When I tell people I’m a clean energy consultant, oftentimes the first question I get asked is, “So, what do you think of nuclear?”  Usually this comes from folks who are skeptical of renewables’ cost effectiveness and sometimes even of scientists’ climate change predictions.  I admit, I don’t really work with nuclear.  And I am genuinely conflicted about it.  So, I take the easy way out, and tell them this: It doesn’t matter whether nuclear is a viable solution on a technical basis, because it’s just not cost-effective, and it’s highly unlikely to become so.

In January’s Flex Your Power newsletter, I found some nice analysis to back up all of the anecdotes I’ve heard working in the energy industry.  I’ve reproduced Flex Your Power’s summary here, but I encourage you to read the study yourself.  As you read the summary below, keep in mind that according to the American Wind Energy Association, state of the art wind power installations cost less than five cents per kWh (with the caveat that nuclear is baseload, while wind has intermittency issues), and retail electricity prices here in California averaged 12.8 cents per kWh in 2007.  Anyway, here’s the Flex Your Power article:

New Study Finds Cost of Nuclear Too High

(Photo: Flickr)

A new study, Business Risks and Costs of New Nuclear Power, by a leading expert in power plant costs, Craig A. Severance, finds nuclear power too costly to pursue.

The report affirms that many U.S. utilities are diversifying through a combination of aggressive load reduction incentives to customers, better grid management, renewable energy sources and natural gas. However, some U.S. utilities have less aggressive load reduction programs and are now exploring new nuclear power. Severance points out that the reason U.S. utilities stopped ordering nuclear power plants was their conclusion that nuclear power’s business risks and costs were too high.

The report notes that utilities promoting new nuclear power claim it is their least costly option, but independent studies have concluded new nuclear power is not economically competitive. Because of a history of cost overruns, construction delays and the fact that new generation designs have never been constructed, there is a major business risk that nuclear power will be more costly than projected, the report says. Furthermore, recent construction cost estimates (not counting operation or fuel costs) run from 17 to 22 cents/kWh when the nuclear facilities come online, and generation cost estimates - including fuel and operation and maintenance, but not distribution - are likely to be from 25 to 30 cents/kWh, which is triple current U.S. electricity rates. According to the report, this high cost may destroy the very demand the plant was built to serve.

Want to learn more?  Check out the complete study.

Here’s the last poster in the series.  Fast forward!  It’s from California today.

(Poster by Albert Dorne, 1945)

Well, I guess we don’t know who the winner is yet. But here are some interesting ways of trying to frame that question:

First up, the consumer payback period vs the cost of gas for your favorite alternative fuel vehicles (cars only). The only one missing is ethanol. But flex-fuel capability is super-cheap and is already included in many cars, sometimes without the owner’s knowledge, as a way to get around fuel efficiency regulations and/or capitalize on the recent ethanol fad. So paybacks are not really a barrier there.
The chart is from California’s State Alternative Fuels Plan, developed in response to AB1007 and adopted in December 2007. Actually I took it from the draft Commission-Adopted Report, because it is prettier than the final version (content unchanged). Looks like Honda’s CNG Civic is already a good deal. Fuel cells, unsurprisingly, come out as the biggest loser, with their worst-case scenario not even shown.

Next up, the global issues: energy independence and climate change. This chart is also from California’s State Alternative Fuels Plan, this time from the final version. It shows the well-to-wheels (full lifecycle) greenhouse gas and petroleum reductions achieved by each of your favorite technologies. Enjoy!

Here’s the first in a short poster series on our first major energy crisis. I’m not talking about the 1970s, I’m talking about World War II. I can’t imagine seeing anything as aggressive as this poster today, even though we could easily substitute Bin Laden or your choice of terrorist-sheltering dictators for Hitler. What’s different today? Is it the lack of immediacy in the threat to our national security? Or the indirect connection between energy independence and national security? Is it that the prosperity of the post-WWII era has created a country unaccustomed and unwilling to sacrifice? Or maybe we as a society have moved on from finger-wagging and just won’t accept this kind of tone in our ad campaigns. Perhaps we’d just see it as hokey. Anyway, I think these posters are an interesting insight into how another culture from another time responded to the need for a level of energy efficiency and conservation that is similar to what we’re experiencing today. Enjoy!

Source: California in Context: Long-Term Scenarios of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, California Energy Commission

Looks like shipping freight by air is not the greatest idea after all. But this chart does seem conservative - are we really only going to have 35 mpg hybrids in 2050? The Prius can already do that..

http://www.wateronline.com/article.mvc/Possible-New-Approach-To-Purifying-Drinking-0001

Durham, NC — A genetic tool used by medical researchers may also be used in a novel approach to remove harmful microbes and viruses from drinking water.

In a series of proof-of-concept experiments, Duke University engineers demonstrated that short strands of genetic material could successfully target a matching portion of a gene in a common fungus found in water and make it stop working. If this new approach can be perfected, the researchers believe that it could serve as the basis for a device to help solve the problem of safe drinking water in Third World countries without water treatment facilities.

The relatively new technology, known as RNA interference (RNAi), makes use of short snippets of genetic material that match — like a lock and key — a corresponding segment of a gene in the target. When these snippets enter a cell and attach to the corresponding segment, they can inhibit or block the action of the target gene. This approach is increasingly being used as a tool in biomedical research, but has not previously been applied to environmental issues.

“Pathogens, whether bacterial or viral, represent one of the major threats to drinking water in developed and undeveloped countries,” said Sara Morey, a Ph.D. candidate in the lab of Claudia Gunsch, assistant professor of civil engineering at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering. “Our data showed that we could silence the action of a specific gene in a fungus in water, leading us to believe that RNAi shows promise as a gene-silencing tool for controlling the proliferation of waterborne bacteria and viruses.”

Morey presented the results of her experiments June 3, 2008, during the annual meeting of the American Society of Microbiology in Boston.

In addition to helping solve drinking water issues in underdeveloped countries, this new approach could also address some of the drawbacks associated with treated drinking water in more developed nations, Morey said. Methods currently used to treat water — chlorine and ultraviolet (UV) light — can be expensive to operate and the results of the treatment itself can affect the taste and smell of the water.

Although these methods have been employed for years, problems can emerge once the treated water enters the distribution system, where pathogens are also present. For this reason, water is often over-chlorinated at the plant so that it remains in high enough concentrations in the pipes to neutralize pathogens. This explains why people living the closer to a treatment plant will be more likely to taste or smell the chemical than those farthest away from the plant, the researchers said. Additionally, chlorine can react with other organic matter in the system, leading to potentially harmful by-products.

UV light, while also effective in neutralizing pathogens at the plant, has no effect once the water is pumped out of the plant. Gunsch said that many pathogens are developing a resistance to the effects of chlorine and UV light, so newer options are needed.

“We envision creating a system based on RNAi technology that would look from the outside just like the water filters commonly used now,” Gunsch said. “This approach would be especially attractive in less industrialized countries without water treatment systems. This ‘point-of-use’ strategy would allow these countries to make safe water without the expense of water purification infrastructure.”

The first prototypes would likely involve a filter “seeded” with RNAi that would eliminate pathogens as the water passed through it. These filters would likely need to be replaced regularly, Gunsch said, adding that she believes it would theoretically be possible to create a living, or self-replicating system, which would not require replacement.

The researchers are currently conducting additional experiments targeting other regions of the fungus’ genome. For their proof-of-concept experiments, they tested RNAi on a non-essential, yet easy to monitor, gene. They are now testing this approach to silence or block genes essential to the viability of the pathogen.

They are also planning to test this strategy in water that contains a number of different pathogens at the same time, as well as trying to determine the optimal concentration needed in the water to be effective.

Welcome to Blog it Green! I’m hoping this will be a place for me to share interesting clean energy tidbits that I come across. But I’d also like it to be an interactive venue. If there’s something you’d like to share, whether it’s a link to an interesting article or a post you’d like to contribute to the blog, just let me know. I’m also happy to take requests, as my schedule permits - just send me your question as a comment to a post, or email me at BlogItGreen at Gmail. Your question can be as specific or as general as you would like. If I think it’s interesting and feasible to answer, I’ll look into it and report back.