Solar Scientists for Nuclear
Here;s a story that is the opening vignette in my book.
Just after New Year’s in 2006 I was out in Golden, Colorado, visiting the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, doing research for the book. I was just listening to Thomas Friedman’s The World is Flat on the car CD when I pull into the parking lot and there’s Thomas Friedman unloading his Discovery Channel camera crew to do some interviews. He was just getting off technology at that point and onto energy. We chatted for a few minutes, I told him I was also doing a book about energy, and then I said, I’m talking a lot about nuclear. Are you doing anything like that? He gave me a blank look as if I had just asked him to lend me $5 or something. That was it.
So I go in and do an interview with Larry, Kazmerski, who has been with the NREL since it was the Solar Energy Research Institute in 1977 and is now considered the government’s leading authority on photovoltaics. We talked for about 15 minutes. I never said a word about nuclear and then I finally asked him, What do you think is the overall solution to our energy problems. (Friedman was about to show up any minute so we had to hurry.) He gave me a very wary look. You know you’re probably not going to believe this, but I think we need both solar AND nuclear. We’re big fans of nuclear energy around here. Nuclear can provide the base load power, solar can provide the peaking power, and we can begin to retire the fossil fuels.
I was a bit astonished myself. You know that’s what I’ve concluded in writing that book.
His eyes got real wide at that point. You mean you’re going to write THAT book! he said. I’ve been hoping for ten years that somebody would write that book. I can’t get anybody in the Department of Energy to talk to each other. The nuclear people all think the solars are a bunch of hippies and the solars think the nuclears are a bunch of Nazis. I’ve stood up at conference and said, `We need both these technologies working together to provide the country with electricity, but nobody will pay attention.
At this point Friedman arrived with his cameras and he had to go. I hung around just to see what would happen. Soon Friedman had Kazmerski stationed in a little garden of solar collectors that NREL is testing. After a few “strolling together shots he plants Kazmerski in front of one of the more photogenic collectors and says, So the reason Germany and Japan are forging ahead solar energy and we’re not is because the government is subsidizing it.
Let him say it, shouts the director from behind the camera.
And so they do it again a few times but finally he gets Kazmerski to say it. The reason Germany and Japan are developing solar energy and we’re not is because their governments are subsidizing it.
And that was it. He got what he wanted.
The whole country is now going on a Friedmanesque binge we’re going to rebuild the economy around solar and wind energy. (Hot, Flat and Crowded, the current best seller, is the book that finally came out of this.) We’re going to put people to work, achieve sustainability, secure our energy independence, etc. etc. It’s only people like Friedman, who don’t understand the physics of energy, who can be so wildly enthusiastic about wind and other so-called €œrenewables. (In truth, no form of energy is renewable - that’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics.) Scientists who really understand the situation know that you need both solar and nuclear if you’re going to eliminate coal.
By the way, as far as wind is concerned, Kazmerski was less than enthusiastic. He had a little joke about wind. Solar and wind work really well together. We have a big problem with bird droppings on solar panels and wind kills a lot of birds.
I’ll bet to this day Thomas Friedman still does not realize that the country’s biggest expert in photovoltaics is also one of its most enthusiastic supporters of nuclear power.