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Done SAFELY, nuclear is essentially carbon-free.

In addition to the point of the AC here, a second reason that nuclear power is not carbon-free is the massive amount of concrete used to build nuclear plants, far exceeding that of any other power generation save hydro. Cement production is a giant CO2 emitter, roughly the second largest CO2 source mankind has. And while not a lot of the annual concrete production goes into nuclear power plants, when it does, the amount is not negligible. Just doing a quick google, 200,000 tons of concrete for a nuclear plant at 180 kg CO2/ton is 36 million kg of CO2, That's ballpark 40,000 tons of CO2, and while a coal plant might dump out 100x that much annually and natural gas 50x, saying nuclear is carbon-free is very much wrong.
 
In addition to this, there's a lot of soil disruption in mining for both cement materials and uranium, and that also releases CO2. Combined with run-off from these activities, which generally isn't well controlled, you get even more CO2 released.
 
Nuclear is definitely better than any fossil fuel use, but not better than solar or wind in terms of CO2 generation.

even the most hardcore anti-nuclear people wouldn't generally have a problem knowing that there's a multi-kilometer thick radiation shield in place.

That's because those dumbasses believe that all the Earth's fissioning material is buried miles below the crust, rather than being distributed through it, including places where a lot of people live:
http://ecolo.org/documents/doc...

TheRealLifeboy:

It will probably have a good effect on life in general and prevent a lot of cancer. This is why no-one has died from radiation sickness at Fukushima and probably won't in future either.

And the link goes to this letter, describing the case of people living exposed to Cobalt-60. TheRealLifeboy is referring to here the question of whether the danger of radioactive exposure scales down to low dosage in a linear way (the assumption our safety rules are based on), or whether the danger levels off at some point, and there's a threshold below which it's not dangerous, and may even be beneficial ("radiation hormeisis").

Myself, I would say that this is essentially an open question, with some evidence pointing either way. More importantly though, it isn't necessary for there to be a "safe threshold" for nuclear power to be safe, relative to other sources of power. Our safety rules make the more conservative assumption, so this isn't really an issue.

And as a fellow pro-nuke kind of guy, take it from me: the Okrent Window is way out there compared to this position. It doesn't matter whether it's true, you don't want to make the assertion because it just sounds too crazy to the people you want to convince. You need to say stuff like "the number of deaths caused by the Fukushima incident are far lower than many people realize", you don't want to say stuff like this:

Radiation (as high as 800 mSv aoording to the original research) is actually good for you!

No, a false dilemma is when only a fixed number of options are presented, when in actuality there are many more. Although I can understand how you got confused, I didn't present Denver as the only other place to live. What I did was point out the hypocrisy of those who say that the contamination is bad - if Fukishima is so bad, why aren't we complaining about the natural radiation from Denver, which is 10 times worse?!?!? Why don't we boycott food grown in Denver? Why don't we declare it as unsafe for human habitation?

Just out of interest, you might like to know that more people have been killed by breached hydro-electric than by breached nuclear. In fact, in a single accident, ~171,000 people were killed by hydro. And the thing is, I don't think they really cared whether it was nuclear or hydro that killed them, they are still dead. Solar panels use dangerous chemicals in their manufacture. Wind requires massive constructions projects. Tidal requires massive amounts of dangerous maintenance. Hydro displaces anybody who lived in the catchment area. And in comparison, they produce so little energy compared to nuclear that to get equivalent outputs, they are downright dangerous.

Here, some facts might help you. Seriously, read that before you respond.
Notice what the safest thing is? Sure, nuclear fuel is highly poisonous, but we need *so little* of it that in the big picture it really doesn't matter. In fact, naturally, Uranium decays into Radon, a highly radioactive gas (which is the main source of radiation in Denver). So, by using the Uranium for fuel, we actually reduce the amount of Radon, making the world safer in the future. Neat, huh?

So there is a trope in the engineering world that the safest reactors are the ones that are confined to paper studies, or, to put it more timely, to PowerPoint slides.

Yes. Here's the original source of that, from Hyman Rickover, 1953:

"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."

Looking at the history of reactors, almost everything other than water-cooled reactors has been an operational failure. Pebble-bed reactors have pebble jams. Helium-cooled reactors leak. Sodium-cooled reactors have fires. Boiling water reactors are basically simple devices, and even they have problems. Complexity in the radioactive side of a reactor system has not worked well in practice. The environment is hostile and the required lifetime without maintenance is decades long.

I hate to burst your bubble, but that study is utter garbage and does not represent low level radiation exposure.

1. page 19, figure 2. Look at it. Exposure to levels up to 0.2Gy were below LNT. 0.2Gy is not low level radiation! At 1Gy exposure your hair falls out, for Pete's sake!

2. there has been NO research about low level exposure to background levels.

3. there has been absolutely no research at near 0 exposure levels - a lab has been proposed for this. It has not been built.

Since there are no facilities to measure effects of radiation at low levels on test subjects, all we have is anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal evidence points to the fact that

1. you can prime your body for higher exposure with a lower exposure

2. people live in areas with 20mSv/yr background exposure do not experience any more tumors than people living in areas with 1mSv/yr background exposure.

http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/ramsar-natural-radioactivity/ramsar.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramsar,_Mazandaran#Radioactivity

So basically, LNT is garbage below its intended range (ie. nuclear bomb blast range) - levels of 100mSv acute or 400mSv/yr background.

Try Ramsar in Iran, which has naturally occuring high background radiation levels:
http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/ramsar-natural-radioactivity/ramsar.html

There are also other places like Guarapari in Brazil, and Kerala in India that have naturally high background radiation levels.

Also, high altitude flight (airliners) can expose passengers and aircrew to up to 4 uSv/hr...

It is insignificant in comparison to constant radiation you are exposed on daily basis, if you live, well, almost anywhere!!

life evolved in a radiation field that was much more intense than today. The annual effective radiation dose from natural and man-made sources for the world's population is about 3 mSv

http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/ramsar-natural-radioactivity/ramsar.html

I believe Hydro is much much worse than that. Since 1970 there are more than 1M people that died out of a failed dam (volcanoes, earthquakes, defects, etc.). Relatively safe in the US though. (My source is in French.)

I don't speak or read Japanese, but I do know that there are parts of Brazil and Iran that have incredibly high levels of naturally occurring background radiation. I assume the Brazilian flag is there to represent to dose you'd get living in one of the [V]HBRA areas in Brazil.

... here we have yet another instance of a phenomenon that could have significant climate effects, that was completely unknown until now.

Compare the surface forcing due to ozone at any reasonable concentration to that of CO2 at today's concentration, and then re-examine your use of the word "significant".

Until very recently, there was little if any evidence (that was available and analyzed, at any rate) that the troposphere was warming to a degree that matched the greenhouse warming models. Only a few weeks ago did I learn that some relatively recent papers did in fact indicate that the troposphere appeared to be warming in a way that better matched the models. ... Your comment about "overlapping sensitivities" means next to nothing in this context.

Ironically, the issue you're describing was exacerbated by precisely this overlap problem. Sensors designed to measure the upper troposphere also pick up signals from the lower stratosphere.

Second, the graphs in figure 4 don't "vividly illustrate" low SNL. This is just yet another of your specious dismissals. Your claim of low SNR contradicts what the paper itself says about the statistics (and the information we already have about these instruments). The stated errors in the trends (slopes) are at a 95% confidence level. That's not bad.

I'm not referring to the error bars on the linear trend. I'm referring to the fact that predicting the climate is a boundary value problem; it's really all about measuring the energy imbalance of the Earth. Notice that skeptics like Dr. Pielke advocate using ocean heat content as a diagnostic of climate change rather than surface air temperatures. I agree with him about this point, because the ocean has a vast heat capacity compared to air at the surface. So it's a better place to look for an energy imbalance (in theory).

In contrast, the heat capacity of the stratosphere is even lower than that of air at the surface. In other words, it's a really bad place to look for signals of a global energy imbalance.

And the spikes caused by El Chichon and Pinatubo are just about what one would expect.

Good thing we know what to expect because of GCMs... right?

And it makes little sense to complain about few instruments (actually more than you imply; the data was cross-correlated with other satellites) when those instruments are pretty much the best available, and in some cases the only ones available. Why do you not make the same complaint about CRU's use of only a few bristlecone pines as temperature proxies?

Because there's a difference between remote measurements made by a few dozen sensors over the last ~40 years, and thousands of surface temperature stations backed up with boreholes, ice cores and numerous other proxies extending much further back in time. I'll complain when I see a genuinely peer-reviewed paper make a sweeping claim based only on weak proxy data.

You have argued with every piece of counter-evidence I have seen presented to you. ... I find it very interesting that you have consistently made negative comments about credibility of sources, accuracy and SNR or measurements, and so on... only in regard to counter-evidence. ...

Not all of them. Also, I'm annoyed with the prevalence of the term "tipping point" in the mainstream media, when we don't have any idea where it lies, or whether runaway warming is remotely likely in the foreseeable futu

I have located an even more recent paper, written by a scientist working for NOAA (a reputable scientific body), using NASA's own data, that shows that the lower stratosphere is not in fact cooling as the greenhouse models call for. Rather, it is warming. Which in turn means the greenhouse warming models are fundamentally flawed...

Interesting paper. Of course, it doesn't say (or even imply) that "greenhouse warming models are fundamentally flawed." The stratosphere cools as CO2 increases because the "emitting layer" moves higher into the troposphere, so it emits less long wave radiation because temperature decreases with altitude in the troposphere. Because that radiation normally warms the stratosphere, the stratosphere cools. But other factors can warm the stratosphere, like anthropogenic methane and water vapor. Also, increased ozone warms the stratosphere, which is why the paper you cited actually suggests that "the reversing trend may relate to a possible recovery of stratospheric ozone concentration."

In reality, global circulation models (GCMs) are validated in a more robust fashion than examining a single variable in a single paper. After running an initial condition ensemble to average away the weather, and a multi-model ensemble to average away non-systematic errors, GCM output is compared to paleoclimate reconstructions and instrumental records (though the mean climate can't be independently verified because of model "tuning"). The GCM response to forcing events such as volcanic eruptions can be compared to reality. The CO2 sensitivity implied by the GCM can be compared to independent estimates from the last deglaciation. Chapter 8 here is a good source for background information concerning climate models and their evaluation.

I could go on about this for hours, pointing out reams of data and studies that do not support the idea of man-caused global warming... but I have already made my point: the plain FACT is, nowhere near "all" our evidence points to man-caused global warming. There is a great deal of counter-evidence, and much of the evidence on the "pro" side is now under suspicion because of some questionable practices used.

Maybe you understand the physics behind these arguments better than I do, but the overwhelming majority of the evidence I've seen says that abrupt climate change is happening because of anthropogenic greenhouse gases like CO2. Considering that this conclusion has been subjected to extensive independent verification, I also don't see any reason to be concerned about any questionable practices that have been floating around the tabloids. The few stories that weren't complete nonsense simply showed that scientists are human-- that countering the never-ending deluge of misinformation from nonscientists is stressful enough that they need to vent to each other privately via email.

I can sympathize. If every one of these climate skeptics put as much energy into getting a graduate physics education as they do into reading crackpot blogs and hurling insults at me online, maybe I'd have more time to work on my actual research...

You summarized one of my points as "The earth's temperature is warmer than it has been in the past" but in fact what worries scientists is the rate of the warming, which is probably higher than at any point in the last 1000 years. Scientists are concerned about the abrupt nature of these changes, not the absolute temperature.

I don't think many people realize that the entire link from CO2 to the warming is based on computer models not being able to think of any other explanation.

It's based on the fact that global circulation models account for temperatures after 1970, which can't be explained by any other process like increasing solar illumination, magnetic effects, etc. Those GCMs have been validated in multiple ways, by correctly predicting climate response to volcanic eruptions, by comparison to independent paleoclimate data and modern temperature records (which are independent because GCMs are dynamical models, not empirical models.) As I've explained, GCMs are able to reproduce strange features of modern warming like the cooling stratosphere which can't be explained using other hypotheses.

That point alone is suspect when you consider that from the time the study you linked to was published until now, the temperatures have not continued to rise as those models predicted would happen. What this means is that there are other factors affecting global temperature, that are unknown, that are at least as big as CO2 (otherwise they would have continued to rise).

Nonsense. I've already been over this. ENSO variation isn't important to the long term climate.

The computers predict a rise from 1.2 degrees to 5 degrees or so. In order to do this, they rely on feedbacks in the environmental system.

Very close. Modern estimates assign a maximum likelihood value of 2.9C, with a 95% confidence that it's less than 4.9C but greater than 1.7C.

Now, any scientist who claimed to understand all the potential positive and negative feedbacks in the system would be laughed out of the room...

Of course. What's troubling is that our estimates of the long-term feedback effects are known to be too small to account for the Milankovitch glaciation cycles.

there are known important feedbacks that they aren't considering, such as clouds (to understand the difference clouds can make, consider the difference in temperature on a cloudy day and a clear day, or even the difference of temperature in the shade of a tree).

Yes, I've already had to explain that I'm aware of how important clouds are. But why do you say clouds aren't being considered? In fact, all models take clouds into account. I've previously linked to a new paper describing recent improvements to models of clouds.

As for the fourth point, even on your web page you admit it is nothing more than a worry.

Yeah, it's a worry about the future of human civilization.

I will agree with you that I certainly have more reading to do. However, I must say that the New Scientist is not he end all be all and neither is it a final authority.

I've never included New Scientist in my list of reputable peer-reviewed journals (in the article.) I've provided a couple of links to it, but only because I've verified that the story matches the evidence provided in genuinely peer-reviewed journals.

It is troubling to me that you reject papers from other peer-reviewed journals (as seems apparent in one of the responses to posts to your article). It raises questions in my mind why include some and exclude others.

I presume you're referring to the incident where Jane Q. Public tried to reference an article from Energy and Environment (a social science journal) when that research had been presented in hard science journals 15 years previously and quickly dismissed as a fluke of data smoothing parameters? That's the reason I dismissed the paper: it was wrong. This happens often enough in that journal that I wouldn't recommend reading it unless you want to waste your time.

Until scientists models start predicting the future accurately, GW is going to be a hard sell.

When it comes to the general public, this subject is quite similar to evolution or the reality of the moon landings. It will always be a hard sell to most nonscientists despite the many model validations like the Mt. Pinatubo prediction. I'm not under the impression that anyone I'm talking to has the slightest intention of looking into the science deeply enough to understand it.

Bottom line, there are too many creditable people who argue against your point of view.

Again, I've repeatedly stressed that science isn't democratic.

What evidence?

The scientific articles referenced all over this article, which is what the whole issue is about... and with all due respect you still haven't said exactly which point I've made that you think is wrong.

Certainly no evidence of consensus.

As I said in a comment: First of all, I've repeatedly stressed that science isn't democratic, so I don't give "consensus" any weight. For example, I once said "... I don't see how the popularity of an idea has anything to do with its veracity."

And later: "Uniformity of opinion is neither expected nor desired. Consensus is irrelevant; evidence is all that matters."

So if you have some credible evidence, please let me know.

Does the phrase "cherry picking" mean anything to you?

Where- exactly- in the article did I do that?

A peripheral observation: the earth's climate is a complex adaptive system. I know of no computer model that takes this into account.

A good place to start is chapter 8 of the IPCC report. I've also previously discussed this general issue.

That's why they can't predict the past, much less the future.

Hindcast validations are one of the standard ways to validate dynamical climate models. They've been tested against instrumental records and proxy data like borehole measurements, tree rings and ice cores. The eruption of Mt. Pinatubo showed that climate models can predict climate response very accurately.

Even if they did, the best they could produce is probabilities with wide multimodal distributions. They'd be useless for decision making.

Yes, the error bars are large, but the separation between the future scenarios is larger still. The models are plenty good enough to see that we need a new industrial revolution, or risk further damaging the climate.

Now, you are not trying to tell me that the tuning of adjustable numerical parameters, grid size, time steps, simplifications, linearisation techniques, and choosing of unknown physical parameters in the simplified mathematical models are not of the utmost importance, are you?

No, just that these parameterizations are only performed for the mean climate, and shouldn't change over a timespan measured in decades. Over geological time shifting continents and increasing solar brightness will matter, but not from the period 1900 to 2010.

The validations I have seen for those models (single curve fitting over small period) are not convincing enough, too much local errors for such a model to be reliable imho.

I presume you're referring to the model validations via the Pinatubo eruption. There are other validations, chief among them being comparisons to proxy data which extends over hundreds of thousands of years. Initial conditions ensembles are taken to average out the weather, and models with completely different parameterizations are averaged in a bigger ensemble to produce the IPCC results (see chapter 8).

Untold thousands die every year from coal related illnesses, and there are huge environmental impacts - in the only and worst nuclear accident in US history - 0 people died. Get real, know your facts.

http://www.ecolo.org/base/baseus.htm

http://russp.org/nucpower.htm

First, I'd like to apologize for crashing your machine. I simply ended up closing the browser after a while. Today I saved the pdf before opening it, works fine. Apparently Adobe's downloading system is messed up.

That's alright. I tried to quit the browser but it wouldn't. For opening PDFs I don't have Adobe's reader. I have a Mac and Apple includes a previewer that opens PDFs. I've had trouble opening them a couple of tymes before but quiting worked before. When I used Windows I did have occasional trouble with PDFs though using Adobe's reader. Perhaps like you can download the PDF then open it.

Do you have a counter for the Berkeley study, showing that wind needing 10 times the steel and 4 times the concrete per MW?

First, I don't see a link to the Berkeley study on the CITRIS page. There is a link to a ppt and while it downloads preview shows nothing. The details provided on the pathsoflight.us page does say wind requires about 4 tymes as much concrete though. I'll try to find something more... Ump, I found a company that does concrete for both nuclear and wind power. On that page it says that concrete pours in excess of 500 cubic meters per base are common for wind but does not say the size of the wind turbines or how much concrete is used for nuclear power. Look some more... A Daily Kos page, "Nuclear vs. Wind - Mining impact and Capital Cost" says wind uses more concrete and steel than nuclear though both are comparable in mining and beat coal. Look more... I found "How much steel and how much concrete for the fabrication of windmills and nuclear reactors ?[.doc warning]" which say wind uses a hell of a lot more concrete and steel than nuclear.

Apparently I may of been wrong about how much concrete and steel nuclear uses vs wind.

Back on topic - Have you ever seen how much concrete goes into putting footings in for a simple chain link fence? Now consider your 5MW turbine.

As a kid perhaps but I don't recall how much was used. I do know how much concrete is used generally for footers, and slabs and walls though, I used to work in construction for a concrete and masonry subcontractor. We poored a bunch of things, including pylons and pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station for rockets.

And all the steel used to make the turbine, tower, and pylons would be less too. Even your link to the environmental effects of wind power "suggested a payback time of 1.1 years". That charter only considers CO2 not other environmental considerations also.

Probably up against not particularly efficient coal plant; I've already posted links showing that it takes less CO2 to produce power via nuclear than wind/solar.

I said other environmental concerns because you did address CO2. From what I found and included above about mining nuclear and wind are about the same as far as mining. That only leaves three reasons I generally oppose nuclear, if they can be dealt with I may be able to support nuclear power. They are, not in any particular order, subsidies, nuclear waste, and what happens to a plant when it is decommissioned.

You and others have given me plenty to research and think about.

Falcon

Maybe i was too young to remember clearly at the time, but i don't remember the environmentalists getting up in arms about the global cooling stuff. It made the covers of newspapers because it was sensationalist, but there was no crusade behind it like there was with DDT or the ozone layer or such. I'm not sure why you're blaming the environmentalists on that one.

As for DDT, maybe you're not the one making stuff up, but you're swallowing what other people made up, hook line and sinker.

In many cases DDT use wasn't discontinued because of pressure from environmentalist groups, but phased out because either the number of cases was so low that it wasn't believed necessary anymore or because insects were actually developing a resistance to it.

There has never been a worldwide ban on the use of DDT for vector control, and many of the people most involved in controlling malaria are glad that its use as an agricultural pesticide has been banned because it slows the rate at which insects are developing a resistance to it. Currently 4000-5000 tons of it are used every year for vector control. Although in many places they've switched to alternative chemicals, again because of fears of (or the actuality of) resistance.

I'm not going to claim that the environmentalists response didn't have any negative impact, but the anti-environmentalists habitually either misrepresent the facts or outright lie in their criticisms of them and exaggerate the consequences for shock value. I used to be a staunch supporter of the hardcore environmentalists, but then i learned a little of the truth and got disillusioned. Then i learned even more of the truth and got disillusioned with the anti-environmentalists and their own version of scaremongering. Each side has some combination of philosophical fanaticism and economic agenda to push, and are willing to bend or even shatter the truth to accomplish it.

If you're actually concerned with the truth, stop spreading the anti-environmentalists lies and starting looking for the truth in between. If you're an active anti-environmentalist, well clearly nothing i say is going to convince you otherwise, but spreading such obvious lies (once you actually think to look into them) is only going to hurt your cause in the end. If you want to _really_ criticize the environmentalists, criticize them for things that are actually 100% true, like their opposition to nuclear power (although when you do that remember that at least some environmental groups have wised up and changed their tune recently.)

Environmentalists should be proponents of finding ways to deal with our nuclear waste problem, not object to every single proposal with a blanket statement that nuclear power is a dead end and re-hashing the same old tired arguments regardless of whether or not they apply to the new proposals.

Actually environmentalists are supporting nuclear power. It's the freemarket and Wall Street that don't support it. Quite a switch from how it used to be isn't it?

Falcon

"By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming, and that is nuclear energy. . . . Nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources . . . We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilization is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear--the one safe, available, energy source--now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet." --James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia theory

The Independent (UK) "Nuclear Power is the Only Green Solution" May 24, 2004

James Lovelock is an environmentalist and serious scientist who supports nuclear power.

http://www.ecolo.org/media/articles/articles.in.en glish/love-indep-24-05-04.htm

Patrick Moore is a paid lobbyist for the logging industry, who used to be an environmentalist a long time ago.

http://www.fanweb.org/patrick-moore/liar.html

There's a big difference in credibility. Moore has so little that I'm not sure a quote from him helps the cause any.

This article states that "A recent analysis of the only known natural nuclear reactor, which was active nearly 2 billion years ago at what is now Oklo in Gabon..." in the question about constants. I never knew about this, so off to google. According to one web page, bacterial life-forms were involved in the process of running these reactors. This idea isn't mentioned in the wikipedia article. Well, at least the wikipedia article does mention about the alpha constant, and says, "there is no physical reason why it should be exactly constant."

Hmmm... didn't read the "credible link" bit relating to the 10 years fact (oops...). The guy who said it was James Lovelock (the author of the GAIA hypotheses/theory) when asked about the likelihood / effects of global warming on this years (2004/5) Christmas Lectures on Channel4 in the UK. (another link).

He was referring to the "point of no return", after which there will be nothing we can do to stop global warming from melting the ice caps, not that Antarctica will melt in 10 years time. He was refering to the fact that the current CO2 levels in the Earth are around 370 ppm, and if it gets close to 400 ppm, then global warming will be unstopable. CO2 levels are currently rising at a rate of 2~3 ppm a year (which is where the 10 years fact comes from).

James Lovelock is a pretty good example of an independent scientist. He began his career with NASA (back in the 60s working on Martian atmospherics) and eventually wound up largely funding his own research by designing and inventing assorted (scientific) instruments. Lovelock thinks that the planet can be treated as a superorganism, when you look at it as a whole (i.e. it exhibits biofeedback-type responses - add a moon, change the tides; add CO2 to the atmosphere, things warm up). Note that he doesn't claim the planet is aware; just that it responds to stimuli, in its own way.

Whether you agree with it or not, this isn't the sort of thing that you hear coming from the tethered scientists that work for Xerox, GE, or USGS, or that you read about in Nature or Science.

I think Lovelock's method is a fantastic model: become your own patron.

If you rationally calculate what risks really kill people then you find that living near a nuke power plant reduces your life expectancy by about 8 hrs. Going on a driving holiday in the US, or permitting people to smoke tobacco near you, is _much_ more dangerous.

Ours is very irrational society in what we choose to restrict and what we choose to permit.

Sean
PS: And bloody Sterling should know better than to conflate risks of nuke power (minor) and risks of nuke weapons (major).

Plutonium is not "waste". The transuranics and actinides can be used to produce more energy. The only reason plutonium is not reinserted (as in breeder reactors) is the US governments stance on transuranics as weapons fuel. Most plutonium isn't "weapons grade" but even so, it is required to be stored separately and controlled by the gov't.

Other countries have a less wasteful policy.

For an informative look at some of the common Nuclear Energy Myths - take a look here