A March Energy Update

 Here it is, the beginning of March, and I am celebrating my new hip with a great trip to the Bahamas, where I plan on doing a lot of walking on the pink sand beach, and a lot of fun reading and relaxing.  As I’ve said before, I am stepping away from my activism and constant following and reading about what is going on in energy and climate.  I have achieved two major goals I worked hard for, namely decommissioning the Humboldt Bay nuclear power plant, and excited to see the real beginning of a hydrogen economy.  But my mind and heart still long to keep up with what is going on, but at a slower pace.

The nuclear industry continues to use its power and money (mostly our money) to keep the current reactors limping along, and promising the new phase of reactors will be important energy producers in the future.  These fission power plants have not been built or tested yet, and are years away from having any kind of impact on our energy supply, except sucking up lots of money, which could be used for more beneficial purposes.  The industry pushes for some kind of disposal and management of nuclear wastes which will result in moving casks from here to there forever since there is no solution other than cask storage and long-term monitoring.  There are over 80 nukes that eventually will need to be decommissioned and their huge mass of low-level waste dealt with.  Cleaning up the rest of the nuclear infrastructure will drain away much-needed dollars.  And on top of this, the recent hysteria over fusion power keeps the myth of unlimited energy alive.  Fusion will allow us to extract deuterium from seawater, and fuse it to produce huge amounts of heat.  The infrastructure for using this heat is as mired and complex as fissioning uranium.  By the time this is even possible, we will have transitioned to renewables and hydrogen.  We already have a fusion reactor 93 million miles away, and do not need to create one here on earth.  So much is not mentioned or misstated.  Deuterium is extracted by electrolysis of seawater. There is one deuterium atom for every 6,500 normal hydrogen atoms.  The heavier deuterium is further separated sort of like uranium enrichment.  What to do with the depleted hydrogen?!!!   The whole fusion cycle is a very complex technology, requiring tritium (produced in fission reactors), producing neutron-activated radioactive wastes, and a mindboggling amount of heat.  It ain’t gonna happen…at least for a long while.

Meanwhile, hydrogen production and its deployment is increasing at an amazing exponential rate.  Thanks to Putin, green hydrogen has finally taken the world stage as the unlimited, non-carbon, sustainable, equitable, multipurpose, and eventually inexpensive fuel for the future.  It’s been 30+ years in the making but is now beginning to come to fruition augmenting and replacing natural gas, fuel for all modes of transportation, and the advantage of being produced from renewables almost anywhere, and transportable to markets everywhere.  The transition is in full swing all over the world (not so much here in the US where the fossil fuel and nuclear industries continue their stranglehold on our energy supply.)  Of course, this will take time, but the technology and infrastructure will mature very quickly.  More on all this later!!

 

With climate change, what can I say?!!!   Changes and impacts predicted 30-40 years ago are now occurring at increasing rates.  This past year…all over the globe…but just here in the US and California

We have seen record weather phenomena…hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes, fires, droughts, cold, snow, etc.  The human and economic burden is also increasing, and it ain’t over… the changes will continue to escalate over the years, even if we somehow limit CO2. Not much more I can say, other than preparing the best way we can for the future.  But the sun still shines, the winds do blow, and with a new hip, life is good!