ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Espionage, Intelligence, and Security Volume ...

Energy Technologiesinvolves environmentally destructive mining and air pollution,while the latter involves some environmentallydestructive mining and produces growing inventories ofradioactive material that might be released to the environmenteither accidentally or deliberately, as by wartime orterrorist action. Therefore, there is nothing intrinsically“clean” about electricity. About 51% of United Stateselectricity is currently produced by coal-burning powerplants, 21% by nuclear power plants, 17% by natural-gasfiredpower plants, 6% from hydroelectric dams, 3% fromoil-fired power plants, and 2% from wind, wood, andphotovoltaics.Several national-security issues arise with respect toenergy technologies:(1) Self-sufficiency. An energy source that must beimported, such as oil, is vulnerable to cutoff by hostileparties. This was demonstrated by the oil crisis of 1973,when the Organization of Oil Producing Countries (OPEC)suddenly quadrupled its oil prices from about $3 to about$13 per barrel (1 barrel = 42 United States gallons or 159 L)in retaliation for United States support of Israel. Thistriggered an economic crisis in the United States andelsewhere. In contrast, the United States has large domesticstocks of coal and uranium, and is not vulnerable to acutoff of these energy sources; nor is it entangled politicallyor militarily with foreign sources of these fuels, as isthe case with oil. (However, coal and uranium produceelectricity, which, unlike oil, does not yet run affordablecars; therefore, coal and uranium cannot, at present, significantlydecrease United States dependence on foreignoil.) Renewable or alternative energy resources also havethe advantage that they are not imported.(2) Fragility. Energy sources that can be disrupted atcentral points or along key transmission routes are morevulnerable to terrorism and war than distributed energysources. For example, much of the United States electricalgrid—a tuned, interdependent, dynamic network—couldbe blacked out for days or weeks by the destruction ofrelatively few switching points, control centers, or transmissionlines. Locally-harvested alternative-energy sourcessuch as rooftop photovoltaics or woodlots are immune tolarge-scale disruption, but cannot serve all purposes; rooftopphotovoltaics are still expensive relative to grid electricity,and there are no wood-burning computers or refrigerators.Between the resilience of locally-producedenergy supplies and the brittleness of the coal- and nuclear-fueledelectrical grid lie the energy systems that rely ondistributed stocks of fuels such as gasoline and naturalgas. Although these energy technologies still rely on a fewcentralized refineries or long-distance pipelines, they aretolerant of temporary or local damage.(3) Hazardousness. Some energy sources are hazardousdue to toxicity or explosive potential. Standard nuclearpower plants cannot explode, but they do containlarge inventories of radionuclides that could be deliberatelyreleased by an enemy; after the terrorist attacks ofSeptember 11, 2001, the United States Nuclear RegulatoryCommission ordered immediate, drastic increases in securityfor nuclear power plants. A less well-known sourceof vulnerability is liquefied natural gas, which is importedto the United States in large tanker ships and stored incentralized tank farms for national distribution via longdistancepipelines.(4) Pollution. Pollution or greenhouse-gas emissionsthat harm a country’s citizens, environment, and economycan be thought of as a danger to national security. Allsources of energy, including wind and solar, require theextraction and refinement of metals and other substances,some toxic; conventional sources further require the extractionand (often) refinement of fuels and either (a)release combustion products to the atmosphere or (b)require the near-perfect, near-perpetual containment ofincreasing quantities of radioactive materials.(5) Adequacy. Whatever combination of energy technologiesis used by a modern industrial state, its energysystem must provide sufficient energy. The present energysystem of the U.S.—primarily gasoline for transport,coal and nuclear (primarily) for electrical generation, andoil for heating some buildings—does supply adequateenergy; however, some experts maintain that given increasedend-use efficiency, the industrialized countriescould shift almost entirely to alternative energy sources inabout 50 years. If technically feasible this would increaseself-sufficiency and decrease fragility, hazardousness, andpollution, but is not likely to occur without a major shock,or several major shocks, to the conventional energy system,as for example a major terrorist act involving anuclear power plant, a second oil embargo, or radicalclimate change. In the meantime, prices are falling slowlyfor alternative energy sources, especially wind and solar,making them increasingly competitive on the market withconventional electricity sources. Gasoline continues to bethe only affordable energy source for most vehicles, withthe mileage of the United States fleet recently decliningrather than rising.One change in the present U.S. energy system that, iftechnically feasible, would increase self-sufficiency bydecreasing dependence on oil and which would also decreasepollution is a long-term shift (probably only partial)to hydrogen “burned” in fuel cells. Fuel cells are chemicalreactors in which a fuel (not necessarily hydrogen) combineswith oxygen to create electricity, with water vapor asthe only by-product. Hydrogen is available on Earth onlyin chemically stable combination with other substances(e.g., in H 2 O); it is therefore not a primary fuel but, likeelectricity, a form of energy, and must be manufacturedeither by using electricity to split water molecules or bychemical processing of a fuel such as coal. Althoughhydrogen is not currently available in large quantities andfuel cells remain expensive (i.e., about 10 times as expensive,per horsepower delivered, as a conventional automobileengine), U.S. President George W. Bush has announcedtwo funding programs for hydrogen fuel cells:402 Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence, and Security