Powering the Future: A Scientist's Guide to Energy Independence

by Daniel B. Botkin

  8 Coal mining data in the United States is for 2006. Source: Energy Information Administration, Quarterly Coal Report, October–December 2008, (Washington, D.C.; April 2009). www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/special/fig1.html.

  9 World Coal Institute, Coal Facts 2007. www.worldcoal.org/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=188.

  10 Coal mining data in the United States is for 2006. Source: Energy Information Administration, www.eia.doe.gov/fuelcoal.html. Accessed 19 March 2008.

  11 Coal use in the United States is from the DOE EIA Annual Coal Report. www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/acr/acr_sum.html#fes1. Accessed 19 March 2008.

  12 The data I have used in my calculations, from the BP statistical data, gives an estimate of 300 years for coal, but the World Coal Institute states that coal will last 150 years. (See World Coal Institute, Coal Facts 2007, at www.worldcoal.org/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=188.) This range of estimates is typical and to be expected with data as complex and difficult to obtain as the total reserves of coal. In fact, statements that lack such ranges in this context are likely to be less scientifically accurate and reliable and less trustworthy.

  13 Hooke, Roger Leb, “Spatial Distribution of Human Geomorphic Activity in the United States: Comparison with Rivers,” Earth Surface Processes and Landforms 24 (1999): 687–692. I use his worldwide figures of rivers moving 14GT per year (not including 10GT per year from agriculture) and the amount that people move worldwide, at 35GT. Using this ratio, 14/35 = 40% gives a value of 3.04GT per year in relation to the 7.6GT per year moved in the U.S.

  14 Hooke, “Spatial Distribution of Human Geomorphic Activity,” 1999.

  15 “Coal,” Encyclopedia of Appalachia (Knoxville, Tenn.: University of Tennessee Press, 2008).

  16 Appalachian Voices website, www.appvoices.org/index.php?/frontporch/blogposts/environmental_groups_ask_un_to_oppose_appalachian_coal_mining_practices/.

  17 Caudill, Harry M. Night Comes to the Cumberlands: A Biography of a Depressed Area (Boston: Little, Brown and Company; 1963).

  18 Ibid., p. 306–207.

  19 Ibid., p. 318.

  20 Diehl, Peter, “The Inez Coal Tailings Dam Failure (Kentucky, USA),” WISE Uranium Project, part of World Information Service on Energy, 2008.

  21 Bingham, Barry, Jr., “Mining Is Turning Eastern Kentucky into a Despicable Latrine,” Louisville Courier Journal, November 9, 2005.

  22 Rahn, P. H., Engineering Geology: An Environmental Approach (New York: Elsevier, 1986).

  23 Botkin, D. B., and E. A. Keller, Environmental Science: Earth as a Living Planet, 7th Edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

  24 www.undergroundminers.com/laurelrun.html.

  25 www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/other-mine-fires.htm.

  26 Netherlands Earth Observation, Environmental Monitoring of Coal Fires in North China Project Identification Mission Report, October 1993. http://apex.neonet.nl/browse/www.neonet.nl/Document/XHCFRJGIVMUWUYOTOVMWSXKLG.html.

  27 “How China’s Scramble for ‘Black Gold’ is Causing a Green Disaster,” Daily Telegraph, 01 Feb 2002.

  28 Revkin, Andrew C., “Sunken Fires Menace Land and Climate,” New York Times, 15 January 2002. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E2DF1538F936A25752C0A9649C8B63.

  29 Ibid.

  30 www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/coal/contents.asp.

  31 “Clean Air, Dirty Coal,” Sierra Club website, www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/factsheets/power.asp. Accessed 23 March 2008.

  32 NRDC, Return Carbon to the Ground: Reducing Global Warming Pollution and Enhancing Oil Recovery, 2006. www.nrdc.org/globalwarming/solutions.

  33 For additional information, see “Clean Air, Dirty Coal,” Sierra Club website, www.sierraclub.org/cleanair/factsheets/power.asp.

  34 Grand Canyon Trust, www.grandcanyontrust.org/programs/air/mohave.php. Accessed 24 March 2008.

  35 Department of Interior Office of Surface Mining website, www.wrcc.osmre.gov/BlkMsaQ_A/BMFAQ.htm. Accessed 19 March 2008.

  36 Black Mesa Indigenous Support. www.blackmesais.org/struggle_continues05.htm. This organization describes itself as “First Nations, First Resistance—Support the Struggle for Survival at Big Mountain, Black Mesa, Ariz.”

  “On behalf of their peoples, their ancestral lands, and future generations, more than 350 Dineh residents of Black Mesa continue their staunch resistance to the efforts of the U.S. Government—acting in the interests of the Peabody Coal Company—to relocate the Dineh and destroy their homelands.”

  37 Southern California Edison website, www.sce.com/PowerandEnvironment/PowerGeneration/MohaveGenerationStation/. Accessed 24 March 2008.

  38 Grand Canyon Trust, www.grandcanyontrust.org/programs/air/mohave.php. Accessed 24 March 2008.

  39 Frey, Steve, Nevada Visibility FIP for Nevada (Washington, D.C.: EPA, 2001).

  40 Grand Canyon Trust, www.grandcanyontrust.org/programs/air/mohave.php. Accessed 24 March 2008.

  41 “Mohave Power Plant Set to Close,” United Press International. “In a filing Thursday with the California Public Utilities Commission, Edison said it wanted to continue negotiations to keep the power plant open, to add pollution controls that are expected to cost $1 billion, but close for at least a few months.” www.physorg.com/news9480.html, 31 December 2005.

  Also see www.physorg.com/news9480.html. © 2005 United Press International.

  42 Bureau, Kathy Helms Diné, “Mohave Power Plant Looking at Restarting,” The Gallup Independent, 9 July 2007.

  43 www.blackmesais.org/bigmtbackground.html.

  44 Office of Surface Mining, www.osmre.gov/amlgrant04.htm. Accessed 20 March 2008.

  45 Office of Surface Mining, www.osmre.gov/reggrants98.htm.

  46 Smith, R. (2009). “U.S. Foresees a Thinner Cushion of Coal,” Wall Street Journal. New York, Dow Jones.

  47 EIA Report 058 (2008). September, 2008.

  48 Schlissel, D. Allison Smith, and Rachel Wilson, Coal-Fired Plant Construction Costs, Synapse Energy Economics, Inc. 2008.

  49 DOE EIA, “Net Generation by Energy Source: Total (All Sectors),” Electric Power Monthly with data for October 2009; Report Released: January 15, 2010. Coal produced about 2 billion megawatt-hours a year, each year since 2000. In 2009, coal produced 1.99 billion megawatt hours. http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epm/table1_1.html

  50 NRDC, www.nrdc.org/coal/19c.asp. Accessed 23 March 2008.

  51 NRDC, (2006).

  52 Anonymous, “Mountaintop Advocates Open New Front in Fight Against Coal—Challenge Billion-Dollar Government Giveaways for Not Considering Cost to the Mountains.” 3 March 2008. www.ilovemountains.org/all/371.

  53 Katzer, James, et al. The Future of Coal: Options for a Carbon-Constrained World (Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2007).

  54 Wald, Matthew L., “Two Utilities Are Leaving Clean Coal Initiative,” New York Times, 26 June 2009. “Two of the nation’s biggest coal-burning utilities said Thursday that they were withdrawing from a $2.4 billion project to demonstrate carbon capture and storage, and would instead pursue their own work in the field.”

  55 Madrigal, Alexis, “Back to the FutureGen: ‘Clean’ Coal Plant Gets New Backing,” Wired, 12 June 2009. www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/06/futuregen/.

  56 Canine, Craig, “How to Clean Coal,” ONEARTH NDRC online Magazine, Fall 2005. http://www.nrdc.org/OnEarth/05fal/coal1.asp.

  57 Information about the Greenpoint coal liquification comes from Shogren, Elizabeth, “Turning Dirty Coal into Clean Energy,” National Public Radio, 25 March 2008.

  58 Ibid.

  Chapter 4

  1 Photo of Edwards Dam is from the Government of Maine, 7 March 2007. www.maine.gov/spo/sp/edwards/progress.php.

  2 American Rivers, Restoring Rivers, 2007. (Major upcoming dam removals in the Pacific Northwest). www.water.ca.gov/fishpassage/docs/dams/dams.pdf.

  3 The World Bank & The World Commission on Dams Report Q&A, World Bank Publications, 2001. http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTWRM/0,c
ontentMDK:20438903~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:337240,00.html. Accessed 5 March 2007.

  4 Botkin, D. B., 1999, “When Should a Dam be Breached?” Los Angeles Times, Sunday, August 22, 1999.

  5 U.S. DOE EIA website, http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/solar.renewables/page/hydroelec/hydroelec.html. Accessed 12 February 2010. This source states that the total generation was 206,148 thousand megawatt-hours in 2009.

  6 Botkin, D. B., and E. A. Keller, Environmental Sciences: The Earth as a Living Planet (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2009).

  7 World Commission on Dams, Dams and Development: a New Framework for Decision Making.

  8 National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

  9 Wisconsin Valley Improvement Company website, www.wvic.com/hydro-facts.htm. Accessed 8 February 2008.

  10 The Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations website. www.pcffa.org/dams.htm. Accessed 5 February 2008.

  11 Barry Goldwater said this when asked by Vanity Fair to name his “greatest political regret.”

  12 “The potential for hydroelectric power projects on the Nam Theun was first identified in the mid-1970s and was the subject of detailed studies during the following decades. It was not until the early 1990s that the Nam Theun 2 hydroelectric project (NT2 or the Project) was specifically recognized by the Government of the Lao PDR as a key project for the economic and social development of the Lao nation.” http://www.namtheun2.com/. Accessed February 8, 2008.

  13 World Bank, The Nam Theun 2 Hydroelectric Project (NT2): An Overview and Update (Washington, D.C.; World Bank, 2006).

  14 The World Bank & The World Commission on Dams Report Q&A.

  15 The World Bank estimates that revenues will rise to $110 million from 2020 to 2034.

  16 According to the CIA World Fact Book, Laos electricity consumption is 1.715 billion kilowatt-hours (2005); production is 1.193 billion kilowatt-hours (2005).

  17 Scudder, T., The Future of Large Dams: Dealing with Social, Environmental, Institutional, and Political Costs (London: Earthscan, 2006).

  18 For additional reading about environmental and social effects of large dams, see Leslie, J., Deep Water: The Epic Struggle Over Dams, Displaced People, and the Environment (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2005).

  19 http://internationalrivers.org/en/follow-money/world-bank/nam-theun-2-investigation-exposes-project-failings. Accessed 10 February 2008.

  20 Lawrence, S., “Doing Dams Wrong: World Bank’s Model Project Leaves Lao Villagers in the Lurch,” World Rivers Review (2007): 10–15.

  21 Botkin and Keller, Environmental Sciences, 2009; see Chapter 21.

  22 Scudder, T., 2006. The Future of Large Dams: Dealing with Social, Environmental, Institutional, and Political Costs (London: Earthscan, 2006.) See Box 9.1, “Key Message,” page 283.

  23 Timmons, H., “Energy from the Restless Sea,” New York Times, 3 August 2006.

  24 Based on information from the U.S. DOE and EPRI.

  25 Values are for 2005, the most recent data, from Energy Information Administration, International Energy Annual 2005, table posted 2 October 2007.

  26 Energy Information Administration, International Energy Annual 2004 (May–July 2006), www.eia.doe.gov/international. Lists the information for the U.S. in Table 1.3 and for other countries in Table 1.8. Values are for 2005, the most recent data.

  27 International Hydropower Association, Hydropower and the World’s Energy Future: The Role of Hydropower in Bringing Clean, Renewable Energy to the World, November 2000. This report cites information from Hydropower & Dams, World Atlas and Industry Guide, 2000. These are the specifics I used for the text’s discussion: The world’s total technical feasible hydro potential is estimated at 14,370 billion kilowatt-hours per year, of which about 8,082 billion kilowatt-hours per year is currently considered economically feasible for development. About 700 million kilowatt-hours (or about 2,600 billion kilowatt-hours per year) is already in operation, with a further 108 million kilowatt-hours under construction. Most of the remaining potential is in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Translated into simple English, water power provides about 2% of the world’s total energy, and about one-third (36%) of the world’s possible water-power sites have been developed.

  28 Ibid.

  29 Ibid.

  30 Restoring Rivers, 2007. www.water.ca.gov/fishpassage/docs/dams/dams.pdf.

  Chapter 5

  1 Wald, Matthew L., “Foes of Indian Point Begin Legal Battle,” New York Times, 11 March 2008.

  2 “Nuclear power’s most effective spokesman may be Patrick Moore, a founder and former member of the environmental group Greenpeace, who has been hired by the nuclear industry to promote the technology.” Applebome, P., “The Power Grid Game: Choose a Catastrophe,” New York Times, 9 December 2007.

  3 Moor, Patrick, “Going Nuclear: A Green Makes the Case,” Washington Post, 16 April 2006, B01.

  4 Franz J. Dahlkamp email. www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/hugh-montefiore-we-need-nuclear-power-to-save-the-planet-from-looming-catastrophe-544571.html.

  5 Dr. Franz J. Dahlkamp, the world’s leading expert on uranium ore and the author of a five-volume work on the subject, responded to my inquiry, in which I asked for the best sources on this topic. He recommended two sources in his email, dated 14 July 2008: AEA, Analysis of Uranium Supply to 2050 (Vienna: AEA, 2001); and OECD-NEA & IAEA, Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand (Paris: OECD, 2005).

  6 Estimates of the Years That Nuclear Power Plant Fuel Will Last are based on the IAEA estimates of Uranium Ore Reserves.

  7 According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, at www.iaea.org/inis/aws/fnss/auxiliary/iaea.html. Accessed 14 July 2009.

  “For three decades several countries had important fast breeder reactor development programs. Fast test reactors (Rapsodie [France], KNK-II [Germany], FBTR [India], JOYO [Japan], DFR [UK], BR-10, BOR-60 [Russia], EBR-II, Fermi, FFTF [USA]) were operating in several countries, with commercial size prototypes (Phènix, Superphènix [France], SNR-300 [Germany], MONJU [Japan], PFR [UK], BN-350 [Kazakhstan], BN-600 [Russia]) just under construction or coming on line. However, from the 1980s onward, and mostly for economical and political reasons, fast reactor development in general began to decline. By 1994, in the USA, the Clinch River Breeder Reactor (CRBR) had been canceled, and the two fast reactor test facilities, FFTF and EBR-II, had been shut down—with EBR-II permanently and FFTF, until recently, in standby condition, but now also facing permanent closure. Thus, in the U.S., effort essentially disappeared for fast breeder reactor development. Similarly, programs in other nations were terminated or substantially reduced. In France, Superphènix was shut down at the end of 1998; SNR-300 in Germany was completed but not taken into operation, and KNK-II was permanently shut down in 1991 (after 17 years of operation) and is scheduled to be dismantled by 2004. In the UK, PFR was shut down in 1994, and in Kazakhstan, BN-350 was shut down in 1998.”

  8 According to a Wikipedia article, which I have not verified independently, “As of 2003 one indigenous FBR [breeder reactor] was planned for India, and another for China. Both were to use Soviet technology. Meanwhile, South Korea was said to be designing a standardized modular breeder reactor for export. The FBR program of India includes the concept of using fertile thorium-232 to breed fissile uranium-233. Also, a Russian breeder reactor was said to be still operational in Zarechny. And on February 16, 2006, the U.S., France, and Japan signed an ‘arrangement’ to research and develop sodium-cooled fast reactors in support of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.”