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The IPCC's Shifting Position On Nuclear Energy
Lasrick writes Suzanne Waldman writes about the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and its stand on nuclear power over the course of its five well-known climate change assessment reports. The IPCC was formed in 1988 as an expert panel to guide the drafting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, ratified in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The treaty's objective is to stabilize greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a safe level. Waldman writes: 'Over time, the organization has subtly adjusted its position on the role of nuclear power as a contributor to de-carbonization goals," and she provides a timeline of those adjustments.
Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power. Wind is a good bit better but still needs natural gas peaking plants to back it.
For low carbon base load power you have only three choices.
1. Hydro
2. Nuclear
3. Geothermal.
1 and 3 are location limted.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
In addition to the well known nuclear waste issue and well proven dangers of plant meltdowns, you also have proliferation issues with rogue states claiming peaceful use, liberation of waist heat dumped to the environment, and even after that, the more nuclear power you create, the more you get people used to unlimited power and the more their thirst for cheap fossil fuel power. The answer is conservation and population control, not escalation of generation.
Exactly how many nuclear disasters does it take before we figure out we should be using newer, safer, cleaner nuclear technology?
FTFY.
1 with a modern reactor?
So far we've had a partial meltdown that hurt nobody, an "accident" so cartoonishly stupid that it should more accurately be called insider sabotage, and an outdated reactor that was hit with multiple extreme natural disasters simultaneously.
These emotional knee-jerk reactions from Japan, Germany and others are counterproductive and could hurt financially if any kind of global carbon-trading scheme is put in place. Besides, I prefer my nuclear waste nice and contained rather than flowing continuously from the smokestack of a coal power plant.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Exactly how many nuclear disasters does it take before we figure out how to do what these other countries are already doing?
Nuclear energy is just about the safest form of energy: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
Energy is really, really dangerous, end of story. Nuclear is somehow the "scariest," but not because it's statistically more dangerous.
Concerns about rising costs seem to have come and then faded away with new technology.
Concerns about rising costs have NOT faded away. Nuclear costs are higher than ever, and rising, as costs of other power sources continue to fall. Post-Fukushima safety measures will raise costs. Waste storage will raise costs. Reduced subsidies will raise costs. Fuel reprocessing actually raises costs rather than reducing them. New technologies, such as pebble beds, thorium fluoride, traveling wave reactors, are decades away, even if they work at all.
There may be good reasons to build new nukes, but cost is not one of them.
And, while they are still debating all this, nuclear has been and continues to be the single energy technology that has already offset huge amounts of carbon generation. Nobody seems to want to give nuclear credit for what its already done.
> the single energy technology that has already offset huge amounts of carbon generation
Hydro. Longer and more. By far.
> Nobody seems to want to give nuclear credit for what its already done.
Says the guy that forgets about hydro.
Nuclear is so much more expensive than wind, that using it slows the progress of clean energy by tying up resources. http://will.illinois.edu/nfs/R...
Fuel reprocessing actually raises costs rather than reducing them.
Only if you accept externalizing costs on future generations as a $0 cost.
New technologies, such as pebble beds, thorium fluoride, traveling wave reactors, are decades away, even if they work at all.
Baloney - Integral Fast Reactors were ready for commercialization in the early 90's. Al Gore was the chief mover in the effort to cancel the program after the demonstration reactor ran for a couple years without problems. It's not like he had any motive to see a solution to greenhouse gases get mothballed.
IFR's are, of course, famous for consuming the existing nuclear waste (turning 300,000 year problems into 60-year problems) and recognizing the costs now. That's why they were designed and built in the first place.
Would it take decades to build the 1200 plants we'll need as a species? You betcha - we should have started 20 years ago; Obama won't even return Branson's phone calls about funding it and he's been trying since 2009 - the problem is political, not technological or fiscal. AGW is a perfect power grab and all technological 'solutions' are exactly non-solutions for that very reason. Politicians are demonstrably more dangerous than CO2 or methane.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Nuclear power was never an important part of Quebec's power network (roughly around 0.2% of total); it's network is almost entirely made up of hydro dams.
Due to political intervention, Ontario has one of the worst managed power systems in the world but no matter how hard the Liberal government of Ontario keeps trying to shutdown down nuclear there is no way for them to do it. Even with them paying an above market price premium for 'green' energy they can't simply can't replace the 58% of the system that comes from nuclear. They've even had to restart previously shutdown reactors to meet demand and while they did scrap the plans to build 2 new reactors (though that might change) they are retrofitting their current reactors too extend their lifespans.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
But Barnham does not really scrutinize the issue at all. For all his discussion of "rigor" and error bars in the collection of estimates, it does not consider the various components of the CO2 estimates except for one, which is apparently where most of the high CO2 release estimate comes: the assumption that uranium will be extracted from rock with a uranium content of 0.005% or less. This is the "yellow coal" scenario - at this concentration, using once-through U-235 burning only (boosted by in situ produced actinide burning) as in current reactors, the uranium ore contains no more energy than does coal.
But this is not a likely source of uranium in the future. Seawater is. It contains 1000 times as much uranium as the "yellow coal" ore, and can be extracted at a much lower energy cost, and a lower dollar cost as well.
We can estimate the energy cost of uranium from seawater by considering how it is collected, by immersing special polymer fabrics in seawater, to which the uranium ions attach. Polymers exist that have shown the ability to collect over 10% of their mass in uranium, and may be substantially reusable. The energy cost (and dollar cost) of manufacturing the polymers, deploying them, and stripping the uranium from them is considerably lower than mining and refining "yellow coal" uranium ore. Estimates of current seawater extraction technology are actually lower than the peak spot price of uranium already seen.
Nuclear power opponents dismiss seawater uranium with the argument that it is speculative, since no one produces uranium from this source yet. There is a good reason for that. We haven't exhausted supplies of richer ore yet, and thus don't need it. The fact that no one yet mines uranium ore with a uranium content of 0.005% either somehow does not trouble them in making their projections (the lowest grade ore currently mined is about ten times more concentrated than that).
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
What evidence do you have that the newer technology is going to be significantly safer and cleaner? So far most of the accidents have been due to things like not investing enough money in maintenance and general incompetence. You can have a wonderful Rube Goldberg safety system but if left to rust it isn't going to be much help.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
One of the things to remember is that whilst Human Beings have a vested interest in their survival and will do anything to survive, the same can be held true for the Nuclear Industry. The Nuclear Industry has a vested interest in shaping people's worldview to influence the industries' survival and utilizes enormous resources to convince people of their case.
This leads me to the IPCC. In reading the 2007 report I noticed that one of their sources of information to assess the viability of Nuclear energy on climate change is a document produced by an organization with a vested interest in promoting Nuclear power, Vattenfall. I read it back in 2005 (sorry I can't find a link). Rather than a study it's called a "Environmental Product Declaration" which was written to comply with Swedish regulations in 2004, it has not been peer reviewed and was "certified" until 2007. For example, it paints an optimistic picture of the Nuclear Industry's energetic return from mining and Uranium availability through to reactor decommissioning. So it appears this commercial document has been used to deceive the IPCC.
However, a formal, peer reviewed energy analysis from Nuclear Industry Scientists is available to the IPCC in a study called Nuclear Power Insights that uses established scientific methods to arrive at their conclusions. It is a comprehensive and fascinating read, which is in line with the scope and size of the nuclear industry and dispels many of the assumptions surrounding the nuclear industry. In, short the formal analysis assesses the ability of the Nuclear Industry to provide a "net energy return" based on energetic inputs and finds that roughly two thirds of its output is consumed by industrial processes external to the actual production of nuclear power. The carbon intensity of the nuclear industry is also examined.
It was quite confronting to have my worldview of Nuclear Power challenged and I had to take bites out of reading it to avoid being overloaded, however it was worth the effort in dispelling many of the long held assumptions and replacing them with good information and fact.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.