NYT: “A nuclear reactor where a hidden leak caused near-catastrophic corrosion in 2002 has experienced a second bout of the same problem.”
The American nuclear industry, primed to begin new construction projects for the first time in 30 years, is about as eager for an operating problem at an old reactor as the oil industry was for a well blowout on the eve of opening the Atlantic coast to oil drilling.
Let’s file this under, “worst-case scenarios waiting to happen” — a file that has grown uncomfortably large in recent weeks (see BP calls blowout disaster ‘inconceivable,’ ‘unprecedented,’ and unforeseeable).
New York Times reporter Matt Wald has the story, “An Old Nuclear Problem Creeps Back“:
In 2002, the plant, Davis-Besse, in Oak Harbor, Ohio, developed leaks in parts on the vessel head, allowing cooling water from inside the vessel, at 2,200 pounds per square inch of pressure, to leak out.
The cooling water contains boric acid, which is used to control the speed of the nuclear reaction, and the acid ate away a chunk of the steel the size of a football, leaving nothing but a thin stainless-steel liner to maintain the reactor’s integrity.
Nuclear experts characterized it as a startling near-miss. Plants around the country had experienced leaks in the vessel head, but none nearly this serious.
The plant was shut for 14 months. First Energy Nuclear Operating Company, which owns it, eventually brought in a replacement head of similar design from a reactor in Midland, Mich., that had been abandoned during construction.
The company assumed it had solved the problem. But recently the new vessel head showed the same leakage pattern. Once again, the parts prone to leaking are nozzles through which the control rods for the reactor pass. When the rods are inserted, they choke off the flow of neutrons that sustains the reaction; when they are withdrawn, the reactor starts up. But the nozzles are prone to a problem called “stress corrosion cracking,” leading to the leaks.
It is not clear why Davis-Besse’s problem is more serious than other plants have had, although it surfaced in 2002 that First Energy had won approval to delay inspections that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wanted. (When the problem became clear, those approvals set off a crisis of confidence for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.)
No worries. Nothing to see here.
Still, I suppose it is worth pointing out that unlike the case of the BP oil disaster, American taxpayers are on the hook if a nuke goes really bad (see “How much of a subsidy is the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industry Indemnity Act?“)
Related Posts:
- An introduction to nuclear power
- Exclusive analysis, Part 1: The staggering cost of new nuclear power
- Warning to taxpayers, investors “” Part 2: Nukes may become troubled assets, ruin credit ratings
- The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power
- Nuclear Pork “” Enough is Enough
- GOP wants 100 new nukes by 2030 while “Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns.”
- Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost “” $10,800 per kilowatt! “” killed Ontario nuclear bid
We have new aircraft carriers that are huge nuclear plants. They work well and are very reliable.
Kerry Smith: I have always thought that small nukes are the future of power generation. The Navy’s A4W’s, for example, have shown a remarkable degree of reliability, safety and relatively low cost ($2,000/KW).
The third show has dropped. I was just thinking to my self, between the coal mine disasters, oil well blow outs and natural gas explosions we just haven’t heard anything from nuclear yet. Well here ya’ go. We’ve beeen warned people.
In 2005, FirstEnergy was fined $5.45 million for that first incident at Davis-Besse. A system engineer named Siemaszko was barred from the industry for five years (which I think means he’s been eligible again for a couple of months now.)
Operators at the plant had warning from radiation sensors that something was amiss. But they “solved” the problem by moving the sensors.
If we are to expand nuclear power production, as seems to be one of this Congress’ top priorities, then we should also expand our country’s safeguards for reactors.
That means, first, we need a sound understanding of where things stand. That means we need an independent review or audit of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission track record and performance by a reputable group, such as the the National Academy of Sciences or other.
Beyond that, we need to stop pretending nothing could go wrong with nukes. That’s a terribly dangerous starting place for legislation. If we are to expand nuclear power than we must INCREASE the regulation of nuclear power, not loosen it and cut out the public.
A nuclear meltdown will make the BP spill look like peanuts.
There is no need to expand nuclear power and thus there is no need to deal with the very real, very serious problems and dangers of nuclear power.
The USA has vast commercially exploitable wind and solar energy resources that are FAR more than sufficient to produce all the electricity the nation uses, with plenty left over to electrify ground transportation.
There is a reason why solar and wind are the fastest growing sources of new energy in the world, growing at record-breaking double-digit rates year after year, and attracting tens of billions of dollars in private investment capital every year — while nuclear power is languishing, barely maintaining its share of electricity production, and private investors won’t have anything to do with it unless the taxpayers and rate-payers are forced to pay all the up-front costs and absorb all the risks, including the risk of financial losses if new nuclear power plants prove unprofitable to operate when and if they are built.
Sadly, the universe seems to think we have a teachable president. Possibly, as long as he persists in his nuclear and fossil fuel foolishness, we will see coal mine disasters, oil spills and nuclear accidents. President Obama, the 2×4 hitting you on the head is only there because there is some hope you will notice and change your ways.
From NY Times item:
And the reactor will run at a very slightly lower temperature, about two or three degrees less than the usual 606.5 degrees Fahrenheit at the vessel head, to slow down any damaging chemical reaction…
I have to say, pinning hope for continued safety on an adjustment of operating temperature of some 3/10ths of a percent is an excellent argument for fundamental problems with the machinery in question. Clearly there were some large gaps in the understanding of designers here.
All 100% understood now? I bet the engineers who did the original design were quite confident of their comprehension.
Astonishing, really.
I’m with you, Chris. The only way to make nuclear somewhat safe is to make it prohibitively expensive. The French get away with it, but their reactors leak, and they’ve been lucky so far.
“The French get away with it, but their reactors leak, and they’ve been lucky so far.”
Germany’s Siemens AG (SI) said Thursday it will join French solar power initiative Transgreen, which is supposed to complement a German-led project known as Desertec.
“We will join the Transgreen consortium,” a Siemens spokeswoman told Dow Jones Newswires Thursday.
Transgreen is a French government-led project aiming to build a network of undersea electricity lines to bring solar power from Africa to Europe.
Transgreen is supposed to complement Desertec, which aims to build, over 40 years, a huge network of wind turbines and solar electricity sites in North Africa and the Middle East.
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100520-704911.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines
Alternatives to nuclear energy under focus
Last year, Minister of Petroleum, Ali Al-Naimi, said: “Saudi Arabia aspires to export as much solar energy in the future as it exports oil now.”
In 2009, power demand grew by more than 8 percent, increasing annually by at least 7% with an additional 60,000 megawatts expected to be needed by 2020. Previous plans for harnessing the extra energy was simple, namely to merely increase the use of crude oil to generate the extra power.
However, the Kingdom has come under tough scrutiny due to environmental issues and the pollution being caused globally by fossil fuels. The American Energy Information Administration (EIA) has predicted that the only way to mitigate global warming is if the world energy consumption of fossil fuels drastically is reduced over the next 10-15 years. They also found that the use of nuclear power is only effective in reducing the causes of global warming by only 10 percent
In April, however, there were announcements that the Kingdom is planning to open the King Abdullah City for Nuclear Energy and Renewable Energy in Riyadh. Former Minister of Commerce and Industry, Hashim Yamani, is expected to head of the new research city. “This is a massive step toward securing additional sources of energy and preserving oil for many decades. Turning to renewable energy will safeguard energy supplies for the ever-growing population and its increasing demand for desalinated seawater and electricity,” said Khaled Al-Sultan, rector of King Fahd University Petroleum and Minerals.
http://arabnews.com/saudiarabia/article62098.ece
Mike (#9),
We get a big nuclear accident every 20 years or so. So far the big ones have been where most nuclear power is generated, in the US and the USSR. So, France has not been lucky, per se, they are following the odds. They are likely to have a big accident within the next fifty years or so. We might get another in the US before them though. Repealing Price-Anderson would be a good way to shift the danger away from us. We’d get as fresh set of eyes on nuclear safety from Lloyds where the NRC seems to be stumbling around.
Oh c’mon guys, what’s the worst that could possibly happen?
[pauses to consider . . . ]
Okay, okay — what’s the second worst that could happen?
An electrical worker died in a gas explosion in Texas. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i3fQFROi7EjjP1ifzux9UOPWFP8AD9G75JOO0
The complexities of our energy system seem to be the culprit. President Obama recently made a speech wanting to boost natural gas use. As a transition fuel this could make sense but not as a goal in itself. Natural gas is not clean energy, it is just a little less dirty than coal or oil. People still die and pollution still happens.
I think the main issue with nuclear plants is cooling them during high demand in heatwaves and basic implications from it’s use.
Looking at the progress in clean energy tech, i really find no reason not to use renewables. In terms of energy security, dezentralized energy grids seems the best choice.
What I don’t understand is how conservatives can love an industry that requires big government bureaucracy, regulation, and subsidies. Somehow nuclear power dissolves their core principles. The safety hazards, terrorism risks, and national security threats just ice the cake.
And yes — cooling nukes during heat waves is a growing problem.
Mark (#16),
Precisely. As one of Ralph Nader’s sisters has pointed out, committing to nuclear power is committing to a police state for a very long time to come. A powerful central authority has to exist to secure the technology, the fuel and the waste. Nuclear power puts irreconcilable limits on liberty.
#15,
A diffuse energy grid may also be helpful for national security. Chances are that rail guns will replace missiles for defense and a diffuse energy source is less easy to be knocked out, leading to greater weapons reliability.
It’s interesting how everyone here seems opposed to nuclear power.
James Lovelock wrote:
James Hansen also thinks we need nuclear power. The Australian writes:
Stewart Brand also thinks we need it:
I’m not sure what I think, but these guys aren’t dumb, and the world could be running out of options.
John Baez wrote: “I’m not sure what I think, but these guys aren’t dumb, and the world could be running out of options.”
It’s true that James Lovelock, James Hansen and Stewart Brand are all intelligent people. Moreover, all of them are impressively knowledgeable about certain fields.
None of them are knowledgeable about energy issues. Their support for nuclear power is wrongheaded, based on ignorance about the technological and economic realities of both nuclear power and renewables (primarily wind and solar). All three of them base their argument for nuclear on numerous assertions that are just plain false.
There is simply NO NEED FOR NUCLEAR POWER. We can get vastly more energy than the entire world currently uses from wind, solar, geothermal, hydro and biomass — without the toxic pollution, enormous cost, insurmountably long lead times, and grave dangers of nuclear power. End of story.
John (#19),
There are atmospherically clean technologies that are cheaper and more reliable than nuclear power so you are really proposing doing something for the sake of doing it rather than proposing a useful solution. It seems like a quasi-religious boosterism for a technology that has gone badly wrong and keep getting worse.
I worked as a “temporary” at Davis-Besse in the early 1980’s. They were preparing for some type of inspection and we were putting together reams of policies/procedures, engineering specs etc. into notebooks to arrive at various stations in the plant prior to the inspection. I suspect that these should have been in place all along. Similar to BP rigs not having all the engineering operating proceedures on some of their rigs?
What is it with energy companies anyway?
@SecularAnimist,
i really think hard about Lovelock’s view on nuclear, but he misses the recent development. And i think his remarks are based on his worst case scenario.
@John Baetz
Would have been nice to attach the dates of those quotes (source).
Germany has today 16% renewables.
“The share of electricity from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3 percent in 2000 to about 16.1 percent in 2009.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_in_Germany
Nevertheless nuclear is saver than fossil energy. And i think that is the point here.
Unfortunately the responses so far to my quotes of Lovelock, Hansen and Brand don’t provide any supporting evidence. For example, ‘SecularAnimist’ writes:
I wish it were. But it’s far from clear that we can get all the energy we need – or more precisely: demand – from these other sources in time to save the planet. The magnitude of the problem may call us on to pull out the stops and use every source of carbon-free power we can get our hands on.
The engineer Samuel Griffith has been thinking hard about just how big this problem is. From Stewart Brand’s summary of Griffith’s Long Now Foundation talk:
I feel very pessimistic about the chances of the world deciding to undertake a project of this astounding magnitude. Do you folks really think this is going to happen, and succeed even without all the nuclear energy we can get? Or do you dispute Griffith’s numbers?
The world could generate 95 percent of electricity from renewable energies by 2050 in a drastic shift from fossil fuels
The report, by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC), representing Europe’s main renewable energy companies, is one of the most detailed to work out the nuts and bolts of a near-total shift to green energy such as wind or solar power. Such proposals often stop at wishful thinking.
The report said that global investments in energy would need to total $18 trillion by 2030 — almost five times the entire U.S. federal budget for next year — to set the world on a path to generating about 95 percent of electricity from non-polluting renewables by mid-century.
However, the International Energy Agency has estimated that investments of $11.3 trillion will be needed anyway by 2030, in all forms of energy, to cover the world’s growing needs. The IEA’s central scenario assumes fossil fuels will remain dominant.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6561GK20100607?type=domesticNews&feedType=RSS&feedName=domesticNews
June 7 (Bloomberg) — Energy investment will gradually shift to private investors and away from utilities as electricity and heat production becomes more decentralized, according to a study by the European Renewable Energy Council.
By 2050 as much as 70 percent of electricity production will be done by decentralized producers from today’s relatively small number of “centralized” utilities, the study by the Erec lobby group and Greenpeace environmental organization said.
A shift to wind turbines, solar panels and biomass plants means that power production will become more local and smaller in scale, the study said. The global market for renewable energy has the potential to grow to $600 billion annually, supporting 8.5 million jobs, within 20 years, the study said.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-06-07/energy-investment-to-shift-away-from-utilities-study-shows.html
John Baez, “In other words, the land area dedicated to renewable energy (“Renewistan”) would occupy a space about the size of Australia”
Under the proposal, concentrating solar power systems, PV systems and wind parks would be located on 6,500 square miles (17,000 km2) in the Sahara Desert.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec
Satellite-based studies by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) have shown that, by using less than 0.3% of the entire desert area of the MENA region, enough electricity and desalinated seawater can be produced to meet the growing needs of these countries and of Europe.
Greenpeace International recently issued its report “Global Concentrating Solar Power Outlook 2009” which shows that the DESERTEC Concept “Clean Power from Deserts” is feasable worldwide.
http://www.desertec.org/en/concept/studies/
Monomania, again. We can’t afford it. What part of “all hands on deck” is so hard to understand?
Right now– today– if we “vanished” all the operating nuclear plants there would be a noticeable detrimental effect. Today, if we “vanished” all existing PV installations, it would be noticeable. Similarly with wind generators, in fact any generation system you care to name.
The first and foremost system requiring to be “vanished” is coal generation technology. Conceptually vanishing other options makes the disappearance of coal plants even less likely that it is today.
John i have 2 post in moderation, but check this map out about your quote and the size required for solar demand.
http://mvnm.tumblr.com/post/679443357/surface-area-required-to-power-the-whole-world-by-solar
jcwwrc says:
June 9, 2010 at 12:09 pm
“I worked as a “temporary” at Davis-Besse in the early 1980’s. They were preparing for some type of inspection and we were putting together reams of policies/procedures, engineering specs etc. into notebooks to arrive at various stations in the plant prior to the inspection. ”
And, why are they notified of the time and date of the next inspection?
Which, I have read, is the way it is done.
How ridiculous is that?
As far as nuclear goes, some people just seem to be drawn to the worst possible solutions.
John Baez wrote: “But it’s far from clear that we can get all the energy we need – or more precisely: demand – from these other sources in time to save the planet.”
It is absolutely clear that expanding nuclear power CANNOT make any significant contribution to reducing CO2 emissions from electricity generation “in time to save the planet”. It simply takes too long to build nuclear power plants.
John Baez wrote: “… the responses so far to my quotes of Lovelock, Hansen and Brand don’t provide any supporting evidence.”
Your extended quotes offered no evidence at all — except the opinions of three people who have no expertise in energy issues and are conspicuously ill-informed about both nuclear power and renewables.
James Hansen, for example, is a climate scientist. In that field he is a giant, and a hero. However, he has NO background and NO expertise in energy technologies. His views on energy issues have no particularly greater merit than yours or mine, and far less merit than the views of someone like Amory Lovins who has specialized in energy technology issues for decades.
As for supporting evidence for my statements, please do some homework on your own time (beyond cutting and pasting the opinions of nuclear advocates). Numerous readily available studies have found that (for example):
As for Stewart Brand’s summary of Griffith, this is a perfect example of the nonsense that Brand has been peddling. We don’t need somebody’s ridiculous baseless assumptions and back of the envelope scribbling to come up with fantastical scenarios about solar energy. We can just look at what is actually happening in the world today where major utilities are rapidly deploying and scaling up concentrating solar thermal, concentrating solar PV, and distributed conventional and thin-film PV technologies at record-breaking rates every year, to see that Griffith’s “analysis” is rubbish.
For whatever reason, nuclear advocates seem relentlessly determined to ignore the reality of renewable energy technologies, and instead live in an imaginary world where “solar and wind can’t cut it” — so instead of deploying the powerful, mature solar and wind technologies that are ready to go NOW, we should squander huge resources on science-fiction “fourth generation nuclear” that doesn’t exist and has no possibility of generating any significant amount of electricity for decades.
Doug Bostrom wrote: “Monomania, again. We can’t afford it. What part of ‘all hands on deck’ is so hard to understand?”
What part of “there is no need to expand nuclear power, because we can get all the energy we can use from renewables, thus there is no need to deal with the toxic pollution and very real dangers of nuclear power, or to divert precious resources from effective solutions into an ineffectual expansion of nuclear power” is so hard to understand?
Doug Bostrom wrote: “Right now– today– if we ‘vanished’ all the operating nuclear plants there would be a noticeable detrimental effect.”
Straw man. While there are some nuclear power plants that probably should be shut down sooner rather than later for safety reasons, I am not arguing for “vanishing” existing nuclear power plants “right now today”.
I am arguing that squandering hundreds of billions of dollars on building new nuclear power plants is neither necessary nor effective to reduce GHG emissions in the time frame that reductions are needed.
And again, to do so would mean misdirecting precious resources that would FAR more effectively be spent on accelerating the deployment of existing renewable energy and efficiency technologies, and would thus hinder rather than help the urgent task of reducing GHG emissions.
SecularAnimist says: June 9, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Sorry about the appearance of strawman arguments, SA, that was not my intention.
My point is that I constantly hear arguments to the effect that this or that particular technological solution is 100% guaranteed useless, definitely cannot be deployed for various reasons. Just plug in -any- particular technology in place of “generic generation/capture system” and you’ll find somebody passionately negating it, very often with plausible reasons for taking that position.
Summing up everybody’s arguments, assessing a plethora of reasonable points unreasonably extended, we deduce there’s nothing we can do but mill around in functional paralysis while our existing fossil fuel generation systems continue to spew their wretched mess into the atmosphere.
Taking nuclear energy as an example, I suggest that at the end of the day we’ll see some number of contexts where in fact nuclear plants are temporarily a chronologically and geographically appropriate and even optimal solution for substitution of fossil fuel generation capacity for some period of time to come. I say this despite the fact that I think these machines are horrendously complex, exhibit some very undesirable failure modes and tax our materials science to the utmost; even with all those faults they’re going to be necessary in some locations for an indefinite period.
Equally, I see nuclear generation as being wholly unsuitable for application in a host of contexts, such as where there is insufficient political stability, insufficient means to reject waste heat, etc. As well, they suffer from a more innate problem of complexity, something to be avoided if possible. So I’m not happy with them and more importantly I believe people responsible for operating these machines will jump at the chance to ditch them as such becomes possible.
This is not an either-or situation, not a time when we can be so picky as to eschew generation systems capable of making substantial contributions to dumping our fossil fuel habit. I believe our intuitive numeracy is wholly inadequate to fathom the substitution problem we’ve created and how difficult it’s going to be to sort it out.
At least Brand’s engineer friend, Griffith, realized the value of conservation, and dropped his energy consumption significantly, at a benefit, not a cost, to his health and well-being.
He did not discuss efficiency at all, which provides the fastest and cheapest parts of decarbonization.
Conservation, efficiency, and renewables are the answers. Nuclear means big-government, less freedom, and less security.
Meanwhile, Joe has posted 9 more comments today — I haven’t seen any of ’em yet!
Doug Bostrom wrote: “This is not an either-or situation …”
This is a situation in which many “either-or” decisions must be and will be made in a relatively short time frame.
If you have a given amount of money to invest in new energy generation technology, you have to make some decisions about where and how to most effectively invest it. Money invested in new nuclear power plants is unavailable for investment in wind, solar, geothermal, biomass, efficiency, etc. — all of which are FAR more effective than nuclear power in rapidly reducing GHG emissions from electricity generation.
The “free market” has already made its decision: private venture capitalists are falling over themselves to invest tens of millions of dollars per year in wind and solar, but private capital won’t touch nuclear power unless the taxpayers are forced to pay all the costs upfront and absorb all the risks.
Nobody is standing there blocking the nuclear power industry from building more power plants — that’s not what is going on. What is going on is that private capital is standing there saying “we aren’t going to pay to build those things and take the risks that they won’t be profitable when they finally go online — we want the taxpayers and the rate payers to pay for them and cover all the risks, while we are guaranteed profits”.
When you get right down to it, the “debate” over whether or not to expand nuclear power on the huge scale that would be required to have any meaningful impact on reducing GHG emissions (starting decades from now, given the long lead time of nuclear power plant construction) is a debate about whether the government — i.e. the taxpayers — should bail out an obsolete industry that cannot compete with less expensive, less dangerous, cleaner, faster and far more effective alternatives.
SecularAnimist:
The “free market” has already made its decision: private venture capitalists are falling over themselves to invest tens of millions of dollars per year in wind and solar, but private capital won’t touch nuclear power unless the taxpayers are forced to pay all the costs upfront and absorb all the risks.
I heartily agree. Despite all the whining and moaning about how regulations and public fear killed nuclear power in the U.S., what really arrested the development of nuclear power in the U.S. was money and the market following “cheap” coal, enjoying a massive windfall of unaccounted external costs and the like. Now the market is assessing past breathtaking financial failures connected w/nuclear power and much of the money is following a path “it” feels is safer, with better prospects for a return on investment.
My fond hope is the people will exert more net effort toward creating substitute generation systems than they do ensuring that substitute generation systems are not built. Fortunately we have avarice to help do the important work of constructive criticism, forming conclusions and then creating physical facts.
The desire for wealth is not sufficient, though. If the market found nuclear to be more attractive from a purely financial perspective that’s what we’d end up with as a replacement for fossil fuel generation. Regarding the original point of this thread, I’m highly favorable to government putting its fingers on the balance of assessment based on a clear-eyed long term perspective, indeed thinking about the long term is one of the primary functions of government. The barely-averted failure of the nuclear plant in question and the subsequent eye-popping “solution” should be a powerful lesson for government (us) about where we should be heading in the way of graceful generation systems, systems that are not worryingly analogous to the position helicopters occupy in aviation.
By analogizing nuclear power with helicopters I mean that they are indispensable in a limited number of cases but are inherently more prone to fail ungracefully and are consistently found employing the bleeding edge of materials science applications.
SecularAnimist writes:
I’m glad lots of companies are deploying solar energy, and the fact that they’re going for this rather than nuclear does indeed say something about their relative advantages.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t prove that Griffith’s analysis is rubbish — because it’s not clear all this work on solar is happening anywhere near fast enough to prevent a global crisis.
Griffith, by the way, is not particularly advocating nuclear power. It seems that right now he’s spending a lot of time developing replacements for automobiles and making it easier for people to understand how much energy they’re using. In his talk, he was mainly trying to point out the enormity of the energy problem. If he’s overestimating it, and becoming too pessimistic, I hope somebody lets him know, because I hear it’s really getting him down.
…”because it’s not clear all this work on solar is happening anywhere near fast enough to prevent a global crisis.” Joan Baez, @38
It is quite clear in my view that Solar, wind, etc. are not happening fast enough. It is also clear that renewable employ more people, with sooner energy out put, a lot cheaper / kW, with quicker pay back, and no fuel legacy, then Nuclear power. With so many attributes I cannot understand Why the GOP would be such hounds for Nuclear Power. Money into Nukes is just money into the deep pockets of the already well healed. Surely you see that do you not, “T-Baggers? And you,as taxpayers, are guaranteeing that the rich get their money if anything goes wrong. And paying the insurance. And picking up the overs. What is not to like at the little guy’s expense.
Thanks, Procaryote, for the link to that map. It says that according to 2008 figures, we could ‘power the world’ using just 366,375 square kilometers of land. It doesn’t say what ‘power the world’ means, and it would be nice to know what calculation they did. But we can still compare it to what Griffith is saying.
Griffith says that 30,000 square miles of photovoltaics – or about 78,000 square kilometers – would generate 2 terawatts of power. He estimates a total world power usage of about 18 terawatts. So, according to his figures, we could theoretically generate all that power with about 700,000 square kilometers of photovoltaics.
Hey! These estimates differ by only a factor of two! That’s actually not bad, given how poorly the problem has been specified here!
(What does ‘powering the world’ mean, what efficiency are we assuming for our photovoltaics, how much land are we leaving between the solar panels, how many days of good sunlight we’re assuming, etc…)
On the other hand, the area of Australia is 7,692,024 square kilometers: roughly an order of magnitude larger.
So, when Stewart Brand writes “In other words, the land area dedicated to renewable energy (“Renewistan”) would occupy a space about the size of Australia to keep the carbon dioxide level at 450 ppm”, it’s clear that this much larger figure is not coming from the area required for solar power. It may be coming from the area he allots to wind power. Or it may simply be some mistake on his part.
Anyway, thanks for prodding me into doing this little calculation.
And with these projections we do not account for new advancements in technology.And there are when you have a scenario reaching decades. You could make estimates on latest clean tech and need to factor in the drop in capital needed because you produce big.
When it comes to nuclear it seems just not that feasable (and to costly). It is centralized and often heatwaves (or strong storms) require plant shut-down.
I have trouble believing that we’ll manage to cover an area equal to 1/10th (or 1/20th, or even 1/50th) the area of Australia with solar panels within 25 years or so. But let’s do another quick back-of-the-envelope calculation.
According to this website, 7.3 gigawatts of photovoltaics were installed in 2009, representing a growth of 20% over the previous year. If that growth rate continues, after 25 years we’ll have installed 567 times as much, namely about 4 terawatts.
Hmm, not bad! Better than I thought! The surprising power of compound interest strikes again. But still, it’s not the 18 terawatts needed to ‘power the world’ at today’s level.
So, either we need more solar quicker, and/or more of something else, and/or more conservation and efficiency, and/or more suffering as the world warms.
“What does ‘powering the world’ mean, what efficiency are we assuming for our photovoltaics, how much land are we leaving between the solar panels, how many days of good sunlight we’re assuming, etc…”
See my post in 27#, and PV and concentrated solar are diffrent. Efficiency in PV made big steps lately.
Satcon Technology Corp. has introduced its next-generation solar PV inverter solution, the 500 kV Equinox, which features maximum power point tracking optimization and 98.5% efficiency.
http://www.renewgridmag.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.5370
Solar energy can be stored at high temperatures using molten salts. Salts are an effective storage medium because they are low-cost, have a high specific heat capacity and can deliver heat at temperatures compatible with conventional power systems. The Solar Two used this method of energy storage, allowing it to store 1.44 TJ in its 68 m³ storage tank with an annual storage efficiency of about 99%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy
The current market leader in solar panel efficiency (measured by energy conversion ratio) is SunPower, a San Jose based company. Sunpower’s cells have a conversion ratio of 23.4%, well above the market average of 12-18%. However, advances past this efficiency mark are being pursued in academia and R&D labs with efficiencies of 42% achieved at the University of Delaware in conjunction with DuPont by means of concentration of light[32] The highest efficiencies achieved without concentration include Sharp Corporation at 35.8% using a proprietary triple-junction manufacturing technology in 2009,[33] and Boeing Spectrolab (40.7% also using a triple layer design). A March 2010 experimental demonstration of a design by a Caltech group which has an absorption efficiency of 85% in sunlight and 95% at certain wavelengths (it is claimed to have near perfect quantum efficiency).[34] However, absorption efficiency should not be confused with the sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiency.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics
John (#24),
There are some problems with the numbers but mostly what you have suffers from jibber-jabber. You are worried about getting 2 terawatts in 25 years and go off on a tangent about so much per second. But, between 1980 and 2004 the world added 5.5 terawatts in primary energy consumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption , a 24 year span. So, what exactly are you worried about? Have our thumbs fallen off so that we can’t match that feat? The world produces about 2 automobiles per second. Isn’t that a little more difficult than installing a 10×10 meter^2 patch of panels each second?
John (#42),
The world used about 15.8 TW of primary energy in 2006 and that at a typical efficiency of 30%. To replace that with solar we’d need about 4.75 TW of average generation.
Note that solar PV is headed towards $0.50/Watt while nuclear power is headed towards $20/watt so there is really no competition. By the time a new nuclear plant comes on line it will be too expensive to operate. PV and batteries will be way cheaper.