US Dept of Energy: 1 gigawatt of solar energy by 2010.

[NNadir]

If all goes well, the US department of Energy indicates that we will have 1 gigawatt of solar power installed in the US by 2010, a mere five years away.

http://www.eere.energy.gov/news/archive.cfm/pubDate=%7Bd%20'2005-03-09'%7D

According to a thread recently posted here, total US energy demand is about 100 exajoules. Dividing by 31.6 million seconds in a year this means that the US power requirement is 3.2 trillion watts, assuming, of course, constant load (which is not actually the case, but let's not focus too much on reality. Reality is unpleasant.)

This means, assuming that the sun shines continuously and there is no night, that solar power, the much hyped "success" story that some people are claiming with absolutely NO evidence, will prevent global climate change, will, in 2010, if all goes well, represent a whopping 0.03% of total US power demands at constant load.

Since this great solar victory that wouldn't arrive for another 5 years will basically leave 99.97% of US energy demand unmet, I am happy to announce that conservation strategies are in place that will help our future: 1) New Orleans can go underwater. If you've been to New Orleans, you will recognize that there are many neon lights on Bourbon Street that are on continuously all night. When the city goes under water, some of the US power demand will be eliminated. 2) New York can go under water. Although this city has many skyscrapers that will stick out of the rising seas, many of the entrances to these buildings are actually on ground level. A ten or twenty feet rise in sea level should make it very difficult for citizens to get in and out of these skyscrapers, preventing from getting in to turn on the lights. This should save globs of electricity. In any case, New York City was in terrible danger because of the existence of the Indian Point Nuclear plant. Although the plant has operated for decades without a single loss of life, and has produced zero air pollution, many people just know it is dangerous, because it has the word "nuclear" in its name. Since "nuclear waste" is dangerous because lots of people can dream up scenarios whereby it will harm someone somewhere someday, it is preferable to have New York City go under water. Scenarios involving carbon dioxide are not the same because no one thinks of it as dangerous waste and therefore it is not dangerous waste. 3) Have huge droughts in the west owing to global climate change, and force the cities there to disband: Many cities in the west use lots of power pumping water to their reservoirs. Therefore we can eliminate some of the missing 99.97% of the power by simply eliminating water in the West. 4) Eliminate farming: Farms also consume water and the produce from them is often trucked. Almost none of this trucking uses solar power. If global climate change causes all of the Midwestern farms to fail, we can eliminate another portion of the 99.97% of missing energy. I also note that the famines that are a happy side effect of the elimination of farming should also reduce energy consumption dramatically.

I am so relieved. Problem solved.

[Massacure]

1. lmao. Sarcasm and ridicule are such powerful tools.

[brokensymmetry]

2. Serious question...

First of all, great post! I enjoyed your comments.

Now the question...I've read a few opinions that Uranium could be extracted from seawater - and done so with a positive EROEI ratio. In your opinion, is that true?

[NNadir]

3. Yes it is true. It has been demonstrated in Japan.

The price of Uranium would have to rise to $200/kg from the current $13-15/kg. This is not likely to happen in our lifetimes, though, assuming humanity survives global climate change, it may happen several generations off. The price of nuclear fuel has almost no bearing whatsoever on the price of nuclear energy, just as the price of sunlight has almost no bearing on cost of solar energy. Note that the cost of solar energy - except for wind - is much, much, much higher than the cost of nuclear energy, even the fuel is "free."

I think that many other approaches will be taken before the price of uranium rises that high. For instance, there are now about 1000 MT of plutonium on the planet. There is enough energy contained in this plutonium in theory to run all of the world's existing nuclear capacity, 361,000 Megawatts (361 Gigawatts) for about two years without using any newly mined uranium at all. One of the main reasons that such an approach has had mixed economic success, is that uranium from mines right now is so cheap.

The same holds true of the huge stocks of uranium contained in so called "nuclear waste," and "depleted uranium." Although the uranium materials are readily available in quantities that could easily be treated to supply much of the world's energy needs for decades and decades to come, the low price of existing uranium has given no impetus for their use. The cost of use of "once through" uranium and depleted uranium definitely comes in at a higher cost than $13-15/kg. Note that the "once through" uranium is still enriched with respect to natural uranium. The fuel is considered "spent" not because the fuel is completely burned up, but because neutron absorbing fission products have accumulated in it, especially certain samarium and europium isotopes. Thus if one merely removes the samarium and europium and other fission products, this uranium is perfectly suited for direct use in CANDU type reactors. Again, the reason it is not done now is cost, it is much cheaper to use virgin uranium in CANDU's - they can use natural uranium and do not require "enrichment."

Another reason that plutonium fuel is not more widely used is that the use of plutonium requires certain physics accommodations in nuclear reactors. A very successful strategy for adjusting for these physics changes in plutonium, which has to do with prompt neutrons, is now being piloted in Russia by the Thorium Power Company. This configuration which is known as the "Radkowsky" fuel loading scheme can be employed in almost any pressurized water reactor of any existing type. Under these conditions the reactor consumes about 60% of the plutonium put into it, while converting substantial quantities of thorium into uranium-233, a fissionable fuel. The U-233 based fuel can then be burned in CANDU type reactors after dilution with U-238 (depleted uranium) or "once through uranium", where it will achieve very high burn-ups while producing more plutonium. Since the creation of plutonium in CANDUs, however, has a relatively high weapons proliferation risk - CANDUs can be fueled on load - I would hope that the uranium used to dilute the U-233 would be "once through" uranium. Under these conditions, any plutonium created would be contaminated with sufficient quantities of Pu-238 and Pu-236, rendering it almost useless in nuclear weapons. The isotopic mixture of any unconsumed plutonium placed in a "Radkowsky" type reactor is also substantially changed, making the probability of weapons diversion - an over hyped consideration already - much, much lower. The "Radowsky" program in Russia is being undertaken to destroy weapons grade plutonium. The Clinton-Gore administration had promised US funding for this program, but the United States was subsequently seized by a bunch of religious freaks who promptly abandoned this commitment.

Note that Uranium-233 is almost useless in nuclear weapons too. Although the pure isotope was used in a nuclear test by the United States in the 1960's, the material was very difficult to handle because of the decay products of the uranium-232 side product from U-233 production. Some of these, in particular Thallium-208, are very powerful gamma emitters. Thus the handling of U-233 requires remote systems. This effect also has profound stability implications on the chemical explosives used to detonate nuclear weapons. Further, it makes such weapons almost impossible to conceal and transport. Also U-233 as produced in commercial reactors is contaminated with very large quantities of U-234, further complicating a weapons diversion program by making the construction of physically large weapons with low explosive yields.

Note that U-234 is itself a fertile nuclei and can be used to make U-235. This happy effect accounts for the huge burn-ups that can be achieved using U-233 fuels, in the range of 100,000 MW-days/ton. This compares with about 30,000 MW-days/ton for existing fuel types. Thus it is possible, even without the use of fast liquid metal fueled breeder reactors, to achieve far greater efficiency in the use of nuclear fuel than is currently practiced.

For these reasons, I cannot see a "uranium from seawater" requirement being necessary for many centuries.

[brokensymmetry]

4. Thank you!

That was a most informative answer. I appreciate your time, effort, and expertise.

[jpak]

6. It's bullshit

There are 3.3 micrograms of uranium in a liter of seawater

There are a trillion liters in a cubic kilometer of seawater.

A cubic kilometer of seawater holds 3300 kilograms of uranium.

US nuclear power plants currently consume ~25 million kilograms of uranium per year.

The US would have to extract 7575 cubic kilometers of seawater each year (assuming an unrealistic 100% extraction efficiency) just to supply current US reactor uranium demand.

Let's put this in perspective...

That's a column of seawater one kilometer by one kilometer wide at its base and 7575 kilometers tall.

The volume of Chesapeake Bay is 73 cubic kilometers..

The mean annual discharge of the Mississippi River is "only" 534 cubic kilometers per year.

The amount of energy required to extract uranium this amount of seawater easily exceeds any energy it would produce.

Furthermore, the extraction process would seriously alter the chemistry and temperature of the extracted water, and kill all larva (including commercial fish species) and microorganisms present (the vast majority of organisms in the sea are microscopic) - it would be an enormous environmental disaster.

...and it's bullshit.

[brokensymmetry]

7. That's fascinating.

Thank you for taking the time to post it.

I wonder if it might be possible to get some links? I'd like to develop a set of references on the subject.

edit: I had difficulty finding the information about micrograms per liter, but I found an interesting link:

http://www.denisonmines.com/en/operations/uranium/uranium/

Excerpt:
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There are currently 439 nuclear reactors with a generating capacity of 361 GWe in operation in 30 different countries, generating about 16% of the world's electricity requirements. There are 30 more reactors under construction, and a further 34 reactors are planned, for which approvals and funding are already in place. China, in particular, has an ambitious nuclear power development program with its generating capacity expected to grow from 7 GWe to 36 GWe by 2020.

Production costs of nuclear electricity in the United States have been lower than other sources of electricity production for the past four years and are continuing to fall. The most recent OECD comparative study showed that nuclear was the preferred choice for new base line capacity commissioned by 2010 in 7 of the 13 countries considering nuclear energy based on a 5% discount rate on capital.

Uranium consumption world-wide in 2003 was about 180 million pounds of U3O8 and is expected to increase to 205 million pounds in 2013. The demand for uranium is expected to grow by between 1% and 2% per year over the next decade. This growth in consumption comes not only from the construction of new reactors, but also from improving capacity factors, uprating of the generating capacity of existing plants, and the extension of the licensed operating lives of the reactors.

---------------------------------------------------------
All of this is in accord with your figures, of course.

[jpak]

8. Here ya go

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:gDIkKYBB85AJ:www.geo.tu-freiberg.de/~merkel/Uran_analytik.pdf+uranium+seawater+3.3+%C2%B5g+L&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

(scroll way down for the 3.3 µg . L-1 concentration)...

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[Massacure]

12. Two words: Breeder reactors.

[pie]

14. I like that fancy science talk

That is definitely a lot of sea water

[PaulaFarrell]

5. so I guess from this post you're pushing nuclear energy?

Solar power could provide a lot more than 1 gig if there was the same money and lobbying behind it. Portugal is going to build a 116 megawatt solar facility, if little old Portugal can do that why can't the US get serious about solar too? IMore nuclear power plants just means more of the same - we continue to waste energy and leave the consequences to our kids.

[Coastie for Truth]

13. General Comment - Not just to this posting

On a lot of the "Peak Oil" and "Energy and Environment" fora there is the unstated assumption that "one size must fit all" and there must be "one uniform solution."

Kind of reading the first chapter of W. Edwards Demming or Peter Drucker or even Frank Gilbreth or strict adherence to Henry Ford.

That's not the case with energy. There is no one generic solution. For some niches we might want nuclear, and for others geothermal, and for others wind turbines, and for others photovoltaic, and for others hydro. For some of personal transportation the good old Adenosine triphosphate <-> Adenosine diphosphate cycle might be adequate (people power), or electric, or hybrid electric or biomass (whether by fermentation or some other process).

Whenever I see a paper that starts out rebutting another paper or append or proposal by saying "There isn't enough of this or that kind of energy to ever satisfy all of our needs......" I say "The blind men are looking at the elephant."

We have got to think out of the box - and don't dismiss, by way of example, ethanol, because it doesn't fit in New Mexico -- it might be a perfect fit for Illinois; similarly, don't dismiss geothermal for "The Geysers", CA (northeast of San Francisco) because it doesn't work in Massachusetts.

We will have to integrate lots of dissimilar and disparate technologies -- that's the fun of this business.