On Energy, Global Warming, Home Heating and Transportation

peculations about climate change, energy supply, and price grow more ominous daily. Computer models seem to predict more dire consequences from atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory predicts a sea level rise of 20 feet before the end of this century. The world supply of oil and gas is limited and the production rate, according to some analysts, may have reached its peak. China and India are prosperous emerging economies with rapidly rising competitive demands for dwindling oil. All this information surely is a signal that in coming years, gasoline, heating oil, and natural gas prices are going to trend higher, not lower. The price of natural gas is at least ten times what it was less than two decades ago. The skyrocketing price is a direct result of burning natural gas to generate electricity because it was cheap, and because environmental standards are more easily met. Many homes will be cold this winter and the worst environmental calamity is freezing in the dark.

This is a grim outlook -- no silver bullet, no magical solution. We simply use hydrocarbons too much for all sorts of things -- electricity, transportation, heating, fertilizer, plastics, and much more. Most utilization is essential and no alternative exists, at least not now.

However, we can relieve the problem and we must start now to produce energy without emissions. Four possibilities exist; solar, wind, burying the CO2 from fossil plants, and nuclear generation. The first two provide a fuzzy feeling of environmental virtue but the infrastructure is expensive and neither can provide or even contribute significantly to the ten-fold increase in energy production future civilization requires. Moreover, when the wind stops and the sun sets, a steam power station must be on hot standby to pick up the load until solar and wind power production can resume. Forcing gas from coal plants underground is a new technique for the electric industry and cost estimates make it prohibitive -- almost doubling cost at the meter. The only established technology capable of providing cheap, uninterrupted power on an immense scale without emissions, is nuclear. It's becoming abundantly clear that for our civilization, nuclear fission was discovered and utilized in the nick of time. We should replace all the coal, natural gas and oil burning electric plants during the next 50 years. We can’t start any sooner than now! To quote Dr. James Lovelock, the founder of Greenpeace, “only one immediately available source (of energy) does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy.” Fossil energycan't be better used than in the transition to massive nuclear power generation. Our objective must be availability on an international scale so enormous that energy no longer triggers military confrontation. Energy availability is the key to future political stability; the alternative is fighting over the remaining fossil inventory and increasing emissions in attempts to meet ever-expanding energy demands.

During the twenty years between 1968 and 1988, the US built and still operates over 100 nuclear electric power reactors, 20% of our total capacity. The phenomenal operating record of these plants has resulted in cheaper electricity than from any other source with reliability that has allowed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to extend operating licenses twenty years beyond the initial forty with further extensions later. We propose that our nation and others initiate building these plants as fast as we can. The French began the process in the 1970s when the oil supply crisis stopped their Metro, elevators, and riots were imminent. Now, 80+ % of their electricity comes from nuclear power plants and they are selling electricity to neighboring countries. A drastic increase in domestic nuclear power generation at a low price would provide an alternative for heating and the price of natural gas would become irrelevant. Proposals to build any other type of power station (coal or gas) should be questioned closely.

The first new nuclear power plants will be the reliable pressurized water reactors and boiling water reactors where we have many reactor years of experience in construction and operation of both types. Proposed new, modified designs are simpler with fewer moving parts -- easier to operate and maintain. We should be building these new nuclear power stations as fast as the industry can manage.

Along with this effort to increase nuclear power production, the US should resume reprocessing of spent reactor fuel and incorporate the uranium, plutonium and higher transuranic isotopes in new fuel. The process can be safe and the residual fission products (waste) then occupy a very small but very hot volume amenable to sophisticated disposal. A salt deposit storage facility similar to the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant would be an ideal solution. Other possibilities exist, but since the National Academy of Science recommended storage in salt deposits a half century ago, no better solution has been found. In the long run (e.g. 50 to75 years), sodium or helium cooled breeder reactors will be needed that can produce excess plutonium fuel while producing electricity. These technical developments are proper activities for the federal government. The French and others are leading the safe development of advanced fuel cycles; the French plant near the Channel coast is surrounded by grassy fields grazed by cattle, no doubt to make cheeses like camembert and brie.A major benefit would be to end the expensive but worthless effort to store spent fuel at Yucca Mountain. The billions of dollars going to waste on that project could fund most of the proposed spent fuel reprocessing. The enormous nuclear waste problem we face is of our own making, originating with the wrong-headed decision to stop reprocessing thirty years ago. The "example" we set with the expectation that the rest of the world would follow, has been completely ignored. Internal combustion engines are a major source of emissions averted by an inexpensive source of electricity when a “plug in” car powered by the electrical grid becomes available. Replacing the present fleet of private automobiles will require decades and we doubt the feasibility of hybrid, long haul trucks, although some saving may evolve.

The Holy Grail for many interested in mitigating global warming from carbon dioxide is the hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is a carrier, not a primary energy source and the principal difficulty is the production of hydrogen itself. Abundant in water and hydrocarbons, hydrogen extraction requires high temperatures currently obtained by burning natural gas, releasing CO₂, so nothing is gained. A large-scale hydrogen economy is only practical when teamed with nuclear power -- a nuclear electric power station producing high temperature helium can be used as the source of heat to produce hydrogen. Graphite moderated, helium cooled reactors have been built in the past, different designs are proposed and one is under construction, but no full-scale prototype exists. Hence, this project also is a proper developmental responsibility of the Department of Energy. High temperature gas is a first step on the long path to using hydrogen for propulsion. We foresee decades of development. We have described what must be done to avoid the potential, but feared, change in the earth’s climate. If doomsday writers are correct, we have chosen the right path. If all the furor is a false alarm, we still have significantly increased energy production, provided a cleaner environment, and solved the major problem of increasing dependence on foreign oil. We can’t lose, but the time to start is now -- it's not necessary to burn every last ton of coal before starting the transition and the effort must be international. To quote Dr. Lovelock again, “civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear—the one, safe, available energy source.”

Finally, in this bare outline, we stress that transition to nuclear power must be achieved with uncertain, expensive, largely foreign oil supplies controlled by unstable governments. To squander the energy we have, jeopardizes our future; we must develop as much as necessary of our oil and natural gas resources in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the continental shelves, ANWAR, Colorado Plateau oil shale, and most abundant, the Athabaskan oil sands in Canada. The transition will take years and we don't know how long we have.

# E-Mail for William R. Stratton: bstrat505@comcast.net

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