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Milestones and Trends in Renewable Energy
Sterling D. Allan writes "Some reflections and projections: The year 2005 saw large wind power installments come into a price range where they are now competitive with traditional grid prices. 2006 could see several solar designs do the same. Cold fusion was boosted with two, concurrent and independent sonofusion breakthroughs, though the stigma in the name is still deeply seated. 2006 could see floating wind turbines arrive on the commercial scene -- floating in the water like oil rigs, or floating high in the air, courtesy of helium. 2006 will see at least three companies offering after-market kits for adding Brown's gas (H and O from electrolysis, common ducted) to the air intake of vehicles for enhanced mileage and performance. Many other fuel economizing systems are slated to mature in the marketplace. Climate change evidence will continue to mount. It will yet be years before we harness lightning, but stable tornado systems prototypes that tap waste heat from power plants could arrive this coming year. Will 2006 be the year that clean energy becomes more the vogue than cool computer gadgets?"
Pebble bed reactors are inherently safer and make efficient use of nuclear fuel. And they can be a lot smaller than conventional nuclear reactors, which makes them more attractive for smaller scale use.
However, PBRs have a very large drawback. It is nearly impossible to extract useful material from the spent fuel pebbles. Manufacturing these pebbles is not a trivial process, by the way.
Personally, I'd like to see more development of integral fast reactors. They are not modular in design, but these plants are designed with the entire fuel cycle in mind and can burn up nuclear fuel so efficiently that the waste degrades to background radiation in just 300 years.
And yet, strangely, in France and Germany, ecologists want to revert to coal plants to prevent nuclear pollution.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
It is nearly impossible to extract useful material from the spent fuel pebbles.
It's also impractical to extract useful materials from spent fuel rods of conventional reactors, unless you're running a weapons program and don't care about the cost. Pu from commercial reprocessed fuel is expensive to separate, and it has a negative value once you've separated it -- the extra hassle of designing your fuel fabrication plant to be able to handle Pu (which is much more radioactive than enriched uranium) dwarfs the cost of the uranium you save.
If you're concerned about uranium running out, the incremental approach will be to go to cycles with higher burnup and fuel efficiency. CANDU reactors are like this, particularly if used with thorium-uranium fuel elements.
The market is good at eventually seeking the best answers, however the market cannot handle very large shocks very quickly
Luckily, the oil is not going to disappear overnight. Even as we approach the end of the available reserves, the flow of oil will just slow, not stop. Long before that, as the easy-to-reach oil reserves are depleted, the price will rise as the needed oil is drawn from less and less accessible sources. At some point extracting oil from shale and tar sands will become cost-effective.
As the price gradually rises, more and more alternatives to oil will become cost-effective. As use of alternative sources increases, the investment into them will improve their efficiency, through process improvements and through mass production, making them even better competitors.
the problem is, oil is so ingrained in our current economy it's going to take the market a long while to find adequate substitutes for all its uses without an outside shove.
The transition from oil to other energy sources will occur naturally, through normal market forces, and without any extreme shocks. No "outside shove" is required to make the energy source transition. That said, I think there is value in governmental influence pushing toward cleaner energy sources, since market forces won't naturally push us in that direction. I think "pollution taxes" (or pollution credits, which are similar) are a good idea as they can both bring market forces to bear on keeping the environment clean and can also provide funding for alternative energy research.
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