| THE ESSENTIAL ENGINEER Why Science Alone Will Not Solve Our Global Problems Henry Petroski New York: Alfred A. Knopf, February 2010 |
Rating: 4.5 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-307-27245-4 | ||||
| ISBN 0-307-27245-1 | 274pp. | HC/BWI | $26.95 | |
Henry Petroski devotes 31 pages of his book to the subject of alternative energy1 — that is to say, energy produced without the combustion of fossil fuels, which raises the atmosphere's concentration of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Here he discusses various sources of such energy, real or potential, from nuclear power to biofuels. He seems to hold nuclear power in high esteem — not the Gen-IV designs, which he never mentions, but existing nuclear power plants. Consider this statement (emphasis added):
"In its early days, nuclear power came under the authority of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, which both promoted and regulated the industry. But in the 1970s the political landscape changed with the growing awareness of environmental impacts of technologies of all kinds and the seeming conflicts of interest within the AEC. [. . .]" "Increasingly complex regulations were placed in the way of nuclear power. Any proposed new plant had to contend with a bureaucratic licensing process, which involved the preparation of license applications and environmental impact statements that took up longer and longer stretches of library shelf space. The adversarial process became increasingly drawn out and promised no certain outcome. The 1979 accident at Three Mile Island—even though it resulted in no significant release of radioactive material—completely changed the playing field and had a chilling effect on the industry. New plants that were in the planning stages were put on hold and many were canceled. The effect was to last for three decades, sending the country into an energy tailspin from which it has not yet recovered. – Pages 125-6 |
He glosses over the facts that the TMI plant was poorly designed, its operating crews were improperly trained to deal with the emergency, and the disaster plan was inadequate. He omits the numerous problems at other nuclear plants, both before and after 1979, and the "whistleblower" assessment that safety systems for that type of reactor could not assure emergency cooling under certain likely conditions. While he's concerned with the costs of these sources in $/kwh, he does not acknowledge that nuclear remains the most expensive option. All this makes his uncritical boosterism for nuclear energy suspect. And I must have missed that "energy tailspin."
Then he turns to wind energy.
"In Southern California, on the 1,500-foot-high San Gorgonio Pass near Palm Springs, thousands of wind turbines stand straight up, looking like giant soldiers twirling their rifles. They also resemble a sparse growth of tall, pale vegetation. Other so-called wind farms are beginning to proliferate around the country. And because wind farms have become big business promising big profits for early (and often subsidized) investors, the rush to install electricity- and noise-generating turbines can produce undesirable social side effects in economically depressed communities, where some citizens are all too eager to share in the windfall." – Page 127 |
This is apparently based on a single wind farm in upstate New York, which he mentions but doesn't identify. He goes on to praise offshore wind turbine farms such as Cape Wind in Massachusetts, but denigrates Mayor Bloomberg's plan to place small turbines all over New York City.2 Then he notes "it has been suggested" that making and emplacing wind turbines produces more CO2 than operating them saves.
When I compare his treatment of these two forms of energy production, I get two distinct impressions: first, that existing nuclear plants are great despite their high cost and long history of problems and we should expedite building more; second, that wind turbines on land are ugly and noisy and unreliable at producing power, and wind turbines anywhere may not be truly "green." Also, that subsidies for nuclear power are OK (the Price-Anderson Act is mentioned) but subsidized wind power is a boondoggle.
This uneven treatment continues throughout the chapter. He likes tidal power but in discussing it takes another shot at wind3. He's bullish on solar (and again, government subsidies are OK) but goes out of his way to describe some anecdotal regulatory goofs like Marburg, Germany which at one point fined its residents for not installing a solar panel. Then he gets to biofuels and spends most of his time on ethanol made from corn. He's correct in saying that it undesirably raises the cost of food and takes more energy to make than it delivers in use. But he barely mentions the possibility of cellulosic ethanol, a research goal being ardently pursued.
Finally, he turns to energy conservation. But he discusses it only in the context of motor-vehicle fuel conservation, and does not even give a full discussion on that, mentioning only the introduction of hybrid and electric vehicles and the future possibility of hydrogen-powered cars. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute says rightly that conservation is the best source of energy (he calls it "negawatts") and has made a career of pointing out the immense reductions possible in energy used by homes, offices and industrial plants. The name "Amory Lovins" does not appear once in this book. In summary, I consider these major defects in the book; for most authors, I would lower the rating to 4.0 or even 3.5.
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