Background Info about Arjun Makhijani’s Book

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Thomas Friedman's "Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America" (Hardcover 9/8/2008 - available from your local library or from Amazon.com for $15.37 new or $10.95 used + shipping). Suggested by "solutions."

Thomas Friedman is a syndicated columnist for the NY Times and a prolific author. "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" is largely a non-technical version of Option C below.

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T. Boone Pickens' "The First Billion Is The Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America's Energy Future" (Hardcover 9/2/2008 - available from your local library or from Amazon.com for $17.79 new or $13.00 used + shipping). Suggested by "solutions."

T. Boone Pickens is a famous oil man who proposes long-term solar and wind in line with Options A and C - but notes that America has virtually unlimited reserves of natural gas and proposes tapping American natural gas immediately to eliminate political dependency on foreign producers and eliminate the $750 billion/year paid to foreign producers as a bridge until solar- and wind-power can be implemented on a large scale.

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"Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy" by Arjun Makhijani (11/15/2007 - available from your local library or from Amazon.com for $12.21 new or $9.99 used + shipping). Suggested by "UtahOwl."

Arjun Makhijani is President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (http://www.ieer.org). He has authored or co-authored many books, articles, and reports on energy, nuclear weapons and environmental issues. He has testified before Congress and appeared on national ABC, CBS, BBC, CNN, and NPR news programs, among others. He has written for the Washington Post, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Technology Review, and many other publications. He has a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley where he specialized in nuclear fusion.
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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Background Info about Arjun Makhijani’s Book

Post by johnkarls »

Editorial Note –

Arjun Makhijani’s book does not appear to have been reviewed anywhere.

However, a flavor of its contents is reflected in the first two items that appear below –

(1) a posting on the web site of The Dallas Morning News by Makhijani concerning new nuclear plants in Texas; and

(2) an article in the Boise Weekly about Makhijani’s book and its relevance to proposed nuclear facilities in Idaho.

The third item is a notice in the University of Utah Law School’s Stegner Center Newsletter announcing a panel discussion last fall in which Makhijani participated.



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dallasnews.com of The Dallas Morning News
12:00 AM CST on Tuesday, February 26, 2008
By Arjun Makhijani:

Nuclear is not the right alternative energy source
New plants are risky, costly and unnecessary, says ARJUN MAKHIJANI

Luminant Energy, formerly TXU, is proposing to build two Mitsubishi nuclear power reactors at its Comanche Peak site, where two reactors are already in place.

This is part of a national wave of new commercial reactor proposals after a three-decade lapse in new orders – eight in Texas alone. Having failed miserably to deliver on the 1950s promise that nuclear electricity would be "too cheap to meter," the industry now says it will save us from climate change. If you don't like coal, you have to take nuclear, goes the nuclear establishment's hopeful mantra.
That's a false choice. Replacing coal with nuclear is risky, costly and unnecessary.

Renewable energy sources are quite sufficient to provide ample, reliable electricity. For instance, Texas has greater wind energy potential than its present electricity generation from all sources; it is greater also than the output from all U.S. nuclear power plants combined. And it has barely captured a whisper of its potential.

Wind energy is competitive with or more economical than nuclear energy – about 8 cents per kilowatt-hour in good areas. A recent independent assessment by the Keystone Center, which included industry representatives, estimated nuclear costs at 8 to 11 cents.

Intermittency is not a significant issue until very high levels of penetration. For instance, a 2006 study prepared for the Minnesota Public Utilities Commission found that an increase of just over 2 percent in operating reserves would be sufficient to underpin a 25 percent renewable energy standard supplied by wind.
Meanwhile, Solar energy is somewhat more expensive today, but costs are coming down rapidly. Last December, Nanosolar produced the first solar panels costing less than a dollar a watt at its factory in Silicon Valley.

In January, MidAmerican Energy Holdings, which is owned by Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway, dropped plans to build a nuclear power plant in Idaho, on the grounds that it could not provide reasonably priced energy to its customers.
New nuclear plants would add to the country's problem of nuclear waste. The federal government has long been in default of its obligations to existing nuclear plant operators to take the waste away from their sites. Nuclear utilities have had to take the government to court to recover added storage expenses, which will cost the taxpayers billions or possibly even tens of billions of dollars over time.
To imagine that the federal government will take charge of waste from new plants where it does not even have contracts is wishful thinking. Much more likely, Texas will be stuck with it.

And then there is the problem of cooling water. The two proposed reactors would consume about 40 million gallons of water per day. Even assuming that the water is available, Texas is risking a less reliable power system, given that droughts are estimated to become more extreme in a warming world.

For instance, last September, a nuclear unit at Browns Ferry belonging to the Tennessee Valley Authority had to be shut down for lack of water. In contrast, solar photovoltaics and wind-generated electricity do not need water.

Luminant's two reactors are already discharging significant amounts of tritium-contaminated radioactive water into the Squaw Creek reservoir. New reactors would only add to those discharges.

Before proceeding with new reactor proposals, Luminant should at least investigate how it might reduce existing tritium discharges. Tritium is radioactive hydrogen, which displaces ordinary hydrogen in water to form tritiated water, which becomes radioactive as a result.

The notion that renewable energy cannot supply the electricity requirements of the United States has been widely put forward without careful technical evaluation.

On the contrary, it is nuclear that is the risky course. Texas can remain an energy leader in the twenty-first century – but only if it steps out ahead of the coming renewable energy revolution.

Arjun Makhijani is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and author of Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy. His e-mail address is arjun@ieer.org.


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Boise Weekly

DECEMBER 5, 2007
Nuclear Idaho
Environmental summit brings national issue home

BY TERESA SHIPLEY

Idaho is not immune to the challenges posed by the need to find new energy sources in a changing world.

As people search for cheap and efficient means to meet growing energy needs, attention has been returning to nuclear energy—a plentiful resource, but one that raises some major concerns for anyone living near a plant.

With the announcement last year that Alternate Energy Holdings Inc. plans to build what would be Idaho's first commercial nuclear reactor near Bruneau, the concerns have become much more real. In April, AEHI announced it had signed an agreement to purchase 4,000 acres of land near the C.J. Strike Reservoir and Recreation Area from James Hilliard. In June, the company said it had secured $3.5 billion for the project, being called the Idaho Energy Complex.

According to the group's Web site, the reactor will feature a dry design, meaning that it will require only thousands of gallons of water for cooling, rather than the millions of gallons other reactors use. "Furthermore, IEC will use the plant's excess heat from nuclear generation to produce biofuels like ethanol, thereby further reducing cooling requirements and giving local farmers a market for their crops and agricultural waste," the Web site reads.

AEHI has begun the three-year approval process through the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and hopes the plant could begin generating power by late 2015.

The issue will be one of the focuses of the Idaho Environmental Summit, Dec. 11 to 13 in Boise. More than 300 people from 135 organizations and 40 cities attended the event last year, and organizers anticipate a packed house this year as well.

Lisa Audin, a volunteer coordinator, is quick to stress that the mission of the summit is one of harmony and inclusiveness.

"We're trying to move discussions forward rather than be political or divisive," she said. "We're trying to be educational and information-sharing and focus on building relationships and understanding diverse perspectives so that we can try to solve some of our challenges."

For nuclear engineer Arjun Makhijani, the issue is one that needs to be examined carefully.

Makhijani, president and senior engineer of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Md., will be a summit panelist on Dec. 13. As part of his presentation, Makhijani plans to discuss his new book, Carbon Free and Nuclear Free, a Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy. The book, published this fall, was a joint project between the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and Makhijani's organization.

"I set out to do a technical and economic feasibility study of whether it was possible to phase out fossil fuels and nuclear power at the same time," Makhijani said in an interview with BW. What he discovered surprised him.

"Not only do I think it can be done, I think it can be done at reasonable cost and done fairly rapidly for such a massive change," he said. "In 30 to 50 years, I think we can completely transform our energy economy."

Makhijani advocates using intensive coordination at the regional level and a distributed energy grid that would allow a steady and reliable energy supply from a combination of renewable sources such as hydro, wind, geothermal and solar. A diversified energy source pool such as this, combined with energy-efficient technologies and building design would, as Makhijani puts it, "increase our renewable energy supply 20 to 30 times without sacrificing any reliability at all."

It will be difficult, he readily admits, but believes it would be better than developing nuclear energy, which he sees now as a potentially harmful technology.

When Makhijani was a doctoral student in the '70s and working to engineer nuclear power plants, he said he was neither pro-, nor anti-nuclear. "I just did my job," he said.

Later, a professor's lecture about some of the consequences of the carbon-free technology weapons proliferation, waste storage and severe accident risks changed his mind. "I became convinced that we can have a better energy system," he said.

In Idaho, that could mean further developing wind, solar and geothermal potential. Wind is currently the fastest-growing source of electricity in the United States. Currently, the United States produces between 11,000 and 13,000 megawatts of wind power, or enough electricity to feed 3 million homes.

Idaho National Laboratory in Idaho Falls studies these and other forms of renewable energy. Robert Neilson, manager of the Renewable Energy Department at the lab, said he sees more and more application of renewables across the state.

Neilson said the non-nuclear energy division of INL was working primarily on biofuels, geothermal, hydropower and wind. "Renewables are part of the way of the future," he said. "Whether you believe in climate change because of carbon dioxide, or whether you believe that oil is going to run out, or you believe that CO2 emissions are an issue. And to the extent that they make sense, we should be looking at employing them."

"The laboratory has for quite some time been doing a lot of great research and development for renewable energy resources in Idaho," said Ken Miller, director of clean energy for the Snake River Alliance, Idaho's nuclear watchdog. "Clearly, the lab has taken a great interest in terms of renewable energy and also low-impact hydropower development and other resources," he said.

Miller is working with the IES to coordinate the summit's six energy panels focusing on wind energy, geothermal production, self-power generation, the state's power transmission projects, the Climate Initiative for Idaho cities and nuclear power.

"Given recent events, probably the nuclear issues track will be fairly heavily attended," Miller said. "Clearly, [nuclear energy] is one of the topics that Idahoans are very interested in." Miller said he hopes that the dialogue will be constructive despite the topic's polarizing nature and said he will not take a role in the nuclear discussion due to his involvement with the Snake River Alliance.

"We're trying to avoid a polarized discussion," Miller said.

The summit is open to the public, but attendees must register at the door or online.

A three-day pass, including lunches and a networking kit costs $225. The day rate is $115, which in,cludes a ticket to Tuesday evening's keynote presentation by Richard Louv, author of the bestselling book Last Child in the Woods. Limited free seating for the keynote speech is also available on a first-come, first-served basis.

For more information and to register, visit IdahoSummit.org


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Newsletter of the Stegner Center – S.J. Quinney College of Law – The University of Utah
Vol. 4/Fall 2007/Spring 2008 – page 27/28

November 2, 2007
Panel Discussion
Nuclear Power, Global Warming and Utah’s Energy Future
6:00-8:30 PM The Pickle Gallery
741 S. 400 W

Panelists:

Peter Bradford, former Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner, NY Public Service Commission Member, and Maine Public Utilities Commission Chair

Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D., President, Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (IEER), author of the forthcoming book “Carbon Free and Nuclear Free: A Roadmap for US Energy Policy”

Vanessa Pierce, Executive Director, HEAL Utah

Kent Udell, Professor and Chair of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah

Sarah Wright, Executive Director, Utah Clean Energy

Sponsors:

HEAL Utah
Wallace Stegner Center
Cultural Vision Fund

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