Energy

[random axe]

We're gonna be stretching you out!

As ominous a threat from the planet as was ever issued during Schoolhouse Rock.

OK, so, nuclear power is back, baby.  The question is whether this is a good idea or not.  And by "good idea", I mean a good policy, because there's only so much sense in discussing it as a theoretical course of action when we know it's going to be carried out by politicians, plutocrats, and energy companies. 

Certainly nuclear power (fission power) has the potential to save our delicious bacon, and I think probably a serious plan to increase our production by building new plants is a considerable improvement over our use of oil and coal to generate juice.  I mean, the coal industry has done a hell of a lot more to release radioactive waste into our environment than the nuclear power people have, not to mention all the other ways they deface the country and poison us.  (Some studies have put airborne particulates, especially coal soot, as the #1 untimely hastener of death, well ahead of cars, smoking, fatty foods, etc.)

There are newer designs for nuke plants now that are far better than the plants we already have.  There's this new traveling-wave design, too, although I honestly don't even know if it works or if it's another Cold Fusion.  And with proper regulation and oversight, I do think that fission power could realistically be hellaciously good for us.  But you do have to get past the NIMBY waste problem.  I mean, personally, I think it's dumb to ship insanely dangerous waste across several states in the first place.

But what do you think?  I think if Bill Gates' angle on this turns out to be right AND he manages to get his dream of it going, it would cancel out the entire evil and antisocial effects of Microsoft several times over.  I just don't have the optimism to bet on it.

[PVC Barbie]

Think about how many times a Windows machine crashes.

Now think about Windows Nuke.

I, uh, hear homes and staff are pretty affordable in the second world... so uhhhhh ... BRB - filling out citizenship forms.

[Lindsey Buckinghmof]

I really don't like this idea. It's another one of those brilliant ideas that will cost an infinite amount of money, screw up the environment, and generate less power than switching to LED bulbs will save.

[random axe]

Well, I certainly agree Bill Gates shouldn't be allowed to design the new plants, but he wasn't planning to.  But, seriously, as half-assed as our nuclear power policy and regulation has been, nuclear power has done a lot less environmental damage than coal power has.  Probably less than oil has, too, but the difference is that we import a lot of oil and not a lot of coal (in recent years, we've exported about 2.5 times as much coal as we've imported), so a lot of the environmental damage from oil exploration and recovery isn't so apparent here.

Thing is, cheap clean energy is probably about the single most important thing we can realistically get.  It's free wealth.  I don't think that hydrogen fusion is just around the corner.  We're just not putting enough money into advanced solar, and for whatever reasons it seems like we're never going to.  The main problem with wind power is that we refuse to upgrade our grid and create intelligent distributed storage (which is a shame since it recently became very economically plausible).

Switching to LED lighting would be great, but it's not happening.  The major problem with conservation is that there's little economic incentive there for anyone except consumers; consumers are rarely good at economical analysis; and the up-front costs are often scary and prohibitive.  The government under progressive leadership only makes weak stabs at subsidizing that stuff.

Ultimately, as a culture, reducing power production and usage is almost always a reduction in wealth.  What you really want to do is to increase efficiency and use the depressed price of energy to decrease the costs of manufacturing, etc.  That's good for everybody, from poor people to megacorporations, and it also hugely improves your economic status.  China's going to be kicking our ass pretty soon because they're going to have cheaper energy in addition to cheaper labor.  A lot of their energy will be quite polluting, which will suck for them in other ways, but the disparity in energy production will suck for us, too.

[the other andrea]

There's this:



and then there's this:

-- which leads to this very cool animation

First picture is of the radiation cloud one day after the Chernobyl disaster. Second is a NASA computer model of the global transport of black carbon.

Can't say I feel good about either. 

[random axe]

Chernobl was a particularly Russian problem, though, a very half-assed poorly contained reactor system.  Don't get me wrong:  Our commercial nuclear power plants should not be allowed, due to poor design (mostly in secondary systems, but they're still critical systems) and management and ridiculously lax oversight.  But Chernobl was an entirely different and crappier animal, a disaster waiting to happen.  In this country, only military nuclear power plants even approach that kind of lowered safety standard, and part of the problem there is that (so I'm led to understand) they're designed to be able to go critical very quickly and easily, so that they could be rendered useless and unrecoverable if the area were taken over by an invading enemy.

Our nuclear power program was largely crap.  It was a shambles of pork and grift and special interests and thinly veiled military necessity -- much of it intended to breed plutonium for use in weapons rather than to necessarily be good energy policy.  The AEC and NRC were and are more about promoting nuclear power than regulating it as a power industry.  (Similarly, the FAA is meant to keep US airlines in business as much as to regulate them.) 

But the problems with US nuclear power are all solvable -- realistically, even -- with just some serious oversight and regulation.  The technology exists, and the new traveling wave reactors allegedly won't even produce significant amounts of waste.  France makes nuclear power work, although I'm sure they could do a better job.

Of course, here we still haven't managed to get the coal industry under reasonable control, much less Big Oil.  But we could.  And, seriously, pollution from coal poisons and kills a lot more people every year than Chernobl did.  We're just largely used to it, and it's underreported.

Eh.  I dunno.  I still wish they would put some money into boron fusion.  They like to say that it's just too hot and couldn't possibly be controlled, but (A) there are a lot of different reactions available with boron, at a whole range of temperatures, and (B) it's not the spot heat that matters so much but the total heat in the containment vessel.  I think you could manage a small amount of fusion in a large chamber with inertial confinement and let the plasma expand / escape rapidly and make it work.

I mean, obviously, I'm not an expert, but boron fusion works sustainably in science fair projects, and gigantic research labs can't get hydrogen fusion to stabilize for even half a second.  Pff.  Share the research money, man.

[stormneedle]

Hey, don't forget about the Technetium generation from commercial nuclear power plants. I liked being a gamma emitter for a day, and nobody got me angry.

[random axe]

So . . . the Bloom Box.

I am not yet up to the point of Cautiously Optimistic about it, myself.  I am ready to be convinced one way or the other, although I don't expect to reach a conclusion anytime too soon.

Basically, it seems to be . . . a fuel cell.  Now, fuel cells are a good idea.  At the end of the day, a fuel cell is essentially a generator that perfectly burns the fuel you put in.  The pollution that results from burning coal or gasoline comes from two sources:  contaminants that are in the fuel and imperfect combustion of the fuel.  If you burned chemically pure gasoline at an optimum temperature (hotter than a typical car engine), you'd get hot water and carbon dioxide and not much of anything else in the exhaust.  Run that gasoline through a fuel cell, and you get the exact same waste out.  It's pretty much only with pure-hydrogen fuel cells that you get no CO2.

Fuel cells have the potential to run cooler than combustion engines, more quietly, more efficiently, and with less maintenance.  They don't always do these things, though, and they generally currently cost a lot more up front.

The Bloom Box is said to be able to run on almost anything, but I've only heard about it being set up to run on relatively clean gasses, usually natural gas.  Running one on gasoline, say, would take a rather different setup, and you'd have some nasty waste products gunking the thing up.  Still, not impossible.

The main problem I have with the Bloom Box is that 95% of their PR seems to be just PR.  Some big companies are already using the things, but using the thing is great PR, too.  These suckers currently cost a fortune, and although they say they'll get the price down, they're very fuzzy about it.  For instance, how long would a Box last in an average home?  If it costs $3000 and saves you $300 a year but lasts five years, that's not so great.  I'm told they run at a rather high temperature -- probably too hot to use in a car, for instance.  That's hot.

Several years ago (ten, even?), there was a company out the Portland / Seattle way putting $5000 fuel cell machines in people's homes.  Those were the size of water heaters, and they ran on natural gas.  They provided heat, electicity, and hot water all out of one cogeneration machine, and they were supposed to last at least ten years.  A Bloom Box for the home is supposed to be much smaller, although also not cogenerating, and slightly cheaper, but they're saying it won't be ready for 5-10 years.  I'm not sure that's that much of a breakthrough.

I'm also not sure how the price of natural gas would fluctuate if these things became popular.  Biogas is a nice idea, but unless you run a hog or dairy farm there may very well not be enough of the stuff to go around.


Call me crazy, but those new whole-house battery systems are a LOT more exciting to me.  Not only do they make solar and wind power much much more useful and attractive, but they mean everyone could buy electricity during cheaper non-peak hours.  And that the power companies never needed to use peak hours again, which would make new power plants and maintaining old ones vastly cheaper.  And it would be like upgrading the power grid, since average power flow would drop and even out.

So I have nothing against the Bloom Box, assuming it's as-advertised, but it doesn't sound like anything like the big deal they've been making it out to be.  Maybe if they can get the price down.  It would actually be awesome in many ways if people could cheaply and cleanly generate so much electricity at home that they could switch to electric heat, for instance.

[random axe]

I totally understand the dismay of some Cape Cod residents at the idea of their ocean view including new things, such as an undetermined number of big wind turbines.  I also agree that there are lot of valid questions, like how careful the government is being about the proposed deal, regulation, etc.  Don't do it unless you're going to do it right.

The rich-person NIMBY crap has got to go, though.  Period.  As far as that's concerned, how about if they take a third of Hyannis by eminent domain and build a coal-fired plant?

Yeah, the wind farm is nicer, and lots of people have had to put up with far, FAR worse.  So you deserve a voice in this matter, but stop with the whining.

[random axe]

It would be a nice surprise, but I'll be amazed if this BP cap actually works.  Fingers are crossed.