Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source
Devil's Advocate
221796.html
Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source
Steve Kirsch
Entrepreneur and philanthropist
Posted: June 27, 2009 07:28 PM
Do you think our country's energy policy is in good hands now that the
American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) climate bill has passed the
House? I'm very worried and I think you should be too. Experts fret
about balancing energy, environment, and the economy. But there is a way
to have all three at the same time if we are willing to take a fresh
look at an old technology. And that great solution is nowhere to be
found in the ACES bill.
First, let's start by assuming science of global warming is correct.
We'll see later that we'd want to do exactly the same thing even if we
didn't believe in global warming at all.
To stop global warming, we must virtually eliminate the use of coal
worldwide
Dr. James Hansen, one of our nation's leading experts on global warming,
is very clear about the necessary attributes of any solution: we must
stop building new coal plants immediately and start retiring existing
coal plants worldwide. If we cannot virtually eliminate coal worldwide
within a couple of decades, then the sum total of all of our other
efforts to reduce our carbon footprint will be about as effective as
rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
The "worldwide" requirement is critical. The best way, and for all
practical purposes, probably the only way, to get other countries to
abandon coal is to give them a seemingly magical new technology that is
lower cost than coal, with the same 24x7 baseline power reliability, but
without the CO2 emissions. Existing coal plants could be "upgraded"
simply by replacing the "burner" with a the new technology.
We invented a superior power generation technology in 1974, but killed
it for political reasons in 1994
The good news is we have such a magical power technology. The big
surprise is that it isn't new. It's old. It is a fast nuclear reactor
known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) that was developed by a team of
hundreds of scientists working for more than 20 years at our top
government national laboratory for nuclear energy (Argonne National
Laboratory, at its branches in Illinois and Idaho).
The bad news is that the IFR development was abruptly canceled in its
final stages in 1994. A decision was made in the early weeks of the
Clinton administration by people who formerly worked for the oil and
natural gas industry to cancel the project. The three reasons publicly
given for canceling the program were all based on misconceptions. Since
then we haven't done a damn thing to exploit their marvelous invention.
The convenient solution invented at Argonne is simple: instead of
spending billions to dispose of our nuclear waste, we can re-use that
"waste" to generate power by using advanced "fourth generation" nuclear
power technology. Using just our existing nuclear waste, we can power
the entire planet for centuries.
Our uranium "waste" is our biggest and most valuable energy resource
Did you know that our uranium waste is our nation's #1 energy resource?
In fact, just in the depleted uranium (DU) waste alone (the stuff left
over after natural uranium has been enriched), we have more than 10
times the extractable energy than we have from coal in the ground!
Using fast reactors (a type of fourth generation nuclear), we can make
use of this "waste" and extract enough energy to power the entire planet
(at the current usage rate) for 700 years. After 700 years, we can
extract uranium from seawater. There is enough uranium in seawater to
power the entire planet forever (we will be burned alive by the Sun
before we run out of nuclear fuel).
Yet the Department of Energy (DOE), due to an admitted lack of funds to
properly study the problem, currently plans to spend $428 million to
permanently get rid of the DU. Such an action would be as nonsensical as
Saudi Arabia suddenly deciding to pay someone to destroy all their oil
reserves!
Hopefully, someone at DOE will stop this from happening. It is directly
contrary to the recommendation of a National Academy of Sciences
committee (specifically requested by the DOE in 1991 to study this
issue) that fuel retrievability should be extended to a reasonable time
(on the order of 100 years) to avoid foreclosing alternative fuel
strategies that may be in the national interest.
The IFR is superior to today's nuclear technology in every respect
Fast reactor nuclear power designs, such as the IFR, are more than 100
times more efficient than our existing light water nuclear reactors
(LWRs). The waste they produce is minimal, short-lived, and relatively
easy to safely store: a factor of 500 less in space-time requirements
than the waste from our existing nuclear reactors. If an American used
nuclear power their entire life, they would produce enough nuclear waste
to fill a soda can.
The IFR is inherently safer than existing reactors: they can't melt down
because the laws of physics prevent it. They are also objectively more
resistant to use in weapons proliferation than existing reactors and
also substantially more proliferation resistant than the far more
expensive alternatives that we have already decided are perfectly safe
(such as the $10 billion we are currently spending on the AREVA MOX
plant in South Carolina).
LWRs are very safe and the nuclear industry is one of the nation's
safest working environments. It is safer to work at a nuclear power
plant than in the manufacturing sector and even the real estate and
financial sectors! Yet, IFRs are better than LWRs in every aspect,
including safety. Here are a few excerpts from emails from former
Argonne Lab associate director Charles Till regarding the safety of IFR
reactors:
These [safety] effects are not theoretical or subject to informed
challenge. They have been proven by full-scale experiments in the
assemblage of fast reactor test facilities in Idaho by Argonne National
Laboratory.
The ultimate point is that no radioactivity will be released.
Period. Under any circumstance. And under even very, very unlikely
circumstances which would lead to a mess in other reactors, the IFR will
not even incur damage.
IFRs also meet the four requirements (transparency, security, waste, and
proliferation) that President Obama recently laid out as a pre-requisite
for using nuclear energy. Till pointed this out four years ago.
Even though the initial capital costs of these plants are high, over the
60 year lifetime of the plants, they are a small fraction of the cost of
generating power from renewables.
Other countries are building fourth generation nuclear reactors
Russia, China, and India are building fast nuclear reactors now and the
French plan to begin construction in 2012 with completion by 2020. Japan
plans to build a prototype fast reactor by 2025.
Russians scientists independently found the same thing the scientists at
Argonne have been saying for years: these plants are safer and less
expensive to build and operate than existing nuclear plants and they
solve the nuclear waste problem while providing a virtually
inexhaustible power source. The Russians also realized a key point that
the 2003 MIT report on the Future of Nuclear Power had missed: that if
nuclear power grows faster than people think, large scale deployment of
fast reactors will absolutely be required in as little as 25 years from
now (see the first paragraph of BN-800 as a New Stage in the Development
of Fast Sodium-Cooled Reactors).
In the US, the complexity of understanding the science combined with an
abundance of misperception and misinformation has stalled any progress
on fast nuclear technology
Dr. Hansen and scientists at MIT are urging Obama to build fast reactors
now. House Members Jerry McNerney (D-CA) and Judy Biggert (R-IL) agree.
But what about Al Gore? The environmental groups? What do they think?
The problem is that there is so much misinformation in the nuclear space
and the science is so complicated that it takes a reasonably large
investment of time to really understand what is going on so you can sort
truth from fiction. Al Gore has looked at fast reactors, but hasn't
taken a position on the issue and it's likely he never will. The top
environmental groups have either been too busy to be briefed, have no
nuclear expert on staff qualified to be briefed, or have already taken
an anti-nuclear position before the briefing and have no interest in
impartially weighing the facts.
At the most recent Aspen Institute Energy Forum held March 25-28, the
experts talked about how difficult tackling all three issues together:
environment, economy, energy. Sure, I agree. It's difficult to
impossible without the IFR. But the IFR enables us to solve all three
simultaneously. But it wasn't brought up by anyone, even though the
attendees acknowledged nuclear had to be part of the solution. This is a
big problem that the "big thinker" experts assembled at Aspen seemed to
be completely unaware of the world's best nuclear design.
The former top civilian nuclear guy at DOE thinks we are nuts for not
pursuing this technology
Ray Hunter was Deputy Director of the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science
and Technology in the U.S. DOE. At the time of his retirement in 1998,
he was the most knowledgeable senior person in the government on
civilian reactor research and development. He spent more than 29 years
in DOE and predecessor agencies working on developing advanced nuclear
reactors for civilian nuclear power applications. He's seen it all. He's
heard all the arguments from every side multiple times. His conclusions
are the same as Hansen; he thinks it is a huge mistake that we are not
pursuing the IFR technology we invented at Argonne.
On December 23, 2008, Hunter wrote a letter to Senators Reid, McCain,
Bingaman, and Mikulski explaining that before his retirement, he was the
Director of the Office of Nuclear Energy at DOE and pointing out that
"the energy content contained in LWR spent fuel and depleted uranium
resulting from weapons production and enriched LWR new fuel production
exceeds all the known oil reserves in the world." He pointed out that we
have the technology to safely and securely harness that power and
eliminate our nuclear waste at the same time. Hunter received no
response to his letter; Senator Mikulski's office thanked him for
sharing his thoughts but did not respond to any of his comments. But I
don't blame these Senators at all. It's unlikely that any US Senator
ever saw Hunter's letter; in each case, a staff person decided that his
thoughts were not significant enough to bring to their Senator's
attention.
It's not clear that we can rely on the DOE to make the right decisions
I recently wrote to the DOE offering to have the scientists who were
directly involved in the IFR brief Secretary of Energy Chu on our most
important source of energy. I received this email response from the DOE
that a briefing was unnecessary as there are many people in DOE who are
knowledgable about the IFR and that "the IFR definitely lives on." I
said if that was true, then how it is possible that DOE wants to dispose
of all the fuel that could be used to power these reactors? I received
no response to my question.
I then asked Hunter how could it be that both Secretary Chu and DOE are
saying fast reactors are good, while at the same time announcing plans
to destroy the material that could be used to power them. I received the
following response:
The main reason that nuclear energy development is so screwed up in
DOE is that critical elements e.g. nonproliferation, waste, and nuclear
R&D are in separate organizations all reporting to the Secretary. It
requires real head knocking to integrate the pieces to have a rational
program and there is no one in DOE sufficiently interested in nuclear to
perform this task.
The problem is made worse by individual budgets requested and
approved by Congress. In addition, the waste issue encompasses both
civilian and defense waste. For example the depleted uranium stored as
uranium hexafluoride at Portsmith, Ohio; Paducah, Kentucky; and Qak
Ridge, Tennessee is a result of enrichment for weapons and naval
reactors, enrichment for LWR commercial reactors and enrichment for DOE
and University test reactors. The nuclear energy program should have
requested funds to retain all of the material in a safe store condition
as a future resource as you suggested. Since the material is under the
waste program, funding was requested from Congress to dispose of it.
My guess is there wasn't any internal discussion on this matter. You
might note from my resume that I had the assignment to address safety
concerns about storage of the depleted uranium and an action planned was
initiated to correct deficiencies and retain the material for possible
future use.
Steve, I don't know who you talked to or sent a letter to at DOE
regarding the IFR, but the response you got is baloney.
Sadly, many people now at DOE are content to not make any waves. They
just do what they are told.
The disenchantment with the DOE is not just from people inside the DOE,
but the dysfunction inside the DOE is also negatively impacting the
quality of talent at our national labs. I received this email from a
scientist who spent 33 years at Argonne including 10 years working on
the IFR:
I was there at the birth of the IFR, in late 1983, and still there
at the cancellation in 1994.My main beat was demonstration of the
pyroprocess fuel cycle, which morphed into "EBR-II fuel treatment" post-
1994. I was on the U. Chicago bid team which competed for the INL
contract in 2004.When BEA wonthe contractand assumed command of the
entire Idaho site in early 2005, ANL-W went away and was absorbed into
INL.To this day most of the ANL-W people, and I think ALL of the key
people who haven't retired or gone on, are very disenchanted with the
inability to get much work done in the DOE environment.
I could only take it as an INL employee for nine months. When, on a
Friday in November 2005 the Vice-President for Research at Idaho State
U. said "Mike, you ought to just end this. Come on over to ISU full
time". I said I'd be there the following Monday. 33 years, and I
resigned inan hour.It couldn't have worked out better for me. I'm able
to close out my career working with young budding nuclear engineers
andbuilding research programs.
You asked about when the disenchantment began. I'd say around 1990.
I think it was about then that the FBI rolled into Rocky Flats. Adm.
James Watkins (retired, then DOE Secretary) became convinced that there
was an inadequate "safety culture" in DOE facilities, and thus were
spawned "Tiger Teams"-- composed of literally dozens of consultants who
would descend on a major facility for two weeks. Months of preparations
went into their much-feared visit. But that was only the tip of the
iceberg. All sorts of new DOE orders related to safety, environment, and
QA began to appear. The workplace became so highly proceduralized that
it was increasingly difficult to get anything done.
So in my first 20 years or so, being on the Till team meant you were
working on important things, and the work was getting done, and the
results were exciting. The conception of the IFR in the days following
cancellation of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor project, the birth or
more accurately the rebirth of the pyroprocess, the EBR-II safety tests
in 1986 -- damn those were heady days.
Why are other countries pursuing our invention while we aren't even
talking about it? We seem to be pretty good at spreading misinformation
and hanging on to old preconceptions especially when it relates to
nuclear.
When DOE evaluated all the nuclear technologies, the IFR came out as #1
When we look at things objectively, we get the right answer. When DOE
adequately funds a study, they do great work (it's when they don't
adequately fund a study like the DU disposal study cited above that they
have problems).
In 2001, as part of the Generation IV roadmap, the DOE tasked a 242
person team of scientists from DOE, UC Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, ANL,
LLNL, Toshiba, Westinghouse, Duke, EPRI, and many other institutions to
evaluate 19 of the best reactor designs on 27 different criteria. They
spent a year doing this. So this wasn't just "a" study. This was the
mother of all nuclear studies; the most comprehensive comparison of
nuclear designs ever done. The IFR ranked #1 in their study which was
released April 9, 2002.
People outside the US have recognized the importance of fast reactors
and the IFR
The Russians very clearly understand how significant the IFR invention
is to the future of energy. Len Koch, who was the IFR project manager at
Argonne, was awarded the Global Energy International Prize by Russian
President Vladimir Putin in Russia in June 2004 for his work on the IFR.
The prize is awarded "to assist international cooperation in solving
today's most important problems in the field of power generation."
Koch recently sent me the following note:
A POUND OF URANIUM (ABOUT THE VOLUME OFA TENNIS BALL) CONTAINS THE
ENERGY EQUIVALENT TO ABOUT 5,000 BARRELS OF OIL! And we have about a
MILLION TONS OF URANIUM in storage (as waste), from which we have only
extracted about 1% of the contained energy.
We understand what must be done to extract that remaining energy,
but we quit trying to learn and demonstrate how to do it in an
acceptable manner. We need to reinitiate the program that we started
more than 60 years ago. It will require a the support and leadership of
the Government. We do not even have an operational Fast Reactor in our
Country now. The Government shut-down the two which we had.
People from other countries who have looked at the facts objectively
came to the same conclusion Russia, India, France, China, Japan, and
South Korea did.
Prominent Australian climate scientist Barry Brook admitted that he
spent months educating himself on fourth generation nuclear before he
came to the same conclusion Hansen did. In fact, before Brook heard
about fourth generation nuclear, he thought the global warming problem
was intractable because his own calculations confirmed the observations
of many others (including Energy Secretary Steven Chu, MIT President
Susan Hockfield and US Senator Lamar Alexander) regarding the necessity
of nuclear power due to the problems with renewables being able to scale
to meet our energy needs. With fourth generation nuclear in the mix,
Brook has gone from being a climate pessimist to being an optimist about
our ability to replace our existing energy sources with carbon-free
power. He's written extensively about the IFR on his site, more so than
any climate scientist on the planet.
The Green case against nuclear power is based largely on myth and dogma
Noted UK environmental writer Mark Lynas did the same thing Brook
did...objectively looked at the evidence. He came to the same conclusion
as Brook and Hansen. He wrote about his "conversion" in an article in
the Sunday Times on September 28, 2008:
Just a month ago I had a Damascene conversion: the Green case
against nuclear power is based largely on myth and dogma. My tipping
point came when I discovered just how much nuclear power has changed
since I first set my mind against it. Prescription for the Planet, a new
book by the American writer Tom Blees, opened my eyes to fourth-
generation "fast-breeder" reactors, which use fuel much more efficiently
than the old-style reactors, produce shorter-lived waste and can also be
designed to be "walk-away safe".
Lynas wrote how he was criticized by his peers for supporting nuclear,
but privately some of them admitted that they agreed with him.
In our own country, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy and a consortium of
America's major corporations (including Babcock & Wilcox, Bechtel,
Westinghouse, and Raytheon) came to the same conclusion. They have a
reactor design, the PRISM, that is ready to be built based on the
original Argonne IFR design.
There is a lot of misinformation about nuclear
There is a tremendous amount of misinformation about nuclear out there.
There are books and papers galore that appear to be credible citing all
the reasons nuclear is a bad idea. I could probably spend the rest of my
life investigating them all. Those reports that have been brought to my
attention I've looked into and, after a fair amount of effort, found
them not to be persuasive.
Did you know that there is more than 100 times more radiation from a
typical coal plant than a nuclear plant, yet the nuclear plant is
perceived by the public to be a radiation hazard.
Another example of misinformation is in Discover magazine June 2009
entitled "New Tech Could Make Nuclear the Best Weapon Against Climate
Change" talking about the importance of the IFR to both greenhouse gas
emissions and to our future energy needs. But the article implies the
scientists want to do more studies and that an improved design will take
10 to 20 years. I keep in close touch with a number of the top
scientists who worked on the IFR, including IFR inventor Charles Till,
and they are saying the opposite...that we are 20 years late on building
one and the sooner we build one, the better.
We should build a $3B demonstration plant now to get started
We should be exploring all viable options to solve our energy problems
and global warming. General Electric working with Argonne and/or Idaho
National Laboratory (INL) could build a small prototype fourth
generation nuclear reactor (311 megawatts of electricity (MWe)) for
about $2 billion and $1 billion for a pilot commercial-scale
pyroprocessing plant to recycle the spent fuel. That $3 billion one-time
investment would settle once and for all whether this is a good idea or
not. Following this demonstration, the deployment of dozens of
commercial fast reactors and pyroprocessing facilities needed to handle
the light water reactor (LWR) spent fuel could be economically
competitive as electricity generators and their construction could be
carried out by the industry using standardized, modular, factory built
designs to reduce costs without any further government investment.
Compare that one-time R&D investment to the estimated $96 billion cost
of storing the waste at Yucca Mountain. Isn't it smarter to spend a
little money to prove we can recycle our waste and generate power than
to spend $100 billion to bury it? Compare this one-time $3 billion
investment to the $10 billion that will be spent on the AREVA Mixed
Oxide (MOX) plant, which is being built to dispose of only 33 tons of
plutonium. The MOX plant is a big waste of money. The IFR could denature
the weapons Pu much faster and more cheaply.
Nuclear is the elephant in the room, but the politicians are still
ignoring it
Obama and Energy Secretary Chu have both pointed out that nuclear
provides 70% of the carbon-free power in America even though we haven't
built a new nuclear plant in the US in 30 years! Yet in the latest House
energy bill (HR 2454), in over 932 pages of text, the word "nuclear"
appears only twice: once in a definition of "retail supplier's base
amount" on page 23, and once on page 351 where nuclear plants qualify
for monetary awards if they use innovative means to recover any thermal
energy. That's it.
Now you'd think that a bill entitled "American Clean Energy and Security
Act of 2009" that proclaims to create clean energy jobs and achieve
energy independence would have more than 2 words about nuclear since it
is our largest energy asset and also our largest carbon-free energy
source. There is no mention at all of fourth generation nuclear in the
bill. I'd think they should at the very least acknowledge the omission
with a footnote along these lines:
"Even though nuclear supplies the vast majority of our carbon-free
power and even though fourth generation nuclear is more than 100 times
more efficient as existing nuclear, and even though the waste products
are minimal and short-lived, and even though these reactors have been
demonstrated to be inherently safe, and even though these reactors can
use our existing nuclear waste as fuel and virtually eliminate our $100
billion nuclear waste problem, and even though other countries such as
Russia, China, India, Japan, and France are either building or planning
to build these plants, and even though we can power our entire planet
for thousands of years from our existing uranium resources without any
CO2 emissions, and the energy content contained in LWR spent fuel and
depleted uranium resulting from weapons production and enriched LWR new
fuel production exceeds all the known oil reserves in the world, and
even though the US Congress voted to fund fourth generation nuclear
every year for 10 years from 1984 to 1993, we haven't spent any time
discussing the role of fourth generation nuclear in this Congress or in
any Congress in the last 15 years and this is probably very short-
sighted of us."
After the bill was drafted, Lisa Price, senior vice president of GE-
Hitachi testified before the House Science and Technology committee on
June 18, 2009 about the benefits of IFRs. The bill hasn't changed.
Today's nuclear designs are substantially better than the reactors built
30 years ago. For example, the new Babcox and Wilcox mPower reactor can
be constructed in only 3 years, is scalable (it can produce as little as
125 megawatts making it economical for smaller regions), air-cooled (so
the water needs are minimal), and it can store its waste underground for
60 years.
Twelve reasons we should spend $3B to build a demonstration IFR plant
today
Here are my top 12 reasons as to why the IFR (and pyroprocessing of LWR
spent fuel) is the right thing to do now for the nation and for the
world:
1. If you're going to build new nuclear plants, IFRs are superior to
LWRs in every dimension. Experts I've talked to agree that nuclear has
to be an important part of the energy mix going forward. It's hard to
argue this isn't the case since even 30 years after the time we built
our last nuclear plant, nuclear is still supplying 70% of the clean
power in the US. Fourth generation reactors such as the IFR are simply a
"better" nuclear in every respect: lower cost, more efficient, less
waste, all the waste is short-lived, inherently safer (it doesn't need
any active safety systems since the laws of physics shut it down if
something goes wrong), and the nuclear material is unsuitable for use in
weapons so it is inherently more proliferation resistant. That's why the
IFR ranked #1 in the DOE's comprehensive study of alternative nuclear
reactor designs.
2. IFRs are the safest, most cost-effective solution to our nuclear
waste problem. IFRs can efficiently consume the waste we've already
generated from existing light water reactors so they are simply a
cleaner, safer, and more cost-effective solution to "dispose" of our
nuclear waste than any of the alternatives that have been proposed.
Rather than trying to secure that waste for 10,000 years, IFRs reuse it
and eliminate all the long-lived nuclear waste. The head of civilian
nuclear at DOE spent years trying to get the DOE to do the right thing
and failed for political reasons.
3. In order to wean other countries off of coal, you must offer them
a technology that is more attractive than coal or they aren't going to
switch. The IFR technology can achieve that. Renewables can't (which is
why Germany is still building coal plants even though they want to get
rid of their CO2 emissions). China and India will experience tremendous
energy growth and only the huge energy potential of IFRs are a realistic
alternative to coal.
4. Even long-time vocal critics of nuclear power such as Amory Lovins
agree that investing in the IFR now as a "contingency plan" in case
renewables and/or carbon capture and sequestration don't work out is
sound public policy. Even ardent believers in renewables concede that we
cannot take anything, including nuclear, off the table.
5. The IFR (called the PRISM) has already been Authorized to Build by
Congress in the 1992 Energy Policy Act. GE-Hitachi has had a design
ready to build for years (the S-PRISM).
6. IFR power is virtually inexhaustible and more reliable and
predictable than renewable power. IFRs can supply humanity's energy
needs for millions of years if we are willing to mine additional uranium
beyond what we already have on hand (which is sufficient for the next
700 years). Winds can change and die down. For example, a new report
says that because of climate change, wind speeds are diminishing across
parts of the United States, including a 10 percent drop in the Midwest
over the last decade. The number of low or no wind days also has been
increasing, according to the report by a team of scientists at Indiana
and Iowa State universities. During the California heat wave and
blackouts of 2006, wind's output dropped to 4% of rated capacity during
peak demand - so effectively required 100% fossil or nuclear backup.
Solar can be obscured by air pollution (such as the Atmospheric Brown
Cloud that grows bigger every day and is "dramatically" reducing
sunlight in many Chinese cities). Hydro power can be diverted or dry up.
But nuclear just keeps humming 24x7 for millions of years with no
emissions. If you want a nice contingency plan for when renewables fail,
nuclear is it. It isn't dependent on any external factors. To ignore
nuclear as an important part of the energy mix would be irresponsible
public policy.
7. Nuclear power is cheaper than power from renewables and soon will
be cheaper than coal. A nuclear plant costs more up-front to build than
a wind or solar plant, and they take longer to build, but they have low
operating costs and they last 60 years or more making them a far better
financial investment than renewable power typically by a factor of 2.
For example, if you use this calculator to compare an AP1000 to GE 2.5
MW XL wind turbines with pumped storage for load management, in North
Dakota you get $13 billion/GW for the wind option vs. a max cited figure
for a US AP1000 (a new nuclear reactor from Westinghouse) of $7 billion.
If the AP1000 lives up to its promises of $1000 per KW construction cost
and 3 year construction time, it will provide cheaper electricity than
any other fossil fuel based generating facility, including Australian
coal power, even with no sequestration charges.
8. The heat from IFRs can be used to reprocess transportation fuel
practically for free. The IFR gives us more options for ending our oil
addiction. If we move to boron-powered cars, the fuel can be recycled in
a IFR for nearly free, since the high temperatures are already there.
You can't do that with a renewable plant.
9. Existing coal plants can be economically converted into clean
nuclear plants. No country has to abandon the huge investment they've
made in coal plants. As Felix Salmon pointed out in his blog "Nuclear
Power: Going Fast," you'd just replace the burner and the control room.
This makes the economics irresistible even if you don't give a damn
about global warming.
10. To reduce the concerns about proliferation, the plants could be
jointly owned and operated securely by the US and the host country. Or
we can just restrict the technology to countries who already have
nuclear power. However, there have been 0 people killed since the dawn
of time due to nuclear proliferation from a power plant. An IFR would be
the last place you'd go to get material for building a weapon because
you'd have to invent technology that doesn't exist to purify the
material to make it suitable for a weapon.
11. Nuclear can be deployed very rapidly. About two thirds of the
currently operating 440 reactors around the world came online during a
10 year period between 1980 and 1990. In southeast Asia, reactors are
typically constructed in 4 years or less (about 44 months)
12. The amount of waste generated in an IFR is minimal; all the
reprocessing is done on-site. With reprocessing, if an American used
nuclear power their entire life, they would produce enough nuclear waste
to fill a soda can.
13. Pyroprocessing is at least 5 times cheaper than PUREX The French
PUREX method for reprocessing nuclear waste is too expensive to be
practical. The IFR method is much cheaper and the facility can be
located within the plant so the nuclear material never leaves the plant.
14. Pyroprocessing doesn't create a proliferation risk The PUREX
method for reprocessing can easily be "adjusted" to produce pure
plutonium. This is impossible to do using pyroprocessing. We can't just
bury our heads in the sand an pretend nuclear and reprocessing is going
to go away. The genie is out of the bottle. If we continue to keep our
pyroprocessing technology secret, the world will move to PUREX because
there is no other viable option. So by sequestering our best nuclear
technology, we are making the world less safe.
We need a vision for the future of nuclear; one we can commit to long-
term
The current funding for nuclear is fragmented without a clear direction.
We need to establish a clear, long-term plan for advanced nuclear. We
must make sure we have a clear understanding of why we are doing this so
we don't keep revisiting this issue and changing our minds. I think the
only way to create such a plan is to assemble a very small team of
people who really understand the issues involved. Ray Hunter could give
you a list. It's a very short list. The key to making this work well is
in the selection of the people. Pick the wrong people and this is a
terrible idea. Pick the right people and it's brilliant. A key part of
that plan should be to immediately appropriate the $3B to build a 311
MWe prototype fourth generation reactor and a pilot commercial-scale
pyroprocessing plant
Listen to scientists, not ideology
Recently, Senator Barbara Boxer laid out six principles for fighting
global warming that are "simple, but extremely important." Number one on
Boxer's list is: "Listen to scientists, not ideology." That's a great
principle and we should all be paying attention.
Nuclear energy is our largest carbon-free power source today. We have
one US national laboratory that is run by the US DOE whose primary
mission is to "ensure the nation's energy security with safe,
competitive, and sustainable energy systems:" Idaho National Laboratory.
So why aren't we heeding Senator Boxer's advice and paying attention to
what those scientists have accomplished and listening to what they are
telling us today?
If for some reason we shouldn't listen to ANL, then shouldn't we listen
to the 242 scientists from all over the country that DOE asked to
evaluate which was the best nuclear technology?
Finally, the main reason we are in this crisis situation today is due to
our government's lack of a long term vision and strategy with respect to
global warming. So we need to be sure not to make the same mistake
again.
The good news is that key members of Congress realize that this isn't
just a local problem. To stabilize the climate, we basically have to
completely eliminate the emissions from every coal plant on the planet
and we don't have a lot of time to accomplish that.
The bad news is their plan to achieve that goal has virtually no chance
of success.
Would you bet your planet on our current strategy?
Here's their plan: we are going to invest in carbon capture and
sequestration (CCS) to see if we can make it work at scale, make it
reliable, commercialize it, then export it to other countries who will
adopt it for all their coal plants.
In short, they are banking the future of humanity on exporting a
technology that doesn't yet exist at scale, that may never exist, that
even if it exists would likely be extremely hard to implement reliably,
that nobody really wants (since it is only for the environment), that
would be easy to cheat, that would probably raise the price of
electricity to be unaffordably high, and that can be economically added
only to coal plants that were originally constructed with CCS in mind of
which there are none.
Holy cow... that's a lot of assumptions. Is that our official core
strategy to save the planet??!?!?! I wouldn't want to bet my planet on
that strategy and I don't think you should either.
The only realistic way to 'win the energy game' is to develop an energy
source that is cheaper than coal
Fortunately, there is a smarter long-term strategy for getting everyone
on the planet off of coal and it doesn't rely on goodwill, mandates,
and/or trade policy coercion. It relies on pure economics.
My plan is simple: make IFR technology so cheap that running a coal
plant will be the dumb economic decision.
I'd start by focusing my resources on my most promising technology. So
I'd invest in commercializing our IFR technology that we invented 25
years ago. I'd do that immediately while the people who worked on the
original project are still alive. This would have a side benefit in that
it would give the people in our national labs a fantastic project to
work on: a project that is both important to the world and
scientifically challenging, much like the 1960's space program that put
man on the moon. Once a few plants have been built, I'd invest lots of
money to figure out ways to lower the construction costs through
modularization and mass production. Then I'd have the US (in partnership
with other countries we want to share the wealth with) finance
construction of the plants in foreign countries, and make partnerships
with the local government to jointly build and operate the plants so
they would benefit too. In short, we could be the power supplier to the
world if we are aggressive in investment and capturing market share.
My plan would displace existing coal plants because it would provide
power at a cheaper cost than coal. It would be the equivalent of Wal-
Mart moving into town and displacing the higher priced competitors. And
of course, it will also eliminate the construction of new coal plants.
Coal gets wiped out because a cheaper, more reliable, cleaner, and safer
technology made it obsolete.
The heat from an IFR can be used for reprocessing a clean lower cost
transportation fuel
There is one more thing I'd do. Instead of subsidizing the fossil fuel
industry, I'd spend that money on commercializing technologies like
using boron as a transportation fuel. The heat produced by IFRs can be
used to reprocess boron used to fuel transportation at virtually no
incremental cost. Using boron as a transportation fuel would take up as
much space and weight as gasoline, but it's a completely recyclable,
clean fuel (more precisely an energy carrier) with no emissions. The
price per "gas gallon equivalent" would be a tiny fraction of the price
of gasoline. So we'd clean up the air, eliminate greenhouse gas
emissions, save money on every tank of "gas," and eliminate our
dependence on foreign oil. You can't do that if you are building
networks of renewable plants. By investing in IFRs, you have more
options for future transportation fuels that can be used either as the
sole fuel, or as the fuel in a boron-electric hybrid vehicle.
While we're doing the R&D for boron engines we can convert existing
internal combustion engines to run on ammonia, which has already been
done. Ammonia in this case would work as a hydrogen carrier, the
hydrogen being easily produced by electrolysis powered by IFRs and then
made into ammonia (NH3) with nitrogen from the air. Ultimately boron
would be a better energy carrier because of its lack of volatility,
solid form, and energy density, but if we want to get off oil ASAP,
ammonia-powered cars can help get us there faster. These engines have
already been built.
In my plan, the benefits to the US would be huge:
1. we'd make lots of money (the return on our capital investment in
the plant)
2. we'd create lots of high paying jobs to build these plants and the
parts for them and to operate them
3. we'd reduce our trade deficit
4. we'd get rid of our nuclear waste
5. we'd help get industry going again
6. by eliminating coal plants, we'd improve our air quality (for
example, did you know that 25% of the particulates in the air in
California come from China and that the Atmospheric Brown Cloud over
China now has intercontinental reach with effects felt world wide)
7. we'd wean ourselves off of gasoline onto a re-usable energy
carrier (boron) that has no emissions that costs only 50 cents a gallon
(see p. 146 of Prescription for the Planet). No more having to drill for
oil.
8. we could eliminate our dependence on foreign oil
The benefits to the world are huge in terms of CO2 reduction and air
quality. It also solves the nuclear waste problem of other countries
which, if left unchecked, could turn into a very messy situation.
The host country benefits too: they get cheaper power, they can
prematurely retire their coal plants, and they get to clean up their
air.
Everyone wins. And nobody has to debate whether global warming is a
problem or not. Everything is justified on pure economics. What's wrong
with that?
Apparently nothing. We know that the Russians are, in fact, planning to
do precisely the plan I laid out. They aren't stupid. We shouldn't be
either.
The amount of space required to generate huge amounts of electricity is
quite small. Here's a picture of a completely self-contained 1.8GWe IFR
plant including 6 modular reactors and an on-site reprocessing facility
capable of powering 1.4M homes:2009-06-27-stk-IFRplant.jpg
Under my IFR strategy, after a small government investment and a
willingness to allow these plants to be built, you could simply let
economics take over. No Congressional mandates are required. Not that we
can get such mandates anyway. For example, the renewable energy use
requirements in the energy bills in both the House and Senate have been
watered down so much in order to attract votes as to be meaningless
(requiring virtually no change from the status quo).
Unfortunately, science, facts, and logic are simply no match for special
interest money, perception, bias, misinformation, and beliefs. So I can
have all the facts and all the most informed and smartest experts on my
side like Hansen and Hunter and all the objective analysis like that two
year DOE study showing the IFR was the best nuclear design, but that may
not be enough.
Senator Lamar Alexander gets it. He is trying to revive nuclear energy
in Congress. I hope he is wildly successful.
There are so many benefits to reviving the IFR: global warming, low cost
energy, climate change, nuclear waste disposal, powering clean, low-cost
transportation, and so on. You could justify it on any single benefit
alone. At $3B to build a demonstration plant, it's a cheap insurance
policy in case the official strategies don't pan out. That's pretty hard
to argue against, especially when the stakes are planetary in scope.
My favorite argument for the IFR leaves my opponents completely unable
to refute its logic and simplicity:
1. Nuclear has to be an important part of the energy mix. Even the
biggest proponents of renewables have conceded that point.
2. The IFR is the best nuclear. The 2002 DOE study by 242 nuclear
experts from all over the country selected by the DOE was quite
comprehensive and definitive on that point.
Since nuclear is still our largest CO2-free power source (even after 30
years of not building a nuclear plant), I remain totally baffled why
Congress isn't allocating the $3B to build a demonstration IFR plant.
When I make my 2 point argument and ask that question, I am greeted with
"I'll check that out with my staff" and then you never hear from them
again. When you try to arrange a briefing with the staff, they are too
busy to meet with you (or in the case of Waxman-Markey's staff, couldn't
tell me who their nuclear expert was or even who might know who their
nuclear expert was).