Reality Check on Renewable Energy
It's 19 degrees and overcast in Dallas today, so no solar power is being generated. The wind is out of the north at 6 mph, a couple of miles per hour below the minimum threshold for un-iced wind turbines to "cut-in" and generate electric power. Even if the wind picks up,delivering industrial quantities of electricity from thousands of low-power turbines distributed over hundreds of square miles will be challenging as blades ice up, transmissions freeze and vents clog with snow.
Due to weather-related failures in conventional power plants--the kind that generate power when consumers want it rather than when nature happens to be cooperating--the Electric Reliability Council of Texas is instituting rolling blackouts today to keep the grid from collapsing in the wake of demand for heat from local residents.
In the State of the Union address last week, President Obama called for moving 80 percent of US electric generation to "renewable" sources by 2035. There is simply no way to reach this goal and run a modern industrial civilization on wind and solar. Nuclear energy is the only viable option and would require a massive construction effort beginning today, not the lip-service we've seen so far from the Administration.
Is the President serious about a renewables definition that includes nuclear power generation, or are we going to have to get used to being a lot colder in winter and hotter in summer?
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Comments:
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
I've got a propeller beanie. When I put the top down on my car and drive at a nice clip, I can generate enough juice to recharge my iPod.
Do I qualify for a subsidy?
Edited on February 2, 2011 at 7:07pmOct '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Obama serious????? Are you serious????
Of course he is BSing us (can I use that euphemism?). This guy is simply determined to destroy the last vestige of Western civilization, American style. There is only one word in answer how to deal with Obama. DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!! DEFEAT!!
Of course, it could simply be a case of gross stupidity. If you buy it, you deserve the consequences. But please, don't inflict it on us.
Edited on February 2, 2011 at 7:09pmJul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
I may, may, consider "alternative" forms of power the day Air Force One flies using windmills and solar panels.
Sep '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
19 degrees in Dallas is a problem, 21 degrees here in Houston is a crisis.
What I think you have missed is that you have the solution embedded in your post. When demand outstrips supply you just have rolling blackouts. Problem solved n'est-ce pas?
May '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Meanwhile, utility companies never bother to warn us specifically when these blackouts will occur, and regularly practice brownouts that damage our electronics.
May '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
And as government protected monopolies, they don't have to worry we will leave them.
Dec '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
We need not really suppose; we have their actual words.
When I had a similar discussion with the head of a well known environmentalist group, his response to me was (direct quote), "We are just going to have to adjust people's attitudes". It is not about using renewables, or "all of the above" approaches to addressing our energy needs. From their perspective, it is about adjusting our energy needs.
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
CJRun: We need not really suppose; we have their actual words.
When I had a similar discussion with the head of a well known environmentalist group, his response to me was (direct quote), "We are just going to have to adjust people's attitudes". It is not about using renewables, or "all of the above" approaches to addressing our energy needs. From their perspective, it is about adjusting our energy needs. · Feb 2 at 10:31am
You're a better man than I. I would have adjusted that guy's attitude with a good poke in the snoot.
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Actually there is Hope.
But not as long as Democrats are in charge.
Innovation is out there in the form of what many techies like to call the Nuclear Battery. The New Minni Reactors can provide power to Neighborhoods or to areas as small as a Cul-de-Sac.
Unfortunatly we will hear about 3 Mile Island and Chernobyl ad Nausium before these will made Available to people in the United States.
And Oh By The Way, these aren't just a pipe dream, they are for real.
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Jaydee_007, I wrote an article about Hyperion back in 2008. But my understanding is that the company is focusing on the international market because of regulatory issues in the US. Sound familiar?
I think a good national security argument can be made to reserve liquid fossil fuels for automobiles and aircraft, with nuclear, domestic coal and natural gas employed for domestic electricity generation. Oh, and use the corn for food, not fuel.
May '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
With luminaries like Steven Chu and Cass Sunstein at the helm we'll all be left in the cold and dark. It's only fair, after all.
Dec '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Wind power is nothing more than a device to sluice billions of tax dollars to favored businesses, and that's all it ever will be.
That, incidentally, is why we can't get rid of the notion that wind power is the way of the future.
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
This President lives in Never-Never Land. And once he has an idea he does not change his mind. It makes you long for Slick Willie -- who was nothing if not flexible.
Edited on February 2, 2011 at 9:29pmMay '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Forget reliable energy production - the Democrats running Franklin County, Ohio can't even get a "green" building right! $105 million for a new courthouse, and a month before the scheduled open date somebody realized cell phones and police radios don't work inside, most likely due to a coating on the "green" glass.
But even Newt loves ethanol. Nothing dies harder than a good boondoggle!
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
George Savage:
I think a good national security argument can be made to reserve liquid fossil fuels for automobiles and aircraft, with nuclear, domestic coal and natural gas employed for domestic electricity generation. Oh, and use the corn for food, not fuel.
George,
I want to make two points.
1) This is the best kept secret in the Energy Debate
2) We need to use the Left's tactic of Catchy Phrases to make this Item an issue.
Toshiba is also working on a version of these Reactors. But we on the right have to stop calling them Reactors and use the Term Nuclear Battery (or something similar) and make this technology KNOWN! As with the Tea Party, the Republicans will have to be dragged kicking and screaming to this technology to start asking those on the Left "What about the Nuclear Battery?"
(Nuclear Battery won't conote the thoughts of Chernobyl and 3-Mile-Island.)
This is a Real, Viable, and Dependable Solution to Energy Needs looking into the future, but until more people are made aware of it we cannot make it an issue headed into 2012.
Nuclear Batteries, Not just blowing in the wind!
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Jaydee, I think you are onto something important, both about this technology and about the commanding linguistic heights needed to popularize it. I may whip up an article on just this point. Thank you.
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
George Savage
Jaydee, I think you are onto something important, both about this technology and about the commanding linguistic heights needed to popularize it. I may whip up an article on just this point. Thank you. · Feb 2 at 1:33pm
George, the author of The Long Emergency, a book about peak oil and alternative energy, asserts that there simply is not enough uranium available to build out nearly the number of nuclear reactors we would need. Do you have any opinion on that?
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Jason Hart: Forget reliable energy production - the Democrats running Franklin County, Ohio can't even get a "green" building right! $105 million for a new courthouse, and a month before the scheduled open date somebody realized cell phones and police radios don't work inside, most likely due to a coating on the "green" glass.
But even Newt loves ethanol. Nothing dies harder than a good boondoggle! · Feb 2 at 12:31pm
Jason, you so right. Green buildings are mainly uncomfortable PR palaces. For example, I visited an award winning eco-building in Europe recently. The ever-so-green climate control system in this all-glass structure circulates water from the nearby lake to reduce energy usage. At my meeting in the Board Room on a sunny December afternoon it was so hot that I was feeling faint, despite freezing outside temperatures. I then noticed four large department store fans distributed around the room and thought, this is not an unusual problem. And the executive who built the building, reaped the fawning PR, and sweats in this room on a regular basis ... is a billionaire.
Who says life isn't fair?
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Kenneth, without taking the time to analyze the specifics of the argument, I am nevertheless certain this assertion of insufficient uranium is wrong. Spent nuclear fuel can be recycled, increasing the yield of a given quantity of uranium by up to 95 times! This is how the French ensure adequate nuclear fuel for national electricity generation while minimizing nuclear waste. Sadly, Jimmy Carter outlawed such reprocessing in 1977, presumably on the liberal principle that the United States can't be trusted to manage commercial-scale uranium enrichment.
More generally, the most effective anti-nuclear power arguments are inherently circular: there is too little fuel and too much waste--because the US government prevents recycling; nuclear plants are too expensive to build and operate--because government regulations and associated environmental red-tape drive up construction times from a base case of 18-24 months to literally decades. And so on ad nauseam.
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
George Savage
Kenneth, without taking the time to analyze the specifics of the argument, I am nevertheless certain this assertion of insufficient uranium is wrong. Spent nuclear fuel can be recycled, increasing the yield of a given quantity of uranium by up to 95 times! This is how the French ensure adequate nuclear fuel for national electricity generation while minimizing nuclear waste. Sadly, Jimmy Carter outlawed such reprocessing in 1977, presumably on the liberal principle that the United States can't be trusted to manage commercial-scale uranium enrichment.
More generally, the most effective anti-nuclear power arguments are inherently circular: there is too little fuel and too much waste--because the US government prevents recycling; nuclear plants are too expensive to build and operate--because government regulations and associated environmental red-tape drive up construction times from a base case of 18-24 months to literally decades. And so on ad nauseam. · Feb 2 at 1:57pm
You really don't care whether bunnies and puppies die of radiation poisoning, do you, Buster?
How do you look your children in the eye?