Let's start by clearing the air: the problem is not with energy supplies. The amount of exploitable coal and uranium still in the ground will supply our needs for a long time. Coal can power electric generation plants, it can be processed into syngas, and liquid synfuel using off the shelf technology that has been available for almost a century. Thorium/uranium breeder reactors, while not as mature a technology, have the interesting property of producing more fuel than they use. These types of reactors have been built, have been run successfully, and have proven practical. Bear with me while I drive this point home. Nightmare visions of a collapsed society starving and freezing in the dark ruins of their once mighty cities because they ran out of energy are just that: dreams. It_will_not_happen. Ether one of the above sources can take up the slack, and can do so within a reasonable time frame. So the problem is? The problem is we have to replace something cheap and simple with something complicated and expensive but that is also that is environmentally sound. The worse part is we will have only one shot to make the right choice.
Oil is the most incredible fuel, it is cheap, it is easy to store and transport and it has a high energy to mass ratio. Along with those properties it can be easily and inexpensively fine-tuned to optimize its performance for the application at hand. Natural Gas has its own ideal set of properties for the applications that it is used for; it can be transmitted by pipeline thus centralizing the storage and distribution issues, (yielding economies of scale) it can be controlled quickly to a very fine degree with very simple apparatus, and it also burns clean.
For almost all of the period these fuels have been in use the biggest issue has been the fact that production has always been able to outstrip consumption. Thus throughout their history these industries have relied on various price-fixing schemes and the organizations they created to administer them. Now with demand growing faster than consumption, the supply and demand equation will reverse itself and prices will rise as a result of market forces. This will have two major consequences.
The first will be a reawakening of fuel efficiency concerns. During the 1973 oil crisis, everyone changed their attitudes almost overnight on this issue. MPG's, R-Factors, these terms came into common usage in that period, and also became common concerns for car and homebuyers. Looking back I am impressed by how fast the Market forced these factors into products and product improvements. The same will happen again. While this isn't the long-term solution, it will buy us some breathing room. It will also push the problem to the front and that's when the real fight will begin.
The second consequence of a dwindling supply of oil and gas will be the development and exploitation of alternative sources. Were this the only factor the issue would be of no more interest to the typical consumer than whether the gasoline that was just bought filling up, came from Light Sweet or Heavy Sour crude. This however is not the case. The road to a solution is strewn with boulders, some are technical, and some socio-political; all have an economic component.
Starting with the technical issues let's look at an important, albeit overused term: energy infrastructure. When most of us think of energy in our personal or working lives, we tend to think of a product delivered by pipe, wire or pump to the point where it can undergo final conversion to a consumable form. While almost all of us know that in most cases it didn't start out in the same form that it was delivered, and that it was transported along a dedicated network, when we think of energy we often tend to limit the discussion to the supply end. This is myopic.
These delivery networks, in all of their manifestations, have two roles: moving the stuff from production to consumption; and guaranteeing a reliable supply (and demand) by connecting multiple numbers of each. The second factor, although often understated, is just as important as the first. Reliable access to markets encourages production; choice of suppliers keeps prices under control, encouraging use. At least that's the Intro to Economics 101 theory, and broadly viewed over the long historic axis, a correct one.
The energy networks have one other important property that cannot be ignored. They are there. Vast sums of money, time and material have been expended over the better part of the last century building these things and polishing the procedures to make them run. The only way we were able to afford these huge systems in the first place is that they grew slowly and the products that they moved were so inexpensive to produce that the consumer could absorb the cost of construction almost without noticing.
The point? Many of the proposals out there, some which are being seriously considered, involve retasking one or more of these systems, and in many instances this critical issue is breezed over in discussion. This is a mistake. These systems are huge and complex, with a bewildering number of control nodes and operate under protocols that been less designed then they have accumulated. They have not been built for two-way traffic, and even in cases where bi-directional flow is physically possible it is often achieved only by overriding system fail-safes, and potentially compromising product integrity. Refitting to allow for this, while certainly doable from the engineering standpoint, would be horrendously expensive, and in some cases would require that large chunks of the network go offline or isolate for extended periods of time and in most cases this factor alone makes conversion unfeasible.
The second overarching technical concern is reliability. We use energy in such a way that an unreliable source is often worse than no source at all. Many of our day-to-day behaviors are predicated on subliminally knowing that the juice will be right there, right now, when we throw the switch or turn the key. If you're a backwoods camper, or stay in a country place off the grid, you make adjustments, but we cannot run our lives not knowing from moment to moment if power will be there. Yes, that's the case in some third world urban pestholes, but those are not the conditions we are striving for.
The only way to assure reliability is obviously, to have reliable reserves on hand at all times. Bluntly, safe, affordable, local high density, storage technologies are not yet ready for large-scale deployment. The practical systems available now are too costly and too dangerous both to the user and the environment to be in general use. Unfortunately development in this area has been hampered by the fact that the one ideal store of energy that is in widespread use is the one that must be replaced: oil. As a consequence the only way to assure reliability at this point is a continuous supply.
In transmission and reliability above we touched on matters that are primarily technical with economic overtones. Now we will deal with economic concerns that have a technical component. This will round out our survey of the system issues before moving on to the political ones. The two areas left are, of course, production and consumption.
If you want build power source, it is important to analyze the amount of input power (needed to build the source) and running costs (needed to produce that power), and match that amount against the power output that can be expected over the lifetime of the plant. For example, if it took more energy to build and to run a source than the energy that can be extracted during its lifetime, then clearly the project is not worth making in energy terms. No power-sourcing project can sensibly be undertaken without Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROEI) assessments. A purely financial analysis is wholly inadequate, especially where data is distorted by government subsidies.
This does not mean that we would not manufacture an energy-storage device, such as a battery, which costs far more in energy to produce than the energy that can be extracted from it. It is often decided to produce such devices for their utility, but it is not a means for producing energy in the first place. Note also that EROEIs vary greatly according to assumptions. For instance any given project would probably come out much worse if site preparation and restoration and externalized pollution by end users were factored in. Similar remarks probably relate to other figures, but this gives you an idea.
If the pithy one liner for the above is: "there is no such thing as a free lunch" then the one for what follows would be: "good enough is the enemy of better. Doing more with less (efficiency) or doing less, period (conservation) doesn't usually stir the passions as much as discussions of other energy sources do.
One problem with efficiency improvement is that it is often more expensive than the status quo. One may well use less energy lowering the costs on one side of the equation but it has required an investment up front to replace the old inefficient stuff with the new efficient stuff. The cost that are occurred must be returned (with lost interest) over the things useful life. This sets a lower bound on what level of improvement is worth the price, but higher efficiencies incur greater initial costs raising the lower bound yet again. A family household also often buys inefficient, `cheap' lamps with short lives and high consumption, in a very similar calculation. Consequently it is not higher prices for energy per se that make conservation a worthwhile consideration, it is rising prices that make these steps attractive.
Intuitively it seems obvious to most that increasing energy efficiency will ultimately reduce demand for an energy resource. Paradoxically, economic theory suggests that this decrease in demand and subsequent decrease in cost of using the resource could in fact cause a rebound in demand. This is known as Jevon's paradox. This is exactly what happened to oil and gas. The efficiency of the product over other sources drove its adoption, thus increasing its consumption. In short Jevon's Paradox is that conservation can encourage and increase consumption. Conservation does not necessarily, and of itself, reduce consumption.
Finally we are going to take a quick survey of some potential socio-political pitfalls. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it covers broadly most of the potential points of conflict. The environment falls into this list because it is a collective choice whether or not we live in or own effluent.
Like the Energy Return on Energy formula there are Economic-Ecology Tests that must be done to determine the complete life cycle environmental burden versus cost of any power technology, essentially a cost-benefit analysis. Here's the rub: this calculation can yield a negative value. It really doesn't matter if you get zero emissions at the tailpipe with hydrogen if you discharged three times the pollution making the stuff.
Vested interests are another political concern. Ideologies aside, any new energy product will have to have the involvement of the old energy sector. It is just a fact that corporate entities exist to maximize shareholder's value, and they will act to protect that value. Earlier I wrote that we only had one chance to make the right choice, that is because the remaining pool of gas and oil represents our inheritance of (almost) free energy Although all of the connections are somewhat convoluted to follow, if that inheritance is squandered chasing poor solutions, implementing another will be even more expensive,
Finally there is the question of convenience. It's all very Green and all to suggest driving at slower speeds in smaller less powerful cars, and setting the thermostats from a comfortable setting to a tolerable one and admonishing folk to take shorter, cooler showers but of course this is not likely to happen. Also systems that are too complex for the end-user or require a lot of fuss and bother cannot go into widespread implementation.
Enfin, on to some of the proposed solutions, and why most of them won't work...
Let's start with dismissing some of the more ridiculous ideas that are floating about, like "free energy." On any number of web sites one can find an impressive variety of devices that claim overunity, which is to say that the apparatus produces more energy that it consumes. While some are based on proven phenomenon, (such as the Casimir Effect) most are without any real theoretical foundation. Even if one or more of these turns out to be based on some hitherto undiscovered effect, turning it into a practical system in the timeframe we are dealing with is unlikely.
There are some that claim oil is not made of dinosaurs & old lettuce. That in fact the origins of oil are abiotic. Their reasoning is that other planets in the Solar System, like Saturn and Jupiter, contain significant amounts of methane. Many near-earth asteroids also contain large proportions of carbon. Just like the rest of our solar system, the primordial matter of Earth itself also undoubtedly contains a significant percentage of carbon -- and petroleum can be formed only in conditions of very high temperature and pressure deep within the earth. Thus there are no fundamental limits posed by the biological material that lived a hundred million years ago.
Let's assume for the moment that this is true, and ask ourselves the two following questions. How long will it take for now depleted reservoirs to recover to the point where they can be exploited again? And if so then even if the evidence that burning hydrocarbons has had a deleterious effect on the weather (and the environment in general) is disputable now, is there any doubt that we can continue to increase our use of these fuels at the current pace without these effects happening? In other words the fact that we seem to be running out of this stuff, be it true or a fabrication, is an opportunity to deal with the negative aspects of combustion technologies.
Cold fusion. Yes something is going on there; no we don't exactly know what it is; and yes one day this might be the answer to our prayers - but not to-day. As early as 1839, Sir William Grove (often referred to as the "Father of the Fuel Cell") discovered that it may be possible to generate electricity by reversing the electrolysis of water. It was not until 1889 that two researchers, Charles Langer and Ludwig Mond, coined the term "fuel cell" as they were trying to engineer the first practical fuel cell using air and coal gas. Do you see the dates? Today, fuel cells are just out of beta. I hope that this horse comes in but I don't see it happening in time.
Hot fusion, on the other hand, has been just around the corner so many times that I am convinced that the researchers are living in a universe with many more dimensions than this one. Progress has been made yes, but it is been incremental, this technology may serve us in the future but it's not coming on line soon. And when it does it will have to meet EROEI assessments, which in this case mean breakeven plus the huge cost of the reactors. Also this method is not as radiation free as some people that are frightened of fission think it is.
There are constant, ill-informed debates and reports that suggest that we can easily replace our fossil fuel usage by wind, or solar cell power, or some such method. Within current technology, this is a pipe-dream, it is impossible, it simply cannot be done. Solar-electric systems and wind turbines face not only the enormous problem of scale but the fact that the components require substantial amounts of energy to manufacture and the number of sites that are economically exploitable are limited. They are not that clean as, a great deal of waste is created in their manufacture, and in the case of photo-electrics, their disposal. Also there is valid concern that windmills are hard on flying creatures, and shadows cast by vast fields of solar arrays will have a negative impact on the soil beneath leading to erosion risks and the destruction of whole ecosystems on a grand scale.
The killer however is the fact that the sun doesn't shine, and the wind doesn't blow all the time, so backup is needed. It is also needed for load leveling and to provide a service called frequency discipline by maintaining so called spinning reserve. This means that a fair fraction of available power must not be drawn from a generator so that it doesn't slowdown (or speed up) too much with a changing load. This situation is made worse when the power input itself is subject to variation, consequently a greater percentage of spinning reserve is required. In short, almost as much power must be available on backup as is being extracted from the wind and/or sun and a fair amount of that has to be spinning free at a cost of fuel and emissions.
The situation is a little better for free run hydro, (exploiting river currents) tidal systems and wave power, but not much. Again the issue is with the number of available, exploitable sites, and the environmental impact that these systems will cause if scaled. Bottom line is that these cannot take up the slack. Wishful notions about rescuing our way of life with "renewables" are just unrealistic; these systems may generate some electricity for a period ahead but probably at a very local and very small scale.
What about the idea of a power system composed of distributed energy resources, where much smaller amounts of energy are produced by numerous small, modular energy conversion units, like renewables which are then integrated into the grid like an energy internet? Thing is each node whether a gigawatt natural gas power station or a single solar photovoltaic panel needs to be controlled and the necessary number of combined control tasks multiply as devices multiply. The requirement of implementing Flexible AC Transmission Systems (FACTS) technology increases the number of control parameters. Accurate information on the state of the network and coordination between local control centers and the generators is essential. However an inherent risk of interconnected networks is a domino effect - that is a system failure in one part of the network can quickly spread. Therefore the active network needs appropriate design standards, fast acting protection mechanisms and also automatic reconfiguration equipment to address potentially higher fault levels. On top of which most of the proposed systems require intelligent loads as well, adding to network complexity and cost. As I stated above these changes are not cheap or easy.
Adding to the complexity of this sort of system is that it would require storage technologies that can store significant amounts of power and reliably discharge it over and over again. Most of the candidates suffer from poor power density, as in standard batteries and flywheels; high complexity, in the case of molten salt and regenerative fuel cells, or are limited by location such as subterranean compressed air and hydraulic storage.
James Howard Kunstler wrote: "Virtually all "biomass" schemes for using plants to create liquid fuels cannot be scaled up to even a fraction of the level at which things are currently run. What's more, these schemes are predicated on using oil and gas "inputs" (fertilizers, weed-killers) to grow the biomass crops that would be converted into ethanol or bio-diesel fuels. This is a net energy loser -- you might as well just burn the inputs and not bother with the biomass products. Proposals to distill trash and waste into oil by means of thermal depolymerization depend on the huge waste stream produced by a cheap oil and gas economy in the first place," from the RollingStone article: The Long Emergency. It cannot be stated any better than that. Add to this the fact that some 80% of arable land would have to be dedicated to fuel crops and it is obvious that this is not the path we should take. And again the distribution issue cannot be forgotten. The pipeline network is not a viable method of moving alcohols for a number of reasons, thus tankers and the energy cost associated have to be factored in.
"The widely touted hydrogen economy," Kunstler goes on to write, "is a particularly cruel hoax." While that is a little harsh, the fact is that the transportation and storage issues of this fuel have not been solved. A great deal of work has been done true, but they are not ready for commercial deployment. And frankly with plans to generate hydrogen by reforming hydrocarbon gases, (with an attendant release of carbon dioxide), I am hard pressed to see the advantages.
Oil sand and oil shale deposits have been held up as the great fix for our fuel problems. Unfortunately this is just not so. The cost of extraction and processing are extremely high both in economic and environmental terms. Rosy claims by the industry aside, the return is just above break-even for tarsands and well below for oil shale. The burden on the environment would be staggering, essentially doubling instantly if this source were ramped up. The oil from these deposits will be important in the future, but not necessarily as fuel.
Moving on to the practical solutions, and by "practical" I mean practicable. These are sources that can be brought on line now. Most of them come with a set of environmental problems that cannot be eliminated. It is a simple trade-off that has to be made if we grow the use of these sources. Commonsense would indicate that faced with a choice like this we should choose the path of lesser evil.
It may come as surprise to some that there is still a significant amount of undeveloped traditional hydro potential left in North America. The National Hydropower Association (U.S.) river basin studies show a potential of 73,200 MW of additional U.S. hydroelectric capacity in 5,677 undeveloped sites. The situation is the same for Canada, including the Far North where eight major rivers draining into the Arctic Ocean are considered ripe for exploitation. Of course this is emphasizing engineering feasibility and some economic analysis, but no environmental considerations. Despite the widespread belief that hydro is the ideal clean source of renewable energy the bald fact is that it is hugely destructive to local environments and can and does create disruptions to the hydrology of an area several orders of magnitude greater.
Geothermal is another potential source that is underdeveloped just about everywhere except Iceland. If exploited correctly, geothermal energy could certainly assume an important role in the energy balance. In fact the world's potential is estimated to be equivalent to 22 400 TWh/yr of electricity (source: International Geothermal Association). This may seem to make the choice of geothermal quite a simple one but the construction of good geothermal systems are by no means easy to achieve. It requires skill in many disciplines and vast experience, especially when dealing with high-temperature systems. Geothermal systems also occur in nature in a variety of combinations of geological, physical and chemical characteristics, thus giving rise to several different types of systems. Not all of these have been field proven and this reduces the useful accessible resource base (that part of the accessible resource base that could be extracted economically (and legally) at some specified time in the future.
The figure for available power quoted above is somewhat misleading as it includes non-electric uses of geothermal energy; applications such as industrial and district heating systems. While these are important applications they are very market specific. If the source is not in a cold climate area, or if heat using industries cannot be attracted to the area, low-grade heat cannot be economically transmitted long distances.
Environmental problems also arise with this form of energy. Geothermal fluids (steam or hot water) usually contain gases such as carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, ammonia, methane, and trace amounts of other gases, as well as dissolved chemicals whose concentrations usually increase with temperature. For example, sodium chloride, boron, arsenic and mercury are a source of pollution if discharged into the environment. Some geothermal fluids, such as those utilized for district-heating in Iceland, are freshwaters, but this is very rare. The waste waters from geothermal plants also have a higher temperature than the environment and therefore constitute a potential thermal pollutant.
Coal now provides over 23% of global primary energy needs and generates about 39% of the world's electricity (World Coal Institute). Proven coal reserves are estimated to last over 200 years, (World Coal Institute) or only 50 years (Abelard.org). The truth, we can safely assume, lies somewhere between these two extremes. It will elbow its way into being a major player in this issue one way or the other. The big questions are: do we need it too; do we want it too.
The key environmental challenges we are facing from the use of coal are related to both coal mining - principally the disturbance of land and the local environment - and the use of coal - greenhouse gases, acid rain, ground level ozone and waste disposal, issues which can be both local and global in their impacts. Large-scale coal mining, particularly surface mining, requires large tracts of land to be disturbed. The main environmental problems associated with land disturbance include erosion of soil, dust pollution and impact on biodiversity.
Acid mine drainage (AMD) is an environmental problem that can come from waste material dumps, including those from coal mines and, less frequently, rehabilitated underground and surface mines. AMD is metal-rich water formed from the chemical reaction between water and rocks containing sulfur-bearing minerals. This acid runoff dissolves heavy metals such as copper, lead and mercury into ground and surface water. Environmental effects of AMD include contamination of drinking water and disrupted growth and reproduction of aquatic plants and animals.
Coal use can also have significant environmental impacts. The combustion of fossil fuels, including coal, produces gaseous emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides that are responsible for the production of `acid rain' and `ground level ozone'. Acid rain occurs when SO2 and NOx gases react in the atmosphere with water, oxygen and other chemicals to form acidic compounds. Ground level ozone is mainly responsible for smog that forms a brown haze over cities. Ground level ozone is formed when NOx gases react with other chemicals in the atmosphere and is enhanced by strong sunlight. Emissions of SO2 and NOx are termed transboundary air pollution because the environmental impacts from the production of these gases are not restricted by geographical boundaries. Ash too must be disposed of, and in huge volumes.
Fires in abandoned coal mines are the most serious coal mining-related problems in the world and it is currently estimated to require more than $650 million to eliminate these dangers in the U.S. alone Once started, coal fires can burn for years before cannibalizing their source of fuel. The fires released up to 360 million metric tons of carbon dioxide -- 2 to 3 percent of worldwide production per year from burning fossil fuels, an amount equivalent to that emitted per year from all automobiles and light trucks in the United States.
Now for the kicker. According to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/years for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/years for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. For the complete nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to reactor operation to waste disposal, the radiation dose is cited as 136 person-rem/years; the equivalent dose for coal use, from mining to power plant operation to waste disposal, is not listed in this report and is probably unknown.
Worldwide releases of uranium and thorium from coal burning total are about 37,300 tonnes (metric tons) annually (the annual U.S. share of those releases is about 7,300 tonnes). [Gabbard (1993)] More radioactive heavy metal is released into the environment every two years by coal burning than the total spent fuel waiting to be buried from all U.S. nuclear power production and most U.S. nuclear weapons production. [Lehman (1996] Also since uranium and thorium are recoverable nuclear fuels, burning coal also wastes more potential energy than it produces. [Gabbard (1993)]
Taking all of the above into consideration I am forced to draw the conclusion that by all rational criteria Thermonuclear Energy is the option that must be pursued. Keeping with the negative tone of this article, I should examine the criticisms leveled against this type of power plant; however I'm sure, assuming anyone reads this, that it will be done for me. I will answer them then. However I do hope that critics will use up to date information. The antinuclear movement is great for dragging up data from the Fifties and treating it as if it was still current. Note too that nuclear energy's opponents have yet to credibly suggest how we should produce most of our future electricity; I will be holding any critic to provide alternative answers.
From the outset the basic attraction of nuclear energy has been its low fuel costs compared with coal, oil and gas fired plants. Uranium has the advantage of being a highly concentrated source of energy which is easily and cheaply transportable. The quantities needed are very much less than for coal or oil. One kilogram of natural uranium will yield about 20,000 times as much energy as the same amount of coal. There are other possible savings. For example, if spent fuel is reprocessed on site and the recovered plutonium and uranium is used in mixed oxide (MOX) fuel, more energy can be extracted. The costs of achieving this are offset by MOX fuel not needing enrichment and particularly by the smaller amount of high-level wastes produced at the end. Seven UO2 fuel assemblies give rise to one MOX assembly plus some vitrified high-level waste, resulting in only about 35% of the volume, mass and cost of disposal.
In the past, long construction periods have pushed up financing costs. In Asia construction times have tended to be shorter, for instance the new-generation 1300 MWe Japanese reactors which began operating in 1996 and 1997 were built in a little over four years. In general the construction costs of nuclear power plants are significantly higher than for coal- or gas-fired plants because of the need to use special materials, and to incorporate sophisticated safety features and back-up control equipment. These contribute much of the nuclear generation cost, but if coal fired plants were held to the same standards for radioactive safety these costs would be more than competitive as the physics of a thermonuclear plant make maintaining containment less complex.
There is probably no other large-scale technology used worldwide with a comparable safety record. This is largely because safety was given a very high priority from the outset of the civil nuclear energy program, at least in the west. About one third of the cost of a typical reactor is due to its safety systems and structures, including containment and back-up provisions. This is a higher proportion even than in aircraft design and construction.
Nuclear energy produces both operational and decommissioning wastes, which are contained and managed. Although experience with both storage and transport over half a century clearly shows that there is no technical problem in managing any civil nuclear wastes without environmental impact, the question has become political, focusing on final disposal. In fact, nuclear power is the only energy-producing industry which takes full responsibility for all its wastes, and costs this into the product - a key factor in sustainability. Ethical, environmental and health issues related to nuclear wastes are topical, and their prominence has tended to obscure the fact that such wastes are a declining hazard, while other industrial wastes retain their toxicity indefinitely.
There is plenty of nuclear fuel, if not in the ground, then from partially burnt fuel elements that could be reprocessed using modern techniques (such as the process developed in Brazil) Also, thorium, as well as uranium, can be used as a nuclear fuel. Although not fissile itself, thorium-232 (Th-232) will absorb slow neutrons to produce uranium-233 (U-233), which is fissile. Given a start with some other fissile material (U-235 or Pu-239), a breeding cycle similar to but more efficient than that with U-238 and plutonium (in slow-neutron reactors) can be set up. The Th-232 absorbs a neutron to become Th-233 which normally decays to protactinium-233 and then U-233. The irradiated fuel can then be unloaded from the reactor, the U-233 separated from the thorium, and fed back into another reactor as part of a closed fuel cycle.
Neutron efficient reactors, such as CANDU, are capable of operating on a thorium fuel cycle, once they are started using a fissile material such as U-235 or Pu-239. Then the thorium (Th-232) captures a neutron in the reactor to become fissile uranium (U-233), which continues the reaction. As a bonus for those worried about proliferation of atomic weapons, any plutonium leftover in this cycle is denatured. That is it cannot be use to make bombs.
Thorium is about three times as abundant in the earth's crust as uranium. Also, all of the mined thorium is potentially usable in a reactor, compared with the 0.7% of natural uranium, so some 40 times the amount of energy per unit mass is available. The thorium cycle fuel thus claims four advantages: lower cost of fuel, compatibility with existing reactors, proliferation resistance and it creates more fuel than it uses.
But what about transportation fuels? Atomic reactors don't fit in vehicles or on aircraft. Well it come as surprise to many that methanol can be cheaply fabricated from hydrogen electrolyzed from water and atmospheric carbon dioxide. Johnson Matthey Catalysts invented the Low Pressure Methanol (LPM) process in the 1960s and is now used to manufacture over 60% of the world's methanol. Methanol is a good fuel for automobile engines because it has a high octane rating and low pollution emission.
A lot of enthusiasm is currently being generated for synthetically derived fuels from methanol precursors. Notable among such fuels are the jet fuels for which fairly well developed commercial manufacturing processes are in place. A more recent addition to this family of sulfur-free, near-zero aromatics synthetic fuels is dimethyl ether (DME). For these processes thermonuclear reactors can supply the electricity to produce hydrogen, drive the compressors that produce the liquid air that carbon dioxide is distilled from, and also provide the heat to run the reaction.
So that's it. Putting on a tinfoil hat for the moment I will close by voicing my belief that the negative press that nuclear has gotten is propaganda from the one industry that would lose and lose big if there was a wholesale shift to nuclear. Coal
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