# Renewable Green Energy Blues



## Wolverine (Jul 30, 2007)

Here's an interesting article on the short term futures of renewable energy. I used to be excited about the concept of renewables and wanted to go that way in my industry, until I got into the economy of scale and found there's just nothing that compares to a good 1 gigawatt nuke unit as far as low cost, low impact energy. As for the issue of spent fuel storage, I'll save my rant on Yucca Mountain for another day.

Disclaimer: This article is presented for information only to all who are interested in the topic of renewables versus traditional energy sources.

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Junk Science: A Green Sings the Renewable Energy Blues

Monday , July 30, 2007

By Steven Milloy

Rockefeller University’s Jesse Ausubel introduced his new article on renewable energy by openly worrying about “hereticide” — the all-to-common historical phenomenon of putting heretics to death.

As a long-time Green, Ausubel has good reason to be concerned given his article condemns renewable energy as “wrecking” the environment.

“Renewables are not green,” is how Ausubel begins the article published in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology. It’s a remarkable statement coming from someone who beat his fellow Greens to global warming alarmism by at least 10 years.

Ausubel’s Rockefeller University bio says that he “was one of the main organizers of the first U.N. World Climate Conference (Geneva, 1979) which substantially elevated the global warming issue on scientific and political agendas” and that he “played major roles in the formulation of both U.S. and world climate-research programs.”

Ausubel’s remarkable article, however, may very well cost him whatever exalted status he may have had in the Green movement, which is likely to brand him an out-and-out traitor to the cause.

But the Green’s loss is a big gain for the rest of us — particularly those interested in sensible energy and environmental policy as opposed to ill-considered, pie-in-the-sky hopes for a renewable energy-powered civilization.

Ausubel calculated the amount of energy produced by various renewable energy sources — including hydroelectric, biomass, wind and solar power — in terms of power output per square meter of land disturbed.

If you could collect the average annual rainfall of the 900,000-square-kilometer Canadian province of Ontario — about 680,000 billion liters of water — and store it behind a dam 60 meters tall, you would produce about 11,000 Megawatts of electricity — which is only about 80 percent of the output of Canada’s 25 nuclear power stations, Ausubel says.

In other words, this works out to a power production rate of 0.012 watts per square meter of land. It would take 1 square kilometer of land to provide enough electricity for about 12 Canadians, according to Ausubel, who says this inefficiency is a key reason for the reduced demand for hydroelectric power.

Biomass is an even worse renewable source of energy than hydroelectric power in terms of ecological harm.

Large-scale power generation from biomass would require that “vast areas be shaved or harvested annually,” Ausubel says. It would take 2,500 square kilometers of prime Iowa farmland to produce as much electricity from biomass as from a single nuclear power plant.

“Increased use of biomass fuel in any form is criminal,” Ausubel stated in a media release. “Every automobile would require a pasture of 1-2 hectares.” He added.

Wind power? While it’s much less land intensive than biomass, that’s not saying much. A 770-square-kilometer area would only produce as much electricity as a single 1,000 Megawatt nuclear plant.

A wind farm the size of Texas would be required to extract, store and transport annual U.S. energy needs. “Every square meter of Connecticut” would have to be turned into a wind farm to provide all of New York City’s electricity demands.

Solar power is also quite a land hog. As photovoltaic cells are only 10 percent efficient and have seen no breakthroughs in 30 years, U.S. electric consumption would require a 150,000-square kilometer area of photovoltaics, plus additional land for electricity storage and retrieval.

The photovoltaic industry would have to step up its production by 600,000 times to produce the same amount of power as that generated by single 1,000 Megawatt nuclear plant.

Aside from land misuse, Ausubel also raises the other undesirable consequences of renewables: wind power produces low-frequency noise and thumps, blights landscapes, interferes with TV reception, and chops birds and bats; dams kill rivers; and solar power would require that large areas of land be essentially “painted black” with photovoltaic cells.

In terms of resource use, the infrastructure of a wind farm takes five to 10 times the steel and concrete used in a 1970-vintage nuclear power plant.

The first part of Ausubel’s heresy closes with a sobering assessment: “Cheerful self-delusion about new solar and renewables since 1970 has yet to produce a single quad of the more than 90 quadrillion BTU of total energy the U.S. now yearly consumes. ... Let’s stop sanctifying false and minor gods and heretically chant ‘Renewables are not Green.’”

The second part of Ausubel’s heresy, which will have to be addressed in more detail at another time, is his prescription for nuclear power.

Greens traditionally oppose nuclear power wherever and whenever they can. Even those Greens that say it’s time to consider nuclear power seem to be paying no more than lip service to the concept — witness the lack of progress on greenhouse gas-free nuclear power despite all the hoopla about the supposed fossil fuel-caused manmade climate change.

But Ausubel says that, “Like computers, to grow larger, the energy system must now shrink in size and cost. Considered in watts per square meter, nuclear has astronomical advantages over its competitors.”

In a time when those who question the Green agenda are scurrilously defamed and routinely intimidated — just for the sin of expressing contrary opinions — the Green Ausubel should be applauded for having the courage to stand up and speak the truth: that renewable energy wasn’t, isn’t and ought not ever be.


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## cmp252 (Jul 30, 2007)

What are the chances this ever makes it to the main stream-media???? Im guessing about the time we PROVE global warming is man made.

:suicide1:


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## Tina (Jul 30, 2007)

Thanks for the article. Very interesting.


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## Freon (Jul 30, 2007)

Great article, do you know where it was published?


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## Dleg (Jul 31, 2007)

Outstanding! I've been saying the same stuff for several years to all of my tree-hugging friends, who just can't seem to get their heads around the numbers.

A funny thing about the renewable energy business out here - and I suspect everywhere else - it is primarily being promoted by lawyers and "business people". Not engineers. It's just another way to capitalize on society's mass fears and do-gooder-ness. A quick buck.

Any rational person will conclude that nuclear fission is the best short-term option. R&amp;D into safer fusion energy should be the long-term goal.

I've always had a problem with the whole "conservation" aspect of the renewable energy movement. We're human beings and we can do better than that - there's no reason we should be cutting back on energy use, when we can produce plenty of it cheaply and efficiently. More electricity = higher standard of living. We should not be taking steps backward. We should be looking at ways t generate more power, more efficiently.


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## ktulu (Jul 31, 2007)

Freon said:


> Great article, do you know where it was published?


published in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology. Or so the article says...


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## Freon (Jul 31, 2007)

ktulu said:


> published in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology. Or so the article says...



I read right over that at least twice.


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## Wolverine (Aug 1, 2007)

Dleg said:


> A funny thing about the renewable energy business out here - and I suspect everywhere else - it is primarily being promoted by lawyers and "business people". Not engineers. It's just another way to capitalize on society's mass fears and do-gooder-ness. A quick buck.


I think you're onto something there. The way to make money is to find something that everybody needs, in this case clean water/air, and then sell it to them, creating an entirely new money making industry. BTW, I've got a garage full of carbon-offsets if anyone wants to buy some. :w00t:

Steven Milloy runs a website called JunkScience.com. He and John Stossel are two of my favorite mythbusters and always a good read.


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## FusionWhite (Aug 1, 2007)

The article is great. The only problem with nuclear power is the highly radioactive waste it produces. For every ton of nuclear fuel many more tons of low level radioactive waste is produced. And the last time I checked there isnt anyway to effectively destroy it. Our best solution so far has been to dump it under a mountain. Doesnt sound like a very good plan to me.

All in all though I dont see why we're not building more nuclear power plants. Im all for it. I wont ever see one in my neck of the woods though; we have a saying here in Kentucky: "Coal is King". A company will build a nuclear power plant in KY over the corpses of many dead coal miners who will fight it tooth and nail.


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## grover (Aug 2, 2007)

I'm glad someone's publishing this stuff! I did these calcs years ago, and reached the exact same conclusion: solar energy, regardless as how you harvest it (via direct solar-electric conversion, solar-thermal through wind or hydroelectric, or biochemical through corn ethanol or other biomass), is limited inherently to the amount of sunlight hitting the earth, and SUCKS for our demands. The public has to realize that solar is a pipe dream and ethanol has a net energy _loss_, so we can past all the diversions and start developing the only REAL long-term solution to our impending energy crsis: fusion power.



FusionWhite said:


> The article is great. The only problem with nuclear power is the highly radioactive waste it produces. For every ton of nuclear fuel many more tons of low level radioactive waste is produced. And the last time I checked there isnt anyway to effectively destroy it. Our best solution so far has been to dump it under a mountain. Doesnt sound like a very good plan to me.


We don't really need to worry about it, though. The great thing about highly radioactive waste is that it' highly radioactive! The same short half-life that makes is so very radioactive also means those isotopes decay quickly into lower-level radioactive waste, leaving only the less radioactive isotopes behind. All this talk about 10,000 years for Yucca Mountain is using unreasonable levels of radioactivity- I believe I saw a report saying that within 100 years, a human could safely walk through Yucca Mountain. Well, if it it weren't completely encapsulated in salt at least. Really, I'd argue all the heavy metals and other _chemical_ contaminants are far more dangerous than the radiation, but nobody ever really seems to care about that.
I mean, shoot, how many hundreds of megatons of thermonuclear warheads were exploded over Bikini atoll... yet it's open today for tourists? I did some calculations once, restating levels of radiation as SWW- "Spooning with wife"- a unit of measure equal to the amount of natural radiation you get from your spouse over the course of a year. Damn, I don't have them here at work though... maybe I'll remember to post them sometime.


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## Guest (Aug 2, 2007)

^^^ Did you also see that those larger calculations were based on using a 1E-06 risk return period?? I am not sure where everyone came up with the idea that 1-in-1 Million was a good planning number but in the end ... it is just a number.

I primarily work with Risk-Based Corrective Action (RBCA) and find in many cases that people don't really understand the underlying meaning of those numbers. And it isn't just the public - I find practioners are pretty fuzzy as well. :true:

I posted my endoresement of nuclear energy in a different thread based on our societies INCREASING DEMAND for energy. I think the phrase, "You can't have your cake and eat it too" works well here, unless of course you are this guy ---&gt;






I think there is blame on all sides for adequately presenting the picture. It starts with the politicized issues and then it spins into a  of misinformation by the media.

:2cents:

JR


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## grover (Aug 2, 2007)

To combat people's fear of radiation and lack of basis for comparison for the danger between different levels of radiation, I created an initiative to calculate radiation exposure, and, in every radiation thread, present the radiation numbers in terms of SWWs, the exposure you get from natural radiation in the human body while spooning with your wife for an 8 hour night.

The human body contains 13.8Bq  (0.37nCi), mostly from K[super]40[/super] (gamma) and C[super]14[/super] (beta). I'll try to do some rough calcs. Even spooning naked, C[super]14[/super]'s beta won't be much of a risk so I decided to run the calcs for K[super]40[/super] alone. Someone saved me the work, though! The equivilent dose of radiation from the human body is 40 mrem/yr- about 1/3 the natural background radiation we recieve every year, and 1/6 total radiation we recieve. How that compared to other radiation sources is readily noted at this link.


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## Freon (Aug 3, 2007)

grover said:


> To combat people's fear of radiation and lack of basis for comparison for the danger between different levels of radiation, I created an initiative to calculate radiation exposure, and, in every radiation thread, present the radiation numbers in terms of SWWs, the exposure you get from natural radiation in the human body while spooning with your wife for an 8 hour night.
> The human body contains 13.8Bq  (0.37nCi), mostly from K[super]40[/super] (gamma) and C[super]14[/super] (beta). I'll try to do some rough calcs. Even spooning naked, C[super]14[/super]'s beta won't be much of a risk so I decided to run the calcs for K[super]40[/super] alone. Someone saved me the work, though! The equivilent dose of radiation from the human body is 40 mrem/yr- about 1/3 the natural background radiation we recieve every year, and 1/6 total radiation we recieve. How that compared to other radiation sources is readily noted at this link. calcs!
> 
> Calcs:
> ...


In the spirt of Fudgy....I assume this is a linear realtionship. Otherwise Hugh Hefner would be in deep trouble....


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## Capt Worley PE (Aug 3, 2007)

Freon said:


> In the spirt of Fudgy....I assume this is a linear realtionship. Otherwise Hugh Hefner would be in deep trouble....


He is losing weight...


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