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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."
If a guy like him advocates nuclear power as a way to avoid global warming, the risks must be enormous indeed.
Even if global warming is not as bad as predicted, the about face is certainly interesting.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
overheard in springfield, ??:
excellent!
These green people are ultimatly interested in saving the human race...not the planet.
Do we really think that we, with a few fossil fuels and other environmental crap we throw into the air and water over the past 150 year, can really change the Earth?
The Earth will shuck us off like a bad case of fleas. 1 million years from now...which is but an eyeblink to the Earth...we'll be long gone. A footnote as it were. The Earth will heal itself.
So please, stop with the "Save the planet" high-horse. The planet isn't going anywhere...WE ARE! So say what you really mean...save the humans.
(paraphrased quite a bit from George Carlin btw)
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
While it's true that nuclear power is one of the best int the short term but I think in the long term renewables are preferable.
With renewables:
- You don't have to mine
- You don't have to pay except initial investment and maintainance
- You don't have to take care of waste.
- It's distributable. Everybody can have it in their houses.
- Recent breaktrhoughts in solar cells will make them efficient and cheap.
Ok, we all know that the sea levels will rise, the weather will be come (even more) unpredictable, etc,etc. But every documentary I have seen on this subject, seems to use 2 different sources for its data. At first, they use data gained from antarctic ice cores that show that this has happened ("global warming") time and again over a considerable amount of time. Then suddenly, the doomsday scenario is based on the fact that the changes in the global climate have happened in the 400 or so years since records began.
How can you accept both points of view ? It is misleading to suggest that humans are the cause of global warming. I fully agree that we as a race should seek some non-polluting energy source over one that has shown to be bad for us, let alone the planet, but to use misleading information to achieve social indignation is wrong.
Global warming is a catch-phrase, being used to describe potential doom. Even if we all stopped using electricity and cars etc, then the planet would still go through immense environmental changes, as it has done since the beginning. News flash, the sahara used to be green and pleasant, and before that it was under water. Are we as humans responsible for that too ?
Wow, the OP compared global warming to nazis, thus invoking Godwin's law before the discussion even started.
I have no choice but to declare this thread officially closed...
I don't know very much about three mile island, but as I recall, the Soviet reactor designs were all quite unreliable. At the time, I guess what the Soviet Government really cared about was the electricity plutonium that the reactor produced. I think Chernobyl melted down around 82? In the 80s I think. I'm only 14, so I don't remember the Soviets, but being towards the end of the Cold War, the Soviet economic situation would have been quite poor, and they could not have afforded maintenence, etc. as well as we can now.
Since technology has improved, I would have thought that today's reactors would be safer and more efficient than designs from 20 years ago. I'm from Australia where we don't have nuclear rectors (except for Lucas Heights, near Sydney, but that is used for research, producing isotopes for radio-medicine, and producing more pure silicon (neutron bombardment doping, i think) by using neutrons to turn 1 in a billon silicon atoms into phosphorus, producing N-Type silicon. Lucas Heights has 15% of the world market, and I would like to see how well a processor made of this would overclock).
Nuclear power will be the way of the future, but Australia will take time to adopt it, with a supply of coal to last hundreds of years.
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!
Lovelock has been advocating nuclear energy for a while now.
From a September 2000 article in the Guardian:
"And then they say: what shall we do with nuclear waste?" Lovelock has an answer for that, too. Stick it in some precious wilderness, he says. If you wanted to preserve the biodiversity of rainforest, drop pockets of nuclear waste into it to keep the developers out. The lifespans of the wild things might be shortened a bit, but the animals wouldn't know, or care. Natural selection would take care of the mutations. Life would go on."
Guardian article here
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?
current situation:
we use oil for energy. Problem, oil is a finite resource, it WILL run out. Alternatives are needed. Okay, we agree so far.
What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energy..The Sun?
No viable alternatives exist yet. To quote verbatim:
Direct conversion of sunlight to electricity by solar cells is a promising technology, and already locally useful, but the amount of electricity which can be generated by that method is not great compared with demand. Because it is a low grade energy, with a low conversion efficiency (about 15%) capturing solar energy in quantity requires huge installations--many square miles. About 8 percent of the cells must be replaced each year. But the big problem is how to store significant amounts of electricity when the Sun is not available to produce it (Trainer, 1995), for example, at night. The problem remains unsolved. Because of this, solar energy cannot be used as a dependable base load. And, the immediate end product is electricity, a very limited replacement for oil. Also, adding in all the energy costs of the production and maintenance of PV (photovoltaic) installations, the net energy recovery is low (Trainer, 1995).
If you can think of a way to store this energy, fantastic, please share. Otherwise, back to the drawing board.
Do you need a website upgrade?
I'm a west australian, and I'll tell you this. Solar is ready to go NOW.
Up in the north of WA, we have a fair amount of mining, and reeeeeeealy remote towns (like towns with 500k spacings between each one and just desert in between) , and many many aboriginal communities with perhaps 20 members and the like.
Through necesity, alot of these places are using solar energy, simply because it isnt feasible to stick all that copper around the place. This includes mining btw which is verry energy intensive.
There are folks up there also using 'bio diesel', which is basically canola oil + ethanol + an agent to 'crack' the oil (dont ask me what that means, cos I dont know either!) since its cheaper to make diesel then to drive it there.
You can get a handfull of large solar panels , chuck it on the roof, stick it thru a 240w inverter and blammo. You dont have to pay power bills again (factor in 10 batteries every 5 years tho).
It can be done, we just need to get off our ass and do it. In some parts of the north west of australia, solar is the rule, not the exception.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
That's right, only the communists could mess up something as important as nuclear safety.
You appear to be rebutting the "SUVs get bad mileage" meme by redefining 22-27mpg as good mileage.
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.
The SUV syndrome is mob mentality at its utter finest. "If no-body else is going to stop driving SUV's, why should I stop" is really one of the biggest problems with this issue, a typical Consumerican viewpoint, derived directly from the callous mob mentality currently perpetuated by "consumerist" ideals .
SUV owners are subject to supply and demand just like anyone else. As gas prices go up demand for SUV's will drop. I think I read somewhere that it is already happening. Do we need nuclear energy? Well... define "need". In my opinion "The Great Transition" [away from oil as a primary energy source] might be painful but the predictions of disaster are greatly overblown. Between belt tightening and alternative sources I think we can make it. As for global warming, again, the "new" environment will be different, it will suck in some ways and be better in others. Lastly, in all of this, the simplest and most powerful solution for making a transition is almost never mentioned. Tax oil (BEFORE refining). Try this thought experiment. Tax oil. Consumption goes down (supply/demand etc.). Competing suppliers respond with lower prices barrel prices in an attempt to keep market share. We (as a nation) effectively pay *less* for our oil AND our consumption rate decreases AND new markets are created for energy effiency AND alternative sources of energy become more attractive AND greenhouse gas emmisions decrease.
90% of the wealth is in 2% of the pockets. Bummer to be in the majority.
I'm sorry to tell you, but sometimes numbers _do_ matter. It's true, we can get energy from sun, wind, biomass or tides, but it's the order of magnitude that kills you.
I didn't do the math, but try to think: what can you get from sun energy? 5% growing crops? 60% fotocells? Even at 100% it's just not enough. Covering square miles with cheap reliable high-efficiency solar panels would (maybe) get us close, but we don't even have that. From 1 square meter you can maybe boil a glass of water, but you can't heat your house in winter, nor make cars or computers.
There's more energy in the wind and in the tides, but 1. it's still not enough and 2. how much energy goes into melting 1 ton of steel? not to mention processing of ore etc. It takes years for such technology to break even (wind turbines have a lot of steel in them).
The real answer (not counting truly non-conventional approaches) is fusion, but nobody pretends it's closer then 50 years.
What we have left is classic nuclear power, or fission. It has its problems, mainly radioactive waste, but has a big hidden advantage: currently all nuclear power plants use old technologies, sometimes even ancient. Why? because the political climate is against innovation in this field, and sometimes greed: it's expensive to update a power plant that still works.
New plants can be cheaper, more efficient and a lot cleaner then what we have now, _if_ we give them a chance.
And another aspect: we, as a species, will never reduce our energy consumption in the forseeable future. SUVs or not, a lot more power goes into industry then cars and air conditioning. _And_ there's two thirds of the planet that still has to reach the level of cars and air conditioning, and they're not going to care about ecology until they do (nor should they, truth be told).
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.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
Of course, diesel engines also help mileage, though those are also hard to find around here in cars.
Rudolph Diesel ran his prototype engine on vegetable oil. Similarly Frank Whittle used vegetable oil in his prototype gas turbine. The only reason we have ended up with most of the world's vehicles using petroleum derived fuels is that a century ago these were waste products of the oil industry. Nothing in the technology of internal combustion engines requires the fuel to come from oil... Even with spark-ignition engines, which tend to be more fussy about their fuel than either compression-ignition or gas turbines.
Try this thought experiment. Tax oil. Consumption goes down (supply/demand etc.). Competing suppliers respond with lower prices barrel prices in an attempt to keep market share. We (as a nation) effectively pay *less* for our oil AND our consumption rate decreases AND new markets are created for energy effiency AND alternative sources of energy become more attractive AND greenhouse gas emmisions decrease.
Tax oil. Keep taxing it for several months, maybe years. Lose elections. Stop taxing oil.
..... putting millions back to work in the manufacturing industries inside the US? Two and a half million manufacturing jobs lost in the past few years, how about just start building and deploying the technology that we have now, that works? Ask any of them guys currently out of work "hey, you want your old job back, same pay, but now you'll be making a model A wind charger instead?" What do you think they'd say to that?
When we decided to mass produce "stuff",instead of custom build it one at a time method, it took off, all of a sudden joe average not only got the benefit of having modern tech, he had a job that let him afford that tech! Why is it that anytime we see any sort of big government solution to a problem it revolves around a handful of giant international corporations making even more profits?
Smaller scale, distributed energy production means more jobs for more people,practical jobs, too, less points of energy failure or political machinations, more national security, not less. What's wrong with all that? There are millions of roofs inside the US just sitting baking in the sun every day, accomplishing not much other than wearing out the shingles. A million hilltops all over, the breeze just blowing on by, untapped. Hundreds of thousands of farms still not collecting and using the methane that could be garnered. How about as simple an idea as mandating tougher INSULATION standards on new buildings? 2x4 crappy built butt joint r-18 insulated walls are like ancient technology, but are still being made brand new, banks still pop for 20 year mortgages for that sort of non-quality construction, and it "passes code". Why, it's ill thought out and ridiculously energy wasteful. Modern building techniques at the medium and lower scales are teh suxs, really, they are pure crap. I'm amazed people even buy them, they certainly aren't going to last and people are buying guaranteed energy hog homes, or leasing energy hog commercial space. Dollar for dollar, just better construction efforts and more insulation results in a better energy savings and over all savings to the economy than any scheme, nuclear or anything else. I'm a solar and wind advocate, but I'm the first to admit that just better designed and more insulated buildings are the best deal out there to drop energy demand. If you don't NEED the massive constant energy input in the first place, isn't that a better idea? Here's another, how about mandating more recycling, force these international profiteers to take back their old worn out stuff for recycling, instead of just dumping it? And for more R&D and deployment of the renewables, how about bringing back 100% tax credits, not a deduction, a pure credit? When we had that, adoption of renewables was just proceeding great,interest was up, people were getting them, the small companies out there doing the new work required were making some decent inroads on improving the various technology, but then it ceased and it slowed down, just when things were looking good. Perhaps a few giant monopolies got scared, they saw their generations long dominance being disrupted. I don't know but that is what it looked like to me back then.
Nukes have some place in the scheme of things, but really, incredibly complex and dangerous and expensive tech to basically produce a heat source. That's all they do, make "hot" that not only is hot now, the resultant stuff stays hot and has to be literally guarded with military forces for the next several--whatever thousands of years it takes. That's critical mass societal arrogance to think we can do that. Ye gads, we got millions and millions of acres of "heat source" hanging around doing basically nothing in the south west. And all over any place else that gets even a modicum of normal rainfall we got several million more acres of land that could be put to use with such cross-useage practical crops as industrial hemp, a HUGE untapped resource that has energy and manufacturing useages. And the frozen methane hydrates locked into place all over the planet, sur
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.
And "high" gas prices have already caused a fall in SUV sales.
From this article:
But even more interesting;
So much for the "fuel efficient" cars...Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
I agree, but I don't think that, even then, you will see a dramatic reduction. People are paying a lot more for SUVs than they would be paying for a fuel efficient economy car. Over the course of a year, they may be paying hundreds of dollars more for gasoline, but they generally have already payed thousands more for the upfront cost of buying an SUV over an economy car.
Moreover, there are other significant costs to owning an SUV (and other luxery cars) that aren't always obvious at first; tires for example. Often enough a single tire for a large SUV can cost four or more times than a single small tire for an economy car, and only last half as long. Higher insurance, maintenance on the larger engines (more cylinders, more spark plugs, more oil). Often enough it even costs more just to get it washed.
So money is not the object here, for all but a small portion of those who buy SUVs. Personally, I'm not the anti-SUV zealot I may once have been. I still think it's a stupid buy, but if someone wants to waste their money then, well, it's their money. There's a lot of other big luxery cars that are just as bad on gas mileage yet, for some reason, we don't complain about those.
Frankly, my next car will not be an economy car. I'm getting old, I spend a lot of time in my car, and I want it to be more comfortable.
Anyway, to stay on topic, I've always supported nuclear ("Nuculer... it's pronounced new-cue-ler...") power, and was hoping 15 years ago that fussion would have been more advanced now than it is.
While there is a definate possibility of disaster with fission, the truth is that instead of releasing pollutants in the air, it's right there - ultimately in barrels. So there's your choice... you have pollution using fission or fossil fuels, but with one of these two methods the pollution is immediately released in the air, and with the other it's right there, in that barrel.
Yes, we need to deal with the barrel, but it's a better dilema than trying to deal with pollution that's already been released into the atmosphere.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
We have the technology to make safe, efficient, and clean nuclear plants in the United States. We haven't had an accident. Even Three Mile Island, oft-quoted as a disaster, completely contained the malfunction and it is safe to tour the site today as it was right after the incident.
m l
The only problem with Nuclear power is that the plants take years to build. There is no hope that after investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build a plant that politics will shut it down once it starts up. In effect, no investor will approach it.
The United States needs to start a campaign to educate its citizenry about the benefits and real drawbacks to the nuclear power industry. We need to teach in our schools the facts of nuclear power from where we obtain the raw materials, how they are processed, how much waste is produced, and how efficient it is. If we laid out the facts, including how long the isotopes will last and where we will store them, then maybe we can get some serious private investment and some serious growth in the industry. Perhaps we can totally replace our coal and natural gas burning plants with nuclear ones. Maybe we can retrofit our commercial ships with the safe reactors that our submarines and battleships have.
The bottom line is that there is so much misunderstanding about radiation, nuclear isotopes, and the like. The restrictions placed on background radiation on the Yucca Mountain was more severe than the restrictions placed on granite statues in the capitol building. A smart researcher brought his geiger counter with him and demonstrated that some of the statues we adore are actually more radioactive than the Yucca Mountain would be allowed to be!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,21015,00.ht
I for one am still hoping our 1950's utopian dream about nuclear power will be realized.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
Most people don't seem to be aware of the fact that coal power plants are more radioactive than nuclear power plants.
It is also now possible to design nuclear power plants so that they fail safe, unlike the poorly designed plant at Chernobyl.
Safety-driven memes are difficult to counter, but once we run out of options perhaps we'll do what we must.
You know that oil consumption in China since 1990 has more than doubled Source. India's is growing rapidly too Source. I think it's time we realized that the rapid economic development of 2 countries containing a mere 2 billion+ people has something to do with rising oil prices in the U.S and the increase in Greenhouse gas emmissions. Guess what! The Indian government doesn't care to much about what the European/U.S centric green movement says and the Chinese care even less. That's why they demanded to be exempt from the provisions of the Kyoto treaty.