Category: energy policy

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.

The Promise of Renewable Energy: It Can Do The Job

In my previous blog I talked about the broad range of renewable energy technologies and the fact that most of them are direct or indirect forms of solar energy. I also talked as a physicist (please forgive me – congenital weakness) about the origin of solar energy in that fusion reactor 93 million miles away from earth. Now I’d like to talk about what happens to that solar radiation when it reaches the earth’s atmosphere, and what it promises as an energy resource for the earth’s future.

This is not an obvious discussion. A question raised throughout my years involved with renewable energy has been: Can renewable energy meet human needs for energy or is it something less than that as a practical energy resource? These ‘doubts’ began to be raised in a series of studies sponsored by the U.S. coal industry in the mid 1990’s, at a time when the promise of renewables was beginning to be actively explored and, I believe, the coal industry began to feel threatened as a long-term source of electricity. The studies were refuted which required a lot of work, as is currently true of studies questioning the reality and seriousness of global warming and climate change. Both efforts mirror the long-term battle to educate the public about the serious health effects of smoking.

What happens to the more than 6 million quads of solar energy that annually reach the earth’s atmosphere? While the amount of energy radiated by the sun does vary slightly due to sunspot activity, this variation is negligibly small compared o the energy released by the sun’s basic radiative process. As a result the amount of energy received at the outer boundary of the earth’s atmosphere is called the Solar Constant because it varies so little. This number, averaged over the earth’s orbit around the sun, is 1,367 watts per square meter on a surface perpendicular to the sun’s rays. In fact, the earth’s orbit around the sun is not circular but elliptical, and the ‘Solar Constant’ varies by about three percent during the year. In the northern hemisphere the highest value is in the winter and the lowest in the summer.

About a quarter of the radiation incident on the earth is lost by reflection back into space from the top of the atmosphere and tops of clouds. For the radiation penetrating the earth’s atmosphere a not insignificant amount is lost due to scattering and absorption by air molecules, clouds, dust and aerosols. One must also take into account the earth’s rotation and the resultant day-night (diurnal) cycle. To put a number on all this, if one assumes 30% is lost due to the above factors and the sun shines only 12 hours per day on a one square meter surface, that surface receives no more than (1,367W/m2)x(70%)x(12 hours/day)x(365 days/year) = 4,200 kWh of solar energy per year. Since on average the sun actually shines less than 12 hours/day at any location, the maximum solar radiation a site can receive is closer to 2,600 kWh per square meter per year. To put this number into perspective, the average person on earth uses about 20,000 kWh per year (524 quads in 2010 for 7 billion people).

A definitive and transparent answer to the question ‘How real is renewable energy?’ was given recently in the June 2012 NREL report Renewable Electricity Futures Study (Renewable Electricity Futures Study) which concluded that “Renewable electricity generation from technologies that are commercially available today, in combination with a more flexible electric system, is more than adequate to supply 80% of total U.S. electricity generation in 2050 while meeting electricity demand on an hourly basis in every region of the country.”

This is not a prediction but a statement that renewable electricity can meet our needs if we so choose. It will not happen without overcoming many barriers (need for new transmission lines and storage, technology cost, political opposition) but it is possible if we have the political will to make it so. We must also recognize that renewable resources can be used to supply thermal energy as well as electricity, for space heating and cooling and water heating, and transportation fuels via chemical conversion of biomass materials. This is why I get excited about our renewable energy future!

A History of Renewable Energy at DOE

As you will have noticed when you logged in, the ‘theme’ (presentation format) of the blog has been changed to make it more interesting and visually attractive. Hopefully you will like the change.

Back to blogging: my next several blogs will focus on renewable energy, starting with a few bits of history that may not be widely known. Some of my fellow ‘dinosaurs’ will know this history, but one purpose of this blog is to share some of this history with the young people now populating the field who may not.

I will start with a memo that I forwarded to DOE Undersecretary Kristina Johnson when she requested information on the history of renewable energy at DOE (History of RE at DOE). She had spoken to a group of Fellows at DOE about her responsibilities and this topic came up in the following discussion. The memo makes reference to the ‘DPR’ and the video of President Carter’s 1979 speech when he dedicated solar water heaters that had been mounted on the White House roof. The DPR is discussed below and copies of the video (DVD) are available upon request.

The DPR (Domestic Policy Review of Solar Energy) was the final report of the first comprehensive review of federal renewable energy policy. It was announced by President Carter on May 3, 1978 when he dedicated SERI (Solar Energy Research Institute) in Golden, CO. It involved 30 federal departments and agencies, and at its peak there were 175 senior officials detailed to the DPR task force. As DOE’s senior representative to the DPR, and just one month after I had joined DOE as a political appointee, I was designated to head the effort by my boss, Al Alm.

The next six months were rather intense, beginning immediately on May 4th when it became urgent to move my temporary DOE office in the Old Post Office Building in downtown DC to the Forrestal Building (DOE Headquarters) without DOE assistance (no trucks or moving staff were available on short notice). One of my then new staff was also with me in the Old PO Building (Ron White, still a dear friend all these years later) and using our own cars we moved our stuff into a large open (and somewhat unpleasant) space on the G-level of Forrestal. In the next few days this space, which we dubbed the ‘bullpen’, was filled with desks to accommodate the anticipated agency detailees, but without dividing walls. Actually, there was one small office in the bullpen, mine, which meant that I saw the mice when they occasionally showed up during the day.

Another problem ‘out of the chute’ was the fact that the other 29 departments and agencies didn’t trust the 30th, DOE, because of some recent history. Shortly before the DPR was announced the Carter Administration had released a National Energy Policy, also a multi-agency effort chaired by DOE. The story I was told by non-DOE staff was that DOE, at the last minute, had pulled out a draft it had prepared on its own and submitted it as the multi-agency report. Not nice! As a result I spent much of the DPR’s first month building relationships with the non-DOE detailees to reestablish trust.

The DPR was completed in early December 1978, and delivered to the Domestic Policy Staff of the White House on December 6th, 1978, a date that those of us intimately involved in putting it together will never forget. For several years after, on the anniversary of this date, several of my staff and I would get together to celebrate the DPR’s completion. The full report, with appendices, was formally published in February 1979 and is available in DOE’s archives – its Executive Summary is attached (DPR-Executive Summary-1979).

What is worth noting is that a 34+ year old report is still somewhat relevant, indicating that the ‘dinosaurs’ did some useful thinking way back when and that U.S. energy policy has not advanced as quickly or as much as we had hoped when the report was completed in 1978.

Keystone XL Pipeline: A Memorandum To The President

A tough political decision that President Obama will soon have to make is whether to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline that would cross the international border between the U.S. and Canada. It is a highly controversial issue, one I do not find it easy to form an opinion on (see final paragraph) and about which I have had quite a few discussions with colleagues. What follows are some of the arguments that complicate my thinking and would constitute the elements of a decision memorandum I would send to the President.

Let me begin by reminding readers what the pipeline issue is all about. Quoting from Wikipedia: “The Keystone Pipeline System is a pipeline system to transport oil sands bitumen from Canada and the northern United States “primarily to refineries in the Gulf Coast” of Texas. The products to be shipped include synthetic crude oil (syncrude) and dilbit (diluted bitumen) from the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin in Alberta, Canada, and Bakken synthetic crude oil and light crude oil produced from the Williston Basin (Bakken) region in Montana and North Dakota. Two phases of the project are in operation, a third, from Oklahoma to the Texas Gulf coast, is under construction and the fourth is awaiting U.S. government approval as of mid-March 2013. Upon completion, the Keystone Pipeline System would consist of the completed 2,151-mile (3,462 km) Keystone Pipeline (Phases I and II) and the proposed 1,661-mile (2,673 km) Keystone Gulf Coast Expansion Project (Phases III and IV) . The controversial fourth phase, the Keystone XL Pipeline Project, would begin at the oil distribution hub in Hardisty, Alberta and extend 1,179 miles (1,897 km), to Steele City, Nebraska.”

Those opposed to the pipeline cite the contribution to carbon dioxide emissions from the mining of tar sands in Canada, the possibility and consequences of pipeline leaks associated with heated and highly pressurized bitumen, the initial (now modified) proposed path of the pipeline through areas above the Ogallala Aquifer (a major source of fresh water), and the potential delay in investments in renewable energy technologies due to the continued availability of oil resources.

The proponents of the pipeline argue that Canada will mine the tar sands and produce the bitumen and its associated carbon dioxide emissions regardless of what the U.S. decides (an alternative pipeline path would be to Canada’s west coast for sales to Asia), Canadian tar sands oil is already reaching the U.S. by train and new quantities could be shipped by rail as well (as Canada is already preparing to do), that obtaining oil from Canada is preferable to obtaining oil from the Persian Gulf and other countries and is in the U.S. national security and economic interest, and that pipeline construction today is under better regulation and is safer than ever before.

In his climate change speech at Georgetown University on June 25th (see earlier blog ‘The Beginnings of a U.S. Energy Policy’) the President seemed to hint that he would approve the pipeline, arguing that “Allowing the Keystone pipeline to be built requires a finding that doing so would be in our nation’s interest. And our national interest will be served only if this project does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution. The net effects of the pipeline’s impact on our climate will be absolutely critical to determining whether this project is allowed to go forward.”

The use of the words ‘significantly exacerbate’ seems ‘significant’ in that it will be hard to argue that the carbon emissions from mininig the Alberta tar sands will add significantly to current global carbon dioxide emissions. Add they will, and add to oil availability they will as well, but by themselves and in terms of impact on climate change, not significantly.

Thus, if one assumes that the pipeline will be carefully regulated (and strict enforcement of regulations will be critical), that the Canadian tar sands will be mined regardless, that the new pipeline path is less risky for the Ogallala, and that the pipeline will reduce U.S. needs for other oil imports, I would approve the pipeline if it were my decision to make. This recognizes that our current need for liquid petroleum fuels to support transportation is significant and will continue for a while. However, this should in no way limit or slow down our efforts to electrify our transportation fleet, derive the needed electricity from renewable sources, and develop non-petroleum-based alternative fuels. I will say much more about these latter topics in future blogs.