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4 Prominent Scientists Say Renewables Aren't Enough, Urge Support For Nuclear
First time accepted submitter Paddy_O'Furniture writes "Four prominent scientists have penned a letter urging those concerned about climate change to support nuclear energy, saying that renewables such as wind and solar will not be sufficient to meet the world's energy needs. Among the authors is James Hansen, a former top NASA scientist, whose 1988 testimony before the United States Congress helped launch discussions of global warming into the mainstream."
Geothermal and Solar have basically the same problem. Quite plentiful, way more than we'll ever use until we become truly space going (centuries) but dispersed enough that gathering and storing it becomes impractical.
The main problem with renewable sources isn't the availability, it's the storage for later use. Coal/oil/uranium already have this part solved by nature, though with all the downsides that go with them. Dams solve the storage issue for hydro, but can't really be built in many more places than they are already and have their own negatives as well.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium#Reserve_estimates
Lowest pollution? I guess little things like Windscale, Tchernobyl, and Fuckushima are removed from that calculation...
Nope. Go ahead and include them. You'll get to about .1% of the emissions of coal power plants with every nuclear disaster. Ever. Including all of the nuclear bomb tests, the two bombs we dropped on Japan, three mile island, and more.
Fun fact: Coal plants collectively emit more radiation in a year than all those disasters combined have, and that's when you include into the figures the yearly radiation the nuclear plants emit into the environment as well.
Coal: Because glowing green is fun.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
The price of uranium is about $35/lb ($77.16/kg) at the moment, and it costs about $40/lb ($88.18/kg) to produce the stuff at the moment[1]. 1kg of uranium gives you 83TJ of energy, the same as 3464 tonnes of coal. Coal costs $71.34 per tonne[2], so to get the same amount of energy from 1kg of uranium in coal, you would need to spend $247,133.65.
The fact that uranium is currently selling for less than the cost of production suggests that there is a massive surplus of inventory in the channel at the moment, not that resources are limited.
Sources:
1. http://www.businessinsider.com/uranium-is-set-for-a-violent-move-higher-2013-10
2. http://dawn.com/news/1053697/rising-coal-prices-to-hit-profit-margins
Funny you should mention Thorium.
Here are a couple of letters (postal+email) I have written to Senator Inhofe and Halliburton Corporate. They express my sense of urgency. I invite everyone to review them and comment. Flames are welcome too. Whopee! I have a 'foe' now! Movin' on up.
And if your own process of discovery also leads you to some conclusion that is best expressed by getting the word out -- please do so. Whether you are not a thorium advocate, please consider the underlying issue, the necessity for an urgent PUSH to develop energy independence.
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate
It's about keeping the lights on.
Thanks for reading this, that and the other thing.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Er, no. Fukushima alone has put out about order of magnitude more radiation than every coal plant in the history of the world ever. This response completely debunks the article you linked to, and this chart shows how what was released from Chernobyl compares to all coal and nuclear emissions ever combined.
In fact the paper that the article you linked to is based on doesn't even support what the article says, but I guess you didn't read it.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
IAAESS (I am an energy system scientist).
These are four of the most prominent *climate* scientists in the world. But not one of them has published a single paper on energy systems (as far as I can see in their online lists of publications). There is a whole field of science concerning integration of intermittent renewables, and these guys have never demonstrated any expertise in this area.
I'm sure all four of them get extremely annoyed when scientists in fields completely unrelated to climate change spout climate skeptic nonsense all over the media (I do too). Now they are guilty of the exact same sin.
Unfortunately no-one has been able to build a viable commercial scale breeder reactor. You could try again but good luck getting investment on such a risky prospect.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
There is no such thing as a "meltdown-proof" design. All reactors can suffer catastrophic failure that releases radioactive material into the surrounding environment. It would be more accurate to say the alternative designs you have mentioned are meltdown-resistant, in the same way bulletproof glass isn't truly bulletproof... you just need a bigger gun.
Thorium reactors by design are meltdown proof.
Om, nomnomnom...
Er, no. Fukushima alone has put out about order of magnitude more radiation than every coal plant in the history of the world ever. This response completely debunks the article you linked to, and this chart shows how what was released from Chernobyl compares to all coal and nuclear emissions ever combined.
Ok, lets use the information from stack exchange. They quote the uranium limits from coal plants as being less than 10 parts per million. Lets use 10% of that as the baseline. 1 part per million. The annual coal emissions are on the order of 1.7 billion *tons* of CO2 per year. 1 part per million would be on the order of 1700 tons of uranium per year. By contrast, Chernobyl had about 180 tons of nuclear material, and blew up once... Fukushima had about 10 times that much at the facility, the vast majority of which never left the facility. Three mile island contained all but trace amounts of the core material.
So in the history of nuclear power, coal has released somewhere in the neighborhood of 85,000 tons of uranium into the atmosphere, and all of the nuclear accidents combined have released... wait for it... less than 300 tons.
Wow, just wow.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
France gets 80% of its power from nuclear, so your "over 50%" number doesn't really ring true.