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Tapping The Source: The Power Of The Oceans
Posted by Big Gav on February 24, 2008 - 1:00pm in TOD: Australia/New Zealand
Topic: Alternative energy
Tags: alternative energy, energy island, ocean current power, ocean power, otec, tidal power, wave power [list all tags]
Last year I came across the story of Dutch company Kema and their energy island idea - basically a variant on the usual pumped hydro energy storage concept where water is pumped out of a space below sea level then allowed to flow back in, generating power as it does. The "island" uses wind power to pump water out of the enclosed area. An obvious extension to this idea would be to harness ocean energy as well - letting wave and/or tidal power supplement the output of the wind turbines. An attraction of this concept is that it potentially allows a large amount of new energy storage to be brought online - and this storage would be along the world's coastlines, where most of the population lives.
Another form of energy island has been in the news recently, this one a substantially more ambitious proposal which envisions artificial islands to collect wind, wave, ocean current and solar power in the tropics, along with a more unusual energy source - harnessing the difference in water temperatures between the warm surface and the cold depths using a technique called OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion).
These islands are being proposed by architects Dominic Michaelis and his son Alex Michaelin as a response to Richard Branson’s Virgin Earth Challenge, which offers $25 million in prizes for innovative solutions for combating global warming.
While the practicality of these particular proposals has yet to be put to the test, the various forms of ocean power are probably the most overlooked of the big 6 renewable energy sources (along with solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and hydro).
Other forms of renewable energy are sometimes criticised for being more intermittent and less predictable than traditional power generation, however ocean energy is much more reliable - steady ocean currents could provide good baseload power, as could OTEC, tidal power is diurnal and highly predictable and waves are predictable days in advance.
In this post I'll have a look at the amount of energy that could potentially be harvested from these sources and the various projects underway to try and make this a reality.
Tidal and Ocean Current Power
Tidal power stations usually take the form of a dam (or barrage) built across a narrow bay or river mouth. As the tide flows in or out, it creates uneven water levels on either side of the barrier. The water flows through the barrier, turning turbines to generate electricity.
Benefits of tidal barrage power generation include :
* Predictable source of clean energy
* No dependence on foreign fuel sources
* Flood protection
* Transport links for road and/or rail
* Better shipping and boating conditions behind the barrier
Disadvantages include :
* The timing of the tides doesn't often correlate with peak demand times (less of a problem if there are good energy storage options available)
* Existing ecosystems behind the barrage tend to be heavily altered
* Likely to stimulate silting in some areas and coastal erosion in others
* Enhance flood risk on the seaward side
* Shipping would have to navigate locks
* Industrial discharges behind the barrage are less likely to be dispersed out to sea
Variations on this theme include offshore tidal lagoons, which use a water impoundment structure and low-head hydroelectric generating equipment on shallow tidal flats, and tidal fences, which are composed of a number of individual vertical axis turbines mounted within the fence structure, known as a caisson.
Underwater turbines can also be used to harness both tidal power and ocean current power. The turbines (sometimes called aquanators) are similar to wind turbines. In water moving between 6 and 9 km per hour, a 15 m diameter water turbine could generate as much energy as a 60 m diameter wind turbine. Given the smaller amount of infrastructure required and the larger range of possible sites that this technology could be deployed to, it seems likely that underwater turbines will become much more widespread than tidal barrage style generation.
World tidal energy resources have been estimated at around 3000 GW, however less than 3% of this is located in areas considered suitable for power generation (these figures probably don't include ocean current power, which doesn't seem to be well studied).
A 240 MW tidal-barrage power plant has been operating at La Rance in Brittany since 1966. Other operational barrage sites are at Annapolis Royal in Nova Scotia (18 MW), the Bay of Kislaya near Murmansk and at Jangxia Creek in the East China Sea.
The largest tides in the world are found in Canada's Bay of Fundy, which has been earmarked to become a 4-berth test site for tidal power generation next year.
On the west coast of Canada, Marine Current Turbine and BC Tidal Energy Corporation plan to install at least three 1.2 MW tidal energy turbines in Vancouver Island's Campbell River by 2009. This the first step in a plan to develop larger tidal farms off British Columbia's coast, which the company says have a tidal energy potential of up to 4,000 MW.
In the United States, at the southern end of the Bay of Fundy, lies Passamaquoddy Bay, which has long been a target for a tidal power development - first initiated in 1935 by the Public Works Administration under the Roosevelt administration, then halted by Congress a year later. John F Kennedy revived the 550 MW project in 1963, however the plan died with him (spawning one of the stranger JFK assassination conspiracy theories I have come across).
Further south, in the Martha's Vineyard area, two underwater turbine projects are trying to get started - one a 300 MW proposal from Oceana Energy Company and the other from Natural Currents Energy Services. Other projects are being considered in the Cape Cod and New Bedford areas - part of a "gold rush" for good tidal power sites (the most desirable ones usually have hourglass figures, to get maximum force in the incoming tide) which has seen the FERC issue 47 preliminary permits for ocean energy projects (and generated mainstream news coverage on the NBC network).
New York's East River is the location of one of the more high profile tidal power experiments currently underway, with Verdant Power experimenting with underwater turbines there. The first attempt eventually ended in failure, with the strong tides breaking the devices.
The Gulf Stream has also caught the eye of hopeful ocean energy companies, particularly in Florida, with the 30 mile wide current pushing 8.5 billion gallons of water along per second and prompting some observers to consider the prospect of "Infinite Underwater Energy".
Californian utility PG&E is also investigating tapping tidal power in San Francsico Bay, with some observers talking about a plant of up to 400 MW in size.
Another bay famous for its tides is the Severn river estuary in Britain, with a tidal range of 14 metres. Plans for damming the Severn estuary or Bristol channel have existed since the 19th century (with tidal power generation being just one proposed application). The UK government recently proposed a new barrage design, which could produce 5% of the UK's electricity requirements, with a peak rate of 8.6 GW. A feasibility study is expected to be complete by 2010. An alternative proposal, by Tidal Electric, involves a series of lagoons, the first of which would be built in Swansea Bay. Some observers have noted underwater turbines may be more appropriate than a barrage.
Pentland Firth in Scotland is another UK location that is considered to have a large amount of tidal power potential - a DTI study in 1993 indicated that if all potential sites were developed, the total UK tidal stream resource could be about 60 TWh. Of this, almost half (28 TWh) could come from the Pentland Firth. The water depth is 60m or more, making potential energy capture huge but technically difficult - 63% of the tidal stream resource is estimated to be in waters deeper than 40m.
Marine Current Turbines launched the world's first underwater turbine project off north Devon in 2003. MCT also began installing a 1.2 MW "SeaGen" tidal current turbine in Northern Ireland's Strangford Lough in 2007, with the company planning to scale up to build a 10MW tidal power farm off Anglesey in North Wales, and to have 500MW of tidal capacity by 2015. Also in Wales, Lunar Energy and Eon are hoping to build an underwater tidal project off Pembrokeshire.
Another UK tidal power proposal is part of a plan by Metrotidal to build a tunnel under the Thames, currently under fire from environmental groups. There is also talk about regions like the Isle Of Wight and the Humber estuary harnessing tidal power as part of initiatives to become energy self-sufficient (like other "Transition Towns").
Norway has also begun investigating the use of tidal power, with an experimental facility opening in Hammerfest in 2003. The company that developed that technology, Hammerfest Strøm, is working with Scottish Power to develop a project near the Orkney Islands (the islands have also been a test site for another venture by Lunar Energy and Rotech).
There has been no tidal power development in Australia thus far, though the Kimberly region has long been a target for would be developers of tidal power projects, due to its enormous potential (a tidal range of 11 metres). Thus far all of the proposed projects have been stymied by the remoteness of the location from the Western Australian and national electricity grids and by environmental concerns. A number of possible sites have been identified, including Secure Bay, Walcott Inlet, George Water and St. George's Basin.
Liberal backbencher Wilson "Ironbar" Tuckey has been the most vocal supporter of a Kimberly tidal project, pointing out if a link was built to the eastern states grid it would obviate the need for any consideration of nuclear power. Some Kimberly tidal power advocates have also tried to base the idea of a "hydrogen economy" on the resource, though this seems a lot more far-fetched than a grid link (the grid link could also potentially include large scale CSP solar in the western australian deserts, which are one of the best solar resources in the world) .
The Bass Strait area is also considered to have significant potential for tidal / ocean current power generation (one estimate claiming there is potential for 3000 MW of generation in the channel between King Island and Cape Otway).
New Zealand is another country with large tidal resources but without any existing tidal energy generation. According to TVNZ, there are at least 24 wave and tidal power projects currently under development. Trying to get a handle on who might be behind these projects isn't easy - there is an NZ wave and tidal power association, but it doesn't list members or projects - according to their latest newsletter they have 59 members. Crest Energy seems to be the most prominent local company, with a plan for a 200 MW plant in Kaipara Harbour using underwater turbines. Other potential locations include Manukau and Hokianga Harbours, and Tory Strait and French Pass in the Marlborough Sounds. The harbours produce 5 to 6-knot currents and tidal flows of 100,000 cu m a second from the flood and ebb tides, with tidal volumes 12 times greater than the flow in the largest local rivers.
The Phillipines is another potential location for tidal power, with a 2.2GW tidal fence proposed for the Dalupiri Passage using the Davis turbine, from the Blue Energy company and an estimated cost of $US 2.8 Billion is unfortunately on hold due to political instability.
South Korea also has ambitions to generate power from ocean currents, with pilot underwater turbines being installed at Uldolmok, in the country's south-west. Researchers at the Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute (KORDI) chose the site because it has flows up to 12 knots, believed to be among the fastest in Asia. The strong currents have resulted in a number of accidents, hampering progress. KORDI is also trying to improve the efficiency of more conventional barrage-type tidal power plants. The primary project involves building a power plant with a capacity of 250 MW at Lake Sihwa, with another plant up to 520 MW being considered for Garolim Bay.
Taiwan is another Asian nation considering the the possibility of large-scale ocean current power generation. There have been discussions about using the strong Kuroshio current off the east coast of Taiwan to generate up to 1.68 trillion kilowatt-hours per year (compared to Taiwan's current annual demand of electricity of around 98 billion kilowatt-hours).
Wave Power
Surface waves and pressure variations below the ocean's surface can be used by floating buoys or submerged platforms to generate intermittent power. Wave energy sources are widely available, are relatively consistent and predictable and (According to analysts Frost and Sullivan) have the highest energy density among all renewable energy sources. The best resource is found between 40-60 degrees of latitude where the available resource is 30 to 70 kW/m, with peaks of 100 kW/m. The potential global wave power potential has been estimated to be around 8,000-80,000TWh/y (1-10TW), which is the same order of magnitude as world electrical energy consumption.
The UK, for example, is estimated to possess the capacity to generate approximately 87 TWh of wave power per year - equivalent to almost 25 per cent of current UK demand. There are two main research centres in Europe focusing on the development and commercialisation of ocean energy technologies. The first is the European Marine Energy Centre located in Orkney, Scotland, which provides developers with sites to test their prototypes. The other is the Wave Energy Centre in Portugal.
Wave energy ideas are plentiful but real world examples are still rare - there are around 1000 patents for wave energy converters currently on the market and no consensus has emerged yet on which technologies will succeed.
Australian company Oceanlinx (previously known as Energetech) has had a 450 kilowatt wave power unit running at Port Kembla in NSW for a number of years, and plans to connect to the commercial power grid in early 2008. Oceanlinx is also at the advanced permitting stage for a project in Portland, Victoria which would deploy eighteen 1.5MW units for a total capacity of 27MW, which the company claims will be the largest wave energy project in the world.
The company has other projects planned in Rhode Island, Hawaii and Namibia, and intends to participate in the South West of England Regional Development Agency's "Cornwall Wave Hub" in the UK.
The Cornwall Wave Hub aims to create the world's first large scale wave energy farm by constructing a wave hub, or "socket", on the seabed. Oceanlinx is participating along with Ocean Power Technologies, Fred Olsen Renewables and WestWave. Ireland is looking to build a similar grid connected test facility on the Mullet Peninsula in Ireland's County Mayo. While the marine renewables industry in the UK seems to be quite vibrant, government programs to fund the sector have been criticised for not spending the money they have been allocated.
Another Australian company, Carnegie Corp has installed a small array of its CETO II units off Fremantle in WA, and is looking to set up a 50 MW facility in South Australia to desalinate seawater for the Adelaide market and the mining industry. The CETO technology was devised in the 1970s by Carnegie's chairman Alan Burns, a well-known Perth oil man who also founded Hardman Resources. It operates mostly underwater rather than on the surface like many buoy based alternatives, which the company believes will result in a much lower likelihood of damage from storms and rough conditions.
Another Australian company exploring wave (and tidal) power is Sydney based BioPowerSystems, which is trying to is commercialise "biomimetic ocean energy conversion technologies" (an example of "biomimicry", which I'll be doing a post on at a later date). BioPower has been awarded a $5 million grant under the Australian Government's AusIndustry Renewable Energy Development Initiative to test prototypes of the wave energy device (most likely at King Island) and the tidal energy device (at Flinders Island), with each generating around 250 kW.
Pelamis Wave power is a Scottish company that is constructing a 3 MW wave farm off the coast of the Orkney Islands. The company is also involved in the construction of a 2.25 MW plant in Portugal at Aguçadoura, which will soon be expanded to 20 MW, and is providing the technology for the WestWave project in Cornwall. The Pelamis design is a distinctive device resembling a 150m long red snake.
The Scottish government is considering building a connection linking the north and west coasts of Scotland with England, Norway, Germany and the Netherlands by 2020 which could be connected to the proposed European Supergrid, with the aim of harvesting up to 10 GW of wind and wave power.
Spain is also dipping a toe into the waters of wave generation, with a 300 kW "breakwater wave energy plant" being constructed on the north coast, using Wavegen (now owned by Siemens) equipment.
In the US, the wave energy company getting the most attention has been Finavera, which has received preliminary approval to build a 100 MW facility off northern California (and has signed a power purchase agreement with PG&E for part of this). At hasn't all been plain sailing for Finavera however, with a test AquaBuoy device sinking off Oregon late last year.
The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) estimated that waves off the Washington, Oregon and California coasts could produce from 250 to 500 terawatt-hours per year - around 12% of US energy demand. Finavera also has approval for a project in Washington state, along with others in South Africa and Canada.
Another US based company is Ocean Power Technologies, which is looking at developing projects in Hawaii, New Jersey and Spain.
OTEC
Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion is not a new idea, it has been around for more than a century. OTEC uses the temperature difference between warm surface water and cold deep water to drive a power-producing cycle. For this to be practical, the temperature difference needs to be at least 20 degrees C, which tends to limit potential application to the tropics. The potential of this energy source has been estimated to be about 10 TW, according to some experts.
The economics of energy production today have delayed the financing of a permanent, continuously operating OTEC plant. However, OTEC is promising as an alternative energy resource for tropical island communities that rely heavily on imported fuel. OTEC plants in these markets could provide islands with power and desalinated water. Other applications that have been considered are aquaculture and mineral extraction.
OTEC plants have been trialled in Nauru and India (along with extensive research in Hawaii). There are also plans to build plants for the US military base on Diego Garcia, and in the Marianas Islands.
One unusual apparent application of this energy source that I came across recently is a robotic "thermal glider" which, at the least, seems like a very interesting tool for environmental monitoring.
Regular news updates on OTEC can be found at OTEC News.
Energy Island Ideas
The thinking behind harnessing ocean power has traditionally focussed on systems built on or near the shoreline. The amount of power available is large, however we are still at the very early stages of learning to harness it, and it is unlikely that ocean power will provide a significant proportion of our energy needs in the next decade or two.
The Energy Island concepts that I began the post with show that people are now beginning to consider harnessing ocean power out at sea as well, which vastly increases the amount of energy that could be tapped.
(The term "energy island" is an overloaded one unfortunately - the Danish island of Samso, for example, calls itself Energy Island as it is completely self-sufficient. There is also a "solar island" being developed off Dubai known as Ras Al Khaima.)
Dominic Michaelis' energy islands are by far the most ambitious plan I've seen for harnessing ocean power in the open seas. These hexagonal islands, are designed to generate electricity using wave, ocean current, OTEC, wind and solar sources. The group estimates that each island complex could produce around 250 MW of power. 50,000 energy islands could meet the world’s energy requirements - ands provide two tons of fresh water per person per day for the entire world population as a byproduct of the OTEC process.
The island design also supports farming seafood in small pens below deck and growing vegetables in shaded areas on the platform. The group is planning to conduct a pilot in the waters off the British Virgin Islands or in the Indian Ocean over the coming year.
Most observers consider the likelihood of energy islands appearing in the near term as remote, however the ideas are thought provoking and put into context just how much energy could be obtained out at sea.
One of the main issues with generating power offshore is how to store or transfer the energy (assuming that the islands don't simply become mobile aquatic arcologies of the sort science fiction writers used to dream about). One possible way of storing the energy would be to produce hydrogen, and to use the islands as refuelling stations for ships that use hydrogen fuel cells. Alternatively, the energy could be used to process raw materials, or to produce materials like ammonia.
Crossposted from Peak Energy.
Some time ago, there was some noise about another energy island project using a variation of OTEC, Biomass and Solar Energy:
http://www.mareinitiative.com/
not much detail known so far
" The first attempt eventually ended in failure, with the strong tides breaking the devices."
failure is relative. they just found out the hard way that they have more power available to them than they thought.
When I see a wave break I wonder how much power was just wasted because we didn't capture it. wave and tidal are very interesting because so much of the population is near the coasts.
Sure - failure is relative - like the Korean problems, these are teething problems - harnessing the tides and currents is likely to be a lot more difficult than harnessing the wind has been. We'll see plenty more failures over the years...
oh you doomers.
Great Article!
Minor point of editing.
The project in BC, Canada is noted as "three 1.2 MW tidal energy turbines in Vancouver Island's Campbell River by 2009."
Which makes it sound like it's in a river. It should say"
"Three 1.2 MW tidal energy turbines in Seymour Narrows near the City of Campbell River, on Vancouver Island."
Seymour Narrows is quite famous around these parts, both for its deadly whirlpools swallowing fishing boats and the rocks, known as "Ripple Rocks" that used to sit right in the middle of the Narrows and were noted for their danger by Captain Vancouver himself in the 1700s and claimed many lives.... a tunnel was dug across the narrows and up underneath... packed with 1375lbs of dynamite, and blown up in 1958. Largest civilian explosion in the world that i know of.
The Rocks are gone.. but the incredibly strong currents remain. A perfect place for tidal energy.
Really interesting link, but a minor point, it was 1375 tons of dynamite!
lol. yes. sorry, that is of course what i meant. Here I am correcting people.... :)
I wish I coulda been there to see it!
Must have been quite a bang. Where was YouTube when we needed it.
Thanks for the additional info.
Never fear, YouTube was there!. I suspect an application for regulatory approval for a similar project today wouldn't get far.
Ripple Rock was blown up because it was a hazard to navigation. A tidal power scheme at the same site would have to be pretty neatly designed to forestall the same calls for removal.
Awesome :-)
Thanks for digging that one up.
How deep is the channel ? A lot of the underwater turbine schemes talk about avoiding blocking channels so that shipping can still get through...
The depth over the remains of Ripple Rock is 13-15 m at low tide. Ripple Rock sits just about in the middle of Seymour Narrows. On either side the bottom drops away to over 55 m. The channel is just 750 m wide and about 3.2 km long. The tidal current reaches 7.7 m/sec, and Ripple Rock results in very strong local upwelling.
The Alaska cruise ships pass through Seymour Narrows, clearing what's left of Ripple Rock with only a few metres to spare.
Just a minor editing note:
I've heard of spontaneous combustion, but that must have been SOME fart!!
Ah... I love irony.
;)
Cheers
While tides and ocean currents can doubtless be used safely on relatively small scales, I'm concerned about the effects on weather and climate if we start to drain energy out of ocean circulation on a large scale. I have some of the same concerns about atmospheric circulation as well. Do we have any idea how much energy we can drain before we upset cirulation patterns? I don't think so.
Energy is not "wasted" just because we have not tapped it for electricity. The earth is a dynamic system, and we understand very little how about tapping natural energy will affect it. It would be exquisitely ironic if, after building hundreds of thousands of underwater turbines, we find that we have altered oceanic circulation, and those turbines now stand idle in stagnant sections of ocean.
Hmmm...let's say we covered 1% of the earth's surface (land and oceans) with CSP plants...wouldn't that mean that the sunlight energy striking that 1% would go towards heating up the oil in the CSP plants, which would go towards driving the oil and steam loops and producing electricity in those plants, INSTEAD of heating up the ocean? Wouldn't that effectively reduce the average solar flux from 1365 W/m^2 to 1350 W/m^2, which would theoretically offset increased heat retention from GHG?
Only if you don't use (or waste) the eletricity. If you don't stockpile it, it'll be converted into heat. Alied to that, the CSP plant has a lower reflectance than the original surface, so you'll increase global warming.
But a nice way to stockpile energy would be converting CO2 into coal :)
What is the albedo of a CSP plant? Of the water it would replace? What increase in global warming can be assigned to any 30-35% efficient thermal plant regardless of the GHGs they might produce?
You mean, like making bio-char and holding it as a reserve?
Very low; the whole point of a CSP plant is to capture solar radiation as heat. Once it's heat, it's got to escape via radiation.
IIRC the albedo of open water is around 0.1.
Given that we only need one tenthousandth of the solar energy at the earths surface to replace ALL of our FF usage, I'm not particularly worried about the change of albedo from CSP (or PV). We are decreasing the earths albedo substantially, via the loss of snow and ice cover from global warming. That effect is orders of magnitude higher than albedo changes due to solar power. Of course if we expand our energy usage a hundredfold, it would be an issue.
I don't have numbers to offer here, but the amounts we could, practically speaking, harness are quite small in percentage terms. In contrast, there has been a credible case made that CO2 venting from FF use could shut down the gulf stream entirely. The risk of using tides and currents - and wind, which is even less likely to pose a problem - seems orders of magnitudes less.
Your points are well-motivated and well-made though, and would be worrisome if we could tap a significant percent of the power. We won't.
If we could build these out AND declare war on coal, the planet would be better off...
I don't think we ought to assume that small percentages don't matter. The research into the effects is never done, probably because it seems laughable that anything humans could do would be so small to matter. I think many still use that argument to deny anthropogenic global warming.
I don't assume that. Many times that assumption has been made and it has been wrong. CFC's, phosphate runoffs... hell, hundreds of things. I agree with you. However, I was speaking about having a sense of proportionality versus the greenhouse effect of coal-burning which is the default otherwise and which is reliably predicted to mess up the entire planet, probably including changing the ocean currents and definitely altering the winds.
It would be a shame for a misplaced precautionary principle to prevent our substituting wind and water power for coal, because the already-occurring fluctuations are probably orders of magnitude greater than what humans would affect by tapping into it, and I've never seen a mechanism proposed, nor can I think of one, by which the large-scale dynamics would be disproportionately affected. Of course, living communities of animals are often exquisitely in tune with tidal effects and they'd be locally optimized for ocean currents, but my statement stands as a pretty educated guess.
Oh, I wouldn't want us to abandon the idea of removing fossil fuel energy sources and using potentially renewable sources. But what I'd like us to do is accept the earth's limits, try to determine what is a sustainable level of resource use (including as much of the impacts as we can) and then plan to live within those limits. I think the acceptance must come first as proposals for energy would then be predicated by what is sustainable.
But it seems vast technology proposals are now emerging and, as far as I can tell, all assume that we actually need to power our societies to continuous economic growth, indefinitely.
No argument, sofistek, I'd like to see that happen too. If it were up to me we'd seal the coal mines tomorrow and draw lots to voluntarily reduce the human population to a billion before christmas. That won't happen, though, and your notion of "acceptance (of reasonable limits) coming first" is unfortunately also unlikely.
We don't need to power our societies 24/7, we don't need to drive around, we don't need to sustain a 6+ billion population, we don't need "growth", etc etc. However, being stuck as a member of a delusional race of pyromaniac apes, I'd settle for wind and tide energy about now.
"But it seems vast technology proposals are now emerging and, as far as I can tell, all assume that we actually need to power our societies to continuous economic growth, indefinitely."
New technology (or use of it) should be pursued, but I tend to agree with you. Preservation of current standards seems to be the underlying theme...
I can't help but notice the double standard here, when similar arguments are applied against nuclear power.
The infinitesimally small probability of nuclear accident that could affect the environment in any significant way is used to deny this energy source, while the fact that it is the biggest non fossil fuel source of energy, which can be readily scaled up is simply ignored. The precautionary principle obviously can be applied selectively.
On the other hand tidal barges or river dams have very real (not just theoretical) impacts on the local ecosystems, but this is again ignored... what is important is labeling something "renewable" and this makes it the synonym to clean. Clean like renewable ethanol from corn for example. It would have been funny if it was not that sad.
You talkin' to me about double standards, fella/m'am? This seems to be a reply to my post.
I don't recall having made any such arguments against nukes. Are you just speculating that I might have a double standard, or what?
In fact, to the extent they'd be used to displace coal - and to that extent only - I think nukes should be pursued. I also think that after catabolic system collapse of human society, a number of the pools of stored fuel rods will likely dry out and go chernobyl, and you may take that as an index of how much I dislike the prospect of burning coal.
On the other hand, as I've said, I can't imagine a mechanism whereby using a bit of wind or tidal energy would mess things up much by comparison.
No doubt Levin will speak for himself, but to my eye this did not read as a critique either of yourself or big Gav, who wrote the article, but was more of a general comment on how nuclear and renewable energy proposals are often presented and evaluated.
My own particular frustration, and again it is not, in my case anyway, a comment in any way on your or Gav's standpoint, is that many do not realise how long it would take to develop and deploy in great numbers technology as immature as this.
Capital cost issues are also important, as it is clear that in a post peak world there won't be money to throw around, but we should certainly investigate this and other renewable technologies and use them whenever it is possible and not grossly uneconomic to do so.
Thank you - I think that is a fair assessment of the situation.
I'm certainly not suggesting ocean power is ready for a large scale build out just yet - and the costs of doing this are still very unclear.
At this point CSP solar and wind are the renewable technologies that can clearly provide energy at a reasonable price and can be quickly scaled up. They will need energy storage as well to be used beyond a certain point. Most of the other promising options still have quite a way to go before they can provide a large scale alternative source of energy.
Obviously there is scope for increases in hydro and (traditional style) geothermal power, but they aren't game changers.
Biogas may also be able to provide a significant amount of energy - but I haven't researched this well enough to be sure of the scale of the opportunity.
As regards affordable costs Gav, interestingly enough I have (provisionally) come to conclusions which are almost a mirror image of yours!
To take them in reverse order, from the (limited) information which I have, it appears to be economic, unlike ethanol from corn.
How it will scale I don't know, as it can be used in a relatively small way to make biogas from municipal waste and sewage, or at a lager scale from waste from crops or the crops themselves.
Care would have to be taken that the same problems do not arise as with ethanol, with agricultural areas diverting too much of the food supply. but the information I have to hand seems to indicate that it is much more efficient than ethanol.
I don't know how accurate the information I have is, but here are some links - biogas is very important in Sweden, and Germany expects it to play a big role, but they have not got all of their legislation in place to develop it to best advantage:
http://biopact.com/2008/01/report-biogas-can-replace-all-eu.html
JoSmith in comments on the following link kindly provided a complete translation of the report:
http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2008/01/all-eu-natural.html#co...
Here is a link which compares the energy you get out of different biofuels - according to this, at any rate, biogas looks good:
http://biopact.com/2007/12/biomethane-presented-as-most-efficient.html
I'll put in another post a bit later some comments on costs of CSP and wind, briefly they both look pretty pricey, depending on location for wind, but so far at any rate CSP is dear - more later - dinnertime!
I'm sorry you took this against yourself.
It was directed in general towards the criticism against nuclear power, which for the most part I'm finding baseless and full of nitpicking and biased preconceptions. I assumed the fact you were not talking nuclear here would be a hint I was not arguing you, and in fact I was continuing your own argument in a different context. But now I realise I used the word "here" in my first sentence, which was misleading... sorry again.
OK, no harm done. There's something about the contemplating the possibility of runaway global warming that just puts me in a testy mood, seemingly. Those pools of spent fuel rods will come back to haunt us, though. The way things could be done versus the way they have been done provides quite a contrast, and since I think civilization will collapse to far simpler forms, I like energy systems which decay gracefully.
I am familiar with this argument, but I don't accept it... I think I have quite a cynical view of human nature, but in my view a collapsing civilization would be the worst environmental nightmare ever - I see us eating or burning through every bit of natural resource left on this planet as a result. I think human species were never in some dreamed of ecological equilibrium with the nature, and have been overhunting an overharvesting even in prehistoric times - they won't be doing it neither on the way down, nor when they reach the supposed bottom. Just think about it - after FFs are gone the easiest to access and harness energy source using even low tech is... wood. How will 7-9bln.people harvest wood sustainably? What will happen after all forests go?
The bottom line - our civilization has just one way to go technologically - and this is up, even in a scaled down and less consumption oriented version, but it still has to be up. The alternative is simply too horrible to even contemplate. Like we shouldn't live as though we would die tomorrow we shouldn't plan with such idea in mind either.
But let's not hijack this thread, I already did enough harm :)
Talk about a Pollyanna moment! Problem is, history teaches otherwise. Yes, eventually recovery and advance will occur, but it often involves a very serious decline or total collapse first. This isn't doomer sophistry, that's simple history.
It's important to keep in mind we are not talking about a single nation collapsing, which in the wider view wouldn't mean much to humanity, we are talking about possible Dark Ages stuff, globally.
Then again, can't achieve a goal if you don't have one...
Cheers
I doubt it.
Fission products include such important and scarce elements as iridium; in a mere 30 years those fuel rods are going to be better than a gold mine, they'll be a platinum mine.
Off by one row. For iridium read rhodium. No platinum.
Not sure fission-generated light PGMs will ever be worthwhile, but fission-generated xenon is good nonradioactive xenon, and xenon is otherwise hard to get.
How shall the car gain nuclear cachet?
Rhodium price currently is upward of $9100/oz. 4 times as platinum. AFAIK it is irreplaceable in auto catalytic converters and in a broad range of chemical processes. Obviously a precious thing.
I guess future generations will indeed mine and reprocess the spent fuel in Yucca (if it ever gets built). Obviously the current class of corrupted political morons has to expire before some sense of reality gets some hold.
And there has to be a massive change in public opinion, which is very unlikely to happen...
I don't think it is correct to give up on doing what is right because of some folks prejudices.
It seems to me that the balance of opinion is slowly changing, as costs and the problems of generating power by fossil fuels become clearer, and the true vast costs of the small amount of power (other than hydroelectric) we get from renewables sink in.
Many of the more reasonable critics are coming over, however reluctantly, and in general I doubt that as a political force that the anti nuclear movement will last much beyond peak oil and the first power cuts.
However, that they can do considerable damage in the interim is undoubtedly true, and it is ironic that a way of thinking which purports to be about saving the planet should contribute so greatly to GW and the destruction of it.
It was wholly reasonable after TMI and Chernobyl to pause and reflect, and the concerns of people about safety need answering.
Most of the alleged other 'issues' such as wastes and shortage of fuel and so on are red herrings, with the flimsiest basis.
If we want to do something about GW it seems IMHO bordering on the criminal to lightly cast aside the only proven means of running our society and mitigating carbon emissions greatly.
We have wasted 30 years in tackling them, and further hesitation in the light of the information we now have available is ridiculous.
I have no doubt that some of the most strident of nuclear power will declare their intention of not being bound by the decision of the majority, and avow their intention to throw their toys completely out of the pram, regardless of how many might suffer form hypothermia due to their actions, but it seems to me that this needs taking on, not surrendering to.
Reasonable doubt needs reasonable answer, but some of the attitudes and prejudices go way beyond that.
Please list the 400 - 1000 sites in the US where nuclear plants could be built.
Please list the many thousands of other sites where they might be built.
Please list where the 3 billion+ per plant comes from in a resource and financially constrained world comes from that is also paying for AGW, etc.
Please explain how a near- or even mid-term peak is helped by construction processes that will stretch decades.
I don't think constantly harping on nuclear as the answer to PO or anything else is very productive if you cannot provide answers to the above.
Wheat from the chaff.
Cheers
I am not familiar enough with the US to answer your questions on that country.
In the UK however we can use old coal plants for the 50 or so sites needed, as most would be in a double reactor configuration, and coal generation sites would already have much of the needed infrastructure and transmission capabilities.
Here is a list of sites which are under current consideration for the first build:
http://www.berr.gov.uk/files/file39030.pdf
file39030.pdf
These just use existing nuclear sites.
This would not answer your question fully, as we would be trying to replace current gas supplies too, but before we get to that stage we would have many years to allocate sites.
The US with it's vastly greater land mass is presumably at least as well situated.
And please note that I am by no means trying to argue that nuclear will do the whole job everywhere, it seems likely to me that, for instance, solar power will make a huge contribution, as might wind power in some locations.
Heat pumps, insulation and so on are also extremely important, so I am just seeking to argue that it is silly to discard help from nuclear, so IMHO that hardly qualifies as an obsession.
As for the cost, at £66 bn for 33GW of nameplate capacity in the UK, actual energy flow around 10-11GW, that appears to be roughly twice the price of the same power from nuclear, so if we can't afford that we certainly can't afford the alternative.
Again, please note that whenever it is reasonably economic to do so, such as in the plains of America, very possibly, I have nothing at all against using renewable resources.
If you are talking about building massive grids to shunt the power round absolutely everywhere though, that is when the cost goes through the roof.
Whatever we do we are not going to halt GW gasses instantly, any realistic program is going to take decades and must be combined with measures to try to take up the ones we have already emitted, such as agrichar, and incidentally it should be noted that GW gasses are already at a substantially higher level than they would have been with a larger nuclear build.
So IOW it is incorrect to feel that I am against renewables - I want to use all the options wherever they are most appropriate.
I hope you find this a responsive answer.
I do in part. Perhaps the biggest issue is that you are looking at a local solution but we are talking about a global problem. I'm not sure I see the utility of discussing PO or GW in those terms. At least not on this board. There are TOD Local boards, though.
Second, your piece is full of assumptions about locations existing. The need for safety and the need for water are limiting problems. You can't just put the reactors anywhere. Some limits are socio-political in nature and might be overcome, but I'd be surprised in most cases. Nuclear doesn't really solve our problem. It's a solution for the wealthy, basically. When you add in the problems with waste and cost, you end up with a solution that creates more problems in the end.
There may be resource issues with renewables, too, given a large enough global population, but at least I can grow trees to build windmills out of and grow straw to build homes out of, etc.
Considering the money nuclear would take from other, more sustainable solutions and the time it will take to get them all built - time in which further developments of renewables will almost certainly occur - I don't think the value is there but for those locations where other solutions don't exist or are significantly inferior.
Cheers
Well, I hope you appreciate that it is a tleast an attempt to answer any genuine question.
I really feel it is most useful to separate the, as you put it, socio-political angle from the technical, as if you can't physically do it then there is no point in getting involved in the politics, and if you can, politics can change.
I suspect that the first cold snap without sufficient gas supplies will effectively end the power of the anti-nuclear movement, in Britain at least, and although, as I said, I have a far easier case to make then Gav as I am fully prepared to make use of renewables whenever that is the best option, but in addition to being prepared to use all the resources he is can call on nuclear power in addition.
So in fact, to make my case in the dispute in this thread, that it would be silly to write off nuclear power, I would only have to demonstrate that nuclear could make a contribution, and since it currently supplies around 20% of Britain's total nuclear capacity and more of it's baseload just re-developing those sites with modern nuclear reactors would be a significant amount of power and a large upgrade, and the same would apply in the US, so in effect there is no case to answer.
Just the same I have no wish to evade the question, but the problem in discussing issues inthe US or still more in the world at large is really one of scale, and also I obviously have no detailed knowledge of the areas.
In many ways in the US it is often more helpful to discuss on a state by state basis, as for instance water resources will be far more of a problem in Nevada than New York.
Just the same, since I live in a small and very crowded island, perhaps if it seems reasonable that we can provide enough sites here, then the US should be fine.
Actually, I am somewhat surprised that you should consider it a problem, as certainly in the UK there are many, many places with access to all the requirements that I am aware of for a nuclear site, and can only really conclude that you are in fact implying a possible shortage by reference to your 'socio-political' criteria -IOW, it has not got a great deal to do with technical issues.
To illustrate what I mean, perhaps I could trouble you to go to Google Earth, and Bristol,in England, which is where I live.
If you go a few miles north and west of the city, on the Severn estuary, you will come to Hinckley point, by the bridge, one of the sites under early consideration for a dual reactor.
So if you take that criteria as the needed distance form a major city, and look along the coasts of the whole of the South-West of England, and the whole of Wales, that is the only reactor until you get to North Wales.
As far as I can see it looks like you would have ample locations for the whole of a British reactor build to power the whole country just within this small part of the country.
Of course this is not going to happen, and of course they like to be where there are already power connections and proximity to population centres, but still, I feel it is pretty clear that there is no technical problem at all in siting all the reactors we would need-plenty of coastal points with plenty of water.
I have great hopes for renewables too, but at present costs are very high, and it seems only prudent to proceed as rapidly as possible with a nuclear build then see how renewables pan out.
If you really want to screw up, all you need to do is follow a theory! - and basing a substantial amount of the power for our society on renewables is still a theory - I can point to a minimum of 75% of electricity from nuclear at reasonable power rates in France.
I don't doubt that.
I believe that is a mistake, but I studied psychology and am a teacher, so... This is a question of dichotomy. In most dichotomies the flow is bi-directional. Not wise to inore half the flow.
I think I have arued clearly that nuclear has some utility, but not as a major part of the answer. France built their nuclear grid durin a time of relative plenty for Western nations. The future decades, should Climate Change, PO and Chaos fully assert themselves, will not provide the stable environment, the time frames or the money to build out infrastructure on that scale.
Cost is cost and time is time. You don't seem to be addressing this. We seem to disaree on fundamentals, so have probably taken this as far as we can. My key limiting factor: time. On that basis alone, nuclear fails as a major answer to the challenges ahead.
To repeat, I think this is the proper approach for any and all areas. Solutions will be localized in the short term, probably the medium term (if I'm right about time), and will go global only in the long term. Essentially, during recovery. In fact, that might be one of the ways in which economies rebuild. Personally, I'd like to see the world remain localized in practice, but remain a "small world" in terms of communications, knowledge sharin, etc.
I'll defer to your greater knowledge here, but isn't water one of the great limitin factors for nuclear? It's expected to get quite scarce over great swathes of the US. Even the Great Lakes are falling rapidly.
Again, time.
Cheers
We could be in the middle of a major nuclear build by 2020, and it seems to me unlikely that any alternative is going to have huge effect before then - there are major issues such as power storage, intermittency and transmission with renewables which have less effect on nuclear, and so it is unclear why they should have a major impact any faster.
We both agree that conservation is important in any scenario.
On water issues it is clear that in the UK at least all the build could be done on the coast very comfortably, and since you have the whole of the east and west coasts and the great lakes to play with in the US it seems improbable that water shortages there would be a major hindrance other than locally.
As for the scale of the problem, the latest post on the Olduvai Gorge makes it clear that the numbers needed for the nuclear option are really very small, and that is based on 1GW plants, not the modern 1.6GW.
So for Britain we might need 1 reactor a year at peak, and for America perhaps 10 - why not worry about not having any more room for them when we run into problems?
It seems very unlikely we will.
In any case all these figures will be reduced by whatever the solar and wind build does, so the problem really seems very modest.
So time does not seem more against nuclear build than renewables - and in fact we are much further along in knowing how to run a society built on it - France's nuclear build was substantially completed in 17 years.
Cheers
Dichotomies have nothing to do with natural law. Seriously, the effort of the fuzzy-studies departments to turn everything into a dialectic or "other ways of knowing" is one of the most damaging bits of P.C. indoctrination in the university system. It renders people unable to analyze, think and understand, and is responsible for the collapse of biology in the Soviet Union under Stalin (Lysenkoism). Nature is what nature is, and human society (including politics) ignores nature at its peril.
One could apply this argument equally for e.g. geographically-dispersed networks of wind farms and their associated transmission systems. It appears more apathetic than useful.
It was also a time of steeply rising oil prices, and the USA did roughly the same thing: replaced oil-fired electricity with nuclear. We should have continued and replaced most coal-fired electricity as well, but the environmental movement made a serious mistake and got on the wrong side of that issue.
If the heat production of nuclear fuel can be increased 50% using annular fuel pellets, US nuclear electric generation might be increased as much as 45 GW (~10% of US consumption) before the first Gen III reactor goes on line. I'm all for wind and solar, but large-scale wind requires geographic separation and transmission on a much larger scale than nuclear. We're going to need, and wind up using, all of this.
The post itself notes the issues with tidal barrages, and suggests that tidal lagoons or underwater turbines would have much less environmental impact.
Wave energy and OTEC don't present any obvious environmental hazards.
Nuclear is a legacy technology - the oceans could potentially provide more energy than we get from all sources currently. The sun could provide more than 10,000 times our current energy usage.
Nuclear is too unpopular and has too many side effects to warrant the cost and effort involved in a massive build out - which would still only be a medium term solution anyway.
There are many sources of energy that "could" provide many times more than we need. Ocean currents, methane hydrates, tabletop fusion, solar power - you name it. The ultimate size of the resource has never been an issue - it has always been about the "taps" we are using to harness it. Even oil would be virtually unlimited for the foreseeable future if we could include lower grade oil sources like tar sands, oil shale and CTL. But - we are living in a world with physical constraints and it is unrealistic we can harness all that energy out there, and PO is about those constraints, not only about natural constraints.
The distinct advantage of nuclear, which will make it the energy source of the 21st century is that it is the most concentrated energy source known to humans. You don't need a 10 miles long barge trapping cubic miles of water to get the energy - you need a reactor 6 meters in diameter. It takes orders of magnitude less physical resources to harness such energy source, it is so much easier to maintain and control it - and this will become even more critical in the close future when PO unfolds. Remember that energy concentration was the primary reason we picked oil a century ago... things have not changed that much from back then. Calling nuclear "legacy" won't change this and I'd advise anyone interested to get prepared for a nuclear future... by all indications this is the only feasible outcome (besides civilization collapse of course).
Levink
Along with that concentration of nuclear comes the problems associated with the concentration like the intensely damaging effect on any biological processes if that concentration is not safely handled. The issue that the nuclear opponents have is that we are not confident in the ability of humankind to handle such concentration over the timescales necessary. As simple as that!!!
Even the argument about orders of magnitude less physical resources for harnessing nuclear gets less convincing when the issues with mining, defending, storing reactants etc. are all taken into consideration. It is my claim for example that over the same timescales as nuclear, 1 kg of raw silicon ore will outperform the same kg of uranium, thorium or whatever you care to use when recycling of the silicon becomes accepted practice. Same for wind, the steel tower can be reused indefinitely etc. etc.
One question. How do you absolutely guarantee that in some future war over whatever resource you care to imagine that ubiquitous nuclear plants will not be attacked, damaged and relieved of some or all of its radioactive inventory to the general biosphere. The only way that a claim can be made for an infinitesimal probability of release is if a scenario as described above be next to guaranteed impossible. We all know that such a guarantee is not possible.
Simple.
This has the extra benefit of allowing reactors to be sited below cities, which permits use of the waste heat for space heat during the winter and hot water and industrial process heat year-round. A 200 MWe reactor would produce on the order of 300-400 MW of waste heat; this is 1-1.3 billion BTU/hr.
The Fort St. Vrain high temperature, gas-cooled reactor near Denver had similar construction. A large cast concrete pressure vessel with a steel liner and inner heat shield.
Current pebble bed designs use shop-fabricated steel vessels in underground concrete silos with passive air cooling.
In a war, everything of value or utility is fair game. The question is what is the most vulnerable factors in the enemy's industrial or social base where the risk/reward for an attack is most favorable.
In WWII, strategic bombing tried a number of specific targeting strateges. First ball bearings, then worker morale, etc. What really worked was attacks on petroleum, both in Germany and in Japan. We didn't really understand that until after the war.
It would be much easier in a future war to knockout the whole grid. Remember the electric bombs in Iraq that used conductive strips across power lines. Substations are easy targets for smart bombs and widely scattered.
If the USA is faced with an enemy which can bomb power lines and substations with impunity, it won't be a nation which can build nuclear plants and the point is moot.
A similar argument could be made prior 9/11 for an aircraft attack. Substations and high-voltage transmission lines are indeed very easy targets. It would take just a box of dynamite to leave New York without power. Luckily the harm would be more psychological than real.
Exactly - and silicon and steel are materials we know how to use and are adept at using - we are better off just leaving the uranium in the ground and forgetting about it.
The claim that nuclear power is the only way to avoid the collapse of civilisation is laughable - surely you aren't serious levink ?
Since the world began using electricity, the majority of generation has been from sources which can be scheduled to meet requirements.
We may be able to run a civilization entirely on intermittent flows from solar and wind, but putting all our eggs in that basket is somewhere between risky and batshit crazy. Nuclear is an insurance policy in case the RE engineers (or the politicians who decide what the engineers are allowed to do) get something wrong.
We can revisit the issue of nuclear in 50 years. In the mean time, wind and solar are going to grow like crazy and reveal any problems now kept under wraps by differences in scale. They're all carbon-free, so no worries there.
Sure - I don't have any problem with the idea of nuclear as a backup option.
Just out of curiosity - assuming construction of large scale energy storage to go with the solar / wind build out - and a smart grid with plenty of demand management built in - do you foresee a day where the grid *could* be 100% renewable power ?
Personally I quite like the idea of lots of Kena style energy "islands" built along the coasts with wind, tidal, wave and possibly solar all bundled together - you'd effectively have dispatchable renewable power, everywhere :-)
The issue that the nuclear opponents have is that we are not confident in the ability of humankind to handle such concentration over the timescales necessary. As simple as that!!!
This has always been the underlying reasoning, isn't it? It has never been truly about the risk of accidents or the waste, which history has shown to be manageable problems if addressed correctly (which developed countries do, despite minor hiccups). What it has always been about is the fear of giving the humankind a powerful and potentially destructive energy source; the idea we shouldn't give the kids play with the matches. This begs the question: what if the kid is grown up enough to make its own matches or bombs? Is it prudent to forbid something you know s/he will do, even more that his/her survival or well-being may depend on it? Second: what gives you the right to treat humanity as kids, and what is the point of planning for geological timescales? If people start thinking "what if" they will stop living. If your parents thought "what if my child has a birth defect" maybe you wouldn't be here.
Even the argument about orders of magnitude less physical resources for harnessing nuclear gets less convincing when the issues with mining, defending, storing reactants etc. are all taken into consideration.
This is a myth. These reactants are less dangerous and far less as a volume than you imagine and the fuel spent for a year of plant operation would fit in the back of a truck. And they are not that dangerous - half a centimeter of steel sheet would stop all radiation. Yes if you unshield them and hold for a while you can get sick or even die, but so can you if you drink gasoline or breath its vapors.
It is my claim for example that over the same timescales as nuclear, 1 kg of raw silicon ore will outperform the same kg of uranium, thorium or whatever you care to use when recycling of the silicon becomes accepted practice.
First there is no such thing as "silicon ore". Second I doubt you grasp the scale of the energies involved. One kg of unenriched Uranium yields 554,400 MJ. To get the same energy in an excellent solar location (7kWh/day/m2) using 15% efficient solar cell would take a square meter of solar panels over 400 years!
How do you absolutely guarantee that in some future war over whatever resource you care to imagine that ubiquitous nuclear plants will not be attacked, damaged and relieved of some or all of its radioactive inventory to the general biosphere.
The only thing I can absolutely guarantee is that you and me one day will die. There is no such thing as absolute guarantees and life involves millions of tradeoffs of risks vs benefits. The risk you cite pales in comparison to the risk of the context you put it in (an all out war), but this is not a problem to imply that a radioactive release is the absolute worst evil that could happen ever... just look at Chernobyl - this same "absolute worst evil" did not result in desert ecosystems and millions dying didn't it?
A half-inch of steel does not stop Sr-90 gammas; that's why the casks for transport and storage have so much concrete in them.
As long as we're being pedantic here, Sr-90 isn't a direct gamma emitter. Some X-rays are generated by the bremmalstrung radiation from the betas.
Well, Gav, we certainly differ here.
The reasons why are basically the same as you outline in your article.
I know that you accept that it is far too early to rely on wave energy and OTEC, and it must be realised that sometimes things just don't pan out.
However,