t’s difficult to get your head around the sheer massive size of nuclear reactors. The things are absolutely huge. Just to give you a flavour, in Flamanville, France, where EDF are building a ‘state of the art’ EPR reactor, the roads aren’t wide enough to transport the large reactor components to the construction site.
People sometimes forget that nuclear reactors are just kettles. Great big kettles. The hot nuclear fuel inside the reactor boils water which turns into steam which turns the turbines which generate electricity. Those turbines, as you can imagine, are also huge.
Being so large and heavy, they can’t be transported in any conventional way. Often they’re shipped on giant barges. They’re shipped very slowly and very carefully. Sometimes not slowly and carefully enough. You know where two $10-million 107-tonne turbines destined for the Canada’s Point Lepreau nuclear power station found themselves last October? Spending five days on the bottom of Saint John Harbour.
And that’s another of the major problems with nuclear power and why a so-called nuclear ‘renaissance’ will be impossible to achieve: the nuclear industry has no economies of scale. You cannot increase production of nuclear power stations anywhere near quickly enough to fulfil the promises made by the industry and save us from the worst of global climate change.
Wind turbines and solar energy couldn’t be more different. You can build a working wind turbine in two weeks. The renewable energy industry is a hugely scaleable one. Smaller and more readily available components make it far, far easier to expand production. Want a hundred kilometres of solar cells produced in a day? Mass-produced printable solar cells are already being trialled. The renewable energy technologies are ever improving.
The components of nuclear reactors are too large and complex to mass produce or produce quickly in the same way. Japan Steel Works, the only company in the world currently making specialised steel containers for reactor cores, already has a three year backlog. All those countries boasting of building new reactors in the near future are going to have to join a very slow-moving queue.
Posted by Justin on February 20, 2009 3:03 PM | Permalink
Forget the skyscrapers, and forget the suburbs, when you tear down buildings and then replace them you waste tons of energy. Not to mention the crap that they put in landfills. This is especially true when you produce negligible results. If you address the economic issues instead of the housing issues, you solve the problem. Case in point.
Ambitious attempt to help the city’s poor by moving them out of troubled housing projects is having mixed results, MIT study finds.
Peter Dizikes, MIT News Office
In December 2010, the last remaining resident was removed from the last high-rise building standing in Chicago’s notorious Cabrini-Green housing projects, long a national symbol of urban blight. The relocation was part of Chicago’s ambitious Plan for Transformation, a 15-year enterprise aimed at breaking the poverty cycle in which tens of thousands of the city’s poor have lived, by moving them out of the projects and into better, safer living environments.
So far, according to a study by MIT researchers, the Plan for Transformation is faring only moderately well. Leaving the projects has produced positive psychological effects for some of Chicago’s poor, but has not appreciably improved their economic prospects, while relatively few participants in the program are living in drastically different types of housing.
“The results are mixed and nuanced,” says Lawrence Vale, Ford Professor of Urban Design and Planning at MIT, who produced the report along with Erin Graves, a former postdoctoral research associate in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. The report, “The Chicago Housing Authority’s Plan for Transformation: What Does the Research Show So Far?” released in October by the MacArthur Foundation, surveys 83 previous studies of the Chicago plan conducted by social scientists.
On the positive side, the report notes that people leaving Chicago public-housing projects display better mental health; one study showed that the percentage of residents suffering anxiety problems in a given year dropped from 30 percent to 21 percent. Relocated residents also said they felt safer.
However, it is not clear that relocation helps residents increase their employment prospects and incomes. One study shows that among working-age public-housing residents, the proportion employed between 1999, when the plan was founded, and 2010, remained between 50 percent and 55 percent, including part-time workers. “The question of whether they’ve made significant economic gains is unresolved,” notes Vale.
Moreover, as Vale and Graves emphasize, only about 2,100 of the 26,000 households relocated as part of the Plan for Transformation have moved from the projects into mixed-income housing: the smaller, safer developments, where middle-income families are mixed in with low-income households.
“The public perception is that Chicago is replacing all of its infamous public housing with low-rise mixed-income communities,” says Vale. But as the report notes, about 9,000 households have moved to senior-only public housing, and 6,000 households have stayed in renovated public buildings that house only low-income residents. Similarly, Vale says, “The academic literature has focused on the least common experience, not on what the city has done with the majority of the housing.”
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Read the rest of the article, but it doesn’t get any better. More tomorrow.
OK, I do not normally do politics. But Moammar puts the tin in tinpot. Bombing your own people? Blowing up you own munitions stockpiles? Threatening to set the oil field on fire? Screwing with energy markets? There are any number of reasons to quit burning oil but he is reason number one.
By Ben Rooney, staff reporterFebruary 22, 2011: 9:42 AM ET
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Libya is the first oil exporting nation to be engulfed in the political upheaval spreading across North Africa and the Middle East, and investors are worried that further chaos in the region will drive crude prices even higher.
U.S. oil prices soared more than 7% early Tuesday, coming within $2 of $100 a barrel. That’s on top of the 6% surge on Monday. The price spikes follow violent protests in Tripoli, Libya’s capital, that claimed an estimated 200 lives over the weekend.
Libya produces about 2% of the world’s oil but is a major regional player. In 2010, the country produced about 1.65 million barrels per day, making it Africa’s third-largest crude producer, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. It also supplies several hundred thousand barrels per day of natural gas and other liquid petroleum products.
In addition, Libya sits atop large reserves of oil and gas that have yet to be developed. Libya holds around 44 billion barrels of oil reserves — the largest in Africa — according to Oil and Gas Journal, an industry publication.
By contrast, Russia produces 10.1 million barrels per day, while the United States produces 9.8 million barrels per day, according to the Energy Information Administration. Saudi Arabia, currently observing OPEC production quotas, produces 8.57 million barrels per day. Those numbers include oil from ethanol, natural gas liquids and other products.
The world consumes 87.5 million barrels of oil day.
U.N. sanctions in place since 1992 had prevented most Western oil firms from operating in Libya after agents from the country’s intelligence service were implicated in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270. The sanctions have left most of the country’s natural gas reserves, along with a lot of its oil, fairly undeveloped.
The sanctions were lifted in 2004, after Libya said it was disbanding its nuclear program and finished cooperating in the Pam Am case. In 2006, the United States officially took Libya off its list of states that sponsor terrorism. That opened the door for renewed investment in the oil and gas sector
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Oil is verging on 100 $$$ per barrel and once it goes past that. Who knows. Please see the article for more balanced analysis. More tomorrow.
n 1845, the French economist Frederic Bastiat published a satirical petition from the “Manufacturers of Candles” to the French Chamber of Deputies, which ridiculed the arguments made on behalf of inefficient industries to protect them from more efficient producers:
“We are suffering from the ruinous competition of a rival who apparently works under conditions so far superior to our own for the production of light that he is flooding the domestic market with it at an incredibly low price; for the moment he appears, our sales cease, all the consumers turn to him, and a branch of French industry whose ramifications are innumerable is all at once reduced to complete stagnation. This rival, which is none other than the sun, is waging war on us. …?We ask you to be so good as to pass a law requiring the closing of all windows, dormers, skylights, inside and outside shutters, curtains, casements, bull’s-eyes, deadlights, and blinds — in short, all openings, holes, chinks, and fissures through which the light of the sun is wont to enter houses, to the detriment of the fair industries with which, we are proud to say, we have endowed the country.”
This famous put-down highlights the problem of claiming that protecting inefficient producers creates good jobs. Obviously, the money the French would have wasted on unneeded candles could have been spent on needed products and services — to the increased prosperity of the French economy.
I mention this in the context of the Obama administration’s assertion that by subsidizing alternative energy sources, it will create 5 million green jobs. To that end, Congress passed in the stimulus bill $110 billion to subsidize and otherwise support such green efforts. And in conceptual support of that argument, the administration has referred to “what’s happening in countries like Spain, Germany and Japan, where they’re making real investments in renewable energy.”
Well, in March, one of Spain’s leading universities, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, published an authoritative study “of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources.” The report pointed out: “This study is important for several reasons. First is that the Spanish experience is considered a leading example to be followed by many policy advocates and politicians. This study marks the very first time a critical analysis of the actual performance and impact has been made. Most important, it demonstrates that the Spanish/EU-style ‘green jobs’ agenda now being promoted in the U.S. in fact destroys jobs, detailing this in terms of jobs destroyed per job created.”
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Go read the rest of the article if you can stomach it. More next week.
What a difference the evaporation of 5 $$$ gasoline and 2 years makes. Obama is President and one of the greenest Presidents we have ever had. McCain is not. Gasoline, though rising, is at 3.25 $$$ a gallon. Electric cars have just rolled out of two car companies, one of which Obama saved through a bailout. The electrics are popular and have waiting lists. The new normal for cars is 40 miles to the gallon. Of course I have the advantage of hindsight but I was pointing out that Obama had the superior energy policy back then so I can crow alittle.
John McCain has drawn first blood in the political debate following Barack Obama’s victory in the primaries. His call yesterday for offshore oil drilling — and Bush’s decision to press the issue in Congress – puts the Democrats in the position of advocating the wear-your-sweater policies that made Jimmy Carter unpopular.
With gas prices nearing $5, all of the previous shibboleths need to be discarded. Where once voters in swing states like Florida opposed offshore drilling, the high gas prices are prompting them to reconsider. McCain’s argument that even hurricane Katrina did not cause any oil spills from the offshore rigs in the Gulf of Mexico certainly will go far to allay the fears of the average voter.
For decades, Americans have dragged their feet when it comes to switching their cars, leaving their SUVs at home, and backing alternative energy development and new oil drilling. But the recent shock of a massive surge in oil and gasoline prices has awakened the nation from its complaisance. The soaring prices are the equivalent of Pearl Harbor in jolting us out of our trance when it comes to energy.
Suddenly, everything is on the table. Offshore drilling, Alaska drilling, nuclear power, wind, solar, flex-fuel cars, plug-in cars are all increasingly attractive options and John McCain seems alive to the need to go there while Obama is strangely passive. During the Democratic primary, he opposed a gas tax holiday and continues to be against offshore and Alaska drilling and squishy on nuclear power. That leaves turning down your thermostat and walking to work as the Democratic policies.
McCain has also been ratcheting up his attacks on oil speculators. With the total value of trades in oil futures soaring from $13 billion in 2003 to $260 billion today, it is increasingly clear that it is not the supply and demand for oil which is, alone, driving up the price, but it is the supply and demand for oil futures which is stoking the upward movement.
The Saudis have made a fatal mistake in not forcing down the price of oil. We could have gone for decades as their hostage, letting their control over our oil supplies choke us while enriching them. But they got greedy and let the price skyrocket.
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Just so we are clear here, the Greedy Saudi’s had nothing to do with the gasoline prices, speculators and greedy refinery owners did. But then they are these guys friends so they couldn’t possibly see that. More tomorrow.
Apparently Mike Barone believes the tautology that we use a lot of coal now, so we always will. He believes that politicians are gutless when it comes to environmental damage. We shall see.
Bill Galston at the NewRepublic‘s blog provides some clear thinking on the prospects for the Obama administration’s cap-and-trade legislation. His conclusion: ain’t gonna happen. Galston notes that national polls show that on the question of balancing economic against environmental considerations, voters have switched and are now more concerned about the economy—as in holding down utility costs—and less concerned about the environment.
And, as Galston points out, a cap-and-trade system would substantially increase the price of electricity produced by coal. Nationally, we get 49 percent of our energy by coal (these are 2006 figures, from the 2009 Statistical Abstract of the United States), but reliance on coal varies widely by state. The following table may help you to understand the political implications. It shows the percentage of electricity produced by coal in each state above the national average and the number of Democratic senators and representatives from each of those states.
% of electricity produced by coal in each state above the national average
Do the math. That leaves only 32 Democratic senators from less-than-average coal-reliant states and only 157 Democratic House members from less-than-average coal-reliant states. Now I’m not saying that every member from such states will vote against cap-and-trade, but I think an awful lot would. And I don’t think many Republicans are going to vote for cap-and-trade. In his press conference last night, Barack Obama seemed to accept the Senate Budget Committee’s Democrats’ decision to jettison the money for cap-and-trade and expressed a wistful hope that something might be done later. But even in better economic times, the numbers tend to work against any such proposal.
Poor Ann. She has ranted a raved for so long that she, like Sarah Palin, has become a parody of herself. She once said that , “when the democrats talk about new forms of energy they don’t actually create any new form of energys, they talk about old forms of enenrgy like solar power, wind power and barley power”. Did she miss physics in college or what?
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, or as she is called on the Big Dogs blog, “the worst speaker in the history of Congress,” explained the cause of high oil prices back in 2006: “We have two oilmen in the White House. The logical follow-up from that is $3-a-gallon gasoline. It is no accident. It is a cause and effect. A cause and effect.”
Yes, that would explain why the price of oral sex, cigars and Hustler magazine skyrocketed during the Clinton years. Also, I note that Speaker Pelosi is a hotelier … and the price of a hotel room in New York is $1,000 a night! I think she might be onto something.
Is that why a barrel of oil costs mere pennies in all those other countries in the world that are not run by “oilmen”? Wait — it doesn’t cost pennies to them? That’s weird.
In response to the 2003 blackout throughout the Northeast U.S. and parts of Canada, Pelosi blamed: “President Bush and Rep. Tom DeLay’s oil-company interests.” The blackout was a failure of humans operating electric power; it had nothing to do with oil. And I’m not even “an oilman.”
But yes — good point: What a disaster having people in government who haven’t spent their entire lives in politics! That explains everything. A government official with relevant experience or knowledge about an issue is obviously a crisis of gargantuan proportions.
This must be why the Democrats are nominating B. Hussein Obama, who finished middle school three days ago and has less experience than a person one might choose at random from the audience of “American Idol.”
Announcing the Democrats’ bold new “plan” on energy last week, Pelosi said breaking into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve “is one alternative.” That’s not an energy plan. It’s using what we already have — much like “conservation,” which is also part of the Democrats’ plan.
Conservation, efficiency and using oil we hold in reserve for emergencies does not get us more energy. It’s as if we were running out of food and the Democrats were telling us: “Just eat a little less every day.” Great! We’ll die a little more slowly. That’s not what we call a “plan.” We need more energy, not a plan for a slower death.
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She claims to be a comedian. But she declared that an attempt to toss a pie in her face, an age old comedic twist was attempted assault. Soupy Sales where are you? More tomorrow.
This may not seem to be related BUT…When my wife and I went to California on the Zypher I was looking on the net for cheap hotel rooms. I picked a couple of places in Berkley and Oakland because the intent was to a) avoid high San Fransisco prices, and b) to be close to my cousin in south Oakland. I checked a bunch of “review sites” and the reviews were nasty. There were complaints about bed bugs and filth, noise, and crime. You name it. So eventually I went with the La Quinta in Berkley because it was cheap and the car rental place was in the same building. Well when we got there, I decided to check the other places out since they were on the way to my cousins.
They were all FINE. They were in a trendy little area where Cate and I had lunch. The rooms were great and clean. Yes the Metra line went by one of the hotels but you could get a place in back if that really bothered you. So who were all those “reviewers”. Well they were probably the competition, or a marketing company paid to carry out disinformation campaigns.
Well, I have noticed this same trend in commenters on energy issues. So called “people” write comments like – those lying global warming tree huggers or they want our gas prices to go to $5 or even – how could they possibly think that the human population can change the weather on the planet. Just all kinds of garbage with facts that are lies. So I am betting that the commenters to this piece are either directly employed by the energy business. Or they work for one of the multimillion dollar marketing firms the energy companies employ. Though knowing the Koch Brothers, I am sure they hire their own.
From greenhouse gases to green agenda: 5 energy issues to watch
By Andrew Restuccia and Ben Geman – 12/27/10 06:00 AM ET
It’s been a dynamic past 12 months on the energy front. The massive Gulf oil spill dominated much of the news cycle. And while Democratic efforts to pass comprehensive climate change legislation in the Senate failed, the Obama administration is moving ahead with plans to use its existing powers to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
With the end of the year drawing close — the 111th Congress is over and President Obama is in Hawaii with his family for the holidays — it seems only fitting to turn our attention to next year.
Without further ado, here are five things to watch out for in 2011:
Attempts to block the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate regulations:
On Thursday, just hours before most people in Washington left town for the holidays, the EPA made two major announcements in its efforts to reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. The agency laid out a timetable for phasing in emissions standards for power plants and refineries, and announced it would issue greenhouse gas permits in Texas, where the governor had refused to align with federal rules. On top of that, beginning in January the EPA will, on a case-by-case basis, begin phasing in rules that require large new industrial plants and sites that perform major upgrades to curb emissions.
The move is certain to fuel the fire of opposition against the Obama EPA’s efforts. Republicans, emboldened by their majority in the House and swollen numbers in the Senate come next year, have promised to fight the EPA. While Sen. Jay Rockefeller’s (D-W.Va.) effort to delay the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions by two years failed, he’s promised to try again next year. Other Republicans have promised to get in on the action.
All eyes are on the new Republican House and energy and enivornment committee chairmen: Rep. Fred Upton (Mich.) will chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, Rep. Doc Hastings (Wash.) will chair the Natural Resources Committee and Rep. Ralph Hall (Texas) will chair the Science and Technology Committee. All three lawmakers are planning to turn a critical eye toward the Obama administration’s climate change policies.
The continuing fallout from the Gulf oil spill:
For the many months that oil gushed into the Gulf of Mexico, the oil spill stayed on the front pages of the country’s newspapers and at the fore of lawmakers’ minds. But almost as soon as the well was capped, lawmakers’ priorities shifted, and talk of passing an oil spill response bill in the Senate died down.
However, the spill is still very much a part of daily life in the Gulf. Spill victims continue to work to receive adequate compensation for the losses they suffered. Next year, Kenneth Feinberg, the administrator of BP’s $20 billion oil spill compensation fund, will continue to determine how best to dole out money to victims.
At the same time, the Department of Justice will advance both its criminal and civil investigations into those companies responsible for the spill. DoJ announced earlier this month that it is suing BP and eight other companies involved in the spill. The department also reserved the right to expand the lawsuit and add new defendants. And DoJ’s criminal investigation continues apace.
On the congressional front, it’s likely that lawmakers will address a few oil-spill related issues
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Check out the comments for yourself and finish the article. It is pretty good and much better than the top ten lists we shall see soon. More tomorrow.
But stuff just keeps coming up that is too wild or too woolly to not at least post it. I mean why in the world would you turn down money for high speed rail? The upgrades and new crossings and crossing guards are worth it.
Calif., Fla. Big Winners as U.S. Redistributes Rejected Grants
Jason Plautz, E&E reporter, E&E News PM
California and Florida were big winners as the Obama administration announced the redistribution today of more than $1 billion in high-speed rail grants abandoned by incoming governors in Wisconsin and Ohio.
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood officially killed projects in those states after a monthlong dispute with the two Republican governors-elect, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich.
Both Republicans campaigned against the rail projects, saying they would leave their states on the hook for operating costs and take away road-repair money. And both requested permission to redistribute the funds to other transportation projects.
But the Obama administration insisted the states’ stimulus grants be spent on high-speed rail, sparking protests by Wisconsin manufacturers that had been banking on the rail project and jockeying among states seeking fresh cash.
The administration has now reshuffled $1.195 billion — $810 million from Wisconsin and $385 million from Ohio — and is sending it to 14 states. The biggest grant, $624 million, will go to California, while $342.3 million will go to Florida and $161.5 million to Washington state.
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Then there is all the mucking around in an alleged Climate Change Conference. Here is what the Climate Change disbelievers have to say. But really for all they are accomplishing couldn’t they teleconference?
From November 29 to December 10, delegates from 194 countries gathered in sunny Cancun, Mexico to “lay the ghost of Copenhagen to rest,” as one dignitary put it. After last year’s chaotic, disastrous and worthless climate change conference in Copenhagen, the goal this year was simple: avoid further embarrassment.
The focus has been on hashing out details for a global climate fund, extending the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012, and establishing an official agreement among developed countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 percent by 2020.
But in the middle of all the global-warming demagoguery and calls for developed nations to shell out $100 billion per year by 2020 in climate reparations to help less-developed countries cope with the unfair burden of climate change, one thing has very obviously not changed: the hypocrisy.
Yes, hypocrisy was present in Cancun just as it was in Copenhagen in 2009, Ponzan in 2008, Bali in 2007, and the many other climate change summit cities before them. As hundreds of officials travel in gas-guzzling jets and carbon-dioxide emitting cars to the conference site and stay in luxurious, high electricity-consuming resorts, the carbon footprint of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is ironic, to say the least.
