Military Continues to Move Forward on Clean Energy

Great points Cliff.  

It is important to remember that due to the buracracy and competition-inhibitting single-payers system, everything costs more when purchased by the military.  So we should not try to use the military to advance new technolgy, except in cases where there is no commercial alternative (i.e. replacing commercial electricity or wholesale fuel is the last thing the military should do; battle-field point of use fuel is of course different).

On the other hand, the US military does have the ability to bypass burdensome civilian nuclear regulations.  So there is some hope that the military could act as early-adopters and help restore innovation and entrepreneurial spririt to the nuclear industry.    Some of the new and proposed small nuclear reactors would be good additions to foreign military bases (e.g. walk-away safe underground TRISO-fueled reactors), and could help provide clean electricity to host communities. 

I served as a requirements officer in the branch of the OPNAV (Chief of Naval Operations) staff – N4 – that deals with energy and fuel issues. I would be much more impressed by the DoD programs to mitigate climate change if the leadership would have opened their eyes to see that the US Navy already contained one of the world’s formost nuclear energy organizations and owned technology that has been proven to provide battle capable power without producing any emissions at all. 

As we learned when the USS Nautilus first went to sea in January 1955, nuclear fission energy is both clean enough to run inside a sealed submarine and powerful enough to drive that submarine at unmatched speeds. The first Nautilus core propelled the ship more than 62,000 miles; the most recent cores being installed in Virginia class submarines will last the life of the ship – perhaps 1,000,000 miles.

The reception I got when pushing an expanded nuclear energy program was discouragement from the politically appointed leaders in uniform. I kept showing them the numbers; they kept saying that nuclear was not popular. During the huge run up in oil prices prior to 2008, my efforts started to gain some traction, but short memories took over once the prices fell during the recession.

Many of the budget types informed me that it was always easier to get Congress to approve a supplemental budget request if fuel prices skyrocketed than to get them to approve ships that cost 20-30% more. They said that future fuel costs disappear in their spreadsheets – I kept pointing out the dishonesty and the lack of historical understanding.

Eventually I retired without having made as much of an impact as I desired, but the truth remains that nuclear energy works. It is zero emission and it provides reliable power on demand. It is the right choice for an organization that already knows how to build some of the best power plants in the world.

I’ve provided this response because I am quite aware of the fact that the NRDC discourages the use of nuclear energy. I recently had a lengthy conversation with Tom Cochran, who has now retired from your organization; he was insistent that, somehow, the US Navy’s nuclear propulsion program contributed to the risk of nuclear proliferation. That makes no sense at all considering the measures taken to provide security to all military systems. 

One more thing – the cost of military nuclear power plants is higher than it should be, but that is mostly due to the very low production rate environment of today. The recent cost reduction program for the USS Virginia demonstrates how production rates can make a big impact on system costs.

Rod Adams, Publisher, Atomic Insights

CDR, USN (ret)

Very interesting, Rod Adams.

I was wondering why there was no mention of nuclear propulsion in the above article. Presumably, if zero-emissions energy is what constitutes clean energy, one would expect at least a passing mention of navy nuclear propulsion systems! But that would clearly be a wrong expectation. Thankfully, you have lacking information.

On the subject of navy propulsion, I have been wondering how solar power plants are ever going to provide power for the propulsion ofmilitary ships, aircraft and vehicles. Presumably, this is where most of the military demand for energy is coming from. Some time ago I was reading about research performed by the US Navy for providing nuclear power derived fully synthetic liquid fuel based on sea-water extraction of co2 and hydrogen. The concept was to use the nuclear power plants of aircraft carriers to run the (mostly off-the-shelf) fuel synthesis equipment to provide on-site production of drop-in replacement jet fuel! It seemed like a wonderfull idea, also for civilian applications, and the projected economics didn’t look half bad either! Yet no mention of this development in this article from the NRDC. Pity!

The US Air Force is the number one consumer of petroleum products in the world.

All the literature I have read indicates that they expect hydrocarbons to be the primary fuel for the forseeable future, but they are open to clean fuels and synthetic fuels.  Wind, solar and efficiency are all well and good, but they don’t get B-52s into the air. The Air Force has programs testing every viable option for alternative fuels including bio-based and coal based.  There has been operational success with synthetic FT fuels, among the benefits of synthetic fuels is the near elimination of sulfur and particulates, reducing pollution and improving maintenance.

Interestingly, the military has found that ethanol and biodiesel are unsuitable for use in weapon systems due to safety risks, poor performance and maintenance problems.

Great analysis from the Rand Corporation: “Alternative Fuels for Military Applications”

http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/monographs/2011/RAND_MG969.pdf

The military understands as well as any organization the absurdity of using massive quantites of fuel to fight wars to protect access to those very same fuel supplies.

I once read a report from the CNO’s Strategic Studies Group (sometime in the early 2000s) on the processes that could be used to manufacture synthetic hydrocarbons. The study made an interesting assertion – the problem was almost trivial if the heat from nuclear fission power plants was available. The group determined that a more “interesting” problem was determining if the fuel could be manufactured if it was assumed that “the public” would not support expansion of nuclear energy.

One of my buddies served on that SSG. He was totally frustrated by the way that his fellow members were more concerned about an intriguing challenge than about providing a viable, defensible alternative that could be used to explain the need for additional nuclear plants on a larger variety of ships, especially including big deck amphibious ships.

Several studies were undertaken in 2008, 2009, and 2010 as a result of language specified by the Defense Appropriation Acts. They showed that nuclear powered ships, even with some disadvantageous assumptions, could compete on a pure lifecycle cost basis with oil fired plants with reasonably forseeable fuel price scenarios. I’m operating from memory here, but I think the breakever prices range from $109 per barrel for high powered cruisers to about $147 per barrel for large deck amphibious ships.

The Air Force fuel problem is somewhat different, but again, it can be eased considerably if the energy from nuclear plants can be used to create synthetic hydrocarbons.

I find the idea of producing synthetic hydrocarbons from nuclear heat to be particularly fascinating.

I met folks from a company at a conference that was promoting a process for making fuels from CO2. http://www.newco2fuels.co.il/   Their proposition is that waste CO2 + H2O + heat+power -> CO-H + O2.  They want to convert CO2 and water to syngas and oxygen, but they need heat to do it and so they propose to tack these systems onto existing thermal facilities.

Nuclear produces copious heat and power, maybe something like this is the solution for carbon. Turn that captured CO2 into commodity fuels using nuclear energy.  Carbon Capture and Utilization instead of Carbon Capture and Sequestration.