Posted by
Steve Smith on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Obama-on-nuclear-energy-tp2639434p2640131.html
I am sympathetic with the desire to eliminate "messy" forms of energy
production, storage, transmission and use.
England (esp. London) during the early Industrial Revolution understood
that Coal was dirty and should not be used in cities... but they already
had an appetite for it's utility and continued to make themselves ill
for a long time. Even today, the world continues to use it.
Internal Combustion Engines seemed to be a great boon. Around 1905,
Scientific American claimed a great victory for the automobile in NY
City, almost completely eliminating the messy, fly-attracting, etc.
"pollution" of horseshit. It took nearly 50 years for the exhaust of
automobiles to begin to become a bother, and another 50 (today) for it
to become a global threat.
As I was leaving college in my mid twenties, I was quite idealistic. I
was a vegetarian. I drove a honda Civic that got 40+ mpg (@55mph). I
looked at both LLNL and LANL as genuinely positive places to work for
many reasons... the Fusion Energy projects at both labs (Magnetic Fusion
Energy @ LLNL and Antares Laser Fusion @ LANL) seemed to promise (30
years ago) an unlimited supply of energy to feed our unlimited (oops,
did I say that?) appetite. 30 years ago. It was on the tip of our
scientific tongues 30 years ago. And here we are. Maybe it is imminent.
In a few years, I could no longer buy a car that got 40+ mpg. I would
have thought it was an OPEC or Detroit conspiracy, but instead I
discovered that in our haste to improve fuel efficiency we had tweaked
out the emission of Nitrous Oxides... and to keep the air safe to
breathe, and reduce emissions to (mostly) C02 and H20, we needed to give
up a little fuel economy. Nobody knew that C02, for all it's relative
benign properties (we breathe it out with every breath, plants suck it
up like we suck up oxygen!), would become a problem. Wait... *many*
people knew! And only a few listened (I wasn't one of them, I was still
seeking the holy grail of "free energy").
I observed Solar and Wind energy projects with great lust. Free energy
straight from the environment! Then the Eagles (and probably much less
"important" birds) started falling from the sky as they flew into the
blades unaware. The big solar farm in Yuma, AZ proved the scalability
of solar, but oops! it seems you needed to have a "gradient" to produce
power... a high grade (concentrated solar energy) heat source was not
enough... you had to have a high grade medium for dumping the "waste"
heat. In this case the Colorado River... until they discovered that
raising the temperature of the water "a few degrees" completely
destroyed the habitat for the creatures living there... oops! It has
been idle (and dismantled?) since.
Fission Power has been a big player for decades, and an excuse for
naming the Department of Energy, not the Department of WMD. It is a
very high-grade, compact form of energy production. Too bad, the best
processes can also be used to yield weapons grade by-products. Too bad,
the low-grade "waste" can only be buried (if you can find someone with
a back yard they don't mind burying it in) for hundreds of thousands of
years, hoping for the best.
So here we are "wishing and hoping" for a "free lunch". Haven't we
had our free lunches already? And discovered they all have a price?
If there is anything in the current round of "energy solutions" that I
am hopeful about, it is "distributed energy". The more we can become
responsible (and aware) of the energy we consume, by having to accept
the consequences of producing it, the more likely we are to be
thoughtful about how wasteful we are. Maybe.
Some of us became more responsible after the "recycle craze" because we
saw how many bottles and cans we generated each week. Others of us
patted ourselves on the back for how "green" we were and consumed twice
as much! After all, we were being responsible for our "waste" by
"recycling", never realizing that most of the glass and paper and steel
was a loss financially (and maybe energy-wise too) to recycle... only
Aluminum was a significant net-gain. Meanwhile we all felt pretty smug
with our little blue or green containers at the curbside.
If we burn firewood, we breathe our own smoke and watch our own
woodlots/forests deplete. If we dam our own river, we notice the loss
of habitat downstream, and have to negotiate with our neighbors for the
meager output of the hydroelectric plant (see Jemez Springs pre-WWII).
If we put up a windmill in our backyard, we have to listen to it clatter
in the high winds and climb up and oil it now and again, replace a blade
or a bearing maybe. And do without power on the still days. If we
accept GE's "mini-nuke" into our backyard, we have to explain to our
children when they inherit the house from us why they will need to spend
their inheritance on "waste disposal" or why it is no longer operating
and there is a 10' thick layer of concrete poured over/around it and the
house is outfitted with geiger counters.
You can say this is a fantasy... that we don't really notice these
things, and we destroy our own habitat and environment anyway. I
suspect you are right... but if we don't even see it when we live
amongst it... if it is the Amazon Rainforest, if it is the ozone at the
south pole, if it is the eddies of debris in the oceans, then we have no
chance of curbing our appetites. Let the chickens come home to roost,
maybe we will take it as a sign or portent.
But if we make up a high-tech, high-industry solution that we think
"someone else" should put in *their* back yard. That someone else
should finance and approve and make "work well", then I'm sad. I don't
think that will work out so well. It hasn't so far. We are already
complaining about the coal smoke coming from China, a half a world
away... did we think they (or was it Europe) didn't find *our* pollution
offensive when we were at our peak?
I hope Fusion researchers will continue to look for a "better way". I
hope Wind and Sun Farmers will seek ways to provide alternatives. I
hope Fission researchers will continue to look for "better ways". But
maybe we need to change something more fundamental...
I think I'll go drive to ABQ and back, in a 4x4 pickup truck, by myself,
on the same day, at 80 MPH. Gas is below $2.00 if you shop carefully.
- Steve who Rants
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