Category Archives: Energy Investments

Choices for Producing Energy

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I just posted a review of “Wormwood Forest” by Mary Mycio about the Chernobyl disaster, and that brought me back to the question of what is the most responsible method of producing our electricity. We all want electricity to power the fans on our furnaces, the air conditioning, our lights, our computers and printers, to charge our phones other devices, and for some to charge the batteries in their cars. Abundant and affordable electricity is crucial to our economy and the comfort many or most of us have come to expect in our lives.

Most of our electricity is produced in plants fuled by coal (about 50%) or natural gas (about 21%) and by nuclear energy (about 19%). However, new regulations are putting pressure on the coal plants. First Energy Corp recently announced they are retiring six coal-fired plants because of the stricter federal anti-pollution rules. About a third of the workers at the six plants are eligible for retirement, and another 100 or so will be able to transfer to other jobs in the company. However, that leaves about 250 people who can’t retire without a job. This is probably just the beginning of such announcements, since it won’t be economically feasible to retrofit older plants.

I’ve reviewed several books that are pertinent to the discussion. The best, in my opinion, is “The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear” written by Dr. Petr Beckman and published in 1976. On the subject of Chernobyl he would have observed the that minimal environmental effects from Three Mile Island proved that properly designed safety systems can prevent a disaster while shoddy design gives us what happened at Chernobyl. Dr. Beckman wrote that there is no completely safe way to make energy. “Energy is the capacity for doing work, and as long as man is fallible, there is always the possibility to do the wrong type of work; to ask for safe energy, therefore, is much the same as asking for incombustible fuel. He also observed that nuclear energy is “…far safer than any other form of energy.”

Back to the review of “Wormwood Forest,” the author was astonished during her tours of the Zone of Alienation created by the explosion of a Chernobyl reactor by the proliferation of wildlife. She said little is known about the radioactive animals of Chernobyl, but “What is known is that there a many, many more of them than before the disaster.” She also wrote that what she saw during her extensive tours converted her from being an “…adamant opponent of nuclear energy to ambivalent support…”at least until we reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.” I’m hoping that thinking such as that spreads before we reach the economic disaster created by bad economic policy and energy shortages predicted by some of the books I’ve recently reviewed.

Recent events involving the government trying to fund development of alternative energy endorses  the wisdom of Ms. Mycio in advocating nuclear energy until we sort out what is really possible with alternative fuels. As mentioned in the review of the book “Game Over” by Stephen Leeb, there isn’t enough iron to build the windmills and towers to replace energy from carbon based production. Solar power hasn’t been proven to provide a net gain in energy, and the results of providing Solyndra over half a billion dollars in government loans only led to a delay in bankruptcy and the layoff of about 1100 employees. There isn’t enough land area to grow biofuels to replace hydrocarbon energy production, and converting food such as corn into ethanol is both inefficient and idiotic.

Solyndra isn’t the only failure involving alternative energy technology. Beacon Power, a company involved in energy storage also went into bankruptcy after receiving $578 million dollars in taxpayer-guaranteed loans. The most recent bankruptcy was Ener1, an electric battery company that was recently awarded an $118 million dollar stimulus grant. That bankruptcy occurred about one year after Vice President Biden visited the plant to highlight the progress being made by the company with federal funds.

My hope is that technology for alternative energy becomes more successful or that new nuclear power plants will be built using the lessons learned from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Japan before we reach a precipice of economic failure driven by misguided political policies about how we make our energy.

Wormwood Forest, A Natural History of Chernobyl

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This book by Mary Mycio was given to me by a friend who told me I would love it. He was right. It describes the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in 1986 that scattered 20-40 tons of radioactive materials across large areas of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. The area is designated the “Zone of Alienation,” and 350,000 people were evacuated and resettled. There are over four million people still living in areas that are contaminated with at least one curie of cesium per square kilometer. The book has detailed information about the levels of contamination of the Zone and the effects on the animals, plants, insects, and fungus. Many sections are difficult to read because of the amount of technical information. However, I’m glad I read it.

The book begins with a quote from Revelation to explain the title. The quote is about a star called Wormwood that falls on the earth “…and the third part of the waters become wormwood; and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter.” Chornobyl is the Ukrainian name for the wormwood plant and Chernobyl is “…the Russianized version…”   The wormwood herb and other plants have thrived since the reactor disaster. There have been effects, such as pine trees that have grown into distorted shapes called “pine bushes.”

It was believed people would never be able to enter many areas contaminated by the disaster, but the author joined the fad of “atomic tourism” by obtaining permits to tour the Zone wearing her camouflage protective clothing and dosimeter. She writes she was shocked to discover the area “…has become Europe’s largest wildlife sanctuary, a flourishing—at times unearthly—wilderness teeming with large animals…” There are large herds of wild boars, healthy populations of wolves and lynx because of the proliferation of their prey, wild horses, and a large variety of birds. The author observes that “…very little is known about the radioactive animals of Chernobyl. What is known is that there are many, many more of them than before the disaster.

The book is undoubtedly controversial in many aspects. For example the author writes although plutonium is a heavy metal and therefore toxic, the myth that it is the “…deadliest substance known to man…” is not accurate. There are other toxins such as arsenic that win that distinction. I expect the effects on people and the various species described in the book will reinforce the opinions of those who oppose nuclear power and the general absence of longer term devastating effects will reinforce the opinions of those who are proponents. One of the author’s tour guides observed that there has not been mutant animals in the zone. He admitted when pressed that “Because with wild animals, mutants die.” Toads and frogs often develop malformations when exposed to toxins, but those are seen more often in the United States than in the Zone.

There were hundreds of children exposed to radioactive iodine who developed thyroid cancer. However, “… perhaps one of the greatest mysteries is the disaster’s impact on people.” “Samosels,” or squatters, originally hid to prevent being evacuated from the Zone. They are dying at the expected ages despite being exposed to twice the maximum dose “allowed.” “Moreover, it seems impossible to tease the health effects of radiation out of the tangle of poverty, alcoholism, smoking, poor diet, and other factors that plague public health in the the places in the former Soviet Union that were unaffected by Chernobyl and that made life expectancy—especially among men—the lowest in Europe.” It is also observed the Samosels inhale “…too little plutonium to influence their dose.”

The “involuntary park” (a term coined by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling) appears to be proving wildlife will thrive after being made radioactive by cesium, iodine, strontium, and plutonium where there is little human activity. Touring the Zone converted the author from “…adamant opponent of nuclear energy to ambivalent support—at least for giving a window of time for reducing our dependence on fossil fuels…” She describes how she believed life would be mutated if it managed to survive the holocaust, but Chernobyl showed her a different view. The ghost towns are a “…tragic testimony to the devastating effects of technology gone awry. But life in the Wormwood Forest was not only persevering, it was flourishing.”  Of course there were and are numerous media ventures to “…exploit Chernobyl’s inherent spookiness.”

There are interesting bits of historical background about the areas impacted by the disaster. For example, it is mentioned that Stalin’s forced collectivization created an artificial famine in the Ukraine that starved ten million people to death in 1932-1933. There are also bits that were fun to read. One example is that the ugly blob that formed after the reactor meltdown cooled is called the “elephant foot.” The authorities wanted to take a sample, so a machine gun was fired at the blob until a chip came off.

One of my favorite passages in the book was a discussion of the author attending a third grade class trip to the New York Hall of Science. There was a terrarium with a sign: “The Impact of Radiation on Rats.” There was nothing in the terrarium except plants, and author decided the radiation had made the rats invisible. Another passage tells a joke about a “babushka” selling apples labeled “Chernobyl.” A passerby notes that no one will buy apples from there and is told people will certainly buy them for their husband, wife, and mother-in-law.

I was interested in the author’s willingness to expose herself to the radiation levels during her tours. She writes she did not wear a cumulative dosimeter. She calculated an estimated exposure of a few hundred millirems, which isn’t much, but she judged her exposure to be “enough.”

Anyone interested in taking a tour of the Zone of Alienation around Chernobyl should read this book. Approval for a visit is obtained by sending a fax to Chernobylinterinform.

I’m going to let the author have the final say with words written in her closing. “If a nuclear disaster really is …in your metaphoric backyard…it seems best not to think about it too much. Not, at least, until many years have passed, and the bountiful evidence of nature’s nearly miraculous resilience and recovery makes the thinking more bearable.”

Game Over, How You Can Prosper in a Shattered Economy

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This book by Stephen Leeb is the second recent review about the inevitability of an economic collapse. The review of the book posted last week predicts what will happen in the United States compared to what happened in Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. That book provided little guidance other than encouraging stockpiling of food, medicine, and barter goods. There is advice in “Game Over” on how to be best prepared for predicted collapse caused by runaway inflation and shortages of commodities.“Growing numbers of the world’s 6.6 billion people are now actively seeking to equal Americans’ high consumption lifestyle…” There are limits to all commodities, and governments and central banks are not acting as if they have the restraint necessary to keep inflation under control.

Peak and decline of oil supplies and inadequacies of alternative energy production are likely to cause energy production to fail to keep up with the world’s appetite. Replacing carbon fuels with wind is impossible, because there isn’t enough iron oxide to build enough towers and turbines. It is not yet clear whether solar cells produce a net gain in energy. Thin film photovoltaics require cadmium telluride, and there isn’t a wealth of that available in the world. Producing energy by converting corn into ethanol uses more energy than is gained and making fuel out of food when there is a shortage of food is, to be kind, idiotic.   Continue reading →

Game Over, The Impending Economic Collapse

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I posted a review of a book “Game Over” by Stephen Leeb in which it is predicted that the U.S. economy is doomed to collapse because the world has reached what is called “Peak Oil.” All commodities are limited, and the developing world is demanding more of its share. Another review on the same subject titled “Reinventing Collapse” by Dimtry Orlov which gives virtually the same prediction, although that book is about comparing what the U.S. collapse will look like compared to what happened with the Soviet Union.

President Obama might have hastened the eventual collapse of the U.S. economy by his recent rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline. The pipeline is proposed to bring Canadian tar sand oil to the U.S. to be refined. Federal law requires that government projects be subjected to detailed environmental impact studies under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA approval was given to Keystone XL after three years of study found the project would not have an adverse environmental impact. However, the powerful Environmental lobby hates the idea of the project and threatened to not support the Obama reelection campaign if he approved the project.

The President said he rejected the project because the “arbitrary date” set by Congress did not give enough time for full review (despite the lengthy NEPA review). I speculate that most Presidents would have at least complained about Congress passing a law with a deadline for action by the President. However, I also speculate that the President made a calculated political decision. He needs the environmental movement to support his campaign with volunteers to man the phone banks and do the door to door work to get his vote out next November. The Unions wanted the jobs that would be created by pipeline, but I’m guessing Mr. Obama knows they will vote for him over any Republican candidate. Nate Beeler’s political cartoon in The Washington Examiner on January 18 expresses a different perspective. It shows a caricature of President Obama dusting off his hands after tying a pipe labeled “Keystone XL Jobs” into a hangman’s noose. Another figure holding a sign “Need Job” is asking, “IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE FOR ME or YOU?”

“Game Over” documents that alternative energies such as solar, wind, and biofuels can’t replace the energy provided by carbon-based fuels in the near future or ever. An article in the Wall Street Journal by Robert Bryce has interesting information about popular alternative energy sources and nuclear power. It would take 770 square miles of land covered with wind turbines to replace the two Indian Point nuclear reactors that sit on 250 acres of land and provide 30 percent of the energy used by New York City. There isn’t enough iron oxide to build enough towers and wind mills to come close to replacing electricity produced from carbon-based production. It isn’t yet certain that solar panels produce more energy than is required to construct, operate, and maintain the panels.  An area the size of Illinois would have to be planted in switch grass for biofuel to replace one-tenth of the energy produced by oil. Biofuel production as advocated by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, “…is a fool’s errand.”

The Canadians are saying they know they will sell the oil, probably to the Chinese, if the U.S. continues to block the Keystone XL pipeline. The argument that the oil is “too dirty for use” won’t impress a world that is demanding more oil. It will be burned somewhere, and Mr. Obama may have assured it won’t produce jobs and energy here.

“Game Over” predicts that runaway inflation and devaluation of the U.S. dollar along with declining commodity resources will be a centerpiece of an economic collapse. The worst case scenario is that the developed nations, which have created complexity along with wealth, will collapse in the midst of violence and starvation. Perhaps that possible outcome will somehow overcome the resistance to nuclear energy. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the Japanese tsunami disasters certainly have given nuclear energy a bad reputation. The waste generated is another subject popular with critics. However, the “…American commercial nuclear power industry, over its entire history, has produced about 62,000 tons of high-level waste. Stacked to a depth of about 20 feet, that would cover a single football field. Coal-fired power plants in the United States, by contrast, generate 130 million tons of coal ash a single year.” (That is an interesting observation, but remembering what causes a nuclear criticality would tell you that stacking high level waste isn’t a good idea.)

There has been a stream of comments and counter comments about the Bakken field in the Dakotas and how much that huge deposit could help with U.S. demands for oil. The field is producting just under half a million barrels of oil a day, which is stretching the infrastructure ability for collection and shipment. There are also arguments about the “fracking” to improve extraction. The Bakken field is generating oil and arguments. There is an interesting discussion about how much the field might be able to produce on Snopes. That source says production from the field has already peaked at about half a million barrels a day.

I speculate that many people will eventually think developing the Bakken fields, want Canada to sell us oil transported though some pipeline, and/or building more nuclear plants are all acceptable alternatives to starving in the cold and dark.  I also speculate that President Obama’s choice to block the Keystone XL pipeline will prove to be unpopular with a majority of Americans when they eventually can’t afford to fill the gas tanks of their cars or when the charging stations for their battery powered cars aren’t receiving electricity from the power plants. Maybe people won’t really care until they aren’t able to use their electricity-powered computers, cell phones, and other electronics or when they have to walk or bike to get anywhere.

Reinventing Collapse, The Soviet Example and American Prospects

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This book by Dmitry Orlov predicts a U.S. economic collapse, and it is both interesting and often oddly entertaining. The author was born and grew up in Leningrad, but lived in the U.S. until the mid-seventies. He had several visits to the Soviet Union during the years that political system was preparing to collapse or after it had collapsed. He believes that the U.S. will only have the option of inflating to escape excessive debt or defaulting on obligations. “But the results are the same: a worthless national currency and unhappy international creditors unwilling to extend further credit.” That scenario leads to the need, if the author is correct or partially correct, for individuals to consider what they should do, or prepare to do, if there is a collapse of the U.S. economy.  I don’t agree with some of what is written (the risk from global warming, as one example) but I believe the book is worthwhile.

The descriptions of the visits to the Soviet Union are an example of how the author can take the edge off serious matters with clever writing. “The stores were largely empty (in the sense of being quite uncontaminated by consumer goods) and often closed.” He quickly learned a half-liter of vodka could be easily exchanged for ten liters of gasoline, “…giving vodka far greater effective energy density than rocket fuel.” People were willing to exchange items of great value for American jeans. This is an important point. When an economy collapses, it is important to have desirable items to barter for what is needed for survival. The author also warns that, “Access to actual physical resources and assets…and relationships, quickly becomes much more valuable than mere cash.” Continue reading →

Electricity Generation Problems and Politics

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I began doing research on solar generation of power for this posting, but expanded to asking how we continue to power our society in the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly manner. Let’s make a few generalizations. Everyone wants inexpensive energy, and we would prefer to have as little impact on the planet as possible. Some of us might even want to drive cars that are battery powered, which means the batteries have to be recharged from some source of electricity generation. Solar and wind generated electricity are “darlings,” because they don’t use those ugly petrochemicals and don’t emit carbon dioxide. However, they aren’t as dependable as plants that burn coal or natural gas. They are also unfortunately more expensive. Many consumers want to turn on their computers and feel superior because they think the energy is coming from a renewable source such as solar or wind. Some might also selfishly want the energy to be inexpensive and dependable.

This is an immensely complicated problem, but let’s begins with costs for various methods of generating electrical energy. Mark Jaffe wrote an article in the Denver Post that is a pretty good summary of the costs and dependability of various methods of energy production. The flaw is that nuclear power generation is not mentioned. I’ll attempt to summarize the excellent data in the article. Natural gas costs between 6.6 to 10.9 cents to generate a kilowatt of electricity, coal is 7.4 to 13.5, wind is 4.4 to 11.5, and solar comes in last ( in the cost race) at 14.1 to 21. The dependability is perhaps more concerning in comparing “renewable” solar and wind to oil and natural gas.  Coal and natural gas are rated at about 70-90 percent dependable. Solar and wind are rated at twenty-two to forty-two percent dependable.

Let’s try to be honest. Would you prefer to accept a less than fifty percent chance of having your home heating or air conditioning to work or your computer to be powered to be between 70-90 percent dependable, or would you be willing to accept a less than fifty percent chance of that energy being available?

Solar has especially come under pressure recently. An article in the Wall Street Journal by Yuliya Chernova reports that 8% more solar panels would be installed in 2011 than in 2010, but that increases are expected to end in 2012. The United States is about the only country that is expected to have stable or increased demand in this New Year, and that is because utilities have to install new panels to meet State mandates. Price competition for the panels, to include from the Chinese where the government directed banks to lend freely to new manufacturers, is driving companies out of business. At least seven solar panel producers, including Solyndra, filed for bankruptcy in 2011. Stock prices have of course plummeted.

And now let’s discuss nuclear power generation. I know it has been successfully vilified by those who are against anything that is titled “nuclear,” and Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and the recent problems in Japan after the tsunami haven’t done anything to encourage people to advocate that source of electricity. However, let’s think about this. Nuclear power doesn’t generate carbon dioxide, and therefore doesn’t contribute to the currently frightening “boogieman” (which I don’t believe) of global warming. For those who are so selfish to be interested in costs of electricity, nuclear power generation is the least expensive method. It is also dependable so long as a tsunami doesn’t wipe out the cooling systems.

The criminal investigation of government loans to Solyndra won’t help the reputation of the solar industry. An article in the Washington Post by Joe Stephens and Carol D. Leonnig reprinted in the Denver Post contains some troubling information. The loans that were made “…were thick with political considerations.” Thousands of memos, company records, and internal e-mails show that the government was almost exclusively worried about how the story would impact Obama’s campaign for reelection. There was rarely if ever a discussion of the impact Solyndra’s collapse would have on laid-off workers, the development of solar power, or the impact on taxpayers. The discussions were almost exclusively about “How are we going to manage this politically?” The bottom line is that senior officials pushed career bureaucrats to rush their positive decision on making the loans so Vice President Joe Biden could announce it on a trip to California.

A matrix at the end of the Washington Post article presents connections between Solyndra, the Department of Energy, several senior members of the administration, and Solyndra investors. One of those investors was the billionaire George Kaiser who was a “bundler” for the Obama campaign.