Energy Overview

John D’Aloia

John D’Aloia Jr. is a retired navy captain and a submarine commander. He is a columnist for several newspapers in Kansas.

Dr. S. S. Penner, Professor of Engineering Science at the University of California, San Diego, published a twenty-two-page paper entitled “U.S. Energy Follies and Opportunities.” Dr. Penner assumed a world population of 10 billion in 2050 (the UN estimates 9.3 billion, for what it is worth) each one of whom would have the same standard of living as a U.S. citizen in 1998. For readers with a scientific bent, he equated this to a total world energy requirement of 2,000 exajoules per year. That is a lot of energy. With this energy demand, he estimates that worldwide fossil fuel resources (coal, shale oil, tar sands, petroleum, natural gas) would last about 1,000 years. The uranium in the earth’s crust used in fission reactors would last about 20 million years, but if used in breeder reactors, would last 3 billion years. He acknowledged that these resource estimates represent unachievable upper bounds by factors of ten or more because complete recovery is not possible.

Dr. Penner also evaluated renewable energy sources. The “engine” driving most renewable energy sources is solar energy. It is present at the outer boundary of the atmosphere, he wrote, on the order of 5 million exajoules per year, sufficient if there was a way to tap it. One way is to harness the wind. Dr. Penner estimates that winds worldwide could provide 1,000 times the year 2050 energy needs-if the wind energy could be collected and distributed.

Conservation the solution? Not really. The savings can be measurable but are insignificant against the demands and always lurking in the background is “Jevons’ paradox.” Have not heard of it? Neither had I. Jevons observed that human nature is such that improving the use efficiency of a resource increases, rather than decreases, the use of the resource. In the energy context, the more you conserve, the more you use. Dr. Penner explained it thus:

When we showed our fellow citizens how to conserve energy by weatherproofing their homes and eliminating leaks, energy use increased because the affected people enjoyed nonleaking homes so much that they rewarded our conservation efforts by raising indoor temperatures to such an extent that their improved comfort levels led to increased energy consumption.

Dr. Penner concluded that the only assured, low-cost energy supply for the long term is passively safe nuclear fission breeder reactors and that continued reliance on fossil fuels is appropriate until the breeder reactors can be brought on line.

You cannot accept nuclear reactions as an energy source? Too risky? You do not want to glow in the dark? Dr. Bernard Cohen is a nationally recognized authority on the health risks involved with nuclear processes. He lectures extensively, both in academia and in the public square. You may have seen him on television talk shows hosted by the likes of Barbara Walters, William Buckley, or Charlie Rose. Cohen was interviewed in the June 2001 Environment and Climate News for his thoughts on the risks associated with nuclear power. He was asked “How do you put risks into perspective for people?” In response, he provided information on the risks for everyday situations, then the increased risk if all electricity in the country was generated by a nuclear process. He said that being poor reduces life expectancy by 3,500 days, smoking by 2,300 days; being thirty pounds overweight by 900 days; driving by 180 days; living by a nuclear power plant by 0.4 days. If all electrical power was generated by nuclear processes, it would represent the same increased risk as if the regular smoker smoked one extra cigarette every 10 years, as if an overweight person increased his weight by 0.03 ounces, as if the speed limit was increased from 55 MPH to 55.02 MPH, or as if you used a sub-compact car rather than a mid-sized car one day every ten years. I leave to your imagination Cohen’s thoughts about clueless media flacks who gave the Luddites an opportunity to effectively prohibit the use of nuclear reactions to satisfy the nation’s energy requirements.

An intriguing thought. In the June 2001 “Access to Energy,” Dr. Arthur Robinson pointed out that if the mass of a 154-pound person could be converted to energy using Einstein’s E=mc2 formula, enough energy could be generated to supply all of California’s energy needs for five years. I wonder which vocal environmentalists advocating a reduction in the world’s population would offer themselves up to be converted so that Mother Earth would be spared from the pain of having oil or gas or coal or uranium extracted.