Open Thread and News Drop
Posted by Prof. Goose on September 20, 2005 - 11:36pm
If you have any other links to maps, tools, etc., that we should include in the continuing Rita post (below), put them in here. Any other angles we need to hit on this? Feel free to go OT from Rita here too.
“This order [i.e. capitalism] is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with the economic acquisition, with irresistible force. Perhaps it will so determine them until the last ton of fossilized coal is burnt.”
—Max Weber, 1905
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http://transcripts.businessday.co.za/cgi-bin/transcripts/t-showtranscript.pl?1126573326
Excerpt:
GIULIETTA TALEVI: Speaking of Synfuels - perhaps you can detail some of the gas-to-liquids (GTL) and the coal-to-liquids (CTL) projects that Sasol has got on the boil at the moment?
PAT DAVIES: Absolutely. The most exciting part of our growth portfolio is GTL - and I�ll start with that one. We really believe a new industry has been formed now because large reserves of natural gas are available in the world - ready to be monetised and converted into very environmentally friendly diesels - so we believe a global business is developing there. The first project of Sasol is in partnership with Qatar Petroleum in Qatar - will be starting up early 2006. That is 34,000 barrels a day, and we hope reasonably soon after that to expand its capacity to 100,000 barrels a day. To give you a comparison Secunda is about 160,000 barrels a day - so it�s a sizeable plant in Qatar.
GIULIETTA TALEVI: What about Iran and China - China is the CTL project, whereas Iran is GTL?
PAT DAVIES: Correct. Let�s start with CTL - we are doing commercial feasibility studies in China for two projects there based on converting coal to gas, and then the gas to liquid fuels. Those are two times 70,000 to 80,000 barrels a day projects. At the end of the year we�ll be able to make further decisions on those - but it looks very exciting, the Chinese are extremely keen to go ahead with this. As far as Iran is concerned - we�re constructing a polymers facility there at the moment that will come on stream during the course of 2006. That�s about a $1-billion investment that we have there, and we�ve also been in talks with the Iranians to do a GTL project in Iran as well.
also, it seems breeders would be ideal to transform much US transuranic waste (100,000yr+ half-life) into useful fuel while leaving only relatively short half-life (300 yrs or less) fission waste. i think this would be a great topic to discuss on TOD, as there are so many international and scientifically minded folks here. anyone have any ideas/info on the future of breeders around the world?
IFR
MONJU breeder site
Even if we forget about the costs (yes, also subsidazed by fossil fuels) and the hazards of nuclear energy, breeders have inmense technical problems that no one knows whether they will be solved. As for not investing in it (or scrapping the program), be sure that if it is workable, the japanese will get it working. They are investing masively into it. So we just have to watch them succeed or fail to end the argument.
The future of humanity is a structure change, distributed and regional energy production. It's another mentality, where simple solutions win, and technicaly complicated loose.
Nuclear energy is the exponent of the age that we are going to leave. It is the symbol of a wasteful, monolithic and centralized energy structure that will go away.
Why not just accept you have to live with the energy wind and solar can provide?. Energy companies just don't like them because it would put energy generation out of their control, and into the hands of the consumers, it would end the energy oligopolies.
Stop wishing there is a way to keep the system going the way it was during the american-way-of-life age.
by the way, I am a Physicist.
if you have specific details on what technical problems have not been solved with breeders (from my research it seems most have been solved), i would love to hear it. i think we need technical solutions, economic and financial restructuring, and changes in our political and social culture to properly handle peak oil. it's obvious that nuclear and coal is in the future of our world, so why not make it the best it can be? i believe breeders are the best kind of nuclear reactors and will play a part in our future. we should be educated about them and realize the benefits and risks.
btw, i'm a materials engineer.
Sorry, I didn't want to pretend to know what you think. :-)
"actually large energy corps have already infiltrated wind and solar power (BP Solar, Shell Renewables, etc.) "
yes, you're right. They are not pushing with new innovations or flooding the sector with research cash or anything though. They just infiltrate and go with the rest, just in case it proves to be the future of energy.
"what i do think is that breeders (which have been demonstrated around the world - France, Russia, Japan, etc.) would be a great way to get rid of long half-life high level waste and "keep the lights on" as a transition to a powerdown scenario. "
Well, that is a very interesting idea.
"breeders (which have been demonstrated around the world - France, Russia, Japan, etc.) "
Demonstrated is not the same as being proven viable. Nuclear fussion is also being "demonstrated", and you know the state of it...
My point, is that save for the reasons alleged by you ("would be a great way to get rid of long half-life high level waste and "keep the lights on" as a transition to a powerdown scenario. "), it would be a huge missinvestment, because nuclear needs extraordinary amounts of financing (research AND construction) upfront, and there's is no way it's going to pay itself up in the long run. Europe still spends many more times more on nuclear reseach and security than on renewables as a whole!. What do you think such amounts of research could do for solar energy?. Fotovoltaic may seem utopic (or for the long run), but studies of costs for solar-thermal power stations for southern USA latitudes were cost competitive with oil-fired power generation 2 years AGO. At current prices they would be even cheaper!.
"if you have specific details on what technical problems have not been solved with breeders (from my research it seems most have been solved), i would love to hear it.[...] i believe breeders are the best kind of nuclear reactors and will play a part in our future. we should be educated about them and realize the benefits and risks. "
Mmmmmm. I think I'll try to inform myself better about breeders. But still, my point holds.
Regards
http://www.solarserver.de/lexikon/parabolrinnenkraftwerk-e.html
Also, you may have heard of it, the solar chimney. But of course that is not so proven as the parabolic concept:
http://www.math.purdue.edu/~lucier/The_Solar_Chimney.pdf
Extremely insteresting is the graphic on page 13: "Fig. 6: Energy production costs from solar chimneys, coal and combined cycle power
plants depending on the interest rate."
Even if we discount solar chimneys because not yet proven, similar cost are valid for the proven Parabolic design. I would very much apreciate comments on this graphic. It will be a very important concept to consider in the costs calculation for new and alternative energy plants.
you are right that more investment needs to be made into solar thermal and PV, wind, tidal/wave power, geothermal, thermal depolymerization, biodiesel, hemp, etc. and of course the large energy corps are not doing the investment in serious R&D, it's the smaller companies and government that we have to rely on for that.
as for being "demonstrated" the Russian breeder, BN-600 has been in operation since 1986, with 600MW (electric) output. BN-350 (130MWe) is in Kazakhstan, reached criticality in 1973, and serves the dual purpose of electricity generation and water desalination.
http://www.jnc.go.jp/zmonju/mjweb/world1.htm#USSR
as well, Phenix in France has been operating since 1973 and has a output capacity of 250MWe.
http://www.jnc.go.jp/zmonju/mjweb/world.htm#France
the parabolic solar trough seems like a good solar thermal design. to get $0.07/kW-hr is pretty darn good. that's much better than PV solar, last i heard around 20-25cents/kW-hr, and around the same as nuclear electricity costs. NG is still lower at around 3-5cents/kW-hr, while coal is even lower.
i agree that nuclear energy (whether breeders or not) does require enormous capital investment (more than solar/wind/renwables). perhaps its not entirely justified, but i think if we can use them to get rid of long-lived hot, radioactive waste, that in itself is a good thing.
Uranium and plutonium are not the end of the story for nuclear energy. Thorium is a significant alternative.
I am a bit puzzled by the mention of getting rid of "long-lived hot, radioactive waste." Almost by definition, hot waste is short-lived, since high activity implies a short half-life, so it gets rid of itself in a few decades.
"High level Waste (HLW) arises from the use of uranium fuel in a nuclear reactor and nuclear weapons processing. It contains the fission products and transuranic elements generated in the reactor core. It is highly radioactive and hot. It can be considered the "ash" from "burning" uranium. HLW accounts for over 95% of the total radioactivity produced in the process of nuclear electricity generation.
There have been proposals for reactors that consume nuclear waste and transmute it to other, less-harmful nuclear waste. In particular, the Integral Fast Reactor was a proposed nuclear reactor with a nuclear fuel cycle that produced no transuranic waste; in fact, it could consume transuranic waste. It proceeded as far as large-scale tests but was then cancelled by the US Government.
To solve the waste disposal problem, the IFR had an on-site electrowinning fuel reprocessing unit that recycled the uranium and all the transuranics (not just plutonium) via electroplating, leaving just short half-life fission products in the waste. Some of these fission products could later be separated for industrial or medical uses and the rest sent to a waste repository (where they would not have to be stored for anywhere near as long as wastes containing long half-life transuranics). It is thought that it would not be possible to divert fuel from this reactor to make bombs, as several of the transuranics spontaneously fission so rapidly that any assembly would melt before it could be completed. The project was canceled in 1994, at the behest of then-Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary."
from the IFR site:
"Fuel recycling greatly reduces the amount of the radioactive wastes that must be buried in geologic repositories. After 300 to 400 years, IFR waste - the products of fissioning - are as safe as the natural ore the fuel came from. "
i think most transuranics (elements beyond uranium) have very long-half lives (100kyrs+). they can still emit quite a bit (high radiation flux) but the transitions can have very long decay times. perhaps the transuranics and actinides are not as "hot" as the short half-life (<300yr) fission products, but they are still hot enough to be a serious health and environmental problem.
you're right about the thorium, they are using that for some breeders/burners as well.
You have to bear in mind that those analysis were made for coal/natural gas prices of 2001!!! with today's (and tomorrow's) prices, it would be a lot cheaper than fossil fuel fired stations!. It is a shame that fossil fuel power stations are still build at all in southern countries.
There are even studies where solar energy is produced in northern africa to supply Europe (or southern USA to supply the whole country).
A belgium company that offers a parabolic design that is modular and with standard components, making it ready NOW for mass production.
http://www.azom.com/details.asp?newsID=252
An energy efficient future will have both giant and small systems, if efficiency is important.
This is especially true for electricity producktion and exchange since the grid is a kind of infrastructure that require very little fossil fuel to operate. Use it in a wise way and the small producers will not need millions of tonnes of lead for batteries.
ENERGY FIELD: Japan says flames spotted at a platform in the China Sea confirm that China has started production, while Beijing said the activity falls within its rights
AFP AND AP , TOKYO AND BEIJING
Wednesday, Sep 21, 2005,Page 5
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Japan said yesterday that China has started production of gas or oil in a disputed energy field in the East China Sea where Chinese warships were recently spotted, and it would consider countermeasures.
latest EIA report:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/weekly_petroleum_status_report/histor ical/2005/2005_09_14/txt/wpsr.txt