if you can make reactor fuel out of the waste from fracking, we can talk.
might be worth refining some coal ash, too.

They find some idiot, a historian, not a scientist, to announce that nuclear proponents "had not proved that the risks of operating the plants, and the waste they produce, could be managed."

The risks of operating plants. Seven million people die each year from air pollution, and she's complaining about risks of nuclear plants.

According to this moron, and all similar morons, nuclear power is the only form of energy that must be risk free, or other worse technologies will be able to kill at will.

Now, this person is supposed to be a historian, a Harvard historian no less. She should therefore be familiar with the death toll from World War II, which ran somewhere between 7 years and 10 years of dangerous fossil fuel/dangerous biomass combustion deaths, a.k.a air pollution.

She should also be able to calculate how many deaths occurred because of the now sixty year old commercial nuclear energy industry.

But apparently she isn't. To her, we lack "proof." What kind of "proof" does she want? 140 million air pollution deaths in the next twenty years while we all wait, like Godot, for the wind and solar miracle that never comes? The immersion of Manhattan on the grounds that the operations of nuclear plants haven't been "proved?"

It would be interesting if she could prove that so called "nuclear waste" is dangerous by producing someone in this country who's been killed by the storage of used nuclear fuel from a power plant. Or more than one person, say as many as will die in the next twenty minutes from dangerous fossil fuel waste, or the number of people who will die tomorrow from it. Today, 19,000 people died from air pollution on this planet and yet, and yet...and yet, we haven't proved that nuclear energy is "safe?"

Compared to what?

One never knows who is more stupid, the people the New York times quotes on nuclear energy, or the reporters who do the quoting. Neither set seems particularly bright.

Nuclear energy saves lives. It is the only option which has demonstrably prevented tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide being dumped.

The hatred of nuclear energy thrives on ignorance and fear, and it is ignorance and fear, and not the lack of available technology that is destroying the future for all generations. The assholes at the New York Times are part of the problem, and they apparently don't understand a damned thing.

Nuclear energy need not be perfect, it need not be risk free to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is, no matter what a dumbbell at Harvard in the "History" department has to say.

But you already know that. How about an update on that nuclear reactor you claim to have designed? You said you were leaving the country to market it and then we never heard anything else about it.

And by who pays I mean not only who pays in the form of increase taxes, but who losses economic rights?

One of the problems with climate change is Solar, Nuclear, Wind and other non-carbon forms of energy can NOT replace oil especially in the transportation field. Oil just provides to much power per unit (Nuclear is technically more efficient, more power per pound, but nuclear plants tend to be to large to fit into a truck or car).

Side note: Electrical storage (Batteries) have increase in efficiency over the last 40 years but is still no where near the energy storage capacity of a gallon of gasoline.

Between, Nuclear, Wind, Solar and Hydro energy sources, our use of electricity could be maintained (With much of the new power being provided by in current hydro power, modern technology can provide almost all of the electrical power we need by use of such in current hydro system, i.e. system buried deep in the rivers with no dam, the generators rely on the flow of the river to the ocean.

Transportation is the main problem. How do we move people and goods from point A to point B without the use of oil? Short distances can be done by electrical vehicles, but no more then 15 to 20 minutes trips (that is about how far an electrical car can go without needing a recharge). Overhead wires (or electrical systems built into the highway itself) can provide such power, but only in high volume traffic areas (and with a massive increase in electrical generation capacity). Buses could use fast re-chargers located at any transit stop and rely on batteries between such stops (but that is inner city buses only, NOT buses going on any long trips of more then 20 minutes without a stop).

Once you look into the numbers, the numbers do not add up UNLESS you accept the fact people will have to move closer to where they work and shop. People reduce they demand for oil but switching to a life style that does NOT depend on owning a vehicle. i.e. Suburbia will die. Personal transportation costs of people will go down once they commit to NOT having an automobile, but such a situation will require infrastructure that permit people to live without an Automobile (and in most modern urban areas that does NOT exists, it will have to be rebuilt). Such a life style change will be opposed by the people who are use to such a life style AND by the people who have invested in such a life style.

The number once use of oil in the US is the fuel to go to and from work. If people move closer to where they work such use of oil will decline. Businesses will also want to keep their workers, so many will move to locations that permit them to keep their employees (after trying everything else to solve the problem of high worker turnover first WITHOUT having to give up their suburban locations). Most urban residents did not own a Automobile till after WWII and the Automobile permitted them to move out from the inner cities to the suburbs and then commute to work. Employers followed their employees but only starting in the 1960s (and today most job growth is in the suburbs NOT the inner city). Both changes depended on cheap fuel and once cheap fuel is no longer available both will come to a crashing end.

For the foreseeable future, Electrical storage devices can NOT provide the power AND safety margin in power than suburbanites need to maintain their suburban life style (I doubt electrical storage will ever be able to provide both, but in theory it is possible). Thus without cheap fuel, suburbia is doomed. Distances between work, shop, school and home has to be reduced to reflect the reality that the best alternative to the gasoline automobile is the bicycle (Which has comparable range to electric cars).

All of this will be fought not only by people who have purchased homes in Suburbia, but businesses that moved to suburbia to supply services to those same people. To reduce the use of oil, you have to increase its price OR otherwise restrict its use. Given that transportation is the main use of oil today, that means some sort of restriction on oil consumption, either through rationing or taxes. Either method will put pressure on residents of suburbia who will fight the increase taxes or restrictions and demand that those costs to put on someone else. That is the real problem, the solution to Climate Charge is restrictions as to the use of oil, coal and natural gas in ways that restrict suburban living.

Now on the surface, Rural residents will be hit even harder, but rural residents have the option of just staying on the farm except going to town once or twice a month. Such rare trips can be worked around any restriction of oil usage (i.e. ride a bicycle, ride a horse, or just take a horse drawn wagon into town every couple of weeks and make an adventure of it). In areas of rural farms, most elementary and middle schools can be built within bike riding distance (High Schools can become week day boarding schools). In areas of rural herding (mostly out west) we already have problems with children in such places spending hours on the bus to get to and from schools, thus boarding schools may be the solution). Cyper Schools can also provide some help, but in my experience you need to interaction with children of your own age group that you get in a regular school in addition to any technical education you get from going to school, thus boarding school may be the better option in rural America.

Now, not all suburbs will die. Those suburbs that tried to be urban areas (i.e. have sidewalks) will survive better then those suburbs that saw any movement as being Auto driven (i.e. no sidewalks). The problem is these tend to be the older suburbs, built either before WWII or right afterwards. Since the 1960s the norm has been to have suburbs without sidewalks. How do you convert these suburbs to pedestrian urban areas? And the answer is you can not.

Now, I do not see such suburbs dying over night, most will survive for decades. Many will demand public transportation to replace their cars (Trolley buses, electrical buses with overhead wires can be retrofitted to serve many of these areas along the major highways that connect them to the urban areas and each other). Truckers will also demand such over head wires, so they can use trucks hauling heavy loads over those same highways (and then rely on batteries for any delivery off those highways).

Given the above, I foreseen massive support to do something about global warming, but then massive resistance to anything that will have any real affect on such warming. i.e. proposal to increase taxes on fuel will be opposed, any requirement that new cars be hybrids or electric will be oppose do to the increase cost of such vehicles over conventional vehicles. Demands that coal use to generate electricity be stopped, but demand for such coal generated electricity being demands (and an unrealistic demand that such coal generated electricity be replaced by wind, solar and even nuclear power overnight).

I also foresee State legislature passing laws increasing the registration fee of electric vehicles, to cover the loss of revenue to cover the loss of revenue from any drop in fuel taxes collected do to people buying less gasoline and diesel fuel (The trucking industry will demand this, they want someone to pay for the roads they trucks need to operate on, Automobiles put very little wear and tear on any highway, the big costs are the wear and tear done by heavy trucks. Thus trucks pay thousands of dollars in highway taxes, but every highway department need more money to built and maintain the roads that the trucks need, then the trucks being in in the form of taxes). Look at most suburban side streets, most are in good shape and have not been repaved in years (and often decades). The reason is the people riding their cars on such streets do very little damage to such streets. On the highways, it is the heavy duty trucks that tear such roads apart even on roads built up to take such abuse (and most highways are built to take such abuse, thus overbuilt for the cars that travel on them, thus such light vehicles do little wear and tear to such roads unlike the trucks whose weight tears such roads apart). Truckers know they are subsidized by cars and any reduction in collection of gasoline taxes reduced money to maintain roads for truckers, thus truckers will demand that someone other then themselves replace the loss revenue as people opt for electric cars, which will lead to increase registration fees for electric cars.

My point is the people who believe they are being hurt by any effort to reduce global warming will oppose that change. People will gladly support someone else bearing the costs, but not themselves. That is REAL PROBLEM, what changes in income (and that includes taxes you pay) and life style will people accept as reasonable costs to pay to end global warming? Will people give up their vehicle? Will people move to a smaller home? Will people move to the inner city to minimize transportation costs? That is where the fight will occur, not that we need to address global warming. It it HOW we address global warming is where people will fight.

Electric vehicles are far more capable of meeting modern driving needs than you posit with your 20 minute drive time limit, which is why all manufacturers are electrifying their entire line-up. The switch won't be accomplished tomorrow, but it is underway.
The major factor is no longer energy density, it is cost; and the cost of battery storage is falling the same way solar panels dropped over the past 10 years (70% in the past 18 months). Driving that price reduction is rapid escalation of demand and associated investment in manufacturing infrastructure (again like solar). Electric vehicles, distributed grid storage, grid ancillary services, and home solar systems are some of the most prominent uses, but the market is just starting to explore the capabilities of portable electricity.

Some things to ponder:
Gasoline is great in that it has high energy density, but about 85% of that dense energy is lost between the gas tank and the wheels. Conversely, battery electric drive losses are less than 15% on the journey from tank to wheels (and that's headed towards <5%).

Given that fact that the vast majority of drivers use their cars less than 30 miles per day, as things stand right now there is a great deal of room for EV market share growth just in the area of second cars.

Then there is the use of EV batteries as mileage boosters in with various hybrid configurations.

You'll also want to be aware of the way EVs are being conceptualized and designed to work as part of the grid, with opportunities for stacked value streams emerging through Vehicle to Grid (V2G) technologies. It's something the policy makers in the electric industry are definitely excited about.

Your summaries are usually pretty well done, but this one falls short by a mile.

There is 33.40 Kilowatt hours of electricity in a gallon of gasoline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent

A gallon of gasoline weighs just over six pounds:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline#Density

Gasoline has 46.4 MJ/Kg

Lithium has .645 MJ/Kg:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_density

Lithium by itself in theory, can store the same energy as gasoline but:

The cell's energy is equal to the voltage times the charge. Each gram of lithium represents Faraday's constant/6.941 or 13,901 coulombs. At 3 V, this gives 41.7 kJ per gram of lithium, or 11.6 kWh per kg. This is a bit more than the heat of combustion of gasoline, but does not consider the other materials that go into a lithium battery and that make lithium batteries many times heavier per unit of energy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium-ion_battery

But in reality the limit seems to be 1500 W/kg (or 1.5 Kwh per kg), roughly 13% what gasoline provides. That is a huge increase over Lead-Acid batteries but Gasoline still wins out.

Magnesium batteries appear to be the next best improvement, in theory should do five times better then Lithium but at present have a high level of corrosion of its internal parts and this problem is only being address starting in 2015 with only limited success, the ones that have been built tended to do worse then lithium (and in some aspects worse then lead-acid):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnesium_battery#Primary_cells

If we can solve the problems with Magnesium batteries, at its most efficient it will still have only has half the energy density of gasoline (Five times better then Lithium is still about 50% of Gasoline). Please note, the following cite says such batteries will be only three times better then Lithium batteries:

http://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/energy-resources/us-er-electric-storage-paper.pdf

While gasoline "wastes" 85% of it power from the gas tank to the drive wheels and electrical systems only lose 15% but that is NOT the whole story. First you lose about 25% of electrical power as you convert from electricity to actual energy storage in the battery. With gasoline the loss from tanking up is minimal. Please note Taxes on gasoline in the US can be as high as 68.8 cents a gallon, and as of my knowledge no one has taxed electricity that goes into an automobile (but such taxes have been discussed) thus one of the main reasons it is cheaper to run an electric car today then a gasoline car appears to be taxation:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_States

Please note, once gasoline is burned, it is no longer in the vehicle and thus does NOT add weight to the vehicle. With any battery storage system the weight of the battery exists if the batteries are fully charged or discharged another advantage to gasoline.

Please note, in recent years Auto Makers have been slowly going to smaller and smaller gasoline engines, to save weight and thus improve fuel economy. With these smaller engines the loss of energy from gasoline has been reduced. Lithium has done a similar reduction in weight for electric cars but no where near as great. Further reduction in weight is possible if people are willing to accept slower top speeds. VW did a 235 mpg car based on a very small engine, it could get up to highway speeds, but its acceleration was slow. The biggest problems with gasoline drive cars today is a desire to do 60 mph if not faster. When people do opt for smaller and lighter cars, the gasoline engine will remain competitive do to its greater energy density.

Thus unless we find something better then Magnesium as a battery form, gasoline is going to be competitive for a long time to come (and magnesium MAY not make it as a battery given the problems people are having with it, or if it does make it, only in limited situations).

You are wrong in your vision of the state of the industry. This is due to the fact that you don't know the relevant metrics showing that current state - which in turn means that the direction of the industry is completely shrouded to you. You've trotted out a few objections from 20 years ago and you're trying to keep them relevant by fudging numbers.

I've pointed you in the correct direction, but I have no interest in arguing with someone that isn't interested in learning. From the nudges I provided and with the same effort or less effort than you put into trying to defend your ill-informed position you could have delved into the way electric vehicles are poised to successfully integrate into both modern lifestyles and energy/transportation economics.

That 20 minute figure is just dead wrong. I bought a 2013 Chevy Volt recently and I routinely go 40+ miles before it takes its first sip of gasoline. (So far I'm seeing 40-45 MPG in hybrid mode and 25 kWh per 100 miles in electric mode; it lets me draw up to about 10.5 kWh of battery before making the switch.) All-electric cars have bigger batteries (because they have to!) and can go much further on their batteries' stored energy. The upcoming Bolt is expected to get around 200 miles out of a full charge, with the "affordable" Tesla model coming out next offering comparable range.

Now I think it's important to develop viable alternatives to personal automobiles. (I live in a rural area; I don't currently have a lot of alternatives for trips outside bicycle range.) And I am happy to anticipate the demise of the suburb. But it won't happen because the electric car is not technically capable of prolonging the era of personal automobiles. Indeed, they are actually quite well-suited to suburban drivers (who actually have the garages you'll want to house your charging stations; the challenges of ownership are substantially greater for apartment dwellers and anyone who has to park in the street!).

Last edited Wed Jul 13, 2016, 12:14 AM - Edit history (1)

The Cruze Eco and the Volts are two cars to compare for they are the same car body, frame, seats, doors etc except for the engine and transmission. The Eco has the same 1.4 liter engine as the Vote, but cost 1/3 less (and in the Eco the 1.4 liter engine is turbo charged). When I drive in the city (I live in the Appalachian mountains) or up Allegheny Mountain fuel economy drops to the 30s but on the highways 40 to 50 mpg.

The problem is who gets the electricity being produced? To address global warming, electrical production will be affected by the following:

1. The need to replace the 25% of energy use in the US is used in vehicles in the form of oil, 40% of energy is used to produce electricity.

2. The 33% of electricity produced by coal in the US (and another 33% is produce using natural gas) with 1% being produced by oil.

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3

3. The increase by 1/3 of energy usage over the last 10 years

The problem is HOW TO DO THE ABOVE and the numbers are there. Some sort of "Rationing" will have to be used, and that rationing will be by price. i.e. people who want to pay the most will get the electrical power, those who can not afford it will not. Given the increase price of electricity will people decide to "Fuel" their electric cars or their homes? Worse, the Government may NOT give people a choice, restricting electrical access to certain times of the day (done in many other countries when electricity is in short supply) and even denying people access to electricity.

In simple terms you may be able to drive to your garage, but there is a good possibility it will have no electrical service to charge your vehicle. To reduce the level of carbon being released into the atmosphere not only will our consumption of Coal have to be reduced but also our consumption of Oil and Natural Gas and with that reduction how much electricity produced will decline.

That is where the fight going to be, who gets the surviving electrical power? Solar, wind and hydro will provide some but the 13% all provide today AND the 20% provided by nuclear power is NOT enough to replace the 67% provided by Coal, Natural gas and oil (oil provides 1% of Electrical power today) AND also replace the 25 % of ALL ENERGY that is use in transportation.

Whose loss will be the lost of 67% of electrical generation? Whose lost of electricity will be used to replace the 25% of energy used in Transportation? People who can minimize they use of electricity to what they can produce themselves (roof top, small generators on streams etc) will handle the situation the best (and that includes people who can avoid using electricity for transportation). People in the city will be able to live without electricity much more then can suburbanites. The same with people in rural areas, they can work around having only a limited access to electricity. The problem with suburbanites is they need a vehicle and the vehicle will be their number one use of electricity once oil can no longer be used.

Peak oil people made this observation years ago, without cheap oil suburbs can not survive. With restrictions on electrical production based on the need to reduce carbon emissions, you have the same problem, transportation option became bicycles or by foot. In rural and urban areas both are good options, in suburbia no.

That is the problem, who will bare the cost of reducing carbon emissions? The push will be to put the cost on everyone but people in the suburbs are in the worse position to minimize those costs to them. That is the problem that no one wants to address, how do you reduce carbon emissions AND maintain suburbia? Urban and Rural areas will be equally hurt and both will also resent the costs, but in both areas they have options to driving a vehicle, in suburbia there is no real alternative to an automobile.

Please note I suspect nothing will happen till something bug happens, like if the West Antarctic Ice Sheet breaks up and increase world wide sea level 20 feet almost over night. The other ice sheets, the Greenland and even larger East Antarctic Ice Sheet are grounded above sea level so will melt slowly over many decades. The West Antarctic Ice Sheet is grounded below sea level and thus can break up and float, displacing enough water to raise sea levels 20 feet. It is a big enough of a world wide disaster to get people to accept what is needed.


On the other hand till some disaster occurs, we will recognize global warming is bad, we will talk about it and how to stop global warming, but no one will want to take the heat that comes with actually doing something about global warming, ie deciding who will bare the costs and how ( and people accepting that they have to bare the costs for doing nothing is worse).

Thus no restriction on burning carbon, burning coal, burning natural gas, burning oil, you will see some shifting between the three but no actual reduction. You will see support for wind and solar, for that has no political costs, but no actual attack against carbon based energy. I see a lot of talk about the need to reduce such source of energy but no real drop except when cheaper energy source can be obtain, for example Germany has embraced wind power, but still gets most of its power from hydro dams in Switzerland and nuke plants in France. German coal became to expensive to mine and thus Germany turned to the above sources and natural gas from Russia. The rest of the world will do the same till a disaster hits and forces people to do something real as oppose to hust talk.