Creator of the Gaia Hypothesis Urges Nuclear Power

SteamyMobile writes "Professor James Lovelock, creator the Gaia Hypothesis and long-time intellectual leader of the Green movement, says that global warming is a dire threat, more urgent than was previously realized. He compares the threat of global warming with the threat of the Nazis in 1938, and says that in both cases, the Left was not able to grasp the urgency of the situation and see the necessary solution. What is the necessary solution to stop the global warming problem? He says it's nuclear power. Needless to say, the Greens don't agree with him, and he chides them as having irrational phobias of a safer, cleaner energy sources. Even if the "Left" isn't fully aware of the urgency of the world's energy problems, it seems like Slashdot is."

Comments

Re:Some ranting.

[sexecutioner]

Synroc solves the second "Pain in The Arse" problem.

But you're right about the "not in my backyard" syndrome. I've studied Synroc and it really is the perfect solution (btw I work upstairs from where it was developed) but who in the world will listen to reason about it?

Re:Great

[david.gilbert]

That's right, only the communists could mess up something as important as nuclear safety.

Re:Great

[mikerich]

You forget, you Americans (by that, I do of course mean the Government, and not the quite palatable denizens) use hardly any of the energy available in that Uranium. 98% of the mass put in comes out as waste. Look at Sellafield in the UK, only 2% comes out as waste, as a hell of a lot of reprocessing goes on, I in fact believe that they are the most efficient in the world! If everyone reprocessed their waste a lot, then Yucca mountain would not be necessary to store all the waste, you could in fact use a place at least 20 times smaller, and somewhere a little safer too I might add!

The economics of reprocessing don't make sense. Sellafield could not exist without the British government imposing a levy on all energy sales AND bailing BNFL out on a regular basis.

Furthermore, reprocessing produces enormous amounts of high-level liquid waste which must be treated and stored as well as biblical quantities of low-level waste. Even if you don't have to fill up Yucca Mountain, you still need huge nuclear dumps. Reprocessing *increases* the volume of nuclear waste compared to spent fuel elements.

It is significant that Britain has yet to find a long-term solution for the reprocessing waste generated at Sellafield - which is much more dangerous than spent fuel. We are now told that we might have one in 50 years, in the meantime, the high-level waste is being kept liquid, above ground in 30 year-old tanks. I'm glad I don't live in Cumbria.

All the time, Sellafield has been pouring actinides down the pipe into the Irish Sea - which are now detectable across large areas of the Irish, Scottish and Norwegian coasts.

Sellafield's last big hope was Mixed Oxide Fuel, so far its only customer, the Japanese, have refused to accept MOX after it was found that BNFL was faking safety data. The MOX plant at Sellafield is still not working reliably, MOX is far more expensive than new fuel *and* there are concerns that MOX may shorten the lifespan of Pressurised Water Reactors.

Sellafield is a bad joke and should be closed down.

Its sole reason for existance after the development of the British Bomb was to provide plutonium for Britain's Fast Breeder Reactor programme. Well that was abandoned long ago, FBRs are an engineering boondoggle and have never worked reliably. So we sit on 40 tonnes of plutonium with no end use.

Uranium is cheaper now than in 1970, there is no sign of reserves running out, so there is no need to worry about supplies in the foreseeable future.

Using fuel once then putting it into dry store above ground is better economically and environmentally than reprocessing.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

[ThaReetLad]

You pay a fraction of what everyone else pays for fuel. Here in the UK we're now paying 0.82/L which is roughly $5.2 a US gallon. Now if that were the price of gas in the US THEN you would start to see a reduction in SUV usage.

Pebble Reactor

[Foobar_Zen]

Lets not forget about the pebble reactor's when talking about nuclear technology. They are supposed to be a lot safer and a lot more efficent than most of the reactors used today.