A woman who's pregnant today and fits her size 6 jeans through her first trimester could nonetheless see her kid set the table or do the laundry in a dozen years. In twenty years that child could pay her way through college trimming trees or installing solar panels.
Just because something is infinitesimally small today doesn't mean it can't do major service in a decade or two. That's the principle of geometric growth; in the past twenty years it has put cell phones into every remote corner of the world. That's why clean energy advocates are confident that renewable energy boosted with storage and efficiency will give the best bang for the buck as our nation transitions to a clean energy economy.
However, some conveniently forget that geometric growth principle that brought computing away from big central mainframes and on to our desktops; they swear that nuclear power is the "only" way we're going to meet the scale of this big clean energy transition.
Our job is to prioritize energy choices which are least costly and enhance our independence. And that puts us in direct conflict with a big push for new nuclear power, which is widely known as one of the most expensive ways of producing electrons due to the extraordinary engineering and secretive security needed for handling the fuel, the reaction and the waste.
Along with that high cost comes the rarely considered cost of base load energy, which means waste at night. Witness the streetlights of developed nations all over the globe lighting up outer space: that's base load power needing somewhere to go, wasting fuel, capital and water with every lumen.
Where you see base load, all too often, you also see monopoly, making you buy stuff you don't clearly want (as in Xcel Energy's Wind Source customers here in Colorado facing increased base rates for the newly built, unwanted Comanche 3 as well as cost hikes on coal). Monopoly means a big utility in your community constantly courting state regulators, building the installed capacity they want so they can get a guaranteed rate of return on it through base rates increased on customers regardless of how little energy they use. Then they send the profits out of state.
"A planned economy" is what Denver energy attorney Susan Perkins called our regulated monopoly system at a recent talk in Boulder. And it would be all the worse with nuclear power.
Conservative and independent-minded voters should be as distressed by a planned energy economy as they are about health care reform that they think triggers federal involvement and collectivism to an unnecessary degree. And here in Colorado, the Independence Institute is sponsoring legislation to protect individuals who wish to refuse to buy mandated health care insurance.
Likewise, independents ought to be outraged by a scheme that deepens the powers of monopoly in our communities, particularly where nuclear energy means federal rather than state level regulation, and the financing of the giant, default-laden projects means unlimited federal loan guarantees. It's right out of a socialist manifesto.
Privatized profit and socialized risk. Sound familiar?
The attractive free-market alternative is a wide array of energy suppliers and services, funded with private capital and municipal bonding (and yes, some subsidies), competing for contracts with local authorities headed up by citizens. Clean energy advocates in Kentucky, for example, facing a proposal for nuclear plants said they aim for efficiency and a large network of smaller energy generators, such as hydrogen fuel cells, wind, solar and small scale-hydroelectricity. "We don't have to replace one centralized power plant with another," said Tom FitzGerald, director of the Kentucky Resources Council.
Wouldn't our nation be great to spawn a clean energy economy that favors technologies our young people can safely handle, with low barriers for entrepreneurial entry, with no risks of being weaponized? But with the nuclear push we're seeing from conservative senators (including, oddly, our own Mark Udall), some future nuclear engineer could go "Dr. Hassan" on us.
The more we produce electricity from numerous smaller contributors, the closer we get to independence from multinational corporations and distant regulators who make the local voice irrelevant. For maximal jobs, we need entrepreneurship and competition to heavily favor local installations that leverage our existing distribution system. It means a maximal build-out of rooftop solar, power tagging to identify producers and buyers, demand response on heavy users, storage of all types to take up the low cost of wind. It's all about distributed generation: as American as baseball and apple pie.
And the best way we're going to get there is if conservative-minded citizens wake up and smell the freedom of pushing back against nuclear power as the wasteful socialist nightmare that it is.
Currently, nuclear power plants quietly supply us (in the US) with 20% of our electricity, every day, all day and night. Sure, it produces waste - but unlike coal it is not vented into our atmosphere. Some would argue that it is inherently dangerous (e.g. Chernobyl); however, it is impossible for US plants to explode like Chernobyl. Meltdowns are a very small possibility, but the containment domes are nearly impenetrable.
Furthermore, it is not possible for a single engineer or a small group of engineers to make a weapon - or come even close. It is fearmongering to say otherwise.
The large central station nuclear plants that most assume are the only ones being developed are simply the result of business models that the people who developed nuclear energy in the very early days were using. There is no technical reason why nuclear plants cannot be sized for community ownership and control.
In fact, that is the driving model for Hyperion, NuScale, and my own company - Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
Funny thing - there are many "nukes" who agree with much of what Ms. Butterfield advocates. We just believe that if you really want to go small, it would be a good idea to do it with a technology where a pound of fuel contains as much energy as 2 million pounds of oil. The pound of uranium can fit into the palm of your hand, 2 million pounds of oil requires 30 tractor trailers to haul it.
If you like small, I recommend that you do not stand under one of the 40 story wind turbines that are all the rage.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
The Atomic Show
Ironically Mrs. Butterfield dreams of her child INSTALLING Solar Panels, rather than manufacturing Solar Panels. Solar Panels are not environmentally friendly enough to manufacture here. We rely upon Pollution outsourcing to accomplish making supposed green energy product. They actually dump the waste in an unarmed Farmers field, actually located behind the factory. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/08/AR2008030802595.html?sub=new
Small amounts of ordinary water will be a major fuel in the future.
The article about BlackLight Power (labeled Hydrinos) at http://www.american-reporter.com/ is a good place to begin.
The story is really about fractional Hydrogen. It describes power plants that will compete with nuclear power at a fraction of the cost and without the hazards. But, these will still usually be multi-megawatt centrally located installations.
We are also developing fractional Hydrogen. Our goal is a fuel for hybrid vehicles. One gallon of water can be expected to power your car 1,000 miles.
We call this ECHO™ - Energy from Collapsing Hydrogen Orbits.
ECHO makes possible SPICE™ - a Self Powered Internal Combustion Engine.
To learn more, see: http://www.chavaenergy.com Look under the heading: how?
There you will also see other revolutionary technologies that promise to replace fossil fuels and decentralize energy production.
Two independent laboratory validations of fractional Hydrogen have taken place. National laboratories can reproduce the experiments and rapidly increase the acceptance of this new source of energy..
Hybrid cars and trucks running on ECHO, along with other revolutionary technologies, once they are thoroughly validated, can become power plants when suitably parked. No wires necessary. The vehicles are expected to pay their way by selling electricity!
Who will not want such a car or truck?
A 24/7 development program will accomplish several goals, one of which is to cost effectively end new nuclear power plants.
See the website LENR-CANR for data on thousands of experiments at more than one hundred labs, including the U.S. Navy.
BlackLight Power claims they will be producing megawatt plants in 2012. Six utilities, including PacifiCorp and Conrectiv have signed Agreements to purchase more than 8,000 megawatts of electricity.
We hope to have a first product based on ECHO with a year. Cars should be prototyped with a SPICE in three years. Mass production is possible in 5 years.
With a 24/7 development program, these timelines will be shortened.
New nuclear plants in this country take at least 10 years to come on line.
When Pearl Harbor was attacked, FORD built the WIllow Run plant in a matter of months. It completed a bomber every 59 minutes.
This is inherently much simpler technology.