I recently finished up a feature for the May issue of TR on the rare-earth supply crisis, in the process of which I learned in some detail about the dirty processes used to make green technologies like rare-earth permanent magnets for hybrid and electric car motors. With that in my mind, and continued problems at Japan's Fukushima Dai-1 in the news, stories on the unintended consequences of energy technologies have been catching my eye this week.

On Tuesday, the Japanese government raised the severity rating of the accident at Fukushima Dai-1 to level 7 on the International Atomic Energy Agency's scale, which puts it on par with Chernobyl. At IEEE Spectrum, Eliza Strickland takes a look at the numbers and explains why even though the severity level is the same as Chernobyl, this doesn't mean the situation is as dire. But it's not over. She writes:

When a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded in 1986, it sprayed radioactive material high into the air. Then graphite in the reactor began to burn, which sent a plume of highly radioactive smoke into the atmosphere. The drifting smoke spread radioactive materials over a wide area, and more than 300 000 people were eventually evacuated and resettled in safer areas. In total, the Chernobyl accident released an estimated 14 million terabecquerels of radioactive material.

There are several competing estimates of the Fukushima Dai-1's total emissions to date--but it seems clear that the radiation release is much lower than Chernobyl's. According to Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA), the plant has released a total of 370 000 terabecquerels of radioactive material to date, while Japan's Nuclear Safety Commission estimates the number at 630 000 terabecquerels.

Researchers at Cornell have turned over a piece of shale and found some bad news about natural gas, which burns cleaner than coal but, when its entire life cycle is taken into account, has some risks that some say have not been adequately addressed. In the New York Times, Tom Zeller reports on a Cornell study that says the chief component of natural gas, the greenhouse gas methane, leaks out of shale gas wells and pipelines at an alarming rate of 7.9 percent. Natural gas producers quoted in the story dispute the number, saying it would be bad business for them to let so much of their product go. TR will have a story looking at this issue sometime this week. From the Times story:

Mark D. Whitley, a senior vice president for engineering and technology with Range Resources, a gas drilling company with operations in several regions of the country, said the losses suggested by Mr. Howarth's study were simply too high.

"These are huge numbers," he said. "That the industry would let what amounts to trillions of cubic feet of gas get away from us doesn't make any sense. That's not the business that we're in."

And in good but vague news, the owner of the biggest rare-earth mine in the Western Hemisphere, Molycorp Minerals, announced late last week that it will be entering into a research agreement with the Ames National Laboratory in Iowa. The Ames Tribune has a short item. I sat in on the press conference and neither party would provide details about what rare-earth research problems they're tackling or how much money Molycorp will give Ames. But there are many problems to tackle, from coming up with more efficient ways to use the materials in magnets to cleaner processing methods. It seems likely, but I'm just speculating, that Molycorp would fund ongoing research at Ames on cleaner methods for purifying rare earth metals, the first step in making magnets and other products (making permanent rare earth magnets is in Molycorp's plans for the coming years). From previous interviews with Ames scientists, I've learned that the lab is developing a catalytic purification process that would eliminate the need to use fluoride, but previously had not had the money to get the process to pilot scale any time soon.

At an event in downtown San Francisco on Tuesday, a representative of the Obama administration went before a gathering of Silicon Valley cleantech entrepreneurs to spread the good news about what's resulted from the stimulus package, and to get their feedback.

Peter Roehrig, a political appointee in the Department of Energy's office of energy efficiency and renewable energy, pointed to numbers released by the Congressional Budget Office that day suggesting that stimulus funding led to as many as 2.1 million jobs by the end of last year. The Department of Energy administrates $36.7 billion of the stimulus funds. Part of this, Roehrig noted, is going to a program to encourage energy-efficient retrofits for cities--a program being dubbed "cash for caulkers."

But the crowd at the "Meet the DOE" event at Nixon Peabody LLP on Tuesday didn't seem to agree that things were going so well, and used the Q&A session to vent their frustration about the lack of funding for energy startups. Several people asked why big, well-capitalized companies like DuPont and GM recieved funds while their start-ups can't get off the ground. Others noted that stimulus funding seemed to favor big companies, while on the other end the ARPA-E program favors very promising but less proven innovations; companies somewhere in the middle don't know where to turn. One man, representing a company developing an add-on for engines to make them fuel flexible, stood up with excitement as he told Roehrig that Washington needs to figure out a way to take better advantage of the intellectual capital concentrated in the Bay Area.

Roehrig, left to answer for the US government, took the criticism in his stride and deflected suggestions that all it takes is a grant writer and a lobbyist to win funding. Money for new energy technologies was indeed built into the stimulus package, he said, but all with the end of guaranteeing jobs--and bigger companies can make a better argument that they'll create jobs. Roehrig encouraged the companies to come to Washington to meet with DOE representatives personally, but no one seemed much comforted when he expressed that to help solve these problems, like everyone else in the room, he's hoping the economy improves.

Technology Review has reported many times that the cost of solar panels needs to come down for the technology to be widely adopted. In light of that, I was dismayed to hear on the radio on Monday morning that California has a thriving black market for solar cells. KQED, a public radio station here in San Francisco, reported that as the cost of scrap metal has fallen thieves have turned to solar panels. According to the story, California has over 34,000 solar installations and one of the highest solar-panel theft rates in the nation. Many wineries have the systems--it certainly makes a nice blurb on the label--and they've become favored targets. These agricultural installations are easy pickings. One vintner interviewed in the story was burgled twice before installing a security system that alerted the police when thieves targeted his solar installation a third time.

Solar-cell theft is such a big problem that Congressman Mike Thompson, who represents Napa Valley, one of California's major wine-making regions, added a provision to the Solar Technology Roadmap Act that would create a national registry of solar panels and require the secretary of energy to come up with a plan to deal with theft. (The House has passed the bill; the Senate has not.) And startups that provide security systems that alert the owner when a panel is disconnected are blossoming.

Presumably the thieves are motivated by the demand for solar coupled with the inability of people to pay for it given the tanking economy and the technology's expense. (Or, as a Fast Company story suggests, maybe the thieves are motivated by something else--a free source of power for the lamps used to grow another one of California's biggest cash crops, marijuana.) But their actions could create a vicious circle. If it's necessary to include a security system with each solar installation, that will just make solar even more expensive and accessible to fewer companies and people.