Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
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IDAHO SAMIZDAT: NUKE NOTES
As someone who has been involved with nuclear and environmental programs in eastern Idaho since 1989, I've chosen to open a news & discussion blog on nuclear energy and nonproliferation topics here http://djysrv.blogspot.com
This blog is a non-commercial effort, independent of affiliation with any government agency, industry firm, lobby or activist organization. I will post on a wide variety of topical news items and will link, whenever possible, to free original sources of information.
Typically, I will be writing about news items with broad public interest. It is not a forum for insider gossip. Comments on blog topics are welcome. Posting will be light usually less than ten items a week.
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Dan Yurman djysrv@gmail.com http://djysrv.googlepages.com
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