What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change.

[NNadir]

Recently, although I'm no longer an MSR/Thorium kind of guy - although I'm very fond of fluid nuclear reactors of other types - I've been reading this book: Thomas Dolan, Ed., Molten Salt Reactors and Thorium Energy.

It's quite a nice book for general concepts certainly not strictly limited to thorium and MSR's, but includes very nice little riffs on things like the equations of state for liquids, statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, and obscure points, like what is described as a "small deviation" nonadjoint properties of matrices applied to model MSR's using Fick's law as applied to the diffusion of neutrons.

It's a pleasure to read, a desultory tour of physical science as applied to nuclear reactors, and very applicable beyond FLIBE (or similar to FLIBE) based MSRs.

Of particular pleasure is the chapter (Chapter 2) written by the MIT Nuclear Engineer/Chemical Engineer/Materials Science Engineer par excellence Charles Forsberg, whose work and writings I admire enormously.

In a brilliant discussion of the economics of so called "renewable energy" and carbon free energy in general, Forsberg makes some points that I hadn't actually thought much about, although I've long been aware that the real result of the expansion of so called "renewable energy" is to permanently entrench the use of dangerous fossil fuels.

(Note: Forsberg is in no way as hostile to so called "renewable energy" as I am.)

Of course, as a general text, a desultory general text with multiple authors, the real value is in the references.

One of the references in the book is available open sourced on line, and is written by two Google Engineers who worked on the abandoned RE<C project, which was designed to accelerate the 100% renewable energy scheme that has not worked, is not working and will not work but which they believed would work.

It's an interesting read as well.

Some excerpts:

Google cofounder Larry Page is fond of saying that if you choose a harder problem to tackle, you’ll have less competition. This business philosophy has clearly worked out well for the company and led to some remarkably successful “moon shot” projects: a translation engine that knows 80 languages, self-driving cars, and the wearable computer system Google Glass, to name just a few.

Starting in 2007, Google committed significant resources to tackle the world’s climate and energy problems. A few of these efforts proved very successful: Google deployed some of the most energy-efficient data centers in the world, purchased large amounts of renewable energy, and offset what remained of its carbon footprint.

Google’s boldest energy move was an effort known as RE<C, which aimed to develop renewable energy sources that would generate electricity more cheaply than coal-fired power plants do. The company announced that Google would help promising technologies mature by investing in start-ups and conducting its own internal R&D. Its aspirational goal: to produce a gigawatt of renewable power more cheaply than a coal-fired plant could, and to achieve this in years, not decades.

Unfortunately, not every Google moon shot leaves Earth orbit. In 2011, the company decided that RE<C was not on track to meet its target and shut down the initiative. The two of us, who worked as engineers on the internal RE<C projects, were then forced to reexamine our assumptions...

...As we reflected on the project, we came to the conclusion that even if Google and others had led the way toward a wholesale adoption of renewable energy, that switch would not have resulted in significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions. Trying to combat climate change exclusively with today’s renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach...

...We’re hopeful, because sometimes engineers and scientists do achieve the impossible. Consider the space program, which required outlandish inventions for the rockets that brought astronauts to the moon. MIT engineers constructed the lightweight and compact Apollo Guidance Computer, for example, using some of the first integrated circuits, and did this in the vacuum-tube era when computers filled rooms. Their achievements pushed computer science forward and helped create today’s wonderful wired world. Now, R&D dollars must go to inventors who are tackling the daunting energy challenge so they can boldly try out their crazy ideas. We can’t yet imagine which of these technologies will ultimately work and usher in a new era of prosperity—but the people of this prosperous future won’t be able to imagine how we lived without them.

The link to the full text is here, on the IEEE website: What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change.

I personally believe that the technology to reverse climate change is just on the edge of feasibility, but our cultural biases - and I'm including our biases on the political left as well as those on the political right - prevent us for taking a responsible attitude to future generations in particular and life on Earth in general.

In this sense, although at the end of my life I'm losing hope, I admire the statement in the last excerpted paragraphs, because, while left and right we are in an age of contempt for scientists and engineers - I still think it just possible that, as the authors state, "Sometimes engineers and scientists do achieve the impossible."

I trust you're enjoying the holiday, and I'm sure most of you will not be watching the banana dictator's parade for morons.

[Igel]

1. It would be a nightmare.

We'd have to pull all the carbon out of the atmosphere that we put there.

Some came from energy release, and it would take more energy to sequester than was originally released.

Clearing forests and freeing carbon sequestered in the soil (through agricultural practices) released carbon that wasn't necessary released in the acquisition of energy. The trace CO2 increase can be tracked back 10,000 to the dawn of agriculture and field-clearing. We're unlikely to restore all the carbon originally in forests, etc., and so it would have to be stored in some other form.

Then there is the carbon released from processes like calcination and smelting.

Moreover, the oceans function as a carbon sink--but when the atmospheric CO2 levels drop they'll function as a time-release carbon reservoir. (Except, of course, for the carbon pulled out as carbonate precipitates.)

And we'd have to do it soon, otherwise there are likely to be some natural feedback as additional carbon is released in fairly large quantities, which won't just naturally exit the atmosphere in anything like a reasonable time span.

[NNadir]

2. You are correct about the energy costs, and to these we may add...

...that besides matter we have also dumped entropy.

I personally have convinced myself that the carbon dioxide connected with calcination and smelting can readily be eliminated with existing technology; an opportunity to do this exists if we switch refining of metals to FFC Cambridge type process approaches, particularly if we switch from the steel age to the titanium age. I am aware of the electrode issue connected with this process, but I believe the carbon involved in these electrodes is recyclable in a purely economic manner.

It is conceivable to make concrete a carbon sequestering agent rather than the source of carbon dioxide dumping it now is. The only requirement for doing so is heat, and I note that nuclear heat is well known and does not involve carbon.

We need not dump carbon to sequester it. It is a very useful material and if we substitute the source of it we use for materials from dangerous fossil fuels to carbon dioxide. Included in these materials are polymers (although we should all object to the use of single use plastics), structural elements, and refractory carbides.

I am particularly intrigued by a novel class of materials known as the MAX phases. (If Marcel Barsoum of Drexel University is not awarded the Nobel Prize, it will be more of a shame for the prize than for him.) I believe these metalloceramics may represent the dawn of a new age. Silicon, carbon, nitrogen, and titanium, as well as iron (if we abandon the Bessamer process as i believe we can) are common elements readily available for recycling.

The technology for reducing carbon dioxide is well known. What is necessary is to create an economic incentive for doing so. This is, I believe, feasible, perhaps barely so, but feasible nonetheless.

What is feasible is not always what is actually done, but this is a cultural and political choice, not an engineering or scientific one.

Thanks for your comment though. I credit it fully. None of this is simple or easy; in fact the effort required will be enormous.