Editor’s Note: With this post we welcome Eliav Bitan onto the Celsias writing team. Eliav writes out of New York, where he is managing editor of a campus publication. Expect some interesting posts from Eliav!
Andy beat me to the punch of posting about Jesse Ausubel’s Nuclear power agenda, but I think his analysis leaves out important points about efficiency of energy generation and use.
Like Andy, I was intrigued when Jesse Ausubel, one of the main organizers of the first UN World Climate Conference, in Geneva, 1979 wrote insisting (again) that nuclear is the only green source of energy.
If you subscribe to Inderscience’s International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology, you can read his article here. It’s similar to a paper he presented to the Canadian Nuclear association, in which he compares himself to protestant heretics tortured and killed by the 16th century Catholic Church. His central heresy is that nuclear energy takes up less space per mwh produced than current renewable energy sources, so if we want to really walk lightly on the earth, we should use nuclear energy.
The use of nuclear energy to combat climate change has been mentioned on this site before, where Craig Mackintosh pointed out the economic and safety problems with nuclear power. To put the economics succinctly, nuclear energy has cost billions of dollars to develop, and building a plant requires billions more to maintain and secure. These are more billions than required to build fossil fuel plants. The safety problems of nuclear are manifold: exposure to radiation due to plant malfunctioning scares those who may live near plants, exposure to waste radiation seems an inevitable occurrence in 100,000 years of decay, and most threatening of all, nuclear power centralizes large amounts of material that can be easily used to create nuclear ‘weapons of mass destruction’.
As the video on this site points out, centralized power generation has inherent flaws in its design: transportation and delivery losses, and the inefficient waste of heat, a by-product of most electric generation. The management and safety problems presented by centralized energy grids have been thoroughly documented by Amory Lovins, writing on what he calls brittle energy systems. You can buy his book here or just read about it on the energy security section of his website.
Joseph Romm, of Climateprogress and Grist, like Andy, presents a good critique of Ausubel’s article. However Andy and Joe make the same mistake as Dr. Ausubel himself: they all analyze technology results based on current efficiency of renewable energy technology. Ausubel divides total energy production from a resource by number of square meters devoted to energy production, to generate an efficiency of energy produced per land area. The argument then proceeds as if the efficiency of this resource will be constant forever.
There is in fact significant reason to believe that efficiencies are improving. In the last 20 years Wind turbines have quadrupled in efficiency per turbine from 500 kw to 2 mw, and solar cells have moved from 12% to 40% efficiency in the last year. Ausubel says that “Since 1980 the US DOE alone has spent about $6 billion on solar, $2 billion on geothermal, $1 billion on wind, and $3 billion on other renewables.” Compare this to the estimated over $10 billion per year of US fossil fuel energy industry subsidies and tax breaks, and its clear that funding for efficiency research is more easily funded outside the renewable sector.
But in considering the per meter squared efficiency of alternative technologies, Ausubel declines to factor in the $100s of billions spent on nuclear energy research. In this light, nuclear may in fact be the most expensive resource available. Its clear that renewable energy generation is getting more efficient with more funding.
Energy generation is not only getting more efficient: our use of energy is also getting more efficient. People are starting to realize that what we want out of our energy industries is not electricity, or oil, or natural gas, or even hydrogen fuel cells. What we want is energy. Energy is defined in elementary physics texts as “the ability to do work”. People want to move their cars, light their houses, and heat their buildings- not simply buy gasoline, electricity, or heating oil. It’s a fallacy to argue that we’re going to need more energy to power the cars of the future, for example. We can also cut home heating energy needs in half (or more) by wisely using the energy we have. We don’t need amazing amounts of energy - we can be happier by using the energy we have carefully.
I look forward to posting more on the ‘insurmountable opportunities’ of climate change.
view Celsias projects related to this topic >>
August 1st, 2007
I agree with your conclusion, but not how you got there.
Prior research in nuclear energy is a sunk cost and you cannot include it in deciding how to go ahead in the future. If you’ve spent $100B on nuclear already, and can get a plant by spending (numbers made up for the sake of argument) another $6B tomorrow, or by spending $10B tomorrow for the equivalent power from renewables, nuclear power is the cheaper solution, financially speaking.
Nuclear power can also be made more efficient, using the waste heat to heat buildings or run air-conditioning compressors, for example.
But nuclear power isn’t renewable. And it isn’t carbon neutral. Rich uranium deposits will be depleted within my lifetime if more reactors get built (75 years if not), and then we are stuck surface mining poor deposits using significantly more fossil fuels.
I agree with you on the improving efficiency of renewable resources. I’d be surprised if any improved more than 20% over the current state-of-the-art, though. Also, the land impact of renewables may not be as significant as oil wells and uranium mining: a lot of roof space is going to waste right now.
In the long run, as you say, renewable energy sources will be the best bet.
August 1st, 2007
Dan,
Of course you’re right that sunk costs aren’t usually considered in financial decision making. My argument is that nuclear power is not inherently cheaper or more efficient than renewables, but has become so due to our efforts. Similarly, we can make renewables cheaper and more efficient. This is worthwhile for reasons enumerated above: decentralization, avoiding waste, avoiding security risks, etc.
Where do you get your information on uranium deposits?
Good point on wasted space- Joe at Grist (linked in the post) talked about dual use (roof-top solar panels and wind turbines on farms), so I didn’t bother to reiterate this important point.
August 1st, 2007
The “energy efficiency per sq m” argument for nuclear seems to me to be obviously flawed.
You can’t install nuclear power stations on existing roof-tops like you can with solar panels.
We already have vast available roof-top space for solar. (and very close to demand, thus reducing transmission loss - which is >50% in NZ I hear).
Doesn’t that mean solar could end up using less “extra” space than nuclear. As no new structures need to built, rather solar panels are just installed all over our existing structures - ie homes?
Based on my calculations I could light and heat my home, and drive a car from the energy generated by my roof area alone - Though i would obviously need a large energy store.
I guess the big change - is that the electricity generators lose a large part of their market - as their consumers start actively generating a large amount of their own power. I understand that the generators would not want to encourage that…
August 17th, 2007
Eliav
I was just reading several headlines today about Nuclear Power and wondering what the heck is certain portion of the population thinking?
Despite a recent surge in awareness regarding the urgent need to develop and use alterntaive fuels to stop global warming and practice responsible environmental stewardship, apparently a large portion of the world’s population is in favor of promoting nuclear power as a “clean”.
Is this portion of the population not aware that the mining or uranium, building of reactors, decomissioning of reactors and keeping radioactive waste cool for eons requires awesome amounts of fossil fuels? if the way in which an alternative power source or technology is produced is not “clean”, i.e mining of uranium, etc., then the end product will not be “clean”?
The Florida Light & Power Company plans to increase its nuclear capacity by 3400 MW by building 2 new reactors and expanding reactos at two existing nuclear plants to help meet future demand and support Governor Crist’s goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Additionally, Toshiba and Flour Corp. will engineer and construct 2 new reactors in Bay City, Texas.
I never thought I’d witness support for the first wave of nuclear build out that is about to begin in the U.S.
Three-mile island and Chernobyl seem to have been forgotten and the fact that fossil fuels are required to produce nnuclear energy seems to be something that is being casually overlooked.