You compare, you decide

[jmcgowanjm]

the January 29, 2004 edition

Has global oil production peaked?
By David R. Francis | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0129/p14s01-wogi.html

Revised June 9th, 2003
Paris Peak Oil Conference Reveals Deepening Crisis

by Michael C. Ruppert

http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/053103_aspo.html

[FloridaPat]

1. We're in big trouble. Solar power is free. Wind power is free.

Hemp has enough oil in it to be an alternative. Why are we invading oil countries? Quick, buy a SUV before they're all taken. What a dumb country.

[Zhade]

131. Legalize hemp!

Good for energy, good for industry, good for health!

[ramapo]

2. Maybe is not good enough

The CSM article might be called by some as fair and balanced. Maybe we're ok for another 10,20, or 50 years but maybe the crisis has started already.

The Ruppert position is unambigious, oil production has peaked and it's all downhill from here.

The prudent course would be for the US to act on the assumption that the pessimists are correct. This is the win-win. There is no downside to moving away from an oil-based society and economy. To the contrary, a serious move to solar, wind and other alternative energies would generate lots of jobs. It could be the new, new thing that our economy needs.

But being a reactive rather than proactive society, the US will likely fritter away another 30 years as we did from 1973 to 2003. What a different country this would be had the early lessons of the 1970s been remembered and seriously acted upon.

[jmcgowanjm]

3. You can find all of Simmons' remarks from Uppsala here

http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2003/iwood2003.html

[jmcgowanjm]

11. Revealing Statements from a Bush Insider

I finally found the full text of Simmons' remarks.

"that peaking of oil will never be accurately predicted until after the fact"
http://www.peakoil.net/iwood2003/MatSim.html

Based on my studies of parabolic curves, asymptotic
points, central limit theorems, and maximum
power principle(You can google all of these terms
for definitions), I think that the World will know
exactly when peak production consumption occurs.

Sort of like a human knows when blood is not
reaching all of the body's extremities.

As an example, I think December/March 2000 was the peak
of world production and I think December/March 2003 was peak
consumption.

Based on this info, we will know when the Olduvai
Slide begins. It will be something akin to the
Collapse of the USSR with the simultaneous shudder
of the World's Economic Markets.

[jmcgowanjm]

4. And the ASPO Newsletter #38 February 2004 Kuwait

http://www.asponews.org/docs/Newsletter38.pdf

Enjoy and may not only the force be with us
but may we be the force.

Aih Cap'n, the shields are iffy, but I'm game if
you are.

[SixShooter]

5. Think logically

Its not too hard...we need new sources of energy...solar, wind etc..

Of course tell that to Ann Coulter and Limbaugh and you'll be labelled an "enviro-fascist" :wtf:

[NickB79]

6. Wind and solar are stop-gap solutions at best

As are biomass and bio-diesel. All of these alternative energy supplies, even if fully implemented, are incapable of replacing even 50% of current oil demand today, much less ten years from now when energy demands are even higher. Nuclear or coal are the only major energy sources left that could take up the slack a lack of oil would produce. As several posters here have argued quite intelligently in a number of posts, nuclear power is far preferable to increased coal burning. Fusion would be even more preferable, but that has been 20 yrs away for the past 40 yrs. We have a suitable replacement in nuclear power, but the fear of nuclear power is preventing new plants from being built until we're deep into a massive energy crunch.

[BeFree]

7. Nuclear...too cheap to meter

Question: If nuke power is so good, then why aren't private investors investing in nuke power?

Besides, won't all the electrical extension cords get tangled? <grin>

There is nothing to replace oil. Get used to it.

[NickB79]

8. So we're screwed then?

Since so much of our infrastructure depends on oil and its derivatives, we MUST find a way to replace it or our society as it now exists will collapse. Investors aren't investing in nuclear power for the very reason I stated: the hyped-up dangers of nuclear power create a NIMBY attitude in this country that have scared investors and builders away from new reactor development. Other nations, such as Japan, France and India, have made massive advances in nuclear reactor designs. These next-generation reactors produce much less waste (they actually burn up their own waste to generate even more power), are much more weapons-proliferation proof, and can run on thorium, much more common and easily obtained than uranium. Nuclear power IS good; it is the hysterical reaction you get from many people from the mere mention of nuclear power that ruins it.

Nuclear power CAN be used to replace a lot of what is now run by oil. Obviously it can be used to generate additional electricity, but you don't need to use the electricity generated by reactors directly (the extension cords reference). You can use the electricity to drive reactions to generate short-chain hydrocarbons from CO2, or to produce hydrogen, that could then be used as a replacement portable fuel source. This would help to create a substitute to gasoline or diesel in vehicles. It would still be too expensive to maintain our current gas-guzzling society, but it would allow us to maintain commercial airliner fleets, mass transit systems, modest personal vehicle usage and commercial trucking fleets. The hydrocarbon synthesis could also be used to create ammonia to replace petroleum-derived fertilizers for farming, and possibly more complex polymers for the generation of simple plastics.

"Getting used to it" means accepting no more plastics, no more fuels, no more fertilizers, and no more medicines. I honestly don't think our nation could survive getting used to that.

[BeFree]

13. Yeah, we're gonna be hurting

But some of us have been getting prepared for a while now.

I'm all for the push to find alternatives. Hell, we shoulda started years ago. Of course, the main impediment to doing so has been the oil cartels, cartels which we feed money into everyday, everyone of us.

The idea that nuclear is our savior, however, concerns me on a couple of fronts. Ultimate safety is the chief concern. While there have been many deaths attributable to oil and coal, it is possible that just one nuke accident could surpass those numbers.

I do not know much about Japan's and France's nuke programs. But just as soon as they start making nuke fueled cars and shipping them over here, we'll all be educated, eh? <grin>

The new-nuke programs may do as you say -- eliminate the waste -- but here, in the US, "Houston, we've got a problem." And Houston ain't got a clue, 'cept to bury it and hope for the best.

Once again, if nukes are 'So good' why aren't private investors trying to build more, here, in the land of capitalism? Are they no good for the capitalists? Hell, by law, nuke plants are immune from damages.

You, Sir, like nukes. Fine. 50-60 years from now your plan may show fruit. Maybe not. What we can do is to start economically using the limited resource of oil. I think they call it conservation, also. That plan will show fruit next year.

[NickB79]

32. Actually, I hate nukes

I do not like the idea of having more nuclear power plants built anywhere in the US, especially anywhere near I would live. However, I also recognize that we need new sources of energy, and nuclear is the least-damaging one we currently have. I have read up on wind, solar, biomass, biodiesel, hydrogen fuel, and all fall short of providing the required amounts of energy that we will need next year, much less 25 yrs from now. This also takes into account conservation; whether we run out of oil in 10 yrs or 50 yrs, we will still run out. To focus entirely on conservation and nothing on new power sources isn't looking at the long-term requirements, because even with effective conservation programs we will still need additional power.

You say how one nuclear accident could surpass the numbers of dead from coal and oil power, which would mean numbers in the hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, dead. The most devastating nuclear reactor accident, Chernobyl, killed a few thousand. This was using reactor technology from 30 yrs ago that wasn't even considered state-of-the-art then. Furthermore, that accident resulted in large part due to an experiment where the safety systems were deliberately shut down. Had they not done this, the reactor likely would not have gone critical. This wasn't a failure of the reactor itself, but of those manning it and those that gave the orders to carry out this foolhardy experiment. How many other catastrophic nuclear accidents have occurred in the past 50 yrs? The closest one was Three Mile Island, which doesn't even compare to the events at Chernobyl. I would say the track record for nuclear power has been pretty good, considering that there are close to 450 nuclear power plants in 31 countries across the world, meeting 16% of the world's energy needs. And, most of these plants have been operating for many years already with no mishaps.

We could both argue about the hypothetical results of a nuclear reactor failure all night long, but I doubt we would get anywhere. I just can't draw the conclusion of doom and gloom from nuclear reactors when, looking at their history, they have caused so few casualties compared to conventional forms of energy.

[grower]

49. The last I knew

There was a moratorium on new nuke plants. After that if the govt could be trusted to keep their mitts off and not regulate them into bankruptcy you would have more nuke capacity than is imaginable.

And nuke power is the only way to make hydrogen power feasible. The hydrogen lovers always forget to mention that it takes more energy to create hydrogen than hydrogen provides. With nuke power the electricity to produce hydrogen becomes cheap enough to produce hydrogen and start converting internal combustion engines to clean burning hydrogen

[NNadir]

9. You haven't been reading very much, have you?

First of all, nuclear electricity is right now some of the cheapest in the country. The chief reason it is not being invested in is that American Capitalists are cowards; they are deathly afraid of the experience of the 1970's during which they were forced to make continual design changes to satisfy increasingly absurd "safety" demands.

We will have to build nuclear power plants one way or the other, just as the French and the Japanese are ultimately. It will be economic and environmental suicide not to do so. Right now our MBA's in the power industry are building "clean gas" plants. Just wait until they recognize that there is no gas to fuel them. Talk about white elephants!

It is interesting to note that one of the most protested plants in the United States - and the most expensive - Seabrooke in New Hampshire, now provides some of the cheapest power in the United States. Someone just bought it for $836 million dollars, by the way. That may be chump change to you, but I would say that it represents a considerable investment.

Maybe though, if this an objection to nuclear power, that it is not too cheap to meter, you will be so kind as to name a form of energy that is to cheap to meter? Name a form of energy that is cheaper than nuclear power in any sense: But be sure to include the cost of environmental degradation, dead bodies, chemical toxicity, etc. The only form of electrical energy that is competitive with nuclear is coal. http://www.uic.com.au/nip08.htm

On purely environmental and health grounds, only a fool would prefer a coal plant to a nuclear plant.

I've written lots of posts on this site giving lots of examples of how nuclear energy can be used to provide motor fuels and other forms of energy. One recent example is the Sulfur Iodine cycle thread.

You are expousing glib, uninformed rote responses to our energy crisis: Exactly what we will NOT need to address it. I submit that nuclear power plants are too expensive to build because people - with very poor understanding of safety, risk, and technical alternatives - blindly oppose them.

[jmcgowanjm]

12. there's going to be a lag time,NNadir. As DU's NuclearCzar

would you be kind enough to outline the rough
cost/benifit of a new nuclear unit and the time needed
to bring it online. Thank you.

And BTW, Entergy-New Orleans based, formerly MiddleSouthUtilities
bought Seabrook.

[NNadir]

15. "Nuclear Czar?" How about DU Nuclear Educator? I'll take that title.

It is difficult to describe the lead time of a nuclear plant in the United states, mostly because of the problem of determining public acceptance. If the plant faces protesters (and I used to be an anti-nuclear protester if you can believe that) it is possible to extend the time-line (and the cost) almost indefinitely. As we saw at Shoreham, it is possible to extend the time line to infinity. (I'm embarrassed to say I was a participant in the anti-Shoreham movement.)

The issue is therefore not technical, but therefore social and political. This is where a DU Nuclear Educator is potentially valuable. If you offer me this title, I will gladly accept it. I am trying to make people on the left, of which I am one, understand the environmental importance of de-demonizing nuclear power. This is not easy by any means. I've been at this for some years. I can tell you the knee-jerk reactions, almost all of which would be laughable were they not taken so seriously, are cultural myths that are extremely difficult to overcome. (My personal favorite: "Plutonium it the most toxic subtance known," the words of one Ralph Nader, who went on to pronounce even an even more famous whopper: "There is no difference between Al Gore and George Bush.")

The French (who obtain 90% of their electricity from nuclear power) can build a plant in 57 months, just under 5 years. They have standardized designs. As the link below shows, the French have no plans to introduce their standardized design here. I suppose, with typical French contempt, they regard the US as a technological basket case where nuclear energy is concerned. I hate to say it, but they are right. The French have also begun to run with Weinberg's molten salt reactor design first built at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee., as are the Russians. (We of course are doing nothing. History will curse us with how we treated Weinberg. He was fired for pushing the MSR.)

The French are better than us

It is possible however that as the crisis grows in proportion that the US public will become more enlightened. In that case, with the wolf at the door, we can always hire the French to build our plants, assuming of course that the dollar is worth for than a few cents of Euros after George W. Bush is done with the Argentinization of our economy.

It is likely that the United States will turn to coal, since coal is cost competitive with nuclear energy in areas where coal is readily accessible. The competitiveness of coal, of course, is wholly dependent on the fact that there is very little restriction on the health, environmental and greenhouse costs of coal; these are merely foisted on the public and swept under the blackened rug with barely a whimper from anyone. There is almost no regulation of the waste for instance, so little regulation in fact that very few people even consider options for dealing with it. (This is why Mercury is found in high concentrations in the soils of the Northeast for instance.)

The coal option is, of course, what I am trying so hard to fight against. Oil as we discuss here often, is not going to last all that much longer as an unlimited option.

We do have a nuclear industry here of course, but the chief practitioners, the engineers and those with construction and design experience are all aging rapidly. There are some new nuclear engineers coming out of places like Penn State and MIT, but hardly enough. We in the United States will therefore have considerable pain with oil depletion and the manufacture of synthetic fuels. In much of the rest of the world, however, things will be very different.

On the bright side, the HTGCR, a high temperature design suitable for supercritical water operations was designed at General Atomics in San Diego. How long it would take to commercialize such a system is a huge guess. It depends on many variables: Public perception is but one.

Maybe we can import some Indians. India has a vibrant nuclear program (Thorium based). Maybe we can hire some Japanese. They have a vibrant nuclear program.

I note that Americans built the first nuclear reactor, (a horrible graphite thing) in a very short time, two years, with almost no design knowledge or construction experience. This was a time of course when scientific and technical excellence was highly valued in our culture, before the age when had degenerated into a culture of MBA paper pushers defrauding one another in a circle jerk.

I think the Manhattan Project/Apollo Program analogies are sometimes pushed too far. Everyone wants such a project for their pet cause. That said, we certainly understand nuclear energy far better now than did Drs Fermi and Oppenheimer. We may have enough left here for such an effort to succeed on the energy front and considerably shorten the time-lines for the establishment of such technologies. Such an effort, if undertaken, should not limit itself to nuclear energy, of course, but also other viable non fossil fuel related ventures.

Of course none of this will happen so long as our national tragedy occupies the White House. I believe this creature is actually harming the nuclear industry by making a pretense about supporting it, though its support is rather similar to the "no child left behind" support of teachers. Al Gore could have managed this business I think, but we really don't know enough about the other Democrats to say what's what at this point with respect to the issue of energy sanity and potential next Presidents. I'd like to think that Dr. Dean could address this issue, though I'm not sure of it. It's seeming unlikely now, in any case, that Dr. Dean will prevail. (Sigh...)

[jmcgowanjm]

18. OK, you will correct me here. Can each nuke warhead be a powerplant?

If not, what is the smallest cheapest nuke plant
that can be built in the shortest possible time.
Minimum safeguards.

We must reconsider coal and nuclear generation of
electricity, looking for ways to make them more
acceptable environmentally. We must provide at
least as much economic incentive for wind and
solar as for oil and gas. .None of these measures
will prevent a great reduction of consumption, but
may prevent serious social disorganization. We need
to figure out how to retain social cohesiveness while
going through the reduction.

http://goldismoney.info/forums/showthread.php?t=2955

[NNadir]

20. I'm not sure I understand the question about the warhead.

A typical nuclear power plant can totally consume about 1 warhead of fissionable material per day, roughly 3 kg. (This is in fact the only way to consume warhead material through fissioning it. This was the policy of the Clinton-Gore administration.)

Very small nuclear reactors have been built for ships in less than a year's time. These are probably a good example of minimal reactors.

I do not think that we should "minimize safeguards" for nuclear plants. As we know from tens of thousands of reactor-years of experience, it is possible to build safe reliable high functioning, cost competitive nuclear reactors using 1970's technology that function without loss of human life or environmental degradation. In the last four decades, with minimal effort, over 400 nuclear reactors have been built world wide, where they generate about 17% of the world's electrical demand. This would suggest a minimal rate at which they can be constructed, more than two a year. I have no doubt that we could easily increase this number by a factor of ten, providing hundreds of thousands of high paying high tech jobs in the process.

The cost of nuclear power is about 3.20 Eur cents/KW-hr, fully loaded in Europe. Almost all of this cost is capital cost. The cost of nuclear fuel is trivial, less than 1/10th the cost of the power generated 0.3 EUR cents/KW-hr. This overall figure compares with gas 3.05-4.26, and coal 3.81-4.57. Gas costs are expected to rise rapidly. Comparison of energy costs. The provided link shows that the cost of coal when considered from the standpoint of environmental and health damage potential adds another 4 to 7 EUR cents the cost of coal. This cost of course is not charged to utilities; it is simply dumped on a naive populace. Thus it does not show up on the energy bill each month. It is indicated that the cost of environmental damage from nuclear energy from all causes is about 0.4 EUR cents per KW-hr, less than any other form of energy except wind energy. In the case of nuclear plants, these costs DO show up on the bill. Nuclear waste, unlike the wastes of other systems is largely controlled and is chargeable to the utility using it. You cannot simply dump it, although small amounts of nuclear materials do find their way into the environment.

(Solar energy, as photovoltaics, when available, costs over 10 cents KW-hr of generated power, depending on the type of cell and its location: In areas where there is not much sun, the costs of solar generation rise immeasurably. Then, if we want energy in the nighttime we also need to build energy storage systems. These figures are not in the link, nor are figures of the environmental cost of manufacturing photovoltaics. I would imagine, based on the toxicity of cadmium used in the most productive of these systems, that the environmental damage cost of solar cells is at least comparable to that of nuclear energy.)

Only wind power is cheaper than nuclear, but, as we know, wind power is only available when the wind is blowing.

Never let it be said though, that I am opposed to investment in wind and solar energy. I fully support these relatively benign forms of energy and their development. I am opposed to the opposition (on NIMBY grounds) of the off-shore wind plant near Cape Cod.

[jmcgowanjm]

25. thanx NNadir, what I needed. So warheads are not good enough

I asked because I'm looking for cheap nuclear energy
output now. Nukes would be a good way to take
hydrocarbon power plants down (a thought-how much
and how long to retrofit hydrocarbon plants to nuke) and
transfer carbons to making fertilizer.

So a crash course building submarine nukes* could
generate, what, 25%* of our electricity in 5-10 years?

*$2.5 billion per nuke?
*25% of today's electricity

[NNadir]

28. Nuclear power already produces 20% of our electricity.

So we would not need a crash program to reach 25%. I would guess we could increase our share of nuclear energy to 50% relatively easily, once such a program began. We would need a crash program to reach the French value of 90% in short order though. I would estimate that mass produced standarized reactors could be built for a billion or less each in a climate of public acceptance.

Right now it is not economic to use weapons grade plutonium (or for that matter reactor grade Plutonium) in nuclear reactors. Enriched Uranium is so cheap that it would actually require subsidies to use Plutonium. (Highly enriched weapons grade Uranium 90%+ U-235 is easily mixed down to ordinary commercial enriched 3% U-235.) It is estimated that Plutonium will not be economically competitive with enriched Uranium for many decades. There is a very sound non-proliferation value however in using Plutonium and providing these subsidies though. This is the only way to provide for nuclear disarmament. Clinton was in fact working on exactly that when he left office.

[cprise]

60. If you significantly increase the U.S. share of nuclear power

Then most other countries will begin to consider nuclear reactors a must-have in order to be competitive.

Who will want a "defense dividend" from their nuclear power? Probably everyone at some point.

[NNadir]

69. There are 29 countries operating nuclear power plants, including Mexico.

Of the 16 countries that obtain more than 25% of their electric power from nuclear energy, led by Lithuania at 80.1%, exactly one (France at 78%) is a possessor of nuclear weapons. Overall there are thirty countries having 441 nuclear reactors distributed among them, and less than a third have nuclear weapons: The United States, Russia, China, France, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel (unconfirmed) and, if they are to be believed, North Korea. Apartheid South Africa had nuclear weapons, but dismantled them. (Modern South Africa will lead the world in the development of the innovative proliferation resistant pebble bed reactor). The Ukraine had nuclear weapons of course at the moment of independence, but they gave them all to the Russians. Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden, Germany, Japan and Spain have never even contemplated the idea of getting a "defense dividend" from their commercial nuclear operations.

In fact, there is no "defense dividend." Nuclear Weapons, as we are learning from recent events, are extremely difficult and expensive weapons to make, even if you get the plans emailed to you by Bush's pals in Pakistan. They are also expensive to maintain and store. By and large the majority of nuclear weapons developing nations have developed them out of fear of enemies they believed or knew to have them. Only three nations developed nuclear weapons without such fear: India, Israel and South Africa. Japan, the only nation to experience a nuclear attack, has been a world leader in the fight against nuclear weapons even though it is also a world leader in commercial nuclear power development, generating more than 34% of its electricity by nuclear means.

Canada, which has one of the world's most innovative nuclear programs, although it only provides 12% of their electricity, has the potential to lead the world in the dismantling of nuclear weapons. (The Canadians never thought to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. It is estimated that Canada's CANDU reactors could dispose of 50 MT, enough for more than 5000 weapons, of weapons grade plutonium every 25 years.

World Nuclear Power as a percentage of total electrical energy generated.

[cprise]

71. Nuke weapons are proliferating nonetheless

...and the TINA argument for nuclear energy gives the militarily ambitious an excuse to put a nuclear infrastructure in place.

I wish I could say otherwise.

[NNadir]

72. Really? How many new nuclear powers were there in the last 2 decades

The old Soviet weapons dismantled in the 1990's alone speak to a huge reduction in nuclear weapons in quantitative terms. I am sure that the total number of nuclear weapons on the planet is smaller than it was in the recent past.

In spite of a huge amount of hullaboo about "nuclear terrorists" there has yet to be a single incident in over 50 years. Now, it happens that many, many thousands of people have been burned to death in both military and terrorist events using oil derived products. Why then is the risk (or threat or whatever you want to call it) of military diversion of nuclear materials, which has occurred in recent times only in North Korea, worse than the threat of allowing military minded states access to oil?

In any case I've indicated many times before, the only unambiguous way to destroy a nuclear weapon is to fission its fissionable material. This is a powerful argument FOR nuclear power, particularly since so many proliferation strategies and reactors have been developed. (Thorium is the key.)

BTW, I have no idea what the acronym TINA stands for.

[cprise]

74. 'There Is No Alternative'

And it's spelled 'hullabaloo'.

[NNadir]

75. Well I would feel better about if these alledged alternatives

were operating commercially and competitively as nuclear power is. My earlier link demonstrated that there are many countries in the world getting better than 1/4 of their electricity from nuclear power, without any REAL (as opposed to imagined) disaster. I don't think any of the "alternatives" are operating anywhere on this scale, with the possible exception of Brazil.

Certainly I would disagree with the statement "There is an ACCEPTIBLE WORKABLE alternative." Maybe in 50 years. The problem is that peak oil is NOW. We don't need handwaving and back of the envelope calculations. We need PROVEN technologies.

Thanks for the spelling lesson. I'll keep it in mind, since I'm sure the word "hullabaloo" is useful. Thanks, too, for keeping me up to date as well on the latest abbreviated term TINA. WTIAS. They proliferate faster than I can keep track of them. I'm not sure if the reason they proliferate has much to do with the desire to communicate, but that, like my opinion that nuclear energy is risk minimized with respect to things like biodiesel, is simply my view.

[cprise]

76. TINA = A famous Thatcher-ism

Wind is supplying over 20% of Denmark's electricity, and they're just now getting serious about off-shore turbines... AND the country isn't that gifted with wind resources.

And maybe nuclear isn't expanding because wind is cheaper. Nuclear fission will always be highly-concentrated power, and therefore a high potential liability. And no, legislating liability limitations specially for nuclear power is not what I consider "...operating commercially and competitively".

If insurers require astronomical premiums, then something is wrong with the business model.

[NNadir]

84. Wind is cheaper in some places, until you have to store the energy.

Denmark buys electricity from France on windless days. (France is a huge exporter of electrical energy, almost 80% of which is nuclear.) What percentage of Europe's electricity is wind? Personally I would certainly like to see the fraction increase, but wind, under the best circumstances is a peak load option, and extremely dependent on the weather.

BTW, am I ensured against getting lung cancer from air pollution? Liability for energy is dumped on the public in all cases. If my kids develop neurological symptoms from heavy metals coal ash, I am not insured.

The contention that insurance companies determine the best energy strategy is so absurd as to be beneath contempt. Maybe they've been listening to nuclear hysterics too closely. Actually what I think the real case is is that their actuaries had very little data in the 1970's. I note that if insurance companies did insure nuclear plants it would have been an excellent business strategy. They would have been collecting premiums for decades without a single payout.

I'm sorry, BTW, about my linguistic insufficiency. To tell you the absolute truth, I seldom paid much attention to what Margaret Thatcher said. I regarded her as a fool.

[treepig]

26. ok, since you've volunteered to be our nuclear educator

i'll go ahead and ask your opinion about the CANDU reactor:

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/reg/7/millennium/candu/candu_about.html

basically, i guess what i'm interested in is countering those who claim that whatever its environmental benefits, nuclear power is just a scheme to enrich halliburton (and the usual cast of seedy right-wing, neo-con characters).

however, if CANDU reactor provide an acceptable alternative (canadians aren't that bad, are they?) then this objection is overcome. according to stuff on the web, they seem to have been building these things pretty much continously, so perhaps they've moved beyond the 1970's technology extant in the usa? or are they (i.e.., their websites) basically just putting a 21st century spin on 1950's technology?

[NNadir]

27. The Candu Reactor

The Candu Reactor was originally developed by the Canadians to use unenriched (natural) Uranium. The reason for taking this approach was that the Canadians did not want to invest in (then) extremely expensive Uranium isotopic separation plants, and recognized that it was much easier to separate hydrogen isotopes. The name CANDU derives from fusing the words Canadian and Deuterium.

The main principle behind the reactor is that it uses deuterium oxide (heavy water) as a moderator as opposed to the natural water used in most Pressurized Water Reactors (PWR) and boiling water reactors (BWR). Deuterium has an extremely low neutron capture cross section, which is a measure of the probability that a nucleus will absorb a neutron. It also has a very large potential for slowing neutrons down to ordinary molecular speeds, a process generally called "thermalizing" neutrons. Combined these two properties result in a reactor that has a very high "neutron efficiency," meaning the neutrons are available for doing work.

The cost of enriched Uranium has fallen a great deal, especially now with the important task (probably to be abandoned by the awful Bushies) of fissioning surplus weapons grade material. Thus the chief motivation for building the CANDU, at least from a financial perspective has been negated.

It turns out that the CANDU reactor is extremely useful for two other reasons. One reason is that it is possible to use it as a plutonium burner. The other is that using U-233 as a fuel (derived from Thorium) the reactor can function essentially as a thermal breeder reactor, which actually creates more fuel than it burns. (The most widely explored breeder reactors are "fast reactors" cooled with liquid metals.) As a practical matter, this is expressed by the ability of these types of reactors to achieve high "burn-ups" (total energy obtained per unit mass of fuel), conditions that greatly reduces the volume of "waste" that needs processing.

Candu reactors also have an important advantage in that it is possible to continuously refuel them. This latter property eliminated the down-time that reactors require to be re-fueled. Such down-time has important consequences in nuclear economics. In an earlier era, when reactor operators were relatively inexperienced, excessive downtime had a great negative impact on the economics of nuclear power. The reason that the US nuclear industry has been able to increase it's capacity to the highest in its history (by almost 20%) without building a single new reactor (and while actually closing several) is precisely this: great reductions in down time, especially in refueling operations. The CANDU reactor completely eliminates this economic problem almost completely.

There is a drawback to continuous fueling capability: It can under certain circumstances allow for the use of a reactor for the production of weapons grade material, especially when pure Uranium is used as a fuel. Therefore CANDUs have impacts on the area that, in my opinion, represents the most serious objection to nuclear power, proliferation risk. In the CANDU case, this is somewhat offset by the fact that the CANDU is a perfect reactor for destroying and/or denaturing plutonium and recovering energy in the process. The Clinton-Gore administration had quietly sounded out the Canadians on using Candus precisely for this critical (pun intended) disarmament task. Indeed, where the reactor is fueled with Plutonium and Thorium it has tremendous non-proliferation value, as the use of U-233 in weapons is extremely problematic. Thus the CANDU reactor can be a tool for peace or a tool for war, depending on who is using it. CANDU reactors should be subject to close international scrutiny. The Canadians have used them well; and Canada is a nation that is demonstrably more civilized than the United States, for instance. This is an instance where a technological development is ethically and morally neutral: It can be used for either great good or great harm, depending on the ethics and morality of the group using them.

The Indians have basically appropriated the CANDU design and have built copies of this type of reactor. There is an economic purpose for doing so: India has much larger reserves of Thorium than it has Uranium. However, it is worth noting that the Indians are egregious violators of non-proliferation agreements. They, with the Pakastanis stand closer than any other nation to the precipice of potential nuclear war. I don't trust the Indians with CANDUs. I do note however that they are excellent nuclear engineers, and have published good work on the non-weapons use of CANDU reactors.

I really don't know how much presence the Halliburton Corporation has in the nuclear industry. There is none of which I am aware, but I admit to not being aware of many of Halliburton's filthy dealings and operations. It is true that the left has been generally hostile to nuclear power, something I am trying, with mixed success, to reverse. This historical anti-nuclear attitude of the left has probably caused many of the people in the nuclear industry to develop political attitudes that lean rightward. People who are aware of my politically liberal leanings are often surprised by support for nuclear power, an attitude that actually represents a reversal of my previous views on the subject.

In any case, the Canadians, the Japanese, the Germans and the French all have extensive and successful nuclear power programs. None are beholden to Halliburton; arguably these states hold Halliburton in contempt, much as you and I do. The Japanese, Canadians and the Germans have been model states in their use of nuclear technology. Although the technical capability to develop nuclear weapons is a trivial barrier in those nations, none of these three has ever seriously considered becoming nuclear armed states.

I don't believe that hostility to nuclear energy is consistent with realistic environmentalism. It is unfortunately not possible to produce energy with a zero environmental, economic, and moral risk. The best we can hope for is yo minimize these risks. I argue that nuclear energy is the maximally minimized risk strategy available to humanity in the early 21st century. If it happens that people on the right hold similar views on promoting nuclear energy to those which I, on the left, also hold, it has little bearing on the desirability of such views. People often undertake identical actions for widely varying, even opposing, reasons. If it is true that Halliburton supports nuclear energy for the purpose of giving themselves another avenue to pillage and plunder, and I support nuclear power because I am a concerned environmentalist (and Greehouse gas nut-job), the end, if not the means, is the same.

[treepig]

29. thank you muchly!!

your knowledge is greatly appreciated.

btw, do you have a website, or collection of your postings?

[NNadir]

36. Your welcome.

I'm sorry, I don't have a website or a collection of postings. Thanks for asking though.

I used to do quite a bit of writing on SmirkingChimp, where my name was NaderNadir as opposed to the more polite NNadir I use here.

We had a wonderful thread there that went on for several months on the subject of Molten Salt Reactors, which had well over a thousand posts. Unfortunately the owners of that site deleted it in a space saving effort after the topic died. I wish I'd saved it, because I blurted out some good ideas there that I wish I'd pursued.

[treepig]

42. recently, i've been saving interesting posts (like yours) to WORD files

but now that i have a couple hundred of them, the system seems to have broken down (some type of indexing is badly needed . . .)

anyhow i muchly appreciate your efforts to inform us - i've always found your information to be most accurate, with one possible, nit-picking exception. you have claimed that commercial nuclear power has never killed anyone in the usa. but the following analysis by bernard l. cohen (which i've posted before and you seemed to have agreed with the basic premise of the article) indicates that people, albeit very few, actually are dying from the use of nuclear power:


This program of "regulatory ratcheting" has increased the cost of a nuclear power plant by a factor of 4-5 over and above inflation, an increased cost per plant of well over $2 billion. How many lives does
NRC hope to save at this cost? According to its own studies (5), plants built prior to this regulatory ratcheting could be expected to cause an average of 0.8 deaths over their operating life. Thus, according to their own calculations, NRC is knowingly spending ($2 billion/0.8=) $2.5 billion per life saved. An ironic aspect of these NRC reactor safety-upgrading activities is that the cost increases they have caused have forced utilities to build coal burning power plants instead of nuclear plants. A typical estimate (5) is that the air pollution from 1 GWe of coal burning plants kills 25 people per year, or about 1000 people over its operating lifetime. Considering the fact that the nuclear plant is expected to kill 0.8 according to NRC (5) . . .

http://www.cab.cnea.gov.ar/difusion/Cohen.html

the information on nuclear power death rates appears to come from this document (which i haven't been able to find online):

5. U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Reactor Safety Study, Document WASH-1400 or NUREG 75/014 (1975).

so basically, i'm now wondering if your statements on no one dying from the use of nuclear power are meant to be true in the absolute, literal sense (i.e., zero deaths have occurred), or if they're meant to be taken in the context of the number of deaths compared with other forms of energy, such as coal?

[NNadir]

51. Bernard L. Cohen

Somehow my earlier answer to this didn't get properly posted and though I crafted an answer, you didn't see it. I apologize for appearing not to have answered this sooner.

Thanks for your kind words.

Bernard L. Cohen has more influence on my thinking about the subject of energy than any other person. He certainly played a large role in my odyssey from anti-nuclear activist to nuclear promoter in the years following Chernobyl, Chernobyl being the event that focused my personal attention on the matter. It is Bernard Cohen who made me recognize that nuclear power saves lives on a grand scale. Dr. Cohen, like Alvin Weinberg, the inventor of the Molten Salt Reactor, is an old man who will mostly not likely live to see his vision realized. I think though that it is safe to say that unless their visions are realized, it is possible that NO or at least very few visions will be realized. The crisis in the interaction between energy and the environment is probably that severe.

You should be proud to have heard Dr. Cohen's voice in the wilderness. I know I am.

Dr. Cohen is far more rigorous than I am in calculating loss of life from accidents associated with life in a technological society. I suspect that the discrepancy between his (non-zero) figures and my own figures derives from the fact that he calculates errors from all causes. In a nuclear plant there are likely to be some accidents that are non-nuclear in nature: Steam explosions, injuries from things like falling off a ladder or being run over by a truck, etc. Being familiar with Dr. Cohen's thinking, I would suspect that he includes such events in his calculations. He is also the type to include extrapolated probablistic data. He may for instance assume that small releases of fission product gases do in fact lead to some deaths. From everything I've read though, it seems very possible that extrapolations about low level (background) radiation from Hiroshima and Nagasaki data is suspect. Radiation is probably far less harmful than is generally believed.

For years I have been asking people to identify and document a death in the United States from radiation emitted by a commercial nuclear operation (as opposed to a military nuclear operation). No one has provided one. If anyone can produce such an event; I am willing to stand corrected. One thing is certain though, even some number of persons have died from a commercial nuclear operation in the US (as people in Japan and the former Soviet Union have), the absolute numbers of persons who have died differ by a factor of many tens of thousands from the number of persons who have died from fossil fuel related operations. Again, nuclear power saves lives.

But let me be clear: I advance nuclear energy as a risk minimized solution to energy production. This is very different from a risk free solution to energy production. The first case exists wherever there is more than one choice. The second case is impossible.

[treepig]

54. so, when the yucca mountain repository is open

all the deaths caused by diesel exhaust-belching trains bringing nuclear waste to the site will be chalked up to nuclear power?

oh well, guess that's a fact of life. i can just imagine the hallaboolu if one the nuclear waste hauling trains derails (even though it's almost certain no release of dangerous material will occur). on a (very) slightly related topic, i remember hearing a story from the cold war when b-52s armed with nuclear weapons were constantly in the air over europe (so as to be ready to head to the USSR at the drop of a hat, i believe this was in the early 60's before intercontinental missile technology was judged reliable). at some point a b-52 crashed in spain, and one of the nuclear weapons was "missing" - eventually it was tracked down but it was hard to find because it landed on fire in farmland and the locals dumped a couple of truckloads of dirt on it (to put out the fire - apparently it was a fairly arid region and water was in short supply). in the end, everything worked out OK, plus i have a corny story to tell those who are terrified of transit accidents of nuclear materials (with the moral of the story being, which few people get, that they're not really that dangerous after all)

[NNadir]

55. Actually, I'm kind of hoping Yucca Mountain doesn't open or if it does

it does so on a temporary basis. This is not because I think Yucca Mountain is unsafe compared with other options, but because I think the idea of dumping nuclear materials is foolish.

Yucca Mountain is an outgrowth of a certain type of hysteria that insists that there is tremendous urgency in dealing with nuclear "waste," although no such urgency exists for dealing with the wastes of any other forms of energy. (Is anyone doing anything serious about climate change for instance?)

Actually we have generations to deal with nuclear materials. Were I in charge of this matter here is what I would do: I would reprocess the removed fuel to separate the Uranium, plutonium, and the minor actinides. The Uranium removed is actually slightly enriched Uranium (all of the fissionable material is not burned.) It can be used directly to fuel new and existing CANDU reactors, increasing efficiency of the fuel use. The plutonium should be separated and burned in Pressurized Water Reactors configured in the Radowsky configuration to transmute Thorium into fuel. As system should be constructed over the next several decades to close this system completely, so that the thorium/uranium/plutonium are burned completely. This type of treatment will account for over 95% of the mass of the "waste" in its entirety.

I would then separate the fission products. Some, like the precious metals Rhodium and Ruthenium will have fractions that have decayed so far that they can be directly sold as valuable materials. There are ways to isolate Palladium from its single long lived isotope, or to use the slightly radioactive Palladium in closed systems as a hydrogenation catalyst. There are hundreds of millions of dollars of precious metals contained in nuclear waste.

Whatever technetium cannot be immediately used in high temperature nuclear systems should be transmuted to Ruthenium and Rhodium. (I can imagine circumstances where the Technetium is transmuted as a side product of its use.

Dr. Cohen is probably fairer than I in calculating the health, environmental and other consequences of the non-nuclear operations (truck driving and the like) related to the operation of nuclear power plants. I think the inclusion of diesel fumes from transporting nuclear materials is a valid issue, as is mining, and other related activities. (Most of these activities of course exist for all other forms of energy on a grander scale, since Uranium and Thorium are extremely energetically dense.) Still, in doing so, he really brings to fore exactly how nuclear power saves lives. His is in my mind the most irrefutable argument for nuclear power I've ever heard. Unfortunately, the public as a whole thrives and revels in its innumeracy. Doctor Cohen's arguments require mathematic literacy to be read. It may be that people will not think until they are forced to do so.

Over the years, thousands of applications for fission products have been proposed. If the public can be educated on these matters, we ought to explore and industrialize many of these. Only then, should we look at the long term disposal of whatever tiny fragment of nuclear "waste" as might not have a use.

[Kolesar]

65. Pardon me, but having hot fuel rods sitting 1/2 mi from L. Erie is bad

We have two nuke plants on either side of our metropolitan area. Driving on Ohio 2 west of Cleveland, you can see all the way through the grounds of Davis Besse out into Lake Erie. Highway 2 is a mere one mile from the Lake Erie shoreline, so any waste has to be stored close to the lake. Since they don't have much land at Davis Besse, the fuel rods are stored relatively close to Lake Erie. I don't know where on the grounds the fuel rods are stored, but they are also relatively close to the entrance of the facility, so security is also a big challenge (if someone wanted to orchestrate a terrorist attack).

Citizens were promised that the fuel rods would be moved away from our cities when the nuclear-government complex pushed the technology on us several decades ago. We are eager to have them move it away.

This map shows the Oak Harbor area to get a general idea. Davis Besse is near the "route 2" symbol.

http://mapsonus.switchboard.com/bin/maps-maponly/usr=~402bc85e.f21.503.5/c=2/formName=setclickpost

[NNadir]

66. This is a "could happen" argument as opposed to an "is happening" argument

Time for my usual challenge: Please name one person who has actually died from the storage of nuclear "waste" anywhere in the United States.

What is your claim, that there is 100% probability that the waste will get up and jump into the lake?

Until one person who works him or herself up into a paroxysm of terror about what "might happen" with nuclear waste, will indicate how much time they have spent worrying about the Mercury, greenhouse gases, Uranium (yes, Uranium), Cadmium that spews all over the Eastern United States from coal fired plants and IS causing health problems RIGHT NOW, I will take this kind of argument as being hysterical.

I also challenge the same people to remark on the three thousand who died from terrorism because of our involvement in oil. (Yes, it was about oil: The attackers were all Saudis). I submit that if we had spent as much time worrying about the social, political, economic and environmental consequences of using fossil fuels as we do worrying about a few (rather small and easily managed) containers of nuclear waste sitting outside of nuclear plants, the Twin Towers would still loom over New York.

There has yet to be an incident of nuclear terrorism anywhere in the world, unless you count the activities of the United States, the Soviet Union, and a few other countries in the 1950's.

For the record, I swim every summer right near the Oyster Creek Nuclear plant which is right next door to the Atlantic Ocean in New Jersey. Neither I nor the millions of others who visit that area each summer have been injured by the plant operations. Everytime I gaze at that facility, I reflect on how much better that thing is for my lungs than the alternatives.

[Kolesar]

67. When are you coming to pick it up?

I don't trust the staff and management of First Energy to maintain and operate that reactor and cooling tanks in perpetuity. Remember, this is the company who allowed boric acid to eat a hole "as large as a football" in the lid of the containment vessel of Davis Besse while it was operating. This is the company who cannot get the operating permit renewed because the NRC has doubts about their safety procedures.

I used to kayak with one of the technicians at FE's Perry plant. She reported that technical staff routinely signoff on renewal training that they did not perform. What kind of a quality system is that?

Just because no one has breached the security of Davis Besse, it does not mean that someone will not try some day. Terrorists are becoming more sophisticated lately, especially in the last two and a half years.

First Energy is quite likely the worst electricity company in America. They have also engineered a rate case ripoff that has cost us customers as much as $10 Billion dollars. I am hoping that they fail financially and somebody responsible buys them out.

Google "Rob Tongren" and "Alan Schriber" for the latest on the rate case story. The first was forced to resign as Ohio consumer counsel on account of the rate case, and the second is head of PUCO and culpable in the rip off and being pressured to resign. I think we should indict. FE is Senator Voinovich's sugar daddy of contributions to his and many other GOP congressmen's campaigns to rule America.

To sum it up, I have good reasons to want that nuclear waste out of my county and out of Oak Harbor.

[NNadir]

68. Someone will pick it up. What about the Mercury in my soil?

The difference between the nuclear "waste" you have described and the Mercury contamination of the entire Eastern United States (not to mention the climate change of the entire planet) is that functionally a truck could come and drive the nuclear waste away Unfortunately, contaminated soils on a continental scale and the destruction of the atmosphere of an entire planet is not quite so simple a matter.


Let's be clear on what I said though: It is stupid to open Yucca Mountain, because the materials being "dumped" are far to valuable and important for dumping. As it is in most environmental issues, the key is recycling, which WILL happen, simply because it is the best option. I have not said that nuclear waste should remain next to the plants that generated them for eternity. I HAVE said that they can remain for a longer time, decades, perhaps, at a relatively low RISK.

I really haven't noticed a huge increase in terrorist attacks since 9/11 that correspond to the alleged perfection of terrorism. Personally I think the terrorism fears are, like nuclear fears, being vastly overplayed to pursue an agenda, in this case the improvement of Dick Cheney's stock portfolio, and the prospect of actually electing George W. Bush to the Presidency more likely.

Whether or not FirstEnergy is a shitty company is not an issue for me to decide. The worst managed megacorporation in the history of the world, the Government of the Former Soviet Union, did in fact manage a grand scale spectacular nuclear accident of the worst sort. However, I also note that life on earth, to my personal surprise, did not come to an end. In the fossil case it is quite possible that life will come to an end, a risk far more serious. I think that no energy scheme of any type, the sustainable ones (nuclear, solar, and geothermal) or the unsustainable ones (fossil) are immune from human failings because humans are humans. The difference in my view comes down to this: People act like an unsigned document or a leak or mismanagement in a nuclear plant constitutes the end of the world, whereas the murder, accidents, mismanagement, health erosion, etc, etc surrounding the other options can be ignored. Of course we want regulations enforced and more importantly, we want the intent of the regulations met. It does not happen though that a regulatory failure will absolutely result in a disaster 100% of the time, though people often imply otherwise.

We can cower in fear or we can solve problems. I think Yucca Mountain is a poor choice for solving the problem of "Nuclear Waste," and I believe that we have time to enact a well understood, technically piloted program that will serve rather than hinder future generations. From a risk minimization standpoint, it seems to me a no brainer.

I would like the nuclear "waste" at Oak Harbor moved somewhere else as well. I just want to do it intelligently. In fact, I don't want it to be "waste" at all. I want it to be a resource.

[Bdog]

126. French Public's Opposition to Nuclear Waste Repositories

www.ieer.org/comments/waste/chen-prl.html
Vice-President Cheney Wrong About French Nuclear Repository Program, Independent Institute Asserts

French Public's Opposition to Nuclear Waste Repositories as Deep as that in the United States

Washington, D.C.: Vice-President Cheney's claim that France has a safe and environmentally sound repository for burying radioactive waste generated by nuclear power plants is wrong, according to the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), an independent non-profit group that has published numerous technical reports, books, and papers on nuclear waste management and related issues.

In a May 8 interview with CNN on the Bush administration's proposed energy policy, the Vice-President said: "Right now we've got waste piling up at reactors all over the country. Eventually, there ought to be a permanent repository. The French do this very successfully and very safely in an environmentally sound, sane manner. We need to be able to do the same thing."

"The facts regarding the French repository program contradict Vice-President Cheney," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of IEER, who has written widely on nuclear waste issues. "France has no repository, and their siting program faces huge domestic opposition. The controversy that surrounds waste management is a thorn in the side of the French nuclear industry."

The French government's schedule for a repository, like the U.S. schedule, is far too rapid for a careful scientific investigation required for estimating repository performance over hundreds of thousands of years, according to IEER. Later this year, the U.S. government hopes to declare the proposed Yucca Mountain repository site in Nevada suitable for disposing of radioactive waste, despite serious unresolved questions. The earliest U.S. government projection for opening the proposed repository is 2010. The earliest government-projected French repository opening date is 2015. Both programs have faced intense opposition.

The first opposition in France surfaced in 1987 when the French government opened the search for a repository site without a significant public process. The opposition from the local populations was so intense that government investigators were not allowed near some of the named sites. Many protests centered around concern for the safety and image of France's food supply. France created a new waste law in 1991.

Like the 1982 U.S. Nuclear Waste Policy Act, the 1991 French law mandates that there should be two sites (called laboratories in France) for study. In 1998, a clay site, Bure, located in the east of France was chosen for study, over local objections. The site is in an economically depressed area, and was chosen in disregard of both local opposition (which continues) and a large body of emerging evidence that, contrary to decades-old assumptions, plutonium and several other radionuclides migrate rapidly towards the groundwater under a variety of geologic circumstances.

"When I spoke with the officials at the Bure site," noted Dr. Makhijani, who toured the site in July 2000 at the instance of community leaders and local government officials, "they seemed quite unaware of recent U.S. research on the migration of plutonium, for instance in colloidal form. Ignoring important scientific issues in France is quite parallel to what the U.S. Department of Energy has done with the U.S. repository program."

The areas where a second site may be selected for research were listed early last year. The opposition was intense and widespread - in one case, large numbers of people escorted the officials' car to the border of the Mayenne Département. (A Département is a French administrative unit in between a county and a state.) The people wanted to see an end to the production of waste and pointed out that it was not very democratic to discuss dumping waste in areas that had had no say in the decision to produce it.

"France made a historic mistake when it decided to rely so heavily on nuclear power, rather than develop more advanced renewable technologies and efficient utilization methods," said Didier Anger, a local elected official, and a founder of France's Green Party, which is part of the ruling coalition government. Mr. Anger represents one of France's most heavily nuclearized regions, Normandy, where the world's largest commercial plutonium separation plant is located.

France's nuclear waste management differs from the U.S. in one major respect. France has a major plant, called a reprocessing plant, to dissolve used reactor fuel in a chemical plant to separate plutonium, uranium and fission products.

"But reprocessing does not get rid of the radioactivity," said Dr. Makhijani. "Rather it creates more pollution. Moreover the separated plutonium is a proliferation problem and a very costly, uneconomical fuel."

Liquid waste discharges from reprocessing are polluting the English Channel and spreading radioactivity in the seas of Western Europe. The pollution from the reprocessing plant has so rankled other European countries, that 12 members of the OSPAR (Oslo-Paris) convention (a European body whose mission is to protect the marine environment) voted last year for the elimination of the radioactive releases from the plant with a view to shutting down the reprocessing activity. France abstained. Denmark, Norway and Ireland have called on France and Britain, which runs a similar plant, to shut down their reprocessing operations.

The French public is also growing more and more skeptical of government claims about the safety of nuclear power. Government spokespersons misled the French public into believing that there was no fallout on France after the Chernobyl catastrophe in 1986, even as the rest of Europe was dumping contaminated food. Those reassurances have since been proven to be false. France, like much of the rest of Europe has hot spots from Chernobyl. The government has recently commissioned an epidemiological study to investigate the role of the Chernobyl accident in the increase of thyroid cancers.

"There is no good solution to the problem of long-lived nuclear waste," said Dr. Makhijani. "Before we launch into an energy policy that will lock us into another generation of waste creation, we ought at least to look carefully at the terrible burdens we will pass on to future generations from the last round of reactors."

"France is no showcase for nuclear power," said Didier Anger. "Before pointing to France as a success story, the American public should ask the French people what they think of the problems of waste, disease, and government cover-ups."

[Bdog]

127. Finding a location for a dump is one of the biggest hurdles.

www.enn.com/news/2004-01-02/s_11697.asp
Who pays?

In many cases it is unclear for how long nuclear waste is the liability of the firm causing it, and when the state takes over.

This makes it tough for utilities to calculate the cost, especially if the repositories are built in such a way that they have to be guarded for security reasons.

"It is difficult to give precise costs because France hasn't decided on a strategy on long-term waste management," said Yves le Bars, chairman of ANDRA, the national radioactive waste management agency in France, the E.U.'s biggest nuclear power.

"We say it will take between 15 billion to 25 billion euros (U.S.$18.9 billion to $31.4 billion) to build a repository, operate it and close it for the existing facilities," he said. This would cover high-level waste from France's 58 nuclear plants, assuming fuel would be reprocessed.

Finding a location for a dump is one of the biggest hurdles.

[Bdog]

128. Do you have any supporting data to back up your claims?

Do you have any supporting data to back up your claims?

[NNadir]

133. The subject of nuclear transmutation has been exhaustively covered.

A recent monograph on the subject was put out by the National Academy of Sciences entitled "Nuclear Waste". It covered exhaustively this topic in several thousand pages. I referenced it two years ago on SmirkingChimp but you still haven't read it.

The conclusion of this document is that it is cheaper to simply dump waste, and probably very safe to do so, but that the reason for transmutation is to allay unreasonable public fears. I argue that this is true only in the current climate, where nuclear fuel is extremely low priced, but will not be so in 50 years.

William Stacey's "Nuclear Reactor Physics" recently published by John Wiley Sciences has several chapters on actinide and fission product consumption reactors.

What does it matter to you though? You don't think nuclear power is acceptable under any circumstances, and in two years of discussing the subject with you, I rather think it would be unwise to pretend otherwise. You have just spent several days here remarking that my posts are meaningless and silly in several places (as I am responding in several places.) Why then obsess on the "meaningless and silly?" Just call me a fool and move on. Or just abbreviate your response to "NNadir you are an idiot!" This is absolutely fine with me Boodoq.

Please don't pretend though, that you have a subtle or open mind and would actually bother to read or understand references if I posted them. You will not and cannot.

[jmcgowanjm]

33. Ahead of the curve-3 articles here

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/nation/2376295

Long-established government minimum standards
at the more than two dozen nuclear weapons plants
and research labs around the nation would
become unenforceable guidelines under the Energy
Department proposal.

CANDU Update
http://www.energyprobe.org/energyprobe/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=9208

Nuclear Energy Sink/Neutral at best
http://www.energyprobe.org/energyprobe/index.cfm?DSP=content&ContentID=9048

Think about other uses for multiBillions-
like rail/phaseout trucking
reversing urban to rural/not suburbs
localize energy creation/use

[NNadir]

35. I think we're going to have to spend many many many more billions

to provide energy.

Let's look at the links. The first link is another article about an issue on which I posted an article just a week or so ago. The thread was ignored.Bush dereguation of nuclear plants It applies to weapons labs. Of course the Bushies are doing what they always do, deregulate in favor of the corporations at the expense of the workers, but these are NOT commercial workers. They are workers in weapons facilities.

The confusion between commercial nuclear power and nuclear weapons is a huge pyschological millstone around the neck of nuclear power. It is also to some extent a technical one, since nuclear materials have weapons diversion capability. We should note that while the conception to make a nuclear weapon is generally widely known, very few nations, even those with enormous resources, have actually succeeded at building one, never mind terrorist groups working out of caves in Afghanistan. It happens that we will never be able to put the nuclear weapons genie back in the jar. The best option we have therefore is to minimize the potential for diversion. The best option available is not to put our heads in the sand, but to destroy and denature as much plutonium as is possible, especially weapons grade plutonium to increase the difficulty of working with it. Several opportunities present themselves, the most important of which include switching from the Purex process to pyroprocessing (wherein pure metallic plutonium is never isolated.) This will happen.

The critical articles on the CANDU proposal is pretty typical stuff for what you see. A great deal of handwaving with no specifics. The criticism boils down to this: No copy of this new model of the CANDU-9 has been build. This is the equivalent of saying that the Honda Hybrid Civic should not have been built since the Honda Insight was not a good selling car. In fact the CANDU-9 is an improvement on over 40 years of experience with this type of reactor, a type of reactor that has performed spectacularly well.

Here is a report on some of the improve design safety features of these plants: http://canteach.candu.org/library/19990125.pdf. It is remarkable that a system of generating as much energy as this system has with such low cost to the environment and human health can still be made even safer. It is not surprising though, since we have seen an explosion in computing power and materials science in the decades since the last major nuclear building effort.

This updated Candu is cheaper than earlier models because the Deuterium oxide is simply a moderator. The cooling functions have been replaced with ordinary water.

The designers of this plant report they will produce power at 4.4 cents per kilowatt. That is extraordinarily good, competitive with coal (minus of course, the environmental cost of coal which makes coal much more expensive.) Note that this cost is the fully loaded cost. From the first generation of nuclear power, we know that the chief cost of nuclear energy, just like the chief cost of solar energy, is capital cost. Fuel is next to nothing. We also know that nuclear reactors can be designed to function for much longer periods than was expected. Thus, when the capital cost is amortized, say over thirty or fourty years, the reactor's generating cost will fall rather dramatically. This is in fact what is happening with nuclear plants all over the world.

Capital costs for construction of nuclear plants.

The opponents of this plant offer no data as to why they believe these claims to be bogus. They seem to be very vague in their criticism.

I note that other reactors like the Molten Salt Reactor which has very few moving parts, might be made to last for centuries. Under these conditions it actually is possible to imagine extremely low energy costs, since once the reactor is built, all it needs is (very cheap) fuel.

This is a twelve billion dollar investment in the future: It is not a twelve billion dollar investment in war or prisons or sports stadiums. These are plants that will be providing low cost energy to my grandchildren's children, assuming the human race survives climate change.

It is certainly true that if we are going to save the planet from ecological and economic collapse, we will have to invest trillions, not billions in clean safe energy. I would agree emphatically with the statement that conservation of all types, including those you've listed will be a huge part of such an investment. It is not either/or however.

If this proposal goes through, it will be a huge advantage for Canada, its economy, and its environment and its future.

This link provides an opposing view to those you've provided.

The long term competitiveness of nuclear power, another view.

[jmcgowanjm]

44. but that's just it NNadir, Canda's balking on $11B

for current reactor waste holding, not even building, just holding.

BTW your link didn't work but I pulled up what I thought
is a pro nuclear arguement.

Vision 2020 - 50000 MWe of power

http://gen-iv.ne.doe.gov/pdf/Reno_ANS_Presentation_RS044-00_9_Near-Term_Deployment_-_Long.pdf

731 generators of more than 100MW
= 200000 MW tot coal fired capacity of EU*
*rough rough approximation

http://carnot-online.org/Microsoft_PowerPoint_-_Presentation_CARNOT_1A.pdf

Using the above approximations, just the US has
to build a 1/4 of the EU's current coal energy generators.

The Indian Point 3 Nuclear Power Plant in New York cost $560 million dollars to build in 1969. $2.5 B in today's $.
50000/2000MW(Indian Point production)*$2.5B=
$61.5B-a Marshall Plan indeed.

[BeFree]

14. Been reading a little at a time, for a lot of years

Ya know, I could take you a little more seriously, NNadir, if you didn't write stuff like this quote:" ...forced to make continual design changes to satisfy increasingly absurd "safety" demands" Absurd, eh?

I, for one, am glad safety was forced upon these nuke experiments. No telling how many lives have been saved.

"What fuel is too cheap to meter?" Oil, and the sun, are two free recources. We need, instead of thinking some new-nuke power is gonna save us, begin using these two free sources to the maximum.

Then, there's coal. I offer that if we began to process the coal and strip out the toxics, we can come up with a non-toxic coal product we could use it without too great of risk.

Nuke-power, otoh, has the potential for mass destruction from a singular accident. I figure the 'forced continual design changes' to our present plants is the only thing that has kept that from happening. The risk, to me, is too great, and nothing you have served up has made me rethink that position.

[NNadir]

16. Really. solar Energy is free? Too cheap to meter?

How come solar electricity now costs over three times as much as other forms of electricity? Are you giving away free solar cells? Can you put them on my roof? Will you keep the waste Cadmium in your backyard, so my family is not endangered? The waste Hydrogen Fluoride as well? You are a good guy.

What nuclear "experiments" are you talking about? Nuclear power was shut down in the United States by protesters raising absurd "safety" demands, after the majority of the nuclear plants were up and running. 100% of the plants built without this crazy patchwork of experiments operated for nearly three decades without the loss of a single life. So exactly what did the design changes forced on later plants accomplish?

One demand we used on Long Island was to ask Lilco to prove that we could get the entire population of Long Island off the Island in half an hour. This of course is impossible to do. It didn't matter that the likelihood of this ever being required was vanishingly small, much smaller than the likelihood that many thousand of people on Long Island would die from air pollution, as they most assuredly do.) Today people on Long Island die from coal fly ash containing Mercury drifting in from Ohio. (New Jersey and Long Island are hot spots for deposits of coal ash Mercury in their soils.) You of course are not interested in those dead...but I am. Are you going to keep the high Mercury, Lead, and yes, Uranium from coal ash in your backyard? You, I assume, have a solution to the problem of coal waste, and are now going to offer it, based on your reading. Or is against the rules to point out that we have no solution to coal waste? Or maybe with all your reading, you will give a detailed technical description of how you will "strip out the toxics" and what you will do with them once they are stripped.

The world's worst case nuclear accident occurred already. It's a place called Chernobyl. The case has been examined exhaustively. Less than 1000 people are likely to have their lives shortened by this accident, which took place in a type of reactor not built anywhere but in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and its satellites. (One by the way, is Cuba. Cuba Chernobyl (RBMK) Reactor

According to a paper presented Science Magazine, over 40,000 people die each year in New York and three other cities alone from air pollution related causes. If this (coal related) death rate is not an event of "mass destruction" I am at a loss to believe what would be such an event. The problem is that you, like many others, are far more interested in a theoretical disaster than in a real one.

I really think you'd better do some more reading, especially on the subject of risk. You don't seem to understand it very well. I certainly would not accept your risk analysis on behalf of my children.

I am not surprised, though, that you have declined to rethink your position. Rethinking of dogma is not generally successful.

[BeFree]

17. I've rethunk it plenty of times.

It's just that you, personally, are unconvincing, that's all. No deaths, you say. Yeah, right. Shortened life spans from Chernobyl. OK. That's one way to put it. Yer like the media when it comes to this discussion, half fact, half slanted, and all the rest -- biased opinion.

Solar is free. Hot water and passive heating are just two ways of using it without emmissions except for the development of the tools to capture it. If you take into consideration the subsidies for other sources, especially nukes, and applied those monies to solar electric.... well, some here may get my drift.

Coal: are you claiming that it is impossible to clean up coal toxics? If that's what you are saying then one must conclude that you might be just wee bit of a hypocrit.

Air pollution: we can clean it up, and we must. Time spent doing so is, IMO, time better spent than proposing that we build massive, centrally controlled, Yucca Mountain type waste producing plants that I, for one, would not want anywhere near me. And I doubt that you, Sir, will ever convince me to think otherwise.

[NNadir]

19. I'm sure you are impossible to convince of truth, sir.

It certainly is impossible to clean up coal ash containing heavy elements like mercury, lead, cadmium and urananium. (It is of course possible to destroy the last element in a nuclear reactor.)

The total waste mass for the entire history of nuclear energy in the United States is 75,000-85,000 metric tons. These type of quantities of coal waste (which includes by the way carbon dioxide - which everyone who is aware of little matter called the Greenhouse effect) are generated every single DAY. Because of the huge mass of these materials, they leach out because there is simply no physical way to contain them. Besides coal ash, we have black lung disease, accounting for thousands of (IGNORED) Chernobyls in the black EXPERIMENT of coal use. Over 1.8 billion tons of coal ash are generated each YEAR in the United States. Thus there is 2400 times as much coal waste generated in a single year of coal as there is waste generated in the entire history of nuclear energy. Now, I'm sure you find this unimpressive, as you've read (somewhere) something that leads you an immutable conclusion from which I cannot dissaude you.
display http://www.mcrcc.osmre.gov/PDF/Forums/CCB3/4-3.pdf">A Coal Ash Dump.

Further I note that nuclear waste, unlike coal waste, decays at the same time as it is created. It is thus, as someone who has a basic knowledge of physics or physical chemistry would know, dictated by an equilibrium condition. This demands that there are fixed maximums for the accumulations of specific wastes given by a relationship with a (1-exp(-kt)) term, where k is the decay constant of the isotope in question. Thus it would be possible to accumulate a total of about 186 MT of Kr-85 in about 200 years of nuclear program that was producing 100% of the earth's energy needs (as estimated at 1 X 10^21 J.) It is worth noting that after year 186 years the accumulation of NEW Kr-85 each year for the entire planet would be on the order of 1 gram. (Kr-85's half-life is about 10 years.) Further, it is well understood that in fact the total radioactivity of the earth will be REDUCED in about a millenium's time in a (wise) actinide recycling program. Not one of these conditions applys to the coal waste you wave away.

Yet you prefer coal: You'd rather deal with billions of tons of toxic waste than a few tens of thousands of waste. I would guess that there isn't much I can say to that. In fact I'm certain that attempting to convince you that this is possibly a little skewed would be a fruitless exercise indeed. There is no doubt that you prefer removed mountains, sulfuric acid and heavy metal leaching strip mined coal pits, rivers choked with coal ash. and nothing I could say could change that.

I have written here extensively of transmutation of nuclear waste, and other strategies that can effectively destroy nuclear "waste" or convert it into useful materials. As a scientist, I am really at a loss to think how exactly one might destroy coal wastes, even the sulfuric acid leaching out of old abandoned mines. It is clear that you have only handwaving to offer. You offer no technical description of how exactly you will clean up the air from coal waste: None. Then you call me a hypocrit (sic).

You have not convinced me that you understand even the basics of energy, risk or waste. Your "thunk" goes thunk. Thanks though for the demonstration of the type of thinking we are up against when we try to make for a safe clean world.

[BeFree]

21. Hey Nuke Czar

If you truly want to convince folks of how 'Good' nukes are, let me offer a bit of advice: Don't react to them the way you have to me.

I don't support coal. At least not in the way you claim I do, or the way you support nukes. And until such time as a comprehensive, well vetted, peer examined program of nuke power is brought to the public with complete honesty and assurances of nukes long term safety, no one's buying it. I'm not buying your story, it's full of biased and slanted comments.

One thing folks have learned.... once ya got something going, it's real hard to stop it. Like dirty coal fired plants. Somehow, nukes were to a degree, stopped. There must be more of a reason that the ones you might admit too. That's how it is. It's hard, but it's fair.

I'd like to know more about Japan's nuke program, but, frankly, if it comes from you, I'd have to doubt the veracity of the info. Now, if ya can come up with a few really good links that can lay out, in laymans terms, just how good nukes are, I'll give 'em at least a once over. Fair enough?

[NNadir]

22. Hey BeFree

I interpreted the following statement, from your earlier post as being in support of coal:

"Then, there's coal. I offer that if we began to process the coal and strip out the toxics, we can come up with a non-toxic coal product we could use it without too great of risk."

I then explained to you that we cannot dispose of coal toxics since they are too massive to contain, and because they contain toxic chemical elements that once mobilized, are difficult to demobilize. That apparently was not "fair enough," since you interpret that as "biased and slanted comments." I think these things are merely facts.

I think it's time to conclude the conversation. You're a foil, not really a reasonable person that I'm interested in convincing of anything. As you say, you don't trust me. I don't speak at your level.

I don't think tht you would know a "well vetted peer examined" program of nuke power if you saw one. There are probably tens of thousands of links, pro and con on the web about nuclear power. What one needs to interpret them is critical thinking, and a fair amount of self education. The last book I read on the subject of nuclear power was William Stacy's "Nuclear Reactor Physics" copyright 2001, John Wiley and Sons. It has chapters with titles like "Spherical Harmonics in One Dimensional Geometries" and "Resonance Cross Section Representations". You've commented negatively on everything I say, and do so with a pretense of authority. What have you been reading on the topic of energy lately? Wait, don't tell me. I'd rather keep it a mystery.

[BeFree]

23. See ya, nuke czar

The name fits you well.

On edit: I put folks like you in this category: Tech, no logic
Good luck convincing the public to put nukes in their backyards!

[NNadir]

24. Bye BeFree

No edit necessary: I put folks like you in this category: People who when the facts are inconvenient appeal to a very vague and incorrect notion of what does and does not constitute logic.

Good luck surviving the disappearance of energy safely.

[cprise]

45. Solar and Wind are technologies that generate far more power

...than they consume, and they are clean. Looked at this way, there is simply no excuse to avoid scaling this technology up like we did with nuclear power.

In particular, solar heat is very cheap... it beats fossil fuel-only technology in overall costs.

And Solar PV at 3x the current "cheaper than water" rates is already a bargain. For much of the world where grids do not exist, PV already beats fossil fuel in cost and that's a main factor currently driving the growth of the solar-electric market.

I have followed the progress of renewables intensely for 4 years now, and have become convinced they can meet all our needs with current technology. Some modest changes in our lifestyles will be necessary, but if modesty does not prove to be a significant factor in the American dream then we will have plenty of sorrow to deal with later in the form of nuclear proliferation and/or drastic changes in our climate.

A highly-energetic, futuristic society will not be sustainable until fusion becomes a viable power source.

Until then, I think the price you pay for turning a piece of nature into an office park or a parking lot or an estate should be that these spaces are made capable of taking some of the burden of supporting humanity away from nature.

[NNadir]

46. I support solar energy, but you're missing data here.

Your first statement is technically a violation of the first law of thermodynamics, but I think I know what you are trying to say.

I agree that solar energy can under certain circumstances be cheaper than fossil fuels; but only in the case where the fossil fuel cost is fully loaded; i.e. it contains costs for waste disposal (currently charged at zero since you simply breathe, eat, and drink these wastes) etc.

Of course if you fully load solar energy costs, you have to include the costs of disposal of hydrogen fluoride, the costs of leached cadmium etc. I think fully loaded these costs would still come in ahead of fossil fuels (especially when you add the cost of war.) This type of calculation would raise solar energy costs. Hydroelectric dams for instance, a form of solar energy, produce the cheapest power known. Unfortunately the costs associated with the destruction of river ecosystems, salting of vast stretches of land by removing the continental salt drain (because of irrigation) etc are not calculated in the cost of hydroelectric power.

I don't know why you are comparing electricity to water. If this is a "too cheap to meter" claim, watch it, you're in for trouble.

PV power is still very expensive from a capital perspective. In this regard it is most like nuclear energy. The fuel is essentially free ("too cheap to meter") but the conversion system is VERY expensive. On a capital to yield basis, solar energy is three to four more times expensive than nuclear, coming in at around 12 cents per kWhr as opposed to 3 to 4 cents for nuclear. (Fully amortized nuclear plants come in at even less.) Thus solar energy is still a province of the elite.

I assume that you have a solar powered home and you will tell us the installation, maintainence and other associated costs. I also assume that you have a source of energy at night. If this is the power grid, you are still depending either on hydroelectric, fossil or nuclear, unless of course you live near a hot spring, which is somewhat unique in most of the world.

Fusion power is nuclear power. I have written here many times to explain that you cannot have fusion power without a fission infrastructure. The reason is that the Deuterium + Tritium reaction, probably the only one available in less than two or three centuries, requires radioactive tritium that must be made by neutron bombardment of Lithium-6. Since the fusion reaction releases just one neutron, and the neutron absorption cross section of lithium is not high enough to capture every neutron, you cannot make a fusion reactor with even a breeding ratio of one. Therefore you need fission neutrons.

I keep hearing that there's a free lunch, but whenever I ask for the menu, I keep hearing it's available at the restaurant just around the corner. It may be time to pay for what I eat.

[cprise]

47. The sun is on the menu

And it doesn't require nuclear fission.

I rent my place and the building is not solar-powered. My car is solar-powered since I fuel it with biodiesel, and this represents a roughly equivalent amount of energy; The cost is scarecely more than if I bought and drove a midsize gas car. What does nuclear power offer me as a motorist? So I use garden-variety electricity; A solar home in the U.S. may also use it at night... yet even without batteries it still greatly reduces the need for non-renewables during peak hours (daytime). The net effect on the environment is the same. Were you expecting me to argue for a pure approach to solar?

The 'elite' label doesn't stick when you look at the popularity of PV in the developing world; your average African or Bangladeshi village does not have, say, small diesel generators high on its list for energy sources. PV is at a distinct advantage off-grid, esp. since maintenance costs for a solid-state system (or lack thereof) figure prominently in 3rd world, agrarian regions. Since about the mid-90s, locales that do gain the determination to begin electrification tend to choose solar because it is cheapest where little or no infrastructure exists. It is a huge market that is expected to open right up as costs continue to drop.

Almost every industry uses dangerous chemicals. In practice, the processes involved with PV manfacture are considered safe and not high-risk. A report from the Dept. of Environmental Sciences states that "Routine conditions in manufacturing facilities should not pose any threats to health and the environment." The industry isn't exactly having to go out of its way to prevent environmental problems. Despite this, they continue to reduce wastes and the amount of risky substances involved.

Electricity is comparable to water in our country because people here waste both with abandon (hence the "cheaper than water" reference). If electricity costs were to triple, it would NOT be a huge burden as long as people were willing to make adjustments (I'll grant that Americans simply may not be willing).

Our national economy is built around the false idea of a free lunch (from fossil fuels and remote, desperate labor). A side-effect is that we are becoming shut out of the renewable energy market; we are scarecely competing at all. We don't care enough to make smart decisions, to set good examples, or to go through uncomfortable collective transitions. The problem with nuclear energy abroad is essentially politics. The problem with renewable energy here is... politics.

But only energy options that are available to all will be viable beyond the short term. Keeping people in relative peony according to their geopolitical (or racial or religious) classification is falling further and further out of fashion. We may be waiting a very long time indeed for fusion power if it really must be based on fission as you say.

[NNadir]

50. How is that people in Bangladesh can afford PV when people in the US

can't?

Can you back this claim up with references? While I agree in principle that a solar system is cheaper in certain remote regions, it does not mean that it is really affordable. Gold is cheaper than Platinum, but that doesn't mean that people can easily buy gold. What is the installed capacity in these regions and how many people does it actually serve? Can you show that the per capita cost is actually lower than building a power plant powered say, by diesel, even biodiesel? Can you also show that such capacity is sufficient to provide access to the life basics such as clean water.

I was in India last year in some remote and very impoverished areas country. I did not see a single solar panel anywhere. As I'd never before seen anything like India, my eyes were wide open.

I don't know about tripling electical costs. There are those who can afford that and those who can't. If you can show solar installations that run at less than 5 cents kwHr fully loaded (meaning you depreciate at night as well as in the day) I will agree that solar energy is not elitist. Electricity is really not a luxury anymore. Neither is water. It happens that the two are related, as much of the water that moves today is powered by electric pumps. There are millions, if not billions, who would die if electricity were shut off. I don't know really how many deaths would be required if we tripled electricity costs, but I'm sure that that number is not zero.

I do agree though that solar energy is useful for peak loads, which usually occur during daylight hours. It would probably however an environmental disaster of the first order, at least in current technology, to attempt to store this energy when the sun goes down.

I would certainly install a solar "peak load" system if I had $30,000 to do so and if I were willing to cut down all the trees on my small property. Of course, cutting down the trees would have it's own environmental consequence.

I have long supported higher taxes on transportation fuels to reflect their high environmental cost. The war in Iraq and the enormous environmental related health bills we pay on this energy is of course a subsidy. I do believe that people everywhere should be motivated to use the maximally efficient transport.

My personal jury is out on biodiesel. As most people know, agriculture in the United States is a highly oil intensive enterprise. I'm not convinced that this isn't something very much like the "hydrogen economy" shell game. If you can show otherwise though, I'd love to read it. I think biomass can be useful as a carbon source, if we can find ways to cheaply transport it. The cheapest substances to transport are liquids. If you have to drive a huge truck full of corn from Kansas to Maine to fill up your tank, after pumping beaucoup metric tons of water on to the fields to grow it, it's probably not going to have a huge environmental advantage, especially when you consider issues like air quality. It would probably be better to use lower grades of biomass, such as straw, food waste, sawdust and sewage to generate syn gases under supercritical water conditions rather than biodiesel, which is basically corn oil.

On another thread I discussed dimethyl ether, a much cleaner fuel for running diesel engines that biodiesel fuel or petroleum based diesel. I'm hoping, if not betting that this fuel will be important in the future. Dimethyl ether is available from heat, a source of the element carbon (pretty much in any form) and water. We can make heat in lots of ways, but the temperatures required for DME processes are not accessible probably from solar energy.

You say that you can manufacture solar cells with acceptable environmental cost. The environmental costs are probably acceptable to me, though they are anything but zero costs and they may not prove acceptable to everyone on an industrial scale. Having worked with hydrogen fluoride in the lab, I would imagine that some workers somewhere will be killed in the processes of the manufacture of solar cells. This will probably be acceptable to most people however merely on the grounds that the occurence of this failure will not be plastered on every newspaper on earth for a decade. Really the risk associated with manufacture of solar cells or any other product is associated with the ethics of the manufacturers. Most people drawn into solar energy work these days are ethical, because you have to sacrifice to use such energy. However if solar energy ever becomes truly competitive in financial terms, I think they'll be some rapacious goings on of the type we usually see in any industry. Then it might not seem quite so pristine.

I would imagine that solar cells that wear out in twenty or thirty years will represent point sources for Cadmium and Selenium pollution. Fortunately, Cadmium Selenide is usually insoluble, at least at high pH. In areas with acid soils or acid rain however, it is conceivably a problem. Hydrogen selenide, the product of acidification of CdSe is an enormously toxic compound. I can easily imagine a runaway reaction involving hydrogen selenide in a manufacturing situation as well, a wrong valve turned and the HF mixing with the CdSe. That would be bad.

But I am splitting hairs on trivialities. Some people think that any "what if" or "could happen" scenario that pops into their imagination is enough to stop any development. I do not really agree with that approach. I think solar energy is well worth the risks associated with it: Unquestionably solar energy is a very low risk strategy to provide energy. It should be the subject of considerable research and investment and used in those places where it is in fact the best alternative. Whatever it's drawbacks, it is certainly more desirable, than the constant output of mercury, lead, and uranium associated with burning coal. It is certainly preferable to the horros associated with oil. I'm just putting out the caveat that if you look at the 1950's, you will see that the promise of nuclear energy was presented in much the same way that people present solar energy today. I happen to think that nuclear energy delivered a result better than what was available in those times, but it was not the utopian kind of power that people expected and advertised. Neither is solar utopian I suspect. I repeat: There is no free lunch.

Good response by the way. It was well thought out.

[Bdog]

119. Why should a home owner store solar power when there is no need to?

Why should a home owner store solar power when there is no need to?

Integrating solar into the existing grid is the best way to use solar.

It’s called net metering. When a homeowner produces excess electricity the power goes out on the grid for other people to use. When a homeowner needs power he pulls it off the grid.

A homeowner’s monthly eclectic bill reflects the difference between what was used and what was produced.

It been proven to work and it is being used allover the county now.

Why would you want to install a solar system that could supply your peak demand? That’s what net metering is all about. With net metering you can put in ¼ your peak demand and still end up paying nothing on your eclectic bill.

Summary of State Net Metering Programs
www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/netmetering/nmtable.shtml

[NNadir]

121. I'm just guessing here, but could it involve burning coal at night?

If you don't store solar energy you are therefore dependable on nonrenewable alternatives of the type we already have?

Is this a trivial matter?

PV solar energy is an excellent way of meeting peak demands, but it doesn't happen to address the serious issues facing the constant load world. A form of energy is not pollution free simply because you don't keep track of how it's being generated.

This is why PV is an excellent alternative for those who can afford it, but as a total energy system, it is not an ABSOLUTE alternative.

If I could afford a PV system (which I can't) I would certainly buy one and take advantage of net metering.

[Bdog]

122. Your silly…Who says renew-ables have to replace fossil fuel 100%?

Your silly…Who says renew-ables have to replace fossil fuel 100%?

Solar is a renewable that works now.

You claim $30,000 for a system when in actuality it’s more like $12,000 with many utilities giving rebates.

www.etaengineering.com/grid-tie/intro.shtml
A "linetie", "grid-tie", or utility intertie photovoltaic power system is a solar energy system designed to provide AC power to a utility connected household. There are no batteries in the system, it simply converts DC photovoltaic (PV) energy into household AC power using a specific type of grid tie inverter. The AC power is then used to operate your household and the excess power production is fed directly back to the utility via the ac load center. The inverter itself is designed for a grid-tie application in compliance with all required interconnection standards of the National Electric Code (NEC).
The grid tie system is one of the most cost-effective applications available from modern solar energy technology. At a nominal cost of $5 to $7 installed, energy savings are realized instantly and the system is paid back consistently. Yes! The dream of making your utility meter spin backwards with clean, renewable energy is now a reality.


rebates
http://tucsonelectric.com/Community/Environment/SunShare.html

www.beyondoilsolar.com/carebate.htm

www.aps.com/general_info/newsrelease/newsreleases/NewsRelease_229.html

All of pollution avoided is a trivial matter?

Your post is meaningless and silly.

[cprise]

123. People in undeveloped rural areas often have zero electricity

...there are about 2 billion of them.

Often when villages electrify, they choose solar and use the energy during the day. They may also charge their cellphones, a lamp and misc. tools. Not having 24/7 electricity won't seem like a great burden, as NNadir seems to imply.

With no established electrical grids, the solar option is usually cheaper for them these days... but they have to get to the point where they can afford electricity at all.

Solar Energy International states that in 1998 the cost of installing power lines in these locations was at least $23,000 per kilometer.

$30,000 - 40,000 for a village PV system is a bargain by comparison. It won't support heavy industry, but if what you're looking for is a Nike sweatshop setting up in your village then you have bigger problems to worry about than electricity (i.e. you need to have your head examined :) ).

It would be interesting to see the growth of solar vs. grid electricity in these 3rd world countries.

[Bdog]

124. Yes, I agree.

Yes, I agree.

When you don’t have anything and you are sitting in the dark, one light bulb is a vast improvement.

Third world countries have many new energy and society options.

Individual homes or villages with renewable power systems eventually becoming linked in a net metering power sharing system is just one option.

There even the possibility we could sell or trade them things like LED light bulbs, solar panels, small bio-diesel plants, and ethanol fuel cells.

[happyslug]

97. Nuclear power does NOT address the problem of peak oil

Oil is used primarily in transport, Nuclear is used primarily in the Production of electricity. How do we convert Electric power to transport power?

The most efficient way is direct link (Pantographs, third rail or even old fashioned trolley lines i.e. basically light and heavy rail). The only lost in electric power is do to the electricity going through the lines, significant but minor. The problem with such direct lines are you basically restrict such usage to rail lines (With the possibility of other "guide" systems, but steel wheel on Steel Rail has less friction than any other system, especially below 200 mph, so why go with some other type of transport for you are restricted by the electric line anyway?).

If you decide that you want more freedom of movement than you can get from a direct hookup, than some sort of electric storage mechanism is needed. This produces two problems, first such storage devices are very inefficient and second, the means of transport not only has to carry what is being transported but electric storage device. Thus such transport devices will have increase rate and energy usage do to the weight of the transport device. This second problem is significant but minor compared to the problem of electric storage.

Now electric Storage can be direct or indirect. By Direct I mean as in a Battery, fuel cell or fly wheel. All three directly store electricity and releases the electrically when needed. The problem is that batteries only have a 20% efficiently rate (i.e. for every 100 watts of power you put into the battery you get only 20 watts out), Fuel cells are better (50% efficiency rating) with fly wheels the best (90% efficient but expensive and dangerous in an accident). Thus with fuel cells (Which I believe what will be used) you are going to LOSE 50% of whatever electric power you put into the transport (and let us not forget that even fuel cell lose power as the temperature goes down, so less efficient in cold weather).

If you go with an indirect system, i.e. produce hydrogen from electricity (or methanol from a mix of plants and electric power) you still lose electrical power in the conversion (with some conversions using as much as 90% of the electrical power in the conversion to some sort of liquid power source. The main advantage of such liquid power sources is that today's cars could be easily converted to use it and power loss is very small at low temperatures (but you have the additional loss of power when you use the liquid in the transport device i.e. most gasoline engine have only a 10-20 % efficiency).

Now the above problems can be addressed by Nuclear power in larger applications (For example building nuclear power ships like the old N.S. Savannah of the 1960s) but in cars and trucks (Including Semi-trailers) direct use of Nuclear power is not reasonable.

This is the main problem in the long run, how do we adjust our transportation system to reflect the loss of oil? The most efficient way is to rebuild society to reflect high transportation costs.

Do to the problem of transport I foresee Suburbia coming to an end. The further you are from a transportation system that CAN use electricity (Generally Direct connection, i.e heavy and light rail) the higher will the cost of transport. Given what the loss of oil will represent I do not see Electricity generated by Nuclear power or coal being converted to personal transport use (Remember 50% of all energy used today is OIL). The best way is to adjust transport is to move people closer to the means of transportation that can use Electrical generated power and that means the death of Suburbia as we know it today.

A second problem is how will we feed ourselves? Farmers today use a lot of oil in farming (Tractors use a lot of oil), converting to a direct electric link is impossible, and the energy loss through the lines to rural areas becomes a significant loss (Compared to loss in lines in urban areas which tend to be closer to power generation sources). The Horse may come back again transporting items to the nearest rail head as was the case in the early 1900s). Use of Nuclear power can be used to produce fertilizers so the loss of Natural Gas as a feed stock for fertilizers will be addressed. The problem is what energy source can replace oil on the farm? Not in the farm house or even the barn, but the in the fields? Electricity will be one source but I can not see it replacing oil, thus I see the return of the Horse, bio-mass replacing oil, and with both increase food costs.

[Kolesar]

10. Efficiency standards and conservation could help meet that 50% shortfall

Some lifestyle changes are in order, too. 10% of our transportation energy use is aviation--Americans could forgo their energy-guzzling vacations. Disneyworld sucks anyway, so skip it. Breakup the outlet malls by the freeway and plant soybeans. It is stupid that we import food from out of the country. Who really needs apples from New Zealand, anyway? I can walk to an apple orchard from my house.

Etc, etc, you get the drift.

[BeFree]

30. Exactly

Instead of investing in an unproven, dangerous, centralized power system such as nukes, we can begin today too ease the coming energy crunch.

As an example of what can be done today think about this: Every new house is supplied with free insulation. R-40 in the attic and R-20 in the walls. A cheap, long term solution with very little adverse environmental impact. Keep the power right in the home, where it belongs.

[NickB79]

31. Yes, this is a good way to ease into the crunch

But it doesn't mean the crunch won't happen. We can conserve and buy ourselves another 10, 20, 30 yrs, but sooner or later we will need to invest in new power sources. Wouldn't it be smart to invest in conservation AND in new power sources at the same time? That way the ease into a petroleum-rare society would be made even easier.

[BeFree]

34. Sooner or later

Sooner is my preference. Individual control of the source, is also a preference of mine.

Instead of living at the end of a power line, sometimes hundreds of miles from the generator, wouldn't it be nice of the electricty came from your backyard, and you were more than pleased?

Solar is one solution. It's proven to be safe, and the energy is free. It can be brought on immediately, if we just decided to do so. There are other energy sources which are 'homegrown'.

Petroleum is the real problem. There are alternatives being developed. My preference is that it too, is homegrown, and not, as we are today, at the end of a 'pipeline' that stretches clear around the world.

Nuke maybe the answer, but that would mean individuals would still be at the mercy of the corporations. And, Yucca Mountain.

[treepig]

37. i'd be much obliged if you'd point me in the direction of free solar energ

the last time i checked, about a year ago, a set-up of solar panels plus battery back-up system for nights and rainy days for my house would run about $35,000. figuring in financing costs, that's almost $200/month, or about four times what i pay now for electricity.

eagerly awaiting your free source . . .

[NNadir]

38. Let me know if it's delivered.

I'd like free power too. Also let me know if free energy storage equipment is included. I know it's a bit piggish on my part but sometimes I like to use electricity at night.

[BeFree]

39. The source is free

The source is the sun. The sun supplies the energy. Do I need to continue?

The costs come from the appliances used to capture and store the free energy. Hey, I'm with you, I can't afford the stuff either.

About the price for a solar system to capture the sun's energy:
How much wattage was the PV array?
What wattage do you require to keep your house running?
Did you get just one price?

Looking further, do you realize the subsidies the electric companies received in order to supply your needs?
Does your present electric bill represent the pollution and other alterations to the environment that your use causes?

I look forward to your answers.

Oh, one more question: How much do trees pay for the energy they get that fires up their chemical reactions?

[NNadir]

41. So you have these free solar converters/and storage systems available?

For distribution around the world? Treepig and I are first in line.

Or is it merely that you can't tell the difference between capital cost and fuel? The fuel cost of nuclear fuel is 0.3 cents per kwhr, but the electricity generated costs roughly 4 cents per kwhr, because of high capital cost. Sunlight is free. The cost of delivered solar electricity (during daylight) is 12 cents kwhr. The cost of environmentally dangerous storage systems for solar electricity triples that figure.

[Bdog]

120. Why should a home owner store solar power when there is no need to?

Why should a home owner store solar power when there is no need to?

Integrating solar into the existing grid is the best way to use solar.

It’s called net metering. When a homeowner produces excess electricity the power goes out on the grid for other people to use. When a homeowner needs power he pulls it off the grid.

A homeowner’s monthly eclectic bill reflects the difference between what was used and what was produced.

It been proven to work and it is being used allover the county now.

Why would you want to install a solar system that could supply your peak demand? That’s what net metering is all about. With net metering you can put in ¼ your peak demand and still end up paying nothing on your eclectic bill.

Summary of State Net Metering Programs
www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/netmetering/nmtable.shtml

[treepig]

43. there was a good thread on the costs of installing a solar energy

set up in this forum a few months ago (and perhaps you can find if considering you're a contributing member with search priveleges?)

anyhow, the gist of the thread was that the system should be installable for about $20,000 (so i clearly need to go find less expensive suppliers, but i haven't bothered because it's still out of my price range).

the estimate was that i'd need about 5 kW to keep the house running (clearly, not that much capacity is needed at all times, but if the oven is on as well as the clothes dryer (yeah, i know, i should hang the clothes outside in the sleet to dry) the electricity can be sucked up pretty good - plus, you gotta charge up the batteries - which is a whole other can of worms - for the night and heavily overcast days).

and i do see your point about the "source" itself being free, but that's basically what NNadir has been saying about nuclear power, the "source" of energy is of trivial expense, it's the capital costs that get you.

[cprise]

40. Biodiesel alone could meet upto 1/3 of today's demand

I am talking about transportation. Microalgae farms can produce vast quantities of oil for relatively little acreage. And then there is the oil that can be recovered from depolymerization.

Just as importantly, the whole idea of having to meet "current oil demand" is a trap; It has nothing to do with necessity or reality. What we have now is an addict economy on speed.

Subtract frivolous waste from personal/corporate habbits, add practical ideas like station cars, use of electrics in-city, a doubling of rail transportation, a quadrupling of bike paths-- and I see a situation where we could meet all our needs although not as comfortably as today.

As for electricity, solar and wind are just plain necessary. It is how you reduce both climate change and nuclear proliferation.

[jmcgowanjm]

48. could you link these energy sources please cprise?

[TennesseeWalker]

52. Thank you SO much for advancing this topic.

Peak Oil is frightening, and at the root of everything we're going through right now. We're screwed enough even if we make changes NOW. I hate to think what might happen if we experience a few more years of false security.

[cprise]

53. Here are a couple

These are both good (and intriguing) places to start:


NREL's research showed that one quad (ten billion gallons) of biodiesel could be produced from 200,000 hectares of desert land (200,000 hectares is equivalent to 780 square miles). In the previous section, we found that to replace all transportation fuels in the US, we would need 140.8 billion gallons of biodiesel, or roughly 14 quads. To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 11,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. As can be seen in Figure 1 below, the Sonora desert is located along the Pacific ocean, making it an ideal location for algae farms. The arid climate of the desert is very supportive of algae growth, and the nearby ocean could supply saltwater for the algae ponds. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 11,000 square miles, or roughly nine percent of the area of the Sonora desert.
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/article_alge.html


Microalgae for Greenhouse Gas Abatement
http://www.clicknest.it/tpoint/articoli/FT_monitambientale/MicroalgaeGreenhouse_1_2003.pdf

[hunter]

56. I am stunned...

You must be kidding.

Do you really want to cover the lower elevations of the Sonora Desert with salt water?

That's the kind of idea that makes nuclear power look good...

[NNadir]

57. This is an idea proposed in New Hampshire by people who haven't a clue

about the area.

First of all, the Imperial Valley (part of the Sonoran Desert) is already agricultural land, prime agricultural land. It is known as the salad bowl of the nation and supplies a huge fraction of the nation's winter lettuce and tomatoes. So this particular biodiesel scheme will possibly require that we pay higher prices for tomatoes, etc in January.

The water for growing this salad is Colorado River water. The agricultural run-off basin is the Salton Sea, which until the was created (by an irrigation accident) in 1905, was known as the Salton Depression, a dry salt deposit (if memory serves me well).

The Salton Sea is becoming so brackish that it will soon stop supporting life, much like the Dead Sea in Isreal/Jordon. It also has a significant quantity of Selenium in its waters, owing to the geology of the area. Therefore some of the biomass already there is mildly toxic. It is not recommended that people eat too much fish from the Salton Sea. (The fish of course, will die off soon enough.)

I must admit to having had some fantasies about the Imperial Valley and energy. Much of the area is below sea level. This suggests that in the case where a suitable outlet could be found to the sea, the valley could function as a "gravitational battery" for lack of a better term. It could conceivably represent a way of storing solar (or other forms) of energy.

This scheme of mine is not necessarily a realistic idea since it will involve dams with huge reservoirs of salt water. The Imperial Valley as it turns out has the San Andreas fault running smack through its center. (This fault goes under water in the Gulf of California between Baja and Mainland Mexico.)

Another problem is of course the problem the valley already faces: Getting the salt out.

[cprise]

59. Proposed by Californians and Floridians, apparently...

Although I don't give much creedence to provincialism.

The UNH site is mostly a summary of studies from around the U.S., such as this one:
http://www.unh.edu/p2/biodiesel/pdf/algae_salton_sea.pdf

The object is not to use the sea itself, but to divert agricultural run-off and instead use it in aquaculture ponds.

[NNadir]

62. Nobody cares about energy provincialism until it's in their backyard.

It's called NIMBY, and it's a tremendous force in US energy choices, as we can see from the hoopla surrounding the environmentally benign Cape Wind project. NIMBY works everywhere and I'm sure it will work here. (I personally would not like living near a diesel refinery of any kind.) YOU may not be provincial, but practically everyone else is. You're thus swimming against a powerful stream.

This particular technology in the Sonoran desert, no matter what its scale, is NOT sustainable. The Salton Sea is already dying, way before the institution of such a scheme. There is a certain amount of, for lack of a better term, osmotic pressure. Since the Salton Sea, which is reality a sump, is regarded by some as an important environmental area, owing to the number of migrating birds that use it and it is already difficult to "restore" the sea, I can't see how you can simply wave the matter off. The problem is generally conceded as being intractable. If we wanted to save the Sea from its salt, we would simply have to consume a huge amount of energy to pump enough water out of the Sea and over mountains to any potential outlet. The energy to pump this water over the mountains would greatly impact the efficiency of the overall system.

I will concede however that the New River, which flows from Mexacali into the Salton Sea could be diverted to grow algae. The New River is effectively already an open sewer. This scheme couldn't possibly make things worse, and may actually make them better, at least for the short run until the system collapses from salt. I'm sure that algae grows there right now. Maybe we could just filter it into a pilot plant. Algae blooms are generally a consequence of eutrophication. Eutrophication is generally thought to have been an issue in several of the Salton Sea fish die-offs. It would be interesting to simply divert the New River into a pond, grow algae and see how this idea will really work.

What BTW, is the refining process going to do with the fixed nitrogen and phosphorous, both of which are the causes of eutrophication?

Another point: I am long on record as opposing diesel engines fueled by heavier alkanes, whether from petroleum or from biomass, as they represent a serious source of air pollution in the form of carbon particulates, benzopyrans and other nasty compounds. As I've stated elsewhere, in my view, the only acceptable fuel for diesel engines is dimethyl ether, which is probably not accessible from algae without a supercritical water oxidation intermediate step. Algae from agricultural run-off is a potential way to fix carbon, if it can be harvested and refined (to an acceptable form) cheaply.

[cprise]

70. Yep, nuclear reactors near metro areas are a great sell to the NIMBY crowd

Not. Their public acceptance will always be limited. Promoting nuclear expansion instead of replacing existing plants with safer, modern reactors to build public confidence is foolhardy. I predict the industry cannot manage new tech and expansion simultaneously without accidents.

And odd, last time I traveled (on solar power, in my car) I saw agriculture, um just about everywhere. NIMBYs will object to algae farms near their wastewater plants and downstream from wheat fields like they object to cranberry bogs.

Fixed nitrogen and phosphorus are what's left over in the algae 'meal' after the oil has been removed. It is sold as organic fertilizer.

Modern diesels employ catalysts and particle traps to address the emissions you cited. They meet the new EuroIV emissions standards going into effect next year... that's damn good. Even without the emission equipment, biodiesel yields a dramatic lowering of particulates and unburned hydrocarbons, as well as incredibly low CO2. http://www.biodiesel.org/pdf_files/emissions.PDF

FYI, the leading diesel car makers in the world (VW, Daimler) are focusing on biodiesel not DME. Chasing after another nuclear-generated 'pure' fuel wasn't going to be a big help in the long run. Developing reasonble emissions devices for low-sulfur and biodiesel fuels turned out to be much easier.

[NNadir]

73. Actually the folks around here at Oyster Creek were worried the reactor

would close. It has been great for their tax base it creates zero pollution and keeps their electrical bills low.

Irrespective of these wise folks, NIMBY is a powerful argument against nuclear power, but you are completely niave when you assume that it will NOT be an issue in biodiesel, particularly when the program - if it manages to be sustainable in some areas - goes industrial. To wit, it will involve the building of tens of thousands of rather smelly plants.

Most nuclear power thinkers these days are thinking in terms of remote nuclear parks. My personal idea nuclear park would be a park having one or two PWR units running in the Radowsky fuel conformation to burn plutonium in a thorium matrix, two or three CANDU type reactors to burn out the energy from the SEU left over from the PWR, and three or four high temperature reactors for providing water gas reactions for DME, plastic intermediates for jet fuel and the like, and methane/ethane mixes. The most advanced of these proposals include a reactor like an accelerator driven subcritical reactor to burn minor actinides and transmute especially. The plants will all each have a processing facility designed to acheive via a fission/breeding scheme total burn up, as close to 100% of the thorium uranium and plutonium and transplutonium actinides sent to it.

Frankly if people did not have knee jerk terrror reactions (based wholly on ignorance) to the word "nuclear," anti-nuclear NIMBY would disappear and we could probably see the public on other plants like the one near oyster creek. (Its funny that they had to change the name of the NMRI Device to MRI because they couldn't have a word like "nuclear" in it. The devide has no radioactivity in it, just a supercooled magent and a radio pulse transmitter.) Though nuclear NIMBY it a reality today, when cheap oil literally and figuratively clouds the air, what I'm trying to promote is the abandonment of this particularly fractious form of ignorance on which nuclear NIMBY thrives. We can in fact, save the atmosphere AND have relatively low cost energy with which to address the issues of poverty. The technical case is overwhelming. The social (fear) case is not.

As it is in many areas, it does not help of course to have the Bushies around, who have exploited fear of things nuclear in order to steal oil. There's more than a tiny bit of irony that they were able to use that fear to allow themselves to plunder the cities of the ancient cresent, kill their children, demolish their homes, etc, etc.

It may be that VW and Daimler are focusing on biodiesel and not DME. This decision, which is bad for air quality overall, may or may not prove to be economically wise, particularly when some fool comes along with a motor fuel at 2/3 or less the cost, down the road a piece. It really doesn't matter though, if biodesiel isn't nirvana, there are only a few seals and changes to the injectors that are required to convert the engine to DME when it proves cheaper, cleaner and easier to obtain. Personally I have a fondness for seeing the sky, and so I think I'll hold out for DME.

Look though, I support biodiesel research. Nothing would make me happier than to see you succeed and to build an economically viable industry. If you can do it, by all means do so. You will be arresting the Greenhouse effect to some extent. If you can prove your skill on the same scale as nuclear has, you will achieved a powerful step toward sustainable energy.

[Mike Briggs]

78. smelly plants?

"Irrespective of these wise folks, NIMBY is a powerful argument against nuclear power, but you are completely niave when you assume that it will NOT be an issue in biodiesel, particularly when the program - if it manages to be sustainable in some areas - goes industrial. To wit, it will involve the building of tens of thousands of rather smelly plants. "

Uh, no. The process we're designing will actually drastically reduce the smell from existing waste streams (animal or human).

"Frankly if people did not have knee jerk terrror reactions (based wholly on ignorance) to the word "nuclear," anti-nuclear NIMBY would disappear and we could probably see the public on other plants like the one near oyster creek."

But, the reality is that people DO have knee jerk reactions to it, and no amount of complaining is going to change that. Just as people such as yourself have knee-jerk reactions to the word "diesel", assuming all diesels are noxious, polluting machines. Modern diesels can be considerably cleaner than the cleanest gasoline vehicles on the road. Diesels normally emit far less hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions than diesels, but more NOx and particulates. New CRT particulate traps reduce particulate emissions down to around the cleanest gasoline vehicles. NOx adsorbing catalysts, which require ultra low sulfur fuel (either biodiesel or the ULSD that will be mandated in the US in 2006) can eliminate roughly 95% of NOx emissions from diesel vehicles. With those two aftertreatment technologies, diesel vehicles can be cleaner than any other liquid fueled vehicle on the road - and cleaner than CNG vehicles as well.

Getting back to nuclear power - I'm primarily a nuclear physicist, and know that nuclear power is safe. However, there will always be the issue of terrorism, which can make nuclear power far more dangerous. Breeder reactor technology has not reached the stage of being fully successful, so there remains the issue of leftover plutonium - and the leaves the issue of it being potentially sold to, or stolen by terrorists. That's the reality. Modern nuclear reactors are incredibly safe - but creating plutonium is always inherently unsafe due to the issue of terrorists. Add to that the environmental disaster from mining uranium, and nuclear power is not nearly the panacea you are presenting it to be.

[NNadir]

80. I have not said, "panacea." I have used the words "risk minimized"

If you are a physicist, you will recognize the difference. On a planet of 6 billion people, you will not find a perfect or ideal absolutely safe energy source. You are completely off base when you claim that I have presented nuclear power as "panacea."

What "environmental disaster" from mining Uranium has ever approached the level of mining disasters that routinely accompany the mining of coal. Just from a mass balance perspective, it's very clear that it is easy to do much less mining damage per watt using Uranium than any other source of energy, including oil.

I submit that Iraq had billions, Libya had billions plus Dr. Khan's schematics and did not produce a nuclear weapon. Even with these resources we now know they did not come close. Are you claiming that terrorists will be able to accomplish the following: Build a shielded separation plant with robotic controls, manage a separation (Purex, pyroprocessing or electrofining) buying both the equipment and the necessary reagents, surreptitiously transport the waste of these separations, purchase remotely controlled machine tools capable of making pits, purchase the requisite explosives and the equipment to mold them sensitively, the electronics to provide a precise detonation sequence, beryllium shielding to redirect neutrons, and a team of people willing to deliver the completed weapon. I have a strong suspicion that someone somewhere might notice.

I appeal to Steven Hawking's comment on the possibility of time travel: If time travel were possible we'd probably have been visited by people from the future. If nuclear terrorism was so easy, why have we not yet seen it?

There are over 1000 MT of plutonium on the planet right now. Why has there yet to be in 50 years of nuclear power, a single incident of nuclear terrorism anywhere on the planet. Could it be that it's easier and infinitely cheaper to go down to the local Agway fertilizer store, as Tim McVeigh ACTUALLY DID, and purchase a few tons of fertilizer and diesel fuel? Might we not consider banning fertilizer and diesel fuel as unsafe using the same logic?

Finally you will note that consistently in my posts I have called for fissioning plutonium in the presence of Thorium. I am NOT an advocate of the manufacture of plutonium. I am a Thorium cycle advocate. If you are a nuclear physicist, you will surely understand the profound difference. I DO advocate the burning of existing plutonium in nuclear reactors since burying it under a mountain somewhere is a surefire means of making it available to people for many thousands of years. This is especially true of the nearly mono-isotopic plutonium-239 known as "weapons" grade. You will note that Plutonium-240 has a high spontaneous fission rate and greatly complicates weapons design, and therefore it is desirable to increase the Plutonium-240 content to MINIMIZE risk. (You cannot of course eliminate risk.

All of us know how to build a nuclear weapon, but still the process is inherently difficult, particularly with reactor grade fuel where the risk of precriticality is inordinately high. There has yet to be one, single incident of a preassembled nuclear weapon being stolen, much less delivered and used. It would infinitely more difficult for for terrorists to manufacture one. In fact, the United States government famously spent $200,000,000,000 (and still counting) addressing exactly the fear you describe without much of a result, not that they have stopped playing this tired argument up. While the argument makes great copy in newspapers, it does not compare either qualitatively or quantitatively with a sober evaluation of alternatives.

I do indeed have a knee jerk negative reaction to diesel engines operating on fuel consisting of heavy alkanes. I like diesel engines operating on low molecular weight ethers. Environmentalists have argued everywhere that heavy alkane burning engines degrade air quality. Even were one able to remove 99% of the say, benzopyrans, you still would have 1% escaping. I can hardly be enthusiastic about an engine that is merely as polluting as an automobile engine, even if automobile emission standards have improved by several orders of magnitude. I submit, all the wonderful catalysts aside - and I am a chemist by training with a excellent knowledge of catalysis, the overall air quality will CONTINUE to remain poor in a biodiesel world. We may well wonder as well about the reliability of such a system. Presumably the economics of the scheme will depend on the proximity of the fuel to the manufacturing sites, as it does with most forms of energy, nuclear excepted. In the case of biodiesel an episode of rapid climate change presents a real reliability risk. What do we do if the diesel fields are subject to extreme drought in the Midwest or if the flows at the Colorado River near the Imperial Valley become too low to irrigate our Sonoran ponds? Pray for rain? We can of course buy corn and algae from Bangladesh in a pinch, but what does it mean, in environmental and economic terms to get it to our Midwestern fuel plants?

I have no doubt that biodiesel is to preferred to fossil fuels, especially coal derived syn fuels, but what exactly is worse than the fossil option? Cprise, and if I understand correctly, you, are demanding that I agree that it is a good idea to foreclose any option that is not biological in origin. I am nowhere near so cavalier. Large scale, successfully piloted and economically proven "off the shelf" plants for this algae to diesel conversion process are at this point not available. They may become available some day, and I support the research and piloting, but they are NOT an option by 2010 in the advent of rapid atmospheric collapse. I think this is extremely risky and foolish and frankly unnecessary. To me, this biodiesel business sounds like the optimistic posturing of 1950's nuclear engineers whose administrators claimed a nirvana was around the corner.

Nuclear energy was NOT nirvana. Many difficult problems arose in the scaling up and commercialization of the technology. I would expect the scaling of vast biomass schemes that do not use supercritical water oxidation transformations, and indeed those that do, will face many of the same type of scale up issues. It's worth exploring, but it not worth abandoning the proven options that already exist.

Nuclear energy was less successful than advertised in the 1950's and 1960's, although very clearly an extremely useful and viable option was ultimately fashioned from the thousands of reactor years of experience we now have available to us. When biomass gets to the same stage, I will be happy to evaluate it a serious option. If it is as successful of nuclear power, it will certainly be a boon to the human race.

As for the question of whether nuclear energy should be abandoned simply because people don't understand mathematics, it would be very easy for me to throw up my hands and surrender to ignorance. I could say, which apparently you believe I should, "We'll NIMBY rules and that's just how it is." That's just not my style. I am aware of many people who have been swayed by my discussion of this issue. If you are less than impressed, this is, of course, your option.

For the record, I am every bit as pissed off about the NIMBY on the Cape Wind project as I am on nuclear NIMBY. I just do not agree that a biodiesel plant will be any less subject to it than was the Cape Wind proposal, a plan that represents renewable energy at its best. I will never merely accept NIMBY as a justification anymore than I will accept that George W. Bush is a force against evil. Both concepts require the suspension of reason.

[cprise]

81. There is no argument for an exclusively bio-fuel economy

What I did state was biodiesel's potential, to help illustrate just how more productive it is compared with other biofuels. I have also defended microalgae farming against some incorrect assertions. I'm not advocating the banning of nuclear power, just its expansion in the near future. Nukes for us and poverty for everyone else is an energy policy that is asking for conflict.

What is the alternative nuclear policy? Nukes-for-all? And just who is being cavalier? If this thread is a debate over how best to power a diesel transportation sector, then who has been more strident in their claims without backing themselves up with references? ...then why has biodiesel use been more than doubling each year for the past 5 years, and why is the largest diesel market in the world focusing on biodiesel instead of DME? Does DME bring other positive effects into the system, such as the cleanup of agricultural runoff? These are crucial questions you should look into.


"To me, this biodiesel business sounds like the optimistic posturing of 1950's nuclear engineers whose administrators claimed a nirvana was around the corner."

Ironic. But that's what usually happens with projection.

Given the political and environmental concerns, I believe the great majority of energy production should be renewable. Biofuel will be a large part of that, and of that class of fuels biodiesel is shaping up to be the most productive component.

If you are expecting global droughts to impact fuel availability (unlikely, esp. given that much of the production will be done with sea water), then we would have much worse to worry about than fuel for transportation.

Yes, NIMBY rules. It is probably only half-wrong on average (these local instincts should not be turned into a code for "dumb"). Wind power makes great strides in the U.S., despite what happened with Cape Wind, while nuclear energy is still stagnant. Lastly, we should remember that GW Bush is a force for the concentration of power, and that is why I believe he is a friend to the nuclear energy industry in this country.

[NNadir]

82. I sympathize with you.

You are uncomfortable with the comparisons between nuclear energy and bio-fuels and refer to them as projection.

Since a bio-fuel economy as a segment of the energy supply currently represented by nuclear power does not exist, any comment on whether it is projection or reality is inherently speculative.

Nuclear power did not prove "too cheap to meter." Neither did any other form of energy.

Global droughts already exist. They are not a problem that is going to happen "someday." We have seemed immune here in the United States because we are repeating "peak oil" to some extent with water, business like the Ogalla acquifier and the salinity of Imperial Valley.

I do not oppose the exploration and development of biodiesel. I simply note that it is not a reality but some plans on the drawing board. Thus it is subject to a learning curve.

I stand absolutely by the analogy to a 1950's view of Nuclear Power. The first piloted plant, Shippingport, suggested few clouds on the horizon. The reality proved different and far more problematic. I believe that the 50 years of work on these problems has produced a form of energy that is preferable to many of it's competitors. But it would be wrong to suggest that I believe in a 100% nuclear world, since I do in fact recognize that fissionable and fertile nuclei are finite. The more we can minimize the use of this important resource, the longer we can extend it.

Nuclear energy is NOT stagnant. The total power produced in the United States is at the highest level it has ever been, mostly because of improved operations at existing facilities. It may seem stagnant it the largely self-absorbed United States which thinks its views extend beyond its borders to the rest of the planet. China, India and many other countries are building new nuclear plants at an accelerating pace. They already know what it is to be hungry and cold. We apparently will need to learn the same before we learn to attach realities to our options.

[cprise]

83. India and China's problems stem from overpopulation

...but I'm sure nuclear energy will help them with their water supply if nothing else (desalinization).

It should be clear from this thread that the comparisons with the nuclear industry are not valid and my accusation that you are employing projection stands: This is a discussion on oil and transportation fuels. It follows that it is nuclear energy in transportation which is speculative.

Biodiesel already accounts for nearly 5% of diesel consumption in Germany, and is estimated at 2.5 billion liters for the EU in 2004. EU as a whole is required to have 2.5% biofuel by 2005, and 5% by 2010. U.S. states are already starting to require minimum 2% biodiesel blends at the pump. It's impact is more real than just about anything else currently discussed in this forum.

So all that is without switching to a crop like microalgae, with a yield at least 10x greater per hectare than current biodiesel feedstocks. It also doesn't include the fuel about to be harvested from thermal depolymerization, either.

Will we see nuclear power supplying 5% of transportation fuel in 6 years? What about DME in general: Will we transition to an 'ether economy' and use fossil fuels as the source while we're waiting for the relatively expensive nuclear option?

Should I root for a fuel that requires fuel-injector retrofits and new pressurized fuel tanks on millions of diesel vehicles? You're going to get consumers to do that?? Or get truckers to carry 80% more fuel to travel the same distance? Not only that, to use a fuel that doesn't even WORK in diesel vehicles unless another fuel is blended in with it?

You will NOT get diesel owners to put this stuff in their engines.

NEXT!


B-) I'll be thinking of you when I'm filling up tomorrow:


Made for biodiesel. ;)

[NNadir]

85. Um, the planet has energy problems owing to overpopulation.

We can always kill off the excess 5 billion people, and have very few energy concerns. The quality of the air and water knows no borders, believe it or not.

Seriously, I really had no idea that 5% of the diesel fuel in Germany is biodiesel. Can you give me a reference? If so, then you've got me there.

In that case it will be true that DME is more speculative than biodiesel if your statement is true. Whether biodiesel is less polluting is far less clear (no pun intended). Still, biodiesel is being mixed with petroleum based fuel. We have no view of what the total capacity of biodiesel production is. Agriculture in the west is a highly subsidized and highly energy dependent enterprise, so we really have little insight into what it will mean when we are at 80% biodiesel. This summer Europe experienced record droughts and temperatures, killing more than 10,000 people. I would think that such events will have an effect on that capacity should 50% of Europe's fuel be biodiesel. Of course it is easier to afford such things in Europe. Their fuel prices are double (or more) than ours. Are American truckers going to feel any more sanguine about those prices than they would about new injectors? I would actually think that if they could get a fuel that costs about what today's diesel costs, as opposed to one that is 2X or more the price - they'd shell out a few thousand bucks for new injectors and fuel tanks. But I'm not a trucker so I don't know.

The algae business is absolutely no less speculative than DME, particularly because the chemical industry today has tremendous excess capacity, and the algae business does not.

It is NOT true however that nuclear energy is absent from the transportation field TODAY. France has the TGV, the Paris Metro and many other elements of infrastructure that run on nuclear power. If the diesels on the surface roads all disappeared tomorrow all over the planet, they would do far better than we would. Of course, if you believe that we cannot live without cars, and you cannot change infrastructure, you have a case, I'd guess.

I will think of you though, the next time I'm in Paris and the Eiffel Tower is obscured in a haze of brown smog.

As for the (minor) changes to diesel engines required to use DME, the situation is rather analogous to the switchover in the 1970's from unleaded to leaded. Cars briefly became more expensive, but today no one notices the awful inconvenience of their catalytic converter unless they fail a smog test. People argued up and down that it could not be done; oil companies bitched, citizens bitched, automotive companies bitched, but it got done. Why? What's your Margaret Thatcher term, TINA? It got done because of government doing what government should do in the best liberal tradition - for the protection of the common resource (the air).

(It's incredible to think of Richard Nixon's government behaving liberally, but everything is relative I guess - sigh.)

Actually chemical reactors on a huge scale for continuous catalyzed transformations exist all over the world. I would expect that the modifications required to make DME or any other ether would be relatively trivial. Nuclear powered DME conversion plants however are another matter. You are right and I am wrong, at least on scale up considerations. If you include pollution concerns and long term reliability concerns however, I'd think I have better legs to stand on.

Many ethers are today produced on scales of hundreds of thousands of tons. A Japanese company, Toyo, has just announced that it is prepared to use an existing plant to produce DME for fuel. Japan is ready for clean fuel

[Mike Briggs]

87. Enter subject here

"Still, biodiesel is being mixed with petroleum based fuel. We have no view of what the total capacity of biodiesel production is. Agriculture in the west is a highly subsidized and highly energy dependent enterprise, so we really have little insight into what it will mean when we are at 80% biodiesel. "
That was the entire point of my article - just to show that we COULD produce enough biodiesel without needing to use all of the cropland in the US.

Most of the agricultural subsidies in the US are for keeping crop prices high, to keep farmers in business - not subsidies to keep prices low. Soybeans and corn are horrible crops to focus on for biofuels production - microalgae and some other options though are much better (i.e. other options including gassification and Fischer Tropsch synthesis of waste biomass (wood chips, agricultural waste), or thermal depolymerization of waste animal parts). Those options can provide enough biodiesel to replace petroleum fuels entirely, without making a dent in our agricultural land.

"This summer Europe experienced record droughts and temperatures, killing more than 10,000 people. I would think that such events will have an effect on that capacity should 50% of Europe's fuel be biodiesel. "
Yup, when they rely on conventional crops like rapeseed, soy, etc., droughts can have that effect. That's why I don't advocate those choices. The only semi-conventional crop I advocate for biodiesel production is high glucosinolate mustard varieties, since the meal can be sold as a very effective organic pesticide and fertilizer - replacing methyl bromide in the market, and yielding a very low cost biodiesel (the more valuable the co-products, the cheaper the oil can be sold for). But, mustard is incredibly drought resistant, so a drought would have little impact on it.

"Their fuel prices are double (or more) than ours. Are American truckers going to feel any more sanguine about those prices than they would about new injectors? I would actually think that if they could get a fuel that costs about what today's diesel costs, as opposed to one that is 2X or more the price - they'd shell out a few thousand bucks for new injectors and fuel tanks. But I'm not a trucker so I don't know."
The current price of biodiesel in Europe and the US is largely due to a focus on crops that don't really make sense as energy crops (rapeseed (whose meal has very little value) and soybeans (whose price is way too unstable, and whose yield is far too low)). Mustard, algae, and some other options can yield biodiesel at prices comparable to existing fuels, with very high energy balances for production (particularly for algae).

Personally, I think dimethyl ether derived from biomass produced methanol could be a reasonable option, at least for a portion of the transportation sector. I just don't see it being produced from nuclear power in the US.

Almost all DME produced currently is derived from natural gas - and produces over its life cycle considerably more greenhouse gas emissions than even regular diesel (see http://www.uop.com/solutions_and_innovation/Issues%20&%20Solutions/UOPDieselFuel.pdf page 78). You still need a source of methanol. So, DME would either be natural gas or coal derived (most likely) or produced from biomass. To be renewable, and have low emissions, it would have to be from biomass, which means the issue of how much land is required still would need to be resolved.

[NNadir]

90. Um, the reaction in Fischer Tropsch syntheses need not use natural gas.

They only do so now because natual gas is cheap. When it is more expensive or unavailable it is easily made from any carbonaceous compound and steam. This would include the entire mass of any plant.
Under such conditions the production has much higher recovery of carbon than any other existing scheme. There are lots and lots of patents on garbage to synthesis gas schemes (usually rendered as "garbage into oil" with oil being just one possible product of synthesis gas, DME being a better one.)

Your contentions about algae are not proven, any more than are my contentions about nuclear generated DME. Both are scenarios, not realities.

As a practical matter I do not see nuclear generated anything increasing in the United States for at least a decade. This is not because nuclear generated materials are not risk minimized, but because nuclear inspired hysteria punctuates thinking in the United States. This is (in my view) tragic, because it is costing lives.

The United States is quite possibly the most energy ignorant country on the planet with its head far up its butt, so it is not really particularly inspired to point to the United States's sense of reality or better unreality to describe the wisdom of a particular energy development direction or advance to cleaner and safer alternatives. Our current energy strategy, last I looked, is to invade other people's countries and kill them for their oil. I am trying to fight it, but hell, maybe I'm spitting in the wind.

It will be other countries who will do the nuclear development I suggest; and it is other countries that will dominate the economic future. Ignorance has a way of catching up with an economy. It has always been so, and always will be so.

[Mike Briggs]

94. Subject

Um, the reaction in Fischer Tropsch syntheses need not use natural gas."
And where did I say it did? I stated most DME is currently made from it.


They only do so now because natual gas is cheap. When it is more expensive or unavailable it is easily made from any carbonaceous compound and steam.
Easily? Take a look at the energy efficiency of gassification.

This would include the entire mass of any plant.
Under such conditions the production has much higher recovery of carbon than any other existing scheme.
Uh, no, it doesn't, by quite a big stretch. Biological conversion of carbohydrates is far more efficient. Extraction of existing oils, and conversion to biodiesel (which requires an alcohol, which can be made either through those biological conversions of carbohydrates, or more energy intensive gassification of biomass (which DME requires)) is considerably more efficient.

There are lots and lots of patents on garbage to synthesis gas schemes (usually rendered as "garbage into oil" with oil being just one possible product of synthesis gas, DME being a better one.)
There are lots and lots of patents on "free energy devices", which I invite you to spend money on buying if you think a patent means something works, and is economical. There have been countless studies looking at converting various forms of biomass into alcohols, oils, DME, etc.. I haven't seen a single one that concluded that DME was a "better one" to pursue. It's more difficult to use as a fuel, and more energy intensive to produce.

Your contentions about algae are not proven, any more than are my contentions about nuclear generated DME. Both are scenarios, not realities.
Again, "nuclear generated DME" is not an appropriate way of describing it. You are completely ignoring the issue of needing biomass - it's fine to think of using nuclear energy to provide the extra power input required, but you still need the biomass. And there's absolutely no way that the trash we produce would provide the methane required to fuel our country on DME - so you're still stuck having to grow something for that purpose. You were complaining about the need to devote land for growing crops for biodiesel production, but ignore that the same would have to be done for DME.

[NNadir]

118. OK

1) Splitting hairs in the normal way.

2) I understand gassification very well. Do you? Are you just cooking it up in a pressure cooker or do you have supercritical steam under a high field of radiolysis, ozone, and supported catalysts? I know of one such system and its very beautiful.

3) I am not discussing plant physiology. I am talking about industrial production of motor fuels at a high turnover rate (ie suitable for mass production.) While I personally find glycolysis facinating, and the NADH reduction of pyruvate into ethanol and CO2 is a real thrill, it has very little to do with the remark I suspect you are attempting to refute.

I am simply pointing out that high temperatures in the presence of water (supercritical water conditions) for all reduced carbon species results in an equilibrium mixture of carbon monoxide, the dioxide and hydrogen (Nitrogen oxides generated by proteinaceous matter under these conditions are oxidants and oxidize organic substrates while being reduced to nitrogen gas.) You do not get simpler than that: No extractions, fermentations, bioreactors. A simple versitile gas that can be made, like petroleum, into many thousands of different compounds.

4) DME is already manufactured on a 150,000 MT scale. It replaced chlorofluorocarbons in hair spray cans (which is why you can ignite the hair spray.) This use gives you some idea about the gases toxicity, BTW.

I don't think I really need to buy up patents. As is always the case with both continuous and batch process, people patent process improvements and sometimes publish them in scientific or engineering literature. I'm sure I could dig up lots and lots of biodiesel patents that are inherently ridiculous and unworkable. That has no bearing on biodiesel itself. I note that the patent on the fax machine had actually expired before the machine was commercialized. General Atomics is now looking to develop the Sulfur Iodine cycle for direct thermal decompositon into hydrogen because the patent is expired. I worked on a novel method of peptide synthesis that generated great interest in process chemistry circles but was not developed because no one wanted to pay for the license. We need only sort through two decades old patents and find lots of processes for fuel chemistry. More than we could use, in fact.

I am not claiming a "free energy device," although someone with a weak understanding of thermodynamics could conceivably interpret what I am saying as so. I am claiming a system that utilizes and combines two well known energy sources: biomass and nuclear energy. Both are well known and widely explored forms of energy. Biomass has been used since antiquity, but was largely abandoned because of its poor transportability. Nuclear energy provides 15-20% of the total energy demand on earth. Biomass represents I believe, a smaller fraction of the worlds energy supply, even counting the woodstoves and fireplaces that choke the air around here.

Biomass of course is not a primary source of energy, it is stored solar energy. Nuclear energy is primary. I am thus simply stating a scheme for converting a primary and a secondary form of energy into a third chemical intermediate. Hardly problematic, even for an undergrad in his first PChem class.

5) Actually you do not need biomass to generate DME. The reaction intermediate in certain processes starting from syn gas is carbon dioxide. This is a generally available material that plants use for getting carbon intermediates via the use of biotin. There is no reason we can't get our carbon dioxide the same way they do without actually having to use a living (as opposed to a chemical) plant. I would imagine that we could easily implant genes for carbonic anhydrase, the kinetically perfect enzyme, into, oh let me think of something, algae, grow that aglea in a pool of water and have a wonderful equilibrium driven carbon dioxide concentrator using air as a starting material.

I used to imagine using Sr-90, the fission product, in a scheme to recover carbon dioxide, wherein, Sr(90)O was bubbled through a solution percipitating the carbonate. The filtered carbonate was allowed to dry and the autogenerated heat of the radioactive decay released the CO2 and regenerated the oxide. (Oh how I love cyclic processes!) This was when I was young and foolish. I have now calculated that it is only possible in a 100% nuclear world to generate about 19,000 MT of Sr-90, since it reaches an radiochemical equilibrium where it decays as soon as it is formed. Thus the maximum amount of Sr-90 that it would be possible to generate is not enough to provide enough CO2 for all but the smallest plants. This would give nowhere enough carbon dioxide needed worldwide, even at several cycles a day.

The carbonic anhydride - carbonic acid cycle is much better.

Actually the Japanese are developing a system for using waste heat from nuclear plants to capture CO2. This involves cycling cool carbonate saturated water and heating it to drive off the CO2. Electrolysis type systems can exploit acid base chemistry to achieve the same goal, wherein NaOH in aqueous solution and HCl (generated from the electolysis, removes it, restoring the original electrolyte. Japan has very little coal but is stockpiling nuclear material. They think an excellent means of generating motor fuel (DME) would be to capture CO2 in this way. I'll bet their idea will capture carbon faster than yours will.

I like this system best of all because it uses waste heat to collect the gas.

[JetCityLiberal]

132. Great thought provoking post

I have learned a lot reading this long post.

It has brought many memories from a 25 year ago Nuclear Physics coarse I took that was very pro nuclear.

I totally agree that "the US is quite possibly the most energy ignorant country on the planet with its head far up its butt."

I believe that measuring the total impact of any energy source is very important. Many of these threads have taught me about new energy sources and information about some that have been around for a while.

I think pollution from any burning can be very harmful and has to be controlled and reduced if possible. Air pollution kills!

I would like to know which countries are most likely to "do the nuclear development" suggested i.e...develop some of the nuclear facilities that strive toward consume nuclear materials vs. producing nuclear materials that will need to be stored?

I have been pretty anti-nuclear over the last 20 years, but what I am really against is any pollution that effects animals. The human race has over populated the earth to a point of near disaster(or total disaster depending on your point of view) and if we want to enjoy a civilized society we better wise up soon.

Thanks for all of the thought provoking comments. I have learned much!

JetCityLiberal

[cprise]

88. Maybe you should get used to the smog

because the DME solution will not remove it as quickly as biodiesel (or even petrodiesel) if at all... Biodiesel by itself nets a significant reduction in smog because although there is a slight NOx increase, unburned hydrocarbons are drastically reduced. This benefit is realized without emissions equipment, and biodiesel use in Europe is skyrocketing.

However, diesels with the new emissions equipment are now on the market and will be mandatory next year to meet the Euro IV standards. And that's just using petrodiesel.

Assuming we have some kind of real DME production available, we still get no significant benefit because vehicle owners have to spend possibly thousands of dollars for retrofits that include: injectors, higher-pressure injection pump, seals and a pressurized fuel tank. People would also have to fill up almost twice as often. And then there's the question of solving DME's lack of lubricity (it doesn't work in diesel engines without significant additives). And the fact that it's already becoming a fuel idea very much like Bush's hydrogen plan;

The biodiesel market share I was thinking of was France, since they require a 5% biodiesel blend; municipal fleets are often operated with 30-100% biodiesel blends. For Germany, the figure is 3% of the diesel market vended as B100 (pure) through over 1,000 pumps nationwide. The market share in Germany is expected to jump this year when the sale of bio/petro blends is allowed.

http://www.risoe.dk/rispubl/energy_report/ris-r-1430s30_34.pdf

Also of interest:

http://www.ebb-eu.org/stats.php#

http://agriculture.senate.gov/Hearings/Hearings_1997/camp.htm

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/faqs/#resource3

[NNadir]

89. According to this Abstract from Environmental Science Technology

biodiesels are worse in particulates, which are among the important carcinogenic elements of diesel engine output. NOx is comparable, with biodiesel being "slightly higher." (Diesel engines suck on the NOX score.)

This paper does not addres polychlorinated benzopyrans, (analogues of Agent Orange) that represent known output of diesel engines that has only recently been quantified and identified.

Biodiesel was better with CO and Total Hydrocarbon Output, so that's an advantage. The abstract did not use the word "drastic." It uses the words "generally lower." Whether the deaths that will still result from the output of these toxins (which will never be totally removed) is acceptable, is not for me to say. All energy systems result in the loss of life expectancy for some individuals, but not so many as removing all energy systems would do.

This is a choose your poison situation. I think that the money spent on injectors is well spent from a life saved/dollar perspective, especially considering that many people are insisting that nuclear power plants spend millions of dollars per life saved. You however are free to argue that the cost in lives saved for new injectors is prohibitive. Again, it's choose your poison.

From this paper, and the others I scanned, I really don't see biodiesel being a serious alternative in vastly reducing the (immediately tragic) air pollution consequences of diesel engines on any score except of course the extremely important score of greenhouse gas emissions. (Biodiesel is a recycling agent.) In the absence of DME, I will probably not live to see a clean sky again, since diesel engines are endemic worldwide.

I am not sure about the total efficiency of the system when one includes the energy cost of fixed nitrogen, water pumping, and harvesting. I am also concerned with issues of land degradation. However, I would enjoy being proved wrong in this case. Biodiesel, I note, is a mandated fuel as is biogenic ethanol. Whether it proves economic when extrapolated to 100% use is still, in my mind an open question.

I still stand by my contentions (1) DME is cleaner than biodiesel. (2) DME capacity exists (3) The risk optimized solution to the problem of diesel engines is low molecular weight ether fuels generated by supercritical water oxidation of suitable organic feedstocks (waste food, waste paper, waste plastic, and plant processing wastes and other carbonaceous feedstocks.)

Certainly the number of deaths resulting from biodiesel fueled generating stations will in any case far outstrip the deaths resulting from the use of nuclear powered generating stations, watt per watt.

That's my only point.

And now the abstract:

Effects of Biodiesel, Biodiesel Blends, and a Synthetic Diesel on Emissions from Light Heavy-Duty Diesel Vehicles

Thomas D. Durbin,* John R. Collins, Joseph M. Norbeck, and Matthew R. Smith

Bourns College of Engineering, Center for Environmental Research and Technology (CE-CERT), University of California, Riverside, California 92521

Received for review May 12, 1999

Revised manuscript received October 4, 1999

Accepted October 25, 1999

Abstract:

Over the past several years, there has been increased interest in reformulated and alternative diesel fuels to control emissions and provide energy independence. In the following study, a California diesel fuel was compared with neat biodiesel, an 80% California diesel/20% biodiesel blend, and a synthetic diesel fuel to examine the effects on emissions. Chassis dynamometer tests were performed on four light heavy-duty diesel trucks using each of the four fuels. The results of this study showed that biodiesel, the biodiesel blends, and the synthetic diesel produced generally lower THC and CO emissions than California diesel. NOx emissions were comparable over most of the fuel/vehicle combinations, with slightly higher NOx emissions found for the two noncatalyst vehicles on 100% biodiesel. Particulate emissions were slightly higher for two test vehicles and significantly higher for a third test vehicle on the biodiesel fuels. Chemical analyses showed elemental and organic carbon to be the primary constituents of the diesel particulate, accounting for 73-80% of the total mass for the four vehicles. Neat biodiesel had the highest organic carbon fractions for each of the test vehicles. PAH emissions for all fuel combinations were relatively low, probably due to the low fuel PAH levels.

I'll pick up the paper next time I'm at the library and let you know if I find any gems.

[Mike Briggs]

95. emissions

According to this Abstract from Environmental Science Technology, biodiesels are worse in particulates, which are among the important carcinogenic elements of diesel engine output. NOx is comparable, with biodiesel being "slightly higher." (Diesel engines suck on the NOX score.)
And I can provide you with dozens of reports which found that biodiesel significantly reduces particulates, CO, and HC emissions (and especially net greenhouse emissions). Want a few?

Further, new diesel particulate filters can remove so much of the particulate emissions from modern diesels that even on petro diesel they emit less particulates than equivalent gasoline engines (see this study - http://www.vv.se/publ_blank/bokhylla/miljo/2002_62/2002_62.pdf - look at the emissions from the diesel with the DPF - page 21. CI-CR/DPF is a diesel vehicle equipped from the factory with a DPF (the one to the right is a diesel without a DPF. The ones on the left are the same vehicles from the manufacturer with gasoline engines). Even with petro diesel, emissions of HCs, particulates, and CO on a modern diesel vehicle with a DPF are practically non-existant. NOx emissions are still high (and regardless of fuel) - but those can be almost completely removed with NOx adsorbing catalysts that can be used once the sulfur levels are reduced in diesel fuel (2006 ULSD mandate). Those catalysts are successfully removing around 95% of NOx emissions.

From this paper, and the others I scanned, I really don't see biodiesel being a serious alternative in vastly reducing the (immediately tragic) air pollution consequences of diesel engines on any score except of course the extremely important score of greenhouse gas emissions. (Biodiesel is a recycling agent.) In the absence of DME, I will probably not live to see a clean sky again, since diesel engines are endemic worldwide.
I'm sorry, but I found that paragraph rather humorous. Never seeing a clean sky again? That's simply laughable. I haven't seen a dirty sky in many many years. Sure, some big cities have some smog issues - which is caused far more by the VOC emissions from gasoline engines - reducing NOx emissions from diesel vehicles is actually making the smog WORSE (because NOx destroys ground level ozone).

Once NOx adsorbing catalysts can be used (after the ULSD mandate in 2006), with the combination of those and DPFs, even on petroleum diesel (ULSD) diesel vehicles will be incredibly clean. Run them on biodiesel, and they are incredibly clean.

[NNadir]

101. And I can provide many showing it increases NOx

And yes, I would like to see your references. I've perused 9 or 10 recent references, the reduction in particulates, if found, is small. Of these references I scanned all suggested increased NOx in almost all cases. Depending on the chemical nature of the biodiesel (since esters of many differing types long chain alkanoic acids are involved - there is no "generic biodiesel") biodiesel produces higher or lower particulates than ordinary (filthy) diesel fuel in the range of +/- 20%. It depends on the grade I guess. Win some, lose some. Clearly it is a scientifically debatable point, probably owing to the fact that no two biodiesels are identical.

"Better than a gasoline engine" is a small reward. (A gunshot wound to the leg is better than one to the brain, afterall, but no one volunteers to be shot in any organ.) It is moving in a desirable direction, here and there, but it not the best system available by any stretch.

Biodiesel is clearly superior to gasoline and existing diesel fuel on greenhouse grounds, but on grounds of air quality, soil depletion, salt balance and water related health grounds, I'm not convinced that there is a huge advantage over the status quo.

Am I to understand, by the way, that you are in favor of releasing one pollutant (NOx) to eliminate another (ozone)? While you're looking up references, maybe you'd like to find one that quantifies why one pollutant is preferable to the other. I won't speak for your lungs, but for mine, this is very unsatisfying.

NOX catalysts (there are no such thing as NOX absorbers) work quite well, and could conceivably ameliorate the toxic ouput of biodiesel combustion. Necessarily, all such catalysts, usually precious metals, all allow the escape of some fraction of the compounds in the nitrogen-oxygen system of compounds, which as I'm sure you know, is very complex. I would imagine that such catalysts would be ruined in the case of a failure to contain the particulates due to system failure in the marvelous device you've described above. On this subject, I note, though, that you are proposing a fuel that comes from biogenic sources, most of which contain dihydrolipoamide, methionine and cysteine, and a number of other sulfur compounds, all of which can release under oxidative conditions, catalytic poisons. I assume then your refinery for biodiesel will unambigously remove these sulfur compounds 100%, since they are potential catalytic poisons. I also assume that we won't have any of that "corporate shortcutting" in the plants that make biodiesel, that the manufacturers of biodiesel will all be highly ethical persons who only work for the public good.

DME does not produce ANY particulates since it has no carbon carbon bonds. Zero is infinitely better than some in all cases, at least in my opinion. In this case, it is unnecessary to install whatever elaborate pollution control devices, since no pollutant is created. This of course greatly reduces the risks associated with maintenence failures and maintenance avoidance on the part of less than ethical users. Neither does DME produce much NOx.

If we're comparing the status quo petroleum based diesel fuel with biodiesel, there is a marginal improvement in health related pollutants over traditional diesel fuel in most cases. There is a dramatic improvement on greenhouse grounds. If your comparing biodiesel with DME on air pollution grounds however, biodiesel sucks. (Not to worry, there are some grounds on which biodiesel is superior to DME.)

I don't know what planet you live on, though I seriously suspect it is not earth, if you've not seen a dirty sky. I have yet to see a city without one, and I've been all over the world. A recent article in Science (Science, Vol. 293, pp1257-1259 August 17, 2001) argues that air pollution kills 40,000 persons per annum in 4 major Western Hemisphere cities. I'm sure were they polled on their deathbeds, these persons would probably argue that the sky is not particularly clean. I'm glad you're laughing. They obviously are not.

I'm glad though, that I rouse such laughter in you, Mike. I do try to amuse. As being impolitic on DU is frowned upon, I will not remark on the emotions you evoke for me.

[Bdog]

102. New Biodiesel Blend Reduces Particulates and NOx

www.thesoydailyclub.com/BiodieselBiobased/CleanDieselBiodiesel02032004.asp

Clean Diesel's New Biodiesel Blend Reduces Particulates and NOx; Combination Can Reduce Petroleum Imports and Diesel Emission
STAMFORD, Conn., February 2, 2004 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Clean Diesel Technologies Inc. (CDT) (EBB:CDTI)(AIM:CDT) (AIM:CDTS) announced today that results of testing of its new Cleaner Burning Biodiesel-fuel blend produced emissions reductions of 23 percent particulates and 5 percent NOx versus normal on-highway diesel fuel. Testing was conducted at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) on a 1991 certified Cummins 8.3 liter medium-duty engine typical of school buses and delivery fleets.

The Cleaner Burning Biodiesel formulation is a blend of No. 1D and 20 percent biodiesel, along with CDT's patented Platinum Plus(R) fuel-borne catalyst (FBC). Biodiesel is an oxygenated fuel derived from renewable biological sources, such as soybeans. The No. 1D is commercial pipeline-grade kerosene widely used by municipalities. The addition of 20 percent biodiesel not only displaces 20 percent petroleum with a renewable energy source, but in conjunction with the Platinum Plus FBC, provides reductions in all regulated pollutants. "This blend actually beat a commercial ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel (ULSD) in reducing particulate matter (PM), NOx and CO, and was close to the performance of ULSD in reducing hydrocarbon emissions," according to James Valentine, president and COO of CDT.

In addition, the biodiesel enhances the lubricity of the No. 1D, and the No. 1D helps improve the cold-weather performance of the biodiesel. The FBC catalyzes combustion of the fuel in the engine leading to the high overall emission reductions.

Commenting from the National Biodiesel Conference in Palm Springs, Calif., Mr. Steve Howell, technical director of the National Biodiesel Board had the following comments: "This additive/fuel combination has been tested by a highly respected laboratory, and the results are very encouraging. In most biodiesel testing done so far, NOx is the only emission that biodiesel doesn't reduce. This is a positive development for the industry as we search for ways to reduce NOx emissions in addition to the many other benefits of biodiesel."

Earlier testing by CDT at SwRI had shown the ability of the Platinum Plus FBC and No. 1D to produce dramatic PM and NOx reductions, and these reductions were maintained or even improved by the addition of biodiesel to the fuel blend. Some reports have shown modest increases in NOx from the addition of biodiesel. In this new blend, with the FBC, No. 1D and 20 percent biodiesel, NOx is reduced below the baseline levels measured on normal No. 2D fuel.

"This broadens the range of applications for the FBC, making it a platform for clean-fuel solutions and an improvement to the performance of a wide range of after treatment devices," said Valentine. "Combined with a diesel-oxidation catalyst, Platinum Plus has already been verified by the EPA under the rigorous Environmental Technology Verification Program for up to 40-50 percent PM reduction. This performance should be improved even further with this new fuel blend."

Tested at SwRI in conjunction with a new catalyzed wire-mesh filter system (CWMF), the biodiesel blend reduced PM, HC and CO by over 75 percent with NOx reduced by 5 percent. Particulate emissions were actually half the emissions of a new 2004 engine. The FBC not only reduces soot but helps the CWMF self-clean by oxidizing soot even at low exhaust temperatures.

"We are extremely pleased with these results," said Valentine. "The growing interest from municipalities, power generators and fleets in biodiesel blends should provide a market for this new patent-pending fuel formulation. CDT envisions that the FBC will be added directly at the rack by fuel marketers, blending No. 1D and biodiesel with the FBC. All of these components are EPA registered and commercially available so fuel marketers and end users can obtain the benefits immediately."

About Clean Diesel Technologies Inc.

Clean Diesel Technologies is a specialty chemical company with patented products that reduce emissions from diesel engines while simultaneously improving fuel economy and power. Products include Platinum Plus(R) fuel catalysts, the Platinum Plus Purifier System, and the ARIS(R) 2000 urea injection systems for selective catalytic reduction of NOx. Platinum Plus and ARIS are registered trademarks of Clean Diesel Technologies.

Certain statements in this news release constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements involve known or unknown risks, including those detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company, or industry results, to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof.

SOURCE: Clean Diesel Technologies Inc.

[Bdog]

103. DOE Biodiesel Emissions Testing Results

www.rcc.org/oem/biodiesel.html



www.me.iastate.edu/biodiesel/Pages/bio1.html"This increase in NOx can be eliminated with a small adjustment to the engine's injection timing while still retaining a particulate decrease."


http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_nox.htmlHowever, biodiesel's lack of sulfur allows the use of NOx control technologies that cannot be used with conventional diesel. So, biodiesel NOx emissions can be effectively managed and efficiently eliminated as a concern of the fuel's use." -- US National Biodiesel Board, Biodiesel Report, April 1998,

[cprise]

104. The reference to cancer is outlandish

Biodiesel is the only alternative transportation fuel to have a complete evaluation of emissions results and potential health effects submitted to the US EPA under the Clean Air Act 211 (b) Both Tier I and Tier II.


Using pure biodiesel can reduce the cancer risks by 94%; B20 will reduce that risk by as much as 27%. US DOE

Tier 2 Testing of Biodiesel Exhaust Emissions: Final Report


A study by Ford Motor and Harvard (resulted in Harvard eventually switching to B100):

Carbon monoxide, particulate, and hydrocarbon emissions are cut roughly in half. More importantly, air toxins and mutagens are cut by 60 to 90 percent resulting in a 94 percent reduction in cancer risk.
Because of the low cost and extremely high benefit, we recommend an immediate switch to biodiesel for all shuttle busses.

http://www.greencampus.harvard.edu/green_projects/afvp/rec/bus.pdf



Quotes from BD industry (advocacy sources):

Reduction of sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions by 100%
Reduction of soot emissions by 40-60%
Reduction of carbon monoxide (CO) emissions by 10-50%
Reduction of hydrocarbon (HC) emissions by 10-50%
Reduction of all polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and specifically the reduction of the following carcinogenic PAHs:

Reduction of phenanthren by 97%
Reduction of benzofloroanthen by 56%
Reduction of benzapyren by 71%
Reduction of aldehydes and aromatic compounds by 13%

Reduction or increase in nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions by 5-10% depending on the age and type of engine.

http://www.veggievan.org/biodiesel/articles/emissions.php

http://www.worldenergy.net/product/healtheffects.asp


A European lifecycle study (accounts for agriculture and distribution):
http://www.biodiesel.co.uk/emissions_from_liquid_biofuels.htm#2.0 LIFE-CYCLE EMISSIONS FROM BIODIESEL


The above data are why many school bus fleets are switching to biodiesel. It doesn't eliminate cancer risk, although it can put a sizable dent in it now. This fuel will increase in use for a decade or more before DME has a chance to come online for a tiny number of modified engines. Europe knows this, and I think they are much more willing to accept moderate reductions in cancer risk over a radical change in nuclear energy policy and engine construction. Their government and industry know full well that climate change risks the decimation of people and other species on their continent, if not the entire planet; It is not worth risking just because they wanted to extend the average lifespan by a couple years.

Your emissions argument doesn't hold up at all. You had a must better point over the potential for land abuse, which has already been addressed.

[NNadir]

113. There is a huge difference between refereed journals and promotional

literature. According to this reference:

Impact of Biodiesel Source Material and Chemical Structure on Emissions of Criteria Pollutants from a Heavy-Duty Engine
McCormick, R. L.; Graboski, M. S.; Alleman, T. L.; Herring, A. M.; Tyson, K. S.;
Environ. Sci. Technol.; (Article); 2001; 35(9); 1742-1747

in a refereed journal, biodiesel can vary quite dramatically in particulate output depending on its source. In some cases it exceeds the out put of petroleum derived diesel.

I have actually had occasion, when I was a young man, to attend an autopsy of a lung cancer victim. I recall large carcinomas marbled with black carbon particles. I don't know whether or not he was trying to scare me (I was a teenager who could have conceivably taken up smoking), but when I remarked that the man must of been a smoker, the pathologist informed me that this was not the case at all. The cadaver was that of a man who had merely lived for a long time in New York City. I have never forgotten that, which may be why I so hate air pollution.

Carbon particles are carcinogenic. Biodiesel puts them out, maybe less than ordinary diesels in specific cases, but comparably in many cases. Lineoleic acid, a constituent of some biodiesels has 17 carbon-carbon bonds, including two double bonds in a 1,3 arrangement that could conceivable rearrange under oxidative conditions to give aromatics and benzopyrans and other rather nasty compounds. It is a joke to call this molecule, as some do, an oxygenated compound based on a single ester moiety.

But this is just needling on my side. I prefer biodiesel to petroleum, if only on greenhouse grounds. It is not as desirable in my opinion as DME which has no carbon carbon bonds and consequently gives off no particulates. I am simply stating that biodiesel is no - how does your colleague put it? - risk free panacea.

I like DME for other reasons besides its inordinately clean burn (comparable to natural gas), ease of synthesis, the possibility of making it directly via hydrogenation of carbon dioxide (introducing an industrial carbon cycle). The variety of conditions under which synthesis gas is available, including from carbon dioxide, means it does not depend on specific crops grown in specific areas under constant specific weather conditions. Also the preparation of synthesis gas from biomass uses very nearly 100% of the biologically fixed carbon, it does not distinguish between fatty acids, sugars, and amino acids, as biodiesel does.

In fairness to your side, DME has major drawbacks as well. It is a gas at ordinary temperatures and pressures, and although it is easily liquifiable under pressure, it is at least as dangerous as propane (LPG). This problem can be ameliorated somewhat by adding dimethoxymethane to create a liquid solution, but it is much more prone to accident than biodiesel ever will be. (Dimethoxymethane, like DME itself, has zero carbon carbon bonds.) A very serious drawback to DME in my view is that any scheme to synthesize it will use synthesis gas. There are many environmentally friendly ways to make synthesis gas, from garbage, from biomass etc, but one really objectionable way: From coal. There is no law (existent) that says a DME infrastructure could not be diverted the use of coal as a feedstock. In addition, DME is soluble in water, although undermost spill conditions, it will simply boil away, much as propane does. Also DME is a greenhouse gas. It has a very short half-life in the atmosphere, but this should be a concern nonetheless. If DME is made from atmospheric carbon dioxide sources of course (as biodiesel is 100% of the time) this concern is somewhat ameliorated, but not completely. Undoubtedly DME has a higher greenhouse impact mole for mole than does carbon dioxide.

Overall, I'd still come down in favor of DME, based on my principles of risk minimization. This is because air pollution kills with far greater regularity and constancy than does gas explosions. (I perfectly understand that risk elimination is impossible.)

[cprise]

125. You're welcome to focus on the EPA and Harvard studies

...which I hope you're not ignoring.

The carbon compounds from biodeisel are over 90% less carcinogenic than petrodiesel. You, however, focus on the fact that it can cause cancer at all.
I'd say 'needling' was the right term.

The biodiesel industry is focused on producing the fuel from specific sources in order to control its combustion qualities. There is SME, RME and their waste oil (WVO) counterparts, for instance. Their overall performance as fuels is outstanding.

I continue to be bothered by the question of what fuel will be added to DME to make it usable in diesel engines; DME doesn't have sufficient lubricity to work on its own. I don't think biodiesel would mix well, so that leaves you with... ?

[Mike Briggs]

86. erg

This forum format is really annoying. I keep getting errors when making a post, with my entire long-winded response disappearing into the ether. Here goes again, being much shorter, and copying to the clipboard in case it once again disappears.

"What "environmental disaster" from mining Uranium has ever approached the level of mining disasters that routinely accompany the mining of coal. Just from a mass balance perspective, it's very clear that it is easy to do much less mining damage per watt using Uranium than any other source of energy, including oil."
Based on a mass balance in which you only count the mass of the U-235, or of all of the mass mined? The problem is that U-235 is so rare that it requires mining many many orders of magnitude more material to get enough U-235.

Yes, it is safer than coal mining. I'm not opposed to nuclear power, as you seem to have concluded. I prefer it by far over coal - I just don't think it should be our primary focus as an energy and fuel provider as it is NOT as perfect as you are presenting it to be.

" submit that Iraq had billions, Libya had billions plus Dr. Khan's schematics and did not produce a nuclear weapon. Even with these resources we now know they did not come close. Are you claiming that terrorists will be able to accomplish the following: Build a shielded separation plant with robotic controls, manage a separation (Purex, pyroprocessing or electrofining) buying both the equipment and the necessary reagents, surreptitiously transport the waste of these separations, purchase remotely controlled machine tools capable of making pits, purchase the requisite explosives and the equipment to mold them sensitively, the electronics to provide a precise detonation sequence, beryllium shielding to redirect neutrons, and a team of people willing to deliver the completed weapon. I have a strong suspicion that someone somewhere might notice."
That's an unrealistic argument for many reasons. First, terrorists wouldn't need robotic controls - sure, exposure to the plutonium would likely kill those working on it - but, terrorist groups seem to have a plethora of volunteers willing to die for their cause. Are you suggesting that someone who is willing to blow himself up in a car or plane would not be willing to give his life to see his group make a nuclear weapon that could take out tens or hundreds of thousands of people?

North Korea has nukes. Pakistan made them. Iran and Libya are close. The electronics necessary are easier and easier to come by. Some terrorist groups have huge amounts of money funneled into them. It's simply not the unlikely scenario you are claiming.

"Finally you will note that consistently in my posts I have called for fissioning plutonium in the presence of Thorium. I am NOT an advocate of the manufacture of plutonium. I am a Thorium cycle advocate. If you are a nuclear physicist, you will surely understand the profound difference. I DO advocate the burning of existing plutonium in nuclear reactors since burying it under a mountain somewhere is a surefire means of making it available to people for many thousands of years."
I agree with that logic, but I don't think it's at all realistic to think that any form of nuclear power could provide the bulk of our energy and fuel in the US. No new plants have been commissioned in quite a while - there's a reason for that.

"I do indeed have a knee jerk negative reaction to diesel engines operating on fuel consisting of heavy alkanes. I like diesel engines operating on low molecular weight ethers. Environmentalists have argued everywhere that heavy alkane burning engines degrade air quality."
Uh, biodiesel is NOT an alkane. It is an ester, and burns far far cleaner than any alkane. Throw on a DPF and NOx adsorbing catalyst, and it's incredibly clean. Decaying plant matter gives off considerably more emissions than a biodiesel powered vehicle with those catalysts would.

" What do we do if the diesel fields are subject to extreme drought in the Midwest or if the flows at the Colorado River near the Imperial Valley become too low to irrigate our Sonoran ponds? Pray for rain? We can of course buy corn and algae from Bangladesh in a pinch, but what does it mean, in environmental and economic terms to get it to our Midwestern fuel plants? "
That's why our focus is on growing algae off of waste streams which have a plentiful supply of water. If those waste streams for some reason suddenly have no water, it would only be because we humans suddenly have no water to drink , which means we'd all be dead anyway. SO sure, if there were a drought so severe that there were no water for us to drink, we wouldn't be able to grow algae off of our waste streams. We'd be dead anyway, but let's still chalk that up as a drawback - if we all die of drought, we couldn't produce biodiesel for our cars.

We're not saying nuclear power should be abandoned - just that it should not be perceived as the best option available.

[NNadir]

92. Missed your reply.

I missed your reply.

Well, I'm glad we've gotten past coal. That's a start. Let me ask you would you favor the replacement of all the coal power stations with nuclear stations? I know I would.

You write:

That's an unrealistic argument for many reasons. First, terrorists wouldn't need robotic controls - sure, exposure to the plutonium would likely kill those working on it - but, terrorist groups seem to have a plethora of volunteers willing to die for their cause. Are you suggesting that someone who is willing to blow himself up in a car or plane would not be willing to give his life to see his group make a nuclear weapon that could take out tens or hundreds of thousands of people?

North Korea has nukes. Pakistan made them. Iran and Libya are close. The electronics necessary are easier and easier to come by. Some terrorist groups have huge amounts of money funneled into them. It's simply not the unlikely scenario you are claiming.


I'm not sure that you understand the building of nuclear weapons at all. What size exactly is this plethora of suicide nuclear engineers are you requiring? Might not the disposal of the (irradiated) bodies not increase the visibility of this operation. The West was able to not the North Korean reprossessing, the Chernobyl accident and many other nuclear incidents on the basis of Kr-85 output. You still haven't addressed the acquiring of the requisite machinery, the chemical reagents, the apparatus etc.

Let us assume for one second that building a nuclear weapon requires various steps, and estimate the probability of these events, and then determine an expectation value measured in the cynical but necessary unit of deaths involved both on the part of participants and victims in. Let us then find the expectation values for other energy scenarios and determine which is to preferable. I will try to be biased in favor of the ease of obtaining the requisite materials.

1.) Obtaining plans. Well, many people understand how to make nuclear weapons under ideal conditions, and let us say that Dr. Khan's plans are available widely. Let us say that at a particular campus of terrorist school you odds of finding detailed plans for a nuclear weapon is 50%. I think that's a high number.

2) Obtaining the fissionable material.

a) We are discussing your contention that nuclear energy is unsafe because of the plutonium produced in commercial reactors, so I will ignore centrifuges and the like. Unless we fission it, we cannot make naturally occurring Uranium go away, and the nuclear genie is out of the bag, so this option is always available to terrorists at all times and will be for all time.

b) From a we are left with scenario that incites you Ashcroftian heights of fear, plutonium is obtained from reactor "waste" generated in commercial plants. You say no shielding is necessary, but I think you are quite wrong on this. The stealing of a single spent fuel rod that is less than say, 50 years old, would involve massive whole body radiation to the thief, chiefly from Cs-137, enough that he might not succeed in getting very far off the premises dragging the heavy fuel rod. He certainly would not be able to stick it under is jacket. However, let us say we had 20 suicide thieves willing to carry the fuel rod each of thirty feet to get it to a waiting truck. Plutonium is typically found in spent fuel rods at about 5 grams per kilogram of fuel, so to get 20 kg, enough for two or three bombs ignoring losses to processing, we will need enough suicide thieves to steal 4 metric tons of spent rods. The fuel rods will probably be in assemblies that will make the transport easier, but how many suicide thieves do we need to steal 4 tons of spent fuel? Obviously the more we need the lower our probability of pulling this off surreptiously, by I will say that stolen fuel rods, even for suicidal thieves (wearing heavy gloves so they don't burn themselves, is rather low. Let us say that there is an absurdly high probability though, 10% that we will be able to steal the fuel rods with enough fuel for our terrorist nuke.

3) Now, lets look at what we do with the fuel rods. First we need to dissolve them. Typically Uranium fuel rods are clad in Uranium and the decladding devices are typically very heavy mechanical machines with robotic controls. Let us say that our terrorists, after disposing surreptiously of the dead bodies of their irradiated thieves have a probability of obtaining such a rather unusual machine of 10%. Let us also say that in the absense of this machine they have the option of obtaining tons of extremely toxic hydrogen fluoride to effect a dissolution process for most Zircalloy cladding. Let us put this probability at 20%. Thus they can either dissolve, or mechanically decladding the fuel with an overall probability of 30%.

4) Now they need to separate the Plutonium without being detected. You still say shielding is unnecessary, so this will require some suicide chemists. How many will we need? Well, these guys are going to be handling truckload quantities of nitric acid, and TPB or some other extractant to process their four tons, so I'm going to guess we'll need at least 50 highly trained suicide chemists. They may be able to go into the process room infrequently, so probably not many of them will get acute radiation sickness immediately, so I will assume. Nitric acid is an item of commerce, so I will ignore the probability that it will stir up much interest. Kerosene is much the same. However, getting TPB is another matter. If one chooses more exotic and effective extractants, thenoyl acetone, or worse a calixarene type of extractant, you are certain to attract attention. Let us say again, that we can obtain these rare and not widely used chemicals with a non-detect probability of 10%

5) During this processing step, you are of course releasing volatile fission products like Kr-85, I-129, and I-131, since we're doing things on the cheap and don't have scrubbers etc. So we need to include a factor for premature detection evasion, hoping that we are not too close to an existing nuclear power plant or a medical facility with radiation detectors. (The West knew about Chernobyl for days before it's announcement for exactly this reason.) Let us say though that our neighbors have nothing to do with radiation, or are incompetant, or are terrorists themselves, and so our detection evasion probability is 50%.

6) Because we are using primitive means of extraction, 1950's stuff, we have lots of high level nuclear waste that we really can't approach. We'll just put that in the back yard until we get enough suicide truck drivers and suicide straphangers to distribute in New York. We estimate that there is only a 1% possibility that the presence of so much nuclear waste will get noticed, so our liklihood of success is 99%.

7) Now comes the fun part. We collect our plutonium fractions and pool them. This is reactor grade plutonium with a high neutron output flux from Pu-240, high gamma output from Pu-241's daughter, Am-241, heat output from Cu-242, and possibly Pu-238. Therefore we're going to need a number of suicide metallurgists to effect these metal reductions without a premature criticality event. We are also going to have to do a bit of experimentation on this score, since Dr. Khan's directions imply the use of higher grades of plutonium. Since we do not have the complex radiation history of the rods, we have no idea about the specific isotopic compositions of the plutonium obtained from different channels in the reactor, the degree of flux flattening, composition of the original fuel mix etc, etc. So I'm going to guess that we'll lose quite a number of suicide metallurgists in the reduction phase, lets say twenty. I know this is ungenerous of me, but I'm going to assign only a 5% probability of success for this phase. Sue me if I'm wrong.

8) Now we have our plutonium, little vials of bright shining metal. (We are keeping them under argon, to prevent them from burning into flame or severly oxidizing.) We need our suicide metallurgists to alloy it with Gallium to help with the compressibility and machinability of the pits we are about to machine. As we mix these unfamiliar fractions together we're likely to lose a few more suicide metallurgists to precriticality accidents, but getting Gallium is trivial (unless of course someone wonders why we have all these truckloads nitric acid, kerosene, TBP, Hydrofluoric acid, and now are ordering of all things, kilos of Gallium.) I'm going to be generous here though say we're going to get a 10% rate of success here.

9) Now we have to order high explosives to effect our implosion. This explosive can't be ordinary dynamite. It must be heat resistant because of our plutonium-241, 238, and Curium-242. It must be radiation resistant. It must be moldable. It must be able to be denotated in a precise sequence with high reproducibility. Now I'm going to be a real pig, because this type of explosive can only have one use. I'm going to say we're going to have only a 2% chance of getting this material, especially because of all the other purchases we've made while we work on the cheap.

10) Now we need the electronics. One doesn't normally obtain the high quality electronics for detonating a nuclear weapon at radio shack, but we do have Dr. Khan's email, so we pretty much know what we need. We don't want to create to much attention, so we head out to high end stereo stores and cannibalize amplifers and the like for our electronics. Probability of success, lets say 95%.

11) Now comes the Louis Slotin problem. (Louis Slotin was a physicist in the Manhattan project who was killed assembling a nuclear weapon in 1946 when he accidentally caused two halves of a plutonium pit to get too close.) Louis Slotin had been working with a team of some of the finest minds on earth with highly pure, well characterized, plutonium. As he had these resources, and the resources of the tens of thousands of people who worked on the Manhattan project available to him, I'm going to guess our backyard terrorists, who keep killing themselves off, and who are using a very poor grade of plutonium are going to actually have a less than 5% probability of actually assembling the weapon in such a way that you don't completely destroy the components so difficultly obtained, even with a team of suicide physicists. I'm sorry, but I can't give you more than 10% here.


You say you are a nuclear physicist, so I do not need to explain expectation values to you. Our probability function here, and I do think I've been overly generous in my probabilities here, though you should feel free to disagree, is =0.5*0.1*0.3*0.5*0.99*0.05*0.1*0.02*0.95*0.1, or as I translate it one in 14,000,000 roughly for our team of suicide nuclear workers.

Now I'm going to ignore the fact that this reactor grade bomb is going to actually fizzle in the event and probably take out only a few blocks and claim that this bomb will kill at Hiroshima type levels. Further I'm going to give you a 100% probability of delivering it as desired. I'm going to claim that the number of deaths from Hiroshima is 300,000, just for argument's sake. We have then the expectation value for this scenario of =300,000/14,000,000 = 0.02.

Now every year several million people die of air pollution and other pollution associated with fuel operations of all kinds. Let's be conservative and say that its twenty million people, although it's probably much higher. Our expectation value there is 20,000,000/6,000,000,000,000 = 0.003 per year. We can only estimate the per year value of the terrorist weapon since it has never happened, but lets assume it happens next year and we have an experimental nuclear bomb terrorist per year probability of 1 every fifty years. Then we have 0.03*50 = 0.15 for air pollution vs an experimental nuclear bomb terrorist attack in 50 years of 0.02. On this score, the terrorist risk is considerably lower.

Let us say that there is a 0.01% chance of a total atmospheric collapse leading to extinction of life on earth. The expectation value here is a whopping 6X10^5.

I'm sorry, I still go with nuclear power.

Before you tell me by the way how free of pollution biodiesel is, I hope you will review the abstract to the reference I posted in reponse to Cprise's remarks.

[Mike Briggs]

93. re: erg, etc.

Well, I'm glad we've gotten past coal. That's a start. Let me ask you would you favor the replacement of all the coal power stations with nuclear stations? I know I would.
Yes, I would.

I'm not sure that you understand the building of nuclear weapons at all. What size exactly is this plethora of suicide nuclear engineers are you requiring? Might not the disposal of the (irradiated) bodies not increase the visibility of this operation. The West was able to not the North Korean reprossessing, the Chernobyl accident and many other nuclear incidents on the basis of Kr-85 output. You still haven't addressed the acquiring of the requisite machinery, the chemical reagents, the apparatus etc.
I'm not sure that you understand the nature of the state of terrorism. They aren't a group of uneducated barbarians. And not everyone working on a device would need to be a nuclear engineer, by any stretch of the imagination. Why would the disposal of some irradiated bodies tip anyone off? Are you implying that you couldn't dump, say even 100 irradiated terrorists in some caves in the mountains of Pakistan without us knowing about it? Perhaps you should fly over the mountains of some of those regions, and ask yourself how likely it is that we'd know about much of anything that could go in down there.

The Kr-85 output is only something we'd note if we were specifically looking for it, and were able to collect air samples from that specific region. It's not like we can scan the globe for any signs of re-processing. Sure, if we suspected that in some particular location, something like that was going on, we could send a team (or remotely controlled vehicles) to collect air samples to look for Kr-85. It's absurd to insinuate that that means we'd somehow be able to detect if a terrorist group that had obtained spent nuclear material were reprocessing it somewhere - anywhere in the world.

Acquiring the equipment is not an insurmountable task. There are plenty of countries, such as Pakistan, from whom they could acquire anything they need.

b) From a we are left with scenario that incites you Ashcroftian heights of fear, plutonium is obtained from reactor "waste" generated in commercial plants. You say no shielding is necessary, but I think you are quite wrong on this. The stealing of a single spent fuel rod that is less than say, 50 years old, would involve massive whole body radiation to the thief, chiefly from Cs-137, enough that he might not succeed in getting very far off the premises dragging the heavy fuel rod. He certainly would not be able to stick it under is jacket. However, let us say we had 20 suicide thieves willing to carry the fuel rod each of thirty feet to get it to a waiting truck.
Again, your assessment is based on a poor analysis of what options could be taken. You are assuming it would have to be stolen by individual thiefs - there are many scenarios under which that is not required at all. Buying people off to look the other way, getting willing parties to have a large control over the supervision of spent material, an armed raid, and many other scenarios can completely negate the need for a single individual to have to carry the material by hand. Delivery trucks can easily be modified to provide enough shielding for the material to be transported undetected, etc.. There are countless scenarios in which it is quite feasible, without the need for a lone thief to sneak into some facility to steal the material, and attempt to steal it himself (and the notion that a thief would only be able to get 30 feet before collapsing is absurd). Have a handful of people carry in a large iron crate on support rods (or hell, if they bought off enough people, killed enough, or had enough conspirators "inside", they could just drive the crate right in), put the material inside, and carry it out to a truck.

Plutonium is typically found in spent fuel rods at about 5 grams per kilogram of fuel, so to get 20 kg, enough for two or three bombs ignoring losses to processing, we will need enough suicide thieves to steal 4 metric tons of spent rods.
This is an example of how you are looking at extreme cases - why do you assume they'd need enough for 2 or 3 bombs? Is one bomb not a problem?

Material could be stolen over a long period of time, in multiple raids, etc.. It's just absurd to think that your scenario of needing to steal 4 metric tons at once is a realistic one to look at.


3) Now, lets look at what we do with the fuel rods. First we need to dissolve them. Typically Uranium fuel rods are clad in Uranium and the decladding devices are typically very heavy mechanical machines with robotic controls. Let us say that our terrorists, after disposing surreptiously of the dead bodies of their irradiated thieves have a probability of obtaining such a rather unusual machine of 10%. Let us also say that in the absense of this machine they have the option of obtaining tons of extremely toxic hydrogen fluoride to effect a dissolution process for most Zircalloy cladding. Let us put this probability at 20%. Thus they can either dissolve, or mechanically decladding the fuel with an overall probability of 30%.
Again, this demonstrates the extreme bias you're looking at the issue with, passing things off as far less likely to happen than they are. Consider this part in particular - "Let us also say that in the absense of this machine they have the option of obtaining tons of extremely toxic hydrogen fluoride to effect a dissolution process for most Zircalloy cladding. Let us put this probability at 20%." Hydrofluoric acid (hydrogen floride) is the building block of a huge portion of industrial and pharmaceutical processes, and is extremely easy to come by. It's not something that would be at all difficult to obtain. Back when I was an engineer, many of the companies that we did hazardous waste design systems for used HF rountinely in their processes. It's easily availble, in pretty much any part of the world. THere are countless plants pumping out thousands of tons of the stuff. Yet you present the possibility of a rogue group obtaining a few tons of it as an extremely unlikely event.

4) Now they need to separate the Plutonium without being detected. You still say shielding is unnecessary, so this will require some suicide chemists. How many will we need? Well, these guys are going to be handling truckload quantities of nitric acid, and TPB or some other extractant to process their four tons, so I'm going to guess we'll need at least 50 highly trained suicide chemists. They may be able to go into the process room infrequently, so probably not many of them will get acute radiation sickness immediately, so I will assume. Nitric acid is an item of commerce, so I will ignore the probability that it will stir up much interest. Kerosene is much the same. However, getting TPB is another matter. If one chooses more exotic and effective extractants, thenoyl acetone, or worse a calixarene type of extractant, you are certain to attract attention. Let us say again, that we can obtain these rare and not widely used chemicals with a non-detect probability of 10%
And the absurdity continues. You're claiming you need highly trained suicide chemists just to handle nitric acid? Puuhhhleaze! That's ridiculous. Similarly, there are plenty of options for getting extractants that would be hardly noticed at all. Even if a particular chemical might raise an eyebrow - set up a chemical company as a front for purchasing it.

5) During this processing step, you are of course releasing volatile fission products like Kr-85, I-129, and I-131, since we're doing things on the cheap and don't have scrubbers etc. So we need to include a factor for premature detection evasion, hoping that we are not too close to an existing nuclear power plant or a medical facility with radiation detectors. (The West knew about Chernobyl for days before it's announcement for exactly this reason.) Let us say though that our neighbors have nothing to do with radiation, or are incompetant, or are terrorists themselves, and so our detection evasion probability is 50%.
Again, this is absurd. Transport the material out of the country, and suddenly there is an incredibly small chance that it would be detected. This wouldn't involve a Chernobyl-scale emission that would be nearly so easily detected. Hell, even without transporting it out of the country, it would be easy to do it without detection in many remote parts of the US.

I'm not going to bother responding to the rest, as it's more of a study in absurdity than an attempt at analyzing the likelihood if this actually happening.

[NNadir]

98. I think you're wiggling still.

1) Good. That's sensible.

2) Each event of thievery involves a lower probability of diversion success. If one assumes a 80% probability of success in each act of thievery for (highly radioactive and easily detectable) plutonium in each case, the overall success rate for 5 thefts is roughly 11%.

Even moderately probably events in sequence become improbable.. Like many people, you have a poor understanding of probability.

There simply aren't that many reprocessing plants on the surface of the earth to make this probability much higher than I suggested. You can hand wave this away, but you haven't given one single reason to indicate a higher probability than that I suggested.

In any case, your original contention in any case was not about weapons factories, in any case. You have claimed that commercial nuclear power would increase the likelihood of terrorism. So my argument applies, especially since most commercial reprocessing schemes do not isolate pure metallic plutonium. The make MOX. I absolutely support the dismantling of weapons laboratories worldwide for the purpose of minimizing weapons use risk. I'll go further. I absolutely support the fissioning of nuclear materials suitable for weapons use in commercial reactors, for lowering the probability of diversion.

3) I'm well aware of the amounts of HF produced on the planet. You are again confusing commercial operations with terrorist operations. Most HF, because of the difficulty of transportation, is used in situ for captive operations. An example would be the Torrance Mobil Refinery in Torrance California (on the Crenshaw fault) historically (I don't know that the do today) used MT quantities of HF for cracking operations. That doesn't mean a terrorist can steal it. I work in the chemical industry. I can tell you that a truckload quantity of HF being sold to an unknown party with an unknown application would certainly raise eyebrows. This material dissolves glass and requires special trucking in monel metal tankers or polypropylene lined tankers. Be specific. How would you make this a likely scenario. Or is it just hand waving?


4) Hand waving again. I am talking about nitric acid solutions saturated with plutonium nitrate and highly radioactive fission products, not the stuff you buy form Aldrich. PUUUUHLLLEAAASE indeed.

5) Spikes in Kr-85 are the de riguer method of detecting reprocessing operations worldwide, because one can basically detect radioactive nuclei at absurdly low concentrations. I have not even bothered to suggest a (ridiculously low) probability of someone importing and exporting highly radioactive fission products. Reprocessing enough nuclear fuel, again at a level of metric tons, is pretty easy to do if you are looking for it. They knew in Japan for instance that plutonium was being reprocessed in North Korea.

This is pretty typical nuclear scare stuff that you provide and you are clearly confusing weapons operations with commercial operations. My guess is that you have no idea of the issues and realities in handling nuclear materials, no conception of processing and simply want to believe what you want to believe. It is easy to call it "absurd," especially when you cannot address issues specifically. I am not surprised that you resort to this dismissal, as if this somehow addresses the question. It's better than thinking. (It reminds me of shouting "terrorist!" when justifying invading another country.) The fact is that the construction of nuclear weapons is a multi-billion dollar enterprise whereever it is entered into. Therefore the probability of terrorists assembling one is vanishingly small.

It is a very different issue to address when you discuss terrorists stealing an existing weapon. You are using the typical anti-nuclear argument which attempts, without justification, to include commercial operations under the rubric of weapons operations.

The probability of a preassembled stolen (or sold) nuclear weapon being provided by a rogue nation cannot be dismissed unless of course nuclear weapons are disassembled and their cores dealt with. If you consider it from this perspective, nuclear power plants are the best and possibly only mechanism of reducing this probability (via the destruction of high quality isolated fissionable materials).

[cprise]

105. I take the threat of Al Queda seriously

And I know they do not require a well-functioning nuclear enterprise in order to produce something threatening and lethal: Say, a radiological "dirty" bomb.

They are not N. Korea and aren't looking for military efficacy. Rogue nations with nuclear power are one thing, a man smuggling uranium out of the Ukraine for who-knows-what is quite another. They present different kinds of risks that we haven't been able to deal with effectively.

At the very least, terrorists will use possession of radioactive materials to bluff their way into conflicts. Right-wingers will use doubts about these materials to bluff *US* into starting conflicts. I now think it is unlikely we will be told who the actual perpetrator is in the event a radiological or nuclear bomb is used somewhere in the world; we will be told whatever lies are necessary to try out our new nuclear toys on someone, and then there will be no end to the scope of that arms race.

"Spikes in Kr-85 are the de riguer method..."

No, labeling chicken farms in Iraq as WMD factories is fashionable now.

You can't scale up nuclear power and deny it to certain peoples; That flew in 1950 but it won't any longer. If we do this, then wielding nuclear power any way they can will be de riguer for people around the world.

[NNadir]

108. Well, I think we're past the point of reason here.

I really don't think terrorists are going to drive truckloads of nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, spent fuel rods, etc, etc (see my earlier post) through the Khyber Pass to make a nuclear weapons or make a (very detectable) radiological weapons, after smuggling of metric ton quantities of a neutron emitting starting material under thousands of suicide jacket coats.

If that probability seems worth risking the collapse of the atmosphere (a situation with an infinitely larger expectation value), I really can't help you.

I find it amusing in this country that people shout Al Queda! Al Queda to support any far-out fear they wish to have. Of course, such fears go along way. They are specious, of course, but what can you do in age of the decline of thinking?

Nuclear power is very high tech by its nature; and very difficult to screw with. That's mere physics and chemistry. I am not going to lose sleep over Al Queda's nuclear potential. That's because I actually understand radiochemistry. We now have post mortems on two major nuclear weapons programs funded with billions of dollars, Iraq (primitive at best, and long disassembled) and Libya (primitive, but useful as a bargaining chip to make new friends in the Bush White House). If these billion dollar economies could not do it, I would suspect that the realitionship between Al Queda terrorism and nuclear weapons is rather similar to the relationship of Al Queda to my infestation last year with aphids.

Terrorism is noted for it's low cost approaches everywhere. Even the WTC bombings, which effectively destroyed the United States Constitution and economy, came in at probably less than a few hundred thousand dollars, if that much, for the perpetrators. Why distribute all over Afghanistan, 1000 dead suicide irradiated chemists, truck drivers, physicists, etc and drop a few billion bucks into the void on the precipe of being found out, when for at about $200-300 a bomb, you can strap 1000 dead suicide pedestrians with bombs and wreck real terror?

It sounds unreasonable to me that terrorists will get their hands on bombs they manufacture themselves but then again, I guess there really isn't much point in trying to convince you otherwise. You started with a preconcieved notion, the one supported by that deep thinker George W. Bush, that nuclear terrorism is a serious threat.

You cannot distinguish between commercial technology and military technology and in the latter case, you have a poor understanding of how difficult in practice the steps that are so easy on paper actually are. I'm sorry. But having spent almost two decades looking into the matter for myself, this is a bunch of hooey. You can never tell, though, what some people will believe. The Pakistanis have 20-30 nuclear devices and face an enemy with probably double the arsenal. It is always possible that they will sell a device to a third party, but this has nothing to do with building nuclear fueled powerplants in most places on the earth, absolutely nothing at all.

I've got to go. Al Queda has been littering my lawn and I have to clean it up.

[Bdog]

107. insurance companies will not touch the nuclear power industry

Nuclear power is so safe that the insurance companies will not touch the nuclear power industry with a 60 foot pole.

www.nirs.org/reactors/ThePriceAndersonActfactsheet1001.htm
BACKGROUND
Congress is considering reauthorization of the Price-Anderson Act, which, since first enacted in 1957, has served as the nuclear industry's limited liability policy. To understand the magnitude and purpose of Price-Anderson, try this simple exercise: Take out your home- or business-owner insurance policy and look for the "Nuclear Hazard Exclusion Clause."
What does this mean? It means that individual members of the public are prohibited from purchasing protection from a nuclear accident. The insurance industry--the professional-risk assessor--recognized from the start that nuclear power was too dangerous to fully insure. The government realized that no utility would ever build an atomic reactor because no utility would ever open itself to the potential consequences of an accident. So the federal government and the nuclear industry lobby found someone else to foot the rest of the bill: the public. Through the Price-Anderson act, nuclear utilities can afford insurance that they could never obtain in real market circumstances. Moreover, Price-Anderson has a liability cap well below the compensation needed to cover most nuclear accident consequences.
NON-INSURABLE AT ANY COST
At the dawn of the atomic age, the insurance industry's refusal to fully insure the nuclear industry created the need for federal intervention. Congress gave the infant technology "protection against potentially enormous liability claims in the event of a nuclear accident," a benefit no other U.S. industry ever has received. According to May 2001 congressional testimony from American Nuclear Insurers (ANI), Congress convinced the insurance companies to create a joint underwriting association (ANI) so that "insurers (could) find a way to insure what was then a fledgling technology."
Offered originally as 10-year temporary training wheels, "to encourage the private development of nuclear power" (ANI testimony) the Price-Anderson Act of 1957 has now provided the atomic industry with a permanent wheelchair for financial immunity from mistakes and accidents that can environmentally devastate whole countries, cripple economies and sicken entire populations.
Without this liability shelter, nuclear reactors would never have split the first atom. ANI recognized this when it testified "the Act has been critical in enabling us to provide stable, high quality insurance capacity for nuclear risks in the face of normally overwhelming obstacles for insurers—those obstacles being catastrophic loss potential, the absence of credible predictability…without the "ups and downs" (or market cycles) that have affected nearly all other lines of insurance." (emphasis added) Left to market forces, the nuclear industry is uninsurable and financially non-viable. With the Act, the public is denied financial protection from the enormous health costs and economic losses from a catastrophic accident.
NOT ENOUGH TO COVER ACCIDENT CONSEQUENCES
With his National Energy Policy, President Bush is now calling upon Congress to reauthorize the Price-Anderson Act before it expires in August 2002. Last amended in 1988, the Price-Anderson Act is a fairly complicated system in which nuclear utilities—as a group—purchase a small level of insurance for accidents (currently $200 million). For damages above that, each reactor would be assessed $10 million per year for about 7.5 years. The total amount available to compensate accident damages thus depends on how many reactors are operating. The proposed reauthorization of Price-Anderson in the House of Representatives would increase the assessment to $15 million per year per reactor—for a total pot currently of about $12 billion. Is this enough? No.
A 1982 Sandia National Laboratories study, leaked to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.), quantified the consequences of a catastrophic nuclear power accident in the U.S. Besides potentially causing thousands of early deaths and cancers, an accident could cause as much as $313 billion in damages, or about $600 billion today with inflation. The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident has cost Ukraine, Belarus and southern Russia an estimated $350 billion.
PRICE-ANDERSON IS A SUBSIDY TO A FAILED, DANGEROUS TECHNOLOGY
ANI states that Price-Anderson is not a subsidy to the nuclear industry because, although it caps industry liability, there is a defacto liability cap to any industry: "the limit equal to the assets of the company at fault." But the point isn’t just the compensatory sum, which falls well below the assets of nuclear utilities. As long as the liability cap exists, it is the taxpayers and ultimately the accident victims and their descendents, not the industry, that would pay damages that exceed its artificial limit.
The ability to hold corporations fully financially liable as a deterrent to reckless business practices is a cornerstone of civil law. In reality, Price-Anderson offers an aging nuclear power fleet under increased energy market competition the principle of limited liability as a growing disincentive to safety. A deteriorating nuclear power plant provided with a full liability exemption is more likely to take short cuts that pit profit-margins against safety-margins as a routine course of business.
REACTORS WITHOUT CONTAINMENT DON’T DESERVE PRICE-ANDERSON SUBSIDY
If Price-Anderson were not reauthorized, existing reactors would still be covered by its current provisions. The only reason to extend the commercial provisions of the Act is to encourage the construction of new reactors. As Vice-President Dick Cheney recently admitted, without extension of Price-Anderson to new reactors, "Nobody's going to invest in nuclear power."
The nuclear industry’s promotion of new reactor designs, such as the Pebble Bed Modular Reactor (PBMR) as "inherently safe" stands in stark contrast to its call for extending limited liability to these new reactors. Indeed, the industry is seeking even lower assessments for the PBMR design than exist for current reactors.
The tragic events of September 11, 2001, served to highlight the fact that nuclear reactors pose a great security risk. The "new generation" of so-called "inherently safe" reactors such as the PBMR have no containment structure. This simple, frightening fact makes them extremely vulnerable to terrorist attack, and shows the hypocrisy of the nuclear industry. Industry claimed, in a continued, unsupported flurry of self-denial, that Chernobyl couldn’t happen in the US because our reactors have containment. Now they are calling a new generation of containment-lacking reactors "inherently safe" but they also claim these reactors are not safe enough to insure without a law limiting utility liability.
If the nuclear industry is the safe, market viable and mature industry it claims to be, it can be held accountable for the real cost of doing business. If the public is to believe this "free market" oratory then every nuclear power plant designer, supplier and operator should be required to internalize the insurance costs to the full extent of the risks and consequences associated with splitting the atom to create electricity. However, were Congress to lift the liability cap and require full insurance liability for as long as it takes to pay off an accident, utilities would likely abandon this technology for safer, cheaper, cleaner and renewable electricity generation.
Cindy Folkers, October 2001

[NNadir]

109. Insurance companies, the source of all wisdom and balance.

Insurance companies, staffed by a team of advanced physicists and the finest scientists in the world are the best qualified at understanding our energy options.

This is because they routinely pay out billions of dollars to people who's children are suffering learning deficits and other neurological symptoms from the mercury in coal fly ash. They are also covering all of Great Britian for the costs that may be associated with the shut down of the Gulf Stream and ensuing European climate change. A consortium of American companies have teamed together to pay death and disability to the tens of thousands people who died in Europe this past summer from excessive heat.

They are covering each of the people who die each year from air pollution.

It's very clear that insurance companies, the pinnacle of wisdom and insight in America, as we all agree owing to their spectacular success in health care, know the score. They are covering all of our risks. Since they pay enormous sums to the fossil fuel industry and will not even take payments from an industry where a claim as never been made in 50 years, they must know something we don't.

It's clear. You can get insurance on a Hummer. You cannot get insurance on a nuclear power plant. It follows: Hummer good! Nuclear power plant bad!

Wonderful. I'm enlightened.

I'm wondering though how many thousand times I'm going to hear this particular bit of Naderism.

[Bdog]

116. Your post is meaningless and silly

Your post is meaningless and silly

[NNadir]

117. To each his own. I rather think I was responding in kind.

[Mike Briggs]

77. Clueless in New Hampshire?

Nnadir and some other people here seem to have some problems with reading. So, let me try to explain it a little more clearly

I am the author of the article in reference regarding growing algae for biodiesel production. Nowhere in the article do I advocate flooding the Sonora Desert, nor even say that we should focus on growing algae in that location. As I point out (which I thought I pointed out fairly clearly), I was using the Sonora Desert to illustrate the amount of land that would be necessary. When you say a figure such as "11,000 square miles", most people have no idea how big that is. So, I mentioned the hypothetical case of putting all of the algae farms in the Sonora Desert to put that 11,000 square miles in perspective.

I clearly state:
"To produce that amount would require a land mass of almost 11,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, consider that the Sonora desert in the southwestern US comprises 120,000 square miles. As can be seen in Figure 1 below, the Sonora desert is located along the Pacific ocean, making it an ideal location for algae farms. The arid climate of the desert is very supportive of algae growth, and the nearby ocean could supply saltwater for the algae ponds. Enough biodiesel to replace all petroleum transportation fuels could be grown in 11,000 square miles, or roughly nine percent of the area of the Sonora desert.

The algae farms would not all need to be built in the same location, of course. In fact, it would be preferable to spread them around throughout the country, to lessen the cost and energy used in transporting the feedstocks. Algae farms could also be constructed to use waste streams (either human waste or animal waste from animal farms) as a food source, which would provide a beautiful way of spreading algae production around the country. "

We are developing a process for growing algae on waste streams, for growing algae all over the country. Just to be clear - I am not advocating growing all of the algae that would be required in the Sonora Desert.

Nnadir - I am familiar with the thorium reactor you are referring to in a later post - it is a novel concept, but last I heard, far far too expensive for one to ever be built in the US. In fact, for a variety of reasons (fighting lawsuits by everyone and their brother who doesn't want the plant to be built, etc.), nuclear reactors have pretty much all become too expensive to be built in the US. I agree that nuclear power is preferable to coal, etc., but unfortunately wailing against human nature (i.e. the public's fear of everything nuclear, based on a lack of understanding) is not going to change things.

In this portion: "It really doesn't matter though, if biodesiel isn't nirvana, there are only a few seals and changes to the injectors that are required to convert the engine to DME when it proves cheaper, cleaner and easier to obtain. Personally I have a fondness for seeing the sky, and so I think I'll hold out for DME." - are you claiming that biodiesel causes enough pollution to block out the sky or something?

[treepig]

79. perhaps you could clarify?

first you say "Nowhere in the article do I advocate flooding the Sonora Desert, nor even say that we should focus on growing algae in that location."

then you say "As can be seen in Figure 1 below, the Sonora desert is located along the Pacific ocean, making it an ideal location for algae farms."

(perhaps you can see how a naive reader could interpret your essay as advocating the location of algae farms in the sonoran desert - if, as you claim, that it was referenced only for size/scale comparisons, then why was the second quote included?)

then, if you propose scattering the algae farms around the country, to take advantage of waste streams such as sewage, how do you reconcile your cost estimates ($60,000 / hectare) with the cost of land? places where sewage is plentiful tend to be highly populated, such as the northeast - i'm skeptical that you'll be able to buy industrial/agricultural land in this area for less than $200,000 / hectare, led alone build the infrastructure, for less than one third this cost.

[treepig]

91. i'm still awaiting the incorporation of land costs into your model

i'm also increasingly curious about your proposal "to use waste streams (either human waste or animal waste from animal farms)"

in light of the following statement from NATURE "Currently, some algae are grown commercially in shallow ponds to make dietary supplements or food for shellfish farms. The ponds often get contaminated by other microorganisms and are at the mercy of the elements. Also the algae grow only at the top of the pond, below which they shade each other out."

http://www.nature.com/nsu/010614/010614-13.html


there is ample documentation (in fact i suspect that it's common knowledge) that human waste or animal waste is probably the most abundant source of microorganisms (hundreds of species of bacteria) on earth. therefore, it would seem uniquely at odds with growing large scale algae ponds, where, as stated in the above quote, a problem is bacterial contamination. i trust you have a ready and economical method for sterilization of the sewage before it will be used in the algae ponds?

[Mike Briggs]

96. algae

i'm also increasingly curious about your proposal "to use waste streams (either human waste or animal waste from animal farms)"

in light of the following statement from NATURE "Currently, some algae are grown commercially in shallow ponds to make dietary supplements or food for shellfish farms. The ponds often get contaminated by other microorganisms and are at the mercy of the elements. Also the algae grow only at the top of the pond, below which they shade each other out."

treepig, I can't elaborate right now, since the university I work for intends on patenting the design we've developed to take care of the problem of microorganism contamination, and several other problems with previous work. So, for now, all I can say is "we have methods for dealing with those problems". :)

[treepig]

100. ok, thanks for the reply and good luck!

i hope you get this technology off the ground (figuratively speaking) - it's just that when i see analyses pointing that biodiesel can be produced for $0.24 / gallon, as discussed on this thread:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x5066

it makes me wonder why somebody (or some corporation) isn't using this method right now (and hence my questions on what some of the "hidden" problems might be).

[cprise]

106. Thanks. Here is some explanation:

1) BD production has not yet approached the point where our surplus veg oil is used up. Despite a phenomenal growth rate, the US market simply doesn't accept BD enough at this point to consume 300 mil. gallons per year.

2) We continue to subsidize fossil fuel over renewables. This is an effect of entrenched business models buying votes, as well as a lack of awareness. Ex: Biodiesel even from soy yields much more energy for your investment, but the corn lobby can still push ethanol in a very big way. Rapeseed works great in Europe, but it's not "ours" (no U.S. mandarins benefit from it); same with GMO canola... it's Canadian.

3) Big agrobusiness is more interested in a GMO solution. Then maybe they can push GMO algae for the same kind of return on their "intellectual property" that helps motivate #2.

4) The public dislikes diesels and this takes time to change. There is also a sort of allergic reaction in some people when you associate plants with the energy their car uses. It gets even worse when you refer to it as "solar power". When I tell passengers about the fuel in my car, they usually can't deal with it: They stutter a bit, "from VEGetable oil??", wide eyes, then retreat from the subject and don't respond to it further. I think getting a ride from soybeans of very unglamorous. :)

If so many people could save money with a solar water heater, why don't they use them?

[cprise]

58. Pumping water into ponds

No one is proposing we actually convert 11k sq km of desert right into aquaculture. But the paper does show that the potential in fuel-algae is there. If we used 1/3rd as much total land, with only 1.5k sq km worth of ponds in the Sonora, and the rest spread throughout the country (esp. in areas where it could clean up agricultural runoff) then we've got a distributed energy production system that reclaims more land from ethanol production while supplying 1/3 of today's (still wasteful) transportation demand.

I think it's stunning.

[hunter]

61. Here you go, a pilot project...

Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is troubled by the toxic dust bowl they created when they sucked the life out of Owens Lake. It sounds like the perfect place for a fuel-algae project.

[NNadir]

63. Um, the Owens lake has no water in it. n/t

[hunter]

64. It used to have water...

That's the problem.

The dry lake bed is the source of a fine, irritating dust. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is mitigating this three ways -- by covering portions of the lake bed with a shallow layer of water, by covering the lakebed with gravel, and by attempting to establish plant cover.

I was imagining the shallow water portion of this project would be a fine place to practice growing "fuel-algae."

[mouse7]

138. Actually... it uses the Sonora mostly as an example and start up

Nobody suggested anywhere to uproot all agriculture in the Imperial Valley. You're just being an goof who refuses to read links provided to them for suggesting so, hunter and nnadir.

If you had read any of the proposals on the links, you would know that one of opportunities for biodiesel from algae is to generate biodiesel from waste water treatment plants. That OBVIOUSLY would put production all over the country, not centered in the Sonora.

You also couldn't produce all the fuel in one small area becasue that would make too enticing a strategic target. You can't have one nuke finish off all fuel production in the US. There's plenty of land west of the Mississippi that can be used for biodiesel algae production. Most of the best land to use can be used for little else.

The reason the lit talks so much about the Sonora and the Salton Sea is because another proposal for algae biodiesel involves remediation of the polluted mess the Salton Sea has become by having the Imperial Valley agricultural runoff be moved through biodiesel algae farms before it gets to the Salton Sea. It talks about putting algae facilities between The Imperial Valley and the three sources of the runoff.

[Bdog]

99. Let energy costs reflect their true production costs.

If you want real change, start removing all of the energy subsidies. Let energy costs reflect their true production costs.

When people are paying over $2.00 a gallon and $.10 per kwh, then you will see real changes. The people will demand high efficiency cars and solar water heaters.

I think everyone on this tread would agree that raising fuel efficiencies and creating public transportation would create jobs and stop our money form going overseas.

I, for one, would like to see all energy subsidies scaled back. Let the price of gasoline and power creep up and let the free market take care of the rest. In my opinion, all subsidies should be temporary not permanent.

Let high mileage vehicles, renewables, and new technologies compete on a level playing field.

http://plus.maths.org/issue14/features/smith/
“Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it...He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”


www.foe.org/camps/eco/payingforpollution/table2.html

[treepig]

110. getting back to the original topic

anybody know if there is there any credibility to this report?

Black gold in the Gulf

On April 16, Newsday, the Long Island newspaper, published a startling report that old oil fields in the Gulf of Mexico were somehow being refilled. That is, new oil was being discovered in fields where it previously had not existed.

Scientists, led by Mahlon Kennicutt of Texas A&M University, speculate that the new oil is surging upward from deposits well below those currently in production. "Very light oil and gas were being injected from below, even as the producing was going on," he said.

Although it is not yet known whether this is a worldwide phenomenon or commercially important, the new discovery suggests that there may be far more oil and gas within the earth's core than previously thought.

Kennicutt is not the first to suggest that vast hydrocarbon deposits may lie well below those currently known. In 1995, The New York Times reported that geochemist Jean Whelan of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts had also found evidence that oil was moving upward into reservoirs from somewhere far deeper.


http://www.townhall.com/columnists/brucebartlett/bb20020529.shtml

[Bdog]

111. Plenty of spent oil fields to check, probably a local phenomena

I know horizontal drilling can and has revived old oil fields. Drilling horizontally can strike pockets that were missed by drilling vertically.

It’s not that we don’t have oil it’s just the oil we have left is expensive to extract. It only becomes economically feasible to extract the oil, from poorer quality reserves, when the price of oil is high.

I don’t know when the world will reach peak oil or if it has.

The United Stats reached peak oil production decades ago.

We import 60% of our oil from overseas.

Clinton and the first Bush managed to keep the price of oil low and stable by keeping the Middle East stable.

With what Bush the Lesser has done, I don’t think the price will be low and stable for a long time. It doesn’t matter if the world reaches peak oil next year or ten years form now. The damage is done.

[treepig]

112. ah yes, the old slant drilling scheme

as popularized by the two mythically evil men, mr. burns and mr. hussein.

however, my understanding of what's supposedly going on here is not that more oil is being recovered due to improved drilling technology, instead "new" oil is re-filling the previously-emptied reservoirs (and can presumably be recovered by using the original low-tech drilling methods).

[fedsron2us]

114. Oil Window

The article does not go into much detail about the process so its hard to judge what exactly is happening. Conventional geological theory states that oil will only form in rocks between the depth of 7000-15000 feet. Above that level there is insufficient heat to break down organic sediments. Below the window thermal cracking causes the oil to be converted to methane. I suspect that the phenomenon in the Gulf of Mexico is caused by oil migrating from neighboring reservoirs. Certainly, the experience from most fields around the world is that as the reserves become exhausted the oil becomes increasingly harder to extract. I do not think that there is much sign of oil fields elsewhere in the USA spontaneously refilling.

The theory about the potential size of methane gas deposits is more interesting. In the early days of the oil industry gas finds were so common that they were regarded as a nuisance. Given that methane is exists in vast quantities throughout the solar system and is given off as by product by most life forms we may well be underestimating the amount that exists on the planet.

[Bdog]

115. Biofuels from Switchgrass: Greener Energy Pastures

Most researchers have concluded that ethanol made from corn is slightly energy positive.

However, there are many other feed stocks that are better suited for ethanol production.


http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html
Biofuels from Switchgrass: Greener Energy Pastures
“Looking down the road, McLaughlin believes switchgrass offers important advantages as an energy crop. "Producing ethanol from corn requires almost as much energy to produce as it yields," he explains, "while ethanol from switchgrass can produce about five times more energy than you put in. When you factor in the energy required to make tractors, transport farm equipment, plant and harvest, and so on, the net energy output of switchgrass is about 20 times better than corn's." Switchgrass also does a far better job of protecting soil, virtually eliminating erosion. And it removes considerably more CO2 from the air, packing it away in soils and roots.”

"The grass stretched as far as the eye could see, and hundreds more miles beyond that. An ocean of grass—deep enough to swallow a horse and rider—swaying and singing in the steady wind of the Great Plains. § The American prairie—tens of millions of acres— once looked like this. But that was centuries ago, before the coming of the white man, the railroad, and the steel plow. Today, corn and beans hold sway, and the remnants of America's tallgrass prairie are confined mostly to parks and preserves. § Now, though, in research plots and laboratories in the Plains states and even in the Deep South the seeds of change are germinating. The tall, native grasses of the prairie, so vital to our land's ecological past, may prove equally vital to its economic future. Such grasses once fed millions of bison. Soon, grown as energy crops, they may help fuel millions of cars and trucks, spin power turbines, and supply chemicals to American industries."

[Bdog]

129. 270,000 flex-fuel "green" vehicles expected to be sold in Brazil

www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23224/story.htm
Sales of flex-fuel vehicles, which can be powered by gasoline or sugar-based ethanol, or a mixture of both, are seen soothing public concerns about air pollution and depleting Brazilian oil reserves.

Soaring world crude oil prices higher than $30 a barrel are also adding incentive to use alternative fuels. But growth in Brazil's domestic hydrous alcohol, or ethanol, market is also needed to absorb record sugar cane crops grown by Brazil.

[Bdog]

130. Orasco, S.P. Operating a distillery producing FUEL-ETHANOL

I don't understand Portuguese but I like their web page.

www.alcoolferreira.com.br/start.swf

[historian]

136. free translation!

This is propaganda about Brazils manufacture of cars run on alcohol in the 70's when oil prices began to increase in leaps and bounds. However,(personal experience having lived there for 8 years) as with anything else, the people buying these cars suddenly found themselves paying almost as much as gas but the worse effect was on agriculture. Sugar cane was now being developed for use of alchol so the price of sugar shot through the roof. So much land was being used for alcohol production, that even cows were running out of grazing land.
So Brazil, who used to be a major exporter of sugar and beef, now finds itself in the position of having to import most of this stuff.

[Bdog]

137. It’s a good thing they quit subsidiesing a failed system

A good example of how government subsidies can screw up a market. I don’t believe in subsidies especially permanent ones. Short term subsidies are ok, but after that an industry should survive or fail on its own merits.

It’s a good thing they quit subsidiesing a failed system and let the market do its job. To bad we can’t do the same thing and quit sending our money and jobs overseas.

The market should pick the feed stock not an arbitrary subsidy scheme and the customer should be able to choose his fuel source to fit their driving needs with flex use cars.

In some ways, Switch Grass would make a better fuel sock. Switch grass can be used as hay feed for agricultural animals.

http://plus.maths.org/issue14/features/smith /
“Every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it...He intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of his intention. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”

www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/23224/story.htm
"We're facing another revolution, which will be as important as Pro-Alcohol, but without government subsidies and entirely dependent on the consumer," Carvalho said.
Unica's Carvalho said that sales of flex-fuel cars should become significant in three to four years. Car assemblers, such as Volkswagen and General Motors, have already announced that most of their new models will feature flex-fuel engines.
Some 270,000 of the flex-fuel "green" vehicles are expected to be sold in Brazil in 2004, according to industry forecasts.
When ethanol is more than 40 percent cheaper than gasoline, it becomes attractive to drivers, sugar producers said.
"There's enough cane planted to guarantee supplies at competitive prices," Carvalho said, adding that a big fall in gasoline prices was not expected in coming years.
Carvalho said that a decline in Brazilian ethanol prices in 2002 encouraged drivers to opt for a mixture of hydrous alcohol and gasoline when filling up their tanks. Noting this practice, car assemblers hurried to develop the flex-fuel car.

[gamemasterG]

134. Yes

Yes it has we must now be careful with are use of oil

[historian]

135. not at all

We forget that Norway and Finland are huge exporters of oil, while the russian oil fields havent been explored yet (which explains afghanistan). Brazil has off shore oil as does venezuals. If we increase the limit of fuel consumption on SUV's by 2 miles/gal our imports will decrease by 30% and that is exactly the amount we import from the arabs (and bush allies)
Besides, even if oil did peak, new technologies will come up as they are even now. Honda and Toyota with battery and gas cars and so on.
This is merely fear mongering.