Month: March 2022

Green Lithium and Clean Energy at the Salton Sea

Big story getting bigger.
We can do this.

Bryant Jones and Michael McKibben in The Conversation:

Geothermal energy has long been the forgotten member of the clean energy family, overshadowed by relatively cheap solar and wind power, despite its proven potential. But that may soon change – for an unexpected reason.

Geothermal technologies are on the verge of unlocking vast quantities of lithium from naturally occurring hot brines beneath places like California’s Salton Sea, a two-hour drive from San Diego.

Lithium is essential for lithium-ion batteries, which power electric vehicles and energy storage. Demand for these batteries is quickly rising, but the U.S. is currently heavily reliant on lithium imports from other countries – most of the nation’s lithium supply comes from Argentina, Chile, Russia and China. The ability to recover critical minerals from geothermal brines in the U.S. could have important implications for energy and mineral security, as well as global supply chains, workforce transitions and geopolitics.

As a geologist who works with geothermal brines and an energy policy scholar, we believe this technology can bolster the nation’s critical minerals supply chain at a time when concerns about the supply chain’s security are rising.

Geothermal power plants use heat from the Earth to generate a constant supply of steam to run turbines that produce electricity. The plants operate by bringing up a complex saline solution located far underground, where it absorbs heat and is enriched with minerals such as lithium, manganese, zinc, potassium and boron.

Geothermal brines are the concentrated liquid left over after heat and steam are extracted at a geothermal plant. In the Salton Sea plants, these brines contain high concentrations – about 30% – of dissolved solids.

If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand.

Three geothermal operators at the Salton Sea geothermal field are in various stages of designing, constructing and testing pilot plants for direct lithium extraction from the hot brines.

At full production capacity, the 11 existing power plants near the Salton Sea, which currently generate about 432 megawatts of electricity, could also produce about 20,000 metric tons of lithium metal per year. The annual market value of this metal would be over $5 billion at current prices.

Continue reading “Green Lithium and Clean Energy at the Salton Sea”

Security and Sustainability Come Together: Former Bank of England Governor, Mark Carney

Excellent, succinct and well informed explanation of the post-Russia/Ukraine energy transition.

Assuming we’re all, like, still here.

Mark Carney, Former Governor, Bank of England, on the energy transition:

“American sun, American Wind, American hydro, American nuclear, American Storage, American Storage technology, and North American energy that can provide energy security to this country, to this continent .. that mixture of low cost, low carbon and competitive energy, that’s what gives you energy security.

So we’re going to see an acceleration of the energy transition as a consequence of this. 

On the current energy crunch:

“If you saw the fall-off in US drilling, 2014, 2015, that came as on the heels of an over expansion too much capital pouring into shale oil, shale gas,  and an expansion in Saudi ..particularly crude production, so let’s not forget what happened in the capital discipline that came into the oil and gas industry after that, that’s the big story in terms of US energy production the latter half of the last decade.”

Indiana Aiming at Future Beyond Coal

Above, from a 2020 broadcast on Indiana Public TV.
Interview with Utility Coop CEO Doug Childs on the transition away from coal, lead by market forces.

Below, a clue as to why markets are no longer choosing coal. Solar and wind are the lowest cost options for new electric generation. “New Nuclear” designs are still most of a decade away in the United States. Big corporate customers, and a majority of citizens, are demanding solutions to coal’s health, climate, and cost problems NOW.

Below: hear from another big midwestern utility CEO on the specific advantages of wind over fossil fuel.

Continue reading “Indiana Aiming at Future Beyond Coal”

Nuclear Plants Were Not Designed for War

The war in Ukraine has brought up the security issue of nuclear power plants in a war zone. Experiment currently in progress. Relevant discussion above and below from Bill Maher’s interview with former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and others.

There are other issues related to security. One is proliferation of nuclear weapons. Another is the potential for operating nuclear plants to be weaponized in a cyber attack.
Fair to point out that those building a new generation of nuclear plants say these problems have been solved, and I hope that’s true. Also fair to say not everyone believes that.
The security implications of multiplying thousands of nuclear reactors throughout the developing world is certainly worth discussion. Experts, by all means, weigh in.

Kate Brown and Susan Solomon in the Washington Post:

The day Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian forces took control of the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power plant. A week later, flares from Russian artillery lit up the Zaporizhzhia plant; Ukrainian media reported that the Russian army had placed land mines around the plant’s perimeter and was stockpiling arms at both nuclear installations. The army is now pointed at yet another nuclear facility, the South Ukraine plant.

The world is watching the first war in a nuclearized country — and combat has already reached active reactors. It is difficult to believe, but in all the decades of imagining nuclear-emergency scenarios, engineers did not design for an event so human and inevitable as war.

Military strategists routinely target electrical grids and power plants to incapacitate the enemy. But Russia’s is the first invasion of a country that derives more than half its energy from nuclear power. It stands to reason that Russian generals will seek to capture all 15 active reactors in Ukraine. The Russian army appears to be using the nuclear installations as safe havens, calculating that the Ukrainians will not fire on them, but we can still expect plenty more fearful nights spent riveted to scenes of battles over huge concrete towers and rows of basins filled with radioactive spent nuclear fuel: It turns out that reactor containment buildings have never been stress-tested for blows from heavy artillery or missiles.

Even without a direct hit on a reactor, we are learning of the fragility of nuclear power plants. Normal oversight and operations have essentially been replaced by isolation and disorder. Workers at Chernobyl have been on the job continuously for more than three weeks. They have no clean clothes (important for nuclear workers), no real beds, no contact with family, no proper meals or rest. At the Zaporizhzhia plant, according to a Ukrainian official, Russian soldiers have forced employees into submission. Employee-hostages — exhausted, hungry and stressed — could make mistakes. So could the untrained Russian military personnel who are giving the orders.

Communication to these sites is largely cut off. Independent oversight experts cannot enter to verify safe operations or deliver spare parts. Russian diplomats continue to enjoy a privileged role at the International Atomic Energy Agency, despite the war. We have to rely on what the IAEA and the Russian army tell us. In the past, Soviet nuclear information services specialized in secrecy and mistruths. One of us, while working on a history of Chernobyl, found that the IAEA had difficulty acknowledging the public health impact of the fallout from the 1986 explosion there. Russian information services again appear to be opaque and untrustworthy. If an accident occurs, we don’t have confidence that rescue squads and firefighters can get to captured nuclear installations to deal with infernos and injuries. Nor can we be sure that we will learn the full extent of the damage and spread of radioactive sources.

New York Times March 15, 2018:

The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will.

United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict.

They said the strikes accelerated in late 2015, at the same time the Russian interference in the American election was underway. The attackers had compromised some operators in North America and Europe by spring 2017, after President Trump was inaugurated.

In the following months, according to a Department of Homeland Security report issued on Thursday, Russian hackers made their way to machines with access to critical control systems at power plants that were not identified. The hackers never went so far as to sabotage or shut down the computer systems that guide the operations of the plants.

Continue reading “Nuclear Plants Were Not Designed for War”

In Texas, Raging Fire has Climate Connection

Some commonalities between the wildfire currently burning in Central Texas, which in recent days, incidentally, destroyed the all too aptly named town of Carbon, – and the blowtorch catastrophe that hit Boulder County Colorado in December, the subject of the video above.
Below, scan down to the Washington Post’s account from Texas Climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, and compare to what Colorado Deputy Climatologist Becky Bolinger told me in January, posted below as well.

Extremes of wet, leading to lush growth of vegetation, grass and underbrush, followed by extreme dry, making all that fuel super-combustible, add in the expected strong spring winds, (or December winds, as it was on the Colorado front range) and a spark.

UPDATE:

Fires still raging, now classed as seven separate fires. Video below illustrates windy conditions.

https://twitter.com/jwrath7/status/1504844216161157174?s=20&t=4DLTIv8wBGHLzeho3alwEw

Washington Post:

The Eastland Complex fire — made up of three smaller wild fires in Central Texas — has incinerated more than 45,000 acres of land since sparking Thursday, destroying hundreds of homes and killing a deputy sheriff who was helping evacuate residents. Deputy Sgt. Barbara Fenley, 51, was evacuating homes in Carbon, the Eastland County Sheriff’s Office said, when, due to poor visibility and deteriorating conditions, she steered her vehicle off the road and into flames.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) declared a disaster in 11 counties affected by the blaze. Smoke on Friday drifted into skies above Houston, some 300 miles away. Only 15 percent of the fire was contained as of Saturday afternoon, officials said.

And conditions could worsen. Large swaths of Texas — from the Dallas and Fort Worth suburbs in the east to Lubbock in the north and Odessa and Midland in the west — are suffering extreme drought conditions. Meteorological officials expect winds from the arid southwest to kick up Sunday and Monday, fueling the fire’s spread.

The National Weather Service on Saturday posted a “critical” fire weather outlook for nearly all of West Texas, half of New Mexico, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska.

“When it’s as dry as it is out here and as windy as it is, that really allows that fire to spread, and that’s what we’ve seen with the Eastland Complex,” Adam Wiley, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service field office in San Angelo, Tex., told The Washington Post.

Rapidly warming temperatures around the globe threaten to exacerbate wild fires, international climate experts say, lengthening fire seasons and making the blazes more harmful.

Researchers and meteorologists in Texas have worried about spring and summer fires for months after the Lone Star State experienced one of its driest and warmest summers on record, developments closely linked with global warming.

Temperatures in December in Texas averaged 5 to 12 degrees above normal, experts at Texas A&M University found, worsening the state’s drought and setting the stage for a catastrophic fire season.

Meanwhile, said John Nielsen-Gammon, a Texas A&M atmospheric sciences professor, rainfall in Central Texas has increased by 10 percent over the past century, and the last six months of 2021 were wetter than usual.

Both developments, he said, are caused by rising global temperatures, which intensify storms during some seasons, then parch the landscape during others.

Continue reading “In Texas, Raging Fire has Climate Connection”

On Target: Solar Panels Power Big Box Store

CNBC:

Target has rolled out one of the most visible displays of its efforts to become a greener company: Massive carports topped with solar panels that will power a big-box store in California.

The panels, high above the parking lot, will produce enough renewable energy to power the entire store, from its refrigeration to its heating and air conditioning, the retail chain says. And the towering structures outside offer a striking visual clue into the environmentally conscious efforts going on inside the store.

In aisles with items like milk, ice cream and frozen pizza, refrigerators and freezers will use a natural refrigerant to cut back on emissions. All sales floor lighting has been replaced with LED, and back outside, customers who arrive in electric cars can charge them in the parking lot.

The Target location in Vista, Calif., about 40 miles north of San Diego, has become the company’s most sustainable store — and could become a national model for the retailer. Target previously installed solar panels on the location’s rooftop, which power a portion of the store.

John Conlin, senior vice president of Target properties, said the retrofit makes the location the company’s first net-zero energy store. The chain expects the solar panels to produce 10% more energy than the store needs, which it will return to the local power grid.

“This is a big step for us in terms of how we’re testing and learning from innovations around sustainability,” Conlin said.

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