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The EV--Death by Nuclear?
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The recent devastating events that have unfolded at Japan’s Fukushima power plant have reignited the world’s fears concerning nuclear power and have caused a renewed backlash towards existing nuclear facilities and future operations.
The disaster at Fukushima is leading governments and concerned citizens alike to question the safety and viability of nuclear power, and in turn, the erection of new power plants. A vital question that has arisen among environmental activists, energy sector leaders, and professionals in the automotive industry is how this renewed sentiment will affect the future of the electric car. What will power tomorrow’s electric car if nuclear energy is no longer an option?
Many electric car enthusiasts are arguing that without nuclear electric power, electric cars seem highly unlikely. For the EV to become a mainstream alternative to the standard vehicle, we would need more, rather than less electric power to run electric cars. Without nuclear energy, adding or producing electrical power of any kind could prove quite the challenge.
Plans in Europe call for about 1 million EVs on the road by 2020, and a lot of that push centers around increasing the number of nuclear power plants to feed these vehicles. In the U.S., nuclear energy currently makes up 20% of all power generation sources (45% comes from coal, and 23% is derived from natural gas).
When it comes to electric cars, is nuclear power our only answer to decreasing our reliance on fossil fuels? Some say that the obituary of the nuclear industry has already been written and that the spotlight has now been placed on natural gas.
Replies
While nuclear energy has several advantages over coal, etc., there are many options in using the electric car as a storage media for wind and marginal or excess energy created at night when most areas demand for energy drops. This is especially true in the southwest US where air conditioning and lighting demand drop dramatically. Some utilities are looking into this in rationalizing their costs for charging cars in an intelligent grid when power is available. The most likely future is that there will be many alternate strategies instead of the singular solutions we strive for today.
The reduction of nuclear plants from main energy providers to secondary ones, may give a boost to the electric vehicle market to change its main fuel, from pure electricity requiring heavy duty battery storage to hydrogen friendly stored in water form or other forms of fuel.
The dissolution of water to pure Hydrogen is an expensive procedure but with the right catalyst, that problem should be overcome.
Other form of fuel may include the Compressed air propulsion which still at infancy but still operational.
http://www.mdi.lu/english/
EV's to be environmentally successful will need to be charged overnight from green sources and then be able to go much further using less power from lighter weight batteries. This is what a new technology under development is anticipated to be able to deliver. Video link concentrates on the home power generation aspect but the technology will also enable EV's to operate with same relative output while consuming less power. (allowing battery weight to be reduced and range to be extended) Power consumption from all thermodynamic power plants (coal, natural gas or nuclear) will decrease as green sources increase.
The current issues with everything from opt-in smart metering, the actual cost of a smart grid deployment and of course the lack of safety and maintenance of nuclear power plants are all tied to a centralized production and distribution paradigm for energy.
Historically the progress of civilization has always followed the dispersion of power from the few to the many, as in modern democracies, and social networks as it relates to media production and distribution. With viable and cost efficient distributed generation technologies available, I don't see why we need to be dependent on centralized constructs like coal and nuclear power plants.
For that matter, just selling more EVs that take up more and more centralized planning resources yet sit idle for 23 hours of the day is also not the best use of EV technology. Conversions, shared access and more with local renewables are not only nice ideas, but critical as planned systems are cracking (no sick pun intended) worldwide.
I pains me to see this attitude about nuclear power. There seems to be two camps, pro-nuclear people who consider the risks and long term radio-active waste problem as acceptable and the anti-nuke crowd exemplified by the Green Peace mantra "No Nukes are Good Nukes"
This last statement is simply not true. There is a type of nuclear power called the LFTR that has lower cost, no long term radio-active waste, and is inherently safe. See energyfromthorium.com
And of course there are other alternatives, we all know about hydro power, solar , wind, geothermal, etc. These alternatives are good, but not cheap. Liquid Flouride Thorium Reactors can provide cheap on-demand base load power with no pollution. Thorium is very plentiful, and in fact is literally free as a byproduct of several processes, but most notably from mining rare earths. Thorium does not require the expensive enrichment process used in uranium reactors.
My take on nuclear power and alternatives is here.
The GM EV1 of which my sister was a recipient to have one of their pre-production models in the early 1990's in California would for one, never have been introduced given the amount of investment GM was making into the venture if they did not believe we had the adequate infrastructure for electrical energy to sustain a large fleet of them going forward into full production if with the population in CA of approx. 38+ million people. Furthermore this was also at a time when the nuclear power generating industry was at its lowest ebb.
Having worked in the risk management, emergency response & preparedness, HAZMAT, and nuclear safety field for many years in my former career for 25 years, (1970-1996) INEL (Idaho Natl. Engr. Lab) a DOE nuclear generation research site I learned in the end that NP is really obsolete, and the only reason it is even seeing the light of day is due to 3 primary reasons:
1.It possess the path of least resistance to pull it off the shelf to put more enormous amounts of energy on the grid with the least amount of R &D, Capital, & infrastructure adaption, or simply put has the least amount of hoops to jump through to put more energy into the system to plug into.
And that’s very attractive, especially to politicians who look to pin gold stars on their chest with the least amount of effort to solve a problem using buzz words like “New new Nuclear Power to advance the cause the industry has finally achieved the ability to provide safe nuclear power generation-wrong.
To use ionizing radiation, itself extremely hazardous to your health in order to simply boil off H20 to generate steam, and saying that is the only way you can do it without putting half the planet at risk of contamination at risk, is nothing short of insanity in knowing the difference between right & wrong.
I would rather eat cold rabbit stew & live out of a tent than subject humanity & the planet I live on to that kind of technology when you consider the scale to which the risk presents itself to the planet and living organisms if an emergency occurs risky inherently damaging
2. The generation (my generation & parent’s generation) had protested big time in large numbers with immense grassroots organizations to put the nuclear power generation off the road-map.
What we learned at 3 mile island that scared the heck out of the population in America, and because we experienced Hiroshima/Nagasaki, and had a 60's population of pretty intense environmental consciousness put Nuclear power licensing at the State & local level prohibitive for nuke generators. But now, we have a new generation of much younger people who did not live through & come to learn yet the lessons we did.
So were back to De Ja Vu all over again 1970, except that it is 2011, the industry sees in light of the political argument more popular than ever although it's the same as it was during the 1st peak oil incident in 1973' leading to gas rationing lines because were too dependent on foreign oil, to go back to nuclear power.
Same arguments, same types of energy distribution pendulums, and same level of empty headed thinking skills to change the conceptualization paradigm that we must do, in order to build a more sustainable world using renewable that are far cheaper if thought out correctly, far cleaner if properly thought through, and far safer than nuclear& fossil fuels.
3. (The biggest problem-Neoliberal Capitalism)
The problem we faced in 1973 is the same problem we face now, and why the entire climate change arguments & peak oil debates driving much of these issues centers on the dynamics of human nature in Western Culture & Neoliberal Capitalism which cannot survive without continuous Capital accumulation with an average per annum growth rate of 3%>to avoid crises points like we did in 2008, refuses to yield in light of the obvious truth to eliminate fossil fuels & power grid distribution systems like Nuclear Energy Power Generators (investment capital driving lobbyists like Alex Flint & his Nuclear Energy Institute on Capitol Hill) which are prohibitively risky to public health & that of our planets living systems, already in a steep despicable state of decline.
This means they being(Capitalists) would have to be willing to accept a decline in capital accumulation from one investment sector and apply Capital to an entirely different set of applications & stakeholders, if you like ,in order for sustainable alternatives which are already being adopted on smaller local driven economies from solar, wind, compressed air technologies, voltaic battery cell technologies(Germans way ahead)to be brought to scale to become the primary driving force that keeps our global economic engine humming right along to meet the essential needs of humanity every waking day we get up to survive yet another day of life.
It's not that there is not enough Capital to bring alternative R & D applications to scale to meet the energy requirements of tomorrow which are sustainable cleaner, safer, more cost effective means, we could have and should have put billions if not trillions of this Capital to work decades ago, no different than say a Morton Thiokol Saturn V Rocket for Apollo Moon project, an Interstate Highway System or any one of a hundred incredible man made projects we have developed to tweak nature to suit our needs whoever the need arose.
We have done it.
This was never a, mater of can it be done.
I learned this first hand from my own Father who as a small kid used to give me the full treatment by showing me how this kind of technology needs get accomplished when he worked as a Project Mgr.-Senior Design Engineer for what was the XLR-99 Rocket Motor with “Reaction Motors” a Division of Morton Thiokol that drive the X-15 Rocket Engine Space plane at a time it was never thought possible to even break the sound barrier out at Edwards AFB in the 1950’s.
It’s absolutely shameful that our human world has not moved on for a paradigm shift to where we adopt systems & technologies where our primary consideration for ultimate adoption must be setting standards of risk to the environment & public health for which nuclear power certainly rises above all others as the most dangerous to public health & the health to our planets living systems we have yet to adopt.
This was a matter of convincing the Capitalist Class they need to invest whatever it takes in order to move off fossil-fuels & nuclear power altogether and begin a new chapter in our species to start imagining a world where our the critical operating principles & values that drives everything we do must be geared to the ultimate consideration of what impact it will have on the health & safety of our planet & that of humanity.
If this does not occur, then I am afraid for the future generations of this planet who will inherit a world not worth living in.
We own the day and the future here and now and with that I will close by simply saying what w3 lack is the essential ingredient:
And that is our enduring love for humanity and the grace that touches the natural world of our planet that can sustain us for all time which must be protected.
The sooner we begin to embark down a new path of sustainability for future generations the greater the chance that humanity will endure for future generations.
.Here is the link for the informative interview with nuclear physicist Professor Michio Kaku & Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow.org April 13, 2011
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/13/expert_despite_japanese_govt_claims_of
.Radiation 101: What is it, how much is dangerous, and how does Fukushima compare to Chernobyl?
http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/blog/?p=511
Best Chernobyl Documentary 2006 The Battle of Chernobyl (HQ) 1hr 32min 1 clip
http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/the-battle-of-chernobyl/
Reexaming the Nuclear Safety Issues of NUKE Emergencies
Testimony to CA State Senate post Fukushima
http://videos.sacbee.com/vmix_hosted_apps/p/media?id=74429111
All Levels of Radiation Confirmed to Cause Cancer.
http://www.nirs.org/press/06-30-2005/1
Cesium fallout from Fukushima rivals Chernobyl
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20305-caesium-fallout-from-fukushima-rivals-chernobyl.html
http://www.newscientist.com/special/fukushima-crisis
International Institute of Concern for Public Health
Nuclear Disasters and Environmental Health
http://iicph.org/nuclear-disasters-and-environmental-health
Radiation protection 125
Low dose ionizing radiation and cancer risk
European Atomic Energy Community
http://ec.europa.eu/energy/nuclear/radiation_protection/doc/publication/125.pdf
SECRET FALLOUT LOW-LEVEL RADIATION FROM
HIROSHIMA TO THREE-MILE ISLAND
By ERNEST STERNGLASS
Introduction by George Wald
http://www.ratical.org/radiation/SecretFallout/SF.pdf
THE CARCINOGENIC, MUTAGENIC, TERATOGENIC AND TRANSMUTATIONAL EFFECTS OF TRITIUM
CITIZENS AWARENESS NETWORK
A P R I L 1 9 9 4
Updated January 2001
http://www.ipsecinfo.org/Tritium.htm
Accidents Involving Nuclear Energy
http://www.chris-winter.com/Digressions/Nuke-Goofs/Refs-2K.html
Health Physics Considerations in
Medical Radiation Emergencies
By Ken Miller and Mike Erdman
https://hps.org/hsc/documents/Miller_Article.pdf
“Fighting Radiation and Chemical Pollutants with Foods, Herbs and Vitamins” by Steven R. Schechter, N.D
http://www.livewellnaturally.com
http://www.rifeenergymedicine.com
SUPPLEMENTS SHOWN TO HELP PREVENT EFFECTS OF RADIATION FALL-OUT
By by Dr. Melissa Patterson, ND
http://www.waccobb.net/forums/showthread.php?78066-Dr.-Patterson-SUPPLEMENTS-SHOWN-TO-HELP-PREVENT-EFFECTS-OF-RADIATION-FALL-OUT
Tying up the destiny of EV to nuclear is non-sense.
Although nuclear is giving us sudden death when it's compared to our addiction to oil and coal which are killing us slowly in greater numbers we should be careful about our future energy strategies.
First thing is first: ICE car (Car 1.0) has to go away. period. Responsible of a quarter of all pollution on earth, it has to be dealt urgently. A viable alternative exists (Car 2.0) in the form of EV. I don't have yet a technology to fly me zero emission but I have technologies to ride me zero emission.
Besides, EV is 5 times more efficient than ICE car converting enrgy to kilometers, so for the same amount of pollution you can have 5 EVs instead of 1 ICE. Now, consider that the electricty used is created by dirty technologies such coal or nuclear but EV eventually absorbs the portion that we waste. What if then solar or wind generated electricity used to charge those cars: means that I have to shut down power plants coal&nuke.
I hope you get the picture, instead of jumping on non-sense headlines like this one.
Remember there was also this green peace guy declaring: « Electric cars run mostly on power derived from coal and nuclear power, and that’s not environmentally friendly. » Every body should do his/or homework before making such declarations.
The electric car is probably the future of individual transport and I don't think that we should involve that with the future of nuclear power plants.
I don't think that nuclear energy will kill EVs (for a second time). It depends on the country and on every user. For exampel in germany, the public is aware of the whole topic about the danger of nuclea energy therefore they would prefer to use renewables. OEMs want to offer a package with EV and a special eco power tarif for the users, which would be perfect for germany. In contrast in france nuclear power isn't regarded condemned that much, wherefore potential users in France maybe would agree to use nuclear power for their EVs.
We've did an interesting survey about coal vs. nuclear power. Read more about this topic on:
http://www.green-and-energy.com/blog/evchat-nr-11-evil-energy-nuclear-or-coal-for-your-ev/
Bye, Thomas