Dear Mr. Pickens,
My previous three messages dealt with "new" technologies (or more correctly old technologies that have not perviously been used as a primary source of energy). Today, I explore an old technology that you mention in your PickensPlan, but which you gave a short shrift.
You discarded Nuclear Power because it took too long to build a nuclear power plant and then there was the problem of nuclear waste. There is a global bottleneck that prevents more than two or three new nuclear plants from being constructed each year--lack of capacity to cast the giant steel reactor pressure vessels and containment vessels.
Well, a new company, NuScale Power, has overcome the problem of nuclear power by designing a nuclear power plant that can be mass produced complete and ready to be installed as a unit. The power plants are then shipped by rail, truck, or barge. The company also plans to provide a fuel reprocessing plant so the nuclear waste can be turned into new fuel. The French reprocess spent nuclear fuel--why can't we?
At this link you can hear a pod-cast about it.
The NuScale Power system will produce only about 1/30th as much power as a large light water reactor. Its advantage is that it produces power with a greatly simplified system that has no valves, pumps or external piping systems. It operates at temperatures and pressures that are familiar in the industry, uses fuel that can be manufactured on the same lines as conventional reactor fuel, and uses conventional pressure vessel technology that is small enough to be produced in a number of qualified factories. The electric power portion utilizes an off-the-shelf General Electric turbine-generator set.
Work on this new power system began at Oregon State University in 2000, was "spun off" to a private company, NuScale Power, in 2003, and should be through the NRC certification process in another 7 years. Then, NuScale Power will set up an assembly line to prefabricate the power plants for sale to utilities world wide.
As I've said in each of my previous messages the energy crisis cannot be completely solved as long as energy production depends upon the consumption of material (mass). However, there is so much nuclear fission fuel available, when Thorium, Plutonium (made from Uranium in a "breeder" reactor), and Radium (from Coal Ash piles) are included, that there is enough for thousands of years.
I have more to say, but this is probably already too long.
Larry Brown
Your Eyes and Ears in SW Oregon
Now using a Mac Mini (Apple)
P.S. I saw your plan in two different You Tube videos. As a Caltech grad (MS in EE, 1954), I was impressed. IMHO, we, as a nation, should consider all of the energy sources that you enumerated along with any new, "out of the box" technologies, but the "playing field" should be leveled. All government interference in the energy markets should be stopped. This will allow all technologies to compete--the market will select those technologies that are most cost-effective. It was government regulations, subsidies, and taxes that brought us the "energy crisis."