Archive for the 'Energy Policy' Category

High-speed rail: Booze Allen carbon impact study

Published on 9/2/2010 in Energy Policy and Transportation . 0 Comments Tags: , .

London to Manchester carbon emission parity

London to Scotland carbon emission parity can barely be achieved

Note to reader: this study is exclusively focused upon carbon emissions relative to policy options. There is no consideration of economics — in particular no LCA of the rail, air, road options.

The UK Department of Transport engaged Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH) to assess the carbon impact of a possible new North-South rail line (referred to as the ‘new line’). Two indicative point to point routes for the new line have been analysed, London to Manchester and London to Glasgow/Edinburgh.

The July 2007 report [PDF] makes it clear why high-speed rail advocates may not wish to see spreadsheets or data on the table that would challenge the received wisdom that the planet will die if we don’t get those pesky humans out of their cars and into high-speed rail cars (HSR).

Regular Seekerblog readers know that I have concluded that any useful carbon policy proposal must begin with the Kaya Identity (if you aren’t familiar, start with Prins, Rayner et al “How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course“. Grasping the Kaya Identity, an engineer or scientist immediately realizes that effective carbon policy will focus on the BIG PROBLEMS, namely the big emissions sources that must be rapidly replaced. As the BAH study states right in the summary:

[The] pursuit of direct efficiency gains prioritises the heavy energy using sectors first and only concerns itself with lower impact sectors much later on. So, on this logic, world-wide there should be a sectoral focus on electricity generation first of all and then on other heavy user industries, such as iron and steel or aluminium production.

I would paraphrase as “this is not a government expenditure we should be discussing“. Suppose that we could build and operate the high-speed rail links London to Manchester and London to Glasgow/Edinburgh for zero carbon cost, and every competing airline was shut down (100% modal shift from air to rail). In that magical future, the total impact on UK CO2 emissions would be only 1%. I.e., the impossibly perfect result is completely unworthy of political attention today — yet another “Wrong Trousers” approach.

it should be made clear that the current emissions from rail and domestic aviation together account for only around 1% of total UK CO2 emissions,

The BAH study examines what is achievable in the real world. I recommend a careful read of the study as an example of good methodology. To avoid drowning in the murky waters of forecasting traffic and the modal shift from air to rail, the study normalizes to carbon parity. Over 60 years, estimate the total carbon emissions resulting from construction and operation of the three rail variants (conventional, high-speed, maglev). Then determine the rail traffic share required to achieve carbon parity with the “Do Nothing” policy.

The first figure summarizes the results for the London to Manchester line. That line never achieves carbon parity within the 60 year study period. The London Scotland line does achieve parity, but the actual payback is small and distant, requiring not-credible traffic share. High-speed rail would have to garner about 60% of traffic to simply breakeven with all the carbon emitted during construction (average traffic over the full 60 years, not reach 60% by the end of 60 years). So we are talking about a small fraction of 1% of UK emissions that might be slightly reduced 60 years in the future — under optimistic assumptions.

Why do high-speed rail advocates keep trying to get taxpayer funding? Not for sound energy policy, not for sound climate policy. If that were their goal they would be campaigning for the most rapid feasible replacement of hydrocarbon-based electrical generation by nuclear power. That goal could realistically cut 40% of UK emissions to zero in 30 years. Similarly they would be advocating for zero or low-carbon options for production of steel, concrete and aluminium.

Given confidence in a zero-carbon electrical generation future, the true earth-climate-activists would also focus upon electrifying the amenable segments of road transportation. Success in that arena could cut another 10-20% of emissions near to zero in 50 years (two fleet replacement generations).

Lastly, to emphasize just how little milk is in this high-speed rail cow, consider the following graphic Emissions by mode London to Manchester over 60 years.

Emissions by mode London to Manchester over 60 years

Assumptions to check: I believe that the cost of constructing the road infrastructure is excluded in the bus, car cases. BAH did find in their sensitivity analysis that the cost of expanding any required air facilities was negligible. So they are modeling new rail options vs existing air, road options. Secondly, I believe that maintenance and replacement cycle costs are included in the source report estimates for each transport mode. E.g., bus maintenance and replacement.

There are 26 references cited at the end of BAH. Here are a couple of key studies used for the carbon/mode assumptions:

Source: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/statistics/globatmos/alltables.htm, 2005 figures for UK greenhouse gas inventory by IPCC source categories: 2005 from DEFRA.

Source: “High Speed Rail and Greenhouse Gas Emissions in the U.S.” January 2006, a paper produced jointly by the Center for Neighbourhood Technology and the Center for Clean Air Policy, available at http://www.cnt.org/repository/HighSpeedRailEmissions.pdf. It summarises a number of worldwide HSL operations and 1 Maglev operation. Results for Danish IC3 and Maglev TR07 are quoted (see page 10).

Pebble Bed Advanced High Temperature Reactor at UC Berkeley — low cost nuclear?

Published on 8/27/2010 in Nuclear Costs and Nuclear Power . 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Per’s aim is to develop really compact nuclear units with very high power densities, based on mostly well-understood technology that is deployable on the time-scale of a decade or less. The driving aim is to get these units commercialised in the near term, and to bring down costs, thereby paving the way for later widespread commercial deployment of full Generation IV designs like the LFTR and IFR, which not only achieve high burnup, but also completely close the fuel cycle.

Barry Brook and Tom Blees were invited to visit Per Peterson’s laboratory at the Nuclear Engineering Department of UC Berkeley. I would love to have been there, sigh. Anyhow, read Barry’s account, almost as good as being there.

When I visited California earlier this month, Tom Blees and I paid a visit to Prof Per Peterson and Prof Jasmina Vujic at the Nuclear Engineering Department of UC Berkeley. After chatting over lunch, Per took us on a personal tour of his lab, which was quite an experience. Per’s research focuses on development of a high-temperature reactor with an incredibly high power density. Why? In short, it’s about the money. Per’s argument — and a quite persasive one — is that if the costs of advanced reactors can be brought way down, below that of pressurised and boiling water reactors (PWRs and BWRs), then their scaled-up deployment is highly likely. The following post owes a lot to Per’s insights on this critical issue.

(…)

You’ll be rewarded for reading Barry’s complete post. Also, Per Peterson’s homepage for the PB-AHTR research is here.

How does the UCB reactor design stack up relative to current and other advanced reactor concepts (e.g., LFTR, S-PRISM)? At the 2007 MIT-Stanford Workshop on Nuclear Fission: Opportunities for Fundamental Research and Breakthrough in Fission, one of the papers by UC Berkeley’s Ehud Greenspan compares four advanced reactor classes, one of which is the PB-AHTR (class 2). Download and archive this Ehud Greenspan presentation — it is almost an encyclopedia of nuclear fuel and reactor systems, including high-performance transportation fuel production:

  1. Light-water cooled breeding reactors
  2. Liquid-salt cooled high temperature thermal reactors
  3. Nuclear battery type reactors
  4. Deployment of fast reactors without separating TRU from LWR spent fuel

We obviously will not know for sure until we have built PB-AHTR’s at commercial scale, but at least one study by ORNL indicate the capital cost should be about 70% of current LWR reactors (e.g., the Westinghouse AP-1000). BTW, Greenspan lists just one “Con” for the AHTR class, “not sustainable”. I need to read more on this, as I thought the design was sustainable (i.e., does not require mining new fissionable feedstock).

UAE: our nuclear future

Published on 8/26/2010 in Nuclear Power . 0 Comments Tags: .

The UAE “The National” reports on the startup of the four 1.4GWe reactor project at Braka:

(…) The Government says the pace of the nuclear programme is being driven by ballooning electricity demand that leaves little room for construction delays. Rapid economic development and population growth have raised Abu Dhabi’s electricity consumption as much as 10 per cent per year, forcing the Government to build a multibillion-dollar gas-fired power station nearly every year.

The growth rate, among the highest in the world, will see electricity demand double even before the first reactor comes online in 2017, according to the Government’s ambitious reactor completion schedule.

A government study concluded in April 2008 that the country’s abundant natural gas reserves, which have supplied low-cost electricity for decades, could not be develpoed quickly and cheaply enough to indefinitely fuel each new power station. Burning oil, meanwhile, would be prohibitively expensive, cutting into the emirate’s exports, officials said. Coal would be too polluting and solar power too expensive to play the dominant role in electricity generation.

With those conclusions, officials took the bureaucratic and legal steps toward nuclear power: in less than two years they concluded cooperation agreements with major reactor suppliers including the US and France, set up an independent federal regulator and awarded a US$20 billion (Dh73.46bn) contract to Korea Electric Power Corporation and its partners to build the country’s first four reactors.

Ridiculous Uranium Scare in Moldova Gets Internatonal Attention

Published on 8/26/2010 in Nuclear Power . 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Massive uranium scare

Fortunately science-based observer Steve Packard is alert to idiot-based scare-mongering:

This is the kind of ignorance-based story that drives me nuts: 3 arrested in Moldova in uranium smuggling plot…

(…) I believe the uranium is most likely of the depleted variety. This photo was published in several news outlets and reports to show the uranium in question. It appears to be some kind of counter-weight or possibly a plug from a shielded cask – both of these being common uses of depleted uranium. The source of the uranium is unknown, but it may have been scavenged from a junked aircraft or from a scrap metal yard.

So is this dangerous? Absolutely, unequivocally and unquestionably NO. It’s not dangerous – at least no more so than a chunk of lead of equal size. You could possibly drop it on someone’s head, but that’s about the worst you could do with this uranium.

Read more »

Nuclear fall in: Why I’m becoming a pro-nuke nut

Published on 8/26/2010 in Nuclear Power . 0 Comments Tags: .

Scientific American writer John Horgan is advancing up the nuclear learning curve. John learned from debating Rod Adams, leading to meeting Gwyneth Cravens, and reading her book Power to Save the World.

(…) I’m feeling a lot better about living near Indian Point, less because of what I learned during my tour (although plant employees were quite informative) than because of Power to Save the World.

The 2007 book describes how Cravens morphed from a nuke-fearing greenie who in the 1980s opposed the Shoreham nuclear plant on Long Island, where she lives, into a proponent who believes that we need nuclear power to save us from global warming and other adverse effects of fossil fuels. Cravens repeats the refrain that the risks of nuclear energy have been exaggerated; nuclear power, both civilian and military, hasn’t killed a single person in the U.S. over the past half century. But she fleshes out these statements with surprising (to me) details.

(…) I’ve always had a knee-jerk distrust of nuclear advocates, just as I have of right-wing Congressmen, psychiatric-drug shills and string theorists. But I trust Cravens and the experts she interviewed—including physicists, engineers and epidemiologists—over many years of reporting. If you’re agonizing over whether to support nuclear energy, read Cravens’s book and see if you find it as persuasive as I do. I also welcome (and expect) challenges to the assertions above.

Now, if we could just get the editors of Scientific American to do their homework…

What’s Really Holding Cellulosic Biofuels Back

Published on 8/24/2010 in Energy Policy . 3 Comments Tags: , , , .

Robert Rapier does the math:

There was a recent article in MIT Technology review called What’s Holding Biofuels Back? There is a relatively simple answer to the question that I will delve into below, but the short answer to “What’s holding biofuels back?” is that we placed unreasonable expectations on them to begin with, and they have simply failed to meet those unreasonable expectations. People would think it was unreasonable if Congress mandated a cure for the common cold within 5 years, but they don’t think twice when Congress mandates the creation of a cellulosic ethanol industry within 5 years. Yet either scenario requires technical breakthroughs that are not assured.

(…) That’s also why I maintain that cellulosic ethanol will never be produced at a lower cost than corn ethanol: It is much more challenging to unlock the sugars in biomass than in corn. People may project lower costs, but they do so on the basis of models that have not been validated in the real world.

Blue Ribbon Commission: Subcommittee on Transportation and Storage

Published on 8/23/2010 in Nuclear Power . 1 Comment Tags: , , .

One presentation caught my eye, by Dr. Clifford Singer of Univ. of Illinois. Excerpts from the summary emphasize the incentives — which seem to totally absent from all the existing law and regulation. Ensure there is competition among several states for storage operations:

Obtaining the cooperation of localities and states on siting spent nuclear fuel management facilities requires more than building trust with local communities. States having an appropriate site will view it as a valuable energy systems asset and will want financial compensation not at the level of a few percent, but measured in tenths of the cost of the entire project. If siting is really to be voluntary, it is important not to put a single state in a monopoly position of having the only licensed site. To do so will generate tension with the federal government over the level of financial benefit to the host state and within the host state over whether the final arrangement is equitable. There must be a sensible mechanism for compensating host states and a process that leads to more than one site being licensed and ready for use.

(…) Use of the Framework: Congress should set the maximum allowed Permanent Fund charges high enough to make hosting spent fuel management facilities something that several states desire rather than wish to avoid. A short list of geological repository sites in at least six states should lead to a competition to be amongst two or preferably three chosen for licensing. It is economically optimal to age spent fuel intact over a few of the c. 30 year half lives of its most intense fission product heat generators, before its final disposition. Thus, a similar number of spent fuel aging facilities should be licensed, some of which may be at repository sites. In this context spent fuel reprocessing will not be economically favorable for many decades, if ever. If a pilot scale reprocessing facility is nevertheless licensed, it should also be licensed as an indefinitely renewable aging facility, as no reprocessing facility anywhere has yet both operated as planned and removed all high-level radioactive materials from site.

‘Plan D’ for Spent Nuclear Fuel

Published on 8/23/2010 in Nuclear Power . 1 Comment Tags: .

Published by Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS), University of Illinois

Full text [PDF]

Summary

An impasse on spent nuclear fuel management would have several effects. It would render the U.S. government liable to billions of dollars in legal fees for failure to take title to spent nuclear fuel. It would result in extra costs and security risks from suboptimal management of spent fuel at reactor sites. It would also leave nuclear fuel cycle research and development without a clear roadmap. Such a situation not only would be deleterious domestically but also would undermine U.S. influence on matters related to energy and security internationally.

The reality appears to be that most U.S. spent nuclear fuel is likely to remain where it was generated for an extended period of time. Managing this situation efficiently and laying the groundwork for a functional transition to long-term spent fuel management require paying careful attention to the financial situations of nuclear reactor site owners and the host states for long-term spent fuel management facilities. These observations led to seven recommendations, each of which would each require U.S. congressional action for implementation.

This report documents the recent success achieved in reaching a consensus on how to revise U.S. management of spent nuclear fuel. This consensus was reached at a workshop held on March 16, 2009, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Organized by the university’s Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security, the workshop attracted participants from nuclear engineering programs at seven Midwestern universities. In their deliberations, these participants drew upon the findings of an earlier workshop held on June 6, 2008, at the American Association for the Advancement of Science Center for Science, Technology and Security Policy and upon interviews in Washington, D.C., with dozens of congressional staff members. All of these efforts were supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation through its Science, Technology, and Security Initiative.

Critique of “Zero Carbon Australia – Stationary Energy Plan”

Published on 8/22/2010 in Energy Policy . 0 Comments

This analysis by By Martin Nicholson and Peter Lang was published 12 August in Brave New Climate. Download the printable PDF here. [An addendum on wind farm and solar construction rates, by Dave Burraston]

Edit: Here are some media-suitable ‘sound bytes’ from the critique, prepared by Martin. Obviously, please read the whole critique below to understand the context:

  • They assume we will be using less than half the energy by 2020 than we do today without any damage to the economy. This flies in the face of 200 years of history.
  • They have seriously underestimated the cost and timescale required to implement the plan.
  • For $8 a week extra on your electricity bill, you will give up all domestic plane travel, all your bus trips and you must all take half your journeys by electrified trains.
  • They even suggest that all you two car families cut back to just one electric car.
  • You better stock up on candles because you can certainly expect more blackouts and brownouts.
  • Addressing these drawbacks could add over $50 a week to your power bill not the $8 promised by BZE. That’s over $2,600 per year for the average household.

Read more »

Nanosolar rising

Published on 8/17/2010 in Energy Policy . 0 Comments Tags: , .

Tom Cheyney has a two-part update on progress at valley-darling Nanosolar. We’ve been naively hopeful about Nanosolar since 2007 (see Energy sources with “Moore’s law” type exponential deflation?).

Cheyney had good access to the new crop of Nanosolar execs. I continue to be guardedly optimistic. The article gives a good outline of the challenges facing the scaling from prototype to industrial production of a new technology.

(…)

“We can go faster; the line speed we’re running right now is fairly slow,” a process engineer told me, snapping me out of my ink-stained trance stare. “This machine has the capability to go five times this speed, so we could go five times the capacity of what we’re running on the other tools.”

“We’re not a fully balanced line yet, as you’d expect, so this tool, if it were running 24 by 7, we’d need a lot more equipment to catch up with it,” piped in Brian Stone, VP of sales and product management.

“We’re in commercial production, and we’re ramping up our volumes and our factories,” added Eugenia Corrales, Nanosolar’s exec VP of ops and engineering. “What you’re going to see is the beginnings of that. You’re not going to see our full-fledged capability–you’re going to see where we are today.”

“Various tools are in various places,” explained Stone. “Some may be running production rolls, others may be running experiments.”

“We share the shop floor with development areas where some of our engineers are doing work,” said Corrales. “The pilot line is also on the floor right now, our waste management is on the floor right now: long-term, it’s going to be outside the building.”

“At some point, it will be more automated in this part of the evolution, but right now we don’t even have all the equipment lined up in a true end-to-end line, because that’s how this evolved.”

Corrales, a new kid on the Nanosolar block (six weeks on the job when I visited in mid-July), has her work cut out for her. But her c.v. suggests she should be up to the task of bringing order to the Nanosolar factory floor, with its mix of R&D/pilot activities as well as front- and back-end CIGS solar-cell production. She brings years of manufacturing, product development, and operations management experience from stints at SolFocus, Cisco Systems, and Hewlett Packard.

I asked her what struck her, both expected and unexpected, about her new employer.

For starters, she told me, “the foil is thinner than I expected it to be.” (The flexible aluminum-alloy substrate, in rolled lengths between one and two kilometers, is 150um thick.)

“There’s a tremendous amount of innovation that goes on in Nanosolar,” she then generalized. “That’s really the history of the company. I expected that to some degree, but there’s just a whole slew of scientists that are very impressive.

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