Introduction to Section - Energy Today John Shanahan August 12, 2022 This section of the website: allaboutenergy.net addresses humanity’s use of energy to advance his standard of living from the beginning to the present. It includes some of the pros and cons of each form of energy. Please send suggestions and corrections to john.shanahan@allaboutenergy.net. Energy is defined as the ability to do work. Energy used = Work Done + Waste Energy AExample:fulltank of gas (Energy) = Work done to drive the car until the tank is empty + waste heat from friction in all moving parts, hot gasses going out the exhaust pipe, and heat in the engine block and exhaust piping transmitted to air by conduction. Fossil fuels do a lot of work in moving over one billion cars every day. 1
The most important forms of energy are:
2
1) Biomass - animal dung, brush, branches, trees
The bad news about biomass: Biomass was the main energy source for the entire history of humanity up to the early 1800s. Wind energy powered ships and grinding mills for hundreds of years before that. With biomass energy alone, the world’s population was never able to grow over one billion people in over 100,000 years. Slavery was a worldwide evil and still is to some extent. Agriculture was primitive - horse and plow, less fertilizer, less water management. Climate changes caused population collapses. There was nothing equivalent to by-products from fossil fuels, no modern medicine, very little toilet paper. A pizza oven. We still use biomass for cooking some foods Hometoday.cooking for more than one billion people today and for the whole world prior to the 1800s was done with biomass fuel.
3
The good news for biomass fuels: With biomass fuels, humanity progressed from hunter-gatherers to agriculture based societies with towns and cities, knowledge, art, literature advanced through the Golden Ages of Greece, Rome, and the Renaissance. The Europeans made contact with people in Central and Southern Africa, North and South America, India, China and the South Pacific. Not all of this was good. But for a lot, yes. Animal dung is dried on walls of homes, then burned for cooking and heat. This woman’s hands are covered with cow dung! Some in North American and Europe complain about the hard times they have to endure!
Here are more articles about solar photo-voltaic energy.
4
2) Solar energy
Here are articles about biomass as an energy source.
Branches and brush are still essential fuel for many people. They have to walk long distances to collect it. Some North Americans and Europeans expect that governments take care of them! The government will, if you vote for them.
The bad news: Solar photo-voltaic, PV, panels are a bad way for producing electricity. They are an environmental disaster mining for their materials and disposal of used PV panels. They needlessly take up a lot of land for solar PV farms. They are destroyed by hurricanes, tornadoes, hail, and extreme gusts of wind from other weather phenomena. They only work near maximum capacity for less than eight hours a day on average. For about twelve hours, they don’t work at all. To make up for these times with little or no electricity production, PV promoters are selling storage batteries and other devices for storing potential energy. The batteries are an environmental nightmare.
Here is an article by environmentalist and energy expert, Michael Shellenberger.
The good news about solar energy: Electromagnetic radiation from the sun is the world’s most important energy source. It heats the planet to liveable conditions and powers photosynthesis for plants to grow and support all life. It heats buildings to reduce energy requirements from fossil fuels. It causes massive movement in the atmosphere and Humanoceans.expansion around the world using only solar and biomass energy.
5
3) Wind energy
The bad news about wind energy. The problems with wind turbines are similar to the problems for solar PV panels. They are an environmental disaster in mining for materials and end of use disposal. Sometimes there is practically no wind, particularly near urban centers. Many wind farms are far from population centers. This requires new
6
Solar energy produces clouds that bring rain and snow to grow crops, commercial forests, and all kinds of plants in the wilderness. It supports wildlife, farm animals, and humans. Solar energy is key to photosynthesis for plants to grow.
transmission lines. That is another cost and environmental disturbance. Wind turbines kill birds and bats. Wind turbine advocates say - No worries, it is all for the good purpose of not producing carbon dioxide, the molecule of life, from fossil fuels. Here are articles by Jon Boone about wind turbines. Here are many more articles about wind turbines.
Thousands of wind turbines fill waste dumps every twenty to thirty years creating a long-term environmental disaster. Owners of wind turbines go bankrupt. They aren’t available to dismantle and dispose of them. The problem is much worse for dismantling and disposing of worn out wind turbines in the ocean.
7
Wind turbines kill birds and bats that are essential for a balance in nature.
Wind turbines collapse in winds that are no problem for fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.
8
Wind brings all kinds of changes in the weather. Wind patterns near the United States.
Repeat taking worn out wind turbines to landfills for thousands of years. The good news for wind energy. Global wind patterns deliver fresh water to support plants, animals, and humans. Delivering fresh water from the sources of ocean evaporation to almost every square meter of land would be impossible using power plants and pipelines.
9
Disposal of wind turbine blades is an environmental disgrace. No one should use wind turbines. Notice the size of the large bulldozer at the top of the picture.
Global wind currents and atmospheric events over the Atlantic Ocean. Natural wind patterns do a lot of good that wind turbines with their vast mining pollution, power variability, periods out of operation can not do. Fossil Fuels bad news about fossil fuels. Coal fired plants without environmental pollution abatement equipment cause serious pollution and health problems. Oil spills in the ocean are disasters. Ontario, Canada in the 1940s.
10
4)
The
China in the 2000s. London, UK in the 1950s. 11
Pennsylvania,Pittsburg, USA in the 1940s.
Most of these examples have been cleaned up with pollution control equipment or by switching to cleaner fuels. Here are articles about pollution from the energy sector: Counting the cost of air pollution Global Environmentalism - Who Is The worst Polluter of All?
Here are more articles about pollution. The good news about fossil fuels. There is really good news about fossil fuels and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels for the future. Nothing comes close to being able to do everything fossil fuels and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels do at the same cost. All attempts to avoid hydrocarbon fuels will lead to much higher costs and environmental disasters. This will impoverish humanity and take standards of living back to prior to 1800 AD. Hydrocarbon fuels perform most tasks for land, air, and sea transportation, power agricultural equipment and equipment in heavy industry, provide space heating, and produce a lot of electricity. Hydrocarbon fuels have a vast amount of by-products that are essential for the modern world. No other molecules will replace hydrocarbon fuels in all these applications at the same cost.
12
Modern cities are built with fossil fuels. San Francisco, California, USA built with fossil fuels. 13
Modern Shanghai, China was built with fossil fuels.
14
15
16
The world can no longer go without by-products from fossil fuels. But alarmists want fossil fuels left in the ground. Many medicines are based on by-products from fossil fuels.
The bad news about nuclear power.
All of the bad news can be fixed. It will take a revolution of leadership, but the bad news can be fixed. It is all man-made. Nuclear power is the best energy source humanity will ever have.
There is a lot of artificial bad news about nuclear power and misinformation about fossil fuels from some nuclear advocates. New nuclear power has been mostly stopped by anti-nuclear power activists and their vote-seeking politicians. The good news about nuclear power.
5) Fission Nuclear Power, Nuclear Science By-Products and Services
Here is an article about fossil fuels: How Prosperity Can Save The Planet. Here are more articles about fossil fuels.
17
Fertilizers, insecticides, and herbicides are by-products of fossil fuels. Farm machinery is powered by fossil fuels. Without fossil fuels, modern agriculture would collapse, billions of people would die. That is what anti-fossil fuel and man-made global warming fear monger alarmists at the World Economic Forum, Natural Resources Defense Council, climate “ambassadors,” presidential science advisors, their president bosses, and many other alarmists want.
Here are articles about the accident at Chernobyl in 1986 - at the time a part of the Soviet Union. Here are articles about the accident at Fukushima, Japan in 2011.
The alarmists lied about the dangers of low-dose radiation. They created the Linear No-Threshold Hypothesis with Collective Dose Corollary radiation guidelines, LNT.
For articles about benefits (not danger) of low-dose radiation, artificial fear of radiation, benefits of nuclear medicine, background radiation, and radon, click Anti-nuclearhere.
power activists deliberately mislabel used nuclear power fuel as hazardous waste. The spent nuclear fuel and non-fissile U238 uranium removed in the enrichment process are a treasure of nuclear energy. Calling it hazardous nuclear waste is to prevent the world from using this marvelous energy. Keep the world using biomass energy like back in the Dark Ages.
The performance of nuclear power plants around the world since the 1960s makes the advantages perfectly clear. No deaths from radiation accidents at commercial nuclear power plants following the rules initially established by the United States and its partner nations. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant did not follow these design or operating rules. Here are articles about the accident at Three Mile Island, USA in 1979.
18
Nuclear power in Canada, Europe, South Africa, Central and South America, and the USA has been made safe by laws, regulations, and design. China and Russia seem to be following these rules. Nuclear power is safer and better for the environment than most other energy sources and activities of mankind. Nuclear power and its by-products and services will be essential for the modern world for thousands of years into the future. Without nuclear power and their by-products, the standard of living will stay the way it was for 100,000 years.
The bad news about nuclear power is that anti-nuclear power alarmists have worked since the 1950s to scare the world about potential nuclear explosions, spread of lethal amounts of radiation, and proliferation of nuclear bomb material from commercial nuclear power plants. All these alarms are categorically false.
The story of commercial nuclear power described above is about Light Water Reactors using uranium fuel. They use only about 1% of the energy in the ore. Fast reactors can use close to 100%. But they were stopped by anti-nuclear power politicians and anti-nuclear power handlers in universities and “think-tanks.”
There are other nuclear power technologies that serve special needs like the gas cooled Pebble Bed Modular Reactor, PBMR, that is needed in dry regions. South Africa needs this technology.
Many countries have done outstanding work developing their nuclear power programs. Here are some examples the public may not know about:
Obviously nuclear technology that only uses 1% of the energy in the ore is not as good as technology that uses close to 100% of the potential energy. We would never use just 1% of the gas in our gas tanks and put the other 99% back in the ground forever. That is what American and European politicians who are against nuclear power technology are demanding. See the story of America’s best fast reactor as told by Charles Till and Yoon Chang: PLENTIFUL ENERGY - The Story of The Integral Fast Reactor.
All technologies have risks. The most widely used nuclear power technology is called Light Water Reactor Nuclear Power. This comes in two variations: boiling water and pressurized water nuclear power - BWR or PWR. The most important thing to note is that these power plants use only about 1% of the energy in the original uranium ore. The rest is in the ore left over from enrichment or in the spent nuclear fuel. The intent of scientists and engineers from the beginning was to use the other 99% of the nuclear energy in fast reactors. But anti-nuclear activists stopped the use of fast reactors - so far. Governments are planning to put the ore left over from enrichment and the spent nuclear fuel in deep repositories, locked away for millions of years. This plan to put perfectly good nuclear fuel back in the ground for millions of years is a crime against humanity by the anti-nuclear alarmist politicians and their extreme environmentalists.
There is another nuclear fuel besides uranium. It is thorium. Here are articles about thorium nuclear power. There is enough uranium and thorium to provide for our energy needs for as long as Earth will be inhabitable, millions of years.
Canada - They developed their own technology for nuclear power, the CANDU Heavy Water Reactor. It is an excellent technology that does not need uranium enrichment. 19
France - They standardized and optimized the Pressurized Light Water Reactor and planned for nuclear power to be at each site for multiple generations of power plants. The French are successful in reprocessing spent nuclear fuel.
South Korea - They have an excellent nuclear power program, build power plants in other countries, and educate nuclear engineering students from around the Switzerlandworld.
They have the best program for producing radioisotopes in a research reactor. It supports nuclear medicine around the world. Unlike some professional organizations and individuals in other countries, South Africa’s nuclear professionals follow discussions about carbon dioxide from fossil fuels honestly.
20
The United States has an excellent nuclear power program. But self-serving, alarmist regulatory and environmental organizations, and their go-along-for-the -vote politicians are holding everything back. This is a disgrace to sincere, honest Americans and to countries dependent on the United States for leadership and support.
Can the world follow the examples of these countries? It is possible. But first, all countries need better economies, schools, governments, transportation systems, and industry infrastructure that need availability of fossil fuels, not solar panels and wind turbines.
South Africa - They have excellent scientists and engineers eager to lead development of nuclear power in South Africa and across the continent of Africa.
- The Swiss did with their nuclear power program what they do with technical education in their universities, railroad and highway design, production of cheese, chocolate, and precision mechanical watches. All of these fields are done with Swiss perfection. Switzerland is a small country where people speak four modern languages and many older, non-written dialects of German. The Swiss people are a pleasure to work with, have as friends, and go hiking with.
21
Nuclear power is the cleanest, safest, most environmentally friendly energy. The natural draft cooling tower above is used both at nuclear and coal fired power plants. The nuclear reactor is a small dome to the right of the cooling tower, mostly hidden by trees.
Swiss Nuclear Power Plant Leibstadt on the Rhine River. Germany is in the background. Energy for the modern world doesn’t get much better than this.
