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This contains a link to the actual discussion [1] which I highly recommend watching. Bill demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of energy systems, guided b

This contains a link to the actual discussion [1] which I highly recommend watching. Bill demonstrates a sophisticated understanding of energy systems, guided by one of his favorite authors (Vaclav Smil) who recently wrote the incredible and humbling book, Energy and Civilization [2]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1EB1zsxW0k [2] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Energy-and-Civilization https://www.gatesnotes.com/Books/Energy-and-Civilization

dharma1 8y ago
Great interview. Really sounds like for the next 25 years (where China will increase energy capacity by 2x and India 4x) better nuclear fission plants will be the only viable choice for a source of energy that doesn't increase co2 emissions
blencdr 8y ago
Another really interesting conference [1] about energy, economics and physics. Bill Gates is right and the path to reduce our greenhouse gas emission won't be easy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA
mklarmann 8y ago
I met Vaclav Smil 3 years ago in Zurich and talked with him. He told me, he doesn't believe in climate change. I find that very odd. His books might still be good so.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  He must have changed since then. He sees the effects of climate change quantitatively and worries a lot about them. I've discussed this with him several times. At this point he's extremely tired of writing quantitative facts and seeing the world basically ignore the magnitude of the challenge of the energy transformation we're up against. He's skeptical that we'll be able to get our act together for the thing we need. Here are some of my shorthand notes from last time I spoke with him. It's clear that he believes in climate change. We've detached ourselves totally from the material world. Everyone is a money massager or investment banker. But point is that everything has been made by someone somewhere. Primary iron (electric arc furnace, in US is recycled) 1 billion tonnes of coke per year to make primary iron in China. 1.6 B tonnes of steel. Cement: 4.2 B tonnes/year with the worst possible fuel. 300 M t plastics. And ammonia. Without these there are no roads and buildings and metal. These are fundamental pillars of civilization that have no non-fossil sources. Carnegie melon made 5 g of iron by reducing with hydrogen. So how do you replace 4 pillars of civilization in scale with something non-carbon? DR Congo have lots of hydro. There could be a lot of hydro building there. India has some coal, they will burn all of it. Indian coal is low quality. Until at least 2047 coal will be primary source of India energy. You don't want to think about future of energy in Africa. If you have 0.5 Billion in Nigeria. If you want sleepless nights, think about Nigeria. Cleave it any way and it will have half a billion. No reliable electricity in the capital. To answer your question he has no idea, it's a nightmare. Lots of cleavages. One big river is drying out. Sunshine isn't going to carry the civilization.
olau 8y ago
It didn't sound particularly sophisticated to me. For instance, he asks the rhetorical question, what kind of battery is going to power Tokyo at 22 GW through a cyclone? One way to answer that question is to ponder the following question - if we can reduce the price 90% of the time by say half, how much are you willing to pay for power in the remaining 10% of the time? There are a multitude of technical solutions. But you can only see them if you actually look for them. If you're down in a nuclear 24/7-constant-output-except-for-one-refueling-month-per-year pit, then you can't. Cheap renewables are going to be favoured by the marked forces. Yes, we need to solve the gaps, but will just have to do so. Nuclear can't do it, so there's really little room for nuclear in the future.
- acidburnNSA 8y ago
  That's not a rhetorical question at all. To do that you need 22 GW of storage that's only used a few percent of the time. Why are we going to price gouge everyone to pay for reliability when we could just build reliable energy sources in the first place? Show me the battery that can do 22 GW for three days. As for cheap renewables being favored: check out this other thread about Californians banning new solar installations in the desert [1]. As we ramp wind and solar from 3% of total energy (not just electricity) towards 100%, you can bet you'll see significant NIMBY stuff at work. Plus, what are you going to do with the waste from all the gargantuan retiring solar and win farms and chemical battery systems? You mention that nuclear can't do it without substantiating it. Care to expand on why that'd be impossible? France and Ontario are doing pretty well in the decarbonized world at the moment thanks to nuclear. [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19277653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19277653 [2] https://www.electricitymap.org/ https://www.electricitymap.org/
  - philipkglass 8y ago
    Just repeating "building nuclear is much cheaper" doesn't make it so. Nuclear is safe. It has some very admirable technical qualities. But it's difficult to find examples of reactors built quickly and at low cost any more[1]. South Korean reactors built in South Korea seem to be the last good example. South Korean reactors in UAE are behind schedule. China takes 6 years to build reactors in China and their costs aren't very transparent due to opaque government and censored press. Russia takes even longer to build reactors in Russia and abroad. India takes a decade+ to finish a reactor. France can't build their new reactors swiftly or affordably, either in Finland or in France. We all know how Westinghouse's AP1000 has fared in South Carolina, Georgia, and China. Ontario experienced drastic cost overruns building the Darlington reactors in the first place and rejected new Darlington reactors a decade ago because the projected costs were too high. The Ontario government put its nuclear power plans on hold last month because the bid from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the only "compliant" one received, was more than three times higher than what the province expected to pay, the Star has learned. Sources close to the bidding, one involved directly in one of the bids, said that adding two next-generation Candu reactors at Darlington generating station would have cost around $26 billion. https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_nuclear_bid.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_... I have some hopes that small modular reactors will eventually break out of the rut of disappointment that recent Western reactor projects have furrowed. I'm not trusting anybody's cost/schedule estimates until some SMR projects are actually in commercial operation. Finally, if NIMBY is a legitimate obstacle to renewable projects, it's also a legitimate obstacle to nuclear projects. (I think that NIMBY is not a good reason to block either renewable facilities or nuclear plants, but I'm not King of Earth.) [1] You might think that requiring swift completion on top of affordability is excessive, but my view is that Western projects that aren't fast will become expensive as well. Even projects that never get within earshot of the NRC, like building transmission lines or refurbishing bridges, are very predictably expensive if they stretch beyond 5 years.

dharma1 8y ago

Great interview. Really sounds like for the next 25 years (where China will increase energy capacity by 2x and India 4x) better nuclear fission plants will be the only viable choice for a source of energy that doesn't increase co2 emissions

blencdr 8y ago

Another really interesting conference [1] about energy, economics and physics. Bill Gates is right and the path to reduce our greenhouse gas emission won't be easy. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA

mklarmann 8y ago

I met Vaclav Smil 3 years ago in Zurich and talked with him. He told me, he doesn't believe in climate change. I find that very odd. His books might still be good so.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
He must have changed since then. He sees the effects of climate change quantitatively and worries a lot about them. I've discussed this with him several times. At this point he's extremely tired of writing quantitative facts and seeing the world basically ignore the magnitude of the challenge of the energy transformation we're up against. He's skeptical that we'll be able to get our act together for the thing we need. Here are some of my shorthand notes from last time I spoke with him. It's clear that he believes in climate change. We've detached ourselves totally from the material world. Everyone is a money massager or investment banker. But point is that everything has been made by someone somewhere. Primary iron (electric arc furnace, in US is recycled) 1 billion tonnes of coke per year to make primary iron in China. 1.6 B tonnes of steel. Cement: 4.2 B tonnes/year with the worst possible fuel. 300 M t plastics. And ammonia. Without these there are no roads and buildings and metal. These are fundamental pillars of civilization that have no non-fossil sources. Carnegie melon made 5 g of iron by reducing with hydrogen. So how do you replace 4 pillars of civilization in scale with something non-carbon? DR Congo have lots of hydro. There could be a lot of hydro building there. India has some coal, they will burn all of it. Indian coal is low quality. Until at least 2047 coal will be primary source of India energy. You don't want to think about future of energy in Africa. If you have 0.5 Billion in Nigeria. If you want sleepless nights, think about Nigeria. Cleave it any way and it will have half a billion. No reliable electricity in the capital. To answer your question he has no idea, it's a nightmare. Lots of cleavages. One big river is drying out. Sunshine isn't going to carry the civilization.

olau 8y ago

It didn't sound particularly sophisticated to me. For instance, he asks the rhetorical question, what kind of battery is going to power Tokyo at 22 GW through a cyclone? One way to answer that question is to ponder the following question - if we can reduce the price 90% of the time by say half, how much are you willing to pay for power in the remaining 10% of the time? There are a multitude of technical solutions. But you can only see them if you actually look for them. If you're down in a nuclear 24/7-constant-output-except-for-one-refueling-month-per-year pit, then you can't. Cheap renewables are going to be favoured by the marked forces. Yes, we need to solve the gaps, but will just have to do so. Nuclear can't do it, so there's really little room for nuclear in the future.

acidburnNSA 8y ago
That's not a rhetorical question at all. To do that you need 22 GW of storage that's only used a few percent of the time. Why are we going to price gouge everyone to pay for reliability when we could just build reliable energy sources in the first place? Show me the battery that can do 22 GW for three days. As for cheap renewables being favored: check out this other thread about Californians banning new solar installations in the desert [1]. As we ramp wind and solar from 3% of total energy (not just electricity) towards 100%, you can bet you'll see significant NIMBY stuff at work. Plus, what are you going to do with the waste from all the gargantuan retiring solar and win farms and chemical battery systems? You mention that nuclear can't do it without substantiating it. Care to expand on why that'd be impossible? France and Ontario are doing pretty well in the decarbonized world at the moment thanks to nuclear. [2] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19277653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19277653 [2] https://www.electricitymap.org/ https://www.electricitymap.org/
- philipkglass 8y ago
  Just repeating "building nuclear is much cheaper" doesn't make it so. Nuclear is safe. It has some very admirable technical qualities. But it's difficult to find examples of reactors built quickly and at low cost any more[1]. South Korean reactors built in South Korea seem to be the last good example. South Korean reactors in UAE are behind schedule. China takes 6 years to build reactors in China and their costs aren't very transparent due to opaque government and censored press. Russia takes even longer to build reactors in Russia and abroad. India takes a decade+ to finish a reactor. France can't build their new reactors swiftly or affordably, either in Finland or in France. We all know how Westinghouse's AP1000 has fared in South Carolina, Georgia, and China. Ontario experienced drastic cost overruns building the Darlington reactors in the first place and rejected new Darlington reactors a decade ago because the projected costs were too high. The Ontario government put its nuclear power plans on hold last month because the bid from Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the only "compliant" one received, was more than three times higher than what the province expected to pay, the Star has learned. Sources close to the bidding, one involved directly in one of the bids, said that adding two next-generation Candu reactors at Darlington generating station would have cost around $26 billion. https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_nuclear_bid.html https://www.thestar.com/business/2009/07/14/26b_cost_killed_... I have some hopes that small modular reactors will eventually break out of the rut of disappointment that recent Western reactor projects have furrowed. I'm not trusting anybody's cost/schedule estimates until some SMR projects are actually in commercial operation. Finally, if NIMBY is a legitimate obstacle to renewable projects, it's also a legitimate obstacle to nuclear projects. (I think that NIMBY is not a good reason to block either renewable facilities or nuclear plants, but I'm not King of Earth.) [1] You might think that requiring swift completion on top of affordability is excessive, but my view is that Western projects that aren't fast will become expensive as well. Even projects that never get within earshot of the NRC, like building transmission lines or refurbishing bridges, are very predictably expensive if they stretch beyond 5 years.