Why didn't we get rid of coal 40 years ago?

On this Earth Day celebration one may ask, why are we still dependent on fossil fuels? To answer this question let's look at a 'revolution' that was happening in the steel industry in the mid 60's and early 70's.

During this time before the Three Mile Island accident, the steel industry had perfected the electric arc furnace. Basically, this process would melt iron or recycled steel to make new steel. Many thought the old technology from the days of Andrew Carnegie, the blast furnace which relies on coal, would be totally replaced by the new electric arc furnace. The electric arc furnace would only use electricity from nuclear plants and there would be no need for any coal or coke (a coal product). They encountered a problem, however. Without the right carbon additives, the steel was weak. To this day, there is not a clear technology where we can introduce carbon without coal to strengthen steel. Electric arc furnaces now are a secondary process that rely on blast furnaces to make a preliminary steel product. Because the electric arc furnaces require a lot of electricity they take a lot of power from the coal fired grids. Because transmission of electricity is not efficient, the blast furnace ends up having a smaller carbon footprint than the electric arc furnace! So by trying to become more independent of fossil fuels, we actually became more dependent on them!

As detailed in previous posts on this blog, new technologies with the best of intentions have backfired much like the electric arc technology and are increasing our addition to fossil fuels. The moral of the story is that before we get carried away with a 'revolution' we must first examine the science behind the 'breakthrough'.

Electric Cars are Part of the Solution

One truth out there about "going green" is the efficiency of the electric car. Loss due to transmission of electricity tends to be about 30% which is approximately equal to the loss of efficiency from oil after it has been extracted, refined and transported. The boiler at the electric plant has less heat efficiency losses than the liquid fuel engine. Where the electric car really gains over the standard car is on vehicle design. Electric motors provide direct energy to the drive train without the need for several gear reductions. Also, electric motors do not require heavy oil maintenance and provide power on demand, with very little start up or stop energy loss. These gains in efficiencies result in a fossil fuel expenditure savings of approximately 30%. Therefore, if we want to take a large chunk of carbon dioxide emissions out of our economy, the sooner we introduce electric vehicles, the better.

Nuclear Energy Turns Your Electricity Bill into a Mortgage Payment!

Let's assume that we replace all coal electricity with nuclear energy. Currently the USA consumes approximately 2 trillion kilowatt hours of electricity each year from coal. The average nuke can produce 8 billion kilowatt hours of electricity. Therefore, we would need to build 250 nukes. Estimated costs for nuclear plants today are approximately 20 billion per plant and that's an optimistic number. That means we need 5 trillion dollars to build these plants! Let's also assume that, when is all said and done, the cost of running all of these plants is about the same number, $5 trillion. With these optimistic numbers we would have $10 trillion in costs. However, let's assume that the nuke plants get financing at 6.5% (property tax 1.25%) and spread the cost over 30 years. This gives them a cost of roughly $77.79 billion per month. Of course these companies are not charities, they will want to make a profit, so let's assume they charge their customers double their cost or roughly $150 billion per month. There are about 115 million households in the United States. This translates into an electricity bill of $1,300! The latest data shows an average price of a US home to be $180,000. Assuming you have the same payment plan the nuclear plant has, this work out to be $1,400 per month. In other words, the average American is spending the same amount on his or her mortgage as they are on their electricity bill! In essence, replacing coal with nuclear energy gives the average American a second mortgage.