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 Set up as a book with 10 chapters (sub-sites), this web site makes extensive use of full screen displays, Broadband, and Adobe pdf files.  Repeatedly restructured, expect broken and wrong-return links.

  Global Warming.   We can fix it.   We can even reverse it.   We would end nuke waste at the same time.
 Reversing Global Warming at a glance.         Ending nuke waste

Part One: Global Warming
 1. About Global Warming.  Its Harm, CO2's 'Big Picture', Sources and Sinks, Introductions to both Strategic Mitigation and the role of Boilers.
 2. Repowering Global Warming's Boilers.  Nuclear Renaissance: They Are Not your Father's Reactors.
Part Two: Fixing Global Warming
 3. First Fix, Fast Fix: The Supersized Coal Power Plants.  Since they make 65% of Global Warming, this is the important chapter.
 4. Final Fix: Strategic Mitigation.
 5. Pleasant Surprise: Global Warming's Unexpected Oil Field. 
Part Three: Fixing Global Warming's Boilers
 6. Supersized coal burning boilers.  The clean next-generation BN-800 nuclear boiler has the "Right Stuff."
 7. Conventional sized coal boilers.  Nuclear waste burning General Electric-Hitachi ARC-PRISMs will hit the spot here.
 8. Natural gas burning electricity generating turbines.  Pumped water energy storage combined with waste burning GE-H ARC-PRISMs hit the spot here.
 9. Large industrial and commercial sized natural gas boilers.  The clean next-generation HYPERION micronuke boiler heater is the best fit here.
10. Small commercial sized boilers, residential hot water heaters, and furnaces.  The nuclear electricity from all those ARC-PRISMs is the best fit here.

How this web site is organized:
 Text is usually a slide presentation.  Click on linked words, phrases, or tiny images to view large slides.
This unfinished web site consists of the above 10 chapters illuminated by additional pages about specific items.
 Questions  Reoccurring questions relating to this web site's content.

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Part One: Supersizing Global Warming.

Is it possible we are going about trying to end Global Warming all wrong?  Are we looking for mitigation in all the wrong places?

Incredibly, our leaders are talking about slowing Global Warming's CO2 growth rate over the next 50 or more years.  We have the means at hand to cut it in half in 5 or fewer years.  They are talking bottom up mitigation - wind, light bulbs, cars, etc.  I'm talking top-down mitigation - chopping off the big CO2 sources - by repowering the biggest power plant boilers that make the big Global Warming.

The world began to move toward a Global Warming-free future when the world began to build supersized nuclear electricity power plants.  Tragically, anti-nuclear environmentalist organizations such as Sierra Club persuaded the world to build supersized coal-burning power plants instead.  Supersized coal-burning power plants, now producing 65% of the CO2 in our air, led to much greater production of Global Warming CO2 than was necessary, exacerbating the Climate Change emergency now overwhelming us. 

Just as these power plants supersized Global Warming, repowering them with next-generation nuclear boilers will supersize our impact on Global Warming.  Replacing a coal burning boiler with a nuclear boiler stops coal burning immediately - at 10% to 20% the cost and time of building new. 

30% of our natural gas is also used to produce electricity.  The best synthetic crude oil is made from natural gas.  Shell and others are doing it now.  Better by far to convert all natural gas burning boilers to nuclear heat and use the surplus natural gas to make more crude than we are importing from the Mideast.  And, this is consistent with James Hansen's climate change teachings.

The tragedy of Global Warming is that we do not have to make CO2 to make electricity.  The CO2 from fossil fuel boilers is more than equal to all of what the world calls "Global Warming." 

Outlining a way to end, and then reverse, Global Warming without depending upon any lifestyle changes to make it happen, this web site shows how it has become practical to replace most of the world's fossil fuel boilers with smaller, safer, next-generation nuclear boilers and describes a quicker, simpler, more cost-effective mitigation strategy for ending Global Warming in a way that will prevent Global Warming from returning in the future.

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Part Two: Fixing Global Warming

1. The IPCC indicates about 58% of all Global Warming CO2 emissions are being absorbed, mostly by vegetation and the oceans.  The author has learned 65% of the remaining CO2 (what the world calls "Global Warming") is being produced by only 1,200 of the world's 60,000 power plants, the "Supersized" power plants.  Further, it is possible these power plants may be inexpensively and quickly converted to nuclear by installing a reactor building in the power plant's adjacent large coal yard and piping the reactor's steam to drive the existing turbines.

2. Man is putting 29.0 billion tons of CO2 into the air every year. Of that, Nature removes only 17.0. The remaining 12.0 billion tons CO2/yr is "Global Warming CO2."
All of Global Warming, 12.0, is less than the amount of CO2 coming from only coal and natural gas, 15.9, which is almost always burned in the world's 1 billion boilers.

3. Boilers can be considered to be producing more than all the world's accumulating Global Warming CO2.  See Vehicle vs. Boiler CO2 Emissions  Since most coal and natural gas is burned in boilers, most of Global Warming happens in boilers.  This is the overlooked key fact about Global Warming's CO2 sources.

4. Repowering an existing coal burning power plant with new nuclear boilers causes it to stop making Global Warming CO2 immediately.  Repowering an existing coal power plant's boiler is far cheaper and far quicker than building a new nuclear power plant.

5. Below, what we are doing and what we could do.  The steps to REVERSING Global Warming.  Global Warming could soon be history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


   (Above) Current Global Warming situation.                 (Above, right)  First Fix, Fast Fix: Quickly converting the world's 1,200 supersized coal power plants to nuclear. 

Data source: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (AR4)
 "Global Carbon Cycle."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Above) THE PRIZE.  Final Fix: Strategic Mitigation.  REVERSING GLOBAL WARMING.
  The path back to 350 ppm.  Natural sequestration is now taking CO2 FROM the air.

 

"The scientific method requires that we keep an open mind and change our conclusions when new evidence indicates that we should.  The new evidence affecting the nuclear debate is climate change, specifically the urgency of moving beyond fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources.  We need an urgent, substantial research and development program on fourth-generation nuclear power, so that we have at least one viable option in the likely event that efficiency and renewables cannot provide all needed energy.  A phase-out of coal emissions in the West can proceed promptly on the basis of efficiency, renewables, third-generation nuclear power, and possibly a contribution from carbon capture and storage - although it also requires a price on carbon emissions.  A phase-out of coal emissions in China and India almost certainly requires a cost-competitive alternative to coal.  One reason for urgent development of fourth-generation nuclear power is the possibility of producing a design for a modular reactor, which would reduce costs if built in large number.  It is conceivable that next-generation nuclear power  might begin to be broadly deployed in China or India as early as the 2020s.  Deployment would be soonest if the United States would cooperate with these nations and treat this as a mater of urgency.  If you do not believe that such rapid development is feasible, you should read some of the stories about the Manhattan Project."
 -- Dr. James Hansen, "Storms of my Grandchildren," 2009, page 204.

 

Dr. Hansen may be unaware the Russians have been running - since 1973 - the "fourth-generation" reactors Dr. Hansen is proposing we set up a "Manhattan Project" to develop.  We also had one, the Integral Fast Reactor, but Clinton killed it in 1994.  The Russians are currently building a third-generation descendent of their 1973 BN-350 model, the BN-800.  Currently under construction, the first BN-800 is scheduled to go on line in 2012. The BN-800 has the potential to run "Closed Cycle," consuming its own nuclear waste, thereby providing an over-20 year power run on a single load of fuel.

The BN-800 is a current commercial product purchasable from the Russian State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom.  China recently purchased two BN-800s, India has purchased 6 to 8.  Japan currently has technicians working at the BN-800's construction site, Beloyarsk-4, in Russia's Sverdlovsk region.  The Russians have an even more advanced reactor, the BREST, in development.

A wonderful technology opportunity, the author thinks a coal-boiler-emulating version of the BN-800 could exactly duplicate the steam produced by almost all of the world's largest coal burning power plant boilers.  This would produce a "Universal CO2 Mitigation Boiler." 

2% of the world's power plant population, the supersized coal burning power plants, cause 65% of Global Warming CO2.  By adding a mitigation boiler to the power plants to convert them to nuclear - with coal backup - 65% of Global Warming could be ended within 5 years. 

About 5,000 BN-800s need to be built.  There is always plenty of space for BN-800s in a coal burning power plant's large coal yard.  Mass production of 5,000 BN-800s in shipyards wouldn't impact the world's industrial capacity much.  The world builds about 5,000 ocean-going ships every year.  A BN-800 is tiny compared to an average ocean-going ship.  More than ten BN-800s could be built from the same material resources as one ocean-going ship.  There are many countries with both active nuclear programs and shipyards.

This web site outlines how Dr. Hansen's dream of a world free of Global Warming can be realized much sooner than everyone thinks.

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Part Three: Fixing Global Warming's Boilers

Global Warming's Boilers Make 112% of Global Warming
 Most coal and natural gas is burned in boilers.  Nature is cleaning up the remainder.

 

Hidden away, largely forgotten, all over the world, perhaps a billion huge-to-tiny boilers, hot water heaters and furnaces are silently making the Global Warming CO2 that's overwhelming Nature.  All day, every day.   

 Vehicle vs. Boiler CO2 Emissions  Global Warming happens in boilers.

230 feet high, open-air for cooling, a pair of Babcock & Wilcox supersized coal burning power plant boilers. - Photo: B&W Brochure

 

      5,000 Supersized Coal Burning Boilers in 1,200 supersize power plants are making about 65% of Global Warming's accumulating CO2 >
   150,000 Conventional Sized Coal Burning Power Plant Boilers make about 17% of Global Warming's accumulating CO2 >
       50,000 Natural Gas Burning Electricity Turbines make about  10% of Global Warming's accumulating CO2 >
  1 Million Large Industrial and Commercial Natural Gas Boilers make about 10% of Global Warming's accumulating CO2 >
  1 Billion Small Commercial Natural Gas Boilers, residential hot water heaters, furnaces make about 10% of Global Warming's accumulating CO2 >

Notes:
1. The nuclear boiler that can replace supersized coal boilers - the BN-800 - is available now.  It is a Russian product so don't expect to ever see it purchased by the United States.  There is nothing like it in the United States because we are far behind in the BN-800's technology.  Commercially available, a pair of BN-800s have been recently purchased by China as part of a completely new power plant at Sanming City.  India just purchased four.  Turkey is negotiating purchasing two.
 2. We can't use our large conventional power plant reactors to replace existing coal-burning power plant boilers because conventional 550°F nuclear boilers cannot duplicate the 1,000°F higher efficiency steam coal-burning power plant boilers make. 
3. Boiler numbers are 2005 world-wide counts and/or estimates.

 

(Right) Classic American natural gas burning 800 horsepower industrial boiler.  Click on image to see a cutaway of this boiler - which is the same concept as a classic steam locomotive fire-tube boiler.  Brochure.pdf  - - Hurst Boiler & Welding

 

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    You can see for yourself how wind power is doing in the Pacific Northwest at this moment.  (Wind's total contribution is the lower blue line, upper red line is total system user load.)  This is a huge wind farm grid that covers 5 states.  Visit Bonneville Wind Power at: http://www.bpa.gov/power/pgc/wind/wind.shtml   Individual projects are at bottom. (More) (More)   (Left) Windmill making heat.
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A long way from being a completed manuscript, this unsponsored educational web site is about repowering boilers as the way for the United States to both end its Global Warming CO2 emissions and to improve its energy options.  It is the pro bono effort of a retired professional engineer who has spent 40+ years working in and around heavy electric utility and large industrial energy management systems.  

Climate Change, like a potentially terminal cancer, is a fact that must be acknowledged and dealt with promptly.  Currently we are in the stage of denial and green quackery.  Over time, repositories of effective mitigation ideas - such as coal2nuclear.com - will emerge as the prevailing Global Warming mitigation handbooks.

 I am not a scientist and this is not a scientific web site.  I am an applications engineer and this is a web site suggesting how one may best repower, i.e., convert from fossil to nuclear, the world's wide spectrum of heat engines - the engines that power all aspects of all modern civilizations.

This web site is a work in progress, all content subject to frequent and extensive revisions due to new information, thought, and after-thought.  Expect broken links.  Please share its ideas with others and feel free to email contact me to correct my mistakes.

Thank you for visiting Coal2Nuclear.  I invite your questions, comments, and suggestions.  Please return.
Jim Holm

This Web site has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication
 and does not guarantee that any content on this or other Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

       Hit Counter     Any work that I own the rights to is licensed under a    Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.  
This page was last updated on 02/08/10.

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