Thursday, April 26, 2012
Moving
In my continuing effort to rationalise everything to do with my online presence... blog is moving to THMooreBlog.BlogSpot.com. This can also be accessible via www.thmoore.org.
Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Energy Innovation
The ideas of energy innovation have been a hot topic over the last number of years. There are many reasons for the concerns. Coal power is about as dirty an energy source as there is. Even if you don't believe in the effects of climate change there is no arguing the about of radioactive waste that get pushed directly up into the air as a result of burning coal. This waste is estimated to be toughly 100 times the amount of radioactive material that is contained in a nuclear reactor, and goes up into the air and gets blown around. Oil as we know has issues with supply and refinement, issues with drilling and potential oil spill sand the horrible environmental effects of these disasters.
Alternative energy sources exist, but in reality are only feasible at this point, in small uses. Solar panels, wind turbines, bio files, etc all have had there spills in popularity, however they have never truly been feasible for the mass production of power on the grand scale.
Then we come to Nuclear Power. Nuclear power is one of those issues that inevitably invokes passionate arguments around the issue. Now you would shave had to live under a rock, or in a shed in a forrest in Montana not to have heard the name "Fukushima" over the past year and a half.
The story goes that Japan had an earthquake, which caused a tsunami, which caused mass devastation in the area of a nuclear power plant, which sparked a chain of events which led to the latest nuclear disaster.
So what was the final death toll attributed to the disaster? An estimated 20,000 people. Clearly Nuklear power is horrible because of that death toll right? Well, not really. The loss of human life is terrible, no matter the cause. However of those 200,000 lives that were lost, the vast majority were lost due to the effects of the earthquake, and the tsunami, not the nuclear disaster that followed up.
According to Asian Correspondant the final death toll for the nuclear portion of the incident were 5. Of those:
* one man who became trapped in the console of a crane during the earthquake,
* two who were swept away by the tsunami
* a clean up worker who suffered from a heart attack.
And another man reportedly died suddenly in October. Although the company is not revealing the cause of death, they say it was not related to radiation.
Now the conspiracy theorists could surmise that the final death was in fact a coverup of radiation poisoning or a cover up of some sort, but the fact remains that the death toll was Thankfully very small during this disaster.
The article goes on to state that there are expected to be no deaths from radiation at all.
By compare, the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 people as a direct result of the incident. The Pike River coal mine explosion killed 29 people. These incidents aren't isolated, but that are considered almost an acceptable loss for the industry. Now don't get me wrong I don't think there is any such thing as an 'acceptable loss' however if we were to operate industries along the line of 0 acceptable losses, nothing would ever happen.
So the question arrises as to why we continue to use power sources like coal and natural bass, despite the higher death toll. The answer was outlined in a bit of an off handed comment, however one can't shake the reality. These types of power kill vasty more people, however they do it in lower concentrations. Politicians prefer this because it means they show up at a funeral, publish a press release and the next day they can get "back on message." Where as with a nuclear disaster they have to monitor the solution for ages because everyone is sitting on the edge of there seats waiting for the other shoe to fall.
Inevitably the sceptics of Nuclear power end up going back to the Chernobyl incident and the death toll from that incident as justification for not using nuclear power. My answer to that response is typically "Banning nuclear power based on Chernobyl is like
banning driving based on the Ford Pinto, with no breaks, no seat belts, and no headlights while driving at highway speeds in the middle of the night."
The reality is we need energy innovation. Traditional means of power production simply aren't feasible. Many people suggest that by increasing domestic supply of oil we can avoid the expense and risk of spending money on advances in technology. First and foremost, increasing supply will not impact the issues that we currently face. The idea of Supply and Demand, thus increasing supply results in lower cost is an overly simple economic model. For this to work we would have to assume that the demand for power consumption remain constant, that there are no other outside factors, and ignore the idea that oil is traded as a global commodity. Additionally we would have to assume that domestic production is sufficient to have a dramatic impact on the overall supply, and rely on there being no other supply limiting factors. The only way to dramatically affect the price of energy is to dramatically reduce the demand. Demand will be reduced in only two ways, new technologies that increase efficiencies, or new technologies that allow alternate energy sources to meet our needs. Guess what, both mean innovation.
Energy innovation also isn't about addressing the demands of today. We have something that, depending on your perspective, meets our current needs, so why are we going to waste time investing in future technologies? Imagine if we stopped making medical advances because there wasn't any pressing need right now at this moment... imaging if we stopped searching for ways to make our cars safer or more efficient... imaging if we stopped driving advances in computing back in 1985 because the computing power we had then met our needs.
When ever we start talking about energy innovation, inevitably attention turns to "Green Energy." and initiatives there. Green energy is great, on the small scale. I can put solar panels on the roof of my house, as I have done, and I can off set some of the power that I consume personally. My investment takes about 7 years to pay it self off, and I get some level of protection against raising energy costs. However it's also dependant on me hang access to the funds up front to actually install the solar panels. On the large scale this falls down however, as you would have to cover pretty much all of Nevada and Arazona with solar panels to power the US demand for energy, and that doesn't account for the loss of energy in transporting from one side of the country to another! Wind farms cause environmental disruption, noise pollution and disrupt the local environment. Bio-Fules like ethanol, from my limited knowledge, consume more energy to produce then they replace, which really boils down to them being a farm subsidy rather than an energy plan.
Fukushima's first reactor went online 40 years ago. Imagine if the forty subsequent years had been spent undertaking innovation.
Alternative energy sources exist, but in reality are only feasible at this point, in small uses. Solar panels, wind turbines, bio files, etc all have had there spills in popularity, however they have never truly been feasible for the mass production of power on the grand scale.
Then we come to Nuclear Power. Nuclear power is one of those issues that inevitably invokes passionate arguments around the issue. Now you would shave had to live under a rock, or in a shed in a forrest in Montana not to have heard the name "Fukushima" over the past year and a half.
The story goes that Japan had an earthquake, which caused a tsunami, which caused mass devastation in the area of a nuclear power plant, which sparked a chain of events which led to the latest nuclear disaster.
So what was the final death toll attributed to the disaster? An estimated 20,000 people. Clearly Nuklear power is horrible because of that death toll right? Well, not really. The loss of human life is terrible, no matter the cause. However of those 200,000 lives that were lost, the vast majority were lost due to the effects of the earthquake, and the tsunami, not the nuclear disaster that followed up.
According to Asian Correspondant the final death toll for the nuclear portion of the incident were 5. Of those:
* one man who became trapped in the console of a crane during the earthquake,
* two who were swept away by the tsunami
* a clean up worker who suffered from a heart attack.
And another man reportedly died suddenly in October. Although the company is not revealing the cause of death, they say it was not related to radiation.
Now the conspiracy theorists could surmise that the final death was in fact a coverup of radiation poisoning or a cover up of some sort, but the fact remains that the death toll was Thankfully very small during this disaster.
The article goes on to state that there are expected to be no deaths from radiation at all.
By compare, the Deepwater Horizon explosion killed 11 people as a direct result of the incident. The Pike River coal mine explosion killed 29 people. These incidents aren't isolated, but that are considered almost an acceptable loss for the industry. Now don't get me wrong I don't think there is any such thing as an 'acceptable loss' however if we were to operate industries along the line of 0 acceptable losses, nothing would ever happen.
So the question arrises as to why we continue to use power sources like coal and natural bass, despite the higher death toll. The answer was outlined in a bit of an off handed comment, however one can't shake the reality. These types of power kill vasty more people, however they do it in lower concentrations. Politicians prefer this because it means they show up at a funeral, publish a press release and the next day they can get "back on message." Where as with a nuclear disaster they have to monitor the solution for ages because everyone is sitting on the edge of there seats waiting for the other shoe to fall.
Inevitably the sceptics of Nuclear power end up going back to the Chernobyl incident and the death toll from that incident as justification for not using nuclear power. My answer to that response is typically "Banning nuclear power based on Chernobyl is like
banning driving based on the Ford Pinto, with no breaks, no seat belts, and no headlights while driving at highway speeds in the middle of the night."
The reality is we need energy innovation. Traditional means of power production simply aren't feasible. Many people suggest that by increasing domestic supply of oil we can avoid the expense and risk of spending money on advances in technology. First and foremost, increasing supply will not impact the issues that we currently face. The idea of Supply and Demand, thus increasing supply results in lower cost is an overly simple economic model. For this to work we would have to assume that the demand for power consumption remain constant, that there are no other outside factors, and ignore the idea that oil is traded as a global commodity. Additionally we would have to assume that domestic production is sufficient to have a dramatic impact on the overall supply, and rely on there being no other supply limiting factors. The only way to dramatically affect the price of energy is to dramatically reduce the demand. Demand will be reduced in only two ways, new technologies that increase efficiencies, or new technologies that allow alternate energy sources to meet our needs. Guess what, both mean innovation.
Energy innovation also isn't about addressing the demands of today. We have something that, depending on your perspective, meets our current needs, so why are we going to waste time investing in future technologies? Imagine if we stopped making medical advances because there wasn't any pressing need right now at this moment... imaging if we stopped searching for ways to make our cars safer or more efficient... imaging if we stopped driving advances in computing back in 1985 because the computing power we had then met our needs.
When ever we start talking about energy innovation, inevitably attention turns to "Green Energy." and initiatives there. Green energy is great, on the small scale. I can put solar panels on the roof of my house, as I have done, and I can off set some of the power that I consume personally. My investment takes about 7 years to pay it self off, and I get some level of protection against raising energy costs. However it's also dependant on me hang access to the funds up front to actually install the solar panels. On the large scale this falls down however, as you would have to cover pretty much all of Nevada and Arazona with solar panels to power the US demand for energy, and that doesn't account for the loss of energy in transporting from one side of the country to another! Wind farms cause environmental disruption, noise pollution and disrupt the local environment. Bio-Fules like ethanol, from my limited knowledge, consume more energy to produce then they replace, which really boils down to them being a farm subsidy rather than an energy plan.
Fukushima's first reactor went online 40 years ago. Imagine if the forty subsequent years had been spent undertaking innovation.
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