Save the planet: Stop the Greens

I find myself in an uncomfortable position over this climate change thing. I've no problem with the existence of man-made climate change, no problem with the idea that we ought to do something about it. But what we are actually trying to do about it seems bonkers, counter-productive even. So how did we get into this mess? To …

[Alex Prior]

Wrong Economics On First Page

Actually, the global financial crisis has fairly crushingly proved the point that there is one thing more efficient than a market economy, and that is a mixed economy, where the market does what it is good at, and government does what it is good at (long term planning and investment). I would argue that climate change requires the latter.

This argument (the bit about the mixed economy) is explicated in full in Prof John Quiggin's excellent "Zombie Economics" - worth reading, and challenges a fundamental assumption of the article.

[Ken Hagan]

Re: Actually...

"the global financial crisis has fairly crushingly proved the point"

...that if you intervene in a market economy and stop the losers from being eliminated, by bunging billions at them, then you end up with a horrible mess.

[NikFromNYC]

Whatver

http://i49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg

http://oi53.tinypic.com/52l2pv.jpg

[Mark Serlin]

Shale gas will work?

That's where you lost me. That's just rubbish, do your research. The environmental costs are MASSIVE and cracking destroys local environments and communities.

[Anonymous Coward]

How will the climate changer's react when they discover the continents are drifting?

The climate is changing? No shit sherlock. Since time immemorial.

I also get a kick out of the solution they offer for what they claim is man-made climate change: manipulate the climate!

Any moron can see this is a contrived political 'crisis'...or maybe not?

Using Paris, because the world revolves around her, does it not?

[Anonymous Coward]

You know why

Quote 'Thus, in the absence of a storage system, populating the country with windmills just won't work. So why are we doing it?' - we are doing it because windmills are very visible and our scum that we elect want something visible so that they can point at it and say 'look we are doing our bit'.

Scare = money = political scum sit up and rob us blind.

[Anonymous Coward]

Article spot on with respect to wind power and the greens

The article is spot on in that the green lobby is a problem pushing us towards a fantasy solution (wind power) which has little environmental benefit, damages the economy by unnecessarily increasing energy prices, undermines energy security and prevents investment in solutions that do work.

The second area of irrationality in the energy debate is that nuclear power is remarkably safe. Safety can be measured by the average impact over time or the worst possible impact from an event. Nuclear is excellant on both. The average safety measured as deaths per GWh is two or three orders of magnitude better than any other source of energy. The worst possible consequences of an accident can be confidently known after Chernobyl. The affect of that disaster, the result of a poorly designed, poorly operated nuclear reactor failing catastrophically were relatively minor. The total death toll was significantly below 100, a tragidy to those involved but much less than most industries. It is three orders of magnitude less than hydroelectric power (deathhs in 100K range when catastrophically failling), better than petrchcemical plants, a little better than passenger aircraft.

The perception pushe dby greens is that nuclear power is extremely dangerous when the opposite is true. Strangely the extremely cautious safety limits for radioactivity increase rather than decrease th epublic perception of danger. When a radiation leak is thousand sof times above the safety limit but stiall has very little public health impact the fact that the leak ias 1000 time sthe 'safety' limit makes peope scared instead of reassured that the industry sets such incredibly conservative limits.

Any sort of rational energy policy would stop wasting money on wind power and focus on an increased nuclear program, and energy efficency. We will probably carry on as we are and as a consequence have higher than necessary emisssion of C02 and much higher enegry prices.

.

Brent Spar tells everything you need to know about the true priorities of the green movement as a whole. I fthe green movement was actually about the environment they would push nuclear power.

[A J Stiles]

Enemy at the Gates

It's an ancient, established principle of statecraft that the people need to be convinced that there is an imminent threat to their security, in order that they will gratefully accept whatever mistreatment you care to dole out to them under the noble colour of preventing the enemy from attacking.

Persuading them that the enemy at the gates is themselves is a great modern twist, though. The existence of an abundant source of energy with no attached guilt-stick would deprive the ruling classes (and the wannabe rulers) of an extremely useful tool.

[Kestrix]

Kestrix

Here's a novel idea, how about reducing the population?

[Anteaus]

Fusion yes, Tokamak,no.

The reason fusion power has gone nowhere is that almost all of the money is being poured-into just one branch of that science, namely the Tokamak or toroidal magnetic-bottle style of reactor. Some research is now being done into laser fusion, but that is only recent.

The Farnsworth electrostatic-confinement fusor was producing actual hydrogen fusion, albeit at a low level, long before the big Tokamak projects got off the ground. The Tokamaks have only recently produced low-level fusion after countless years of trying, and billions spent.

Opinions have been voiced that the reason so much money has been poured-into just one field of fusion research that has produced virtually no useful results is that the oil companies see this as a safe option, since Tokamaks will never challenge the dominance of oil, whereas some other technologies just might do. I don't hold much for conspiracy theories, but it does beg the question.. why? If a simple, inexpensive apparatus was already producing measurable results, why spend 40 years trying to get one very bulky and very expensive apparatus to do the same?

A development of the Farnsworth machine, the Bussard or Polywell reactor, certainly has the theoretical potential to produce power on a commercial scale. Yet, it has suffered from serious lack of funding, hence the slow progress.

A viable fusion powerplant would in any case more likely use hydrogen-boron fusion rather than the deuterium-tritium fusion currently being explored in Tokamaks. The reason is that D-T fusion generates fast neutrons which tend to damage the apparatus, not to mention ruining any electronic equipment inside the shielding. Which would make control and monitoring extremely difficult.

Hydrogen-boron fusion calls for energy levels which no present Tokamak can reach, and which are probably beyond the theoretical capability of any Tokamak design. Meanwhile, Farnsworth/Bussard reactors could exploit the less problematic H-B reaction, as it is within their theoretical capability given a moderate upscale of present test plant.

As far as proof of concept goes, at least with fusion we have one. Nature has done this before, albeit with a very simple apparatus but much larger supplies of fuel. The sun. We therefore know it can be done. There is no question about that. We just need to figure-out how to duplicate those results, but on a smaller scale.

First though, we need to stop flogging the dead horse and look at ALL the available options.

[W. Keith Wingate]

Why no mention of those who will die from the Fukushima windmills?

</sarcasm>

At least in the US (I can't imagine it's all that different in the UK) "green" (note the lowercase; the actual US Green Party here has only a casual interest in environmental issues, bears little resemblance to their European counterparts, and enjoys less popularity than a hunter in a gathering of vegan deer) comes in at least two different hues: 1) The "smaller is better crowd", [eat local, organic food ; bike more / drive less, recycle, have fewer children...] and the 2) The "I'll have my cake and eat it too" [tech will solve all problems: PV on the roof, Prius in the drive, ...] crowd.

Far from being a denialist, I actually thing the environmental question must be our number 1 priority: if we get that wrong (and we're clearly getting it wrong) the other issues won't matter. At all. And yet...

Group 1) is just naive. The Ponzi schemes which pass for pensions in the developed world, even the whole economic system is completely dependent on growth. Without that, they collapse. Most of what we toss in the recycling bin ends up in landfills anyway. I can bike everywhere, but when neighbors on both sides joy-ride in SUV's my impact is negligible.

Group 2) is just buying indulgences. If mere technological innovation could solve these types of problems, we wouldn't be here. "Free markets" don't solve all problems, and in fact may solve fewer than they create.

So despite epic fails in some of the arguments (Globalization absolutely DOES accelerate our self-destruction because we globalize capital but not environmental protections, so it's a race to the dirtiest, cheapest. least sustainable way to bring the 3rd world up to 1st world standards of gluttony and waste), I am very sympathetic to the article's author.

Enough so, that he's sold me on his book -- if I can get a soft-copy, rather than the dead-tree version.

[Alan Brown]

hydro has serious emissions levels

Especially methane - this comes from flooded vegetation breaking down anerobically.

This is well known for tropical hydro - https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Hydroelectricity#Methane_emissions_.28from_reservoirs.29

but it also appears the levels are significantly higher than expected in temperate regions - http://www.adaptalp.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=242&Itemid=98

(Of course the emissions are substantially less than burning fossil fuels for the same energy AND as nothing compared to what's about to happen with permafrost melt and possible methane hdyrate outgassing as happened off Norway 10,000 years ago)

[Zippy the Pinhead]

The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.

(Of course the emissions are substantially less than burning fossil fuels for the same energy AND as nothing compared to what's about to happen with permafrost melt and possible methane hdyrate outgassing as happened off Norway 10,000 years ago)

Total Human based carbon released is at about 3% of what the earth releases naturally on its own.

[Alan Brown]

@Kestrix

Funnily enough several climate experts have the same opinion - the point being that none of the stuff anyone is doing now will be worth anything as long as the human population stays at the size it is or increases.

[siliconhillbilly]

Electric Power Storage

Most knowledgeable people agree that it's necessary to have power storage if you want more than a few percent of wind and/or solar power on the grid. That, or lots of cheap, inefficient gas turbines for backup generation.

With current technology, a storage battery costs about 5x to 10x more than it is worth to store energy for "calm, cloudy days" . Actually, I can't imagine a battery system large enough to store more than a few hours of grid make-up power on "bad renewable energy days".

Of course, if you have the ideal geo-hydrology for it (steep mountains with lakes on the top and bottom) you can build pumped hydro storage and all is well. I don't think this describes much of the English countryside.

So when the "windy power" promoters show up at the money trough, uh, I mean national government energy ministry, they should be escorted to the door, forcefully. Unless they have made the proper payment to play the subsidy game. Fun for all! No one loses! Ummmm.

If you end up wasting the investment money, it's NOT green. But it seems to be happening anyway. Could it be that someone is actually making real money on the deals? It's certainly not the electricity consumer! So who else might be smiling about this situation? Don't take too long to answer, because the waste is still going on.

[Videography]

Electric Power Storage

There are new standards for electric-power-storage that are currently developed. They work very efficiently for families and individuals. They were designed to store power from humble sources of energy and give power back when required. We have them now and more in production!

At present they are expensive, but according to our marketing the "power of scale" of mass production will dramatically reduce costs later this year. An analogy is batteries used in early automobiles were 6 volt. Later the standard went to 12 volt. We believe that 48 volt is the next step and so our micro-processor controlled sealed lithium batteries were designed for rugged durability, 2000 cycles, safety and maintenance free operation. Put them between your windmill or solar panels or power them with your vehicle as you ride along. Bottom line is that they can power a lot of stuff :)

[Andydaws]

You need to have a look at your own marketing, then....

The voltage produced by single cell of a given type is fixed by its electrochemistry. For lithium cell, it's about 4v.

If you're going to 48v from 12v, all you're doing is packing more cells in series - hardly a transformational breakthrough in cost, and one that is likely to have reliability implications (think what happens when a cell in a stack fails - and you've just gone to four times as many).

Your wording "humble sources of energy" is suggestive. It implies you're not talking bulk scale storage, but perhaps a few tens of KWh. Industrial scale storage needs to be delivered in GWh scale, at a cost per MW of significantly less than the original generation cost. What's your capital cost per KWh?

[royan]

II-IV Corporation

II-VI perhaps? Don't go short-changing us on the Nitrogen group and Chalcogens... where will I get my CdTe and CIGS?

[Malcom Ryder 1]

Market forces

You are right about the market forces leading the energy strategy. Players like GE and Siemens have marketing forces that are known in America as lobbyists, who are strong arming your politicians into putting big money into wind. Gotta love capitalism.

[Anonymous Coward]

NikFromNYC

How can climate change be a problem if real thermometer records that carry back 350 years show NO SIGN OF TREND CHANGE WHATSOEVER IN THE MODERN ERA?

http://i49.tinypic.com/rc93fa.jpg

Well, I guess if you listen to utter psychopaths it might make sense.

http://oi55.tinypic.com/2jb7fk7.jpg

But I'm not sure left leaning intellectuals are along for the ride.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n92YenWfz0Y

[bugalugs]

Wacking great prop-driven dynamos up on poles

always struck me as a bit daft. As well as producing nothing when the wind fails ( Or over-achieves ! ), each dynamo uses masses of copper and other expensive stuff, increasing capital costs/kwh. Storage of any surplus neat electricity is also expensive and inefficient. Earlier mentions of air-pressure storage sound interesting. What about hydraulic ( or air ) accumulation ? Relatively cheap hydraulic ( or air ) compressors feeding central accumulators which can be tapped for more-or-less instantaneous use ? Vertical spindle rotors ( an article here t'other day found nothing worse to say about these than that they required guy ropes ) might make things a bit safer for the birdies too. Automatic transmissions might allow for continued operation at higher wind speeds too. This as part of the mix perhaps.

It's worth noting that if coal, oil, gas, wind and solar had to conform to the safety standards of nuclear, we would be nowhere at all. We have a 25% or so chance of dying from cancer anyways, some of that probably attributable to pollution from coal, oil and other *conventional* nasties associated with energy production/storage/use.

We need engineers in charge, not ignorant/bought pollies, lobbyists, fanatics and FUD-mongers.

[cnapan]

Fusion research pitifully under-resourced

I agree with the notion that fusion research is pitifully under-resourced and the options not fully explored.

Our per-capita consumption of energy is going to have to increase dramatically in the future, both as a result of rising living standards and as a consequence of us having stripped the earth of the easily reachable resources.

Renewables make sense in certain situations, but many of the most populous areas of the planet cannot hope to rely on them for future energy needs.

The current use of carbon-based fuels is something that everyone agrees cannot go on indefinitely, for the simple reason that they are finite resources (even leaving aside the sense in toying with the earth's chemistry on such a huge scale).

That leaves just one game in town: the liberation of energy from mass.

ITER, by far the world's largest fusion research project, will probably end up costing around 15 billion quid or so - with contributions from many countries.

To put this into perspective, the UK alone is expected to borrow about ten times that amount this year alone to cover its current budget deficit.

The world's politicians are not currently taking the impending energy crisis at all seriously. Their support of forms of power generation which cannot provide the vast majority of predictable and cheap power our societies need in the future just goes to demonstrate their lack of engagement with the seriousness of the situation.

The atom is the only thing that will give us the energy we need without changing the chemistry of the planet. It really is that simple.... so what are we waiting for?

[Ken Hagan]

Re: what are we waiting for?

"ITER, by far the world's largest fusion research project, will probably end up costing around 15 billion quid or so - with contributions from many countries. [...] To put this into perspective, the UK alone is expected to borrow about ten times that amount this year alone to cover its current budget deficit."

We're waiting for politicians who can count. (Right now we've just got c*nts who can pollute.)

[Videography]

How many ways can Modern Humans divide?

male-female-short-tall-white-black-chocolate-rich-poor-fearful-brave and by culture-education-creed-politics-vocation-race-religion ... add a million more dividing characteristics as you will. Now "ofcourse" by additive Primary Colors, in the case of this article, Green :)

In the USA Red often describes conservative(s) and Blue describes liberal(s). Such labels and indeed the division that they create between people are a key reason why ALL systems [Yes! I said "ALL systems"] are stalemated by viral-quibble these days.

[Anteaus]

Here is an example of 'green effect.'

OK this has been commented to the hilt already, but thought I'd add these links:

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/uk_supply/energy_mix/ccs/ccs.aspx

"This is the largest public funding contribution in the world to a single CCS project, ensuring that the UK will continue to lead the way on large-scale demonstration."

http://www.bellona.org/ccs/Artikler/pre_combustion

Gives an idea what's involved.

-and which hint at the sheer amount of taxpayers' money being wasted on 'carbon capture' projects.

-So' we're going to spend huge wads of cash and loads of scientists' time on developing these extremely questionable technologies to trap CO2. Then of course we have to burn MORE of our limited fossil fuels because of the lower efficiency of these schemes. So, we run-out sooner.

I firmly believe that if the cash were put into fusion research instead, we'd have an answer in a few years. Or, even photovoltaic cell research would be a wiser spend. Low cost, high efficiency solar panels would at least have a use, especially in developing countries.

Maybe we should all lobby our MPs to stop this nonsense.

[Anonymous Coward]

question

Ive got a question for everyone, and please dont slate me for this, im curious and thats why im asking.

At what point do we allow the world to change is climate? it changes all the time, its on a natural warming cycle just now so who are we do try are keep it the same. And lets assume for a second that we are able to keep the climate to our needs, what would the long term effects be? would the world behave like an elastic band, stretched until it snaps?

Also, the climate suites us very well at the moment but that cant be said for everywhere, who are we to say that jo blogs in the north cant have a warmer climate because we dont want it too warm, on the flip side who is to say that those in the warmest regions wouldnt want it to be cooler.

Im all up for not needlessly poluting our planet but at what point did we suddenly become the climate police and there by changing or insisting on our views being the correct view.

Curiously, a warmer brition would be hugely benificial in a economic sense....so anyway, whats your thoughts on that?

[Colin Bain]

Quixotic

Perhaps in our enlightenment our glorious leaders have been overly affected by the tale of Don Quixote, who was fond of tilting towards windmills, although even he had the sense to overturn them rather than support them?

[Andydaws]

meanwhile, on a not unrelated topic.....

ttp://www.world-nuclear-news.org/RS_No_significant_damage_to_fuel_at_unit_4_3004111.html

"A visual inspection by remote controlled camera has shown no significant damage to the used fuel pond of Fukushima Daiichi unit 4.

There had been fears of serious damage to nuclear fuel stored in the pond after a series of fires and explosions in the vicinity. Highly radioactive and heat-emitting used nuclear fuel is stored for a few years in the ponds before transfer to a larger storage pond shared by all six reactors at the site. However, the reactor was in a period of maintenance with the full core temporarily stored, requiring very much more cooling than the years-old fuel. This contributed to problems at the pond as water heated up and evaporated after the tsunami of 11 March disabled cooling and water top-up systems.

At least two fires as well as an explosion occurred in the area of the pond around 15 March, although at that time radiation levels prevented workers from making a direct check on the pond's status. Engineers became worried that the pool had dried out, the fuel overheated and zirconium cladding reacted with water to produce hydrogen, but this visual inspection initially discounts that scenario by showing no serious damage of the kinds that would be expected. Some debris was scattered in the pond as a result of the damage to the building but it is thought that fuel integrity has been maintained.,,,,"

[Andydaws]

Anteus, you miss a couple of subtleties

I'm guessing you missed the announcement. on the DECC page that the subsidy was now available for gas-firing too?

There are two potential fuels (at scale), and two broad groups of technologies. These are respectively gas/coal, and pre/post combustion.

Post combustion is a long-shot irrespective of fuelling - you've got to try to remove CO2 from hot flue gas, without using excessive quantities of absorbent, and without requiring much pressure differential.

Coal-based capture's always going to be a pig. It means having to handle huge quantities of solids, contaning significant levels of contaminants (assuming a CCS plant is half as fuel efficient as a modern coal plant, the residues dumped in the environment will contain about 1000te of uranium over life). I don't expect it to be cost-competitive, even with CO2 penalties.

Pre-combustion gas is a different matter. The technologies involved are well established, albeit not cheap. It's basically a Fischer-Tropsch hydrogen production plant, in front of a CCGT power station, with a large-scale compression and pumping plant (like we already use for moving gas in pipelines taking the CO2 waste stream. I've worked on a F-T plant of the right sort of scale, making synthetic petrol from gas in New Zealand, so we know that works. About 40% of our electricity already comes from CCGT, which could move to h2 burning with minimal mods, so we know that works. And large scale CO2 injection into oil-bearing formations is routine as close to home as Norway. So, not much that's "questionable" from an engineering perspective.

As things stand on economics, it looks as though it'll add between 100% and 200% onto the capital cost of a CCGT plant - but, CCGT is cheap, so we're still talking about something much less capital intensive than wind or other renewables (and less than nuclear). A number in the range £1.2-£1.8Bn/GW won't be far out. They're also less gas efficient than a pure CCGT, adding about 40% to gas usage/MWh - the end result is they'll probably produce at £60-80/MWh. Dearer than new build nuclear (except at the very bottom end of the scale), but cheap compared to offshore wind (£100-150/MWh).

I'd be interested as to what sorts of costs you think fusion plant will produce at - although I can see technical progress, ITER and the various inertial confinement tests won't tell us anything much about what building and running a "commercial" plant will cost - we're still at least one generation, and probably two away from a commercial demonstrator - but I see noting to suggest it'll be cheap.

[Anteaus]

Don't think so.

The issue here is not whether there are environmental concerns, but what those environmental concerns are. Pollution, yes, that is a concern, and a possible reason to avoid coal. But CO2 is not a pollutant.

Wastage of limited natural resources on a pointless exercise is also a key issue. The efficiency of any plant using carbon capture will be substantially lower than that of one without.

I can't help but think there are parallels between this scheme and the old American 'gas guzzler' cars, some of which managed only 3mpg due to ill-conceived 'smog control' measures which still further reduced the efficiency of an already inefficient vehicle to the point where an engine of ridiculous size was needed even just to achieve acceptable performance. I could forsee a similar positive-feedback loop applying here, with larger and larger power stations being needed to achieve the same output, but at much lower efficiency. If these 'green' power-stations guzzle the remainder of our gas reserves they will do us no favours.

As for funding, the cost of the carbon-capture pilot alone is touted as a billion.

I don't hold out much hope for ITER, it is a dead-end technology. Even if it can demonstrate continuous fusion at breakeven levels, there is no known way of extracting the energy it would produce. Meanwhile, a pilot-scale Bussard plant would cost a great deal less than the CC pilot.

Now, everyone's afraid to waste money on long-shot fringe science, and rightly so. But in this context what is carbon capture but fringe science? OK the technology is mostly based on proven stuff, but can it be shown to achieve anything useful? If every powerplant is converted to CC but global temperatures continue to rise regardless.. where are we then? Billions or trillions worse off, energy reserves squandered, and the chance to find a better solution wasted. That's where we are.

[Anteaus]

Unreal...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-13253876

So, now your windfarm pays you more if you switch it off.

[John Smith 19]

Some notes on the ORNL Molten Salt *Breeder* reactor and chemcial plant. study

Oak Ridge worked up a design for a 1GW molten salt *breeder* in the early 1970s. The report is archived at http://www.moltensalt.org/references/static/downloads/pdf/index.html ORNL-4812. "development status of molten-salt breeder reactors" I've skimmed it.

The Bismuth separation process allows 1 salt mixture to hold both U233 and Thorium to act as both the core and the blanket provided the moderator layout is properly chosen.. This makes *all* of the MSRE experience applicable and the Bismuth process a real game changer.

Flow through the reactor core was 55000 gallons per minute, *but* the flow through the processing plant is 1 (US) gallon per minute. Whole inventory cycles through reprocessing every 10 days.

Fissile Uranium inventory is listed as 1500Kg.

Thorium inventory is 68000Kg

Fuel doubling time is 19yrs.

Graphite parts need replacing every 4 years if Graphite properties *no* better than those in the MSRE are available (Graphite or reinforced carbon carbon is now used in aircraft brake linings. I suspect some grade have *much* better properties)

Some processing tanks were expected to made of graphite.

Processing plant input was at 1050F/566c which is output temperature from the core.

Bismuth cycle operates at 500-700c and its MP is 271c

Heat transfer from reactor is to a sodium/Potassium fluoride mix then steam generation at 3500psi (modern approaches talk about driving a gas turbine using hot Helium or Nitrogen).

The chemical cycle works a series of swaps between the reactor salt, Bismuth and a Lithium Chloride/Bromide mix, preceeded by spraying the reactor salt mix with Fluorine to salt out 99% of the Uranium.

The structure where this happens is kept cold enough to leave a layer of metal fluorides on the metal surface, hence a "Frozen" flourinator.

Fluorinator (ORNL spelling) is 8" dia x 15' high. Protactinium column is 3" dia and 15 ' high.

The rare earth columns are 7" to 13" in dia. *None* of these is particularly large WRT the bulk chemicals industry. Note they would all need radiation shielding so the layout would not be as compact as you might hope, but we are not talking a warehouse sized structure either.

Graphite to survive in the reactor without replacement would have to resist damage at a total fluence of 3x10^23 neutrons per cm^2 (described as roughly 10x what available grades could survive in 1970)and a gas permeability of < 3x10^-8 cm^2/sec of STP He, implying pores of c10nm dia, requiring at least a surface layer of fine grained graphite.

This is a *landmark* study from people who had spent a *lot* of effort (its > 400 pages long). Sadly a follow up document from ORNL "molten salt reactor technology gaps" keeps coming up "Forbidden" and should make *very* interesting reading to see how people's views have changed in 40 years.

These do not sound like show stoppers to me. Experience of Kr and Xe stripping was that the process was straightforward. The protactinium separation column is not huge, nor are the rare earth metals (IIRC you'd need 3 for 2+,3+ and 4+ oxidation states) You're looking at a 2 storey building, but provide you don't have shielding *between* the colums perhaps quite a small 2 storey building.

Possibly the *big* disappointment was the 19 years to double the fuel inventory. Note that implies *no* more U233 available from outside, which is unrealistic. OTOH the ability to operate both as a regular and as a breeder seems to be a very *practical* benefit avoiding a bet you whole operation on weather you need one or other type, especially as so far the answer has been we need *no* breeders at this time.

[mstreet]

Green movement bad for the environment

Well...maybe not in theory. But I've been amused for years how suddenly we all need greener cars, fridges, air conditioners,factories etc. Sure many new products are more efficient than their predecessors, but only at face value. When you consider the environmental impact of retooling factories, energy requirements to create all these shiny new replacements etc. how much impact will the green tech really have?

It's a sad fact that once unbridled capitalism see's proffit in a venture, their maeketing 'geniuses' will convince the puplic to buy the new stuff whether it is needed or not. How many people buying the newest and greenest tech, actualy consider what happens to the perfectly servisable stuff it replaces? How many functioning fridges and cars will be scrapped and left in landfills in the name of the environment?

[karlmitchell]

A few quick responses

I agree there are problems with the debate becoming somewhat dogmatic and ill-informed. Unfortunately, this makes for messy arguments that are detracting somewhat from the need to do something now. I'll avoid the planned versus free market debate, as the US and European contexts are more relevant to this discussion, and they have a free market bias. However, I wanted to respond to some of your specific points regarding forms of energy production.

Solar PV is reducing in price faster than any other form of energy production, but it is not at grid parity in the UK. It's mostly a matter of how much sun there is, and the U.K. isn't ideal from that perspective. It IS approaching grid parity in many parts of the world, and is there in some sunnier parts, Hawai'i and Southern California for example, and in these places solar PV is starting to attract massive investment. However, this grid parity is on a cost/watt sense, and some issues linger with respect to balancing variable supply with variable by different demand levels (which is a problem for fixed-rate energy production too); In short, rooftop installations are already cost-efficient in many places, but big solar farms are still a challenge. I agree there are issues regarding the metals required for production, and only a fraction of this can be tackled by recycling (which is now done by many solar companies) due to exponential industry growth. R&D activities are on-going to address this.

Wind is already very cost effective on a cost/watt sense (cheaper than nuclear in most countries), but, as you mentioned, the variability/unreliability of wind is even more difficult to deal with in a grid system.

Several developments are necessary in order to make large scale implementation of variable-supply clean energy (especially wind) cost effective: (1) An improved wide-spread efficient grid system capable of utilising geographic distribution of installations in order to smooth out supply and transfer efficiently over great distances; (2) Smart metering and billing that can match demand to supply (e.g. turning dish washers on when supply->demand; (3) GWh-scale pumped storage to further smooth out supply. For the U.K., the first of these is cheaper than many countries due to the small scale, but also will not smooth out supply as much for the same reasons; An interconnected European system would be ideal, but hard to implement. The technology for smart metering and billing is already there, in both public and private hands. Pumped storage technology is often combined with hydroelectric facilities, with the most well-known UK example being Dinorwig, Wales (see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station).

Natural gas is cheap at present, but remains a finite fossil fuel, and so may be useful as a stop-gap, but not in the very long term. Shale gas reserves are hard to tap, and highly dangerous. The technology may improve, but it's not there yet.

Nuclear power (also subsidised) is currently cost effective in a $/watt sense, in most countries, lagging slightly behind wind and lots behind more efficient fossil fuels, but ahead of solar. It has the advantage of a smooth supply, but bear in mind that demand is not smooth although is, to a large extent, predictable. However, in the light of Fukushima, tighter safety standards, rising insurance costs and a not-in-my-backyard mentality are likely to cause these costs to increase. The nuclear industry also consistently underestimates the cost of waste disposal in the very long-term future. Regarding insurance, nuclear power stations and their operators are not liable for the full cost of major nuclear accidents, keeping economic costs artificially low. Even the U.S., which has national reserves specifically for nuclear incidents (Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnities Act), cannot afford a Fukushima-scale incident without public payout.

Also, don't forget wave, hydroelectric, solar thermal and geothermal energy sources. Only the first two of these are really viable in the UK, and neither are probably sufficient on their own without massive land-/sea-scape changes.

No solution on its own is ideal, but the need to do SOMETHING is urgent. All supply methods have pros and cons, and market prices are likely to fluctuate. By combining multiple production sources, and the various grid improvements, most of the problems (esp. variable supply rates and finite metal resources) are eased. National or even international infrastructure (electricity pipeline from Iceland to tap their vast geothermal reserves, anyone?) is required in order to deal with the challenges of green energy, which is difficult in a competitive free market. Given the fragmental nature of most nation's energy supply, especially in more free market countries, some level of government involvement is essential.

Within a free market context, there are three strong arguments in favour of subsidies: (1) It provides a kickstart for the industry in order for mass production to continue increasing efficiency and thus become more universally cost effective; (2) It makes it affordable in the near-run in order to tackle climate change now and prevent massive environmental costs later; and (3) Because infrastructure costs are massive compared with running costs, which delays profitability potentially for over a decade in some instances, investments in solar and wind are hard to attract.

-Karl

P.S. And as I'm sure has been pointed out, wind turbines are NOT windmills, which are for grinding. What you mean is wind turbines.