4. Field Trip to a Power Plant

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 4

2009 October 13. Catching the Wind in Rural Malawi. By Maywa Montenegro, SEED. Excerpt: From the blustery plains of Texas to the Danish island of Samsø, wind power—and the giant, bladed towers that generate it—is all the rage in a warming world searching for cleaner sources of energy. Fourteen-year-old William Kamkwamba had never heard of windmills, or climate change, for that matter, when he stumbled across a photograph one day and it changed his life forever.
Now 22, Kamkwamba has become something of an international DIY celebrity: He’s spoken at the World Economic Forum, at the Aspen Ideas Festival, and at TED Global—twice. He’s chatted with Al Gore, Bono, and Larry Page. A documentary about his life is currently in the works. But Kamkwamba’s story isn’t really about stardom: It’s about the grit, resourcefulness, and audacity of a young engineer who built a windmill from scrap in his native Malawi and brought power to his home—and eventually lit up every house in the village....

2009 September 14. Hawaii Tries Green Tools in Remaking Power Grids. By Felicity Barringer, The NY Times. Excerpt: NAALEHU, Hawaii — Two miles or so from this tiny town in the southernmost corner of the United States, across ranches where cattle herds graze beneath the distant Mauna Loa volcano, the giant turbines of a new wind farm cut through the air.
Sixty miles to the northeast, near a spot where golden-red lava streams meet the sea in clouds of steam, a small power plant extracts heat from the volcanic rock beneath it to generate electricity.
These projects are just a slice of the energy experiment unfolding across Hawaii’s six main islands. With the most diverse array of alternative energy potential of any state in the nation, Hawaii has set out to become a living laboratory for the rest of the country, hoping it can slash its dependence on fossil fuels while keeping the lights on....

2009 August 19. Drilling Ordeals Said to Delay Geothermal Project. By James Glanz, The NY Times. Excerpt: The Obama administration’s first major test of geothermal energy as a significant alternative to fossil fuels has fallen seriously behind schedule, several federal scientists said this week, even as the project is under review because of the earthquakes it could generate in Northern California.
Intended to extract heat from hot bedrock, the project has been delayed because the bit on a giant rig, meant to drill more than two miles underground, has struggled to pierce surface rock formations, the scientists said.
...The scientists who told of delays in the project...said that after nearly two months of the highly expensive drilling, the rig had reached depths of less than 4,000 feet. The original schedule called for it to reach a final depth of 12,000 feet, or 2.3 miles, after no more than 50 days of drilling, according to company officials.
The problems are particularly surprising given that the drilling essentially started at 3,200 feet, at the bottom of an older hole at the site, north of San Francisco at a place called the Geysers.
...Advocates for the technique, known as an “enhanced geothermal system,” say it could eventually generate vast amounts of energy and reduce America’s dependence on fossil fuels. But the latest delays come as AltaRock awaits word on whether the federal government will allow the fracturing of rock at all....

2009 July 2. Should We Depend on Coal or Nuclear? Five Experts Discuss how Clean Coal Works, how Dangerous Nuclear Waste Really Is, and Whether the Root of the Problem is Money. BY Veronique Greenwood, Seed Magazine. Excerpt: "If I compare the downsides of coal versus nuclear, I have to say I’d rather see renewed investment in nuclear power plant generation of electricity in this century than to build more coal plants,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu in a NOVA special released recently. “There’s no question in my mind, that’s the lesser of the two evils.”
Wave, wind, sun—the buffet of renewable energy options is attractive. But the sheer amount of power generated by coal and fission cannot be rivaled by any current system of renewable energy. Between them, nuclear and coal provide more than 70 percent of US electricity. Renewable sources provided 9 percent as of 2007. While research is advancing by leaps and bounds, for the foreseeable future some dependence on these super-producers will be necessary. But when deciding between a new coal plant or a nuclear plant, a knot of difficult decisions, many of them decades old, rear their heads.
Coal-fired plants, of course, spew out CO2 and toxins like nitrous oxide and sulfur dioxide. The cumulative greenhouse effects promise catastrophic weather phenomena, widespread flooding, food shortage, displacement, and extinction....
Nuclear plants produce radioisotopes with half-lives ranging from a few days to a few million years. Their pollution tends to occur in bursts—either in catastrophic accidents or waste leaks—but, as with CO2, the effects can propagate for decades or centuries. Storage and disposal of nuclear waste are longstanding problems, complicated by President Obama’s plan to abandon the long-term nuclear storage project at Yucca Mountain....
...The questions when it comes to coal and nuclear are: Which process’s byproducts—CO2 or radioisotopes—are the least frightening? Which are we most likely to figure out a solution for in the near future, and which has the most pressing effects?...

2009 June 8. New Tech Could Make Nuclear the Best Weapon Against Climate Change. By Elizabeth Svoboda, Discover Magazine. Excerpt: ...Buoyed by an allocation of $1.25 billion in funding for reactor research from the 2005 Energy Policy Act, Idaho National Laboratory scientists are working to improve safety, boost efficiency, minimize waste, and decrease cost in a new generation of nuclear reactors. Even if renewable energy goes mainstream, INL researchers still believe nuclear will be essential for supporting the electrical grid’s base load—that portion of the nation’s electricity that must be supplied at a constant rate, in contrast to the variable supplies from the sun and wind....
Unlike burning coal or other fossil fuels, fission—the breaking apart of atomic nuclei, the process underlying nuclear energy—emits no carbon dioxide....
...Nuclear’s day-in, day-out reliability makes it an essential companion to renewable energy, argues Burton Richter, winner of the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics. “The sun doesn’t shine at night, and wind power is highly variable,” he says. “To meet our emissions goals, we’re going to have to grasp every arrow in the quiver, and nuclear is one of those arrows.”
Before that can happen, though, nuclear power will have to overcome the unresolved issue of how to dispose of radioactive fuel waste....
That is exactly what the INL scientists are aiming to do, however, confident that their work is essential to the planet’s well-being. Their efforts focus on two new designs: the very-high-temperature reactor (VHTR) and the sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR). Both incorporate inherent safety features to prevent core overheating and the release of radioactive material. The hope is that these new approaches will finally erase the memory of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and eliminate some of the political opposition that has stymied the American nuclear power industry for three decades....

2009 May 10. Students, faculty design green way to absorb power plant waste. By Dana Bartholomew, LA Daily News. Excerpt: As drought dries the Southland, Cal State Northridge has sprouted a new home for the jungle yodeler - a subtropical rain forest.
The campus ... has already won national awards for its fuel-cell power plant, the largest operated by any university in the world.
Now it has created a "rain forest" of 115 tropical species that inhale its greenhouse gas and ingest its wastewater stream, the first such design on the planet.
...The university built its award-winning 1-megawatt fuel-cell plant two years ago after its main plant hit capacity during hyper campus growth.
The $3 million fuel-cell plant, which converts natural gas into electricity via an electrochemical process, now supplies 18 percent of the campus' electricity and air conditioning needs.
But while the combustion-free plant produces zero particulate emissions, it cranks out planet-warming carbon dioxide, in addition to wastewater high in potassium chloride.
So faculty members joined students to design a "green" means to absorb the waste.
...rather than spew 3,600 cubic-feet per minute of carbon dioxide into the sky, as traditional condensers do, the gas is aimed into a bed of flowering tulip trees, hibiscus, cana lilies and more.
...And up to 6 gallons a minute of wastewater rich in plant nutrients leaches into the soil....
..."What we're going for here is a marriage between nature and technology, because this equipment is usually hidden on rooftops," said Ben Elisondo, manager of Physical Plant Management....

2009 March 10. E.P.A. Proposes Tracking Industry Emissions. By Kate Galbraith, The NY Times. Excerpt: The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule on Tuesday that would require a broad range of industries to tally and report their greenhouse gas emissions.
The proposal...would require about 13,000 factories, power plants and other facilities to report their emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and other gases that climate scientists link to global warming.
...The E.P.A. says that the rule, promulgated under the Clean Air Act, would account for 85 percent to 90 percent of the country’s emissions of heat-trapping gases....
...“This is the foundation of any serious program to cap and reduce global warming pollution,” said David Doniger, the policy director for the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “You have to have source-by-source data on how much of global warming pollution is emitted and from where.”...

2009 March 10. Energy Dept. Said to Err on Coal Project. By Matthew L. Wald, The NY Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON — The Energy Department made a $500 million math error a year ago when it withdrew its support from a “near-zero emissions” coal plant in Illinois, Congressional auditors...say....
The error led the department to say mistakenly that the project, known as FutureGen, had nearly doubled in cost — an increase the Bush administration deemed too expensive.
At the time, FutureGen was the leading effort to capture and sequester carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas linked to global warming. If the project were resumed and proved successful, it could provide a model for curbing the carbon dioxide that coal adds to the atmosphere.
The new energy secretary, Steven Chu, has said that he will consider renewing support for FutureGen but that changes will be needed....

2009 March 9. Turn, Turn, Turn. By C. Claiborne Ray, The NY Times. Excerpt: Q. Why is it that nearly every time I see a wind farm, like the one at Altamont Pass, so few of the turbines are spinning, even in a stiff breeze?
A. The wind farm at Altamont Pass in California is one of the oldest in the country, and technology has marched on.
“The performance and reliability of older wind turbines from the 1970s and 1980s era, of which there are quite a few in California, is analogous to an older computer,” said Mark Rodgers, communications director of Cape Wind, the developer of an offshore wind farm in Nantucket Sound in Massachusetts. “It would be like offices still using Apple II’s or Commodores from 1978.”
“With modern wind farms,” he said, “it is possible that an individual turbine could be down for maintenance. Or if the winds were light, it could be right on the edge where some turbines are getting just enough wind to operate, others slightly less.”...

2009 March 2. Can Geothermal Power Compete with Coal on Price? By Christopher Mims, Scientific American. Excerpt: Although the environmental benefits of burning less fossil fuel by using renewable sources of energy—such as geothermal, hydropower, solar and wind—are clear, there's been a serious roadblock in their adoption: cost per kilowatt-hour.
That barrier may be opening, however—at least for one of these sources. Two recent reports, among others, suggest that geothermal may actually be cheaper than every other source, including coal. Geothermal power plants work by pumping hot water from deep beneath Earth's surface, which can either be used to turn steam turbines directly or to heat a second, more volatile liquid such as isobutane (which then turns a steam turbine).
Combine a new U.S. president pushing a stimulus package that includes $28 billion in direct subsidies for renewable energy with another $13 billion for research and development, and the picture for renewable energy—geothermal power among the options—is brightening. The newest report, from international investment bank Credit Suisse, says geothermal power costs 3.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, versus 5.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for coal.
That does not mean companies are rushing to build geothermal plants: There are a number of assumptions in the geothermal figure. First, there are the tax incentives, which save about 1.9 cents per kilowatt-hour....
Second, the Credit Suisse analysis relied on...the total cost to produce a given unit of energy. Embedded within this figure is an assumption that the money to build a new geothermal plant is available at reasonable interest rates—on the order of 8 percent.
In today's economic climate, that just isn't the case....
...There's another significant issue: finding geothermal resources. In that way, the geothermal industry has the same challenges as the oil and gas industry. The Credit Suisse analysis doesn't factor in exploration costs, which can run hundreds of thousands of dollars for per well....

2009 February 17. Alaska Is a Frontier for Green Power. By Stephan Milkowski, The NY Times. Excerpt: TOKSOOK BAY, Alaska — Beyond the fishing boats, the snug homes and the tanks of diesel fuel marking this Eskimo village on the Bering Sea, three huge wind turbines tower over the tundra. Their blades spin slowly in a breeze cold enough to freeze skin.
One of the nation’s harshest landscapes, it turns out, is becoming fertile ground for green power.
...Alaska is fast becoming a testing ground for new technologies and an unlikely experiment in oil-state support for renewable energy....
In remote villages like this one, where diesel to power generators is shipped by barge and can cost more than $5 a gallon in bulk, electricity from renewable sources like wind is already competitive with power made from fossil fuels. In urban areas along the state’s limited road system, large wind and hydroelectric projects are also becoming attractive.
Alaska produces more oil than any state except Texas, but most of it leaves the state. Small markets and high transportation costs have kept local fuel prices high. As oil prices spiked last year, the state’s coffers overflowed with oil tax revenue, but the rising cost of diesel and other fuels became a local crisis.
...Advocates of renewable energy here say Alaska, with its windy coasts, untapped rivers and huge tidal and wave resources, could quickly become a national leader. The state already generates 24 percent of its electricity from renewable sources — almost exclusively hydroelectric — and Ms. Palin last month announced a goal of 50 percent by 2025....

2008 December 25. Solar Meets Polar as Winter Curbs Clean Energy. By Kate Galbraith. Excerpt: Old Man Winter, it turns out, is no friend of renewable energy.This time of year, wind turbine blades ice up, biodiesel congeals in tanks and solar panels produce less power because there is not as much sun. And perhaps most irritating to the people who own them, the panels become covered with snow, rendering them useless even in bright winter sunshine...As concern has grown about global warming, many utilities and homeowners have been trying to shrink their emissions of carbon dioxide — their carbon footprints — by installing solar panels, wind turbines and even generators powered by tides or rivers. But for the moment, at least, the planet is still cold enough to deal nasty winter blows to some of this green machinery...The wind industry admits that turbines can drop ice, like a lamppost or any tall structure. To ameliorate the hazard, some turbines are painted black to absorb sunlight and melt the ice faster. But Ron Stimmel, an expert on small wind turbines at the American Wind Energy Association, denies that the whirling blades tend to hurl icy javelins.Large turbines turn off automatically as ice builds up, and small turbines will slow and stop because the ice prevents them from spinning — “just like a plane’s wing needs to be de-iced to fly,” Mr. Stimmel said.Mr. Brokaw says that his turbines do turn off when they are too icy, but the danger sometimes comes right before the turbines shut down, after a wet, warm snow causes ice buildup.From the standpoint of generating power, winter is actually good for wind turbines, because it is generally windier than summer. In Vermont, for example, Green Mountain Power, which operates a small wind farm in the southeastern part of the state, gets more than twice the monthly production in winter as in August.The opposite is true, however, for solar power. Days are shorter and the sun is lower in the sky during the winter, ensuring less power production...

2008 October 6. A Gift From the ’70s: Energy Lessons. By John Tierny, The New York Times. Excerpt: The presidential candidates claim to see America’s energy future, but their competing visions have a certain vintage quality. They’ve revived that classic debate: the hard path versus the soft path.
The soft path, as Amory Lovins defined it in the 1970s, is energy conservation and power from the sun, wind and plants — the technologies that Senator Barack Obama emphasizes in his plan to reduce greenhouse emissions. Senator John McCain is more enthusiastic about building nuclear power plants, the quintessential hard path.
As a rule, it’s not a good idea to revive anything from the 1970s. But this debate is the exception, and not just because the threat of global warming has raised the stakes. The old lessons are as good a guide as any to the future, as William Tucker argues in “Terrestrial Energy,” his history of the hard-soft debate.
...Today about 20 percent of electricity in America is generated by nuclear power, which is about 20 times the contribution from solar and wind power. Nuclear power also costs less, according to Gilbert Metcalf, an economist at Tufts University. After estimating the costs and factoring out the hefty tax breaks for different forms of low-carbon energy, he estimates that new nuclear plants could produce electricity more cheaply than windmills, solar power or “clean coal” plants....
..."The nuclear debate is still stuck back in the 1980s," says Mr. Tucker, the author of "Terrestrial Energy," the new brand he's trying to affix to nuclear power. If people started associating nuclear plants with natural radioactive processes in the Earth instead of atomic bombs, he says, they might be persuaded that it's the most environmentally benign form of energy....

2008 Sep. Nuclear Redux - Climate Change Forces a Reexamination of Nuclear Power. By AMY KISER, Terrain Magazine. Excerpt: For the last several decades, "no nukes" has been the mantra of environmentalists and a no-brainer for many US citizens. The generation of nuclear power involved impossible-to-ignore environmental risks, horribly obvious after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl....plants could suffer meltdowns, and safe storage options for spent fuel were questionable.
Plans to build new nuclear power plants ground to a halt in many countries, including the US, partially due to bad publicity and the enormous expense of plant construction.
But then ... global warming took center stage.... The need to transition away from burning fossil fuels became paramount, and some environmentalists began to reconsider nuclear power as a necessary and even preferable part of the energy portfolio.
...The Energy Commission found that a complete life-cycle analysis of nuclear power reveals that its greenhouse gas emissions are comparable to wind, solar voltaics, and geothermal technologies.
...The radioactive spent fuel left over from generating nuclear power is one of its greatest liabilities, but some argue that radioactive waste-because it is contained-is better than the byproducts of burning coal. ... In 1993, nuclear physicist Alex Gabbard of Oak Ridge National Laboratory wrote in a seminal article, "Overall, nuclear power produces far less waste material than fossil-fuel based power plants. Coal-burning plants are particularly noted for producing large amounts of toxic and mildly radioactive ash due to concentrating naturally occurring metals and radioactive material from the coal. Contrary to popular belief, coal power actually results in more radioactive waste being released into the environment than nuclear power. The population effective dose equivalent from radiation from coal plants is 100 times as much as nuclear plants."
Admittedly, comparing anything to coal sets a pretty low bar. ...The US nuclear power industry gets much of its fuel from Russia's decommissioned nuclear weapons.
... a large quantity of intermediate-level waste is created, and deep repositories like Yucca Mountain are still necessary.
...Soon, the US will be in the business of recovering plutonium from our own surplus weapons.
...Nuclear power plants (and reprocessing plants) are costly to build, and they depend on government subsidies and loan guarantees to be competitive. Large reactors can cost $2.5 billion to $4 billion each; it takes decades to recoup the investment. As part of the 2005 Energy Policy Act, Congress granted approximately $10 billion in new subsidies to the nuclear industry.
Many environmentalists fear that public investment in nuclear will gobble up dollars that could be invested in renewable energy and energy efficiency. The National Resources Defense Council warns that the cost of nuclear power is prohibitive and makes it uncompetitive on the free market.
...Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute has argued that, "every dollar invested in nuclear expansion will worsen climate change by buying less solution per dollar."
...Many environmentalists are content to let nuclear power fade into history because they believe that the current paradigm of the energy grid, featuring large, centralized power plants, is outdated. The evolving model involves decentralized generation, often called "the Internet for energy." ...Stewart Brand insists that a decentralized model does not preclude nuclear power generation. Indeed, a race is on worldwide to produce a new generation of small nuclear reactors that can live on a barge or sit in a hole in the ground for decades. ....

2008 August 31. Tajikistan Hopes Water Will Power Its Ambitions. By DAVID L. STERN, The New York Times. Excerpt: NUREK, Tajikistan — The inscription just above a tunnel at the foot of the colossal Nurek hydropower dam in south central Tajikistan is succinct: “Water Is Life.” The frigid, frothing Vakhsh River rushing under it adds a visual punctuation mark.
In Tajikistan, the source of more than 40 percent of Central Asia’s water, this is no mere platitude. The mountainous state lacks the industry and natural riches that bless other former Soviet Central Asian republics. Water is one of the few resources the country possesses in great abundance.
For this reason, President Emomali Rakhmon has pinned Tajikistan’s economic hopes — and perhaps even its continued political existence — on developing its hydropower potential.
Three projects are either under construction or being considered, including Rogun, a gargantuan structure farther up the Vakhsh River. Tajik officials say they have hopes of building more than 20 hydroelectric plants and dams.
But a number of sizable hurdles must be surmounted before the plans for a great hydropower future can be realized. Tajikistan is in an earthquake zone and the dams must be built to withstand major seismic shocks. Officials are expected to conduct environmental impact studies to determine whether any flora or fauna will be threatened.
The Tajik government is also heavily in debt and must find heavy foreign investment to build the dams. On Wednesday, China agreed to build a $300 million hydroelectric power plant, Nurobad-2, with a capacity of 160 to 220 megawatts. But Tajik officials say Rogun alone will cost up to $3.2 billion.
...Though for the moment it seems to be managing, Tajikistan threatens to become a failed state, say Western experts and diplomats...The country still has not fully recovered from a devastating civil war a decade ago. State coffers are virtually empty, while the government is viewed as unable to meet basic needs.
...All of Tajikistan’s power troubles will be remedied by the dam projects, the Rakhmon government hopes. They will not only provide for all of Tajikistan’s energy needs but also allow the country to export power to neighboring countries.
...Rogun, for example, will generate about 13 billion kilowatt hours per year, more than 80 percent of the country’s average consumption, officials at the construction site say....

2008 August 26. Air Storage Is Explored for Energy. By KEN BELSON, The New York Times. Excerpt: When Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg dreamed out loud last week about a New York skyline filled with wind turbines, one of the most serious issues raised by the naysayers was that the wind does not always blow when you need it.
But a New Jersey company plans to announce on Tuesday that it is working on a solution to this perennial problem with wind power: using wind turbines to produce compressed air that can be stored underground or in tanks and released later to power generators during peak hours.
The company, Public Service Enterprise Group Global LLC, a subsidiary of P.S.E.G. Energy Holdings, is forming a joint venture with Michael Nakhamkin, a leader in the development of energy storage technology....
The venture has met with utilities that might buy the storage technology. Compressed air can be produced by a variety of fuels. But the new venture hopes to put wind power generated during off-peak hours to use during peak hours — typically 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. — and especially on hot days.
...P.S.E.G. Global is trying to win a contract to build 95 windmills that would produce a maximum of 350 megawatts of electricity off the New Jersey coast. If the company is chosen, it would consider linking the windmills to a compressed air storage plant, Mr. Byrd said, and then feeding it into the power grid.
Roy Daniel, the chief executive of Energy Storage and Power, said that an underground reservoir the size of Giants Stadium could hold enough compressed air to power three 300-megawatt plants. (One megawatt hour can power a large hospital for an hour.) The reservoirs, which are typically more than 1,500 feet below ground, could take eight hours to fill at night. The compressed air would be released to run generators for eight hours during the day....

2008 July 25. Oil Spill on Nearly 100 Miles of Mississippi River. By ADAM NOSSITER, NY Times. Excerpt: NEW ORLEANS - A sheen of oil coated the Mississippi River for nearly 100 miles from the center of this city to the Gulf of Mexico on Thursday following the worst oil spill here in nearly a decade. The fuel-laden barge that collided with a heavy tanker on Wednesday was still leaking.
The thick industrial fuel pouring from the barge could be smelled for miles in city neighborhoods up and down the river, even as hundreds of cleanup workers struggled to contain the hundreds of thousands of gallons. Some environmentalists worried about reports of fish and bird kills in sensitive marsh areas downstream, though officials said they had so far heard of only a handful of oil-covered birds. Booms to protect areas richest in wildlife, at the river's mouth, were being deployed, officials said.
..."We've had a number of large spills in the New Orleans area, but this is a heavy, nasty product, problematic in the cleanup," said Lt. Cmdr. Cheri Ben-Iesau of the Coast Guard, adding that it is of the sort normally used to fire up boilers at power plants.
"It's a significant spill, if for nothing else because of its impact on the water supply," Commander Ben-Iesau said. "We've got a lot of commerce dependent on this water supply, so we're scrambling to get it cleaned up."
...Officials were generally guarded about the possible effects on fish, plants and wildlife in these rivers of grass and marshlands, but some in the state's environmental community were not.
"When it goes down to the area where there are no longer levees, it gets into the swamp," said Wilma Subra of the Louisiana Environmental Action Network. "It's going to contaminate the marsh."....

2008 June 13. The case for Yucca mountain revisited. NUCLEAR WASTE: Yucca Mountain Revisited. Isaac J. Winograd* and Eugene H. Roseboom Jr. - Science 13 June 2008: Vol. 320. no. 5882, pp. 1426 - 1427 - Excerpt: In papers published over a quarter of a century ago (1-3), we discussed the assets and liabilities of isolating high-level radioactive wastes (HLWs) (chiefly spent fuel from nuclear reactors) from the environment by burying them in areas with deep water tables, ... This idea--endorsed for further study by our colleagues at the U.S. Geological Survey and by scientists at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (4) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (5)--eventually led to identification of Yucca Mountain (YM) (see photograph) as a potential repository for HLWs. ....
The idea of storing radioactive waste at YM was born into political controversy. In 1987, Congress, via an amendment to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, selected YM from a group of three previously identified potential repository sites. ...the Nuclear Waste Policy Amendments Act of 1987 became known among Nevadans as the "screw Nevada bill."
...The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit was aware that some of the radionuclides in HLWs have half-lives of thousands to millions of years and followed a recommendation of the National Research Council (9) regarding time frames. ... for permissible releases of radioactivity to the environment to encompass a time frame of hundreds of thousands to a million years. Before the court's ruling, the USEPA considered a 10,000-year time frame as an achievable requirement. ....
...Last, and hardly least, is the decades-old public opposition to a geologic repository, not only in Nevada and across the United States, but in Europe as well.... This opposition stems from various concerns and/or agendas, including: fear of nuclear radiation; distrust of governmental and technical community assurances regarding safety; opposition to nuclear power; and various NIMBY...-related issues....
In view of the above matters, it has been argued that HLWs should be stored at the surface, perhaps even for a century or two during which time better solutions may develop. However, extended surface storage of the HLWs (presently about 60,000 metric tons) at 72 commercial reactor sites--many adjacent to metropolitan areas and all next to rivers, lakes, or the ocean--introduces its own set of uncertainties. For example, what is the likelihood that more pressing future national problems could cause final isolation of the HLWs to be postponed indefinitely? What is the probability that the funds for HLW disposal, now being generated by a surcharge on nuclear-generated electricity, will still be available a century in the future? In the event of accidents, sabotage, or a loss of institutional control, a variety of scenarios can be envisioned that would create environmental hazards greater than any that could result from emplacement of HLWs in an underground repository. ....
Given that both geologic isolation of HLWs and their storage at the surface are fraught with uncertainty, how might we proceed with the disposition of HLWs in a manner that restores public confidence?

2008 July 9. Ocean Wind Power Maps Reveal Possible Wind Energy Sources. NASA News Release. Excerpt: WASHINGTON -- Efforts to harness the energy potential of Earth's ocean winds could soon gain an important new tool: global satellite maps from NASA. Scientists have been creating maps using nearly a decade of data from NASA's QuikSCAT satellite that reveal ocean areas where winds could produce wind energy.
The new maps have many potential uses including planning the location of offshore wind farms to convert wind energy into electric energy...
"Wind energy is environmentally friendly. After the initial energy investment to build and install wind turbines, you don't burn fossil fuels that emit carbon," said study lead author Tim Liu, a senior research scientist and QuikSCAT science team leader at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Like solar power, wind energy is green energy."
QuikSCAT, launched in 1999, tracks the speed, direction and power of winds near the ocean surface. Data from QuikSCAT, collected continuously by a specialized microwave radar instrument named SeaWinds, also are used to predict storms and enhance the accuracy of weather forecasts.
Wind energy has the potential to provide 10 to 15 percent of future world energy requirements, according to Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at JPL. If ocean areas with high winds were tapped for wind energy, they could potentially generate 500 to 800 watts of energy per square meter, according to Liu's research. Dimotakis notes that while this is slightly less than solar energy (which generates about one kilowatt of energy per square meter), wind power can be converted to electricity more efficiently than solar energy and at a lower cost per watt of electricity produced...

2008 July. DOE urged to proceed more deliberately with global plan to expand nuclear power. David Kramer, Physics Today page 19. Excerpt: Critics of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership [GNEP] say the Department of Energy is rushing to commercialize unproven technologies. ...Many experts believe that a vast expansion of nuclear power is the only plausible option for meeting the anticipated explosion in electricity demand from the developing world while mitigating global warming.
...Unveiled in 2006 by President Bush, the GNEP envisions the US and other nuclear powers supplying aspiring nuclear nations with both advanced reactors and the nuclear fuel for them. For their part, recipient nations would agree to return their spent fuel to its nation of origin and pledge not to develop uranium-enrichment or spent-fuel reprocessing capabilities of their own.
...Two groups of outside reviewers also have urged DOE to apply the brakes to the GNEP. The Government Accountability Office warned in a May report that moving to construction too rapidly will "likely require using unproven evolutions of existing technologies" and ultimately limit their usefulness for nuclear waste reduction and proliferation prevention.
...No feature of the GNEP is more controversial than reprocessing, a technology that the US forswore for civilian use in the late 1970s out of concern that reprocessed plutonium could be stolen or diverted for weapons purposes.
... "We know exactly what it costs to reprocess, but nobody has even the slightest idea what it will cost to store spent fuel," [Alan] Hanson [executive vice president of Areva, the French nuclear conglomerate] told the May roundtable.
Indeed, storage costs can't be estimated as long as the already decades-long delay with building the Yucca Mountain site drags on. But even if the repository is completed-not before 2020, according to DOE-it will have only enough room for spent fuel that is generated through the year 2010 (see PHYSICS TODAY, June 2008, page 28). Without reprocessing, DOE warns, a second repository will need to be built to accommodate the growing quantities of spent fuel that will result from a revitalized US nuclear industry, let alone material that will be shipped back to the US under the GNEP.

2008 Summer. America's Energy Future: Why Water Matters. David Holtz, Clean Water Action News. Excerpt: While enacting strong policies that encourage energy sources like wind and solar seem like obvious good global warming and employment solutions, it is also increasingly clear that water - protecting it, conserving it - matters a lot in considering other choices, particularly nuclear and coal, in the context of global warming.
... Proposed expansion of nuclear power and the introduction of new, untried technology of capturing carbon from coal plant emissions and sequestering it underground raise important and still unaddressed questions related to water. Both nuclear and coal power plants use huge amounts of water, mostly in cooling processes.
... In August, the Tennessee Valley Authority was forced to shut down one reactor at the Browns Ferry nuclear plant in Alabama and scale back production at the plant's two other reactors because of overheated water in the Tennessee River, which is used to cool the facility.
..."Water is the nuclear industry's Achilles heel," Jim Warren, executive director of N.C. Waste Awareness and Reduction Network, told the Associated Press in January. "You need a lot of water to operate nuclear plants."
The vast amounts of water used by coal plants for cooling purposes also raise questions, said Roger Smith, Clean Water Action's Global Warming and Energy Policy Associate. "All of our assumptions for power plant water use are based on current and historical levels of water," Smith explained. "What happens if those assumptions are wrong?

2008 July 1. Georgia Judge Cites Carbon Dioxide in Denying Coal Plant Permit. By Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times. Excerpt: A judge in Georgia has thrown out an air pollution permit for a new coal-fired power plant because the permit did not set limits on carbon dioxide emissions.
Both opponents of coal use and the company that wants to build the plant said it was the first time a court decision had linked carbon dioxide to an air pollution permit.
The decision’s broader legal impact was not clear, either for the plant, proposed to be built near Blakely, in Early County, Ga., or for others outside Georgia, but it signaled that builders of coal plants would face continued difficulties in the court system as well as with elected officials in many states.
In the ruling released late Monday afternoon, a state judge relied on a decision by the Supreme Court last year that carbon dioxide could be regulated as a pollutant. Carbon dioxide, which is colorless, odorless and not directly harmful to animals or plants, is not now regulated, and the Bush administration has signaled that it would not issue such regulations before the president leaves office.
But the judge, Thelma Wyatt Cummings Moore in Superior Court in Fulton County, Ga., said that federal air pollution control laws required pollution permits to cover all pollutants that could be regulated under the Clean Air Act, not just those for which there is “a separate, general numerical limitation.”
Robert Wyman, a partner in the Los Angeles office of Latham & Watkins, the law firm, who has represented power producers in previous cases, said of the decision: “I would be surprised if it had much of an impact. I’m not sure other jurisdictions will pick up that opinion.”
Vickie Patton, the deputy general counsel at the Environmental Defense Fund, however, argued that the judge’s reasoning might prove persuasive to other courts facing similar issues...

2008 May 30. Mounting Costs Slow the Push for Clean Coal.By MATTHEW L. WALD, NY Times. Excerpt: WASHINGTON - For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They want to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground. President Bush ... has spent years talking up the virtues of "clean coal." All three candidates to succeed him favor the approach. So do many other members of Congress.
Coal companies are for it. Many environmentalists favor it. Utility executives are practically begging for the technology. But it has become clear in recent months that the nation's effort to develop the technique is lagging badly. In January, the government canceled its support for what was supposed to be a showcase project, a plant at a carefully chosen site in Illinois where there was coal, access to the power grid, and soil underfoot that backers said could hold the carbon dioxide for eons.
Perhaps worse, in the last few months, utility projects in Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Washington State that would have made it easier to capture carbon dioxide have all been canceled or thrown into regulatory limbo.
...In Wisconsin, engineers are testing a method that may allow them to bolt machinery for capturing carbon dioxide onto the back of old-style power plants; Sweden, Australia and Denmark are planning similar tests. And German engineers are exploring another approach, one that involves burning coal in pure oxygen, which would produce a clean stream of exhaust gases that could be injected into the ground. But no project is very far along, and it remains an open question whether techniques for capturing and storing carbon dioxide will be available by the time they are critically needed....

2008 May 23. Italy Plans to Resume Building Atomic Plants.By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL, NY Times. Excerpt: ROME - Italy announced Thursday that within five years it planned to resume building nuclear energy plants, two decades after a public referendum resoundingly banned nuclear power and deactivated all its reactors. ...The change is a striking sign of the times, reflecting growing concern in many European countries over the skyrocketing price of oil and energy security, and the warming effects of carbon emissions from fossil fuels. All have combined to make this once-scorned form of energy far more palatable.
"Italy has had the most dramatic, the most public turnaround, but the sentiments against nuclear are reversing very quickly all across Europe - Holland, Belgium, Sweden, Germany and more," said Ian Hore-Lacey, spokesman for the World Nuclear Association, an industry group based in London.
...A number of European countries have banned or restricted nuclear power in the past 20 years, including Italy, which closed all its plants. Germany and Belgium have long prohibited the building of reactors, although existing ones were allowed to run their natural lifespan. France was one of the few countries that continued to rely heavily on nuclear power.
...conditions were very different in the 1980s, when European countries turned away from nuclear power. Oil cost less than $50 a barrel, global warming was a fringe science and climate change had not been linked to manmade emissions. Perhaps more important for the public psyche, almost all of Europe's nuclear bans and restrictions were enacted after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union in which radioactivity was released into the environment.
The equation has changed. Today, with oil approaching $150 a barrel, most European countries, which generally have no oil and gas resources, have been forced by finances to consider new forms of energy - and fast. New nuclear plants take 20 years to build. Also, Europeans watched in horror in 2006 as President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia cut off the natural gas supply to Ukraine in a price dispute, leaving it in darkness.
...To build nuclear plants, Italy would almost certainly have to improve its system of dealing with nuclear waste. The plants that were shut down years ago still store 235 tons of nuclear fuel. See also World Uranium Reserves, [http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/uranium.html] By James Hopf, Nuclear Engineer, November 2004

2008 April 23. Europe Turns Back to Coal, Raising Climate Fears. ELISABETH ROSENTHAL. The NY times. Excerpt: At a time when the world’s top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy’s major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth. Over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent. And Italy is not alone in its return to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades…
Enel and many other electricity companies say they have little choice but to build coal plants to replace aging infrastructure, particularly in countries like Italy and Germany that have banned the building of nuclear power plants. Fuel costs have risen 151 percent since 1996, and Italians pay the highest electricity costs in Europe. In terms of cost and energy security, coal has all the advantages, its proponents argue. Coal reserves will last for 200 years, rather than 50 years for gas and oil. Coal is relatively cheap compared with oil and natural gas, although coal prices have tripled in the past few years. More important, hundreds of countries export coal — there is not a coal cartel — so there is more room to negotiate prices…
The task — in which carbon emissions are pumped into underground reservoirs rather than released — is challenging for any fuel source, but particularly so for coal, which produces more carbon dioxide than oil or natural gas. Under optimal current conditions, coal produces more than twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of electricity as natural gas, the second most common fuel used for electricity generation, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. In the developing world, where even new coal plants use lower grade coal and less efficient machinery, the equation is even worse…The European Union had pledged to develop 12 pilot carbon-capture projects for Europe, but says that is not enough.
On many other fronts, the new Enel plant is a model of efficiency and recycling. The nitrous oxide is chemically altered to generate ammonia, which is then sold. The resulting coal ash and gypsum are sold to the cement industry.
An on-site desalination plant means that the operation generates its own water for cooling. Even the heated water that comes out of the plant is not wasted: it heats a fish farm, one of Italy’s largest…
In the towns surrounding Civitavecchia, the impending arrival of a huge coal plant, with its three silvery domes, is being greeted with a hefty dose of dread….

2008 Apr 15. Technology Smooths the Way for Home Wind-Power Turbines. By JOHN CASEY, NY Times. Excerpt: Wind turbines, once used primarily for farms and rural houses far from electrical service, are becoming more common in heavily populated residential areas as homeowners are attracted to ease of use, financial incentives and low environmental effects.
No one tracks the number of small-scale residential wind turbines - windmills that run turbines to produce electricity - in the United States. ... a convergence of factors, political, technical and ecological, has caused a surge in the use of residential wind turbines, especially in the Northeast and California. "Back in the early days, off-grid electrical generation was pursued mostly by hippies and rednecks, usually in isolated, rural areas," said Joe Schwartz, editor of Home Power magazine. "Now, it's a lot more mainstream."
"The big shift happened in the last three years," Mr. Schwartz said, because of technology that makes it possible to feed electricity back to the grid, the commercial power system fed by large utilities. "These new systems use the utility for back up power, removing the need for big, expensive battery backup systems." ...Ecological concerns, more than cost savings may drive many new residential turbine installations. "People want to reduce their carbon footprints," Mr. Tonko said. "They're concerned about climate change and they want to reduce our reliance of foreign sources of fuels."
Mr. Schwartz, the editor, said that even with the economic benefits, it can take 20 years to pay back the installation cost. "This isn't about people putting turbines in to lower their electric bills as much as it is about people voting with their dollars to help the environment in some small way," he said.
...Even if the wind is strong, zoning and aesthetics can pose problems. "Turbines work in rural areas with strong wind," Mr. Schwartz said. "But in urban and suburban areas, neighbors are never happy to see a 60- to 120-foot tower going up across the street."

2008 Apr 15. New Ways to Store Solar Energy for Nighttime and Cloudy Days. By MATTHEW L. WALD, NY Times. Excerpt: Solar power, the holy grail of renewable energy, has always faced the problem of how to store the energy captured from the sun's rays so that demand for electricity can be met at night or whenever the sun is not shining. The difficulty is that electricity is hard to store. Batteries are not up to efficiently storing energy on a large scale. A different approach being tried by the solar power industry could eliminate the problem.
The idea is to capture the sun's heat. ... a "power tower," a little bit like a water tank on stilts surrounded by hundreds of mirrors that tilt on two axes, one to follow the sun across the sky in the course of the day and the other in the course of the year. In the tower and in a tank below are tens of thousands of gallons of molten salt that can be heated to very high temperatures and not reach high pressure.
...Terry Murphy, president and chief executive of SolarReserve, ... design is for a power tower that can supply 540 megawatts of heat. At the high temperatures it could achieve, that would produce 250 megawatts of electricity, enough to run a fair-size city. It might make more sense to produce a smaller quantity and run well into the evening or around the clock or for several days when it is cloudy, he said.
At Black & Veatch, a builder of power plants, Larry Stoddard, the manager of renewable energy consulting, said that with a molten salt design, "your turbine is totally buffered from the vagaries of the sun." By contrast, "if I've got a 50 megawatt photovoltaic plant, covering 300 acres or so, and a large cloud comes over, I lose 50 megawatts in something like 100 to 120 seconds," he said, adding, "That strikes fear into the hearts of utility dispatchers."....

2008 Apr 7. Trees Block Solar Panels, and a Feud Ends in Court. By FELICITY BARRINGER, The New York Times. Excerpt: Under a California law, a criminal court ruled that these redwood trees cast too much shade on Mark Vargas's solar panels. SUNNYVALE, Calif. - Call it an eco-parable: one Prius-driving couple takes pride in their eight redwoods,... Their electric-car-driving neighbors take pride in their rooftop solar panels, installed five years after the first trees were planted.
...The solar-redwoods dispute is unusual largely because it is a solar-panel owner who is mounting the challenge. Typically, solar-panel owners have to play defense. For example, despite a 1980 Arizona law to protect homeowners who install photovoltaic panels, Henry Speak, a retiree in Avondale, Ariz., had to battle his homeowners' association through a series of state courts to keep his rooftop solar system without adding expensive screening - screening that, like the redwoods, would have reduced the panels' efficiency.
...On both sides of the Sunnyvale backyard fence, there is evidence of environmental virtue - one Prius (Ms. Bissett and Mr. Treanor), one electric car (the Vargases), one water-free xeriscaped front yard with recycled-plastic borders (Ms. Bissett and Mr. Treanor), 128 solar panels providing almost all the power for one home (the Vargases), and eight carbon-dioxide-sipping, bird-friendly redwood trees in various stages of growth (Ms. Bissett and Mr. Treanor). ...There was little communication between the neighbors - until Ms. Bissett introduced three redwood trees in 1996. In the next five years, she planted five more....
In 2001, Mr. Vargas installed solar panels ... then informed his neighbors - brusquely, they say - about the solar shade law, saying they must cut down all of the redwoods. ... and offered to pay for removal and replacement.
... in 2005, the deputy district attorney, John Fioretta, began the first prosecution under the Solar Shade Act. It ended in December with the conviction of Ms. Bissett and Mr. Treanor by Judge Kurt Kumli of Santa Clara County Superior Court. ...found that Trees Nos. 4, 5 and 6, ... were now collectively blocking more than 10 percent of the panels over the hot tub. Trees Nos. 1, 2 and 3 shaded the area when the panels were installed, so they were exempt, and Trees Nos. 7 and 8 did not violate the law, the judge ruled. ...Mr. Treanor and Ms. Bissett still do not quite believe what happened. "It was like I'd been hit in the chest," Ms. Bissett said ....
Mr. Vargas said it all could have been avoided. "My entire goal was to find a more appropriate tree to place between our two properties," he said. "To have a 60-foot barrier is unreasonable."....

2008 March 6. THE ENERGY CHALLENGE Turning Glare Into Watts. By MATTHEW L. WALD, NY Times. Excerpt: BOULDER CITY, Nev. - At first, as he adjusted pumps and checked temperatures, Aaron Boucher looked like any technician in the control room of an electrical plant. Then he rushed to the window and scanned the sky, to check his fuel supply. ...Especially in areas of intense sun, an array of reflectors can concentrate sunlight, heating a fluid to create steam and power. Mr. Boucher was battling clouds, timing the operations of his power plant to get the most out of patchy sunshine. It is a skill that may soon be in greater demand, for the world appears to be on the verge of a boom in a little-known but promising type of solar power ... covering acres of desert with mirrors that focus intense sunlight on a fluid, heating it enough to make steam. The steam turns a turbine and generates electricity. ...After a decade of no activity, two prototype solar thermal plants were recently opened in the United States, with a capacity that could power several big hotels, neon included, on the Las Vegas Strip, about 20 miles north of here. Another 10 power plants are in advanced planning in California, Arizona and Nevada.
On sunny afternoons, those 10 plants would produce as much electricity as three nuclear reactors, but they can be built in as little as two years, compared with a decade or longer for a nuclear plant. Some of the new plants will feature systems that allow them to store heat and generate electricity for hours after sunset. Aside from the ones in the United States, eight plants are under construction in Spain, Algeria and Morocco. Another nine projects are in various stages of planning in those countries as well as Israel, Mexico, China, South Africa and Egypt, ...Donald E. Brandt, the chief executive of Pinnacle West, said the decision to build the new solar plant was as important as his company's decision in 1973 to build the Palo Verde nuclear plant, the largest and most modern in the United States.
"The key is, the solar technology has advanced," Mr. Brandt said. At 280 megawatts, "it's a critical size; it's a real power plant; it's meaningful; it's beyond the demonstration stage."
...If large numbers of plants are built, they will eventually pose some problems, even in the desert. They could take up immense amounts of land and damage the environment. Already, building a plant in California requires hiring a licensed tortoise wrangler to capture and relocate endangered desert tortoises. "The one thing that's eventually going to raise its head is desert biodiversity, and the land area itself," said Terrence J. Collins, an environmental expert and professor at Carnegie Mellon University....

2008 Feb 23. Move Over, Oil, There's Money in Texas Wind. By CLIFFORD KRAUSS, The New York Times.Excerpt: SWEETWATER, Tex. - ... wind turbines that recently went up on Louis Brooks's ranch ... paid $500 a month apiece to permit 78 of them on his land, with 76 more on the way.
"That's just money you're hearing," he said as they hummed in a brisk breeze recently.
Texas, once the oil capital of North America, is rapidly turning into the capital of wind power. ...more than 3 percent of its electricity, enough to supply power to one million homes, comes from wind turbines. Texans are even turning tapped-out oil fields into wind farms, and no less an oilman than Boone Pickens is getting into alternative energy. "I have the same feelings about wind," Mr. Pickens said in an interview, "as I had about the best oil field I ever found." He is planning to build the biggest wind farm in the world, a $10 billion behemoth that could power a small city by itself.
Wind turbines were once a marginal form of electrical generation. But amid rising concern about greenhouse gases from coal-burning power plants, wind power is booming. Installed wind capacity in the United States grew 45 percent last year, albeit from a small base, and a comparable increase is expected this year.
...The United States recently overtook Spain as the world's second-largest wind power market, after Germany, with $9 billion invested last year.
...The turbines are getting bigger and their blades can kill birds and bats. Aesthetic and wildlife issues have led to opposition emerging around the country, particularly in coastal areas like Cape Cod. Some opposition in Texas has cropped up as well, ...Some Texans see the sleek new turbines as a welcome change in the landscape. "Texas has been looking at oil and gas rigs for 100 years, and frankly, wind turbines look a little nicer," said Jerry Patterson, the Texas land commissioner....
...At the end of 2007, Texas ranked No. 1 in the nation with installed wind power of 4,356 megawatts (and 1,238 under construction), far outdistancing California's 2,439 megawatts (and 165 under construction). Minnesota and Iowa came in third and fourth with almost 1,300 megawatts each (and 46 and 116 under construction, respectively).
Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado and Oregon, states with smaller populations than Texas, all get 5 to 8 percent of their power from wind farms, according to estimates by the American Wind Energy Association....

2008 February 3. A 'Bold' Step to Capture an Elusive Gas Falters. By ANDREW C. REVKIN, NY Times. Excerpt: CAPTURING heat-trapping emissions from coal-fired power plants is on nearly every climate expert's menu for a planet whose inhabitants all want a plugged-in lifestyle.
So there was much enthusiasm five years ago when the Bush administration said it would pursue "one of the boldest steps our nation has taken toward a pollution-free energy future" by building a commercial-scale coal-fire plant that would emit no carbon dioxide - the greenhouse gas that makes those plants major contributors to global warming.
That bold step forward stumbled last week. With the budget of the so-called FutureGen project having nearly doubled, to $1.8 billion, and the government responsible for more than 70 percent of the eventual bill, the administration completely revamped the project. ...The idea is to capture carbon dioxide emitted by coal-fire power plants and then pump it deep into the earth to avoid further buildup of the gas in the atmosphere. But several experts said the plan still lacked the scope to test various gas-separation technologies, coal varieties, and - most important - whether varied geological conditions can permanently hold carbon dioxide.
Coal companies are desperate for this option to work, given how much coal remains to be mined. Many climate scientists and environmental campaigners see it as vital. Steady growth in coal use by developing and industrialized countries is expected to extend well beyond 2030. David G. Hawkins, an energy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the new approach would have been a good move four years ago. "But to tout FutureGen for five years and then in the president's last year pull the plug is just bait and switch," he said....

2007 November 29. Helium Isotopes Point to New Sources of Geothermal Energy. Research News, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Excerpt: BERKELEY, CA -- ... geochemists Mack Kennedy of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Matthijs van Soest of Arizona State University have discovered a new tool for identifying potential geothermal energy resources.
Currently, most developed geothermal energy comes from regions of volcanic activity, such as The Geysers in Northern California. The potential resources identified by Kennedy and van Soest arise not from volcanism but from the flow of surface fluids through deep fractures that penetrate the earth's lower crust, in regions far from current or recent volcanic activity. The researchers report their findings in the November 30, 2007 issue of Science.
"A good geothermal energy source has three basic requirements: a high thermal gradient -- which means accessible hot rock -- plus a rechargeable reservoir fluid, usually water, and finally, deep permeable pathways for the fluid to circulate through the hot rock," says Kennedy, a staff scientist in Berkeley Lab's Earth Sciences Division. "We believe we have found a way to map and quantify zones of permeability deep in the lower crust that result not from volcanic activity but from tectonic activity, the movement of pieces of the Earth's crust."
Kennedy and van Soest made their discovery by comparing the ratios of helium isotopes in samples gathered from wells, surface springs, and vents across the northern Basin and Range. ...a high ratio of helium-three to helium-four in a fluid sample indicates that much of the fluid came from the mantle.
..."We have never seen such a clear correlation of surface geochemical signals with tectonic activity, nor have we ever been able to quantify deep permeability from surface measurements of any kind," says Kennedy. The samples they collected on the surface gave the researchers a window into the structure of the rocks far below, with no need to drill.
With the urgent need to find energy sources that are renewable and don't emit greenhouse gases, geothermal energy is ideal -- "the best renewable energy source besides the sun," Kennedy says. Accessible geothermal energy in the United States, excluding Alaska and Hawaii, has been estimated at 9 x 1016 (90 quadrillion) kilowatt-hours, 3,000 times more than the country's total annual energy consumption....

2007 November 23. Sweden Turns to a Promising Power Source, With Flaws. The New York Times. By MARK LANDLER. Excerpt:
MALMO, Sweden ...A 30-mile-an-hour wind was twirling the fingerlike blades of a turbine 380 feet above his head. Around him, a field of turbines rotated in a synchronized ballet that, when fully connected to an electrical grid, would generate enough power to light 60,000 nearby houses.
"We've created a new landmark," said Mr. [Arne] Floderus, the project manager of the $280 million wind park, one of the world's largest, which was built by the Swedish power company Vattenfall.
...Yet Sweden's gleaming wind park is entering service at a time when wind energy is coming under sharper scrutiny, not just from hostile neighbors, who complain that the towers are a blot on the landscape, but from energy experts who question its reliability as a source of power.
For starters, the wind does not blow all the time. When it does, it does not necessarily do so during periods of high demand for electricity. That makes wind a shaky replacement for more dependable, if polluting, energy sources like oil, coal and natural gas. Moreover, to capture the best breezes, wind farms are often built far from where the demand for electricity is highest. The power they generate must then be carried over long distances on high-voltage lines, which in Germany and other countries are strained and prone to breakdowns.
...In Denmark, which pioneered wind energy in Europe, construction of wind farms has stagnated in recent years. The Danes export much of their wind-generated electricity to Norway and Sweden because it comes in unpredictable surges that often outstrip demand.
...For a socially conscious society like Sweden, wind turbines exert a fashionable appeal.
Today, they account for less than 1 percent of Sweden's electricity generation. But the government wants to increase annual wind power production to 10 terawatt hours, or 10 trillion watt hours, by 2015 from less than 1 terawatt hour now (the park off Malmo will produce a third of a terawatt hour).
Vattenfall hopes to develop an even larger off-shore park in the Baltic Sea, between Sweden and Germany.
...Sweden does not need to build wind parks to get wind power. It could simply buy more surplus wind power from Denmark, which it uses, as does Norway, to pump underground water into elevated reservoirs. The water is later released during periods of peak electric demand to drive hydroelectric stations. In this way, hydro acts as a form of storage for wind energy - addressing one of wind power's biggest shortcomings....

2007 October 22. Scientists see coal as key challenge. By CHARLES J. HANLEY, AP Special Correspondent. Excerpt: The proliferation of coal-burning power plants around the world may pose "the single greatest challenge" to averting dangerous climate change, an international panel of scientists reported Monday.Governments and the private sector are spending too little on research into a partial solution - technology to capture and store the carbon dioxide emissions from such plants, the group said.
The study by 15 scientists from 13 nations, "Lighting the Way: Toward a Sustainable Energy Future," was commissioned by the governments of China and Brazil and is the product of two years of workshops organized by the InterAcademy Council, the Netherlands-based network of national academies of science.
The 174-page report details current and developing technologies, and government incentives and other policies that could lead both the developed and developing world to clean, affordable and sustainable energy supplies.
"The first thing it says, really, is that conservation and energy efficiency will remain for the next couple of decades the most important thing the world can do to get on a sustainable path," said co-chairman Steven Chu, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and director of California's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
...China expects to open one new coal-fired plant per week over the next five years. In the United States, plans for more than 150 new coal plants have been announced since the late 1990s, although some recently have been scrapped or delayed because of climate and other concerns....

2007 July 23. A Warming World: No to Nukes. The Los Angeles Times | Editorial. Excerpt: ... Japan sees nuclear power as a solution to global warming, but.... Last week, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake caused dozens of problems at the world's biggest nuclear plant, leading to releases of radioactive elements into the air and ocean and an indefinite shutdown. ...Japan has a sordid history of serious nuclear accidents or spills followed by cover-ups.... The U.S. government allows nuclear plants to operate under a level of secrecy usually reserved for the national security apparatus. Last year...about nine gallons of highly enriched uranium spilled at a processing plant in Tennessee, forming a puddle a few feet from an elevator shaft. Had it dripped into the shaft, it might have formed a critical mass sufficient for a chain reaction, releasing enough radiation to kill or burn workers nearby....
No U.S. utility has ordered a new nuclear plant since 1978....
Many respected academics and environmentalists argue that nuclear power must be part of any solution to climate change because nuclear power plants don't release greenhouse gases. ...nuclear power is extremely risky. ...there are cleaner, cheaper, faster alternatives that come with none of the risks.
...The Union of Concerned Scientists cites 51 cases at 41 U.S. nuclear plants in which reactors have been shut down for more than a year.... Nuclear plants are also considered attractive terrorist targets.... Weapons proliferation is an even more serious concern.... It would be more than a little hypocritical for the U.S. to expand its own nuclear power capacity while forbidding countries it doesn't like from doing the same. ...No country in the world has yet built a permanent underground waste repository.... The existing 104 nuclear plants in the U.S., which supply roughly 20% of the nation's electricity, are old and nearing the end of their useful lives. ... to replace them would require building a new reactor every four or five months for the next 40 years. ...The average nuclear plant is estimated to cost about $4 billion. Because of the risks involved, there is scarce interest among investors in putting up the needed capital. ...The newest nuclear plant in the U.S. opened in 1996, after having been ordered in 1970 - a 26-year gap....

2007 July 1. Nuclear Energy Hot Topic Once Again. The New York Times. By The Associated Press. Excerpt: Thanks to global warming, nuclear energy is hot again. Its promise of abundant, carbon emissions-free power is being pushed by the president and newly considered by environmentalists. But any expansion won't come cheap or easy. The enormous obstacles facing nuclear power are the same as they were in 1996, when the nation's last new nuclear plant opened near the Watts Bar reservoir in Tennessee after 22 years of construction and $7 billion in costs. Waste disposal, safe operation and security remain major concerns, but economics may be the biggest deterrent. Huge capital costs combine into an enormous price tag for would-be investors. There is also fervent anti-nuke opposition waiting to be re-stoked. Recycling used fuel, which contains 90 percent of its original energy after one use, can reduce waste. ''Reprocessing'' also produces a plutonium that's nearer to weapons grade, raising fears that widespread reprocessing could increase the risks of nuclear proliferation. … ''You don't ban the beneficial uses of a technology just because that same technology can be used for evil,'' he said. ''Otherwise we would never have harnessed fire.'' …

2007 June 6. From Turkey Waste, a New Fuel and a New Fight. By SUSAN SAULNY, The New York Times. Excerpt: BENSON, Minn. - ...Thanks to the abundance of local droppings, Benson is home to a new $200 million power plant that burns turkey litter to produce electricity. For the last few weeks now, since before generating operations began in mid-May, turkey waste has poured in from nearby farms by the truckload, filling a fuel hall several stories high.
The power plant is a novelty on the prairie, the first in the country to burn animal litter (manure mixed with farm-animal bedding like wood chips). And it sits at the intersection of two national obsessions: an appetite for lean meat and a demand for alternative fuels.
...The critics say turkey litter, of all farm animals' manure, is the most valuable just as it is, useful as a rich, organic fertilizer at a time when demand is growing for all things organic. ...the unwanted attention shows, once again, how the landscape of renewable energy production is fraught with potential land mines, even in a case that seems small-scale and straightforward. What could be so offensive about burning turkey poop?
"This is the only advancement in manure utilization since the manure spreader - that's 100-year-old technology," said Greg Langmo, a third-generation turkey farmer who lobbied for the plant, where he now works as a field manager.
Minnesota produces more turkeys than any other state, some 44.5 million birds in 2005, the most recent year for which data are available. It follows that the turkeys leave behind a lot of waste in their pens, where most are confined to gobble and peck until they are robust enough for slaughter. The Benson plant, then, has been of considerable help for farmers with a disposal problem.
The plant was built by Fibrowatt, a Philadelphia-based company, with financial incentives from the State of Minnesota.
...biomass burning, as it is called, produces its own pollutants. According to information in one of its federal air permits, the plant is a major source of particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrogen sulfide....

2007 June. Falling in Love with Wind. OnEarth, NRDC. by Joseph D'Agnese. Excerpt: How a small farm town traded its dairy cows for renewable energy. In the spring of 1999 a stranger named Bill Moore arrived in the small town of Lowville, ... New York, and ... had what he considered a good proposal for the 27,000 citizens of Lewis County: Milk wind, not cows. When he started telling the locals about his notion, Moore was met with indulgent smiles but little genuine enthusiasm. "...they looked at me like I was from Mars," he says. "They were polite. They didn't openly laugh."
...Eight years later, though, it's as if the cool reception Moore received never happened at all. Windmills stud the flat, stark landscape as far as the eye can see. Each turbine is taller than the Statue of Liberty, and nearly all of them are spinning inexorably toward the future of Lewis County -- and perhaps our own. This is the Maple Ridge Wind Farm, the nation's largest new alternative energy project east of the Mississippi River. In the last year or so, 195 turbines have become operational in the towns of Lowville, Harrisburg, and Martinsburg, capable of producing 320 megawatts of electricity, the amount generated by a medium-size power plant, or enough power to run 98,000 homes.
...The guaranteed income -- a minimum annual payment of about $6,000 per turbine, adjusted annually for inflation -- has transformed their lives. "It's paying for me to retire," says Bill Burke. "It's given us a chance to stay in our house," adds Patricia Burke. "We don't have to sell after all. We sold off the herd one spring, and the heifers later, ....
... Today, 20 percent of Denmark's electricity comes from the wind. In sharp contrast to Maple Ridge and other big U.S. wind farms, of the 5,600 turbines in Denmark, only about 20 percent are owned by utility companies. Twenty-three percent belong to cooperatives and almost 60 percent to small, local companies or to individuals, including farmers. This has been the key to public acceptance. As one Danish study concluded: "People who own shares in a turbine are significantly more positive about wind power than people having no economic interest in the subject. Members of wind cooperatives are more willing to accept that their neighbor erect [sic] a turbine." Other experts say that local ownership makes wind power more economical, since expenses are lower and companies more competitive, with cheaper connection to the grid than big utilities would offer and faster, less bureaucratic decision-making. But now that grassroots-owned technology has turned into big business, not all is well in the state of Denmark....

2007 May 29. Uranium Windfall Opens Choices for the Energy Dept. By MATTHEW L. WALD Excerpt: WASHINGTON, May 28 - The government accumulated vast quantities of uranium when prices were very low and no one else wanted it. But now that uranium prices have increased tenfold, the government has a precious commodity - and some tough questions - on its hands. ...the material's market value has been estimated at $750 million to $3 billion, one of the companies most vocal in making its case says it deserves the uranium - without paying a cent for it. Up for grabs is 25 million kilograms of uranium hexafluoride that was incompletely processed at government enrichment plants when prices were very low. ...
The lone operating enrichment plant in this country, built by the old Atomic Energy Commission, is in Paducah, Ky. It is run by a subsidiary of USEC, a company formed in the 1990s to privatize the enrichment monopoly that the government had run since the days of the Manhattan Project.
The technology at the plant is outdated, and USEC is struggling to commercialize a more efficient system, using centrifuges, at another plant, in southern Ohio. USEC will not say what it thinks that project will cost, but it has said it does not know how it will raise the money. ...USEC officials say the Energy Department could transfer much of the uranium to it with the stroke of a pen.
...Some lawmakers on Capitol Hill say giving the uranium to USEC would reward a company that has not demonstrated fiscal responsibility. ...Representative John D. Dingell, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee, said in a statement. ... Congress should consider "whether we should be allocating this $2 billion or $3 billion to children's health insurance instead of subsidizing executives who have mismanaged their companies." USEC, he said, had "squandered resources on multimillion-dollar golden parachutes, stock buybacks and dividend payments that frequently exceeded their earnings."
...In addition to USEC, a consortium of British, Dutch and German companies has expressed interest in the partly processed uranium for a centrifuge plant that it is building in New Mexico, using the same type of machines that have operated for years in Europe....

2007 May 9. Clean Power That Reaps a Whirlwind. By KEITH BRADSHER, The New York Times. Excerpt: HOUXINQIU, China - The wind turbines rising 180 feet above this dusty village at the hilly edge of Inner Mongolia could be an environmentalist's dream... are also part of a growing dispute over a United Nations program that is the centerpiece of international efforts to help developing countries combat global warming. ...the Clean Development Mechanism, ...raising billions of dollars from rich countries and transferring them to poor countries to curb the emission of global warming gases. ...China is expected to pass the United States this year or next to become the world's largest emitter of global warming gases. ...the Clean Development Mechanism ...has grown at an extraordinary pace, to $4.8 billion in transfer payments to developing countries last year from less than $100 million in 2002. The Clean Development Mechanism ...helps advanced industrial nations stay within their Kyoto Protocol limits for emitting climate-changing gases like carbon dioxide. For each ton of global warming gases that a developing country can prove it has eliminated, the secretariat of the Clean Development Mechanism... awards it a credit. Developing countries sold credits last year... for an average price of $10.70 each. ...China captured $3 billion of the $4.8 billion.... African countries... totaled less than $150 million last year.... Even when very poor countries are able to organize development projects, they may lack expertise and must sometimes pay out as much as half the credits in the form of fees for international consultants and credit brokers. ...before manufacturers can obtain the subsidies, their national governments need to set up a legal framework for handling the money, which some of the poorest countries have not yet been able to do....The wind turbine project here in Houxinqiu ...generates nearly 24 megawatts of electricity that would otherwise come from coal. China is already building enough coal-fired power plants each year to light all of Britain. ...Li Guohai, a local peasant ...explained how he had received free electricity since the wind turbines were erected four years ago. He has saved enough money that he bought an all-steel plow for his mules to pull; the new plow now frees his son to finish junior high school and perhaps go to high school, Mr. Li said. The project is narrowly profitable even without Clean Development Mechanism payments, Mr. Tao, the general manager, said. But the payments made the project more attractive and made it easier to raise money for it....the wind farm saves the equivalent of 35,119 tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year. At $8 a credit, that is worth $281,000....

2007 May 2. Power station harnesses Sun's rays. By David Shukman. Science correspondent, BBC News, Seville. ...There is a scene in one of the Austin Powers films where Dr Evil unleashes a giant "tractor beam" of energy at Earth in order to extract a massive payment. ...the new solar thermal power plant outside Seville in southern Spain ... concrete tower - 40 storeys high - stood bathed in intense white light, a totally bizarre image in the depths of the Andalusian countryside. ...the rays of sunlight reflected by a field of 600 huge mirrors are so intense they illuminate the water vapour and dust hanging in the air. ...It is Europe's first commercially operating power station using the Sun's energy this way and at the moment its operator, Solucar, proudly claims that it generates 11 Megawatts (MW) of electricity without emitting a single puff of greenhouse gas. This current figure is enough to power up to 6,000 homes. But ultimately, the entire plant should generate as much power as is used by the 600,000 people of Seville. It works by focusing the reflected rays on one location, turning water into steam and then blasting it into turbines to generate power. ...the solar power is most needed in the heat of summer when air conditioners are working flat out. ...this power is three times more expensive than power from conventional sources.... ...a more realistic comparison is with the cost of generating power from coal or gas only at times of peak demand - then this solar system seems more attractive....

2007 April 23. Climate Change Adds Twist to Debate Over Dams. By William Yardley. NY TIMES. KLAMATH FALLS, Ore., April 19 - Excerpt: The power company that  owns  four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River says the dams provide a crucial source of so-called clean energy at a time when carbon emissions have become one of the world's foremost environmental concerns. The clean-energy argument has entered a debate over dams. But the American Indians, fishermen and environmentalists who want the dams removed point  to what has happened since the first one was built nearly 90 years ago: endangered salmon have been blocked from migrating, Indian livelihoods have been threatened, and, more recently, the commercial fishing industry off the Oregon and California coasts has been devastated.. …The Klamath dams provide enough power to serve about 70,000 homes, a small fraction of PacifiCorp's 1.6 million customers, which span six Western states. But the company says only coal or natural gas are likely to be reliable enough to replace the river, which hits hydroelectric turbines four times on its way to the sea from east of the snow-capped Cascade Range. Those who support removing the dams largely dismiss the clean-energy argument, saying the benefits outweigh losing a relatively small source of hydropower. They note that PacifiCorp's increased interest in the environment comes as recent rulings by judges and federal fisheries agencies have given new momentum for removal. The company's federal license to run the dams expired last year, and the government has said PacifiCorp must build fish ladders over the four dams to get a new license, a proposition that could cost $300 million and reduce the power the dams generate, potentially making removal a less costly choice……The Klamath runs more than 250 miles from southwest Oregon to the California coast, connecting two states where power and water supply have long been contentious issues……The Northwest, where more than 80 percent of the power generated comes from hydroelectricity, has long had some of the lowest electricity rates in the nation. It has also been the setting for epic environmental fights that reflect the tension across the region's topographic and demographic divides……

2007 March 13. White House Seeks to Cut Geothermal Research Funds. By Bernie Woodall. Reuters. Excerpt: The Bush administration wants to eliminate federal support for geothermal power just as many U.S. states are looking to cut greenhouse gas emissions and raise renewable power output. The move has angered scientists who say there is enough hot water underground to meet all U.S. electricity needs without greenhouse gas emissions. "The Department of Energy has not requested funds for geothermal research in our fiscal-year 2008 budget," said Christina Kielich, a spokeswoman for the Department of Energy. "Geothermal is a mature technology. Our focus is on breakthrough energy research and development." The administration of George W. Bush has made renewable energy a priority as it seeks to wean the United States off foreign oil, but it emphasizes use of biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel for vehicles and nuclear research for electricity. ... DOE requested no funding for geothermal for the 2007 fiscal year, after funding averaged about $26 million over the previous six years, but Congress restored $5 million. This year, the DOE's $24.3 billion budget request includes a 38 percent federal spending increase for nuclear power, but nothing for geothermal. ...New geothermal power projects by 2050 could provide 100,000 megawatts of electricity - enough to power about 80 million U.S. homes, or as much as U.S. nuclear power plants make today, the MIT study said. But U.S. geothermal development will need $300 million to $400 million over 15 years to make this type of power competitive versus other forms of power generation, the study said....

2007 March. Thermonuclear Weapons. Catalyst magazine, Union of Concerned Scientists. by Robert Nelson is a senior scientist in the Global Security Program. Excerpt: U.S. thermonuclear weapons derive their explosive energy from the combined power of nuclear fission and fusion. An initial fission reaction generates the high temperatures needed to trigger a secondary-and much more powerful-fusion reaction (hence the term "thermonuclear"). ...The first is the detonation of chemical explosives that surrounds a sphere (or "pit") of plutonium metal. The force from this blast is directed inward, compressing the pit and bringing its atoms closer together...sometimes causing them to split, or fission....
...Every year since 1997, the nation's nuclear weapons laboratories have certified that all U.S. nuclear warheads are safe and reliable, and that renewed nuclear explosive testing is not currently needed to gauge reliability. However, the laboratories have recently voiced concern that warheads may not be reliable over the long term.
It must be noted that the definition of "unreliable" in this context is a weapon that falls short of its designed yield by more than 10 percent. In other words, an "unreliable" nuclear weapon can still produce a devastating explosion. A weapon with a 300-kiloton yield could be deemed unreliable if it exploded with a 270-kiloton yield-13 times more energy than that released by the Nagasaki bomb.
... the United States conducted its last nuclear explosive test in 1992. Every type of U.S. nuclear weapon currently deployed underwent explosive testing, but it is theoretically possible that the properties of the plutonium could change as it ages, resulting in a weaker primary.
...the oldest warheads in the U.S. weapons stockpile were assembled almost 30 years ago. Until very recently, the minimum lifetime of plutonium pits was conservatively estimated to be 45 years, which would mean that the pits in every U.S. warhead might have to be replaced within the next two decades. This is the rationale behind the Bush administration's proposed Reliable Replacement Warhead (RRW) program, which would redesign and replace all 10,000 U.S. warheads.
Over the past several years, however, the U.S. weapons laboratories have effectively eliminated this rationale by conducting "accelerated aging" experiments to re-evaluate the age at which reliability would realistically decline. By simulating the behavior of aged plutonium, scientists concluded that all existing U.S. plutonium pits have minimum lifetimes of 85 years, and most will remain reliable for at least 100 years. (The lifetimes could be much longer, but further experiments are needed.)
As these results make clear U.S. thermonuclear weapons will remain highly reliable for many decades, undercutting the primary reason for the Bush administration's RRW plans....

2007 February 13. In a Corner of Virginia's 'Switzerland,' a Division Over a Planned Wind Farm. By PAMELA J. PODGER, for The New York Times. Excerpt: MONTEREY, Va. - ...Mr. Wes Maupin, a 52-year-old former corrections worker... finds no joy in the prospect that these blustery Allegheny ridges could soon become home to the state's first wind farm: 19 wind turbines, each taller than the Statue of Liberty, its pedestal included. "Any wind farm," Mr. Maupin said, "would surely change the character of this county forever." ...Where some see unwelcome industrialization of the wilderness, others see green energy and an estimated $200,000 a year in tax revenue for the financially needy county. ...at Grady's Barber Shop here in Monterey, the county seat, 35 miles west of Staunton, Roy Waggoner said he supported the $60 million project. "One way to clean up the environment is with the wind turbines; it's green energy," said Mr. Waggoner, 57, a sheep rancher. "I don't want to see them on every inch of land, but that ridge is very secluded." ...But Randy Richardson, president of Highlanders for Responsible Development, a group that opposes the project, said people worried about noise pollution from the turbines' blades and light pollution from the red strobes that would alert aircraft to the 400-foot-tall structures. "We actually had some guy saying these will be similar to the windmills in Holland," Mr. Richardson said. "Well, there is a little bit of difference between a quaint Dutch windmill and a 400-foot turbine."....

2007 February. US-India nuclear pact gets mixed reaction.By Jim Dawson, Physics Today-ISSUES AND EVENTS - Volume 60, Issue 2. Excerpt: In the midst of the US government's attempts to refocus its nuclear weapons program and stop the spread of nuclear weapons in hostile countries, President Bush signed legislation in December [2006] allowing the sale of civilian nuclear fuel and technology to India and thus reversed 30 years of nonproliferation policy. The legislation allows US companies to sell nuclear fuel to India and invest in and construct new civilian nuclear power plants in that country. In exchange, India will open up 14 of its civilian nuclear reactors to international inspections but keep 8 military reactors off-limits. ...The law makes India an exception to the US Atomic Energy Act, which prohibits trade of nuclear material with countries that haven't signed the NPT. Both the US House and Senate voted overwhelmingly in early December to pass the legislation, with Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) saying it "ushers in a new era of cooperation between our two great democracies." But Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) termed the deal a "historic mistake" that has "shredded the nuclear nonproliferation treaty."....

2007 February. Future of US nuclear weapons a tangle of visions, science, and money. By Jim Dawson, Physics Today-ISSUES AND EVENTS - Volume 60, Issue 2. Excerpt: National Nuclear Security Administration officials push for a new nuclear bomb, some scientists and arms control experts are asking what's wrong with the old ones. ...The decision on whether to go forward with the new bomb, known as the Reliable Replacement Warhead [RRW], rests with the Bush administration and Congress, but weapons and arms control experts note that the decision is not straightforward. The RRW program, mandated by Congress in 2004 "to improve the reliability, longevity, and certifiability of existing weapons," faces a host of questions based on need and on cost. ...Weapons experts expect the total cost of the RRW could reach tens of billions of dollars over the next 25 years if the bomb is developed. ...Underlying the entire discussion about the future of US nuclear weapons is the enormous expense. The US currently spends about $6.7 billion a year to maintain the existing stockpile and the weapons complex....

2007 January 25. Smuggler's Plot Highlights Fear Over Uranium. By LAWRENCE SCOTT SHEETS and WILLIAM J. BROAD. NY Times. Excerpt: TBILISI, Georgia, Jan. 24 - Last January, a Russian man with sunken cheeks and a wispy mustache crossed into Georgia and traveled to Tbilisi by car along a high mountain road. In two plastic bags in his leather jacket, Georgian authorities say, he carried 100 grams of uranium so refined that it could help fuel an atom bomb. ...Oleg Khinsagov,left, was arrested by Georgian authorities for smuggling almost four ounces of enriched uranium. Interior Minister Ivane Merabishvili, right, reported two cases of uranium smuggling in two and a half years. The Russian, Oleg Khinsagov, had come to meet a buyer who he believed would pay him $1 million and deliver the material to a Muslim man from "a serious organization," the authorities say. The uranium was a sample, just under four ounces, and the deal a test: If all went smoothly, he boasted, he would sell a far larger cache stored in his apartment back in Vladikavkaz, two to three kilograms of the rare material, four and a half to six and a half pounds, which in expert hands is enough to make a small bomb. The buyer, it turned out, was a Georgian agent. Alerted to Mr. Khinsagov's ambitions by spies in South Ossetia, Georgian officials arrested him and confiscated his merchandise. After a secret trial, the smuggler was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison. ...The old Soviet empire had a vast network of nuclear facilities. After its breakup, as managers abandoned plants and security fell apart, the West grew alarmed as many cases of atomic smuggling came to light. ...Since 2000, however, the amounts and purity of the seized material has declined as former Soviet republics set up new security precautions, often financed by the United States. ...Georgians called for help from American diplomats, who sent in experts from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Energy, American officials say. Mr. Merabishvili said the Americans shocked them by taking the uranium and simply putting it "in their pocket." Uranium in that form emits little radiation and presents little or no danger to its handlers. When it was analyzed at the Energy Department's laboratory in the Pacific Northwest, it was found to have a U-235 purity of 89.451 percent, "suitable for certain types of research reactors, as a source material for medical isotope production, and for military purposes including nuclear weapons."

2007 January 23. Study Says Tapping of Granite Could Unleash Energy Source. By ANDREW C. REVKIN, NY Times. Excerpt: The United States could generate as much electricity by 2050 as that flowing today from all of the country's nuclear power plants by developing technologies that tap heat locked in deep layers of granite, according to a new study commissioned by the Energy Department. ...The new report, published online yesterday, focuses on a process that it said could affordably harvest heat locked in deep layers of granite that exist almost everywhere on earth. The technique, called enhanced geothermal, involves drilling several holes - some two to three miles deep - into granite that has been held at chicken-roasting temperatures, around 400 degrees or more, by insulating layers of rock above. In the right geological conditions, pressurized water can be used to widen natural mazelike arrays of cracks in the granite, creating a vast, porous subterranean reservoir. In a typical setup, water pumped down into the reservoir through one hole absorbs heat from the rock and flows up another hole to a power plant, giving up its heat to generate steam and electricity before it is recirculated in the rock below.There are successful plants harvesting heat from deep hot rock in Australia, Europe and Japan, the report noted, adding that studies of the technology largely stopped in the United States after a brief burst of research during the oil crises of the 1970s. ...The generating capacity by 2050 could be 100 billion watts, about 10 percent of the country's current generating capacity....

2007 January 22. The Future of Geothermal Energy - Impact of Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS) on the United States in the 21st Century. A report prepared by an MIT-led interdisciplinary panel, was released to the public. The report suggests that 100,000 MWe of electrical generation capacity can be met through EGS within 50 years with a modest investment in R&D. (14.1MB PDF)

2006 June 6. Debate Over Wind Power Creates Environmental Rift. By FELICITY BARRINGER. NY Times. Excerpt: OAKLAND, Md. - Dan Boone ...wants to slow the growth of wind-power projects. For four years or more, Mr. Boone has traveled across the mid-Atlantic to make every argument he can muster against local wind-power projects: they kill birds and bats; they are too noisy; they are inefficient, making no more than a symbolic contribution to energy needs.
... in the mountainous terrain of southwestern Pennsylvania, western Maryland or West Virginia, areas where 15 new projects have been proposed. If all were built, 750 to 1,000 giant turbines would line the hilltops, most producing, on average, enough electricity to power 600 homes.
..."The broader environmental movement knows we have this urgent need for renewable energy to avert global warming," said John Passacantando, executive director of Greenpeace U.S.A. "But we're still dealing with groups that can't get their heads around global warming yet."
...Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s very public opposition to the 130-turbine Cape Wind energy facility proposed off Nantucket Sound has driven a wedge between activists.
...Mr. Boone's quiver of anti-wind arguments includes economic analyses, but his first line of attack is biological: he contends that they are a threat to bats and potentially to migratory birds and that they break up forest habitat. Scores of raptors and other birds were killed by the first generation of wind turbines set up at Altamont Pass in Northern California. Since the Altamont Pass turbines were erected in the early 1980's, turbine design has been altered, and most subsequent studies have shown that birds tend to fly above the height of most turbines though some experts say more studies are needed. But the turbines south of here in Thomas, W.Va., have been lethal to bats. More than 2,000 were killed in 2003 at the Mountaineer project, whose 44 turbines are owned by FPL Energy, a big power company that is the wind industry's dominant player. Industry officials agree that the bat mortality measured at the Mountaineer site is unacceptable, and they are studying the benefits of deterrent devices and the best ways to modify turbine operations in bat-rich areas....

Archive of Past Articles for Chapter 4

Acid Rain

• Effects of Acid Rain: Lakes & Streams (EPA web page)
• California Energy Commission

Geothermal Energy

• Geothermal Education Office (GEO) http://Geothermal.marin.org/
  

Nuclear Energy

• Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board -- http://www.nwtrb.gov/
• Shundahai Network http://www.shundahai.org/, is a non-profit organization dedicated to breaking the nuclear chain by building alliances with indigenous communities and environmental, peace and human rights movements. We seek to abolish all nuclear weapons and an end to nuclear testing. We advocate phasing out nuclear energy and ending the transportation and dumping of nuclear waste.
• Yucca Mountain Project -- http://www.ymp.gov/
  May 6, 2002: Environmentalists and State of Nevada Say Yucca Mountain Radiation Standards Violate Drinking Water Protection Law

Renewable energy

• Canadian Renewable Energy Network
  

Tidal Energy

• Blue Energy Canada http://www.bluenergy.com/technology.html -- commercializing the Davis Hydro Turbine, to generate high-density renewable and emission-free electricity from ocean currents and tides.
• Australian Renewable energy Website

Wind Energy

• American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) http://www.awea.org/
• Wind energy http://www.nativeenergy.com/
• January 15, 2002--Ireland to Build World's Largest Wind Farm, Bijal P. Trivedi, National Geographic Today--Ireland has approved plans to build the world's largest wind farm on a sandbank just six miles (ten kilometers) offshore from Arklow, a town about 40 miles (70 kilometers) south of Dublin.

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