Bernie Sanders
was never very high up my list of viable candidates. My reasons at the start
included: age and an incredibly abrasive personality, as well as a “too
Socialist” (with a capital S) bent. The tipping point for me, however, is his
newly announced 'Climate Plan". Per a recent (today) WaPo article, “Mr. Sanders
would spend more than $2 trillion to build new wind, solar and geothermal
electricity-production infrastructure through government-run utilities. He
would spend another $2 trillion buying people electric cars. Though he proposes
totally electrifying car and truck transportation, he also wants to spend $607
billion linking U.S. cities with high-speed rail, which, under his plan, would
represent a major cost for meager carbon benefits.
Taking these proposals one at a time:
Wind: Wind power
is certainly a zero-carbon-footprint option. According to the federal Energy
Information Administration, however, the "levelized cost" of new wind
power (including capital and operating costs) is 8.2 cents per kWh. This is
just under the cost of newer “clean coal" (now there’s an oxymoron) plants, but
as I said, no CFP. Studying the results of Danish efforts with wind, however,
shows a much larger increase in electrical costs than this projected figure. Danes,
whose percentage of wind generated power has steadily increased, have seen their
electric bills do the same, and they are now 41 cents per kwh, compared to the
US (average) figure of 12 cents per kwh. Wind isn’t cheap, and it is high
maintenance.
Wind power advocates
frequently use extreme low-ball price /cost figures to make their pitch, but
the figures are as I stated earlier. The most reliable figure for cost (which
includes many things the “lo-ballers” ignore, like transmission lines, the
requirement for “rolling reserves (other power sourced production medium when
wind is insufficient), and land costs) is $149 per MWH. This equates to a
higher cost per KWH of 14.9 cents, higher than today’s (all source) average, and
180% higher than the rose-colored glasses estimates used by advocates. This is “pre-profit,” in the event that wind
power is commercial rather than nationally owned. In that case it would be even
higher.
Finally, in the
interest of objective analysis. There are those who get outraged by birds being
killed by wind turbines. Yes, they are. They are also killed by other fixed
vertical projections. Best guess for wind turbine caused bird fatalities is between
214,000 and 368,000 birds annually. This is rarely compared to the estimated
6.8 million fatalities from collisions with cell and radio towers and the 1.4
billion to 3.7 billion deaths from cats.
Want to save birds? Keep your friggin’ cat inside!
Solar: Solar
generated electricity costs less per kwh than wind, but that figure is power
produced by panels in real time. Storage capacity per home (batteries) jacks this
price up a lot. If you are able to use electricity only during the day (right!)
than you can save the battery cost, which is, even for the cheapest and latest
technology, about another $5,000 per home.
The big lie with solar is that while
many “plans” allow selling excess to the grid, the investment in panels is a
large cost, amplified by interest on the installation loan (the way most do it).
Add to this that even if the panels themselves last as “promised” they will have
to be replaced in 25-30 years. The farther
north the installation, the less the return, Solar in Iowa is 33% more costly
than in Florida.
All this has
been a discussion is related to home solar installations. Accepting the fact that
many American households will never be able to afford such installations, that
may mean that, while they might rely on large solar installations for power
there are several significant drawbacks.
1. A large scale commercial installation requires first and
foremost, space. Lots of space. In fact, to produce the same amount of
electricity as the average nuclear power plant (in the daytime) would require right
at fifty-one square miles of panels. Don’t even think about the added necessary
storage battery space or cost to insure full time production in fact; like
solar, this requires “rolling reserve” to supplement shortfalls.
2. Unlike claims to the contrary, solar is not a zero CFP technology
either. The fact is that even solar power plants have an environmental
footprint on a lifecycle basis. For instance, Concentrated Solar Power (CSP)
has a footprint of 20 grams of carbon dioxide (CO2) per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of
electricity produced, in addition to consuming vast amounts of water.
Similarly, photovoltaic (PV) power plants also have carbon
footprints which, on a lifecycle basis can range from 12g per kWh for a
facility using First Solar’s thin film modules, to as much as 24 g per kWh –
for one using multi-crystalline silicon panels. This doesn’t count the
relatively high CFP of the manufacturing process.
3. Fossil fuels: No, just no. At least not coal, the carcinogen
queen of fossil fuels. As a rolling reserve possibility, (actually more like
necessity) natural gas plants are marginally better. Tens of thousands of
Americans die every year from old-fashioned air pollution, generated by
electric power plants that burn fossil fuels. Estimates vary, but between 7,500
and 52,000 people in the United States meet early deaths because of small
particles resulting from power plant emissions.
Even as the
percentage of power produced by natural gas has grown (1990-2015) to almost
that of coal, the CO2 produced remains less than 1/3 that of a similar sized
coal plant, and the menu of cancer-causing components is lower too. Not saying
“use it” bit I would endorse using it rather than coal.
4. Hydro/Geothermal: Hydro-electric is winner when
considering CFP. It has none. Period. On the other hand, in flat lands where
there are no natural barriers to contain water, it is rather impractical. Damming
rivers to create elevated sources is one way to do it, and the Columbia, Snake
and Missouri among other US rivers have been used in this manner for years.
Norway
has, for years, had the lowest energy costs in Europe, exporting electricity in
many years. Fiords bounded by high cliffs make this work. One drawback, of
course is water level in dry seasons, or if demand requires more power than the
dam’s flow was originally intended to support. A visit to Lake Mead and Boulder
Dam will immediately convey the scope of this problem, as the Colorado’s flow
has rarely kept up with electrical demand. Last time I was there, there was a
30 foot “bathtub ring” showing where the level had once been!
I won’t discuss environmental pros and cons,
here since this is about energy costs, but two words: fish ladders.
Geothermal –
Geothermal uses existing subsurface heat or cooler soil in the case of
geothermal air conditioning. A well- functioning geothermal unit can also serve
as a heat pump in some areas. Electrical power production has some serious
limitations.
1. Environmental
Issues. There is an abundance of greenhouse gases below the surface of the
earth, some of which mitigates towards the surface and into the atmosphere. ...
2. Surface Instability (Earthquakes) can damage continuity
of not water or steam ergo loss of power.
3. Expensive: it just
is, as a commercial power source.
4. Location Specific: There simply aren’t a lot of places
where it can be used for power production
5 Sustainability Issues: is the heat source constant. Can’t tell
until it isn’t.
The largest group of geothermal power plants in the world is
located at The Geysers, a geothermal field in California, United States. As of
2004, five countries (El Salvador, Kenya, the Philippines, Iceland, and Costa
Rica) generate more than 15% of their electricity from geothermal sources. In
Iceland, almost 90% of the country's people use geothermal heating resources.
Iceland also relies on its natural geysers to melt snow, warm fisheries, and
heat greenhouses. America generates more geothermal than any other country, but
will never be able to power a national grid
Which brings me
to the reason I wrote this. Mr. Sanders, having fallen for the hysteria (he’s
in good company, ask AOC) related to nuclear power has eschewed the obvious
best choice for cheap, zero emission, zero CFP electrical power – Nuclear.
Among all the power providers in the US, nuclear is the only one with zero
fatalities.
Nuclear reactors have been safely mobile in surface craft and
submarines since 1957 (USS Nautilus). 134 million miles safely steamed on
nuclear power with zero accidents.
Accidents during oil and gas drilling claim about 100 lives
a year in the United States. You’d think this would be big news. If any other
energy source, like wind or solar, killed that many people, it would be front
page. And if five people died at a nuclear plant, there’d be calls to close all
nuclear plants immediately, accompanied by mobs with pitchforks.
Energy’s death-print, as it is sometimes called by analysts,
is a rarely discussed externality. The death-print is the number of people
killed per kWh produced. There is debate on the absolute numbers, but no one
debates on the relative ranking from most dangerous to least.
Like the carbon
footprint, coal has the largest death-print while nuclear has the smallest,
even with the worst-case Chernobyl numbers. Natural Gas has the highest
accident-related deaths. It is notable that in media and legislative
discussions, the only time death is mentioned is for nuclear, which is ironic
since it has the lowest death-print of any source. There is, of course a reason,
of sorts.
Two events 12 days apart created an unjustified and supremely harmful
(to the industry) panic among the uninformed, and many who should have known
better). The motion picture, The China Syndrome, which opened in mid-March 1979,
scared the bejesus out of viewers with its story of a fictional Nuke plant
built foolishly on a fault line in California, where, apparently, all this sort
of thing happens first.
Later that month, after operators did almost every
conceivable thing wrong in response to a malfunctioning relief valve, there was
a real incident at a reactor plant in Pennsylvania. 40 years later, the largest
public health study done in the u to date shows no, none, zero, short, or long-term
human casualties related to that incident.
Yet, largely due to ignorance and
fear mongering among some who should have known better, and this included the Senator himself. He has opposed Nuclear power vociferously (his middle name) as
it is an emotional and misunderstood issue.
What’s misunderstood?
1. Nuclear power plants are inherently stable. I’ve spent 38
months of my life submerged in steel tubes with several. For most of that time
I was responsible for power plant operation in numerous roles. During that
period, I received less radiation (and I was an Engineering lab tech who did
radioactive water testing and surveys) than if I had lived in Denver for the
same period. Think about it. Lest we think, “Yeah but that’s the Navy…! Guess
where the vast bulk of civilian operators got their training?
2. Nuclear power plants are not site specific. Yes, they are
most economically sited where there is a supply of cooling water, but they can
also use hyperbolic cooling towers.
3. Power density (amount of power capability per acre)
eclipses solar and wind by numerous powers of ten with zero CFP.
4. Modern reprocessing techniques allow recovery of most
remaining fissionable material from a spent core. The Obama administration, in
my estimation, erred in discontinuing the Bush 43 efforts to increase fuel
reprocessing. Why? The original concern going all the way back to the late 70s
was that reprocessed fuel was an attractive target for terrorists. Perhaps, but
since Russia, Europe and Japan all routinely do it….?
5. Waste: First, the more you reprocess, the less waste. Launch
it to the sun if you must, although that large fission/fusion blob has its own
supply.
In Summary Nuclear power should be the front
line of a “green” environmental plan, not a target for extermination. But then
that would require doing the homework rather than simply garrulous and abrasive posturing.
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