Wind Power Beats Nuclear & Clean Coal, Other Renewables As US’s Best Energy Option

Costs? Distribution? Neither this summary nor the Science Codex summary mention cost. Wind requires a grid that isn't there because

The wind, I claim
blows mainly on the plain.

But the big power users are not in South Dakota more like Southern California. Solar thermal has the same issue since

The sun shines best
out in the Southwest.

PV's, on the other hand, put the power right where it's used decreasing the demands on the grid instead of increasing them.

While this plan doesn't take into account the obvious problem of replacing the entire us car fleet with battery-electric (or hydrogen fuel cell) cars, which at best would take roughly 20 years, it's still a good plan.

The reason being that coal power plants still produce more pollution than cars do. To replace them all with wind is more feasible.

Although at the same time, there's also the problem of having to rebuild much of the power grid to accomodate the new power source. I expect that wouldn't quite take 20 years though, but at the very least, if you're going to make a 20 year plan to replace all cars (and all power plants) in the US with technology X, that would be where I would go. I wouldn't spend any time mucking about with Ethanol as some kind of a stop-gap measure. Moreover, if you (can) only go halfway with wind power, well, you've still gone halfway. Going halfway with Ethanol is just pointless.

I really like wind power. It's perfect application would be recharging electric car fleets. However, that does little to ensure that the current main users of electricity (industrial, commercial, and residential) are still able to have adequate baseload power. Geothermal shows great potential in areas where EGS can be tapped with wells less than 3km. I would like to submit the idea of clean coal with vertically stacked algae farms.

Algae could consume all of the carbon emitted by coal power plans in a land footprint that would not require land beyond the power plant compound.

Having said that, I believe that all forms of generation should be explored. Barack et al would do best to spend billions giving research grants to public and private organizations rather than subsidizing the use of current technology.

Also, I'm a registered republican and I gave money to Ron Paul's campaign.

I'm surprised tidal ranked above PV, since the potential for solar generation is so much greater than for tidal. Maybe its a cost comparison.

Other than that I think he's absolutely right, given the state of our technology today for developing each of these energy sources.

According to the article, "Jacobson says he has conducted to first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed, major, energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability."

What an astonishing amount of arrogance! With all the scientific studies that have been done on this issue, how could Jacobson possibly believe he's done the first one? Let's hope he was misquoted.

I just now looked at Dr. Jacobson's paper. Like all scientific-looking studies that aim at confirming a pre-determined conclusion, his paper takes twists and turns to achieve its goal.

All his calculations on nuclear energy assume that the presence of nuclear power plants will lead to atomic wars. That assuredly is not the case.

Inside the reactor, the uranium isotope U238 is transmuted into Pu239, which is a bomb material. But if the fuel stays in the reactor more than a few weeks some of the Pu239 turns into Pu240. Pu240 prevents the bomb from going off by predetonating before a critical mass is achieved. To make bomb material from plutonium from power reactors requires isotope separation and enrichment. If a country has the capability of doing separation and enrichment, it can make a bomb from uranium, which is an easier material to work with. (DOE )

Hans Blix was head of IAEA, the UN agency responsible for preventing proliferation. Here's what he has to say:

"A phasing out of nuclear power in some or all states would not lead to the scrapping of a single nuclear bomb.

"States can have nuclear weapons without nuclear power though it is not common today. Israel is a case in point. It has no nuclear power but is assessed to have some 200 nuclear warheads. For a long time China had only the weapons. Indeed, most nuclear weapons states, including the US, had weapons before they had power. " (Blix )

By inserting political dogma into a supposedly scientific paper, Dr. Jacobson has discredited his own work.

In truth, his paper wasn't very scientific anyway. Like all wind-power polemicists, he tries to overcome the fundamental problem of intermittency through hand-waving. Here's an example:

"When 13-19 geographically-disperse wind sites in the Midwest, over a region 850 km x 850 km, were hypothetically interconnected, an average of 33% and a maximum of 47% of yearly-averaged wind power was calculated to be usable as baseload electric power at the same reliability as a coal-fired power plant (Archer and Jacobson, 2007)."

Translated into English, what he says is that if wind farms are oversized by a factor of three, on average the entire assemblage spread out over 720,000 square kilometers could be as reliable as a single coal plant. This ignores the fact that coal plants are already interconnected, so if one plant is down there is no effect on the grid's availability. In contrast, winds can be low over vast areas for months at a time during which the combined power levels will be inadequate.

Dr. Jacobson goes on to cite imaginary technological fixes as though such a citation is all that is required to overcome this inherent limitation to wind energy.

Opponents of nuclear energy gain nothing but confusion by using pseudo-scientific studies like this one to bolster their position.

I'm all for thermal solar, PV, tidal, wind, wave, biofuels,* and conservation broadly defined. But when these energy sources inevitably fall short of what we need - they will with our increasingly technology dependent economy/society, our growing population, and the long-term need for desalinization plants in some parts of the country - its going to come down to more coal, or nuclear. If we take nuclear off the table, our options are: or coal. Something about that bothers me.

Instead of 'not recommending' nuclear power, maybe we should start building nuclear plants now - that way we can take our time and be extra sure get it right (aka we don't accidentally build them on fault lines). Even better, lets insist every new nuclear power plant is build with some sort of reprocessing facility on site so that we don't have to truck highly radioactive waste across the country.

* I support Biofuels so long as they don't contribute to deforestation, world hunger, and result in a significant net reduction of greenhouse gasses.

well, as Ernie says, putting up wind farms, to power the US is going to take quite some time... but better that than nuclear.

The problem that I have with studies such as this is that the take away message is that we need to wait. Electric cars aren't available and neither is the required wind power to fuel them so all that is left for a person to do is wait until everything is in place. And of course as a previous poster already mentioned move away from current alternatives such as ethanol. What do you want to bet that just before electric cars and wind power are available someone else will come up with a better solution and the wait will be back on?

This guy is right about ethanol, but way off about almost everything else, especially nuclear power. I almost don't know where to begin. On alot of his topics, many extensive, detailed studies have been performed, and their conclusions disagree with his (unsupported) assertions/opinions.

Renewables' intermittentcy is a serious limitation that will NOT be easily overcome. Wind and solar thermal may be able to provide up to ~15-20% of our power at a reasonable (somewhat competative) price, but trying to extend them much beyond that will involve enormous costs that the public will not (and should not) be willing to pay. Geothermal and tidal both have relatively small potential. For these reasons, no serious energy experts believe that renewable sources will be able to provide most or all of our energy needs, for the forseeable future.

Concerning ner CO2 emissions, nuclear does NOT emit 25 times as much as wind, directly or indirectly. There have been many studies on this subject, and they all conclude that nuclear's net emissions are a tiny fraction of coal's (~2-3%), a small fraction of natural gas (~5%) and similar to or lower than renewable sources. One such study is at:

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull422/article4.pdf

The punch line is that all non-fossil sources emit negligible CO2, and all are "just fine" with respect to solving global warming. No need to distinguish between them.

The story is similar with respect to overall external costs (i.e., overall environmental impact and public health risk). There have actually been extensive scientific studies on this subject, and the great majority of studies show that nuclear's external costs are a tiny fraction (a few percent) of fossil fuels' costs, and similar to renewable's external costs.

The most recent and extensive such study is the European Commission's ExternE project, whose results are summarized at:

http://www.externe.info/

For coal and oil, the (monetary equivalent) external costs are ~4-8 cents/kW-hr, enough to double their price. For gas, it is ~1 cent. For nuclear and renewables, external costs are very small; a fraction of a cent/kW-hr. This includes all impacts/risks of nuclear, like reactor accident risk, mining effects, and long term waste risks. The fact is, all these risks are tiny, and massively overplayed. While fossil plants have been causing ~25,000 deaths in the US every single year (in addition to global warming), US nuclear power has never had any measurable impact on public health. Given nuclear's small external costs, there is no reason for us to pay much the much higher electricity costs that would be involved with trying to get most of our power from renewables sources (as I discussed earlier). The best approach is a mix of nuclear and renewables.

Finally, with respect to proliferation, the story is quite simple. Increasing the number of nuclear power plants in the US will have absolutely no impact on the risk (or rate) of nuclear weapons proliferation, period. Commercial spent fuel is useless for weapons, as converting it into weapons materal is more difficult than just mining and enriching raw uranium ore.

Jacobson's statement about "refining" uranium in a "nuclear energy facility" displays either extraordinary ignorance or deliberate conflation. Nuclear power plants do not enrich or refine uranium. That requires an entirely different facility. Nuclear plants convert low-enriched uranium into spent fuel (something even harder to make into weapons material).

The assertion that expanding nuclear in the US will cause more plants in new, developing countries is also without merit. The whole world (Russia, China, India and many others) are moving forward with nuclear power, and they aren't going to change their plans just because we were foolish enough to not pursue it as well. Developing countries base their energy decisions on rational analysis and their real interests. If anything, expanding nuclear in the US will reduce the number of new nukes in the developing world, as it will result in less gas used for power generation, which will extend the world's supply of gas (and oil), and reduce their price. It is the high cost of gas and oil, not some bandwagon effect, that is causing many developing nations to consider nuclear.

The main determinant as to whether a nation develops nuclear weapons is simply its desire to do so. If a nation does desire a weapon, it does not need nuclear power. It can simply enrich its own ore directly. Furthermore, under Article IV of the NPT, all nations have the right to pursue nuclear power if they wish. If nuclear power WERE a path to weapons, any nation desiring weapons would claim its rights under Article IV and pursue it. Whether or not the US is expanding nuclear would in no way affect their decision.

The only way to prevent such nations from aquiring nuclear weapons is to have the whole world agree not to provide any nuclear-related technology or know how to the developing world. Good luck. This would require control over the Russians, Chinese and French that we simply don't have. In any event, none of this has anything to do with (or is in any way affected by) whether we build more nuclear plants here in the US.

This "reasearch" is little more than a polemic.

Like all scientific-looking studies that aim at confirming a pre-determined conclusion, Prof. Jacobson's paper takes twists and turns to achieve its goal.

All his calculations on nuclear energy assume that the presence of nuclear power plants will lead to atomic wars. That assuredly is not the case.

Here's what you need to know about reactors and weapons proliferation: Inside the reactor, the uranium isotope U238 is transmuted into Pu239, which is a bomb material. But if the fuel stays in the reactor more than a few weeks some of the Pu239 turns into Pu240. Pu240 prevents the bomb from going off by predetonating before a critical mass is achieved. To make bomb material from plutonium from power reactors requires isotope separation and enrichment. If a country has the capability of doing separation and enrichment, it can make a bomb from uranium, which is an easier material to work with. (DOE )

Hans Blix was head of IAEA, the UN agency responsible for preventing proliferation. Here's what he has to say:

"A phasing out of nuclear power in some or all states would not lead to the scrapping of a single nuclear bomb.

"States can have nuclear weapons without nuclear power though it is not common today. Israel is a case in point. It has no nuclear power but is assessed to have some 200 nuclear warheads. For a long time China had only the weapons. Indeed, most nuclear weapons states, including the US, had weapons before they had power. " (Blix )

By inserting political dogma into a supposedly scientific paper, Prof. Jacobson has discredited his own work.

In truth, his paper wasn't very scientific anyway. Like all wind-power polemicists, he tries to overcome the fundamental problem of intermittency through hand-waving. Here's an example:

"When 13-19 geographically-disperse wind sites in the Midwest, over a region 850 km x 850 km, were hypothetically interconnected, an average of 33% and a maximum of 47% of yearly-averaged wind power was calculated to be usable as baseload electric power at the same reliability as a coal-fired power plant (Archer and Jacobson, 2007)."

Translated into English, what he says is that if wind farms are oversized by a factor of three, on average the entire assemblage spread out over 720,000 square kilometers could be as reliable as a single coal plant. This ignores the fact that coal plants are already interconnected, so if one plant is down there is no effect on the grid's availability. In contrast, winds can be low over vast areas for months at a time during which the combined power levels will be inadequate.

Prof. Jacobson goes on to cite imaginary technological fixes as though such a citation is all that is required to overcome this inherent limitation to wind energy.

Opponents of nuclear energy gain nothing but confusion by using pseudo-scientific studies like this one to bolster their position.

Ideology can work its way into good science in many ways, perhaps mostly commonly in the form of the variables studied and the way results are presented. How would the good professor's results change if the following variables were included:

1) System reliability. Wind and nukes requires a grid--and a big one. Making it fault-tolerant is a really big problem. Big things get to be very expensive.

2) Economics. The real world doesn't exist on endowments to fund further research. What's the cost over the next 50 years, of each alternative. Include basic research, development, and most importantly, long-term operation. Navigant has some very good data out 25 years.

3) Competitive markets. The bigger and more complex a solution, the more monopolistic the market tends to be. Long-term, more market participation by more competitors is what drives innovation and reduces costs. Today's energy markets are largely the exact opposite.

The computer industry became what it is today by following a distributed, rather than centralized path. The key choice today if whether we want to continue centralized power generation, or moved to a decentralized model right down to the residential point-of-use.

This is a guess, but the introduction of economics and competitive markets probably turns a ranked list into a pie chart--the future is going to be a mix of energy conversion (there is only one energy source, and it's a looooonnnnng way away) devices, perhaps minus 1 or 2 we know today. We need to stop talking about ranked lists--such doesn't inform the future.

This guy is right about ethanol, but way off about almost everything else, especially nuclear power. I almost don't know where to begin. On alot of his topics, many extensive, detailed studies have been performed, and their conclusions disagree with his (unsupported) assertions/opinions.

Renewables' intermittentcy is a serious limitation that will NOT be easily overcome. Wind and solar thermal may be able to provide up to ~15-20% of our power at a reasonable (somewhat competative) price, but trying to extend them much beyond that will involve enormous costs that the public will not (and should not) be willing to pay. Geothermal and tidal both have relatively small potential. For these reasons, no serious energy experts believe that renewable sources will be able to provide most or all of our energy needs, for the forseeable future.

Concerning ner CO2 emissions, nuclear does NOT emit 25 times as much as wind, directly or indirectly. There have been many studies on this subject, and they all conclude that nuclear's net emissions are a tiny fraction of coal's (~2-3%), a small fraction of natural gas (~5%) and similar to or lower than renewable sources. One such study is at:

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull422/article4.pdf

The punch line is that all non-fossil sources emit negligible CO2, and all are "just fine" with respect to solving global warming. No need to distinguish between them.

The story is similar with respect to overall external costs (i.e., overall environmental impact and public health risk). There have actually been extensive scientific studies on this subject, and the great majority of studies show that nuclear's external costs are a tiny fraction (a few percent) of fossil fuels' costs, and similar to renewable's external costs.

The most recent and extensive such study is the European Commission's ExternE project, whose results are summarized at:

http://www.externe.info/

For coal and oil, the (monetary equivalent) external costs are ~4-8 cents/kW-hr, enough to double their price. For gas, it is ~1 cent. For nuclear and renewables, external costs are very small; a fraction of a cent/kW-hr. This includes all impacts/risks of nuclear, like reactor accident risk, mining effects, and long term waste risks. The fact is, all these risks are tiny, and massively overplayed. While fossil plants have been causing ~25,000 deaths in the US every single year (in addition to global warming), US nuclear power has never had any measurable impact on public health. Given nuclear's small external costs, there is no reason for us to pay much the much higher electricity costs that would be involved with trying to get most of our power from renewables sources (as I discussed earlier). The best approach is a mix of nuclear and renewables.

As the above posters have noted, increasing the number of nuclear plants in the US will have abolutely zero impact on weapons proliferation.

Geothermal does NOT have 'small potential'. Geothermal is in use today and works very effectively at reasonable rates. Where do you even get that? You sound like a nuclear industry shill, seriously. Here's my thing: nuclear is not a renewable resource. You have to mine it, and eventually it runs out, which means changing over to other methods at a later date. When combined with the other admittedly exaggerated problems and overall negative public opinion, it's just not a great option, politically or otherwise.

What we need is a broad-based energy policy that employs the naturally renewable resources at hand. Wind, Solar thermal, tidal, geothermal are all great at the power plant level. When combined with an updated electric grid and maintenance of our current hydroelectric system, we can take care of our current needs on renewables alone. Also, in an age of threats of terrorism and natural disasters, decentralized power generation, as with wind, solar, and tidal, will help ensure national security in a way that a big target like a nuclear or coal plant cannot. Further decentralization, to the level of individual homeowners, as solar installations drop in price and powerful systems of financing for private energy improvements are made available during the rebuilding phase of this economic recession/depression, will also prove both cost effective and flexible.

Geothermal is a critically underfunded and under-publicized area of renewable energy development with truly vast potential.

The key to our sustainable energy future is in promoting a balanced system that takes advantage of what resources are available to us.

As shown here:

http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2027

the USGS says that if all known, conventional geothermal fields were tapped, it would increase geothermal generation from ~3 GW to ~9 GW (i.e., from ~0.6% to almost 2% of total US generation). With a significant exploration effort, fields may be discovered that would provide ~30 GW of power (~6% of total US generation). If means of economically tapping unconventional geothermal sources (such as deep, hot, dry rock), then it could provide a large fraction of our power.

Dry rock geothermal is one "sleeper" (dark horse) option that could be out there. Barring such a breakthrough, however, conventional geothermal, like hydro, will remain a minor player.

I agree that geothermal does not get attention, and that we need a balanced approach that takes advantage of the resources available to us, but this clearly includes nuclear.

Long term uranium supply is not a real concern. We have (and will find) enough uranium to last more than a century, even with significant nuclear growth. With breeder reactors, the fuel supply is essentially infinite. A hundred years will be more than enough time to develop safe economical breeders, fusion, or some other set of inexhaustible energy sources.

Large plants do not threaten our power supply, from a security perspective. The grid can easily handle the loss of a 1000-1500 MW plant. Terrorists have much better targets, with respect to both economic impact or human death toll.

One final note, a substantial majority (60-70%) of the US public now supports nuclear power. At the local sites where plants will be built, it is even more popular, with communities engaging in bidding wars to host new plants. If anything, nuclear is more popular in its new build communities than wind farms are.

I was wondering if there is any concern about the warm water output from nuclear plants? Has this problem been addressed already in their builds? I was under the impression that nuclear plants output a great deal of warm water from their cooling processes and that this has been known to be a threat to local aquatic ecosystems. I would greatly appreciate it if someone could enlighten me regarding this. Thank you.

@Isaac

If memory serves me correctly, a nuclear power plant produces only slightly more waste heat than a coal or natural gas power plant of similar size. So I'm guessing that a nuclear plant poses little (if any) more threat to local aquatic life than a coal or natural gas plant.

I would be interested if anyone has ever calculated the carbon footprint of this clean coal/storage idea which does not seem to away, although so many arguments are against it, not in the least transforming CO2 into esters through iridium catalysts, for instance - and/or that algae idea.

There are several energy intensive stages involved in that carbon storage idea, but nobody appears to calculate that carbon footprint!?

1. pumping the CO2 into a compressor facility,
2. compressing the CO2,
3. manufacturing pipelines,
4. laying and maintaining a pipeline system of probably thousands of kilometers (here in Australia)
5. Pumping the compressed CO2 underground
6. maintaining the underground storage so it does not leak.
Why does this carbon footprint not count?
Could it be, that whatever you make from the CO2, esters or algae, reduces profits in some factory somewhere, while the pipeline system is pay, pay, pay?