Philippe Joubert on Carbon Capture, Nuclear, and Climate
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About this video
Philippe Joubert, President of French power company Alstom, talks to Clean Skies News about carbon capture and storage research, the U.S. nuclear industry, The West Virginia Mountaineer Project and the pending climate change legislation.
Published: 10/14/09 7:32am
Running Time: 11:35
Related Keywords: Politics, Politics (Environment), Politics (Coal), Congress (Politics), Power Generation (Nuclear), Power Generation (Natural Gas), Natural Gas, Coal, Nuclear, Environment, Clean Skies News, Tyler Suiters, Philippe Joubert, Alstom Power, Barbara Boxer, Cap and Trade, carbon capture, CCS, Duke Energy, French, Jim Rogers, Kerry-Boxer, legislation, nuclear, research, storage, technology
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*This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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CCS - BIG PICTURE
CCS - BIG PICTURE -
Sometimes it is valuable to step back from a problem to get "THE BIG PICTURE" of what is being attempted and decide if what you are trying to do is reasonable.
Dr. Stephen Chu contributed an editorial to Science Magazine (25 December 2009 issue) entitled "Carbon Capture and Sequestration" where he described the magnitude of the challenge of sequestering the CO2 the world generates from burning coal. In that editorial he wrote the following:
"At geological storage densities of CO2 (0.6 kg/m3), underground sequestration will require a storage volume of 30,000 km^3/year."
30,000 cubic kilometers of CO2 is equal to 7187.382 cubic miles. This is a show stopper of a large value which should call into question the wisdom of this approach.
7187.382 cubic miles of volume would be a rectangular trench 1 mile deep x 1 mile wide x 7187 miles long. The storage volume required to store the world's CO2 for one year would be a trench having 1 mile width and 1 mile depth and exceed twice the distance from Los Angeles to New York City.
It is just not practical to expect to generate storage volumes of this size on a year in and year out basis. There are no underground caverns or natural features that are close to this size and it is not practical to talk about excavating storage structures that are this large.
Why not rethink this goal of deploying CCS given the Big Picture of the unrealistic magnitude of volume required to store the world's CO2 produced from burning coal?