Quickthink

This is not a blog about nuclear reactors. It is not even an energy markets blog. But we do track interesting stories. And one of those stories is about a different nuclear reactor design based on using a different fuel - thorium. Peter Reinhardt offers an overview of where things stand on this. It is a nice update and also a potential forum for sharing insights about the relative merits of this approach to generating power.

My interest - how long will it take to learn whether this is a practical technology and if so, to bring it online? Let’s see.

A while ago, I got interested in nuclear energy. Not the old style that produces radioactive by products we can’t safely store and has meltdown risks. I got interested in reactors that use thorium as fuel. Back in January I posted on this. I posted again in February and hoped to find out more. Today I am excited to see a report of a thorium reactor project. Apparently those clever Norwegians re going to start using thorium to fuel a conventional reactor.

Professor Don Sadoway from MIT did a great TED talk a while ago about his idea to build a cheaper and better commercial battery. His start up has funding and as Giga reports, is about 2 years from large scale production. Better yet, he appeared on Colbert to talk up the idea. The video is embeded in the Giga article.

What’s the big deal? Well, the biggest single problem in using electricity more is storage. With better storage, we will much better use out of renewables.

Onward!

It has been argued that the 20th century was the century of oil. Oil gave mankind a relatively cheap and seemingly inexhaustible supply of energy. This, in turn, drove development of a broad range of new technologies and life styles. But sadly, oil reserves are not unlimited and we are struggling to find alternatives. On top of that, global climate change suggests that whatever alternatives we come up with, they cannot pump more carbon into the air.

So, is the 21st century going to be the sad century where humankind was forced off its addiction to oil? Where life styles were severely reduced because there was no alternative that worked so well?

It is possible. So far, even with advances in the use of renewable energy sources, we do not have satisfactory technological solutions to our energy and climate issues. But … consider that we might be able to take carbon from the air to make fuel. Indeed, as Salon reports, British scientists are already doing it on a small scale.  Now that would be a game changer.

This may or may not work. But hold onto your hats. We are likely to see quite a few new technologies that change how we think of energy production and use in the 21st century. We may become experts at “unlocking” the carbon around us for use and reuse as fuel (not just sequestering it). Why am I so optimistic? Because of something new that is already here — vastly expanded capacity to share knowledge that speeds up innovation.

Giga offers an interesting post on … drum roll please … industrial energy efficiency. More specifically, it is about the Obama push to adopt cogeneration technology more rapidly. What’s the big deal? Check out the numbers

A couple years ago a study came out from Oak Ridge National Labs that found that boosting the use of combined heat and power to 20 percent of the generating capacity of the U.S. by 2030 would save 5.3 quadrillion thermal units of fuel per year, which is equal to almost half the total energy consumed by U.S. households. That much CHP could also lead to a 60 percent reduction of carbon emissions, which is the equivalent of taking 154 million cars off the road.

Pretty impressive.

We should think about this potential saving in light of potential shifts in demand for grid power. A growing percentage of power used is generated from off grid sources (like solar and cogeneration). So are we headed for more and smaller generating facilities that are closer to users? Some think so.

Dave Talbot asks this question for Technology Review

Germany has decided to pursue ambitious greenhouse-gas reductions—while closing down its nuclear plants. Can a heavily industrialized country power its economy with wind turbines and solar panels?

It is a very good piece - telling us a lot about German policy making and about the energy sector. Bravo!

Modern societies need a lot of modern fuels and so far, carbon based fuels are the most efficient. But where did the energy that is in our carbon based fuels come from? It was created a really long time ago by the sun and then stored in organic matter. So we run around the planet looking for places where this organic muck is stored in large enough quantities to refine and distribute.

But what if we could use the same ultimate resource (the sun) to generate energy as we need it. That is what plants do, so it is no huge surprise that we would be trying to copy the process that plants use. But so far,  our best efforts are still not very efficient. The best solar panels convert around 10% to 15% of the sun’s energy into usable power.  And while costs for solar panels are falling, they are not all that cheap yet. BTW, this is a price that I am keeping an eye on.

Can we do better? Well, a lot of people think we could. And they are experimenting with ways to tweak the conversion process. If we can do this — especially if we can do it by using carbon in the atmosphere — the fossil fuel era would come to an end. We would no longer need to go to the trouble to drill deep, deep holes to pump up the muck that we convert to gas.

FC offers a nice profile of one of the latest experiments to use genetically modified microbes to generate liquid fuel from the sun.  This works, though not yet in a cost effective way. Good story. And it is a brief snippet of one the great learning adventures of our time.

FOLLOW -  This is not the only great learning adventure about “fuels”.  We are only now just beginning to understand what fuels ourselves. I don’t mean the physical foods that we need for fuel (though we are learning a lot about that too). I am talking about what fuels our our motivation in groups to learn. This process is still a bit mysterious. But we know more now than we ever have.  But we just haven’t yet converted this into the right kinds of platforms that would be more efficient than the stuff we use now. Hence we tolerate very inefficient institutions. Will this change over the next century. I believe that it will.

Peering into my crystal ball …

A while ago, I posted on an idea that seems to have amazing potential, but does not attract much attention. The idea is to develop thorium based nuclear reactors. Why? Well, last I checked, we do need the energy. Check. And thorium reactors would be cleaner and safer than our current models. Check. And there is a hell of a lot of thorium lying around.  Check. It seems like the no-brainer no one is talking about.

Well, almost no one.  I was pleased to see a Twitter link to an article at the Guardian discussing a variation of the idea. Now if we could just get the proponents of these different approaches talking to each other …

Paul Krugman offers a few thoughts today on a revolution in energy - the falling price of delivering electricity form the sun. I have been tracking this issue and posted about biomimetics just a few weeks ago. This is all very good news. But Paul raises the alarm about fossil fuel industry lobbying. Let’s see if he has a point.

At QT, I am tracking the great adventure of how mankind will develop alternatives to burning fossil fuels for energy. It is, in my view, one of the biggest or meta stories out there, and one that is not well enough reported. Why is it so big? Because we are likely to face ever more severe impacts from two trends: (1) ever higher fossil fuel costs and (2) global warming. Why is it under-reported? Who knows? But probably the reason is simple - most journalists are not well versed in the area.

The most interesting questions concern the likely effects that changes in energy supply and pricing have on how we live. Here are two very different views of what is in store for us (1) From the TV series “The Prize” - As it was in the 20th century, access to oil will drive political and military decision making and lead to conflict, or (2) from Carlota Perez - The negative impacts from ever increasing prices of energy will be offset by gains from smarter living that will produce a “golden era”.

So far, even as energy prices have gone up, we have not seen that much change. Even after the financial crash and resulting recession, we continue to hold on to patterns of living based on cheap energy, albeit with ever greater strain. Can we continue to hold on? Who knows. But there are some trends at work that may guide us in decision making.

One trend is that as the cost of extracting and delivering fossil fuels continues to rise, the cost of alternative energy supplies is falling. Good reports

The price of fossil fuel energy has been rising for the last decade, and every year those fuels get even more expensive to extract. Meanwhile, the price of solar power has fallen steadily since the 1970s, and manufacturing capacity for solar panels has quadrupled in the last three years alone. The inexorable result is that electricity generated from solar plants will soon become as cheap as electricity generated by gas and coal power plants, a moment known as “grid parity.”

When will we get to “grid parity”? We may already be there in certain locations. It may be a more general phenomenon by 2015 or even 2013. Once we get past grid parity, where the cost of solar power is less than the cost of burning fossil fuels, a lot of interesting things will happen.

We might keep in mind that the earth is bathed in a huge amount of solar energy every day that vegetation harvests. Once we get used to the idea that we need to do that too, we might start copying how plants do it. This copying is called “biomimetics” - and biomimetics may lead us to embrace some wild new technology. FC offers an interesting article on that topic.

So hold onto your solar powered hats. This may be a wild ride.

FOLLOW - BTW, Carlota Perez takes into account rising energy prices in her model of how the next “golden era” will come about. Her point is that the negative impacts of high energy prices will be offset by dramatic increases in the value added we find from enhanced information flow. We will use less energy as we wean ourselves away from the era of mass production and all “go green”. It will be fun to see if she is right.

2d FOLLOW -  Carlota Perez also points out that the idea of a great life in the suburbs was a by-product of the era of cars and cheap transport. With fuel prices on the rise, this is changing. We already see disturbing signs of increased suburban poverty. Are suburbs sustainable? Not many people were asking this question just a few years ago. Now doubts about suburbia are growing. My sense is that they probably are sustainable if we can access enough energy from non-fossil fuels to keep them powered up and and keep our cars going. The more important question is will they lose their appeal. I think  they will if conventional wisdom shifts to the conclusion that having a primary residence in the suburbs is no longer a smart option. And that my friend, is probable.

3rd FOLLOW -  I made the point that traditional journalism is not reporting the story about energy well enough and is letting us down. This is not the only area where I believe traditional journalism is letting us down. I would argue that reporting about the current economic malaise is equally poor. As with energy matters, most journalists simply are not well enough versed in finance matters to try to engage the wider audience. So we get silly and reactionary news reporting about events and debates instead of serious trend analysis and learning. This must change over time if — as Carlota Perez predicts — the world is to grow smarter.