I Can Explain

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes 57 seconds. Read Later

I always run my blog ideas past Natalie in our marketing department. She is the one that makes my blog writing sound intelligent and well written as opposed to the various random ideas I send her. This special April Fool’s post was no different. I suggested to her that I write a post announcing a new software discovery that would solve the energy crisis by providing an unlimited supply of free electrical power simply by using unused computing power.

She said I should write about something that sounds more realistic, and then throw the punch line in at the end. After all, the more believable and entertaining the story, the funnier it will be when you reach the punch line. She suggested I write about taking the summer off and pursuing the life of an Alaskan bush pilot. Those who know me personally know I love flying and try to get up in my plane whenever the sun is shining. One of my favorite shows is the “Flying Wild Alaska” on the Discovery Channel. She thought it might be funny to have me claim that I was on a sabbatical trying out for this reality show. Tempting as it sounded, I have been in the energy business in one way or another since 1971 so I decided to use some of my energy experiences to help develop the story.

It always seems the solution to the energy crisis is only 10 years into the future. I don’t know why 10 years is the magic number, but it seems that everyone uses it. If you’re a politician 10 years is well into the next election cycle and no one will remember your campaign promises.  If you’re a CEO, in 10 years you’ll either retire rich or move on to a bigger company to cause more damage.  If you are in the news business 10 years is over 120 news cycles, (remember the infamous “wardrobe malfunction, ” the “Balloon Boy”, Pluto’s demotion from Planet Status, Leno vs. Conan, Tiger Woods' marital problems, the financial meltdown, ... see I told you). And if you are the one actually involved in doing the work, within 10 years you’ll have kids and you won’t be able to remember back 10 weeks let alone 10 years.

The next thing is you need to make the technology reward sound almost too true to believe. For example in the 1960’s I can remember GE, Westinghouse, and Combustion Engineering say that in the future nuclear power will be so cheap to produce, the power company will not need to meter the power anymore. That sounded really great so I decided to go study nuclear power in school. 

In the 1970’s when I was actually starting up nuclear power plants, it turned out the costs to build a plant got out of control and nuclear power was really not that cheap. In addition, everyone was worried about the China Syndrome and suddenly no one wanted a nuclear power plant in their state let alone their back yard. 

In the late 70’s the next big thing was the breeder reactor. Breeder reactors were supposed to make their own fuel (Plutonium) from Uranium 238 that could not be used as fuel in a regular nuclear reactor. The process actually worked, because that is how the US Government created all the plutonium for the nuclear weapons program. With the breeder reactors we can turn swords into plowshares (another great slogan of the time). It turns out that some people were concerned that with all the power plants making all that plutonium someone could sneak into a nuclear reactor, steal some plutonium and make their own nuclear weapons. As a result the breeder reactor lived a short life.

Well not to be outdone someone came up with the fusion program in the late 70’s and early 80’s. With a fusion reactor we would be able to harness the unlimited energy of the sun, with an abundant source of fuel coming from sea water. Once again, they promised power so cheap the electric utilities wouldn’t need to meter it. Trust me, the physics work; there is no need to go into details when we’re solving the energy crisis. Many of the world’s industrial countries started major fusion programs with the goal of developing working fusion reactors in 10 years. (Seems like all the smaller countries were developing their own breeder reactors to make their own nuclear weapons because of the cancelled breeder program in the US.)  Initially the fusion programs had some success by getting the temperature of the hydrogen plasma up to million or so degrees needed for fusion to occur, but the process never could be sustained. In other words, it took more energy to get started that it could ever produce. Work is still proceeding on fusion power but it is still a research project. 

In the late 70’s the shine had worn off anything nuclear and the US Department of Energy had to look at other ways to gain our energy independence from Middle Eastern oil. (Now that’s a concept we can all agree with, and it got started after the 1967 Oil Embargo). So we decided clean up our coal industry. I was in Indiana, PA working at a dirty coal preparation facility. Down the road, they had a clean coal gasification facility that would turn dirty coal into clean natural gas. The gas companies weren’t going to get rid of the gas meter but since the US has more than a 200-year supply of coal, we were well on our way to becoming energy independent within 10 years. 

As it turns out, these plants had a tendency to blow up, so much so that they built special blast walls. These walls were designed to blow off to prevent a buildup in pressure that would bring the entire building down. It also turned out the byproducts of coal gasification were really bad for the environment, and even Pennsylvania didn’t want that stuff in their backyard.

Another group in the government was working on liquefying coal, or turning coal into crude oil that could be refined to end our dependence on foreign oil. This time they decided to do everything underground that way they didn’t have to worry about bringing the coal to the surface, blowing up the process plant, and getting rid of the waste products. I’m not too sure on the details, but I think it involved injecting steam into coal seams, high temperatures, along with problems controlling the reactions underground. Coal liquefaction inevitably turned out to be a dead end on the road to energy independence.

In the late 80’s and the 90’s were the government was serious about ending the cold war so they didn’t have many energy initiatives in the works. The power utility business was more involved in developing power plants that were smaller and cheaper to build. It seems large power generation units, (nuclear of fossil) were very expensive to license because of all the resistance by the environmentalists. So the power utilities started building many smaller gas turbines to run a generator to make electricity (simple cycle). By keeping the projects small, they avoided much of the opposition. They then added a steam boiler to the back end of the process to take advantage of the high exhaust gas temperatures of the gas turbines (combined cycle). Everyone was building combined cycle units and it looked like the energy crisis might be ending.

In the 90’s something strange happened, one day we woke up and we found out the west won the Cold War. With the end of the cold war, we had a much larger problem; the Russians and Chinese quit the cold war to become capitalists. With over 1 billion people in China and all of them wanting a Chevy Tahoe or Ford Explorer, the oil prices went through the roof, and we were no closer to energy independence.

In the early 2000’s after the dot com bust, people decided that it was high time to invest in something new, so why not invest in becoming energy independent. Not only independent but environmentally responsible with our energy consumption, if we used less then we wouldn’t have to produce so much. With the financial power of Wall Street and the promise of tax incentives for “Clean Energy” we were well on our way. 

World's Most Fuel Efficient Car

The next focus for energy reduction spurred by our need for independence from foreign oil involved automotive transportation, developing cars with the promises of 60-100 miles per gallon. California wanted it, the people wanted it (but we also want our SUVs) and with a healthy dose of tax incentives to help speed the process along we had a clear objective. The first step was the ethanol tax incentive where every farm co-op in the Midwest decided to convert subsidized corn into subsidized ethanol. The investment bankers all wanted to get some of this action so there were hundreds of ethanol plants popping up everywhere to feed our nations thirst for domestic oil. Unfortunately, this hasn’t quite panned out because the energy needed to produce and ship the final product was still supplied by burning oil and coal.

We also needed to replace dirty power plants that burned coal and generated green house gasses with clean energy, wind turbines, photoelectric energy, and tidal power. What was really amazing was the recent “Nuclear Renaissance” where nuclear power all of sudden became the green solution (that is until the nuclear meltdowns in Japan). It seems with “clean energy” all we need to do is cover large sections of the earth’s surface with wind farms or solar collectors then develop a “smart” power grid to get the power from where the land is cheap to where the people live.

The next energy solution is going to involve many different technologies. With the wisdom of Wall Street, a heavy doses of “clean energy” tax incentives, and lots of hard work I’m sure we can be energy independent of foreign oil within 10 years. So in a way, my April Fools is an example of how we need to continue to look outside the box for solutions and new technology to solve our energy crisis. There probably isn’t going to be only one fix-all answer. The US is going to need to be creative and figure out how to produce our own energy using new technology instead of relying on oil and coal to get us there.

Tell me your thoughts on the future of energy consumption, or how you think we might learn from the past. Please leave me a comment or send me an email to blogger @ eng-software.com

Also, we are currently welcoming guest bloggers. If you are interested, just send me a message about becoming a guest blogger, and what you would like to write about. Thanks!