At the North American International Auto Show yesterday, Ford sponsored a discussion with Stewart Brand, author of the Whole Earth Catalog. In his discussion, he highlighted the dramatic shift in population from rural areas to urban areas in developed nations thus increasing overall energy usage.
Stewart noted that in addition to the intermittency problem associated with wind and solar, each of these forms of renewable energy takes a significant amount of land. To get one gigawatt of power from wind, it takes approximately 250 square miles of landscape. To get one gigawatt of power from solar, it takes 50 square miles of landscape. Don’t forget the fact that you need to build power lines to connect all that power to the grid (see Sunrise Power Link)
Stewart, as of late, has become a believer in either developing clean coal technology or taxing the hell out of it in order to make it a less attractive form of energy. However, it was the discussion on nuclear that raised eyebrows. Stewart stressed that increasing nuclear energy development should be at the top of our list in weaning ourselves off of fossil fuels. He recognized that environmentalists have, over the last thirty years, helped increase regulation on nuclear power plants. However, as Stewart noted, all these regulations will hamper growth in nuclear power in the US while other nations, including China, forge ahead in implementing advanced nuclear technology.
Now the question becomes, if large solar and wind projects are unattractive for any number of reasons, can the Federal government enact new policies to fast track approval of nuclear plants? While there are a number of nuclear power plants being proposed, they will likely come online by 2018 at the earliest.
The other question that is raised by Stewart’s support of nuclear power is whether it should qualify as a renewable energy source for purposes of a renewable portfolio standard/renewable energy standard?
Ford Motor Company paid for my travel and accommodations at the 2-day Driving Green Technology event, I was not compensated in any other manner for my time. My opinions here are my own.
6 comments
It’s time to seriously consider nuclear power in the US. Wind and Solar are great, and should be developed and implemented. But we need to be realistic in our expectations by understanding that the sun goes down every night and the wind doesn’t blow for 2/3 of the day. These technologies, if implemented properly could produce up to 20% of our electricity when combined with developments in energy storage technology.
That leaves the remaining 80%. Hydroelectric is more or less tapped out in the US and we won’t be expanding that anytime soon. Geothermal helps, but is limited by, well geology. That leaves fossil fuels (natural gas and coal) or nuclear to supply the lion’s share of our power.
Right now, it’s 60% coal, 20% nuclear. Unfortunately, the only technology we are currently expanding is natural gas which will only prolong environmental damage and economic woes caused by fossil fuels.
We need nuclear power in a bad way. It can be built here, by American workers with American technology, and Operated by American workers and using American Uranium and Plutonium for fuel (we could also continue destroying those ugly cold war nuclear bombs by turning them into fuel as we’ve done for the last 15 years).
If we could replace coal with nuclear and wind/solar and then temper our appeite for natural gas – then we are well on our way to a low/no Carbon and self sustaining economy. Then we can talk about electric cars and finally do something about OIL!
Nuclear power is but far the worst option. Nuclear waste is the worst thing humans have ever created. There is no way to safely destroy it or contain it. It will be toxic longer than humans have walked the earth
Billy,
Natural nuclear reactors like the one at Oklo, Gabon and at least 16 other known locations were fissioning Uranium underground for hundreds of thousands of years. This was 2 billion years ago – before the first multicellular life ever even evolved on this planet. It is an undisputable fact that every single organism that exists today on earth evolved with nuclear waste safely stored underground for billions of years. This without any human controls or containment efforts what so ever. Mother Nature has already demonstrated for us that deep geoligical storage like that proposed at Yucca Moutain is entirely safe for billions of years.
Now factor in that nuclear fuel is 96% recycleable and that most of the radioactivity in the remaining 4% is gone after the first few hundred years leaving only mildly radioactive materials to store permanently. Compare that to toxic fumes like mercury and arsenic that are produced by burning coal and natural gas. Those materials have no half life and remain toxic FOREVER and are carelessly dumped into our atmosphere by the metric ton (along with plenty of CO2 and SO2).
You need to see through the hype and examine the facts without the emotional response that antinuclear groups have instilled in the public for decades. Irrational fear of nuclear energy of prolongs the danger we all face both economically and environmentally from fossil fuels.
I wonder where those figures of “landscape ocupation” come from, because they do not fit at all the technical design of wind farms. The real affection area is 1/100 smaller in terms of wind power infrastructure… Are you talking about “visual effect”? I never saw it could be an issue for conventional power plants.
Although working in renewable energy sector, I agree that nuclear power must be part of the energy mix in any mid-term energy strategy. When already suffering the effects of the emissions achieved since the development of the fossil fuels (specilaly for transportation), nuclear gives a very valuable extra time until new technologies come economically feasible in the energy mix, either as new sources (fusion) or making manageable the renewable sources (wind, solar).
On the contrary, voices betting for a source as the key sollution always seem to skip critical details. In case of nuclear plants, it must bve noticed that those countries actually developing and building nuclear reactors have their energy systems managed and strongly subsidized by the governement (i.e. China, India..). On the contrary, few countries with electricty market liberalized in some or other way face one of the biggest inconveniences of nuclear power on my opinion: the financial cost. A utility scale nuclear power plant has a budget around 2 M€/MW with each reactor sized around 1 GW, and development + construction can take over 10 years, out of those a minimum of 2 are construction time. You can guess that an investment of 3 to 5 billion euro is difficult to be financed or even to have it in the figures of the balance of a company listed in the stock exchange. And as private investor, an additional risk must be taken into account, which is the weak stability of the legal framework in energy market that came recently with the financial crisis and the efforts of the Governments to cut down public debt. So, it goes a world from keeping the existing nuclear power plants working to build new ones.
For sure there are voices here that can give more accuracy to my comment, I am leaving just some report on the overcost of the nuclear power plant in Finland, I don’t know it finally it’s in operation nowadays.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/business/energy-environment/29nuke.html
FYI: you might find this interesting — an insiders look at an atomic fun house in good times and bad. “Rad Decision” is a novel — but then it has to be to cover everything in a way that won’t put the reader to sleep. The book is also free online, as well as in paperback. And it’s gotten good reviews (if not wide publicity) – including a nice plug from Stewart Brand himself (below).
I like to think we’ll make better decisions about our energy future if we first understand our energy present. http://RadDecision.blogspot.com
Regards,
James Aach
“I’d like to see Rad Decision widely read” – STEWART BRAND, founder of The Whole Earth Catalog.
“I got to about page four and I was hooked, I couldn’t put it down… It was very easy to read, the characters were well described, and they were vibrant.” – DAVID LEVY, noted science author and comet discoverer.
Nuclear waste from current generation of nuclear power plants is NOT waste, Billy. It is fuel awaiting reprocessing for another go through the system. Technology has moved on since you last read about nuclear power. One place to find out what is true about this form of energy production is http://www.world-nuclear.org/ Here’s another: http://www.atomicinsights.blogspot.com/ not only for what Rod Adams has to teach but also for his long list of useful sites to click on and learn some more. Check out also videos on YouTube about THORIUM. New tech that will be coming along before long. As for long-lived toxicity – we are going to follow nature and put last residues into places where they will not move anywhere. Did the products of natural reactors at Oklo in Africa go far? No. Get to know geology as well, I suggest. Or do you disbelieve geologists when they speak about burying stuff safely? We need nuclear energy because it is reliable, small footprint, doesn’t affect the landscape or climate like solar and wind are likely to be doing, or ruin habitats for other creatures like they now want to do in the southwest of the USA – the Mojave and nearby. Nuclear fuel is a million times more powerful than coal, per unit. It makes enormous sense to harness that nature-given bounty and elegance and provide baseload power to the cities of the world for thousands of years to come. Yes, there is enough raw material for thousands of years, from land sources alone and if these run out, we can also get it from the oceans where uranium is to be found. The Japanese have already proven that it can be extracted from the ocean.
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