Unreal!  I had never heard of that story.  Thanks, David.

You advocate nuclear power to mitigate the problems of CO2 while decrying short-term thinking driving long-term policy decisions. This seems problematic to me for several reasons.

Most obviously, while you are correct to point out analogies between sequestering CO2 indefinitely and radioactive waste, the fact is no one has successfully demonstrated long-term storage of large amounts of high level radioactive waste. See Mountain, Yucca. The cost estimates for the Yucca Mountain facility keep going up geometrically, while the opening date recedes constantly. All this for a facility, if it were ever to actually open, that would  only be able to handle waste for the relative handful of nuke plants we have now for couple of decades at most. After that, it shuts down and we start the process over again.

Then there is the issue of fuel. I don't have the cites handy, but it's my understanding that there isn't enough world supply of uranium ore for nukes to be a major source of energy. Unless perhaps breeder nuclear reactor technology is used, which has its own set of problems: excess supplies of fissile plutonium, with attendant worries of nuclear proliferation and possible nuclear holocaust.

And, according to Amory Lovins at least, there is the issue of cost. Yeah, I know, dirty coal is cheap, but Lovins claims that, other technologies are better and cheaper, even if you don't count waste fuel disposal costs for nuclear.

Believe it or not, I'm not unalterably opposed to nuclear power. It may, and I think it probably will, be a small piece of the puzzle. But when it gets trotted out as a major answer to climate change, as it appears you have here, I do wonder if all the costs are being considered.

I'm totally against using nukes for power. They are just too dangerous, too risky, and have too long term potential risks.

Coal in contrast is relatively safe. Global warming's impact on the planet will be relatively minor compared to even the results of one nuclear meltdown -- see Chernobyl.

In the near term, I'm for keeping coal (without CARBON SEQUESTRATION) as the base source of power in our electric grid, with using renewables and conservation as the primary way to address increasing demand for energy.

Farther on, as renewables become better embraced, then we can start shutting down both nuclear and coal plants. Oil and natural gas, combined with several massive new pump-storage plants can provide peak energy in that future, with eventually a massive network of renewables, partially decenteralized and owned by homeonwers.

There is a better way to do this, that goes right along with DR's URGE 2.

It uses dirty coal, natural gas, oil, nukes, and the grid we have now in the transition to a new distributed renewable energy future.  Eventually shutting down nukes and coal and replacing most oil use with renewable electric powered transportation.

Along the way coal power plants can be converted to natural gas and some nukes can be converted to nuclear waste processing plants.

Where would that natural gas to replace coal come from?  From conservation, efficiency gains, and bacterial conversion of coal to natural gas underground.  And this all fits well into biogas conversion from the waste stream, a renewable source of natural gas that saves methane release (23 times worse than CO2 as a GHG) from human waste, manure, and fertilizer run off.

Forget clean coal, it is a diversion by the coal industry, nothing more.  In your advocacy for diverse sources of energy to solve energy and climate problems, it is important to choose the right sources.  Sources that work together, to design a symbiotic solution where gains in one area make further gains possible in other areas.

No new nukes or coal plants ought to be built, but the ones we have now should fill in the gaps (until the new grid supports itself)in a distributed renewable, internet enabled smart grid that conserves, generates, and stores energy in conjunction with plugin vehicles, industrial energy use timing, and geo heat exchange heating/cooling.

Trying to clean up oil, coal, and nuclear power by retrofitting add on solutions just creates excuses to continue the status quo energy policy.

Lovins pointed out recently that our vehicles have 7 times the energy use of the entire grid.  So if those vehicles are plugin hybrid, would other forms of storage be needed?  How about if heating/cooling loads were reduced drastically by geo heat exchange and used as a form of storage by storing heat or cold during peak wind and solar energy production periods?

A distributed grid takes far less transmission capacity, rendering the present capacity more than enough.  A fraction of the money not spent on a huge grid transmission increase and stabilization effort using centralized generation (trillions), including building clean coal and new improved, safer nukes, would be enough to convert to an internet enabled, switchable grid that could facilitate those conservation and storage improvements.

And that would completely backup a grid mainly powered by distributed wind, solar, wave, and water power, with biogas/natural gas solid oxide fuel cell/turbine cogeneration facilities (2 to 3 times the efficiency of present power plants).  These installations can be much smaller than centralized power plants and more widely distributed, giving each local area and region it's own stable power system.  Making for a safer more reliable grid.

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Actually, in reference to the nuke issue, coal releases more radiactive material than nuclear plants do.

Coal contains low levels of uranium, thorium, and other naturally-occurring radioactive isotopes whose release into the environment leads to radioactive contamination. While these substances are present as very small trace impurities, enough coal is burned that significant amounts of these substances are released. A 1,000 MW coal-burning power plant could release as much as 5.2 tons/year of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons/year of thorium. The radioactive emission from this coal power plant is 100 times greater than a comparable nuclear power plant with the same electrical output; including processing output, the coal power plant's radiation output is over 3 times greater.[

Putting smaller coal cogeneration around the grid would involve going back to coal distribution.  Coal trucks burn oil.

That's why natural gas makes more sense for distributed cogeneration, the pipelines are already there.

By going to geo heat exchange for heating, enough natural gas will be saved to replace coal.  And by using geo heat exchange for cooling, grid load will be reduced, that will save coal and gas too.  Cogeneration heat will save gas as well.

Add biogas from waste to the natural gas and conversion of coal underground to natural gas, and the renewable grid would have backup without coal or nukes.

These types of solutions that work together use efficiency gains and conservation that reduce total energy use without harming the economy.  In fact they make energy cheaper and domestically produced to boost our failing economy.  Hampered by huge debt from oil and oil wars and energy inflation driving inflation in every other sector.

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I think the next task, then, is to start to quantify the potential of geoexchange and the conversion of coal to gas.  I hope to put up a post soon on electricity consumption as a start.

Check out air conditioning electrical load Jon.  I have seen a few stats on it and I remember grid overload outages from it in California a few years back.

I also saw a story on the science channel about a high rise that uses geo heat exchange cooling by circulating chilled water cooled by ocean water.  There was a "Dirty Jobs" segment on a cooling system for a nursing home using a geo heat exchange system.  Wells were drilled then a loop of plastic pipe with the circulation fluid inside was put down each well with all the pipe loops connected to circulate cooling through the building.

The coal to biogas conversion concept is kind of short on information so far.  Not sure how much gas is produced or how fast.  Clean coal, fuel farming, and nuke subsidies ought to be diverted to R and D on geo heat exchange heating/cooling.

There should be stats on the amount of gas used for building heat. That could be replaced by either heat envelope geo heat exchange or heat pumps extracting and elevating geo heat.

Warmer areas where winter temps only get down in the 30s could easily use heat envelope systems, for colder regions heat pumps might also be needed.  Heat envelope systems have mainly been built with a double wall circulating ground and solar heated air between so far.

Here in the cold north, the ground maintains it's 55 degree heat with about a 10 R factor of soil over it.  That is the principle behind an underground home.  Bringing that 55 degree heat up around a conventional above ground home with circulating anti freeze solution under an outside insulation layer of about 2 inches of rigid foam insulation should be feasible.  The question is how big would the heat exchange area have to be and how much flow would be needed.

And there is always solar heating and heat storage that would work with geo heat exchange.  Evacuated tube hot water heating works well even in northern climes.  

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