Situation Today

Fossil Fuels

• Here now and cheap.

• Existing infrastructure:

  • gas and oil is cheap to ship,

  • and easy to store.

• Limited disaster potential:

  • kills more steadily, not very saliently.

• Fossil fuels make great heat engines,

  • but poor electricity and kinetic engines.

Basic Alternative Fuels / Stores

1. Hydrogen

2. Batteries

3. Nuclear

   

More details in next chapters.

1. Hydrogen

• Lighter but less dense (lower per m$^3$)

  • Best for airplanes and ships far off the grid.

  • Will need new designs, but not terribly novel.

• Flammable (better and worse than gasoline).

• Similar but more corrosive than natgas.

• Storable like natgas

Hydrogen’s Deadly Problem

 

     Cost!

 

Hydrogen’s Deadly Problem

• Clean hydrogen costs about 10x as much as natgas

  • could come down to 2x in 30 years?!

• Who wants to pay “only” twice as much?

  • Think competitive industries.

  • Think Expedia airplane trips

  • Think shipping containers.

Better catalysts? Cheaper electricity inputs?

2. Nuclear Power

• Clean reliable power

except when plant blows up.

Nuclear Power Safety

• Safest plants ever built, but not safe enough.

  • 1 core melt-down per 4,000 reactor years.

  • Unknown problems always creep up.

  • Disasters can be terrible.

  • Hard to control human agency problem:

    • Make 100x profit using 5c screw as $5 screw.

    • Who will check later?

    • Screw changes risk from 1/100m to 1/99.99m.

Nuclear Power Safety

• How safe is safe enough?

  • Even overall, could make twice the profit allowing 1-in-3,000 over 1-in-4,000?

  • What company and manager wouldn’t want to outperform others and be promoted?

  • Inspect (or falsify reports)?

    • Much easier to conquer atom than humans!

  • Watch HBO Chernobyl miniseries.

Safety Considerations

• Human Operations Error:

  • we need nuclear plants where operator can no longer even intentionally blow up the plant,

  • no matter how hard they try.

Better Than Fossil Fuels?

• Fossil fuels kill hundreds of thousands

  • every year, but not with big bangs,

  • and scary radioactivity.

• Since 1960, nuclear has killed $\approx$ 100,

  • almost all in Chernobyl.

  • Devastation in Fukujima is from Tsunami, not from nuclear plant core meltdown!

  • Radiation is not as bad as public imagines it.

    • It truly depends on dose.

Nuclear Power Regulation

The Regulator’s Problem:

• Companies that want to go to 1 in 3,000,

• and know more than the regulators.

• What does a bureaucrat get for:

  • Type-I error?

  • Type-II error?

wanna become famous? only one way…

Innovation And Improvement

Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1975:

• Need better regulation.

• More regulation is not better regulation.

• No new designs both completed and built

• Some slightly better designs were finished.

  • Better safety features than older designs.

• About to change (Terapower Wyoming)

 

• FOAK costs, experience, etc.

Nuclear Fusion Plants

• Completely different physics.

• Power source of the sun, infinite supply.

• Don’t drink the Cool Aid.

---

• Ironically, economically just like fission:

  • very high fixed costs,

  • very low marginal costs,

  • near infinite supply of fuel.

• Except

  • fusion plants cannot blow up, more like flame very difficult to sustain.

  • less radioactivity at end of life (EOL)

No panacea, but good to research.

Eol Nuclear Waste Problem?

• Spent Fuel-Rod Disposal

  • but could be reused 1,000x more in breeder reactors, which no one wants to license,

  • and government has guaranteed disposal.

• PS: Fossil Fuels have same problem,

  • but public does not seem to care as much;

  • much stronger lobby for fossil fuels!

  • Perfunctory: Feds collect nominal amounts.

Biggest Nuclear Problem

• Huge Fixed Cost: Think $20b/plant.

  • plus maybe cost overruns.

• Think 10 years to build.

• Could be obsolete at opening,

  • while suffering new regs along the way,

  • or be so unpopular as not to be licensed.

 

• Who wants to gamble their retirement funds?

3. Batteries

• Very low energy density.

  • Think 5% of fossil fuels.

• Never useful for heat.

  • Make heat first and store heat!

• Battery capacity on grid is tiny.

  • Think 10 minutes of storage.

  • Even hydro storage is much more.

  • Only useful for niche applications sofar.

Today’s Lithium Batteries

• Best and dominant technology

• Very lightweight (great for cars)

 

• Highly explosive when exposed to humidity.

 

We will cover batteries in the next chapter.

Cool Aid: Green Tech

• Even technologies working in the lab usually fail to work in the real world.

  • Think 1 in 10 will ultimately make it.

• Fortunately, civilization has 20 draws.

• R&D investment is large and risky,

  • also because another stealth green company could solve problem even better.

• Better to research, develop, or deploy now?

Cool Aid: Fossil Fuels

• FUD. Attack critics.

• Huge lobbying engine and political power.

• Fossil fuels have enjoyed huge subsidies.

 

• Think half-truths and non-sense:

  • mix liberally,

  • repeat often.

If it’s a lie, then we fight on that lie — Slim.

A lie ain’t a side of a story. It’s just a lie — Gus.

Attack Vectors

• Blacken green alternatives

• Point out unimaginably large numbers

  • Of course it’s big—including the problem.

  • Ignorant public is easy target.

 

(PS: also true for green proponents.)

Space Requirements

• Green Tech requires too much space:

  • Size of Massachusetts!

 

• Yes and no.

  • Space is not a constraint, except inside cities.

  • Think instead size of land for agriculture.

    • need only <5% thereof and elsewhere.

Space Needs For Solar

Dig, Recycle, Etc.

• WSJ OpEd: Get ready digging.

• Of course yes, but so do fossil fuels:

  • Real(istic) EOL consequences of fossil fuels have been terrible!

  • So are the ongoing local health effects.

• Worst comes to worst, landfill wind turbines.

• But critique is cosmically good

  • better designs with recycling in mind.

Tire Mountains, 1970s

Limited Clean Materials

• Cobalt, Lithium are in short supply.

• Yes and No.

• Cosmic Nonsense:

  • Just cheapest and best first solutions.

  • Chemistries will be much better and cheaper in 30 years.

Unfair Government Subsidies

• Clean energy is indeed getting subsidies,

• but not nearly as much as fossil fuels have gotten over the decades.

  • (and this does not even consider the pollution externalities, which we should add in, because we have not charged them for it.)

Conclusion

• Fossil fuels are not easy to replace,

• but they are not irreplaceable.

 

Technology alternatives to be explained next.