Nuclear power: Ehrlich
Michael V. Stein
>>"A political campaign has, for example, succeeded in frightening the
>>public over a minuscule quantity of temporarily toxic nuclear wastes
>>while glossing over an annual billion tons (in the US) of coal wastes
>>with an infinite lifetime, a considerable part of which is diposed of
>>into the atmosphere."
Richard Carnes writes:
>Beckmann speaks of "an annual billion tons (in the US) of coal wastes
>with an infinite lifetime...". CO2 has a quite limited lifetime,
>since roughly 1/7 of the atmospheric pool is annually used up in
>photosynthesis. To be sure, CO2 accumulation may pose a severe
>threat to the environment, but that is due to the "greenhouse
>effect", not to any toxicity of CO2. CO2 is indeed not very toxic,
>because it is not toxic at all, at least anywhere near the ~500 ppm
>concentration of it that we breathe.
Oh please! Beckman is refering to coal wastes - not CO2 emmissions!!!
We have covered *all* of this before. Oh well, we shall start again..
One 1000 megawatt coal plant will generate over 35,000 truckloads of
ash that must be disposed of in the environment. This ash contains
radioactive elements, and not in negligible amounts. The radium 226 in
coal is long lived with a half-life of over 1500 years. It is also
water soluble and chemically very active. In total amount these
wastes are greater in radioactivity then nuclear wastes. Though
by the light of the Double Standard, coal wastes, unlike nuclear
wastes, are dispersed without monitoring or control.
There are no provisions to prevent the poisons in coal ash from
being leached out by rainwater and seeping into the water supply.
The poisonous metals in the sludge such as selenium and mercury
may be even more of a hazard to the public's health then the
radium and thorium. Of course we can not forget the
carcinogenic hydrocarbons also among the posions in the millions of tons
of sludge. Will this be dangerous to our great grandchildren
in the coming centurys? What are the long term effects to the
environment?
Let future generations worry.
>To be sure, CO2 accumulation may pose a severe
>threat to the environment, but that is due to the "greenhouse
>effect", not to any toxicity of CO2
Oh yes, the enormous CO2 emmisions from coal plants are something to
be concerned about also. It is well known that CO2 levels in the atmosphere
have always been increasing since they started measuring it 30 years ago.
It is just that the health hazards from the CO2 are dwarfed by the
other health hazards from coal. (Also noone really knows how much of the
extra CO2 is being caused by coal plants.)
Will we find out that in a hundred years, that the enormous emmissions
from coal have done irreparable damage to the environment?
Let future generations worry.
>...So I am
>still looking for the "annual billion tons of coal wastes with an
>infinite lifetime".
And so you have found them.
[Wayne]
>>The point that nuclear wastes, while highly toxic, are small in
>>quantity compared to those from chemically powered processes is still
>>valid.
Absolutey true, in every sence of the word. A 1000 megawatt nuclear
plant will annually produce 90 cubic *feet* of nuclear wastes that must
be stored. A 1000 megawatt coal plant will produce thousands of
truckloads of wastes. They are not even close!
>In a previous article I quoted
>some of the other criticisms of Beckmann's two articles made by the
>Ehrlichs. They were not trying to write a complete rebuttal to
>Beckmann; rather, they were reviewing the book in which his articles
>appear (*The Resourceful Earth*, eds. Julian Simon and Herman Kahn).
>They judged his contributions to be "embarrassingly incompetent" and
>cited a few points to illustrate. (I'll send Wayne a copy of the
>Beckmann articles, if he wants.)
As noted here and before in other articles, Ehrlich clearly is
confused about many basic points in the energy debate. (I will be
happy to mail those articles to anyone.) If more proof is needed
let us tyrn the clock back to 1974 and the Rasmussen study.
In 1974 the Rasmussen study gave its draft report. This report
was directed by M.I.T. professor Norman Rasmussen, and involved over
70 man years of effort. With a total cost of about four million, the
Rasmussen report still today provides about the best study of
reactor safety. For example, in order to compute health effects
of radiation accidents, over 140,000 combinations of accident
magnitude, weather type, and populations exposed were evaluated.
(The complete Rasmussen Report is several feet thick.)
Once published, Ehrlich immediately said in an interview that
the report, know officially as WASH-1400 "should be called
WHITE-WASH 1400"
Also he made the misleading statement
"Plutonium, one of the most dangerous substances known to
man will be produced in prodigious amounts as the number
of atomic plants increases."
(Once again, we see scaremongering being done about the toxicity of
plutonium.)
It was also energy scholar Ehrlich who once said that nuclear wastes
dumped into a river caused oysters to glow in the dark.
According to to the excerpt from the "Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists," it was Ehrlich who dismissed a poll of health
physicists, done by Dr. Cohen, on the grounds that they are
partisan and have a conflict of interest. Most anti-nukes
only try this baiting against nuclear engineers. Even then,
without proof, it is as morally bankrupt as accusing doctors of having
a conflict of interest. (Since, of course, without disease
they have no business.) From what I could get out of the
excerpt it appears that Ehrlich is willing to condemn the
entire field of health physics. This is all the more absurd
when one remembers that a statute of the American Health Physics
Society states that they are:
...devoted to the protection of man and his environment from
the harmful effects of radiation.
Oh certainly Ehrlich is better then some of the anti-nukes. For
example, I doubt he would say that radiation caused AIDS such as
professional anti-nuke Sister Bertel said at a disarmament
conference. But the obvious point is that if Ehrlich is going
to distance himself from all of the world's authorities on the
energy issue (which according to the excerpt is clearly what he has
done), he can't be considered a very credible source on this
issue.
[Wayne]
>>...Safety of burning coal or fissioning uranium is questionable,
>>and, in reality, nobody knows the ultimate dangers of either path,
>>though it seems on the surface that they are comparable in terms of
>>predictable deaths. ...
Well from what we have learned so far, the risks are not
close to being comparable. The routine burning of coal in the
US kills upwards of 40,000 people a year. This is 40,000 more deaths
then the routine operation of nuclear power plants. (Only the
worst possible scenarios of the Rasmussen study could account
for this many deaths.) Coal mining is a more dangerous
occupation then uranium mining, coal mining is more damaging to
the environment than uranium mining, the routine operation of
coal plants kills thousands and the coal wastes are a great
burden we are throwing onto our future decendents.
>In addition, health risks should not be the
>only consideration for energy policy.
Certainly, I agree completely. But let us remember that nuclear
is less dependent on unsecure energy producers than either coal
or oil. Also, there is essentially an infinite supply of fuel
for nuclear power. Coal and oil have the added disadvantage that we
probably only have a few more centurys of use left available
in this country. (Thank God, we don't have an infinite supply
of coal. As an environmentalist, I can not even conceive of
the damage to the environment that would come from burning coal
for another 1000 years..)
>...And many anti-nukes advocate the "soft
>energy paths", by which our use of fossil fuels will be reduced while
>renewable energy sources are increasingly developed and utilized.
As I, and others, have said over and over: most people who study the
energy issue realize that solar and nuclear are a partner, not a rival.
--
Michael V. Stein
Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation - Technical Services
UUCP ihnp4!dicome!meccts!mvs
Michael V. Stein
Richard Carnes
> If more proof is needed let
>us tyrn the clock back to 1974 and the Rasmussen study. In 1974 the
>M.I.T. professor Norman Rasmussen, and involved over 70 man years of
>effort. With a total cost of about four million, the Rasmussen
>report still today provides about the best study of reactor safety.
>For example, in order to compute health effects of radiation
>accidents, over 140,000 combinations of accident magnitude, weather
>Report is several feet thick. Ehrlich immediately said in an
>interview that the report, known officially as WASH-1400, "should be
>called WHITE-WASH 1400"
Mr. Stein somehow manages to avoid mentioning that (1) the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission [NRC], the body that had commissioned the
Rasmussen Report, repudiated the Report's Executive Summary in
January 1979 and stated that it no longer considered the Report's
risk elements reliable; and (2) the Lewis Report, prepared by an
*NRC-appointed* panel under the chairmanship of Prof. Harold Lewis
and published in 1978, largely vindicates the Report's critics.
According to Richard Sclove's review of the Lewis Report [*Bull.
Atom. Sci.*, Feb. 1979, pp. 46-48]:
"...the new study finds that although the Reactor Safety Study [RSS =
Rasmussen Report] was a `conscientious and honest effort,' it
nonetheless `greatly understated' the uncertainty of its estimates of
the probability of severe reactor accidents, poorly described its
analysis and results in its Executive Summary, and is generally
`defective in many important ways.' The criticism of the Executive
Summary is especially important, because it is the part of the RSS
most widely read by the public and decision-makers.
Among the Lewis Report's specific findings:
[...]
--The statistical analysis which the RSS performed in conjunction
with its use of these logical techniques is flawed -- so deeply, in
one instance, that it `boggles the mind.'
--The RSS model of the consequences of reactor accidents requires
substantial improvement.
--The final version of the RSS suffers because its authors either
evaded or failed to acknowledge a number of cogent criticisms
submitted by peer reviewers of a publicly released draft of the
report.
[...] One broad topic is, however, conspicuously absent [from the
Lewis report]. Although the report includes detailed assessment of
the RSS peer review process, nowhere does it discuss the overall
process by which the RSS was undertaken or the political manner in
which the study was used by the NRC and its predecessor, the AEC.
...it is now known that the RSS was initiated in anticipation of an
upcoming congressional vote on whether or not to renew the
Price-Anderson Act -- legislation through which the federal
government participates in the insurance of commercial nuclear
reactors and sets an upper limit on electric utilities' public
liability in the even of a major reactor accident. As the Act
gradually worked its way through the congressional committee system
in 1974-75, the AEC/NRC first briefed members of Congress on a draft
of the RSS without disclosing internal criticism by AEC reviewers,
rushed completion of the report to coincide with congressional
schedules, and then presented the final report to the Congress
without mentioning that interested scientists who had asked
repeatedly to see the final document had not yet been provided with
copies. ..."
To conclude my contributions to this debate, I append some quotes:
"To the contrary, a government bent on its one and only job --
ensuring the security and civil rights of its citizens -- might not
attempt the futile task of keeping nuclear weapons from tyrannical
and aggressive governments; ... it might rather take steps to defend
itself and its like-minded allies from nuclear attack.... Such a
government dedicated exclusively to protecting the security and civil
rights of its citizens is, of course, entirely imaginary; real
governments spend most of their time attempting to make everybody
live at everybody else's expense.... The only effective protection
from large-scale nuclear attacks is military strength.... Finally,
the United States should vigorously promote and implement the policy
that strikes at [nuclear] proliferation in the free world at its very
roots: maintain a principled, determined, and credible military
posture vis-a-vis the Soviet Union and other potential aggressors so
as to make it unnecessary for smaller countries -- in particular
Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan -- to seek nuclear weapons for their
defense." --Beckmann, "International Nuclear Policy" in *Free Market
Energy*, ed. S. Fred Singer. [No comment.]
"When people wanted to hear from scientists, the [anti-nuclear]
attackers supplied their own: there are always a few available to
present any point of view. Who was to know that they represented
only a tiny minority of the scientific community. The battle was
*not* billed as a bunch of scientifically illiterate political
activists attacking the community of nuclear scientists, which was
the true situation. Instead, it was represented as
"environmentalists" -- what a good, sweet, and pure connotation that
name carries -- attacking "big business" interests (the nuclear
industry), which was trying to make money at the expense of the
public's health and safety..." --Bernard L. Cohen, "Nuclear Power
Economics and Prospects", in ibid. [The above is extracted from
pages of polemics which portray nuclear scientists as the hapless
victims of political activists with debating and media skills and
victims of that all-purpose scapegoat the media, with all the
knowledge and reasonableness on one side while the other goes looking
for political battles to fight -- any battle will do, apparently.
But scientific-technical debates are not decided by taking a poll of
the experts, as Cohen seems to want; nor should public policy issues
affecting millions be decided by handing the decision over to an
elite of experts and sidestepping democracy, as he also seems to
want. It is attitudes such as are epitomized by Cohen's colossal
arrogance that have been a principal source of public distrust of
the "experts".]
"[From the fact that the US population will continue to grow for some
decades] it is often quite wrongly concluded that there is a
population explosion in the US. This is like fearing a flood because
the river level is still slowly rising after the spring run-off, when
a look at the dry mountains would reveal that what is really
threatening is a drought." --Beckmann, quoted by Tom Bethell in
*National Review*. [Get serious. If the current below-replacement
fertility remains constant, the US will remain overpopulated (given
current consumption patterns) for well over a century, for the US
population will continue to consume its environmental and ecological
capital at an increasing rate for decades and inflict much more
environmental damage per additional person than the typical
additional Indian or African. Yet Beckmann is worried about
*underpopulation*, even though no one can predict what will happen to
fertility rates, much less that they will remain below replacement.]
"Contrary to the general belief, there is very little factual support
for the theory of evolution." --Bethell, current issue of *Nat. Rev.*
(8/29/86), p. 43. [Right, Tom, that's why few scientists today
accept evolution.]
Sorry to distract everyone with long-winded discussions of such
trivial topics as the future of the human race. Now you can all go
back to debating the important issues of our time, such as whether or
not to boycott L. Sprague de Camp.
Richard Carnes
Michael V. Stein
[I said ]
>>...With a total cost of about four million, the Rasmussen
>>report still today provides about the best study of reactor safety.
[Long quote from Carnes mentioning the Lewis Report...]
>...Mr. Stein somehow manages to avoid mentioning that (1) the Nuclear
>Regulatory Commission [NRC], the body that had commissioned the
>Rasmussen Report, repudiated the Report's Executive Summary in
>January 1979 and stated that it no longer considered the Report's
>risk elements reliable; ...
Although the Lewis Report rejected the *executive* summary of the
WASH 1400, they also said:
Despite its shortcomings, WASH-1400 provides at this time the
most complete picture of accident probabilities associated
with nuclear reactors. The fault tree/event tree approach
coupled with an adequate data base is the best available tool
with which to quantify these probabilities.
This is exactly why I said what I did.
>To conclude my contributions to this debate, I append some quotes:
[What follows next is a quote by Beckman essentially espousing the
theory that the best way of preventing a war is to be prepared for
the possibility.]
I am certain that Beckman's views on defense are influenced by the
fact that he is an escaped scientist from the communist regime of
Czechoslovakia. Yet your views, or Beckman's views, on defense
have *no* relevance to a discussion of the risks associated with
electrical power sources.
[Excerpted quote by Cohen, showing his and other scientists
frustration when dealing with professional activists..]
> ...."When people wanted to hear from scientists, the [anti-nuclear]
> attackers supplied their own: there are always a few available to
> present any point of view. Who was to know that they represented
> only a tiny minority of the scientific community. The battle was
> *not* billed as a bunch of scientifically illiterate political
> activists attacking the community of nuclear scientists, which was
> the true situation. ....
In responce, Carnes writes:
> ...But scientific-technical debates are not decided by taking a poll of
> the experts, as Cohen seems to want; nor should public policy issues
> affecting millions be decided by handing the decision over to an
> elite of experts and sidestepping democracy, as he also seems to
> want.
Get serious. Cohen is not saying that energy decisions should be
left to physicists. Instead his frustration is with the political
opportunism on the nuclear power issue. This frustration is most
keenly felt by those in the field who try and contribute to the
public debate. As Dr. A. David Rossin of the American Nuclear
Society writes:
Skepticism is healthy. I believe our nation is far better off
than it was, because over the past three decades children have
been encouraged to question. Blind acceptance is a thing of
the past.
But blind oppostion is arrogant and just dangerous as
blind acceptance, perhaps more so. If there is a maturity to
public debate on nuclear power, it will become evident when
the public, and more important, the media who provide them
with information, openly apply the same level of skepticism to
the anti-nuclear activists as they do to the nuclear industry.
Again, the debate is on the risks of energy production. The debate
*isn't* on the maturity level of the nuclear debate.
This next quote I had better include in its entirity:
> "[From the fact that the US population will continue to grow for some
> decades] it is often quite wrongly concluded that there is a
> population explosion in the US. This is like fearing a flood because
> the river level is still slowly rising after the spring run-off, when
> a look at the dry mountains would reveal that what is really
> threatening is a drought." --Beckmann, quoted by Tom Bethell in
> *National Review*. [Get serious. If the current below-replacement
> fertility remains constant, the US will remain overpopulated (given
> current consumption patterns) for well over a century, for the US
> population will continue to consume its environmental and ecological
> capital at an increasing rate for decades and inflict much more
> environmental damage per additional person than the typical
> additional Indian or African. Yet Beckmann is worried about
> *underpopulation*, even though no one can predict what will happen to
> fertility rates, much less that they will remain below replacement.]
I wonder if you even bothered to read the above quote before writing
it down. Beckman is stating that the fertility rate is the key,
not population trends. Population trends are merely the effect
and are not the important issue. He certainly isn't saying
that underpopulation is a problem...
Of course the point is that even if what you are saying was true,
it still has *no* relevance to this debate.
[Final polemic by Carnes is a quote by someone named Bethel that there
is little factual support for evolution.]
I thought it was funny when people argued for the end of American
nuclear power when the Chernobyl accident occurred. Now I guess
Mr. Carnes is arguing that because someone doesn't believe in
evolution that we should end nuclear power!
From the very first message written on nuclear energy, I and others
have asked for evidence showing how either coal or oil are safer than
nuclear power. I have not seen any such arguments. Instead we have
dealt with side issues.
The first major argument was that commercial nuclear power was
inexorably linked with nuclear weapons. As has been shown, this is
not very valid. There are about eight ways of enriching nuclear fuel
and reprocessing spent fuel rods is the most difficult. This is
why *none* of the countries with atomic weapons got the
"bomb" from a commercial nuclear reactor. In fact they all seem
to have built research reactors to get their plutonium.
The next major point was the toxicity of plutonium. Although there
are plenty of sensationalism about the dangers of plutonium, the truth
is that it is a hazardous material, like many, that we deal with in our
society. One advantage of it is that, since it is slightly
radioactive, very small amounts of it can be detected.
When these two major points died down, Mr. Carnes went on the
offensive with direct personal attacks on Dr. Beckman and Dr. Cohen
and indirect personal attacks on anyone else who opposed his will.
Hoping to later claim that the entire energy debate for the world
centers around the work of these two researchers, he tried
discrediting them. Thus, people have had to waste several hours
writing messages to refute some strange energy claims from Ehrlich.
(As I have had to show in nauseating detail, Ehrlich
can hardly be considered an expert on energy issues.)
I certainly wish that the nuclear issue did not have to be so polarized.
Nuclear power is not an all or nothing answer. Nuclear power is
simply an energy source. The best empirical and theoretical knowledge
we have is that it is far safer than the alternatives of coal or oil.
(By safer, I mean safer in mining, transportation, routine operation
and waste disposal.)
This fear of "nuclear" is unfortunately extending to other areas.
(There have been proposals to change the name of the medical technique
of "nuclear magnetic resonanse" to magnetic resonance - which is
an inaccurate title.)
But as Richard Carnes has noted, safety should not be the only criteria
deciding energy policy. As the United States learned in the 1970's
having your energy sources controlled by non-friendly countries
is a dangerous path to follow. The coal miners strike
several years ago, did not cripple this country precisely because we
had sources of power like nuclear that weren't dependent on their control.
Sometimes the environmental impact of attaining the fuel source
is very costly, such as with coal. Some fuels are volatible and
can explode with *mind-boggling* force - this is a clear risk
when dealing with liquidified natural gas. Other fuels have
only a limited span before we run out of all known reserves.
All of these sorts of issues have to come into play when discussing
energy policy, and I wish we could have gotten into them more here...
SEVENER
Drs. Goffman and Tamplin, who *had* been members of the AEC
but left when their research demonstrating there was no
threshold effect to health effects of radioactivty was squelched
by the AEC, are simply
in it for the money, recent news is of relevance to the whole
debate.
The Lovins and many other advocates of the "soft" energy path
have long contended that the whole presumption that we should
simply increase our energy output indefinitely is not the best
solution. Whether the increase in energy production be from
coal, gas, nukes or whatever the whole need for exponentially
increasing energy production can be avoided by energy *conservation*.
We waste enormous amounts of energy through inefficient building
heating and cooling systems, inefficient transportation systems
and inefficient appliances.
In this regard Mr. Stein, Mr Carnes and everyone on the net should
cheer the recent agreement reached between the Natural Resources
Defense Council and the Appliance Industry in which the Appliance
Industry finally gave up fighting conservation and agreed to
support standards mandating that all appliances produced be
energy efficient. The groups estimated that the production of
energy efficient appliances would save the equivalent of 22
power plants. The report was on NPR a couple days ago.
It is ironic that some of the biggest customers for the Lovins
energy consulting work is now electrical utilities. They have
begun to realize that they can save more money by promoting
energy conservation measures than by building evermore expensive
power plants of whatever type.
We can do a lot more in terms of energy conservation which removes
the need for *either* nukes or coal plants.
tim sevener whuxn!orb
Bill Tanenbaum
> energy consulting work is now electrical utilities. They have
> begun to realize that they can save more money by promoting
> energy conservation measures than by building evermore expensive
> power plants of whatever type.
> We can do a lot more in terms of energy conservation which removes
> the need for *either* nukes or coal plants.
Amen, (almost)! I don't think that even Amory Lovins thinks that
we will NEVER have to build another electric power plant. If so,
the debate of which is the lesser evil, nuclear or fossil fuel,
must unfortunately continue for the forseeable future. (MY vote
is that fossil fuel is the greater evil.)
--
Bill Tanenbaum - AT&T Bell Labs - Naperville IL ihnp4!ihlpg!tan
SEVENER
of the safe supply of energy. The New York Times a month ago
reported on an experiment with geothermal energy in Maryland in
which a hole was dug deep enough to hit the hot rocks underneath
the surface. It successfully produced electricity.
The major advance of the technique is that unlike other geothermal
techniques which rely on natural geysers or other such sources of
steam, this technique could essentially be used practically anywhere.
It just means digging deep enough to reach the region of the
earth's crust beneath the surface which is constantly hot.
The report said that such a hole could produce energy for a period
of some years. Then it would just be a few thousand years for the
heated rock to regain its heat from the earth's core.
An intriguing possibility...
Of course one would want to consider effects of geological stability.
tim sevener whuxn!or
Michael V. Stein
[Tim Sevener]
>While Michael Stein continues his barrage of accusations that
>Drs. Goffman and Tamplin, who *had* been members of the AEC
>but left when their research demonstrating there was no
>threshold effect to health effects of radioactivty was squelched
>by the AEC, are simply
No, that is not what I have said. I have no idea of the psychological
motivations of John Gofman. I certainly never claimed he was "in it
for the money." Also as regards the "barrage of accusations", what I
simply did was quote from the Court's decision in the case of
Johnson vs U.S., where Gofman was an expert whitness.
The District Court had this to say about Gofman:
...he is not a certified health physicist, and while a physician,
he does not examine or treat patients. He enjoys emeritus
status at the University of California at Berkely, but has no
office, nor access to any laboratory or library, and he teaches
no one! From what this Court can garner, it appears that his
principal activities are writing books and testifying in
the courtroom.
Gofman has never served on either the international UNSCEAR committees,
or the National Acadamy of Sciences BEIR committees. Indeed, besides
having never served on any of the relevant committees, he also
refuses to accept the consensus reports of these committees as
reliable authorities. (See Gofman's, "Radiation and Human Health.")
As the Courts decision later writes:
...It is not this Court which has chosen to separate Dr. Morgan
and Dr. Gofman from the vast majority of respected radiation
scientists. They have chosen to separate themselves by rejecting
as reliable authorities the very documents which represent the
scientific consensus in this particular field.
But the point I want to make is that the AEC could not squelch
new radiation research since it is not the organization that
even studies the effects on radiation on human health. The
scientists who specialize in this area are known as the radiation
protection community. Depending on how you define it precisely,
this group contains about 6,000 to 10,000 scientists. As the
Court's decision relates:
...Dr. John Gofman has never been an active member of the
group because he has never made any significant contributions
to this field and because his writings on the subject have
not been found to be scientifically credible by the radiation
protection community.
(My personal view is that if Gofman's views are correct and
the rest of the world's radiation experts are wrong, he should
only have to explain his views to them, to get the world
recognition he deserves. Very few men are able to show that
60 years of research are wrong - Gofman would have a golden
opportunity here if he was correct.)
>...We waste enormous amounts of energy through inefficient building
>heating and cooling systems, ...
Careful here. Tightly sealing a building is one good way of increasing
radon to dangerous levels.
>In this regard Mr. Stein, Mr Carnes and everyone on the net should
>cheer the recent agreement reached between the Natural Resources
>Defense Council and the Appliance Industry in which the Appliance
>Industry finally gave up fighting conservation and agreed to
>support standards mandating that all appliances produced be
>energy efficient. The groups estimated that the production of
>energy efficient appliances would save the equivalent of 22
>power plants.
It is a good sign and not unexpected if american manufacturers want
to compete with imported appliances. Yet I would be interested
in knowing how they computed that this measure could save the
equivalent of 22 power plants.
Jeff McQuinn
> techniques which rely on natural geysers or other such sources of
> steam, this technique could essentially be used practically anywhere.
> It just means digging deep enough to reach the region of the
> earth's crust beneath the surface which is constantly hot.
> The report said that such a hole could produce energy for a period
> of some years. Then it would just be a few thousand years for the
> heated rock to regain its heat from the earth's core.
>
> An intriguing possibility...
> Of course one would want to consider effects of geological stability.
> tim sevener whuxn!or
I saw a program on Nova or one of the Chicago City College courses on T.V.
that covered this very topic. As I recall it's not just a matter of
plunking down a hole any old place and getting free energy. Like other
energy sources, the energy itself is free but you pay to get it from
where it found to where it is needed and in converting it from it's
present form to what you can use.
The main problem with geothermal wells is that you tend to have to dig
VERY deep wells. Few places exist where magma is close enough to the
surface to heat groundwater. If an injection well is used it would be
assumed that vast quantities of water need to be available. The biggest
problem is that the heated water picks up so many minerals that it is
essentially polluted. If surface water is injected into a dry well to
pick up heat you cannot just dump it after removing the heat or you'll
end up creating a salt bed. The same water could be used in a closed
system but this implies that you'll have to plant a large heat exchanger
at the bottom of the well. That's an enormously expensive proposition.
If the well is tapping a ground water source the water can be reinjected
at another location. Eventually the reinjected water poisons the main
well and not enough hot water is drawn to make it worth the effort.
The hot ground water is also heavily laden with minerals and tends to be
corrosive and very hard on the equipment.
The temperature of the water was not high enough to efficiently create
electricity (in the program) but was suitable for heating houses in
a small city. But the cost of the pumping station and two wells (main
well and reinjection well) over the useful lifetime of the wells was
not competative with natural gas.
Jeff McQuinn jes' VAXing around
Bob Cunningham
> VERY deep wells. Few places exist where magma is close enough to the
It's surprising how many places are suitable: portions of the U.S. Pacific
northwest, California, Japan, etc. along the "ring of fire" circling the
Pacific Ocean, plus the Hawaiian islands (where there is very active
development of geothermal sources). Not so surprisingly (given the
geological conditions) those are precisely areas where coal generally
isn't.
The temperature difference doesn't have to be extreme, remember that ocean
thermal energy conversion technology works with a relatively small thermal
difference (though it does require lots of water, and thus its usefulness is
primarily confined to ocean & nearshore sites between 35 degrees north or
south of the Equator).
--
Bob Cunningham {humu|ihnp4}!{islenet|uhmanoa}!bob
cunninghamr%haw.s...@LLL-MFE.ARPA
Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, University of Hawaii