| 4.
Field Trip to a Power Plant
Archive of Past Articles for Chapter
4
2011 April 26. Report Urges Storing Spent Nuclear Fuel, Not Reprocessing It. By Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times. Excerpt: Experts on nuclear power predict that Japan’s Fukushima crisis will lead to a major rethinking of how spent nuclear fuel is handled in the United States but have cast doubt on a proposed solution: reprocessing the fuel to recover plutonium and other materials for reuse…
Rather than processing the fuel to retrieve plutonium, the report suggests, the fuel should be “managed” so that the option of doing so is preserved — perhaps by storing the fuel in above-ground silos for a century. It recommends moving it to a centralized repository, starting with fuel from nuclear reactors that have been retired and torn down.
2011 April 11. Japan Nuclear Disaster Put on Par With Chernobyl. By Hiroko Tabuchi and Keith Bradsher, The New York Times. Excerpt:Japan has decided to raise its assessment of the accident at the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant to the worst rating on an international scale…
The decision to raise the alert level to 7 from 5 on the scale amounts to an admission that the accident at the nuclear facility, brought on by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, is likely to have substantial and long-lasting consequences for health and for the environment. Some in the nuclear industry have been saying for weeks that the accident released large amounts of radiation...
On the International Nuclear Event Scale, a Level 7 nuclear accident involves “widespread health and environmental effects” and the “external release of a significant fraction of the reactor core inventory.”
2011 April 5. U.S. Sees Array of New Threats at Japan’s Nuclear Plant. By James Glanz and William J. Broad, The New York Times. Excerpt: …United States government engineers sent to help with the crisis in Japan are warning that the troubled nuclear plant there is facing a wide array of fresh threats that could persist indefinitely, and that in some cases are expected to increase as a result of the very measures being taken to keep the plant stable, according to a confidential assessment prepared by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
Among the new threats that were cited in the assessment, dated March 26, are the mounting stresses placed on the containment structures as they fill with radioactive cooling water, making them more vulnerable to rupture in one of the aftershocks rattling the site after the earthquake and tsunami of March 11. The document also cites the possibility of explosions inside the containment structures due to the release of hydrogen and oxygen from seawater pumped into the reactors, and offers new details on how semimolten fuel rods and salt buildup are impeding the flow of fresh water meant to cool the nuclear cores….
2011 April 5. Crisis Saddles Village With Unwanted Notoriety. By Martin Fackler, The NY Times. Excerpt: …Iitate (pronounced EE-tah-tay) has felt itself under siege since the damaged Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station showered the village with far higher levels of radiation than neighboring communities. Although Iitate’s inland location helped it escape the earthquake and tsunami with little damage, villagers blame an unfortunate combination of winds and the shapes of the mountains for channeling radioactive fallout from the plant, 25 miles to the southeast….
…Since the nuclear crisis began, about half of Iitate’s 6,200 residents have fled of their own accord, though a few have returned to their homes as the plant has appeared to avoid a full-scale meltdown. Those who remained say a lack of clear guidance from the national government, and the sometimes contradictory assessments of the danger levels by outside experts like the atomic energy agency have left them confused and scared about the fate of their village….
2011 March 23. Japan Nuclear Crisis Revives Long U.S. Fight on Spent Fuel. By Matthe L. Wald, The NY Times. Excerpt: The threat of the release of highly radioactive spent fuel at a Japanese nuclear plant has revived a debate in the United States about how to manage such waste and has led to new recriminations over a derailed plan for a national repository in Nevada....
...Pools holding spent fuel at nuclear plants in the United States are even more heavily loaded than those at the Japanese reactors, experts say, and are more vulnerable to some threats than the ones in Japan....
...Adding to those concerns, no plan to move the waste has emerged to replace a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert. President Obama promised to cancel the project during his 2008 campaign, and last year he told the Department of Energy to withdraw an application that it had submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a construction license....
2011 Mar 15. Nuclear meltdowns and some thoughts for science center responses [PDF]. By Alan J. Friedman, Ph.D., Consultant for Museum Development and Science Communication. Excerpt: …I’ve seen several commentators and reporters use the words “nuclear” and “explosion” in close proximity while failing to distinguish between nuclear detonations (like a nuclear bomb, which can’t happen) and non-nuclear ones (like a steam or hydrogen gas explosion inside the plant, which can and perhaps already have happened). Both kinds of explosions are extremely dangerous, but for very different reasons. The measures to prevent them, the kind of damage they cause, and the steps to mitigate that damage are also different. It may keep viewers glued to their sets, waiting for video of a mushroom cloud, but this kind of sloppy journalism can also cause panic, accelerate false rumors, and hinder appropriate responses….
2011 March 15. UC Berkeley engineers concerned about reactor leak [Article and video]. By Tomas Roman, KGO-TV San Francisco. Excerpt: States of emergency are in effect at five nuclear power plants in Japan. Evacuations are underway as the concern grows about the possibility of a nuclear meltdown.
Berkeley nuclear engineers say the Fukushima Daiichi power plant, which is now shut down, is about 40 years old. The 8.9 earthquake caused the reactor to leak radiation in a way that they say they could not have anticipated and caused evacuations of 50,000 people, within six miles of the plant. Japanese engineers are now concerned about cooling the reactor and avoiding more leaks.
"This increase of radioactivity in the control room makes me very nervous," said UC Berkeley Professor Joonhong Ahn....
2011 March 14. Emerging Economies Move Ahead With Nuclear Plans. By Heather Timmons and Vikas Bajaj, The NY Times. Excerpt: …The Japanese disaster has led some energy officials in the United States and in industrialized European nations to think twice about nuclear expansion. And if a huge release of radiation worsens the crisis, even big developing nations might reconsider their ambitious plans. But for now, while acknowledging the need for safety, they say their unmet energy needs give them little choice but to continue investing in nuclear power....
2011 March 14. In Stricken Fuel-Cooling Pools, a Danger for the Longer Term. By William J. Broad and Hiroko Tabuchi, The NY Times. Excerpt: Even as workers race to prevent the radioactive cores of the damaged nuclear reactors in Japan from melting down, concerns are growing that nearby pools holding spent fuel rods could pose an even greater danger….
…The pools are a worry at the stricken reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi plant because at least two of the three have lost their roofs in explosions, exposing the spent fuel pools to the atmosphere. By contrast, reactors have strong containment vessels that stand a better chance of bottling up radiation from a meltdown of the fuel in the reactor core….
March 14, 2011. Japan Faces Potential Nuclear Disaster as Radiation Levels Rise. By Hiroko Tabuchi, David E. Sanger, and Keith Bradsher, The NY Times. Excerpt: Japan’s nuclear crisis verged toward catastrophe on Tuesday after an explosion damaged the vessel containing the nuclear core at one reactor and a fire at another spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to the statements of Japanese government and industry officials....
…The two critical questions over the next day or so are how much radioactive material is spewed into the atmosphere, and where the winds carry it. Readings reported on Tuesday showed a spike of radioactivity around the plant that made the leakage categorically worse than in had been, with radiation levels measured at one point as high as 400 millisieverts an hour...
...The extent of the public health risk depends on how long such elevated levels persist — they may have declined after the fire at No. 4 reactor was extinguished — as well as how far and fast the radioactive materials spread, and whether the limited evacuation plan announced by the government proves sufficient….
2011 March 13. A Look at the Mechanics of a Partial Meltdown. By Henry Fountain, The NY Times. Excerpt: …A partial meltdown, like those suspected at two reactors in northeastern Japan over the weekend, may not necessarily mean that any of the uranium fuel in the core has melted, experts said. The fuel rods may be only damaged, a portion of them having been left uncovered by cooling water long enough to crack, allowing the release of some radioactive elements in the fuel….
…With loss of power and pumps after the earthquake, the fission reactions at the plants were successfully halted. But there is much residual heat in the reactors, both because they operated at about 550 degrees Fahrenheit and because the radioactive elements in the fuel continue to produce heat as they decay. Without pumps to circulate the water, it will boil off quickly….
2010 December 26. A Battle Over Uranium Bodes Ill for U.S. Debate. By Kirk Johnson, NYTimes. Excerpt: ...A proposal for a new mill to process uranium ore, which would lead to the opening of long-shuttered mines in Colorado and Utah, has brought global and local concerns into collision — jobs, health, class-consciousness and historical memory among them — in ways that suggest, if the pattern here holds, a bitter national debate to come….
2010 September 18. Ancient Italian Town Now Has Wind at Its Back. By Elisabeth Rosenthal, New York Times. Excerpt: Faced with sky-high electricity rates, small communities across a country known more for garbage than environmental citizenship are finding economic salvation in making renewable energy.
…A quintessential Italian town of 2,700 people in Italy’s poor mountainous center, with its well-maintained church and ruined castle, Tocco is in most ways stuck in yesteryear… Yet, from an energy perspective, Tocco is very much tomorrow. In addition to the town’s wind turbines, solar panels generate electricity at its ancient cemetery and sports complex, as well as at a growing number of private residences.
…Italy is an unlikely backdrop for a renewable revolution…It is not on track to meet either its European Union-mandated emissions-reduction target or its commitment to get 17 percent of its total power from renewable sources by 2020, experts say. Currently, only 7 percent of Italy’s power comes from renewable sources.
But the growth of small renewable projects in towns like Tocco — not only in Italy, but also in other countries — highlights the way that shifting energy economics are often more important than national planning in promoting alternative energy.
…In countries where energy from fossil fuels is naturally expensive — or rendered so because of a carbon tax — and there is money to be made, renewable energy quickly starts to flow, even in unlikely places like Tocco.
… Tocco is now essentially energy independent from a financial standpoint, generating 30 percent more electricity than it uses. Production of green electricity earned the town 170,000 euros, or more than $200,000, last year. The town is renovating the school for earthquake protection and has tripled the budget for street cleaners.
2010 October 1. In California, a Grid Storage Mandate. By Felicity Barringer, The New York Times. Excerpt: It’s no news to most people that renewable energy sources like wind and solar power have their off-moments, or off-days... A potential remedy was just signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, whose governorship has long had a greenish tinge. The state will now require utilities (first, investor-owned utilities, and later, publicly owned ones) to have storage capacity on hand that can quickly be put into use when the wind dies down… Like California’s renewable energy mandates, the requirement is meant to jump-start new battery and storage technologies by guaranteeing them a broader market.
…The law will also serve another purpose… determining how energy storage should be defined for regulatory purposes.
… As a result of the law and the definitions to be developed by regulators, “there will be more market certainty about what storage is and what you use it for.”
… Lawmakers backed away from the idea of setting timetables for the new program or determining how much storage the utilities must have on hand. So it will be up to the California Public Utilities Commission and the board of publicly owned utilities to work out those details over the next two years.
2010 August. Small nuclear reactors raise big hopes. By Paul Guinnessy, Physics Today. Excerpt: …The nuclear industry has begun to think smaller than the 1700 MW of power a typical nuclear reactor produces. Modular reactors that generate between 30 MW and 300 MW per module and work in sync with other modules to produce up to 600 MW, the equivalent of an average gas-fired power plant, are on the rise.
…Small reactors aren’t new—nuclear submarines use them—but they still face regulatory, technical, and licensing hurdles. The main attraction for both electrical utilities and reactor builders is the potential cost savings: Producing electricity could be 10–20% cheaper per kilowatt-hour than with a standard reactor.
…One of the biggest selling points is that as the power output is the same as fossil-fuel plants, SMRs can easily hook into existing electrical grids; expensive grid upgrades required by typical nuclear reactors can be bypassed. That makes nuclear power an option for smaller utility companies. And smaller reactors are easier to cool, a benefit for water-scarce regions.
…Although SMRs do not burn fuel as efficiently as larger reactors, some, like the mPower, can operate for 4.5 years without refueling, twice as long as the average for large reactors. The US designs are also easily refueled… A plant can be refueled one module at a time without interrupting overall power generation. Most SMR plants are designed to keep spent fuel on-site in air- or water-cooled underground storage for 60 years, the expected lifetime of the plant, or send it back to the SMR builder. Those procedures, claim the reactor builders, will keep spent fuel safe and thus not pose a proliferation risk.
…Competing against fossil fuels is still tough. Nearly all SMR cost studies, including an upcoming report from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), assume that a carbon tax will eventually be introduced in the US. Such a tax would, as a side effect, help make running SMRs cost competitive.
2010 July 22. China: Oil Spill Prompts Warning. AP, The New York Times. Excerpt: China’s largest reported oil spill emptied beaches along the Yellow Sea as its size doubled Wednesday… An official warned that the spill posed a “severe threat” to sea life and water quality… In the five days since a pipeline exploded at the northeastern port of Dalian, the oil spread over 165 square miles of water. State media have said no more oil is leaking into the sea, but the total amount of oil that was spilled is not yet clear.
2010 July. Working toward a world without nuclear weapons. By Sidney D. Drell, Physics Today. Excerpt: …Today, 65 years after the end of World War II and two decades since the dismantling of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union into the dustbin of history, we are still living in a world armed with approximately 20 000 nuclear bombs. And a growing number of nations are seeking to join the nuclear weapons club.
...Relying on nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective in a world in which nuclear know-how, materials, and weapons are spreading ever farther and faster. With the spread of advanced technology, we face a growing danger that nuclear weapons may fall into the hands of rogue states or terrorist organizations that do not shrink from mass murder on an unprecedented scale.
…The good news is that no law of nature stands in the way of ridding the world of nuclear weapons. The political problems can, in principle, be overcome. The bad news is that as Einstein once said, “Politics is much harder than physics.”
…The only way to contain and control the danger of proliferation is with a mechanism for international control of the entire fuel cycle at all stages. Such a cooperative regime will also need to guarantee the availability of fuel to all nations that agree to comply with the NPT. That will be difficult because of concerns about placing valuable proprietary information under international control. Several nations are exploring the development of such a nuclear power infrastructure.
…During the coming year, I hope the US Senate, after careful preparation, will again consider the CTBT [Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty]. There are good reasons why legitimate skeptics back in 1999 could now support ratification.
…Getting to zero and monitoring the end state will require comprehensive cooperation and improvements in all types of verification tools: national technical means, data exchanges, on-site inspections, continuous perimeter and portal monitoring, tags and seals, sensors and detection devices, and remote viewing as conducted already by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
2010 June 22. Will the world be a safer place without nuclear weapons? By David Kramer, physicstoday.org. Excerpt: A wealth of technical challenges must be overcome before President Obama's vision of a world without nuclear weapons can ever become a reality, in the view of weapons expert Stephen Younger.
…Younger told a Washington conference on 9 June that below some threshold—certainly at a level of 100 or fewer weapons—the US could become vulnerable to a preemptive nuclear attack. With a US stockpile that small, an enemy might calculate that it can "ride out" a retaliatory response comprising whatever is left of the US strategic force in the aftermath of the aggressive act. Younger also dismissed the commonly held assertion that a terrorist or other subnational group could design and build a nuclear weapon using information available on the Internet. "Uranium is tough stuff; try machining it," he said. "Plutonium is the most complex material on the planet. It changes phases if you look at it."
Apart from the unlikelihood that Russia, France, Israel, Pakistan, and North Korea would give up their nuclear arsenals, he said, there are multiple political and technical obstacles standing in the way of achieving the global disarmament that President Obama has pledged to work toward. What constitutes the dismantlement of a warhead, for example, will need to be resolved, since disassembling the weapons into their components provides no assurance of enduring nuclear abolition… No one knows exactly how much weapons-usable material exists and where it is located. Preventing the clandestine movement of those materials or weapons may require a global network of sensors, perhaps numbering in the millions, to be installed in roads, railroads, and seaports.
…Adding further complexity to the design of a verification regime is the fact that much of the supporting technology underlying nuclear weapons…also has legitimate non-weapons uses. No better illustration of that dual-use quandary is the ongoing dispute with Iran over the nature of its uranium enrichment enterprise.
2010 June 5. Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Prof. Cutler Cleveland, Encyclopedia of Earth. This is a comprehensive article on the oil spill, regularly updated.
2010 June 1. A Bullish View of Wind Power Out West. By John Collins Rudolf, NY Times blog. Excerpt: …The study, released in late May, found that the power grid for five western states – Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming – could operate on as much as 30 percent wind and 5 percent solar without the construction of extensive new infrastructure.
…Wind power proponents have long faced skepticism that renewables could ever displace conventional power sources in a meaningful way, with critics asserting that large coal or nuclear plants would always need to stand ready to provide backup power whenever the wind ceased to blow or clouds blocked the sun.
…Still, the outlook for wind power is far from grim. The industry installed 9.8 gigawatts of capacity in 2009, a record, and is on pace to install at least 6 gigawatts in 2010. And a recent industry study has projected $330 billion in new wind investment between 2010 and 2025.
2010 May 15. Giant Plumes of Oil Forming Under the Gulf. By Justin Gillis, NY Times. Excerpt: Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.
… Dr. Joye said the oxygen had already dropped 30 percent near some of the plumes in the month that the broken oil well had been flowing. “If you keep those kinds of rates up, you could draw the oxygen down to very low levels that are dangerous to animals in a couple of months,” she said Saturday. “That is alarming.”
…“This is a new type of event, and it’s critically important that we really understand it, because of the incredible number of oil platforms not only in the Gulf of Mexico but all over the world now,” Dr. Highsmith said. “We need to know what these events are like, and what their outcomes can be, and what can be done to deal with the next one.”
2010 May 13. Size of Oil Spill Underestimated, Scientists Say. By Justin Gillis, NY Times. Excerpt: Two weeks ago, the government put out a round estimate of the size of the oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico: 5,000 barrels a day. Repeated endlessly in news reports, it has become conventional wisdom.
…Ian R. MacDonald, an oceanographer at Florida State University who is an expert in the analysis of oil slicks, said he had made his own rough calculations using satellite imagery. They suggested that the leak could “easily be four or five times” the government estimate, he said.
…“If we are systematically underestimating the rate that’s being spilled, and we design a response capability based on that underestimate, then the next time we have an event of this magnitude, we are doomed to fail again,” said John Amos, the president of SkyTruth. “So it’s really important to get this number right.”
2010 April 28. Big Wind Farm Off Cape Cod Gets Approval. By Katharine Q. Seelye, NY Times. Excerpt: BOSTON — After nine years of regulatory review, the federal government gave the green light on Wednesday to the nation’s first offshore wind farm, a fiercely contested project off the coast of Cape Cod.
Opponents said they would continue to fight construction of the farm, known as Cape Wind, which would sprawl across 25 square miles of Nantucket Sound.
But the decision is expected to give a significant boost to the nascent offshore wind industry in the United States, which has lagged far behind Europe and China in harnessing the strong and steady power of ocean breezes to electrify homes and businesses.
...Friends and foes have squared off over the impact it would have on nature, local traditions, property values and electricity bills; on the profits to be pocketed by a private developer; and even the urgency of easing the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels, a priority of the Obama administration.
...Developers say that Cape Wind will provide 75 percent of the power for Cape Cod, Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard — the equivalent of that produced by a medium-size coal-fired plant. It would also reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the equivalent of taking 175,000 cars off the road, officials said, and provide 1,000 construction jobs....
2010 April 27. ‘Controlled Burn’ Considered for Gulf Oil Spill. By Leslie Kaufman, NY Times. Excerpt: With a vast oil slick now within only 20 miles of the ecologically fragile Louisiana coastline, Coast Guard officials said they were considering a “controlled burn” of the petroleum on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico.
Rear Adm. Mary E. Landry, the federal on-scene coordinator for the spill, said such a burn might be conducted as soon as Wednesday.
A joint government and industry task force has been unable to stop crude oil from streaming out of a broken pipe attached to a well 5,000 feet below sea level. The leaks were found Saturday, days after an oil rig to which the pipe was attached exploded and sank in the gulf about 50 miles southeast of Venice, La. An estimated 42,000 gallons a day are now spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.
...Controlled burns have been done and tested before, Admiral Landry said, and had been shown to be “effective in burning 50 to 95 percent of oil collected in a fire boom.” The downside, she said, was a “black plume” of smoke that would put soot and other particulates into the air....
2010 April 26. Robots Work to Stop Leak of Oil in Gulf. By Campbell Robertson and Clifford Krauss, NY Times. Excerpt: NEW ORLEANS — Oil continued to pour into the Gulf of Mexico on Monday as the authorities waited to see if the quickest possible method of stopping the leaks would bring an end to what was threatening to become an environmental disaster.
Remote-controlled robots operating 5,000 feet under the ocean’s surface were more than a full day into efforts to seal off the oil well, which has been belching crude through leaks in a pipe at the rate of 42,000 gallons a day. The leaks were found on Saturday, days after an oil rig to which the pipe was attached exploded, caught on fire and sank in the gulf about 50 miles from the Louisiana coast....
...Wind has kept the spill from moving toward the coast. Officials said the spill had a 600-mile circumference Monday, but most of that was a thin sheen of oil-water mix. Only 3 percent of the area was crude oil with a “pudding-like” consistency, they said.
The wind was expected to change direction by Thursday, however, and the spill’s distance from the coast has not prevented a threat to marine life.
On Sunday a crew from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service spotted three sperm whales in the vicinity of the spill. Planes that were dropping chemicals to break down the oil were told to steer clear of the whales.
The chemicals, known as dispersants, can be as toxic to mammals as the oil itself, said Jackie Savitz, a marine biologist with a background in toxicity with Oceana, a Washington nonprofit group that focuses on ocean conservation.
Ms. Savitz said environmental concerns were not alleviated by assurances that the spill was not yet a threat to the coast. “There is a misconception that if water doesn’t hit the beach it isn’t dangerous,” she said....
2010 April 22. 2 Mines Show How Safety Practices Vary Widely. By Dan Barry, Ian Urbina and Clifford Krauss, NY Times. Excerpt: Earlier this year, in the subterranean workplace of a southern West Virginia coal mine, methane kept building up because of a lack of fresh air. Odorless, explosive, this natural gas must be dispersed from where miners work, and yet it became such a familiar presence at the mine called Upper Big Branch that entire sections had to be evacuated four times this year alone.
Many of the miners suspected they knew a major source of the gas buildup: a coal shaft, unused for years, that passed down through several old mines before reaching theirs. According to a longtime foreman at the mine, who provided previously undisclosed details of its operation, the shaft was never properly sealed to prevent the methane above from being sucked into Upper Big Branch.
Instead, the foreman said, rags and garbage were used to create a poor man’s sealant, which he said allowed methane to permeate the mine, displacing much-needed oxygen.
“Every single day, the levels were double or triple what they were supposed to be,” said the foreman, whose account of the shaft was corroborated in part by records collected by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration....
It is not clear whether the coal shaft played a role in the explosion of the Upper Big Branch mine two weeks ago, a disaster that killed 29 miners, rattled West Virginia and, once again, raised questions about Massey’s safety practices. But with federal investigators saying they suspect that a buildup of methane and coal dust led to the explosion, the handling of the shaft seems a particularly egregious example of the mining practices that have set Massey apart from the rest of the coal industry....
2010 April 2. A Race to Reap Energy From the Ocean Breezes. By Sindya N. Bhanoo, NY Times. Excerpt: As New Englanders await a decision in Massachusetts on a bitterly contested proposal to build the nation’s first offshore wind farm, the State of Rhode Island is forging ahead with its own project in the hope of outpacing — and upstaging — its neighbor.
...Instead of having a private developer dominate the research on potential sites, as Massachusetts has, Rhode Island embarked on a three-year scientific study, to be completed in August, of all waters within 30 miles of its coast. It has spent more than $8 million on research into bird migration patterns, wildlife habitats, fish distribution, fishermen’s needs and areas that might be of cultural importance to Indian tribes.
Its goal has been to head off the hurdles that have been in the way of the Massachusetts project, which has pitted coastal Indian tribes, business interest and homeowners against the developer, Cape Wind, and proponents of alternative energy. Frustrated by the failure of the two sides to broker an agreement, the Obama administration’s interior secretary, Ken Salazar, has promised to determine the fate of the project on his own this month....
2010 March 4. The Newest Hybrid Model. By Jad Mouawad, NY Times. Excerpt: INDIANTOWN, Fla. — In former swamplands teeming with otters and wild hogs, one of the nation’s biggest utilities is running an experiment in the future of renewable power.
Across 500 acres north of West Palm Beach, the FPL Group utility is assembling a life-size Erector Set of 190,000 shimmering mirrors and thousands of steel pylons that stretch as far as the eye can see. When it is completed by the end of the year, this vast project will be the world’s second-largest solar plant.
But that is not its real novelty. The solar array is being grafted onto the back of the nation’s largest fossil-fuel power plant, fired by natural gas. It is an experiment in whether conventional power generation can be married with renewable power in a way that lowers costs and spares the environment.
This project is among a handful of innovative hybrid designs meant to use the sun’s power as an adjunct to coal or gas in producing electricity. While other solar projects already use small gas-fired turbines to provide backup power for cloudy days or at night, this is the first time that a conventional plant is being retrofitted with the latest solar technology on such an industrial scale....
2010 February 2. More
Than 25 pct of US Nuclear Reactors
Leaking Carcinogen into Groundwater. EIN Press Wire.
The Associated Press reports that
at least 27 of the 104 nuclear reactors
in the US have been leaking a cancer-causing
by-product of nuclear fission, with
the leaks mostly occurring through
deteriorating underground pipes.
The carcinogen tritium has been discovered
in potentially dangerous levels (more
than three times the federal safety
standard) in the groundwater around
the nuclear plants, most recently at
the Vermont Yankee Nuclear plant.
Tritium has been linked to cancer if
ingested, inhaled or absorbed through
the skin in large amounts, and the
concentration of tritium found in groundwater
has caught the attention of the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission....
2009 December 11. Geothermal
Project in California Is Shut Down. By James
Glanz, The NY Times. Excerpt: The
company in charge of a California
project to extract vast amounts of
renewable energy from deep, hot bedrock
has removed its drill rig and informed
federal officials that the government
project will be abandoned.
The project by the company, AltaRock
Energy, was the Obama administration’s
first major test of geothermal energy
as a significant alternative to fossil
fuels and the project was being financed
with federal Department of Energy
money at a site about 100 miles north
of San Francisco called the Geysers.
...The project’s apparent collapse
comes a day after Swiss government
officials permanently shut down a
similar project in Basel, because
of the damaging earthquakes it produced
in 2006 and 2007. Taken together,
the two setbacks could change the
direction of the Obama administration’s
geothermal program, which had raised
hopes that the earth’s bedrock
could be quickly tapped as a clean
and almost limitless energy source....
2009 October 13. Catching
the Wind in Rural Malawi. By Maywa Montenegro,
SEED. Excerpt:
From the blustery plains of Texas
to the Danish island of Samsø, wind power—and
the giant, bladed towers that generate
it—is all the rage in a warming
world searching for cleaner sources
of energy. Fourteen-year-old William
Kamkwamba had never heard of windmills,
or climate change, for that matter,
when he stumbled across a photograph
one day and it changed his life forever.
Now 22, Kamkwamba has become something
of an international DIY celebrity:
He’s spoken at the World Economic
Forum, at the Aspen Ideas Festival,
and at TED Global—twice. He’s
chatted with Al Gore, Bono, and Larry
Page. A documentary about his life
is currently in the works. But Kamkwamba’s
story isn’t really about stardom:
It’s about the grit, resourcefulness,
and audacity of a young engineer
who built a windmill from scrap in
his native Malawi and brought power
to his home—and eventually
lit up every house in the village....
2009
September 14. Hawaii
Tries Green Tools in Remaking Power
Grids.
By Felicity Barringer, The NY Times. Excerpt:
NAALEHU, Hawaii — Two
miles or so from this tiny town in
the southernmost corner of the United
States, across ranches where cattle
herds graze beneath the distant Mauna
Loa volcano, the giant turbines of
a new wind farm cut through the air.
Sixty miles to the northeast, near
a spot where golden-red lava streams
meet the sea in clouds of steam,
a small power plant extracts heat
from the volcanic rock beneath it
to generate electricity.
These projects are just a slice of
the energy experiment unfolding across
Hawaii’s six main islands.
With the most diverse array of alternative
energy potential of any state in
the nation, Hawaii has set out to
become a living laboratory for the
rest of the country, hoping it can
slash its dependence on fossil fuels
while keeping the lights on....
2009 August 19. Drilling
Ordeals Said to Delay Geothermal
Project. By
James Glanz, The NY Times. Excerpt:
The Obama administration’s
first major test of geothermal energy
as a significant alternative to fossil
fuels has fallen seriously behind
schedule, several federal scientists
said this week, even as the project
is under review because of the earthquakes
it could generate in Northern California.
Intended to extract heat from hot bedrock,
the project has been delayed because
the bit on a giant rig, meant to drill
more than two miles underground, has
struggled to pierce surface rock formations,
the scientists said.
...The scientists who told of delays in
the project...said
that after nearly two months of the
highly expensive drilling, the rig
had reached depths of less than 4,000
feet. The original schedule called
for it to reach a final depth of 12,000
feet, or 2.3 miles, after no more than
50 days of drilling, according to company
officials.
The problems are particularly surprising
given that the drilling essentially
started at 3,200 feet, at the bottom
of an older hole at the site, north
of San Francisco at a place called
the Geysers.
...Advocates for the technique, known
as an “enhanced geothermal system,” say
it could eventually generate vast amounts
of energy and reduce America’s
dependence on fossil fuels. But the
latest delays come as AltaRock awaits
word on whether the federal government
will allow the fracturing of rock at
all....
2009 July 2. Should
We Depend on Coal or Nuclear? Five Experts
Discuss how Clean Coal Works,
how Dangerous Nuclear Waste
Really Is, and Whether the
Root of the Problem is Money. BY
Veronique Greenwood, Seed Magazine.
Excerpt: "If I compare the downsides
of coal versus nuclear, I have to
say I’d rather see renewed
investment in nuclear power plant
generation of electricity in this
century than to build more coal plants,” said
Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a
NOVA special released recently. “There’s
no question in my mind, that’s
the lesser of the two evils.”
Wave, wind, sun—the buffet
of renewable energy options is attractive.
But the sheer amount of power generated
by coal and fission cannot be rivaled
by any current system of renewable
energy. Between them, nuclear and
coal provide more than 70 percent
of US electricity. Renewable sources
provided 9 percent as of 2007. While
research is advancing by leaps and
bounds, for the foreseeable future
some dependence on these super-producers
will be necessary. But when deciding
between a new coal plant or a nuclear
plant, a knot of difficult decisions,
many of them decades old, rear their
heads.
Coal-fired plants, of course, spew
out CO2 and toxins like nitrous oxide
and sulfur dioxide. The cumulative
greenhouse effects promise catastrophic
weather phenomena, widespread flooding,
food shortage, displacement, and
extinction....
Nuclear plants produce radioisotopes
with half-lives ranging from a few
days to a few million years. Their
pollution tends to occur in bursts—either
in catastrophic accidents or waste
leaks—but, as with CO2, the
effects can propagate for decades
or centuries. Storage and disposal
of nuclear waste are longstanding
problems, complicated by President
Obama’s plan to abandon the
long-term nuclear storage project
at Yucca Mountain....
...The questions when it comes to
coal and nuclear are: Which process’s
byproducts—CO2 or radioisotopes—are
the least frightening? Which are
we most likely to figure out a solution
for in the near future, and which
has the most pressing effects?...
2009 June 8. New
Tech Could Make Nuclear the Best
Weapon Against Climate Change.
By Elizabeth Svoboda, Discover
Magazine. Excerpt:
...Buoyed by an allocation of $1.25
billion in funding for reactor
research from the 2005 Energy Policy
Act, Idaho National Laboratory scientists
are working to improve safety,
boost efficiency, minimize waste,
and decrease cost in a new generation
of nuclear reactors. Even if renewable
energy goes mainstream, INL researchers
still believe nuclear will be essential
for supporting the electrical grid’s
base load—that portion of
the nation’s
electricity that must be supplied
at a constant rate, in contrast
to the variable supplies from the
sun and wind....
Unlike burning coal or other fossil
fuels, fission—the breaking
apart of atomic nuclei, the process
underlying nuclear energy—emits
no carbon dioxide....
...Nuclear’s day-in, day-out
reliability makes it an essential
companion to renewable energy, argues
Burton Richter, winner of the 1976
Nobel Prize in Physics. “The
sun doesn’t shine at night,
and wind power is highly variable,” he
says. “To meet our emissions
goals, we’re going to have
to grasp every arrow in the quiver,
and nuclear is one of those arrows.”
Before that can happen, though, nuclear
power will have to overcome the unresolved
issue of how to dispose of radioactive
fuel waste....
That is exactly what the INL scientists
are aiming to do, however, confident
that their work is essential to the
planet’s well-being. Their
efforts focus on two new designs:
the very-high-temperature reactor
(VHTR) and the sodium-cooled fast
reactor (SFR). Both incorporate inherent
safety features to prevent core overheating
and the release of radioactive material.
The hope is that these new approaches
will finally erase the memory of
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and
eliminate some of the political opposition
that has stymied the American nuclear
power industry for three decades....
2009 May 10. Students,
faculty design green way to absorb
power plant waste.
By Dana Bartholomew, LA Daily News.
Excerpt: As drought dries the Southland,
Cal State Northridge has sprouted
a new home for the jungle yodeler
- a subtropical rain forest.
The campus ... has already won national
awards for its fuel-cell power plant,
the largest operated by any university
in the world.
Now it has created a "rain forest" of
115 tropical species that inhale
its greenhouse gas and ingest its
wastewater stream, the first such
design on the planet.
...The university built its award-winning
1-megawatt fuel-cell plant two years
ago after its main plant hit capacity
during hyper campus growth.
The $3 million fuel-cell plant, which
converts natural gas into electricity
via an electrochemical process, now
supplies 18 percent of the campus'
electricity and air conditioning
needs.
But while the combustion-free plant
produces zero particulate emissions,
it cranks out planet-warming carbon
dioxide, in addition to wastewater
high in potassium chloride.
So faculty members joined students
to design a "green" means
to absorb the waste.
...rather than spew 3,600 cubic-feet
per minute of carbon dioxide into
the sky, as traditional condensers
do, the gas is aimed into a bed of
flowering tulip trees, hibiscus,
cana lilies and more.
...And up to 6 gallons a minute of
wastewater rich in plant nutrients
leaches into the soil....
..."What we're going for here
is a marriage between nature and
technology, because this equipment
is usually hidden on rooftops," said
Ben Elisondo, manager of Physical
Plant Management....
2009 March 10. E.P.A.
Proposes Tracking Industry Emissions. By Kate Galbraith,
The NY Times. Excerpt: The Environmental
Protection Agency proposed a rule
on Tuesday that would require a broad
range of industries to tally and
report their greenhouse gas emissions.
The proposal...would require about
13,000 factories, power plants and
other facilities to report their
emissions of carbon dioxide, methane,
nitrous oxide and other gases that
climate scientists link to global
warming.
...The E.P.A. says that the rule,
promulgated under the Clean Air Act,
would account for 85 percent to 90
percent of the country’s emissions
of heat-trapping gases....
...“This is the foundation
of any serious program to cap and
reduce global warming pollution,” said
David Doniger, the policy director
for the climate center at the Natural
Resources Defense Council. “You
have to have source-by-source data
on how much of global warming pollution
is emitted and from where.”...
2009 March 10. Energy
Dept. Said to Err on Coal Project.
By Matthew L. Wald, The NY Times. Excerpt:
WASHINGTON — The
Energy Department made a $500 million
math error a year ago when it withdrew
its support from a “near-zero
emissions” coal plant in Illinois,
Congressional auditors...say....
The error led the department to say
mistakenly that the project, known
as FutureGen, had nearly doubled
in cost — an increase the Bush
administration deemed too expensive.
At the time, FutureGen was the leading
effort to capture and sequester carbon
dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas
linked to global warming. If the
project were resumed and proved successful,
it could provide a model for curbing
the carbon dioxide that coal adds
to the atmosphere.
The new energy secretary, Steven
Chu, has said that he will consider
renewing support for FutureGen but
that changes will be needed....
2009 March 9. Turn,
Turn, Turn. By C. Claiborne
Ray, The NY Times. Excerpt:
Q. Why is it that nearly every
time I see a wind farm, like the
one at Altamont Pass, so few of
the turbines are spinning, even
in a stiff breeze?
A. The wind farm at Altamont Pass in California is one of the
oldest in the country, and technology has marched on.
“The performance and reliability of older wind turbines
from the 1970s and 1980s era, of which there are quite a few
in California, is analogous to an older computer,” said
Mark Rodgers, communications director of Cape Wind, the developer
of an offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts. “It
would be like offices still using Apple II’s or Commodores
from 1978.”
“With modern wind farms,” he said, “it is possible
that an individual turbine could be down for maintenance. Or
if the winds were light, it could be right on the edge where
some turbines are getting just enough wind to operate, others
slightly less.”...
2009 March 2. Can
Geothermal Power Compete with Coal
on Price? By Christopher
Mims, Scientific American. Excerpt:
Although the environmental benefits
of burning less fossil fuel by using
renewable sources of energy—such
as geothermal, hydropower, solar
and wind—are clear, there's
been a serious roadblock in their
adoption: cost per kilowatt-hour.
That barrier may be opening, however—at
least for one of these sources. Two
recent reports, among others, suggest
that geothermal may actually be cheaper
than every other source, including
coal. Geothermal power plants work
by pumping hot water from deep beneath
Earth's surface, which can either be
used to turn steam turbines directly
or to heat a second, more volatile
liquid such as isobutane (which then
turns a steam turbine).
Combine a new U.S. president pushing
a stimulus package that includes $28
billion in direct subsidies for renewable
energy with another $13 billion for
research and development, and the picture
for renewable energy—geothermal
power among the options—is brightening.
The newest report, from international
investment bank Credit Suisse, says
geothermal power costs 3.6 cents per
kilowatt-hour, versus 5.5 cents per
kilowatt-hour for coal.
That does not mean companies are rushing
to build geothermal plants: There are
a number of assumptions in the geothermal
figure. First, there are the tax incentives,
which save about 1.9 cents per kilowatt-hour....
Second, the Credit Suisse analysis
relied on...the total cost to produce
a given unit of energy. Embedded within
this figure is an assumption that the
money to build a new geothermal plant
is available at reasonable interest
rates—on the order of 8 percent.
In today's economic climate, that just
isn't the case....
...There's another significant issue:
finding geothermal resources. In that
way, the geothermal industry has the
same challenges as the oil and gas
industry. The Credit Suisse analysis
doesn't factor in exploration costs,
which can run hundreds of thousands
of dollars for per well....
2009 February 17. Alaska
Is a Frontier for Green Power. By Stephan Milkowski,
The NY Times. Excerpt:
TOKSOOK BAY, Alaska — Beyond
the fishing boats, the snug homes
and the tanks of diesel fuel marking
this Eskimo village on the Bering
Sea, three huge wind turbines tower
over the tundra. Their blades spin
slowly in a breeze cold enough to
freeze skin.
One of the nation’s harshest
landscapes, it turns out, is becoming
fertile ground for green power.
...Alaska is fast becoming a testing
ground for new technologies and an
unlikely experiment in oil-state
support for renewable energy....
In remote villages like this one,
where diesel to power generators
is shipped by barge and can cost
more than $5 a gallon in bulk, electricity
from renewable sources like wind
is already competitive with power
made from fossil fuels. In urban
areas along the state’s limited
road system, large wind and hydroelectric
projects are also becoming attractive.
Alaska produces more oil than any
state except Texas, but most of it
leaves the state. Small markets and
high transportation costs have kept
local fuel prices high. As oil prices
spiked last year, the state’s
coffers overflowed with oil tax revenue,
but the rising cost of diesel and
other fuels became a local crisis.
...Advocates of renewable energy
here say Alaska, with its windy coasts,
untapped rivers and huge tidal and
wave resources, could quickly become
a national leader. The state already
generates 24 percent of its electricity
from renewable sources — almost
exclusively hydroelectric — and
Ms. Palin last month announced a
goal of 50 percent by 2025....
Archive
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