Situation Today
Fossil Fuels
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Here now and cheap.
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Existing infrastructure:
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gas and oil is cheap to ship,
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and easy to store.
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Limited disaster potential:
- kills more steadily, not very saliently.
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Fossil fuels make great heat engines,
- but poor electricity and kinetic engines.
Basic Alternative Fuels / Stores
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Hydrogen
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Batteries
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Nuclear
More details in next chapters.
1. Hydrogen
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Lighter but less dense (lower per m$^3$)
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Best for airplanes and ships far off the grid.
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Will need new designs, but not terribly novel.
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Flammable (better and worse than gasoline).
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Similar but more corrosive than natgas.
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Storable like natgas
Hydrogen’s Deadly Problem
Cost!
Hydrogen’s Deadly Problem
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Clean hydrogen costs about 10x as much as natgas
- could come down to 2x in 30 years?!
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Who wants to pay “only” twice as much?
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Think competitive industries.
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Think Expedia airplane trips
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Think shipping containers.
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Better catalysts? Cheaper electricity inputs?
2. Nuclear Power
- Clean reliable power
except when plant blows up.
Nuclear Power Safety
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Safest plants ever built, but not safe enough.
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1 core melt-down per 4,000 reactor years.
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Unknown problems always creep up.
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Disasters can be terrible.
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Hard to control human agency problem:
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Make 100x profit using 5c screw as $5 screw.
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Who will check later?
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Screw changes risk from 1/100m to 1/99.99m.
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Nuclear Power Safety
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How safe is safe enough?
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Even overall, could make twice the profit allowing 1-in-3,000 over 1-in-4,000?
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What company and manager wouldn’t want to outperform others and be promoted?
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Inspect (or falsify reports)?
- Much easier to conquer atom than humans!
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Watch HBO Chernobyl miniseries.
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Safety Considerations
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Human Operations Error:
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we need nuclear plants where operator can no longer even intentionally blow up the plant,
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no matter how hard they try.
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Better Than Fossil Fuels?
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Fossil fuels kill hundreds of thousands
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every year, but not with big bangs,
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and scary radioactivity.
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Since 1960, nuclear has killed $\approx$ 100,
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almost all in Chernobyl.
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Devastation in Fukujima is from Tsunami, not from nuclear plant core meltdown!
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Radiation is not as bad as public imagines it.
- It truly depends on dose.
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Nuclear Power Regulation
The Regulator’s Problem:
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Companies that want to go to 1 in 3,000,
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and know more than the regulators.
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What does a bureaucrat get for:
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Type-I error?
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Type-II error?
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wanna become famous? only one way…
Innovation And Improvement
Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1975:
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Need better regulation.
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More regulation is not better regulation.
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No new designs both completed and built
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Some slightly better designs were finished.
- Better safety features than older designs.
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About to change (Terapower Wyoming)
- FOAK costs, experience, etc.
Nuclear Fusion Plants
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Completely different physics.
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Power source of the sun, infinite supply.
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Don’t drink the Cool Aid.
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Ironically, economically just like fission:
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very high fixed costs,
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very low marginal costs,
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near infinite supply of fuel.
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Except
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fusion plants cannot blow up, more like flame very difficult to sustain.
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less radioactivity at end of life (EOL)
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No panacea, but good to research.
Eol Nuclear Waste Problem?
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Spent Fuel-Rod Disposal
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but could be reused 1,000x more in breeder reactors, which no one wants to license,
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and government has guaranteed disposal.
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PS: Fossil Fuels have same problem,
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but public does not seem to care as much;
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much stronger lobby for fossil fuels!
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Perfunctory: Feds collect nominal amounts.
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Biggest Nuclear Problem
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Huge Fixed Cost: Think $20b/plant.
- plus maybe cost overruns.
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Think 10 years to build.
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Could be obsolete at opening,
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while suffering new regs along the way,
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or be so unpopular as not to be licensed.
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- Who wants to gamble their retirement funds?
3. Batteries
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Very low energy density.
- Think 5% of fossil fuels.
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Never useful for heat.
- Make heat first and store heat!
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Battery capacity on grid is tiny.
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Think 10 minutes of storage.
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Even hydro storage is much more.
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Only useful for niche applications sofar.
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Today’s Lithium Batteries
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Best and dominant technology
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Very lightweight (great for cars)
- Highly explosive when exposed to humidity.
We will cover batteries in the next chapter.
Cool Aid: Green Tech
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Even technologies working in the lab usually fail to work in the real world.
- Think 1 in 10 will ultimately make it.
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Fortunately, civilization has 20 draws.
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R&D investment is large and risky,
- also because another stealth green company could solve problem even better.
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Better to research, develop, or deploy now?
Cool Aid: Fossil Fuels
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FUD. Attack critics.
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Huge lobbying engine and political power.
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Fossil fuels have enjoyed huge subsidies.
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Think half-truths and non-sense:
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mix liberally,
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repeat often.
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If it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie — Slim.
A lie ain’t a side of a story. It’s just a lie — Gus.
Attack Vectors
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Blacken green alternatives
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Point out unimaginably large numbers
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Of course it’s big—including the problem.
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Ignorant public is easy target.
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(PS: also true for green proponents.)
Space Requirements
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Green Tech requires too much space:
- Size of Massachusetts!
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Yes and no.
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Space is not a constraint, except inside cities.
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Think instead size of land for agriculture.
- need only <5% thereof and elsewhere.
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Space Needs For Solar
Dig, Recycle, Etc.
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WSJ OpEd: Get ready digging.
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Of course yes, but so do fossil fuels:
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Real(istic) EOL consequences of fossil fuels have been terrible!
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So are the ongoing local health effects.
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Worst comes to worst, landfill wind turbines.
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But critique is cosmically good
- better designs with recycling in mind.
Tire Mountains, 1970s
Limited Clean Materials
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Cobalt, Lithium are in short supply.
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Yes and No.
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Cosmic Nonsense:
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Just cheapest and best first solutions.
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Chemistries will be much better and cheaper in 30 years.
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Unfair Government Subsidies
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Clean energy is indeed getting subsidies,
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but not nearly as much as fossil fuels have gotten over the decades.
- (and this does not even consider the pollution externalities, which we should add in, because we have not charged them for it.)
Conclusion
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Fossil fuels are not easy to replace,
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but they are not irreplaceable.
Technology alternatives to be explained next.