Category Archives: Energy Investments

Building a Safer, Cleaner Nuclear Reactor

Posted on by

I had an opportunity to read a copy of Popular Science while waiting for a doctor appointment, and I had forgotten how much I had liked that magazine as a young adult. There were several interesting articles, but the one titled “Revive the Nuclear Dream” was fascinating. Two young scientists, Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, have been working on nuclear power generation since they found articles about reactor research performed at Oak Ridge at an MIT library in 2009. One subject was molten salt reactors, and it intrigued them that using liquid uranium fuel instead of solid fuel eliminates the chance of a meltdown. “So they dusted off the Oak Ridge design and got to work. Today, their start-up, Transatomic Power, is poised to build a new, even better molten salt reactor.”

The idea has some very compelling possibilities. Fuel rods from light water reactors, the design used at existing U.S. nuclear power plants, have to be replaced when only four percent of the uranium has been converted to energy. The molten salt reactor will convert 96 percent of the uranium into energy and generates 75 times the amount of electricity per ton of uranium. Of course another advantage is there is less waste to manage. Even better is that their reactor could run on spent fuel from those other reactors.

The article describes how the reactor works. Uranium salt is liquefied by heating it to 500 degrees C, and the molten salt is pumped past zirconium hydride to slow down the neutrons and induce fission. The krypton and xenon that poisons light water reactor fuel rods is continuously off-gassed. “You basically simmer the reactor like a Crock-Pot for decades…The fuel salt flows through a loop with a drain that is blocked by a freezer plug, a chunk of electrically cooled frozen salt. If the reactor loses electricity, the plug melts, and the fuel drains into a tank where it cools and solidifies.” That feature makes the design “virtually accident proof.”

The big hurdle for the technology is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t have a framework for licensing “advanced reactors.” The coal and natural gas lobbies see nuclear as a threat and some environmental groups will fight anything labeled “nuclear.” The two young scientists want a regulatory pathway developed, but good luck with that. We may still be developing smart and ambitious entrepreneurs, but we haven’t found a way to make government bureaucracies lobby-proof, efficient, or courageous. China would probably welcome the technology, but Dewan says they want to succeed in the U.S. I think we should think of ways to help them. My first contribution is this commentary.  Meet the two impressive people by watching the video on the home page of their web site.

Costs of Fighting Global Warming

Posted on by

I was inspired to weigh in again on the issue of global warming by an article titled “Post-coal Pueblo left out in the cold” by Lydia DePillis of the Washington Post. Under the headline there is a picture of Pueblo resident Sharon Garcia who “…doesn’t allow lights to be left on in rooms that aren’t being used.” She had her power shut off in 2010, and is constantly struggling to make ends meet running a day care center. She is struggling with paying her electricity bill because the residential rate per kilowatt hour has increased 26 percent since 2010.

The reasons for the increase are complex, and I suggest you read the entire article. The impact of regulatory requirements on utility companies is what attracted my attention. A big part of the problem is caused by “…coal plants shutting down as Colorado transitions to renewable energy.” Black Hills Energy provides power to Pueblo, and Colorado’s 2010 Clean Air—Clean Jobs act caused them to shutter three older plants that would have been too expensive to overhaul. Utility regulators guarantee Black Hills an 8.53 percent return, which gives it an incentive to close nearly all of its relatively inexpensive coal capacity, build new plants, and pass the costs to consumers. Continue reading →

Department of Energy Study of Fracking

Posted on by

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is used to enhance oil and gas production, and the recent news has been positive for the process and unwelcome for those opposing the practice. A Denver Post editorial says, “Fracking has been conducted for decades and is now a routine procedure in the vast majority of drilling operations and yet federal and state regulators have not identified one confirmed instance in which fracking chemicals have migrated through layers of shale to groundwater.”

Citizens of cities along the Colorado Front Range have passed referendums that prohibit fracking within their city limits. There are many people who oppose any process that produces hydrocarbons for energy, and they consider hydraulic fracturing negatively because of the success of that process. Colorado Governor Hickenlooper has angered them by taking the position that the cities do not have the right to prohibit the activity, which is controlled by state law. Continue reading →

Renewable Energy

Posted on by

There were two articles in a recent Denver Post about the wisdom of mandating renewable energy. The first that I’ll mention is titled “A job killer or a job creator” by Allen Best. He mentions that the town of Craig, Colorado was “rocking” with construction of coal-fired power plants. Then the construction crews departed after the Colorado legislature mandated that Colorado must get 20 percent of energy from renewable sources by 2020. That mandate not only reduced the flow of money into the Craig economy; the renewable industry is expected to go to Wyoming and Nebraska to obtain wind resources that are more dependable and cheaper. Continue reading →

Climatism!

Posted on by

climatismThe subtitle of this excellent, well-researched book by Steve Goreham is “Science, Common Sense, and the Twenty First Century’s Hottest Topic.” The book is over 400 pages long including notes and references. It provides both practical and technical details disputing the insistence that “The Science is Settled, Man is Causing Global Warming.” The book presents ample evidence that the science is far from settled and that man has had little impact on climate. However, there is a dire warning that you will be labeled a “Denier” if you question the politically correct positions. Those who have worked diligently to develop the “global-warning-disaster created- by-man-scenario” have invested their reputations in that outcome. They will eagerly attack anyone who has the audacity to ask, “But is it supported by science?” Science at one time was dependant on freedom of thought and criticism that required explanation based on facts. On this subject, questioning the legitimacy of the predictions is equivalent to when people were accused of being witches and treated badly. (This is my comment, and is not in the book.)

The Author’s Note points out that people aren’t shocked when the five day weather forecast isn’t accurate, but are willing to accept that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations knows what the climate will be in 2100. The dominant public assumption is that the IPCC predictions are accurate, but the number of scientists who question the predictions has grown rapidly despite the attacks they know will be leveled at them for being “skeptics” or “deniers.”

The author proposes the title Climatism for the ideology that man-made greenhouse gases are destroying Earth’s climate, “…an extreme form of environmentalism that is using the natural climatic changes of Earth to re-define our societies.” Those who advocate that ideology want to limit population growth and replace all hydrocarbon-energy production with solar and wind power. What they don’t mention is that those energy sources cannot provide even a fraction of the energy produced by hydrocarbons, which means that society will have to do without. There has been a slight warming, but evidence is presented that the cause is likely natural and has nothing to do with the activities of man. ”

If global warming is from natural causes, then all efforts to stop the Earth from warming are not only futile, but destructive to our way of life and economic prosperity of the developing nations.”

No book on climate change would be complete without an analysis of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” A judge in London ruled that the film could be used as part of school curriculum, but the teachers must point out there were nine scientific errors or assertions not supported by scientific evidence. The nine corrections did not include mention that the film does not point out that the carbon dioxide increases lag the temperature increases. Therefore, temperature increases are the cause of carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere (carbon dioxide is less soluble in warm ocean water). The basis of the climatism ideology that man’s generation of carbon dioxide is the cause of climate change is therefore false from the beginning. That didn’t stop Dr. James Hansen, an outspoken climatist from saying, “CEOs of fossil energy companies know what they are doing and are aware of long-term consequences of continued business as usual. In my opinion, those CEOs should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.”

There is a summary of the eight disasters that climatists predict with descriptions of why the predictions are already known to be incorrect. The dominant disaster predictions are rising sea levels (the sea has had a steady rise of 6-7 inches per century), devastating hurricanes (frequency and strength have not increased) and increased famine and death from droughts and floods (droughts and floods have not increased). Of course there is the concern about polar bear drowning, although polar bear populations have doubled since 1950. One of my granddaughters read that increased carbon dioxide will lead to acidification of the oceans and coral bleaching, but the actual data indicates the increase in water temperature and is having a positive effect on coral growth.

It is true that the climate will change just as it has always changed. The Medieval Warm Period occurred from about 900 to 1,300 A.D., and Vikings were able to settle and prosper in Greenland. The climate then moved into the Little Ice Age, and the last written evidence of the settlement was in 1408. The year 1816 is known as the “Year Without a Summer,” and that is the only known instance of a missing oak tree ring.

Chapter 5 presents data that, not surprisingly, solar activity is the main driver of global temperatures. “The scientific results…indicate that the varying activity of the Sun is indeed the largest and most systematic contributor to natural climate variations.” “There is little doubt that solar-wind variability is the primary cause of climate change…Once the IPCC comes to terms with this finding, it will have to concede that solar variability provides a better explanation of…warming than greenhouse gases.” Conversely, solar activity has declined. By April 2009 the sun had hit a 100-year low in sunspot activity and a 50 year low in solar wind pressure.

The saddest bit of evidence offered by the book is the discussion of Dr. Michael Mann’s infamous “Hockey Stick Curve.” The actual record of temperatures from about 900 A.D. is shown along with the modified graph that became known as the “hockey stick” on page 149. The actual graph shows the Medieval warm period and Little Ice Age with a slight upward trend in the late 1900s. The “hockey stick” graph shows basically unchanging temperatures until a sudden spike upward to much higher than anything that had been measured in a thousand years. It is said the Mann data “…contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components, and other quality control defects.” In other words, the graph was and is a fraud.

The climate research community was shaken when an unknown hacker downloaded and posted more than a thousand documents from the University of East Anglia, the “…world’s leading source of global temperature information.” The emails revealed “…a high level of bias toward man-made warming…” One email quoted Dr. Kevin Trenberth of UCAR lamenting a cooling trend didn’t match predictions and referred to it as “…a travesty…”

There are detailed discussions of the flaws with solar, wind, and biofuel energy production. I won’t detail them here to be consistent with my goal of keeping reviews to two pages or less. I will jump ahead to pages 393 -394 where the story of the P-38 “Glacier Girl” is told. A flight of planes being sent from the U.S. to Britain in WWII was forced to land on the ice of Greenland. An expedition set out in 1981 to retrieve the planes from the well-documented location. The planes were eventually found under 270 feet of solid ice.

Killing for Coal, America’s Deadliest Labor War

Posted on by

This book by Thomas G. Andrews begins with a description of the United Mine Worker strike in Colorado in 1913  that lasted several months. Violence could finally no longer be contained, and on April 20, 1914 open warfare broke out between the Colorado state militia and “…hundreds of striking coal miners of more than a dozen nationalities.” The canvas tents at Ludlow where the miners and their families were living caught fire, and two women and eleven children were asphyxiated in their cellar hideout. The book does not speculate on which side fired the first shot, but both sides blamed the other. There were many killed by the time the “Ten Days War” ended when President Woodrow Wilson sent in federal troops. The author says that a key premise of current politics continues to be that fairness and justice for working people must be achieved “…through intervention of national unions, the Democratic Party, and the federal government.”

I highly recommend the book. It is well and fairly written, and has fascinating history about the history of Colorado, the land, the environment, the people, and the conflicts between coal miners and mine owners.

The origin of opening the coal mines of Colorado is traced to William Jackson Palmer who had his apprenticeship studying the coal mining industries of England, and he was appalled at some of the working conditions he observed in those mines. “Mine work seemed to turn boys into drones, women into men, and manly laborers into ‘an inferior class of beings’.” Palmer didn’t immediate building a coal mining empire. He organized a Union light cavalry unit to fight in the Civil War. He was a brevet general by the end of the war and thus was the highest ranking Quaker on either side of the conflict. The end of the war freed Palmer to begin building an empire seeking to extract coal, or “buried sunshine” and begin powering the transformation of Colorado. Industry (mostly blast furnaces and smelters), trains, and homes were fueled. Farming prospered because there was energy to pump irritation water out of the Ogallala aquifer. Of course the air smelled of smoke from the burned coal. A Denver Post cartoon celebrated the end of a strike in 1899 and “…depicted the welcome return of inky black billows to the urban skyline above a caption that said…Prosperity.”  Beneath “…the glitter of gold and silver (of Colorado mining) lay the grime of coal.”

Palmer stated that he intended to pay workers enough to have some left for saving and investing. He also gave them the opportunities for stock options and profit sharing. Coal barons who followed were less interested in the welfare of the miners.

The descriptions of the broad diversity of the nationalities of the coal miners, or colliers, who were lured to Colorado from far reaches of the world by the promise of well-paying jobs, is an interesting component of the book. Agents developed credit systems for destitute people who wanted to immigrate and the transportation lines profited as the number of immigrants swelled. The harsh conditions made me wonder why someone would travel across the planet to work in the mines. One mine inspector wrote that “…it seems that death lurks…” Electrification brought exposed wires, cages carrying the workers to the depths sometimes smashed, and power drills created clouds of choking dust. These hazards were added to the risk of death from explosion, cave in, carbon monoxide and other toxins in addition to  the physical problems from working deep underground in heat with poor lighting and performing back-breaking labor. George Orwell once wrote, “Watching coal-miners work you realize momentarily what different universes different people inhabit.” There were 1,708 Colorado mine deaths between 1884 and 1912.

There are some descriptions of the mines that are on the light-hearted side. The mines were often inhabited by large numbers of mice, and the men welcomed and fed and even named them. The men found the playful and harmless creatures a welcome distraction from the long hours working under dangerous conditions. The mice were also the miners “canaries,” since they were very susceptible to very small amounts of carbon monoxide and were vibrations that warned of a roof cracking overhead. The miners watched the mice closely and responded if one keeled over or scurried away. Mules were a different story. The animals were bred to be either quite large or small, to match the height of the mines. However, almost all of the mules contributed to earning the description “stubborn as a mule.”

The men were paid by the tons of coal they mined and not for “dead work” involving activities such as building supporting timbers. They would gamble with their lives by skimping on erecting support structures to maximize the time they could be mining coal. The toiling men and animals depleted oxygen by breathing heavily from their labors, and made them, among other symptoms, indifferent, because of the low oxygen content of the mine air. There were atmospheric conditions the miners called “stinkdamp” (hydrogen sulfide), “blackdamp” (carbon monoxide mixed with other noxious vapors), “afterdamp” (heavy concentrations of carbon monoxide), and “firedamp” (methane).

The latter part of the book describes how the union grew stronger as the resentment for the working conditions and pay of the miners increased. The story is told with significant human interest insights. As an example, it is told how an African American working with an Italian immigrant enjoyed pointing out that at the end of the shift they were both black. But there was little if any humor in the dealings of the companies with the union, and labor relations worsened steadily. The union made seven demands when they went on strike in 1912. The first demand was that the union be recognized. The other six demanded better pay, better working conditions, and ending the “company town” practice. Colorado Governor Ammons initially chose not to intervene. He was warned of the volatility in the Ludlow camp, and relented to send state militiamen after there had been several gun battles.

Ammons summoned three Union officials and three key company executives to his office for a marathon negotiation to settle the strike. The company officials announced they were ready to agree to all of the union demands with the exception of recognizing the union. The union men held fast to that being the most important demand. They said “…that only through a union could they educate green men, settle grievances, and uphold the miners’ self-determined laws of safety and mutualism.” The meeting therefore failed to reach an agreement, and outrageous behavior continued on both sides while the people of Colorado worried about a “coal famine.”

President Wilson responded to the escalating violence by sending in federal troops, and the strike zone was declared “silent.” The costly fifteen-month struggle was ended by a unanimous vote by the miners.

My favorite line in the book is in the Acknowledgments, where the author describes the struggles at researching the complex history and writing the book. He writes, “History isn’t Rocket Science—it’s harder.”