Bruce Sterling On Lovelock's Pro-Nuclear Stance

Robert Berger writes "Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, critic, blogger is also the creator of the Viridian Notes series of emails that comment on articles and websites about global warming. The current Viridian Note 00415: Doom is Nigh (scroll down past the inital links) has inserted his Sterling's pithy comments into Jame Lovelock's assertion that 'Nuclear power is the only green solution.'" (See also this earlier Slashdot post about Lovelock's nuclear apologia.)

Comments

Criticism without Solution

[Skyshadow]

Of course nobody likes nuclear energy. Nuclear's some scary shit even if you don't mess it up, and messing it up is what humanity does.

Unfortuately, coal and oil suck too. Natural gas is better, but also somewhat finite. And the other alternatives suck, too -- solar and wind might be eco-friendly, but they sure ain't cheap. Think the recession in 2000 was bad? Wait until you see what doubling the cost of electricity would do.

Bruce can make all the "pithy comments" he wants, but unless he has some terrific solution stashed up his sleeve they're ultimately not very helpful or insightful. So, unless you're looking to opt out of using electricity and other sources of power (I was camping this weekend -- it's fun, but it's no way to live), it's a necessary evil.

Re:Criticism without Solution

[Johnathon_Dough]

Actually I like nuclear energy.

The navy has been using it pretty much constantly for years, with no noticeable mishaps at least in the last 30 years(last one I could find was a release of contaminatd water in 1978).

There is a town not too far from here that has an oil refinery that about every six months has an accident that causes alerts to be broadcast over all news sources. These alerts tell people to stay indoors, keep their wondows closed etc etc. Because of the toxic fumes in the air. This is safe?

The bigger problem with nuclear power is getting rid of the waste products. If someone could figure out a good way to launch those into the sun cheaply nuclear power would probably be the best solution.

As other sources dwindle, nuclear power is going to have to be looked at more and more, regardless of the people's inherent fear of it. We as a society are demanding more and more electricity as time passes.

Re:Criticism without Solution

[Aglassis]

You said: "The bigger problem with nuclear power is getting rid of the waste products. If someone could figure out a good way to launch those into the sun cheaply nuclear power would probably be the best solution"

The waste problem is completely political. If it wasn't for cold war/war on terrorism fears (no reprocessing of waste or use of breeder reactors) and irrational fears of storage (not in my backyard syndrome), waste could be safely reprocessed and the minimal high level waste could be safely stowed away.

I hope you didn't underestimate the difficulty on getting anything to the sun. The Earth's orbital speed is about 30 km/s. Kinetic energy is one-half the mass times the velocity squared. In order to get to the sun you have to cancel out the 30 km/s orbital speed (where 0 km/s is the Sun's 'orbit') and that will require enourmous amounts of energy. Doesn't really make sense.

Re:Criticism without Solution

[cdrguru]

I think Mr. Sterling's real "solution" is disclosed about 80% through the article:

(((How about the relatively simple solution of seven or eight billion of us starving to death? Or how about a few massive heat-wave-boosted lethal epidemics? That ought to put a swift kibosh on energy demand.)))

This is the only real solution according to much of the "Green" philosophy. I agree that it would solve most of the problems - having 1/8 of the population would put us back to where things were in the 1800s (or earlier) and effectively "solve" all of the pollution problems.

Unfortunately, I do not see many of the "Greens" volunteering to be in the first wave of losses to begin this process. If this is truely the way to a sustainable level of development, I see it coming about only as a couple of Green-inspired governments starting the process. Let's see, if Canada and Norway got together and declared war on Germany, France (nukes! bad!) and the US, could they win? Could they start a world war that would decrease the population by the necessary amount? I doubt it, but it would be a start in what could be considered "the right direction".

Are we interested in this as a solution?

Re:Criticism without Solution

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

>The bigger problem with nuclear power is getting rid of the waste products.

Why?

How are they different from all the other highly poisonous things we dispose of?

Arsenic and mercury never decay into something else. They remain toxic in most chemical combinations.

As a society, we've chosen to allow coal-fired power plants to dispose of mercury in people's lungs. All proposed methods of nuclear waste containment are safer than that.

600 years, by the way, is how long it would take the waste to be *less* radioactive than the ore it was mined from IF we recycled the usable fuel. Reprocessing has been a non-starter due to environmentalist opposition, expense, additional waste generation, and worries about having purified plutonium around.

Re:Criticism without Solution

[Dachannien]

Some other posters have already disagreed with you, so I'll do the same: I like nuclear energy.

France derives almost 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. The rest of its generation doesn't depend on the burning of coal, oil, or gas, so evidently their government feels that nuclear power is a suitable green solution.

The U.S. on the other hand generates about 20% of its electricity from nuclear plants and about 40% from coal-fired plants. The damage caused by sulfurous compounds released into the atmosphere from burning coal is well known, and most environmental activists are convinced that the process of burning coal contributes to greenhouse effect. On the other hand, the pollution generated by nuclear plants is entirely containable, and when contained, does not affect the environment at all. Great efforts have gone into ensuring that nuclear waste does not escape the containment and transportation vessels it is placed in, regardless of the situation. The extra generation provided by nuclear power will be necessary if we are ever to switch to fuel cell powered automobiles - building extra coal/gas/oil generation defeats the purpose of fuel cells.

Also, nuclear plants don't take up the *enormous* amount of space that wind or solar generation would require (a factor conveniently ignored by anti-nuclear activists).

Re:Criticism without Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The waste problem is not completely political. Check out this story about how there are thousands of tons of nuclear waste sludge in South Carolina that simply can't be dredged out and taken to some storage site in Nevada or Washington state.

What I think this is emblematic of: the people who run our nuclear plants are near-morons who don't think about the fact that eventually the plant will shut down and there'll be a lot of deadly stuff left over that there's no good way to dispose of. (And that's ignoring potential leaks or bigger problems when the plant is operating).

While we're on the subject, check out this article about fuel rods which some geniuses lost some time between 1978 and now (yes, it's pretty bad not to even know when you lost that sort of thing).

A few of my favorite highlights:
"would be fatal to anyone who came into contact with it"
"In 2002 a Connecticut nuclear plant was fined $288,000 after a similar loss. That fuel was never accounted for."

Advocates of nuclear power always say, "Well it'd be perfect if it was done right." Really though, we're pretty lucky the shortsighted and careless way in which the nuclear industry in this country operates hasn't resulted in more Three Mile Islands.

Re:Criticism without Solution

[tehdaemon]

Find a park with a merry-go-round. Get on, spin it, and then try to hit something on the other side of the merry-go-round with a ball. Have fun!

Re:Criticism without Solution

[HeghmoH]

Advocates of nuclear power always say, "Well it'd be perfect if it was done right."

I'm an advocate of nuclear power, and I don't say that. What I say is this: "Even as done today, it's better than every method of generating power that burns stuff, and more practical than every other method that doesn't." That is good enough for me.

What the hell is this?

[dfenstrate]

I don't see how this qualifies as a news piece, even by slashdot standards.

Somebody writes a piece in support of nuclear power. Some blogger fisks it, with as poor or lesser quality than the original article was written. No hard science, lots of hyperbole, and random conjectures.

Juvenile activity all around.

What the hell was timothy thinking?
If he's trying to advance his political views- and I'm not so sure this is the proper forum for him to do so- this is the least subtle and least effective way to do so.

Re:What the hell is this?

[penguinland]

Hear, hear! James Lovelock took the time to research the topic, find his facts, look at the whole picture, and then write a very elegant piece on it. Bruce Sterling's rebuttal is little more than "You're using the word 'nuclear,' so it must be bad." Lovelock even adresses this in his piece:

"Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen."

Sterling, without a shred of evidence, dismisses this all. Nuclear power really is very safe and controlled - the only reason Chernobyl happened at all was that some idiot had the bright idea to turn off the control system, and then turn off the back-up control system. Other than that and 3 Mile Island (which was a remarkably similar, easily avoidable situation), I do not know of any problems with nuclear power (feel free to give me more examples; I'd like to learn. Also, if I have any facts wrong, please correct me). Sterling seems to think that power plants and bombs are the same thing, despite the difference in grades of feul, elements used, etc. This just goes to show that people can be really illogical when the word "nuclear" is used.
Here's a good example of that: When MRI scans were invented, they were called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans, because that's what they are: they look at the magnetic moments of the nucleii that you are made of. But since it had the word "nuclear" in the name, no one wanted to try it out. Since then, they dropped the "nuclear" bit and called it MRI (same process, just a different name). Suddenly, everyone realizes that this is a fantastic process, and deserves Nobel prises (IIRC, 2 different ones were handed out for different aspects of the process).
The bottom line is, know the facts before you reject something. Nuclear power plants are not going to blow up the world 3 times over. The worst they could do is give you cancer, which happens far more often from smoking (or, as Lovelock points out, breathing). If Sterling actually sat down and learned about the issue, I'm pretty sure he'd change his tune. I'm disappointed that this counts as "news" :-P

Re:What the hell is this?

[Aglassis]

You said: "Nuclear power really is very safe and controlled - the only reason Chernobyl happened at all was that some idiot had the bright idea to turn off the control system, and then turn off the back-up control system. Other than that and 3 Mile Island (which was a remarkably similar, easily avoidable situation),"

Chernobyl happened for the following reasons:
1. The Soviet government wanted to perform a test on the reactor's turbines.
2. The Soviet testers took control of the reactor (not directly--they just gave orders to the operators). The operators, whose job was reactor safety and who knew the reactor the best were no longer in charge or reactor safety. Now the test scientists who knew their test very well but not the reactor plant were in charge of the reactor.
3. The safeguards on the reactor were *intentionally* shut down in order to operate the reactor *intentionally* in an unsafe way (at low power).
4. The testers rushed the test because of schedule concerns.
5. The reactor was operated for full power during the day contrary to the testing schedule. Additionally the test was performed late at night when most of the reactor plant managers and supervisors (who would normally watch the tests like a hawk) were gone.
6. And the least significant factor, but the one that allowed the reactor to blow up: reactor design (power increases as water boils and a shutdown in the unsafe condition that the testers put it in would cause a brief power spike--coupled together it blew up the core).

Three Mile island was significantly different. In brief, it was caused by improper maintenance, improper value lineups on reactor safety systems, material failures, an incredibly overcomplicated reactor control and indication system, operators not believing their indications, and improper operator training and operation.

I'm not against nuclear power at all (I work as a reactor operator), but both of these accidents were mostly due to political reasons. In Chernobyl, the Soviet government did not have adequate respect for reactor safety and rushed a test. In TMI, the NRC (which IMHO had previously downplayed reactor incidents) did not regulate enough the maintenance and operation aspects of the reactor (and in particular the operator training). I think both of these problems have been fixed, but careful attention must be directed at all nuclear plants to not repeat these accidents.

Wow, just like slashdot.

[Minna Kirai]

Bruce Sterling's "response" adds no substance to the debate. His rejoiners come in two forms:

• No, you're wrong.
• No, you're wrong, and here's a joke.

Bruce never even touches Lovlock's central thesis: that at current rates of usage and current estimation of reserves, oil will stop meeting our energy needs within just a few decades, and atomic fission is the only replacement we know can take it's place.

If Sterling's comments are taken at face value, then he wants to see a return to 1700s-style labor-intensive agriculture.

You'll seriously get a higher quality of discussion just re-reading last week's Slashdot, rather than looking for any insight in that blob^Hg.

Re:Wow, just like slashdot.

[Minna Kirai]

I think this comment misses Bruce's point.

Maybe so. I certainly couldn't detect a point in there- he just likes to bash on nuclear power, and the article was a fine target.

and that Lovelock offers no practical solution to actually make any of this happen

Wha? Sterling is the one who has no inkling of a concrete solution. Lovelock at least gives a partial solution- Bruce does nothing but attempt to knock it down with invalid objections.

Sterling: Do you have the clout to give us one of those

Of course no one human has the "clout" to accomplish anything like realigning the international economic/industrial system. Lovelock isn't Superman. All any individual can do is share his views and try to convince others of the same.

Lovelock believes that nuclear power is the only energy source that can come close to replacing petrofuel, and he's honestly saying so. But Sterling comes along and yells "No! Nukes bad Nukes BAD!"- how does that help anything?

And then, at the end of the piece: ... what we need is genuine industrial policy agreed on by the powers-that be. A new Kyoto, genuine international agreement with coherent steps to deal with the menace.

So what he essentially says is "We need somebody to solve this problem". Uh, duh... can you say "Content-free platitude"? Of course we need a solution, and somebody will have to figure it out. That doesn't mean that anyone who isn't the president of an industrialized state is forbidden to talk about it.

The only way we'll get a "genuine international agreement" is if the people of earth start to care about solving it- and while Lovelock has tried to advance the debate, Sterling is the one knocking him down with a pessimistic attitude: "You can't do everything, so why do anything?"

Bruce Sterling is a fool

[dokhebi]

If he thinks switching to a 'green' power will end global warming, he is in for a big suprise. The Earth is just returning to its pre-mini ice age temperature.

Before several volcanoes spewed greenhouse gasses into the air (several centuries before the industrial revolution), farmers in what is now New Foundland and England grew wine grapes. They will be able to again in another 50 to 100 years...

Hey kiddies, it's life. The world get hot, the world gets cold. Live with it or die, because the Greens won't allow us to build the technology to leave.

Just me $0.02 worth.

Pithy comments?

[roystgnr]

You mean "misinformed wisecracks". The only reason to conflate nuclear power and nuclear weapons, as is done repeatedly here, is because you want to use the fallacy of equivocation to trick your audience into viewing even the safest reactor designs as weapons of mass destruction. You might as well blame gasoline users for the horrors of napalm.

What an Asshat

[HeghmoH]

I was under the impression that Bruce Stirling was a cool guy, although I never read any of his stuff, but he comes across as a total asshat in this article. Here is one teeny example:

nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. (((If you don't count the nuclear energy released over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that is.)))

Yeah, those 300,00 dead in the nuclear attacks on Japan certainly look horrible compared to the millions of air pollution deaths. He continually treats nuclear power and nuclear weapons as one and the same, and generally comes off making no sense.

I stopped reading halfway through, I couldn't stand it anymore, but he basically says, "What are you thinking? Nukes are bad. I don't care what evidence you have. I don't care what the alternatives are. Bad! Bad! Bad!" It's like a satire or caricature on the wacko ultra-environmental movement. Maybe that's what it really is. If not, then my only response is to say, what a jerk.

In other words...

[Millennium]

"Um, nukes are bad, mmmkay?"

No, really, that's it. "There are risks, so we shouldn't do it". That sums up the entire argument. He equates all nuclear energy with nuclear weapons. I also find it rather amusing that he assumes that the only use for oil is in fuel; this is not true. It would take a lot more than "green energy" to allow us to "leave the oil and coal in the ground"; we would have to completely break our current dependence on polymers as we know them.

There's plenty of propaganda on the other side, too, don't get me wrong. But I find it amusing to find people who consider nuclear energy "too dangerous" yet push for plenty of other equally-dangerous technologies. Let's have some rationality here, please.

This guy is a crackpot

[iwadasn]

Ok, this is nice, but neither side gives any evidence. Since when does "no it isn't" count as a refutation?

Everything that guy has to say is about nuclear weapons. Well, guess what. WE ALREADY HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. There, accept it. Get over it. There is no danger of additional reactors turning the US, or China, or India, or Western Europe into nuclear armed powers. NONE, because they already are.

It's easy to tear down someone else's proposal when you don't have on of your own and need rely on nothing but juvenile comebacks. Get some actual evidence. And you know what, even if you count the victims of Hiroshima and Nagisaki against nuclear power (but don't count the victims of conventional warfare against fossil fuels) and you throw in Cherenoble, and maybe round everything up by a few hundred thousand just to be sure, Nuclear killed far fewer people per kWh of energy. It is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which it might be otherwise. Fossil fuels kill tens (hundreds, depending on how you count) of thousands of people each year.

A nuclear disaster would have to kill tens of millions (at least) in order to even the score. Nobody can even conceive of how that could happen with civilian reactors built to even the most incompetent of standards, like Cherenobl. About the only real possibility is if WW-III breaks out and people start tossing around nuclear weapons (which they already have, and don't need civilian reactors for), and that is far MORE likely if we start fighting over oil.

Just once I'd like to hear a well reasoned out anti-nuclear position. Include some numbers (you know, dollars and cents, lives lost, that sort of thing) and keep them accurate. Include an honest asessment of nuclear waste dangers (assuming various means of disposal) and honest asessments of nuclear proliferation. I have never seen any evidence that civilian nuclear power leads to proliferation, but it seems to be a given for the anti-nuke types. Japan and South Korea both have reactors, and neither has nuclear weapons.

The only scenario the anti-nuke types ever argue against is such a complete straw man. They assume we dump all the nuclear waste into the nation's beer supply, give away spent fuel to everyone with a driver's license, and somehow (though nobody can really imagine exactly how this happens) have lots of melt downs in highly populated areas. Seriously. Assume an even marginally competent nuclear program (needn't be perfect) and then try a comparison with our fossil fuel system. See how that treats you.

It's like comparing against an oil economy where it's assumed that 99% of the oil is dumped raw into the ocean, the rest is burned in the foulest, dirtiest machines imaginable, and that somehow access to oil allows every fool who can rub two sticks together to build a jet fighter with which to kill people. Be serious.

At this point...

[ttfkam]

Nuclear is to power what democracy is to political systems. Yes, it sucks. But sucks less than the alternatives.

The Thing is though

[GrimSean]

what the hell else are we supposed to do? Sterling is attacking Lovelock based solely on fear of Nuclear weapons - not energy, and a nuclear plant has about as much of a chance of blowing up as my chair does when properly designed. Chernobyl happened because the Soviets let regular Engineers perform a test on a reactor - not Nuclear Engineers who actually would have known what they were doing. Three Mile Island happened because of pure stupidity. A properly designed nuclear plant, with proper safeguards and well trained staff is a fairly safe place.

I think Sterling's comments would have been decidedly better had they actually proposed something else, instead of attacking an idea that is a feasable solution to significantly lowering the emission of greenhouse gasses. I have to wonder if he would have been among the people objecting to wind power because it ruined the view, if he lived in Martha's Vineyard.

Re:The Thing is though

[rebelcool]

The most modern of fission reactor designs are passively safe, meaning they require little to no active safety systems (ie, working cooling pumps) in order to operate.

Toshiba is working a design which requires no crew even. You build a housing, put the reactor in the ground, and in 30 years replace its core fuel element. Several of these put together can power entire towns.

http://www.nuclear.com/n-plants/index-Small_modulr _reactr.html

Sad

[jmorris42]

This piece is sad. The commentary is written by someone who obviously has a working mind and can write (see his published works) but is so blinded by an irrational phobia against anything connected to the N word he is blindly attacking it, and because apparently his mind shuts down in the presence of the N word he isn't even doing a very good job of rebutting the idea.

This guy can't even tell the difference between fusion bombs and modern reactor designs that are pretty darned failsafe.

If you are really concerned about global warming, dependence on foreign oil, etc, you have to at least have a rational discussion about fission power. Which is why the ultra greens are having none of that and attacking with such ferocity, to them it ia a matter of religion, not science. Gaia told them in a dream or something that "Thou Shalt not Fission the Atoms that I have given unto thee." That's religion for you though, Galieo wasn't the first to be persecuted by religious intolerance and apparently isn't anywhere near the last.

Re:Recession = cost doubling?

[nacturation]

While this might cause a small hit into the profits of those corporations, average Joe isn't going to go to the poorhouse because he has to pay more for electricity

This won't cause any hit in the profits of corporations because they'll simply pass on the cost of electricity to the consumer.

No....

[Skyshadow]

I believe what Mr. Lovelock is saying is that in the next 50 years or so we're going to deplete our supply of fossil fuels to the point where they can't cover our power demands, and that nuclear fission is the only current method we have of replacing the huge gap that's going to be left.

He's right. Unless there's a fantastic amount of oil and coal someplace that we can get at reasonably soon, or unless all the cars in the world start getting 90 MPG Real Soon Now, the price of gas is going to go to a place where it's not usable anymore.

Try to understand: We're not just talking about those evil SUV drivers paying $80 to $100 at the pump. The depletion of the world's fossil fuel supplies will mean a breakdown on a global scale if it isn't planned for *well* in advance. We're talking about a collapse of the global economy and a return to a way of living that can't support the global population. Famine, disease, abject poverty, devistating wars, genocide. A return to a feudal economy, a breakdown of our civilization and another dark age for my children and grandchildren to live in.

While some of the more frustrated environmentalists might suggest that this is what we have coming to us, I'd rather see it avoided. You can't wait for it to happen and then start responding -- humanity has got to get on this one now, and pie-in-the-sky "what if we could increase the yield of solar cell" shit isn't going to cut it.

Once you devise a method of generating power that can compete on an economic level with nuclear, of *course* the world will switch. It only makes sense that we'd switch -- it's basic economics. But we can't count on the tech genie popping up at the last second to save our bacon.

Re:No....

[RayBender]

I believe what Mr. Lovelock is saying is that in the next 50 years or so we're going to deplete our supply of fossil fuels to the point where they can't cover our power demands, and that nuclear fission is the only current method we have of replacing the huge gap that's going to be left.

I'm not sure if he's saying that or not, but it's not quite true. The fact of the matter is that while supplies of cheap oil are indeed limited and will likely run out in something like 50 years, there is ample coal available to sustain us for at least 1000 years. Now, the consequences of burning all that coal will be staggering. Think multiplying current CO2 levels by factors of 5; no reasonable scientist would argue that such extreme levels won't lead to serious warming and climate change. At that point you're talking shutdown of the Gulf Stream, 20 to 50-meter sea level change and the release of methane clathrates, among other things. Real fun stuff.

Mr. Lovelock is correct in that nuclear power will be needed in the near future if we are to avoid damaging our climate system. However, it won't be required because we run out of fossil fuel (coal). The Saudis on the other hand are screwed - or at least their children are. Not that I'm all that sympatheitc to their plight, mind you. I'm sure they'll survive off of investments...

Re:No....

[sparks]

Part of the reason the UK nuclear industry is in such a bad financial shape is that the Government makes it pay the "climate change levy", on the basis of the amout of CO2 produced to generate a given amount of elecricity.

But wait; the nuclear industry doesn't emit CO2!

I know this sounds stupid, crazy, unreal, but it's absolutely true. The only major source of electricity in the UK which doesn't contribute to climate change has to pay a climate change tax. This is to the tune of 600 million UK pounds for British Energy. That amount is the difference between a 300 million loss and a 300 million profit for that company.

Re:No....

[tonyr60]

"The real problems with nuclear energy, however, are that we can't get rid of the waste and the consequences of even minor mistakes are catastrophic."

Agreed, much the same as other sources of thermal energy such as coal, oil etc. However to date the evidence suggests that deaths, injury and illness associated with the use of other thermal sources is greater per kwh generated than for nuclear energy.

Even production of hydro enegy has caused more deaths, due to dam creation and failure, flooding etc. than nuclear.

Re:No....

[Firethorn]

Run a death scenario for the Hoover Dam breaking...

Sure, you can come up with doomsday scenarios for nuclear plants, but how likely are they? All US reactors that are not small-scale experimentals are built so that a Chernobyl style meltdown isn't possible. The meltdown process physically triggers events that shut the reaction down, stopping the meltdown.

If you want to talk about what ifs, how about blade breakages hitting cars/buildings for wind, mirror mis-alignment hitting an aircraft for solar, coal mine collapes/accidents/fires (already happen), and explosions for natural gas.

If I had my way, I'd replace every coal plant with a nuclear one. Preferably a breeder.

Nuclear Hate-Conditioning...

[RexRhino]

Even though nuclear energy is relatively safe, environmentally friendly, and the only practical solution to global warming we have right now, getting people of Mr. Sterling's generation to accept it will be impossible.

These people have grew up their whole lives with the word "nuclear" being associated with the word "Armageddon". Nuclear energy is permanently associated in their brain with "biblical disaster". They have been sold fear of nuclear annihilation from childhood (duck-and-cover propaganda), to adolescence (China Syndrome), to adulthood (The Day After), and are even now being sold fear about nuclear energy (Iraq weapons of mass destruction, anyone?). Baby Boomer response to nuclear energy is like a Catholic priest response to Satanism. They are never going to be psychological capable of viewing the situation rationally. Nuclear power has been their "Satan" figure for their entire lives, and they will never change.

Once the Boomers start dying off, people will realize the benefits of nuclear power once again. Hopefully global warming won't mess things up too bad before that happens.

Are you kidding?

[Skyshadow]

You've got it backwards -- the only reason that wind and solar plants exist is because the government (a) heavily subsidizes them, (b) gives power producers a tax break for buying power from them and (c) in some cases mandates that a certain percentage of power delivered by the power industry be from renewable sources.

Of course, in the end, this means that we (taxpayers) are paying more money to fund wind and solar producers (*not* wind and solar research, BTW, but to pay off people to have these plants).

If wind and solar were really reliable and less expensive, what in God's name makes you think we'd be relying on fossil fuels? The oil lobby is powerful, sure, but the rest of the economy would crush them like a bug if a cheaper source of energy came along. That's capitalism for you.

Um, duh?

[emarkp]

Add this to the logical fallacies. How do you think the grocery store refrigerates your food before you buy it? Now, how much would refrigerated goods cost to you (the average Joe) if refrigeration costs doubled?

You might even notice other goods and services increase in cost. It's silly to think that the cost of electricity is only reflected in your electricity bill.

show of spectacular ignorance

[Bob Loblaw]

... or just classic misdirection of a discussion to argue the absurd. Both sides of the nuclear debate use this technique.

Q:"Is nuclear power useful?"
A:"No, you idiot, nukes are bad!"

Q:"Is waste from nuclear power managable?"
A:"Would you hippies rather be breathing coal dust?"

Never answer the question ... just answer the question that you wished was asked that makes the other side look stupid ... oh and make sure your answer is derogatory.

How about some discussion regarding breeder vs. non-breeder reactors. Or half-life of waste. Or decommissioning of reactors. Or standardized independent safety inspection and rules ... nope ... everyone would rather spew the same old rhetoric that has been regurgitated for nearly 60 years. Surely we have learned something in all that time to add to the debate?

I'm unimpressed....

[Malor]

Pretty much his whole commentary, the strong point of his whole argument, is two words: "with NUKES!" This is religion, not science. Nukes are bad, unquestionably bad, so bad that they trump all other arguments. They are, after all, NUKES!

(pause for reader to quake in fear)

Nuclear power is, like any other energy source, a tool. Like all tools, it can be misused. You can make amazingly destructive bombs with nuclear power, so powerful, in fact, that they've never been used since the first two. But you can also make very, very effective explosives with oil... a fuel-air bomb is vastly destructive. And those, as far as I know, HAVE BEEN used. So which is really worse?

Mr. Sterling, whether he intends to or not, is playing on the confusion between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Think how silly his argument would look with a different energy source.... "with FIRE!"

Humans don't survive radiation very well, we are quite susceptible to it. That does not, however, imply that all of Nature is. In fact, it appears that very few species suffer from radiation as much as we do. The Earth has not always been as cozy and comfortable as it is now, and humans are a relatively recent evolutionary offshoot. We die from even small amounts of the stuff, but most species don't.

(we argued back and forth about why this is, in another thread... no conclusions drawn. Regardless, Bikini Atoll, the site of 20+ bomb tests, including the first hydrogen bomb, is a lush tropical paradise. It's not safe for people to live there, but Nature is doing JUST FINE.)

Since humans are the ones getting the primary benefit from nuclear power, it is just that we're the ones who suffer if we blow it. From an environmental standpoint, nuclear power is nearly perfect. If we screw up completely and have some horrid catastrophe that renders the Earth too radioactive for human habitation, it'll be the best possible outcome for most other species, since their most aggressive competitor would be wiped out.

Now, I did think his comment about how we'll just add nuclear power and keep using oil to be pretty accurate... we'd need a concerted effort to switch power sources, not just supplement them. And of course we'd have to take care of the waste, but that's far from an insurmountable problem. However much it costs, it'll probably take only one prevented major hurricane on the East Coast to pay for it. (which, of course, we wouldn't see directly... but if the weather stopped getting worse, it'd MORE than pay for itself.)

I do think we'd end up with 'nuclear slums', low-rent districts around most plants. Poor people would be the ones to suffer first, but that's ALWAYS true of EVERY technology. And in this case, it would at least be a deliberate choice.

I am cheerfully willing to trade nuclear slums for cleaner air, cleaner water, and more natural weather patterns. I'd probably even live in one.... since I'm such a strong proponent, I really oughta be putting myself in the line of fire, so to speak.

Small leakage a health tonic?

[2901]

As opposed to the small leakages of nuclear power, which are a kind of health tonic

This wise-crack got me confused. People sometimes say that there is no safe level of radio-activity, not realising that this is a methodological assumption, rather than an empirical fact. When scientists have tried to investigate this, using the natural variation in background radiation and existing epidemilogical data, they have found that radiation is a health tonic!

Some scientists have speculated that this might even be a real effect, not a statistical artifact. Their idea is that damage from free radicals is a much bigger deal than damage by background radition. Cells have repair mechanisms that get turned on in response to increased metabolism and the consequent rise in free radicals. Lags in the regulation of repair are responsible for much of the damage caused by free radicals, and if radiation upregulated the repair mechanism that could more than compensate for the actual damage done by the radiation.

My guess, from having done research on speech recognition, is that most scientists just don't get how hard it is to do statistics right, and the "tonic" effect of radiation will turn out to be an artifact, probably due to incorrect compensation for regional variations in cigarette smoking.

Meanwhile Bruce Sterling's attempt at sarcasm is a bit of a disaster, revealing that the controversy over the dangers (or otherwise) of low levels of radiation has passed him by.

Re:Recession = cost doubling?

[Mac Degger]

Thing is, things aren't so simple as just the cost of power. One of the projects I had as a first year applied physics was 'sustainable energy'. When you actually look at the facts and figures, and are not just reacting to your gut reaction, nuclear is for the next 50 to 100 years the only way to go.

Wind power just doesn't cut it: reason being for one that it can't provide power all the time, and can't provide power when the wind is too slow or too hard. There's a number of nifty calculations you can make, but all you have to do is look at Finland, I believe it was: they invested heavily in wind power and are now regretting it heftily. Not only is power not being produced when it's needed, but it's being overproduced when it's not needed, and /it costs them bigtime to sell that power over the border!/ I know this sounds strange, but that's the way the world energy market works (well, call it a localised energy market, seeing as 'green energy' can be bought and sold like stock globally [but that's only on paper], but the actual electricity can't be transfered worldwide).
And to boot, it's way more expensive than any other from of energy except solar.

Nice segue into that, eh? Solar energy is prohibitively expensive too. And appart from that, it's not very efficient. And (again), it can't provide power when needed. Which is not just important for cost reasons [so you don't have to buy from other countries] but more importantly it's important for getting the current to stay at a stable voltage so your equipment doesn't explode.
Not only that, but solar cells are notoriously poluting in their manufacture.

Then there is tidal energy, which sounds nice...but there has been little to no research about it's environmental impacts (you know, the lack of which got us here in the first place?) like reducing tides, or maybe removing so much energy from the ocean tides that certain ocean streams will stop/reverse/whatever. BTW, none of this research has been done for solar and wind either: whilst there is research that says that localised heating up of the atmosphere might be enough to change tornado's from their path, we have no idea how we will affect the trade winds/whatever with these forms of energy. Oh, and again, to top it off, tidal energy is expensive.

I'll skip fossil fuels. Go look up the research yourself.

Now the two drawback to nuclear power in the form of fission (fussion won't happen for 50 to a hundred years, at least in a viable, mass-enough form) are the waste and risk of meltdown. Nuclear weapons are not a problem, unless we start enriching the radioactives just for powergenerating...and there's no reason to do that. As for terrorists? They don't have the resources to do that in secret. Hell, not only am I studying applied physics, but I used to study mechanical engineering: you need mayor funding and little bells will be going off in all the security agencies in the world when you start to try amasing the materials neccessary (which is one reason I started laughing when Powell went before the UN with his story about "tubes of such high tollerance" story...the tollerances he was talking about where a)used in many, many appliacations and b) in all probability not sufficient for cyclotrons. Anyway...).
Back to the watse and meltdown. Let's have a look at the latter: meltdown will be pretty much a thing of the past when the new generation (IV) of reactors come online. These are (amongst others) those pebblebed reactors you might've heard of. Not only that, but if something does go wrong (and with the new designs, it's not very likely, but we must assume a worst case scenario) it will be contained. We are a long way away from the not-up-to-standards, bad-maintenance reactor of Chernobyl; current standards mean that if something does go catastrophically wrong, only a square mile or so of the earth is rendered uninhabitable. Which is much preferable to rendering the whole earth uninhabitable as we are with the current fossil fuels.
And then there is t

Re:Recession = cost doubling?

[ttfkam]

There is a bigger issue with solar and wind than simply cost: total power output. Demand for electricity is not going to drop dramatically and in all likelihood will continue to increase.

Now what about wind... Allow me to direct you to The Earth Policy Institute, an organization with a decidedly alternative/renewable energy bias. (Not a bad thing, just making it clear that it has no reason to artificially lower their numbers to make wind look bad.) Their examination of wind power is quite optimistic. Pay special attention to their expectations: gathering hydrogen for fuel in cars, halting coal usage, etc. Now let's look at the data they used for that. They cite a total U.S. potential (not current, but potential) of 1,221,191 megawatts. With that comes, I assume, the expectation that every possible free tract of land had a windmill farm stuck on it.

~1kW per square meter is what you have to work with in solar energy. When you have 8-12% efficient solar panels, that means you can get up to 80-120W per square meter...for six hours per day in the desert without trackers...on a cloudless day... In areas with more cloud cover, shorter days in winter, etc. the numbers drop off dramatically. Then we calculate that consumer solar cells degrade by 2-5% every year of use and have a life span of ~30 years. Then keep in mind that you have to keep all of those cells clean -- more energy used for something besides keeping the lights on. Don't forget that you have to actually manufacture those solar cells which of course means clean rooms (the real reason behind the costs) and the aquisition and refinement of requisite building materials. And to top it all off, when you cover large tracts of land with solar cells, that land gets less sunlight. So yeah, we can all put solar panels on our homes, get by on what we get, and then deal with the health problems after a year with more than average rainfall causes refridgerators to cease functioning and food to rot.

Repeat after me: large-scale power cannot be a "good enough" proposition where a 5% shortfall is acceptable.

So I want to get a pencil and paper and work out the total amount of land area needed to sustain 3,848,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours (Yes! That's 3.848 trillion!) of electricity -- of which 53% of that currently comes from coal. Now if you come up with a calculation that if you completely covered the sunny state of Arizona with solar cells, it would still not be enough to replace just coal, you're on the right track. To top it all off, it costs about $30,000 on average to fit solar panels sufficient to power a typical house. How much would it cost to cover Arizona will solar cells?

Repeat after me: It doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay. Solar and wind alone cannot do the job.

Solar and wind are excellent candidates for supplementary energy sources. They are great for providing primary electricity to many residences (provided that folks can afford the $30K price tag). However, most folks will still need the grid as a backup and supplement. Hell, I'd be bullish on solar if for no other reason than the effective elimination of large-scale blackouts. But it still remains a supplementary energy source. There is far more to electricity demand than making sure the microwaves and personal computers have power.

So what can produce that much power? Coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. In the US, we have hundreds of years' worth of coal. Oil and natural gas reserves are far more finite and are needed for materials (plastics, vehicles, etc.). And that leaves us with nuclear. Existing models will blow through our uranium reserves in less than a century. However, models that aren't just a one-pass design can not only use existing nuclear waste, but also nuclear weapons material. AND they extend the pote

Decide for yourself

[moosesocks]

Take a look at wikipedia's List of Nuclear Accidents and decide for yourself weather or not we should be using nuclear power.

The list is either alarmingly long or extremely short depending upon how you look at it.

Some of the accidents are incredibly trivial. Others are pretty darn frightening. It's all a matter of a chain reaction (no pun intended) of bad events happening in succession. Take this one for example:

"September 19, 1980 - An Air Force repairman doing routine maintenance in a Titan II ICBM silo in Arkansas drops a wrench socket which rolls off a work platform and falls to the bottom of the silo. The socket strikes the missile, causing a leak from a pressurized fuel tank. The missile complex and surrounding area is evacuated and eight and a half hours later, vapors within the silo ignite and explode with enough force to blow off the two 740-ton silo doors and hurl the nine megaton warhead 600 feet (180 m). The explosion fatally injures an Air Force specialist and twenty-one other USAF personnel are injured."

Re:Decide for yourself

[irix]

...doing routine maintenance in a Titan II ICBM silo...

Bruce, is that you? Seriously, what does this have to do with nuclear power generation ... absolutely nothing. Most of these accidents relate to military and medical use of nuclear radation, which have nothing in common with nuclear power, besides that scary "n" word.

Re:Decide for yourself

[argStyopa]

That's a perfect example:
"September 19, 1980 - An Air Force repairman doing routine maintenance in a Titan II ICBM silo in Arkansas drops a wrench socket which rolls off a work platform and falls to the bottom of the silo. The socket strikes the missile, causing a leak from a pressurized fuel tank. The missile complex and surrounding area is evacuated and eight and a half hours later, vapors within the silo ignite and explode with enough force to blow off the two 740-ton silo doors and hurl the nine megaton warhead 600 feet (180 m). The explosion fatally injures an Air Force specialist and twenty-one other USAF personnel are injured."


It's a good example, actually.
The explosion and subsequent death/injuries are because of the CHEMICAL explosion and, despite the massive blast, there was never any danger of the warheads either going off or being dispersed in dirty-bomb style.

I'd say that's a testament to the safety of the darn things.

Re:Recession = cost doubling?

[Willard B. Trophy]

> Wind power just doesn't cut it

Them's fightin' words. I design wind farms.

> it can't provide power all the time

Neither can any other power source, but there's nearly always somewhere windy in a country. Wind can contribute to baseload, and does in several countries.

I could be mean and point to Ontario's CANDU reactors, some of which provide a 30% capacity factor. That's about the same as wind, which of course can't provide power all the time.

> can't provide power when the wind is too slow or too hard.

The low windspeed bit is true. As regards high windspeeds, even in extreme sites the wind very seldom goes too high -- a matter of a couple of hours per year.

> all you have to do is look at Finland, I believe it was: they invested heavily in wind power

Finland has only ever modestly invested in wind energy. They did do some sterling work on wind energy in cold climates.

> the actual electricity can't be transfered worldwide).

So why did a powerline failure in the US affect Canada? Many countries are interconnected.

> And to boot, it's way more expensive than any other from of energy except solar.

Wrong. We're cheaper than any new generation except gas. Of course, when you get obvious fudging of nuclear costs like we did with the Manley Committee (who grossly overstated the cost of all other forms of generation to make a nuclear restart look viable), we're not dealing with fair opposition.

Sterling's Response to the E-Mail I Just Sent Him

[Jakob Eriksson]

*Look, fella, I get to wisecrack about nuclear power
to my own email list if I feel like it. I didn't post that thing on Slashdot,
and not everything that flies off my keyboard into cyberspace
is gonna be solemn, Asperger-style argumentation intended
intended to convince a bunch of Linux freaks.

* If you can't take a joke, take a hike! And if you can
take a joke, then read the friggin' list and get a clue
as to what's been going on there for the past six years,
before you send email to novelists and get
all teary-eyed about your disillusionment.

http://www.viridiandesign.org

bruces

On May 31, 2004, at 9:35 PM, Jakob Eriksson wrote:

Hi Bruce,

I stumbled upon your comments on Lovelock's nuclear power article today. I'd previously read your book "Distraction", and enjoyed it. In particular, I liked your portrayal of the nomads and the political power struggles.

Because I enjoyed your writing, and thus respected you as an author. I was hoping to read a creative and possibly convincing argument against the use of nuclear power. Instead, to my dismay, I was confronted with a series of immature comments, often with very little basis in fact, far from either creative or convincing.

Due to my respect for you as an SF author, I was prepared to take your advice to heart, and to give up the hope of nuclear power, had you shown good arguments for your case. Instead, I'm afraid you've spent all your whuffie (see Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out") on this childish flamebait. Given the comments on /., it would seem I am not alone in feeling this.

You just lost a faithful reader.

Re:Recession = cost doubling?

[tehdaemon]

The problem with wind is as you stated: you get power when the wind blows, not necessarily when you need it. The solution to this problem is simple in theory. Storage. Get some good storage method and wind has no problem.

One storage method that will work in many places is water, on a hill. About 10 cubic meters of water 1000 ft up stores about 1 MWh of energy. This energy is easily stored and released with high efficiency, (pumps and turbines) This can be used easily anywhere there is a mountain 1000 ft high or more, and here in Utah at least, those are in abundance.

I read in another /. post that this is being done in West Virginia, and he had links.

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

[taharvey]

So much misinformation, so little time.

When you have 8-12% efficient solar panels

8-12% is a little low. Current product cell efficiency are around 14-18%, and Concentrators w/ multijunctions get 30%. But who cares? Your car gets 15% efficiency in average use, nobody complains about that even thought you pay for the gas. Sun is free. The question is does 15% efficiency do the job? Yes. Even if it gets no better, it wouldn't matter.

six hours per day in the desert without trackers...on a cloudless day... In areas with more cloud cover, shorter days in winter, etc. the numbers drop off dramatically.

Wrong. The average insolation in the US is 6 hours of peak sun per day, no desert required (ie 6000 Wh/sq. meter per day). For a flat panel, the deviation from the best southern nevada site to the worst northern washington state site is only 2-to-1! The rest of the country is suprisingly small devation within this. See rredc.nrel.gov/solar/

Solar cells degrade by 2-5% every year and have a life span of ~30 years

Wrong again. Silicon solar cells degrade less than 10% over 25 years, and are garanteed by the manufacturer to not exceed this over a 20-30 year guarantee - compare that to any other product guarantee! Though, they are guaranteed for 20-30 years, their life isn't limited by it. (see Solarbuzz.com)

Then keep in mind that you have to keep all of those cells clean

Wrong. If you clean them verses do nothing you get a whopping 4% increase. Few people clean PV panels.

And to top it all off, when you cover large tracts of land with solar cells, that land gets less sunlight.

My roof doesn't seem to mind. What land? The average roof has 4-6 times the generating capacity of the average house. 1600 sq ft house = 148 sq meters. 148 m x 150 watts x 6 hours = 133 kWh/day. Average house power consuption 24kWh/day. Beat that with some other form of energy.

after a year with more than average rainfall causes refridgerators to cease functioning and food to rot.

Wrong. When is the last time you noticed the sun failed to come up (yes you still get power in overcast conditions). Further, home PV systems are designed using statistic based on the past 30 years of weather data (see rredc.nrel.gov/solar/). Ask somebody with PV, their power is WAY more reliable than the grid. In fact, most of the comminucation repeaters throughout the western US use PV for this reason.

Now if you come up with a calculation that if you completely covered the sunny state of Arizona with solar cells, it would still not be enough to replace just coal, you're on the right track.

Wrong. Solar is a reasonably dense form of energy wirelessly transmitted through a light "grid" in a usable form almost everywhere on the earth. If you wanted to compare space needed to produce all the electricity consumed in the US it would be a small 100 mile square (see picture for scale www.energycooperation.org/solarh2.htm). In fact studies have shown coal uses as much space due to the space required for strip mining. Try strip mining on top of your roof!

Repeat after me: It doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay. Solar and wind alone cannot do the job.

Wrong. What would it cost to pay for solar electricity? Try the cost of the Irag war. Seriously, do the math (including new military spending) and that would be enough over the next 3-5 years to t

s/Cherkenov/Cherenkov/ ...and...

[leonbrooks]

Otherwise, good post, I'm sure Pavel's used to getting his name misspelled, and SlashDot won't let anyone put a cedilla on top of the C anyway. It's a nice blue.

Bruce Sterling needs to learn a lot more about nuclear power than he evidently knows. He seems to be stuck in a Chernobyl culture.

My own answer would be to go off-planet in search of energy, but we can't break that down into small enough pieces to sell to anyone with enough resources to actually do it.

In the absence of that sensible but grandiose solution, I'll quite happily swap the local coal-fired power station (Muja) that burns 12 tonnes of Uranium every year for one that reacts maybe half a tonne of the stuff every year, less than a tenth as much radioactive material involved and the results carefully captured and rationally stored for reprocessing instead of being spewed into the atmosphere.

This says nothing about the Radon and other radioactives released in the mining and processing of the coal, nor about the miners killed and injured in extracting it, nor about the huge amounts of diesel burned in mining and transporting it, nor about the enormous tracts of bush turned over so the miners can whip the coal out from underneath it.