Comments KenG has made

Computers

If you have a car less than 20 years old it is computer dependent. Surprisingly few are stranded by the side of the road. It is unlikely that any car, gasoline or electric powered, will be built in the future without almost complete computer control.On Ford starts marketing campaign to emphasize fuel economy in new hybrid posted 8 months, 3 weeks ago 9 Responses

Paying the Federal Government

There is some real life experience that may shed some light on why companies might be hesitant to pay the Federal Government to do inspections. The nuclear industry is required by law to reimburse the NRC for the time spent on review, inspection and regulation. In 2007, NRC time was billed at $258 per hour. If you have the option, you will obviously hire your own inspectors.On Who put the food companies in charge of food safety? We did. posted 8 months, 4 weeks ago 6 Responses

What Does It Mean?

The inclusion of the delay in carbon impact is cute, but does it have any real meaning? Only if you think there is a single solution to the CO2 issue. No single technology can substitute for existing carbon emitters. No single technology or combination of technologies can replace coal/gas/oil in the upcoming 5, 10 or 20 years. As a result, penalizing technologies that take longer to implement is a very artificial way to bias the evaluation.

Also, the lifetime assumptions are suspect. Current US nuclear plants are almost all going to operate for 60 years and the next generation are expected to operate for 80 years, rather than the 40 years assumed. Wind lifetime is hard to evaluate. The turbines will probably be limited to 20 years or less but the foundations (a significant part of the CO2 footprint) may be able to be reused and last 100 years.

I haven't had time to fully read the paper, but I think the uncertainty on the evaluation is very large.On They all crush 'clean coal': Stanford study, part 1 posted 11 months, 2 weeks ago 8 Responses

A Narrow Question

It seems to me the question is being framed too narrowly. The reasons for higher gas taxes go way beyond just forcing higher gas mileage. It seems well established that gas taxes are not currently adequate to maintain the highway infrastructure and Obama is now suggesting a significant increase in that expenditure. If we don't fund it with gas taxes, we will be shifting the burden somewhere else, further skewing the economic feedback in the system.

The slightly higher European mileage isn't the whole story. Europeans drive less, even considering the density differences. They acccommodated higher taxes with a limited set of compensating measures (smaller cars, public transport, diesels). We may have more and better options (hybrids, electric cars, super lightweight materials). This could alter the response to higher taxes.

I wouldn't go out on a limb and say higher taxes are great/doable, but I think the situation is complex enough that an increase deserves a serious consideration.On Higher gasoline taxes to boost efficiency would be 'a mistake' posted 11 months, 3 weeks ago 8 Responses

Thorium

Thorium is three times as common as Uranium and about as plentiful as Lead. Not so rare.

What is the measure of safety? If producing a significant portion of the US electricity for 50 years without harming a member of the public isn't proof, what will it take? For some people  the answer seems to be that there can be no proof.On The flawed economics of nuclear power posted 1 year, 1 month ago 106 Responses

How to Spin

With something as uncertain as meeting electric demands 20 or 30 years from now, it's pretty easy to spin the story. You take the worst of the experience and forecasts on one side and the best on the other and... surprise, you've proved your point. That's essentially what this little rant by Mr. Brown is.

Examples: It's criminal the way the Feds have managed Yucca Mtn but it is being funded by the nuclear plants electricity production. Even if it does cost $1B per reactor sometime in the future, that's only 1 or 2% of the lifetime value of the electricity produced.

Decommissioning - Yes the Brits are worrying over costs but in the US, decommissioning again is funded up front by the operating plants. Several US plants have been decommissioned and come in under budget. What reason is there to be concerned?

119 closed reactors? Yes, the small early prototypes have been closed. The large units are having operating life extended. It is expected that over 90% of the 104 US reactors now operating will operate for at least 60 years. A good number are already past 30 years.

Price Anderson - Will you please read the act instead of getting info from Wikipedia? Anything over 10.2 Billion would be covered by the taxpayers only if Congress specifically decides that. Even if Congress decides to pay additional damages, the nuclear industry can be assessed payments for as long as necessary to pay back the funds. That's what P-A says.

Finally, comparing renewables without storage to nuclear only makes sense until renewables get up to 20% or so of generation. After that you need storage. Storage may become feasible, but to date, no one has done it on a large scale, or operated economically.

Contrary to what many may believe, I'm not against renewables and I think conservation is absolutely essential. But if we don't at least start building the next generation of nuclear, we're putting all our eggs in a very leaky basket. On The flawed economics of nuclear power posted 1 year, 1 month ago 106 Responses

Statistics

It's getting really hard to stay up with the numbers. Although the US has been increasing economic performance (GDP) at about twice the rate of Europe, I have repeatedly seen this dismissed as being largely the result of the higher US population growth and I accepted that. Now we find European population is growing faster? That would mean the European economic performance is very disappointing.On Population growth and climate: The E.U.-15 vs. the U.S. posted 1 year, 1 month ago 4 Responses

SL-1

The SL-1 accident is technically very interesting. SL-1 was an experimental small reactor that the Army was investigating to put in remote locations. Because of this it had a small highly enriched core and a unique design that would allow it to go prompt critical when one rod was removed in a cold condition.

This characteristic was always prohibited in commercial nuclear design and the SL-1 accident (caused by a single human error) proved the wisdom of this approach.

I believe this was the only fatal US reactor accident but there have been other fatalities associated with nuclear research. One fatal accident (47 years ago) in over 50 years of reactor operation is a pretty impressive performance. On Fermi who? posted 1 year, 1 month ago 7 Responses

Math results are based on inputs

Predicting the economics of any technology in 10 or 15 years is really difficult. That brings me back to my broken record position of level the playing field and see what happens. I watch this stuff since I'm in the energy industry and it seems to me that sequestration has been coming down in price faster over the last few years than solar. Let's hope they both come down in price.On Solar industry aims for grid parity in eight years posted 1 year, 1 month ago 10 Responses

Nuclear vs Oil

"Building nuclear plants doesn't replace oil" only if you believe that in 10 years we will have no signficant switch to electric powered transportation. I can't understand why "progressives" can't look that far into the future when it doesn't fit their mindset.On Safety is for extremists posted 1 year, 1 month ago 10 Responses

Corrections are Called For

There are a few very misleading aspects of this post. Currently the US imports a lot of uranium, much from Russia. However, this is not a result of Russia having a monopoly on Uranium. It is a results of the nuclear weapon reduction program. Russia used enriched Uranium in many of their weapons and are downblending it to use up in reactors, providing a bargain source of fuel. This source will be gone in a few years. Uranium is plentiful. The US, Canada, Australia, Khazakstan, several African countries, etc all have major Uranium resources. Security associated with Uranium is just a non-issue.

Second, Daniel Weiss is misquoted in the above post. He says certain "key components" are built overseas, not "most of the components". In fact, the US is the number one supplier of nuclear technology. The post also seems to be trying to indicate that these supply limitations are a security issue. In fact the one limiting component (large forgings for reactor vessels) are currently built in Japan but plans are in place to also build them in the UK, France and South Korea, all countries very friendly to the US. There are US facilities that could be upgraded in a reasonable time to also build these components if the demand exists.On McCain/Palin nuclear plan would make U.S. more dependent on Russia for energy posted 1 year, 1 month ago 5 Responses

Biomass Plant Size

Does anyone know the size of the proposed biomass plants? If they are 100 MW plants, this is kind of a big deal from the infrastructure and local impact viewpoint. If they are 10 MW plants, not so much.

Biomass is only viable if it doesn't cost much. If it's already waste product from another industry, great. You can't afford to log forests for biomass feedstock. If you're really using trees, you need thousands of acres of tree farms that you can mechanically harvest with no complications or manual labor. Think of running a combine through a Christmas tree farm.

The information I could find on line indicated Duke/AREVA were just focused on wood waste products but I couldn't find anything on the projected size of the plants.On Duke Energy announces investment in wood biomass on first day of the Clinton Global Initiative posted 1 year, 2 months ago 18 Responses

Per what?

Is the cost actually 2 or 3 cents per MILE? That sounds about right. (As oppposed to equivalent to gas at 2 or 3 cents per gallon.)On Tesla's motoring toward sustainability one sports car at a time posted 1 year, 2 months ago 4 Responses

Counter Views

How about considering that the "financial crises" was not caused by lack of regulation but a combination of over-regulation (perhaps meddling) and incompetant regulation. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have to seen as drivers (but not the sole drivers) in this mess. These are quasi governmental corporations that were, theoretically, under the complete control of congress. Under the guise of encouraging home ownership, congress allowed these entities to become politically controlled houses of cards. This is not a party issue - Dems and Reps both had extensive involvement in this.

Also, this bail out seems to be viewed as real money. It's not. True to form, the bail out money won't come from  other sources, it will just increase the deficit. I can't imagine that whatever action is being taken will actually impact taxes or other spending. The most likely effect will be a small long term increase in inflation. Also, the Federal government will be buying "stuff" (bankrupt companies and questionable loans). There will be some equity value and no one can predict the ultimate "cost" of the bail out.

Ordinarily I would be opposed to Federal involvement here, but in this case I think the Feds were involved in breaking the system and need to be involved in fixing it.On Ramblings on the financial crisis posted 1 year, 2 months ago 14 Responses

Energy Efficiency

I haven't seen a detailed analysis of the Tesla energy usage but one of the most attractive features of electric cars compared to internal combustion engines is the lower loss of efficiency at part load. Electric drive technology has the potential to maintain high efficiency over a much wider range of output.

A high performance electric car will have a higher initial cost than an economy version due to more expensive components but the operating cost will not necessarily be higher.On Tesla profile in New Scientist posted 1 year, 2 months ago 4 Responses

Net Metering?

What Duggles describes isn't net metering exactly. It's more like being a qualified wholesaler. I think this supports the overall conclusion that when self generated power is valued at it's true value to the customer (in this case the utility) it's hardly worth the effort for a home generator.On Renewable energy promotion policies: non-transparent or hidden posted 1 year, 2 months ago 12 Responses

Net Metering

Michael has it pretty much correct. What Russ and Duggles are missing is the differences between wholesale and retail electricity and the intrinsic value of dispatchable power. The electric "rate" is generally over twice the actual value of the power generated. The difference is the cost of the transmission and distribution systems and the administrative costs of the system. If you self generate power and have net metered excess, you are providing none of that infrastructure and yet you are getting paid for it. In the case where you generate enough power to completely offset what you use from the grid, you will pay nothing. However, the utility still has the investment and cost of supplying power to you, metering the usage, etc. Even worse, the utility has to take the excess power you generate, even though it is likely supplied at a low demand period when they really don't need and it and potentially have to operate their units uneconomically.

Net metering is a real cute selling point when only 0.5% of the users are generators. The system will fall apart if self generation becomes significant.On Renewable energy promotion policies: non-transparent or hidden posted 1 year, 2 months ago 12 Responses

Standardized Design

There are several standardized designs. The whole concept is based on multiple standardized designs from competing companies. The Westinghouse AP1000 is already being built with four units in China and multiple projects moving forward in the US. The French EPR is being built on two sites in Europe and is proposed for several locations in the US.

Modularization? The Japanese have already built modularized units and a new facility is being built in Louisiana to build AP1000 modules.On McCain's nuclear plan would cost $315 billion, with taxpayers risking over $100 billion posted 1 year, 2 months ago 21 Responses

Really?

"New solar concentrators actually cost less than new coal boilers, so solar steam is cheaper (adjusted for capacity factors) even if coal were delivered free."

If this is really true (adjusted for capacity factor) why is there a need for subsidies and incentives for solar power? Why is CSP projected at almost $.20/kw busbar cost on all the proposed CSP plants (without storage) that I am aware of?

Logic fails me here.On So how much do renewables cost anyway? posted 1 year, 2 months ago 30 Responses

Blinders

The bottom line is that Lieberman had a long record as a moderate Democrat with a hawkish view on the middle east. He also had a long record as a middle of the roader in the Senate. The core Democratic faithful rejected that and he won decisively as an Independent. I certainly can't see any inconsistency in position there. He represents the entire state, not just the Democrats.

Contrast that with Jim Jeffords, hailed as a hero by the Democrats. He ran as a Republican and changed parties only after he was safety elected to his last term.On Former Democrat Joe Lieberman addresses RNC posted 1 year, 2 months ago 9 Responses

Nuclear

Nu-kyu-lar is now a recognized but not preferred alternative pronunciation by most dictionaries. I'm not happy about it either, but the day is past when you can smugly point it out as an error.On The eco-rundown on Alaska guv Sarah Palin, John McCain's veep pick posted 1 year, 3 months ago 120 Responses

Interesting Summary

In general this is an informative summary. I could nitpick on a lot of issues like how much is "large amounts" of waste, whether plutonium actually has to be separated in reprocessing, etc. However, there is one very misleading fact. Chernobyl cannot be considered a "pressurized light water reactor" in the context of this discussion. Chernobyl is a pressure tube graphite moderated reactor which has completely different behavior and response to transients than a conventional pressurized light water reactor.On A choice of primary energies: nuclear power takes the silver posted 1 year, 3 months ago 23 Responses

Apples and Oranges

Bob Wallace's cost comparisons are not on the same basis. While you can find a report that says nuclear generation could cost as much as $0.14 and another that says gas could be as cheap as $0.10 and wind as cheap as $0.07, they are not the same reports and do not have the same basis. The industry reports I have seen that compare alternatives say that nuclear is cheaper in all scenarios except the ones that assume gas will become cheaper over the long term.On Why do more men than women support nuclear power? posted 1 year, 3 months ago 31 Responses

Electricity is Cheap

It's very hard to produce an incentive to conserve without a lot of artificial manipulation of the system because the actual cost of generating electricity is very low. In a completely rational system (ignoring political and environmental reasons to minimize generation) an electric bill could be divided into three components (neglecting taxes) - the cost of infrastructure to distribute power, the administrative cost to maintain customer accounts, and the cost to generate the power used. The first two would be constant and independent of amount of power used. The cost of the actual electricity would then be less than half of what we now see as a retail price.

I think it's important to remember this when we talk about the relative value of individually owned renewables, negawatts, etc. These hidden infrastructure costs have to still be paid (unless we get completely off the grid) even as consumption decreases. The same principle will apply to higher mpg cars and electric cars - someone still has to pay for the road maintenance.On New England ISO's forward capacity market posted 1 year, 3 months ago 22 Responses

Accuracy

Opinions are pretty set in concrete on this one, but you should at least try to be accurate. Rather than going to Wikipedia, you could just go to the Act. Then you find that it is an indemnity meaning there is no taxpayer liability for losses beyond the insurance amount. In the incredible event the liability limit is exceeded, Congress can decide to make additional compensation if they wish. If they do provide for compensation, they can assess the nuclear industry in the future to recover part or all of the compensation. The Act does not pass any liability to the taxpayers, that is all up to Congress.

Also, in the discussion, it might be worth mentioning that Price-Anderson has been in effect for over 50 years and there has yet to be a single dollar loss because of the indemnity.On How much of a subsidy is the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industry Indemnity Act? posted 1 year, 3 months ago 11 Responses

PHEVs

As usual, it seems to me that Obama's plans are strictly political strategy. "Increase fuel ecomony standards 4 percent per each year while protecting the financial future of domestic automakers"? I'd love to see the implementation details on that one.

However, 1 million plug-ins by 2015 seems like a reasonable goal. Toyota, GM, Ford and others already plan to have PHEVs on the market in 2010. That's only 200,000 per year and Toyota already sells more Prius (Prii?) each year. Development may crash on the PHEVs but right now that looks like a reasonable goal.

Grid capability? No problem at this point with the night baseload capability. Now, if Obama takes the advice of some to shut down base load capacity in favor of solar/wind resources, that would be a whole new ball game. On Efficiency now, 10 percent renewables by 2012, and one million plug-in hybrids by 2015 posted 1 year, 3 months ago 9 Responses

Efficiency

I'm with Sean that the ideal is to eliminate all subsidies/preferences (at least for deployed technologies) but Pickens plan still confuses me. Maybe I'm missing something but won't a large wind installation (with inherent low capacity factor) in Texas reduce the incentive for other capital intensive generation (gas combined cycle, coal, nuclear) and increase the incentive for less efficient simple cycle gas generation (to respond to the intermittant demands)? This would take some fancy economic modeling but I'm not sure wind power reduces natural gas use in Texas.On Marketplace commentary gives a misleading picture of government's role in energy use posted 1 year, 4 months ago 12 Responses

Complainers

You complain when he lies, you complain when he tells the truth. Is there no way to make you happy?On We're number one! posted 1 year, 4 months ago 8 Responses

Does the Subsidy Help?

As someone who rides trains, I think the Federal support guarantees that rail transport will never be cost effective or efficient. The trains I ride are 50% subsidized, overstaffed, and outdated. The whole experience is great for nostalgia buffs - it's run the same way I imagine it was run in 1935. As long as the subsidy money comes in the politicians are happy, the unions are happy and US rail will never be more than a urban commuter service.On McCain just not that into Amtrak posted 1 year, 5 months ago 39 Responses

Trading Impact

It would seem to me that trading (regulated or unregulated) can only make a temporary fluctuation in price. The contracts must always be closed with delivery.

On the other hand, permanent price increases can be the result only of true commodity shortage or monopoly/cartel/government action to restrict supply or set prices. Traders do not have the necessary supply control to have a long term impact on prices.

If the current bubble is really due to trading manipulation, hang on to your SUV. Prices will be back down within 6 months. (I'm not betting on that.)On McCain names his energy plan and bashes Barack Obama while he's at it posted 1 year, 5 months ago 10 Responses

Strategy

It's always a surprise when I find myself in (partial) agreement with DrX. I think he's got it nailed. Obama is staying on the fence to retain support on the "green" side and appeal to the 60% or so of voters who think we need more nuclear power.

What will happen if he's elected? Who can guess? Will he line up with Harry Reid and Greenpeace or will he pay back the state of Illinois and Exelon who have supported him for so many years? Roll the dice.On RNC claims Obama contradicts himself on nuclear power posted 1 year, 5 months ago 8 Responses

Worried?

This looks somewhat worrisome for the Obama campaign. With McCain linked to a very unpopular administration and Obama riding a year long love affair with the media - a difference of only 6%? I would have guessed it would be closer to 16%.On Public trusts Obama more than McCain on gas prices, global warming, energy posted 1 year, 5 months ago 4 Responses

Public Utiities

With the Rancho Seco conversion to solar, the utility reduced the electrical production to one half of one percent of what it was - reduced electrical generation by a factor of 200. Somehow that doesn't give me a warm feeling about all utilities being publicly owned.On Climate-bill sponsors talk about nukes and wooing McCain posted 1 year, 6 months ago 3 Responses

Just the Facts

I don't really ever expect hard core environmentalists to accept nuclear power. By it's very nature it requires centralization, major corporate involvement, etc. I also don't expect hard core environmentalists to be very important in the decision process if the anti-carbon movement succeeds. There just won't be any practical alternatives. Maybe I'm wrong and there's a wind/solar success path around the corner but I don't see it.

However, I wish we wouldn't keep seeing the same silly untruths. 10 years for energy break-even? It's about 1 year and established by many diverse well documented studies. I'm very skeptical that wind can achieve a 6 month breakeven given the huge amount of concrete per unit of electrical generation.

Also, Caldicotts "factoid" about the coal power required for Uranium enrichment is about 40 years out of date. Most Uranium is now enriched by the centrifuge method instead of diffusion. In a few years all will be from centrifuge plants unless the even more efficient laser enrichment process takes over. The energy required is at least 20 times less than Calcicott assumes in her assessments.On The latest sorties in the war over nuclear power posted 1 year, 6 months ago 43 Responses

Reelin'

As a long time manual mower user, I sympathize. A reel mower works great with two conditions:

You have is regularly sharpened (by a professional unless you are trained).
You have a healthy, thick, mostly grass yard.

I had great success with a yard that had rich topsoil and that I carefully fertilized and hand weeded on a regular basis. The reel mower worked like a charm.

I now have only a little lawn by the road, having gone natural on most of the property. That patch of lawn is "pasture like" and mowing it is a two step process - one pass with the reel mower to take care of the grass and one pass with a weedwhacker to take care of the rest.

Either commit yourself to intensive lawn buildup (which may or may not be possible depending on your location) or put out the cash for an electric mower. The price is coming down on the electric machines.On My yard, a source of shame posted 1 year, 6 months ago 18 Responses

Is the Comparison Vaild

I think the comparisons may be a little biased.

Why compare store brand organic raison bran with name brand sugar cereal? Organic or not, Meijer store brands are pretty horrible.

Day in and day out, brown eggs are more expensive than white and are nutritionally identical. Why not disallow them?

As for the carrots, the only time I've seen organics cheaper than regular is when they are out of date and about to be thrown out.

As for the tomato juice, if V8 sold organic it would be much more expensive. You can't legitimately compare brands without looking at the range.

I don't see a convincing case that the WIC rules are inappropriate. On Evidently, women, infants, and children in need don't deserve organic posted 1 year, 6 months ago 8 Responses

Subsidy or Tax

The patchwork will continue as long as we pretend that renewables only need a jumpstart to be competitive with other sources of energy. A carbon tax would change the process and effectively be a permanent subsidy for low carbon energy.On House passes massive tax extensions for renewable energy posted 1 year, 6 months ago 12 Responses

Battery Size

"It is physically impossible to increase gas mileage of a Prius (for any given tank of gas) by maximizing the time it runs on battery power alone (unless it is a plug-in drawing energy from the grid), because all energy came from burning the gas."

This is not correct for the current generation of hybrids. The limits of battery charge/discharge and size of battery result in cases where energy cannot be recovered and cases where battery energy cannot be used in the most effective way. The current hybrids have batteries sized to compromise between initial cost and gas savings. However, a bigger battery would allow greater gas savings.On Prius sales top one million posted 1 year, 6 months ago 14 Responses

The Rignt Argument?

Charles and David:

Are we arguing about the right thing here?

Is it really very important how much subsidy one assigns to nuclear from 30 or 40 years ago?

Isn't the real distinction here over production credits vs. R&D? Nuclear go massive R&D subsidies many years ago and it resulted in nuclear today producing the vast majority of our carbon free electricity. (A "push" subsidy, if you will.) current nuclear subsidies continue the theme in that they are (at least now) limited to early deployment.

Some renewables (particularly wind) have been supported by production credits. (Call that a "pull" subsidy.) Is this working or is it just creating a dependent industry?

If this difference reflects the nature of high tech (nuclear) and low tech (wind/solar thermal) where do we expect these policies to take us? I'm not impressed with the WSJ editorial and I'm not opposed to the renewable subsidies. I just can't get to a conclusion that says we don't need a lot of new nuclear from the history I see.On Subsidies for wind power pale beside subsidies for nuclear posted 1 year, 6 months ago 23 Responses

Biomass

Jonas,

I think the answer you are looking for is in Table ES5 in the recent EIA report:

http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/FTPROOT/service/srcneaf(2008)01.pdf

It indicates that biomass, hydro, geothermal, landfill gas, and others are centered around $1.00 per megawatt-hour or less while the "sexy" renewables (solar and wind) are about 25 times that.

If your interest is in actual total magnitude instead of per unit production, the 2007 generation values are also in the table so you can calculate that.On Subsidies for wind power pale beside subsidies for nuclear posted 1 year, 6 months ago 23 Responses

Load Management

Ron,

Various types of residential load management have been in use in the US for many years, they just haven't spread. The relatively low cost of electricity in the US has limited the incentive. The rising costs, reduced reserve margins and significant recent reductions in the cost of the load management hardware suggest we'll see a lot more of it.

For a while it was quite common for customers with electric heat to get a much lower rate for heating power in exchange for agreeing to be interruptible. I think this went away in some cases because utility regulators banned any discounts that would encourage electric heat as a way to avoid building new power plants.On We can't wait for new nukes, so what do we do now? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 15 Responses

Huh?

I'll avoid the usual arguments here but does anyone have insight into what this waste actually is? Italy doesn't have any nuclear power plants. They closed them all about 20 years ago and, to the best of my knowledge, all the nuclear material is already gone.

Is this actually medical, industrial and research waste? Would that make a difference to those who are opposed to this miniscule importation of low level material?On Should we take Italian nuclear waste? posted 1 year, 6 months ago 6 Responses

Go Build It

I have no bone to pick with renewables. I've worked a bit in that area. However, I've been working in energy systems for 35 years and solar/wind was "just around the corner" when I was an undergraduate.

As soon as it all works I'm confident the renewables will be built. I guess I'm just not smart enough to see how it can be done.On Industry bottlenecks will delay any reactors for years, maybe longer posted 1 year, 6 months ago 11 Responses

Where is the long view?

I find it interesting that so many regular participants here are glad to jump on renewable technology that has no practical path to commercial deployment, but think a few years is fatal to nuclear development.

Yes JSW has a limited capability right now. But they've already started a program to double capacity. Forgemasters in England is starting to restore their large forging capability. Doosan in Korea is capable of quickly increasing their size capacity. There are facilities in France that could be expanded within a few years. In the US there are mothballed facilities that formerly produced the large forgings. This whole capacity issue is bogus. You could make the same statements about windmill capacity, mirror capacity, etc.

Also, what kind of an engineer is Frank Greening? He must have never seen a boiler for a coal or natural gas fired power plant. Unless he was misquoted, he should be embarrassed.On Industry bottlenecks will delay any reactors for years, maybe longer posted 1 year, 6 months ago 11 Responses

Handling

"So you're saying you can get better mileage, but you might lose control and/or just fly off the road?"

Yes, there is a problem with being a fanatic. If you visit the hybrid car forums, you will find there are people out there running 60 psi in their tires, driving 10 mph under the speed limit in heavy traffic or drafting semis. It's not worth it to save a couple of gallons of gas.On Easing off the gas eases gas use posted 1 year, 7 months ago 29 Responses

55 mph value

It's not entirely clear what a reduced speed limit would save. Gas? Less than 25% of our mileage is on interstate highways. Many of the heavily traveled sections of interstates are already 55 mph. Slowing on the highway does reduce consumption, but this is already at a fairly efficient level compared to city driving. After the 55 mph experiment in the 70's/80's I believe the DOT concluded the savings was on the order of 2%.

As far as saving lives, that is debatable. Common sense would indicate that but the data is less clear. Yes, fatalities did decrease, but much of that was the result of lower number of miles driven. Also, when the speed limit was changed in 1973 there were many cars on the road with little or no safety equipment and that rapidly changed over the next few years. The University of California did a well known study that indicated that fatalities decreased as much when the speed limit was increased in the mid 90's as they did when the limit was decreased. With improvements in roads, cars (and enforcement) fatalities seem to decrease independent of speed limits.On Easing off the gas eases gas use posted 1 year, 7 months ago 29 Responses

Distributed Grid

The distributed grid concept works only under the assumption that you have a tremendous spinning reserve capability. When we had a less connected grid, utilities typically aimed for 25 or 30% overcapacity. Today 10 to 15% is adequate because of the greater connectivity. Adding in intermittent renewables (absent an efficient storage technology that does not currently exist) increases reserve requirements. Right now the only technology that can economically provide low capacity spinning reserves is natural gas fired simple cycle plants.

To beat my dead horse, until a viable storage technology exists renewables are not economic or practical. If we want to talk about increased R&D investment, it should be in the enabling technologies (storage and load management) instead of the generation technologies.On Concentrated solar power is already doing great; no breakthroughs needed posted 1 year, 7 months ago 49 Responses

Impossible?

While I understand the principle, I'm not sure how you would actually differentiate additionality. I just look at my own situation.

I bought a hybrid car even though (becuase of AMT) I got no tax advantage. I did it because I needed a new car and I thought the technology was cool. It's additional but it's not because of the incentive.

I'm delaying installing a geothermal heating system. Partly because I won't qualify for the incentives, partly because I think installation costs are coming down with experience, and partly because I don't think my gas furnace is worn out quite yet. When I have to replace the furnace, I'm 100% sure I'm going geothermal. Will that be additional, even if I get the incentives?On The deceptively simple concept at the heart of carbon markets posted 1 year, 8 months ago 22 Responses

Pork Producers

Raising pork is about the easiest farming to get into and out of (short of chickens) since the cycle to market is small, the land required is minimal and almost any existing structures can be adopted for hogs. I know people who pop in and out of this as the market swings. Having raised hogs, this is something I actually know about.  :-)On The burrito giant buys pork from celebrity farmer Joel Salatin posted 1 year, 8 months ago 12 Responses

Huh?

I don't understand Pangolin. If Chipotle corners the supply from one producer, others will appear to take up the slack and get in on the market. That's how free enterprise works. Start up of a pork operation isn't subject to many barriers.

Chains only thrive when they offer improvements in value (and reliability) over locals. In my area we don't have chain restaurants with Mexican food because the locals are good. My guess is that chain restaurants don't have the same type of advantage that "big box" retailers have over locals if local restaurants are well run. They have done well only because so many local restaurants are not run well.On The burrito giant buys pork from celebrity farmer Joel Salatin posted 1 year, 8 months ago 12 Responses

HIgh Pressure Piping

Elbarto

A conventional power plant has a very limited amount of high pressure piping from the feedwater pumps to the boiler tubes to the high pressure turbine. In a 1000 MW coal plant there are a large number of small diameter boiler tubes but these have almost constant structural support and are isolated from people. The other high pressure piping is measured in hundreds of feet, not kilometers.

Miles and miles of high pressure piping out in the open in a solar facility is a major problem.On Cost of solar cells may be driven down dramatically posted 1 year, 8 months ago 36 Responses

Orders of Magnitude

Sunflower

There are a couple of problems with your estimates.

First, 700 degree F water has a saturation pressure of 3090 psia. Therefore your 6 inch pipe has a required design pressure of 3500 psi or greater. That is not garden variety piping. I think the wall thickness is 1 inch or greater and the material is exotic. There will be several tons of steel in each well. Also, it would fall under ASME boiler code and require code safety valves. Add in drilling and I would wager your wells are closer to $100,000 each than $1000. $1000 won't even pay for the steel ingots from the foundry.

Your calculation of energy available also doesn't work. 700 degree water has an enthalpy of 823 BTU/lb. If you release steam (initially at very high pressure) the steam flashes by transferring energy from the water as it depressurizes. Eventually you end up with a tank that's still full but full of water at atmospheric pressure and 212 F plus enough steam at 212 F to fill the rest of the tank. So a lot of the water is still in the tank. Yes, you released steam but initially it was released at 3000 psi but the pressure quickly dropped and the steam you released at 1000 psi or 500 psi was significantly less efficient in driving the turbine. You only get 500 F steam until the pressure drops to 680 psia which will happen very quickly in this system.

There is s tendency for people to look at these things as big hot water heaters. This would be a very sophisticated energy transfer system.
On Cost of solar cells may be driven down dramatically posted 1 year, 8 months ago 36 Responses

Steam Storage

Sunflower,

I would love to see some explanation of how you can get 16 hours of steam storage. I assume you are talking about the AUSRA concept. It still confounds me how this could ever work. The system supposedly stores high temperature, high pressure water and flashes it to steam when needed. The problem, of course, is that energy content of water is much lower than steam and, at feasible temperatures and pressure, only about 1/3 of the water can be flashed. Also, that's at the maximum pressure. As water is flashed, the pressure drops (unless you continue to pump in water, which would cool the stored water) and the yield drops. When you look at the steam throughput in any reasonably large turbine, you quickly find that you need to provide storage for millions of pounds of high pressure, high temperature water. That would be ASME pressure vessel storage. The cost of this scheme would be incredible, which is why the only operating storage systems have used molten salt.

Let's hope for the best, but the storage issue is far from solved.

Also, using hydro to level renewables is a good idea, as far as it goes. However, hydro is, if I remember correctly, only about 8% of total generation so I would guess dedicating hydro to leveling would only allow wind/solar to contribute two or three times that, so renewables would still only be about 30% of total generation.On Cost of solar cells may be driven down dramatically posted 1 year, 8 months ago 36 Responses

I Volunteer

I'll bite since you're looking for someone to kick around. Of course solar is intermittent. That's why there are two enabling technologies to address - photo cell cost and storage cost/practicality.

I've long thought that Concentrating Solar has very little chance of a technical breakthrough to allow the cost to be competitive. Photovoltaic has the potential for the order of magnitude type of breakthrough. But the storage technology also has to exist at a reasonable cost or else we still need a large installation of baseload generation that would either be fossil fuel or nuclear (which I favor but I know most people here don't) and would make solar redundant.On Cost of solar cells may be driven down dramatically posted 1 year, 8 months ago 36 Responses

Whats a subsidy?

Without getting into an endless argument with GreyFlcn (which is very easy to do), one should consider the definition of subsidy.

The easy one is direct support for price of a commodity (the agriculture model). This really doesn't exist in the energy field.

The next level is the production tax credit. This let's income escape taxation to some level. At the whim of congress, renewables get this while a limited number of new nuclear plants would get it for a limited amount of time.

Then there is research and development. Everyone has thier own ox to gore here, but a lot of this involves the Feds trying to pick winners and losers and it's all over the place from pure research to direct support of prototype projects.

Finally, there are implied subsidies. This is includes indemnities, loan guarantees, and the new guy on the block, licensing insurance. These are really forms of underwriting and often result in an actual income at the Federal level, not a cost, since there is an underwriting fee.

I think you need to be consistent. If you don't want production credits, you have to take it away from all technologies. If you don't want load guarantees, you have to take them away from everyone. This is why I continue to favor the carbon tax approach with no subsidies (except real R&D). I trust the market more to pick the winners than the Feds.On Deep thought of the day posted 1 year, 8 months ago 5 Responses

A Contrary View

Is this really a "crisis"?

Maybe this is really just a badly managed correction. It seems to me that 95% of the people I know have thought the housing market was irrational for years. (This isn't hindsight, people have really been talking about it for years.) However, a small number of people, aided by nonsense lending practices were able to keep the bubble going.

How about the rest of the economy? Business profits are good, the commercial/industrial construction markets are healthy, unemployment is low and (absent abandonment of free trade) the falling dollar should  fuel a surge in US business.

The only way this can be a crisis is if we let the media and politicians convince us things are worse than they are.On A few thoughts for environmentalists posted 1 year, 8 months ago 95 Responses

Payback

Storing steam does not "pencil out" unless you can store it reliably at high pressures (say 1000 psi). Otherwise the old second law of thermo zaps you again. I've heard claims of steam storage before but I've never seen a design that looks practical and I've never seen an operating system. I remain a skeptic.

I would hold on to my wallet looking at Solel's claims also. To the best of my knowledge no CSP has ever been viable without large subsidies and the biggest one (the Luz plants in California) went bankrupt and wrote off the entire capital cost even with subsidies.

Don't get me wrong - I'm in favor of developing and building these things but at some point they have to make sense. I'm concerned that solar may be the electrical generation version of ethanol.On Projected CO2 emissions dwarf previous expectations posted 1 year, 8 months ago 15 Responses

Numbers

Whenever I see one of these "create jobs" stories, I assume it's based on numbers games. You always need to go back to basic economic theory. Defense spending is an inefficient job engine because, although it advances technology, it creates a product that, in the best of scenarios, never gets used. Government spending, in general is inefficient becuase it lacks a good mechanism for targeting resource expenditure to results. Paying housewives, new tax "rebates", welfare, etc are zeroes. Though they may improve society they just transfer resources from one person to another in return for no economic activity.

I'm always reminded of the old joke about an engineer hired to go to China and advise them on building a dam. He saw them filling wheelbarrows to move dirt. He suggested they get backhoes and trucks. The Chinese said that would be impossible, too many people would lose their jobs. His response? "I'm sorry, I thought you wanted to build a dam. If you want to create jobs I suggest you give each worker a teaspoon."

Policy needs to aim at meeting long term goals in the most efficient way possible, not creating jobs or any other intermediate goals.On If we want to create jobs, why aren't we spending on mass transit? posted 1 year, 8 months ago 10 Responses

Who Doesn't Get It

The nuclear "analysis" needs a serious reality check. To start with it suggests that nuclear needs to support all future growth and replace all coal. If anyone is seriously proposing this, I've missed it. No single energy source (or conservation) can do this. It claims that use of lower grade Uranium will negate any advantages of nuclear but this is based on flawed thirty year old data. I suggests that some advantage may be gained by switching to more efficient centrifuge enrichment but almost all enrichment will be by centrifuge within two or three years. On Building faster to get the power to build faster posted 1 year, 9 months ago 10 Responses

Distributed Grid

Since the existing grid only has (or needs) about 15% margin on peak demand, your scenario doesn't have 10 50 MW generators, it has 18 or 19 to meet the peak demand and tolerate outages. These simple cycle gas units are pumping out huge amounts of CO2 because you can't invest in combined cycle to increase efficiency at this unit size. Reliability of small distributed units in baseload applications is unknown since they can't afford full time maintenance technicians and sophisticated reliability programs.

I'm not at all sure this is a solution.On South Fla. power outage posted 1 year, 9 months ago 9 Responses

Cynical?

My take is that when we find out that we can't easily meet the CAFE and RES, Congress will cancel those. It's easy to set goals if there is no real accountability for not meeting them. Witness Kyoto.On Bartlett opposes energy bill over RFS posted 1 year, 11 months ago 12 Responses

Renewable Methane?

Jim, I've got to ask what you have in mind. I get this vision of millions of cows hooked up to piping systems.

More seriously, SCE's energy mix is only "cleaner" because of California's huge reliance on natural gas. Moving the national grid in this direction would entail huge importation of LNG from the middle east. Unless we see a huge increase in deep well geothermal, the SCE renewables are of little use in supporting a PHEV network.On The debate on plug-ins begins posted 2 years ago 12 Responses

Carbon Sources

I don't have my data at hand but I believe that transportation and electrical generation generate similar amounts of CO2. The long term point of interest is that, once you apply conservation, further transportation CO2 reductions will likely depend on increased electricity production (EVs or hydrogen). That puts a lot of focus on electrical generation technology.On Three new sites track individual power plants and your connection to them posted 2 years ago 3 Responses

Solar Maintenance

I guess he was talking about photovoltaic but at over 4000/kw and low capacity factor, it isn't even in the game. Currently, the O&M costs at SEGS are 100% of the electricity cost. After the bankruptcy, the capital costs were fully written off. SEGS now makes a small profit based on tax credits balancing the O&M costs.

Things don't seem to have improved much for solar thermal. Here is proposed project in New Mexico that projects about 50% O&M costs.

http://www.sriglobal.org/suncone_04.htmlOn The cost of the FutureGen 'clean coal' plant doubles posted 2 years ago 16 Responses

Cute, but.

It's a real interesting little car, but why would I be interested in a 2 seat minicar that only gets 40 mpg highway when I can get a 4 or 5 seater that gets almost the same mileage for about the same price?On Eensy-weensy Smart car getting a big embrace from U.S. drivers posted 2 years ago 9 Responses

The Daleys

Of course, the 1914 remark was recognized as satire. However those of us who are familiar with Chicago recognize that we've actually had a couple of non-Daley mayors in the last 50 years and they were even worse than Richard and Richie. Very depressing.On Clinton, Daley to green Sears Tower, other Chicago landmarks posted 2 years ago 4 Responses

Reform

You don't have to dig to deep to see the process here. A compromise between a $14 billion bill and a $15 billion bill turns out to be $23 billion. Pork barrel business as usual.On Why Bush's water-bill veto was actually a good idea posted 2 years ago 11 Responses

Age

Aging may be related (via evolution) to the reproductive process. Large mammals that have fairly quick maturing (dogs, horses, cows) have moderate lifespans. Large mammals with slower maturing (elephants) have longer life spans. reptiles (chancy reproduction by eggs with limited nurturing of young) seem to have longer life spans. On Iraqi catches shark, blames America posted 2 years ago 7 Responses

Missing the Point

Sean -
What you are saying is technically correct until you get to the part about not "giving up" the heat of vaporazation by exhausting at a higher temperature. No matter what temperature/pressure you exhaust from the turbine, you will recover the entire energy when you condense. You just do it at a different temperature. At 1.5 psia (13.2 psi vacuum) the enthalpy of evaporation is 1028 btu/lbm, at 14.7 it is 970 btu/lbm, at 100 psi it is 889 and so on.

The problem is what you lose in cycle efficiency and what you can do with low temperature heat. I did a quick comparison (using ideal Carnot cycles, I was too lazy to run out a full Rankine spreadsheet). Using typical nuclear parameters (550 deg F supply saturated steam, condensing at 1.5 psia) the theoretical maximum efficiency is 43%. Raise the condensing pressure to atmospheric and that drops to 33.5%. Raise it up to 50 psi (281 deg F) and it drops to 26.5%.

For that significant drop in efficiency what do you get? A bunch of hot water. While that may be attractive for a limited amount of district heating, you can do most heating services with the 115 deg steam and a small amount of add on reheat.

Like most students, I thought I had discovered something wonderful in my first thermo class when I realized how much energy was available in condensing steam. 40 years later, I realize how little need the world has for low pressure steam.
On Why can't legislators connect nuclear power and water shortages? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 11 Responses

Cost Impact

Not only is the efficiency hit only a few percent on the wholesale (busbar) cost of electricity, it only occurs during a limited part of the year when the temperature. So it's really a 3 to 5% hit on 3 to 4 cents per kw that applies probably about 10% of the year. On Why can't legislators connect nuclear power and water shortages? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 11 Responses

Don't Get It?

The thing you apparently don't get, although comments keep explaining it, is that all steam cycle generation plants (nuclear, fossil or solar) currently utilize water for cooling. However, they don't "use" it as much as they warm it up a few degrees. Ultimately the heat is rejected to the atmosphere. At the expense of a few percent efficiency, the heat can be directly rejected to the atmosphere.

New nuclear plants, if located on the ocean, can actually solve some of the water shortage issues by incorporating desalinization into the design.

Time to give this one a rest. There is just no issue here.On Why can't legislators connect nuclear power and water shortages? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 11 Responses

Multiple Vehicles

The logical approach is to have the truck/SUV for hauling and an econobox for other driving. I'd like to do that. I need the truck for heavy hauling a few times a month but my wife seldom lets me drive the hybrid. So the truck gets 6000 to 8000 miles a year. A third car won't work because the license and insurance costs so much.

Justiou - I don't think you understand us truck guys. Hauling a ton in a Ranger is not a problem. I regularly haul over a ton in my 6 cyl Dakota. Infamous episodes in my past include 1800 lbs of gravel in a Datsun with a curb weight of 2200 lbs and 3700 lbs of scrap iron in a stock F-100. When you need a truck, you really need a truck.On Tell BioD what car to buy posted 2 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

Other Ideas

Well, as an Escape hybrid owner, I can only say don't knock it until you've driven one. But since you probably don't want to spend that much, some other ideas.

If you really want towing capability I'd look for something a little bigger than a Yaris. Used is a good idea if you don't put a lot of miles on. Think about minivans. More room, better mpg than the Jeep. If you don't need to haul the family along, think about a 4 cylinder Ford Ranger pickup. Surprisingly good gas mileage and real hauling capacity.On Tell BioD what car to buy posted 2 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

Being Practical

Sam, if I read your comment correctly, you want technical progress only if it comes from companies that are not interested in making a profit. Good luck on that. Kind of like boxing with both hands tied behind you.

GreyFlcn, The CSP water storage system has been all over the internet recently. I can't see anyway this can work from a thermodynamic viewpoint. Thermal storage either requires a huge thermal capacity (i.e. molten sodium) or a phase change (water to steam). Since it is impractical to store large amounts of steam, I don't see where this concept is going.On Some good news for wind and solar posted 2 years, 1 month ago 5 Responses

Green Vermont

I hope someone reminds David that Vermont is number one in no small part because most of it's electricity is generated by nuclear power.On Vermont named greenest state in Forbes ranking posted 2 years, 1 month ago 1 Response

Land Use

In theory, wind farms are dual use. However, I've seen quite a few in North America and none of them seem to have any other use. Others may have better information. Sea based installations have all sorts of possibilities. Of course, we have yet to be able to build the first one in North America. The main point of the referenced article seems to be how many square miles of scenic view are we willing to give up for a few megawatts? So far, a lot of localities are strongly against these installations and most successful installations are in remote areas with few permanent residents.

It's yet to be seen how people will warm to this technology. After all, major conflicts erupt over cell phone towers, 5 story buildings etc that are nothing compared to these windmills.

I really don't have a dog in this particular hunt since I think wind farms collapse from the aspect of capacity factor and predictability when wind reaches about 15% of the electrical generation. (Danish/German experience supports this concern.) However, my personal opinion is that the first one on the ridgetop is interesting and the rest are unsightly.On Is wind worth it? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 72 Responses

Real World

I agree with the general premise that the Energy Bill developments in Congress are disappointing and don't seem to be constructive.

However, though I don't like to get into commenting on comments, Green Miles needs a reality check. It takes a short memory to credit the Republicans with abusing the filibuster process. The greatest moral abuse of the process would have to be the Democratic blockage of civil rights legislation in the 50's and 60's. The greatest constitutional abuse would probably have to be the blockage of judicial appointments by both parties. Energy legislation would pale in comparison to those.

As far as backlash from the electorate, you give the voters too much credit. This will provide the Republicans (and probably some Democrats) a golden opportunity to run on the basis of stopping increases in energy prices.On Can the House and the Senate agree on energy legislation? posted 2 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

A Real Problem?

This issue resurfaces periodically but I don't understand why this is any real problem. Power plants do not "use" water in the sense that it becomes unavailable. The water is merely a mechanism to transfer heat to the environment. That total heat is insignificant in the big picture. If a lake, river, or ocean is used for cooling, the water if very slightly warmer. If a cooling tower is used, a certain amount of the water is evaporated faster than it ordinarily would be.

If this is considered to be a real problem, dry condenser power plants are already in use. In these plants, a closed condenser (like the radiator in a car) is used to directly transfer the heat to the air. The cost is slightly higher and the efficiency slightly lower, but there is no technical challenge at all.On Water limits on power plants posted 2 years, 1 month ago 14 Responses

Tunnel Vision

Yes, Mr. Ellis should be chastised. Not for encouraging purchase of fuel efficient cars, but for missing the fact that GM, Ford and Chrysler all have a number of high mileage small cars avaialable. Yes, Detroit is trying to sell high profit cars, but have you looked at the Honda, Toyota or Nissan SUVs, trucks and high performance sedans lately? That's where they make the most profit. On Feds apologize for encouraging employees to buy fuel-efficient Japanese cars posted 2 years, 2 months ago 3 Responses