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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Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
George Savage
More generally, the most effective anti-nuclear power arguments are inherently circular:
Having spent 13 years in the nuclear field, several years of which doing public acceptance (debates, TV, radio) in addition to my reg job, I can attest to the circular arguments. Diablo Canyon took 19 years to come on line. Just calculate the cost of money in that case! As for waste, 3 points:
Oh, and Jimmi’ – There was a Sr. VP of Westinghouse who was with him at the USNA and who, when the words Jimmy Carter and nuclear engineer were used in the same sentence, would bounce from wall to wall mumbling unprintable phrases…
May '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."
The brownouts are intended to bolster our image abroad.
Aug '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Uranium is not the only possible fuel for "nuclear" power generation. Nor is it the safest, or even the most efficient. Thorium is potentially a much better "nuclear" fuel, but it was abandoned early on because it could not be weaponized.
When people talk about "nuclear", we need to understand that there's more than one way to get energy from atoms. Just because the method we've used throughout the 20th Century is politically unsavoury (and economically unsustainable without massive government subsidies), it doesn't mean that other methods don't have promise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk
May '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Misthiocracy
Uranium is not the only possible fuel for "nuclear" power generation. Nor is it the safest, or even the most efficient. Thorium is potentially a much better "nuclear" fuel, but it was abandoned early on because it could not be weaponized.
When people talk about "nuclear", we need to understand that there's more than one way to get energy from atoms. Just because the method we've used throughout the 20th Century is politically unsavoury (and economically unsustainable without massive government subsidies), it doesn't mean that other methods don't have promise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk · Feb 2 at 3:34pm
What is the relative abundance of these other elements? I thought uranium was fairly common, which is one of the reasons it was selected.
Edit: Answered my own question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elemental_abundances.svg
Edited on February 3, 2011 at 12:51amSep '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Misthiocracy
Uranium is not the only possible fuel for "nuclear" power generation.
One can even mine uranium from slag outside coal plants; turns out there is more potential power in the uranium in coal than you can get from burning the coal. Just kind of expensive to process it. (That's also why you get more radiation outside a coal plant than is allowed outside a nuclear plant.)
And - why is it that the "greens" want us to recycle everything EXCEPT nuclear fuel?
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Kenneth 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? · Feb 2 at 2:21pm
How did you know my kids only have one eye? Some folks say it's because of all my nucular experiments...
Edited on February 3, 2011 at 1:03amDec '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Kenneth
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? · Feb 2 at 1:36pm
My opinion is that he's FOS. The man went to college and majored in Theater for cripes sake.
Find a Mining Engineer, or a Geological Engineer, or a Geophysicist, and ask them what they think.
Why would anyone take the word of an artist/actor seriously on anything but the theater and acting, I will never know.
Basically, Peak Oil™, Peak Uranium™, and Peak (Insert Catastrophe Here)™ boil down to people with no imagination or training in the field looking at current reserve numbers as though that is all the oil or coal or uranium that has ever or will ever exist, and then doing the simple math to project how long it will last.
It is a moronic way to go about estimating actual reserve usage or projecting future prices, but there it is.
Ever notice how Peak Oil™ is always just ten years off the horizon?
It's been that way for the last forty years.
Edited on February 3, 2011 at 1:24amJul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
CoolHand
Kenneth
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? · Feb 2 at 1:36pm
Find a Mining Engineer, or a Geological Engineer, or a Geophysicist, and ask them what they think.
Well, actually peak oil theory was the brainchild of M. King Hubbert, a geoscientist who worked for Shell Oil and as a geophysicist for the United States Geophysical Survey.
In 1956, he predicted that oil production in the United States would begin to decline somewhere between 1960 and 1970. His prediction proved to be correct.
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
CoolHand Basically, Peak Oil™, Peak Uranium™, and Peak (Insert Catastrophe Here)™ boil down to people with no imagination or training in the field looking at current reserve numbers as though that is all the oil or coal or uranium that has ever or will ever exist, and then doing the simple math to project how long it will last.Feb 2 at 4:22pm
Edited on Feb 02 at 04:24 pm
Kenneth Well, actually peak oil theory was the brainchild of M. King Hubbert, a geoscientist who worked for Shell Oil and as a geophysicist for the United States Geophysical Survey.
In 1956, he predicted that oil production in the United States would begin to decline somewhere between 1960 and 1970. His prediction proved to be correct. · Feb 2 at 4:39pm
One wonderful aspect of being a liberal: After making a Peak resource prophecy, one sets about erecting legal barriers to extraction of the soon-to-be-obsolete resource while subsidizing the next New Thing. After all, what's the point of more oil exploration and refining if we are about to run out anyway? Predict decline, enact policies guaranteeing decline and then watch decline unfold as predicted.
Dec '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
George Savage
Kenneth Well, actually peak oil theory was the brainchild of M. King Hubbert, a geoscientist who worked for Shell Oil and as a geophysicist for the United States Geophysical Survey.
In 1956, he predicted that oil production in the United States would begin to decline somewhere between 1960 and 1970. His prediction proved to be correct. · Feb 2 at 4:39pm
One wonderful aspect of being a liberal: After making a Peak resource prophecy, one sets about erecting legal barriers to extraction of the soon-to-be-obsolete resource while subsidizing the next New Thing. After all, what's the point of more oil exploration and refining if we are about to run out anyway? Predict decline, enact policies guaranteeing decline and then watch decline unfold as predicted. · Feb 2 at 4:55pm
As you say George, US oil production tailed off because the .gov regulated the industry into a corner.
We have been discovering oil hither and yon in this country for decades, but much of it gets declared off limits almost immediately by Federal sequestration using historic lands or national park laws.
I was absolutely agog when drilling commenced on the Bakken formation.
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
George Savage
Kenneth Well, actually peak oil theory was the brainchild of M. King Hubbert, a geoscientist who worked for Shell Oil and as a geophysicist for the United States Geophysical Survey.
In 1956, he predicted that oil production in the United States would begin to decline somewhere between 1960 and 1970. His prediction proved to be correct. · Feb 2 at 4:39pm
One wonderful aspect of being a liberal: After making a Peak resource prophecy, one sets about erecting legal barriers to extraction of the soon-to-be-obsolete resource while subsidizing the next New Thing. After all, what's the point of more oil exploration and refining if we are about to run out anyway? Predict decline, enact policies guaranteeing decline and then watch decline unfold as predicted. · Feb 2 at 4:55pm
But George, Hubbert was no liberal. He was a highly-regarded scientist whose seminal work was done in the 1950's, when he worked in the private sector - long before the days of wacko environmentalism.
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Kenneth, I'm not criticizing Hubbert, or any other genuine scientist. However, it is undeniable that liberals and enviro-statists of more extreme views latch onto any sort of limits-to-growth story and then set about legislating it into existence. Since Marx, leftism is all about historical inevitability, so hastening the day of transition away from a soon-to-be-depleted resource is just the scientific thing to do, right? The fact that you strengthen centralized authority over the individual at the same time is just a bonus.
If we had no limits to oil extraction and refining and were hitting the supply buffers, prices would gradually rise, signaling the need for a shift to less intrinsically attractive alternative fuels. However, the current "peak" is artificially mandated by social engineers unwilling to wait the decades--or perhaps centuries--it would take to get there naturally, when our society would be much wealthier and better able to bear the cost.
Making people poorer than they need to be is not compassionate.
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
CoolHand
As you say George, US oil production tailed off because the .gov regulated the industry into a corner.
We have been discovering oil hither and yon in this country for decades, but much of it gets declared off limits almost immediately by Federal sequestration using historic lands or national park laws.
The discoveries made around the globe over the past decade are a pittance compared to ongoing extraction of the huge, rapidly dwindling proven reserves in the Middle East, Alaska and the North Sea.
As for the Bakken formation, it represents only 47 days of global consumption: estimated Bakken reserves are 4 billion barrels, daily global consumption is 84 million barrels.
Edited on February 3, 2011 at 2:22amDec '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Also, as time goes on, recovery from each well is working steadily upward.
Just as with mining reserves, those estimates are based off of the technology and methodology of the day.
A hundred years ago, all the gold in Barrick Gold's Golden Sunlight mine near Butte MT would have been considered unrecoverable because of the low Au concentration. As time and technology has advanced, useless low grade ore has morphed into high grade ore with an estimated recoverable reserve in excess of 500,000 ounces
Anyone who says that they know exactly how much and where all our natural resources are is either lying to you, or a fool.
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Care to share some data with us? The oil fields in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Alaska and the North Sea are rapidly declining.
Oct '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
That's similar to what I tell my friends, you show me the fighter jet that runs on sunshine and I'll be the first one burning my "Drill, Baby, Drill" T-shirt.
May '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Casey Way
That's similar to what I tell my friends, you show me the fighter jet that runs on sunshine and I'll be the first one burning my "Drill, Baby, Drill" T-shirt. · Feb 2 at 5:27pm
To quote my jet propulsion professor at Stanford:
"The energy content of a kilogram of hydrocarbon fuel is remarkably large and constitutes one of the important facts of nature that makes extended powered flight possible."
Edited on February 3, 2011 at 2:43amOct '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Jaydee_007
2) We need to use the Left's tactic of Catchy Phrases to make this Item an issue.
In the comics and cartoons, nuclear material is always glowing green, so why not call them "HyperGreen Batteries"?
Jul '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Mark Wilson
Casey Way
That's similar to what I tell my friends, you show me the fighter jet that runs on sunshine and I'll be the first one burning my "Drill, Baby, Drill" T-shirt. · Feb 2 at 5:27pm
I'm studying jet propulsion right now at Stanford. He has emphasized this several times in lecture. To quote the professor:
"The energy content of a kilogram of hydrocarbon fuel is remarkably large and constitutes one of the important facts of nature that makes extended powered flight possible." · Feb 2 at 5:39pm
Petroleum really is a marvel. Consider that one-thirtieth of a gallon of gasoline can carry 4 men and a 4,000 pound vehicle one mile in one minute at 60 mph. Now consider how far and how fast those 4 men could push the same vehicle in one minute.
May '10
Re: Reality Check on Renewable Energy
Casey Way
Jaydee_007
2) We need to use the Left's tactic of Catchy Phrases to make this Item an issue.
In the comics and cartoons, nuclear material is always glowing green, so why not call them "HyperGreen Batteries"? · Feb 2 at 5:41pm
Plus we could use them as a replacement for the soon-to-be-illegal incandescent light bulbs. They have to be at least as safe as the Mercury Twist.