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Why is this nuclear fission disrespect from Cipher important enough for such a long post?
Cipher’s “About” page includes this self-description “Cipher covers the technological innovations we need to combat climate change and transform our global energy systems.” The publication’s executive editor is @AmyAHarder Cipher is sponsored by Breakthrough Energy.
Cipher’s fission “coverage” slows global progress in combating climate change. Fission is an incredibly powerful natural reaction that serves as an easily controlled heat source for the most productive, cleanest and safest power plants on Earth. It will play an increasingly important role in addressing energy sufficiency for all, energy abundance for most, energy security and energy cleanliness.
Of course nuclear is a “controversial topic.” People have been carefully taught to fear fission. They have rarely been taught much about the technological details of the power plants. Publications like Cipher that point to accidents almost never mention the statistical evidence accumulated over >6 decades that shows nuclear fission is one of our safest forms of energy production.
It’s logical to have some trepidation and concerns about the unknown, especially when fear messaging has been so prevalent.
There is also the competitive factor. Nuclear energy production takes markets away from all other power sources. No business likes to lose sales and revenues. All businesses strive to beat their competition. Talking trash and going negative are frequently used techniques.
But journalists shouldn’t pick sides.
Cipher should adhere to its mission of covering [all of] “the technological innovations we need to combat climate change” and the rest of our energy challenges.
Rod Adams says: December 15, 2023 at 10:13 AM
I believe that many (perhaps most) observers are confused about the economies of scale and believe that the term only applies to ever larger machines.
Scale is also related to the enterprise that develops the power plant and the supply chain that produces the parts for the machines. If the power plants are so large that all of their components are produced in limited quantities, their supply chain never has the chance to develop economic scale.
NuScale’s system includes many simplifications that might enable it to achieve competitive pricing, especially when the kWh that they sell get appropriately differentiated and valued as superior to similar units of electricity that do not include valuable characteristics like cleanliness, reliability, stability, inertia and power factor.
As I pointed out in my post, the $89/MWh price tag for NuScale output is competitive in a number of different markets. Their mistake was trying to sell to reluctant customers in a place where power is generally cheap and where the customers have no real reason to take risks and bet on FOAK technology.
My sources tell me that the fatal decision to focus on UAMPS as the initial customer was a result of strong pressure by INL to host US’s the pioneering SMR.
That might have worked if NuScale had planned to offer a single 50 MWe module. That power output that could be handled by INL, perhaps with the help of Idaho Power. But NuScale decided they needed to achieve scale more quickly and chose initially to build a 12 unit, 600 MWe power plant in the middle of a vast, nearly unpopulated desert. (The initial plan was rescaled to 6 units of 77 MWe each, but that is still a 462 MWe facility on an 860 square mile site with a total local consumption of roughly 80 MWe.
Consuming the power from their proposed plant required a much larger customer base, but the only utility available was a consortium of 40+ small town cooperatives.
Abandoning the UAMPS project before wasting any more money was a good decision. NuScale has a number of additional potential customers in its pipeline, though it still needs to overcome the FOAK challenge.
Yesterday (Nov 8, 2023), an expected shoe dropped. NuScale and UAMPS (Utah Association of Municipal Power Systems) announced that they had decided to abandon their Carbon Free Power Project. The press release stated, “Despite significant efforts by both parties to advance the CFPP, it appears unlikely that the project will have enough subscription to continue toward deployment.”
A chorus of commentary has erupted on social media. Some are cheers from the usual suspects who have never met a nuclear reactor that they like. Others are from people who ardently support different designs that range from different water reactors to gas-cooled, molten salt or liquid metal reactors that don’t use water cooling and moderation.
Some believe that the decision proves that NuScale Power Modules are hopelessly uneconomic and that the CFPP cancellation proves that NuScale is on shaky grounds as a company. Self-admitted short sellers are doing everything they can to undermine investor confidence so that the company stock price falls quickly and profitably for those betting on that behavior.
My conclusions from the project cancellation are different. There is no doubt that a smooth first-of-a-kind demonstration of a 6-12 unit NuScale power plant would have been better for the company’s prospects in the short term. That result would have also helped to increase interest in new nuclear power projects and would have increased investor FOMO (fear of missing out.) //
UAMPS member power systems have ready access to local coal sources.
The UAMPS-served areas are close to productive oil shale formations that contain substantial quantities of associated natural gas. Sometimes North Dakota gas is almost given away – even in the dead of winter – because it is an annoying byproduct of oil production. //
The CFPP was an important project for NuScale, but it is not the only sale that the company is working on. UAMPS is not the only customer attracted by a passively cooled, light water reactor using established fuel forms, materials and chemistry refined through many decades of operation in large fleets of nuclear power plants.
NuScale’s power modules have been issued a design certification at a time when none of the alternative choices have submitted an application for review. Submission is needed to start a regulatory calendar that moves at an excruciatingly slow pace. Though we hope the next review will be quicker, it took more than six years from the time NuScale submitted its Design Certification Application until the 5-member commission issued the final document. (Dec 31, 2016 – Feb 21, 2023)
According to Fluor, which still holds its large stake in NuScale, 18 active and signed Memorandums of Understanding from 11 different countries were in effect at the end of 2021. //
Blue Energy is “productizing” nuclear fission by manufacturing pre-certified light water small modular reactors in shipyards as fully-completed, transportable nuclear power plants that are leased to industrial facilities and countries seeking energy security, price stability, and turnkey decarbonization. We leverage existing oil & gas platform manufacturing infrastructure and a simplified plant design to shrink the construction schedule from 10 years to 24 months and the overnight capital cost from greater than $6,000/kW to less than $2,500/kW while putting nuclear on a learning curve down to $1/W.
-- CERAWeek presentation “Blue Energy | Offshore Nuclear Power” Mar 7, 2023
Do Dubai delegates propose to reduce supply or demand? //
After two weeks of negotiation, the United Nations climate conference in Dubai agreed last week to “transition away” from fossil fuels. Left unanswered is whether governments are supposed to do that by reducing supply, reducing demand or both. A lot rides on the answer, but neither would affect the climate much.
The trick to developing immunity to misinformation
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” ― Isaac Asimov, 1988 //
You’re probably thinking “it’s just a meme”, but it is illustrative of a wider problem where information is presented in this manner: as if the truth is subjective. I only need to open any social media app to see that ‘subjective truth’ seems to be everywhere, and every day there is new questionable information to think about (this assertion isn’t only anecdotal, but is also supported by research). //
As social psychologist Dr. Sander van der Linden points out in his book Foolproof: Why We Fall for Misinformation and How to Build Immunity, misinformation is not new. Previous large-scale examples of misinformation taking hold in populations include Nazi propaganda, which heavily relied on the printed press, radio and cinema, and misinformation campaigns that have been traced back to Roman times when emperors used messages on coins as a form of mass communication to gain power. //
Many vested interests and those who believe misinformation themselves use these biases to their advantage. If this was a war, I would argue that the other side is winning. Thanks to some of these people being convincing communicators, and using storytelling that plays on these biases to their advantage, they have been able to influence what wider populations believe on multitudinous topics ranging from gene-editing to nuclear energy to degrowth as a solution to climate change (it’s not). //
The greatest irony is that anti-nuclear activists have also been able to convincingly embed their unscientific position within environmentalism, even though nuclear energy is the cleanest and most environmentally friendly energy source available to humankind, with the smallest land footprint of all energy sources.
Slogans and stories are sticky, but they may not be true or helpful. Hence I’ve argued before that catchphrases and slogans used by activists are often convincing and successful, even when they are inaccurate. Stories, however, are essential to communicating scientific matters, and we need more people to tell them.
After all, it’s much easier and faster to respond with “what about the waste?” when I mention nuclear energy, than for me to explain why spent fuel isn’t the problem many people think it is, which takes time and isn’t as catchy or simple as the aphorism “what about the waste?” (I have covered the waste argument in detail in this article.) In my work tackling misinformation, I have honed some of these detailed responses to convey them through catchphrases that have also been popularised, such as “it’s only waste if you waste it” (in reference to being able to recycle spent fuel) and “meanwhile fossil fuel waste is being stored in the Earth’s atmosphere”, which is both true and a sticky idea. //
Although no one has studied it directly, I feel sure that coining and popularising terms like “nuclear saves lives”, “energy is life”, “nuclear energy is clean energy”, and “rethink nuclear” has helped to combat the misinformation we’ve heard about nuclear energy for so long. //
People often ask how I stay calm when countering constant ad hominem attacks, gish-galloping and sometimes outright insults. As Mr Spock once said, “Reverting to name-calling suggests that you are defensive and, therefore, find my opinion valid.” My answer is that I don’t take people’s biases personally - after all, I used to believe misinformation myself. We have all done so at some point in our lives, and we are all susceptible to believing misinformation in the future. While it’s worth learning to identify the few people who hold fundamental beliefs on a topic that simply cannot be changed, to save wasting your time debating them, remember that for most people these messages do have an impact. It took me years to change my mind from being against nuclear energy to being in favour of it, and every person who took the time to dispel the misinformation I believed, and provide better sources for me to read to counter my viewpoints, had an impact on my beliefs.
While it may not seem challenging to you, remember that when you engage with someone on a wedge issue, you are making a worldview-threatening correction. It is no different than learning that the Earth is spherical when you’ve grown up believing that it is flat. ///
Evangelism takes time and repetition.
The most common argument is that wind and solar power are the cheapest clean energy sources and that nuclear power plants are the most expensive. Taken at face value, it is true that a single solar photovoltaic (PV) panel is cheap, and that a single wind turbine is cheap, while on the other hand, a single nuclear power plant costs billions of pounds. Technically, measured one-on-one, it is correct that wind and solar are cheaper. But is it useful to compare them in this way? //
To understand why people argue that wind and solar power are cheaper, we need to examine the basic economic metric for assessing a generating power plant: the Levelised Cost of Energy (LCOE). This metric provides what is essentially a banker’s number that covers the total amount of power over the lifetime of an energy source, divided by the lifecycle costs over the lifetime of the same energy source.
But there’s a problem: LCOE is a terrible metric for assessing cost-effectiveness because it doesn’t include several crucial factors. For example, it ignores costs and benefits at an energy system level, such as price reductions due to low-carbon generation and higher system costs when extra interconnection, storage, or backup power is needed due to the variable output of wind and solar power.
Crucially, LCOE ignores the value of the plant’s output to the grid. For example, solar plants have a much more attractive production profile relative to wind farms because society needs most of the energy during the day when the sun is shining. So, even though the LCOE of solar power is higher than wind energy, it provides electricity that is more economically valuable. A paper found that ‘An LCOE comparison ignores the temporal heterogeneity of electricity and in particular the variability of VRE [Variable Renewable Energy]’. Therefore, the true economics of power generation can be very different to the ones predicted by the LCOE numbers.
Another issue LCOE ignores relates to different lifespans of technologies. Typically, a 20- or 30-year recovery period is accounted for, but what about when competing technologies last half a century or more? Then the comparison is faulty, as nuclear power plants can generate power for 60 to 80 years, sometimes longer.
Other factors that aren’t considered by the LCOE include:
- Cost of the land required
- Cost to the consumer
- Dispatchability, i.e. the ability of a generating system to come online, go offline, or ramp up or down, quickly as demand swings
- Indirect costs of generation, which can include environmental externalities or grid upgrade requirements
- Additional cost of integrating non-dispatchable energy sources into the grid
- Cost of disposal, which is usually built into the price of nuclear energy but excluded from the price of solar and wind power
- Subsidies and externality costs, such as the costs of carbon emissions
- The cost of backup or baseload power
Intermittent power sources like wind and solar usually incur extra costs associated with needing to have storage or backup generation available. LCOE ignores the cost of this unreliability, which can be as simple as keeping coal-fired power stations running in case they are needed to fire up and meet electricity demand when it becomes less windy or sunny. //
South Korea is our second example. In the mid-1980s the Korean nuclear industry decided to standardise the design of nuclear plants and to gain independence in building them. The country imported proven US, French, and Canadian reactor designs in the 1970s and learned from other countries' experiences before developing its own domestic reactors in 1989. It developed stable regulations, had a single utility overseeing construction, and built reactors in pairs at single sites.
The results were remarkable: between 1971 and 2008, South Korea built a total of 28 reactors. Due to the developments they made in 1989, their overnight construction cost fell by 50%. //
With nuclear energy, waste disposal and decommissioning costs are usually fully included in the operating costs, but they are not accounted for in wind and solar costs. Yes, a single solar panel is cheap. But what about disposing of it? Sadly, they often end up in landfill sites in poor countries abroad, where they leach toxic chemicals. Batteries are currently not recycled, and therefore this is another missing cost. Wind turbine blades face similar issues. And none of these elements will last more than thirty years before they need replacing. What will that cost? //
Oil and gas companies celebrate wind and solar power because they keep fossil fuels in business. Today, wind and solar are backed 1:1 by oil-and-gas-based generators, to fill the gaps when it isn’t windy or sunny, thus keeping the oil and gas industries in demand. In the future, solar purists propose mega storage, which means more batteries, and overbuilding (extra panels) as the solution. These extra costs aren't factored into LCOE. //
What I have tried to do here is trigger a thought experiment by illustrating how complicated these assessments are, that it is not a case of comparing one panel to one plant, and that the LCOE fails on all counts. Ultimately, the full cost of nuclear energy is an upfront investment for a long-lasting, reliable form of energy, which is not the cost people consider when arguing that solar panels and wind turbines are cheaper. Nuclear energy can get cheaper, or it can get more expensive, depending on how it is approached. //
I am of the opinion that we should build everything we need to bring down greenhouse gas emissions and reduce deaths from air pollution. Yet it is clean energy advocates who only like wind and solar power who argue against nuclear energy based on the myth that the latter is too expensive. //
Every time a nuclear power plant is replaced with fossil fuel generation, people die from the resulting air pollution, and more fossil fuel waste is stored in the Earth’s atmosphere. Every time a grid is made to support more wind and solar power without the baseload power to support them, fossil fuels win as they have to fill the gap. Every time a nuclear power plant isn’t built on the supposed basis of cost, the environment is further harmed and human progress takes a step backwards. Every time someone quotes the LCOE, they are either being misled, misleading others, or both.
“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be… This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.” – Isaac Asimov //
There is no argument for our complacency that is better represented than the current social movement against producing energy, which perhaps began with Boomers, but is now being led mostly by Gen Z, also known as ‘the sustainability generation’, and also to some degree by Millennials. The irony is that these generations have been the most comfortable of all (and –full disclosure – I am a Millennial); unlike my parents who grew up in poverty in India, and were then manual labourers in Britain, we have had it easy. We haven’t suffered through truly gruelling labour, we don’t need to know how electricity grids work, and most of us have never stepped foot in a mine or experienced electricity blackouts. The divide between what it takes to maintain a high quality of life and the understanding of this has also widened over generations; //
This is not necessarily a bad thing. Thanks to years of development and growth, we live in a time of prosperity, facing fewer core challenges than past generations. //
The problem is that thanks to all of this, a disconnection has occurred between our lifestyles and what it has taken to get us here. The lack of understanding of the skilled labour, need for industries, and mining for raw materials that enabled these lifestyles, and the fact that the toll those things took on the environment was inevitable, but not permanent, has repercussions for society. I was once part of the problem, fighting to forge a society that would be independent of fossil fuels, without thinking about our continued and growing need for reliable electricity and fighting for the alternatives. My argument was the standard traditional environmentalist argument: that we need to live with less. I was wrong.
Now, the argument has gone so far that activists argue that we should just stop oil overnight. But can it be done without causing immense harm to people? //
About 45% of a typical barrel of crude oil is refined into gasoline, and an additional 29% is refined into diesel fuel. The remaining 26% is used to make plastics and other products. There is good news in these figures, as it means that we can reduce a lot of our dependence on oil by making the switch from petrol and diesel cars to electric vehicles, which is a trend that is taking place in many countries already. //
Instead of going ahead anyway and virtue signalling that they are now plastic-free, Lego has ditched plans to switch to PET, since doing so would have had a greater impact on the environment.
Of course, many anti-oil activists would argue that Lego should stop making the bricks altogether. They would argue that they are unnecessary and wasteful. But I disagree. I recall many years of constructing large and complicated architectural designs with my brother when we were children; he was fascinated by the way things work and are put together, and he later trained to become an engineer (a field he now holds a senior position in). This link between playing with Lego and developing engineering skills has been well-documented elsewhere. The irony of wanting to just stop oil is well represented in the idea that we don’t ‘need’ Lego. We don’t ‘need’ to build housing, railways, or power plants either – if we are happy for society to stagnate and for future generations to suffer.
Let’s ignore the idea of an immediate transition, then, and consider what can be done to stop oil eventually. //
This brings me back to a point I’ve been making for years: we should be aiming for energy abundance.
As we shift towards electrifying everything, switching from gas boilers to heat pumps, and diesel cars to electric vehicles, much of our demand for oil will be replaced naturally. But the alternatives will require more electricity, and unless the electricity grid is supplying us with clean power, we have a problem. //
As I’ve explained before, we can build all the wind and solar power people want, but we will still need baseload power to back them up, and historically this has always either come from fossil fuels or nuclear energy. Although the upfront costs for the alternatives appear to be cheaper than for nuclear, this is incorrect when the figures are viewed in context. As well, we need to be aware of shift-loading the costs of wind and solar power onto ordinary working people. I’ve also seen NGOs arguing for building wind and solar in less wealthy countries, and I find this tactic appalling. Intermittent energy is not what we in the wealthy West used to escape poverty. We burned a lot of fossil fuels to develop. We don’t get to deny other countries of that now. //
The truth is that I am a shill. I am a shill for the human race. I want to see the end of needless suffering and death from preventable diseases. I want to see all poverty eradicated. Apart from a few specific war-mongers, who doesn’t want to see the end of all war? I want all life on this planet to thrive. I want to see the best of humankind during my brief presence on this pale blue dot that we are so fortunate enough to inhabit. I want us to live long and prosper.
Humans are capable of solving immense problems and achieving great things, through forging strong values and working together. I am a shill for progress because I want to see what we do next, once the immediate – and entirely solvable – problems like air pollution, poverty, and climate change have been solved.
JUST STOP OIL
JUST START NUCLEAR
Last February, the independent Public Advocates Office of the state Public Utilities Commission reported that residential electricity rates in California had risen between 77% and 105% since 2014 and are far above the national average. “The majority of bill increases are associated with long-standing state priorities,” the report explained.
Yet for all the money Californians pay for those “priorities,” the state doesn’t really run on solar and wind energy.
It’s powered mostly by natural gas, hydroelectric, nuclear energy and, when all else fails, electricity generated in other states and imported on transmission lines. //
While California’s need for electricity can rise as high as 50,000 megawatts in the summer with air conditioning, solar energy produces about 15,000 megawatts at its peak, declining to zero after sunset.
The gap is filled by – you guessed it – natural gas, nuclear, hydroelectric and imports.
In pursuit of “100% clean electricity,” the state’s gas-fired plants were scheduled to be closed this week and its one nuclear plant to be shuttered in 2025.
The Center For Alternative Technologies in the UK delves into embedded carbon in residential storage batteries. It says the carbon footprint of current lithium ion batteries is around 100 kg of carbon dioxide per KWH of battery capacity when manufactured in factories that use fossil fuels. When renewable energy is used for the manufacturing, this is reduced to about 60 kg of CO2 per kWh.
What is the replacement plan for plastic, rubber, cement, steel, and the millions of products they create?
Wind and solar make electricity — albeit inefficient, unreliable, intermittent, and expensive. But fossil fuels do so much more, and the Biden administration and environmental leftists pretend to ignore it. For example, the Biden administration passed the so-called Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which threw over a trillion tax dollars at, among other things, “rebuild[ing] crumbling road [sic] and bridges.” But at the same time, a government agency, the Environmental Protection Agency, is restricting the very oil, gas, and coal needed to accomplish this. //
Every call to eliminate fossil fuels is a call to slowly, incrementally raise the price of all these products making them cost-prohibitive for the masses. Yes, cement and steel are vital to our economy and our quality of life, but so are the millions of affordable, daily-life products like laundry detergent and aspirin.
I always carry a handkerchief (because my dad did), but most people prefer disposable tissues. When fossil fuels are gone, tissues are gone. Disposable diapers are gone. Yoga mats and plastic water bottles are gone. Do climate change activist suburban moms know that? Do you think Starbucks can survive without fossil fuels? What about that salad from Whole Foods in a plastic container or even the plastic packaging for meat and produce? Cologne, deodorant, perfume, bathroom cleansers, Swiffer pads, paper towels — sure, that mom may think disposable products are “bad for the Earth,” but a lack of hygiene is far worse for her and her family. //
What is at stake is much deeper: human dignity — a dignity that elevates us above the harshness of nature and cruelty of illness or allows us to cleanse ourselves from the sweat of labor.
We do not talk about the “then what” after fossil fuels are eliminated. But I assure you, life as we know it would be absolutely, categorically impossible without them.
LeedCo points to the long delays and legal challenges it faced while specifically calling out “a project killing condition by the Ohio Power Siting Board which significantly impeded the project.” The company was involved in an extended battle with regulators and legal appeals after the Ohio Power Sitting Board initially ruled that the wind farm would have to cease operations in the evening to protect birds. //
But the stake driven into the heart of this project came from genuine environmental concerns about the bird life in the region.
They got their thumbs up, but it came in a mitten. Sure they could put their turbines out in the lake, the new chair of the OPSB [Ohio Power Siting Board], Sam Randazzo said, but the blades had to be “feathered” – or stopped – at night for nine months out of the year to protect waterfowl, raptors, and bats. LEEDCO went ballistic, calling it a “poison pill.” //
But, as this is the Christmas season, I would like to end on a positive note for our friends in Ohio. A more reliable and efficient energy project is being planned for the state.
A California company has signed an agreement to open two new cutting-edge nuclear power plants by the end of the decade on the site of a long-shuttered Southern Ohio facility built to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
Oklo Inc., announced this week it intends to build two small, advanced nuclear power plants on part of a 3,700-acre site south of Piketon that once was home to the Portsmouth Gaseous Diffusion Plant. They would be the first nuclear power plants built in Ohio in decades. //
MattMusson in reply to gonzotx. | December 24, 2023 at 9:48 pm
The three largest wind turbine manufacturers have admitted that their products won’t actually last the 20 year lifespan they were sold as having. At 20 years, only subsidies and low interest rates made them possible. With a 12 year life, high interest rates and falling subsidies they are not close to practical.
Both energy industry officials and eco-activists are complaining.
U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry announced that America was joining the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which means the Biden Administration commits to building no new coal plants and phasing out existing plants. No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go, but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in the works had meant no coal by 2035.
Daniel Turner @DanielTurnerPTF
·
John Kerry demands the end of coal plants.
Here's what Kerry won't tell you:
- Coal is inexpensive, abundant, and reliable
- Solar manufacturing plants run on coal
- Wind manufacturing plants run on coal
- EV battery factories are powered by coal
Facts matter.
9:33 AM · Dec 4, 2023 //
But it gets worse, as Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) point out. While the Biden team is pushing for this radical agenda that would limit and harm the U.S., Kerry gave China a pass by locking them into the status of a "developing country" according to the Paris Agreement, which Kerry helped to negotiate.
“China is bent on global domination. It is the world’s second largest economy and largest emitter of greenhouse gases. It is America’s chief economic and geopolitical rival. It exploits forced labor. It manipulates global markets. It steals our technology. It is building hypersonic missiles and a blue-water navy,” the senators wrote. “It should not get special treatment in international climate agreements. There should be no more free rides for China. That should be non-negotiable.”
China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021. //
China is the world's biggest emitter of fossil fuels and has pledged for its emissions to peak by 2030. But there are questions over how high that peak will get and how soon that peak will come, says Champenois.
For the first time ever, a commercial plane flew across the Atlantic Ocean without using fossil fuels.
Virgin Atlantic said the test flight Tuesday from London to New York was powered only by sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, a broad category of jet fuel that creates fewer carbon emissions than standard kerosene blends. The fuel on this flight was made from waste fats and plant sugars and emits 70% less carbon than petroleum-based jet fuel, according to a press release. //
Sustainable aviation fuels are a broad category that includes biofuels made from raw materials such as corn, animal fat, algae, municipal trash and sewage. By definition, they must emit at least 50% less carbon than petroleum-based jet fuel, according to federal guidelines.
But all of these fuels still produce some emissions. SAF, on its own, will not get the airline industry to zero carbon emissions.
To do that, the industry will have to develop new technologies that will allow planes to run on electric batteries, liquid hydrogen or some other as-yet-unproven fuel source. ///
Novel, but not very sustainable -- imagine how much "stuff" (sugar and fat) that takes to manufacture, compared to the equivalent volume of petroleum/crude oil...
Just because you can doesn't mean you should! I don't think it will scale well. Another case of diverting food for fuel. Humans can't eat petroleum, even though engines can be made to consume both.
Any time Gavin Newsom says, “Here are the facts,” brace yourself — you will not be getting the facts.
The reasons for the recent spike in California gas prices was expertly laid out by Valero executive Scott Folwarkow in reply to a September 30 letter California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild sent to California refinery executives regarding the issue. Hochschild’s letter was filed at the Commission at 1:26 p.m. that Friday afternoon, and he demanded a reply to his questions by Monday, October 3 — giving them just one business day to answer. //
We believe the Commission experts understand that California cannot mandate a unique fuel that is not readily unavailable outside of the West Coast and then burden or eliminate California refining capacity and expect to have robust fuel supplies. Adding further costs, in the form of new taxes or regulatory constraints, will only further strain the fuel market and adversely impact refiners and ultimately those costs will pass to California consumers. //
For Valero, California is the most expensive operating environment in the country and a very hostile regulatory environment for refining. California policy makers have knowingly adopted policies with the expressed intent of eliminating the refinery sector. California requires refiners to pay very high carbon cap and trade fees and burdened gasoline with cost of the low carbon fuel standards. With the backdrop of these policies, not surprisingly, California has seen refineries completely close or shut down major units. When you shut down refinery operations, you limit the resilience of the supply chain. //
the number of operating refineries in the state has decreased dramatically over the years. In 2000 there were 23 operating refineries, compared to just 13 in 2022. In 1983, when the state’s population was 25 million, there were 40 operating refineries. In 2020 there were 40 million people in California and just 14 operating refineries.
According to IAEA calculations, it is necessary to double the number of nuclear reactors in the world - currently at about 400 units - to achieve the objectives of the Paris climate agreement, Grossi said at the World Nuclear Exhibition in Paris. //
"We already have 10 countries which have entered the decision phase (to build nuclear power plants) and 17 others which are in the evaluation process," he said.
"There will be a dozen or 13 (new) nuclear countries within a few years," he added.
Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Namibia, the Philippines, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were cited by Grossi as potential new nuclear countries.
As the green energy dominoes continue to fall, one of the major climate cult propaganda machines falls with them. //
As we enter the year’s final phase, I am becoming more hopeful that 2023 may be remembered as an essential point in human civilization as the threat to critical and efficient energy supplies begins to recede.
Sweden’s government has ditched plans to go all-in on “green energy,” green-lighting the construction of new nuclear power plants. Fossil fuel giant Shell announced it was scaling back its energy transition plans to focus on . . . gas and oil! Specific wind farm projects began to topple due to strong economic headwinds because the cost of generating electricity was deemed too high.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his decision to open the North Sea to more oil and gas drilling. French President Emmanuel Macron is surrendering to reality and asked for a “regulatory pause.”. More recently, the US and the United Kingdom have committed to expanding nuclear energy, and offshore windfarm projects are going kaput.
Now comes intriguing confirmation that there may be an end to the mindless and unscientific promotion of green energy sooner rather than later. One of the climate crisis propaganda machines is closing its climate desk. //
Neo | November 24, 2023 at 7:57 pm
The dam on Climate Change hysteria seem to break after ExxonMobil broke ranks saying that to reach NetZero 2050 would require sacrifices that society would not accept. //
broomhandle | November 24, 2023 at 8:14 pm
How much advanced nuclear technology could have been developed with all the resources wasted on green energy follies? Maybe that was the point all along.
Gordian Knot News just turned two. The number of posts is over 100. Way too many. Our new subscribers need to understand that most of these posts are redundant detail. If they are truly interested in solving the Gordian Knot, they should focus on the A List.
The core argument is simple. Humanity needs cheap nuclear power. Cheap nuclear power is the only way the species can prosper. If and only if we have cheap nuclear power, can we lift billions of humans out of poverty. If and only if we have cheap nuclear power, can we stop polluting out planet's atmosphere and conserve its land.
It is a simple argument based on dispatchability, energy density, natural resources required, and the amount of CO2 and other pollutants generated. The numbers are so overwhelmingly obvious, they beg the question: why is nuclear not our totally dominant source of electricity? Why has nuclear power been such a tragic flop?
You do not need 100 posts to answer this question. I need twelve. Everything else is redundant detail.
Mostly because they don't know
When I give talks I am frequently asked a variation of the following question: how do we stop consumption and development to protect the planet?
My answer always draws blank faces. Stopping growth is not the solution to addressing climate change, I tell concerned environmentalists and anxious climate activists. We do need to decarbonise and move to cleaner technologies, but fighting development won’t save the planet, and nor has it been shown to reduce emissions. //
We have also repeatedly been told that we are the problem, and therefore the solution is for there to be fewer of us. But all of this is wrong.
It may seem unbelievable that continuing on our current trajectory will solve anything, but the evidence shows that environmental progress is being made in many areas and that growth is the only thing that is working in terms of lowering emissions and improving air quality.
If we want to save the planet, we need to understand what works.
We know how to reduce resource consumption without reducing growth
It’s true that for the past 200 years, economic activity has led to an increase in carbon emissions. More recently, however, since the 1980s and largely thanks to the use of nuclear energy, many countries have been able to reduce emissions while continuing to increase GDP. Investment in renewables has also driven this growth further. In 2016, 70 countries experienced a growth in GDP while also experiencing a run of at least five years in which emissions decreased.
Using historical data, researchers have calculated that nuclear energy has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. They find that:
“On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000–7.04 million deaths and 80–240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.” //
As countries become richer, they become more environmentally friendly. Air quality improves, water use becomes more efficient, and fewer natural resources are required. This is true across developed countries, where the population has increased but resource consumption has fallen, including timber, water, metal, minerals, and energy. //
Although cars still carry an environmental cost, not having them would also have had a significant impact on the planet. The Horse Association of America calculated that 54 million acres of US farmland was spared by the automobile in the 1930s, as the land was not needed for meadows for grazing horses. The US population has nearly tripled since then, yet hundreds of millions of acres of forests were saved from being cut down to make room to feed horses and to store waste horse manure.
Cars are not an isolated example – consider your Smartphone. Again, the innovation of phone designs has significantly reduced material use. In the recent past, a single person would have owned a GPS device, a calculator, a camera, a landline telephone, an alarm clock, and so on. Now, you only need one device instead of all of these items. Yes, phones still require resources, but the amount required is significantly less than when multiple items are no longer needed to do the same job. Resource use often becomes significantly reduced as the technology becomes more efficient. //
Building more clean energy is also key to cleaner air, tackling emissions, and reducing resource consumption. When it is built in Britain, the nuclear power plant Sizewell C will produce 3.2 GWh of electricity. Compare this with the 2.6 GWh produced by the Drax power station by burning 27 million trees every year. The alternative to building Sizewell C would be burning 33 million trees a year. That’s more than one tree per second.
Drax, which is classed as ‘renewable’ but shouldn’t be, is the UK’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. Burning wood creates 18% more CO2 than burning coal. Instead of relying on polluting fuels that may be classified as green, we need to build nuclear power plants, which allow us all to breathe a little easier.
As a result of Germany’s nuclear power phase-out, they are now burning coal again, and a study found that the air pollution resulting from the nuclear phase-out is now killing an extra 1,100 people a year. Japan also shut down their nuclear power plants (although they recently reversed this decision), and a study found that if both countries had reduced fossil fuel power output instead of nuclear energy, they could have prevented 28,000 air pollution-induced deaths and 2400 MtCO2 emissions between 2011 and 2017. //
Traditional environmentalism was founded based on the myth of overpopulation. In 1798, the English economist Thomas Malthus predicted that (so-called) ‘overpopulation’ would lead to famine as there would be too many mouths to feed.
He was wrong. There was no population ‘bomb’, no famine due to increased numbers of people. Instead, life improved for many millions of people, thanks to the innovation and development that they initiated. This largely relates to agriculture and the productivity of land, where labour and capital have increased more than proportionately to the increased number of humans. Thanks to agricultural improvements and technological advances, which required the input of many people and the use of many hands, we have experienced an outcome of more food rather than less. Thanks to the mechanisation of The Green Revolution, we have seen greatly increased crop yields and agricultural production, improved food supplies, and increased economic development in underdeveloped nations. Sadly, many environmentalists are still in denial about this and see such food security as a bad thing. //
There is an argument to be made that increased population has led to more environmental progress, through greater human capital. In November 2022, the world’s population hit 8 billion. Across history, exceptional people have led us to technological and cultural masterpieces. The past 200 years have shown exponential growth in technical development and innovation. In 1823 there were just over 1 billion people in the world. We now have 8 billion people from whom pioneering new science, art, medicine, and other technologies are emerging daily. A bigger pool of human capital is therefore not inherently a bad thing, but may yield immense benefits – so long as many of these people are also freed from the chains of poverty so that they can live fulfilling lives and contribute to global progress.
I cannot make this argument more clearly than the late statistician Hans Rosling, who gave a talk on the reduction of extreme poverty, where he also goes into the difference that owning a washing machine made for his (financially poor) family:
“My mother explained the magic with this machine the very very first day. She said, ‘now Hans, we have loaded the laundry, the machine will make the work. And now we can go to the library. Because this is the magic. You load the laundry, and what do you get out of the machine? You get books out of the machines. Children’s books.’ And mother got time to read for me. She loved this. I got the ABCs, this is why I started my career as Professor, when mother had time to read for me. And she also got books for herself, she managed to study English and learn that as a foreign language… We really loved this machine. And what we said, my mother and me, ‘thank you industrialisation. Thank you steel mill. Thank you power station, and thank you chemical processing industry that gave us time to read books’!”
Imagine a world with fewer people like Hans Rosling in it. It would be a much poorer world without such invaluable contributions to human knowledge and progress. We would all be impacted by this loss. //
Let’s give people a break. For too long we have been sold the myth that we should be concerned about so-called ‘overpopulation’, but this has been proven to be nonsensical fearmongering. Instead, population decline is occurring in almost every country in the world, and it is already having negative impacts on ageing populations and the future generations who have to support them. Not only do ageing populations impose costs on society as we struggle to pay for healthcare and pensions, but in some countries like Japan there simply aren’t enough younger people to physically support older generations, which poses serious problems for the country. //
But it’s telling that underpopulation has not led to a moral panic the way that false ideas of population growth have done so for many years. Arguably, underpopulation will have a far greater and more negative impact than the old worry of having more mouths to feed. For example, China, whose economy has long benefited from the sheer number of people in its workforce, is forecast to lose almost half of this population by 2100, plunging from more than 1.4 billion to 771 million inhabitants. Many of our goods come from China – including solar panels. The Chinese One Child Policy, which was so concerned with ‘overpopulation’, has proven to be short-sighted and damaging in ways that Chinese leaders did not foresee. Unfortunately, Germany, South Korea and Russia are not far behind on the underpopulation trajectory, and Europe's population as a whole will begin to decline as early as this decade.
Population growth was never really the problem. Lack of foresight, and forming policy based on myths over data, have been the real problems for the planet. //
Evidence shows that we are capable of solving the world’s problems. The fool’s trick is to make out that predicting an apocalyptic future is somehow smarter than pointing out optimistic scenarios; when in reality, being pessimistic is simply the easier and lazier option thanks to human negativity bias. Yet many factors, some of which I have covered here, show that in many areas we are on a positive trajectory.
We are capable of decoupling growth from emissions. We are capable of improving air quality, which makes us healthier and makes our children taller, less violent, and smarter. We are capable of tackling climate change as well as eradicating poverty. We are capable of hitting net zero targets – as I wrote in a recent article, we may even be on track to keep under 1.5°C of warming. No one is going to shout any of this from the rooftops; it is not headline-grabbing news. But humans are capable of solving immense problems, including problems we have created, and we have been doing so for many years now. To place all our bets on failure does humankind a disservice; but also, no one has ever fixed a problem by fixating only on the problem. Let’s fight to implement evidence-based solutions instead so that we can build the cleaner, healthier world that we are all so keen to live in.