Month: August 2013

Vulnerabilities of U.S. Infrastructure: We Need To Pay More Attention

U.S. infrastructure is highly vulnerable to natural disasters and sabotage and needs increased attention from all levels of government. It is an issue that first caught my attention in the 1980’s and continues to concern me. This blog is my first attempt to write down my thoughts on what I consider a scary subject.

‘Infrastructure’ is defined by Wikipedia as “basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. The term typically refers to the technical structures that support a society, such as roads, bridges, water supply, sewers, electrical grids, telecommunications, and so forth.”

My first exposure to the complexities of maintaining infrastructure came in 1985 at a meeting of the Council of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). I was then a staff person at the NAS/NRC. Part of the discussion was in response to a Council member’s suggestion that the NAE undertake a study of the vulnerability of the U.S. power distribution network, in response to several instances of power blackouts. Pros and cons of such a study were discussed for about half an hour until it was agreed that the topic was too complicated to undertake a study. I remember that discussion like it was yesterday and have never stopped thinking about it. Hopefully, lots of people today are giving much more thought to that issue, along with other national vulnerabilities, but is it enough?

Let me be specific about my concerns:
– most of our electricity supply today comes from large, centralized power plants that are not terribly well protected if at all (nuclear power plants are protected, but how well is a good question), and most power is distributed over above-ground power lines that are subject to falling trees, storm damage, or sabotage. In my opinion it wouldn’t take much to disable a portion of our electrical grid that removes power from large numbers of people and other utility customers. This concern is exacerbated by our increasing computer control of the grid and its vulnerability to malevolent hacking. Given today’s level of protection against such hacking I am very worried.

Another vulnerability of our power system, one that has received some increasing attention of late, is the impact that an electromagnetic pulse from a solar flare could have on that system. The power line system can act as a giant antenna that captures solar flare energy that overloads the system and burns out power lines and transformers (Note: this happened in the 1860’s and burned out many telegraph lines). While physical components can be replaced it takes time, during which most people will be without power unless they have a backup generator. This is especially true for replacing the large power transformers in the system that are quite expensive and not routinely inventoried.

– another area of concern is the U.S. water supply. In fact, immediately after I learned of the 9/11/2001 attacks in New York City, and in my capacity as a DOE official, I immediately placed a call to one of DOE’s Power Administrations with responsibility for water reservoirs that serve as hydroelectric power as well as domestic water sources. My question was: What are you doing to make sure nobody is poisoning that water supply? We could not discuss that on the telephone, but it was my first thought about how else can a terrorist disrupt our country. I see our water supplies as poorly protected, with a critical need for sensors that can detect even small amounts of contamination. This latter topic is now getting some attention at DOE’s National Laboratories.

A disrupted water supply also has major implications for food production and public health, along with other potentially impacted areas of national life.

– I will end this blog by mentioning only one other area of concern out of the many others that could be discussed, telecommunications. Our communication systems today (telephone, internet, GPS, weather forecasting, ….) are highly dependent on solar-powered satellite links and any disruption to these links, whether inadvertent or deliberate, can disable critical aspects of our society. As a ‘renewable energy advocate’ I am particularly sensitive to the suggestion that we place large (multi-gigawaat) solar power satellites in synchronous orbit around the earth and beam the power down via microwaves. This concept has some strong advocates but I’m not one of them. While the cost of putting large solar arrays in orbit is an obvious concern, I worry most about the vulnerability of such a large array to technological failure (there are micrometeorites up there and things do break, don’t they) and deliberate military attack. One proposal I read about, and never got over, was to put a 10-gigawatt array in orbit above New York City, whose peak demand is about that size. In my opinion, and apparently that of many other people, that’s crazy and I don’t mind saying so.

Nevertheless, reasonably-sized earth-orbiting solar-powered satellites are an important part of today’s world and provide unique and invaluable services. Their vulnerability to failure due to wearing out, micrometeorites hits and solar flare radiation place many services on which we depend at risk.

I see this issue – the vulnerability of our infrastructure systems – as requiring significantly increased national attention, debate and financial support. Please join me in being part of this debate.

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Sticking Your Neck Out

In a recent Comment a reader suggested: “….readers might like to hear your perspective on the value and difficulties of “sticking your neck out” on the job, particularly from within federal agencies.” I agreed to respond, so here goes. These are my views, and I know there will a range of answers to this request from other active or retired Feds. I hope they will respond as well.

My first experience as a staff person in the Federal Government was in 1974 when I came to Washington as an APS Congressional Fellow and served as Staff Scientist for the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee. I quickly learned my first lesson about ‘sticking one’s neck out’ by observing what happened to the Committee’s Senior Counsel when he went to Sandusky, Ohio on Committeee business and managed to get his picture in the local paper. Senator Magnuson, the Committee Chair, raked him over the coals and said clearly: “If you want to get your picture in the paper get elected”. Sen. Magnuson also forbade any travel by Committee staff for 30 days.

Luckily, aside from sensitivity about pictures in the paper, the Committee was ‘entrepreneurial’ in the sense that staff were given lots of leeway to do things for which they were held closely accountable. This contrasted with the style of some other Senate Committees that were managed more tightly by the members, with less staff discretion. I have always liked the Commerce Committee approach and have used it throughout my government career.

To answer the question more directly I believe, strongly, that staff are obligated to tell their bosses what they believe or else they are not doing their job. Smart managers also should want to hear the unvarnished truth from staff if they are to be most effective in carrying out their jobs. Unfortunately, all too often that is not the way it works. In my experience most people play it safe by not sticking their necks out if they suspect that their bosses really don’t want to hear what they have to say, and too many bosses are not secure enough to be open to suggestions without feeling threatened. That’s why when I found people who were willing to stick their necks out I grabbed them as quickly as I could (they are not common) and insisted upon their promise to provide honest feedback before hiring them.

There is one caveat that I will put forward, one that I believe is essential to survival in any relationship, especially in bureaucratic organizations like the federal government. Pick your fights carefully. Not every issue is worth going to the mattresses for, and if everything from you becomes problematic then you won’t have an impact when you really want it. Credibility and trust are important and are earned .

This may or may not answer the question posed at the beginning of this blog, and I look forward to feedback. What say you all?

Sticking One's Neck Out

Nuclear Waste Storage: A Problem We Must Solve

nuclear

The attached article (Federal Court Revives Yucca Mountain – 18 August 2013), which appeared in a recent issue of the e-journal Energybiz, addresses an important issue – use of Yucca Mountain in Nevada as a long-term radioactive waste repository. In principle the discussed Court decision, subject to further appeal, reopens the entire Yucca Mountain issue.

As mentioned in my earlier blog “Nuclear Power” the U.S. has a long-term radioactive waste storage problem that must be addressed, although temporary storage onsite at nuclear power plants gives us time to try to perhaps develop a different and less problematic storage scheme. This was the approach taken by Energy Secretary Chu in the first Obama Administration, along with the appointment of a Blue Ribbon Commission to explore options. The full Commission report (‘Blue Ribbon Commission On America’s Nuclear Future’), released in January 2012, can be found at htp://www.nei.org/corporatesite/media/filefolder/BRC_FinalReport_Jan2012.pdf. A brief summary of its recommendations is shown below:
“The strategy we recommend in this report has eight key elements:
1. A new, consent-based approach to siting future nuclear waste management facilities.
2. A new organization dedicated solely to implementing the waste management program and empowered with the
authority and resources to succeed.
3. Access to the funds nuclear utility ratepayers are providing for the purpose of nuclear waste management.
4. Prompt efforts to develop one or more geologic disposal facilities.
5. Prompt efforts to develop one or more consolidated storage facilities.
6. Prompt efforts to prepare for the eventual large-scale transport of spent nuclear fuel and high-level waste to
consolidated storage and disposal facilities when such facilities become available.
7. Support for continued U.S. innovation in nuclear energy technology and for workforce development.
8. Active U.S. leadership in international efforts to address safety, waste management, non-proliferation, and
security concerns.”

These decisions by Secretary Chu and subsequently by the chair of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission effectively stopped progress on Yucca development. They have been highly controversial, attacked by many in the nuclear power industry and other nuclear power supporters. Utilities that have long paid into a federal fund for permanent waste storage are also litigating to recover the funds if Yucca does not go forward. A significant political factor is the unrelenting and powerful opposition to Yucca by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other Nevada politicians and citizens.

Many ideas have been put forward for long-term radioactive waste storage since the dawn of the nuclear age. These include deep geological storage (e.g., Yucca), disposal in the deep ocean, disposal at deep ocean rifts, burn-up of long half-life transuranic wastes in breeder reactors, and even disposal of wastes in the sun after placement in earth orbit by rockets (with obvious risk factors!). The theoretical attractiveness of the latter scheme is that it removes the waste from the earth and it takes relatively little energy to go from earth orbit to collision with the sun (although the energy to reach earth orbit is not insignificant).

The long-term waste problem is part of what Alvin Weinberg called nuclear power’s Faustian Bargain – accepting the benefits of nuclear power along with its long-term and problematic legacies. Most of the accumulated wastes today are from civilian nuclear power but development of nuclear weapons has also contributed a significant share.

So how does one solve this problem, which has to be solved and has implications for an untold number of future generations? Several countries with nuclear power plants are actively researching this issue, and deep geological storage seems to be the favorite so far. There are no easy answers, given the time scales involved (e.g., plutonium, a by-product of fission, has a radioactive half-life of more than 22,000 years), but an answer is needed soon because of the growing amounts of waste and their vulnerability, in above-surface storage, to natural disasters or terrorist attacks. Fukishima is a clear example of the former.

What I believe is needed is a speed-up of U.S. government examination of this issue and increased and informed public discussion of the options. Increased international cooperation on the issue is also needed. Nuclear power issues are not just technocratic issues, as some in the nuclear power industry have long argued. The broader public needs to be involved in decisions about long-term storage if they are to receive needed public support and if civilian nuclear power is to have a shot at a long-term future. And not finding a solution is not an option – the waste problem exists and that genie, along with the ability to produce nuclear weapons, is out of the bottle.

We Need A Carbon Tax

While I’m usually not a fan of economists (life ain’t that simple) I do subscribe to their theory that the cost of things influences human behavior. The difficult part is finding that trigger cost point that makes a difference. One example is recent U.S. history on gasoline prices. When imported oil prices surged a while back and gas prices reached more than $3/gallon, many thought that gasoline consumption would dip because of the increased price. If it did it was hard to notice. Seems like the U.S. ‘breakpoint’ is closer to $4/gallon, and even then I’m not sure. But at some point…. Now it’s true that U.S. gasoline consumption recently has begun to dip, and some of this may be due to higher prices, but my instinct tells me that the dip mostly reflects more fuel efficient cars in the fleet.

Now what does the above have to do with a carbon tax? For those familiar with my earlier blog on CAFE Standards you will recall that way back in 1975, just after the Arab oil embargo, I would have favored a gradual but long-term increase in the federal gasoline tax as a way to reduce gasoline consumption and oil imports. This was not to be because of Congressional resistance, and so we ended up with fuel economy standards for cars and light duty trucks.

In today’s world not only are we still concerned about reducing oil imports, we are also concerned about reducing carbon emissions from combustion of carbon-rich fossil fuels. Hence my return to support for the use of a price mechanism to influence human behavior, in this case a gradually increasing tax on carbon emissions throughout our economy.

I prefer a steadily increasing and long-term carbon tax to a cap-and-trade system for several reasons: I believe a cap-and-trade system is more vulnerable to ‘gaming’ and a steadily increasing and predictable tax provides more certainty to the private sector in its planning and investment activities. I also believe that the revenues from a carbon tax can be redistributed in a way to alleviate inequities arising from the tax (gasoline taxes have more relative impact on low-income vs higher-income citizens), facilitate critical long-term national investments in infrastucture, education and research, as well as to reduce other taxes such as corporate and income taxes. This latter possibility could provide the basis of an agreement between Republicans and Democrats to finally address global warming and climate change as part of a larger effort at tax reform. Recent hints at discussions of such an agreement are encouraging.

Update on Global Warming And The Threat Of Sea Level Rise

The following article appeared in today’s (12 August 2013) New York Times and by reproducing it here I hope to help it get wider visibility. It is one of the most disturbing articles on global warming and its possible implications that I’ve ever read. If the sea level rises mentioned in the article hold up under scientific scrutiny it foretells a significant shift in human habitation. Not only did I find the article alarming, but it also got my juices going. There are still those out there like the Heartland Institute, and even a few scientists, who deny the reality of global warming or say that its impacts will be minimal. If one believes in the scientific method the evidence for global warming is overwhelming, at least to this scientist and to the many scientists much more knowledgeable of global warming than I am. I consider it irresponsible of the deniers to continue their denial in light of this growing body of evidence.

“Timing a Rise in Sea Level
By JUSTIN GILLIS (New York Times)
Thirty-five years ago, a scientist named John H. Mercer issued a warning. By then it was already becoming clear that human emissions would warm the earth, and Dr. Mercer had begun thinking deeply about the consequences.

His paper, in the journal Nature, was titled “West Antarctic Ice Sheet and CO2 Greenhouse Effect: A Threat of Disaster.” In it, Dr. Mercer pointed out the unusual topography of the ice sheet sitting over the western part of Antarctica. Much of it is below sea level, in a sort of bowl, and he said that a climatic warming could cause the whole thing to degrade rapidly on a geologic time scale, leading to a possible rise in sea level of 16 feet.

While it is clear by now that we are in the early stages of what is likely to be a substantial rise in sea level, we still do not know if Dr. Mercer was right about a dangerous instability that could cause that rise to happen rapidly, in geologic time. We may be getting closer to figuring that out. An intriguing new paper comes from Michael J. O’Leary of Curtin University in Australia and five colleagues scattered around the world. Dr. O’Leary has spent more than a decade exploring the remote western coast of Australia, considered one of the best places in the world to study sea levels of the past.

The paper, published July 28 in Nature Geoscience, focuses on a warm period in the earth’s history that preceded the most recent ice age. In that epoch, sometimes called the Eemian, the planetary temperature was similar to levels we may see in coming decades as a result of human emissions, so it is considered a possible indicator of things to come.

Examining elevated fossil beaches and coral reefs along more than a thousand miles of coast, Dr. O’Leary’s group confirmed something we pretty much already knew. In the warmer world of the Eemian, sea level stabilized for several thousand years at about 10 to 12 feet above modern sea level.

The interesting part is what happened after that. Dr. O’Leary’s group found what they consider to be compelling evidence that near the end of the Eemian, sea level jumped by another 17 feet or so, to settle at close to 30 feet above the modern level, before beginning to fall as the ice age set in.

In an interview, Dr. O’Leary told me he was confident that the 17-foot jump happened in less than a thousand years — how much less, he cannot be sure.

This finding is something of a vindication for one member of the team, a North Carolina field geologist, Paul J. Hearty. He had argued for decades that the rock record suggested a jump of this sort, but only recently have measurement and modeling techniques reached the level of precision needed to nail the case.

We have to see if their results withstand critical scrutiny. A sea-level scientist not involved in the work, Andrea Dutton of the University of Florida, said the paper had failed to disclose enough detailed information about the field sites to allow her to judge the overall conclusion. But if the work does hold up, the implications are profound. The only possible explanation for such a large, rapid jump in sea level is the catastrophic collapse of a polar ice sheet, on either Greenland or Antarctica.

Dr. O’Leary is not prepared to say which; figuring that out is the group’s next project. But a 17-foot rise in less than a thousand years, a geologic instant, has to mean that one or both ice sheets contain some profound instability that can be set off by a warmer climate.

That, of course, augurs poorly for humans. Scientists at Stanford calculated recently that human emissions are causing the climate to change many times faster than at any point since the dinosaurs died out. We are pushing the climate system so hard that, if the ice sheets do have a threshold of some kind, we stand a good chance of exceeding it.

Another recent paper, by Anders Levermann of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and a half-dozen colleagues, implies that even if emissions were to stop tomorrow, we have probably locked in several feet of sea level rise over the long term.

Benjamin Strauss and his colleagues at Climate Central, an independent group of scientists and journalists in Princeton, that reports climate research, translated the Levermann results into graphical form, and showed the difference it could make if we launched an aggressive program to control emissions. By 2100, their calculations suggest, continuing on our current path would mean locking in a long-term sea level rise of 23 feet, but aggressive emission cuts could limit that to seven feet.

If you are the mayor of Miami or of a beach town in New Jersey, you may be asking yourself: Exactly how long is all this going to take to play out?

On that crucial point, alas, our science is still nearly blind. Scientists can look at the rocks and see indisputable evidence of jumps in sea level, and they can associate those with relatively modest increases in global temperature. But the nature of the evidence is such that it is hard to tell the difference between something that happened in a thousand years and something that happened in a hundred.

On the human time scale, of course, that is all the difference in the world. If sea level is going to rise by, say, 30 feet over several thousand years, that is quite a lot of time to adjust — to pull back from the beaches, to reinforce major cities, and to develop technologies to help us cope.

But if sea level is capable of rising several feet per century, as Dr. O’Leary’s paper would seem to imply and as many other scientists believe, then babies being born now could live to see the early stages of a global calamity.”