Energy: The Need vs. The Risk

“. . . one has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet, demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.”

Morris L. West, The Shoes of the Fisherman

The tragedy of the BP spill illuminates the risks we accept to satisfy our energy appetite. Hundreds of thousands of crude oil and natural gas wells (almost 500,000 gas wells in the U.S. alone) pump continuously. The world produces 72 Million daily barrels of crude oil. BP's Gulf spill has been estimated to be up to 60,000 barrels per day. In the scheme of world production, infinitesimal. In the dread of environmental damage and consequence, ostensibly infinite.

The risks do not end where crude oil emerges from the earth. That’s where risk begins. Risk in every facet of discovering, gathering, processing, storing, transporting and delivering energy.

Gasoline: The U.S. daily consumption is 360 Million gallons. Transported to nearly 118,000 filling stations by tanker truck, we give it not a first thought. We put that gasoline into 135 million passenger vehicles and transport it all over our country in our autos, consuming it.

Contemplate this:

• Billions of cubic feet of natural gas pumped through 300,000 miles of underground pipe each day.
• Billion tons of mined coal we transport and burn each year.
• Billions of tons of coal ash on the ground.
• Nuclear power, enriched uranium, its long storage and half life.
• Electricity above us in transmission lines, the largest carry 765,000 volts.
  

Risk is embedded in energy, whether we make the calculus or not. Why are we willing to accept these risks when the potential disasters are beyond our imagination, comprehension and calculation? We like the convenience our energy intensive world provides. We like the ability to fly to Tokyo today for a meeting tomorrow. We like our iphones, ipads, blackberrys, etc. We also accept that the risk is improbable.

Though painful, disasters are rare. Exxon Valdez was a disaster, yet we accept tankers, albeit now double-hulled, and safer. We accept trade-offs all the time. We risk flying because the convenience outweighs the infinitesimal risk. We risk an energy disaster because of its rarity. We accept environmental risks even though every form of energy we produce puts something bad, small though it may be, into the environment.

When a disaster occurs, we do not have to sit by and watch, stunned and perplexed. At an auto accident, first responders swing into action. Police, fire, EMTs and hazardous materials teams respond with all deliberate speed. They ask no questions about fault, how long it will take or who is going to pay for their response. They secure the roadway, put out the fire, tend to the injured and clean up the mess. They leave the questions and recriminations for later and others. We, the taxpayers, are perfectly willing to pay to have them ready at a moment's notice.

We should have a “SWAT” approach to oil spills. The industry should establish, fund, train, equip and deploy an international team of experts who will, with developed and proven methods, contain any gusher anywhere in the world——fast. Ultimately, consumers will pay for these “Hydrocarbon Emergency Responders” through higher prices. And that's fine, just as we are willing to pay for first responders to a highway accident.

Our government will propound strengthened laws, rules, regulations, practices, etc. to lower the already small probable risk of deep sea drilling. But "trust us" to get it right the next time is not the answer. Notwithstanding the rarity of a catastrophic event, we cannot eliminate it, no matter how good technology, rules and practices become. We accept that and the risks associated with energy as a technologically advanced society. That will not likely change because we are “. . . stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.”

Accept the consequence though we may, we cannot simply wait for the next catastrophe and allow the response to devolve to fortune and happenstance. Allowing the BP catastrophe to exist as a blip on the energy radar screen, chalked up as a bad experience, does not suffice. Out government’s response painfully demonstrates that there is no expertise in Washington.

Energy is a universal responsibility of the ordinary consumer, government bureaucrat, environmentalist and oil industry employee. Each of us, each stake holder, is responsible. Therefore, every one of us has accepted the risks associated with our gluttonous and growing appetite for energy. That growth is inexorable; it will not change easily and without the complete rethinking of energy policy (a subject for a different Op-Ed piece). Drilling for oil and natural gas is a brute force exercise. Although it is complex, it isn’t quantum physics. And although there is good science behind the advances in drilling technology, that science must be applied by good engineers with good engineering practices. Otherwise, how are we to entrust ourselves with more complex and riskier technologies that will emerge in the future, ultimately replacing fossil fuels.

“SWAT”——Special Weapons and Tactics——should, for oil and gas drilling, become “STTAT”——Special Teams, Tools and Tactics, a rapid response apparatus that world governments and the oil industry institute to suppress the next uncontrollable, deep sea gusher.

Book Review: "The Elements"

My literary agent (Amanda Mecke) may have a Ph.D. in English, but she has an eye (and a brain) for science. She commends to me The Elements - A Visual Exploration of Every Known Atom in the Universe, which I promptly obtain and devour.

Theodore Gray, the author, and Nick Mann, the photographer, have assembled a visual masterpiece that accomplishes what I wish all introductory books of science would do: engender some interest in science! I can imagine this work becoming a first selection in chemistry for students as early as the late grades in grammar school. It beautifully displays every element known to mankind with a nice, brief and not-too-complicated explanation of the history, practical uses, dangers and oddities of the individual elements.

The book goes beyond this in that it presents the science within the atom in an understandable way. Each element has a visual sidebar of elemental information, including atomic weight, place in the periodic table, crystal structure, melting point and boiling point temperatures, etc. The most standout piece of scientific information The Elements displays is how the electron orbits of each element fill up. This is the essence of chemistry and begins to broach how compounds form naturally (by providing examples of how they occur naturally in minerals, for example) and initiates a beginner's sense of how chemists create useful products in our advanced society.

What I also like about this book is a very nice explanation in the beginning of the shape and characteristics of the Periodic Table and a wonderfully visual explanation of the shapes and positions of the electron shells. And there's a nice, big detachable Periodic Table at the very end.

Parents everywhere should insist that this book be one of the very first texts (and I hesitate to refer to it as a text, lest we condemn it to the unreadable textbook bone yard) their tender students get their hands--and eyes--on. Because everyone needs just a little understanding of chemistry and the atom. For twenty bucks, a fraction of the cost of a text book, a parent can enlighten a child of any age--including one my age.

The Promise of More Efficient Solar Power

Technology Review of December 18, 2009 had an article entitled, Hot Electrons Could Double Solar Power. It's worth a little review of how solar photovoltaic cells work. A PV is essentially two layers of semiconductor material, one of which has an excess of electrons and the other a shortage of electrons. When a photon from the sun hits an electron, it dislodges it, sends it through a curuit, to the other side, creating electricity.

The article discusses how certain of these electrons respond to different wavelengths of sunlight. Some PV cells are adapted to one wavelength or another. In the blue light wavelength of the sun, the electrons have high energy, but it dissipates as heat before it can escape the cell and produce electricity. Researchers are finding ways to make the PV cell sufficiently thin and configured in such a way, as to take advantage of these "hot electrons" and produce much more electricity from a given surface area than the current state of the art of photovoltaics.

In my book, How to Tell a Btu from a BLT, I discuss in my chapter on solar energy the heat transfer mechanism by which the sun's heat is transmitted through the vacuum of space and the fact that PV cells have efficiencies ranging from 8% to 35%. The Technology Review article reports the promise of PVs with an efficiency of 67%. This is an enormous breakthrough in solar technology. It has an enormously positive impact on land use for central station generation using photovoltaics. Moreover, it brings distributed generation using photovoltaics one step further toward reality. One can imagine a the day when a significant portion of household power requirements come from a PV array on one's roof during the day (especially in the Southwest) and we rely on the grid at night. This would relieve a huge burden of building new generation and transmission infrastructure by the nation's electric utilities. But most amazingly, 67% efficiency is a twice the efficiency of the average coal or nuclear steam generating plant that exists today. Now that's progress!

Sunday New York Times - Solar Power That Blends In

Sunday's (9/27/09) New York Times (Sunday Business) - Solar Power, Without All those Panels is a very interesting advance in the use of photovoltaic cells and one I would like to see more use of. It seems to me that the use of solar power as a distributed generation alternative, rather than a central station alternative, is best use and best practices.

Home builders are including "building integrated photovoltaics" in roof tiles that will generate power directly into the home. The article provides an example of one product, installed in a California home, that will generate 2,400 kilowatt-hours per year for about 300 square feet of roofing tiles that contain photovoltaic cells. If you use about 1000 kilowatt-hours per month, this will reduce your consumption of central station power by 20%. That is a huge reduction in consumption and, if universally applied, would reduce the need for new power plants and transmission lines in the U.S. very significantly. It might also shift some of our electricity consumption from central station power plants from periods of peak consumption into off-peak periods because the solar roofs would be generating power when we need it most: at the peak time of day when the sun is shining, hottest temperatures and peak air conditioning consumption.

This fits very well with the concept I propose in my book (How to Tell a BTU from a BLT): Conservation Without Deprivation!

The Modular, Scalable Nuclear Reactor

Anyone who has been involved in the engineering design and construction of a new nuclear power plant will admit the process is long, risky (financially) and with too much government red tape and delays. They will also tell you that as a result, you only get one shot at building a nuke--so build it big. The latest crop of nuclear power plant designs are 1,100 MWe (Westinghouse/Toshiba) and an astounding 1,700 MWe (Mitshubishi Heavy Industries).

Along comes Babcock & Wilcox (a company well experienced in electric power and with a big nuclear design of its own when the first 104 U.S. Nukes were developed) with mPower, a modular, scalable nuclear plant that comes in sizes ranging from 125 MWe to 750MWe. These designs are safer than the existing fleet and the newer designs because the configuration is such that it eliminates the worst design basis accident that is postulated: the LOSS OF COOLANT ACCIDENT or LOCA. The existing fleet and the newer nuclear offerings have to be designed to withstand a break in the main piping that cools the reactor core--LOCA. Much of the regulatory angst and engineering challenges surround this hypothetical accident.

B&W's design is different. It is totally self contained and, therefore, does not include the system (Reactor Coolant Loop) that requires engineers to worry about its breaking. The other advantages are reduced regulatory requirements, only a three year construction cycle and a five year refueling cycle, meaning the utility only has to replace the nuclear fuel every five years, instead of every 18 months prevalent today.

The other obvious advantages are that smaller utilities can take advantage of nuclear power because it can be built in smaller, more affordable increments in much less time than the big units. In addition, it can be built in smaller pieces providing system flexibility. A small utility cannot afford to lose 1000 MWe of power when a plant has a forced outage if it only has a 4000 MWe system. So it can't build plants that are so big. However, if it can build 125 MWe or 25o MWe, the system can maintain its flexibility and reliabilty if a unit is forced out of service.

This is the type of nuclear plant innovation that will allow the U.S. to achieve the long process of weaning itself off of polluting fossil fuels.

Cafe Etiquette

Yesterday's WSJ Article ("No More Perks: Coffee Shops Pull the Plug on Laptop Users" ) discusses shop owners' frustration with loitering laptop users who take advantage of free electricity and WiFi while buying nothing and displacing paying customers.

It points up how oblivious we all are to our use of energy both direct and indirect. When we use the internet we either have a desktop plugged in, a laptop we have had to charge up or some other portable device that also had to be charged. But we speak with forked tongue: We speak conservation and renewables out of one side of our mouths and banter about this great, energy consuming technology out of the other side.

Remember, the internet isn't in the airwaves because angels deliver it on splendid wings. There are servers, mountains of servers, all over the world that provide us with the internet. And they require power. Lots of it. Moreover, those servers have to be cool. And I don't mean wearing a pair of Ray-Bans, a spiffy hat with a cigarette dangling. Those servers need air conditioning all of the time.

Here's the point: the small things we do mindlessly, consume energy constantly. And no matter how conservation minded we would like to be, are we really willing to give up the pleasure and utility of modern technology. Laptop users consume a shopowner's electricity and WiFi because it's "free" but it should be as carefully conserved as if it were your own. The proprietor meets his overhead by selling food and drink; the freebies are an inducement to buy.

So, I'll quote the wisdom of my literary agent, Amanda Mecke: "There is no free lunch --- or electricity anywhere."

CONGRESS RESTORES FUNDING FOR HYDROGEN FUEL CELLS

Finally, some sanity from the Congress. Steven Chu, Secretary of Energy, killed fuel cell research a while back. Now it has been restored (MIT Technology Review: Hydrogen Fuel Cell Funding Restored) by the legislature, you know, that bicameral body that sits in session on our behalf in the District.

Secretary Chu prefers biofuels and better batteries, but that is not mainstream thinking. Thinking long into the future, hydrogen-based fuel cells make a lot of sense. In the interim, fossil fuel-based fuel cells--methanol for automotive propulsion and diesel and natural gas (among others) for stationary fuel cells--should be aggressively developed by Dr. Chu and the DOE.

There will come a day when planet earth can yield up no more hydrocarbons. Our planet is finite. At that time, the hydrogen-based fuel cell (hydrogen cracked from water), fully developed and ready to go, will displace the interim technology. We need to be fully prepared for the hydrogen future--a world in which all electricity is generated by nuclear power plants and all hydrogen comes from the oceans. A time when there is no measurable air pollution, greenhouse gases and the insidious effects of mercury and arsenic from burning coal.

And thank you to Amanda Mecke, my literary agent, for kindly passing on this article to me.