The Relationship of Energy to Sustainability (John Tjostem)

1

The Relationship of Energy to Sustainability

John Tjostem My perspective on the subject of sustainability has been influenced by my childhood experiences on a South Dakota farm and by farming with my dad in the 1950s. Graduate school majors in plant physiology and microbiology plus a teaching specialty in immunology have provided unique additional dimensions for developing my position on sustainability. This essay draws on an extensive review of the literature. Many supporting facts are included. Read the text carefully and bring your questions. I look forward to addressing them. Since this paper covers a range of topics, it is divided into sections as follows: 1. Peak Oil 2. Debates on Sustainability of Economic Growth 3. Advances in Modern Agriculture 4. Mineral Ores (unlike Fossil Fuels) are not used up 5. Prosperity Stabilizes Population 6. Electric Power Changes Lifestyle 7. Urbanization Causes Birth Rate to Drop 8. Sustainable Path replaces Fossil Fuels with Nuclear Fission 9. Short Term Petroleum Substitutes 10. Legislation for Energy R&D Funding 11. Small Breeder Reactors 12. Comprehending Energy Density of Fuels 13. Choices of Energy Sources Matter 14. Ionizing Radiation is Safer than People Realize 15 Summaries of Core Issues 16 Conclusions

Peak Oil We visited a museum at Missouri Valley that houses 200,000 items from the steamship, Bertrand. The Bertrand sank in the Missouri River in 1865. Mud which was made anaerobic by bacteria soon covered over the vessel preserving its cargo from oxidation. The steamship’s location remained a mystery for 104 years. Rediscovery of the Bertrand’s occurred 1969. I was struck by a collection of ornate whale oil lamps and a shelf which contained several rows of delicate glass oil lamp chimneys. Whale oil lamps were used by rich folks. The common herd got along with dim light from tallow candles. Kerosene lamps came into use a few years after the Bertrand accident, sometime during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The first oil well in our country was dug in 1859. Since there was little demand for petroleum, the first refinery was not built for many years and when it was built the main product was kerosene for lamps, gasoline was burned off. The advent of kerosene saved a lot of whales, since whale oil was the most sought after product of the whaling industry.

2

Petroleum played a major role in transforming America into an industrial giant. However, within 100 years of the first kerosene distillation, domestic crude oil production had peaked. M. King Hubbert compared the annual new oil discoveries to the amount of investment in oil exploration. Hubbert’s basic assumption was that the discovery of oil would follow a bell curve. When half of the deposits have been discovered the amount oil discovered in the future would follow a downward sloping curve resulting in ever smaller annual amounts of new oil finds. In 1950 he predicted that peak oil would occur in the USA in 1970, which proved to be the case and the drop off progressed as expected except for a blip deviation produced by the Alaska find. Today, domestic oil production continues to fall forcing us to import two thirds of our petroleum from foreign sources.

Hubbert also predicted a world petroleum peak between 2005 and 2015. Peak oil and rapidly growing economies in China and India portend price hikes in the near future. It is now predicted that Arab oil will not be able to meet demand in 2011.

Debates on Sustainability of Economic Growth

In the early 1970s Hubbert’s peak oil prediction aroused a discussion that continues today on finding our way forward after petroleum. A split in public opinion on the issue of sustainability of economic growth soon opened. One group rejects the growth model for a sustainable economy, claiming that using sustainability and growth in the same sentence is an oxymoron. They conclude that our life style is not sustainable as fossil fuels have allowed us to live on borrowed time. They say we must now adopt a lowered standard of living including drastic reduction in the amount of energy used by our society. They see the energy in this restricted diet coming from renewables and energy savings through conservation. The basis of this concept is the notion that endless growth is unsustainable and once fossil fuels are gone, the only sustainable energy sources are renewables.

Let’s consider this model, which concludes our current standard of living is unsustainable. The model rejects growth and advocates lowering our energy input. Though, my head tells me this model is all wrong, my heart identifies with some of points made by the lower energy advocates. I was born in the mid 1930s and I was a grade school kid during WWII. The world into which I was born and reared was one of drought, dust storms, economic depression, and scarcities of war. We patriotically accepted commodity rationing. Growing up while my parents and neighbors innovated their way through hardships and shortages was certainly a growth experience. Repeatedly, I was taught to accept deferred gratification and I regularly saw the need of repair and continue use of what under other circumstances would be considered worn out goods. I found gratification and even pride in innovating ways to repair and preserve utility. I especially found satisfaction in using ingenuity to transform an obsolete mechanism into another useful good. I now reflect with some satisfaction on the many times that I have used the skills and problem solving experiences acquired during my childhood.

The throwaway society is difficult to accept for one conditioned by events in the 1930s and war years of the 1940s. It is much more satisfying to repair and restore than to send a worn or broken appliance to the landfill and be assessed a humiliating fee, which communicates that this property is worse than worthless, it has been declared to be a liability that I must pay society to bury.

3

Why do so many of today’s appliances remain “on” drawing electricity when not in use? Isn’t that wasteful? Or am I just stingy? The other day, I was looking for a cork. Another reported to me that daughter, Ann, had quipped, “Dad would have a cork if he wasn’t too tight to buy his wine in corked bottles.” Oops, I just answered my question.

The following excerpts are from writings of six authors who support the concept that our current standard of living is unsustainable and continued economic growth of our nation’s economy is most certainly unsustainable. I am not setting up straw men to be knocked down. This group of authors has clout; they show a lack of respect for science, and each has a following of disciples. Unfortunately several environmental organizations and higher education institutions buy into their anti-technology message, actively promoting their gospel which includes negawatts and renewables.

Dennis Meadows’ Limits to Growth showed effects of finite resources.

http://www.aspoitalia.net/images/stories/aspo5presentations/Meadows_ASPO5.pdf

Resources

Population

Food

PollutionIndustrial Output

20101972

Figure from Aim High by, Robert Hargraves

1. Resources fail

2.Industrial output peaks 2040 and plunges to 1950 level

3. Food production drop precedes the population crash

4.Population peaks 2040, plunges from 9 billion to 2.5 billion by 2100, causing death by

starvation for more than 6 billion.

Dennis L. Meadows (born June 7, 1942) is an American scientist and Emeritus Professor of Systems Management and former director of the Institute for Policy and Social Science Research at the University of New Hampshire. He is President of the Laboratory for Interactive Learning and widely known as the co-author of Limits to Growth, which

4

has sold 12 million copies in more than 30 translations, making it the best-selling environmental book in world. Dennis Meadows received a BA from Carleton College, a Ph.D. in Management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and holds four honorary doctorates.

In their 1972 publication, commissioned by The Club of Rome, Limits to Growth, their recommendations were focused on “how to slow growth”. The book echoes some of the concerns and predictions of the Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). In the 2004 Limits to Growth: the 30-year update the message has changed. Meadows explained: “Now we must tell people how to manage an orderly reduction of their activities back down below the limits of the earth’s resources.”

Walter Youngquist, Ph.D. Emeritus, Department of Geology, University of Oregon

We inevitably face a future of less. However, bringing this message to the developed and developing world’s citizens is not being done. Discussion of this topic and population growth unfortunately remains politically incorrect. Economists and political leaders nearly everywhere continue to endorse the illusion that more people consuming more resources (“buy more”—“increase demand”) is the road to permanent prosperity, whereas now the exact opposite is true. Looking inevitably toward a renewable resource-based future, present population has already exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth, but by 2050 another 2.5 billion are projected to be here. The worldwide number one problem is population, for, as is the motto of one environmental group “Whatever your cause is, it is lost without population control.” Projections regarding the United States: (1) We will refuse to solve our own problems so Mother Nature will “solve” them for us. (2) Sooner or later industrial decline will cause population decline and, tit-for-tat feedback, population decline will cause industrial decline. (3) The U.S. population distribution in 2100 will look more like the rural geography of 1900 than like the urban geography of today. (4) Trying to stimulate – or even maintain – the present level of domestic demand of nonrenewable and renewable Earth resources will fail. (5) Multiculturalism will cause chaos during the transition to localism. Dr. Walter Youngquist, GeoDestinies, 2009

Some folks fear abundant energy:

Amory Lovins, 1977 Time magazine named Lovins as one of the world’s 100 most influential people. He has ten honorary degrees The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec, Lovins says:

“If you ask me, it’d be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won’t give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.”

Jeremy Rifkin, Greenhouse Crisis Foundation and the founder and president of the Foundation on Economic Trends (FOET), is the intellectual guru of the neo-Luddites, especially as their anti-technology principles apply to food. He has been called "the most hated man in science" by TIME magazine, Rifkin nonetheless has a wide following and genuine influence on public policy debates. National Journal magazine named Rifkin one

5

of the 150 people in the U.S. that have the most influence in shaping federal government policy for his "skillfully manipulated legal and bureaucratic procedures to slow the pace of biotechnology." Rifkin wrote: “The prospect of cheap fusion energy is the worst thing that could happen to the planet”.

Paul Ehrlich, author of the bestseller, The Population Bomb. Paul Ehrlich predicted a major starvation event before1985. It didn’t happen because Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution took advantage of scientific advances in agriculture. Some say that Paul Ehrlich will be proved right as only his timing was off and the mass starvation is still coming. In, An Ecologist’s Perspective on Nuclear Power, May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report, Ehrlich wrote:

“Giving society cheap, abundant energy ... would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun”. George Mobus, Associate Professor of Computing and Software Systems, University of

Washington, Tacoma Can we solve two problems at once - unemployment and preparing for power down? Energy Bulletin July 2010

Over the next twenty years the US and the world will need to transition from an industrial agriculture model to one based on permaculture and more organic, labor intensive approaches to growing food. Oil is going to decline, meaning that diesel fuels to run tractors and combines will become increasingly costly. And natural gas, meaning fertilizers, will also go into decline. The era of agribusiness is coming to a close sooner than anybody might have imagined. And we are not prepared for what follows.

The work that should be started soon and will be labor intensive is relatively straightforward enough. We need, literally, millions of men and women reconditioning and building soils capable of sustaining permaculture and local production/delivery of food. The Green Revolution has done a great deal to degrade so much of our natural soils through the increasing use of fertilizers and pesticides as well as irrigation.(aside: bold is mine) Now, without these petroleum-derived inputs, it is likely that food yields would drop significantly. Some land areas currently under cultivation might even fail completely. As far as oil-based transportation is concerned, the world is going to grow very large once again, and very round, once long-distance hauling is no longer cost effective. Foods will have to be grown and consumed locally and the only alternative to industrial agriculture that might hope to produce sufficient calories and nutrients to keep huge numbers from starving is permaculture. That is where the jobs will be. And the sooner we get started developing our skills and knowledge of how to do this, the better off we will all be.

Discreditably, George Mobus blames the Green Revolution for soil degradation. I must say to Professor Mobus, our duty is not to return our 7 billion fellows to the Stone Age, but to use our technology to build a better world for all. Apparently he has little faith in modern agricultural science. Feeding a projected world population of 9 billion certainly can’t be accomplished putting the masses back on the land to practice a primitive agriculture. It is a big order even with the best practices that the science of modern agriculture can provide. Success depends upon sustainable economic growth and of

6

replacement energy sources for fossil fuels that are capable of sustainable growth. Also needed are scientific advances not hampered by misguided environmentalists push to strip technology out of agriculture.

Advances in Modern Agriculture

Not even mid-twentieth century agriculture can produce enough food for 9 billion. I farmed with my dad in the mid 1950s before pursuing a college education. It may seem counterintuitive that today’s large scale farms and mega sized farm tractors could be more fuel efficient than the farms of the 1950s or today’s smaller organic farms. Modern farmers use less fuel per acre and much less fuel per bushel than in the 1950s. Efficiency gains help to reduce agriculture’s dependence on oil. By the way, only 20% of the energy invested in our food is from farm energy input which includes the energy invested in fertilizer and energy to operate irrigation pumps. In the United States, the combined direct use of gasoline and diesel fuel in farming fell from its historical high of 7.7 billion gallons in 1973 to 4.2 billion in 2005–a decline of 45 percent. Broadly calculated, the gallons of fuel used per ton of grain produced dropped from 33 in 1973 to 12 in 2005, an impressive decrease of 64 percent. One reason for this achievement was a shift to minimum- and no-till cultural practices on roughly two fifths of U.S. cropland. Commercial fertilizer was not applied on our farm or on most farms in the 1950s and chemical weed control was just beginning. We cultivated our wire checked corn three times during the season and in the fall we ploughed our fields with a moldboard plow. These tillage operations loosened the soil, causing inevitable erosion. Our corn yield of 40 bushels/acre was considered to be a good yield. Today, the corn yield has tripled on this farm to 160 bushels/acre. No till and minimum till have replaced the plow. Monsanto’s Round-up and Round-up ready seeds have made possible the complete elimination of the corn cultivator. A sprayer with a 120 foot long boom replaces the tiller. In the 1950s a net loss of soil was occurring. Today’s agricultural practices can boast of actually building soil on much of the nation’s farmland. Commercial fertilizer, plant breeding, and genetically modified crops (GM crops) have brought about abundant yields that are sufficient to feed our world’s human population of 7 billion. The fact that children go to bed hungry in this world is not because of food shortage, rather, food distribution is not equitable. We cannot go back to the organic farming practices of 1900 or even the 1950s without causing starvation. The world population in 1900 was 1.6 billion and in 1950, 2.55 billion. Our world population today has just passed 7 billion. To go back would not only cause a shortage of food, but also a return to tillage practices which causes soil erosion. Agriculture that promotes soil erosion is not sustainable.

Plant physiology and microbiology were my majors in grad school. I appreciate the great improvements in plant breeding and genetic engineering. Round-up and genetically engineered Round-up Ready seeds are a godsend. This completely safe, non-toxic technology has made possible a no till/minimum till agriculture which has greatly reduced soil erosion and even reversed soil loss. The trade off of the tiller for the sprayer is an important component to the success of modern agriculture. It is responsible for a more soil friendly and fuel efficient agriculture.

7

Modern American agriculture is the most sustainable form of agriculture on the planet. There is strong political opposition to agribusiness, chemical companies, and corporate agriculture. The issue of trust and public acceptance of biotechnology has been highlighted by the debate over the acceptance of genetically modified (GM) technologies. There are many difficulties in making sustainability operational.

Genetically engineered (GE) crops are lifesaving breakthroughs for the developing world because plants have been created that contain all the essential nutrients for human health. GM seeds also make possible the tailoring of crops to specific local growing conditions. It is a tragedy that well meaning “greens” in Europe have poisoned the minds of Africans against the use of GE crops. According to Stewart Brand, the Greenpeace campaign is one of the causes of starvation for untold numbers of Africans. It is critical that advances in bioengineering be implemented in crops grown in areas of the world where human nutrition is an unfulfilled need.

Many fear that GE crops are not safe. Truth be known, the food produced from GE crops is safer than that from conventional crops. Plants have evolved in a highly competitive world. Evolution has endowed them with poisonous molecules to combat plant eating pests. Such crop plants may be toxic or they may cause serious allergies in humans.

In the 3.5 billion years that microorganisms have been around, they have likely invented every possible chemical harmful to heath. There is really nothing to fear from GE crops. The likelihood of the molecular biologist creating a harmful “Franken food” that contains a new and unique molecule is vanishingly small. On the contrary, GM seeds are required to pass tests to confirm that no harmful molecules are present in newly engineered crop varieties. They are much safer than varieties made by back crossing to wild type with conventional genetic breeding because unwanted genes often tag along with the sought after gene. GM seeds bring in only the sought after trait and they are subjected to extensive testing to verify safety.

Plants and insects have a long history of intimate association. Over time they have traded lots of genes back and forth. Plant genomes contain insect DNA and insects carry a load of plant DNA. Likewise we humans share genetic material with our microbial flora.

Bacterial DNA is one of many sources used in making GM seeds. Knowledge that genes in nature flit between widely different species should mute some of the negative connotations of GM seeds. This, the last week in August 2010, brought about two noteworthy developments in plant genetics, the sequencing of Chinese Wheat DNA and also the DNA of the Golden Delicious Apple. Previously, agriculturists such as the late, great Norman Borlaug had to laboriously cross-breed varieties to develop new traits, such as the high-yielding dwarf wheat bred by Borlaug in the mid-20th century that staved off famine for billions. Now breeders will be able to improve crop yield where specific environmental factors such as drought exist. Wheat rust should become a scourge of the past. I recall writing my freshman English term paper on race 15B wheat rust. Wheat, our main cash crop, had been the victim of this fungus. I recall commuting to NDAC library to research this topic in the Journal of Phytopathology. I also recall that the loss of the wheat crop did not dampen my father’s keen sense of humor. He told my mother, who was the daughter of a Swedish immigrant, that we had a crop of Swedish wheat-empty in the head!

8

When I find continuing fear and mistrust of GM technology, I recognize that science has to be promoted as much in the twenty first century as it was in the nineteenth century. One of the earliest defenders of science was T.H. Huxley. In 1860, a year after Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published, Huxley’s famous encounter with Archbishop Wilberforce occurred. The Bishop concluded his attack on evolution by asking Huxley whether his decent from the ape was on his father’s side or his mother’s side.

The lean tall figure of Huxley quietly rose. He looked, for a moment, thoughtfully, at the crowd; Saw rows of hostile faces, caught the grin Of ignorant curiosity; here and there, A hopeful gleam of friendship; and far back, The young swift-footed, waiting for the fire, He fixed his eyes on these-then in low tones, Clear, cool and incisive, “I have come here,” he said, “In the cause of Science only.”

(Alfred Noyes, The Book of Earth)

A verbatim transcript of the exchange does not exist, but the following is from a letter written by Huxley, “If then, said I, the question is put to me would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessing great means and influence and yet who employs those faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion-I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape. Whereupon there was unextinguishable laughter among the people, and they listened to the rest of my argument with the greatest attention.”

The above account is reported in Great Essays in Science, Edited by Martin Gardner. Science was a young discipline fighting for status in 1860.

My hope is that all farmers including organic farmers will take seriously this biology and adopt GM seeds as they are engineered to produce the most nutritious and non-allergenic foods. They have a role to play in adapting plants to thrive in a warmer world.

At least one trait, added with molecular breeding of a gene from a wild strain of rice, has already been introduced in Asia and Africa: New varieties of rice, called “scuba rice” because they resists flooding damage, are now being adopted in India, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia. Each year, lowland floods in South Asia destroy 4 million tons of rice. Rice is a staple for more than 3 billion people.

Corn genes for C-4 photosynthesis are being researched for incorporation into rice. Special cells in corn store sun’s energy for use in fixing carbon dioxide at night. This acquired efficiency could greatly increase the productivity of rice. Corn rich in vitamin A precursors is being targeted for release in Zambia by HarvestPlus.

The following is a list of examples of present and potential future applications of GM technology for crop genetic improvement. Royal Society of London, Reaping the Benefits: Science and the Sustainable Intensification of Global Agriculture (Royal Society, London, 2009)

9

Time scale Target crop trait Target crops

Current Tolerance to broad-spectrum herbicide

Maize, soybean, oilseed brassica

Resistance to chewing insect pests

Maize, cotton, oilseed brassica

Short-term (5–10 years)

Nutritional bio-fortification Staple cereal crops, sweet potato

Resistance to fungus and virus pathogens

Potato, wheat, rice, banana, fruits, vegetables

Resistance to sucking insect pests Rice, fruits, vegetables

improved processing and storage Wheat, potato, fruits, vegetables

Drought tolerance Staple cereal and tuber crops

Medium-term (10–20 years)

Salinity tolerance Staple cereal and tuber crops

Increased nitrogen-use efficiency

High-temperature tolerance

Long-term (>20 years)

apomixis Staple cereal and tuber crops

Nitrogen fixation

Denitrification inhibitor production

Conversion to perennial habit

Increased photosynthetic efficiency

Organic and other smaller scale farms are well positioned to market locally. Using local marketing saves fuel expended on long distance shipping. This niche becomes more important as fuel costs go up and it should be encouraged wherever locally grown food can be made available. However, with 50 % of the world population living in cities and a projection of 80% by mid century, most people do not live near enough to avail themselves of a local farmer’s market. Local marketing is not an answer for feeding the world population; rather it is like a bake sale for the purpose of funding a new school. It is a drop-in-the-bucket, but it gets people involved.

As a microbiologist, I know that microbes infect crops and impart toxins and carcinogens. If you opt for organically grown crops you take your chances with the

10

microbial toxins and carcinogens. If you opt of crops produced by modern farms you expose yourself to agro-industry chemicals that have been applied to crops to control plant pests and parasites. It is probably a tossup, and it is a personal choice as to which method of crop production that you prefer for the food that you eat.

One concern that organic growers bring up is that open pollinated crops may get contaminated with GE crops. This is certainly possible even when people try to be good neighbors and agree upon buffer strips it can happen. The complaint may be likened to that of the model T owner who complains that the 45 MPH freeway minimum is too fast for his vehicle. We may just have to live with GE crops. They play a vital role in providing human nutrition and in plant adaptation such as tolerance to a warmer climate. We have just begun to see the changes that will come from the plant engineers. My suggestion is to celebrate the new biology as we have done with Borlaug’s Green Revolution. The charge by Professor Mobus that the Green Revolution has damaged the soil is groundless. Pun not intended.

Mineral Ores (unlike Fossil Fuels) are not used up

I have demonstrated the growth curve of bacteria many times in microbiology labs. The logarithmic death phase always happens after exhaustion of the energy source. Our current world is somewhat analogous to the closed system of the bacterial growth flask because a major part of our society’s energy supply has been finite fossil fuels which are approaching exhaustion.

Fortunately, our future is to live in a world with an inexhaustible terrestrial energy source. Given an adequate energy replacement for fossil fuel, our planet’s mineral supplies are abundant and have the potential to allow all the people of the world to industrialize and enjoy a first world’s living standard for millennia to come. A cheap clean energy replacement for fossil fuels will increase the availably of mineral resources. Our lithosphere is well endowed with the elements needed for plant nutrition. Unlike fossil fuels, mineral ores are recyclable; they are never used up. Given abundant energy, minerals can and should be recycled and also be refined from seawater. Cheaper energy also makes lower quality ores affordable. But in the absence of energy even the richest mineral deposits are inaccessible.

Prosperity Stabilizes Population

Can the population bomb be defused by prosperity? Would a yes answer to that question be too good to be true? Check out the figure below. To build these graphs, Dr. Hargraves went to the CIA World Factbook, which lists countries and their statistical data: population, GDP, electricity use, life expectancy, etc. Prosperity in developing nations may be the solution to the problem of world overpopulation. Industrialization brings prosperity and it is accompanied by a drop in the birth rate. The results of this graph demonstrate that countries with GDPs above $7500 per capita have birthrates below ZPG. These data strongly support the notion that promoting growth of economies in countries with GDPs below $7500 is the way to turn our population growth rate negative.

11

Prosperity stabilizes population.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/docs/rankorderguide.html

GDPpercapita

Children per woman

82 nations with populations over 10 million.

Stable replacement rate

Prosperity

Figure from Aim High by, Robert Hargraves

Prosperity

Prosperity depends on energy.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2042rank.html

GDPpercapita

Annual kWh per capita

Nations with populations over 10 million.

Figure from Aim High by, Robert Hargraves

12

Electric Power Changes Lifestyle

The transition from lighting the kerosene lantern to flipping on the light switch was the end result of a series of political decisions about creating the Rural Electric Association. It began at the voting booth and made its way through the politics and bureaucracy of the 1930s.

Life without electricity is very different and more difficult than having power at ones finger tip. For my first thirteen years, I lived in a world that lacked modern conveniences at home, at school, and at church. The biggest technical change in my lifetime was the arrival of the REA. I can still recall the night in November 1948 when the dark landscape was lighted for the first time by dozens of yard lights. Nearly every yard light was turned on that clear autumn night.

Within a couple of years the flush toilet replaced the outhouse and I had my first bath in a real bathtub. It had been my winter chore to keep the copper boiler on the top of the cook stove filled with snow. The water from melted snow was needed on washday when the wash machine with the kick start engine occupied a place in the middle of the kitchen floor. The end of the engine’s flexible exhaust pipe was placed in the ash drawer of the cook stove. At times one of my mother’s arms bore burn marks from coming in contact with the hot exhaust pipe.

Electricity took a lot of drudgery out of my mother’s life. Hot water on tap from the electric water heater was a wonderful change. Wash day included ironing. Mother always dreaded lighting the white gas iron. The electric iron was among her favorite improvements to come with electricity.

Our diet changed with the addition of a refrigerator in the kitchen. For the first time we could have store-bought ice cream at home. No more sour milk and cream and no more smelly swill pail in the entry. The entry also contained the hand cranked cream separator which separated the cream from milk that was milked by hand from cows. Large Redwing crocks filled with brine for curing meat in the cellar were empted and no longer used. Dozens of jars of canned meat on the shelf in the cellar were consumed and not replaced. In their place was a large deep freezer. I missed the large slab of dried beef which hung from a hook in the pantry. With a really sharp knife one could sneak into the pantry slice off thin slices of dried beef without removing the slab from its hook. Whole hams hung from a ledge in the stairwell to the unheated upstairs. The large wooden butter churn was no longer cranked and buttermilk was no longer served. Smaller batches of butter were churned in the new GE Mix Master. It also replaced the hand potato masher and the hand cranked egg beater. The toaster was wonderful; we could have toast for breakfast every day. No more toasting homemade bread over an open fire of the cook stove. I think milktoast dropped out of our diet with end to open fire toasting. Heavily salted cod in a white sauce that did not require refrigeration came in the small wooden boxes with mitered corners. The salted creamed cod served over toast also became a rare item on our menu.

A lot of salt went out of our diets when the refrigerator came to our house. We are still using that 1948 GE refrigerator in the basement of our cabin where it expands our refrigerator space when the whole family is at the lake.

13

One point that needs to be made is the fact that one third of all the food produced on the planet is lost to spoilage. Lack of refrigeration is the main cause of that loss. Since refrigeration requires electricity, expanding electricity to underserved populations increases the available food supply. Electrification also brings a huge jump in life expectancy.

Our nearest store was at Dahlberg, a village with no electricity. No fresh meat, milk, butter, or cold soda pop was sold in the dimly lit general store. Dahlberg also had a town hall, a cream station, and a grain elevator. The centrifuge in the cream station was hand cranked, as was the Emerson Kicker dockage separator at the elevator. A large one cylinder engine powered the elevator lag and the hydraulic pump for the lift that elevated the front of trucks or wagons during unloading. The engine starting procedure was exciting to watch. It began with heating the glow plug with a blowtorch for what seemed like an eternity. Cranking the engine began with the engineer climbing up on one of the two big fly wheels. He rode it down with hope that fuel combustion in the cylinder would occur. He repeated climbing up and riding down the fly wheel down until the engine came to life.

Urbanization Causes Birth Rate to Drop

Migration to the city brings opportunities. Stewart Brand makes the point that with urbanization, women who leave the farm, gain freedom and choose to have small families. The internet and cell phones are showing people of the developing world that a better lifestyle is possible. He projects that by mid-century 80% of the world’s population will be urbanites. On the farm children are a labor source and insurance of a caretaker for parents in old age. In the city children are an expense. The result is that urbanization is followed by a birth rate below replacement. Rather than buying into gloom and doom we should concentrate on giving developing countries an affordable energy source so that they can manufacture goods for bettering their standard of living. By selling goods to the rest of the world they gain wealth to grow their economies. It is not a sin to have a growing economy.

We do not want the developed world to stop or significantly slow consumption. The developing world needs our markets to grow their economies. Our goal should be to maintain our standard of living and assist the developing world by providing an affordable energy source. Bill Gates suggests the minimum amount of energy that a person in a developing country should have for a reasonable standard of living is, a level that’s about half of current European usage or a quarter of current U.S. usage.

Sustainable Path replaces Fossil Fuels with Nuclear Fission

There is a sustainable path forward with intrinsically safe, scalable, inexpensive nuclear energy. Our best hope for an abundance of emission free energy is smaller factory built, advanced generation nuclear fission reactor technology. Nuclear fission is the only energy capable of replacing fossil fuel. Advance generation reactors that operate at ambient pressure, have a strong possibility of producing power that is cheaper than dirty coal.

14

What about liquid fuel? Can nuclear power give us fuel for our tractors, combines, airplanes, and highway transportation? How can nuclear reactors replace petroleum? The answer to the “can” question is yes, and the “how” question answer is as follows: High temperature nuclear reactors can split hydrogen form water at high efficiency. The thermo-chemical splitting of water at high temperature looks like a winner. One such system uses sulfuric acid and iodine as catalysts. I have read of 60% efficiency for hydrogen production at temperatures in the 900 to 1000 degree C range. Synfuels can be produced by chemically reducing carbon dioxide with the efficiently produced hydrogen. The Los Alamos National Lab has developed a highly efficient method for making synthetic hydrocarbon fuels from atmospheric carbon dioxide and hydrogen. They project an operating cost (Nov 2007) of $0.65/gal for methanol and $1.40/gal for syn-gasoline. Add on five billion dollars for construction of a plant and the cost goes to $4.60 for gasoline and $1.65 for methanol. They suggested that with improvements costs could drop to $3.40/gal and $1.14/gal. I suspect that the high temperature reactor hydrogen production would lower those costs considerably more.

Before WWII ammonia was made from hydrogen produced by electrolysis rather than hydrogen from methane. Since electricity is necessary for electrolysis we start with efficiency in the 30+% range, so the total process efficiency must be still lower. Getting a highly efficient hydrogen production system could drop the consumption of natural gas by about 5%.which is the percentage of natural gas used to make hydrogen. This also might lower the cost of anhydrous ammonia, which could trickle down to making food more affordable. The oil industry also would increasingly benefit as they come to rely on more heavy crude and tars extracted from oil sand which need to be lightened with hydrogen.

Short Term Petroleum Substitutes

Climate change, peak oil, and the industrialization occurring in developing countries are driving up energy costs and threatening to bring on critical shortages of liquid fuels. With petroleum production dropping and advanced generation nuclear reactors still under development it is critical that affordable short term substitutes for liquid fuels be found.

Canadian oil sands are not profitable at the current price of crude oil. High petroleum prices drove our economy into recession. It is apparent that our economy cannot stand much higher priced oil. Oil sands will soon be needed as petroleum dwindles. Oil sands products can be produced at a rate capable of replacing half of the current petroleum output.

World crude oil output is dropping by 6.4% per year. It is frightening to realize that in just ten years the drop in crude oil production will exceed Canada’s capacity to make up the shortfall with oil from oil sands.

Another source of replacement energy for petroleum will be needed. Natural gas is also a potential replacement for petroleum. Vehicles can be equipped to run on natural gas. Propane can be made from natural gas. Sixty years ago farm tractors were offered with three fuel types, diesel, gasoline, or propane. South Africa is making liquid fuel for its

15

transportation from hydrogen supplied by natural gas. We need to invest in facilities to create liquid fuel from hydrogen and carbon dioxide.

Nuclear reactors may be used in mining oil sands. Much heat is needed to liquefy the tar in sand and hydrogen is needed to hydrogenate the tar to make it a liquid that will flow at room temperature. Reactors can provide both the heat and the hydrogen. Canada is planning to use nuclear reactors in their oil sands mining. Hopefully the use of nuclear reactors will lower the fuel production costs from oil sand. The use of nuclear power in the mining of oil sands will also lower the very large carbon foot print associated with oil sands fuel.

Legislation for Energy R&D Funding

It appears that the transition from fossil fuel to a replacement fuel cannot occur fast enough to prevent some continued drop in our standard of living. This lower living standard can be minimized if government makes a major investment in R&D to develop the most economically viable replacement energy sources. The American Energy Innovation Council, the AEIC, calls for a national energy policy that would increase U.S. investment in energy research every year from $5 billion to $16 billion. Bill Gates, a member of the AEIC, said that he was stunned that the DOE budget for R&D was only $5 billion; by comparison the National Institutes of Health invests a bit more than $30 billion. To pay for more R&D, Gates favors a 2% tax on energy. He does not favor cap and trade or a tax on carbon, but he favors a time table for closing coal power plants so that each utility can have a dependable long range plan.

I had given thought to funding more R&D for energy before I saw Gates’ ideas. My thought was that energy subsidies should be phased out and the government investment in subsidies be placed in the DOE’s R&D fund. The first subside to go should be the 45 cent per gallon ethanol subsidy. It goes to the blenders. Removing this subsidy would not affect the amount of ethanol sold because its use is mandated by our government. The $1.59/ MWH for nuclear power are not justified. Our 104 nuclear power plants are now paid for and the O&M is less than 2 cent/kWh. Our nuclear plants have the lowest generating costs of all generating sources. Renewable subsidies are much larger (wind $23.37 MWH and solar $24.34/ MWH). Wind and solar would not be competitive without these subsidies plus a subsidy for 30% of construction costs. I will make a general statement: Subsidies do not encourage innovation and they often do not favor the most cost effective strategy.

Money spent on R&D, education, and infrastructure is investment that pays back big dividends. Our regulatory infrastructure needs to be streamlined and beefed up to assure timely deployment of the fruits of our R&D investments.

Small Breeder Reactors

Our current Light Water Reactors (LWRs) cannot replace fossil fuels fast enough or at affordable prices. They are expensive because they must operate at high pressure. In order to get efficiency, steam must be under very high pressure. A horribly expensive 1000 ton reactor vessel must be cast in one piece and be made of very thick stainless steel

16

walls to withstand high pressure. The so-called billion dollar dome must be set over the reactor to contain a leak of potentially radioactive steam under 2000 to 3000 pounds pressure. Charles Barton, Jr., the son of a nuclear chemist, Charles Barton Sr., an associate of Alvin Weinberg at ORNL, wrote this: “As far back as 1943, Manhattan project scientists including Phil Morrison, Harrison Brown, and Alvin Weinberg began to understand the energy implications of nuclear energy.” Weinberg later wrote: “Phil Morrison could hardly contain his excitement as he showed me his calculations. If uranium were burned in a breeder (reactor), the energy released through fission would exceed the amount of energy required to extract the residual 4 ppm of uranium from granitic rock.” Barton explains the implications of Harrison’s insight: “This constituted a virtually inexhaustible supply of energy, one which would keep humanity out of the Malthusian trap for millions of years to come.” Barton then observed, “The deployment of nuclear power is not a liberal-conservative issue. Nuclear power will be the primary source of future human wealth. Without out that wealth, it will be impossible to meet either liberal or conservative socio-economic goals.” The early 1940s was the beginning of the golden age for discovery of controlled ways to unlock the energy stored in the nucleus of the atom. Until I read Weinberg’s account of the energy potential stored in granite, I didn’t appreciate the implication of the statement, we can burn rocks. Generation IV breeder reactor technology is by far the most promising new technology capable of replacing fossil fuel. Breeder reactors can be built to follow load automatically and they are meltdown proof as overheating causes the rate of fission to slowdown. Since the energy density of nuclear fuel is so great and all of the energy in the fuel source is released in closed cycle breeder reactors, nuclear fuel for human society’s future needs is inexhaustible in any time frame that is worthy of consideration. It has been shown that uranium can be extracted from sea water at an affordable cost and as mentioned above also from granite rocks. In addition fertile thorium, also reactor fuel, is believed to be three times more abundant than uranium in the earth’s mantle. There is growing interest in smaller size breeders that can be factory built and delivered to site by train of truck for set up in weeks or months rather than years. Since they operate at near ambient pressure no billion dollar dome or 1000 ton reactor vessel is needed. Breeder reactors have high burn up rates. Those with closed cycles recycle the fuel until 100% of it is burned up. Several countries have had experience with breeder reactors. France generated electricity with its Phenix reactor for 37 years. Russia has had the BN 600 in service for 30 years. It has been the most reliable reactor in their fleet. They are soon ready to bring on line a modernized scaled up BN 800. They have sold two BN 800s to China.

We have plans for two closed cycle reactors. The most complete plans are for the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR.). It is a project from Argonne National Laboratory. Clinton killed this nearly completed project in the 1994, three years before its planned completion. The

17

other is The Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) from Oakridge National Laboratory where a prototype was operated for five years in the 1960s. Two Nobel laureates, Eugene Wigner and Edward Teller of the Manhattan project endorsed the LFTR reactor. Sadly, politics killed this promising project in the 1970s.

Two more breeder reactor projects are described below. These will have a high fuel burn up, but some fuel will remain since they are not closed cycle. They will be faster and cheaper to build than closed cycle reactors and are seen as a bridge to closed cycle technology. Both have the goal of completion by 2020.

One of these reactors is the product of TerraPower, a company founded by Bill Gates for the express purpose of building a reactor with potential to produce electricity cheaper than dirty coal plants. The plan is to combat global warming, which he sees as humanity’s greatest threat. By making energy cheaper than coal, coal will become an obsolete fuel. His goal is zero carbon emissions globally by 2050.

He is seeking an affordable, safe energy source for use in developing countries. This type of reactor is known as a Traveling Wave Reactor (TWR). He says that high operating temperature means that it puts out a lot of energy for its size. It is designed to use the spent fuel from our current LWRs and it will be loaded with enough fuel to operate for 60 years without refueling. He is looking to partner with China. Gates says, “China's the most obvious one, and we're certainly talking to them. It's not clear enough at this stage that we'd put all of our eggs in one basket. They're building over half the reactors, and they build them very quickly. It would be a great place if they chose to.” Gates hope is to have it completed by 2020.

The other is a design created by Prof. Per Peterson at UC Berkeley. He has designed a low cost Pebble Bed Advanced High Temperature Reactor. The power output of a full-sized 4 m tall (2 m wide) reactor core unit would be 400+ MWe, which is surprising large for such a small size core. Prof. Barry Brook visited Per’s lab and he wrote the following summary: “Per’s aim is to develop really compact nuclear units with very high power densities, based on mostly well-understood technology that is deployable on the time-scale of a decade or less. The driving aim is to get these units commercialized in the near term, and to bring down costs, thereby paving the way for later widespread commercial deployment of full Generation IV designs like the LFTR and IFR, which not only achieve high burn up, but also completely close the fuel cycle.”

Comprehending Energy Density of Fuels

Nuclear fuel energy density is 50 million times that of coal on a volume basis. This example may help us conceptualize the tiny amount of nuclear fuel needed to run a 1 GW reactor for a year. The energy density of nuclear fuel (uranium or thorium) is 2 to 3 million times that of coal on a weight basis. Uranium or thorium is 19 times heavier than coal, so when compared on a volume basis we must multiply the 2 to 3 million times 19, which gives us about 50 million times more energy than coal.

18

One ton of coal fills my Nifty Fifty pickup bed to a depth of one foot. That coal fed into a coal fired power plant will generate about 2400 kWh which is the amount of electricity used in two months in the average American home. One ton of uranium or thorium loaded into a breeder reactor that burns up 100% of the nuclear fuel will last for one year producing 8 billion kWh. Since nuclear fuel is 19 times heavier than coal, my pickup box filled to a depth of one foot would contain 19 tons, enough nuclear fuel to keep a 1 GW reactor running for 19 years. Or stated another way a year’s supply of fuel would occupy only 2 cubic feet of space and the resulting fission products would also be contained in a 2 cubic foot space. After storage for 10 years 83% of the fission products contents will have decayed to stable elements. The remaining 17%, about a third of a cubic foot, will be radioactive for 300 years. It is a question about calling this material radioactive waste, as these radioactive fission products have great value in medicine for treatment of cancers.

Forget about renewables; they are diffuse (an order of magnitude less dense than coal) and intermittent. They cost too much, take up too much space, and too much of our earth’s resources must be invested in their construction and maintenance. The mean wind capacity is only 27% of rated capacity, and due to variability, wind needs a backup most of the time. Solar’s capacity factor is even worse than wind. Denmark produces 20% of its total electric power needs from wind, but it is only able to provide between 5 and 10% of Denmark’s annual electric power generation to the grid. More than half of the wind generated energy must be sold at bargain basement prices to their neighbors. Sometimes the Danish utilities even pay their neighbors to take the energy so that they can collect the subsidy from their government! Denmark, at 40 cents/kWh, has the highest priced electricity in Europe and Denmark has one of largest carbon foot prints in Europe. So much for wind’s poster child!

Choices of Energy Sources Matter

Power cheaper than coal is our only hope for turning the world away from dirty coal which is implicated in climate change and pollution induced heath issues. If we can develop and export a nuclear technology that is cheaper than coal we not only address our economic problems, but also the climate change threat.

If on the other hand if we make poor decisions on our energy sources, other nations will out compete us with lower power costs. Russia is already into floating reactors. They have a 30 year head start with their breeder, the BN 600. They have sold the updated BN 800 to China. We need to worry that our labor force will remain underemployed while our utilities buy our power from Russia and China. Our power will be delivered to us from floating reactors placed along our coasts. If we choose not to buy their power, our more expensive power will negatively affect the price of our exports. I recall when Oregon Plywood mills closed their doors because Japan made plywood cheaper on ships that were positioned off our west coast. Will it be déjà vu?

Ionizing Radiation is Safer than People Realize

We need to relax our overly strict nuclear power regulations to match those on other countries. We also need to address radiation phobia in our population. FDR’s, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself”, has new meaning when we realize that radiation phobia may prevent us from developing a competitive source of power. The Three Mile

19

Island/Chernobyl generation has a problem accepting nuclear power. They grew up with the fear caused by these accidents and the images from the China Syndrome movie. It is hard to shake a life-long fear. The best approach is to provide data that is verifiable. Changing attitudes takes time and patience.

Our species evolved in a world that had much higher levels of radiation. Radiation exposure induces several mechanisms of the immune system that function to actually lower our incidence of cancer. Among those are killer T cell and apoptosis that eliminate cells with damaged DNA. Such cells are at risk for becoming cancerous. Cells are damaged from a variety of sources, including chemicals in coal smoke and free radicals that are a product of our own metabolism. Radiation induced surveillance reduces the risk of cancer occurrence from those sources as well. It has been shown that populations who live in areas of high background radiation have an increased level of DNA repair enzymes. It is no coincidence that the seven states with the highest background radiation, year after year, appear on the list of the ten states with the lowest incidence of cancer. Background radiation varies over a wide range. Evidence suggests that increasing exposure to the upper part of that range would tune up the immune system for better overall health and reduce the incidence of cancer in the population.

Our immune systems are endowed with elegant mechanisms, to not only tolerate the range of naturally occurring radiation, but to actually benefit from amounts somewhat greater amount than most of us currently receive. The Linear No Threshold (LNT) theory, which our EPA adheres to, views any additional radiation as increasing our chances of getting cancer. What is ignored is that the immune system is actually stimulated by radiation to repair damaged DNA and to eliminate cells that could potentially turn malignant. The limits set to radiation exposures are much lower than necessary. These overly cautious limits serve to frighten people about a nonexistent radiation hazard from low dose radiation. Ionizing radiation has been proven to be a poor carcinogen.

Truth is, the scientific literature is filled with studies that show that a modest increase in radiation decreases our risk of cancer. This benefit is termed radiation hormesis. Our current policy is a well meaning attempt to protect us from cancer. It is unwittingly leaves us with more vulnerability to cancer and an immune response that is less than its maximum capability.

Summaries of Core Issues

Stewart Brand believes that the environmental movement will soon reverse its position on four core issues. “Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.” Here is a brief summary of his position on these issues:

Population growth: Worldwide, birthrates are in free fall. Around one-third of countries now have birthrates

20

below replacement level (2.1 children per woman) and sinking. Nowhere does the downward trend show signs of leveling off. Urbanization: Abundant low cost energy underlies industrialization. Industrialization creates employment opportunities in cities. Urbanization is underway. Women have fewer kids because they moved to town. Children are a liability in the city, while more children are an asset in the countryside. Genetic engineering: GE crops are more efficient, giving higher yield on less land with less use of pesticides and herbicides.

Nuclear power:

The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power. Nuclear plants are very high yield, with low fuel cost.

Conclusions

Nuclear energy is the only way to retain a livable planet without lowering our living standards. It also provides opportunity for the Third World to raise their living standard, giving hope for disarming the population bomb. It’s just that simple and it is our only real hope; no other options are on the table. We move forward with nuclear fission, or it is coal and gas, with the environmental consequences.

Science and technology are not frozen in time. Wonderful new developments are living in the minds of future scientists. That is the leap of faith we must make. We have not yet probed the depth of the earth’s abundance. Affordable and sustainable energy is the KEY to sustainable economies in all the nations of the world and a sustainable decent standard of living for all the people of the world. Maintaining our efforts in scientific research is the best way to insure sustainability.

“I have come here in the cause of Science only.” T. H. Huxley

Books:

Stewart Brand, Whole-Earth-Discipline-Ecopragmatist-Manifesto

William Tucker, Terrestrial Energy

James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth's Climate Crisis and the Fate of Humanity

Gwyneth Cravens, Power to Save the World: The Truth about Nuclear Energy

James Hansen, Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth about the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance to Save Humanity

Lawrence Solomon, Deniers

21