Why not nukes?

I can remember walking out of a theatre in north Austin on a warm Spring evening in 1979 thinking ‘well, that should put the nail in the coffin of the damn South Texas Nuclear Project.’ The movie was The China Syndrome, a nuclear thriller about human corruption and cover-up and the near-disaster of a nuclear meltdown that, as jokingly asserted in the movie, would have burned its way through the planet all the way to China. Back in late March, the disastrous accident at Three-Mile Island had turned ‘nuclear power’ into a synonym for catastrophically dangerous and there was now no way in hell the Austin voters were going to approve our continued participation in the South Texas nuke proposed for construction in Bay City. Or so I thought. But the Austin business community rallied behind the nuke and mounted a very effective campaign that was based, ironically, on the argument that nuclear was the cheapest power we could buy and that a decision to bail out of the nuclear partnership would be extremely costly and very ill-advised. Leading the argument was our sterling mayor at the time, Carol Keaton, later to become Carol Keaton McClellan Rylander Tom-Thumb-Page Strayhorn-Bullhorn, about whom the less said the better. So we stayed in the nuke (even though in 1981 voters authorized the city council to dump our 16% of the STP, by that time there were no unwary buyers who were willing to take it off our hands.) We stayed through mind-boggling cost overruns (the project, estimated in the initial feasibility study at $974 million has now cost $5.5 billion – for those of you not so hot at math, that’s a 560% cost overrun, an overrun that compares proudly with some of the ones the pentagon has rung up on the taxpayer’s nickel. This particular boondoggle stayed in Texas – you see it every month in your utility bill.)

And now, after years of no major nuclear meltdowns (well, Chernobyl, but that was the Russians and what do they know about nuclear power) but no new applications for licenses to build new nukes, the nation as a whole seems prepared to be stampeded into an acceptance of nuclear power as a ‘clean’ alternative to burning fossil fuels. Holy Radioactive Holocaust, Batman – since when did we re-define ‘clean’ in such a logic-shattering manner? Before we go about shooting ourselves in both feet because we are frustrated that we may have to get out of our cars and walk somewhere, let’s review the history and the facts.

The story of the nuke and its place in our energy past (and future) is a complicated one, but we can parse it into the following major pro-nuke arguments:
1. the nuke makes sense economically; it is cheap energy.
2. the nuke is safe; the problems of the past have been fixed.
3. the nuke causes less environmental damage than other alternative energy sources.
4. the nuke is proven technology; other alternative energy solutions are unproven and may prove to be dead ends.

Pro-nukers (like scientist and Gaia theorist James Lovelock, a supporter of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy™), can produce lots of other arguments in favor of the nuke, and do, but these are the four that I would like to examine since they are likely to be of most concern to Sierra Club cardholders and other responsible members of the environmentally-conscious community.

1. the nuke makes sense economically; it is cheap energy. Well, actually no. Nuclear energy is certainly not inexpensive to build. Despite initial claims to the contrary, the construction of nuclear power plants is outrageously expensive and corruption and cost-overruns are endemic in the industry. Austin is certainly not alone in experiencing the devastating effect of construction cost overruns for a nuke. Mark Holt and Carl E. Behrens, of the Congressional Research Service report that “Construction costs for reactors completed since the mid-1980s have ranged from $2-$6 billion, averaging more than $3,000 per kilowatt of electric generating capacity (in 1997 dollars). The nuclear industry predicts that new plant designs could be built for less than half that amount if many identical plants were built in a series, but such economies of scale have yet to be demonstrated.” In addition, the spiraling costs of waste elimination and compliance with regulatory mandates imposed by a nervous Congress on behalf of an even more nervous American public make building a nuke one of the riskiest economic ventures around. So risky, in fact, that as early as 1957, it was necessary to pass special legislation (the Price Anderson Act) in order to tempt investors into the nuke by severely limiting their liability for even gross incompetence and malfeasance. Despite court challenges that assert that the act underestimated the effect and cost of a catastrophic nuclear failure and that the burden of cost for the fed-backed indemnity to the US taxpayer (estimated at between $2.5 million and $33 million per reactor per year by USPIRG and other groups), the act was defended by the courts (in 1978) and is still in effect. $70 million of the fund was used to cover liability costs of Three-Mile Island. Cost could be reduced, of course, by reducing or eliminating nettlesome government regulation. The track record of this administration has shown how efficient and cost-effective that solution is, hasn’t it? Waste storage is certainly not going to get any cheaper in the future, either. Already, protests of the people who live in the areas where their politicians have sold them out in order to eagerly accept the money nukes are willing to pay to store radioactive waste are mounting and storage sites are harder and harder to find. Funny thing, no one seems to want a glowing radioactive dump in their back yard. So, initial costs are prohibitively expensive (unless the figures are tweaked to suck in the investors who are then caught in a spiral of cost-overruns), regulatory compliance costs are the highest in the energy business and waste storage costs are escalating to the point that some of the most outrageous proposals (like that of sending the waste out into deep space) may actually be seriously offered in the future. Does that sound like an investment opportunity to you?
2. the nuke is safe; the problems of the past have been fixed. Well, actually no it isn’t and no they haven’t. True, we have had no more Three-Mile Island bumbles, but other countries have. The most infamous, of course, is Chernobyl, but there have been other disasters as well. In all, Wikipedia lists 30 verifiable nuclear accidents world-wide (3 in the 50’s, 4 in the 60’s, 2 in the 70’s, 8 in the 80’s, 3 in the 90’s and 10 in the 2000’s – so far). Few of these accidents involved fatalities – at least that we know of since reporting on the long-term results of these accidents is minimal and extremely difficult to come by – no country wants to admit that accidents or worker carelessness caused liability-producing results and the countries that can, like Russia, simply clamp down on the data that is released to the rest of the world. Thirty accidents since the fifties could be cited as an admirable safety record, but remember that these are verifiable nuclear radiation-related accidents, not normal plant accidents involving one plant worker spilling hot coffee on another worker during break. The potential for widespread catastrophe also makes a significant difference. If a sanitation worker accidentally or deliberately dumps untreated sewage into a local river, the results can be damaging and destructive to the river, the fish and wildlife and even the people downstream for several miles who may drink the contaminated water, but if a nuclear power plant worker vents contaminated fuel rod containment water into that same river, the pollution results are much more deadly and extreme and can persist literally for thousands of years. The scale is way different. As a result of the ‘uncontrolled power excursion’ at Chernobyl, “Approximately fifty fatalities resulted from the accident and its immediate aftermath (most were cleanup personnel) and an additional nine fatal cases of thyroid cancer in children in the Chernobyl area have been attributed to the accident. Radioactive material was spread over much of Europe, with over 100,000 evacuated from the areas immediately surrounding Chernobyl in addition to 300,000 from the areas of fallout in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Approximately 1,000 mi² (3,000 km²) of land (the "Exclusion Zone") around the site have been deemed off-limits for humans for an indefinite period. Several studies by governments, UN agencies and environmental groups have estimated the consequences and eventual number of casualties, and their findings are subject to controversy.” (Wikipedia, “List of civilian nuclear accidents”). Add to this the fact that in the US almost all of our nukes were built between 1950 and 1980 (plant licensing applications fell off rather drastically after the 1979 partial core meltdown at Three-Mile-Island). That means most of these plants are thirty years old or older and for an energy plant made of concrete, steel, wood, cable, valves, etc. that is getting pretty long in the tooth. While close government regulation requires replacement and refurbishment of key containment components, the surrounding infrastructure of these plants is aging. Look at the accident list again. We are seeing MORE accidents, not fewer. Pro-nukers argue that the new round of nukes would solve those problems and that standardizing on the best-of-breed designs would cut costs and reduce the problems with failures resulting from design flaws and the rapid aging of customized plants. But the industry suffers from a credibility problem. Austin was told the South Texas nuke would cost just under a billion. The tab is now $5.5 billion and the new, improved expansion recently permitted by the Texas lege will add to that tab.
To my mind, however, the biggest safety drawback to nuclear power plants is not accidents, but deliberate terrorist attacks. Terrorist organizations have already clearly stated that nuclear power plants are a high-priority target. We ignore that threat at our very great peril. The destruction and death of 9/11 would pale in comparison to an explosion at a nuclear power plant in a populated area that could disperse a poisonous radioactive steam and particle cloud across miles of urban area. Of even more concern is the availability of radioactive waste material which could be used to make a ‘dirty bomb,’ a highly-portable explosive device that could be detonated in a dense urban center with devastating effect. On July 12, 2007 the New York Times printed an article about congressional investigators who obtained a license to procure radioactive materials from the Nuclear Regulatory Agency by submitting phony application information. The NRC mailed a purchasing permit to a post office box (!) without attempting to verify the ownership or identity of the licensee. The resulting permit was then altered, permitting investigators to purchase large quantities of low-level radioactive materials that could have been assembled into a dirty bomb. The fact of the matter is that we are, as a country, reasonably trusting and increasing the amount of radioactive material (alarming large amounts of which are currently unaccounted for, incidentally) available to terrorist who would abuse that trust is neither wise nor safe.
3. the nuke causes less environmental damage than other alternative energy sources.
Well, this is partially true. Since the real answer is (or should be) of real concern to environmentally-conscious citizens, I want to spend some time on it and get the facts straight. Let’s start with laying out the alternative energy sources we are talking about. It’s true that compared to the mining, processing, distribution and use of coal for electrical energy production, the nuke is an environmental winner. Less pollution is created in the mining of Uranium than in mining coal and it contributes no CO2 to the atmosphere. But who in their right mind in the 21st century considers coal a reasonable energy source (unless we exclude the current coal-owning power broker corporations, their investors and lobbyists and, of course, the current administration whose policies have been provided by those same corporations, along with wheelbarrows of hard currency)?
But as Rebecca Solnit points out in an excellent article in the July/August 2007 issue of Orion magazine, “Nuclear power proponents like to picture a bunch of clean plants humming away like beehives across the landscape. Yet when it comes to the mining of uranium, which mostly takes place on indigenous lands from northern Canada to central Australia, you need to picture fossil-fuel-intensive carbon-emitting vehicles, and lots of them—big disgusting diesel-belching ones. But that’s the least of it. The Navajo are fighting right now to prevent uranium mining from resuming on their land, which was severely contaminated by the postwar uranium boom of the 1940s and 1950s. The miners got lung cancer. The children in the area got birth defects and a 1,500 percent increase in ovarian and testicular cancer. And the slag heaps and contaminated pools that were left behind will be radioactive for millennia.” Hardly what most folks would consider a low environmental impact, unless, of course, you are comparing it to blowing mountains apart in West Virginia, obliterating forests, burying watercourses and polluting the groundwater of entire communities to get at the increasingly poor-quality coal below the ground. As Solnit succinctly points out: “Sure, you can say nuclear power is somewhat less carbon-intensive than burning fossil fuels for energy; beating your children to death with a club will prevent them from getting hit by a car. Ravaging the Earth by one irreparable means is not a sensible way to prevent it from being destroyed by another. There are alternatives. We should choose them and use them.” You’d think that went without saying, wouldn’t you?
By comparison, the expense of building wind generators, solar power collectors for rooftops and OTEC plants for electrical power generation continues to fall as the technologies become more efficient and the savings of mass production kick into place. I won’t dwell on the low environmental impact of wind and solar, advantages which should be abundantly clear to any barely literate American citizen who has not been in a coma for the last few years. People interested in the zero-impact environmental footprint of OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) plants are welcome to read about it in the postings below or at the site made available by the OCEES (Ocean Engineering and Energy Systems) at: http://www.ocees.com/main2.html The point is, that nuclear energy is environmentally ‘low-impact’ only if you compare it only to coal or if you ignore the mining end and the waste disposal end (plant construction costs and impact for OTEC plants are also considerably lower, but there are those who would argue that this is an economic rather than an environmental issue – actually it is both, but that’s another article.)
4. the nuke is proven technology; other alternative energy solutions are unproven and may prove to be dead ends.
OK, this is just flat wrong. And yet James Lovelock, the Gaia scientist and nuke apologist mentioned at the beginning of this article, contends: “We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear—the one safe, available, energy source—now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.” (Orion, July/August, 2007)
In that same Orion article, Solnit counters: “If you sit next to Lovelock, you might start by mentioning that half the farms in this country had windmills before Marie Curie figured out anything about radiation or Lise Meitner surmised that atoms could be split. Wind power is not visionary in the sense of experimental. Neither is solar, which is already widely used.” Neither, I might add, is OTEC technology which is currently in use and producing electricity for the Kona coast in Hawaii, in Singapore and which will soon be supplying the energy needs for the US Naval Base in Diego Garcia (as well as producing fresh drinking water, water-cooled air conditioning and large, useable quantities of H2 to meet the demands of the future hydrogen fuel cell-based automobile industry.) Finally, Lovelock’s contention that nuclear power is “available” is also misleading. Yes, the electricity produced by current nukes is available, but we are using it (until the next shutdown, anyway). Nuke plant construction is notoriously slow and problem-plagued (cf. South Texas nuke) and tends to take much longer to build than promised (a part of the overrun problem), especially when irate customers like the City of Austin get involved in the project and file lawsuits to get corrupt construction companies dismissed from the projects for gross criminal malfeasance and mismanagement (Austin filed three lawsuits, one as one of the owners of STP in 1981 against Brown & Root for breach of contract, settled in 1985, one in 1983 against Houston Power & Light, who took over from Brown & Root and another in 1994 to recover the fuel costs of an extended outage in the early 90’s.) The initial feasibility study on the STP was launched in 1971 by four partners: Houston Power and Light, the City of Austin, the City of San Antonio and Central Power and Light (CPL). Unit 1 finally came on-line August 25, 1988. Unit 2 came on-line June 19th, 1989. Granted, nuke-builders have probably worked out a few kinks in the process since then, but an 18-year stretch between feasibility and switching on the juice is hardly what I would consider ‘availability.’

It is true that we face a bleak energy future. Like the seemingly interminable war in Iraq, there are no simple, inexpensive or easy solutions. Fossil fuels are killing the planet and quickly rather than slowly. We have failed, as a people and as citizens to insist that the current administration, blinkered by energy policies dictated by 19th-century robber baron politics, take significant action to protect our world and to develop alternative sources of energy. As a consequence we are way late in working on true solutions and throwing the amount of will and money behind those solutions that we should have. It may very well be too late. We may have passed a tipping point, a point beyond which there is no return. But ours is a nation of hope – not hope based on sitting on our hands and having faith that the Big Guy will bail us out of this one, but hope that can be part of a determination to make the sacrifices, pay the costs, think it through, use our native ingenuity and drive to save this planet for ourselves and our children and grandchildren and to do what we can to re-claim our future. In order to do that, we must resist the urge to panic and settle for failed solutions. The Union of Concerned Scientists, one of the most level-headed and objective groups around these days, has considered nuclear power very carefully and from a scientific perspective. Although they do not shut the door to the possible future development of nuclear power as an energy source, their final conclusion is: “Prudence dictates that we develop as many options to reduce global warming emissions as possible, and begin by deploying those that achieve the largest reductions most quickly and with the lowest costs and risk. Nuclear power today does not meet these criteria.” I could not agree more.

An introduction to Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) technology.

The following information on Wikipedia contains a reasonable introductory description of OTEC from an informed layman’s perspective. Some of the information is dated, however and the statement that “The total energy available is one or two orders of magnitude higher than other ocean energy options such as wave power, but the small size of the temperature difference makes energy extraction difficult and expensive. Hence, existing OTEC systems have an overall efficiency of only 1 to 3%.” is not accurate for solutions devised by some of the more advanced engineering firms working with OTEC. Since they have concentrated their efforts in the tropical oceans, in a band that extends roughly a few degrees north and south of the equator, the temperature difference is considerably greater than suggested and the overall efficiency, consequently, is considerably higher as well. Here is the article citation:

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

The construction of the OTEC plant on the island of Diego Garcia continues and is both on schedule and on budget. The OTEC plant on the Kona coast of Hawaii is being re-built and re-designed to produce even more power. As gas prices rise, interest in OTEC as a source of low-footprint, zero-impact electrical energy and, more importantly, a source of high volumes of hydrogen gas to fuel the coming fuel cell economy increases as well, although other alternative sources of energy continue to hold the public spotlight.

Climbing Down from Hubbert's Peak

In previous posts I have discussed the need for and the logistics of weaning ourselves away from the fossil fuels that are poisoning our air and contributing to the climate disruptions we are seeing all over the world. Despite the clamor of anti-scientific and anti-intellectual disinformation coming from an administration that has been in the deep pockets of the Oil industry from the start, it is becoming clear to anyone who is paying attention (or who has not been paid to NOT pay attention), that we are reaching the End Of Oil. Since the 1970's US oil companies have known that we have passed the half-full mark on our domestic oil reserves and will soon be running on empty. There are no more American gas stations on the road ahead. Estimates vary about how soon we will be completely out of American oil, but most researchers think that we only have another 15 to 25 years of American oil left (add another week to that if we despoil the ANWR to get at the deposits there.) In some cases, it is not so much that the oil is not there, it is simply that it becomes more and more difficult and expensive to get it out and to refine it into a usable form. I know you have heard all this before. If you have not, start with Deffeves' two books, Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (2001) and Beyond Oil: The View from Hubbert's Peak (2005). Then read the first section of Kevin Phillips book, American Theocracy (2006), in which he traces the way the oil economy has controlled and doomed American democracy.
Most people are plenty frustrated at this point. The problem seems to be very clear (it is certainly clear to the residents of New Orleans' 9th ward): if we are running out of oil for energy and if continued use of fossil fuels is contributing to global climate disruption and catastrophe and putting our energy fate in the hands of Middle Eastern oil brokers who helped bankroll 9/11 and who will sell more oil to China and India in the next decade than we could possibly buy or afford, then why the hell are we not doing anything about it? The answer is just as clear: we elected (wrong word. We allowed the inauguration) of an oil patch president who has dismantled controls, safeguards and regulations on big business in general and on oil in particular, increasing government incentives, tax loopholes and windfalls for Big Oil in a careful, systematic and effective program. What happens as we run out of American oil? Take a peek at your local gas pump. Then double those prices. Then triple them. Same oil. Same cost to recover, refine and ship it, so why will it cost $8 to $12 dollars a gallon? Republicans like to blather about the free market forces that result in windfall profits because of artificially-imposed scarcity, but the fact is that there is no free market at work here. There is welfare for the corporate super-rich, a welfare system purchased with lobby dollars which ultimately come out of our pockets, yours and mine.
Again, I know you know all this. So what is new? Are there any solutions? What in God's name can we do? Alternative energy holds the key. We must replace fossil fuels as our primary source of energy. Our existence as a culture literally depends on it. Perhaps our existence as a species. The big question, of course, is WHICH alternative energy? There are lots of partial solutions out there: conservation and CAFE standards will help, of course, the less we demand, the less we need, but we are not a culture that is much into self-sacrifice and abnegation and this will come only when cheap oil goes. By that time it may be too late. Photovoltaic and wind energy have potential and should be pursued much more aggressively than they are now; nuclear can never be called "clean energy" until we figure out how to dispose of toxic waste that remains deadly for thousands of years; fusion energy would be great if we could ever figure out how to hold superhot plasma in a magnetic bottle, a problem that has eluded us for 40 year now; ethanol is expensive to produce and corrosive to the transport systems and most of the other alternatives suffer from the same flaws: too expensive to produce, even at mass-market costs, too marginal in their potential output to be considered as a replacement for petroleum. There are, finally, two co-dependent technologies that are emerging as a true solution: hydrogen fuel cell-powered engines (to replace internal combustion engines) and Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion technology to produce the massive amounts of hydrogen required to supply a transportation industry based on hydrogen as a fuel instead of petroleum. Ironically, the Bush administration has supported hydrogen fuel cell solutions because they envision producing the required supplies of hydrogen from coal-fired power plants! Talk about insanity. "Yes, ma'am, the doctor recommends that the best way to cure the virus is to cut off your child's supply of oxygen. Works every time."
Not very many people know about Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion technology and those engineers and scientists who do know a little about it are basing their evaluations of its viability on data that is least a decade out of date. There are companies out there, Ocean Engineering and Energy, Inc., in particular (http://www.ocees.com/) that are having significant success with drawing energy from the temperature differential between the warm upper levels of the tropical ocean and the much colder lower levels. Using turbines that take advantage of the thermodynamic principles that warm water rises/cold water sinks, OCEES is able to produce significant amounts of electrical power that is then used to desalinate sea water for drinking water, chill seaport buildings using the cold water from the ocean depths and, most importantly, produce hydrogen gas in abundance through electrolysis. This hydrogen can then be compressed and liquefied and shipped worldwide in tankers that are currently used to transport compressed natural gas.
Pie in the sky? Hardly. OCEES has previously constructed a working model of this technology off the Kona coast of Hawaii (the plant is currently being re-built on a larger scale to take advantage of newer construction materials). They have won a competitive bid to supply the energy needs of the US Naval base on the island of Diego Garcia, a small, British-owned island off the coast of Sri Lanka of critical strategic importance to the US Navy. The plant is currently under construction and is on time and on budget. When completed, it will supply electricity, drinking water and air conditioning to the facility, replacing an inefficient, failing and dirty diesel generation system that is on its last legs. This week, Hans Krock, president of OCEES and a former college roommate of mine, is in Taiwan discussing OTEC energy plants with the premier and his staff. His next stop is China to discuss the same issue with energy staff members there. Hans, a graduate of Arizona State University and Berkley (Ph.D.) has been working on OTEC technology for thirty years and is the acknowledged world expert on the technology. He is a professor of Ocean Engineering at the University of Hawaii, Manoa campus (Honolulu). For years, Hans has been leading the fight for the recognition of this eco-friendly energy source and for years he has been thwarted, frustrated and bullied by the representatives of Big Oil. Just as Standard Oil and the consortium of California Oil companies conspired to purchase and mothball the trolley system of Los Angeles and just as they routinely purchase and shelve independent technological innovations that would improve the efficiency of the internal combustion engine, they have routinely intimidated OCEES clients, used lobbyists to deny construction permits and falsified RFP documents to keep OTEC technology out of the hands of those who could benefit by it. That is changing. There is enough interest in and understanding of OTEC and its value that even Big Oil cannot keep it in the box. The question that we are facing now is very simple: will the US recognize and take advantage of this unique and incredibly powerful source of hydrogen for the new hydrogen economy, or will we continue to go to war over oil and wind up buying our hydrogen from China or Hong Kong just as we now buy our oil from the Middle East?
There is always a little old lady in the back of the room who stands and asks, "Yes, but sir, what can we as individuals do about all this?" And here is the answer: educate yourself. Read up. Explore the options. Ask embarrassing questions. Read Carl Pope's column on the National Sierra Club website at: http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/releases/pr2005-07-28.asp And perhaps most important right now, participate in the process. The National Sierra Club has mounted a project to determine the energy programs that its members want the club to focus on. They have a survey on-line at http://clubhouse.sierraclub.org/surveys/energy.asp that will allow you to express your interest in current energy solutions and which ones the Sierra Club should support. (you will need a user ID and password, which the website will provide) Unfortunately, like most energy researchers, the survey developers have marginalized OTEC energy, partly because it is frequently lumped in with drawing energy from tide and currents, a much less viable solution. So do this: take the survey. If you are persuaded that OTEC is worth a closer look, tell the Sierra Club. Your voice will make a difference and the Sierra Club can make a difference. Which means that many years down the road you may be able to look your grandchildren in the eye and say "I helped make a difference." How much is that worth to you?

Why do we need Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion?

We are committing suicide by oil. Since the discovery of coal and the industrial use of fossil fuels, our culture has been poisoning our atmosphere with particulate matter by-products and CO2, initiating a process that has resulted in the catastrophic disruption of worldwide climates. We have destroyed an alarming amount of the protective ozone layer of the earth and are only just beginning to see the results in the dangerous levels of unfiltered UV rays in places like Australia, New Zealand and Antarctica. Glaciers in all parts of the world (Glacier National Park, Greenland, Iceland) are melting at a rate much faster than computer models ever anticipated. Hurricanes and cyclones have not only become more numerous, they are starting earlier in the season and warmer ocean temperatures are resulting in much more violent storms. Every objective scientist worth his degree and not in the pay of a giant corporation or the White House will verify these facts. If you disagree, you are too stupid to understand the rest of my argument, so return your head to your butt and go do something to entertain yourself while the end approaches.
The rest of the industrialized world has recognized this problem and the seriousness of it and has come together to make a start at addressing the problem through accords expressed in the Kyoto Treaty of 1997 (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol) The US has signed but not ratified this treaty, which is a way of saying: "Sounds good; you guys let me know how it turns out." George W. Bush, in particular, has made a point of stating that he would not permit the ratification of the treaty without binding agreement on developing nations because of the economic impact to US corporations. So, because the solution is not perfect, we will continue making the problem worse. That makes sense.
We are at the end of the era of Big Oil. Most oil experts agree that sometime in the '70s the US reached "Hubbert's Peak," the point at which the oil which is easy to recover has been recovered and the cost of recovery of the shrinking amount of oil remaining will rise significantly. In other words, American oil supplies in the National Gas Tank reached the half-way mark in the 1970s and since then we have been gunning our Hummers down the highway with no more gas stations ahead. Big Oil does not like to talk about this much because they don't want people to start looking seriously at alternative replacements for petroleum products. They, more than anyone else, have known for 50 years that the end was coming, but it is to their advantage to ignore alternative fuel sources for as long as possible in order to make exorbitant profits from the remaining oil supplies as they become more and more scarce. But despite what the Bush administration would like you to believe, what's good for Standard Oil is NOT what's good for the county. As we run out of oil, more and more desperate measures will be proposed by legislators whose campaigns and war chests depend on money from Big Oil. ANWR will be despoiled for the paltry amounts of oil beneath the surface and our importation of foreign oil from an increasingly hostile Middle East will continue to escalate, as it has since US oil reserves peaked, assuming that we can out-bid the Chinese and Indians who are only just beginning to start making their oil demands clear.
Alternative forms of energy are not just desirable, they are critical to the viability of American culture. Unfortunately, very few of the alternative energy sources have the potential to provide more than a fraction of the energy necessary to keep our economy and our energy-centric culture from collapsing. Photovoltaic and wind energy are both excellent sources of energy and we need to be developing them as quickly and aggressively as we can, but most of the other options have serious drawbacks aside from scalability. Ethanol, no matter where it comes from (corn or sugar) is energy-intensive to produce; coal is so dirty that the cost and energy required to produce "clean coal" plants is prohibitive. Nuclear energy can never be described as "clean" as long as it produces radioactive wastes that will pose serious human health risks (to say nothing of terrorist targets) for thousands of years. Fusion energy has a lot of potential, but after forty years of trying, it is beginning to look like it is going to be impossible to hold the sun in a bottle, even in a very big magnetic bottle.
Of all the alternative fuel options available to us only Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion has the potential to replace petroleum as an energy source through the production of clean hydrogen gas to be used in hydrogen fuel cells. We need to understand that and get to work. We may already be out of time.

Why I Am Here

The purpose of this blog is to create interest in and educate web readers about the smartest and most effective source of energy available to mankind, energy that is inexhaustible, available and has virtually zero detrimental environmental effect on our planet.
Most people do not know about this energy source, and most of those who do know about it base their misconceptions on sources that are decades out of date. The purpose of this blog is to make that right.
The energy source I am writing about is Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion technology, a technology that is currently being exploited and developed by a very small number of futuristic companies, most based in Hawaii and the Pacific Rim. The foremost of these companies is Ocean Engineering & Energy Systems in Honolulu and is run by a old friend and former college roommate of mine, Dr. Hans-Jurgen Krock.
In the course of posting this blog, I will attempt to explain, to the best of my ability, what OTEC is and why it should be considered the ONLY viable and practical replacement for the deadly fossil fuel energy catastrophe that is identified as a major culprit, if not the major culprit, in Global Warming.
In later postings I will set out the details of this energy source and will attempt to respond to every serious question posed.
With the possible exception of Population Control, there is no other issue more critical to the fate of the world we will leave our children and grandchildren. So far in this twenty-first century we have proved to be rotten stewards of this planet. We can change that. We must change that and future generations will hold us accountable for the decisions we make today and tomorrow.
Chuck Byrd