The Center for American Progress: Experts aint what they used to be.

This article from the Center for American Progress caught my eye this morning. Its author, Daniel J. Weiss, is an “expert on climate strategy. He has gained this prestigious title mainly through his many years of experience as a PR hack for environmental groups. The article argues that we don’t need more exploration, focusing on offshore exploration, because we just wind up exporting all of it anyways,

More offshore drilling in the Gulf Coast region, however, may not do much to increase our energy security. A CAP analysis (.xls) of Energy Information Administration data found that a large portion of the oil produced in the Gulf Coast region is actually exported to other nations, and this undoubtedly includes some of the offshore oil produced there.

After looking into this, there are several problems with Weiss’s argument.

First, there is no data that directly states what oil drilled from what region is exported. Weiss admits this, but manages to weasel out of it.

But the main problem with his argument is that no clarification is given as to what exactly is being exported.

The “oil” we export is not in the form crude, but rather is composed of diesel and other heavy fractional petroleum distillates. When crude is refined into its final products, the ratio of what is produced out is fixed (for the most part). A barrel of oil is 42 gallons, out of which refiners can squeeze about 20 gallons of gasoline and about 10 gallons of diesel. Refiners have become pretty good at modifying their process to maximize the most marketable products, but the chemistry and thermodynamics of refining do have limits as to how much they can maximize the more profitable distillates. And since we use far more gasoline than diesel, refiners are always left with excess diesel.

Weiss’s data that he used for his “analysis” (if that’s what you’d call it) states quite clearly: Total Crude Oil and Petroleum Products. Had Weiss bothered to look at the footnotes in his link, he would have also found this:

Exports of distillate fuel oil categories for sulfur greater than 15 ppm to 500 ppm and sulfur greater than 500 ppm to 2000 ppm may include distillate fuel oil with sulfur content 15 ppm and under.

Had Weiss then done some more digging (I know, hard work for an “expert”) he would have come across this set of data, also from the Energy Information Administration, breaking down the subcategories for exports of “Total Crude Oil and Petroleum Products”.

Even more digging (once again, hard work for an “expert”) he would have seen that what little raw crude oil the US exports goes exclusively to Canada. To further put this into perspective, in 2009 we exported a whopping 15.9 million barrels to Canada, or 0.82% of total US domestic oil production.

This leaves us with three possible conclusion: Weiss isn’t the expert he claims to be because he dint know how to look deeper into the numbers or he deliberately mislead to make his case against additional oil production.

Either way, its just another reason not to take the Center for American Progress seriously. And, naturally, “climate expert” Joe Romm bought off on this POS as well.

Why is it so expensive to build a nuclear plant?

That’s not really a fair statement. It was expensive to build a nuclear plant and the costs thrown around are based on historical figures.

But its like those guys on TV say, past performance is no guarantee on future returns.

In order to understand what went wrong in the US nuclear industry, you really have to take a look at the past to see how some of the conditions that made them as expensive to build as they were no longer exist.

Back in the day, every utility in the country functioned as a regulated monopoly. The utility had every major decision ran past a regulatory body that would either approve or reject the decision as well as tell the utility how much more it could charge for its power. While this meant that reliable power was available to nearly everyone who needed it or wanted it, it removed any kinds of incentives for efficiency or risk management on the utilities end because every capital infrastructure request made by a utility was approved and the regulators gave the utility permission to increase their prices to cover the construction costs, including cost overruns. This increase also included the utilities predetermined profit rate. Even if they made a mistake, they still profited off of it.

Management did not have a good understanding of what they were getting themselves into when thy initially went seeking approval for the plants. They were basing their budgetary estimates off of a scope of work that was 20-25% defined because they were rushing themselves to get these projects up and running and did not fully appreciate the risks involved in this kind of heavily regulated work.

Think about that for a moment …. only 20-25% of the project could be categorized as a “known”. That means any contractor bidding on it knows with certainty only ¼ of his scope, and he is then expected to provide a fixed price bid for the entire project .. doesn’t work like that.

And since only 25% of the scope was defined that meant only 25% of the engineering was complete, so all permitting for the plant had to be done on an incomplete design, and regulators at the NRC didn’t care for that either.

On a project like this you perform detailed engineering, seek permits, take bids, procure, construct and operate. When the big nuclear projects of the 70’s were in full swing, utilities were half assing this creed of good project management, hoping that things would just work themselves out but also not caring too much if they didn’t because there was no real financial risk.

So when work began on the plants and engineering tried to catch up, the NRC would invariably reject part of the design (because naturally it would make too much God damn sense to have a standardized pre-approved design instead of reinventing the wheel every project). The design would then have to go back to engineering; subcontractors would have to stop what they were working on, idling hundreds of tradesmen or worse reworking what they had done. Delays would ensue, schedules would slip and the project’s margin sheet would begin to bleed like a stuck pig.

Do this 70 or 100 times during the course of a project and its no wonder why costs spiral out of control and 4 years projects turn into 20 year projects.

Sure, the ever changing NRC rules and the Ralph Nader’s and Jane Fonda’s of the world certainly didn’t help, but all the missteps the utilities were making made them more vulnerable in the courts and with the regulators.

So what is different now?

Well, for one, manufacturers (Westinghouse and GE-Hitachi for example) are pushing for standardized packages that once given NRC approval would take the permitting issue out of the equation.

Utilities now have to go onto the market and get funds the old fashioned way and private investors have to weigh the ability of the utilities to control costs, meaning you damn well have better know what you are doing before we lend you billions of dollars.

Material and labor costs are at the lowest they have been in over a decade. High material and labor costs was actually a reason that asshole extraordinaire Joe Romm said that nuclear was doomed for a comeback:

In fact, from 2000 through October 2007, nuclear power plant construction costs -- mainly materials, labor and engineering -- have gone up 185 percent! That means a nuclear power plant that would have cost $4 billion to build in 2000 would have cost more than $11 billion to build last October.

Looks like his ability to predict the future isn’t quite as good as he would like the rest of us to believe it is.

Most importantly though public sentiment is now behind nuclear power.

If the utilities and their subcontractors can demonstrate the ability to manage a project well, nuclear will see a revival.

Joe Romm is a fucking hack

Romm was on NPR a couple weeks ago commenting on a NY Magazine article on Freeman Dyson. The article, amongst other things, focused on Dyson’s contrarian views on man made global warming.

Romm seem to be most pissed that since Dyson wasn’t a climate scientist he shouldn’t have been given any room to air his views and that the media needs to act as a “filter” to make sure we Lilliputians cant have our thought polluted with heretical ideas like Dyson’s.

It got better though:

“If he were a Holocaust denier or if he said cigarettes were good for you, then
Dawidoff would not be writing this favorable extensive profile of his life and
times”

I find it truly disgusting that Romm has the nerve to compare one of the most distinguished scientist of his generation to a holocaust denier.

“Scientists” like Joe Romm remind me of those who threw charges of heresy at Galileo Galilei. Fact is Dyson is eminently more credible than Romm on what does and does not constitute good science and scientific method and the unreliable nature of scientific theories when they are still in their infancy.

I doubt Romm would last more than 30 minuets in a face to face debate with Dyson, but a coward like Romm wouldn’t take that challenge in the first place.

Joe Romm is a fucking coward

After reading another half assed posting from Joe Romm at ClimateProgress, I figured I would post a comment. It was quickly removed.

It's Romm's prerogative to be sure, but it really does speak volumes on what a complete and total fucking coward he is.

I have posted the comment below.

[JR]Everybody knows that wind and solar have a 30 to 40 percent capacity factor. It is no big secret as this paragraph seems to imply, assuming anyone can figure out what the authors actually meant. It has no impact on their carbon dioxide reduction.

Your hero Jon Wellinghoff, the new head of FERC hasn’t figured that out. He just said that the installed cost of a KW of solar and wind was less than nuclear. That would have been true if you didn’t include capacity factors into that number. When included into that figure, Nuclear is still cheaper than solar or wind when spinning reserve construction is taken into account.

[JR]The fact is that countries have integrated into their grids a fraction of wind that is 10 times what we have today.

Interesting that you neglected to mention that renewable heavy nations like Denmark and Spain rely on Nuclear heavy nations like France to provide all the spinning reserve they need when the wind slows down. Who are we supposed to rely on … Canada and Mexico?

[JR]And the fact is that this country is already reducing the fraction of all electricity produced by coal, thanks part to renewable.

Ehhh .. wrong again Joe. The fraction of all electricity produced by coal has dropped only in relative terms and only by a fraction of a %. And the part played by renewables is insignificant … the largest generation growth has come from natural gas. While the year to year % increase of wind is big, its still a pittance when compared to the actual year to year increases in gas, or even coal.

[JR]The authors and the Post also seem to be unaware that the fossil fuel power most often paired with renewables to firm up the power — natural gas power — has substantially lower greenhouse gas emissions per kiloWatt-hour than the gird as a whole. So a wind-gas or solar-gas hybrid still represents a very sharp reductions in carbon emissions.

And at only 5 times the cost and with 75% of the reliability .. that’s one hell of a tradeoff.

Welcome to the reality based community.

In short Joseph Romm is a fucking retard and a coward to boot. Oh, sure, he got his fancy PhD degree in physics, making him a self professed "physicist and climate expert", but he doesn’t have a fucking clue when it comes to channeling electrons in useful work and the technical and managerial challenges that go along with that let alone a thick enough hide to handle some dissenting views at his website.