The Viability of Germany’s Energiewende: Mark Jacobson Answers 3 Questions

[PamW]

17. The name is Pam!!

The MIT studies were done on commercially available technology - that is technology that you can currently buy.

The IFR technology was developed by Argonne, and no Administration nor Congress has provided Argonne with the permission to commercialize / license the technology.

Actually we DON'T know what the learning curve is for any technology; until you actually go develop it.

Nuclear power is still providing over 20% our electric demand, safely and cleanly; and that's more than renewables. So I don't see how one can say it is dying.

Monju was also cooled by liquid metal coolant and it had a leak. Handling liquid metals is not as uncommon as you think. Every foundry handles liquid metals - and they have leaks every so often. They just don't get the publicity and the unscientific pretense that something major is wrong. Why the Japanese didn't pursue it is their business, and likely their error. We don't have to do what other countries do.

For example, do you know what country first introduced the commercial jet airliner? It wasn't the USA. It wasn't France. It wasn't either of the two countries that make the bulk of the airliners for the free world. The first jet airliner was introduced by the British; the deHavilland Comet. However, the Comet had a design defect; it had passenger windows that were rectangular. The windows had corners, and stress concentrates at corners, and led to metal fatigue, and failure, and the loss of 3 planes. The loss of 3 planes was more than the British public could tolerate, and British commercial jet aviation industry wasn't pursued.

That let US companies like Boeing and McDonnell-Douglas ( now absorbed into Boeing ) take over the market and were unchallenged during the '50s and '60s. The US companies basically had the whole industry to themselves until Airbus started in the '70s. So all the money and all the jobs that accrue from the design / manufacture of airliners used to be the sole providence of the USA, and now the USA shares it with France. The British could have had a stake in that industry, but they didn't pursue it. Was that a good thing? I think it was a mistake. If during the development of the Boeing 707 someone had said, "Well this is just like what the British did, and they abandoned it. We should abandon it too."; we wouldn't have a major portion of our GDP today. Just because someone else makes a choice doesn't mean we have to be like lemmings and follow along.

The whole history of science and industry in the USA is about doing something different and better; and we've enjoyed the fruits of that success. Just because some other effort encountered problems doesn't mean the problems are not solvable. For example, the problem with the windows on the Comet was solved by rounding the corners of the window, which is why the windows in passenger jets look the way they do. You do that - and we haven't had that problem since.

BTW; please do me the courtesy of calling me by my real name, and not someone from your past.

PamW