[Stoves] Academic Cookstoves and Practical Cookstoves - advice from Hyman Rickover

Traveller miata98 at gmail.com
Wed Jan 11 11:13:10 CST 2017


If Anil is correct that there are no clean fuels, just clean combustion,
there are also no "clean cookstoves" - which is the ISO framing of the
problem - but just clean combustion, which is a complex of fuels, devices,
operating practices.

And all this Tier-ing business has little to do with household cooking.
Perhaps commercial, large-scale cooking and other direct combustion, but
cooking is contextual, as are "safe", "clean", and all that jazz.

The cookstoves bellyaching over the decades reminds me of another subject
from 35+ years ago - small-and-medium power reactors, frequently referred
to also as small modular power reactors (SMPRs
<http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/small-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx>
or SMRs). I did a review for the Brundtland Commission, the first line
being (I think), "On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I think these
reactors are around the corner, will be a boon to mankind, the designers
have finally got everything right. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, I
think entirely the opposite. On Sundays I go fishing, and don't care."

I went to see Alvin Weinberg once in his Washington office to discuss the
set of papers on "The Second Nuclear Era". I was skeptical. And argued with
him about his error in understanding utility operations (average capacity
factors of coal power plants).

The SMPR excitement has returned after 30 years (60+ years remembering the
first power reactors in US, UK, France, USSR), and so has the biomass stove
excitement, now in the garb of IWA "Clean Cookstoves".

The same thing in cookstoves with unprocessed biomass (i.e., excluding
charcoal, pellets, etc.), now these undefined "clean cookstoves". The Holy
Grail. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, ... You get the picture.

For some 40 years, woodstove experts have made two key technical errors: a)
getting trapped in test protocols, and b) ignoring the chemistry -
agro-chemistry, fuel chemistry, air chemistry, food chemistry, human
biochemistry.

And of course the chemistry of cooking and of cooks.

Academic cookstoves versus practical cookstoves. Read below.

When do we get to "contextual" testing of "usable" cookstoves? Just for
ordinal rating purposes, not even "standards" according to these fictional
"Tiers". (Frankly, I haven't bothered to read all that gibberish of SE4All
on modern energy access or cookstoves. Will do if someone suggests it's
worth taking a look, like I did with SMPRs 30 years ago.)

*******

The link I just gave on SMPRs (at World Nuclear Association) has the
following quote. I wish I had known of it when I went to see Weinberg.

""Nevertheless it is salutary to keep in mind the words of the main US
pioneer in nuclear reactor development. Admiral Hyman Rickover in 1953 -
about the time his first test reactor in USA started up - made some
comments about "academic paper-reactors" vs. real reactors. See:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover for the full quote:

"An academic reactor or reactor plant almost always has the following basic
characteristics: (1) It is simple. (2) It is small. (3) It is cheap. (4) It
is light. (5) It can be built very quickly. (6) It is very flexible in
purpose. (7) Very little development will be required. It will use
off-the-shelf components. (8) The reactor is in the study phase. It is not
being built now.

"On the other hand a practical reactor can be distinguished by the
following characteristics: (1) It is being built now. (2) It is behind
schedule. (3) It requires an immense amount of development on apparently
trivial items. (4) It is very expensive. (5) It takes a long time to build
because of its engineering development problems. (6) It is large. (7) It is
heavy. (8) It is complicated.

"The tools of the academic designer are a piece of paper and a pencil with
an eraser. If a mistake is made, it can always be erased and changed. If
the practical-reactor designer errs, he wears the mistake around his neck;
it cannot be erased. Everyone sees it. The academic-reactor designer is a
dilettante. ......."

USS Nautilus was launched in 1955.

Some people treat real reactors as if they were academic reactors.  And
truth be told, people in the 1950s and 1960s didn't have a choice. They
learnt as they went along.


Nikhil
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