227
replacing the heat source in a fossil plant to boil water and make steam will allow
existing generating equipment to produce electricity without GHG emissions.
This has a much lower CAPEX than abandoning entire power plants in favor of
renewables like wind and solar.
2. We must reduce the high levels of GHG that are already in the atmosphere and
affecting the climate. This requires the development of methods to remove and
sequester carbon dioxide and other GHG through direct air capture (DAC) or
“negative emissions” (Kramer 2020), also discussed in Chap. 11. The technology for doing this exists, but it needs improvements in efficiency and costs. A
revenue stream from a carbon tax can be used to support DAC with artificial
trees, and fund other solutions that may include massive tree planting or fertilizing the oceans to create CO 2 -absorbing algal blooms.
Advanced nuclear power and enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) are two existing,
non-GHG technologies that can directly replace fossil fuels for generating electricity. Both of these provide heat that can create steam to turn existing turbines and
generators. They can be used nearly everywhere in current power plants by replacing the natural gas or coal burner with a heat exchanger. The boilers that make steam
don't care where the heat comes from, as long as it is between 200 and 400 °C. Billions
of dollars invested in electrical generating infrastructure could still be used. Both
heat sources are energy-dense, carbon-free, and more energy efficient than wind or
photovoltaics.
Nuclear power raises images of large concrete containment domes, huge cooling
towers and billions of dollars in infrastructure. That was old nuclear power. New
nuclear engineering uses small, modular reactors derived from spacecraft and submarine designs that provide a heat source to boil water in a power plant. The reactors can be added together in a series as needed to provide sufficient energy to meet
demands. These designs are intrinsically safe, because the reactors simply do not
contain enough mass of nuclear material to generate enough heat for core meltdown, the boogeyman of nuclear power plants. Current designs use molten salt as a
heat exchanger at sufficiently high temperatures to produce live steam for turbines.
Fears among the public about the risks of nuclear power are driven largely by the
disasters and reactor meltdowns at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979,
Chernobyl in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine) in 1986, and Fukushima Daiichi in
Japan in 2011. Although these three incidents occurred among some 450 reactors
operating in 30 countries worldwide, and across more than 60 years of commercial
nuclear power generation, people are still scared (Wang 2019). Like fracking,
nuclear power suffers from a perceived risk that is substantially higher than the
actual risk.
Risk is the product of both probability and consequences. Although the probability of a nuclear accident is quite low, the consequences can be dire. These may
include immediate deaths from acute radiation poisoning, and later cancer deaths
caused by long-term exposures to lower doses of radiation. The potential long-term
impacts, which could manifest years to decades after an incident seem to be the
most terrifying to many people, and remain a significant concern to this day in
12.1 Technological Solutions
replacing the heat source in a fossil plant to boil water and make steam will allow
existing generating equipment to produce electricity without GHG emissions.
This has a much lower CAPEX than abandoning entire power plants in favor of
renewables like wind and solar.
2. We must reduce the high levels of GHG that are already in the atmosphere and
affecting the climate. This requires the development of methods to remove and
sequester carbon dioxide and other GHG through direct air capture (DAC) or
“negative emissions” (Kramer 2020), also discussed in Chap. 11. The technology for doing this exists, but it needs improvements in efficiency and costs. A
revenue stream from a carbon tax can be used to support DAC with artificial
trees, and fund other solutions that may include massive tree planting or fertilizing the oceans to create CO 2 -absorbing algal blooms.
Advanced nuclear power and enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) are two existing,
non-GHG technologies that can directly replace fossil fuels for generating electricity. Both of these provide heat that can create steam to turn existing turbines and
generators. They can be used nearly everywhere in current power plants by replacing the natural gas or coal burner with a heat exchanger. The boilers that make steam
don't care where the heat comes from, as long as it is between 200 and 400 °C. Billions
of dollars invested in electrical generating infrastructure could still be used. Both
heat sources are energy-dense, carbon-free, and more energy efficient than wind or
photovoltaics.
Nuclear power raises images of large concrete containment domes, huge cooling
towers and billions of dollars in infrastructure. That was old nuclear power. New
nuclear engineering uses small, modular reactors derived from spacecraft and submarine designs that provide a heat source to boil water in a power plant. The reactors can be added together in a series as needed to provide sufficient energy to meet
demands. These designs are intrinsically safe, because the reactors simply do not
contain enough mass of nuclear material to generate enough heat for core meltdown, the boogeyman of nuclear power plants. Current designs use molten salt as a
heat exchanger at sufficiently high temperatures to produce live steam for turbines.
Fears among the public about the risks of nuclear power are driven largely by the
disasters and reactor meltdowns at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979,
Chernobyl in the Soviet Union (now Ukraine) in 1986, and Fukushima Daiichi in
Japan in 2011. Although these three incidents occurred among some 450 reactors
operating in 30 countries worldwide, and across more than 60 years of commercial
nuclear power generation, people are still scared (Wang 2019). Like fracking,
nuclear power suffers from a perceived risk that is substantially higher than the
actual risk.
Risk is the product of both probability and consequences. Although the probability of a nuclear accident is quite low, the consequences can be dire. These may
include immediate deaths from acute radiation poisoning, and later cancer deaths
caused by long-term exposures to lower doses of radiation. The potential long-term
impacts, which could manifest years to decades after an incident seem to be the
most terrifying to many people, and remain a significant concern to this day in
12.1 Technological Solutions