The Capacity Factor

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2011-08-21T18:50:00.003-04:00

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"Thorium" scam widely linked, hits Slashdot

2011-08-12T14:11:00.022-04:00

[Slashdot] 8 Grams of Thorium Could Replace Gasoline In Cars

Some devious misanthrope has latched onto the thorium hype for his own personal scam. Dr. (allegedly) Charles Stevens claims to be developing a thorium-powered-car, whose nature is impossible to pin down beneath the incoherent mismash of idiotic technobable... i.e.:

However, the use of thorium is controversial because, as with uranium, it is used as a nuclear power source. Indeed, the internal heat of the Earth largely is attributed to the presence of thorium and uranium.

The key to the system developed by inventor Charles Stevens, CEO and chairman of Connecticut-based Laser Power Systems, is that when silvery metal thorium is heated by an external source, it becomes so dense its molecules give off considerable heat.

Small blocks of thorium generate heat surges that are configured as a thorium-based laser, Stevens tells Ward’s. These create steam from water within mini-turbines, generating electricity to drive a car.

The key to the system developed by inventor Charles Stevens, CEO and chairman of Connecticut-based Laser Power Systems, is that when silvery metal thorium is heated by an external source, it becomes so dense its molecules give off considerable heat.

Natural thorium has little radioactivity, Stevens says. What isotopes there are could be blocked by aluminum foil, so the power unit’s 3-in. (7.6-cm) thick stainless-steel box should do the trick.

Stevens has worked out you’d require a 227kg, 250MW thorium engine in order to power a typical road car. Within that system 1 gram of thorium produces the equivalent of 7,500 gallons of gasoline. So if you fit the Thorium engine with 8 grams of Thorium, it will run the vehicle for its entire lifetime without needing to be refueled while all the time not producing any emissions. The engine lasts so long in fact, that it could be taken from one vehicle and used in another as and when they wear out.

Stevens agrees, emphasizing his system is “subcritical.” This means no nuclear reaction occurs within the thorium. It remains in the same state and is not turned into uranium 233, which happens only if thorium is sufficiently super-heated to generate a fission reaction. “It’s very safe,” he says.

http://wardsauto.com/ar/thorium_power_car_110811/

Please don't subject yourself of the anguish of trying to interpret this gibberish! He alternately describes this as not a fission reaction (although he doesn't appear know to what fission is, describing it as ²³²Th --> ²³³U...), but claims energy densities which strictly apply to fission reactions only. Claims thorium "molecules" [sic] give off heat when they become "dense". Claims there is lasing involved somewhere.

The scammer has incorporated himself as "Laser Power Systems, LLC." His previous startup, "Helyxzion, LLC", was in genomics.

[LinkedIn] Charles Stevens

Laser Power Systems, LLC

Helyxzion, LLC

Texas grid declares Level 1 Emergency as ten thousand megawatts of wind power stands paralyzed

2011-08-04T16:47:00.030-04:00

Heat wave (NOAA)

Tuesday (two days ago):

[KHOU] Texas now under level 1 emergency; Residents asked to conserve more electricity

HOUSTON – ERCOT put out a notice at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday afternoon saying the state’s reserve levels dropped below 2,300 megawatts, putting into effect an Energy Emergency Alert level 1.

“We are requesting that consumers and businesses reduce their electricity use during peak electricity hours from 3 to 7 p.m. today, particularly between 4 and 5 p.m. when we expect to hit another peak demand record,” said Kent Saathoff, vice president of system planning and operations. “We do not know at this time if additional emergency steps will be needed.”

More blackouts this afternoon (i.e. Thursday):

[Reuters] Texas grid warns of rolling outages on heat

Extreme heat and soaring power demand may force the Texas power grid operator to impose rolling outages on Thursday afternoon to prevent a wider blackout as residents struggle with a record-breaking heatwave.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, moved to curtail power to some industrial customers Thursday afternoon as a way to boost surplus power to keep residential air conditioners running over the hottest part of the afternoon.

The state -- broiling under a relentless streak of 100-plus degree temperatures and drought -- has set three power consumption records this week, straining power plants.

And where are Texas' 9,727 MW of wind turbines in this crisis? Out to lunch. One picture says it all (note the distinct scales):

http://www.ercot.com/gridinfo/generation/ (August 2011)

Note how wind power is strongly anticorrelated with the afternoon demand peak! Wind power "reliably fails" whenever electricity is most needed.

The American Wind Energy Association is here to give us their "spin" on the situation:

[AWEA blog] Wind helps meet new Texas record for electricity demand

Commented American Wind Energy Association Manager of Transmission Policy Michael Goggin, "At a time when the extreme heat prevailing in Texas is pushing the utility system close to its limits, wind generation is making a valuable and much-needed contribution to system reliability."

At the risk of revisiting the obvious, these were the operating power levels of Texas' four nuclear power reactors over the same week, according to the NRC:

power reactor	capacity (net)	7/27	7/28	7/29	7/30	7/31	8/1	8/2	8/3
Comanche Peak #1 (PWR)	1,209 MWe	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
Comanche Peak #2 (PWR)	1,158 MWe	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
South Texas #1 (PWR)	1,280 MWe	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
South Texas #2 (PWR)	1,280 MWe	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%	100%
	4,927 MWe

[NRC] Power Reactor Status Reports for 2011

[IAEA] United States of America: Nuclear Power Reactors - Alphabetic

Update (8/11): One week later, more of the same:

Informative article in WSJ:

[WSJ] Texas Power Grid Falls Short

Very strange technical critique of the molten salt reactor -- by a PhD engineer, supposedly

2011-07-04T15:22:00.013-04:00

I just want to point out this nonsense piece that's been making the rounds. It is a long, technical, detailed critique of the molten-salt reactor (MSR) concept, from someone who claims to be a PhD engineer (with expertise in "renewables"). It is absurd hogwash, full of utterly insane misconceptions. But it looks superficially credible, so I expect this "expert" will be widely quoted in the near future.

http://daryanenergyblog.wordpress.com/ca/part-8-msr-lftr/

The 8th in a series (!).

I'm not a PhD engineer, or any sort of engineer at all. Part of this blog's extremely small readership is such engineers. To those of you, here's a quick summary of some of the things in this critique which are complete nonsense, so you can judge for yourselves (I'll go into a bit more detail after the summary):

Summary of some of the biggest howlers

Claims MSRs have "Isotope Separation Plants" which separate ²³³U and ²³²U (the trace contaminant)
Warns of hazardous fission products, such as thorium isotope "T-232" [sic], which supposedly is a disadvantage of thorium-fuelled reactors because of its 14 billion year half-life
Warns that electrolyzing nuclear fuel salts is energy-intensive
Warns that heat inputs in fluoride reprocessing are energy-intensive
Asserts that thorium MSRs are constrained to a lower temperature limit of 1,110 °C, the melting point of pure ThF₄. Concludes MSRs must be built entirely from ceramics
"Obviously, once we exhaust the world’s U-235 stockpiles, LFTR’s and any other Thorium fuelled reactors will cease to function."
Argues against using molten fuel salt as a working fluid in a gas turbine

Well, that pretty much says it all, don't you agree?

I'll go into a bit of detail on individual points, pointing out where in the 23-page screed they are from (so no one else has to waste time).

Isotope separation plants

§8.4:

The Isotope Separation plant and waste output

[...] Also the supporters of the LFTR seem to assume that this ISP can operate with 100% efficiency (i.e remove all the radioactive poisons). This would be very technically challenging, especially in the LFTR case given the importance (if you followed the points made by IEER earlier) about separating out of U-232 (and its Thallium-208 payload) from U-233.

He has the misconception that ²³³U/²³²U isotopic enrichment is necessary for MSR operation. Spends many paragraphs speculating on this imaginary thing, finally concluding it will consume up to 25% of an MSR's electric output:

All in all my suspicion is that our heat exchanger would struggle to produce thermal efficiencies any greater than 70-75%. Assume a good high efficiency Gas driven Brayton cycle the other end (55-60%) so that yields us an overall efficiency of 38% – 45%, oh! but we almost forgot about that isotope separation plant and its net energy inputs, say we deduct 5-10% of reactor power output to account for running that, so overall between 29% – 40%, with a 35% overall efficiency being my best WEG

Dangerous fission products

§8.3:

Certainly the fission products from a Thorium reactor are a worry, Technetium-99 has a half life of 220,000 years, uranium-232 produces thallium-208 (a nasty wee gamma emitter), Selenium-79 (another gamma emitter with a 327,000 year half-life), even Thorium-232 is a problem with its half life of 14 Billion years (and while the T-232 isn’t a major worry, all the time during this 14 Billion years it will be decaying and producing stuff that is!).

Names the long-lived fission products as the most "worrying". Thinks thorium-232 is a fission product (abbreviates it "T-232"). Is very worried about its daughter products -- they're continuously generated over 14 billion years! Thinks this is somehow a disadvantage of the thorium reactor (the one that consumes ²³²Th dug up out of the ground).

Where will we find so much energy?

Sounds the alarm about the energy intensiveness of using electrolysis in reprocessing (§8.4):

Notably, the LFTR supporters have suggested (see here) using electrolysis to help improve the filtering efficiency of their plant. An excellent idea, it would solve a number of problems, but unfortunately electrolysis systems practically eat electricity! Where’s all that electricity going to come from?

And (same section), the energy intensity of heating fuel salt to high temperatures in reprocessing:

As the working fluid will be coming off the exhaust from the heat exchange cycle it will be relatively cool (in the MSRE it was at around 570 °C) yet some of these processing stages will require the fluid to be heated back up to 1,600 °C. Where’s that energy going to come from?

Perhaps he is confused about the difference between temperature and heat? There is enough energy coming out of a nuclear reactor at full power to heat a ton of fuel salt by a thousand degrees in one second. (...within an order of magnitude. Don't have temperature-dependent heat capacities on hand, so this number is rough.) That a multi-gigawatt-thermal MSR "only" operates at 600° C or at 800 °C, is hardly a statement against its enormous power!

Insane temperatures

One section (§8.8) of his critique is based on the bizarre error that thorium MSRs are limited to operating at above 1,110 °C, the melting point of pure ThF₄:

The dendrite problem above demonstrates that the LFTR/LFUR has a relatively narrow thermal window. Its filtering plant will not work if the temperature of the fluid drops much below a certain threshold and the danger of fuel solidification raises the risk of the reactor being damaged. With UF4 the solidification temperature is 1,036 °C and its vapourisation temperature is 1,417 °C. [...] With TF4 our “window” is 1110 – 1,680 °C, but again we can potentially move this by lowering the pressure (or raising it if we want to go the other way…not that we do!). A low vapour pressure also creates a few potential problems in terms of keeping the reactor sealed (air is more likely to leak in if the pressure inside is less than atmospheric…possibly starting a fire!) and maintaining a good flow rate from our pumps.

I don't know what confusion of his provoked this nonsense. Maybe he hasn't done his basic research, that all MSR proposals involve solvating actinide fluorides in other fluoride salts -- mixtures of LiF, NaF, BeF₂, ZrF₄, and/or others -- with the mixture having far lower melting points than actinide fluorides. Or maybe he's under the illusion that individual components of a chemical solution precipitate out at their pure melting points. At any rate, his chain of reasoning starts from this major error and leads to others:

With the LFTR however, I doubt you could operate one made out of any Nickel alloy, contrary to everything said on the internet. Bare in mind I’m thinking in terms of a good lengthy service life with a sensible factor of safety, not a flimsy test reactor in a lab (with a 100 mile exclusion zone!).

[...]

Thus the pressure vessel of any LFTR would likely have to formed out of Ceramics (very expensive and difficult to form, especially given how critical getting an air tight seal is given the graphite core) and key internal components out of Refractory metals, as would be the case for certain high temperature parts of any ISP (in both the LFTR and LFUR cases) given talk of operating temperatures in the range of 1600 °C.

[...]

So my instinct from a materials science point of view would be to drop the LFTR idea altogether and focus instead on a LFUR. While this isn’t able to use the Thorium cycle, the point was raised earlier about how the Thorium cycle isn’t all its cracked up to be. Its going to be a lot easier to build a LFUR than a LFTR, cheaper (relatively speaking) and likely safer too. Of course it does come at the disadvantage of a slightly awkward acronym! but overall that would be my focus of attention.

In reality, an MSR runs at fuel temperatures of only 700 °C (at least the first generation), which is why "internet" people like Kirk Sorensen, PhD assert that Hastelloy alloys are perfectly acceptable structural material.

What is breeding?

His presentation of the thorium fuel cycle, is, well, I don't know what to make of it!

(§8.3)

...and the fact we’ll still need supplies of Uranium to get Thorium reactors going again whenever we have to turn it off (which will happen at least once a year or so during its annual maintenance shutdown).

[...]

Obviously, once we exhaust the world’s U-235 stockpiles, LFTR’s and any other Thorium fuelled reactors will cease to function. The LFTR fans usually groan at this point and state that “all we need is a little plutonium”. Now while I’m quite sure that in the fantasy world which the LFTR fans inhabit Plutonium is available in any good hardware store but back in the real world, it’s a little harder to come by! As with the HTGR’s using Thorium (if its possible) would certainly help stretch things out….a bit! But not by nearly as much as the supporters of Thorium reactors would have you believe.

It's not a gas turbine if it's not a gas

Unlike Dr. PhD, I'm not an engineer, and my background knowledge does not help me understand how a Brayton cycle can run on liquid. I just don't get how it would spin, what with the difficulty of getting a liquid to expand. But because the author says he has a "PhD in a thermodynamics-related field", and is trained as a mechanical engineer -- I assume he understands something that I do not.

Another misconception is that a LFTR or LFUR can operate on an open cycle with a gas turbine. While true, it could be run this way, there are a host of practical reasons not to do it. Not least of them the fact that our turbine would have to be designed to withstand having a mixture of molten salt and fluorided fuel passed through it at very high temperatures. This would be tricky to say the least, likely requiring the use of those super expensive refractory metals, and while using such materials to make the odd turbine blade is one thing, an entire turbine casing is an entirely different matter. It would likely cost much more than the reactor itself!

Of course, the concept he is supposedly debunking, it seems he has somewhat miscomprehended its nature. The Energy from Thorium discussion isn't talking about running molten salt through a turbine as a working fluid. They're actually talking about running atmospheric air through a gas turbine ("open cycle") -- analogous to a jet engine or a gas-fired internal combustion turbine. (The air being heated by the reactor, through a gas/liquid heat exchanger). But hey, if we actually read and understood the thinks we were ridiculing, that wouldn't be much fun, would it?

Bug in Google Calculator breaks "Capacity Factor" posts

2011-06-25T14:55:00.027-04:00

To help myself out in arithmetic-intensive calculations (and to make them more convenient to readers), I often use Google's 'Calculator' feature -- a nifty tool which is units-aware ("10 btu/hour") and can perform units conversions, as well as other convenient shortcuts such as scientific notation ("1e9"), natural-language words ("billion"), abbreviations ("GeV"), and mathematical constants ("Avogadro's number"). Here's a short example using several of them, illustrating how delightfully expressive this calculator language is. Unfortunately, this feature no longer works the same way it did before, creating broken links in many of my old comments. One of the bugs involves Google being "smart" and substituting words with textually "similar" ones (which mean completely different things), so that

1 TWh/year in watts

is reinterpreted as "1 kWh/year in watts" (kWh being a far more common search phrase) -- introducing an error of 10⁹. Previously, the abbreviation "TWh" would be correctly interpreted as "terawatt hour". For added confusion, this "smart search" is not consistent in its buginess: e.g., slightly tweak the previous query to

1 TWh/hour in watts

And suddenly 'TWh' is back to "terawatt-hour"! Quite an insidious bug.

I would worry for physics students who use this tool. You input the expression correctly, and the wrong answer comes out. Worse, the wrong answer comes out where previous versions of the Calculator yielded the right answer. And most-worstest, this bug is dangerously silent: often the result retains the correct units, so it looks superficially correct. You only see that something went horribly wrong if you read the "parse" preceding the result, which often you won't because

It is very verbose on even small inputs, full of natural-language words and superfluous parentheses
It is nothing more than a 1-to-1 rewording of the expression you just entered (...except when it's disastrously wrong)

Anyway, a heads-up and an apology: there are some confusing broken links in my archived posts, due to this issue.

Guest post: A curious case of cherry-picking data for the greater good

2011-06-23T13:52:00.045-04:00

On the subject of Fukushima hysteria, here is a guest post by Alexey Goldin. It's a rebuttal of claims, by activists Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman, that lethal amounts of fallout have reached North America, and that there is a "dramatic increase" in infant mortality in US cities. (!) Of course they have no evidence for a causal link, just correlation. Of course they didn't explain how on earth the microscopic amount of fallout observed in the US could cause any health effects, let alone lethal acute radiation poisoning; or how the obvious symptoms of such a deadly disease are going completely unnoticed. They haven't merely not-demonstrated causation -- they haven't even hit plausibility.

In this vein I think it is overgenerous to consider the numbers behind these epidemiological claims at all; what would a statistically significant correlation mean, if anything? Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Nevertheless, Alexey takes on the epidemiological correlation at face value, and finds it substanceless. According to his analysis there is no statistical significance to the alleged "dramatic increase in mortality". It is noise.

A curious case of cherry-picking data for the greater good

Alexey Goldin

A large number of websites (for example, see this) recently furiously discussed a finding by Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano claiming that radioactive fallout from Fukushima resulted in a statistically significant increase in child mortality. As in my daily job I rely very heavily on being able to learn some facts around the world around from very noisy data using statistical methods, I got curious. I was especially interested to learn what "statistically significant" means.

I am not a statistician but I play one at work. If a real statistician will analyze these data in a more careful way I'd be be grateful, but I hope my analysis is rigorous enough. It is overkill for debunking, but I hope it can be used as an introduction to R for some curious people who might be interested to check the next outrageous claims for themselves and demonstrate R capabilities for analysis.

The data are available from the Center for Disease Control, but not in a very convenient format. Great thanks to the Capacity Factor blog for compiling the data for 8 cities used in the Janette Sherman and Joseph Mangano analysis. The csv file childMort.csv is included in attached zip file. To repeat my analysis you do not need anything beyond opensource statistical package R and some standard libraries (lubridate, xts, plyr, sandwich,lmtest), installable by using the install.packages function.

Using functions defined in the included file mort.R one can read data like this:

> childM <- get.data("childMort.csv")

The average mortality for selected 8 cities for 10 weeks after Fukushima:

> dp10 <- mean(childM$Deaths["2011-03-20::2011-05-28"])
> dp10

12.5

And before:

> dm4 <- mean(childM$Deaths["2011-02-26::2011-03-19"])
> dm4

9.25

The plot of mortality vs time:

Indeed, if you squint enough you'll see that post-Fukushima mortality is higher. It looks grim. However it is not obvious why the authors of the study use 10 weeks after March 19 but only 4 before. There is a lot of data available before and using more data always allows you to estimate averages with better precision. If we use all 12 weeks of 2011 before March 19, surely we can get a better estimate of average mortality then using only 4 weeks. Let's try:

> dm12 <- mean(childM$Deaths["2011-01-01::2011-03-19"])
> dm12

12.25

12.25 is much closer to post-Fukushima average weekly value of 12.5.

Let's not stop here and use all of the data available, starting from 2007:

> dm2007 <- mean(childM$Deaths["2007-01-01::2011-03-19"])
> dm2007

13.7899543378995

It definitely looks like average post-Fukushima mortality is lower. You could say "But it is just a statistical fluke!" and would be (partially) right.

Partially, because there is a clear downward trend in child mortality which Fukushima (visually) does not seem to influence very much. But we will return to this trend a bit later.

Let's see if there is more evidence for conclusion-based evidence drawing. If you loaded my code you should have dataframes "cities" and "cities.cdc" defined in your workspace. Here are the cities used in Sherman and Mangano analysis.

> library(maps)
> map(database = "state", regions = c("CA", "OR", "WA", "ID"))
> points(cities.cdc$long, cities.cdc$lat, pch = 16, col = "blue")
> points(cities$long, cities$lat, pch = 16, col = "red")

Blue dots show the cities available in CDC database but not included in the study. Red dots are the cities in the study. Usually every scientist is trying to use as much data as available. There might be a reason for omitting cities south of San Jose, but what are the reasons for omitting Spokane, WA and Tacoma, WA, but including Boise, ID? What is the reason for this?

I downloaded 2011 data for both cities (if you load my code you'll have variables spokane and tacoma). The averages after Fukushima and before:

> mean((spokane + tacoma)["2011-03-20::2011-05-28"])

1.5

> mean((spokane + tacoma)["2011-02-26::2011-03-19"])

1.66666666666667

And it looks like the average death rate is decreasing for these two cities. This might be a good reason to not include them.

At this point it looks quite likely that Sherman and Mangano picked up their indicator (ratio of average death rate for 10 weeks later after the event to average rate for 4 weeks before the event) to be able to claim relationship between child mortality and Fukushima event that may not be there. But let's investigate how good their indicator is. We suspect that they artificially constructed this indicator to spike on March 19. Would it spike on other dates?

The following function averages mortality on next 10 weeks, previous 4 weeks and returns the value. When its value reaches 1.35, average 10 week mortality exceeded previous 4 weeks mortality by 35%.

> tr.indicator <- function(lr, nback = 4, nforward = 10) {
>     lr4 <- rollapply(lr$Deaths, nback, mean, align = "right", 
>         na.pad = TRUE)
>     lr10 <- lag(rollapply(lr$Deaths, nforward, mean, align = "left", 
>         na.pad = TRUE), 1)
>     as.xts(lr10/lr4)
> }
> rind <- tr.indicator(childM)
> plot(rind, main = "Sherman-Mangano indicator")
> abline(h = 1.35)

The horizontal line is exactly where value of indicator is 1.35, or where the average number of deaths for the next 10 weeks is higher then average number of deaths for the previous 4 weeks. You see that it spikes at March 19, 2011 but it also spikes (and sometimes significantly higher) on numerous other occasions.

What about Jan 2011? And what about late 2009? Where infants dying in large numbers then? Could something be happening that we missed? Were there numerous unannounced reactors melting down without anyone noticing? Why Sherman and Mangano were silent on Jan 2011? Or maybe Jan 2011 (just like March 19) was just a statistical fluke?

Let's try another approach. We take our data and resample them, by taking them in random order. Any time dependent pattern will be scrambled, and whatever remains after applying the same 10 week - 4 week indicator is just an artifact of random distribution.

> set.seed(1)
> s1 <- sample(as.numeric(childM$Deaths), nrow(childM), replace = TRUE)
> sxts1 <- xts(s1, order.by = index(childM))
> names(sxts1) <- "Deaths"
> rind1 <- tr.indicator(sxts1)
> plot(rind1, main = "Sherman-Mangano indicator for random sample")
> abline(h = 1.35)

It is obvious that this indicator very often sets off alarms when there is nothing to predict at all, the data we fed to it were random by design.

Let's try to estimate the probability of seeing this indicator exceeding some value of 1.35 on any particular day. We can do it with the following simple method. Let's generate a thousand random sequences which are 14 weeks long with numbers drawn from observed mortality data, calculate our indicator and count how often we exceed value of 1.35:

> mk.boot14 <- function(cm) {
>     d1 <- sample(as.numeric(cm$Deaths), 14, replace = TRUE)
>     d14 <- as.xts(d1, order.by = index(cm)[1:14])
>     names(d14) <- "Deaths"
>     d14
> }
> set.seed(2)
> N <- 1000
> res <- rep(NA, N)
> for (i in 1:N) {
>     d14 <- mk.boot14(childM)
>     res[i] <- coredata(tr.indicator(d14)[4, 1])
> }
> plot(density(res), main = "Sherman-Mangano indicator density distribution")
> abline(v = 1.35)
> s <- sum(res >= 1.35)/N
> s

0.062

A total 0.062 of all samples in a completely random sequence have next 10 weeks average 35% higher then previous 4 weeks average. This is not considered significant even when researcher is not hand picking data subset (cities) which to analyze and not picking his indicator to peak at predetermined date which is probably what was happening (consciously or unconsciously) in this Sherman-Mangano "study".

In fact with significance of 0.062 by selecting from 16 independent samples one is almost guaranteed to find a sample which will demonstrate 35% higher death rate in next 10 weeks compared to previous 4.

Can we take into account the general very fortuitous downward trend in infant mortality? We could modify our bootstrap procedure to take it into account but for educational purposes we will take another approach, described in this great tutorial. The data follows Poisson distribution, therefore we are using Poisson regression to estimate trend and impact of Fukushima factor.

We put our data in dataframe, add a Fukushima factor equal to 1 after March 19, 2011 and 0 before and add a column for linear trend.

> childM$F <- 0
> childM$F["2011-03-20::2011-06-12"] <- 1
> dt <- data.frame(childM)
> ind <- index(childM)
> trend <- (julian(ind) - julian(ind[1]))/365.25
> dt$trend <- trend
> fit <- glm(formula = Deaths ~ trend + F, family = poisson, data = dt)
> library(lmtest)
> library(sandwich)

Here is the fit summary via coeftest:

> ct <- coeftest(fit, vcov = sandwich)

Mortality data fit results
	Estimate	Std. Error	z value	Pr(> \|z\|)
(Intercept)	2.82	0.04	78.51	0.00
trend	-0.09	0.02	-5.90	0.00
F	0.08	0.10	0.81	0.42

We see that while trend (fortunately) has a very high significance (better then 1e-8), significance of the F (Fukushima) term is 42 %. This means that without anything happening at all on March 19 we would have this value for coefficient F or higher with a probability of 42 % due to simply random effects. This is because we used not only 4 weeks before the event, but all available data to estimate background death rate. Intercept is a natural log of average death rate.

To estimate average mortality for weeks following Fukushima disaster using all available data and taking into account downward trend we can fit the model using all before-Fukushima data and use this model to predict averages for post-Fukushima. We use argument "weights" to limit our model to the period when F=0 (before Fukushima) and do not use F term in this model:

> w <- 1 - dt$F
> fit.0 <- glm(formula = Deaths ~ trend, family = poisson, data = dt, 
>     weights = w)
> pr <- predict(fit.0, data = dt, type = "response")
> mean(pr[dt$F > 0])

11.1069765487832

The number above is the expected average weekly infant mortality assuming linear trend is correct. Of course, linear trend can not last forever as it would mean mortality would become negative. But it may be a reasonable estimate for a short term ( if you play with the data try to fit quadratic model as well, using additional term I(trend^2). ) So the expected average daily mortality using all data from 2007 is, unfortunately, higher then which we were led to believe. Post-Fukushima excess is much less significant, which is demonstrated in the significance table above.

To plot original mortality data together with fits:

> plot(childM$Deaths)
> prd <- xts(predict(fit, type = "response"), order.by = index(childM))
> lines(prd, col = "red")
> prd.0 <- xts(predict(fit.0, type = "response", data = dt), order.by = index(childM))
> lines(prd.0, col = "blue")

The model with Fukushima factor is plotted with red color, without it -- with blue. They are very close, overlapping everywhere but after Fukushima. You can see that there is just not enough data to see the difference.

At this point it is worthwhile to question either the scientific integrity or statistical competence of Sherman and Mangano. They might be decent people and believe in what they say, but allow themselves to say "small lies" in a service of "Greater Truth". This never ends up well. Because they are likely to kill some unstable people with their small lies.

Now, if someone could find me the data used to "prove" that there are leukemia clusters next to nuclear plants....

The promised attached zip with the data and code is here.

Russian nuclear industry hurt by fatal plane crash

2011-06-22T00:42:00.010-04:00

A commenter calls attention to the recent airplane disaster in Russia. Several leading nuclear-power experts lost their lives (they were on a delegation to inspect a prospective nuclear supplier).

http://uvdiv.blogspot.com/2011/06/nuclear-phaseouts-spreading-japanese.html?showComment=1308665098289#c5223789704525534645

Please pass the word
http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/06/21/russia.plane.crash/index.html?hpt=hp_
Several prominent members of Russian nuclear community lost their lifes

Sergey Ryzhov, Reactor Chief Designer, Gidropress

Gennady Banyuk, his deputy, Gidropress

Nikolay Trunov, Reactor Designer and Department Head, Gidropress

Andrey Trofimov, Chief Technology Officer, Afrikantov Bureau

Valery Lyalin, Department Head, Rosatom

Reporting from India newspapers:

[Times of India] Designer of Indian N-reactor killed in Russian plane crash

The whole leadership of the designers units of Russia's state nuclear corporation was killed when a Tu-134 passenger plane crash landed in the northern republic of Karelia.

[The Hindu] Kudankulam reactor designers among those killed in Russia aircrash

Three top officials of Russia’s main nuclear reactor design company, Gidropress, were killed in the aircrash along with two other senior nuclear engineers. Gidropress CEO and Designer General Sergei Ryzhov, Deputy CEO and Chief Designer Gennady Banyuk and Chief Designer Nikolai Trunov were all involved in designing two VVER-1000 (Version V-412) nuclear reactors for the the first stage of the Kudankulam power project in Tamilnadu. Another four reactors of this type are to be built at Kudankulam under second and third stages of the plant’s expansion.

VVER-1000/VVER-1200 is a PWR that is currently exported to several countries (with, I think, integrated fuel supply agreements). Notably including, China, India (which has neither the industry nor enrichment plants for domestic LWRs), and Iran (Bushehr NPP).

Nuclear phaseouts spreading; Japanese NPPs remain closed nationwide; Jaczko accused

2011-06-13T23:43:00.015-04:00

In more Fukushima fallout, at least three European countries have elected to prohibit nuclear power:

[Economist] Nuclear? Nein, danke | A nuclear phase-out leaves German energy policy in a muddle

[WSJ] Swiss Move to End Nuclear Era

[Reuters] Italians say no to nuclear energy in referendum

(In Germany, a nuclear phaseout was ongoing; the action here was to close plants much sooner than otherwise planned.)

In Japan, 3/4ths of voters now support a nuclear phaseout:

[Reuters] 74 pct of Japanese favour nuclear power phase-out -- survey

Japan has not enacted such a phase-out, although it is in a de facto freeze on nuclear operations as 29 out of its 54 reactors remain shut down post-earthquake (not including the six Fukushima Daiichi reactors), with 5 more to turn off for maintenance before August (so that only 14/54 will be operating):

[Asahi Shimbun] Local officials saying no to restarting nuclear reactors

Since the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 plant in Fukushima Prefecture started on March 11, nuclear power plants across the country have faced difficulty in resuming operations of some of their reactors that have been closed for regular inspections.

Moreover, the governments of prefectures or municipalities where those plants are located are strengthening their positions that they cannot allow the operations to resume unless the central government provides new safety standards that can prevent crises like the current one at the Fukushima plant.

US nuclear politics is in a meltdown of a different sort. NRC chairman Gregory Jaczko is indisgrace, as the agency's inspector general reported underhanded tactics he used to circumvent NRC commissioners:

[WSJ] Report Slams U.S. Nuclear Regulator

At issue is a directive by Mr. Jaczko to agency staffers that effectively halted work on a key NRC report about a proposed waste repository at Nevada's Yucca Mountain. The inspector general alleges that Mr. Jaczko wasn't forthcoming with his fellow NRC commissioners about the implications of his directive.

[...]

The safety evaluation would have determined whether Yucca met NRC health and safety regulations. Yucca's supporters have long hoped to see the safety report made public, because they believe it will support the technical and scientific case for the repository.

Mr. Jaczko anticipated that using the budget guidance to halt work "could be controversial" and acknowledged that others might see it as requiring consideration by the full commission, the report said.

As a result, Mr. Jaczko "strategically provided" three of the four other NRC commissioners "with varying amounts of information" about his intention to prevent publication of the safety documents. The report says that two of the three commissioners "did not fully understand" the implications of Mr. Jaczko's budget guidance, and that a majority of the commissioners "disagreed with" the outcome.

The political game here is much larger than Mr. Jaczko:

[NYT] GAO: Death of Yucca Mountain Caused by Political Maneuvering

The Obama administration's rushed efforts to shut down Yucca Mountain were strictly political and could set back the opening of a nuclear waste repository by more than 20 years, according to a new report by a federal watchdog.

The administration killed the repository program last year without citing technical or safety issues, and restarting the costly and time-consuming process of finding a permanent repository or an alternative solution could take decades and cost billions of additional dollars, the Government Accountability Office reported yesterday.

Passive safety

2011-05-28T18:28:00.029-04:00

There's no doubt that the Fukushima catastrophe has decimated public support for nuclear power.

[Asahi Shimbun] Nuclear power opponents increase in 7 countries

NuScale RPV and containment vessel

Suppose you are a proponent of large-scale nuclear expansion, and you are arguing your case with someone who has become opposed to it after the Fukushima disaster. They cite Fukushima as an example of -- if not danger, the unreliability, and potential for economic devestation, of nuclear power plants. Setting aside the issue of operating Gen-2 reactors, what's your defense of new construction -- for building Gen-3.5, Gen-4 NPPs? Granted, human engineering is never perfect; but how would you make a convincing case that nuclear power can become more reliable than the engineering of 50 years ago?

I think the first place to start is with decay heat removal. Fukushima's failure to do this under extreme conditions directly caused much of the disaster: the core drying up and uncovering fuel, causing it to overheat; the high temperatures allowing zirconium oxidation, leading to hydrogen explosions breaching containment; the overheated fuel melting, releasing fission products; the melted fuel (probably) boring through reactor pressure vessels, resulting (again) in radiological release.

So then: how fundamentally can you "eliminate" the design limitations involving decay heat removal? How far can you go towards making heat removal passive and intrinsically safe?

I'm not an engineer, but I'd like to provoke debate by suggesting one solution. It's based on very basic physics, and there's already a Gen-3.5 design that exemplifies it.

The concept is to put small reactors in very large, atmospheric-pressure water pools. Large enough that they can reject decay heat indefinitely by boiling away into the atmosphere. At least one small/modular reactor (SMR), NuScale, seems designed to do this:

[NuScale] NuScale's Passive Safety Approach

[NuScale] Introduction to NuScale Design

The NuScale design has twelve 150 MWt/45 MWe reactors, each in their own steel containments, submerged in a common 4 million gallon (15,000 m³) pool. With about 20 megawatt-days of decay heat per reactor over the first 30 days (see above), or 240 MWt-days combined, the pool is more than enough to absorb all of it through evaporative cooling. (It would take at least 396 MWt-days to evaporate all of it, just by multiplying by the heat of vaporization).

This is described by NuScale as a "30-day supply" of cooling water. By their reasoning, this is all that is needed: air cooling is sufficient afterwards, when each core is down to just <400 kW of decay heat.

So, this design's emergency heat rejection seemingly does not depend on

External water supply (Fukushima: lost seawater pumps)
External AC power (Fukushima: lost power lines, diesel generators)
Battery power (Fukushima: batteries did not last long enough)
Safety-critical piping (Fukushima: possibly damaged by earthquakes)

On that last point: NuScale argues their design eliminates "large break" loss-of-coolant accidents, since the reactors are completely submerged in a pool. The core can always be flooded simply by opening a valve in the containment.

Should this type of SMR be the nuclear industry's response to Fukushima? What do you think?

NuScale plant layout:

Japanese parents in arms over school radiation standards: govt. raised from 1 mSv/yr to 20 mSv/yr

2011-05-25T19:53:00.011-04:00

Being reported by many sources, including:

[NYT] Japanese Parents Assail Government Over Radiation

[ABC (Australia)] Outrage as Japan lifts radiation limit for kids

At issue are updated government guidelines that allow schoolchildren to be exposed to radiation doses that are more than 20 times the previously permissible levels. That dose is equal to the international standard for adult nuclear power plant workers.

(I'd earlier blogged about the top radiation advisor who resigned in protest over this decision).

As ABC writes, the government position is one of perceived necessity: contamination is widespread enough that the old 1 mSv/year would demand an exodus.

The government says it had no choice but to raise the legal exposure limit, saying about three-quarters of the schools in Fukushima have radiation levels above the old safety level of one millisievert.

I'm not even aware of a map at this resolution: the ones available (like in my previous post) stop at 5 mSv/year external dose, which already covers a very wide area.

Like a sacrificial offering to an angry mob, an education ministry official was bundled outside to speak to the demonstrators, although he had very little to offer them at all.

The hapless official's words only seemed to anger the protesters further.

"The current radiation levels for schools in Fukushima pose no health risks to kids at all," the official said.

I find it bizarre that the government is claiming external doses of tens of mSv -- at the level of CT scans, or possibly several CT scans -- are absolutely risk-free. While there's little empirical data at this level, it's widlely believed that doses these high cause nonzero excess risk of cancer and cancer fatalities. See for instance an authoritative reference from a radiological professional society -- these for adult doses:

Radiation Exposure in X-ray and CT Examinations

This is a very messy situation. The high radiation levels in parts of Fukushima are, apparently, likely to cause cancer deaths. And this excess risk is relatively small compared to other risk factors. So how does one react to this? Should government apply ordinary risk-tolerance standards, doing nothing, and allow a few tens or perhaps hundreds of radiation deaths (epidemiologically undetectable)? Or should they mount a massively expensive and destructive evacuation effort over a large area (the 5 mSv/year external dose range currently encompasses about 1 million people), itself probably causing serious health hazards to the displaced? Or should it leave people to make their own risk judgements (whether rational or not), informing them of the situation accurately?

(One of the commenters on this blog suggested, correctly, that to evacuate at this risk level, one should equally evacuate most cities near fossil fuel plants, factories, major highways. Which is strictly accurate, if you weigh all risks equally without regards to source. But then it does not seem people choose to view radiation dangers in the same way as other dangers.)

What I think they should not be doing is denying the problem like the Japanese officials are at this point. This is either incompetent or unconscionable.

From some extrapolations of future dose (over more than one year), see the new ISRN report (pdf, in French). In my previous post I also made a graph charting the decay of dose rates from cesium. (Other isotopes are mostly decayed away at this point).

ISRN on Fukushima radiation effects; I-131 thyroid exposure by inhalation

2011-05-25T00:15:00.011-04:00

French public radiation-protection agency Institut de radioprotection et de sûreté nucléaire released a report Monday (in French only). Based on the French standard of 10 mSv/year to the public after a nuclear accident, they are calling for further evacuations of an additional 70,000 Fukushima residents.

[AFP] 70,000 more should evacuate after Fukushima: Watchdog

Staying in this area means the inhabitants would be exposed to radiation of more than 10 millisieverts (mSv)in the year following the disaster, according to the IRSN.

This level is used in French safety guidelines for protecting civilian populations after a nuclear accident. In France, 10 mSv is three times the normal background radiation from natural sources.

"Ten mSV is not a dangerous dose in and of itself, it's more a precautionary dose," said Champion, noting however that this figure that does not include any additional doses from contaminated food or water.

(If I remember right, Japan is using a 20 mSv/year standard).

(summary) [IRSN] Gestion radiologique des territoires contaminés à la suite de l’accident de Fukushima : l’IRSN rend public son rapport d’analyse de la situation

(report) [ISRN] Evaluation Au 66^eme Jour Des Doses Externes Projetees Pour Les Populations Vivant Dans La Zone De Retombee Nord-Ouest De L’Accident Nucleaire De Fukushima - Impact Des Mesures D’Evacuation Des Populations

Since the report is in French only for now, my comprehension is limited. Here is the map they are using, similar to a dozen other maps I've linked on this blog (except that this one depicts city population sizes). Their recommended evacuation is on the green (10 mSv in 1st year) line, following French standards. (Note that if the standard were more conservative by just a factor of two, several major cities would be encompassed, including over one million people. Or: about one million people will be exposed to ~5 mSv external dose this year, the equivalent of a CT scan.)

By their accounting, this corresponds to a combined ¹³⁴Cs/¹³⁷Cs deposition level of 600,000 Bq/km², or an outdoors dose rate of 2 μSv/hr. (There's no inconsistency there; people do not spend all their time outdoors, and buildings shield gamma radiation somewhat.) I made a graph of how this dose rate will decay over time:

(¹³⁴Cs has a t_1/2 of 2.07 years, and ¹³⁷Cs has a t_1/2 = 30.08 years. Based on surveys (two are below), the ¹³⁷Cs/¹³⁴Cs activity ratio is currently about 1.2. Comparing the decay radiation (¹³⁴Cs, ¹³⁷Cs), ¹³⁴Cs gammas are about 2.7 times more energetic (there's also a small contribution from beta rays, if they're not shielded). So the initial dose ratio is around 2.5 in favor of ¹³⁴Cs; this goes away fairly quickly.)

[MEXT] Readings of dust sampling

Interim Report on Radiation Survey in Iitate Village area conducted on March 28th and 29th

The report also mentions potential ¹³¹I thyroid doses to children in excess of 1 Sievert. (Note that Sieverts are intensive quantities, they have units of J/kg. A dose to an individual organ is not the same as a whole-body dose.) This is the main risk factor for thyroid cancer, one of the most destructive effects of the Chernobyl disaster. (I don't know off hand what doses were involved there, or what thyroid doses are considered dangerous).

¹³¹I ingestion (e.g. through contaminated milk) was probably limited by food bans. But, in Nuclear Safety Commission data I found (in Japanese), they're talking about internal doses through inhalation of iodine from air:

[NSC] 文部科学省　緊急時迅速放射能影響予測ネットワークシステム（SPEEDI）による計算結果

This map is made on the (conservative) assumption of an infant staying outdoors 24 hours a day (it's cumulative over the first month or so):

Not sure what to make of this.

Kirk Sorensen founds Flibe Energy to commercialize the molten-salt nuclear reactor

2011-05-22T16:26:00.013-04:00

[Energy from Thorium] Third TEA Conference: Theory Into Practice

...The most significant was the announcement by Kirk Sorensen, founder of this blog, that he has left his job as chief nuclear technologist at Teledyne Brown to found a company, Flibe Energy, dedicated to building commercial liquid-fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs).

Flibe Energy, Inc.

(FLiBe = Fluorine, Lithium, Beryllium, as mixed LiF/BeF₂ salt)

Apparently these are his slides from the TEAC3 conference:

[Flibe Energy, Inc.] Introduction to Flibe Energy

Congratulations to Kirk, and best of luck in your endeavor!

This and that: GAO on Yucca decision; BRC nuclear waste report; TEPCO data released; CBO on Navy nuclear destroyers

2011-05-18T04:31:00.015-04:00

As has been pretty obvious all along, the Administration's sabotage of the Yucca Mountain repository was a purely political act with no real justification. The Government Accountability Office investigated and discovered the obvious:

[NYT] GAO: Death of Yucca Mountain Caused by Political Maneuvering

The Obama administration's rushed efforts to shut down Yucca Mountain were strictly political and could set back the opening of a nuclear waste repository by more than 20 years, according to a new report by a federal watchdog.

The administration killed the repository program last year without citing technical or safety issues, and restarting the costly and time-consuming process of finding a permanent repository or an alternative solution could take decades and cost billions of additional dollars, the Government Accountability Office reported yesterday.

Separately, the "Blue Ribbon Commission" (which I have claimed was stacked for whitewashing the Administration's political position on Yucca Mountain) released its draft report, which looks predictably bureaucratic:

[BRC] May 13, 2011 Full Commission Meeting | Information, Documents & Presentations

I'm not editorializing on it, but Jim Hopf and Charles Barton are.

TEPCO published thousands of pages of previously unreleased data (WSJ says some of it is redacted):

[WSJ] Documents Illustrate Desperate Hours at Plant

[TEPCO] 東北地方太平洋沖地震発生当時の福島第一原子力発電所プラントデータ集 (plant data -- the biggest collection, I think) (accompanying press release)

[TEPCO] Submission of Report of Analysis of Observed Seismic Data [...]

[TEPCO] Submission of report [...] on the damage of electric facilities [...]

For example: temperatures measurements from unit #3

TEPCO press releases (and attached reports/data) are collected here here.

Reported in Forbes, the Congressional Budget Office is looking at the economics of a much larger US nuclear navy -- encompasing nuclear destroyers, amphibious assault ships, and others.

[CBO] The Cost-Effectiveness of Nuclear Power for Navy Surface Ships

To assess the relative costs of using nuclear versus conventional propulsion for ships other than carriers and submarines, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) developed a hypothetical future fleet, based on the Navy's shipbuilding plan, of new destroyers and amphibious warfare ships that are candidates for nuclear propulsion systems. Specifically, CBO chose for its analysis the Navy's planned new version of the DDG-51 destroyer and its replacement, the DDG(X); the LH(X) amphibious assault ship; and the LSD(X) amphibious dock landing ship. CBO then estimated the life-cycle costs for each ship in that fleet—that is, the costs over the ship's entire 40-year service life, beginning with its acquisition and progressing through the annual expenditures over 40 years for its fuel, personnel, and other operations and support and, finally, its disposal. CBO compared lifecycle costs under two alternative versions of the fleet: Each version comprised the same number of ships of each class but differed in whether the ships were powered by conventional systems that used petroleum-based fuels or by nuclear reactors.

Their result is that conventional (fossil fuelled) ships of these size likely remain cheaper than nuclear versions. Here's their sensitivity to oil prices:

The higher oil prices are probably not realistic over long periods, because synthetic oil (from coal or gas, or possibly biomass) can be produced for less.

One of the CBO's caveats is that it assumes the same power consumption; but without fuel limitations, nuclear ships can travel much faster, using more power. They say the costs would break even for destroyers, if their energy consumption more then doubled.

Unit #4 spent fuel pool in danger of structural collapse?

2011-05-16T00:02:00.008-04:00

I missed this news, from over two weeks ago. A TEPCO press release from April 30th reports efforts to reinforce "severely damaged" walls supporting the unit #4 spent fuel storage pool:

[TEPCO] Installation of support structure under the spent fuel pool of Unit 4

Since the walls of the reactor building, Unit 4 are severely damaged, we have been evaluating the seismic capacity to confirm the soundness of the building. As the result of the evaluation, we have decided to install support structure under the spent fuel pool to enhance safety of the building.

There is a brief mention of the hazard in a Reuters article:

Officials also remain worried about structural damage to the No. 4 reactor and whether its storage pool for spent fuel rods has sufficient support. A strong aftershock could topple the structure and spill and scatter radioactive fuel on the ground, compounding the crisis, experts have said.

[NISA spokesman Hidehiko] Nishiyama said that Japanese officials "don't believe it is in danger of immediate collapse," but want to shore up the No. 4 reactor with new steel girders and cement.

[Reuters] Japan readies new tactics for Fukushima after setback

Fukushima updates

2011-05-14T21:15:00.011-04:00

TEPCO has confirmed substantial fuel damage in unit #1. A large part of the fuel has melted and is believed to be accumulating at the base of the reactor pressure vessel [1,2]. It is further suspected that this fuel melted holes [2], several centimeters wide [3], in the base of the steel RPV, leaking both molten fuel and water. (At Three Mile Island-2, the RPV was not breached like this). TEPCO engineers say the fuel mass seems to be contained in the steel containment structure [1]. However contaminated water is leaking out in large quantities, possibly through the suppression pool (torus), accumulating in the basement [1], and possibly leaking outside. There is at least 12 feet of water in the basement of unit #1 reactor building [4]. A robot in this building measured dose rates of up to 2 Sv/hr near an entrance [5].

Here is a graphic of this situation from the WSJ [1]:

And another from the Asahi Shimbun [6], which postulates this water is leaking from the basement into outdoor drains. (I can not read Japanese, but it looks like these arrows have question marks ('?') on their labels).

An elderly worker ("in his 60s") was killed at the Fukushima Daiichi site, apparently of a heart attack after carrying heavy equipment. There have already been numerous injuries and health problems among workers here, disclosed in scattered TEPCO press releases (but not aggregated anywhere, to my knowledge). For example, here is one of the casualty reports, from March 24:

Casualty
-2 workers of cooperative firm were injured at the occurrence of the earthquake, and were transported to the hospital on March 11th.
-4 workers were injured and transported to the hospital after explosive sound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit 1on March 11th.
-Presence of 2 TEPCO employees at the site is not confirmed on March 11th.
-1 TEPCO employee who was not able to stand by his own holding left chest with his hand, was transported to the hospital by an ambulance on March 12th.
-1 subcontract worker at the key earthquake-proof building was unconscious and transported to the hospital by an ambulance on March 12th.
-The radiation exposure of 1 TEPCO employee, who was working inside the reactor building, exceeded 100mSv and he was transported to the hospital on March 12th.
-2 TEPCO employees felt bad during their operation in the central control rooms of Unit 1 and 2 while wearing full masks, and were transferred to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station for consultation with a medical advisor on March 13th.
-11 workers were injured and transported to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station etc. after explosive sound and white smoke were confirmed around the Unit 3. One of the workers was transported to the FUKUSHIMA Medical University Hospital on March 14th.
-At approximately 10 pm on March 22nd, 1 worker who had been working on setting up a temporary power panel in the common pool was injured and transported to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station where the industrial doctor is.
-At approximately 1 am on March 23rd, 1 worker who had been working on transporting a temporary power panel in the common pool was injured and transported to Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station where the industrial doctor is.

http://www.tepco.co.jp/en/press/corp-com/release/11032401-e.html

More updates on joint Japanese/American airborne monitoring [7]. On the left is measured external dose rates at 1 meter height (in micro-Sieverts per hour, μSv/hr); on the right is estimated ¹³⁷Cs deposition rates in Bq/m². (Click to enlarge)

You can compare with Chernobyl ¹³⁷Cs deposition, keeping in mind the scales are not the same, that 1 Ci/km² = 37 kBq/m², and that the Chernobyl map was made several years after the disaster.

MEXT monitoring seems to have detected several other isotopes away (>20 km) from the Fukushiam Daiichi site -- comparatively small amounts of ⁹⁵Nb, ^110mAg, and ¹⁴⁰La [8]. These are not volatile elements (or isotopes which are decay products of isotopes of volatile elements, as far as I can tell); I am not sure what mechanism distributed these isotopes, or how to interpret this. The academic radiological survey also detected ¹⁴⁰La, and inconclusively, ⁹⁹Mo and ¹⁴⁰Ba (parent of ¹⁴⁰La); however it did not quantify the amounts present.

[1] [WSJ] At Reactor, Damage Worse Than Feared

[2] [Telegraph] Nuclear meltdown at Fukushima plant

[3] [Reuters] Fukushima reactor has a hole, leading to leakage

[4] [NYT] Japanese Worker’s Death Not Linked to Radiation

[5] [Yomiuri Shimbun] http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/science/news/20110514-OYT1T00768.htm

[6] [Asahi Shimbun] http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0514/TKY201105140387.html

[7] [MEXT/DOE] Results of Airborne Monitoring

[8] [MEXT] Readings of dust sampling

Top Japan advisor resigns in protest over radiation protection for schools

2011-04-30T09:09:00.004-04:00

[Mainichi Shimbun] Cabinet nuclear advisor resigns in protest over government response to plant crisis

A nuclear advisor to the Cabinet has resigned in protest against government stopgap measures that deal with the ongoing nuclear crisis in Fukushima Prefecture.

Toshiso Kosako, 61, a University of Tokyo professor specializing in radiation safety, submitted a letter of resignation to the Prime Minister's Office on April 29.

...

In particular, Kosako protested against the government's decision to revise the maximum permissible level of radiation exposure among children up to 20 millisieverts per year, saying, "Should I approve that decision, I would no longer be a researcher. I would not want my children to be exposed to that amount of radiation."

Kosako revealed the Cabinet did not accept his advice that outdoor school activities for elementary and junior high school students near the crippled power station be restricted to prevent them from being exposed to over 1 millisievert of radiation per year.

"It is quite rare for nuclear power plant workers dealing with radioactive materials to be exposed to 20 millisieverts of radiation per year. I cannot allow infants and children to be exposed to such high levels of radiation from an academic as well as humanitarian point of view."

[Forbes] Criticism up on Japan govt handling of nuke crisis

In a tearful news conference, Kosako said he could not stay and allow the government to set what he called improper radiation limits of 20 millisieverts an hour for elementary schools in areas near the plant.

"I cannot allow this as a scholar," he said. "I feel the government response has been merely to bide time."

I am not a health physicist (i.e. radiation expert), but I think Professor Kosako is correct. 20 mSv/year (which is also the evacuation threshold) is not a dose to be subjected to without good cause. It is ten times background radiation; it is comparbale to a CT scan every year. Based on ICRP recommendations, 20 mSv (1 year) should be estimated to cause an excess fatal-cancer risk of 0.1% (general population -- for children this should be higher?):

[Google Books excerpt] Radiobiology for the radiologist By Eric J. Hall, Amato J. Giaccia

Admittedly there is signficiant uncertainty about such a prediction, as 20 mSv is a sufficiently low dose that emprical data does not exist (you can only extrapolate from known effects at much higher doses). The Health Physics Society, for instance, recommends against quantiative estimation below 50 mSv (5 rem). But 20 mSv is pretty close to 50 mSv; I should think there's a good chance there are substantial health risks at this dose rate, even if the linear extrapolation is an overestimate.

As a related issue (one I've been repeatedly bringing up), some people in yet-to-be-evacuated areas have already received doses of up to 20 mSv (in Namie, measured), or maybe 50 mSv (extrapolated). Actually these are outdoors doses, so actual exposures are attenuated (by maybe a half).

MIT publishes study on nuclear fuel cycles

2011-04-27T10:57:00.002-04:00

[MIT] The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

1-year cumulative dose in Fukushima prefecture

2011-04-27T01:46:00.006-04:00

[NHK] Science ministry releases Fukushima radiation map

Estimated cumulative dose over one year (in milliSieverts), starting from March 11, to someone spending 8 hours a day outdoors:

http://www.asahi.com/national/gallery_e/view_photo.html?national-pg/0426/TKY201104260415.jpg

What's the bold line (black) at 20 mSv mean? According to reports (e.g. this NYT article), 20 mSv over one year is the Japanese government's threshold for evacuation. So if I interpret correctly, that enclosed area is likely to be evacuated within a month or so, for a long period of time. (Since much of the dose comes from long-lived ¹³⁷Cs, this could be a very long time. A permanent-exclusion zone.) That's around 500 km² in there, which based on district-level population densities probably encloses (very roughly) around 50,000 people.

Some related data sources are

MEXT radiation monitoring data (measurements)
Independent academic radiation survey (with more isotopes)
NNSA monitoring data (mostly overflights)

More detailed isotope analysis from Iitate, from an academic source

2011-04-13T11:43:00.010-04:00

Somehow I've overlooked this! It is two weeks old; it is a survey by a team of academics, hosted on Kyoto University's Reactor Research Institute:

Interim Report on Radiation Survey in Iitate Village area conducted on March 28th and 29th

Soil analysis of 8 isotopes:

Note the ¹³⁷Cs levels on the order of ~1 MBq/m². This validates previous measurements (see MEXT page for their latest data). MEXT's daily ¹³⁷Cs readings in this area have been fluctuating by almost two orders of magnitude -- maybe (?) they are measuring in different locations, moving in and out of hot spots (note the units are different here, Bq/kg of soil):

("Island Soil" is a mistake for "Inland Soil"). As a common reference point: the Kyoto University report describes the flowerbed soil sample as averaging 21 kBq/kg ¹³⁷Cs, and 749 kBq/m² in terms of area. Maybe this suggests a conversion factor (it's consistent with the earlier media reports).

They also extrapolate back from soil samples to estimate past dose rates -- they infer up to 200 μSv/hour on March 15, or 5 mSv/day, in Magata (where they measured their highest fallout levels). Based on their calculation, the accumulated dose there would be around 50 mSv to date, going up to 95 mSv over 90 days . Note these are outdoor doses (standing above soil); they say being inside a wooden framed house would reduce this by 1/2.

These are the radiation dose equivalents of multiple CT scans. I would definitely not stick around here for extended periods -- and indeed, the Japanese government is planning evacuations for this area.

Note that this survey is geographically limited (map below). The highest dose rates there (colored red) are 18 - 20 μSv/hour; apparently they extend higher further south (into the "stay indoors" zone). As being reported by Kyodo News and others, the NSC estimates the accumulated dose in the 20 - 30 km ring to be <50 mSv, and over 100 mSv in some areas of the (evacuated) 20 km zone.

For comparison, here's the map from the NNSA overflights in approximately the same time period. Not clear to me if "R" is short for "roentgen", or if they've misabbreviated "rem".

A comment on N. American 131I milk contamination non-story

2011-04-12T21:44:00.004-04:00

Slightly-modified comment I wrote on Barry Brook's blog.

According to EL's EPA link [1], iodine-131 activities in milk were measured at 3.2 pCi/L in Arizona, 8.9 pCi/L in Arkansas, and 18 pCi/L in Hawaii; the EPA's MCL is 3 pCi/L [2], which was exceeded. But this MCL is for life-long exposure, whereas this ¹³¹I will decay in a few days; it is completely harmless, despite exceeding MCL. For example the FDA's derived intervention level for ¹³¹I in milk is 170 Bq/kg or 4,600 pCi/kg [2,3]; this is 250x higher than the highest activities detected.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson testified about this today: she says the same thing I'm saying: [4]

Early precipitation samples collected by EPA indicated low levels of radioactivity. Given the sampling results in other environmental media, EPA expected to find very low levels of radiation in precipitation samples. Similar findings are to be expected in the coming weeks as radioactive materials are dispersed through the air from Japan. While the levels in some of the rainwater exceed the applicable Maximum Contaminant Level (MCL) of 3 pCi/L for drinking water, it is important to note that the corresponding MCL for iodine-131 was calculated based on long-term chronic exposures over the course of a lifetime 70 years. The levels seen in rainwater are expected to be relatively short in duration and are not expected to present any threat to public health.

Results from samples of milk taken March 28, 2011 in Phoenix, Arizona and Los Angeles, California showed approximately 3 pCi/L of iodine-131, which is more than 1,500 times lower than the Derived Intervention Level set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. These types of findings are to be expected in the coming days and are far below levels of public health concern, including for infants and children. Iodine-131 has a very short half-life of approximately eight days, and the level detected in milk and milk products is, therefore, expected to drop relatively quickly. Additional information about the broader federal response can be found at: http://www.usa.gov/Japan2011.

Take the whole-body CEDE of ¹³¹I by ingestion. [5] (Disclaimer, I am not a health physicist). At a CEDE of 1.44*10^-8 Sv/Bq, drinking 1 L/day of MCL 3 pCi/L water gives you an accumulated dose of 40 μSv or 4 mrem (the base regulatory definition [6]) after 70 years. (This is, of course, nothing. You get 17,000 mrem (17 rem) of natural radiation in the same time period). If instead you have a one-shot ¹³¹I release, which gives you an initial ¹³¹I level of 3 pCi/L which then decays, you ingest a total of 1 L/day * 3 pCi/L * (8.0 days / ln(2)) = 34.7 pCi, for a total dose of 18.4 nSv or 1.84 μrem. This is ridiculously negligible. With the Hilo measurement, 18 pCi/L, this goes up to 110 nSv or 11 μrem.

Now, for contrast; in Fukushima prefecture dairy farms, milk ¹³¹I levels had been measured [7] up to 1,510 Bq/kg (L), or 40,810 pCi/L. Under the same assumptions as above, if you were to drink 1 L/day of this milk (which you couldn't been it was not sold), you could get a total dose of 250 μSv (25 mrem), over the few weeks it would take for the iodine to decay. Four orders of magnitude higher than in the US (but still not really harmful).

[1] http://epa.gov/japan2011/rert/radnet-sampling-data.html#milk

[2] http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/iodine/standards_regulations.html

[3] http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/ComplianceManuals/CompliancePolicyGuidanceManual/ucm074576

[4] http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0/16cf19b9b7f7014a85257870006dd410?OpenDocument

[5] http://researchcompliance.uc.edu/radsafety/isotope/isds-I131.html

[6] http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/index.cfm#Radionuclides

[7] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704021504576209854015156320.html

Fukushima rated INES level 7

2011-04-11T23:22:00.012-04:00

[Kyodo News] Japan raises nuke accident severity level to highest 7 from 5

My summary:

The rating is based on the amount of radiation released
Cumulative radiological release estimated at 370 PBq (NISA), 630 PBq (NSC)
NSC had earlier estimated rate of radiological release of 10 PBq/hour, over "several" hours
These activities are in terms of ¹³¹I "equivalent" (see INES User's Manual Appendix I)
Estimated cumulative doses of up to: >100 mSv (within 20 km exclusion zone), 50 mSv (20-30 km "stay indoors" zone), >1 mSv up to 60 km northwest, 40 km south-southwest
Unclear if this is outdoors dose (I assume it is)

Here's the NISA press release:

[NISA] INES Rating on the Events in Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Station by the Tohoku District - off the Pacific Ocean Earthquake

It gives these estimates of the radiological discharge:

For comparison, I've dug up a more comprehensive estimates for the discharge from the Chernobyl disaster. Keep in mind that the dispersal mechanisms are different -- there's no core fire at Fukushima.

http://titania.sourceoecd.org/vl=2140418/cl=16/nw=1/rpsv/~4292/v3n1/s1/p1l

Japan to extend evacuation zone within a month; using threshold of 20 mSv/year

2011-04-11T10:21:00.005-04:00

As I foretold, several towns outside of the current 20-km (30-km recommended) zone will now see long-term evacuations, due to potential hazards of accumulated radiation dose. These evacuations are not urgent and are not going into effect immediately, rather sometime within the next month. The new zone is not a circular radius around Fukushima Daiichi, but rather focused around areas of fallout in the northwest direction.

[NYT] Strong Aftershock as Japan Urges More Evacuations

Yukio Edano, the government’s chief cabinet secretary, said in the capital on Monday that the government would order parts of five villages and cities that are outside the current zone to prepare to evacuate. The fear is that these areas are being exposed to radiation equivalent to at least 20 millisieverts a year, he said, which could be harmful to human health over the long term. Evacuation orders will come within a month for Katsurao, Namie, Iitate and parts of Minamisoma and Kawamata, Mr. Edano said.

The threshold for evacuation is

...to reach the Japanese government’s threshold level for evacuations: radiation accumulating at a rate of at least 20 millisieverts per year.

Monitoring outside the current 20-km zone measured integrated doses up to 14.5 mSv (since March 23), and current dose rates up to 22.1 μSv/hour (24-hour average). These are probably underestimates since the start of monitoring was several days after the initial radiation release, apparently excluding the periods of higher dose rate (as indicated by aerial monitoring).

[MEXT] Readings of integrated Dose at Monitoring Post out of 20 Km Zone of Fukushima Dai-ichi NPP

Significantly, these are outdoor doses (probably higher than what people are actually exposed to). Further, there is significant spatial variation -- most area has much lower dose rates than the highest measured, although this suggests some hotspots might have higher, unmeasured doses.

(Update: according to the Nuclear Safety Commission of Japan, the total dose in the unevacuated 20-30km ring is estimated to have been around 50 mSv. It's unclear if this is the outdoor or indoor dose (in this zone, residents had been cautioned to stay indoors).

As the timescales indiciate, much of the dose comes from long-lived radioisotopes like Cs-137 (see MEXT dust sampling and my earlier comments). So it's conceivable that there will be areas which will remain closed (no permanent residents) for very long timescales -- decades.

US industry source: spent fuel pieces found outside, covered over with bulldozers

2011-04-08T13:26:00.013-04:00

According to a western nuclear industry executive, quoted on condition of anonymity:

Broken pieces of fuel rods have been found outside of Reactor No. 2, and are now being covered with bulldozers, he said. The pieces may be from rods in the spent-fuel pools that were flung out by hydrogen explosions.

[New York Times] Millions Without Power After Japan Aftershock

This is supported by the previously leaked NRC assessment, which stops short of identifying "very high dose rate material" as spent fuel pieces:

Fuel particulates may have been ejected from the pool (based on information of neutron emitters found up to 1 mile from the units, and very high dose rate material that had to be bulldozed over between Units 3 and 4. It is also possible the material could have come from Unit 3).

[NRC Reactor Safety Team] NRC threat assessment of Fukushima risks

There is an inconsistency: the executive says the fuel pieces were found outside Unit 2, while NRC says it was between Units 3 and 4. The Reactor Safety Team speculates the source was the spent fuel pool of either Unit 3 or 4. Unit 4 was the one with the full-core offload, where the entire core was in the storage pool for maintenance. According to the document, those assemblies were 105 days old at the time; and according to JAIF, there were a total of 1,331 assemblies in that pool.

(It's unclear to me whether NRC's "particulates" refers to dust-size particles, or whether the executive's "pieces" refers to larger fragments).

High-resolution damage photos are hosted on Cryptome:

http://cryptome.org/eyeball/daiichi-npp/daiichi-photos.htm

Here's one of them, of the area between Unit 4 (left) and Unit 3 (right) where the NRC says the "very high dose rate" material was found (click to see high-res version):

An idea about the faulty 134I reading

2011-04-04T03:34:00.032-04:00

There's been some speculation (e.g. at Arms Control Wonk) that the detection of short-lived fission products and activation products are evidence of intermittent nuclear criticalities. While it's been suggested that some isotope identifications are probably errors (computer confusion of one gamma-ray peak with another of very similar energy), one problem not resolved in the media is, how to explain the improbably high activities observed? For example, the erroneous measurement of 78 Curies/liter of iodine-134 in turbine hall puddles -- a fission product with a 53 minute half life. Yomiuri Shimbun reports TEPCO as concluding it was actually cobalt-56, or maybe cesium-134 (they backtracked twice). But such high activity levels of these longer-lived fission products would be even more confusing.

I suggest a simple explanation for this absurdity. Take a look again at this set of faulty measurements (leftmost column; I've appended this table at the end of this post). We see 2.9×10⁹ Bq/cm³ (or 78 Ci/L) ¹³⁴I, t_1/2 = 53 minutes. But look at the time! (Top rows, first page). This sample was obtained at 8:50, and measured (by gamma spectrometry I speculate) at 18:50 of the same day -- 10 hours later. Eleven ¹³⁴I half lives later.

So what's the meaning of the reported figure? To report the measured activity of ¹³⁴I, after 99.96% of it had decayed away, would be mostly meaningless. I speculate that TEPCO had, rather, inferred the original ¹³⁴I activity by taking the measured activity and working backwards. That is, compensated for 11.32 half-lives of decay by just multiplying them back in (a factor of 2,558x). This would be fine -- if the isotope really was ¹³⁴I.

But suppose the true contaminant was really a long-lived isotope, half-life of months (Co-56) or years (Cs-134). Then the decay would have been negligible; and the back-calculation would have introduced an error factor of 2,558x. The actual activity would then have been 3 orders of magnitude lower than the reported one, or about 1.13×10⁶ Bq/cm³ (31 mCi/L) of a long-lived isotope. Which would be consistent with the other measurements.

Update: Cyril R points out that tellurium-134, t_1/2 = 41.8 minutes, β-decays to ¹³⁴I, which would alter the calculations (by a small factor).

NNSA overflight fallout maps

2011-03-30T23:54:00.003-04:00

Here's a series of radiation dose rates at 1 meter height, as inferred by US airplane and helicopter overflights. It reveals the general shape of the fallout plume.

[US Department of Energy] The Situation in Japan (Updated 03/29/11)

Here's a couple of them.

IAEA criteria suggest Iitate be evacuated

2011-03-30T19:41:00.010-04:00

Folloiwing up on I-131 and Cs-137 fallout, a new assessment from the IAEA:

[IAEA] Fukushima Nuclear Accident Update Log | Updates of 30 March 2011

Based on measurements of I-131 and Cs-137 in soil, sampled from 18 to 26 March in 9 municipalities at distances of 25 to 58 km from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant, the total deposition of iodine-131 and cesium-137 has been calculated. The results indicate a pronounced spatial variability of the total deposition of iodine-131 and cesium-137. The average total deposition determined at these locations for iodine-131 range from 0.2 to 25 Megabecquerel per square metre and for cesium-137 from 0.02-3.7 Megabecquerel per square metre. The highest values were found in a relatively small area in the Northwest from the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant. First assessment indicates that one of the IAEA operational criteria for evacuation is exceeded in Iitate village. We advised the counterpart to carefully access the situation. They indicated that they are already assessing.

I posted a similar conclusion 3 days ago. This subject was already in the news 5 days ago, and the original data was available to the Japanese ministry MEXT 10 days ago (although they delayed its public release).

IAEA links to a copy of their "Criteria for Use in Preparedness and Response for a Nuclear or Radiological Emergency". My guess is that the criterion is in table 3, effective dose (E) of 100 mSv per annum, suggesting "temporary relocation".

AFP is reporting on this:

[AFP] IAEA worried about radiation in Japan village

The International Atomic Energy Agency said safe limits had been exceeded at Iitate village, 40 kilometres (25 miles) northwest of Fukushima, well outside the government-imposed 20 kilometre exclusion zone and the 30-kilometre "stay indoors" zone.

TEPCO shares down $32 billion

2011-03-29T23:47:00.005-04:00

Tokyo Electric Power Co. stock (Tokyo 9501) -- the utility which just lost four of its commercial reactors -- has had quite a month:

To date, shares of Japan's largest electric utility have lost 78% of their value since the March 11 earthquake, or $32 billion. Debt is also seen as at risk; ratings agencies have downgraded TEPCO [1], its debt is trading at "extremely discounted" prices [2], and the price of credit default swaps (insurance against default on debt) has gone up tenfold [2-3].

Besides the enormous losses and liabilities, one reason for shareholder fear is the serious possibility of nationalization [4-5]. Both sources suggest this would only hurt shareholders as opposed to bondholders (creditors), except in the scenario of a form of bankruptcy [5].

Liability is unclear. Nuclear operators are liable for full damages in accidents, but the Japanese government is liable for accidents caused by certain natural distasters [6]; it hasn't been determined which category this falls under. (Suppliers, e.g. General Electric, have no liability [6]). Legal experts suggest the GoJ will in fact shoulder the cost [6], although GoJ chief cabinet secretary Yukio Edano thinks this is "impossible" under the "social circumstances" [4]. At any rate, TEPCO is seeking $25 billion in (private sector) loans following the catastrophe, which it appears likely to get [7].

[1] [AFP] Ratings agencies downgrade Japanese nuclear plant operator

[2] [WSJ] Tepco Debt Worries Hit Financial Firms

[3] [WSJ MarketBeat] Yikes. Check out CDS on Tokyo Electric

[4] [WSJ] Speculation Grows on Tepco Takeover

[5] [FT Alphaville] Tepco and those nationalisation rumours

[6] [WSJ] Japanese Taxpayers Likely to Shoulder Nuclear Liability

[7] [WSJ] Plant Operator Seeks $25 Billion

MBq/m2 of 137Cs fallout in Iitate village?

2011-03-27T17:07:00.025-04:00

One of the most significant components of fallout is the gamma emitter Cesium-137 (¹³⁷Cs). As a comparatively volatile, high-yield fission product, it is one of the things you are most likely to detect after a major radiological release. Unlike noble gases (such as xenon and krypton), it does not diffuse away but settles down in soil, where it can be absorbed by plants. Unlike very-short-lived volatile FPs like Iodine-131, ¹³⁷Cs is stable enough (t_1/2 = 30.17 years) to be a long-term hazard (it is still sufficiently short-lived to be highly radioactive). ¹³⁷Cs contamination is one of the big reasons for post-Chernobyl exclusion zones still in effect today.

Oxford physicist Wade Allison, writing an opinion in the BBC, makes an assertion about Fukushima Daiichi ¹³⁷Cs fallout (whose accuracy I am disputing):

[BBC] Viewpoint: We should stop running away from radiation [Wade Allison]

So what of the radioactivity released at Fukushima? How does it compare with that at Chernobyl? Let's look at the measured count rates. The highest rate reported, at 1900 on 22 March, for any Japanese prefecture was 12 kBq per sq m (for the radioactive isotope of caesium, caesium-137).

A map of Chernobyl in the UN report shows regions shaded according to rate, up to 3,700 kBq per sq m - areas with less than 37 kBq per sq m are not shaded at all. In round terms, this suggests that the radioactive fallout at Fukushima is less than 1% of that at Chernobyl.

The measurements in the linked source are of (individually measured) ¹³¹I and ¹³⁷Cs deposition levels, measured in mega-Becquerels of activity per square kilometer of area (MBq/km²). The problem with Professor Allison's claim is that the figure he cites is from the Ibaraki prefecture, at a great distance from Fukushima Daiichi. According to the source, these Bq/km² measurements are not being performed in Fukushima prefecture (where Fukushima Daiichi plant, and the entire evacuation zone around it, is located). The prefecture-level fallout summaries exclude the prefecture where the fallout levels are certainly the highest, as well as the neighboring Miyagi prefecture (here's a map of Japanese prefectures).

I stress that I have no clue about the accuracy of the following reports, or if I understand them correctly, or what the reasonable implications are; I am in no way an expert on this subject, and it is certainly not my intention to contribute to the (already overwhelming) volume of poorly-informed panic-raising. But; at least two credible sources, the major newspaper the Asahi Shimbun and the American journal Science, estimate there are substantially higher ¹³⁷Cs fallout levels in Fukushima prefecture -- including outside of the mandatory evacuation zone. (Particularly in the village Iitate in the Fukushima prefecture, about 40 km from Fukushima Daiichi). These are measurements of soil samples, expressed in Bq/kg ¹³⁷Cs as opposed to Bq/m² (reflecting, I assume, a different measurement technique). You could only approximate the Bq/m² deposition rate from this figure, but the values being reported (3.26 MBq/m² and 8 MBq/m²) are amazingly high, and would constitute a long-term health hazard if accurate.

[Asahi Shimbun] Radiation from Fukushima exceeds Three Mile Island

Cesium-137 levels of 163,000 becquerels per kilogram of soil was detected in Iitate, Fukushima Prefecture, about 40 kilometers northwest of the Fukushima plant, on March 20. That was the highest figure in the prefecture.

According to Tetsuji Imanaka, an associate professor of nuclear engineering at the Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute, if the Iitate figure was converted to one square meter, the figure would be 3.26 million becquerels.

[Science] Japan Soil Measurements Surprisingly High

Based on a rough estimate, a person standing on soil with 163,000 Bq/kg of cesium-137 would receive about 150 millisieverts per year of radiation, says [Shih-Yew Chen of Argonne National Laboratory]. This is well above the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standard of 50 millisieverts per year for an evacuation. (Per day, it's 0.41 millisieverts, which is equivalent to four chest x-rays.) But Chen adds, "one point [of data] doesn't mean that much."

The hot spot is similar to levels found in some areas affected by the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident in the former Soviet Union. Assuming the radiation is no more than 2 centimeters deep, Chen calculates that 163,000 Bq/kg is roughly equivalent to 8 million Bq/m2. The highest cesium-137 levels in some villages near Chernobyl were 5 million Bq/m2.

The primary source is the Japanese ministry MEXT: Reading of environmental radioactivity level（English version)

I do not think that 150 mSv/year is an immediately hazardous dose rate, or that it is actually what Iitate residents are exposed to (dose levels indoors should be rather lower). But it is a chronically hazardous dose rate. 150 mSv/year is beyond linear no-threshold debates about "low level" radiation; it is (I understand) uncontroversially dangerous, that prolonged exposure would result in significantly increased cancer risk. For example the threshold described in the Health Physics Society position paper is 50 mSv in one year, or 100 mSv in a lifetime. According to a radiobiology textbook suggested by Google, the excess risk cancer mortality risk (which is lower than total cancer risk) would be, according to ICRP recommendations, around 0.5-1.0% from 150 mSv total dose (that is, one year of 150 mSv/year). Longer exposures would carry proportionally higher risks.

[Google Books excerpt] Radiobiology for the radiologist By Eric J. Hall, Amato J. Giaccia

For this reason, this level of ¹³⁷Cs fallout would (I understand) force a permanent evacuation, if it covered a large area. For example, it compares with Chernobyl closed zones: 3.26 MBq/m² and 8 MBq/m² are respectively 88 and 216 Ci/km², falling into the "Confiscated/Closed zone" on this map (of ¹³⁷Cs levels in 1996):

Notably, parts of Iitate are outside of the 30-km mandatory evacuation zone, although many residents appear to be spontaneously evacuating of their own accord.

Any experts care to comment?

Google Map shows location of Iitate village (A) relative to Fukushima Daiichi NPP (B). Dotted lines are prefectural borders; (A) and (B) are in Fukushima prefecture.

Excellent information source on Fukushima-Daiichi updates

2011-03-19T16:32:00.012-04:00

The IAEA site (which I've linked before) has become a lot more informative and detailed:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

This seems to be the best English-language summary currently available.

Here's a clarification possible due to IAEA's precise language. Seawater is, in fact, being injected into the reactor pressure vessels (i.e. the core, where the fuel is). Some other reporting was ambiguous as to whether it was the RPVs or the secondary containments.

(Update: actually the JAIF site clarifies that the water injection is in both the RPVs and the containment vessels, in units #1 and #3. No containment-vessel injection in #2 (maybe because of the suspected hole?))

Tokyo suburb sees elevated radiation levels; containment vessel thought breached; spent fuel pond fire extinguished

2011-03-15T03:36:00.019-04:00

[Telegraph] Japan earthquake: panic in Tokyo as radiation spreads

But it also reported that radiation levels in Saitama, just outside Tokyo, were 40 times usual levels, although still not harmful to health.

Winds from the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant were travelling in a south-westerly direction towards Tokyo, 155 miles away, at two to three metres per second.

[NYT] Japan Faces Potential Nuclear Disaster as Radiation Levels Rise

Tokyo Electric Power said Tuesday that after the explosion at the No. 2 reactor, pressure had dropped in the “suppression pool” — a section at the bottom of the reactor that converts steam to water and is part of the critical function of keeping the nuclear fuel protected. After that occurred, radiation levels outside No. 2 were reported to have risen sharply.

“We are on the brink. We are now facing the worst-case scenario,” said Hiroaki Koide, a senior reactor engineering specialist at the Research Reactor Institute of Kyoto University. “We can assume that the containment vessel at Reactor No. 2 is already breached. If there is heavy melting inside the reactor, large amounts of radiation will most definitely be released.”

Another executive said the chain of events at Daiichi suggested that it would be difficult to maintain emergency seawater cooling operations for an extended period if the containment vessel at one reactor had been compromised because radiation levels could threaten the health of workers nearby.

Unclear what the contents of the radioisotope plume are -- noble gases only, or iodine and cesium as well? I cannot find monitoring data on this (common Geiger counters do not distinguish them). (update: At least trace amounts of both detected).

Separately, a spent fuel pond exposed to the atmopshere caught fire -- but this has been put out:

http://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/tsunamiupdate01.html

Japanese authorities also today informed the IAEA at 04:50 CET that the spent fuel storage pond at the Unit 4 reactor of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is on fire and radioactivity is being released directly into the atmosphere.

Latest JAIF status report says 400 mSv/hr (milliSieverts) dose rate immediately adjacent to reactors; 8.2 milliSieverts/hr (8,200 μSv/hr) at site boundary. Most nuclear workers evacuated from the site.

http://www.jaif.or.jp/english/

(Update) But they've fallen since then:

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters that radiation levels at the Fukushima Daiichi complex, more than 200 km north of Tokyo, had fallen dramatically to 596.4 microsieverts per hour as of 0630 GMT.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/15/japan-quake-radiation-idUSTFD00668420110315

Wind shifting inland, first from NE towards Tokyo, then from E:

[Reuters] Wind near quake-hit Japan nuke plant to blow inland on Tuesday

Fuel completely uncovered at Fukushima-Daiichi #2: seawater injection fails as vents are stuck

2011-03-14T15:40:00.015-04:00

A third reactor has gone south:

The plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said late Monday that repeated efforts to inject seawater into the reactor had failed, causing water levels inside the reactor’s containment vessel to fall and exposing its fuel rods. After what at first appeared to be a successful bid to refill the vessel, water levels again dwindled, this time to critical levels, exposing the rods almost completely, company executives said.

Workers were having difficulty injecting seawater into the reactor because its vents — necessary to release pressure in the containment vessel by allowing radioactive steam to escape — had stopped working properly, they said.

The more time that passes with fuel rods uncovered by water and the pressure inside the containment vessel unvented, the greater the risk that the containment vessel will crack or explode, creating a potentially catastrophic release of radioactive material into the atmosphere...

[NYT] Emergency Cooling Effort Failing at Japanese Reactor, Deepening Crisis

New hydrogen explosion at Fukushima-Daiichi, this one at unit #3 [with damage photo]

2011-03-14T02:33:00.005-04:00

Video of new explosion:

[YouTube] Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant Reactor 3 explosion on March 14, 2011

Photo from a Japanese-language magazine (?) called "Gigazine" (click to enlarge):

[Gigazine] 福島第一原発3号機で水素爆発が発生、半径20km圏内の住民は屋内待避を

Satellite before/after photos of tsunami damage at Fukushima Daiichi NPP

2011-03-13T05:31:00.004-04:00

Photos from Google / DigitalGlobe / GeoEye, published by ABC (Australian news):

[ABC] Japan Earthquake: before and after

New photos of reactor building partial collapse

2011-03-12T21:54:00.012-05:00

Fukushuima-Daiichi #1 after explosion: [1]	GE Mark I BWR containment [2]

Here's the labeled cutaway again:

GE Mark I BWR containment [Magdi Ragheb, U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]

[1] [NYT] Japan Floods Nuclear Reactor Crippled by Quake in Effort to Avert Meltdown

[2] [NRC] Reactor Concepts Manual | Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) Systems

Where is the spent fuel now?

2011-03-12T13:10:00.011-05:00

The spent fuel pool is on the top floor of the reactor building (assuming this is the same layout):

GE Mark I BWR containment [Magdi Ragheb, U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]

(Newer photo!) Fukushuima-Daiichi #1, after: [NYT]

Fukushuima-Daiichi #1, before and after [NYT]

Has it collapsed with the rest of the building? Is it exposed? I haven't seen any official comment about this.

(News sources seem contradictory on what exactly collapsed: NY Times at one point says "destroyed the concrete structure surrounding the reactor", at another "destroyed the exterior walls of a crippled reactor". Which is it? (But then, they also say that GoJ and TEPCO "gave confusing accounts of the causes of the explosion and the damage it caused"...))

Massive hydrogen explosion destroys part of reactor building at Fukushima-Daiichi NPP

2011-03-12T05:53:00.050-05:00

"We've confirmed that the reactor container was not damaged. The explosion didn't occur inside the reactor container. As such there was no large amount of radiation leakage outside"

--Japan Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano [5]

[Russia Today/YouTube] Video of blast at Fukushima nuke plant, radiation leak reported

Developing news:

WNA expert Ian Hore-Lacy says this was "obviously an hydrogen explosion" [1]
TEPCO confirms 1.5 meters of fuel rod length had been exposed [2]
"The container housing the reactor was not seriously damaged in the explosion" says Japanese nuclear safety agency NISA [3]
But the concrete building collapsed [5] (doesn't this include the spent fuel pool?)
Radiation levels down sharply following explosion [8]; from peak 1,015 μSv/hr
Some civilians needed to be decontaminated [11]; so it is not only noble gas FPs being released
WHO reports public health risks appear low [12]
Containment will be flooded with borated seawater [5]
Containment seawater flooding has begun [6]
One worker is confirmed dead in crane accident [9]
Evacuation extended to 20 km radius [2]; cars being turned back at 60 km [3]
Nuclear "Hyper Rescue Team" being sent [4]
What started this all? IAEA: "Diesel generators... disabled by tsunami flooding" [7]

[1] [Guardian] Japan nuclear alert and earthquake - live coverage

[2] [WSJ] Japan Officials Probe Nuclear Plant Collapse

[3] [BBC] Huge blast at Japan nuclear power plant

[4] [Guardian] Fukushima nuclear plant blast puts Japan on high alert

[5] [Reuters] Japan to fill leaking nuke reactor with sea water

[6] [WSJ] Japan Fills Damaged Reactor With Seawater

[7] [IAEA] Japan Earthquake Update (2030 CET)

[8] [WSJ]Japan Tries Using Seawater to Cool Damaged Reactor

[9] [WNA] Battle to stabilise earthquake reactors

[10] [NHK/Wikipedia] Before and after image of Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant Unit 1

[11] [NHK] 3 patients exposed to radiation in Fukushima

[12] [Reuters] Health risk from Japan reactor seems quite low-WHO

Some links on the Fukushima Daiichi #1 crisis

2011-03-12T01:18:00.056-05:00

(This post is being updated without warning)

Very developing news:

Explosion heard in vicinity of one of the Fukushima NPPs [19]
Concrete walls collapse at NPP; unclear which building [20]
White smoke observered [21] (attached video is not of NPP)

(earlier content follows)

The biggest crisis supposedly involves Fukushima-Daiichi unit #1 [ref 1]. According to IAEA's CNPP database [ref 2], this is a General Electric BWR/3 reactor [table, ref 3] (refuting wikipedia [ref 4], which incorrectly thinks it is a BWR/4). Nuclear Tourist [ref 5] says this reactor uses a Mark I containment (pictured below). An NRC introduction I found, "Reactor Concepts Manual | Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) Systems" [ref 6], gives a basic overview of the coolant systems which are in the news (RCIC, ECCS). Some more information is in an article by Madgi Ragheb (UIUC) [ref. 7]

There are ongoing press releases from TEPCO with details [11].

Brave New Climate has a very active discussion thread [17]

Developing news:

Fuel failure suspected as cesium (volatile fission product) detected outside [8] [9]
Report that fuel rods were uncovered [10]; not corroborated
Containment building vented to atmosphere at Fukushima Daiichi #1 [8]; limited radiological release
Dose rate reached 1,000x background in control room (~65 μSv/hr), 8x background on-site outdoors (~0.5 μSv/hr) [14] (cf. radiation sources [15])
Reports claim Fukushima Daini nos. 1,2,4 control room temperatures exceed 100 °C [8][9]; probable mistranslation -- TEPCO says pressure suppression chambers exceeded 100 °C at exactly these reactors [12]
(in the Mark I containment systems, that means the large torus on the diagrams below. Not sure if these reactors have torii)
Some primary coolant pumps flooded with seawater, nonfunctional [9]
TEPCO reports trapped worker seriously injured [12]
TEPCO reports worker overirradiated (106.3 mSv = 10.63 rem) [13] (this is harmful but not acutely fatal)
TEPCO reports more worker injuries [13]: one broken bone, one unconscious, one with possible heart problem
Almost 51,000 evacuated over 10 km radius [16]

GE Mark I BWR containment [Magdi Ragheb, U. Illinois at Urbana-Champaign]

GE Mark I BWR containment [NRC]

[1] [WSJ] Nuclear Plants Release Radiation

[2] [IAEA] Country Nuclear Power Profiles 2010

[3] [IAEA CNPP] Reactors in Operation, 31 Dec. 2009

[4] [Wikipedia] List of boiling water reactors

[5] [Nuclear Tourist] Containment

[6] [NRC] Reactor Concepts Manual | Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) Systems

[7] [M. Ragheb] Containment Structures

[8] [BusinessWeek] Japan Reactor Rods May Have Started to Melt, Agency Says

[9] [Mainichi Shimbun] Meltdown feared at Fukushima nuclear plant after quake

[10] [Nikkei] Possible Meltdown At Tepco Reactor

[11] [TEPCO] Press Releases

[12] [TEPCO] Plant Status of Fukushima Daini Nuclear Power Station (as of 1PM March 12th)

[13] [TEPCO] Plant Status of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station (as of 1PM March 12th)

[14] [Washington Post] Japanese nuclear reactors in peril, radiation surges after earthquake, tsunami

[15] [ANS] Radiation Dose Chart

[16] [MSNBC] Japan braces for meltdown at nuclear plant

[17] [Brave New Climate] Discussion Thread – Japanese nuclear reactors and the 11 March 2011 earthquake

[18] [NYT] Radioactive Element Detected Near Nuclear Plant

[19] [CNN] Report: Explosion near Japanese nuclear plant

[20] [LA Times] Meltdown fears rise as walls crumble at Japan nuclear site

[21] [Telegraph] Japan earthquake: nuclear disaster feared after power plant 'explosion'

Emergency declared at Fukushima Daiichi NPP following large earthquake; other incidents

2011-03-11T07:28:00.045-05:00

This post is obsolete. It was a developing live-blog of events and is no longer accurate.

A compilation from various sources:

Massive (8.9) earthquake struck off Japan coast
11 reactors automatically shut down [1]
Emergency declared at Fukushima Daiichi NPP after failure of reactor cooling systems [1]
Specifically, backup generators failed [2]
No AC power at all at Fukushima Daiichi units #1,2,3 [7]; running on batteries [12]
"status of reactor water coolant injection could not be confirmed" for units #1,2 [8]
Nuclear agency says "...plant workers are currently scrambling to restore cooling water supply... no prospect for an immediate success" [4]
Evacuation order issued [4] at a 3 km radius [5] [11]
Separately, emergency core coolant system activated [3] in Fukushima Daini unit #1 following suspected coolant leak [9]
Separately, fire in turbine hall at Onagawa NPP [6]
Separately, unspecified coolant leak at another Onagawa unit [6]
No radiological releases recorded [all sources]

The NPP has 10 reactors: Fukushima Daiichi (Fukushima 1) has six units, and Fukushima Daini (Fukushima 2) has four. According to TEPCO, Fukushima Daiichi #4,5,6 were in an outage, and the other seven were shut down in the earthquake [11].

[1] [Guardian] Japan declares 'nuclear emergency' after quake

[2] [NEI Magazine] Japan initiates emergency protocol after earthquake

[3] [AFP/Kyodo] Fire breaks out at Japanese nuclear plant: Kyodo

[4] [AP] Japan to evacuate residents near nuke plant

[5] [Reuters] Japan trying to fix nuclear plant cooling problem

[6] [Washington Post] Japan issues emergency at nuke plant; no leak

[7] [TEPCO] Occurrence of a Specific Incident Stipulated in Article 10, Clause 1 of the Act on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness(Fukushima Daiichi)

[8] [TEPCO]Occurrence of a Specific Incident Stipulated in Article 15, Clause 1 of the Act on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness(Fukushima Daiichi)

[9] [TEPCO] Occurrence of a Specific Incident Stipulated in Article 10, Clause 1 of the Act on Special Measures Concerning Nuclear Emergency Preparedness(Fukushima Daini)

[10] [IAEA] Japan: Nuclear Power Reactors - Alphabetic

[11] [TEPCO] Impact to TEPCO's Facilities due to Miyagiken-Oki Earthquake (as of 10PM)

[12] [Bloomberg] Japan Orders Evacuation From Near Nuclear Plant After Quake

Catastrophic shallow 8.9 earthquake hits off Japan coast; 10 meter tsunami strikes

2011-03-11T02:36:00.033-05:00

[Mainichi Shimbun] 10-meter tsunami observed in area near Sendai in Miyagi Pref.

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A 10-meter tsunami was observed at Sendai port in Sendai, Miyagi Prefecture, in northeastern Japan, at around 3:55 p.m. after a powerful earthquake with a magnitude of 8.4 [upgraded to 8.9] rocked the region Friday, local police said.

[...]

A 7.3-meter tsunami was also observed in Soma port in Sendai and elsewhere, the [Japan Meteorological Agency] said, adding a 4.1-meter tsunami was observed in Kamaishi port in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan, the agency said.

Anyone know the status of the nuclear reactors on this coast? My rough reading is that they must have seen a direct strike. In particular Onagawa NPP is extremely close to the epicenter.

(Update) To answer my own question:

[Reuters] Fire at Tohoku Elec Onagawa nuclear plant -Kyodo

(Reuters) - A fire broke out at Tohoku Electric Power Co's (9506.T) Onagawa nuclear plant in northeastern Japan following Friday's major earthquake, Kyodo news agency said.

Also, at another NPP (!!!)

[Reuters] Japan: trying to fix nuclear plant cooling problem

(Reuters) - Japan said on Friday a cooling function at Tokyo Electric Power's (9501.T) Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant was not working after a major earthquake but that it was trying to get backup power for cooling.

The government has declared an emergency situation as a precaution but there was no radioactive leakage and no damage from the cooling problem was expected at this stage, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference.

(Note that the first article contradicts the second; the second was published an hour later so I assume the first was in fact wrong?)

Emergency diesel generators not working, reports NEI magazine (Nuclear Engineering International, not the lobby group Nuclear Energy Institute):

[NEI Magazine] Japan initiates emergency protocol after earthquake

-Utility TEPCO has requested the establishment of a nuclear emergency response programme for Fukushima Daiichi 1&3 and Fukushima Daini 1.

JAIF reported that Fukushima Daiichi 1, 2 and 3 automatically shut down; units 4, 5 and 6 were in maintenance outages. Fukushima Daini 1, 2, 3 and 4 automatically shut down.

JAIF has reported that TEPCO sent the emergency report because emergency diesel generators at the two sites are out of order. It said that there is no report that the radiation was detected out of the site. It said that an emergency headquarters has been set up and will issue information hourly.

One of the emergency coolant systems has been activated (not elaborated which):

[AFP] Fire breaks out at Japanese nuclear plant: Kyodo

Kyodo also reported that an emergency core-cooling unit had been activated at Fukushima nuclear plant, without giving further details.

40%-salinity brine may be not entirely safe to drink, reports NYT

2011-02-27T10:17:00.021-05:00

Talking about this front-page hackjob:

[New York Times] Regulation Lax as Gas Wells’ Tainted Water Hits Rivers

A much-repeated shock stat (even Rod Adams is repeating it) is this bit about deadly invisible radiation:

The level of radioactivity in the wastewater has sometimes been hundreds or even thousands of times the maximum allowed by the federal standard for drinking water. While people clearly do not drink drilling wastewater, the reason to use the drinking-water standard for comparison is that there is no comprehensive federal standard for what constitutes safe levels of radioactivity in drilling wastewater. [Specious nonsense. --uvdiv]

Drillers trucked at least half of this waste to public sewage treatment plants in Pennsylvania in 2008 and 2009, according to state officials. Some of it has been sent to other states, including New York and West Virginia.

Yet sewage treatment plant operators say they are far less capable of removing radioactive contaminants than most other toxic substances. Indeed, most of these facilities cannot remove enough of the radioactive material to meet federal drinking-water standards before discharging the wastewater into rivers, sometimes just miles upstream from drinking-water intake plants.

What's going on is simple. They are pulling up wastewater from fracking wells, which has dissolved minerals from surrounding shale rock, including radium. Radium is of course a trace mineral, and there's no selectivity for it in fracking fluids that I'm aware of (if there is, please correct me). So why is the concentration comparatively high? Easy: because it's a highly concentrated brine.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/02/27/us/natural-gas-documents-1.html#document/p406/a9941

(Page 406; this is from one of their leaked EPA documents. The slides start on page 391). So in pre-treatment wastewater we see up to 16,030 pCi/L of Ra-226, which is 3,000 times the EPA standard for drinking water. And we also see up to 428,000 ppm total dissolved solids, or 43% (!), mostly salt. It's not a stretch that these top concentrations occur in the sample samples, and for the same reason: you concentrate salt, you concentrate all the trace impurities in the salt.

Of course this wastewater is extremely dangerous to drink. It is 43% salt. It will kill you in minutes.

I'll repeat the stunningly stupid part where the Times tries to justify assessing 43% brine by drinking water standards:

While people clearly do not drink drilling wastewater, the reason to use the drinking-water standard for comparison is that there is no comprehensive federal standard for what constitutes safe levels of radioactivity in drilling wastewater

Indeed, there are no comprehensive federal standards for assessing the safety of drinking concentrated brine.

Some further thoughts.

Atomic Insights goes into the differences between tritium and radium, with the point of suggesting radium contamination is worse beacuse it is more toxic. I think this is mistaken. What matters is dose; and we're already normalizing for the toxicity differences. E.g. radium is an alpha emitter and has much longer biological residence (remains in bones for decades, compared to tritium being excreted with a 1-week half life). This is already accounted for in the EPA standards which every discussion seems to use as the reference point: tritium concentration standards are 4,000x higher than radium's, reflecting the relative toxicity. For tritium the level is the one derived from an effective dose limit of 4 mrem/year [1], which is currently defined [2] as 20,000 pCi/L (although this is not accurate); for Ra-226 and Ra-228 the limit is 5 pCi/L [1].

[1] http://water.epa.gov/drink/contaminants/index.cfm#Radionuclides

[2] http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/tritium-radiation-fs.html

According to [3], the 50-year CEDE (committed effetive dose equivalent) of Ra-226, by ingestion, is 4 mrem from 0.64 pCi/L drinking water, or 31 mrem at the 5 pCi/L regulatory level. (Note this is over 50 years, not an annual figure like tritium).

[3] http://www.ead.anl.gov/pub/doc/h-based_rad_air-dw_concns_plus_3.pdf

The numbers behind the greenwash at Lincoln Financial Field

2010-11-23T20:43:00.015-05:00

No commentary, just numbers.

In advance, here's my results:

	capacity	capacity factor	average output	% of total
Natural gas/"bio"diesel	7.6 MW	77%	5.84 MW	98.5%
Solar panels	0.5 MW	14.5%	0.073 MW	1.2%
Vertical wind turbines	0.36 MW	5%	0.018 MW	0.3%

[Philadelphia Inquirer] Eagles aim to turn Lincoln Financial Field into world's greenest stadium

In the parking lot - not where the fans park - the Eagles will build a cogeneration power plant that can run on biodiesel or natural gas.

The capacity of the plant will be 7.6 megawatts; the solar and wind together will add only .86 of a megawatt.

In short, natural gas.

[Philadelphia Eagles] Lincoln Financial Field Will Be Powered With On-Site, Renewable Energy By September 2011

The Eagles have contracted with Orlando FL-based SolarBlue, a renewable energy and energy conservation company, to install approximately 80 20-foot spiral-shaped wind turbines on the top rim of the stadium...

No source explicitly names these turbines, but I fairly sure they are these ones (S594 -- the 19.8-foot model):

http://www.helixwind.com/en/product.php

http://www.helixwind.com/en/S594.php

Under this assumption, 80*4.5 kW = 360 kW of wind turbines, so the remainder (860 kW - 360 kW = 500 kW) is the solar panels.

How much wind power? The most optimistic number is the manufacturer's advertised figure: 3,362 kWh/year per turbine. Out of 4.5 kW nameplate capacity, this is a pitiable 8.5% capacity factor -- but that's the optimistic figure. In the footnote it mentions the assumed conditions: 7 m/s annual average wind speed (15.7 mph). Wildly optimistic.

The Philadelphia Inquirer article reported the average sustained winds as 8 - 10.9 mph, or 3.6 - 4.9 m/s (I think these numbers are at weather station elevation, 10 meters (33 feet)):

National Weather Service statistics show that monthly average wind speeds at nearby Philadelphia International Airport ranged from 8 miles an hour in August to 10.9 miles an hour in March.

Likewise, NREL statistics put Philadelphia in the worst wind category, 0 - 5.6 m/s (0 - 12.5 mph) annual average at 50 meters (164 feet) above ground level.

NREL | Wind Maps

Compare with the manufacturers' power curves:

Even at the upper limit of Philly 50-meter winds (5.6 m/s average), the range of expected output is from only 2,000 kWh/year down to roughly zero. The highest figure corresponds to 5% capacity factor, though, seeing the ranges involved, this is still wildly optimistic.

2,000 kWh/year per turbine * 80 turbines = 160,000 kWh/year = 18 kW average. Hilariously, this costs $1.28 million at retail price.

On to solar. NREL maps say this place gets roughly 4.5 kWh/year/m^2 for optimally-oriented flat plate (i.e. not sun-following) solar panels. (This is under "PV Solar Radiation (Flat Plate, Facing South, Latitude Tilt)—Static Maps" > "Annual")

NREL | Solar Maps

Note that solar nameplate capacities are measured at 1 kW/m^2 irradiance (standard test conditions), so that assuming linear power/irradiance (very reasonable) 4.5 kWh/day/m^2 represents a capacity factor of 18.8%. Or close; this is the module's best-case DC output -- as NREL details, AC output would be around 0.77 of this (the "performance ratio"). So the capacity factor is around 14.5%.

(As a sanity check, the E.C. has a more sophisticated European map which does exactly the same calculation -- they assume a performance ratio of 0.75)

So in all: 14% * 500 kW = 614 kWh/year = 70 kW average output.

The surprisingly high capacity factor of the gas generator (why?) comes from this figure:

The Eagles and SolarBlue estimate that over the 20-year horizon, the on-site energy sources at Lincoln Financial Field will provide 1.039 billion kilowatt hours of electricity

[Philadelphia Eagles] Lincoln Financial Field Will Be Powered With On-Site, Renewable Energy By September 2011

Subtracting off the solar+wind generation, this leaves 1.024 billion kWh (basically all of it) to the 7.6 MW gas generator -- 77% capacity factor.

NREL | Wind Maps

NREL | Solar Maps

Mendacious propaganda in the Times

2010-11-08T15:31:00.004-05:00

His company, Invenergy, had a contract to sell power to a utility in Virginia, but state regulators rejected the deal, citing the recession and the lower prices of natural gas and other fossil fuels.

“The ratepayers of Virginia must be protected from costs for renewable energy that are unreasonably high,” the regulators said. Wind power would have increased the monthly bill of a typical residential customer by 0.2 percent.

[NYT] Cost of Green Power Makes Projects Tougher Sell

Enough wind to power a negligible fraction of Virginia would have cost the whole state a 0.2% increase. Slimy math indeed. (The amount of wind involved was only 201 MW nameplate capacity -- equal to maybe 40-60 MW output averaged).

With such clever statistics, the NYT readers were successfully bamboozled. Look at what they've been tricked into thinking:

When Natural gas prices skyrocket again, we will still be stuck using natural gas, we won't have the wind energy to switch over to because people don't want their energy prices to go up 0.2% ?

I keep seeing figures like .2 % and .7%. I assume then that on a 1,000$ electricity bill the horrendous discretionary pain would amount to either a total of 2 or 7 dollars. This is a tiny amount to ensure our energy future and independence.

Twenty to ninety cents per HUNDRED dollars is "too much to pass along to the ratepayers"??? Did these regulators say that when the price of fossil fuels doubled or tripled, generating utility rate increases of twenty to ninety DOLLARS per hundred?

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2010/11/08/science/earth/08fossil.html

This is how manipulative, propagnadistic shills like Matthew Wald and Tom Zeller do their dirty work.

Although, at least one reader ('js' from New York, #53) was clever enough to notice something was awry:

I have a hard time believing that, as the article says, a switch to wind would produce only a 0.2% increase in monthly bills -- how could this be when kilowatt hour tariffs for wind are 3x-4x the price of fossil fuels. Assuming the cost of energy is one-half of the total bill (transmission, distribution, etc being the other half), doesn't that mean consumer bills would more than double?

Annual CT scans for your health?

2010-11-04T13:14:00.006-04:00

A new NCI study on the benefits of X-ray computed tomography (CT),

[WSJ] CT Scans Aid Lung-Cancer Screening, Study Shows

[NYT] CT Scans Can Reduce Lung Cancer Deaths, Study Finds

...shows significant life extension from annual CT scans, albeit in a very high-risk group (heavy smokers age 55-74). Quoting the WSJ article:

After receiving three annual tests, study participants where then followed for up to five years with deaths from any documented cause, including lung cancer.

As of Oct. 20, a total of 354 deaths from lung cancer had occurred among participants in the CT arm of the study compared to 442 lung-cancer deaths among those in the X-ray group. The difference between the groups was a 20.3% reduction in lung-cancer deaths favoring the CT arm of the study.

The mechanism thought responsible is the simple one -- CT scans enable early detection, so better chances of treatment. Quoting the NYT article:

Lung cancer claims about 160,000 lives each year, more than the deaths from colorectal, breast, pancreatic and prostate cancers combined. In most patients, the disease is discovered too late for effective treatment, and 85 percent of those who are diagnosed with lung cancer die from it.

Until now, no screening method had proven to be effective at reducing mortality from the disease. Four randomized, controlled trials done during the 1970s showed that chest X-rays helped to catch cancers at an earlier stage, but had no effect on overall death rates. Since then, researchers have suggested that CT scans — which use coordinated X-rays to provide three-dimensional views of body tissue — could detect lung tumors at an even earlier stage than X-rays could, but no trial had shown conclusively that deaths could be averted.

Are preventative CT scans in the future? The helical CT chest scan in the study gives a radiation dose of about 8 mSv (0.8 rem) -- equal to more than a hundred chest x-rays. Annual CT scans would increase total radiation exposure from all sources by a factor of 3. The effects of low-dose radiation more than ever deserve serious research. We cannot continue to rely on untested, highly conservative risk estimates based on the LNT hypothesis; overestimating the hazards of radiation would needlessly impede useful medical imaging.

Some posts on this subject by Steve Packard (Depleted Cranium):

[Depleted Cranium] Scaremongering, Cancer and Medical Imaging

[Depleted Cranium] More Scaremongering About “Radiation Exposure” from Medical Imaging.

What if the US gave solar the same subsidies as coal?

2010-10-22T14:34:00.016-04:00

Today's post tries to quantify US subsidies for coal power.

This blog is basically a response to an eponymous 1BOG advertisement, which is so pathetic that I will not mention it again. Except to say that I will use the same source for US fossil fuel subsidies (the "$72 billion" figure), a dubious study by the "Environmental Law Institute" (ELI).

[ELI] Energy Subsidies Favor Fossil Fuels Over Renewables

I don't actually agree with much of this study, I think it is dishonest (for instance classifying oil company's benefits from the Foreign Tax Credit as a "fossil fuel subsidy", when it applies to all international companies), and needless to say heavily biased. But I'll use its results anyway.

Let's begin. The ELI figure is $72 billion in US fossil fuel subsidies over 2002-2008, an average of $10 billion per year in that period.

First thing to note is that almost none ELI's alleged subsidies deal with coal electricity (and with those that do the link is very dubious -- but I won't challenge this). Going through every item in their report, an upper bound of $9,961 million of it can be linked to coal electricity at all -- the rest being unambiguously oil/gas or some synthetic transport fuel.

The largest single item I've included is the "Low Income Housing Energy Assistance Program" (LIHEAP), at $6,358 million. Because there is no breakdown, I've attributed the entirety of it to coal electricity to be generous (I would assume it's less than half). Personally I think it's ridiculous to classify welfare to the needy as a "subsidy to fossil fuels", but it's in my source so I'll stick to it.
Next is a coal-injury subsidy, the "Black Lung Disability Trust Fund" ($1,035 million) and tax exemptions on its payments ($438 million, "Exclusion of Benefit Payments to Disabled Miners"). This is disability with should be paid by the liable coal companies; the trust fund shortfall is paid by taxpayers and therefore a subsidy.
Then there's "Characterizing Coal Royalty Payments as Capital Gains" ($986 million).
Small-ticket items make up the balance ($1,144 million).

In all, $9,961 million or less for coal subsidies over 2002-2008, or an average $1,423 million per year. For comparison, the EIA statistics account $854 million in "coal subsidies... to electricity generation" in 2007. (The table at the bottom).

To clarify the things that I did not count as coal-electricity subsidies include:

The entirety of the Foreign Tax Credit ($15,300), because US coal production is almost purely domestic (c.f. EIA data, production vs. imports). I assert almost all of fossil-fuel FTC benefits go to petroleum.
"Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels" ($14,097), because it is for transportation fuel, not electricity.

So I say, solar advocates: you want the same solar electricity subsidies as US coal gets? Um, okay, $1.4 billion a year it is then...

To compare with German solar power. The current subsidy for home installations is 0.3303 €/kWh (USD 46 c/kWh). With the same $1.4B/yr subsidies as coal, that could support... 353 MWe of average generation. (About 1.4-3.5 GWe of capacity, depending on location). Less than 1/1,000th of US electricity.

Not that by "same subsidies" we're using absolute amounts -- $1.4 billion for coal, $1.4 billion for solar. In the US coal generates almost 2,000x more electricity than solar (2010 YTD). In fact the coal subsidy averages out to less than 0.07 cents/kWh. (The EIA figure here is 0.044 c/kWh for FY2007).

Rough accounting of US coal electricity subsidies 2002-2008, based on ELI study

Entry	ELI's fossil fuel amount (million USD)	Amount for coal electricity
Tax Expenditures and Other Foregone Revenues
Foreign Tax Credit	$15,300	$0
Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels	$14,097	$0
Oil and Gas Exploration & Development Expensing	$7,100	$0
Oil and Gas Excess Percentage over Cost Depletion	$5,441	$0
Credit for Enhanced Oil Recovery Costs	$1,575	$0
Characterizing Coal Royalty Payments as Capital Gains	$986	$986
Exclusion of Benefit Payments to Disabled Miners	$438	$438
Reduced Government Take from Federal Oil and Gas Leasing	$7,049	$0
(remaining small items)	$2,468	$1,144
Grants and Other Direct Payments
Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program	$6,358	$6,358
Strategic Petroleum Reserve	$6,183	$0
Black Lung Disability Trust Fund	$1,035	$1,035
Highway Trust Fund	$1,035	$0
(remaining small items)	$78	$0
Total	$68,608	$9,961

(Yes, there is a $3.4 billion discrepancy between mine and ELI's total sum ($68.6 vs. $72 billion). Where is it? (I don't know))

How to spin a transmission line

2010-10-12T02:08:00.017-04:00

(Update: check out Rod Adams' take on this).

The cynical scam of the day is:

[Google] The wind cries transmission

[New York Times] Offshore Wind Power Line Wins Praise, and Backing

In a stunning victory for Green Utopia, the market today cast a decisive vote of confidence in wind power. Google, partnering with a Wall Street investment firm, invested $5 billion in an "Offshore Wind Power Line". That is, a $5 billion underwater transmission line which could potentially carry wind power. Although, as it happens, there are 0 offshore wind farms in the area.

By putting strong, secure transmission in place, the project removes a major barrier to scaling up offshore wind, an industry that despite its potential, only had its first federal lease signed last week and still has no operating projects in the U.S.

Enormous, risky gamble?

No. The ulterior motive is briefly alluded to in the Times' paragraph #13:

Yet even before any wind farms were built, the cable would channel existing supplies of electricity from southern Virginia, where it is cheap, to northern New Jersey, where it is costly, bypassing one of the most congested parts of the North American electric grid while lowering energy costs for northern customers.

An absolutely brilliant way to push a profitable transmission project through: spin it as a "wind power project". You don't need any actual wind farms, or any contracts for future wind farms, just the mere possibility of wind power being sent on these lines will win you fawning approval on the front page of the New York Times.

Incidentally here is that arbitrage quantified, the electricity price difference between the industry-friendly red state and New Jersey:

	Industrial	Commercial	Residential
New Jersey	12.72 c/kWh	15.20 c/kWh	16.86 c/kWh
Virginia	6.41 c/kWh	7.63 c/kWh	10.77 c/kWh

[EIA] Retail electricity prices by sector and state, June 2010

Yes, a very profitable transmission line it will be! And look who's just gobbling this stuff up:

Environmentalists who have been briefed on the plan were enthusiastic. Melinda Pierce, the deputy director for national campaigns at the Sierra Club, said she had campaigned against proposed transmission lines that would carry coal-fired energy around the country, but would favor this one, with its promise of tapping the potential of offshore wind.

(Virginia electricity is 51% coal, 39% nuclear. Fools!)

A few more scattered observations.

The transmission cost estimate is $5 billion for 6 GW capacity, 350 miles length. It will be built by 2021 "at earliest", 11 or more years in the future. I doubt the $5B figure includes financing costs over that time period.

Here's a few offshore wind purchase agreements in the region, for perspective:

Bluewater Wind	Delaware	13.9 c/kWh + 2.5%/year escalation	source
Cape Wind	Massachusetts	18.7 c/kWh + 3.5%/year escalation	source
Deepwater Wind	Rhode Island	24.4 c/kWh + 3.5%/year escalation	source

(The last one has a funny story: the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission originally rejected the 24.4 c/kWh contract, state law requiring them to protect consumers from "commercially unreasonable" costs. So the state legislature changed the law!)

(Note these are wholesale purchase costs, not retail costs to end users like the other table.)

The NYT articles quotes some interesting people defending this project. For one, Jon Wellinghoff, the lawyer in charge of FERC (seriously) who thinks baseload electricity is unnecessary (seriously).

Even more curiously, it quotes

By the time the Interior Department could issue permits for such a line, for example, the federal subsidy program for wind will have expired in 2012, said Willett M. Kempton, a professor at the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware and the author of several papers on offshore wind.

...

Mr. Kempton of the University of Delaware and Mr. Wellinghoff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the backbone would offer another plus: reducing one of wind power’s big problems, variability of output. “Along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard, we tend to have storm tracks that move along the coast and somewhat offshore,” Mr. Kempton said.

If storm winds were blowing on Friday off Virginia, they might be off Delaware by Saturday and off New Jersey by Sunday, he noted. Yet the long spine would ensure that the amount of energy coming ashore held roughly constant.

This is interesting for many reasons. For one because this quoted person recently accepted $150,000 from Google. For another because he chairs a committee in the AWEA, the US wind industry lobby.

But what's most interesting is his flat out lies about his own research. He asserts an integrated wind output that is "roughly constant":

If storm winds were blowing on Friday off Virginia, they might be off Delaware by Saturday and off New Jersey by Sunday, he noted. Yet the long spine would ensure that the amount of energy coming ashore held roughly constant.

I invite you to look at his own data -- his simulation of an integrated offshore wind grid on the entire Atlantic, Key West to Maine -- and decide for yourself whether its output looks "roughly constant".

[PNAS] Electric power from offshore wind via synoptic-scale interconnection

Kempton et. al.

(The bottom row is the sum of the outputs of the individual sites). Or for that that matter, whether it's disturbing that the entire 3,000-mile Atlantic coast integrated together is so unreliable that you get a whole week operating at 5% capacity.

I'll have more to say about this particular wind apologism in the near future.

Beware of sand

2010-10-07T12:23:00.009-04:00

Spotted in that British tabloid, the BBC.

[BBC] Hungarian chemical sludge spill reaches Danube

For those curious, there isn't a significant amount of real heavy metals either:

The Hungarian Academy of Science said sludge samples taken two days ago showed that the muck's heavy metal concentrations do "not come close" to levels considered dangerous to the environment. But the academy said Thursday it still considered the sludge dangerous — apparently due to its caustic characteristics.

[AP] Hungary: Toxic red sludge has reached the Danube

The only hazard is the extreme alkalinity which makes the sludge corrosive. Note the CaO and Na2O content; both decompose to extremely basic hydroxides, Ca(OH)2 and NaOH, when exposed to water. Apparently a deadly sea of lye sweeping away villages isn't newsworthy enough for BBC readers without some ludicrous cancer angle being invented.

Idiot Tyler Hamilton celebrates Ontario FIT "success"

2010-09-27T17:26:00.017-04:00

Our friend Tyler Hamilton of the Toronto Star has coughed up another story, and boy does it stink!

[Toronto Star] Hamilton: Ontario’s FIT program a success after one year

There's just too much absurdness in his deranged essay to do anything but shake your head and weep softly. You cannot simply approach it and argue point by point, because there are no points to grasp on to. How can you respond to the flailing insanity, such as where Tyler explains why it's OK that the Ontario government is paying twelve times more for solar power than retail rate:

Yes, we are paying 80.2 cents per kilowatt-hour for small rooftop solar, a rate often cited by critics to stir up anger over the program, but let’s keep it in perspective. Small solar only makes up 1 per cent of all FIT applications and its current contribution to Ontario’s overall system supply is about .08 per cent – too small to register on your bi-monthly bill.

It's so expensive, but don't worry because we're buying only a really tiny amount! Ow, our brain cells! Oh, and this is the article he titles "FIT program a success" -- ow! ow! ow!

But this maddening moron also knows how to pull the wool. Check out deviously-crafted sentence structure:

At the end of the day the private nuclear operator, Bruce Power, gets what it was contractually promised, as do the operators of natural gas-fired plants, which fetch an estimated 8 to 14 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Youza! Quite a juxtaposition there. Bruce Power gets what it is contractually promised, and that is

The contract with the Ontario Power Authority fixes the price for electricity produced at Bruce A at 6.3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

http://www.brucepower.com/pagecontentU12.aspx?navuid=5024&dtuid=2939

Quite a ways from the 13.5 c/kWh the province guarantees wind farms, no? Maybe... less than half?

Wind, which makes up about two-thirds of the approved FIT contracts, fetches 13.5 cents per kilowatt-hour under the FIT. Build a new nuclear plant today and wind is more than competitive, with the added bonus that it doesn’t carry any radioactive baggage.

Yeah, sure. More than competitive.

Of course, the most egregiously dishonest part of this greenwash isn't what Tyler wrote; it's what he omitted.

That Ontario is already wildly successful at "greening" its electricity, deriving 3/4ths of its electricity from clean sources. The unhyped, soft-spoken clean sources of nuclear and hydropower, energy sources so cheap they allow Ontario homes to buy electricity for just 6.5-7.5 c/kWh retail. That these wind-and-solar toys are not only ridiculous but redundant. Ontario's "green transition", it already happened; the nuclear-and-hydro success story is the real one. It is fifty times bigger than Ontario's "wind success story". It is a thousand times bigger than Ontario's "solar success story". It isn't worthy of a footnote in Tyler Hamilton's paper.

It's as if the wind-and-solar delusion is to pretend the easy and obvious engineering solutions don't exist. (Oh, and maybe that's just what it is. Here's a footnote in my paper. This is Tyler Hamilton, advocating for very high energy prices for their own sake -- because they force consumption cutbacks. Yes, really.)

Ontario electricity profile. Source: Ontario Energy Board

Ontario residential retail rates. Source: Ontario Energy Board

Does anyone know where the MIT "fuel cycles" report is?

2010-09-16T15:20:00.009-04:00

Supposedly it was released today, but all I can find is a one-chapter summary.

[MIT] MIT releases major report: The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle

Update: Yes, I see the press release now says the report isn't released in full, and won't be until later this year. This is a correction: it was not present in the original release. Likewise, where the link now reads "download summary report", it originally read only "download report". The discrepancy is now resolved.

Blythe is a blight

2010-09-15T21:02:00.010-04:00

The raw numbers behind the Blythe solar megaproject. You won't see these in any major newspaper.

$6 billion for 1,000 MWe nameplate.

The plant has a capacity of 1,000 megawatts. [...] The Blythe plant essentially groups four 250-MW plants, with the first slated to start generating electricity in 2013. The total pricetag is estimated at north of $6 billion.

[Reuters] World's largest solar plant wins key approval

Expected annual generation of 2,100 GWh.

[energy.ca.gov] Blythe Solar Power Project | Fact Sheet

2,100 GWh/year is the same as a constant 240 MW. $6 billion for the equivalent of 1/5th of an AP-1000, or 1/7th of an EPR. $25,000/kW average output. Capacity factor of 0.24.

A couple more short descriptions from the BLM and ca.gov.

(h/t to Willem Post on Meredith Angwin's blog who wrote a much more detailed article about this.)

IEA/OECD projected nuclear costs for 14 countries -- 2010 update

2010-09-14T14:51:00.005-04:00

Look what I found!

From IEA/OECD Projected Costs of Generating Electricity: 2010 Edition

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/59/50/45528378.pdf

This is from the 2010 update of the joint IEA/OECD study. The full report is actually not free and costs €70 (no, I don't have a copy), but this particular graph is available for free on the errata list I linked to.

Full report for purchase:

[IEA/OECD] Projected Costs of Generating Electricity -- 2010 Edition, 218 pages

The death of the Severn tidal barrage: numbers you won't see in any other news source

2010-09-05T22:48:00.009-04:00

I mean the simple fact that it could generate barely 1/5th its nameplate capacity. And the simple cost figure in $/W. Two numbers for some reason journalists rarely see fit to publish. Here's the first, buried in a PDF on the UK bureucracies' web site:

How much energy would a barrage produce?

It depends on where it would be located. The Cardiff-Weston scheme could have a generation capacity of some 8640 MW (Mega Watts) and an annual electricity output of 17 TWh/y (Tera Watt Hours per Year) or around 5% of UK annual electricity demand."

Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform | SEVERN TIDAL POWER Q&A

Peak generation is 8,640 MW.

Average generation is 1,940 MW (or 17 TWh/year). A 22% capacity factor.

Cost per watt? DIY only. The pricetag is £20 billion ($31 billion):

[Guardian] Severn green energy project loses government funding

$31 billion / 1.94 GW is $16 per watt.

The numbers make it clear: Severn barrage is a ridiculously intermittent and absurdly expensive power source. These two little numbers say more than pages of hand-waving journalistic verbiage.

22% c.f.

$16/W

Our first year with Steve's solar

2010-09-03T20:04:00.013-04:00

Today we'll be taking a look at our solar panels on Steve Johnson's house in Boulder. Our panels are the subject of a new IEEE Spectrum feature by Steve Johnson:

[IEEE Spectrum] My First Year With Solar

Wait a minute, you interrupt, why are we calling them "our" panels? Surely these are Steve's panels. Well they are now, dear readers, but let's not forget so soon that we bought them for him. They were our little $43,000 present to Steve. Enjoy your present, Steve!

Here is the fine print behind our gift (from the article):

Our panels cost $43,000
They have a capacity of 5.88 kW(e)
They generate about 8,500 kWh(e) per year

In redux: they cost $7.31 per watt nameplate. Their capacity factor is 16.5% (they average 973 W over the year); their cost per watt of actual generation is $44.30/W.

Clearly, this is a rather expensive gift, and not a very practical one. To illustrate this: it cost over ten times as much as a French nuclear reactor, like the new one at Flamanville, for the same amount of power:

[Bloomberg] EDF Said to Raise Flamanville Costs to $6.5 Billion, Delay Reactor Starts

That's $6.5 billion for 1,650 MW(e) nameplate. With a capacity factor of 90%, that's an average output of 1,485 MW(e), so $4.38/W. 1/10th the price of Steve's solar surprise.

	Cost	Electricity	Cost/Electricity output
Our solar panel	$43,000	8,524 kWh/year	$5.04 per (kWh per year) ($44.30 per W average)
Areva SA's nuclear reactor	$6.5 billion	13 billion kWh/year	$0.50 per (kWh per year) ($4.38 per W average)

This is puzzling. Why did we buy this silly and impractical gift for Steve? Also, who is 'we'? And why didn't 'we', whoever we are, get a bill? (Did you other we's remember getting a bill for this?)

Let's untangle the net. We are two sets of persons: the US taxpayers, and the Colorado utility ratepayers. (And if you're not, well then you're a different 'we' than we are.). Our money was taken by our governments -- the federal and the state -- and gifted to Steve as a present for his green-mindedness. Steve thinks he is saving money (he wrote a whole essay in Spectrum about how he "saved money" on solar panels). Perhaps I'm being brusque by asking for recognition for my gift, but Steve's not saving money -- he's taking it. Here's how much:

	Contribution	% Share
Xcel Energy	$26,000	60%
Internal Revenue Service	$5,100	12%
Steve	$11,900	28%
Total	$43,000

"I got a nice surprise from the federal government. As part of the big bank bailout of 2008, the government continued the 30 percent tax credit on solar photovoltaic installations and also eliminated the cap of $2000. So the cost of my system, which started at $43 000 list and was reduced to $17 000 after Xcel’s power rebates, was cut by another $5100 with the federal tax credit. The final system price: $11 900."

So, how did we split the bill?

Steve paid 28%, a little over one-quarter. He hit the jackpot. I wish my life was like this -- why can't I pay $12,000 towards a $43,000 car and call it even? My life is not fair.

The IRS paid 12%. This is federal tax revenue. It is an example of a direct subsidy.

Xcel paid 60%. Now this is a mysterious gift. Why would some energy company give $26,000 of their own money to some guy? They must be very nice people!

But wait a second -- look a bit closer, Xcel only gives these gifts to people living in Colorado. That's an odd gift. They must really like the people of Colorado! I can understand why. Coloradoans are nice people.

But back up -- when did Xcel start giving away free gifts? They're a utility! Their revenue is utility bills, and it's supposed to go to maintaining the power plants which their customers use. Here they're taking their customers' money and giving it away. It's the ratepayers -- the customers of Xcel electricity (in Colorado) -- which are footing the $26,000 rebate for Steve. Now they must be nice people.

But... as the cynical scrooges in my readership may have guessed, they aren't nice people after all. In fact their money was taken from them by an act of government. How you say? This is a different kind of subsidy, called an indirect subsidy. Denver isn't mailing tax checks to Steve. Instead, they forced Xcel -- the utility -- to raise their customers' bills and send their money to Steve. Well actually it's a bit less direct than that:

"Xcel’s Solar*Rewards Program was initiated to comply with Colorado's Amendment 37, approved by voters in 2004. The renewable energy standard (RES) component of Amendment 37 has since been amended and now requires Colorado’s investor-owned utilities, including Xcel Energy, to generate or purchase enough renewable energy to supply 20% of their retail electricity sales in Colorado by 2020. Of the electricity generated each year from eligible renewables, at least 4% must come from solar-electric technologies. At least one-half of the solar requirement must be generated by systems located at customers' facilities."

[DSIRE] Xcel Energy - Solar*Rewards Program

And that is how the subsidy works. A government mandate forces Xcel to get 4% of their electricity from solar panels. It doesn't force them to raise bills or send 5-figure checks to random suburban homeowners; that's just the inevitable consequence. Solar power is ten times more expensive than the leading brand, so, to build solar panels as mandated by the state, they must raise rates. But even with solar panels, central, utility-maintained plants are slightly less ridiculous than mounting individual systems on subsurban rooftops. And that's where the second clause comes in: "At least one-half of the solar requirement must be generated by systems located at customers' facilities". To comply with law, they need to get their customers to buy solar panels. And that is why they give away $26,000 rebates to people like Steve.

IEEE Spectrum's feature on the nuclear renaissance

2010-08-07T08:59:00.005-04:00

[IEEE Spectrum] Nuclear Reactor Renaissance

Among other surprisingly creative insights, you'll read

That EPRs have higher fuel burnups, which makes their fuel more radioactive and therefore a nuclear proliferation risk
That fast reactors, unlike LWRs, do not need "vast amounts" of water and hence can be situtated in areas where water is scarce
That one of the drawbacks of fast reactors is that their spent fuel is more radiaoctive and hence could be used to make radiological weapons

This is how journalists treat nuclear power in "the flagship publication of the IEEE".

"Some analysts have expressed doubts that the EPR is the world's safest reactor. Their main concern is the spent fuel: The reactor's higher burn-up rate makes the waste more radioactive, raising concerns about proliferation."

"Because it's a fast reactor, the HPM doesn't consume vast amounts of water, making it attractive for areas where water is scarce or unavailable."

"One of the claimed benefits of [the Toshiba 4S]—the fissioning of long-lived isotopes in the spent fuel—might actually be a weakness. Though the volume of waste product is reduced, the waste itself is much more radioactive and could conceivably be used to create dirty bombs."

Startup seeks to commercialize IFR

2010-06-24T22:00:00.036-04:00

As Dan Yurman reports, several nuclear engineers from US national labs have turned into entrepreneurs, seeking to turn a theoretical reactor into commercial reality. Their shiny new startup, Advanced Reactor Concepts LLC, is betting it all on a "disruptive new technology": a refinement of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) pioneered at Argonne National Lab (ANL).

In short, their design is: the original IFR design and fuel cycle, shrunk down to a ~100 MW small modular reactor (SMR), with breeding gain reduced to ~1 (isobreeder), and the steam turbine replaced with a cutting-edge, supercritical CO2 gas turbine.

At a recent conference of the American Nuclear Society (ANS), they've released a white paper on their design (and a shorter brochure).

What I took from it:

Credit CRIEPI. Pyroprocessing experiment at CRIEPI in Japan. Here, an electrorefiner has successfully (?) separated uranium and plutonium from a molten salt bath; pictured is the cadmium metal cathode with U and Pu adsorbed.

This is in short, a small, modular, sodium-cooled fast breeder reactor (SFR) of 50-100 MWe size
They intend to close the fuel cycle with the original Argonne pyroprocessing system, developed for the IFR. This, as described briefly by the CEA, is a "dry" (non-aqueous) fuel reprocessing cycle, based on electrochemistry in molten salt solvents. Here's a slideshow about recent progress in it by Japanese researchers.
To simplify fuel reprocessing, the reactor's fuel will be metallic (elemental -- 0 oxidation state) uranium and plutonium, like the original IFR design, unlike most reactors which use oxide fuels. This removes the oxide reduction step from reprocessing. The CEA published an accessible article on the tradeoffs between fuel types in SFRs.
They plan for widespread, international deployment. To keep the reactor useless for weapons, the initially-loaded fuel is enriched to no higher than 17% U-235. Further, the electrochemical separation of pyroproccesing cannot be used to isolate weapons-grade material -- it can only separate actinides as a group, plutonium together with extremely hot transuranics.
The fuel cycle is not only fully closed, but self-sustaining. The reactor is an isobreeder -- it converts enough U-238 to fissile fuel to burn through natural uranium entirely. (Ordinary LWRs use barely 1%.) This differs from the original IFR design, which has a large positive breeding ratio, creating more fissile material than it consumes. The breeding ratio is ~1.0.
However, reprocessing is not integral to the power plant (as in the IFR design). Quite the opposite -- ARC has a very heavy fuel loading and high burnup (80-100 GWd/ton heavy metal), allowing for an extraordinary, 20-year refuelling interval! In fact, the white paper asserts there will be no fuel handling capability whatsoever at the power plant (which they intend to situate underground, like a missile silo). I guess the idea is a sort of proflieration-resistant "nuclear battery", a black box without user-servicable components.
To my understanding (they don't clarify this), the reactor burns through all transurianic isotopes, leaving no long-lived TRU waste (well, excluding "< 0.1%" losses in the chemistry step). So this reactor produces no long-lived nuclear waste.
They intend to commercialize a closed-cycle gas turbine with supercritical CO2 as working fluid -- currently only a research idea. They predict have a modest improvement in thermodynamic efficiency (electricity generated / reactor heat output), 38% at 510°C/950°F (coolant at reactor outlet), compared to typically 33% for operating light-water reactors (LWRs). Kirk Sorensen wrote about S-CO2 cycles, in the context of liquid fluoride thorium reactors (LFTRs). Apparently they are extremely compact, because supercritical fluids are much denser than gases.
The founders are team of mostly nuclear engineers from US national labs. The CEO is an exception; Mr. Irfan Ali is an MBA with an MS in electrical engineering, and is also CEO of Lambda OpticalSystems, which does optical fiber networking (and apparently sells the world's only purely-optical switch). His bio is here.

ARC is hardly alone in trying to commercialize liquid-metal fast reactors. There's at least half a dozen such projects right now, some (unlike ARC) backed by giant, established nuclear suppliers. So far none of them are actually commercial, though they seem to be trying.

General Electric and Hitachi are collaborating on the PRISM reactor, which is a small (300 MWe), modular, metal-fuelled sodium-cooled fast reactor -- just like ARC, it seems. According to this GE slideshow, the are also planning to commercialize the IFR pyroprocessing cycle. Also according to that source, this design has been in existence in various forms since either 1981 or 1985 (it hasn't been built yet).
Toshiba is backing an extremely small (10 MWe), modular, metal-fuelled SFR (yet another one), the 4S. There is some hope one of them could be built in Alaska.
Russian state nuclear company Rosatom and the En+ Group are backing a lead-bismuth-cooled modular reactor, SVBR-100, which is derived from the power plant of the formidable Alfa-class nuclear submarine. Sovietologist found more on this, including technical specs on the IAEA website and some renderings on a Russian-language site.
Another small LFR is the SSTAR, this one nitride-fuelled. It is being sponsored by the US Deparment of Energy (and developed in their national labs), but has no commercial backing.
Among these giants, a tiny startup called Hyperion is backing their horse, a nitride-fuelled, lead cooled small reactor. (Thanks to Idaho Samizdat for hosting these slides, delivered at ANS 2009).

For more on liquid-metal fast reactors, also see Steven Kirsch's page, the WNA historical overview, a couple of articles from the CEA, the international Gen IV alliance, the Idaho National Lab pages.

What will Cameron-Clegg do for British Energy? Tories and Lib Dems polar opposites on nuclear

2010-05-13T09:08:00.013-04:00

(Update: Also see Dan Yurman's post on the same subject.)

In Britain's first coalition government in half a century, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have formed an ideologically incongruous new team:

[New York Times] Cameron Sets to Work After Taking Power in Britain

The question is, with such mismatched platforms, in which direction energy policy go? Here's a quick draft of the obvious differences.

The outgoing (liberal) Labour government is strongly pro-nuclear, with a major initative for building ten new power plants in the immediate future -- albeit with a clear statement of "no subsidies" [ibid.] (although financing interventions like this one seem to undermine the principle). Labour was in power at the start of the European Commission-wide carbon cap-and-trade in 2005, although it seems there was significant strife [2] on that act. Separately, they initiated the (catastrophically stupid) subsidy scheme for renewable powers -- imititating the debacles of Germany and Spain -- with feed in tariffs that at pay at least double the market price for wind power, and up to ten-times market for solar panels. This in addition to the renewable electricity standard Labour's official policy statement is here.

The (ingoing) coalition majority Conservatives are likewise strongly climate-change-oriented (in contrast to conservative platforms in other countries, e.g. the US). E.g. they propose strengthening the carbon price, moving in the direction of a carbon tax by instituting a price floor (their proposal is here). Says the FT analysis (which I think is correct), European Trading Scheme (ETS) price volatility -- approaching a factor of 5x in the extremes -- is a key failure of the EC carbon market, introducing major risk and deterring low-carbon investment. (This is a major pro-carbon-tax theme, for those following the economics debates.) Like Labour, they are pro-nuclear; and like Labour they have a clear policy against subsidies for new reactors (relying instead on a fair carbon price). And also like Labour they (!!) support subsidies to renewable power plants (though not nuclear). Hmm. They also support other financial interventions, e.g. a "Green Investment Bank" whose implications I don't really understand, and direct subsidies for residential energy efficiency. The Tories' official policy statement is here.

And the coalition minority Liberal Democrats are... well they're the centrists (I've read), but on this issue they are pretty far from center, in the direction of "brainless". In short, their policy statement: they are crazen anti-nuke Greens and are steeped in the mythology of renewables. (And take a look at their utterly riduculous concept of "community energy generation", "giving people control over the energy they use". Nuclear is wrong because it is "centralized". WTF?) Notably (says wikipedia), the Lib Dems are somewhat factionalized with both social liberal (what you see in the policy statement) and market liberal divisions. And Nick Clegg, party leader and new Deputy PM is apparently in the free-market faction. This distinction is of course orthogonal with the issues of nuclear power and wind power (which are technical not ideological), but perhaps the factions have different viewpoints here too? (I don't know.)

So it seems the real coalition question -- the division between Tories and Lib Dems which I believe many readers are interested in -- is the nuclear question. Which way will it go?

Since I began writing this entry yesterday, events have rapidly developed. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) appointment -- obviously a bellwhether -- is Chris Huhne, a key Liberal Democrat with the corresponding anti views. Concession? Compromise says Reuters; the Lib Dems have dropped opposition to nuclear expansion, in particular to the planning rules reform (the one that overrides local-government hurdles). But as the Telegraph's Rowena Mason analyses, it's unclear: a politically potent anti-nuke in a position of regulatory power over British nukes... suggests they could strangle the industry's expansion with regulatory hurdles and delays, while officially maintaining an neutral position (anyone following US nukes would agree this is scenario is highly credible.) WSJ quotes a Citigroup analyst as saying the appointment could undermine financial confidence in the new reactors (regulatory risk), making it harder to obtain funding. Officially, Huhne's position as clarified today is that Lib Dems will allow new nukes if they are built without subsidies. Hmm. Note this isn't a Conservative compromise, as the Conservatives have the same position -- as reiteraed in the join Conservative-Lib Dem statement (and it is preexisting). A more exotic agreement is that the Lib Dems will abstain from voting on the nuclear planning measure.

I'll quote the joint Cameron-Clegg statement in its entirety, as a focus point for comments:

“Liberal Democrats have long opposed any new nuclear construction. Conservatives, by contrast, are committed to allowing the replacement of existing nuclear power stations provided they are subject to the normal planning process for major projects (under a new national planning statement) and provided also that they receive no public subsidy. We have agreed a process that will allow Liberal Democrats to maintain their opposition to nuclear power while permitting the government to bring forward the national planning statement for ratification by Parliament so that new nuclear construction becomes possible.

This process will involve:
- the government completing the drafting of a national planning statement and putting it before Parliament;
- specific agreement that a Liberal Democrat spokesman will speak against the planning statement, but that Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain; and clarity that this will not be regarded as an issue of confidence.”

Also, here's a brief "10 questions" interview with Huhne.

How much subsidy for German solar power?

2010-04-26T17:29:00.009-04:00

Today I attempt to answer the question: how many solar panels are there in Germany, and how much tax money are they incinerating?

The calculation is straightforward. The federal government subsidies each solar installation with a rate that is fixed for 20 years. The rate depends on the year the installation was completed; here is a table of the historical subsidy rates:

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erneuerbare-Energien-Gesetz (translation; and another description here)

And here is historical data for solar installations in Germany (table 6, page 20):

http://www.erneuerbare-energien.de/inhalt/5996/42720/

(Unfortunately this data is deficient: it only gives the total solar capacities of all kinds, without the breakdown by installation size and rooftop vs. ground-mounted type, which receive different subsidy rates. Hence my results are expressed as ranges: the low ends represent the extreme of all solar capacity receiving the lowest possible subsidy rate, and vice versa.)

And here are a few data for specific photovoltaic plants, which show a typical capacity factor of 0.11 (consistent with theoretical predictions):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Germany

The computation goes as such: for each year, I multiply the capacity of new solar installations, by the subsidy rate which those installations receive.

	Cumulative installed (MWp)	New installed (MWp)	Subsidy rate (€ cent/kWh)	Annual subsidies (million €/year)	20-year committed subsidy (million €)	Cumulative committed subsidy (million €)
2004	1,074	635	45.7 -57.4	280 - 351	5,596 - 7,029	5,596 - 7,029
2005	1,980	906	43.4 - 54.53	379 - 476	7,583 - 9,527	13,179 - 16,557
2006	2,812	832	40.6 - 51.8	326 - 416	6,514 - 8,311	19,693 - 24,868
2007	3,977	1,165	37.96 - 49.21	426 - 553	8,528 - 11,056	28,222 - 35,924
2008	5,877	1,900	35.49 - 46.75	650 - 856	13,004 - 17,130	41,226 - 53,053
2009	8,877	3,000	31.94 - 43.01	924 - 1,244	18,479 - 24,883	59,704 - 77,937
Total				2,985 - 3,987	59,704 - 77,937

Hence the key results:

Installed capacity by the end of 2009 was about 8,900 MW. The average output of this capacity is an estimated 980 MW -- equivalent to a mid-size nuclear reactor, or ~1.3% of Germany's present electricity demand
Solar subsidies on present capacity add up to between €2.99 - €3.99 billion per year (or $3.97 - $5.31 billion/year, at current exchange rates)
The committed subsidies on present capacity, obligated to be paid out over the next 20 years, are between €59.7 - €77.9 billion ($79.5 - $103.8 billion)
Keeping in mind that these are future gifts: the net present value (NPV) of these subsidy guarantees, assuming a 5%/year discount rate, is between €38.3 - €50.0 billion ($51.0 - $66.6 billion) in today's dollars.

One hundred nuclear reactor wallcharts

2010-04-06T18:56:00.009-04:00

[NEI Magazine] Nuclear Engineering Wall Charts

Published since 1956, now available without charge as PDFs. There are 58 now, and they are still scanning the rest (105 in all)*. All of the reactors are antiques classics.

*Update (April 27): They're all done!

Trawsfynydd Magnox (1965). Primary coolant is CO2 gas

NEI magazine is still selling the physical wallcharts.

FOIA emails: NREL collaborated with the AWEA -- the US wind lobby -- in writing a government report countering a wind power critic

2010-03-21T11:38:00.019-04:00

Background

In March 2009, an economics professor from King Juan Carlos University in Madrid briefly made the news with his new academic paper. Gabriel Calzada's conclusions were in short critical of Spain's wind and solar power subsidy program, and the claims that they were "job creating". He found that, for one, there were around $770,000 in renewable subsidies paid per renewable-sector job (note this is renewable subsidies divided by renewable jobs, which isn't the same as direct subsidies to the jobs (important difference) -- the subsidies had other effects too); and for another, that that for each such "green job" there were about 2.2 jobs erased elsewhere.

[Bloomberg] Job Losses From Obama Green Stimulus Foreseen in Spanish Study

[Universidad Rey Juan Carlos] Study of the effects on employment of public aid to renewable energy sources> (PDF)

That's not the subject of today's news. This is: by August 2009, the US government had published a report countering the claims of Calzada's study:

NREL Response to the Report Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources from King Juan Carlos University (Spain) (PDF)

(NREL, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is a research division of the US Department of Energy.)

A report which, it turns out, was written with substantial collaboration with wind industry lobbyists. The Competitive Enterprise Institute recently obtained internal DoE emails, revealing this cooperation, under a Freedom of Information Act request:

[Washington Times] The wind-energy cover-up: The Obama administration works with lobbyists to distort reality

That (above article) is the politics of it. But here are the internal NREL communications obtained through the FOIA request:

[Pajamas Media] Released Emails Show Wind Lobby, Soros Group Helped with White House PR (PJM Exclusive — Read the Emails Here)

There is lots of chatter about AWEA, and between NREL operatives and the AWEA lobbyists; a few of them stand out as clear "smoking guns". (N.B. Eric Lantz and Suzanne Tegen are the authors of the NREL report; Elizabeth Salerno and Jessica Isaacs are AWEA lobbyists).

Here, one of the NREL study coauthors receives an attachment of documents about the Calzada study from an AWEA lobbyist:

Here, the same coauthor arranges a conference call with two AWEA lobbyists to discuss the unfinished report:

And here is the NREL coauthor sending her draft to the AWEA lobbyists for feedback, two months before publication:

Myth: Wind farm developments rely on Government subsidies

2010-03-08T21:09:00.012-05:00

The British wind industry seem to hold low opinions of the public's intelligence.

[BWEA] Facts on Wind: Top 7 wind farm myths dispelled

They attempt to claim they British wind farms don't rely on subsidies. This is a pretty difficult lie: fortunately the industry employs skilled experts. First, they weaselize that wind farms don't get construction subsidies, a clever qualifier presumably lost on most readers.

Myth: Wind farm developments rely on Government subsidies.

Fact: The planning and construction (emphasis mine) of UK wind farms is financed entirely with private capital, no matter what the costs are.

See how the "myth" and "fact" don't line up? That's weaselology. Wind farms rely on intensive government subsidies, subsidies which are doled out at electricity-generation time rather than construction time. (The reason is obvious: if the rewards weren't tied to actual electricity production, they could simply build wind farms, collect the checks, and never turn them on. This is exactly the fraud the Italian Mafia perpetrated, when the Italian subsidy scheme had such a loophole).

And then several sentences down -- in the small-font section of text -- the weasels get around to "acknowledging" the subsidies -- supposedly the "myth" they were in the process of "refuting":

Only when the wind farm is fully operational and starts delivering electricity to the grid, it qualifies for Renewable Energy Certificates (ROC’s) for each megawatt unit [sic] of electricity it produces.

With a nice, baroque euphemism for "subsidy": "Renewable Energy Certificate". It's not a subsidy... it's a "certificate".

Now they try to pretend these (mythical) subsides are very small:

According to a report by the Sustainable Development Commission, in 2007 the average cost of ROC’s was £9 per household, with only a part of this going to wind energy...

Using the simple trick of dividing up the tariffs by every household in the UK. They don't power every household in the UK of course -- in 2007 (the year quoted), wind power was just 1.3% of domestic electricity. Perhaps you could argue sports cars are cheap: if 1% of the population owns a sports car, and somehow manages to spread its costs over the remainder of the population, the result is surprisingly cheap Ferraris. I think that's an apt analogy for this equally regressive wealth redistribution scam. (And even more regressive when it's $50,000 home solar panels... but I digress.)

Here are the new tariff levels:

http://www.fitariffs.co.uk/eligible/levels/

For typical commercial turbines (500-1,500 kW), the subsidy is £ 94/MWh, or $141/MWh. This is 250% of the value of the electricity (in Britain):

[RWE] Electricity prices in the UK and in Central Eastern European markets

Uptime & downtime

2010-03-07T22:58:00.009-05:00

You would be surprised to hear that wind power advocates, long defending their intermittency problem, have turned to the counteroffensive, criticizing the reliability of baseload plants. There are some truly ludicrous claims here. Here's a sampling of the mendacity to which dishonest and deluded wind apologists are resorting to.

Here's Mark Jacobson and Mark Delucchi, in the infamous Scientific American propaganda piece:

[Scientific American] A path to sustainable energy by 2030

A new infrastructure must provide energy on demand at least as reliably as the existing infrastructure. WWS technologies generally suffer less downtime than traditional sources. The average U.S. coal plant is offline 12.5 percent of the year for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. Modern wind turbines have a down time of less than 2 percent on land and less than 5 percent at sea. Photovoltaic systems are also at less than 2 percent. Moreover, when an individual wind, solar or wave device is down, only a small fraction of production is affected; when a coal, nuclear or natural gas plant goes offline, a large chunk of generation is lost.

And the same in more detail in the accompanying paper, submitted to Energy Policy:

Evaluating the Feasibility of Meeting all Global Energy Needs with Wind, Water, and Solar Power

A WWS infrastructure offers new challenges but also new opportunities with respect to reliably meeting energy demands. On the positive side, WWS technologies generally suffer less downtime than current electric power technologies. For example, the average coal plant in the U.S. from 2000-2004 was down 6.5% of the year for unscheduled maintenance and 6.0% of the year for scheduled maintenance (North American Reliability Corporation, 2009), but modern wind turbines have a down time of only 0-2% over land and 0-5% over the ocean (Dong Energy, et al., 2006, p. 133). Similarly, solar-PV panels have a downtime of around 0-2%. Moreover, there is an important difference between outages of centralized power plants (coal, nuclear, natural gas) and outages of distributed plants (wind, solar, wave): when individual solar panels or wind turbines are down, only a small fraction of electrical production is affected, whereas when a centralized plant is down, a large fraction of the grid is affected.[9]

Here's the US wind industry's PR front, the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), in one of their propaganda "factsheets":

[AWEA] Wind Power -- Clean AND Reliable

Is wind less “reliable” than conventional generation?

No. Conventional resources occasionally shut down with no notice, and these “forced outages” require operating reserves. For example, a power system that has a 1000 megawatt (MW) nuclear or coal plant will typically keep 1000 MW of other generation available, to be ready to quickly supply electricity if a plant unexpectedly shuts down. The power system can still be operated perfectly reliably in this fashion. Thus, “reliability” is not specific to any single generation facility; rather it is measured on a system-wide basis. Because significant generation reserves are already required to accommodate unexpected changes in electricity supply and demand, in many regions large amounts of wind power can be added to the grid without increasing the total amount of reserves that are needed.

As noted by Jon Brekke, Vice President of Member Services for Great River Energy, a utility that operates in Minnesota and Wisconsin, “Wind energy is a valuable part of our diverse and growing energy portfolio. When partnered with other traditional generation resources, wind energy is an effective way to provide reliable, clean and affordable power to our member cooperatives. Geographic diversity of wind energy helps even out the variability of wind energy in the regional market. In addition, wind farms are typically made up of many individual turbines which reduce the impact of outages. For instance, there are 67 1.5 -MW turbines at our Trimont Wind Farm, so if one is down for maintenance, only 1.5% of the total wind farm's generating capacity is lost.”

They both propone the same claim: that a collection of many wind farms is more reliable than a collection of large baseload plants, because they are smaller and hence an individual outage has a smaller effect. When a single wind turbine goes down, it doesn't knock out 1,000,000 kW of grid power; the damage is lesser.

Additionally, the Jacobson and Delucchi rag claims that wind is "more reliable" than baseload because it has fewer maintenance outages (0-2% onshore, 0-5% offshore). This is a spectular example of cherry-picking: almost all wind outage is due to weather, not turbine maintenance.

As a focus point: here's some data I uncovered last year -- the generating statistics of wind in Germany:

[Capacity Factor (this blog)] Section 17

This is the sum of four major utilities' wind generation, for all of Germany over the month of January 2009. According to wikipedia statistics there could be at most 24 GW capacity, and according to the data there is at least 16 GW represented; I'm not sure exactly how much capacity was online at the time, but it's between 16-24 GW and probably towards the higher figure.

And for comparison, here's a similar capacity of US nuclear power -- 25.06 GW -- NRC's Region I, over the same time period (with the disclaimer that this performance is better than usual, as I will show shortly, because there were no refuelling outages):

This is the sum generation of the 26 NRC Region I reactors, according to power levels from NRC status data, and power capacities (net) from IAEA data. (That is: where a reactor is 1,000 MWe capacity, and recorded as running at 90% power level, I add 900 MWe). I've restricted to this 25 GW subset of the data to make a fair comparison with the 16-24 GW of wind capacity in the German data.

It's spectacular isn't it? First, when Mark Jacobson says wind energy has "less downtime" than traditional sources -- which as you can see is, um, not quite the case -- none of that obvious, obvious downtime you see on the graph counts. It doesn't count because it's not turbine downtime, but weather downtime. The "downtime" Jacobson boasts about is less than 5%, which is "less than traditional sources". Oy vey.

Now the really interesting lie, is that a collection of many wind farms is more reliable than a collection of large baseload plants, because they are smaller and hence an individual outage has a smaller effect.

You can see from the power graphs this is obviously false. But why is it false? One obvious reason is that the uptimes of wind power are much lower than other sources (contrary to the egregious misdirection of Jacobson et. al). But an even more crucial reason is the correlations between plants. Probabilistically, a grid of N power plants -- if they are entirely independent -- will never fail all at once, and their aggregate will act as a very reliable system. When plants go down, they go down at different times (with extremely high probability), and the rest of the system can be relied to back them up. As it happens, none of the four outages (A,B,C,D -- two unplanned) in the nuclear graph coincided, and more broadly they will never all fail at the same time, like wind turbines do. There's little or no correlation. (Actually I suspect it may be better than uncorrelated - they may be anticorrelated, when flexible-schedule maintenance between units can be intentionally staggered, or shifted forward or delayed to counteract conditions at other plants.) Handwavingly, with independent units, the variability (as standard deviation of the probability distribution) will tend to fall as 1/sqrt(N), according to the central limit theorem.

Whereas, for complete and utter contrast, wind power is massively correlated. It is correlated with diurnal cycles, it is correlated with seasonal patterns, it is correlated with weather fronts over thousands of miles of space... completely separate wind farms are all correlated together, rising and failing in synchrony. You clearly see this in action in the German national data -- 20,000 turbines, scattered hundreds of miles apart, all failing at the same time. That's the key: correlation. When my quoted wind advocates say

Moreover, when an individual wind, solar or wave device is down, only a small fraction of production is affected;

(Jacobson & Delucchi) or

In addition, wind farms are typically made up of many individual turbines which reduce the impact of outages. For instance, there are 67 1.5 -MW turbines at our Trimont Wind Farm, so if one is down for maintenance, only 1.5% of the total wind farm's generating capacity is lost.

(AWEA) -- they've failed to understand the whole point of wind intermittency: that they don't fail one a time, but all at once.

I mentioned that the nuclear performance is unusually good, because there are no refuelling outages included. The US nuclear capacity factor is around 91%, although on the short term it ranges from 80-100% (dark blue):

(Same NRC data, now for a 12-month period.) I've added a gray line for the total US electricity consumption for each month (arbitrarily normalized; source is EIA). The key feature missing the January data is refueling outages, which cluster in spring and fall. I'm pretty sure this is deliberate; they are in the months of lowest demand (according to the gray line); a sort of load following. You see dozens of unplanned outages over the year as well, but clearly they are totally uncorrelated, and the collection is infinitely more reliable than wind farms.

To see the individual outages, I've drawn a rudimentary graphic (I don't what it's called) of the 26 Region I reactors and their power levels. The timescale is the same, the year 2009:

So you see individual features like refueling episodes (~1 month, at ~2 year intervals (so half the reactors refuel in 2009), clustered at low seasonal demand), as well as very short outages which in total amount to little.

Update (3/16): for another example of this lie see Sovacool.

A conflict of interest

2010-03-03T21:54:00.033-05:00

Well, this is dubious. The Guardian just published a column defending the UK's upcoming solar electricity feed-in tariff. The article does not mention who the author is: the chairman of a giant British solar company! Of course he stands to benefit enormously from the solar subsidies. Yet the author's column only mentions obliquely that he "works in the industry", and not that's he's chairman of a £100 million firm. The editors failed to add any disclaimer before or after the article, something they've been regularly doing previously.

[Guardian] Solar panels are not fashion accessories

You have to navigate elsewhere, to his biography on another page, in order to realize who he is and why he's advocating what he does:

[Guardian] Jeremy Leggett

According to a recent article in The Independent, Leggett's Solarcentury is estimated to be worth £100 million (US $150 million):

[The Independent] Solarcentury considers listing

It's certainly not the case that the editors are unaware of the issue, as they've regularly added clear disclaimers of Leggett's interests before -- appended to the body of the article, where every reader must see them:

[Guardian] Investing in coal is dysfunctional

Jeremy Leggett, jeremyleggett.net, set up his company, Solarcentury, to fight climate change.

[Guardian] Society ignores the oil crunch at its peril

• Jeremy Leggett is the chairman of Solarcentury and SolarAid, and the convenor of the UK industry taskforce on peak oil and energy security

And particularly, the last time he discussed British solar tariffs (May 2009):

[Guardian] Green feed-in tariff needs to maximise solar power

• Jeremy Leggett is the executive chairman of Solarcentury

Newsbox

2010-03-02T12:22:00.019-05:00

On the subject of waves. Construction has started on the first ocean wave "power plant" in the US, where by "power plant" they mean something like a small generator:

[USA Today] Oregon is first U.S. site for a wave-power farm

[Ocean Power Technologies] Reedsport OPT Wave Park

$60 million was sunk into this 10-buoy plant, which has a capacity of only 1.5 MWe total, and is expected to generate less than a third of that. From the manufacturer's numbers: "4,140 MWh/year" is 470 kW average, or 30% capacity factor. A titanic $127/W average power. Not that that stops them from advertising the systems as "cost-effective". And see their miraculous cost numbers. Note how they get the costs on their chart from this DTI study (Ernst & Young) except wave power, for which they create their own. The DTI wave power estimate is 30 c/kWh; but the Oregon capital costs -- $40/W capacity -- exceed the DTI's assumed capital costs by a factor of ten.

(If $6 million seems a bit high for a "buoy", you should look at the size of the creatures. 145 feet high (mostly underwater)!)

The USA Today article is hardly lapdog journalism -- digging up criticsms of the exorbitant cost ("5-6 times wind power"), environmental impacts, effects on fisheries, and the awful track record of wave plants:

The world's first commercial wave farm opened in 2008 off the coast of Portugal, at the Aguçadoura Wave Park, Husing said. It ran into financial difficulties last year and was suspended indefinitely, according to a statement from Pelamis Wave Power of Scotland, part owner of the project.

A wave-power device from another company, Finavera Renewables of Canada, sank off Oregon's coast two years ago, Pellegrino said.

(Actually Aguçadoura didn't simply "run into financial difficulties"; it broke down after a few months of operation. Pity, they can no longer collect their 31 c/kWh subsidy.)

In other news: George Monbiot tears apart the UK's obscene (61 c/kWh) new solar subsidies, coming into effect April 2010:

[Guardian] Are we really going to let ourselves be duped into this solar panel rip-off?

So while the electricity you might generate from large wind turbines and hydro plants will earn you 4.5p per kilowatt hour, mini wind turbines get 34p, and solar panels 41p. In other words, the government acknowledges that micro wind and solar PV in the UK are between seven and nine times less cost-effective than the alternatives.

It expects this scheme to save 7m tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2020. Assuming – generously – that the rate of installation keeps accelerating, this suggests a saving of about 20m tonnes of CO2 by 2030. The estimated price by then is £8.6bn. This means it will cost about £430 to save one tonne of CO2.

Another Guardian columnist takes a positive view of this subsidy act, which is very surprising because he owns a solar company.

A US federal court has awarded a utility $57 million in damages, over the federal government's breach of contract on spent fuel:

[Seattle Times] Federal court awards damages to utility

(Why is the government responsible? Because it created the Nuclear Waste Fund under which it charges utilities $1/MWh -- $25 billion accumulated -- for the service of disposing of spent fuel, a service which it is not performing.) This could be just the tip of the iceberg; WSJ counts no fewer than 72 such lawsuits in progress, with sought damages totaling $50 billion. The White House, according to the article, is busy working on their nuclear waste problem: they are hiring more lawyers.

In California, at least $8.5 billion in power plant upgrades are being scheduled, as the state prepares to outlaw seawater cooling:

[Los Angeles Times] Power plants criticize proposal to block use of seawater for cooling machinery

Environmentalists emphasize the loss of millions, even billions, of fish larvae, eggs and other organisms from power plants. But fish employ a reproductive system a little like dandelions, scattering clouds of offspring, of which a tiny fraction will survive. So such figures are less eye-popping when compared with vaster numbers of larvae in the sea, most of which would die anyway.

Similar regulations are sprouting all over the country, for example at the Oyster Creek power plant.

Off topic: CNN can't be trusted with raw data

2010-02-28T16:01:00.005-05:00

Having spent some time yesterday going over ocean buoy data and observing tsunamis, I was surprised to hear about a "27 foot" tsunami seen in the open ocean. The source of this amazing rumor is, of all places, CNN:

[CNN] Transcript

JERAS: OK, so these are the detection which are out there in the Pacific Ocean. And you can see the flashing ones. These are active. These are the ones that we're watching. And there's Hawaii right from there. About 140 miles away from the Hawaiian island, we have a Bouie out there and this is what it is showing here. There you can see the line and notice this big drop down here. We have this big drop. This is about a nine-meter drop.

...

SANCHEZ: But what we can say is, tell me if I'm wrong, there is a tsunami there and it was just detected that it caused a 27-foot drop.

FRANKEL: Yeah, we recoded the tsunami passing that buoy, yes.

That's the essential part of the "reporting", the gist of which is that CNN claims a nine meter tsunami was detected in deep water. There's just so much wrong with this I don't know where to begin:

The wave is two orders of magnitude larger than an open-water tsunami
The wave is an order of magnitude shorter than a tsunami
The wave precedes the expected arrival time of the tsunami by two hours

NDBC Buoy 51407

(The tsunami arrival time was estimated no earlier than 11:05 HST (for Hilo), which is 21:05 UTC -- two hours later than this "tsunami". CNN didn't catch on.)

Now there is something very important about this data, the reason why I added the data "dots" to the graph (on top of the lines). Right when the "tsunami" occured, the reporting frequency increased from 15 minutes to 1 minute, as you see by the density of the data points. Clearly, this "tsunami" is an artifact of measurement. To speculate, I think it is most likely they are catching ordinary ocean swells (or the integral over several of them, over 1 minute). There must be some sort of averaging algorithm that removes this short-scale variation. Most of the data, such as the 1-minute data featured in yesterday's blog, does not have such spikes. And in fact this dataset, over the last hour I've graphed, is perfectly flat as well.

To conclude, here is the rest of this buoy's data for the evening (postdating the CNN report), and again with the very obvious outliers excised. In the final, adjusted version, you can see the actual tsunami arriving right on schedule, around 21:10 UTC (11:10 HST).

By the way, take a look at this amateur video of the tsunami at Hilo (where it is amplified by the bay). It causes a small river to suddenly reverse direction.

Off-topic -- following the Pacific tsunami, with buoys

2010-02-27T13:18:00.025-05:00

I hope everyone affected is aware of the massive tsunami in progress right now:

[NOAA] Pacific Tsunami Warning Center

I was curious as to how these giant waves are being tracked. Satellite-base radar can measure sea level over large areas simultaneously, but (says wikipedia) this data takes days to process. But there is a network of NOAA buoys anchored in the open ocean, which send over measurements in real time. In particular they send real-time sea levels. Normally they are measured at 15-minute intervals, but under tsunami "event" conditions this is accelerated to up to once every 15 seconds, which gives surprisingly rich profiles of the waves. I've graphed a few of them -- these are up-to-the-minute measurements (as of the time I'm writing this):

[NOAA] National Data Buoy Center

It seems you can resolve sea level variations to centimeter precision. And quite a lot of features there are. The biggest feature is the very large, slow tide variations, over timescales of hours. We can ignore this. The earthquake starts at 06:34 UTC (marked with a red line): almost immediately you see significant waves in the closest buoy. This is not the tsunami itself -- it was much too soon. I believe this is the direct shock wave of the earthquake, at the location of the buoy (waves travel much faster through rock than water). I even see a bit of this in the second buoy (at 07:00), which is thousands of miles away!

The tsunami itself looks like a wavetrain, with a huge solitary Gaussian wave in the front, and a mess of smaller, interfering waves following behind. These take hours to reach the buoys, and are highlighted in gray. According to wikipedia it should be moving at ~500 mph with wavelengths of hundreds of miles. This is consistent with these wave profiles: the Gaussian peaks have a full-peak width of about 18 minutes. The maximum amplitudes are about 15-25 cm.

Fuel cell hype

2010-02-25T01:42:00.030-05:00

I don't get it.

Manufacturer	Bloom Energy	Siemens

Fuel	Natural gas	Natural gas
Energy conversion	Electrochemical	Thermal
Tech	Solid oxide fuel cell	Combined-cycle gas turbine
Model	ES-5000	SGT5-8000H
Unit size	100 kWe	570 MWe (375 MWe Brayton + 195 MWe Rankine)
Thermodynamic efficiency	52%	60%
Cost/kW	$7,000-$8,000/kWe	$753/kWe

The combustion turbine figures are for a power plant in Bavaria, estimated at €450 million (total) for 800 MWe:

[Power-Technology.com] Irsching Siemens Gas Turbine, Germany

[Siemens] Gas Turbine SGT5-8000H

The fuel cell costs are being reported as $700,000 - $800,000 for a 100 kWe module:

[Los Angeles Times] Bloom Energy reveals new 'Bloom Box' fuel cell technology

[Forbes] The Economics of Bloom Energy's 'Breakthrough' Fuel Cell

[GreenTechMedia] Bloom Energy Revealed

[MarketWatch] Bloom Energy raises hopes - and questions

[Bloom Energy] ES-5000 Energy Server Data Sheet

(In a minor inconsitency, "GreenTechMedia" reports the efficiency as 48%, whereas Forbes says 50-55%. I use the figure derived from the datasheet numbers, as 52%.)

Update: Can anyone clarify the configuration of Irsching unit #5 (my gas turbine example)? I'm sure it's simple, but I can't reconcile the MW capacities between my two sources.

Tritiumlight vigil

2010-02-23T21:13:00.009-05:00

In anticipation of the act of economic violence likely to be committed tomorrow, this blog is observing a candlelight vigil. As the Vermont politicians are turning off the lights in their state, so this blog turns off its virtual lights. In place of ordinary candles, which have an unfortunate tendency to leak wax and start fires, the editor of the Capacity Factor raises these inextinguishable lights:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tritium_illumination

(Contents: 1.2 trillion picocuries tritium).

(Update: The vote was 26-4 to close VY. I've restored the white blog background for readability).

Vermont senate president seeks to close Yankee; vote next week

2010-02-17T13:51:00.025-05:00

Just a heads-up:

[VtDigger] Senate leadership announces push for shut down of Vermont Yankee in 2012

The Vermont Senate will vote next week on whether to authorize the continued operation of Vermont Yankee, the 38-year-old nuclear power plant in Vernon, through 2032.

...

The Senate has asked nuclear expert Arnie Gundersen to give a report to the Legislature next week on the 80 requirements “that the audit committee needed to meet in order to continue operation in a reliable fashion.”

I noticed one of Senate President Shumlin's key arguments for shuttering VY is that its electricity is too expensive:

The corporation is offering Vermont utilities a third of the power it provides to the state now at a rate of 6.1 cents per kilowatt hour, 50 percent more than the current rate;

Indeed, that is true. Shumlin cannot let his state pay so much as 6 c/kWh for clean electricity; he's out to save money for the ratepayers of Vermont. Why make them waste 6 c/kWh on expensive nuclear, when, as Shumlin advocates (see bill below), they can pay only 30 c/kWh for cheap solar power?

[2009 H. 446] An act relating to renewable energy and energy efficiency. (PDF)

[2009 H. 446] Rollcall Vote Detail

Fuel maneuvering in Vermont Yankee. Credit: Mark Wilson/Boston Globe

The $9 million turtle

2010-02-12T08:25:00.005-05:00

A California solar plant has been scaled back over a small population of desert tortoises:

BrightSource Energy on Thursday plans to submit a new design to regulators that shrinks the size of the 4,000-acre Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating Station by 12 percent, reducing the number of desert tortoises that must be relocated and avoiding an area of rare plants.

The portion of the project that would most affect wildlife will be cut by 23 percent. The power plant’s electricity generation would fall from 440 megawatts to 392 megawatts.

[...]

Surveys have found 25 desert tortoises on the site, which is about 45 miles south of Las Vegas.

[NYT] BrightSource Alters Solar Plant Plan to Address Concerns Over Desert Tortoise

A couple of observations. First, they weren't in danger of being killed, just relocated to another part of the desert. Second, this species is not even endangered.

By a back-of-the-envelope calculation, the 48 MWe capacity that was removed, at California rates and an assumption of 20% capacity factor and a 20-year lifespan, would have yielded electricity worth $227 million. Let's say this regulatory action represents a balanced assessments of tradeoff, rather than environmental absolutism. Then it represents a valuation that: the damage of moving one tortoise exceeds ($227M / 25) = $9 million.

German solar industry protesting subsidy cuts

2010-02-04T18:30:00.012-05:00

Apparently it's unfair that solar electricity will get a price up to nine times higher than market rates, thanks to mandated government price fixing. It's unfair because they currently get eleven times market rate, and the reduction will hurt the industry.

[WSJ] Solar Stocks Drop as Germany Proposes Solar Subsidy Cut

NEW YORK -- Shares of solar stocks dropped Wednesday after the German government said it's proposing a 15% cut on subsidies to solar-power providers.

The solar industry is actually planning protests over this:

[Bloomberg] German Solar Industry Protests Cuts Amid Merkel Policy Deadlock

Feb. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Germany’s solar industry called for countrywide protests against Environment Ministry plans to slash subsidies, amid mounting frustration at the uncertainty caused by government deadlock over how far and fast to make the cuts.

As many as 10,000 workers from factories that make solar- power panels and their control systems will tomorrow protest Environment Minister Norbert Roettgen’s planned cuts, the BSW industry lobby group said. Companies including Solarworld AG, Q- Cells SE and First Solar Inc. will participate, it said.

“The 60,000 people working in the growing market for photovoltaic panels demand that the government put a stop to the clear cuts for solar support,” Carsten Koernig, head of the Berlin-based BSW, said in an e-mailed statement.

The details are this: as of 2010, the German government mandates a subsidy of €305/MWh and €422/MWh for, respectively, ground-sited and rooftop solar panels. This compares with with the market rates for ordinary power plants, which are €39/MWh for baseload (the majority of electricity), and €50/MWh for peaking power, averaged over 2009. (Well the first 3/4th of 2009 - 4Q data is not yet available.) Nuclear plants are an exception as always: they will effectively get less than market rates, under proposed legislation which will Robin Hood away most nuclear power revenue to wind & solar corporations.

Sources:

[Solarbuzz] Fast Facts / Germany

[RWE] German Electricity Prices

Summary graph:

I should clarify two points.

First, the market rate for electricity is not the same as what end-users buy, but what power plants sell. For instance, 2007 retail rates averaged $84/MWh and 212/MWh (about €61/MWh and €154/MWh), for industrial and residential users. So industry pays nearly market rates, but households pay considerably more for distribution. (I don't have the exact breakdown -- here's the American version, but it is very different.) This is a point on which solar advocates often prevaricate - they almost always compare with household retail rates, rather that an apples-to-apples comparison with other power plants. (Of course the the exact same distribution costs apply to solar panels as real power plants, because are they completely tied in to the grid both buying and selling; actually the true costs should be much higher because of their intermittency, which requires 100% backup reserve.)

[IEA] Key World Energy Statistics 2007

Second, the solar subsidies are not constant: I've extrapolated the current rates from the initial rates (in 2004) and the reduction rate (5% and 6.5% annual, respectively, rooftop and ground). The rates were actually even higher a few years ago - €574/MWh and €475/MWh.

This second point is also a point of pervarication for solar shills. For instance, Joe Romm screeches that the subsidy cuts are 44% (when they are 15%). In fact, as the Bloomberg source clarifies, this is the sum of the subsidy cut with the accumulated 5% reductions (proscribed by the original law) since 2004. It is "true" that after the 15% cut, obscene solar subsidies will be 44% lower than in 2004, but clearly this isn't an honest choice of numbers.

Although it's too early to celebrate, I hold out hope that these thieves will meet their reckoning the same way they did in Spain. You recall that similar subsidy restrictions there were enough to completely destroy Spain's solar market last year, although not before they burned away $26 billion.

Bill Gates on energy

2010-02-03T18:44:00.003-05:00

If you haven't found out already, programmer philantropist Bill Gates has taken up writing a blog, The Gates Notes. Among other trivialities like his $10 billion donation to vaccine research, he has become very interested in energy and climate change. Here's on of his essays I particularly like:

[Bill Gates] Why We Need Innovation, Not Just Insulation

One of the reasons I bring this up is that I hear a lot of climate change experts focus totally on 2020 or talk about how great it is that there is so much low hanging fruit that will make a difference.

This mostly focuses on saving a little bit of energy, which by itself is simply not enough. The need to get close to zero emissions in key sectors almost never gets mentioned. The danger is people will think they just need to do a little bit and things will be fine.

If CO2 reduction is important, we need to make it clear to people what really matters – getting close to zero.

With that kind of clarity, people will understand the need for the goal to be zero and begin to grasp the scope and scale of innovation that is needed.

(You know it's good because it drove Joe Romm into hysterics.)

Gates also recommends a few energy books (thoughts?); he is particularly interested by Vaclav Smil of Univ. of Manitoba, and also David MacKay's book.

Dealing with nuclear waste - the American way

2010-02-01T23:26:00.003-05:00

[Wall Street Journal] DOJ Wants More Lawyers For Nuclear-Waste Litigation

The president's budget proposal, released Monday, seeks an additional $11.4 million for the Justice Department to devote to nuclear-waste litigation. That increase would more than double the money the department has allocated for the government's legal defense.

The department said nuclear power utilities have filed 72 cases that seek in excess of $50 billion in damages for the government's delay in accepting spent nuclear fuel. The government was required by law to begin collecting the waste by January 1998.

"Defending theses cases will involve intensive resources due to their complexity and high financial stakes," the Justice Department said in a written summary of its budget proposal. "Without the requested additional funding, the government's posture will be severely weakened potentially leading to massive Treasury losses."

(Under current policy, nuclear operators pay a fee of 0.1 c/kWh for the federal nuclear waste fund, which adds up to $25 billion so far. The WSJ article should have explained this: it's the utilities' money, which is why they are suing.)

Obama administration dismantling all nuclear waste options ahead of expert panel

2010-02-01T13:18:00.015-05:00

On the NEI blog, Brian Mays makes a point about the White House's nuclear strategies:

How can this review be "thorough" or "comprehensive" when it already excludes possibilities before it has even begun?

http://neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com/2010/01/blue-ribbon-commission-on-americas.html?showComment=1264804130187#c1754247658951101459

I went through the news archives to figure out Obama's nuclear policies. (They're not obvious: he is very political about them, and further he often ignores his own energy advisor, so you can't take Chu's (very open) views as a barometer of administration policy). I think Brian is more correct than he realizes. The Administration has systematically demolished the foundations of the nuclear waste strategies: geologic storage, spent fuel reprocessing, and fast-spectrum reactors.

Reprocessing

I said Obama regularly ignores his Nobelist aide; here's a clear example. Steven Chu strongly advocates reprocessing (recycling of spent fuel for reuse in nuclear reactors; separation and partitioning of non-fuel waste components to reduce their volume). Here for instance is an interview with NEI, alongside John MCCain:

(March 6, 2009)

Chu: I support reprocessing research. I think it’s an important part of the nuclear - [interrupted by McCain]

[...]

Chu: The interim storage of waste – the solidification of waste – is something we can do today. The NRC has said that it can be done safely. That buys us time to formulate a comprehensive plan in how we deal with the nuclear waste. The recycling which I think in the long term is very beneficial - it has the potential for greatly reducing the amount of waste - is something that we have to press on. But the time scale of the recycling development is different - we have a couple of decades quite frankly in my opinion to figure that one out.

[NEI Nuclear Notes] John McCain and Steven Chu on Yucca Mountain

Whereas the White House opposes commercial reprocessing and is dismantling its research. You won't find an official policy in an Obama speech (way too mercurial for that); you will have to browse the Federal Register to figure out what's going on.

(June 29, 2009)

SUMMARY: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE or Department) has decided to cancel the preparation of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (DOE/EIS-0396). [...] Via this notice, DOE announces that it has decided to cancel the GNEP PEIS because it is no longer pursuing domestic commercial reprocessing, which was the primary focus of the prior Administration's domestic GNEP program.

[Federal Register] Notice of Cancellation of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS)

I'll ask the readers whether this is anti-nuclear politics, whether it is partisan politics (because GNEP was a Bush proposal), or whether it is part of the larger "non-proliferation" foreign policy. That third political motivation is that some diplomats view reprocessing as linked with nuclear weapons, therefore the US pushes other countries to ban reprocessing, which the US itself forgoes to appear consistent (foreign policy). As recent examples, the recent "123 agreement" with the United Arab Emirates:

(May 21, 2009)

President Obama has approved an agreement to help build a nuclear energy program in the United Arab Emirates, officials said Wednesday.

The agreement was reached by the administration of President George W. Bush and left for Obama to shepherd through Congress. The new president's team portrays it as a way to prevent Middle Eastern countries from building nuclear weapons under the guise of energy programs.

Under the agreement, the UAE agreed not to enrich uranium to run its nuclear plants, or to reprocess spent fuel, steps that could be used to create material for a bomb. In exchange, the UAE will be allowed to buy fuel and other materials for its nuclear power plants from U.S. businesses.

[Washington Post] U.S. to Help UAE Build Energy Program

Or the policy towards South Korea, which is seeking to develop pyroprocessing (!), but which the US is obstructing:

(February 2, 2010)

The U.S. is unlikely to allow South Korea to reprocess spent nuclear fuel that is piling up in secure storage facilities until a satisfactory solution to the North Korean nuclear problem is found, a report said this week. The matter is a key issue in negotiations between Seoul and Washington on the revision of the Korea-U.S. Atomic Energy Agreement, which expires in 2014.

Fred McGoldrick, a former chief U.S. representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, published the report on prospects for Seoul-Washington negotiations about nuclear energy at the request of the Center for U.S.-Korea Policy of the Asia Foundation in the U.S. "It is difficult to imagine that the United States would agree to South Korean pyroprocessing until the North Korean nuclear issue reaches a satisfactory resolution," he wrote.

[Chosun Ilbo] U.S. 'Unlikely to Let S.Korea Reprocess Nuclear Fuel'

Sadly, our nuclear ludditism has global reach.

Fast reactors

Just two weeks ago, the White House' Office of Management and Budget (OMB) barred the national labs from researching fast reactors:

(January 15, 2010)

The White House has proposed barring Energy Department research on fast reactor recycling of nuclear waste and technical support for licensing of small, modular light-water reactors, drawing protests from Energy Secretary Steven Chu that such prohibitions will have broad adverse effects, including hurting the U.S. nuclear industry's renaissance; crimping U.S. ability to influence other countries' fast reactor designs to address proliferation concerns; and taking away nuclear waste disposal options that might be considered by the administration's planned blue-ribbon panel on alternatives to the Yucca Mountain repository.

...

In the letter, obtained by sister publication The Energy Daily, Chu said he "strongly disagree[s] with the policy direction [proposed by OMB] concerning allowable nuclear energy R&D activities."

[Defense Daily, mirrored on Free Republic (sorry)] White House Moves To Restrict DoE Nuclear Research

You may remember that the US national labs, particularly Argonne, developed the Integral Fast Reactor, which was similarly axed by bureaucrats in 1994. The excuse -- just like today's reprocessing politics -- was weapons proliferation. For even more tie-in, the original pyroprocessing chemistry -- the one the US is obstructing today in South Korea -- was developed by Argonne for the IFR.

Geological storage

Yucca mountain. 'nuf said.

So then, in the context of the administration's recent acts, what is this "expert" panel doing? I think it is a rubber-stamping committee to justify these numerous political decisions and actions, after the fact. The political pressure on this panel is obvious (how likely are they to recommend something the Boss just canceled?), and even if it weren't there the committee member has been cherry-picked for their views. The team's geologist, Allison MacFarlane, was chosen because she is the most vocal critic of the Yucca repository; she is there to validate Obama's (and Reid's) political decision. They can rely on her conclusions. The nonproliferation experts (Albert Carnesale, Susan Eisenhower) are there to raise the specter of nuclear war, to frighten reprocessing out of consideration. (I think it's not a coincidence that Carnesale represented the US in the "International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation", 1977-1980, in the Carter administration, when Carter outlawed nuclear reprocessing. This merits research).

Nuclear waste "blue ribbon" panel: I don't like it

2010-01-29T17:45:00.024-05:00

(Work in progress)

It's about a year since the Administration's decision to cancel the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste tomb. As energy secretary Steven Chu discussed then, the White House intended to assemble an expert panel to review the options. (One could wonder why they made their decision before hearing what the experts would recommend, but that's not how policymaking works.)

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Steven Chu: Yucca Mountain as a repository is off the table. What we're going to be doing is saying, let's step back. We realize that we know a lot more today than we did 25 or 30 years ago. The NRC [Nuclear Regulatory Commission] is saying that the dry cask storage at current sites would be safe for many decades, so that gives us time to figure out what we should do for a long-term strategy. We will be assembling a blue-ribbon panel to look at the issue.

[MIT Tech Review] Q & A: Steven Chu

Today the executive branch has selected its "blue ribbon" panelists:

[DoE] Secretary Chu Announces Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future

It appears to me this panel isn't suited for its task -- the purely technical issue of spent nuclear fuel. I only count: one engineer, two physicists, and one geologist, out of 15 experts. Most of the rest are politicians and business suits. I fear this is more of a political game than a legitimate conference of nuclear waste experts.

Perhaps the most worrying name on the list none other than Brent Scowcroft. If you recall, he was the national security advisor for George H.W. Bush -- a key figure in the end of the cold war. Him along with Albert Carnesale (nonproliferation diplomat, figure in SALT treaties -- some writings here), and Susan Eisenhower (nonproliferation consultant, board of Nuclear Threat Initiative). I think we should read between the lines: why did Obama put a national security wonk and two nuclear weapons wonks on this panel? What the US does with spent reactor fuel has nothing to do with weapons or war. But the administration thinks, or perhaps wants to signal, otherwise; that US reprocessing and breeder reactors -- key technical solutions for destroying nuclear waste -- would be a security threat. Looking at history, nuclear weapons fearmongering has been a key political attack against nuclear power, especially closed fuel cycles. Ford's reprocessing ban was ostensibly about weapons. John Kerry and Hazel O'Leary's canceling of Argonne's Integral Fast Reactor research was, again, used with proliferation as a pretext.

Professor Per Peterson is the sole nuclear engineer. Among many other things, he is researching a molten salt (!) reactor design called PB-AHTR. Unlike LFTR, it is only half fluid: the coolant is a molten salt, whereas the fuel elements are solid pebbles.

Richard Meserve seems to be lots of things - PhD physicist, former NRC chairman, sits on board of the electric utility PG&E.

Allison MacFarlane is a geologist who researches spent fuel repositories, and has written a book criticizing Yucca Mountain. Some of her writings are here at the Belfer Center (which she is an associate of). Rod Adams interviews her on Atomic Podcast #61 (haven't watched yet; Rod says they "agree to disagree", which is worrying.)

There are several remembers whose only "qualification" appears to be political stature. Lee Hamilton is a former Democratic congressman. Chuck Hagel is a former Republican Senator. Pete Domenici is a former Republican senator, who sat on the energy subcommittee. Phil Sharp is a former Democratic congressman who now heads the political think tank Resources for the Future.

Several sitting energy industry executives, who likewise have no particular reason to be here, and an in my naive opinion have way too much conflict of interest to be allowed in the first place. Vicky Bailey is director of Chiniere Energy, an importer of liquefied natural gas (LNG) (she was also a former commissioner of FERC). John Rowe is CEO of Exelon, an electric utility whose fleet is largely nuclear reactors.

Mark Ayers is a union boss from AFL-CIO.

Jonathan Lash is a lawyer, formerly with the National Resources Defense Council, presently chairman of the World Resources Institute (environmentalist think tank). Some of his writings are here.

Innumeracy in the news

2010-01-20T20:48:00.008-05:00

The following falsehoods appear in today's New York Times article on the recent NREL study, which speculates the effects of integrating 20% wind into the US Eastern grid:

While the costs of the three 20-percent scenarios in the NREL report are close, the scenario of "high quality" on-shore wind, mainly in the Midwest, has the lowest cost, $140 billion. But this scenario also has the highest transmission costs, $93 billion, mainly due to 22,697 miles of extra high-voltage lines.

The report finds that capital costs for building offshore wind farms push up the price for those scenarios. A hybrid of offshore and onshore projects costs about $143 billion, and one that relies more on projects in the East as opposed to including a Midwest mix would cost about $155 billion.

[New York Times] Big Boost in Wind Power Doable but Complicated in Eastern U.S. -- Study

As the most cursory inspection of the actual report reveals, this is incredibly wrong in at least two different ways. First, these figures are annualized - they are costs per year. Second, they are the costs for the entire scenarios including the 80% of electricity that is NOT wind. Here is everything together in figure 8.2 (p. 211) - where the $140/$143/$155 billion figures came from:

[NREL] Eastern Wind Integration and Transmission Study

What this figure actually says is that the cheapest 20%-wind scenario costs about $15 billion/year more, everything included, than the reference case. Is this really so difficult?

The total costs aren't clearly stated in the study. For the wind turbine costs alone, they assume $1,875/kW and $3,700/kW nameplate, respectively, for onshore and offshore wind (table 8.1 p. 209). And their scenarios are summarized in table 1 on p. 26. So for example scenario 1, 223.6 GW onshore wind, under their assumptions would cost $419 billion. And scenario 3 (also 20% wind), 166.2 GW onshore and 64.1 GW offshore, would cost $549 billion. (NB these scenarios are for just the Eastern grid, not the entire US).

Some other sources, like Reuters, are instead using a "$90 billion" figure. This one apparently comes from tables 4 on page 39: it represents just the cost of the new transmission lines needed.

Wind energy could generate 20 percent of the electricity needed by households and businesses in the eastern half of the United States by 2024, but it would require up to $90 billion in investment, according to a government report released on Wednesday.

[Reuters] U.S. says wind could power 20 percent of eastern grid

Newsbox

2010-01-16T20:33:00.007-05:00

Keith Johnson's Wall Street Journal blog Environmental Capital is retiring.

Work for the two new AP-1000s at Turkey Point has been suspended, as private utility Florida Power & Light has been barred from raising prices by state regulators. (This has nothing to do with the nuclear-earmarked rate hike, which is separate and still permitted.) Other projects, including a new natural gas pipeline and upgrades to power transmission (adding up to $10 billion in investments), are likewise frozen. This obstruction of infrastructure expansion incongruously comes in a time of trillion dollar "economic stimulus" spending, and less than a week after Obama announcted $2.3 billion in clean energy tax credits.

In Washington, White House OMB chairman Peter Orszag has killed funding for fast reactor research in the DoE's national lab system (yes, again). Steven Chu protested it, for what it's worth.

In Germany, cautious optimism that Merkel's new coalition with the FDP may scrap the nuclear-power ban altogether. Nevertheless this would be accomplished only with the political "compromise" of stealing all nuclear power revenue, re-appropriating it to wind companies:

Merkel's team says nuclear only has a future if the utilities agree to put the major part of the extra revenues from the longer running times into a fund aimed at boosting renewable energy sources and nuclear safety research.

The absurdities over Vermont Yankee are snowballing. Last week was the scandalous revelation that almost 600 Bq/L tritiated water -- an incredibly benign concentration -- accumulated in a ground well. Now over 100 loopy hippies marched to the state capitol banging drums. Populist state lawmakers are threatening to shut the power plant, which is approaching its license renewal. Yesterday six US congressmen (led by Ed Markey, of course) requested an NRC investigation.

In wind news: Gordon Brown wants Britain to pay $160 billion for 32 GWe of offshore wind capacity ($5/W nameplate, maybe $12/W average output). Intermittent, unreliable, easily triple the cost of equivalent (conventional) nuclear power, and locking the island nation into its natural gas dependance for decades.

parts per liter (ppl)

2010-01-11T20:08:00.005-05:00

Another day, another absurdity.

[Slashdot] Another Crumbling Reactor Springs a Tritium Leak

I had tritium leaks last week in Olympic Swimming Pools -- although that article was back from December. I have nothing more to say, except that where the "Rutland Herald" invents the unit "parts per liter", they actually meant pico-Curies per liter. I hope that makes things comprehensible.

Solar lobby's latest propaganda: ending fossil-fuel subsidies would cause "solar boom"

2010-01-09T01:40:00.019-05:00

[Treehugger] Solar Industry Says End Fossil Fuel Subsidies And Expect A Solar Boom

A report by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) found that power from the sun could generate 15 percent of America's power in the next decade, but only if Washington levels the playing field on subsidies. The fossil fuel industry, led by oil and coal, received $72 billion in total federal subsidies from 2002 to 2008, but earlier this year President Obama called for those subsidies to end. [...] But during that same 7-year period, the solar industry got less than $1 billion, says SEIA. Putting the subsidies even with those for fossil fuels would create jobs and dramatically cut the country's global warming causing emissions.

This from the solar industry lobby SEIA, shameless shills who among other things are promoting an disgustingly-named "Solar Bill of Rights", demanding such "rights" to the solar industry as free access to public lands (#5), and free electric transmission (#3) (that is, the right of solar owners to force utilities to buy their electricity at retail rates, rather than much lower utility rates paid to ordinary power plants -- forcing them to transmit electricity at loss), and the "right" of the solar industry to "require" utilities to sell solar power (#7), and of course the "right" to massive government subsidies (#4), hypocritically named "right to a fair competitive environment".

It's that last perversion of rights which is what this latest PR release is about. The solar industry PR wizards are trying to sell an absurdity - that fossil fuels only exists because they are heavily subsidized, the playing field is tilted in their favor, and solar power would actually flourish and thrive if only those subsidies were removed. It's about fairness! Naturally this 'worldview', no matter how blatantly it challenges reality, is something many people will simply accept, because it is a convenient and comforting narrative. Fossil companies are evil; solar companies are plucky underdogs. Fossil subsidies are a perfect scapegoat for solar's failure: it's a simple explanation which simultaneously vindicates solar (they'd win, if only the playing field was fair), demonizes oil companies (thieves!), and the policymakers, err, oil-military-industrial complex (polluters!). The cynical solar shills know very well how to manipulate public opinion.

First, they try to paint $72 billion in fossil subsidies 2002-2008 as a large sum, with their intented implication that the fossil industry is dependent on these incentives for survival, or at least significant competitive advantage. Simply removing these subsidies would cause a "solar boom", so they must be very important subsidies. Obviously what they've willfully omitted is the scale of the fossil industry for comparison. At typically 20 million barrels oil/day and maybe $60/barrel averaged over the time period (7 years), US revenue for oil alone would be on the order of $3 trillion. Fossil subsidies, in proportion, were less than 2% of the fossil revenues. It is, I suggest, obvious nonsense that fossil fuels only hang on by a razor-thin 2% competitive margin.

And this isn't even the full picture - to begin to talk about "level playing fields", we must look at special incentives in both directions, subsidies and taxes. Oil may get 2% in special subsidies but they pay 20% in special taxes - 45.6 c/kWh average gas tax in the US. Order of $350 billion over the same time period for gasoline alone. The net incentives are tilted against fossil fuels! And in Europe, the oil taxes are far higher - over 100% even - and despite this oil dominates transport fuel.

But if they only stopped the 2% fossil fuel subsidies, everything would change!

Now for the hypocrisy -- the single grubbiest subsidy-sucker in the world is solar power, by enormous margins. Start with their whiny sob-story...

But during that same 7-year period, the solar industry got less than $1 billion, says SEIA.

Boo-hoo! During that 7-year period the solar industry only generated 4.2 TWhe, worth barely $350 million at the average retail rate of 8.32 c/kWh. Their subsidies were bigger than their honest revenue!

And this is just scratching the surface - the USA measures very low in solar support levels (hence solar adoption rates, naturally). Let's look around:

Spain's direct subsidies to solar power are 575%, legally guaranteed for 25 years. Attempts to reduce the subsidies caused the market to instantly collapse, which shows what the solar market really runs on.

Germany's subsidies are 47 c€/kWh (about 68 c/kWh currently). At current utility prices (what power plants get, not what homeowners pay) of 47 €/MWh (4.7 c€/kWh), this is a 1,000% subsidy. (Retail prices are far higher - almost 20 c€/kWh - but this is not the selling price for power plants; much of it goes towards grid distribution or taxes.)

In case it wasn't obvious, these two countries and their astronomical subsidies represent the vast majority of worldwide solar "demand".

But the crown goes to, of all places, Ontario. Partly because of the even-higher cost of solar power in Canada, and partly because of their exceptionally cheap electricity (52% nuclear, of course, as well as 22% hydropower and 18% coal, also very cheap). With such extraordinarily cheap and clean electricity, and so little sunlight, why, and how far would they support solar panels? Quite far. Their solar subsidies are (Canadian cents) 44.3 c/kWh and 80.2 c/kWh respectively, for commercial and residential installations (about the same in US cents). The market price of electricity there is 4.06 c/kWh - that's what ordinary (non-sanctified) power plants get. So the solar feed-in subsidies, for commercial and rooftop respectively, are a slightly-generous 1,091% and 1,975%.

And the shills dare talk about level playing fields.

By the way, these kinds of numbers never seem to end up in mainstream news. Take the top-ranked NYT article on the subject, which euphemizes the subsidies as "Europe’s Way of Encouraging Solar Power". Absolutely no mention of the actual costs involved, or how they compare. It is a whitewash. Here's how they dishonestly spin the costs:

But requiring utilities to pay extra for green power has a direct impact on ratepayers. Homeowners’ electricity bills will rise 74 cents a month in Gainesville, or about half a percentage point of the average homeowner’s monthly bill.

“Seventy cents — what’s that? A Coke?” said Mr. Regan, of the Gainesville utility.

That is the cost increase to every ratepayer to subsidize the extremely tiny minority with solar panels. See how dishonest it is? Here are the suppressed numbers: the Gainesville subsidy is 32 c/kWh, which is 280% of the average retail rate in Florida.

Argh!

Olympic swimming pools

2010-01-07T12:13:00.014-05:00

I'm baffled that writers for major newspapers can't deal with simple numbers.

From today's New York Times article on EPA ozone limits, this absolute howler:

The EPA proposal presents a range for the allowable concentration of ground-level ozone, the main ingredient in smog, from 60 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion. That's equivalent to 60 to 70 tennis balls in an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of a billion tennis balls. EPA will select a specific figure within that range later this year.

[NYT] E.P.A. Announces Strict New Health Standards for Smog

What on earth do they think that analogy adds?

What's worse, it's not even right -- their visualization is off by two orders of magnitude. Consider: a standard tennis ball is 65.41-68.58 millimeters in diameter, so (at the midpoint) ~0.157 liters volume. A random sphere packing is about 36% empty space, so the exclusive volume is ~0.246 liters per ball -- 4 balls per liter. An olympic swimming pool fills 2,500 m^3, so it could fit only 10 million (10^7) tennis balls - not 10^9.

Why do they pretend to quantify things if they don't bother to get the quantities correct? Do these journalism graduates think numbers are just for decoration?

In an a parallel story, the Toronto Star recently mangled the same "analogy", in the opposite direction:

Workers at the Darlington nuclear station filled the wrong tank with a cocktail of water and a radioactive isotope Monday, spilling more than 200,000 litres into Lake Ontario. [...] The spilled water – enough to fill more than two Olympic-sized swimming pools – came from an underground tank that is used for backup cooling in the event of an emergency.

[Toronto Star] Nuclear plant spills tritium into lake

Off by a factor of about 25. Two Olympic pools would be 5 million L.

This article happens to be another one of the absurd anti-nuke scare stories. They are writing about an accidental radioisotope release (tritiated water); the concentration being astronomically dilute, so naturally they highlight the total volume instead (olympic pools of nuclear waste... err, 1/10th of a pool). I want to shine a bit of light on another of the scare statistics:

The spill comes a month after the Sierra Club of Canada released a report warning that "routine and accidental releases of tritium" are rising and that accumulation in the environment is a growing health concern. It criticized Canada for allowing tritium levels in drinking water that are 70 times higher than in the European Union and 473 times higher than in California.

The framing of the issue is obvious, as is the intention behind it: Canada is obscenely backwards in environmental pollution, their nuclear industry having gotten carte blanche to pollute. This factoid is supposed to be outrageous, and indeed the article's commentators are outraged by it.

First: the numbers are blatantly cherry-picked. Look at the statistics on the CNSC factsheet. Switzerland, Finland, Australia all have higher tritium water limits. Australia's are ten times higher than Canada's, almost 4 orders of magnitude higher than California's levels. Canada's limits are lower than the WHO recommended limits. They (and it must be clarified, these limits are never even approached) are designed so that someone drinking nothing but water at maximum tritium level would receive 1 mSv (100 mrem) per year - considerably less than the background radiation dose .

[Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission] Tritium in drinking water

Second: the statistic isn't even true, as the cherry-picked California figure (14.8 Bq/L) is not a real regulatory limit like the other numbers. It is a nonregulatory "public health goal". (The real limit is 740 Bq/L, same as the rest of the US, and 1/10th the Canadian limit). Interestingly, Canada's nuclear-contaminated drinking water always stays below California's (obscenely low) tritium "goal".

And there's one calculation I just have to do, because California's environmental regulations are ludicrous and this is no exception. Their state EPA recommends a "public health goal" of 14.8 Bq/L tritium in water. The committed effective dose equivalent (CEDE) of tritium ingestion is 64 mrem/mCi, or 17 pSv per Bq (this agrees with the calculations on the CNSC page). So at 2 L/day water consumption, 14.8 Bq/L tritium content, this is 184 nSv (18 μrem) per year, for their "public health goal". The CEDE of eating a banana is 10 μrem. If California treated nuclear power and bananas objectively, by the same standards, they would propose a "public health goal" suggesting residents eat no more than 2 bananas per year.

S. Korean firms to build four new PWRs in the UAE

2009-12-27T13:45:00.041-05:00

APR-1400 RPV from Doosan brochure

The United Arab Emirates' nuclear initiative has chosen its contractor, a consortium led by the Korean electric utility KEPCO. They have agreed to build four 1,400 MWe PWRs, of a Gen. 3+ design (APR-1400), in a deal worth $20 billion. From various sources:

[Al Jazeera] S Korea to build UAE nuclear plants

[The National] UAE: Korean consortium to build nuclear power stations

[Korea Times] Korea Wins $40 Bil. UAE Nuclear Deal

[Bloomberg] Korean Group Beats GE, Areva in $20 Billion U.A.E. Nuclear Deal

First off, to clarify the different contract values: it is $20 billion for construction, with an additional $20 billion in operating costs over 60 years, hence the alternative '$40 billion' figure. I think the Bloomberg journalists were confused by this. Citing Al Jazeera:

While the contract to build the reactors is worth about $20bn, the consortium expects to earn another $20bn by jointly operating the plants for 60 years.

For some background: there were three competing contractors -- the winning Korean bid, a French consortium led by EdF offering EPRs, and a GE/Westinghouse consortium. Apparently KEPCO won by a huge margin: Al Jazeera writes that

The Korean bid was $16bn lower than the bid submitted by the French group, an industry source said.

Some analysts called this a 'surprise choice', which is odd because it's been public knowledge KEPCO underbid their competitors, e.g. this WSJ article I linked to last month.

The reactor is an APR-1400 (PWR), of which none exist but two are under construction in Korea (at Shin-Kori). The vendor site is: [APR-1400]. There's also a brief history of Korean reactors at WNA.

And this is just the beginning; from Bloomberg,

The order is just part of a “fleet of power plants” the U.A.E. wants to build, Emirates Nuclear Energy Corp. Chief Executive Officer Mohammed al-Hammadi told reporters in Abu Dhabi yesterday. “We will be building more than four and those will be coming in the future.”

In the background are very interesting weapons proliferation politics. The UAE signed a treaty with the US under which both enrichment and reprocessing are banned in the UAE - they are completely dependent on foreign fuel suppliers. It seems most US commentators read this in the context of Iran (e.g.), which of course refuses to abandon domestic enrichment. But I haven't seen any counterpoint from Gen-4 advocates, which they should be making as reprocessing is essential to closed fuel cycles. Does the 123-agreement prohibit e.g., integrated recycling of actinides, as with the Integral Fast Reactor? And should this be considered a proliferation risk? (I don't know.)

The UAE currently gets 98% of its electricity from natural gas.

Update: I've found a very nice PR brochure. It is from one of the consortium members, South Korea's Doosan Heavy Industries, which makes some key components like reactor pressure vessels, steam generators. This copy is hosted by the NEA (French nuclear agency), which isn't quite were I expected to find it.

[PDF file] Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction

Slashdot LiONs, nuclear-powered waterwheels, and the $865 battery car

2009-12-25T07:29:00.031-05:00

Another grab-bag of numbers...

In another round of renewable-energy advertisement, Slashdot brings us this "vision":

[Slashdot] Hardware: 'Home Batteries' Power Houses For a Week

"Panasonic has announced plans to create 'home batteries.' They are lithium-ion batteries large enough to power a house for a week, making energy sources such as solar and wind power more feasible. Also, you can buy energy when it is cheapest, and don't need to worry about power outages anymore."

Let's bring in some numbers. From Seeking Alpha, a collection of current industrial Li-battery (both LiON and others) prices; and from the EIA, basic statistics on residential electricity use (from 2001 - slightly dated).

[Seeking Alpha] Lithium-ion Batteries: 9 Years of Price Stagnation

[EIA] Electricity Consumption by End Use in U.S. Households, 2001

“Solar Collector Basics”
J. Richter, J. of Ren. and Sus. Energy

The industry battery price figures range from $660 - $2,018 / kWh(e). (I'm not sure if these are real or effective (usable) storage capacities; I'll conservatively assume they are effective.) Average household electricity consumption is 204 kWh(e)/week per household (2001); thus, $135,000-$408,000 for 1 average week of storage capacity, per average house. Err, $14 to $44 trillion, nationwide. Enough for 3.5-11 TW of nuclear capacity (@ $4/W), or 24-97x more than all residential consumption (at 90% capacity factor). And this isn't even fair - the batteries only last a couple of years.

Even the most ridiculous, optimistic industry "targets" cited ($150-$250/kWh(e)) don't alter the conclusion one iota.

This of course is implicitly playing along with the assumption that "1 week of storage" is sufficient. It's not unusual for wind outages to last a week at a time - see e.g. graphs of Irish wind performance in David MacKay's book. And there's the seasonal variation: if generation is nonzero but still fractional, averaged over timescales of weeks, 1-week storage doesn't solve the problem. Here's indicative (?) graphs of seasonal variation for wind and solar (figures on right side).

Lu, McElroy, and Kiviluoma (PNAS 2009)

The solar flux is from a paper by J. Richter, excerpted in part 8 of the lecture notes (very interesting, by the way) of Prof. Eric Switzer at Univ. of Chicago (see also, the NREL maps); the wind graph is from a paper in PNAS.

Also in battery news is announcment of the $865 American EV, via AutoBlog and Discovery News. Once again, marketing experts are trying to rebrand the classic golf cart as a "green car". Top speed of this death trap is 25 mph, which compares it unfavorably to Stephenson's Rocket. Also, the real price is actually $10,600; as with solar panels, 90% of the cost is being subsidized by taxes (well, only in Oklahoma).

On another story, some very green ideas in Japan:

[Denki Shimbun] Mini-hydropower generation at nuclear power plant

A seaside nuclear plant pumps in ocean water through a small channel, at about 130 m^3/s. Some clever fellow noticed the obvious potential for renewable energy. Now there is a waterwheel in this coolant channel. It is powering an electronic sign which advertises the waterwheel. The plant is planning to charge an electric car with the waterwheel. No word on if they are planning to power the coolant pumps themselves with waterwheels - that would be quite a savings.

On a tangent; North Pacific seawater contains 3.2 ppb dissolved uranium. At 130 m^3/s, the Sendai plant coolant channels therefore have a throughput of 0.4 grams U/s. The two Sendai reactors are 900 MWe, for 1,800 MWe or (my estimate) maybe 5,400 MWt heat production, a ratio of 24 m^3/s seawater per GWt. In a completely closed plutonium fuel cycle, such as the IFR, the energy potential of the 3.2 mg U/m^3 is 258 MJ (using 199 MeV/fission, 239 grams/nucleus), or 6.2 GJ potential for every GJ of waste heat. The bizarre conclusion is that a seaside IFR, capturing only 1/6th of its coolant's uranium (with adsorbant polymers), could be entirely self-sufficient in fuel! (If in fact 15% U separation is viable).

How's that for a crazy idea - zero-mining, seawater-powered nuclear fission.

A few news stories I noticed:

Europe's last Soviet RBMK in Lithuania is turning off next week. It is being replaced by a new natural gas plant in 2012, and two 1,150 MWe Russian PWRs in 2016, and possibly a proposed nuclear plant on the same site as Ignalina.

Molten salt reactors have been featured in Wired.

China starts construction of a 1,700 MWe PWR, bringing the number of new Chinese reactors this year to eight. France's PM Fillon showed up in person (the reactor is a French-Chinese collaboration).

(Update) - I almost missed this, in Japan a 912 MWe PWR just started commercial operation this Tuesday.

IEEE Spectrum considers spent fuel

2009-12-15T20:48:00.002-05:00

[IEEE Spectrum] Finland's Nuclear Waste Solution

Here, though, 500 years is hardly a heartbeat. In as little as 20 000 years, Finland may enter an ice age, and advancing ice sheets kilometers thick could carve out the rock and force more water into its fractured depths. The liquid may then diffuse through the bentonite barrier, eat through the copper, and carry off still-hot radionuclides. No one can be sure.

But maybe nobody will be here to care. In 1000, 10 000, or 100 000 years, it might not be unreasonable to think our descendants will have abandoned this toxic land for a cozier alternative, on space pods or newly colonized planets. Where once there were humans, now hermaphroditic fish and finned flamingos may slither through our poisonous landscapes. Or perhaps evolution’s charge will have delivered beings who are healthier, cuter, and more intelligent than the ones designing today’s disposal systems. Or evolution may go in the opposite direction and cockroaches will reign supreme, just as we always suspected they might.

Newsbox

2009-12-15T01:15:00.008-05:00

Today's New York Times front-page leader was:

[NYT] Bloomberg Eyes Danish Offshore Wind Farm and Sees New York’s Future

NYC billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg toured Horns Rev 2 in his helicopter. Certainly the businessman noticed its $1 billion pricetag. For 209 MWe, at ~43% capacity factor (c.f. Horns Rev #1), this is $11/W average. But neither he nor the credulous Times writers deign to discuss any pragmatic failing of these turbines, instead giving us superficial feel-good tripe ("these are pieces of art... pleasing to our minds", chirps Bloomberg). The city is planning a $3 billion installation of art several miles offshore. At 700 MW, it is not particularly "moving".

A while back I ridiculed the Japanese shipping line NYK for decorating their 60,000 ton container ship Auriga Leader with solar panels, which they pretended "powered" the ship (and seemingly professional journalists lapped it up). It appears they are taking the charade a step further:

[WSJ] Shippers Brace for New Tax on Fuel

Japan's NYK Line says it will cut carbon-dioxide emissions by 70% by 2030 and develop a zero-emissions ship by 2050. The ship would use a combination of fuel cells and solar and wind energy, company executives say.

The article goes on to classify nuclear propulsion as a "gimmick"...

Maersk rejects sails, nuclear-powered engines and other innovations as gimmicks, Mr. Andersen says.

Of course we need trite greenwashing now:

Instead, Maersk will reach its target of cutting emissions with measures such as steaming slower and scheduling better to avoid idling, he says. The company also has adopted a few technological innovations, such as using slicker paint on hulls.

A 500 MWe fast reactor is moving towards completion next year, with the installation of the sodium-pool reactor vessel (with attached photo). Unlike the IFR, this reactor uses oxide fuel, hence is rather more difficult to recycle.

[NEI] India's PFBR vessel installed

PFBR at Kalpakkam. Credit NEI magazine

Apparently the cost is barely $750 million, or $1.50/W.

Also in India, a very unusual poisoning attempted involving nuclear waste. Several workers were completely unharmed when a disgruntled employee laced a water cooler with tritiated water. Tritium (H-3) is created in small amounts by neutron capture in deuterium (H-2). Deuterium oxide (heavy water) is the moderator and coolant used in PHWRs, the type of reactors at Kaiga power plant; hence the need for tritium management, the presumable source of this poisoning. (The same tritium issue occurs with CANDU reactors, also PHWRs). The highest exposures were subclinical doses of about 30 mSv (3 rem). Of course Greenpeace is having a field day with this story.

What about the people living in the vicinity who will die subsequently from cancer if their consumption of tritium through the food they eat is never ever measured?”

Tritium is also making the news as a commodity betavoltaic battery is being prototyped by Widetronix. They are intended for tiny microwatt circuits, such as pacemakers. (Earlier pacemakers used radioisotope power sources, but with thermoelectric conversion, like Peltier devices. Whereas this is direct capture of high-energy free electrons, which are spontaneously emitted by tritium.) In particular they are claiming 30% conversion efficiency.

French enrichment plant reduces energy consumption by 98%, saving 3 gigawatts of electricity

2009-12-10T17:17:00.012-05:00

The shiny new cascade of centrifuges at Tricastin - worth €3 billion - started spinning on Wednesday:

[WSJ] Areva: Rotation Of First Georges Besse II Centrifuge Cascade

There is a brochure, which prominently advertises a 50-fold reduction in energy consumption, compared to its predecessor. (C.f. the WNA article: typically ~50 kWh/SWU (separative work unit) for centrifuge enrichment, vs. 2500 kWh/SWU for gas diffusion). To appreciate the enormity of this, realize that the existing plant has its own dedicated nuclear reactor - actually four of them!

Tricastin nuclear power station, which consists of 4 nuclear reactors that supply electricity to the enrichment plant almost exclusively during peak operations.

[Areva] The Tricastin Site

And a back-of-the-envelope calculation validates this: the WNA's energy-intensity figure of 2500 kWh/SWU for gas diffusion, times the 10,800,000 SWU/yr capacity of Georges Besse I, is 3.08 GW.

Here it is in pictures - the extremely large enrichment plant is in the background, with its four PWRs in the foreground.

Tricastin site - Credit WNA

And on the inside - a very baffling maze of pipes: