Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper

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Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper Page 24

by Robert Bryce


  Yes, natural gas is a potent greenhouse gas. And yes, the industry needs to reduce the quantity of gas that leaks from its pipelines and other equipment. But the gas industry in the United States has a big incentive to reduce leakage and therefore have more product to sell. More effort is needed to help reduce methane leakage from other big gas-producers like Russia, where Gazprom’s pipes are notoriously leaky.

  Regardless of what you think about carbon dioxide emissions or the issue of climate change, it’s obvious that N2N fits perfectly with the thesis of this book. In other words, N2N is Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.

  Natural gas development has a Smaller footprint than wind energy. The areal power density of a marginal natural gas well—one producing 60,000 cubic feet per day—is 28 watts per square meter.26 That’s far higher than the power density of wind and solar energy. It’s true that natural gas and oil development requires lots of land. And it’s certainly true that there have been many conflicts over the surge in drilling, particularly as drill rigs have begun sprouting in suburban neighborhoods, and in some cases, even inside cities like Fort Worth. But natural gas’s land needs are minuscule when compared to the countryside-devouring sprawl that is the hallmark of wind energy.

  Natural gas is both Lighter and Denser than other fuels. Because it exists in a gaseous state, natural gas appears Lighter than fuels like wood, coal, or oil. But when measured by weight, gas actually has greater energy density than nearly any other fuel in common use. The gravimetric energy density of natural gas is 53 megajoules per kilogram. For comparison, diesel fuel has 46 megajoules per kilogram.27

  By now, it should be obvious why natural gas consumption will continue to grow in the years ahead. And to the long list of reasons I’ve catalogued above, let me add one more: natural gas is the fuel of the future because the Earth contains massive quantities of it.

  In November 2009, the International Energy Agency estimated that recoverable global gas resources totaled about 30,000 trillion cubic feet.28 At current global rates of consumption, that’s enough gas to last 250 years.29 And more shale resources are being discovered all the time. In mid-2013, the British Geological Survey estimated that the Bowland Shale formation in northwest England holds some 1.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. The agency’s estimate was double the previous estimates.30

  Natural gas is the fuel of the present. It’s also the fuel of the future because gas is not just abundant, it is superabundant. That abundance makes it affordable. And because the methane molecule, CH4, has only one carbon, it’s clean burning. What’s not to like?

  Let me end the discussion of the first N so we can move on to the second N: nuclear—because if it’s not going to be natural gas, it’s got to be nuclear.

  We Need to Reduce Gas Flaring

  Regardless of what you think about carbon dioxide emissions, we need to reduce the flaring of gas. Gas flaring—from Kirkuk and Baghdad to Port Harcourt and Williston—wastes a valuable resource. Globally, according to the World Bank, some 140 billion cubic meters (13.5 billion cubic feet per day) of gas were flared in 2011. That gas is being flared because the producers of the fuel don’t have an economic way of getting their product to the market. For many hydrocarbon producers, the dominant economic value of the well’s output comes from the oil. And rather than spend the money needed to capture and transport the natural gas that is produced alongside the oil, they simply burn it.

  The five biggest wasters of gas: Russia, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, and the United States. Those five countries account for about 57 percent of the global total. Russia alone is flaring more than 3.6 billion cubic feet of gas per day,31 an amount of gas that could almost supply all of France’s natural gas needs.32 The amount of gas flared in Iran (1.4 billion cubic feet per day) could nearly supply all of Belgium’s gas demand.33 The amount of gas flared in the United States (about 700,000 cubic feet per day) could nearly supply all of Vietnam’s needs.34 In all, the amount of gas being flared every day around the world is more than enough to supply all of the current natural gas consumption of Africa (about 12 billion cubic feet per day in 2012).35 In southern Iraq alone, some 700 million cubic feet per day of gas is being flared,36 even though industry throughout the Middle East is starved for the fuel.

  The flaring problem can easily be understood by looking at North Dakota, which has seen a huge boom in oil production from the Bakken Shale. By early 2013, gas flaring in that state was about 300 million cubic feet per day.37 That’s approximately equal to the natural gas consumption of Finland.

  On a global basis, we’re flaring natural gas that’s equal to about 2.5 million barrels of oil per day. That amounts to about 1 percent of all global energy demand.38 The key innovation, the killer app (along with super-cheap fuel cells, and super-cheap, super-dense electricity storage) is a Cheaper method of turning natural gas into liquid fuel. And that conversion system has to be packaged into a system that can easily be replicated and easily transported to individual well sites where the gas is being flared. Such a gas-to-liquids technology would allow us to convert energy that is wasted into useful product and also reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

  22

  EMBRACE NUCLEAR GREEN

  To call one’s self an environmentalist while campaigning against nuclear power (and thus, in a direct and unavoidable way, in favor of coal power) is no longer possible.

  —Graham Templeton1

  In the wake of the 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, it may sound odd to say so, but here goes: the prospects for nuclear energy have never been brighter.

  Nuclear has a bright future for several reasons. First among them: as bad as the accident at Fukushima was, the actual damage was pretty well contained. In addition, reactor technology is rapidly improving, the nuclear sector is getting significant private-sector investment, and mainstream environmentalists are embracing nuclear like never before. Furthermore, nuclear energy is Smaller Lighter Denser than all of its competitors. And with the right policies in place, nuclear should get Cheaper.

  Nuclear reactors have Smaller footprints because they have very high power densities. The areal power density inside the core of an average reactor is about 338 megawatts (338 million watts) per square meter.2 The compactness of the design can be seen in the two reactors at the Indian Point Energy Center in Westchester County, New York. Those reactors, with 2,069 megawatts of generation capacity, provide as much as 30 percent of all the electricity needed by New York City.3 If you include the entire footprint of Indian Point—about 240 acres—the areal power density at the site exceeds 2,130 watts per square meter, meaning that the nuclear plant has 2,100 times as much power density as wind energy (which is 1 watt per square meter).4

  To equal the electricity generation capacity at Indian Point with wind energy, you’d need to pave about 2,000 square kilometers (772 square miles) with wind turbines, an area three-quarters the size of the state of Rhode Island.5 Of course, that capacity would still need to be backed up by a natural gas–fired power plant.

  Nuclear is superior to other forms of energy production because of its unsurpassed power density. No other form of energy comes within a light-year of nuclear when it comes to the amount of energy it can produce from a small amount of space. The gravimetric energy density of uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and used in a nuclear reactor is roughly 87,000 times that of gasoline.6 Add in nuclear’s minimal carbon-dioxide emissions, and it becomes clear that nuclear can, and will, be providing a significant chunk of the world’s electricity for decades—and yes, centuries—to come.

  Let me be clear: I’m not claiming that we will see a big surge in new reactor construction in the next few years. Widespread deployment of nuclear energy will take decades. Yes, nuclear is clearly one of our best no-regrets options. But it’s also clear that widespread deployment of reactor technology faces huge challenges. The biggest among them: it’s still too expensive.

  Once they are built, nuclear plants can produce electricity at relative
ly low cost, but the upfront price tag for the reactors themselves is staggering. In 2012, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved the construction of the Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors, near Augusta, Georgia. The Vogtle reactors, which are primarily owned by Southern Company, will be capable of producing 2,200 megawatts of electricity. The reactors are the first to get a construction permit in the United States since 1978. The reactors will be Westinghouse’s AP1000 design, and the total cost of the project is estimated at $14 billion.7 Thus, building a new nuclear plant in the United States currently costs about $6.3 million per megawatt. For comparison, a coal-fired power plant costs roughly $3 million per megawatt, and a natural gas–fired power plant costs about $1 million.8

  Investors in the Vogtle reactors estimate that when finished, the nuclear plant will produce power for about eight cents per kilowatt-hour.9 And while that’s a competitive price, it’s readily apparent that major efforts are needed to make the upfront costs of nuclear Cheaper. Another big challenge: the world’s biggest environmental groups continue to be nearly unanimous in their opposition to nuclear. They continue their opposition even though nuclear offers the only lower-carbon alternative (aside from natural gas) that can displace significant amounts of coal and do so relatively soon, meaning within a decade or two. The environmental groups’ opposition to nuclear proves, once again, that if you are anti–carbon dioxide and antinuclear, you are pro-blackout.

  Another essential point: we are just at the beginning of the Nuclear Age. When compared to other power sources, nuclear energy is an infant. And yet, the antinuclear Left wants to kill it in the crib.

  Coal has been in use by humans for millennia. It’s been in common industrial use for about three hundred years. The history of human use of oil goes back centuries. The adventurer Marco Polo reported seeing oil that was collected from seeps near Baku being used for medicinal purposes as well as for lighting.10 Petroleum was used to light street lamps in Poland in the 1500s.11 Natural gas provided lighting for the courthouse in Stockton, California, back in 1854.12 The history of hydrocarbons makes nuclear look like the toddler it is. The same is equally true for renewables.

  Wind? Windmills have been in use for a millenium.13 Solar? The photovoltaic effect was first observed in 1839. The first solar-photovoltaic device was introduced by Bell Labs in 1954.14 Biomass? We humans have been burning wood since the discovery of fire some 800,000 years ago.15 We humans have been relying on renewable energy for thousands of years. And what did we learn in all that time? We found that renewable energy stinks.

  Now here comes nuclear energy, a form of electricity production that’s only slightly older than I am. And yet, the catastrophists are claiming that nuclear energy is too dangerous and too expensive. They want us to believe the Nuclear Age is over. It’s not. It’s only just started.

  The world’s first commercial nuclear plant was Calder Hall, which began producing electricity in Britain in 1956. It produced just 40 megawatts of electricity.17 A year later, in 1957, the first commercial reactor in the United States began operating at Shippingport, Pennsylvania.18

  October 10, 1956: The reactor vessel arrives at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Beaver County, Pennsylvania. The Shippingport facility would become the first commercial nuclear reactor in the United States. The facility, which had an initial capacity of 68 megawatts, began operating in 1957. It successfully operated for more than two decades.16 Source: Library of Congress, HAER PA, 4-SHIP, 1—8.

  Despite nuclear energy’s youth and enormous promise, the antinuclear crowd continues its fear-mongering. On its Web site, Greenpeace makes the outrageous claim that there is “no such thing as a ‘safe’ dose of radiation.”19 Never mind that we humans are hit with radiation every day of our lives from the sun and from the environment around us. We can count on Greenpeace and the rest of the antinuclear establishment to continue to denigrate nuclear, because fear sells. They claim that nuclear is too dangerous. Debunking that claim only requires a look at the facts about Fukushima.

  From a nuclear safety scenario, it’s difficult to imagine a scarier scenario than what happened on March 11, 2011. A massive earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale hit 130 kilometers off the Japanese coastline. Within minutes of the earthquake, a series of seven tsunamis slammed into the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Some of them were as high as 15 meters. The backup diesel generators, designed to keep the nuclear plant’s cooling water pumps operating, quickly failed. A day later, a hydrogen explosion blew the roof off the Unit 1 reactor building. Over the next few days, similar explosions would hit Units 2 and 3.20 Three reactors melted down.21

  It was the worst nuclear accident since the Chernobyl accident in 1986. There was widespread fear about the potential for large numbers of casualties due to radiation from the stricken plant. But here’s the reality: the accident at the Japanese nuclear plant led directly to exactly two deaths. About three weeks after the tsunami hit the reactor complex, the bodies of two workers were recovered at the plant. They drowned.22

  For decades, we have been conditioned to believe that radiation is scary. In the wake of the Fukushima accident, there were widespread fears that huge amounts of radioactive materials from the plant would contaminate large areas of Japan and that those same materials could hit the United States. That didn’t happen. In early 2013, the World Health Organization reported that radiation exposure due to Fukushima was low. The report concluded: “Outside the geographical areas most affected by radiation, even in locations within Fukushima prefecture, the predicted risks remain low and no observable increases in cancer above natural variation in baseline rates are anticipated.”23

  A few months after the WHO report was published, the UN’s Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation released its own report. “No radiation-related deaths have been observed among nearly 25,000 workers involved at the accident site. Given the small number of highly exposed workers, it is unlikely that excess cases of thyroid cancer due to radiation exposure would be detectable in the years to come.” The UN committee was made up of eighty scientists from eighteen countries. In addition to finding no documented deaths, the document also praised the actions of the Japanese government immediately after the 2011 accident. “The actions taken by the authorities to protect the public (evacuation and sheltering) significantly reduced the radiation exposures that would have otherwise been received by as much as a factor of 10.”24

  I am not minimizing the seriousness of what happened at Fukushima. The reactors used at the site were of an older, inferior design that lacked the kind of passive-cooling systems that are now being incorporated into reactors. (Passive-cooling systems could have prevented the reactors at Fukushima from melting down.) Furthermore, it’s clear that all the problems with the Fukushima reactors have not been solved. In late summer 2013, Tokyo Electric Power Company admitted that it was having difficulty managing more than 200,000 tons of radioactive water being stored in makeshift tanks. Some of those tanks have begun leaking, and some of that leaked water is reaching the ocean.25 Nor am I forgetting about the huge costs of decommissioning and cleaning up the Fukushima site. In all, the price tag for decommissioning the plant could reach $100 billion, while another $400 billion may be needed to decontaminate areas outside of the plant and to compensate the people who were displaced.26

  Yes, the price tag for Fukushima will be absurdly high. But this wasn’t Chernobyl. The nuclear plants themselves didn’t malfunction. Homer Simpson didn’t hit the wrong button in the control room. Instead, the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi were hammered by some of the planet’s most destructive forces.

  The earthquake that hit northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, was about 700 times as powerful as the killer quake that devastated Haiti in 2010 and left some 300,000 people dead. The Japanese earthquake was the fifth-most powerful one to rock the planet since 1900.27 The quake was so powerful it affected the rotation of the Earth and shifted the position of the planet’s axis by about 17 centimeters
(6.5 inches).28 It’s easy to focus on the problems with the nuclear reactors, but the damaged power plants were only a tiny part of the larger devastation. The March 11 earthquake and tsunami killed nearly 16,000 people. It injured another 6,000 or so, and nearly 2,700 people are still missing.29 Total damages—to infrastructure and the overall Japanese economy—will be measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

  About ten days after the Fukushima accident, George Monbiot, a veteran environmentalist who had long described himself as “nuclear-neutral,” published a column in the Guardian to explain that he had changed his mind on the technology. “Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small.” He continued, “The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.”30

  While the Fukushima accident has been costly, it has also helped catalyze the push for safer, more resilient reactors. Several companies are already deploying what are known as Generation III+ reactors, which have stronger containment systems and passive safety systems that can cool and stabilize the reactor core for at least three days even if there is no available electricity. Examples of the now-available Generation III+ reactors include the AP1000 from Westinghouse and the European Pressurized Reactor from Areva. What’s important here is not necessarily an exhaustive compilation of every known reactor design. Rather, it’s to underscore the effort being made to develop reactors that are Smaller Cheaper and safer. Herewith, a short list of some of the most interesting reactor technologies:

 

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