Waiting Too Long to Make a Mistake

A few bits of news show the nuclear renaissance colliding with the problems besetting the world these days – and demonstrating its value every time. And by value, we mean the jingle in the pocket as well as the zap in your sockets.

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Germany, as you may know, was an early supporter of nuclear energy that changed course, at least partly, because its governing coalitions usually include the Green Party, and doing away with nuclear energy is an article of faith for the Greens. But now, with energy plants having to shut down due to legislation, feet are growing colder:

RWE AG. said delaying a planned nuclear energy phase-out in Germany would help ease pressure on energy prices, adding that it welcomes renewed talks by lawmakers in the country over a possible delay.

Extending nuclear power plant operation in Germany by 25 years to between 50 years and 60 years could yield an additional economic value of 250 billion euros, the company said in a statement.

Well, an energy company, sure. But it’s not the only one talking:

Economy Minister Michael Glos has demanded that nuclear power plants be allowed to operate for more than the current 32 years to halt an increased dependence on power sources outside Germany.

We think it very likely Germany waited too long to make this mistake and will undo it before they make it. The words out of Berlin are increasingly conciliatory.

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Speaking of Germany, they are one of the Group of Eight (or Group of Seven and Russia, depending on what you think of Russia), that informal group of international leaders and policy wonks that gets together every year and then some and draws to their meetings every ragamuffin with a sign and a slogan. The G8 may or may not be responsible for the sins of globalization if sins they be, but it’s work is carefully weighed. Leaving aside the controversies, here’s a bit of news:

Group of Eight leaders were expected to agree to expand the use of civil nuclear power to fight climate change at the upcoming Tokyo summit July 7-9, according to Japanese media Monday.

And a little more:

The draft said: 'recognizing that ensuring safeguards (nuclear nonproliferation), nuclear safety and nuclear security (3S) forms a sound basis for international transparency and confidence in the sustainable development of nuclear power, we agree on a G8 initiative to assist countries in ensuring 3S.'

No word on Germany’s buy-in to this plan. But give them time.

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Okay, there’s the need for new energy, check. There’s the recognition that nuclear can help combat greenhouse gas emission, check check. What else? How about, oh, helping the American economy get back on track?

Shares of DTE Energy Co. rose Monday after the Michigan state Senate passed a bill that is expected to help with financing of the utility's planned nuclear capacity expansion.

Well, all right, that’s a stretch. One swallow doesn’t make a spring. But we’ve gotten lousy with swallows this year and will happily toss out the bread crumbs and popcorn and watch them flock back to the nuclear Capistrano.

Picture of your G8 leaders – last year’s version, anyway. Putin and Blair have ceded power in the interim.

The Wall Street Journal Energy Report

In the unlikely event you've missed it today, The Wall Street Journal has published a special package on Energy and nuclear is the cover girl/boy. WSJ editor Michael Totty has written the lead article, The Case For and Against Nuclear Power. (Janus-like, Totty sees, and provides, both arguments.)

Sidebar materials include a podcast interview with Eileen Claussen, president of the nonpartisan Pew Center on Global Climate Change. Interesting exchange at the 8:44 mark,

Totty: What's your assessment? Will the [nuclear] industry succeed? Or will nuclear power, at least in the U.S., slip in importance over time as other energy sources come up?

Claussen: Well, if you look at the mix of sources that we now have—I think coal is about 50% of electricity generation, nuclear is about 20%—renewables, for all the growth we've seen, particularly in wind, is still in the single digits. So even if we worked really hard to increase the share of renewables, we're still going to need baseload power. And the demand for that power is growing in the United States, not shrinking or staying stable. To meet that, you're going to have to go to either nuclear, coal, with carbon capture and sequestration, or natural gas. And I think, with a carbon price, nuclear will do very well in that. This is going to last for a long time, so I think it [nuclear power] will do well over time. In fact, probably better and better.

Dan Yergin on The Charlie Rose Show

Credible, dispassionate, informed: Dan Yergin on The Charlie Rose Show, Friday, June 27, 2008.

Dr. Daniel Yergin is the Chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a preeminent source of independent analysis and information on the global energy picture. In Friday's appearance on Charlie Rose, Dr. Yergin gave a nearly hour-long interview on the current energy situation.

Dr. Yergin explained the combination of factors that have given us $140/bbl oil. He described the urgency of expanding our use of energy efficiency to help in the short-term. He suggested the most important energy problem our leaders should focus on is natural gas. With so much natural gas used to produce electricity, we are growing dependent on imported natural gas, which suffers from the same pricing and political risks we see in our dependence on imported oil. Our prodigious consumption of natural gas for electricity generation links electricity prices to the vagaries of natural gas, spreading the impact of natural gas price increases well beyond the home heating market and chemical industry.

After laboring in the "Lovins vineyard" with my colleague, David Bradish, I was refreshed by the remarks of an energy professional who was obviously well informed and clearly dispassionate about the facts. Dan Yergin was not selling a point of view or asking the audience to accept certain assumptions he and his acolytes make about the nature of the problem or range of solutions. He simply shared what he knows from studying the problem very deeply and objectively.

If you would like to hear his profile of the global energy situation, look for a rebroadcast of Friday's show on your local PBS station. The show should also be available in the video archive at the Charlie Rose Show web site soon. Two of Dr. Yergin's previous appearances on the show (March 16, 2005 on alternate energy and May 6, 1996 on oil) are already available there.

FULL DISCLOSURE: In pursuit of well informed, objective sources of energy data and analysis, NEI subscribes to CERA's power and natural gas advisory services.

UPDATE at 9:30am, 6/29: Here's the link to the video. It should be showing in the next couple of days. Hat tip to Eric McErlain.

Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Five (Nuclear Plant Reliability)

We are now on part five in the continuing series that seriously looks at RMI’s latest nuclear bashing paper. RMI tries extremely hard on pages 21-26 in their paper to show that nuclear plants are unreliable. Sadly for RMI, a widely publicized set of data refutes their claim: capacity factors. A capacity factor is the amount of electricity a power plant actually produces in a period of time divided by the amount of electricity the plant is rated to produce during that same period of time. A high capacity factor implies high reliability.

From RMI, page 24 (pdf):

Though micropower’s unreliability is an unfounded myth, nuclear power’s unreliability is all too real.

In arguing that nuclear plants are unreliable, the RMI paper brings up a Union of Concerned Scientists’ report on long outages, refueling outages, heat waves, the shutdown of seven Japanese reactors due to an earthquake, and the 2003 Northeast Blackout. Other than the Japanese shutdowns, the four issues RMI brings up are all captured by the data in the graph below. Since 1971, U.S. nuclear plants have substantially improved their performance and reliability. RMI’s paper focuses on some unflattering situations that affected selected nuclear plants. As a fleet, though, U.S. nuclear plants have performed at a 90% capacity factor since 2000. RMI’s cherry-picking is showing again. They focus on a few negative events and ignore the outstanding performance of the rest of the fleet.
It is also interesting to note that nuclear plants have the highest capacity factors of any fuel type in the U.S. (source: Ventyx/Global Energy Decisions based on EIA data). Last year, nuclear plant capacity factors averaged almost 92 percent. If that is “unreliable,” as RMI claims, then what IS reliable?
From RMI’s paper, page 24:

Nuclear plants are capital-intensive and run best at constant power levels, so operators go to great pains to avoid technical failures. These nonetheless occur occasionally, due to physical causes that tend to increase with age due to corrosion, fatigue, and other wear and tear.

Actually, the data show the opposite is true. The average age of the operating U.S. nuclear plants is 28. The first graph above shows that the U.S. nuclear plants have improved their performance as they have become older. Not only that, Nine Mile Point 1 and Oyster Creek (nearly 40 years old and the oldest operating reactors in the U.S.) both averaged a capacity factor greater than 90 percent over the past three years.

From RMI’s paper, page 24:

Yet size does matter. Even if all sizes of generators were equally reliable, a single one-million-kilowatt unit would not be as reliable as the sum of a thousand 1-MW units or a million 1-kW units. Rather, a portfolio of many smaller units is inherently more reliable than one large unit—both because it’s unlikely that many units will fail simultaneously...

Inherently? Actually no. Let's do the math. Say one power plant at 1,000 MW is 90 percent reliable. According to RMI's logic, two 500 MW plants at a 90 percent capacity factor are more reliable than the 1,000 MW plant. The probability that these two plants will provide 1,000 MW, however, is not 0.9 (90 percent). It's 0.81. All you do is multiply 0.9 times 0.9. This is called joint probability which means that in order to find the probability of an event with two or more random variables, you multiply each of their probabilities together. So if you have 10 units at 100 MW each, the probability that all ten will be able to provide the 1,000 MW is 0.35. The probability of success continues to diminish as you increase the number of plants. The same conclusion occurs if you change the capacity factor up or down. There is of course much, much more to managing the grid but based on this simplistic statement from RMI, I am curious how they make the math work!

RMI's statement from above comes from Mr. Lovins' book Small is Profitable. I don't know if there's more information that backs up their statement above, because the $60 book is temporarily out of stock on Amazon and the link to buy the book on its own website is broken. But based on my simple calculation, one plant is more reliable than 10, 100 or 1,000 plants that are “equally reliable” providing the same amount of capacity.

That’s it for this post. I only need to show capacity factor data that is objective and traceable to a widely accepted source and calculate some simple probabilities to show that RMI’s claims are spurious. For those new to this debate, here are links to my previous posts for this series: Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Intro, Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part One (The Art of Deception), Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Two (Big Plants vs. Small Plants), Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Three (Energy Efficiency and “Negawatts”), and Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Four (Costs of New Nuclear Plants). One more post from me left to go...

China's Nuclear Energy Program Accelerating

According to Caijing magazine, China is considering a revision to its nuclear energy development program: now targeting 5% of total capacity by 2020 instead of the 4% called for in a plan released just last year.

Zhao Xiaoping, deputy director of NDRC’s energy bureau, earlier said China may revise its development plan because “the country is capable and needs to accelerate development of the nuclear power industry.”

NDRC’s 2007 plan gave priority for developing nuclear stations to coastal provinces such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shandong and Jiangsu. These new facilities would complement the 11 nuclear power plants now operating in China, all in coastal areas.

But Caijing learned that three nuclear power projects – one each in central China’s Hubei, Hunan and Jiangxi provinces – are now awaiting NDRC approval. Indeed, several regions in central and southwest China – including Sichuan, Chongqing, Hubei, Henan and Jiangxi – had been lobbying the government for permission to launch projects.

John McCain: Running From or To Nuclear Energy?

Because most of Washington’s television needs are served by local outlets and Washington is not a battleground for the presidential candidates – all that action’s over in Virginia – we don’t see as many of the presidential ads that many of you have endured. So it struck us as odd to read the following  from the invaluable Factcheck.org about a new energy-focused ad from the McCain campaign:

Yet the imagery in the ad of solar technology and windmills might lead viewers to draw some false conclusions about McCain's energy policy. McCain has been less than enthusiastic about the development of wind and solar energy. The Politico points out that McCain's favored source of alternative energy, nuclear reactors, did not make the cut for visuals – there are no shots of a cooling tower in the ad.

Here’s the ad in question:

And here’s an earlier ad in which does include nuclear in its litany, though a bit separate from its renewable cousins:

We’re not sure McCain can really downplay his interest in nuclear energy – and granted, a 30-second spot is not the place to expect anything resembling even a complete thought – so we’re inclined to give the candidate a pass on this one.

We also know that cooling stacks, as used in the older ad, still carry, however unfairly, a somewhat sinister charge due to the iconography they picked up years ago. By contrast, the dragonfly windmill in both ads is probably the closest to an aesthetically pleasing object the energy industries has ever devised. So, okay.

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McCain’s message to the wind and solar folks has been fairly consistent, though it could be perceived as marking him as less than a  best friend:

I'm not one who believes that we need to subsidize things. The wind industry is doing fine, the solar industry is doing fine. In the '70s, we gave too many subsidies and too much help, and we had substandard products sold to the American people, which then made them disenchanted with solar for a long time.

McCain has not quite squared the circle on the pluses and minuses of subsidies. Moving industry in the direction you want it to go often involves subsidies simply because, with many public policy ideas, there is no immediately profitable way to go forward. If the government doesn’t splash out some cash, industry can become quite mulish about moving in a desired direction. Since the U.S. doesn’t have a controlled economy, subsidies become a useful tool.

We’re not sure we agree with the notion that McCain is unenthusiastic about wind and solar, as the writer above says, because the argument is that McCain is only interested in what he would have the government subsidize. That needn’t be true.

But McCain may be painting himself into two corners simultaneously. He wants to put forward the winning idea that government spending is mostly wasteful but still has to “waste” some money to buy America a measure of energy independence. Maintaining a consistent governing philosophy is tough under any circumstances, but McCain’s mix of ideas about energy are starting to suffer unwelcome press coverage – the whole piece linked here is very critical of McCain’s energy focused ads.

All things considered, we’re not sure that the wind and solar energy folks are delighted to see McCain embrace them for purposes of advertising – though they are likely fully delighted that windmills and solar panels are being shown in a completely positive way.

As for the cooling towers – well, we’ll keep ours eyes open. We expect Barack Obama to be completely into those dragonflies, though his embrace of nuclear is, in the best Democratic manner, more “nuanced'” than McCain’s if not quite so central to his policy.

Governor Corzine on Nuclear Power in NJ

Jon Corzine [D], current Governor of New Jersey and former U.S. Senator, appeared earlier today on CNN's American Morning. The interviewer was John Roberts (no, not that one) and the transcript/video can be seen here. The pull quote:

Roberts: On that subject of nuclear energy, would you be prepared to see more nuclear plants built in the garden state?

Corzine: Well, we actually have an energy master plan where we're working on the safety and security and the storage of waste. If we can come to positive conclusion on that, I absolutely would. We already get about 50% of our energy from nuclear power here in the state. We have four plants. They're aging and we're going to have to think about whether we want to renew that. I'm not arguing that's the only step. We need to be in wind, solar, biofuel, all of those other areas. And Senator Obama is talking about spending $150 billion in the next ten years in those kind of production activities coming from a cap and trade program. [It's a] very strong program. [It] will work and get us off this addiction on oil.

The History Channel's Mega Disasters "Glow Train Catastrophe"

The History Channel's "Mega Disasters" series ran an episode last night showing the "potential disaster" of trains transporting used nuclear fuel in dry casks. Dr. Buzz0 (aka Steve Packard) over at Depleted Cranium saw the episode and thought it was "just sickening." Here's what he had to say:

[The] theoretical “Mega Disaster” was not a nuclear weapon being used on a civilian population, but rather the idea of a train carrying nuclear waste somehow derailing or colliding with another train and thus causing a massive disaster, possibly wiping out Las Vegas or some other city, while en route to the Yucca Mountain Federal Waste Repository.

The show starts off with one of the worst examples of bad science I’ve seen in a long time. It notes that the trains carrying the nuclear material have been dubbed “glow trains” by anti-nuclear groups. Of course, we have dealt with the stupid “glow” issue before, but it gets worse. After this mention, the show then uses the term “glow train” on several occasions, in statements such as “but what if a glow train were to derail…” Yeah.. clearly we can see which side is getting the say here.

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The show basically seems to consist of a lot of information about rail disasters, some of which have been quite bad in recent years. It then seems to equate these to nuclear waste as if there is some kind of connection to nuclear materials being equally likely to be in such an incident, but capable of increasing the magnitude to catastrophic levels! There are several interviews with emergency personnel (obviously the clueless ones) who state how they are not prepared to deal with a massive nuclear event and how difficult and destructive it would be.

The logic here is so flawed it is absurd. Yes, there are rail disasters and they do carry the potential for mass devastation. A train filled with LPG, toxic chemicals, explosives or other material carry the potential to devastate a large area in a mishap. Yet, these trains are allowed to travel the routes of the United States and other countries with little attention. Accidents can happen and they do. People have died. Communities have been severely damaged.

Yet nuclear materials like spent fuel poses no such risk. If a train were to derail or crash, the waste cask would simply need to be picked up and put back on a new train car or flatbed truck. Spent fuel is a high density ceramic. It cannot burn, explode or evaporate. It stays in one place and is chemically and physically inert. The casks which contain the material have been tested to extremes. In my opinion, it’s really overkill and unnecessary to go to the extreme measures taken, but they are definitely very very safe. And what if one were to be broken open? Well the fuel rods would fall out and the DOE would have to come and pick them up and put them in a new cask. At worst, they might fragment into small pebble-size pieces, which would not be too difficult to pick up.

The only real danger to the locals would be the physical damage from the train - the same as any other train. The cask of nuclear waste could indeed be deadly… if it falls on you. As far as the radiological danger, most of this stuff will be aged enough that the most radioactive fission byproducts will be long gone. The radiological dangers from this material would be limited to those who are in very close contact with the stuff. Therefore… don’t eat it, as that could be dangerous. Dust produced would be extremely minimal and dispersal would be minute.

Well done! Here's a video that shows how impenetrable these casks are.

Here's some more info on NEI's website on the safe transportation of used fuel. If you feel in the mood to be irritated and annoyed, the "glow train" episode is scheduled to air again on Tuesday, July 8.

Obama's Energy Address in Las Vegas

We expected that nuclear energy policy would be in the mix during this presidential campaign, we just didn't expect it to be so soon. From Senator Obama's just-concluded energy address to 100 invited guests at Springs Preserve in Las Vegas, NV:

Meanwhile, the oil companies already own drilling rights to 68 million acres of federal lands, onshore and offshore, that they haven’t touched. 68 million acres that have the potential to nearly double America’s total oil production, and John McCain wants to give them more. Well that might make sense in Washington, but it doesn’t make sense for America. In fact, it makes about as much sense as his proposal to build 45 new nuclear reactors without a plan to store the waste some place other than right here at Yucca Mountain. Folks, these are not serious energy policies. They are not new energy policies. And they are certainly not the kind of energy policies that will give families the relief they need or our country the oil independence we must have.

Update: The full text of the speech is now available here.

CNBC Clip on Nuclear Energy

Hat tip to McErlain for the link.

What I Did Missed on Summer Vacation

Go away for a few days to a wireless-less island and nuclear goes boffo in the general interest press. (Clearly this is a sign that I should go on vacation more often.)

Stephen Dubner, author of Freakonomics, looks at the possibility of nuclear power providing the electricity for plug-in hybrids. (Not the first time this week we've heard that idea.)...In its cover story package, The Future of Energy, The Economist identifies nuclear's place at the table....Investor's Business Daily puts the DOE's loan guarantees in context...The New York Times Magazine profiles Duke Power CEO Jim Rogers...The New York Post publishes an Op-Ed by NEI president and CEO Skip Bowman.

Anything else I missed?

The Debate with Amory Lovins Continues

Here's their rebuttal to my part two.

Dishwasher or No Dishwasher? That Is the Question.

Honestly, we like the folks in the environmental movement a lot, even if their more zealous activities can make some of them easy targets for fun and snark. Maybe it's that environmentalism has a high appeal to younger folk who get their first taste of activism and run wild with it. Maybe it's that the green sands are so shifty it can be hard to maintain ideological purity without tipping into a sandals-and-earnestness trap. Nothing like being hip and a bore at the same time - you can find yourself alienating all your friends at once.

But fair is fair, and we think The New York Times is being signally unfair when it weighs in on green overload:

Two years after “An Inconvenient Truth” helped unleash a new tide of environmental activism, green noise pulses through the collective consciousness from all directions. The news media issues dire reports about disappearing polar bears; Web sites feature Brad Pitt arriving at a movie premiere in his hydrogen-powered BMW; bookstore shelves are piled high with titles like “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth”; shops carry hemp-enriched shampoo and 100-percent organic cotton tampons.

Probably could have done without some of those details, but the idea is that while green may seem the new black, it has rapidly lost cache in a media- and marketing-driven orgy of opportunism.

“What we’ve been seeing in focus groups is a real green backlash,” Ms. [Suzanne C.] Shelton said. Over the last six months, she added, when the agency screened environmentally themed advertisements, “we see over half the room roll their eyes: ‘Not another green message.’ ”

Shelton runs an ad agency, though the article seems loath to point out that it is the marketers and advertisers of the world that are most to blame for this state of affairs.

Now, we should note that the NYT, and especially writer Alex Williams, who put quill to paper for this one, delight in manufacturing trendless trend pieces. Take this, for example:

“I would be a much more productive member of society if I didn’t have to worry about, ‘Should I wash dishes by hand or run the dishwasher?’ ” said Erik Michaels-Ober, a 24-year-old software engineer in San Francisco. “There are all sorts of conflicting stories about that.”

When you get to something like that, you know you're in the thickets with a reporter straining hard enough to develop mental hemorrhoids. (No offense to Mr. Michaels-Ober, who got roped into this, but really - the photo indicates he's a single guy, so what's he doing dishes-wise, feeding the Norwegian army?)

It may sound as though we're rapping the folks here who are trying to wrap their minds around environment issues, but really, the rap is against the Times. This articles takes as its template the argument often used against environmental advocacy - that earnestness shades into silliness when it's taken beyond practical limits. (You could call it the PETA effect.) The net result is to downgrade environmental arguments as crackpot. The timing of this article, with much discussion over offshore drilling now occurring, feels highly suspect, a way to clear out rhetorical deadwood en route to a highly contentious public policy change.

That may well be oversensitivity, but we found our antennae twitching uncomfortably on this one. Not that we'll be taking our most devoted green friend out for a dinner of rocks and twigs, but fair is fair.

Drawing is of a dishwasher. If Mr. Michaels-Ober has a blog, maybe we can help him figure out his dish washing dilemma.

The Heritage Foundation on The Costs of Energy

Our friends over at the Heritage Foundation have been developing quite an interesting portfolio of papers about nuclear energy over the last few months. Their latest is called Critics of Nuclear Power's Costs Miss the Point and addresses the relative costs of nuclear power and its pals in the renewable Club of Heroes, solar and wind.

Writers Jack Spencer and Nick Loris make points we've made here several times over but do a good job of summarizing why it might be that nuclear energy, despite up-front costs that give pause, remains the energy source to favor for emission-free electricity generation (almost sounds like a sale pitch). Here's what they say about some of those up-front costs:

Today, it is very expensive to produce nuclear-qualified components and materials because steep overhead costs are carried by only a few products. Additional production will allow these costs to be spread, thus lowering costs overall. Further savings should be achieved by applying lessons learned from initial construction projects. Because nuclear plants could have an operating life of 80 years, the benefit could be well worth the cost.

John McCain mentioned this the other day in his energy speech and here Spencer and Loris make exactly the point we did: that the potential for industry development around nuclear componentry is enormous.

But what about wind?

Despite efforts to portray these sources as viable alternatives to nuclear power, they have their own problems. They are expensive, intermittent, and inappropriate for broad swaths of the United States. For example, wind turbines are virtually useless in the Southeast, where there is little wind. Even environmental activists are beginning to oppose wind projects because they kill birds, despoil landscapes, and ruin scenic views.

Er, how about solar, guys?

Solar, Inc., the world's largest solar company, recently told investors that its largest market, the European Union, may ban its solar panels because they contain toxic cadmium telluride. To replace the cadmium model with a silicon-based model would quadruple the production costs.

We expect Solar, Inc., will find a way around this, but you get the picture. We're not sure we fully agree with the "all the alternative energy sources have problems, so a pox on all houses" approach here; it's probably fairer to say that all sources of electricity generation present challenges, from construction right up to operation, and it's up to industry, with a nudge from regulators, government and activists, to find ways to solve those challenges.

Nuclear gets the nod in a lot of corners because, in broad terms, it's well understood and has proved its worth in the long term. It's also mature enough to produce electricity less expensively than its cousins.

We cannot nod to our friends over at Heritage without dinging them for a bit of partisan zeal:

Government has no business making any decisions about nuclear power based on costs. Its role should be to provide adequate oversight and fulfill its legal obligations on nuclear waste. It is primarily private companies that produce America's power, and consumers pay for it. Their interactions in the marketplace should determine the best way to meet America's energy needs.

We'd love to believe that government has such a small role to play here; however, when the public good intersects with industrial prerogative, the insertion of government into the mix can be a net positive, welcomed as a counterbalance to the impulse to do what is most immediately profitable - which is where corporations incline, after all. Heritage always seems to assume that if you step one pace away from an unfettered marketplace, Hugo Chavez will be having a ticker tape parade on Fifth Avenue.

Very slight ding, though, on a very good piece. Take a read.

A Response from Amory Lovins on My First Post

It looks like we now have a debate over at Gristmill. Check it out. I'll be responding there shortly.

Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Four (Costs of New Nuclear Plants)

We’re now on our third week of posts seriously looking at Amory Lovins’ and the Rocky Mountain Institute’s latest paper that bashes nuclear energy. Today’s post deals with the paper’s claim that nuclear energy’s “true competitors” (according to RMI) are cheaper and therefore “produce” more “climate solution” than nuclear. I will show that RMI relies on weak sources, no sources, and cherry-picked data for their cost assumptions to exaggerate their claims.

From page 19 in RMI’s paper (pdf):

Every dollar spent on new nuclear power produces 1.4-11+ times less climate solution than spending the same dollar on its cheaper competitors. For a power source merely to emit no carbon isn’t good enough; it must also produce the least carbon per dollar…

To come up with the above statement, RMI’s paper takes the cost assumptions for each technology from their graph below, inverts them to get kWh per dollar, finds each technology’s “CO2 emissions displaced relative to coal,” multiplies the kWh per dollar with the “CO2 emissions displaced relative to coal,” and then compares each technology’s results to nuclear to come up with the above statement. If you understood the first time what I just wrote in the previous sentence, then you’re a genius. It took quite awhile for me to make sense of this, but whatever. My post deals with the cost assumptions in the graph below.Initial Thoughts

I’ve gone through RMI’s Excel spreadsheet, methodology and 52-page paper and what they have basically done is picked and chosen many different data points from many different sources to compile the above graph. The primary cost assumptions are found in rows 20-38 in the worksheet titled “Climate Data” from RMI’s Excel spreadsheet. When digging into the numbers, I found the worksheet was extremely hard to follow, it doesn’t explain certain calculations, and calculates practically everything differently. It’s one big mess in my opinion.

One of the problems with the way RMI put the worksheet together is that the data comes from numerous sources published in different years. RMI compares data from a 2003 MIT study, a 2007 MIT study, a 2006 one-page WADE source, and a 2005 “personal communications” data exchange (will explain below) just to name a few. Picking and choosing certain data points from many different sources just screams the word “cherry-picking.” As I’ll show below, that’s exactly what they did.

Cogeneration Cost Data

The RMI worksheet assumes that the delivered costs (aka levelized costs) of “combined-cycle industrial” and “building-scale” cogeneration plants (aka combined heat and power plants - CHP) are 5.47-5.91 cents per kWh. One component (O&M) of RMI’s levelized costs comes from WADE’s one-pager on gas turbines. What’s interesting is that the WADE one-pager provides a link to the International Energy Agency’s 2008 Combined Heat and Power paper (pdf). According to page 24 in the IEA report, the delivered electricity costs for an “Accelerated CHP” plant are above 10 cents/kWh, nearly twice as high as RMI’s costs. Why didn’t RMI use this data from the IEA paper considering IEA is a more reliable, objective source than themselves or WADE? RMI uses IEA data for one of the cost components of nuclear (O&M). But apparently IEA data on co-gen plants are not good enough for RMI’s comparisons. Looks like cherry-picking to me.

Moving on. The RMI worksheet found that “Recovered-heat industrial cogen” plants are the cheapest power plants in their dataset. I went through a maze trying to find the capital cost assumptions for this type of power plant. In RMI’s “Climate Data” worksheet, the source of the capital costs for this plant was a paper titled “Mighty Mice” (pdf) that Amory Lovins submitted to the Nuclear Engineering International magazine. I found no such mention of the capital costs on “Recovered heat industrial cogen” plants in this paper. Instead, a link “for documentation” in the section titled Comparative Cost sent me to RMI’s page on energy efficiency. This page had nothing to do with the capital costs of “Recovered heat industrial cogen” plants. I went to RMI’s methodology next.

According to the third page of RMI’s methodology (pdf), I can supposedly find the “cost breakdown” of “Recovered heat industrial cogen” plants in a previous RMI document (pdf). It looks like the breakdown is on page 22 in the paragraph on Cogeneration. All the data in this paragraph is based on “personal communications” with Tom Casten, Chairman and CEO of Primary Energy. No capital costs were mentioned in the paragraph, instead, only an “all-in electricity price” was given. To me, relying on “personal communications” from 2005 for cost data is just plain weak. Especially since it is proprietary and there’s no way for me to verify it.

So basically the spreadsheet and methodology pointed me to two different documents which provided no information on the capital costs for a “Recovered heat industrial cogen” plant. Not only that, the source of some of the data is a CEO. Apparently, RMI thinks it’s appropriate to use the info from the CEO of Primary Energy, but when NEI’s CEO says nuclear plants are competitive in a climate-constrained world, Amory Lovins complains that it’s false (as discussed on page 5 in RMI’s paper (pdf)). One word again comes to mind: cherry-picking.

Energy Efficiency Cost Data

RMI assumes, without references to any sources, that efficiency costs 1-4 cents/kWh. How can RMI claim these numbers without any sources?

Here’s what I’ve found when researching efficiency costs. According to the EIA’s 2006 Annual Energy Review, the costs of electric efficiency from utilities have remained between 3-4 cents/kWh since 1996 (adjusting to 2007 dollars, see graph below). The energy savings have also remained flat since 1996 as well. If utilities were to save more with efficiency, I could easily argue that it will cost much more than 3-4 cents/kWh.RMI’s claim that nuclear’s “cheaper competitors” produce “1.4-11+ more climate solution” is grossly exaggerated. Their “11+” number is based on the assumed cost of efficiency of one cent/kWh. Yet, according to EIA data, one cent/kWh is too low. I find it stunning that RMI advocates so much for efficiency, yet they provide no sources on the actual costs! I am not going to get into the RMI’s cost assumptions for coal, combined cycle gas, nuclear and wind because, as I’ll show below, RMI’s assumptions are irrelevant.

So do nuclear plants provide “more climate solution” per dollar than what RMI claims?

Yes they do, at least according to several electric utilities that are planning to build them.

Over the past several years, the capital costs of building different types of power plants have increased substantially. This trend is documented by Cambridge Energy Research Associate’s Power Capital Costs Index. Here’s their press release:

The IHS CERA PCCI – which tracks the costs of building coal, gas, wind and nuclear power plants indexed to the year 2000 – is a proprietary measure of project cost inflation similar in concept to the Consumer Price Index (CPI). The IHS CERA PCCI now registers 231 index points, indicating a power plant that cost $1 billion in 2000 would, on average, cost $2.31 billion today.

…

“The fundamentals that have driven costs upward for the past eight years—supply constraints, increasing wages and rising materials costs—remain in place and will continue during 2008“ [said Candida Scott].

The RMI paper only discusses CERA’s cost increases for new nuclear plants (from pages 7-10) and fails to note that the “supply constraints, increasing wages and rising materials costs” are affecting all types of power plants, including RMI’s co-generation plants. This trend is important to note because cost estimates older than a year ago are outdated. This further invalidates RMI’s cost estimates that are based on data from older studies.

What are the latest new nuclear plant cost estimates then?

I can't give you exact new plant cost estimates because they vary among different sources. I can, however, provide the overall findings from several utilities who have made their own cost estimates.

In October 2007, Florida Power and Light submitted a Petition to Determine Need for Turkey Point Nuclear Units 6 and 7 (pdf) to Florida's Public Service Commission. Here's what page 11 states:

FPL’s analysis shows that for all of the scenarios evaluated (eight of nine), the addition of new nuclear capacity is economically superior versus the corresponding addition of new [combined cycle] units required to provide the same power output, yielding large direct economic benefits to customers as well as effectively addressing the criteria of section 403.519(4)(b). In fact, in the only scenario in which nuclear is not clearly superior, the natural gas prices are significantly lower than they are today and there are zero future economic compliance costs for CO2 emissions. Of all the scenarios evaluated, FPL believes these two to be the most unlikely. Moreover, even in these two unlikely scenarios, the results of the analysis show nuclear to be competitive or only slightly disadvantaged economically, while retaining the non-quantified advantages of fuel diversity, fuel supply reliability, and energy independence. Based on all the information available today, it is clearly desirable to take the steps and make the expenditures necessary to retain the option of new nuclear capacity coming on line in 2018.

This is a pretty significant statement for FPL to find that a new nuclear plant is “economically superior” considering they are the largest owner of wind capacity in the U.S. and 42% of their generation comes from “state-of-the-art” combined-cycle gas plants.

What’s hilarious is that the RMI paper (on pages 6 and 7) used FPL’s high cost estimates to imply that nuclear plants are becoming even more uneconomical. Yet they neglected to mention FPL’s key findings on page 11 as well as the whole point of the filing. Here’s FPL’s page 2:

While FPL continues to advance reduced electricity usage and load management techniques through industry-leading conservation efforts and demand side management (“DSM”) programs, and actively cultivates and pursues the development of additional renewable generating capacity within the state, by themselves these efforts are not enough. FPL must also at times construct large, baseload capacity additions if the Company is to continue “keeping the lights on.” The proposed Project is intended to help meet FPL’s growing need for additional baseload capacity, which is the essential foundation of any utility’s supply portfolio, because these plants run year-round to provide the continuous supply of electricity that customers require. The Project also will enhance the reliability of FPL’s system by reducing reliance on fossil fuels and diversifying the resource mix.

Failure to note these statements is another clear example of RMI’s cherry-picking. Here’s what Progress Energy Florida had to say in their Petition to Florida’s PSC (pdf) back in March 2008 for two new nuclear units (page 4):

PEF made its determination that Levy Units 1 and 2 were needed and the most cost-effective source of power to customers after fully accounting for the express considerations for nuclear power plant need determinations that the Florida Legislature set forth. Levy Units 1 and 2 will meet a reliability need in 2016 and beyond, while capturing cost-saving efficiencies and economies of scale from the successive construction of two nuclear power plants. Levy Units 1 and 2 will help the Company achieve greater fuel diversity and will enhance fuel supply reliability and security. The Levy units will avoid 864 million tons of carbon dioxide (“COz”), 1.4 million tons of NOx, 5.8 million tons of SO*, and 28,800 pounds of mercury over a sixty-year time frame and will, accordingly, position the Company to better respond to existing fossil fuel environmental regulations and future greenhouse gas (“GHG) regulations.

And here is SCE&G’s application to the South Carolina PSC (pdf, docketed in May 2008) to build two new nuclear units at its Summer nuclear plant station (page 6):

SCE&G’s total net reliable generation capacity, including its two-thirds share of the output of the VCSNS Unit No. 1, is 5,687 MW, compared to a 2007 peak demand of 4,998 MW. The Company’s peak demand continues to increase and is presently forecasted to be 5,791 MW by 2016 and 6,133 MW by 2019. SCE&G can efficiently meet as much as 209 MW of this increased demand through conservation, load-shifting, off-system purchases, renewable energy resources or through the installation of gas-fired peaking units. However, without the additional base load capacity represented by the proposed Facilities, SCE&G will not be able to meet the increasing need for efficient base load power in its electric service territory and assure reliable, reasonably priced electric supply to its customers and the State of South Carolina.

At least three utilities tasked with providing reliable power to their customers contradict RMI’s findings on nuclear plant costs. I’m sure the companies planning to build new nuclear plants in this list would also agree with the statements made by FPL, Progress and SCE&G.

Conclusion

The Energy Tribune sums it up best:

Lovins has a number of critics, and among the most prominent is Paul Joskow, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “My rule of thumb,” Joskow wrote me in an e-mail, “is to double his [non-nuclear] cost estimate and divide his energy saving estimate in half to get something closer to reality.”

Pretty much.

Here are links to my previous posts for this series: Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Intro, Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part One (The Art of Deception), Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Two (Big Plants vs. Small Plants), and Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Three (Energy Efficiency and “Negawatts”). I have two more posts left to publish – one on nuclear and grid reliability (also incorporating thoughts on decentralization) and then my overall conclusion of RMI’s paper. Stay tuned.

GM's Plug-in Plugging Into the Grid

Obligatory hat tip to NEI Notes reader Scott for pointing us to this Seattle Times story about GM's plans for its plug-in hybrid vehicle, the Chevy Volt.

Scheduled to launch in 2010, the Volt will run up to 40 miles on a single charge. That 40 mile threshold is key, as, according to GM, 78% of U.S. commuters drive 40 miles or less daily.

How would a fleet of electric cars impact the pump and the grid? (Here's where it gets really interesting.)

Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA), a prominent Boston consultancy, estimates that if the entire U.S. vehicle fleet suddenly became electric, gas consumption would drop 70 percent, and electric-power consumption would jump about 17 percent.

"It's not that big a hit for the electric-power industry," said CERA consultant Patricia DiOrio.

What electricity source could respond to that demand? General Motors vice chairman and head of product development, Robert Lutz, has an answer,

The only real option is nuclear energy.

John McCain’s Energy Speech

Here’s the whole transcript. You don’t have to filter it through our observations. As you might expect, McCain addressed the issue du jour, high gas prices.

People are hurting, small farmers, truckers, and taxi drivers unable to cover their costs, small business owners struggling to meet payroll, the cost of living rising and the value of paychecks falling. All of this, in large part, because the price of oil is too high, and the supply of oil too uncertain. These citizens believe their government has a duty to finally assure the energy security of this country, and they are right.

As you might expect from a very political speech, McCain has to both answer to and challenge industries and the electorate in order to gain support for a change in public policy. Sometimes, that can lead to too many circles getting squared, but we'll put aside the partisan aspects - since the hot air of political discussion could displace all other energy sources with enough left over to power a new sun - and focus on a few issues.

Here’s the paragraph on nuclear energy:

As for nuclear energy -- a proven energy source that requires zero emissions -- we haven't built a new reactor in 31 years. In Europe and elsewhere, they have been expanding their use of nuclear energy. But we've waited so long that we've lost our domestic capability to even build these power plants. Nuclear power is among the surest ways to gain a clean, abundant, and stable energy supply, as other nations understand. One nation today has plans to build almost 50 new reactors by 2020. Another country plans to build 26 major nuclear stations. A third nation plans to build enough nuclear plants to meet one quarter of all the electricity needs of its people -- a population of more than a billion people. Those three countries are China, Russia, and India. And if they have the vision to set and carry out great goals in energy policy, then why don't we?

This popped out:

But we've waited so long that we've lost our domestic capability to even build these power plants.

I think he means some of the components rather than the full plant, which is true enough. But depending on the ambitiousness of the program, nothing stops a revival of the components industry in this country – it could have the salient effects of revitalizing the steel industry, at least to some extent, and creating new industries around new nuclear technologies. As we’ve said here often, the nuclear renaissance implies a strong economic ripple around it, both in associated industries and in communities housing those industries and the plants. But, hey, it’s a sentence, not carved in stone and not in the least problematic.

We expect details on this will emerge in the next week - McCain's making a lot of energy speeches right now - so more on this later.

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Naturally, the speech is a mix of the appealing and appalling. Where you stand on various energy issues, on the partisan arguments advanced and on the sliding scale of environmental stewardship vs. industrial prerogative will determine how you react to it. So far, the fiercest arguments revolve around these few lines of the speech:

We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. And I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use. 

To us, this seems a non-starter due to having to get a Democratic Congress to agree to it. As President Bush’s term winds down, the Dems are far less likely to entertain his wishes. Bush introduced  legislation today that mirrors McCain’s proposal - see below. The only hope is that Republicans can raise enough of a ruckus – Fox News has been supporting it on every show of theirs I’ve seen – to get it to a vote.

The proposal itself, however, falls seriously foul of environmentalists' concerns, though the areas of the country that would embrace it – we’d guess the gulf coast – would find those concerns easy to override. (Florida and the east and west coasts, though, not so much.)

However you slice it, the proposal is worth discussion and you may be sure there will be a lot of it. But if the Democrats move on it, we’ll be genuinely surprised.

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Here’s the Sierra Club on the drilling idea – guess where it falls?

And here’s Fox’s Neil Cavuto – er, guess where he falls?

I have to give Cavuto credit, though; he really pulls out the big guns:

The product of the greatest generation...all too quickly, all too sadly leaving us now. I hope we don't forget them now. Or their resolve then. When they fought a Depression and a World War at the same time.

And how does this relate to offshore drilling? Read the whole thing to find out, then come back here and memorize these lines for future use. You can use them to cow almost anyone about anything.

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Fox also has the story of Bush’s proposal.

Here’s Bush:

For many Americans, there is no more pressing concern than the price of gasoline. Truckers and farmers, small-business owners have been hit especially hard. Every American who drives to work, purchases food or ships a product has felt the effect, and families across the country are looking to Washington for a response.

Sound familiar? It sounds like McCain's lines above.

Here’s House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:

The president's proposal sounds like another page from the administration's energy policy that was literally written by the oil industry: give away more public resources to the very same oil companies that are sitting on 68 million acres of federal lands they've already leased.

There’s the poles of the debate right there.

Photo of John McCain. We've noted the pointing predilections of politicians before, but here's a rare sighting of a thumb point. And don't worry, Obama supporters - we'll scrounge up a photo of Barack Obama with a flag background, too. It's going to be, as always, a long campaign.

U.S. Senate Candidates on Energy

The Denver Post today has an Energy Q&A with Senate candidates, Bob Schaffer (R) and Mark Udall (D). Good news for the nuclear industry: both support its expansion.

Do you support the expansion of nuclear energy?

Schaffer: Yes. Bob Schaffer supports safe and environmentally responsible expansion of nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is cost-effective, efficient and just one plant can produce a great deal of energy. France, for example, depends on nuclear for 75% of its energy. Nuclear can and should be part of America's strategy to achieve energy independence.

Udall: Yes. Given our nation's energy crisis, its effects on our national security, and the threat of global climate change, I think nuclear power has to be "on the table" in the mix of power sources we look to for the 21st Century.

Schaffer and Udall are running for the seat vacated by Wayne Allard (R). The RealClearPolitics average currently has Udall up by 8.3%.

McCain on Cap-and-Trade

Senator John McCain, in response to a question, made a curious comment about cap-and-trade yesterday:

Sure. I believe in the cap-and-trade system, as you know. I would not at this time make those - impose a mandatory cap at this time. But I do believe that we have to establish targets for reductions of greenhouse gas emissions over time, and I think those can be met.

We guess his idea is to get the EPA up to speed on administration and an infrastructure in place for auctions (if there are auctions – and assuming cap-and-trade eventually makes it through Congress – both McCain and Obama favor it), but it seems peculiar not to have the initial caps and a schedule for them in place when the program is ready to go. Otherwise, no market for carbon credits is created.

We’ve noticed McCain’s penchant for comments so terse there may be nothing at all or a universe of detail behind them. It’s not a bad politician trick, and McCain may be trying to signal industry not to worry so much about cap-and-trade while still supporting it in concept – and it makes sense that he should support it, since he drafted an early version of what later became Lieberman-Warner.

Presidential politics, of course, is very different than representing Arizona (or Illinois, in Obama’s case), so positions that make sense in a micro way can make less sense in a macro way. Industry tends to be a Republican go-to for funding, so it seems natural McCain might feint that way, but the power generation industry seems reconciled to a cap-and-trade regime. It’s a bit of a mystery. Is McCain stepping back a little or did he just get too terse for comfort?

McCain’s giving a major speech on energy issues today that should be quite friendly to nuclear energy. More on that later…

How Much Is that Pony in the Window?

The purchase of a major asset, whether a car or a new power plant, frequently involves a trade off between the purchase price and operating costs. A column by Joseph B. White published in The Wall Street Journal's Eyes on the Road column on June 16, 2008 titled, "Still Waiting for Hybrids to be the Smartest Buy", updates us on the trade-off between the higher purchase price and lower fuel costs of hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius.

White shows that, even with gasoline at $4 per gallon, a typical consumer would have to drive the hybrid vehicle for more than seven years to begin to realize net savings compared to the non-hybrid alternative. Said differently, if the consumer expects to keep the vehicle for more than seven years, purchasing the hybrid could make sense economically. Interestingly, the article also mentions some of the non-economic reasons buyers offer to explain their willingness to pay a premium for a hybrid. Among them are a desire to be "greener" and gain access to commuter lanes reserved for high occupancy vehicles and hybrid cars.

Similarly, electricity suppliers are looking at the trade off between initial construction costs and fuel costs for the next generation of power plants now under consideration. While recent press reports (typical is an article in the June 11 Chattanooga Times Free Press) often highlight the cost of constructing new nuclear power plants (i.e., the initial purchase price), they seldom mention the lower, and by comparison more stable, cost of nuclear fuel (part of the operating costs).

These articles offer opportunities for eye-catching headlines, but there is much more to the story. For the consumer, the real issue is not what the initial purchase price will be, but what will be the "cost of ownership", i.e., the cost of the electricity produced by the new power plant. Our analyses and our review of outside studies indicate that the price of electricity produced by new nuclear power plants will be very competitive when they enter the market in 2016 and beyond.

Finally, as was mentioned by hybrid owners quoted in the Wall Street Journal article, there are important non-economic reasons to consider. Chief among them is the importance of maintaining diversity in our energy supply, helping to keep our electric system among the most reliable in the world. NEI has long maintained that the nation will need to tap all of the available options to meet its electricity needs, including efficiency and conservation, renewables, clean coal, and gas.

Later this week, the NEI Blog will present additional information on the cost of new nuclear power plants. Stay tuned.

UPDATE at 2:45pm, 6/17/08
A tip of the hat to our friend and former co-worker Eric McErlain who forwarded a link to an interesting mention of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) in Nashville, Tennessee this week. Thanks, Eric.

Where the Hot Wind Blows: Some Odder Ends

The Guardian has an interesting article about the harder look being taken at microgeneration:

British buildings equipped with solar, wind and other micro power equipment could generate as much electricity in a year as five nuclear power stations, a government-backed industry report showed today.

Commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Regulatory Reform (DBERR), the report says that if government chose to be as ambitious as some other countries, a combination of loans, grants and incentives could lead to nearly 10m microgeneration systems being installed by 2020.

Apparently, Germany is investing the euros necessary to jump start the industry, but Germany is also roaring along economically and most European countries are not. The upfront costs of microgeneration are gasp-inducing and fall on builders and owners retrofitting their houses.

Other possible incentives include 50% grants to help people meet the high initial cost of equipment and installation. If the government subsidised 50% of the cost of the some of the technologies, Britain would save 14m tonnes of CO2 a year, or 3% of all emissions for a cost rising to £2.2bn a year by 2030.

Frankly, we think making individuals do this without shutting off their electricity will take a massive education effort or government dictum (which would mean shutting off the electricity ultimately.) That can be tough, as can be seen in the effort here to get people to switch off analog TV before the government does it for them – and that’s just TV and pretty cheap to do. If done on a large scale, a transition like this could also send unpleasant economic shocks through various energy-generating industries that the government has to somehow accommodate. Oh, and one more thing:

Conservative leader David Cameron, Gordon Brown and Malcolm Wicks have all had applications to erect wind turbines on their roofs turned down by planning officers.

Not on my roof’s backyard, thank you very much.

Which doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be pursued. Not much mentioned in the U.S. so far, it’ll be interesting to see how Great Britain pursues this in their upcoming energy plan.

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As always, Archie Comics – yes, this would be a change of subject – has been looking for ways to keep their characters interesting to the mobs of young girls (mostly) who have lots of other things to gobble up their time. Archie’s gang has been around since 1941 and has always been in high school, so relevance here means keeping Riverdale High more or less in sync with the times and with the cultural touchstones that interest kids. (Which should mean Manga Archie, but so far, no.)

So it’s no surprise that Archie is going green and promoting it:

Just as "Freshman Year" writer Batton Lash [wonder if he was named after Bat Lash, a western hero of 60s comics] is turning back the timeline for a fresh look at Archie and his friends' beginnings, the publishers of Archie Comics are giving previously used paper a fresh look by printing this storyline on recycled paper! Beginning with ARCHIE #587, all five issues featuring this special storyline, through issue ARCHIE #591 will have their interiors printed on recycled paper.

We’re not sure why this story merits the paper rather than a story about the kids’ eco-efforts, but maybe the coverage missed it. And do high school kids have “beginnings”? Since all these kids grew up together, it isn’t even a question of meeting each other for the first time.

Archie Comics may be letting itself in for it, though, as recycled paper is fairly expensive and these issues are probably loss leaders. If Archie’s readership begins to militate for all the titles to be printed this way all the time, trouble for someone’s pocketbook.

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Well, Planet Green, the Discover channel outlet we mentioned last week, debuted. Slate has a first review, but we’re loath to quote from it. If Troy Patterson is right, it’s everything we made fun of and more. But as we said then, early days – Discover has generally found the right balance in their programming before and likely will here, too.

Picture of the first of the green Archies. Note the backpacks and outfits – they do keep up. If you grew up on the Dan DeCarlo version of Archie – and who didn’t? it lasted 50 years – Bill Galvan’s variation is a nice spit polish. Not much diversity, though – where are these kids, anyway? Utah?

In the Tank for Nuclear Energy? John McCain and Subsidizing New Plants

Over at The Atlantic, Matthew Yglesias takes a look at John McCain’s energy plans. He notes McCain’s refusal to consider subsidizing any form of alternative energy source except for nuclear energy. McCain, we noted during our week of Lieberman-Warner, was unhappy with the bill only in that it did not include subsidies for nuclear energy.

Yglesias concludes:

That's the kind of position you would expect a lobbyist for the nuclear energy industry to take -- not someone who's serious about reducing carbon emissions. Anything that puts a price on carbon, whether or not in includes explicit subsidies, will be good for the nuclear energy industry. And if additional subsidies on top of that are the price it takes to convince unprincipled Senators -- like, apparently, John McCain -- to vote for an overall good bill then that's a price worth paying.

It’s an interesting post, even with the drive-by swipe at McCain, so be sure to get the full flavor there.

We don’t really want to get into political bloviation here at NNN – you can get that at lots of different places, at incredible length – but we do have a notion how McCain might have been toting this one up.

Nuclear energy plants, unlike those of some other alternative energy sources, sees a mountainous share of their expense during construction rather than after they start producing those sweet jolts of low-cost electricity we prize them for. If you look at a plant’s costs only during its construction, it would rightly give you pause – but over the long term, the value of a nuclear energy plant increases considerably as its running costs decrease. Mitigating the jitters over those up-front costs is what government-backed loan guarantees are all about and may be what McCain had in mind, too, wanting to see more of them. So, we have a grasp of how McCain is squaring this particular circle, even where it seems to run counter to conservative economic argument (loan guarantees are only nominally a subsidy) and even McCain’s own stance on energy plant subsidization in other instances (wind and solar plants, for example, cost less to construct even if they do not produce electricity as economically as nuclear, but it makes them less vulnerable to skittish loan officers).

Yglesias says that any tax, called such or not, on carbon benefits nuclear energy, but nuclear energy and all its renewable cousins have been benefiting without it so far and are likely to continue doing so with or without cap-and-trade, which, depending on how it’s implemented, could be seen as a tax on carbon emissions (if the credits are auctioned) or a new marketplace for carbon credits(whether or not credits are auctioned – we can see where trades in carbon credits could be taxed, too).

In the realm of energy generation (well, really, any industry in which government inserts itself), government is often looking to find the right carrot and the right stick to get industry to where it wants it to go. This gives government a role without completely warping the normal stresses and strains of capitalism and, at the least, gives industry a sense of where public policy is likely to take it. We may conclude that the energy industry is now fully up-to-speed on what the federal government has in mind for it, however long it takes to get a policy together. You can compare it to those ads about the generosity of pharmaceutical companies giving away expensive medicine to deserving someones – big pharma sees the toast getting buttered and wants to be sure it’s on the right side of it.

We’re not sure McCain has fully cooked his energy plan and think Yglesias might be jumping a bit fast for a spoonful of a developing public policy. Certainly it’s fair to note that the details are not yet matching the big ideas and to really sound the alarm if the details never come together. But we’ll sit a ways back on this one for a spell and see where McCain and Obama take their arguments as the campaign picks up speed.

Political bloviation filter fully back in place. Whew! The hot air could boil a cat.

Photo of Matthew Yglesias. Now, there’s how a writer should be photographed – thoughtful, stroking chin, listening intently – 3/4 view of the face is pretty flattering, too. All that’s lacking is a pipe and a corduroy jacket.

Gordon Brown's Energy Policy and the Fourth Estate

Is there anything more tedious than hearing someone rant about media bias? (Of course there is, but for the sake of this blog post, the answer to the rhetorical question is, "no.") And while I'm sure those who call in to C-SPAN's Washington Journal to expose the agenda of the moderator* are certain they are saving the Republic, I'm not one of 'em. That said, this lede from The Scotsman, caught my eye:

A THOUSAND new nuclear power stations are needed across the world to tackle the oil crisis, Gordon Brown warned yesterday.

Warned?

Here's how London's Independent wrote the story,

Gordon Brown has signalled he wants Britain to play a major role in the race to build an extra 1,000 nuclear power stations across the world as part of his vision for ending the global "addiction to oil".

And The Guardian,

Brown also suggested it would be necessary to build 1,000 nuclear power stations worldwide to combat climate change and end what he described as the world's oil addiction.

And the BBC,

Speaking at his monthly media conference, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said the world may need another 1,000 nuclear power stations to bolster energy security and fight climate change.

So what am I saying? The Scotsman reporter, Ross Lydall, is clearly not a fan of nuclear and his editorializing is showing. Meanwhile, The Independent, The Guardian (both left-leaning papers), and the BBC all stick to straight reporting.

* Full Discloure: I have a bit of a media crush on Greta Wodele.

Barbara Boxer Embraces Nuclear Power

Not all was lost in the Lieberman Warner bill debacle; Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) has publicly stated her support for nuclear energy. From MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday,

Scarborough:...Let me ask you, this is one that you may disagree with me on, but France, a [sic] 75% of its energy coming from nuclear power. Europe is moving in that direction and they are doing it because they believe that's the best way to cut carbon emissions. Why can't we figure out a way to safely regulate nuclear power so we could cut all those greenhouse gases overnight?

Boxer: There's no question that nuclear is going to be part of the solution. The thing is, we have got to get an answer to disposing of the waste. That is a big question mark. But I went to France to see what they do and Joe, it's amazing. Because they have no other way to get energy, you are right. They rely on this. They have put the whole power of the government behind the safety question. Here, we don't do that. So i think if you had, if you make sure that it was safe and that we really worked harder to make it safe, it would have more acceptance. But let me say under any scenario we are going to see more nuclear power because it's going to be more cost effective once there is a price on carbon and that's why we need a global warming bill.

The video is available here. (Nuclear-related comments appear at the 4:20 mark.)

Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Three (Energy Efficiency and “Negawatts”)

So far I have written two detailed posts on Amory Lovins’ and the Rocky Mountain Institute’s latest nuclear critique. My third post discusses energy efficiency and Amory Lovins’ coined term “negawatts.” There is this widely held belief that becoming more energy efficient means that we will consume less energy. At first glance, that notion seems correct but digging further, I found there’s much more to it. In the case of energy efficiency, RMI overlooks a fundamental effect of efficiency on the energy marketplace.

From RMI’s condensed version:

An even cheaper competitor [to new nuclear plants] is enduse efficiency (“negawatts”)—saving electricity by using it more efficiently or at smarter times.

There are several misperceptions about what energy efficiency really contributes. Here’s what Robert Bryce has to say in the Energy Tribune:

The final – and most important – area in which Lovins has been consistently wrong is his claim that efficiency lowers energy consumption. And when it comes to arguing the merits of energy efficiency, Lovins’s prime nemesis is a dead guy – William Stanley Jevons – a British economist who in 1865 determined that increased efficiency won’t cut energy use, it will raise it. “It is wholly a confusion of ideas to suppose that the economical use of fuels is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.” And in the 142 years since Jevons put forth that thesis, now commonly known as the Jevons Paradox, he’s yet to be proven wrong.

The Jevons Paradox is explained further in The Bottomless Well:

First, efficiency seems to come, regardless - often far more efficiency than the most well-meaning regulators and policy pundits can foresee.
…
Second, when radically more efficient technologies do emerge, they are quickly embraced by paying customers without any need for government mandates - embraces not just to displace old ways of doing things, but to do all sorts of new things that previously hadn’t been done at all (pp. 106-107).

Two centuries ago, no engine could surpass 10 percent efficiency. By raising boiler temperatures and pressures, engineers pushed performance to about 20 percent efficiency by the turn of the twentieth century. By mid-century, they were up to about 40 percent. Today, the best thermal plants routinely hit 50 percent efficiency. Efficiency gains this large ought to have had a dramatic impact on supply and demand - and they did. The price of transportation and electricity fell steadily. And the total amount of fuel consumed in those sectors rose apace. Efficiency may curtail demand in the short term, for the specific task at hand. But its long-term impact is just the opposite. When steam-powered plants, jet turbines, car engines, light bulbs, electric motors, air conditioners, and computers were much less efficient than today, they also consumed much less energy. The more efficient they grew, the more of them we built, and the more we used them - and more the energy they consumed overall. Per unit of energy used, the US produces more than twice as much GDP today as it did in 1950 - and total energy consumption in the US has also risen three-fold (p. 111).

…efficiency fails to curb demand because it lets more people do more, and do it faster - and more/more/faster invariably swamps all the efficiency gains (p. 112).

It is only when we begin to focus on efficiency in the extraction of energy that the paradox of efficiency comes to seem less paradoxical…The better our energy-extracting technology, the cheaper the energy, and when goods get cheaper, we consume more of them. There’s nothing paradoxical at all about that proposition … Small wonder, then, that efficiency increases consumption. It makes what we ultimately consume cheaper, and lower price almost always increases consumption. To curb energy consumption, you have to lower efficiency, not raise it. But nobody, it seems, is in favor of that (p. 123)

Where’s the data to back up the Paradox?

Below is a chart that shows the electric intensity vs. electricity consumption per person for the U.S. The chart shows that the U.S. became more efficient with its electricity (electric intensity) starting in the 1970s but continued to consume more electricity per person. If efficiency supposedly curbs demand, then the chart should show the red line following the blue line after the 1970s (or at least some change in that direction). It does not.
RMI’s Rebuttal

RMI and Amory Lovins are well aware of the Jevons Paradox and the Energy Tribune article. They attempt to rebut the two by citing the improvements in refrigerators, the implementation of hybrids, and the reduced energy consumption per-capita in California and Vermont. The Paradox describes macro-level behavior. Micro-level data on refrigerators and hybrids do not refute it. For example, the energy savings from refrigerators could simply have gone to plasma-screen TVs, XBoxes, computers or other electrical equipment. The energy savings from hybrids could simply have gone to a new lawn-mower, boat or car.

The most significant point in RMI’s rebuttal may be the following:

According to RMI co-founder and Chief Scientist Amory Lovins, Vermont has reduced energy use per household in recent years. And California, he adds, "has held per-capita electricity use flat for 30 years -- saving 65 peak GW and more than $100 billion of power-system investment -- while per-capita real income rose 79 percent."

Proponents of energy efficiency often cite California as an example of what the rest of the nation could do to save energy (as evidenced above). A careful look at the data tells us otherwise. Here’s Max Schulz:

California’s proud claim to have kept per-capita energy consumption flat while growing its economy is less impressive than it seems. The state has some of the highest energy prices in the country—nearly twice the national average, a 2002 Milken Institute study found—largely because of regulations and government mandates to use expensive renewable sources of power. As a result, heavy manufacturing and other energy-intensive industries have been fleeing the Golden State in droves for lower-cost locales. Twenty years ago or so, you could count eight automobile factories in California; today, there’s just one, and it’s the same story with other industries, from chemicals to aerospace. Yet Californians still enjoy the fruits of those manufacturing industries—driving cars built in the Midwest and the South, importing chemicals and resins and paints and plastics produced elsewhere, and flying on jumbo jets manufactured in places like Everett, Washington. California can pretend to have controlled energy consumption, but it has just displaced it.

Conclusion

I agree with RMI that promoting energy efficiency is important and valuable. However, I disagree with RMI on where increased efficiency leads. It does not necessarily lead to decreased consumption. The Energy Tribune sums up this perspective very well when it says:

Efficiency is a wonderful by-product of human ingenuity. It is an essential part of America’s ever-evolving economy. It is part and parcel of the free-market economy working independently of government-mandated efficiency programs. It makes sense to wring more work out of each unit of energy. Energy efficiency conserves capital. It is good for the environment. It is good for rich and poor alike. Efficiency helps reduce the impact of energy price volatility and possible oil price hikes.

But when it comes down to brass tacks, energy efficiency doesn’t necessarily mean less energy use, it usually means more energy use. And that usually means more carbon dioxide emissions. Thus, the idea of “saving the climate for fun and profit” may be just a bit more complicated than Lovins claims.

TVA, Chattanooga Economic Choo Choo

Quite a media coup today for the TVA, with an A1 above the fold story in the Chattanooga Times on the nuclear industry's impact on the local economy:

Beyond the temporary plant construction jobs, Tennessee is eager to land new manufacturers to supply the nuclear industry, state Economic and Community Development Commissioner Matt Kisber said.

“One of the goals that the governor has established for the long-term diversification of our economy is to make the energy industry grow roots in our state and really become as important to Tennessee as our automotive industry over the next decade or two,” Mr. Kisber said.

Already, Alstom Turbo Machines Group is preparing to invest $280 million to make turbines for nuclear plants in one of the old plants once owned by Combustion Engineering. Westinghouse Electric also is planning to buy and renovate an abandoned plant in the Centre South Riverport and add 50 more employees over the next year to expand its nuclear services business.

Alstom, a Swiss-based energy giant, plans to hire 350 workers to supplement its nearby 600-employee Chattanooga plant that makes boiler and tubular components for coal-fired power plants.

“We see that nuclear power is already coming back and will come back even stronger in the United States,” Philippe Joubert, president of Alstom Power Systems, recently told Greenwire, a publication of E&E Publishing.

The editors, eager to show off their multimedia chops, have included in their sidebar material: a sound clip from TVA President Jack Bailey, a PDF detailing the status of new plants in the U.S., and a video of a training exercise in the Watts Bar control room simulator.

A Hole in the Toilet

Bet that got your attention. We noted a few months ago that global warming denial has been doing a fade from the media, with only some Fox News personalities holding down the fort on a regular basis. Now, we're not neutral on this subject ourselves and think the issue's extension in the world of punditry has proven to be an extension of other arguments not really related to climate change per se - the know-nothing assault on science, a feint to industries that are rapidly finding their own ways forward, perhaps a way to keep an ideological wedge issue alive for political advantage - but whatever it may be or may have been, the embers of argument seem to be flickering out one at a time. How else to explain Fox's Shepherd Smith, in recounting the tale of a man who fell down the hole of a port-a-potty, saying - well, see for yourself.

The Sunshine Patriot: Edward Markey Explains Energy Options to Saudi Arabia

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) let fly an op-ed in the Wall Street journal today entitled “Why Is Bush Helping Saudi Arabia Build Nukes?” that glides around some very odd desert lands. First, he dings President Bush for going nuclear instead of solar, noticing that the kingdom has lots of sunshine:

Have Ms. Rice, Mr. Bush or Saudi leaders looked skyward? The Saudi desert is under almost constant sunshine. If Mr. Bush wanted to help his friends in Riyadh diversify their energy portfolio, he should have offered solar panels, not nuclear plants.

Second, he doubts that Saudi Arabia has good intentions, especially with Iran nearby:

An Iranian nuclear weapon would radically alter the region's balance of power, and could prove to be the match that lights the tinderbox. By signing this agreement with the U.S., Saudi Arabia is warning Iran that two can play the nuclear game.

And third, those ingrate Saudis are taking advantage of us while they have us over an <ahem> barrel. (Yes, we will be here all week – tip the waitress, she works hard for her money.)

While the scorching Saudi Arabian sun heats sand dunes instead of powering photovoltaic panels, millions of Americans will fork over $4 a gallon without realizing that their gas tank is fueling a nascent nuclear arms race.

Well, where to start? It’s practically a regular feature here at Nuclear Notes that the Arabian peninsula has become a real market-in-the-making for nuclear energy, and America, France, Great Britain and Russia are all up for partnerships. We agree with Markey that Iran has made the atmosphere a trifle thick, and gas prices thicker even. But the goal among the desert regions has been to pursue nuclear energy to free up more oil for export and to prepare for the world that’s coming – one that finds its way away from oil. After all, Markey sees it coming – heck, he wants to hasten it – so why shouldn’t Saudi Arabia?

A larger issue, though, and odd for a Democrat, is the notion that Saudi Arabia or any country should take from America only what we might want to give it. We either partner with Saudi Arabia, offer advice if it partners with France or Russia, or whistle in the dark while it pursue its own agenda. Any of these choices is legitimate; whichever America chooses, Saudi Arabia remains a sovereign nation, an ally America has counted on, and beholden to America’s whim only as far as it suits its own self-interest. 

By now, we hope the words nuclear and sinister have lost any quality as synonyms. Markey is looking backwards when he uses nuclear energy as a stalking horse for proliferation. It isn’t and imagining otherwise allows bad actors to seize the debate about nuclear energy through fear rather than logic.

An even larger issue, and odd for any responsible politician, is the lumping of all Arab countries into a ragbag of discontent and incipient bad intentions. It’s like Canada being “blamed” for the Iraq War and tarnished forever because of it. Saudi Arabia and its neighbors Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE are working as a team with the International Atomic Energy Agency to get things rolling and as we reported awhile ago, it looks like Dubai (with Great Britain as a partner) will be the first to get a nuclear energy plant humming. Does Markey want to discuss the sinister intentions of Dubai? Why, it has the second happiest place in the world within its borders.

We respect Rep. Markey quite a lot. He may sometimes roost too comfortably within the nanny-state wing of the Democratic party - one of his big issues currently is childhood obesity, leading to a letter by him to Nestle asking it not to target advertising at children since a study shows a link between advertising and overconsumption of things like yummy Nestle candy bars. Markey might be better advised to ask Birds Eye or a similar company to start targeting children (broccoli can be cool if the ads are made well; Nestle probably has the template for doing that.)

But Markey’s also genuinely grappling with issues of importance in a way that makes sense or at the very least points productive directions forward. His Cap and Invest bill (link to his home page – a bunch of pdfs are there about his bill – we always get annoyed when linked directly to a pdf) would auction carbon permits and reinvest the monies into new technologies. He really likes cellulosic ethanol, though renewables in general suit him.

Picture of Rep. Edward Markey. At least with a cup in his hand, he can’t point, which politicians do more than hunting dogs.

Germany, Merkel Rethinking Nuclear Power

From Deutsche Welle, more on German Chancellor Angela Merkel's call to restore Germany's nuclear energy program:

Although Merkel has long championed a three-way mix in electrical power generation—fossil, renewables and nuclear—she has in the past been cautious in openly advocating a reverse in official government policy to phase out nuclear power by 2021.

That all changed at a top-level weekend meeting of her Christian Democrats (CDU) and its Bavarian sister-party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), in the Bavarian town of Erding.

The anti-nuclear decision, passed into law by the government of her Social Democrat predecessor Gerhard Schroeder, was "absolutely wrong," Merkel said as the meeting ended Monday.

At a joint press conference, French President Nicolas Sarkozy expressed his country's interest in partnering with Germany:

"The desire of the French is to work with our German friends to produce nuclear energy".

President Bush begins his final, eight-day European tour in Germany on Tuesday. Here's hoping we don't read (or see) any more about his desires and Chancellor Merkel. Yeeshk.

Soylent Green Is People! You As An Energy Source

The old folks who power jog around the mall before it opens are a pretty focused bunch and probably wouldn’t even notice if Charlton Heston charged through to inform them that they, they are being used as an energy source. But some clever British engineers have found a way to convert walking into at least enough energy to keep the lights going.

Underfloor generators, powered by “heel strike” and designed by British engineers, may soon be installed in supermarkets and railway stations.

The technology could use the footsteps of pedestrians to power thousands of lightbulbs at shopping centres. It works by using the pressure of feet on the floor to compress pads underneath, driving fluid through mini-turbines that then generate electricity, which is stored in a battery.

Although the technology is all in place, you knew there had to be a catch:

The underfloor generators could in theory be used in any place where there are large numbers of pedestrians, although the expense of the technology at its current stage of development means that it is unlikely to become widespread for several years.

And we suppose the amount of people power necessary to keep, say, a town going would lead to some mighty powerful calves at the annual sack race. Still, the ingenuity of this effort shouldn’t be slighted nor its potential in logical venues undervalued – it could very well find a place at the renewable energy table.

Photograph from Soylent Green. If I remember rightly, the photo depicts the future world’s way of dealing with riots caused by overpopulation – the early seventies version of global warming, if you want to look at it that way – not how people got to be Soylent Green. That happened at the euthanasia parlors, where fine actors like Edward G. Robinson go to die a peaceful, state-assisted death and then get mulched into food. No one’s idea of a sci-fi classic.

I suppose a better sci-fi equivalent is The Matrix, where people are used as an energy source for the machine world, albeit without mobility.

The WSJ on Obama's and McCain's Clean Energy Plans

To put it mildly, they differ - in some ways reflecting the general approach of their parties. First, McCain:

Sen. McCain argues that many of the steps are little more than subsidies that enrich special interests. He has long called for scrapping the federal ethanol tax credit, saying America's corn-ethanol industry can and should stand on its own. He has also voted against requiring electric utilities to boost their use of renewable energy sources, preferring to let cities and states set their own targets for renewable energy.

And Obama:

[Obama]'s promising to invest $150 billion over the next decade in alternative fuels such as cellulosic ethanol that can be made from materials such as switchgrass and wood chips. He'd push a requirement that the U.S. by 2025 get at least 25% of its electricity from renewable sources like the wind, the sun and geothermal energy (which together currently account for less than 1% of U.S. electricity supply).

Letting the market take care of itself is fairly common thinking on the Republican side of the aisle, though different from President Bush's approach, which was closer to Obama's in terms of investment in new technology. You'll note that Obama has a nicely defined list of renewable energy sources that doesn't include nuclear energy.

Writer Stephen Powers has it covered:

On nuclear power, Sen. Obama says he's open to expanding nuclear energy, which now provides 20% of the nation's electricity, as part of an effort to increase power sources that emit little or no carbon dioxide. But he also has said there is no future for expanded nuclear energy until the U.S. comes up with a safe, long-term solution for disposing of nuclear waste. He opposes the Bush administration's plan for storing waste at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Sen. McCain has expressed support for the Yucca Mountain proposal. And while he opposes subsidies for many alternative-energy technologies, he wants bigger incentives for nuclear energy, arguing that the U.S. "will not succeed in achieving independence [from] foreign oil nor...in addressing seriously the issue of greenhouse-gas emissions" without expanding its use of nuclear power. Many environmentalists see his stance as inconsistent with his free-market rhetoric.

Who said A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds (hint: not Shakespeare) - or was it i before e except after c?  If Obama really wants to compete here, he'll need to develop a plan. Without  one, it would seem he would simply slipstream supporting Yucca Mountain into his budgets. Wouldn't annoy us, but we'll see.

Read the whole thing. It includes a chart which suggests we won't be getting anywhere without China.

Monday Morning Breakfast

...nuclear energy news you may have missed this weekend.

Zogby releases its latest survey: 67% favor building new nuclear power plants in the U.S....The Arizona Republic reviews the state's energy options in the face of growing electricity demands....Barron's attempts to square the Obama campaign's position on nuclear....Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), coming around to nuclear energy?...Britain is "the most exciting place in Europe" for nuclear power, according to Areva president Anne Lauvergeon....Germany is likely the least; at the G-8 Summit in Japan, Economics Minister Jochen Homann reasserted his country's intentions to phase out nuclear....Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, is saying something different....Deutsche Welle puts Germany's decision(s) in relief against the backdrop of the nuclear renaissance in the EU....Albania is the latest country to want in....The IEA calls for 32 new nuclear plants to be built each year, worldwide....Seeking Alpha looks at energy ETFs and likes what it sees in nuclear.

McCain, Obama Surrogates on Nuclear Power

In the middle of the D segment on CNN's Late Edition, we find this interesting exchange between Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA):

Blitzer: What about the nuclear program that Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is recommending?
Feinstein: I think there are a couple of problems with nuclear yet. I think the technology with respect to waste. The training with respect to human, preventing human error has greatly improved. And it may well be possible to do some nuclear.

That again, the permit system is extraordinarily difficult. [It] will take time. In the meantime, I think we have to begin to look into things like speculation on the futures market with respect to oil.

Blitzer: You think there's been some hanky panky there?
Feinstein: Oh, yeah. I think there has been.
Blitzer: Do you agree on that?
Hutchinson: We cannot bring down the cost of gasoline at the pump unless we produce more. And that means nuclear power. We haven't had an accident at a nuclear power plant in this country in 25-years...or ever in this country. We haven't had a [new] nuclear power plant in 25-years and yet other countries are using it very efficiently.

Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part Two (Big Plants vs. Small Plants)

Two days ago I began a series that critically looks into Amory Lovins’ and the Rocky Mountain Institute’s latest paper against nuclear energy. Today’s post discusses the claim that small plants (termed “micropower”) are turning in a “stunning performance” and are the way to go. There are two parts to this post: exposing the flaws in their “micropower” data and discussing the differences of big plants and small plants.

Does RMI’s data fit their definition?

From RMI’s condensed version:

Despite their small individual size, micropower generators and electrical savings are already adding up to huge totals.

After reading and researching RMI’s data, it is still unclear to me what size power plants RMI counts as “micropower.” Here’s RMI’s definition on page 11 (pdf):

1. onsite generation of electricity (at the customer, not at a remote utility plant)—usually cogeneration of electricity plus recovered waste heat (outside the U.S. this is usually called CHP—combined-heat-and-power): this is about half gas-fired, and saves at least half the carbon and much of the cost of the separate power plants and boilers it displaces;
2. distributed renewables—all renewable power sources except big hydro plants, which are defined here as dams larger than 10 megawatts (MW).

So I’m assuming that the size of “micropower” plants is 10 MW or less. The only problem with this is that the data and sources RMI uses do not tell you the size of the plants. According to the data from the 2005 WADE Survey (pdf) that RMI uses, there are about 300 GW of decentralized capacity in the world. The WADE Survey does not mention the average size of the plants included in their data. So basically we don’t know if the data includes all large plants, all small plants, or a mix. If RMI’s original source doesn’t tell us, how can RMI claim that the data is “micropower”?

According to data from Ventyx/Global Energy Decisions (NEI subscribes to their large energy database), the size of the average co-generating power plant in the U.S. is 54 MW. There are a total of 80 GW of co-generating capacity operating in the U.S. (same number reported in WADE’s 2005 Survey on page 27). Of the 80 GW, only 3 GW are less than 10 MW in capacity. Based on just the U.S. data, the majority of the co-generating plants don’t meet the size criteria of “micropower.”

Distributed (decentralized) renewables are the other half of the definition of “micropower.” The problem is that RMI’s data includes centralized renewables. RMI’s Excel spreadsheet shows that the world added 11,471 MW of wind capacity in 2005. According to page 35 of the 2006 WADE Survey (pdf), only 5 percent of this wind capacity is distributed:

On-site wind systems: according to the Global Wind Energy Council, 11,769 MW of wind capacity was installed around the world in 2005. WADE has assumed that about 5% of this is DE [decentralized energy] based, translating into 0.93 TWh based on an 18% load factor.

It seems RMI’s own data doesn’t meet its definition.

One more point. If “micropower” is supposedly turning in a “stunning performance,” then it is clearly not happening in the U.S. The chart below shows how much and what type of power plant capacities have been added in the U.S. since 1950. The chart also shows the average plant size built each year.
If “micropower” is recently turning in a “stunning performance,” then the average new plant size shouldn’t be as high as it is. The average plant size for the U.S. should at least be down in the 20-40 MW range, but it isn’t. The two times the U.S. has built a substantial amount of capacity during a short period of time also saw a scale up in the average plant size being built. RMI could argue that the rest of the world is flourishing with “micropower,” but their data so far hasn’t shown it.

The Virtue of Big Plants

From RMI’s condensed version:

Indeed, over decades, negawatts and micropower can shoulder the entire burden of powering the economy.

The keywords are “can shoulder” a big economy. It doesn’t mean the economy should be run by small plants. The fact is that big plants yield greater efficiencies and economies of scale than small plants. From page 59 in The Bottomless Well:

Bigger systems are easier to keep hot because they have less surface per unit of volume, and because they can be surrounded by materials like concrete and steel that can both contain and survive the heat. There is, of course, much more than that to engineering efficient power plants. But first and foremost, the rule is simple: bigger can be hotter, and hotter is more efficient. So, decade by decade through the first century of electricity, power plants grew bigger, and in so doing grew more efficient.

Amory Lovins and RMI proclaim the benefits of efficiency all the time. What is perplexing is why they would be against bigger plants considering bigger plants are more efficient than smaller plants.

Here are the numbers. According to data from Ventyx/Global Energy Decisions, of all U.S. cogeneration gas plants, those smaller than 100 MW have the lowest thermal efficiencies. Their average heat rate is about 11,600 Btus/kWh and their average thermal efficiency is 30.1 percent. Nearly one-quarter of the U.S.’ gas plants are 100 MW or less and their average thermal efficiency is 29.3 percent (includes cogen and non-cogen plants). Thermal efficiencies dramatically improve for gas plants greater than 200 MW.

Nuclear plants average a 10,400 Btu/kWh heat rate which calculates into a 32.7 percent thermal efficiency. Newer and bigger nuclear plants are expected to operate at greater thermal efficiencies nearly matching today’s combined cycle power plants. Mitsubishi’s 1,700 MW Advanced Pressurized Water Reactor is designed to achieve a thermal efficiency of 39 percent. Westinghouse’s AP1000 is designed for a 35.1 percent thermal efficiency. GE’s ESBWR is designed for a 34.7 percent thermal efficiency. And AREVA’s EPR is designed for a 36-37 percent thermal efficiency depending on site conditions.

From RMI:

Small, quickly built units are faster to deploy for a given total effect than a few big, slowly built units.

Well of course smaller plants can be built faster than larger plants. But how small are we talking about and is it practical?

As stated above, small supposedly means 10 MW or less. A new nuclear plant ranges from 1,100 MW to 1,700 MW. If we need 1,100 MW to meet demand, is it practical to build 110 small plants or just one big plant? If 1,110 MW was all that was needed, one could argue 110 small plants are practical. But 1,110 MW is not all that’s needed.

According to EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2008, the U.S. needs to build another 260,000 MW of capacity by 2030 to meet growing demand. It’s not practical to meet that demand by building 26,000 small plants when we can build 260 large plants - especially since larger plants yield greater efficiencies in the first place.

Now this isn’t to say small plants aren’t worthwhile to build. The size of the plants needed depends largely on the market demands. But when a country operates about one million megawatts of capacity like the U.S., a lot of small plants simply are impractical to build. Especially when one large plant like a nuclear plant is small compared to the overall market it serves.

If economies of scale and greater efficiencies do not exist with bigger machines, then the wind industry would still be building kilowatt wind turbines instead of megawatt wind turbines. Contrary to what RMI believes, there is no one-size fits all solution.

Down and Out with Lieberman-Warner

The Senate failed to proceed with the Climate Security Act (S. 3036), legislation intended to develop a cap-and-trade system to substantially reduce carbon emissions. The method would allow entities with carbon-emitting sources to upgrade facilities or adopt new and improved technologies to contain emissions. After a motion to close debate failed, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pulled the bill and moved on to other business, essentially ending further consideration of the bill in the current session.

The bill, sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and John Warner (R-Va.), limits emissions from coal-burning power plants and factories, natural gas processors and importers, petroleum refiners and importers, and large industrials. In essence, it restricts the supply of fossil fuels in order to favor conservation and non-carbon-emitting energy sources, including nuclear energy.

Environmental Protection Agency analyses of the bill “demonstrate the importance of key enabling technologies, specifically [carbon capture and sequestration] and nuclear power.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), who does not support the bill, asserted that, “There can be a relationship between CO₂ and a warming condition, but it’s not major.”

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who managed the bill on the Senate floor last week, said the legislation is “about saving us. It’s about saving our future. It’s about saving the life on planet Earth. And, yes, it is about saving God’s creatures.”

A cap-and-trade regime creates an emission limit, or cap, in an amount initially 4 percent below the estimated carbon emissions produced in 2005. Companies that adopt technologies that reduce their carbon emissions can sell, or “trade,” their excess allowance on the open market to companies that cannot remain within the level set by their caps.

The cap adjusts downward by about 2 percent each year after 2012. Reductions would reach about 19 percent by 2020 and, ultimately, 71 percent by 2050. The annual adjustment increases the value of the carbon allowances, providing companies with an incentive to reduce their emissions to profit from the allowances they can then sell.

Debate halted Wednesday when Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) requested that the full text of the 456-page bill be read aloud on the Senate floor. McConnell said his request was a protest over Senate inaction on President Bush’s judicial nominees. Debate resumed Thursday.

The bill faces opposition from the White House. The Bush administration said the bill could trade a possible ecological disaster for a likely economic one. “S. 3036 is likely to severely damage the economy and drive jobs overseas,” the administration’s statement said. “As an example, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Information Administration have estimated, respectively, that the bill as reported could reduce U.S. gross domestic product by as much as 7 percent (over $2.8 trillion) in 2050, and reduce U.S. manufacturing output by almost 10 percent in 2030—before even half of the bill’s required reductions have taken effect.”

The strong objections from the Bush administration led some key senators to conclude that the debate and the bill’s proposed amendments could provide a framework that allows its sponsors to reintroduce it next year after a new president is elected.

“However far we take it, it is very important to start now,” said Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

The presumptive nominees of both major parties, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), support the concept of cap-and-trade, with Obama stating he would favor more steeply incremented caps. He also prefers an auction for all carbon permits, creating in effect a carbon tax. McCain stresses the “pursuit of alternatives to carbon-based fuels” and said the cap-and-trade system favors the creation or accelerated use of technologies that can contain emissions. Among these technologies, McCain includes nuclear energy, carbon capture and sequestration and battery development.

This is original reporting and will appear in slightly different form in Nuclear Energy Overview, NEI's weekly member newsletter.

Picture of Harry Reid. This bill will likely be back in revised form in the next session of Congress. But it appears our week of Lieberman-Warner was, this time, really just a week.

Lieberman-Warner: The Outer Limits of Debate

I don't have it in front of me, but the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein once wrote something close to "Once montage was everything; now it is nothing." Montage is editing and its use a major feature of Soviet (and Eisenstein's) silent cinema. But montage as Eisenstein used it allowed for ambiguity and Stalin's regime found that threatening. Thus came Socialist realism and many years of stodgy filmmaking (and art in general) and, most alarmingly, Eisenstein's attempt to fit himself to the new model with the essay that contains that sentence.

Eisenstein's mea culpa may not encapsulate a philosophy to live by - being and nothingness writ large - but it might well illuminate some of the more puzzling aspects of the world around us. For example, consider the debate on Lieberman-Warner bill, which yesterday devolved into partisan bickering and maneuvering for advantage. Before then, though, you got a good sense of everything and nothing in action.

Here is Barbara Boxer of California:

Here ... is a beautiful creature, the polar bear,” she said in a speech on the Senate floor. “And people say, ‘Oh, is this all about saving the polar bear?’ It’s about saving us. It’s about saving our future. It’s about saving the life on planet Earth. And, yes, it is about saving God’s creatures.”

When a politician goes into messianic mode, she's not inviting debate, she's invoking a higher power to validate her argument and make debate irrelevant. If God says climate change is real and must be fixed, who are we to argue? Sen. Boxer is indicating that she believes what she is saying to the extent that she believes in God - and that is, we have no reason to doubt, a whole lot of belief.

That would be everything.

And James Inhofe of Oklahoma:

"Al Gore has done his movie. Almost everything in his movie, in fact, everything has been refuted. Interestingly enough, the I.P.C.C. — on sea levels and other scare tactics used in that science fiction movie — it really has been totally refuted and refuted many times.”

I'm not sure he means the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has refuted its co-Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, because it hasn't, but that Gore's points have in general been refuted, which is at best a mixed bag. (It was a movie, not a white paper - that's more what the IPCC does.)

Anyway, that would be nothing.

I mean these terms as descriptive not evaluative. For Boxer, there is the point that however much pain saving the environment might take - and it could be considerable, as this bill could send a massive shockwave through the economy if not handled correctly - we must do everything we can, and right now, to fix it. For Inhofe, the problem has been vastly overstated and nothing drastic need be done. In his view, the free market and President Bush's focus on long term technology will mitigate man's contribution to global warming - or at least as much as need be given that global warming isn't that much of an issue.

Qualitatively, we'd say Boxer and Inhofe have staked out the outer limits of this debate, with Boxer promising a dire outcome if the bill does not pass and Inhofe almost dismissing it as irrelevant. Clearly, most of the Senate, particularly Obama and McCain, have aimed closer to the center and will be content with the bill if a few amendments get tacked onto it - a whole different issue, as amendments can sometimes stake out so much turf on both sides of an issue as to render the bill incoherent as public policy and a morass of unintended negative consequences. (That's more-or-less what happened with the European Union's first pass at cap-and-trade.)

So there you go. For Boxer, global warming is everything; for Inhofe, nothing. Now, let's see if a bill comes out of all this.

Picture of James Inhofe. We were aiming at something more casual than the usual senator-jabs-at-air thing, succeeded at the casual but got a two-finger jabbing. It must be a senatorial prerogative or something.

Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Part One (The Art of Deception)

Yesterday, I introduced a series of blog posts aiming to show you the errors and limitations in the latest nuclear bashing paper from Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute. This first part (and the longest of this series) deals specifically with the graph below in the RMI paper (also found in their condensed version). There are many details and flaws in the graph, so please bear with me while I walk you through them. If you get lost, don’t despair. Just take your time and if you have questions, please comment.
Nuclear’s “true competitors”

For years now, Amory Lovins and RMI have been claiming that nuclear power’s “true competitors” are not big coal and gas plants but energy efficiency, small scale renewables and decentralized cogeneration. From the condensed version:

While nuclear power struggles in vain to attract private capital, investors have switched to cheaper, faster, less risky alternatives that The Economist calls “micropower”—distributed turbines and generators in factories or buildings (usually cogenerating useful heat), and all renewable sources of electricity except big hydro dams (those over ten megawatts). These alternatives surpassed nuclear’s global capacity in 2002 and its electric output in 2006. Nuclear power now accounts for about 2 percent of worldwide electric capacity additions, vs. 28 percent for micropower (2004– 07 average) and probably more in 2007–08.

After digging into the numbers from their Excel spreadsheet and the methodology (pdf) for the above graph and paragraph, I found the story is much different than what the paper claims. According to the graph above, nuclear’s “true competitors” are already beating nuclear … except that they aren’t.

With the exception of nuclear, the data for the chart aren’t actual generation numbers. RMI collected the capacity and capacity factor data for the other sources to calculate the generation. Most of the capacity and capacity factor assumptions are reasonable but there is one capacity factor the methodology assumes that grossly overstates the contribution from nuclear’s “true competitors.”

By far the largest non-nuclear source of electricity in the above chart is decentralized generation (the big orange block) which the Excel file calls “Non-Biomass Decentralized Co-Generation.” The paper assumes an 83 percent capacity factor for this source. The problem with the 83 percent capacity factor is it is twice as high as what it should be. Here is RMI’s explanation for the 83 percent capacity factor found in the methodology (pdf) on page 6:

Having neither electrical output nor capacity factors from any traditional sources, we again turned to help of Michael Brown of WADE. He provided an estimated average capacity factor in terms of hours per year: “7000-7500, possibly more.” Running 7,250 hours per year equates to a capacity factor of 82.8%, which we applied uniformly to all years under consideration.

Michael Brown’s statement is ambiguous. Does his statement mean non-biomass decentralized plants operate at full capacity 83% of the time? Or does it mean they are available to run 83% of the time? Being available to run is very different from actually running.

The methodology’s source for decentralized data is the 2005 Survey by the World Alliance for Decentralized Energy (pdf). According to the survey, there were 281.9 GW of decentralized capacity in the world as of 2004 (page ii, the survey also says 282.3 GW on page 32 which is what RMI uses). RMI’s methodology backed out the decentralized renewables’ capacity from the 282.3 GW to find the “non-biomass decentralized cogeneration capacity” at 266.3 GW.

What’s off about WADE’s 2005 Survey is that the surveyed countries reported a total of 341.6 GW of decentralized plants, not 281.9 GW (this was found by adding up each country’s data on pages 13-27). When the generation data of decentralized plants also are added up for the reporting countries, I calculated the capacity factor to be 40.1 percent (excluding Russia because they didn’t report generation numbers). I also added up the same numbers from the 2006 WADE Survey (pdf) and found the capacity factor to be 38.9 percent, pretty close to the 40.1 percent value found from 2005 WADE Survey.

If the capacity factor for all decentralized plants is only 40.1 percent, then it is impossible for “non-biomass decentralized co-generation plants” to achieve an 83 percent capacity factor since they make up the majority of the decentralized capacity. If we substitute a 40.1 percent capacity factor for the incorrect 83 percent capacity factor, here’s what the graph would actually look like:There’s more.

After 2007, the “Total renewables plus decentralized generation” line begins to increase faster than in the previous seven years. Since 2008-2010 are projections, one would think there is a methodology for this increase. There is not. According to the RMI paper, the “non-biomass decentralized co-generation” projection is a “target” based on personal communications with WADE. There is no model, study, or methodology mentioned to support the projection.

Here’s page 6 from RMI’s methodology:

The 2005 WADE survey cites, as a target for decentralized energy, 14% of total world capacity by 2012. In personal communications with WADE director Michael Brown, he conceded that realistic projections would be closer to 12%.

Wow. If I were claiming that decentralized generation and renewables are supposedly beating nuclear’s generation, then I would rely on something a bit more meaningful than a “target.”

Distorting the Graph According to Edward Tufte

The original graph from the paper distorts the contribution the “true competitors” are actually making. Edward Tufte, described by The New York Times as "the da Vinci of Data", is a big opponent of chartjunk. Here’s what chartjunk means:

The interior decoration of graphics generates a lot of ink that does not tell the viewer anything new. The purpose of decoration varies — to make the graphic appear more scientific and precise, to enliven the display, to give the designer an opportunity to exercise artistic skills. Regardless of its cause, it is all non-data-ink or redundant data-ink, and it is often chartjunk.

RMI’s graph is all “chartjunk.” The graph displays a lot of ink for the “Total renewables plus decentralized generation” data that deceives the eye. Graphical representations of data help people understand the big picture. But there are correct ways and incorrect ways to show the data. If we take away this “chartjunk” and not stack nuclear’s “true competitors” on top of each other, here’s what the graph actually looks like (including the correct capacity factor data for the orange line).From 2000-2007, it looks like all lines have increased the same as nuclear (which is not much). Contrast this with the following statement in RMI’s condensed version:

These alternatives surpassed nuclear’s global capacity in 2002 and its electric output in 2006.

Doesn’t quite look like it.

Cherry-Picking the Data

The definition of cherry-picking is:

the act of pointing at individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.

My two altered graphs above paint a different picture than what the RMI paper claims. What’s more interesting is that the 2005 WADE Survey (pdf) also tells a story different than that of RMI. Here are some examples:

The US decentralized cogeneration market grew significantly up to 2002 but its subsequent slowdown continues in the face of high gas prices and persistent regulatory barriers. The capacity added in 2004 was the lowest for six years. (Page. ii)

Europe continues to emerge slowly from an extended period of market paralysis. … The US market for cogeneration, according to US government data, continues to show growth but the rate of expansion has slowed markedly in the last year or so, and this is mirrored overall by unenthusiastic market sentiment. (Page. 1)

It’s hard to imagine the rest of the world booming with decentralized plants if the U.S. and Europe are slowing down. Especially since the total electrical capacity in Europe and the US (xls) is nearly 50 percent of the total capacity in the world. Yet according to RMI’s condensed version:

negawatts and micropower have lately turned in a stunning global market performance.

It is clear that RMI is picking and choosing agreeable data points. This, however, is only one example of cherry-picked data. The rest of my posts will show you other instances in which it appears RMI depends on selective use of data.

Is Coal Included in the “Non-Biomass Decentralized Co-Generation” Data?

Here’s page ii in the 2005 WADE Survey (pdf):

Global installed DE [decentralized energy] capacity stood at around 281.9 GWe at the end of 2004, the great proportion of this consisting of high efficiency cogeneration systems in the industrial and district heating sectors, fuelled by coal and gas and, to a lesser extent, biomass-based fuels.

Coal? Nowhere in RMI's condensed version, 52-page paper, or methodology is coal mentioned as being included in the data. This must be why the RMI uses the obscure term “non-biomass decentralized co-generation.” RMI clearly doesn’t like coal since they label it “carbon-spewing”, yet the distributed generation data includes coal to show it beating nuclear. What are we to make of this?

Summary

Let’s sum up the apparent mistakes evident in just this one graph. First, RMI’s analysis erroneously uses twice the actual capacity factor for “non-biomass decentralized co-generation.” Second, RMI’s analysis distorts the actual contribution from nuclear’s “true competitors" with the use of chartjunk. Third, RMI’s analysis makes selective use of data in order to state that nuclear’s “true competitors” are turning “in a stunning global market performance” when in fact one their own sources actually says the opposite. Finally, RMI’s analysis misleads the reader by not stating that coal is included in this graph, when actually it is.

This is about as much as I’m going to go into RMI’s so-called numbers and sources. The rest of my posts will focus on the following themes from RMI: centralized vs. decentralized energy; big plants versus small plants; energy efficiency and “negawatts;” nuclear and grid reliability; and costs.

Amory Lovins and His Nuclear Illusion – Intro

Amory Lovins and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) just released a 52 page paper (pdf) ranting that nuclear power is “not all it’s cracked up to be”. The report claims that the nuclear industry is misleading people that nuclear power is “competitive, necessary, reliable, secure, and vital for fuel security and climate protection.”

I’ve read and studied RMI’s claims and their “methodology”. From my examination of Lovins’ sources, it appears that many of his conclusions and claims are based on selective readings. When those readings are taken in context, they lead to very different conclusions than are presented by Mr. Lovins.

Over the next two weeks I will explain why I believe the RMI paper adds little value to the current public debate about energy policy. In the blog posts to follow, I will also show you the overall picture of how much energy we consume, how much efficiency can contribute, which energies are really making a difference, what RMI’s “solutions” really supply, and what’s up with their favorite, “micropower.”

While I disagree with much of the paper, I have gained a new appreciation for some of Amory Lovins’ and RMI’s ideas. I am a big fan of energy efficiency and I think decentralized sources of energy and cogeneration provide some great benefits. With that being said, I want to ensure that you understand the errors and limitations I found in Mr. Lovins’ latest proposals so that you can decide for yourself how seriously to take his “Nuclear Illusion”.

Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill: Day 3

We watch the Senate debate the Lieberman-Warner bill so you don't have to. What you're missing today: listening to paint dry. Senate Republicans have requested that the entire bill—all 492 pages—be read into the record. At this pace, clerks should be done sometime by midnight.

Congress: working hard to earn that 19% public approval rating.

"Nuclear Bomb" Over at Salon

Joseph Romm wrote a piece titled "Nuclear Bomb" at Salon that has not received a warm welcome. Instead of adding my two cents on the Salon piece, Charles Barton over at Nuclear Green already has summarized why Romm's piece bombed. Barton also did some digging on Romm and found that he is an "acolyte" of Amory Lovins.

Nuclear Energy for Texans Coalition

Be sure to look at Texas' new coalition which was created to promote nuclear energy in the state:

United under the name Nuclear Energy for Texans, a statewide coalition has formed in support of nuclear energy as a safe, reliable and clean alternative to meeting the increasing energy needs of the state. The coalition includes elected officials at the state and local level, representatives from business and industry, environmental groups, health organizations and the scientific and engineering community.

The coalition was formed solely to educate Texans and promote the benefits of nuclear energy as a safe, reliable and clean alternative form of electricity for the state.

Nuclear Energy Quiz at Depleted Cranium

Check it out. I scored a 72.

It's a Green Kind of Planet, uh, Dude!

One of the complaints that those who like old movies have about newer specimens is that they suffer too much from visual ADD, unable to settle on an image long enough for it to register or on a dialogue long enough to create a character in depth. Everything gets hyped until nothing carries any meaning aside from nervous excitation.

So it is with considerable delight that the environmentally conscious, not to mention the culturally self-conscious, can look forward to a channel where actually focusing on an issue, any issue, might be considered taxing: Planet Green. The AP's David Bauder previews  tomorrow's debut:

"The network is not only not finger-wagging, it's sexy, it's interesting, it's irreverent," [network president Eileen] O'Neill,  said.

Planet Green doesn't want to be a network that appeals only to tree huggers and will always resist a heavy-handed approach, she said. Instead of scolding people not to waste paper by using juice boxes, the network will profile a person who built a business upon recycling them.

Thus you don't have to worry about whether or not to get your juice from a box, you just have to admire a guy who got rich turning them into paper towels. Okay.

The programming aims to mix lite celebrities with lite eco-friendly messages.

HBO "Entourage" star [Adrien] Grenier is host of "Alter Eco," where he and a team of experts show celebrities and ordinary people "the way to a hip green lifestyle."

Since leading a square green lifestyle would be, like, death, you know?

But there's more!

[Tommy] Lee and Ludacris will star, beginning in August, in "Battleground Earth," a series of competitions between the rocker and rapper to determine who's the greenest.

If there's one thing we know for sure, it's that the one who's the greenest will also be the hippest. (If we're lucky, John Travolta will drop by in full Cyclon drag and call them both rat-brains.)

While we're doubtful about the approach The Discovery Channel has chosen for this new outlet - available wherever Discovery Home was, as Plant Green takes its place - we've been wrong before and are reasonably sure we will be again.

Discovery, after all, has put up some good shows and if their initial approach to Planet Green doesn't quite work out, they can always tweak it to something perhaps a little less hip and just a touch more substantive. We might then tune in to see what's what even if Adrien Grenier were the host.

A little break from Lieberman-Warner. We'll be back on the beat tomorrow.

Adrien Grenier and Paris Hilton. Picture from Trendhunter. The text fills us in on the couple:  The pair attended the 11th Hour ForestEthics premier together, and have been spotted zooming around in a Toyoto Prius hybrid, “scoping out a new eco-friendly home for Paris.” That's almost too much eco-hipness for one sentence to contain.

A little more on Grenier's bona fides, also from Trendhunter: For him, it’s no publicity stunt; it’s a way of life. “I try to eat free range organic foods. I try and walk if I can, which is why I love New York. Take a train. My home is a green home. To me I look at it as an investment and the things may cost a little bit more but ultimately it pays for itself. And then it gives you low emissions and its good for the environment. So people invest in all sorts of bizarre things. Why not invest in the quality of life?” Why not indeed?

Lieberman-Warner Climate Bill: Warner Amendment

As the IT folks in Senator Warner's office are undoubtedly really busy, below is a transcription of a draft of the Warner amendment. According to Sen. Warner, his proposed amendment will be the first one to be offered up, and will likely be introduced Wednesday morning.

AMENDMENT NO. ____
CALENDAR NO. _____

Purpose: To modify a subtitle relating to low- and zero- carbon electricity technology.

To direct the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency to establish a program to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases, and for other purposes.

AMENDMENTS intended to be proposed by Mr. Warner (for himself and Mr. Lieberman) + Sen. Carper [D-DEL].

Viz:
On page 164, strike line 15 and insert the following:
(c) EDUCATION AND TRAINING - For each

Beginning on page 181, strike line 1 and all that follows through page 183, line 3, and insert the following:
SEC. 536 EDUCATION AND TRAINING

(a) Definition of Applicable Period -- In this section, the term "applicable period" means --
(1) each 5-year period during the period beginning on January 1, 2012 and ending on December 31, 2047: and
(2) the 3-year period beginning on January 1, 2048, and ending on December 31, 2050

(b) Nuclear Science and Engineering Education -- For each applicable period, the Secretary of Energy shall use 1/3 of the amounts made available under section 534 (c) for the calendar years in the applicable period to increase the number and amounts of nuclear science talent expansion grants and nuclear science competitiveness grants provided under section 5004 of the America COMPETES Act (42 U.S.C. 16532).

(c) Nuclear Energy Trades Training and Certification -- For each applicable period, the Secretary of Labor, in consultation with nuclear energy entities and organized labor, shall use 1/3 of the amounts made available under section 534 (c) for the calendar years in the applicable period to expand workforce training to meet the high demand for workers skilled in nuclear power plant construction and operation, including programs for --
(1) electrical craft certification;
(2) preapprenticeship career technical education for industrialized skilled crafts that are useful in the construction of nuclear power plants;
(3) community college and skill center training for nuclear power plant technicians;
(4) training of construction management personnel for nuclear power plant construction projects;
(5) regional grants for integrated nuclear energy workforce development programs

(d) Climate Change Science And Policy Education -- For each applicable period, the Secretary of Education shall use 1/3 of the amounts made available under section 534 (c) for the calendar years in the applicable period to support climate change policy and science education in the United States.

On page 292, strike line 22 and insert the following:
SEC. 901. FINDINGS; SENSE OF SENATE
(a) Findings. -- Congress finds that --
(1) more than 40 years of experience in the United States relating to commercial nuclear power plants have demonstrated that nuclear reactors can be operated safely;
(2) in 2007, nuclear power plants produced 19 percent of the electricity generated in the United States;
(3) nuclear power plants are the only baseload source of emission-free electric generation, emitting no greenhouse gases or criteria pollutants associated with acid rain, smog, or ozone;
(4) in 2007, nuclear power plants in the United States
(A) avoided more than 692,000,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions; and
(B) accounted for more than 73 percent of emission-free electric generation in the United States;
(5) a lifecycle emissions analysis by the International Energy Agency determined that nuclear power plants emit fewer greenhouse gases than wind energy, solar energy, and biomass on a per kilowatt-hour basis;
(6) construction of a new nuclear power plant is estimated to require between 1,400 and 1,800 jobs during a 4-year period, with peak employment reaching as many as 2,400 workers;
(7) (A) once operational, a new nuclear power plant is estimated to provide 400 to 600 full-time jobs for up to 60 years; and
(B) jobs at nuclear power plants pay, on average, 40 percent more than other jobs in surrounding communities;
(8) revitalization of a domestic manufacturing industry to provide nuclear components for new power plants that can be deployed in the United States and exported for use in global carbon reduction programs will provide thousands of new, high-paying jobs and contribute to economic growth in the United States;
(9) data of the Bureau and Labor Statistics demonstrate that it is safer to work in a nuclear power plant than to work in the real estate or financial sectors;
(10) while aggressive energy efficiency measures and an increased deployment of renewable generation can and should be taken, the United States will be unable to meet climate reduction goals without the construction of new nuclear power plants;
(11) modeling conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Information Administration demonstrate that emission reductions are greater, and compliance costs are lower, if nuclear power plants are used to provide a greater percentage of electricity;
(12) the United States has been a world leader in nuclear science; and
(13) institutions of higher education in the United States will play a critical role in advancing knowledge about the use and the safety of nuclear energy for the production of electricity.

(b) Sense of Senate Regarding Use of Funds -- It is the Sense of the Senate that Congres should stimulate private sector investment in the manufacturing if nuclear project components in the United States, including through the financial incentives program established under this subtitle.

SEC. 902 DEFINITIONS
On page 293, line 14, insert: (D) establishing procedures, programs, and facilities to achieve ASME certification standards
On page 294, strike line 10 and insert the following:
or low carbon generation, including --
(A) a technology referred to in section
832(a); and
(B) nuclear power technology

[snip]

The Heritage Foundation on Lieberman-Warner

In general, we find Heritage Foundation documents to be well researched with a heavy overlay of conservative ideology, a combination that can be sometimes be useful for providing a philosophical framework but sometimes toxic to a full appreciation of a topic.

(We hasten to add that it is not the conservative basis that creates problems but the ideological determinism - any ideology can warp an argument if excessively depended upon. Practical realities tend to decay in the face of ideological calcification. Heritage has been guiltier of this than some.)

However, allowing for some free-market-trumps-all talk, Heritage's Jack Spencer has a good rundown of the issues facing Lieberman-Warner and tries to inject a bit of a counterweight into the conversation, particularly around the issue of nuclear energy and its potential role in mitigating greenhouse gas emission.

The article starts off with that end-of-days meme that we noted the other day:

The reality is that the United States has not ordered a new reactor since the mid-1970s and it does not have the industrial infrastructure to build even one reactor today. Its industrial and intellectual base atrophied as the nuclear industry declined over the past three decades. Large forging production, heavy manufacturing, specialized piping, mining, fuel services, and skilled labor all must be reconstituted in massive quantities.

Don't worry - they have little hope for globalization, either:

Global supply is no more promising, especially when one considers that the rest of the world is coming to similar conclusions about the emerging role of nuclear power in meeting CO2 reductions. The global nuclear industrial base currently supports 33 reactors under construction (mostly in Asia and Russia) and the normal operation and maintenance of the world's existing 439 reactors (including those in the U.S.).

Frankly, we find all this a touch (even way) too pessimistic; Heritage, of all places, should see this potential for the revival or creation of new industry as a boon. We've seen through our glances at the world nuclear renaissance that where's there's a will (backed by a few dollars or euros, of course), there's a way.

But the article means to demonstrate that many nuclear plants could be built relatively quickly and provides a proscriptive 10-point list to achieve it. Here are the bullet points; you can see the explanations at the link.

1.  Let the market work.

2. Limit government support to that provided by EPACT 2005.

3. Hold accountable those leading the charge to cap CO2.

4. Put industry in control of fuel cycle management.

5. Open America's doors to legal immigration of skilled labor.

6. Remove commodity tariffs.

7. Liberalize the global commercial nuclear market.

8. Increase supply.The United States needs to increase energy supplies.

9. Take the lead in developing a new international framework for managing the global growth of nuclear power.

10. Reengage Nevada on Yucca Mountain.

Do we agree with all of this? Not really: nuclear energy is a non-starter in a deregulated environment and the United States in particular and the world in general have a vested interest in keeping their eyeballs on the flow of uranium. Heritage is closing in on a libertarian approach here that would make many policymakers nervous. But there are good ideas here, too, certainly worth further conversation.

As always, see what you think.

Yucca Mountain License Application

If all day Senate debate on Lieberman-Warner wasn't enough to keep you occupied today, the DOE is announcing its submission of the Yucca Mountain license application at the National Press Club. The webcast can be seen here. (At least they were good enough to schedule the press conference during the Senate's lunch recess.)

FYI NEI's response to the DOE announcement can be found here. Extensive resources on the Yucca Mountain repository can be found here.

Lieberman-Warner: "Leave No Fuel Behind"

"Leave no fuel behind," says the Progressive Policy Institute. In her policy report, Finding Common Ground on Cap and Trade, Jan Maruzek, senior scholar at PPI, "advances three principles to help break the present impasse over how to price carbon emissions, how to allocate emissions permits, and how to weigh nuclear power's contribution to America's clean-energy portfolio."

PPI on nuclear's role,

When it comes to clean energy, silver bullets are few and far between. The business of making solar panels, particularly in China, relies on a slew of toxic chemicals. The economic and environmental downsides of biofuels made from food products are coming to light. Renewable sources, while extraordinarily promising, are simply not yet capable of supplying energy in remotely the same quantities as coal, which presently provides 50 percent of U.S. electricity.

Nuclear power generates electricity with no CO2 emissions, but any expansion of this industry begs the question of where to store spent fuel. The truth of the matter is that cutting greenhouse gases by more than one-half by mid-century will require us to harness all of these energy sources. The EPA’s recent economic analysis of the Lieberman-Warner bill assumes, for example, that electricity generated by nuclear power will grow 150 percent and that the nation will soon refine technologies to remove and store carbon from coal-fired electricity plants. Non-fossil energy sources such as biomass, solar, and wind will also provide a growing share of the mix.

In order to develop the most effective emission-reducing combination of energy technologies, we will need to redouble our federal energy-research efforts. For example, we should invest more heavily in such advances as carbon capture and storage (CCS) systems; next-generation nuclear pebble-bed reactors that consume uranium more efficiently and reduce the potential threat of proliferation; and spentfuel reprocessing methods of the kind that the French have safely harnessed for decades.

Finally, and most importantly, PPI supports measures to aggressively expand the use of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal power. Previous iterations of the Lieberman legislative proposal, formerly co-sponsored by Sen. John
McCain (R-Ariz.), would have diverted some revenues from a partial auction to help fund vital research and development into clean energy sources. The current version of the bill still contains support for CCS and renewables, but fails to explicitly mention ways to support next-generation nuclear technologies.

This silence on nuclear energy prompted Sen. McCain to withdraw his support. Some Republicans in the Senate have vowed to add nuclear amendments—a move that led in part to Sen. Boxer’s threat to pull the bill from the floor. As the EPA’s recent economic analysis shows, however, we simply cannot meet our twin goals of climate stabilization and cost reduction without a concerted push into nuclear, CCS, and renewable energy. As it takes up the Lieberman-Warner proposal, the Senate must recognize that we presently are not in a position to take any promising energy source off the table.

Latest Issue of Nuclear Energy Insight Now Available

The May issue of Nuclear Energy Insight is now available online. The cover story features the NEI-sponsored race car and driver Simona de Silvestro, winner of the Atlantic Championship season opener. Other featured articles discuss the construction of new nuclear power plants around the world, plans for small-scale reactors for use in remote locations, the nuclear industry’s strategic role in emergency response and federal grants given to community colleges for energy-related job training.

The Lieberman-Warner Bill: The Players Line Up

The Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act tries to come to grips with global warming. Nuclear energy can and likely will make a substantial contribution to the effort but the bill is so freighted with implications for so many vested interests (and their supporters) that getting the bill passed in a coherent form will take a titanic amount of will power and resolve.

The Senate in particular may find this a tough hurdle, in part because the November elections could leave the Democrats with a veto-proof majority - an outside chance, certainly, but a chance. That makes stepping carefully into this bill a priority for the Republicans; they already suffer, rather unfairly, as ecological recidivists in a year in which global warming has become a major issue for voters. Conversely, some Democrats (Lieberman is an Independent who caucuses with the Dems) already see President Bush's opposition and a possible filibuster as bill-killers but gets things set up for the next president.

The measure's sponsors believe that getting a majority of senators to back the bill would be a show of strength, laying the groundwork for passage in the next Congress under a new president.

"However far we take it, it is very important to start now," said Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and has been shepherding the bill through the Senate.

So there is an aura of political theater here, likely also with an eye on the elections. But:

"It seems unlikely that as American families face harsh economic times that any senator would dare stand on the Senate floor and vote in favor of significantly increasing the price of gas at the pump and costing millions of American jobs - all for no environmental gain," said Matt Dempsey, communications director for Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, the ranking Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Remember, Sen. Inhofe is the leading global-warming-is-hooey figure in the Senate. Frankly, despite his best efforts, that ice floe has melted (even if his economic argument mirrors that of President Bush; see below). The timing of this bill is going to make global warming even more of an issue in the upcoming presidential election and for all the down-ticket races as well.

---

How much does President Bush dislike this bill? He has issued a Statement of Administration Policy that lays it all out for you. The main problem is that the bill, in the administration's view, trades an possible ecological disaster for a likely economic one (warning: pdf):

S. 3036 is likely to severely damage the economy and drive jobs overseas. As an example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Energy Information Administration have estimated, respectively, that the bill as reported could reduce U.S. Gross Domestic Product by as much as seven percent (over $2.8 trillion) in 2050, and reduce U.S. manufacturing output by almost 10 percent in 2030 -- before even half of the bill's required reductions have taken effect.

And that's just the tip of that iceberg. Read all of Bush's statement for a lot more in the same vein. In its present state, which of course will be heavily impacted by amendments that might sweeten it, the bill is a non-starter for the White House.

---

So, noting the name of this blog, what about nuclear energy?

Nuclear power is likely to be one of the thorniest issues in the debate. Republican opponents of the bill are expected to offer amendments to boost nuclear energy, which critics call "poison pill" amendments because they could erode support for the bill among Democrats who oppose an expansion of nuclear power.

We would counter that many Democrats have found a place for nuclear energy in their thinking - this seems a bit 2002 to us - and that the Republicans know Sen. McCain, a supporter of a larger role for nuclear energy, could swing votes towards the bill. We'll see.

Early days. Stay tuned.

Picture of Senator Boxer, courtesy Getty Images.

Lieberman-Warner Bill Amendment

In a joint press conference with Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), Sen. John Warner (R-VA) has said,

There is no solution to our energy problem without enhanced nuclear participation. And so this amendment...I'm going to put on, hopefully, as the very first amendment. Again, it states, this where we are in nuclear power. Let's do everything to help the current instruction to get started towards adding more plants. We recognize today much of a plant being built in the near future will be manufactured overseas. Let's put an end to that. We also recognize that when this country shut off all of its effort to go forward with nuclear power a dozen or more years ago, young people turned to other professions. We've got to incentivize them to get the education and do what is necessary so they can join as technology moves forward for safe nuclear power.

Update: Links to the proposed Warner amendment and a transcript of the presser will be added as soon as they become available.

RBC Capital Markets Energy Survey

From a just-released survey conducted by RBC Capital Markets,

Americans' NIMBY "Not In My Backyard" syndrome also appears to be waning. Only 16 per cent of Americans said that they would oppose the construction of any type of energy plant or facility in their hometown, down from 23 per cent in 2007. Seventy-one per cent of Americans said they would support an alternative-energy system in their hometown, including a wind or solar facility, up from 58 per cent last year; 34 per cent would support a clean coal technology plant (up from 27 per cent last year); 32 per cent would support a liquefied natural gas facility (up from 25 per cent last year); and 21 per cent would support a nuclear power plant (up from 17 per cent). Nevertheless, the survey found that although a majority of Americans attribute the rapid rise in gas prices to a lack of oil refining capacity in the U.S., eight out of 10 said they oppose the construction of an oil refinery in their hometown.

Monday Morning Breakfast

...nuclear energy news you may have missed this weekend.

Lots of Lieberman-Warner pre-game analysis this weekend: Grist provides a handy overview of the bill and likely amendments, The San Francisco Chronicle identifies the key players, and Environment & Energy Daily ($ub. req'd) projects each Senator's vote. (Interestingly, they still have Sherrod Brown (D-OH) listed as a probable yes, despite his stated opposition in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.)...In anticipation of this week's DOE license application for Yucca Mountain, the Las Vegas Sun looks at the politics behind the project....The Atlantic weighs in on Yucca....In Salon, another contentious cost per kilowatt piece in the general interest press....In its Stock Watch feature, Kiplinger reviews Exelon and likes what it sees....Idaho Power is considering adding a new nuclear plant....Alstom is expanding its manufacturing facilities in India....Speaking of nuclear-related jobs in India, the Tarapur plant is looking to fill 16 recently vacated engineer positions....Mikhail Gorbachev, former president of the Soviet Union and current president of the environmental foundation, the Green Cross, states that we "cannot do without" nuclear energy plants.