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Former Anti-Nuclear Activist Does A 180
palegray.net writes "Wired is running a story on how Gwyneth Cravens, a former nuclear power protester has changed her views on nuclear power as a viable solution to the world's energy needs. Said Cravens: 'I used to think we surely could do better. We could have more wind farms and solar. But I then learned about base-load energy, and that there are three forms of it: fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear. In the United States, we're maxed out on hydro. That leaves fossil fuels and nuclear power, and most of the fossil fuel burned is coal.'"
I'm always pleased to hear about an activist (doesn't matter what kind) publicly admit they were wrong after learning more about the subject. Firstly because they took the initiative to actually research something instead of taking as gospel anything those around them say. Secondly because they're big enough to admit they were wrong. I just wish more activists would do the same.
Yes, and the CSIRO has been telling our government that the whole country could easily be run from renewables for at least the past decade.
The CSIRO also identified the base load issue as a red-herring - hint: in a geographically large country such as Australia, the US, or Canada, the wind is always blowing somewhere. Wind & Hydro provide the base load for other renewables (solar, tidal, wave, geothermal), just as Hydro currently provides a fast switch "base load" for coal fired plants (that require scheduled shutdowns for maintenance and even then they still break down from time to time).
However our politicians after doing their best to ingnore the issue (lest it affect our coal exports) have been busy colluding with the likes of GWB and GE for the last few years in an attempt to monopolise the nuclear fuel industry.
It seems to be working quite well if you consider the price hike in Uranium over the last 5yrs or so. IMHO the main reason for this state of affairs is not money but the fact that renewable energy can not (easily) be used as an international political lever in the way that fossil fuels have been since WW2.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The problem with renewable resources is the people in power, by not being able to control nature, have no means to control production.
Our society will embrace socialism before it embraces renewable energy as a replacement for fossil/nuclear power.
This isn't renewable energy's problem - just our society.
There is no *waste* that lasts 100,000 years. Most of the isotopes currently viewed as waste are very good sources of energy. Current reactors are not even built to utilize most of the fuel but to generate nuclear weapons hence the so called *waste*. For example, UK now has a problem with all the *waste* Plutonium being generated by its power plants!! That is the insanity! Plutonium is a better power source than U-235 if you have a real energy reactor. One of the few truly civilian reactors are the CANDU reactors designed in Canada. They utilize heavy water and breed Plutonium and use it for energy at the same time. No Plutonium *waste* there. Heck, they are used now to get rid off the US extra nuclear stockpiles - stuff that can't be handled by US reactors mailing because of the Plutonium content.
:)
Secondly, don't be freaked out about radiation so much. If you were transparent to radiation such that a Geiger counter would see all the radiation going off inside of you (where the damage is done), it will go into a nice high pitched, continuous whine. You sid/madam, contain enough radioactive radioactive potassium for about 5000 events per second. Add that nice trails of cosmic muons hitting out every 0.5-1 second (enough to go right through you and ionize LOTS of stuff), and you are positively glowing
Also, coal has 2-3 ppm uranium and about 5ppm thorium (means, 1,000,000 pounds of coal have 2-3 pounds of uranium and 5 ponds of thorium). Since US burns about 2200 times that http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/coal/page/special/feature.html, US alone is releasing about 5000 pounds of Uranium and 10,000 pounds of Thorium into the air. Ok, there are those precipitators, but only about 50% effective on these things (unlike soot). So, about 1 metric ton of Uranium goes poof, into the air *NOW* in the US.
Anyway, most of the so called *waste* can be recycled. You only end up with maybe one small barrel of waste per large nuclear plant per year. That is much cheaper to watch that one can for 10,000 years than letting all the mercury from the coal power plants pollute the lakes such that we can't even fish there anymore. Sad.
http://www.computare.org/Support%20documents/Publications/Fission%20Fuel%20Conservation.htm
BTW: Uranium is not HOT. ANYTHING that has a 10,000 year half-life, by definition, is NOT hot. HOT stuff has a life time of seconds or minutes or maybe up to a few days. Hot stuff is used in medicine.