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Environmentalists Coming Around to Nuclear Power?
Heywood J. Blaume writes "In a Washington Post editorial Patrick Moore, a founder of Greenpeace, now says he was wrong about opposing nuclear power 30 years ago. In the article he addresses common myths about nuclear power, and puts forth the position that nuclear power is the only feasible, affordable power source that can solve today's growing environmental and energy policy issues. From the article: 'Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.'"
The logic behind using safe forms of nuclear power has been clear for a long, long time. It's nice to see some greens finally start accepting what has been obvious to some of us for 30 or 40 years. Now I'm curious how long it will be before the same people start realizing that they have been duped about global warming -- by the same people who duped us about the "coming Ice Age" and hundreds of millions of people supposedly dying of hunger from overpopulation in the '70s. The same crackpots who have been feeding us false predictions are still being given credibility today. Why people such as Lester Brown and Paul Erlich are given any credibility is beyond logic.
David
I've always said that nuclear is the way to go... while there are implications in the extreme long term as far as what you do with the wastes, there are no blaring short term problems like running out of coal and oil or spewing waste directly into the air.
...for this "progressive" voice to come around to nuclear power. Heck, if it's good enough for socialist France, why not here in the US?
"Me fail English? That's unpossible." - Ralph
He was probably right to oppose nuclear power. Certainly we have better technology today to make safer nuclear power. Again, nuclear power will never be completely safe, but neither is wind, hydro, nor coal. Conservation, both thru individual action and thru technology are probably the safest 'forms of power', but they would never be enough.
It is time to bring nuclear power back into the discourse about our energy needs, but I'm not sure it's time to start building plants as fast as we can either...
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I've been an environmentalist all my life; planted close to 10,000 trees, maintain habitat for the critters, that sort of thing. No small expense or effort. I consider myself to be more of an environmentalist than some bozo with a "save the (whatever)" pin that only gets angry about things and doesn't actually do anything to improve the situation.
That said, I'm puzzled at the attitude the submitter apparently has, in that he seems to be describing environmentalists, and pro-nuke-power people, as two separate groups. To me, nuke is an obvious choice. If you need no other explaination, see how the anti-nuke people resort to blatant lies and unrealistic comparisons in order to get people to _feel_ that it's bad. The pro-nuke side goes with science so people _think_ about, and _understand_ the issues.
My point, I guess, is that this isn't surprising or new, some guy who left Greenpeace when it diverted from his POV is just saying what so many other environmentalists have known for decades. I'm not sure this is news, other than that whoever this guy is, is saying it.
Excellent...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This isn't a new thing, as the article (summary) implies. Moore has had this stance for a while now. Here's a 2004 Wired article on this "Eco-Traitor."
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I'd be more impressed if Moore would admit that he's now serving as a consultant for the mining, logging, and energy industries.
Hell, I'd settle for the Washington Post admitting that they're trying to pull one over its readership.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
I seem to recall that something similar to this was brought up a few months ago here at Slashdot and several seemingly very intelligent posters made citations and pointed out that the amount of uranium we have available that can be processed will last for only a very limited timespan and that nuclear perhaps isn't the best way to go.
Of course, there's always the "we'll run out of oil by 1995" theories running around, but the arguments seemed quite compelling. I can't find them again now, but what's the real deal with this? If the whole world went nuclear, would we all be desperate for sources of uranium in fifty years' time?
Wow. I mean... just... wow. I knew that the anti-nuclear movement had long been losing steam, but to get a Greenpeace founder on board? Wow.
... Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power ... ... What nobody noticed [...] was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did [...] prevent radiation from escaping into the environment ...
... Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric ...
... Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. ...
... And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets. ...
... If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire. The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation is [...] to use diplomacy and, where necessary, force ...
Perhaps even more amazing is that he really does understand the pros and cons. His article spells out in plain language that Nuclear power is not dangerous, and that the chance for nuclear weapons is a small risk to take to reduce the amount of pollution coming from coal plants. To read this, you'd think he was a regular on NuclearSpace.com!
Some excellent sound-bites:
(The emphasis is mine. This is the first time I've ever heard a hard-core environmentalist promote nuclear recycling. It's just incredible!)
Everything he says in his article is basically true. I never thought I'd find myself in 100% agreement with Greenpeace, but at this very moment I can't disagree with anything he's said. Kudos to you, Mr. Moore!
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It is absolutely not refutable that change is occuring. What is refuta ble is whether or not it is because of a natural cycle, or because of man-made change.
But the thing is, it does not matter what the cause is. If the cycle continues it will certainly, without a doubt, lead to the death of us as a civilization, whether we were the cause or not.
Hence the concern. It doesn't matter if we are the root cause or not, we're the only species on the planet with the capability to reduce and possibly reverse the cycle.
It's always funny to hear the greenies make fun of the all-too-Texan quirk of mispronouncing "new-cue-ler" while they make the actually meaningful error of not understanding the actual issues at hand. Too bad this guy's old buddies have so rabidly excommunicated him, but they're just as blind in their faith and their Nukes = Evil mantra as they would suggest that an oil-burning, SUV-driving Texan is in his own world view. Critical thinking, people! (both of you!)
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The sad thing is it's now news when someone rationally thinks over their position and changes their mind based on reasoning and evidence.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
As an environmentalist, I have always supported nuclear power. However, to suggest that global warming isn't taking place or that it is another "crackpot" idea of the environmentalist movement is simply flat out wrong.
The people who were leading the anti-nuclear movement thirty years ago were not leading scientists and they did not have the equivelent access to information that we do now.
I do not force my views about electrical engineering or molecular physics on everyone, having never stuided these things. Why does everyone feel compelled to contribute to the environmental debate when very, very few have studed environmental science?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
It seems like the French already figured it out years before. And now are making money selling the electricity from their many nuclear power plants to others (read "Germany" where the Green Peace hippies managed to stop the building of nuclear power plants years ago). Whas is really that hard to predict that nuclear power can be made safe and will be a better option than becoming addicted to overseas oil? Sure Chernobyl happened (I was pretty close to it too) but they should have just looked at it that and said "let's see what they did wrong and fix and move on". Oh, no, they all freaked out: "OMG! Teh nucular power is teh evil -- must burn more oil and coal!".
Was this article written by the nuke PR folks?
Nope. But you're clearly the exact sort of person he's talking about - who can't see the fundamental difference between the Chernobyl and TMI events.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
/Sorry, mandatory Patrick Moore link
a) Is there any commercial insurance company which will insure a nuclear reactor? Here in Germany all reactors must be insured against meltdown, etc. Since no insurance company will write a police for a reactor, the government steps in and "insures" it. All of our reactors here are insured that way.
b) Is there a place in any western democracy (russia and china probably have less problems in that area) for finally depositing the resulting nuclear waste? A proper finaly resting place for the stuff?
Yeah, exactly - cuz because some people in the past were wrong about a specific topic , everyone who says anything about something that makes you uncomfortable has to be wrong too.
How about instead of grasping at straws, you actually look at the data? And I mean, all of the data, not just the one that makes you feel fuzzy and warm?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
pebble bed reactors make all the difference
because they are super safe. they don't melt down. no china syndrome, no 3 mile island, no chernobyl, no silkwood. the fuel is packed in glass pebbles. meltdown is not possible by accidental means
explain this to people and their old understanding of nuclear's dangers, based on 1970s era thinking fade away. which is also about the time that nuclear itself faded away, because of the dangers. but in a world of oil-funded islamic extremism and oil-fueled global warming, super-safe pebble bed nuclear energy looks mighty attractive. now all we need to do is wait for popular wisdom and political will to catch up
and with breeder reactors, we can reprocess the nuclear waste from the bygone era of old-style reactors and do away with all of that left-over pollution. imagine that: run new reactors off of a previous generation's waste. old-style reactors only use 10% of available fuel, the rest sits unused and radiocative for tens of thousands of years. with reprocessing, 95% of the fuel can be used, and left over are isotopes with radioactive half lives measured in a century or two, not tens of thousands of years
and don't let anyone tell you there would be a fuel shortage with the nuclear option like with oil. there is no peak uranium like there is peak oil. mainly because we can run nuclear power off of thorium as well as uranium. go look up the numbers on thorium reserves. we'd be fine for centuries. and the reserves are in more geopolitically friendly places
the problem is still psychological for people though. nuclear IS scary. it's the same thing as flying: it's safer than driving, but people prefer to drive than fly, and feel safer driving than flying. even though the reverse is true. why? the illusion of familiarity and control. people stick with what they are comfortable with, even if what they are comfortable with sucks in comparison
for the longest time i've tried to convince my gf to have laser eye treatment for her myopia. it's the best thing i ever did. but she is scared of the procedure. i tell her that she has more chance of getting an infection that will make her blind via contacts than via a laser screw up. but she wouldn't have any of it
and just this month, they found a connection between bausch and lomb's renu, which she uses, and a sudden surge in cases of an eye fungus that blinds people. sure enough, on her very own, she made inquiries as to laser eye treatment last week
so even though nuclear is safer in this world than oil due to hurricane katrina-making global warming and oil-funded 9/11 terrorism, people are more scared of nuclear than oil. they are familiar with oil, and there is an inertia about their reluctance to embrace nuclear
so we're stuck in the inertia now, and we suffer for the inertia of the general public and the politicians. all of the nimby's who wouldn't let these things be built would apparently prefer to ship their children to falluja to protect oil than build a completely safe pebble bed reactor. meanwhile, china is investing heavily in this technology. so while the usa wears itself down fighting islamonazi wackjobs sitting on top of their precious oil, places like china will enjoy air pollution free totally safe pebble bed reactor power
some morons don't understand the science, but know how to yell loudly and chain themselves to train tracks to prevent uranium shipments
and we all suffer for that
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is fission less dangerous to the environment than coal? Perhaps. If it were a choice between only between building more coal plants and building fission ones, it's possible that fission might win out. (Though I think it would have to depend of the specifics of the technologies and implementations involved.)
But that's the wrong question.
At best, fission is still a stop-gap: supplies of fissionables are limited, on the order of a century or two at most, perhaps much less. So is it not more reasonable to divert resources to solving the problem right - with fusion reseach, renewables (i.e., using that big fusion reactor in the sky, including ideas like orbital photovoltaics) and better energy efficiency - than to build fission reactors and pushing the problem onto our great-grandchildren? (Or rather, for us non-breeders, our friends' great-grandchildren?)
The TFA mentions the Iran situation only to gloss over it, but there are massive security concerns with fission technology.
Also TFA is inaccurate in talking about nuclear waste; the problem is not the U and Pu in spent fuel, which can be processed and reused, but thorium, radium, radon, and radioactive lead isotopes.
Is some of the opposition to fission irrational? Yes. But so is some of its support, based on an almost romantic notion of "man harnassing the mighty power of the atom!"
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You cannot wash away blood with blood
Trolls are hardly uncommon on /.--you must be using quite a filter if this is the first you have seen.
Certainly we have better technology today to make safer nuclear power.
No, we don't. The technology is pretty much the same. There haven't been any new nuclear plants in the past 20 years and they really haven't updated much of the safety systems. There still isn't a long term way of dealing with the tons of radioactive waste being produced. Don't get me wrong, I think Nuclear is the way to go, but I would really like the storage system to be fixed soon.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
I never saw this, but I have seen a lot of variation in the "number of years nuclear energy will power us for" figures. I think there are a few different things that get done to the statistics depending on which outcome you want to show.
Probably the biggest is whether you just take today's energy consumption figures and use them for the future, or whether you project the rate of increase of energy into the future, in order to get your numbers. Obviously a source of energy that could power us for 100 years in 1955 might only last 15 today, and might only last 1 in another 40 or 50 years.
The other major issue is whether you pretend that we'll use the uranium intelligently, or we'll keep squandering it in wasteful reactors like we do today. Right now, our nuclear reactors here in the US (and pretty much everywhere else in the world) are the atomic-age equivalents of an open-hearth coal-fired boiler, giant and inefficient. We shovel enriched uranium into them, use it to make some electricity, and out comes waste. It's terrible, and it wastes a non-renewable resource (fissile uranium). Although I don't know exactly how long we'd last doing this, if you told me it was less than a generation or two before we used up all the fissile uranium, I'd believe you. It's a hellacious waste.
If we were using all that uranium in breeder reactors, using it's neutrons to enrich naturally non-fissile uranium into plutonium, then we'd greatly extend the length of time we'd be able to run on atoms as a civilization. I'm not sure exactly how much plutonium you can produce per pound of fissile uranium, but if you compare it to just wasting those neutrons by crashing them into the shielding, it's basically like making free fuel.
Although I generally dislike the French government, I have to give them kudos in this area for being the only government with the balls to continue civilian research in this area, when the US decided to ban it (thanks, President Carter!) and hitch our wagon to the horses of Persian Gulf oil. Ironically, although the excuse for banning fuel reprocessing was because it could be used to create nuclear weapons, it was the breeder reactors used for creating nuclear weapons (and not peaceful energy) that remained in operation, both here and in the Soviet Union.
I'm a pretty big proponent of nuclear technologies, but I seriously wonder whether it's good in the long run (multi-generational outlook here) for us to build nuclear reactors that do nothing but "burn" U-235 and produce waste, rather than waiting until we come to grips with breeder technology and decide to build facilities that encompass the whole nuclear fuel cycle. I have this fear that if we don't do that, our (grand)children will be left fighting over the world's remaining stocks of U-235, wondering why we wasted all of it so quickly, or digging up Yucca Mountain for the U-238 that we so casually threw away.
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This is a textbook example of an ad hominem attack. If you have anything to say about his actual message, I'd be interested to hear it.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Energy shortage is no more a disaster than most other shortages, provided you have an economy based on supply and demand.
Look at water. Many people have claimed that there would be water shortages in the California. Everyone should conserve water because we're running out. Now look in the Middle East. People have no problem paying for desalination plants. But you never hear them talk about water conservation in the Mid East, because who on Earth would waste such an expensive resource as water? California would find it has plenty of water if people have to pay what water is worth.
The reason we face energy shortages has nothing to do with the fact that we're running out. It has to do with the fact that we waste it. When the price gets high enough, provided of course that the government lets it get high, then you'll find out people get quite resourceful about conservation. You'll also find that there is plenty of energy to do the things we must.
TW
The obvious point is that he's a respected environmentalist, and not a bought and paid for lobbyist of the nuclear industry.
Ummm, no, he IS a bought and paid for lobbyist of the nuclear industry.
Patrick Moore is not a modern environmentalist, he is a paid lobbyist for the energy industry.
He consistently presents himself as a "founder of Green Peace"; while he may have been an early member, "founder" is, as far as I can tell, a stretch. It is rather disingenous of him to keep mentioning his now quite distant association with the enviromental movement, without ever mentioning who's paying his salary today.
Mind you, he's welcome to express whatever views he has, and I don't even necessarily disagree about nuclear power. But the news outlets that continue to identify him as "Patric Moore, founder of Greenpeace" instead of "Patrick Moore, Exxon-Mobil shill" need a lesson in journalism.
Greenpeace got too political, so he left to become a lobbyist? Right. He found out what side of the debate paid better.
With all due respect, just because _one_ self-proclaimed environmentalist, ex-anti-nuclear 'activist' now says he was wrong, and nuclear is good, this doesn't suddenly count as a huge weight of evidence against every person who's ever spoken against nuclear.
Some people are quick to forget that it's possible to weigh the benefits of nuclear objectively, and conclude that it is NOT THE BEST OPTION. Sure - there will be opinions that differ, but that doesn't make anyone who is against nuclear power a tree-hugging hippy!
Personally, I think it's curious that humans think we need a SINGLE source of energy. why can't we make as much use of efficiency/wind/solar/hydro as is reasonable/practical/possible and then 'top-up' with nuclear on an as-needs basis? To my mind, that would be a much better solution than just replacing every fossil-fuel power plant with a nuclear substitute.
You can sell nuclear energy to me when you can answer the question "What do we do with 48 tons of nuclear waste generated per year per plant"? Arrogant people think nuclear power is perfectly safe. Paranoid people think nuclear power will destroy the planet. Intelligent people see plant designs that are intrinsically safe, but want to know what we're going to do with the waste.
The ONLY solution the industry has right now is "bury it" (Yucca), "make it someone else's problem" (Arizona's) and "hope we're not around if it is a problem"(whoever is on the planet when Yucca breaks open, or is attacked, or a society 1,000 years from now, which can't read English, trundles into the mysterious cave and comes out with Magical Glowing Glass.)
Industry never changes. Their solutions to waste never change; it's always about hiding it or making it someone else's problem, because those are the cheapest and easiest.
We've got about 50,000 tons of nuclear waste sitting around in various stockpiles across the nation; more than any other hazardous waste, and if you want to get really scared- some of it is sitting in pools of water (because it heats itself constantly) in STEEL CONTAINERS.
The only solution on the table right now is Yucca; only problem is, we're just extending the parameters of "bury a hole" and "be long gone when it becomes a problem." The stuff in Yucca mountain will be around for 100,000 years. There are serious problems with making stuff last that long, making signs that people will understand even 1,000 years from now, geological changes over just a few thousand years, etc.
Please help metamoderate.
Instead of just asking "what can we do to pollute less to produce energy", we should ask "what can we do to WASTE less energy?"
I mean, we can have the most efficient power plants in the world and generate only 10% CO2, but if we keep using incandescent lightbulbs, CRT televisions and XTRA-HOT CPU's, i doubt it'll help.
Instead I'd welcome more investment in solar cells, ultra-efficient lighting and low-heat CPU's.
World Changing had a post last week explaining why nuclear power is not a great solution to fossil fuels. There are three main reasons why they say nuclear is not the answer: 1) They bring up the issue of safety, not only for the reactors but of storing the radioactive waste. 2) Mining the ore needed is a very high impact activity, so the environmental impact might not be any less, although it would likely be concentrated in a few locations. 3) The money to develop and build new nuclear reactors could be more efficiently spent on greener technologies.
When it comes to climate change, nuclear is probably a better option. But in no way is nuclear a green technology, it just alleviates the most pressing issue facing fossil fuel use. What we need to do is develop truly green and renewable energy sources, which doesn't include nuclear.
-Grant
|grant.henninger.name|
It's interesting/funny to read Patrick Moore describing his former colleague in environmental groups:
Ref: Patrick Moore's Nuclear Statement to the US Congressional Committee
I call bullshit on this one. He clearly has the facts wrong.
The article states that the Chernobyl disaster killed just a few firemen who were fighting the fire. In fact many tens of thousands of people already died or will die of some form of cancer as a consequence of the disaster. For the religious among you: it is estimated that there have been 100000 and 200000 abortions because of Chernobyl.
I read the article because I thought it might offer some sensible views on the topic, but in reality it is just a bad piece of lobbying. I wonder why the editors let this slip into the paper.
where's all that Karma?
The problem is time. Radioactive material is radioactive--it decays into stable elements over time. The most radioactive elements will have decayed in less than a thousand years. Nothing is perfectly safe--crossing the street is a greater hazard to you than Yucca mountain will be to anyone. More on topic, spewing radioactive material into the air is probably a tad less safe than depositing it underground, too. And where do you think we get more stable forms of uranium in the first place? It's been in the ground all over the world for a lot longer than 100,000 years.
English is easier said than done.
So really, the two things cancel out.
The only reason we are expected to hear what this guy has to say is because he's advertised as an environmentalist, and primarily identified as the cofounder of greenpeace - I mean, go read the summary to see what is being emphasised. Undermine that, as the GP has done, and he becomes just another average Joe, and one who has little to say that hasn't been said, and who doesn't really have enough experience in the field to make professional judgements. If he believes his arguments can stand on their own two feet, then he shouldn't have misled about his allegiance in the first place.
That said, I am personally ambivalent on the nuclear issue. I don't think there is alot of real information out there on what the full costs/benefits are - supporters and detractors seem to constantly give contradictory assertions, and there doesn't seem to be a strong scientific consensus on it.
That 48 tons of waste per plant per year could be greatly reduced with spent fuel reprocessing. Most other nuclear nations, including the UK and France, go this route, which is a lot more sensible than just burying everything, however due to some really boneheaded decisions made by President Carter, it's never been done recently in the United States.
Until it was banned, we had a whole system under construction for reprocessing spent fuel that would have reduced the scope of the problem we're now faced with. However, in 1977 the research was cut off, and further development and implementation was banned; although President Reagan quietly reversed the ban, nobody has been willing to put money into it. Except of course the military, their ability to manufacture plutonium for weapons purposes was never affected, something which strikes me as endlessly ironic, given that Carter's justification for banning reprocessing was ostensibly to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons.
By processing the spent fuel assemblies promptly (before they sit around and create a lot of secondary contamination) you reduce the volume of waste that has to be stored for long periods, and you also get a non-trivial amount of new fuel back (even out of reactors that aren't specifically designed to breed new fuel). Either one of those goals would make the procedure worthwhile in my opinion, pick your favorite and count the other one as a bonus. Right now we're burying tons of waste which isn't itself that radioactive or long-lived or even toxic, but because it's physically joined to stuff that is. The actual volume of long-lived high-level waste produced by a plant isn't that much, if you do the right reprocessing first.
The plan in the United States was a process called PUREX; you can Google it for more information. The French do their reprocessing at COGMA LaHague, and the Brits do it at a commercial facility called THORP.
More information here as well:
http://chemcases.com/nuclear/nc-13.htm
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Problem: Too much sulfur dioxide is getting into the atmosphere.
Leftist environmentalist solution: Require installation of scrubbers on powerplants when they are upgraded.
What happens?: Powerplants don't upgrade their powerplants. Those that do upgrade then burn cheaper&dirtier coal leaving net pollution even worse.
Conservative environmentalist solution: Implement pollution trading credits.
What happens?: Pollution reduced in the most cost effective way.
Problem: Power production is heavilly dependent on on fossil fuels... long term issue of global warming.
Leftist environmentalist solution: Subsidize wind, solar, geothermal. Campaign against nuclear, hydropower dams, etc...
What happens?: Power prices go up because wind, solar, and geothermal is massively expensive. Also, these alternative energy sources can't produce enough electricity and today we are more reliant on coal than we have been before.
Conservative environmentalist solution: Implement a modest carbon tax and let the market sort the problem out.
What happens?: Unclear because it hasn't been tried! Theory would predict a slow shift towards nuclear, and low carbon emitting technologies.
Problem: A number of species in the United States are close to extinction.
Leftist environmentalist solution: Ban all construction/anything ANYWHERE these species are found.
What happens?: Developers/landowners have huge incentives to follow a policy of "Shoot, Shovel, and Shut-Up" If the federal government finds that a *insertspeciesnamehere* is living on your land, then your land will become worthless. Therefore, if you see a *insertspeciesnamehere* you shoot it, bury it, and don't tell anyone about it. (Don't think this doesn't happen.)
Conservative environmentalist solution:
Pay landowners some fee if *insertspeciesnamehere* is living on their land. They will then have an incentive not to kill it. Also, the government can try to buy the land from the landowner if it is critical habitat for the animal.
What happens?: Species are protected and society as a WHOLE (not just a few unlucky landowners) is paying the cost of protecting the endagered species. This is a more effective and fair solution.
It's quite clear that we haven't gotten every last drop of the stuff out of the ground, nor will we ever. The problems are this. One, our current economic well-being is pretty closely tied to cheap energy, and much of our industrial infrastructure is built around oil. So the calm transitions you describe in the consumer space are in fact tremendously wrenching events over most of the economy, requiring an extraordinary amount of capital investment to retool a lot of things. The other area where you're being a little too sunny is _how_ the prices go up. If a political faction in Turkmenistan knocks out a major pipeline to Europe, world oil prices double overnight, and that decimates oh, say, 64% of the American airline industry, who happened to bet on modest price increases rather than stratospheric ones. You're probably right that oil won't go away, but even forced reductions in its use could be tremendously disruptive.
As you might guess I happen to think the price of energy will in fact go up, and that oil price shocks are a real threat. I also think infrastructure changes and their corresponding investments take a long time, so we'd better get started early and not wait until the market obligates us to move quickly. We can mitigate both the threat of global warming and of oil shocks by having the government make it economically reasonable to plunk down some do-re-mi on a less oil-dependent infrastructure. I've been scoffed at countless times by conservatarian market "purists" who insist that the government can't possibly do something like this, but it's hard to argue away the obligation of good stewardship, both of the economy and of the environment.
Qouting Wikipedia: The primary advantage of a pebble bed reactor is that it can be designed to be inherently safe. As the reactor gets hotter, the rate of neutron capture by 238U increases, reducing the number of neutrons available to cause nuclear fission.
As many have pointed out, while Moore may once have been with greenpeace, he is no longer any sort of environmentalist. Currently he's working for the timber lobby among others and using his former title as founder of greenpeace to dupe people into thinking that he represents the environmentalist movement. A quick search for "Patrick Moore timber" on google will give you the real story.
That said, I personally agree that nuclear power is the best option in most places in the world. It is certainly *not* the perfect option, but the technology has slowly but steadily improved over time, whereas the alternative, fossil fuels, have become more expensive and not a whole lot cleaner.
Solar power has also improved greatly in efficiency over the years, but solar power is only viable in certain places. The same could be said of wind, geo thermal, and hydro power. They are great options where available... but nuclear power represents the only general purpose replacement for hydrocarbons.
My state, Washington, is run almost entirely on hydro power, which provides us with cheap and reliable power. However, even with the large number of damable rivers, there's still excess need for power, which is split pretty evenly between coal and nuclear power. The thing is, that while nuclear is more environmentally friendly, and doesn't rise in cost with increasing fossil fuel prices, it still comes with its own problems. Additionally, cleaning up the hanford nuclear site has been a nightmare, especially for the people downwind... and the federal government has been remarkably slow to clean up the mess they made. This has done a lot to sour public perception of nuclear technology.
If you are interested in nuclear power, hanford is important to consider. The site was of course used for developing weapons (enriching uranium specifically I believe...), but there's a lot to be learned from the cleanup effort... specifically, that it goes very slowly, and that the federal government pinches every dime they can in the effort. I think that the estimated end of the cleanup is sometime in 2030, not counting further delays... Considering that other messes are likely to happen with widespread enough nuclear power, no matter how careful we are, the slowness of federal cleanup efforts could really become a problem.
If we'd just get them going, Department of Energy laboratories could pretty much eliminate the problem, but anytime someone proposes doing that, who do you think blocks it? But then, if you let them create a way to eliminate the waste, you couldn't block nuclear plants by complaining there's nothing to do with the waste.
The parent posts asserts that Driissen promotes junk science. Again, NOWHERE in the Motherjones article does it say that. NOWHERE.
All the article says is that Driessen is a global warming skeptic, is critical of the environmentalist movement, and participants in events put on by conservative think tanks. It's hard to find anything nefarious or evil in that.
Motherjones is a magazine of the political far left, but even it is honest enough not to say the factually incorrect statements svejk is attributing to it.
In the rest of your points you seem to want to destroy things without getting anything useful out of them, so I'm going to assume you aren't trying to go anywhere with those.
it matters scientifically what the cause is in order to find the right antidote, that's true. but psychologically, the blame game is used to defer responsibility
we all have the responsibility to put our hand on the global thermostat and start twiddling. whether its natural or unnatural that the earth is warming is besides the point. its warming. so lets fix that. it might be natural that the earth is warming up, but we like our ecosystems the way they are, so we're going to fight it. which means that mankind is probably going to preserve the earth's global temperature the way it is from 1500-2000 forever, even if naturally it would waver about, hot and cold. and so what?
an asteroid heading towards earth is natural too. but that's not an argument for not deflecting the thing. same with global warming: who cares if its natural or unnatural. it's more important that it's bad, and that we need to fix it. we can apportion cost and blame later. the point is to not apportion blame first, and then do nothing about the problem based on that
if the river is rising because the dam broke, well we better start slinging sand bags. we can find out later if the dam broke because someone dynamited it or it just broke on its own. but it does no good to say "that psycho fred dynamited the dam, so he should fix it!" and then sit back and watch our houses flood
in other words: ok, there's global warming. why? natural processes? or the industrial revolution? well, we know that if we seed dead areas of the ocean with iron, we cause phytoplankton blooms that sequester tons of CO2. so we should do that, regardless of why the world is warming. get it?
of course it still matters why, but we can start fixing the problem, since we all agree there is a problem, before we figure out why we have a problem. this is just being prudent, and having a set of priorities: fix the problem first, apportion blame later. not apportion blame first, and defer responsibility based on that
simple common sense
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The whole H2O thing is just a distraction being pushed by big multi-nationals to try and confuse the issue and prevent them being reined.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/even t-status/event/2006/
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
1. Not a chance solar panels in their current technology could meet 1% of our entire energy needs and. They could. It would just be too expensive. 2. Did you know what crap and environmentally unfriendly energy is required to make a solar panel :)
Yes, that's why research is needed.
Nuclear needs to keep us going for only 30-40 years before we works something else out
Maybe nuclear is our only current option, but we should still invest massively in solar research now. Ask yourself why that isn't happening.
No nuclear power station has ever been fully decommissioned successfully. All of human civilization has a history of about 5000 years, and yet we imagine that we can successfully manage this incredibly deadly poison for thousands of years into the future. And, on the basis of barely 60 years, some so-called experts express "confidence" that there won't be enormous disasters, both accidental and intentional, in the future.
Instead of huge taxpayer subsidies to make more Nukes, and continuing to never really clean them up afterwards, why not spend some research and pricing support $$$ to get solar panels as a standard roofing material on people's houses? (Or, at least stop building and re-roofing houses with black asphalt shingles in hot geographical regions.... an incredibly wasteful practice.)
Seriously. Is there a cabal of fanatically anti-GW mods in action, or something?
... If press reports of the 1970s are not to be taken seriously, those of today regarding the nature and origins of climate change should also be viewed with healthy skepticism.
Let's dissect this piece by piece.
Isn't realclimate.org by the guy who fudged his analysis to generate the discredited "hockey-stick" graph of temperature predictions?
Ad hominem attack. And wrong, because realclimate is a group blog, and the author in question has nothing to do with the hockey stick. And the hockey stick isn't discredited, except in the eyes of a certain small group of people who are often accused of fudging their own maths.
Finally, its clear that there were concerns,[about a potential new ice age] perhaps quite strong, in the minds of a number of scientists of the time. And yet, the papers of the time present a clear consensus that future climate change could not be predicted with the knowledge then available.
And then the page goes on to mention that the knowledge then available was in the absence of GW. i.e. scientists were considering that the Earth would be naturally cooling, if there wasn't a GW effect.
[and present climate knowledge still does not allow reliable predictions]
This line, or sentiment, isn't present in the article at all. It's a direct fallacy of inserting words into someone else's mouth.
So are you attempting to say that: because the concern was not unanimous (it never is) and scientists believed further study was warranted (they always say that) that the concern about global cooling was not common among climate researchers?
No. The point being made by the article was that such concerns were not exhibited in peer reviewed journals. Climate change is. Popular press does not equal peer reviewed journals. Hence, a direct argument that the present situation is identical to that of 'global cooling' is false.
And before some idiot mods this post as troll (like they did earlier to another of mine), can someone please justify precisely what information the parent offers that makes it so 'informative'?
Nuclear power is not safe!
Crossing the street is not safe. But often the benefits outweigh the risks.
Please go tell how safe it is to the thousands of people affected by the Chernobyl accident.
Chernobyl was a disaster for many reasons, most of which have no relevance to modern nuclear plants not run by Communist dictatorships. It is also instructive to look at the number of people killed in coal mining accidents.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Says the species who lives everywhere from the Arctic to the Sahara: "three degrees of warming will kill our civilization".
And if you bought that one, I have some seafront land in Kansas going cheap...
Yes TMI was a success.
TMI illustrated that a nuclear plant can be designed to fail safely. Despite human error the plant shutdown safely, that is a success but a success by the designers not the operators. Stop spreading FUD about TMI and do some actual reading about it.
Sig is on vacation
The West has mostly left orthodox Christian belief, but it is still inherits the culture. Part of that is the need for Apocalypic End Time accounts. The Christians have Revelation, the rest have what lies to hand--the Environmentalists are happy to fill the need. Note: I am not making an argument for or against global warming, but just making a point about the apocalypic language surrounding it.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
As for passive solar, I'm all in favour, but there are several issues:
As to your objections to nuclear, low-level waste is really a nonissue...the stuff is simply not that dangerous compared to the myriad other waste we dump into landfills or spray into the atmosphere. Compared to the thousands of lung cancers caused by radon annually, LLW is a piffling risk. High-level waste is the problem, if mostly a political one. See how Sweden is dealing with it.
Finally, terrorism. Nuclear plants are a pretty tough target. How well defended is the Maroondah reservoir?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
If you run Linux, you spend it masterbating and looking for more fuel for masterbation on the Internet until the the re-compile is done.
If you run MacOS, you spend it bragging about running MacOS until Starbucks closes.
If you run Solaris, you spend it looking for a job where you can still run Solaris.
If you run none of the above, you spend it having a life, playing with your children, or humping your wife.
I run Windows, but I'm getting a divorce, so I will soon be switching to Linux.
I'm all in favor of facts and balance in environmental questions as well. But when it comes to this particular commentator, I think you give Moore too much credit for conviction. It seems he turned his back on the entire environmental movement decades ago. Rather than being a case of a grizzled veteran of the environmental movement taking a hard look at the facts and coming to an uncomfortable conclusion, I think it's a case of a disgruntled ex-employee using his credentials to give his opinions more credibility than they warrant.
The ANWR doesn't have enough oil in it to provide much aid for energy independence. I'm guessing the supporters of drilling fall into four camps: Exxon-Mobil, people who think there is fifty years of oil instead of one, people who want to piss off the hippies, and people who hate moose.
I'm still ambivalent about nuclear energy. Probably safer and cleaner than coal, but anything that makes it easier to get nukes into the hands of crazy people is worrying.
I want my glow-in-the-dark mutant carrots. I'm not really worried about the health effects of GMOs, but I do worry about the monocultures that arise from the hypermechanization of food production. It leaves us extremely vulnerable to disruptions in the food supply.
Finally, I think that much of the anti-environmental movement come from similarly childish notions. In this case, it's the idea that the free market and human grit will overcome all, or that God Almighty gave us dominion over nature, or that we're too puny to have any real effects. There is too much religion on both sides.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
Unfortunately nuclear energy might be the only viable short term solution. There is no way China, Europe or the US will cut their energy consumption to reasonable levels (reasonable as in all the world's population could use the same lever per capita and the world would not melt or blow to pieces like Melmac when they all turned on their hair dryers at the same time). Sustainable energy sources like wind and water energy can't cover the demand. And coal and oil just add too much CO2 to the atmosphere. So we are left with no choice (until we get fusion, cold or hot) but fission.
But please don't get all excited about it. There seem to be accidents in Japanese plants on a regular basis. Pebble reactors are fine, until you count in terrorism. Uranium is also a limited resource. We produce waste. And even if we refurbish the waste (and take care of the last two points) it still produces waste and it will still run out at some point.
There are new studies coming out every month that either radiation from power plants does or does not make a difference in cancer rates. Until we have that figured out we are still in doubt about that one. So I count that as not being very excited about the prospect of nuclear energy.
But you guys are right about one thing. People need to realize that nuclear energy IS the least worse choice out there now. I come from Germany and it is not possible to build power plants here for political reasons. Nobody will! This is rediculous.
You don't get a research grant for saying everything is OK.
You get one like this: "We're doomed. Everybody panic!"
You get the second one like this: "Maybe we have a chance, if I do more research."
"The only solution on the table right now is Yucca"
Well, there's always the reprocessing route. If you use a breeder reactor and waste reprocessing fuel cycle, you can eliminate all of the high level, won't go away for thousands of years waste. Of course, you still have the "low level" waste, but that will go away after a few hundred years (maybe 500 or so to be safe). The great part is that they've figured out how to convert conventional PWR's and BWR's into breeders through advanced computer modeling, so there's no need for any new R&D. The only problem is that it's a lot more expensive than the once through fuel cycle. I guess you can have it clean, or you can have it cheap. Its cheaper and cleaner than coal anyway.
Storing the high level waste isn't really as much as a problem as you think, either. 48 tons of nuclear waste may sound like a lot, but it's really only a few cubic meters. There are salt domes in new mexico that will probably be geologically stable for millions of years (look up the waste isolation pilot plant, WIPP). The only reason yucca mountain is at yucca mountain is politics, it's really a pretty bad location. At any rate, 48 tons of waste per year compares favorably to the hundreds of tones of waste generated daily by a coal plant, in my opinion.
It's worth noting that, while Patrick Moore was indeed a significant part of the start of Greenpeace, he's basically been in the pocket of industry for ages. He's run a salmon farm and called claims that they pollute 'hogwash'. (They do, in fact, pollute.) He's been a front man for the lumber company involved in the deforestation of much of Canada for a long time. He was instrumental in persuading the Pew Charitable Trust not to 'waste its money' on funding environmental groups.
k _Moore
He's the one who said "We found that the Amazon rainforest is more than 90 percent intact." Which is, of course, total bunk. He's basically a greenwasher now... someone who you hire who tells you how to make your industry look more green without actually changing your practices, or whom you hire to do damage control when your industry has just been exposed as a gross polluter, or in some cases even when your industry is about to get much worse and you don't want any flack from it.
Moore's clients have included:
B.C. Hazardous Waste Management Corporation
BHP Minerals (Canada) Ltd. (To claim that dumping mine tailings in a river is not harmful.)
National Association of Forest Industries (heavy loggers)
Westcoast Energy and BC Gas (to play down global warming concerns)
Some sources:
http://www.fanweb.org/patrick-moore/liar.html
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patric
My favorite quote:
Trees and wood are both good! A world without forests is as unthinkable as a day without wood.
Got wood?
-fred
Sign #11 of Slashdot overdose: You see the phrase 'moderate Republican' and you wonder if that would be a +1 or a -1.
Thinking about the future of the human race on this planet calls for long term planning.
Nope. Not so. That would be entirely analogous to the 18th century folks trying to pre-plan the 20th century. Worse than useless!
"Pushing the problem onto future generations" is exactly the correct strategy. It's like one of those computational problems that you can solve fastest by letting it alone for a few years while Moore's law catches up. Future techological problems are best solved with future technology - our best course is to attempt to reach that future as soon as possible. To which end, fuel the economy! Because economic growth is basically the wave-front that's pushing scientific growth.
"The problem is that while technology advanced, we have not built new reactors to take advantage of it."
/ japan/wna-japan.jpg
By "We", I assume you mean the United States, since France and others have been using fast breeder reactors and fuel recycling that never results in weapons grade Plutonium at any point in the cycle, and reduces the actual long term waste to nearly nothing.
The US has held itself back over its continuing collective guilt over ending WWII by using nuclear weapons on Japan. Japan, on the other hand, has 34% of it's electical power coming form 53 reactors, of which the majority are breeder reactors (generate their own plutonium for use as fuel in themselves and other reactors), so it seems they're a heck of a lot less fearful of it than the US is (the US only gets 10% of our electrical power from reactors). http://www.cscap.nuctrans.org/Nuc_Trans/locations
-- Terry
Use fossil fuel? Hell no! It's better to sell that to the west.
Saudia Arabia actually uses nuclear for desalination.
Solar, wind, hydroelectric, tide power, and other technologies _can_ take the place of nuclear and coal power.
I see the future as one without nuclear waste and with decentralized power coming from safe and clean sources. Just because our houses today have high energy demands it does not mean that is how it has to be.
What is wrong with more efficient heating and cooling combined with renewable sources for the future? To hear a bunch of techies debating nuclear technology as the energy source of the future is a little dissapointing.
The author of the Washington Post article is also a spokesman for- drumroll please....the timber industry, the plastics industry, the Three Gorges dam, genetically modified foods [this guys karma is shot so why not shill for the nuclear industry while he is at it?!].
"In an email, former Greenpeace director Paul Watson charges, "You're a corporate whore, Pat, an eco-Judas, a lowlife bottom-sucking parasite who has grown rich from sacrificing environmentalist principles for plain old money." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/moore.htm l
Ouch!
Because much like the Bush administration's restrictions on stem cell research is based on political reasons rather than engineering or science, the Carter administration's position was also based more on politics than science or engineering.
There were groups that wanted it stopped due to opposition to nuclear power in general. There were also groups that wanted it stopped because they thought it was a proliferation risk. The civilian nuclear power industry didn't fight so strongly for it as it was looking to be expensive and it appeared to be easier just to deal with the waste problem later. i.e Kick the can down the road.
I remember when the decision was made. I disagreed then as well. Unfortunately, the political conditions were such that it went ahead. I think it was quite a bad idea.
The claim of shutting reprocessing down for proliferation reasons was questionable.
Yes, being able to do the chemical separation is one part of making plutonium for bomb fuel. However, it's relatively difficult to get useable bomb fuel plutonium from reactor fuel that's been in a normal type power reactor. It has too much of Pu 240 and other higher weight isotopes of Pu. (What you want is relatively pure Pu 239.)
Bomb fuel is made in a reactor specifically engineered to produce less of the higher weight isotopes of plutonium. Normal power reactors produce too much Pu 240.
That makes the engineering for building a bomb out of it much tougher, since the core has to be crushed more quickly (due to large amount of spontaneous neutrons from Pu 240). The material is also much more dimensionally unstable. Pu is a weird metal in many ways and with the higher decay rate (and higher heat production) of the Pu 240, it changes phases and shape. Some of the dimensions of bomb cores are fairly tight tolerance.
The British apparently had a program to make a plutonium bomb from Pu with a high level of heavier isotopes, but gave it up.
This is why the US offered to build light water reactors for North Korea. It wasn't a major proliferation risk. The US reneged on it, but that's another sad tail of international relations.
So, just having reprocessing plants is a bit less of a direct problem for proliferation than is often alleged, since the product of them (unless it came from a special reactor) isn't easy to use as bomb fuel.
It's not that big a worry as far as nongovernment entities. It would be tough for even an advanced terrorist group to make use of the usual output material from a reprocessing plant.
The indirect problem is that if a country has reprocessing plants already, it's harder to monitor that they aren't secretly setting up one of their reactors to make bomb fuel.
So, that's the longwinded explanation of why I agree with the earlier poster that the Carter administration's decision was shortsighted.
Just like I feel that the Clinton administration's decision to shut down research on the IFR was also a shortsighted payback to a political constituency. (The IFR was an advanced reactor that would have produced far less waste, and much shorter lived waste.)
Pebble reactors are fine, until you count in terrorism.
Just the fact that you mention this means that terrorists have already accomplished their goal. They try to make people terrified by stuff that *might* happen by having smaller events happen every now and then.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Its outrageous that not once in Patrick Moore's article did he mention that we should be doing all we can to REDUCE the amount of electricity we use.
Who has a huge inefficient fridge? Who has a 500 watt powersupply, a fat TV, bar radiators and central heating? Who leaves their computers on when they leave work, or even when they go to bed?!
We need to stop looking for replacements for our massive appetite for power and use our brains to develop devices that are energy efficient. Nuclear power will only replace one environmental problem with another, the long term legacy of radioactive waste.
"I may bend your precious airplane, but I'll get it down." Ted Striker
Your information is way out of date (if it ever was true). PV is relatively clean and cost effective now, and per unit these advantages will only improve with increasing volume. We just don't need centralized nukes in the next few decades, propping up a nuclear industry with a history of lies, murder (Silkwood), and pollution, built on government subsidies for R&D and insurance, and initmately associated with WMD production.
On scalability, PV solar systems work well especially when integrated with a system that gets some of its energy during cloudy or nighttime from cogeneration, which could be fueled using hydrogen made elsewhere by solar panels, or by biodiesel fuelds derived from farms, or from synthetic carbon based fuels (like synthetic propane) created from power from solar panels deployed in equatorial areas or the ocean. To see such an solar and cogeneration system working cost effectively in a major northern city, consider:
http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/popup/hhtoronto/works.h tm
"What is truly amazing is that CMHC's Healthy House in Toronto provides all the comforts of home - without using municipal services. It has been designed to rely on sun and precipitation as the basis of its heating, electrical, water and waste water management systems. And right from the start, the way it is built and the materials used in construction mean more comfort, less maintenance and lower operating costs. That goes for the landscaping, too. CMHC's Healthy House in Toronto is located near public transportation, and is designed to provide maximum usable space on a minimum amount of land, to limit air and water pollution, and to use locally available materials and durable renewable resources wherever possible. It is an affordable solution to housing now that will keep on working for many years to come."
On pollution:
http://greennature.com/article641.html
"These differences, however, may not be particularly meaningful, according to Vasilis Fthenakis, a senior chemical engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory who specializes in the potential environmental impacts of solar cells. "There are no significant environmental and safety hazards with any of [the types of solar cells] to the scale that they are manufactured today," he explains. And although there are some hazardous materials used, such as silane gas, cadmium, carbon tetrafluoride, and lead, he says, "if you look at the quantities in relation to their use in other industries, they are very, very small." But these risks will become more significant as the industry grows, he adds."
Still, the fact remains that either we clean up all manufacturing towards zero emissions, or we will be burried in waste and pollution no matter what our energy source. R&D into all forms of low pollution manufacuring in the future will benefit PV.
Overall they make sense right now compare to what we have:
http://www.azom.com/details.asp?ArticleID=1119
"An average U.S. household uses 830 kilowatt-hours of electricity per month. On average, producing 1000 kWh of electricity with solar power reduces emissions by nearly 8 pounds of sulfur dioxide, 5 pounds of nitrogen oxides, and more than 1,400 pounds of carbon dioxide. During its projected 28 years of clean energy production, a rooftop system with 2-year payback and meeting half of a household's electricity use would avoid conventional electrical plant emissions of more than half a ton of sulfur dioxide, one-third a ton of nitrogen oxides, and 100 tons of carbon dioxide. PV is clearly a wise energy investment with great environmental benefits!"
And consider innovative approaches towards lifetime recycling of PV products:
http://www.renewableenergyacc
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Greenpeace just issued a report made in collaboration with 40 ukranian, russian and white russian scientists where they claim that the estimated death toll from the Chernobyl accident has been extremely underestimated by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The IAEA estimated the total death toll to 4000 people. Greenpeace and the east european scientists estimated that 93,000 people died from Chernobyl related cancer cases. Added to that is the immense social costs from the forced relocation of 300,000 people from the local area.
n obyl-deaths-180406
/. bring news from the anti-nuclear lobby and only news planted by the pro-nuclear lobby?
/. crowd going to accept being tricked by the pro-nuclear power plant lobby? That industry have more money than M$. The last two years increased interest is a classic case of an industry manipulating the public opinion. Do the friendly Linux crowd accept to be manipulated by big business and slick spin doctors? Does anybody?
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/cher
Now, I have a few questions.
Why doesn't
How long are the
And regarding the article: How do we remove the CO2 emissions from the mining, transport and processing of the nuclear fuel? In reality those emissions are so big that nuclear power plants only emits 30% as much CO2 as a traditional coal powered plant.
Nuclear Power is a non-renewable power source. Why not just skip directly to investments in renewable power sources instead of relying on costly, risky, centralized Nuclear Power plants?
Fesible nuclear technology like Integral Fast reactors, a proven and operational concept, and newer Sub critical reactor technology, like thorium based reactors are ignored in these discussions. These are the REAL nuclear alternatives.
It seems to me that these discussions are heavily politicised in favour of the current generation of nuclear plants with no regard to the newer and safer nuclear technologies. Facts ignored, like the gross inefficiencies of the current generation of nuclear reactors, the production of Plutonium as a waste product and the amount of time those waste products are deadly for do nothing to promote an argument in favour of nuclear as an alternative. In particular the Half Life of those isotope's, before it becomes the next deadly element - with an even longer halflife in the millions or billions of years, are treated with a 'head in the sand' attitude that illustrates the ignorance prelavent in these discussions.
Furthermore baseload arguments are used to write off wind and solar technology simply because solutions to these baseload issues, i.e Solar and Wind production of Hydrogen for example, have not been explored.
Attacks on Green groups are made because they make arguments about 'Evil Corporations' (even though corporations are LEGALLY OBLIGED to externalise risk to protect shareholder interest), and while I have no interest in the emotional attachment some green groups have to their arguments, it's at least equivalent to the emotional attachment I see here wrt discussions about current nuclear technology.
Which is to externalise the waste component of nuclear power generation to some other generation and just let them deal with it. How can anyone justify such short term thinking and claim it as a viable solutions to the worlds energy demands.
I wonder how many of you in favour of nuclear power are prepared to put your own money into building a new concrete bunker over Chernobyl or your time lobbying your politicians into supporting contributions to same? How can anyone be expected to take nuclear seriously when the current mess still hasn't been cleaned up properly.
Until a realistic look at newer nuclear technology that has better inherrent saftey is conducted, Chernobyl scale events should be expected to occur every few decades, and there is no way this can be considered 'Viable' or 'Environmentally Friendly'.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.