The Nuclear Green Revolution

On the History of Nuclear Safety

2008-07-04T04:06:00.009-05:00

One of the follies of my youth was to spend a couple of years being trained as a Historian of Ideas. This gives me an unusual perspective as a nuclear blogger. I had a couple of guest posts on Harry's Place last year. In my second post, I discussed the positive secondary benefits of using nuclear power as an energy source. My post attracted an inordinate number of anti-nuclear responses. One of my most vociferous critics was an English woman who was chemist.

My Harry's place critic focused on a number of events in the history of the British nuclear adventure. It is clear that everyone who was doing nuclear science in the 1950's cut corners, and covered up problems, and no one more so than the British. The Windscale fire was a major nuclear accident, and the British covered up quite a lot of the problems. My critic however, chose to attribute to something she called "the nuclear industry" all of the characteristics, of what was a quasi-military nuclear production establishment of the cold war 1950's.

My father did some research on the Windscale accident, because he was researching the movement of radioisotopes in the environment after a nuclear accident. Lots of radioisotopes had escaped into the environment because of Windscale, so Windscale was high on nuclear safety researchers interest list in the early 1960's. Several things about the Windscale reactors, and the 1957 Windscale fire. First the design if the Windscale piles was primitive by American standards. They were graphite piles designed to produce bomb grade plutonium. unlike the Hanford Reactors, which were water cooled, the Windscale reactors were air cooled. The X-10 reactor was the only American air cooled graphite reactor. Eugene Wigner had rejected the use of air or gas cooling in the Hanford reactors. The British did not have a Wigner, and ended up up with an unsafe reactor design. In addition to being badly designed, the Windscale reactors were poorly instrumented, and the British were having increasing problems managing the reactors graphite moderator. Those problems had significant safety implications, which the British failed to identify and analyze.

Thus the history of the Windscale fire must include questions about why the British had in the late 1940's chosen a production reactor design that was already considered obsolete in the United States by the time it went into operation, and why they chose to manage it the way they did. The combination of the reactor design and the management style adopted by the British made an accident in the Windscale reactors quite probable. Of course there was a coverup because culpability for the accident ran to the top of the British Government and military.

The history of nuclear safety is both a history of ideas and a socio-political history. The two are intertwined. My British critic on Harry's Place, however, took an ahistorical viewpoint. She refused to place the Windscale reactor fire into the historic context of the British states management of cold war related technology. It was her view that if something was true of nuclear technology at one time, in one place, it was true everywhere and always. Thus what was characteristic of the Windscale reactors was true of every reactor. And the management of the consequences of the Windscale fire by the British government is characteristic of all aspects of nuclear safety at any time and in any place.

Ahistoric views of the development of any technology are profoundly unsophisticated. Technologies evolve in socio-economic and historical contexts, and attitudes towards technological issues like safety, are in no small measure related to the context in which the technology evolves. Knowledge evolves and with that evolution comes a greater appreciation for risk and understanding of methods of controlling risk,. As knowledge evolves it can begin to change the social and political context, thus altering public attitudes and beliefs.

A historian would, of course, note changes in attitude toward nuclear safety, developing research, on safety, the introduction of new safety concepts, conflicts within the research community, and conflicts over safety involving scientists, interest groups, self styled experts, research funders, policy makers, and policy implementation establishments. Partisans in a conflict might well take a less nuanced view. My British critic from Harry's Place surely took and extremely unsophisticated view that reduced the history of nuclear safety to a simple narrative of good verses evil, With "the nuclear industry" embodying evil, and the critic fantasizing herself to be a warrior on the side of good. This fantasy has characterized the anti-nuclear movement since the 1970's. At its heart then the anti-nuclear movement, to the extent it rejects a historical view of nuclear safety, is wedded to a fantasy politics of identity.

I have pointed out in Nuclear Green, that nuclear critic Ralph Nader's sister Claire had a professional association with with Alvin Weinberg and had discussed nuclear safety issues with Weinberg. Claire Nader undoubtedly passed on the substance of her discussions with Weinberg to her brother, who was later to talk directly with Weinberg about safety issues. The Nader's were both treated with respect by Weinberg. In turn Ralph Nader should hsve known of Weinberg's expertise both on reactor design and on nuclear safety issues. Nader also know of Weinberg's struggle with Chet Hollifeld and Milton Shaw. Thus Nader had no reason to doubt Weinberg commitment to nuclear safety. Nader could have undoubtedly used Weinberg's knowledge in a fight for nuclear safety. Instead Nader made hiscause the fight against nuclear power.

Nader posed for the public as a good little guy, who fought against evil incarnate, represented by such evil forces as "the nuclear industry". Unfortunately this absurd story was bought be an increasingly simple minded media, that wanted to interpret every story for the public as a matter of good verses evil. Good verses evil was easy to sell to ther public, and drew eyes and ears to the media that told the stories. Stories with shades of gray were complicated. They required a lot of thinking and a lot of information. Thinking and information lost readers and viewers. In order to understand the history of nuclear safety in America, we must understand the increasing incompetence and corruption of what past for the mainstream news media during the last third of the 20th century.

There were some bad actors in the nuclear safety story, and Ralph Nader turned out to be one of them. The television networks, and the press were simply too lazy to get the whole story, so the media was content to sell the Saint Ralph line.

Nader tells stories about himself, in which he claims to be a saint of knowledge. For example, Nader claims that in 1964 he attended a conference at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Over lunch Nader claims that he began asking nuclear engineers some questions. "They couldn't answer them, or the answers weren't satisfactory," Nader claims. "'What could happen if a system goes wrong?' Nader asked. They avoided any such descriptions or said, 'we've got defense in depth' -- and other jargon." "Defense in Depth" is of course an effective operational concept, that was proven to be effective at Three Mile Island. By describing a discussion of things things that he did not understand as jargon, Nader revealed his lack of understanding of nuclear safety. As Gomer Pile use to say, "surprise, surprise surprise." There were of course, other people at ORNL who could have the answered Nader's 1964 questions, or at least would have known the answers within the state of knowledge. If Ralph Nader wanted people who could answer his questions about what could go wrong in reactors and under what conditions, he could have talked tp George Parker, or he could have talked to my father. Needless to say, Nader did not seek out nuclear safety experts to answers to his questions. Certainly Alvin Weinberg would and could have answered Nader's questions about nuclear safety, and made himself available to Ralph and his sister Claire. It is quite possible that Nader talked to someone in Oak Ridge who did not answer his question, or alternatively gave Nader an answer that Nader did not understand. Had Nader sought out answers about nuclear safety in 1964, he would have found them, but Nader wanted answers that made nuclear scientist look bad, not in truth.

Nader was not interested in truth, he was looking for witnesses for his drama which would feature Saint Ralph fighnting an evil dragon "the nuclear Industry." People, like Alvin Weinberg, George Parker, and my father were much to dangerous to rely on as witnesses. George Parker might start talking about how improbable it would be for most radioisotopes to escape from Light Water Reactors. My father might have started talking about how coal fired power plants and natural gas furnaces were delivering more radioisotopes to the environment than reactors were. Such people might blow Nader's cover, night reveal that Nader was only concerned about radiation coming from reactors. If natural gas delivered radioactive gases to American homes, the Saint Ralph and the nuclear dragon drama might fall apart. People might start asking why does Saint Ralph ignore the Natural Gas Dragon, that is brining radioactive gas to the lungs of so many Americans. If people knew that Alvin Weinberg had been fired over nuclear safety, he might steal attention from Saint Ralph. Weinberg was so dangerous to Nader's because he actually understood reactors, and safety, and his integrity was unquestionable unlike Saint Ralph's. Thus Nader's account of the history of nuclear safety, is self serving and dishonest.

Thus in the case of my British Harry's Place critic, the history of nuclear safety was something to be ignored. Nuclear power is a manifestation of something called "the nuclear industry", an evil despicable entity that transends time and space. "The Nuclear Industry" is always and everywhere the same, thus it cannot evolve, it cannot change, and has no history. Thus it is impossible to speak of something called the history of nuclear safety.

For Ralph Nader the history of nuclear safety exists to promote his own reputation. Nader has maintained for over a generation that reactors are always and everywhere unsafe. Thus Nader also believes in a mythic "nuclear industry" which also exists outside of time and space. There is for Nader a history of nuclear safety, which is his account of his own struggle to slay the nuclear dragon.

A Primer on Nuclear Safety: 1.4.1 Complexity and Three Mile Island

2008-07-02T08:30:00.008-05:00

1.4.1 Complexity and Three Mile Island
The Three Mile Island accident was the primary example of what concerned advocates of the probabilistic approach to nuclear safety. A series of improbable events, lead to a partial meltdown of core of the Three Mile Island Unite 2 reactor. The background of these events certainly reflected attitudes in both the NRC and among reactor operators that failed to take nuclear safety concerns with sufficient seriousness. This is evident in The Report of the Presidential Commission on the Accident at Three Mile Island which paints a damning picture of the safety problems at Three Mile Island and the relative indifference of the NRC, the reactor's manufacturer Babcox & Wilcox (B&W) and its operator. The report looks at the problems that the operators of TMI Unit 2 faced on March 28, 1979 and concluded that the operators have been overwealmed by problems which could and should have been foreseen by the reactor's manufacturer, the control room architect, the NRC, and the reactor's operator.

The Commission Report noted:
5. TMI management and engineering personnel also had
difficulty in analyzing events. Even after supervisory personnel
took charge, significant delays occurred before core damage was
fully recognized, and stable cooling of the core was achieved.
(Translation: The TMI staff did not have the slightest idea what was happening.)

6. Some of the key TMI-2 operating and emergency procedures
in use on March 28 were inadequate, including the procedures for a
LOCA [Loss of Coolant Accident] and for pressurizer operation. Deficiencies in these
procedures could cause operator confusion or incorrect action.
(The were rooted in the plans for dealing with the accident. The staff was confussed by the bad plans they were expected to follow.)

7. Several earlier warnings that operators needed clear instructions for dealing with events like those during the TMI accident had been disregarded by Babcock & Wilcox (B&W) and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).
(OK lets take the TMI Staff of the Hook, because the NRC and B&W had been warned about the problems, and ignored the warnings.)
a. In September 1977, an incident occured at the Davis-Besse plant, also equipped with a B&W reactor. During that incident, a PORV stuck open and pressurizer level increased, while
pressure fell. Although there were no serious consequences of that incident, operators had improperly interfered with the HPI, apparently relying on rising pressurizer level. The Davis-Besse plant had been operating at only 9 percent power and the PORV block valve was closed approximately 20 minutes after the PORV stuck open. That incident was investigated by both B&W and the NRC, but no information calling attention to the correct operator actions was provided to utilities prior to the TMI accident. A B&W engineer had stated in an internal B&W memorandum written more than a year before the TMI accident that if the Davis-Besse event had occurred in a reactor operating at full power, "it is quite possible, perhaps
probable, that core uncovery and possible fuel damage would have occurred."
(There was a dress rehearsal for the Three Mile Island incident at the Davis-Besse nuclear facility a year and a half before the TMI accident and the NRC & B&W knew all about it, but did not warn reactor operators about the problems uncovered.)
b. An NRC official in January 1978 pointed out the likelihood for erroneous operator action in a TMI-type incident. The NRC did not notify utilities prior to the accident.
(The NRC staff knew that accident management procedures were dangerously flawed but the NRC did not take actions to bring about changes.)
c. A Tennesse Valley Authority (TVA) engineer analyzed the problem of rising pressurizer level and falling pressure more than a year before the accident. His analysis was provided to B&W,
NRC, and the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards. Again no notification was given to utilities prior to the accident.
(Yet another warning had been received by the NRC and B&W with no action taken.)
8. The control room was not adequately designed with the management of an accident in mind. (See also finding G.8.e.) For example:
a. Burns and Roe, the TMI-2 architect-engineer, had never systematically evaluated control room design in the context a serious accident to see how well it would serve in emergency.
(The design of the TMI control room made accident management more difficult. The architects did not consider accident management in control room design.)
b. The information was presented in a manner which could confuse operators:
(i) Over 100 alarms went off in the early stages of the accident with no way of suppressing
the unimportant ones and identifying the important ones. The danger of having too many alarms was recognized by Burns and Roe during the design stage, but the problem was never resolved.
(No wonder the operators were confused during the early stages of the accident with all of those alarms going off. The Architects knew this was going to be a problem, but did not fix it.)

(ii) The arrangement of controls and indicators was not well thought out. Some key indicators relevant to the accident were on the back of the control panel.
(What a mess. No one could expect frightened, poorly trained operators who lacked adequate procedural guidance and who were confronted with this poorly designed and confusing control panel to manage this accident.)

(iii) Several instruments went off-scale during the course of the accident, depriving the
operators of highly significant diagnostic information. These instruments were not designed
to follow the course of an accident.
(The instrumentation of the reactor was not designed with the possibility of accidents in mind. There failure to provide useful information during the accident was but another evidence that the NRC and B&W were not seriously considering accident management in reactor design.)
(iv) The computer printer registering alarms was running more than 2-k hours behind the events and at one point jammed, thereby losing valuable
information.
(The information system was not designed to provide information during an accident and broke down.)
c. After an April 1978 incident, a TMI-2 control room operator complained to his superiors about problems with the control room. No corrective action was taken by the utility.
(The TMI operators had been warned about the problems with the control room and did not do anything to rectify the problem.)

The Presidential Commission report is serious reading for anyone who is interested in the history of reactor safety. The emergence of the large light water civilian power reactor posed significant challenges for nuclear safety. Debate over nuclear safety issues had rocked the nuclear industry during the late 1960's and early 1970's. AEC reactor research czar Milton Shaw, with the undoubted backing of Admiral Hyman Rickover, and powerful Congressman Chet Hollifeld had insisted that light water reactors represented a mature technology, Advocates of nuclear safety concerns including Alvin Weinberg were concerned that the complexity of power reactors was creating new and significant safety problems. This concern was to be justified by the Three Mile Island incident. Although Dixie Lee Ray had out manipulated Milton Shaw at the AEC 6 years previously, Shaw's attitude toward nuclear safety, was behind the problems which the Presidential Commission had documented.

A Primer on Nuclear Safety: 1.4 Complexity

2008-06-30T07:31:00.007-05:00

1.4 Complexity

If reactors are able to operate in unsafe conditions, there is an open invitation for an accident to happen. Light water reactors are complex systems. The one billion electric watts reactors so beloved by the civilian nuclear industry from the 1970’s onward, are large and very complex systems. Things can go wrong with them, go badly wrong due to seemingly minor design features involving secondary systems.

Reactors ought to be built so that safety features prevent the operation of the reactor if safety systems are not functioning, and furthermore operators should not have the power to prevent system shut down for safety reasons. People make mistakes. If you give people the power to make mistakes, you ought to assume they will. To take away from people the power to operate a reactor under conditions in which it is unsafe to do so, is to “fool proof” the reactor.

Unfortunately it is quite possible to engineer reactors with deeply flawed safety systems. Sometimes the flaws can be simple, but some very dangerous flaws are complex. Imagine the existence of multiple minor design flaws in different systems, none of which are sufficient by themselves to create a major problem. But in combination they can trigger a serious accident.

For example safety requires back up systems. Let us consider some design features of the Pressurized Water Reactor. Coolant water flows through the reactor, and picks up heat produced by nuclear fission. The coolant then flows away from the reactor, carrying the heat with it. Water in a reactor is like water in a pot, enough heat will make it boil, We saw the when water entered the Oklo natural reactors, the moderating effect of the water triggered a chain reaction, and the heat from the chain reaction made the water boil. In pressurized water reactor the water is kept under pressure. This allows the water to get hotter than its normal boiling point. The higher temperature will allow the reactor to produce power more efficiently, but the gain of efficiency comes at a cost. Both the complexity and the safety problems of reactor systems are magnified by pressurizing hot water inside the reactor.

In a Pressurized Water Reactor, coolant water flows though the reactor, and then out of the reactor into a heat exchange for the steam generator. The heat exchange does two things. It removes heat from the highly pressurized water of the reactor’s primary coolant system. Secondly the heat exchange causes the secondary coolant water to boil and turn into steam. The hot steam flows into a steam turbine where the pressure from the steam turns the turbine.

In order to keep the reactor safe, it must be continuously cooled both during and after a chain reaction. I will presently explain why the after is important. To keep the reactor cooled water must be kept flowing through the primary and secondary coolant systems. If something goes wrong with either the primary or the secondary coolant system, then a third coolant system, the emergency coolant system needs to begin operations immediately.

What can go wrong with the coolant systems? All sorts of things can go wrong. Valves in the systems can get stuck. Pumps can break. Water under high temperature and pressure can leak. The heat exchange between the primary and secondary coolant systems can leak. One system can be taken off line for servicing. A second system is brought on line to provide water, but for some reason it fails. Then a third system, which is, kept in reserve for back up is brought on line, and the unexpected happens, it fails. Suddenly a system, which is vital for the reactors safety and which had triple redundancy has failed.

A widespread power outage can trip a reactor’s safety shutdown system. In order that the reactor cooling system maintain operations pumps have to be kept in operation. Even when the reactor is not operating, heat from the radioactive decay of fission products has to be removed. There are diesel backup generators, but they won’t start. The warranties on the starter batteries were up, but the request for a purchase order got tied up when an administrator took his family on vacation, and no one realized that the request was parked on his unattended desk.

The increasing decay heat from the reactor trips an automatic start up of the emergency coolant system, but the system cannot operate. The emergency coolant system requires electricity from one of the four emergency diesel generators, whose starter batteries have all failed. The electricity is needed to pump emergency coolant water into the reactor’s core. Suddenly a minor administrative glitch, the failure to obtain a signature on a purchase order request, is turning a minor problem into an major accident.

Now if I were writing the plot to an old Hollywood movie, the reactor overheats until it explodes in a huge fireball, followed by a mushroom shaped cloud. Radiation falls on a tiny creature, which immediately undergoes a mutation and begins to grow and learn how to speak Japanese. The creature grins as it contemplates its quest to find Jane Fonda in order to purchase an exercise tape.

Let us take a brief detour into reality. Nuclear safety is about understanding things that can go wrong in complex systems, and preventing em from happening, in so far as that is possible. In so far as it is not possible, nuclear safety is about minimizing damages. Our detour will eventually take us to Three Mile Island, where our lessons on nucleare safety will be brought into a sharper focus.

Killing the Holy Cows of Renewable Energy

2008-06-27T08:09:00.011-05:00

"the blame [for bad movies and poorly performing sports teams] can be laid at the feet of the people of South Asia, whose tolerance of mediocrity knows no bounds." - Chan Akya

"Leadership is not just charisma or showmanship. It means consistency, being forthright, having no tolerance for mediocrity, and not compromising integrity." - Rahul Bajaj

Chan Akya an Indian writer pointed out the consequences of a lack of critical standards. If people are tolerant of mediocrity, mediocrity is what they will get. When I began to read discussions of renewable energy sources as couple of years ago, I noticed that these discussions invariably left important questions unanswered. Pro-renewable environmentalists like David Roberts basically wrote public relations copy for the renewables industries. Needless to say they left many questions unanswered. I started to look for answers, and the answers I found, the things that Robers, Romm and others were trying to sweep under the rug, were disturbing.

The basic question with renewables is how much is is it going to cost. Other questions include where is the power going to come from if the wind does not blow and the sun goes down. Renewables advocates seldom provide satisfactory answers to these questions. Indeed they seemed to sweep these very real questions under the rug. Or offer answer that said in effect, "Don't worry, every thing will turn out oK." Eventually I began to find answers that were less comforting. For example, I discovered the question of summer wind. At first I found a reference to the problem in California, then New England. Senator Lemar Alexander was upset because wind generators only provide electricity 7% of the time during August in Tennessee. Texas has a summer wind problem too, including windy Amarillo, and so do the Northern Great Planes and Ontario. Nowhere in North America seemed safe from the summer wind scourge.

So there was a wind reliability problem even when during the summer. There are other issues. The cost of windmills has been going up. Yet none of the windbags seemed to be talking about that, There is a disconect, because the cost of reactors have been going up and all of the windbags seem to be talking about that.

We have similar issues with solar. While solar generators have the potential of generating electricity for up to 8 hours a day, But depending on where you live, and that includes 75% of the United States, it could be 5 to 6 hours a day. So what do you do for electricity for the other 18 to 19 hours a day. Solar advocates will talk about various storage schemes, none of which have been demonstrated to be practical and cost effective on a massive scale. When I examined the costs of storage schemes such as giant batteries, and pump storage facilities, they turn out to be as least as expensive as nuclear plants. Why build storage facilities that do not produce electricity when for the same amount of money you can build a nuclear plant that does produce electricity?

I have been posting recently on the cost of solar power. I have not based those cost estimates on information found in glossy handouts written by PR people, but on information from people who are actually building or paying for solar generating facilities. i am not trying to make the solar industry look bad. I am not cherry picking data. The information I have found, does not look as good as the information from the glossy handouts.

Tuesday I wrote about the costs of BrightSource solar facilities:
"A further consideration would be that BrightSources own estimated cost estimates falls within the cost range of current cost estimates for nuclear power plants costs. For the basically the same price as a 1 GW BrightSource generating facility PG&E could buy a 1 GW reactor that would generate power day and night, rain or shine with 3 times the daily electrical output of the BrightSource facility."

No one has disputed my calculations or conclusions. Yet in a comment posted on "Energy from Thorium", sam j demanded to know, "Why denigrate renewables?" Sam followed, of course, with the tired anti-nuclear line that we are running out of uranium and there is of course no other possible reactor fuel - I wonder what he thinks the "Energy from Thorium" title is about. Sam appears to believe that the problems of Renewables should be swept under the rug.

Jesse Ausubel has raised questions about the land use requirements of renewables. (Also see here, here, here, here Ausubel is a conservationist in the traditional sense, but not a green, and not a Amory Lovins clone. (also see here) Jesse Ausubel is the Director of Rockefeller University's human environment program. He looked at how much energy a given unit of land produced through different technologies. His conclusion was that hydroelectric power made the least efficient use of land.

Ausubel argued if the entire provence of Ontario Canada was surrounded by a 60 foot high dam, and the water behind the dam were used to produce electricity, the amount of electricity generated would only equal 80% of the electricity generated by Canada's nuclear 25 power plants.

If American energy needs were meet by wind power, Ausubel argued that an area the size of Texas, would need to be covered with windmills.

To power New York City by electricity from solar cells, an area the size of the entire state of Connecticut would have to be covered by the solar array.

Ausubel has argued that:

* renewables are not green
* nuclear is green

Needless to say, Ausubel's argument has driven the supposedly pro-environmental, anti-nuclear greens crazy, and no one went crazier than Joe Romm.

Romm seems willing to sacrifice every tree in the forrest, if it means that we don't rely on nuclear power. In his attack on Ausubel, Romm engaging in spin doctoring, worthy of an Exxon employed climate change skeptic. He accuses Ausubel on not mentioning climate change in a speech he gave in which he sumerized his findings. He accuses Ausubel of thinking that "if decarbonization is all but inevitable, then global warming will mostly take care of itself. He doesn't come out and say this, but his talk never discusses the threat of climate change, which is much more likely to rape nature than renewables."

Say what?

If we decarbonize society, that is we stop using carbon based fuels. then we stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Once this happens the processes that lead to anthropogenic global warming are interrupted, and eventually the climate change will no longer be driven by increasing levels of greenhous gases. So it would seem that there is no problem with this assumption. It is tasit in Ausubel's thinking. Ausubel is addressing the issue of how much land would be required to impliment various post-carbon energy schemes. We understand the reasons for wanting to do this. Romm is not pushing a weak case against Ausubel. He has no case at all, and simply substitutes words for statements containing substance.

Romm quibbles about land requirements for various renewable options. He argues, for example, that Windmills only occupie 5% of the land on which they are placed. The other 95%, the rest of the land could have alternative uses, Rumm argues. The issue is not just the question of competing land use, each installed wind generator must be connected by a service road and a power line. Thus an area larger than Texas must be densely packed with wind generating towers, service roads and electrical lines. This would represent an enormous investment for what is at best intermittant electrical service. But for windmills, roads and electrical lines, vegitation must be cut back, and maintance must be given, The impact on the environment will be considerable, and as yet largely unacknowledged by Greens like Romm.

Understanding the Issues and the Solutions

2008-06-26T07:53:00.001-05:00

We are in a period of great confusion about energy issues and their solution. The need to switch energy sources because of global warming is somewhat abstract. The case is simple, If we don't switch to non carbon energy sources there will presently be hell to pay. There is nothing new about this. Edward Teller told the American Chemical Society about the dangers of Anthropogenic Global Warming in 1957. Scientist have had the information for a long time. But politicians and the public don't operated on 50 year time frames. Reader's Digest might have told us all about it all two generations ago, but who believed that such information is actually important for us? Energy companies like the deplorable EXXON have payed millions for hacks to spread doubt and confusion about the science of global warming, and the cost of solutions.

In addition we have the issues of Fossil Fuel supply. M. King Hubbert told us 50 years ago that we were going to run out of oil. No one listened, no one believed. So now the price of Gasoline creeps up ten cents a month, and people are still confused about what is happening. People and politicians are still not ready to believe that we are going to run out of oil. Well we are, and natural gas too, soon enough.

So we are still very confused about our energy future, and energy consequences. The era of fossil fuels is ending, and it will profoundly effect our world. Eve peoplewho abstractly understand that still don't fully understand all the implications.

It is widely believed that solutions for our energy problems are going to come from renewable energy sources. Yet we have an amazing amount of confusion about renewable energy. Renerwable energy is costly, far more costly than its advocates are willing to admit. Renewable energy has significant limitations. In theory there are ways to overcome the limitations of renewable energy, but it practice, those fixes are going to be very expensive, so expensive that they probably will not be practical.

Mone of this information is getting out to the public or the politicians. This confusion has real consequences for the future. Germany has 38 per cent of the global capacity in wind energy. It has set an ambitious target of obtaining 25 per cent of its electricity from wind by 2025. In reality Germany has run out of wind resources. Each new German wind installation produces a smaller percentage of its rater power than the last. So 38% of the world's wind generating capacity produces 5% of Germany's electricity and it is never going to get much better. Similar problems are found in Italy, where all of the productive wind sites have been used, and the remaining sites are of little value, but government policy requires new wind installations.

I have also Included a post on a new study on UK government policy on Wind Energy from the Centre for Policy Studies, a British "Think Tank" linked to the Conservative Party. "Wind Chills" argues, I think successfully, that the present Labor Party's policy on wind is bad policy, and further it is an unpopular policy with the British public.

I have noted that detailed information on the cost and productivity of solar generating facilities id difficult to obtain. This lead me to rummage through press releases for snippets of information which gave hints and clues about the information I sought. From the limited information I was able to obtain the reason for the difficulty obtaining information. Solar installation cost are higher than solar advocates have claimed, and performance figure are clearly unimpressive. (Consult my posts on solar power over the last couple of weeks if you doubt this contention.)

Cyril r recently responded to oneof my posts on the cost of Solar power with this comment:
"Ah, the capacity factor fallacy. Levelised cost is the most objective measure of societal cost. Wind is lower than nuclear because of longer build times for nuclear in general, leading to higher costs, in combination with higher interest rates for nuclear projects due to the higher investment risk profile of nuclear to wind. Offshore is a bit of an exception, but here in the US, there's plenty of high quality land resources that make the argument moot. Longer plant lifetime is not a big advantage for nuclear in the world of financing, because the non-linear nature of the time value of money in our current financing methods imply substantial diminishing returns with longer lasting investments. At best it's 15% benefit, not enough to negate the higher cost of nuclear due to longer build times and the higher investment profile."

I responded by noting there that there were other ways to count social cost:
"cyril r, here in Texas we would consider it a social cost if people died because the cheap windmills produce only 2% percent of their name plate capacity on hot summer afternoons. Here in Texas old people fallaciously depend on our air conditioners to survive the summers. Of course it is fallacious to want electricity on demand, and fallacious to think that reliability and capacity matters, Thank you for the lesson in logic!"

We are not talking about abstract issues here. In Europe a few years ago, during an unusual, Texas like heat wave, 50,000 old people died, because governmental energy policies did not include provisions to supply them with electricity for air conditioning.

Wind Chill: wind energy will not fill the UK’s energy gap

2008-06-26T06:40:00.002-05:00

Introduction: The Center for Public Policy Studies is associated with the British Conservative Party, although its positions are not coordinated with the official party views. The Essay, "Wind Chills," by Tony Lodge, ought to be read as a political document, but it should not be dismissed simply because of its ideology. Wind Chills offers a penetrating analysis of the problems associated with wind. I have posted both the press release on Wind Chills and selected passages from the document

Wind Chill: wind energy will not fill the UK’s energy gap
Date: 25 Jun 2008
Source: Centre for Policy Studies

The Government’s renewable energy consultation document, to be published on Thursday 26 June, is expected to call for a massive development of wind power. This is wrong, argues Tony Lodge in Wind Chill: why wind energy will not fill the UK’s energy gap, published today Wednesday 25 June by the Centre for Policy Studies.

Britain faces an energy gap of up 32 GW by 2015 as older coal and nuclear power stations are paid off. At the same time, Britain has made a binding commitment to deliver 15% of all its energy consumption from renewable energy sources by 2020. But a rush to wind energy is not the answer to these problems.

The problems with wind are that:

It is unreliable. Wind energy must be backed up by other baseload sources.

It is expensive. The Royal Academy of Engineering has calculated that wind energy is two and a half times more expensive than other forms of (non-oil and gas) electricity generation in the UK. A Government-sponsored report has calculated that the cost of meeting the 2020 renewable energy target will be between £1,900 and £3,000 a household. The leaked strategy paper estimates the cost at £100 billion (or over £4,000 a household). Leading industry figures have estimated that it might be as much as £4,700 a household.

It is overambitious. The Government proposals imply an increase in wind production of over 20 times (from 4,225 GWh in 2006 GWh to 87,000 GWh in 2020).

It is impractical. The UK does not have the capability to build the 3,000 new offshore wind farms that are proposed; nor can the national grid handle the enormous new strains that will be imposed on it.

This matters. The increase in consumers’ electricity prices, required to pay for and maintain expensive wind energy will contribute to the difficulties faced by the 6 million households facing fuel poverty.

It is also politically foolish. New polling conducted for this report shows that this policy is also deeply unpopular. Only 3% of people say that they are very willing to pay higher electricity bills if the extra money funds renewable power sources such as wind, with another 12% saying that they are willing. The figures for "very unwilling" and "fairly unwilling" are 37% and 24% respectively.

Lodge also shows that the experience of Denmark – often hailed for its pioneering development of wind farms – is that wind energy is expensive, inefficient and not even particularly "green". There are also signs that other countries are losing some of their enthusiasm for wind power.

Lodge concludes that the UK must indeed now develop its nuclear, clean coal (including coal gasification) and other renewable supplies of energy (particularly tidal). But wind energy, in contrast, should only play a negligible role in plugging Britain’s looming energy gap.

From The summery ofWind Chills:

Britain faces an energy gap of up 32 GW by 2015 as older coal and nuclear power stations are paid off. At the same time, Britain has made a binding commitment to deliver 15% of all its energy consumption from renewable energy sources by 2020.

Government policy is based on using wind power both to help close the energy gap and to meet its renewable energy targets

If the Government is to meet its renewables target, then the amount of electricity to be generated by wind farms will have to increase by more than 20 times.

Expensive

This will be very expensive. Electricity generated by wind turbines already enjoys huge subsidies and tax breaks through the Renewables Obligation scheme.

The Government has now accepted that the total costs of meeting the 2020 target will be £100 billion. This is the equivalent of £4,000 for every household in the country.

WIND CHILL

The Royal Academy of Engineering has calculated that wind energy is two and a half times more expensive than other forms of electricity generation in the UK.

Unreliable

Wind generation does not provide a reliable supply of power. It must be backed up by other baseload sources.

Greater reliance on wind power could lead to electricity supply disruptions if the wind does not blow, blows too hard or does not blow where wind farms are located.

The experience of Denmark – often hailed for its pioneering development of wind farms – is that wind energy is expensive, inefficient and not even particularly “green”. There are signs that other countries are losing some of their enthusiasm for wind power.

Unpopular

There is no evidence that people are prepared to pay for wind power. Only 15% of people say that they are fairly or very willing to pay higher electricity bills if the extra money funds renewable power sources such as wind. The figures for “very unwilling” and “fairly unwilling” are 37% and 24% respectively.

This over-reliance on expensive wind energy, coupled with rising gas prices, will drive six million households into fuel poverty.

Disrupting

Present wind farm planning applications do not take into consideration the economic viability of the project or whether the topography and meteorological conditions are suitable.

The planning system already favours wind farm developers. But if the Government is to meet its renewable target by 2020, then current planning regulations will have to be weighted even further in favour of wind farm suppliers.

The Ministry of Defence has recently lodged last minute objections to at least four onshore wind farms claiming the turbines will interfere with their national air defence radar.

The alternative

The energy gap must be filled with equivalent baseload capacity as quickly as possible.

The UK should therefore now develop its nuclear, clean coal (including coal gasification) and other renewable supplies of energy (particularly tidal).

Wind energy, in contrast, should only play a negligible role in plugging Britain’s looming energy gap.

LESSONS FROM DENMARK
DENMARK IS Europe’s most-wind intensive state. With a population of 5.4 million, it has over 6,000 turbines that in 2002 produced electricity equal to 19% of what the country used. In theory, at peak output, the Danish wind farms could account for nearly 64% of Danish peak power
demand.

However, not a single conventional power plant has been closed in the period that Danish wind farms have been developed. Because of the intermittency and variability of the wind, conventional power plants have had to be kept running at full capacity to meet the actual demand for electricity and to provide back-up.7 Furthermore, the Danes have found that it is not practical for large baseload plants to be turned on and off as the wind dies and rises: indeed, the quick ramping up and down of those plants, such as coal, would actually increase their output of pollution and carbon dioxide (the primary greenhouse gas). Baseload stations have to keep running so that they can ‘shadow’ wind turbines due to their intermittency. So when the wind is blowing perfectly for the
turbines, the power they generate is usually a surplus and sold to other countries at an extremely discounted price; or the turbines are simply shut off. According to the
Copenhagen newspaper Politiken, wind met only 1.7% of Denmark’s total demand in 1999.8 And in 2003, for example, 84% of western Denmark’s wind-generated electricity was exported (at a revenue loss). Denmark’s grid accepted only 3.3% of electricity generated by its vast wind farms.9 This has undermined the “green” credentials of Danish wind farms. For example, the Danish grid used 50% more coal-generated electricity in 2006 than in 2005 to cover wind’s failings. The increase in the demand for coal, needed to plug the gap left by underperforming wind farms, meant that Danish carbon emissions rose by 36% in 2006.10

There are other problems. Sometimes the Danish wind turbines produce maximum output when there is little demand. On other occasions they deliver no energy when energy demand is high. Yet wind turbines themselves require electricity to operate.11 On days of little wind, the that they can ‘shadow’ wind turbines due to their intermittency. So when the wind is blowing perfectly for the
turbines, the power they generate is usually a surplus and sold to other countries at an extremely discounted price; or the turbines are simply shut off. According to the Copenhagen newspaper Politiken, wind met only 1.7% of Denmark’s total demand in 1999.8 And in 2003, for example, 84% of western Denmark’s wind-generated electricity was exported (at a revenue loss). Denmark’s grid
accepted only 3.3% of electricity generated by its vast wind farms.9 This has undermined the “green” credentials of Danish wind farms. For example, the Danish grid used 50% more coal-generated electricity in 2006 than in 2005 to cover wind’s failings. The increase in the demand for coal, needed to plug the gap left by underperforming wind farms, meant that Danish carbon emissions rose by 36% in 2006.10

There are other problems. Sometimes the Danish wind turbines produce maximum output when there is little demand. On other occasions they deliver no energy when energy demand is high. Yet wind turbines themselves require electricity to operate.11 On days of little wind, the wind power system reorientation requirements can exceed wind output: the wind turbines therefore consume more power from the grid than they produce. In other words, the turbines can be a net energy consumer.12

And wind is not cheap. Danish electricity costs for the consumer are the highest in Europe. Danish electricity consumers paid €322.03 million in subsidies for wind energy in the first half of 2007. The money was levied through the Danish Public Service Obligation (PSO) which guarantees wind generators a minimum price for their output regardless of the wholesale price of electricity.
Denmark’s national grid, Energinet.dk, had expected PSO fees to be half what they ended up being in the first six months of 2007.13

So the experience of Denmark – often hailed for its pioneering development of wind farms – is that wind energy is expensive, inefficient and not even particularly “green”.

BrightSource dimming

2008-06-24T06:42:00.006-05:00

"Sunflower" in a comment yesterday on Grustmill provided the following prices quotes for CSP:
Ausra (line focus) claims $100/m2, BrightSource (power tower heliostats) $150/m2, Matrix Solar Dish (me) $100/m2.

Let's do a little analysis. A square kilometer at $100 per square meter would cost $100X1000X1000 = 100,000,000 per square kilometer or $247,000,000 per square mile. This represents an improvement over the $260,000,000 for 400 acres figure we got for Nevada Solar 1, or the $1 billion fir 1900 acres figure we got for Solana, but again the word inflation did not appear in the discussion.

The 150/m2 estimate gives us $370500000 per square mile, still a little better than Nevada Solar 1 in price.

Ausra and PG%E have announced a 1 square mile line focus generating facility with a name plate power rating of 177 MWs. The facility is to be located at San Luis Obispo. No price tag has been placed on it yet, so it is impossible to tell if the $100/m2 figure will hold.

BrightSource has a contract with PG%E that calls for the construction of three solar facilities producing a total of 500 MWs. The cost appears to be estimated in the two to three billion dollar range. The size of the facility does not appear in press releases. However, press releases contained a a statement by John Woolard, CEO of BrightSource that the United States production tax credits are "absolutely critical" for his development. "Otherwise these plants will get built all over the world and not in the U.S." It would appear then that the BrightSources facility is not so much of a bargain, since it is too expensive to build without a massive federal subsidy.

According to the Tree Hugger, the first BrightSource facility has a name plate rating of 100 MWs, and will produce 246,000 MWs of electricity a year. That means that the BrightSolar facility will produce peak power with at an .84 capacity factor for 8 or so hours a day. The cost for the first BrightSource Unit would run between four and six hundred million, thus would fall in the range the Nevada Solar 1 range.

While we have not direct report of the size of BrightSource facilities, their mirror test facility in Israel occupies 12,000 Square Meters. The facility produces 1.5 MWs of electricity. This would scale up to about 800,000 Square Meters or 0.8 square kilometers. Subflower gave us the estimate of $150 Per M(2) fir BrighSource,andfor a 100 MW facility that should cost about $120,000,000 which is way lower than my $400,000,000 to $600,000,000 guestimate. And remember that the guestimate was based on BrrightSource's own statement.

A further consideration would be that BrightSources own estimated cost estimates falls within the cost range of current cost estimates for nuclear power plants costs. For the basically the same price as a 1 GW BrightSource generating facility PG&E could buy a 1 GW reactor that would generate power day and night, rain or shine with 3 times the daily electrical output of the BrightSource facility.

A Primer on Nuclear Safety: 1.3.3 Heat, Water, Steam, Mistakes

2008-06-24T02:38:00.011-05:00

1.3.3 Heat, Water, Steam, Mistakes

Homer Simpson is wedded in the public mind to the issue of nuclear safety. We of course know that Homer is a reactor operator, and we know that Homer is going to make mistakes. Much of the Simpson's humor comes from a wedding of the horrifying and the funny, and the jokes that link Homer's professional lapses, with nuclear safety, are perfect examples of that link. We know that Homer is going to make mistakes, and that his job means that his mistakes can cause things to go horribly wrong. Some where in the back of their mind, most Simpson viewers, are probably aware that in the real world Homer would not get a job as a nuclear plant operator. Without that awareness watching Homer operate the reactor would simply be horrifying, not funny. Never-the-less in a back corner of their mind people wonder if there might be truth in the Homer Simpson image. The Canadian cartoon showing Homer advising Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on nuclear safety plays off the Homer Simpson nuclear worker joke. In a way it this cartoon is the perfect expression of manipulative nuclear safety disinformation campaigns of anti-nuclear groups like Greenpeace. Nuclear safety occupied the minds of some of the 20th centuries finest scientist, and they fought for it with great integrity. Alvin Weinberg who was fired for his stand over nuclear safety,was surely the anthesis of Homer Simpson.

Homer Simpson was perhaps a little more representative of the Soviet nuclear workers. We have seen from the Soviet naval experience that reactor accidents can happen because of human error. How is it possible to manufacture a reactor which is built with such fundamental flaws, that cooling water fails to reach part of the core during the shake down cruise? The answer is quite simple. Give the reactor manufacturer an order that the reactor must be completed by a given date no matter what. Contingencies enter into the manufacturing process. A flue epidemic strikes the factors staff, and a third of the workers are home sick for two weeks. The remaining staff does the best that it can, but they have a deadline to keep, and the reactor goes out the door incomplete. A parts supplier fails to supply a vital part, that must be installed by a certain date if the reactor is to be completed on time. The part does not arrive, and the order is given to complete the reactor without it. A factory worker and his supervisor stay out late after work drinking. They both come to work the next morning very hung over. The worker fails to complete his assigned task for the day because of his hang over. The supervisor is too hung over to check on his subordinates work, and marks the tasks as complete.

There are ways for factory management to prevent such defective things from being manufactured. Just ask the Japanese. But not even the Japanese finish every project on time. The Japanese know that management staff and the workers must be well trained, and management and the factory staff must be motivated to do their job properly. The Japanese believe that there must also be a top to bottom commitment to quality control. For the Soviets, the words "quality control" were the punch line of a joke about the follies of the Capitalist system.

Of course, in order to build safe reactors, reactors must be designed safe. There is something basically wrong with the design of a reactor which goes critical if the pressure vessel lid is opened incorrectly. Even if there is a fundamental defect in the reactor design, once that defect is demonstrated through a criticality incident, and partial core melt down, it is inexcusable that the design flaw not be corrected. Yet we see the same design flaw leading to Soviet naval reactor accidents over and over. In contrast the United States Navy has never had in its entire history of naval reactor operations, a single incident of accidental criticality, followed by a partial core melt down.

The designers of the U.S. Naval reactor system, people like Hyman Rickover and Milton Shaw, might have been a little crazy, but they were obsessed with safety, and they did designed a safety system that worked in the Navy context. Unfortunately the believed that they had solved the nuclear safety problem, and that belief was mistaken. United States reactor scientists, understood the Navy's mistake, and there emerged during the 1960's a conflict between the Navy's view, and the views of AEC scientist.

During the 1960’s nuclear safety researchers had determined that major nuclear asccidents could occure due to unlikely sets of occurrences, none of which by itself could trigger a major accident, but which in an extremely unlikely combination of events could lead to disaster. Unlikely is not impossible, and it is even possible to calculate the odds of those unlikely events happening and a major reactor accident taking place. This lead to a new concept of nuclear safety, one which involved probabilistic risk assessment. Think of this in terms of a poker bet on drawing an inside straight.

The Navy, in effect said, we will never bet on drawing an inside straight. The scientist said, sooner or later an inside straight will happen. The Navy in effect wanted to place there safety bet on the proposition that their safety system was infallible. The scientist thought the Navy was mistaken. The result of this disagreement was something like a war between the Navy, and the AEC scientific community. The Navy won all the battles, but lost the war over nuclear safety twice. The first time was when Dixie Lee Ray removed Milton Shaw from responsibility for nuclear safety. The second naval defeat over the safety issue took place at Three Mile Island.

The Three Mile Island accident was to prove the probabilistic theory of nuclear safety theory correct. The nuclear research community began to take a view of nuclear safety with focused on probabilities rather than certainties, and began to feel that safety approaches that were based on simple A causes B models of potential accidents failed to capture the whole picture. The Navy thought in terms of the A causes B theory, a theory that had worked for them. The Navy, in addition, thought that the safety concerns of the civilian scientist was damaging the future of a civilian nuclear industry. There is in fact little doubt that the AEC nuclear safety controversy of the 1960's and early 1970', little understood by the public, and largely ignored by historians,was to have profoundly adverse consequences for the future public reputation of nuclear safety.

Paradoxically one of the effects of Milton Shaw's assault on the nuclear safety community, was the shutting down of research by nuclear safety researchers like George Parker. What was lost when Parker's research was terminated was the knowledge that that even serious reactor accidents might not lead to major human disasters.

Amory Lovins' business

2008-06-23T05:47:00.007-05:00

Amory Lovins is clearly a successful businessman. He is in fact a salesman, and like all true salesmen everything he does is about selling. Sales men focus on their image, an image that lends their sales activities credibility. There arguments are designed to be easily persuasive, rather than to withstand intelligent criticism. Hence an analysis of a salesman's arguments may find significant flaws, flaw of which the salesman himself may be aware of. A salesman may continue to use flawed arguments even though he is aware they are fallacious, because they produce sales. Such use of invalid argument is cynical and manipulative.

Successful salespeople are often charming and charismatic. People like the charming and charismatic, love them, trust them, believe in them, seek to please them, will do what they ask. For the charismatic sales person, the primary product the has to sell is his personality. The sale is made once he gets his foot in the door, because as soon as he does that he begins to sell his personality.

I do have a theory about Lovins' personality. My theory allows me to make predictions about him, but unless I have a source who knows him well, and has the ability to keep a critical distance about him, I will never be able to test my theory. I do not need psychological speculation to show that Lovins is wrong, and that he uses fallacious, cynical and manipulative arguments to justify his claims.

Lovins is in the business of selling his business. His business Rocky Mountain Institute. The Rocky Mountain Institute building is a show case for Lovins' energy efficiency theories, it is also his home. Do you see what I mean when I say that everything a sales man does is part of his business, including the home he lives in. Lovins whole lifestyle, an ostensive tribut to his sincerity, and his ideals, is in fact designed to sell his services, which are for sale through the Rocky Mountain Institute and through his own person.

If Lovins were a Rabbi his rabbinic specialty would be Kashrut. For Lovins soft energy is Kosher, while nuclear power is treif. Fossil fuel energy is sometimes kosher, and sometimes not. Lovins sells a kosher stamp to businesses, politicians and government officials who want to be officially "green."

Here is how the business works. The RMI bio of Lovins states:

Mr. Lovins has advised, often at top levels, such firms as Allstate, Anheuser-Busch, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, Carrier, Ciba- Geigy, Coca-Cola, Dow, Equitable, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, H.P. Bulmer, Interface, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk Hydro, Phillips Petroleum, Prudential, Royal Ahold, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Union Bank of Switzerland, Westinghouse, Xerox, major real-estate developers, and over 100 electric and gas utilities. Public-sector clients have included the OECD, U.N., the U.S. Congress and the Energy and Defense Departments, and many other U.S. and overseas agencies. In 2006 Wal-Mart was added to the list.
Mearly half of the RMI's revenue is placed under the category of consulting (fees). Another 24.6% comes under the category of individual and corporate contributions. While some of those contributions are undoubtedly given in appreciation of the RMI's good works, we cannot dismiss the possibility that some of it is given in appreciation of services rendered.

Another income category caught my eye. 6.9% of RMI's income comes from investments. It would be most interesting to take a peak at the RMI's investment portfolio. Those of you who understand the implications, should take note.

Benefits flow both ways. The clients, for example Wal-Mart, get a "green" stamp of approval from Lovins that comes in exchange for the consultant fee. No one actually worries about what Lovins advised them or if they actually followed Lovins advice. In addition to he consultant fee, RMI and Lovins gets the prestigue of listing his clients.

We have in the Lovins-RMI-client nexus, a perfect example of the social construction of psudo-science. Lovins is not a scientist. He does not publish papers on energy in peer reviewed scientific journals. Indeed Lovin's papers are published by the RMI where he is designated the chief scientist, even though he carries no earned degrees in science.

Does no one see Red flags here? Of course not, because Lovins is part o f a corrupt and cynical system, that is all about public relations, all about front, not about confronting problems that exist in reality.

In addition to his Kashrut business, Lovins hasother ways to make money for RMI. His RMI biography states:

A highly sought-after speaker, Mr. Lovins has addressed many leading U.S. and overseas business, policy, energy, automotive, environment, and development groups. RMI’s principal spokesman, he has been interviewed by most major broadcast and print media, including 60 Minutes, PBS’s Future Quest, CNN, Fortune, Business Week, and Wired.
And of course there is money:

Mr. Lovins plays a leading role in setting RMI’s research agenda. As the Institute’s Treasurer, he is closely involved in finances and funder relations. As a member of RMI’s Board of Directors, he helps set policy and long-term strategy.

Almost everything that Lovins does, is on expense accounts, paid for by the RMI, or RMI clients. Lovins keeps the planet warm by burning thousands of gallons of jet fuel, jetting off to consulting engagements, speaking engagements, and awards ceremonies.

Mr. Lovins is amply compensated. In addition to his official 6 figure pay from RMI, he gets his luxurious home for free. There is no doubt a very substantial retirement account, and perhaps stock options from the for profit subsidies. But that is not all of his compensation. RMI, a non-profit organization has a number of for profit subsidiaries. He is the Chairman of Hypercar, Inc., and the Director and Principal Technical Consultant, of E Source. Lovins no doubt receives further compensation for those services. Lovins is then the perfect example of the entrepreneur who does very well by conspicuously doing good.

Don't Pay Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

2008-06-21T10:53:00.018-05:00

It's nice we are beginning to count all the energy used in a home, including heat as well as electricity. Is there still a huge propane tank behind the snow fence at the foot of RMI's driveway? ("Pay no attention to the huge propane tank behind the fence".) - Nick Pine

Amory Lovins’ negawatt revolution in California was Enron’s wet dream. - James Heartfield

My "Sent" file ...contains rather a lot of comments on Lovins. If he didn't exist, oil money would have to invent someone just like him. - G.R.L. Cowan

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it." - Joseph Goebbels

In my other blog bartoncii, I documented the case of a medical scientist, who held a tenured Professorship at the medical school of a well known university. He was contacted by people who complained that a well known medical procedure they had received had triggered health problems. He devised a theory about the link he believed he existed between the procedure and the health problems. His theory was considered interesting and provocative, but unproven. Then he developed a test which he believed would prove his theory about the link between the health problem and the procedure. Eventually a well known research institution contacted him with a proposal for an exercise that would validate his test. They sent him blind samples, which he tested, and then sent the results back to the institution. Included in the samples were samples of women who had the same health problems and had not received the procedure as well as women who had received the procedure. When the institution looked at the test results, they found that the test was positive for both groups of women. Thus the test failed to link the procedure with the health problems.

The Professor was undismayed. Two years later the research institution began receiving calls from patients, physicians, and other interested parties, asking about the test, apparently assuming that the research institution had either validated the test or was offering it. The Research Institution wrote the professor twice, explaining to him that they had not validated the test, and requesting that he "refrain from any mention of [the name of the institution] patient data." In the mean time researchers from the institution had identified further problems in data that the Professor had reported to them. But far from being concerned by these findings, the professor rejected them. Indeed he had been testifying in court cases for several years, on the basis of his test findings, and he was not about to give up his forensic business.

The professor wrote a paper in support of his test. The paper was rejected by three peer reviewd professional journals, before it was published by a journal on whose editorial board the professor sat. Scientist who read the paper noted it contained numerous flaws and errors. The paper's worst problem was that its conclusions were based on outliers, only 4% of the sample. "He is basing his conclusions on the hypothesis itself," said John Butler, a University of Iowa medical researcher.

A British Medical agency similarly concluded that it was "not possible to draw any definitive conclusions from this work....".

Despite these peer judgements, the Professor filed for a patent and set up a business to market these tests. My then brother-in -law and father-in-law, respectively the Professors father and grandfather, as well as the Professor's wife were to be officers of the business. The test was advertised in a journal for civil litigators. As many as a million women were considered suitable targets for the test. The testing itself was to cost $350.

The FDA wrote a letter to the professor, warning him that it considered the test a medical device used for diagnosis. Further sale of the test would violate FDA rules, and could bring legal action against the professor and members of his family. The professor fought back with a new data set, an an application for FDA approval of his test. But an independent research project using date drawn from well over 80,000 people, provided no support for the professor's hypothesis. Without the right to use his test, and with his hypothesis discredited, the Professor's business collapsed. He was no longer a credible court witness, and he could not sell his test. Yet the Professor defiantly announced, "I kind of feel like Galileo. The Earth still moves."

The Professor's university did not see him as a second Galileo. His work had been attacked by the New England Journal of Medicine. The ABC News show 20/20 had attacked him, and Discovery Magazine, which rarely criticizes Scientists, published a long and harshly critical article on him. He had become notorious, and the University's name was always mentioned in connection with his notoriety. University authorities, not amused, locked the professor out of his own lab, and removed him from responsibility for his teaching load. It is hard to get rid of a tenured Professor, but the University sat out to do it, and eventually it gave the Professor a generous settlement to see him gone from their faculty. The now ex-professor's once promising career was ruined.

The Professor was arrogant. Rather than look for evidence that his theory was wrong, as philosophers of science would suggest, he simply dismissed that evidence when it was presented to him. His failure to accept the falsification of his theory reflected a failure to appreciated the Philosophy of science, yet his undergraduate degree was in the Philosophy of Science. How could someone who should have known better, make such a colossal blunder? It would be easy to say that he was a con man. Yet he had involved his family in his failed venture, including his father a successful scientist with a good reputation, and his grandfather, a highly idealistic humanitarian. These were not the sort of people to partner up with a con. Con men have a well known culture. They understand that they are deceiving, and have a contempt for the people who they deceive, the marks. The Professor appears to have not understood that he was engaged in a deception. His comparison of himself to Galileo seems more an ego defense than a con.

There is an explanation for the Professor's laps. He was and probably still is narcissistic. Sam Vaknin states, "Narcissists are great con-artists. After all, they succeed in deluding themselves! As a result, very few professionals see through them."

I now want to shift to a question about what constitutes science and who should be called a scientist. By conventional definitions our Professor would have made the cut as a scientist.
Now a scientist does not cease to be a scientist when he or she makes a mistake. Indeed, Ivor Robinson, a Dallas based relativity theorist, I once was acquainted with, boasted that his most cited paper contained a notorious mathematical error, and that error was the reason for all of the citations. The error did not lessen his reputation as a scientist or a mathematician. Science is all about checking up on each other, catching errors. Scientist stay scientist by acknowledging their errors once they are caught. The Ex-Professor, as far as I know, never acknowledged his errors.

Amory Lovins' biographies inevitably describe him as a physicist. Earlier biographies even tacked on the word nuclear before the word physicist. This raises an interesting issue, what is a physicist, and who is entitled to be called a physicist. Amory Lovins never earned a degree in physics, but neither did Ivor Robinson, whose only degree was a Bachelors in Mathematics from Oxford. But Ivor became a full professor on the basis of his contributions to relativity theory. Amory Lovins never earned any degree, and unlike Professor Robinson, has never acknowledged his errors.

Of course, Lovins has enjoyed a virtually critic free ride for a long time. Everyone seemed to regard Lovins as some sort of a genius, although in retrospective, it seems possible that people mistook glibness for genius. No doubt Lovins is a very intelligent person, but how could a person that smart drop out of Harvard twice, and not finish a degree program at Oxford?

With his one time wife Hunter, Lovins shared a 1982 Mitchell Prize (for work on utility policy), a 1983 Right Livelihood Award, often called the "alternative Nobel Prize," the 1999 Lindbergh Award, and Time's 2000 Heroes for the Planet Award. In 1989 he won the Onassis Foundation's first DELPHI Prize, one of the world's top environmental awards, for their "essential contribution towards finding alternative solutions to energy problems. In 1993 he received the Nissan Prize for inventing superefficient ultralight-hybrid cars, to which ~$10 billion has been committed, and in 1999, partly for that work, the World Technology Award (Environment). He also received the 1994 regional Award of Distinction from the American Institute of Architects, its highest award for nonarchitects, and the 2000 Happold Medal of the [UK] Construction Industry Council, and of course a MacArthur "genius" Fellowship,

Other trinkets including the Heinz award, Volvo Prize, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, and the Shingo prize, did not formally require genius status. In fact it might be said that never in the course of human endeavor have so few received so much recognition from so many, and for what?

Volvo official claimed that Lovens received the Volvo prize because, “He has developed a number of path-breaking technical, economic and policy concepts and succeeded in merging theory with a wide range of practical applications. His work is transforming the way we use energy worldwide.”

At the very least Lovins has taught prize givers to talk in Lovins speak jargon, although the Volvo official failed to perfectly master Lovins vocabulary, because he did not used the fabled word efficiency.

Journalist Robert Bryce noted that Amory for a genius Lovins has on a surprisingly many number of occasions issued pronouncements on energy related issues that turned out to be wrong. In 1976 Lovins predicted that by 2005 over 1/3 of American energy would be coming from soft, renewable sources. Lovins was off on that one. In 1984 Lovins told Business Week that “we see electricity demand ratcheting downward over the medium and long term. The long-term prospects for selling more electricity are dismal.” Lovins added, “We will never get, we suspect, to a high enough price to justify building centralized thermal power plants again. That era is over.” This statement can now only be characterized as wacky, but coming from Amory Lovins it must have sounded profound at the time. Power demand continued to rise in the United States despite Lovins prediction to the contrary. In 1976 Lovins announced that the entire American Transportation sector could be run on wasted biomass. This is far from the case in 2008, despite the creation of a tortillia shortage in Mexico by converting corn into alcohol rather than flower.

Finally, Lovins predicted that energy efficiency would lead to a great decline in the demand for energy. In this forecast Lovins brought his vision of the future directly into conflict with a basic concept of economics, Jevons' paradox, which states that increases in energy efficiency lead to increased rather than decreased energy consumption. During the period from the 1970s to the present, energy efficiency has increased in the United States, as has energy consumption.

Bryce's point on Jevons Paradox scored heavily with Lovins, who through a RMI statement has attempted to answer it by arguing "we are observing only very small rebound effects (if any at all) in the United States. For example, we can look at household driving patterns: While total vehicle miles traveled have increased 16 percent between 1991 and 2001, there is no evidence that owners of hybrid vehicles drove twice as much just because their cars were twice as efficient." B

Thus Lovins is forced to admit that Jevons Paradox still holds but attempts to minimize it. The RMI statement was forced to conclude, "Jevons' Paradox cannot be so easily put to rest." Indeed it cannot. And Jevons paradox threatens to destroy the entire Lovins energy through efficiency construct.

Robert Bryce is not the only recent critic of Amory Lovins. Rod Adams has raised some telling questions about Lovins educational credentials. Adams found that Loving dropped out of Harvard twice, and that he had not earned a degree while he was a student at Oxford. Lovins biographies refer to an MA from Oxford, but they seldom make clear that this was what might be called a complimentary degree, since the normal earned degree that would be awarded by Oxford for a physics student would be an BSc or MSc.

I had originally intended to write a series of post about Lovins, but David Bradish of NEI Nuclear Notes has been writing a very telling series on Lovins, which is much better than anything I could write. (see here, here, here, here and here. Lovins responded to Bradish's posts on the pro-Lovins blog Gristmill. And Bradish responded to Lovins post in a comment on Lovins response.

Bradish accused Lovins of cherry picking data: "One of the problems with the way RMI put the worksheet together is that the data comes from numerous sources published in different years. RMI compares data from a 2003 MIT study, a 2007 MIT study, a 2006 one-page WADE source, and a 2005 “personal communications” data exchange (will explain below) just to name a few. Picking and choosing certain data points from many different sources just screams the word “cherry-picking.”

Bradish cited a quote from Bryce's Energy Tribune article on Lovins:
"Paul Joskow, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “My rule of thumb,” Joskow wrote me in an e-mail, “is to double his [non-nuclear] cost estimate and divide his energy saving estimate in half to get something closer to reality.”

Lovins has advised the state of California on its electrical energy policy. James Heartfield argues that Lovins advocates policies that manufacture artificial scarcity:
One of the most destructive examples of manufactured scarcity is "clean
energy" and California's "Negawatt Revolution."

In 1997 the Club of Rome collaborated with Amory Lovins of the Rocky
Mountain Institute to launch a new report Factor Four that promised to
bhalve resource useb while doubling wealth. The message was that you
could get rich saving the planet. A privileged few did indeed double
their wealth; but for the rest it was just a case of halving resources.

Immodestly, Lovins made his own California energy scheme the main
example of savings in Factor Four. His well-paid advice to the state of
California was that it was a big mistake to adopt a system that rewarded
increased electricity output with increased profits. Such a system would
naturally tend to boost output. Instead rewards for cutting energy use
were needed. Rather than getting paid for additional megawatts the
utility companies should be rewarded for saving power use: negawatts.

The impact of Lovinsb model on energy generation in California was
decisive. bAround 1980, Pacific Gas and Electricity Company was planning
to build some 10-20 power stations, according to Lovins.

"But by 1992, PG&E was planning to build no more power stations, and in
1993, it permanently dissolved its engineering and construction
division. Instead as its 1992 Annual Report pronounced, it planned to
get at least three quarters of its new power needs in the 1990s from
more efficient use by its customers."

Of course the PG&E was not getting three quarters of its new power needs
from anywhere: it had just reduced its output. But manufacturing energy
scarcity did indeed grow somebody's cash wealth: Enron's. With these
artificial caps on energy production the generating companies could
start to hike up the charges to utility companies, including PG&E, now
unable to meet its own customersb demands. Those energy companies were
owned by Enron.

Amory Lovins' negawatt revolution in California was Enron's wet dream.
Having shut down its own generation capacity, PG&E was at the mercy of
Enron's market manipulation. Buying surplus electricity on the open
market PG&E was royally fleeced, losing $12 billion. Utility bills rose
by nine times. Enron took advantage of the restricted market and cut
electricity to California. They even invented reasons to take power
plants offline while California was blacked out. Enron official joked
that they were stealing one million dollars a day from California.
The PG&E that Lovins held up as a model went bankrupt and had
to be baled out by the state of California.

California energy policy makers are still enthralled by Lovens energy theory, and as a consequence electricity in Califormia is twice as expensive as it is in the rest of the country. Pro-Lovins spear chuckers like David Roberts and Joe Romm praise California its low electricity use which they attribute to a wise policy of energy conservation, without noting that the cost for California's low energy use is paid by the long suffering rate payers of California who conservation is motivated by the most expensive electrical rates in the country.

It is clear then that Amory Lovins is not a great scientist, and indeed is not a scientist at all. He has generated data by bogus and manipulative means, at least one of his central arguments about energy, directly conflicts with Jevons Paradox, a well established and repeatedly verified concept of economics. Several major Lovins predictions have proven false. Following Amory's advice Lead PG&E into financial ruin and lead to the creation of the situation in which ENRON cheated California rate payers out of billions of dollars, and in which they continue to pay the highest electrical rates in the country.

Finally the critiques of Lovins by nuclear bloggers have repeatedly noted the weakness of Lovin's arguments. Like the ex-Professor, Lovins arguments tend to become self-referential. Thus Lovins sole source for a claim that nuclear power is in a global market collapse, was a statement that Lovins himself had published twenty years previously. What begins to emerge from behind the curtain then is Lovins' ego.

Update 6/23/08: Amory Lovins continues to take it on the chin from nuclear bloggers. The Sovietologist argues that Lovins is an apologist for fossil fuel use. This is a point that Rod Adams has made several times on the subject.