Saudi oil reserves

[MediumTex]

If we compare Fission waste with Fusion waste...

The half-life of the radioisotopes produced by fusion tend to be less than those from fission, so that the inventory decreases more rapidly. Unlike fission reactors, whose waste remains radioactive for thousands of years, most of the radioactive material in a fusion reactor would be the reactor core itself, which would be dangerous for about 50 years, and low-level waste another 100. Although this waste will be considerably more radioactive during those 50 years than fission waste, the very short half-life makes the process very attractive, as the waste management is fairly straightforward. By 300 years the material would have the same radioactivity as coal ash.

Additionally, the choice of materials used in a fusion reactor is less constrained than in a fission design, where many materials are required for their specific neutron cross-sections. This allows a fusion reactor to be designed using materials that are selected specifically to be "low activation", materials that do not easily become radioactive. Vanadium, for example, would become much less radioactive than stainless steel. Carbon fiber materials are also low-activation, as well as being strong and light, and are a promising area of study for laser-inertial reactors where a magnetic field is not required.

In general terms, fusion reactors would create far less radioactive material than a fission reactor, the material it would create is less damaging biologically, and the radioactivity "burns off" within a time period that is well within existing engineering capabilities.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_pow ... management

But isn't that kind of like comparing the way cow poop smells to the way unicorn poop smells?

My understanding is that while cow poop smells like poop, unicorn poop is supposed to smells like Skittles.

[Gumby]

But isn't that kind of like comparing the way cow poop smells to the way unicorn poop smells?

My understanding is that while cow poop smells like poop, unicorn poop is supposed to smells like Skittles.

Huh?

You make it sound like fusion reactions, and their waste, are mythical (like a unicorn). You do realize that fusion reactions exist, right? The Sun is an ongoing natural fusion reaction that we see every day. Every star in the Universe is an example of fusion power.  Man-made fusion reactions have been taking place for over 50 years. And there are actual fusion reactors that are currently in production.

See: ITER: International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor

The ITER fusion reactor itself has been designed to produce 500 megawatts of output power for 50 megawatts of input power, or ten times the amount of energy put in. The machine is expected to demonstrate the principle of getting more energy out of the fusion process than is used to initiate it, something that has not been achieved with previous fusion reactors. Construction of the facility began in 2007, and the first plasma is expected in 2019. When ITER becomes operational, it will become the largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment in use, surpassing the Joint European Torus. The first commercial demonstration fusion power plant, named DEMO, is proposed to follow on from the ITER project to bring fusion energy to the commercial market.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER

There are a number of enormous hurdles that must be cleared before fusion reactors will ever be successful — which is why DEMO, the first commercial demonstration fusion power plant, is unlikely to be generating reliable power before the year 2050.

But, this idea that fusion itself is somehow mythical — like a unicorn — is false. Fusion does exist. Fusion waste does exist. As I said before, one kilogram of fusion fuel can provide the same amount of energy as 10 million kilograms of fossil fuel. However, it's going to be a very long time (many decades, at least) before anyone figures out how to harness that power in the form of a power plant that can be easily switched on.

I'm sure the idea of a stable and portable internal combustion engine would have seemed like science fiction to someone 400 years ago — even though rudimentary gunpowder-combustion power existed back then. (Even the idea of a microwave oven would have been science fiction 100 years ago). It seems incredibly short-sighted to suggest that we'll never figure out how to harness fusion power.

The basic criticism of fusion power is.... "We will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don't know how to make the box."  The fact that we haven't yet figured out how to build the box shouldn't stop us from trying.

[MediumTex]

I'm sure the idea of a stable and portable internal combustion engine would have seemed like science fiction to someone 400 years ago — even though rudimentary gunpowder-combustion power existed back then. (Even the idea of a microwave oven would have been science fiction 100 years ago). It seems incredibly short-sighted to suggest that we'll never figure out how to harness fusion power.

I don't mean to suggest that we will never figure out how to harness fusion power, I just meant that it's hard to know whether the waste products from fusion power (i.e., the fusion poop) would actually put us in a significantly better position that we are in with fission waste.

It sounds like fusion waste will still pose a multi-decade storage challenge and that is still a long time to trust humans not to screw something up (or to hope that the power doesn't go out for an extended period as you might see in an EMP event).

I am hopeful, though.  It's certainly exciting to think about.

[stone]

We already have the perfect, entirely safe and entirely ample fusion energy system. It is called the sun. Microalgae can produce 25% of their body mass as oil and grow in salt water and provide 30x the oil yield per acre as oil palms. It is trivial to convert them to biodiesel. They can grow in areas unsuitable for agriculture (eg deserts) in bioreactors or salt water ponds.

Use of seaweed to provide bioethanol feedstock only requires development of yeast that digest alginate. The entire ocean could be used for growing such seaweed were we to want to.
http://ba-lab.com/
http://www.seaweedenergysolutions.com/

The choice is simply whether we choose to have people unemployed or to employ them developing sustainable energy.
The current policy seems to be to use unemployment and war to peg oil to $100d/barrel indefinitely until it all runs out. Potentially enough unemployment and war might enable oil to stay at $100/barrel, no alternatives to be developed and simply fewer and fewer people to be left with the means to afford energy. Finally the last drop of oil will get used for Loyd Blankfein's  last private jet journey and then he will have to resort to be carried in a sedan chair or whatever.

It is a pure lie that biofuels can't replace fossil fuels IMO. Just do the math. Look at the net oil yields per acre (after production costs) and current oil consumption. There simply isn't a problem.

[Gumby]

I just meant that it's hard to know whether the waste products from fusion power (i.e., the fusion poop) would actually put us in a significantly better position that we are in with fission waste.

But it would.. Fusion reactors would create far less radioactive material than a fission reactor, and the waste itself is less damaging biologically. How does that not put us in a significantly better position?

It sounds like fusion waste will still pose a multi-decade storage challenge and that is still a long time to trust humans not to screw something up (or to hope that the power doesn't go out for an extended period as you might see in an EMP event).

Fusion fuel is very tiny — about the weight of a postage stamp. It's a lot easier to stick into a concrete cask than the tons of fission fuel waste that are created today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage

Dry cask storage is not a very good long term plan for fission waste. The casks will probably not survive more than a hundred years or so. But, dry cask storage would be very doable for fusion waste. The casks would be smaller and wouldn't need to last more than a few decades.

[MediumTex]

I just meant that it's hard to know whether the waste products from fusion power (i.e., the fusion poop) would actually put us in a significantly better position that we are in with fission waste.

But it would.. Fusion reactors would create far less radioactive material than a fission reactor, and the waste itself is less damaging biologically. How does that not put us in a significantly better position?

It sounds like fusion waste will still pose a multi-decade storage challenge and that is still a long time to trust humans not to screw something up (or to hope that the power doesn't go out for an extended period as you might see in an EMP event).

Fusion fuel is very tiny — about the weight of a postage stamp. It's a lot easier to stick into a concrete cask than the tons of fission fuel waste that are created today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage

Dry cask storage is not a very good long term plan for fission waste. The casks will probably not survive more than a hundred years or so. But, dry cask storage would be very doable for fusion waste. The casks would be smaller and wouldn't need to last more than a few decades.

You're right.

I just hear a voice in the back of my mind saying that the promise of fusion today sounds a lot like the promise of fission in 1950 and it didn't turn out quite the way we thought it would.

[lazyboy]

We already have the perfect, entirely safe and entirely ample fusion energy system. It is called the sun. Microalgae can produce 25% of their body mass as oil and grow in salt water and provide 30x the oil yield per acre as oil palms. It is trivial to convert them to biodiesel. They can grow in areas unsuitable for agriculture (eg deserts) in bioreactors or salt water ponds.

Use of seaweed to provide bioethanol feedstock only requires development of yeast that digest alginate. The entire ocean could be used for growing such seaweed were we to want to.
http://ba-lab.com/
http://www.seaweedenergysolutions.com/

The choice is simply whether we choose to have people unemployed or to employ them developing sustainable energy.
The current policy seems to be to use unemployment and war to peg oil to $100d/barrel indefinitely until it all runs out. Potentially enough unemployment and war might enable oil to stay at $100/barrel, no alternatives to be developed and simply fewer and fewer people to be left with the means to afford energy. Finally the last drop of oil will get used for Loyd Blankfein's  last private jet journey and then he will have to resort to be carried in a sedan chair or whatever.

It is a pure lie that biofuels can't replace fossil fuels IMO. Just do the math. Look at the net oil yields per acre (after production costs) and current oil consumption. There simply isn't a problem.

Thanks for that hopeful link, Stone.

[smurff]

I got curious and did some Google/Wikipedia research.

Two of the three known major nuclear power generator (commercial scale) disasters that have occurred so far have all happened a short time after they went online:  

In the case of Three Mile Island-2, the reactor got its license in 1978 and began commercial operation December 30 1978; the accident was March 28, 1979.  The reactor had a mere 3 months of use before it suffered a partial meltdown.

In the case of Chernobyl Reactor 4, it began operating in 1983; the accident was in April 1986.  The reactor was a mere 3 years in use before it melted.  ("Commercial" was not a concept in the USSR of the 1980s like it is today.)

In the case of Fukushima Reactor 1, it went online in July 1967; the act-of-god related disaster happened March 2011.  Though act-of-god was involved, design flaws (including location) likely contributed to the disaster.  It was the granddaddy of the group, at just under 44 years of use when it blew up.

In June 1954, the USSR's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant became the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid (closed 2002).  The world's first commercial nuclear power station was Calder Hall in Sellafield, England was opened in 1956 (closed 2003). The first commercial nuclear generator to become operational in the United States was the Shippingport Reactor outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, December 1957 (closed 1982).  


edit - correct age of Fukushima-1

[smurff]

oops, clicked to post too quickly 

So commercial scale nuclear power generation has been around less than 60 years.  Short of accidents, the power plants were built to have operating lifetimes of 30 to 40 years, with many around the world being allowed to work longer.  The different waste materials generated by these power plants, however, as MT said, will be a threat to humanity for a period of time that exceeds the age of human civilization itself, beginning (according to various accounts) some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.

The half-life (the time it takes for half the initial number of atoms in a sample to decay) of Plutonium-239, probably the most lethal component of nuclear waste, is 24,000 years.  Even after 24,000 years, Plutonium-239 is still lethal.  The hazardous life (the length of time that must elapse before the material is considered safe) of a radioactive element is at least 10 half-lives. Plutonium-239 is therefore hazardous for at least 240,000 years.

That would be a period time that exceeds the first appearance of homo sapiens some 130,000 to 200,000 years ago.

[MediumTex]

oops, clicked to post too quickly 

So commercial scale nuclear power generation has been around less than 60 years.  Short of accidents, the power plants were built to have operating lifetimes of 30 to 40 years, with many around the world being allowed to work longer.  The different waste materials generated by these power plants, however, as MT said, will be a threat to humanity for a period of time that exceeds the age of human civilization itself, beginning (according to various accounts) some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.

The half-life (the time it takes for half the initial number of atoms in a sample to decay) of Plutonium-239, probably the most lethal component of nuclear waste, is 24,000 years.  Even after 24,000 years, Plutonium-239 is still lethal.  The hazardous life (the length of time that must elapse before the material is considered safe) of a radioactive element is at least 10 half-lives. Plutonium-239 is therefore hazardous for at least 240,000 years.

That would be a period time that exceeds the first appearance of homo sapiens some 130,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Think about how annoyed we would be right now if our society was destroyed by a poorly designed storage container for the waste generated by a nuclear power plant from 10,000 years ago.

I am imagining a spoof of the movie "The Red Violin" called "The Yellow Barrel".  This movie would cover the first 10,000 years of the life of a batch of nuclear waste material.  The barrel would narrate its story with witty asides like: "Oh good, another group of explorers are entering the cavern.  It's only been 970 years since the last ones came through and tracked a bunch of hot particles back to their settlement.  I love having visitors--these other barrels are so dull!"

[lazyboy]

The news "black out" from Japan: Has anyone noticed that the news reporting about the accident in Japan has been turned down quite a bit? I doubt that the problem has  gone away. It seems like this major disaster will be affecting us for a long, long time to come. And I do mean all of "us."

[Gumby]

I just meant that it's hard to know whether the waste products from fusion power (i.e., the fusion poop) would actually put us in a significantly better position that we are in with fission waste.

But it would.. Fusion reactors would create far less radioactive material than a fission reactor, and the waste itself is less damaging biologically. How does that not put us in a significantly better position?

It sounds like fusion waste will still pose a multi-decade storage challenge and that is still a long time to trust humans not to screw something up (or to hope that the power doesn't go out for an extended period as you might see in an EMP event).

Fusion fuel is very tiny — about the weight of a postage stamp. It's a lot easier to stick into a concrete cask than the tons of fission fuel waste that are created today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage

Dry cask storage is not a very good long term plan for fission waste. The casks will probably not survive more than a hundred years or so. But, dry cask storage would be very doable for fusion waste. The casks would be smaller and wouldn't need to last more than a few decades.

You're right.

I just hear a voice in the back of my mind saying that the promise of fusion today sounds a lot like the promise of fission in 1950 and it didn't turn out quite the way we thought it would.

I totally agree. But, if/when fusion lets us down, it probably won't be due to the waste of the spent fuel itself. The lighter/smaller/shorter-life-span of the waste is one of the better and more manageable aspects of fusion. In fact, there is no fusion waste if impurities are removed from the fuel.

If/when fusion lets us down, it will probably be due to a failure of the box. The good news is that the box won't ever have enough hazardous material in it to cause a large scale problem (beyond the immediate reactor area) like fission can/does. However, the box itself becomes fairly radioactive over time, and requires periodic replacement in sections. In many ways, the box is more of a problem than the spent fuel.

[stone]

Medium Tex:

What you DO find a lot of are alternative energy technologies that are basically what you might call "fossil fuels in drag."  When you look at the fossil fuel inputs that are necessary to build and maintain much of the alternative energy infrastructure you will see what I mean.

Let's unpick the logic of this claim. Oil extraction equipment was obviously first produced using coal energy. Do you say that oil is "coal in drag".

Are you claiming that alternative energy takes more fossil fuel to produce than it replaces? If so then this is a quick discussion because you are wrong except for the most extreme dumb-ass examples of coal heated corn ethanol production or roof-top solar panels in Scotland or whatever.

[dualstow]

'The Devil We Know', a great contemporary book on Iran by Robert Baer, discusses how overstated Saudi oil reserves are.

Anyway, we have nothing to worry about because I clearly heard Harry Browne in the radio archives state that oil does not come from deceased plants or dinosaurs (pronounced "dino-sowers") but from the earth itself.  ;)

[MediumTex]

Medium Tex:

What you DO find a lot of are alternative energy technologies that are basically what you might call "fossil fuels in drag."  When you look at the fossil fuel inputs that are necessary to build and maintain much of the alternative energy infrastructure you will see what I mean.

Let's unpick the logic of this claim. Oil extraction equipment was obviously first produced using coal energy. Do you say that oil is "coal in drag".

No, I wouldn't say that.  They're all fossil fuels, and thus just different configurations of stored "ancient sunlight."

Are you claiming that alternative energy takes more fossil fuel to produce than it replaces? If so then this is a quick discussion because you are wrong except for the most extreme dumb-ass examples of coal heated corn ethanol production or roof-top solar panels in Scotland or whatever.

Not at all.  What I am saying is that if you don't have fossil fuels you don't have the ability to dabble with any of these alternative energy technologies in the first place.  Efficiency is not the primary issue, though the net energy delivered by virtually all alternative energy forms is vastly lower than the net energy delivered by fossil fuel deposits.

The key is to understand that we don't need some fixed level of energy inputs for society to function (as the human body does with calories, for example).  What modern economies require to function is ever-increasing energy inputs to provide the feedstock for ever increasing levels of economic output.  In other words, we need increasing levels of net energy to make our economic dreams come true.  What we are seeing in reality, however, is declining levels of net energy on two fronts: first, fossil fuels are delivering less net energy as find ourselves cooking oil shale and drilling in ever more remote locations; second, we are imagining that we will be able to rely on alternative energy technologies as replacements for fossil fuels when the alternative energy technologies deliver dramatically less net energy than fossil fuels do.

If all we were looking for was a way to maintain current levels of energy use it is conceivable that alternative energy might be able to get us in the ballpark, but when you grasp that our economic system must be in a state of constant expansion in order to prevent its collapse (since expanding debt today requires higher economic output tomorrow to service today's debt and fund tomorrow's consumption) and economic expansion requires expanding supplies of energy and other natural resource inputs, the transitory nature of the whole arrangement becomes painfully obvious (to me anyway).

[stone]

Medium Tex, thanks for the clarification. I see what you mean now. Is it actually true that our economic ballooning does need a parallel energy ballooning? Alan Greenspan said that the consumer products of today weigh no more than those of the past. We now have an ipod rather than a walkman but does an ipod require more energy?

In principle I agree with the general point about exponential economic grow being a pig stupid set up but I don't think that we need fear oil running out so long as we busy ourselves getting the alternatives up and running. Perhaps the more labour and technology intensive nature of alternative energy might actually be a way to give new legs to the next step of the moronic paper wealth exponential expansion .

[MediumTex]

Is it actually true that our economic ballooning does need a parallel energy ballooning?

What does this graph suggest:



Note that although it fluctuates in almost perfect lockstep with economic conditions, oil consumption has always had positive growth over the 30 year period covered by this chart.  The only time it dipped below zero was when economic activity almost collapsed in 2008.

For a sense of why it might be that during a period of dramatic improvements in energy efficiency we have nevertheless seen nothing but increases in overall oil consumption, check out "Jevons Paradox":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

[MachineGhost]

NIMBY is alive and well even in the middle of literally nowhere.

The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository was to be a deep geological repository storage facility for spent nuclear reactor fuel and other high level radioactive waste, until the project was canceled in 2009. It was to be located on federal land adjacent to the Nevada Test Site in Nye County, Nevada, about 80 mi (130 km) northwest of the Las Vegas metropolitan area. The proposed repository was within Yucca Mountain, a ridge line in the south-central part of Nevada near its border with California.

Although the location has been highly contested by both environmentalists and non-local residents in Las Vegas, which is over 100 miles (160 km) away, it was approved in 2002 by the United States Congress. However, under the Obama Administration[2] funding for development of Yucca Mountain waste site was terminated effective with the 2011 federal budget passed by Congress on April 14, 2011. The US GAO stating that the closure was for policy not technical or safety reasons.[2] This leaves United States civilians without any long term storage site for high level radioactive waste, currently stored on-site at various nuclear facilities around the country, although the United States government can dispose of its waste at WIPP, in rooms 2,150 feet (660 m) underground.[3] The Department of Energy is reviewing other options for a high level waste repository.

There was significant public and political opposition to the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository project in Nevada. An attempt was made to push ahead with the project and override this opposition. But for large projects which would take decades to complete, there is every chance that sustained local opposition will prevail, and this happened with the Yucca Mountain project.[35] Successful nuclear waste storage siting efforts in Scandinavia have involved local communities in the decision-making process and given them a veto at each stage, but this did not happen with Yucca Mountain. Local communities at potential storage and repository sites "should have early and continued involvement in the process, including funding that would allow them to retain technical experts".[35]

EPA published in the Federal Register a final rule in 2009. The new rule limits radiation doses from Yucca Mountain for up to 1,000,000 years after it closes. Within that regulatory time frame, the EPA has two dose standards that would apply based on the number of years from the time the facility is closed.

For the first 10,000 years, the EPA would retain the 2001 final rule’s dose limit of 15 millirem per year. This is protection at the level of the most stringent radiation regulations in the U.S. today. From 10,000 to one million years, EPA established a dose limit of 100 millirem per year. EPA's rule requires the Department of Energy to show that Yucca Mountain can safely contain wastes, considering the effects of earthquakes, volcanic activity, climate change, and container corrosion, over one million years. The current analysis indicates that the repository will cause less than 1 mrem/year public dose through 1,000,000 years.

In May 2009, Secretary Steven Chu stated:

    "Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table. What we're going to be doing is saying, let's step back. We realize that we know a lot more today than we did 25 or 30 years ago. The NRC is saying that the dry cask storage at current sites would be safe for many decades, so that gives us time to figure out what we should do for a long-term strategy. We will be assembling a blue-ribbon panel to look at the issue. We're looking at reactors that have a high-energy neutron spectrum that can actually allow you to burn down the long-lived actinide waste. These are fast-neutron reactors. There's others: a resurgence of hybrid solutions of fusion fission where the fusion would impart not only energy, but again creates high-energy neutrons that can burn down the long-lived actinides. ...
    "Some of the waste is already vitrified. There is, in my mind, no economical reason why you would ever think of pulling it back into a potential fuel cycle. So one could well imagine—again, it depends on what the blue-ribbon panel says—one could well imagine that for a certain classification for a certain type of waste, you don't want to have access to it anymore, so that means you could use different sites than Yucca Mountain, such as salt domes. Once you put it in there, the salt oozes around it. These are geologically stable for a 50 to 100 million year time scale. The trouble with those type of places for repositories is you don't have access to it anymore. But say for certain types of waste you don't want to have access to it anymore—that's good. It's a very natural containment. ...whereas there would be other waste where you say it has some inherent value, let's keep it around for a hundred years, two hundred years, because there's a high likelihood we'll come back to it and want to recover that.
    "So the real thing is, let's get some really wise heads together and figure out how you want to deal with the interim and long-term storage. Yucca was supposed to be everything to everybody, and I think, knowing what we know today, there's going to have to be several regional areas."[65]

In 2008, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works found that failure to perform to contractual requirements could cost taxpayers up to $11 billion by 2020.[66] In July 2009, the House of Representatives voted 388 to 30 on amendments to HHR3183 (Roll call vote 591, via Clerk.House.gov) to not defund the Yucca Mountain repository in the FY2010 budget.[24][67]

[MediumTex]

For the first 10,000 years, the EPA would retain the 2001 final rule’s dose limit of 15 millirem per year. This is protection at the level of the most stringent radiation regulations in the U.S. today. From 10,000 to one million years, EPA established a dose limit of 100 millirem per year. EPA's rule requires the Department of Energy to show that Yucca Mountain can safely contain wastes, considering the effects of earthquakes, volcanic activity, climate change, and container corrosion, over one million years. The current analysis indicates that the repository will cause less than 1 mrem/year public dose through 1,000,000 years.

The EPA is today's Ozymandias.

[alvinroast]

In June 1954, the USSR's Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant became the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid (closed 2002).  The world's first commercial nuclear power station was Calder Hall in Sellafield, England was opened in 1956 (closed 2003). The first commercial nuclear generator to become operational in the United States was the Shippingport Reactor outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, December 1957 (closed 1982).  


edit - correct age of Fukushima-1

I thought this was the first electric generating reactor. Also had a 'partial meltdown' though you won't hear about it on the tour.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2960

The town also has it's own nuclear submarine conning tower in the desert. Somewhere I've got a photo of myself standing under it.
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/10226

[smurff]

Well Alvinroast there are lots of firsts when it comes to nukes, and most claims to be the first or the only have lots of qualifying statements about purpose and location.

Arco was an experimental reactor used for peacetime development and design. The reactors I referred to were not experimental but developed as commercial reactors and commercial scale power plants. The very first one (non commercial) was in the Chicago area and was part of the manhattan project.

[stone]

Here's a nice article I ran across recently at work by William Banholzer, CTO at Dow Chemical.  Banholzer is a chemical engineer by training.  I quote the abstract:

Practical Limitations and Recognizing Hype
W.F. Banholzer
Energy and Environmental Science, 2012, 5, 5478

Large swaths of the public lack a basic understanding of energy issues. This fact, coupled with a desire for a miracle that will mitigate energy and environmental concerns, makes clean energy an area ripe for hype. Many technologies are described that are possible, yet will never be practical. As scientists and engineers we must do better job explaining the difference. Practical limitations were ignored as the development of cellulosic ethanol rode a wave of optimism and hype earlier in this decade. It is now clear that cellulosic ethanol is not delivering on the promises made. Scientists and engineers will continue to show us what is possible. We must focus our efforts in energy on those technologies that can also be practical.

I think cellulosic ethanol is probably much like the internet in that in 1990 people were saying the internet would be fantastic by 1995 but it was fairly rubbish until 2005 or whatever. Making cellulosic ethanol requires new yeast etc to be engineered that express all the right sorts of enzymes and can withstand the toxins from the feedstock. It is perfectly do able but will take work. The number of people working on it is pitifully small. The first aeroplanes were not much use were they.

[alvinroast]

Well Alvinroast there are lots of firsts when it comes to nukes, and most claims to be the first or the only have lots of qualifying statements about purpose and location.

Arco was an experimental reactor used for peacetime development and design. The reactors I referred to were not experimental but developed as commercial reactors and commercial scale power plants. The very first one (non commercial) was in the Chicago area and was part of the manhattan project.

Yeah, I know. But they did power an entire town with it so I think that counts as the grid. It's not the same as a commercial reactor of course. Although anything Soviet may have really been experimental rather than commercial - just on a larger scale. (Let's see what happens if we use nuclear for electric power generation. If anything goes wrong we'll lose a few cities, but it's just an experiment)

It is pretty cool to walk through and realize just what the state of technology was while they were running a nuclear plant.

[smurff]

Although anything Soviet may have really been experimental rather than commercial - just on a larger scale. (Let's see what happens if we use nuclear for electric power generation. If anything goes wrong we'll lose a few cities, but it's just an experiment)

Yeah, pretty much everything the Soviets did was an "experiment."

[stone]

It is a thought provoking article but to my mind there seems to be a couple of market failures in the energy economy. Collecting up agricultural waste to use it to make cellulosic ethanol costs a lot compared to fracking gas because it requires lots of people to be employed. If those people want to do something else rather than gathering up straw, then great BUT if they actually would welcome such jobs then it is very hard to get that into a purely commercial equation.  Also fossil fuels will run out whatever Harry Browne may have said to the contary.

Here's a nice article I ran across recently at work by William Banholzer, CTO at Dow Chemical.  Banholzer is a chemical engineer by training.  I quote the abstract:

Practical Limitations and Recognizing Hype
W.F. Banholzer
Energy and Environmental Science, 2012, 5, 5478

Large swaths of the public lack a basic understanding of energy issues. This fact, coupled with a desire for a miracle that will mitigate energy and environmental concerns, makes clean energy an area ripe for hype. Many technologies are described that are possible, yet will never be practical. As scientists and engineers we must do better job explaining the difference. Practical limitations were ignored as the development of cellulosic ethanol rode a wave of optimism and hype earlier in this decade. It is now clear that cellulosic ethanol is not delivering on the promises made. Scientists and engineers will continue to show us what is possible. We must focus our efforts in energy on those technologies that can also be practical.