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Why James Hansen Is Wrong About Nuclear Power (thinkprogress.org)
mdsolar writes: Climatologist James Hansen argued last month, "Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change." He is wrong. As the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and International Energy Agency (IEA) explained in a major report last year, in the best-case scenario, nuclear power can play a modest, but important, role in avoiding catastrophic global warming if it can solve its various nagging problems — particularly high construction cost — without sacrificing safety. Hansen and a handful of other climate scientists I also greatly respect — Ken Caldeira, Tom Wigley, and Kerry Emanuel — present a mostly handwaving argument in which new nuclear power achieves and sustains an unprecedented growth rate for decades. The one quantitative "illustrative scenario" they propose — "a total requirement of 115 reactors per year to 2050 to entirely decarbonise the global electricity system" — is far beyond what the world ever sustained during the nuclear heyday of the 1970s, and far beyond what the overwhelming majority of energy experts, including those sympathetic to the industry, think is plausible.
If it doesn't solve it completely, don't do it at all. Selectively applied of course..
mdsolar, this is absolute trash. No citations, only "it can't work". Fuck you and your worthless do nothing attitude. Please leave. You are approaching Bennett Haselton levels here. No, actually, he prodives bad arguments and poor citations. This is actually worse. This is Jon Katz level.
Climate change scientists are prone to exaggeration. Exaggerated claims about threats, exaggerated claims about temperature increases, exaggerated claims about remedies. But the guys who say it's NOT the end of the world are name-called. Because telling dramatic stories is how you get money and power without earning it.
{anything} is the only viable path to {anything}
Is wrong by definition.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
In all these debates I'm always amazed how the simple "big picture" of the physics involved is disregarded. It all boils down to energy density. Is there any other power generation technology that comes close? The only other alternative is to reduce our energy usage and if that ain't gonna happen you need to build lots of reactors producing lots of energy. Sure you can cover the surface of the Earth in solar panels I suppose, but that seems to be a bit of a maintenance headache (not to mention the energy cost of creating the panels in the first place). It seems to me all the negatives of nuclear boil down to the cost of making it safe which surely we can do a more efficient job of? We can't keep holding out hope for fusion, we need to make plans for relying on fission for the foreseeable future.
present a mostly handwaving argument in which new nuclear power achieves and sustains an unprecedented growth rate for decades
Well at least they are moving up in the world. Handwaving is definitely an improvement from the statistical manipulation they have been using to foist global warming on the world.
Nuclear powers' 'various nagging problems' won't be an issue if we started using thorium-based reactors.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The proposal also runs out of uranium before all the reactors are built. http://slashdot.org/journal/53...
A climate scientist making a hand wavy argument. Big surprise! :P
Look to where they have invested their money. All will be revealed.
If you're going to complain about high construction costs it's worth looking at what has caused those costs. Nuclear power is completely unaffordable. We simply can't build any more plants. Yet somehow the world has built hundreds already with many in the USA which currently has very cheap power. The east is still building them. So what is this mythical high cost? After all the cost of materials has reduced, the cost of construction has only increased marginally and the designs these days aren't very complicated from a control perspective.
Oh that's right regulatory overhead.
Thermal power plant need cooling and nuclear need the most to protect the fuel. Already cooling resouces are limited and will become more so. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
James Hansen is right about this. Nuclear reactor technology has advanced to the point that safe-by-design reactors can be built, with technology that prevents meltdown in the event of total power and coolant failure. No other technology offers the energy density necessary to replace fossil fuel power plants.
The one quantitative "illustrative scenario" they propose — "a total requirement of 115 reactors per year to 2050 to entirely decarbonise the global electricity system"
Who can write this with a straight face ? The premise that humankind should emit no carbon is ridiculous, even if you subscribe to the global doom claims. Even if you do feel that your net carbon emission should be zero (be sure not to get cremated) since when is Atomic Power the only non carbon emitting source of energy ?
The Proposal is for currently available reactor designs.
Now why would I possibly think this idiot has a horrible bias?
RTFA http://thinkprogress.org/clima...
Thorium reactors.
This is climatologists thinking someone else's technology will solve their problem. And it is a dangerous argument since it is both unrealistic and will sideline any real solutions. There are many ways to reduce carbon emissions. The problem is not that they are intellectual puzzle as is the case with nuclear power, but they have powerful opposing political and economic interests. The technological problem with nuclear power is that no one has come up with a passively safe design. Safety systems that depend on human intervention have been shown to be impossible to implement and maintain consistently, at least in a commercial environment. We can't even maintain safety and quality control standards during the construction phase. We repeatedly have had nuclear plants fail at least in part because they weren't constructed to spec.
Has a breeder program. Sounds like a great plan.
mdsolar's point isn't that we should build no new nuclear, at least not in this thread. His point is that nuclear can't, in and of itself, decarbonize the electric sector. We simply don't have the capacity to build that many nuclear power plants simultaneously, nor do we have the fuel, nor do we have the money.
The first one might be overcome. After all, if world leaders were able to simultaneously lay out this plan and get political support for it, part of the plan would include training more engineers, trades, and other jobs necessary. We might not be able to build 100 per year in 2016 (or even 2020), but we could ramp up.
The second one might be overcome. After all, with pressure for more fuel, we might go out and find more fuel, develop new techniques to find, recover, and process more fuel, etc. I doubt we could overcome it, but generally speaking if we went "long" on nuclear, at least some more fuel would turn up.
The third one is the toughest. Nuclear power, today, is more expensive than wind and in some places, more expensive than solar. Given that wind and solar don't have the political opposition, don't have 10-15 year lags from "let's build it" to "let's turn it on", and can be built in more places at far smaller increments, it's really tough to argue that we should spend the money on nuclear when there are cheaper options. But -- that could change. Improving the regulatory climate could help lower construction costs, as could improvements in design. Wind and solar $/kW will continue to fall for a while, but perhaps their supply inputs will become scarce and, at least for wind, the locations for the best wind become scarce. At some point in the future it's possible that the $/kWh for nuclear will become cheap enough, but it's not there now.
My view: don't put any option off the table, but let's spend our money to get the most decarbonization per buck. Right now, that means going long on energy efficiency, retiring the old coal units, building wind and solar where we can, and keeping (most) nuclear units already built up and running, so long as their safety is secure. Simultaneously, we should price carbon appropriately, eliminate subsidies on oil, coal, and gas, and be working to lower the cost of all no-carbon generating options using both technology and regulatory approaches. All of those things, together, will result in a steady least cost decarbonization of our electric sector, and if/when/where nuclear can beat out wind and solar, so be it.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
The U.S. depends on the hegemony of its dollar for oil transactions. It can control these transactions to guarantee the sovereignty of its currency and thus its value, no matter how much it prints. Unless the U.S. can force suppliers of nuclear fuel to accept only U.S. dollars, they will not allow any energy scenario to supplant oil.
There are two problems with solar: night and clouds. There is one problem with wind: it's not always windy. Wind installations are typically combined with natural gas burners to supplement electricity when it's not windy enough.
Nuclear is the only power source that can handle a huge load constantly without interruption. That is why Hansen supports it, because if you want to stop releasing CO2 into the atmosphere without messing up our lifestyles, it's the only way with current technology.
The article cites this paper, which claims to have found a way to handle electricity generation from wind/water/solar while dealing with the interruptions. It assumes by 2050 all residential and commercial heating will have thermal storage, like this community in Alaska. It is up to you to decide if that is a reasonable or practical assumption.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Existing plants are too expensive to run and are closing. http://insideclimatenews.org/s... Nuclear in not cheap at all.
With a name like MDSolar, it's clear where the bias lies in this author.
The fact is nuclear power is the only reliable, clean source of fuel. It's primary issues relate to the initial up front cost and the lack of scalability day to day to meet the power grid's demands. However the next generation of reactors will solve the cost problem; most are moving to a modular concept for the Gen 4 reactor where the reactors can be mass produced in a factory and rail shipped to a location for installation, which can reduce the overall cost by 80 to 90%. These reactors already exist, as the reactors used on submarines and aircraft carriers are already that size.
Wind is to unreliable and expensive. Solar is good but you're a fool if you think it's free; solar arrays and the power lines needed to bring them to the grid are hugely maintenance heavy so it's cost effectiveness is minimal. Nuclear is by far the best option.
Build them in Mexico. Pipe the electrons up here. Mexico will be told: build the wall or build our power plants. Need more then same with Canada.
But capable of %80. It's going to take a combination of everything. Run nuclear the backbone but use up renewable where and when you can get it.
And I'll gladly live next to a reactor if I get a little something out of it... like free power for life. You could build it in the desert and I'd move right next to it and just crank up the AC.
But really we need to focus more on small thorium reactors with enough classic reactors to breed the thorium. And truly our country needs to get off it's ass and start recycling nuclear waste.
The biggest problem nuclear has is the "3 Mile Island", "Chernobyl", "Fukushima" effect. Basically, when things go bad, they can go REALLY bad. Then of course, there was the San Onofre maintenance issue which generated a ton of bad publicity - in a highly populated area; ultimately leading to the shutdown of the reactor. People don't like the idea of being radiated; and understandably so. It is an extremely high hurdle to restore public confidence. Even those who claim to be "pro-nuclear" would say "yes, fine, as long as it isn't in my back yard". The new designs are far safer and more efficient. The industry needs to now solve the PR issue before it can gain traction again - which means an expensive campaign. Nothing is going to change until that happens.
Sloth: Sticking our heads in the sand rather than making the science better solves nothing.
Thorium: Pretty much not able to go critical. The flaws are very high corrosion of the system but thorium is plentiful planet-wide.
Solar: In the end, it's the way to go - but it will take a while before commercial production is at a cost-effective price point.
Wind: Yeah, right. Inconsistent with horrible returns on investment (18 yr payup).
Storage: using lead batteries in cars all over the planet to store energy at night has serious long-term consequences...
Best bet: A combination of solar and hydro: daytime sun pumps water to run turbines at night...
Meantime: We don't have a choice about cutting down on carbon output so let's go nuclear.
Lastly: We are not tackling the issue of methane from animal husbandry. This eclipses all other pollutants and is being ignored as a major contributor.
*** Don't be dull.***
Barring breakthroughs in fusion or another new energy source, the only solution to climate change is that 1st world countries are going to have to reduce their standard of living. Ultimately it will happen one way or the other.
Offshore wind looks to have a good chance at getting very cheap. The capacity there is overwhelming.
Let's first fully exploit:
- Solar, wind, wave, ocean-current, and deep geothermal, supplemented with
- large-scale grid-storage (not rocket-science, just some capital investment)
- transcontinental high-voltage DC transmission lines to move power across weather-systems, ground-temperature zones, and daylight timezones.
And let's invest 50x more funds to speed up fusion reactor research,
Then and only then let's invest in the safest new nuclear technologies if needed, given the known high-impact risks including nuclear weapons proliferation.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Barring breakthroughs in fusion or another new energy source, the only solution to climate change is that 1st world countries are going to have to reduce their standard of living. Ultimately it will happen one way or the other.
Unless, of course, it doesn't happen one way or another. The problem with this sort of thinking, is that you completely ignore technology or population reduction. Most of what we want doesn't require emission of CO2 or exponential population growth. Technology is well on its way to disentangling standard of living from a reliance on fossil fuels.
And one of the obvious things missed here is that a higher standard of living and wealth translates into negative population rates. By ruling out higher standards of living, you are creating a permanent climate problem of continual human exponential population growth followed by environmentally catastrophic die-offs.
I have always suspected that the high upfront cost of new reactors is primarily caused by the Greens' legal delay strategy. Stretch the construction timetable out far enough, and bonding cost will eventually eat up any conceivable budget. Look to China to see what can be done where Greens have no input to the process. According to Reuters, China is building eight reactors of the standard AP-1000 design for $24 billion. In the US, we are close to spending about that much for just one new plant.
And yes, the China program went through the same post-Fukushima safety check cycle as in Japan. Like Japan, they chose to proceed.
The rate of fusion research was set when we figured out we'd run out of uranium and coal around 2100. That was back in the 1970s. The rate is pretty much fixed because the work force has too have PhDs to do the work and you have to have PhD advisors to get more PhDs. Big bottleneck. There are some nonstandard approaches, but the big programs can't be accelerated much.
Was it also impossible for the US to produce 124,000 warships during WWII? http://www.nationalww2museum.o...
What science is "science settled" said about? CO2 **IS** a GHG. Settled. We ARE producing it. Settled. What do you think you are referring to (and where is this proof that it happens) when you complain about that?
We *HAVE* an agreement. Just like we have an agreement that slavery is bad, murder is bad, theft is bad, and so on. What on earth are you referring to when you complain about that?
And what the fuck is all this BS about "sophists"?
When the petrol company demands payment, are they these sophists demanding money????
Until we make a concerted national effort to maximize renewables throughout the grid and the country, any new nuclear should remain on the design table where it belongs. Nuclear will always be a neutron source and always result in a large amount of very toxic and persistent byproducts, and must be a last resort, always. Don't even consider a new nuclear reactor until sun, wind, water, tides, and even fart energy has been harvested to the max, or else you're just a mouthpiece for an industry looking to grift profits on the back of a government and citizenry left to clean up your mess.
Cute! Non-operating plants like Fukushima and Chernobyl have good safety records too....
You might like this http://slashdot.org/journal/25...
In all these debates I'm always amazed how the simple "big picture" of the economics involved is disregarded. . .
/.ers likes to fantasize a world not run by businessmen, and that is fine as long you realize that is just a fantasy. The current world is driven by business and the economic environment that shapes business decisions (though, this may not apply to the basement dwellers that frequent this site . . .).
The nature of some technologies result in centralized and monopolistic markets. In contrast, some technologies are conducive to decentralized and competitive markets. In the end, commoditization wins through rapid advancements and by pricing everything else out of the market. For instance, look at all the centralized land phone lines NOT being installed in Africa, yet phone usage is booming.
I know
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
ThinkProgress is the political blog of the "Center for American Progress", a highly partisan political organization. Romm himself is also highly partisan, and the argument in his article is a political one, not a scientific one. In short, please keep this partisan political crap off Slashdot.
But I first need one answer: What are we going to do with the waste?
I am certainly NOT going to accept that companies build reactors, reap the profits and then miraculously go out of business when the reactors are no longer profitable and society gets the spent fuel dumped on its back. Anyone building a nuclear reactor must prove that he not only has a plan for how to get rid of the waste but also the monetary background to do so. That money could e.g. be parked in government bonds, these things tend to have a long run time, much like those reactors.
And we can ensure that way that the companies will clean up after themselves when everything's said and done. Because that's the one problem we face today whenever one of those things go out of business: They are dumped upon the population and we're stuck with a rotting piece of radioactive trash that costs a fortune to get rid of.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Solar panels are made of sand and are 200 times more energy dense than coal. You've made a mistake in your assumptions.
For industry xyz to take off, you need laws/policies supporting xyz. To get the laws, you need the 1% to support. Nuclear is a technology which can benefit everyone in the long run (all physics principles, energy density, etc); but it doesn't benefit the 1% now. It only negatively affects them (like revenue loss to coal industry/ solar/ wind etc). So unless the industry is going to benefit the 1% and it's in a such way they reap the lions share of the profit, the industry is not going to take off. As we know, it's democracy only in the name.
Cost of producing nuclear is cheaper per watt than alternate energy. In addition there are some pretty good arguments to be made nuclear, with its small physical footprint, is also friendlier to the environment. (despite its hazards).
Nuclear got a bad reputation due to Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. All the eco-crazies were taken seriously in an over reaction. It never recovered from its bad rep. Now everything something goes wrong... same over reaction over and over again.
However... uf we had stuck with nuclear in the 80s... that extra 30 years of funding research would likely have meant much safer and even more efficient reactors today's (and made the issue of Co2 much smaller) Doom sayers want us to repeat the same mistakes.
It's not that we can't also peruse alternate energy like solar, wind, etc...... but without a strong future for nuclear power mankind will be hobbled (e.g. good luck colonizing mars and moons of outer planets without nuclear)
If we build a large number of reactors we certainly must have a much safer type than currently exist. Large numbers of reactors amplify the chances of a mishap. We also must seriously consider what will be required in the way of waste products and removal of reactors that age. I like solar and wind and tidal generation but we have seen nothing in regard to how strong a hurricane such units can survive. I'm in florida where hurricanes are a certainty.
With a handle of MDSOLAR can one believe a word from this self-appointed leader of the nob generation?
MGSi is made from 'high quality' quartz rock, not sand.
MGSi is then processed into Solar Grade Si or Semiconductor Grade Si.
All of these processes are energy intensive. You're melting rock, pulling Oxygen off of the silicon dioxide, and removing all of the things that aren't Si.
Solar Panels have ZERO energy density. They're simply part of the machinery that captures energy from the big fusion reactor in the sky.
If the rest of the world will go to 1/3th of 1st world energy consumption we will need a lot of new power in near future. "Renewables" are not enough even if we focus everything on building them.
I quote Dr. Ripudaman Malhotra @ TEAC7: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpXG3zyg3gk)
If we want to replace one cubic mile of oil by 2050 we need:
200 Three Gorges dam. One built quarterly. We have perhaps three (3) rivers left for such installations. So, no new big hydro. Small perhaps but I personally enjoy more of free flowing rivers than dam lakes.
2500 900MW nuclear plants. One built every week. Completely possible, no shortage of fuel with fast neutron reactors where the remaining 97% of nuclear fuel gets used.
7700 900MW consentrated solar parks 25% availability (10x size of Andasol CSP). 3 a week for next 50 years. This is possible but getting difficult.
3 000 000 1.65MW windmills 35% availability. 1200 per week for next 50 years. This is where it starts getting hard. We need 50 million tonnes of steel/year (possible) and lots of rare earths (not possible) for generators, transmission lines and electronics and billions of tons concrete for offshore installations. All of them are big carbon emitters. Low power density creates need for large power networks, transmissions losses reduce the efficiency of such system. Still I say go for it where the wind is constant, like trade wind regions.
4 200 000 000 (4.2 billion) solar roofs 2.2kw 20% availability. 250 000 new installations _every_ day till 2050. I am sorry, this is not possible. We don't have enough roofs at places where people can actually afford solar roofs and their lifetime, even if increased to 35 years, is not enough.
So this is why we must build 4th gen Uranium-Thorium reactors with passive safety systems. Reactors which operate at 700-800C and produce process heat. Then we can decarbonize things like concrete production and recycle municipal waste/biomass to liquid fuels etc.
These new plants are modular where every part except of the concrete can be swapped when it gets old or fails some way. Concrete is long lasting stuff. It is possible to get Colosseum like lifetimes for these installations, 2000 years easily. 4th gen reactors close the nuclear fuel cycle so the unusable radioactive byproducts are minimal and they have a short half life.
What is worrying me is that the projected energy consumption is nine CMO (all energy forms converted to oil) by 2050. We are using 3.5CMO now. So basically we have to build everything non-fossil source we can. This is possible with nuclear because that is the one which actually makes money to finance the other not-so efficient energy sources.
If you look back through the archives, you might be able to find a few of my longer and more detailed responses whenever the subject of nuclear energy arises. I'll restate my conclusions here.
Current nuclear energy production techniques produce new waste products that did not exist before. These products are so deadly that touching them for a reasonable period of time will result in your painful death in a few days to a few months. These waste products are dangerous for timescales of hundreds of thousands of years, give or take one order of magnitude. I'll restrict my analysis to this so-called high-level radioactive waste, not low-level radioactive waste like contaminated equipment and clothing.
The earliest written languages are around 5,000 years old, give or take a thousand years. Nobody except for a handful of people in the world can read those languages. Most humans can only read languages a few hundred years old at most. In the poorest regions of the world in 2016, half of the local population can read no language whatsoever, local or remote, ancient or modern, because they are illiterate.
Regions of the globe that formerly had the leading civilizations can fall on hard times due to overly intensive agriculture, drought, earthquakes, other types of natural disasters, or any number of freak occurrences. North America, over thousands of years, could swap places with sub-Saharan Africa in terms of, most importantly, literacy, scientific and otherwise. There is no guarantee of forward technological progress. Simply look at the Roman Empire and the following Dark Ages. It took civilization until the 20th century to recover most of what was lost.
Let's fast forward 25,000 years. Due to climate change, there is a population of mostly illiterate nomadic herders in North America. Quite by accident, they come across our 2016 state of the art nuclear waste containment facility. Over the years all of the security measures have been destroyed by natural disasters of one kind or another. Amazingly there are still legible signs posted in 100 of the most common languages from 2016 Earth. Since these herders can't read, the signs are quite useless. Even if the locals could read, the signs would take weeks for academics living thousands of miles away to decipher. Being curious and in need of building supplies, these individuals clean out the facility, emptying all high-level waste containers, hoping to find useful materials. Over the next few weeks the material spreads to other local tribes. The advanced civilizations of sub-Saharan Africa are unaware of this until after a few more weeks tens of thousands of people from the primitive tribes of North America start dying from radiation poisoning. All because some pretty ignorant people in 2016 thought that nuclear energy was completely safe.
This is what nuclear energy produces: Ticking, deadly time bombs for future civilizations, with no guaranteed way to warn them of the danger.
The author claims that the French rate of 3/year during the peak of their nuclear building program shows how ridiculous 115/year is; what that fails to account for is that France has 1% of the world population; so such a rate is fine.
Why James Hansen might be underestimating nuclear energy’s growth potential and why Joe Romm is wrong
Did you respond to the wrong post? Your comments make no sense.
The only logical and truly future proofing of power is a de-centralised power generation model (it doesn't matter if its, solar, wind, etc). But that would mean big power corporations would lose profits, AND that's the underlying problem that needs addressing first.
... except that nuclear is always held to far, far higher safety standards than any other power source. I doubt solar or wind could match the lifecycle deaths or illnesses per kWh that nuclear is held to at even twice nuclear's price. But they're not asked to do so.
Don't give me that Fukushima BS. Fukushima has been a walk in the park compared to the safety impacts of fossil, or even hydro. TMI was a safety non-event. Chernobyl is real, but nobody's proposing to build that kind of plant or operate it that way.
In the case of nuclear, the reason nuclear power plant costs are so high historically is that they're signing long term interest rate loans in a historic environment of falling inflation and thus interest rates. Three Mile Island in 1979 was less than 40 years ago, and most nuclear power plants are financed with a 50 year payback horizon. The nominal interest rate on AAA bonds in 1980 was 13% with 15% inflation (sounds like a good deal, right?) but today AAA bond rate is 4% with 0% inflation. If you bet billions on 50 year duration bonds at 13% interest expecting 10-15% inflation and got 3% average inflation over 40 years, you would be a financial disaster too. $1 billion borrowed with a 7% real interest error over 40 years is suddenly $15 billion with no change in real construction costs. Meanwhile, if you are building ANY power plant today (cough solar wind gas cough) with 4% AAA bonds, you can be pretty sure inflation isn't going lower than the current 0% without causing a deflationary spiral that would ruin everything anyway.
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based (X) magical ( )vigilante
approach to minimizing global warming by expanding nuclear power. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work.
(X) People are afraid of nuclear power, because nuclear.
(X) Anthropocentric Global Warming (AGW) itself is argued not to exist.
(X) There are cheaper, more established alternative energy technologies such as wind and solar.
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
(X) People's irrational fear of nuclear power.
(X) People's lack of science literacy.
(X) People's devotional belief for/against AGW.
(X) Costs.
(X) NIMBY attitudes.
(X) Politics (general).
(X) Donald Trump.
(X) Terrorists.
(X) Asshats (other).
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical.
(X) It requires cooperation and agreement between too many conflicting groups.
(X) It requires deliberate, informed decision making from people and politicians.
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Some years back a few researchers assembled a paper outlining how all sorts of technologies and measures could reduce CO2 output, referring to each as a wedge (slice of the reduction pie). That remains the ONLY study I've seen that realistically included all feasible options without venturing into blue-sky speculation and handwaving arguments.
With respect, mdsolar, your view of Pax Solaris depends on taking an extremely shallow view of solar energy while diving deep into the gritty problems with how nuclear energy has been used in the past.
Solar energy is intrinsically diffuse while nuclear power sources are intrinsically focused. Those characteristics are fixed in reality but little else about them is. We certainly should not do "more of the same old" in nuclear power. We just as certainly need far better ways to collect and focus solar power.
Finding better ways to do things is what technical people should be doing.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
Seriously? Garbage from thinkprogress on slashdot?
This place is basically dead now. Drag it out back and shoot it in the head. Nothing of value lost.
waste, which has never been handled well
We built a perfectly good, and safe, and vast long-term waste sequestration facility inside Yucca Mountain. It was never put into use thanks to brain-dead Nevada politicians. Never mind that it's not even in anyone's back yard.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Correct: the systems shown in the cutaway diagram are not that complex. In fact, over the decades, more engineering has gone into the subsystems inside the tractor-trailer truck that's included in the picture; its engine, and electronic engine control system, and diesel exhaust scrubber, and even the design of its tire tread, to name a few examples.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Plus, do you think a submitter named "mdsolar" might be bringing a preconceived bias into the solar vs. nuclear debate?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
This is where the warmists out themselves as not actually caring about global warming at all and only about halting economic growth. And Slashdot outs itself as being curiously biased with this 'story'.
The post relies on an unproven and unverified assumption, "avoiding catastrophic global warming".
Hansen et al. live day-by-day in the psychosis of catastrophe by man and they accept it without evidence.
In their psychosis who can avoid the "catastrophe" but man.
In their psychosis, Man created the Universe, the galaxies, the nebulae, the stars, the planets, the moon and Earth.
In their psychosis, reality is not a physical state but a manufactured "visual" of Man, the Creator. Man Controls The Visual.
In their psychosis, the Greenland Ice Sheet (they do not realize at Greenland Summit has an elevation in excess of 3500 meter above mean sea level!) is disintegrated and melted, the ice sheets (having substantial elevation also) are disintegrated and melted.
Hansen and his ilk, like Bon Ki-Moon, live their lives in a far-off reality, a psychosis, that has no connection to the reality we see and touch every wakeful day of our lives.
How sad, the days of Hansen and his ilk, like Bon Ki-Moon, and their psychotic believers in catastrophe.
Ha ha
do we always seem to get into the mode of assuming that a large problem will have a single simple solution? In most of the world, solar will do nicely for many homes. In the right circumstances, wind is a useful option. Nuclear, too, has its place, as does hydroelectric. If we are to migrate away from fossil fuels, it would seem highly unlikely that we will move to a single form of power generation, but, rather, will use a group of technologies where they are best suited.
linquendum tondere
The French do not subsidize their nuclear, which has been 75% of their electrical production for decades. Their accident and death rates are microscopic compared to any other form of generation. There is pretty much no anti-nuclear movement there, it has no constituency - and the French are hardly shy about demonstrating when they're unhappy about policy.
So if France of the 60's, just 20 years after a devastating war, with 1st-generation nuclear tech and resources, could go mostly-nuclear in a few decades - why is it just inherently impossible for a richer, higher-tech world now to do the same?
Here's the biggest problem with the bogus argument: Every criticism these crypto-Luddites level at nuclear applies even worse to the unicorn farts sources of energy THEY prefer. For every apparently "too expensive" and "too time consuming" nuke plant needed, they would have us build thousands of windmills and many square miles of solar panels, neither of which will generate reliable electric current. All solar and wind and tidal sources MUST be backed-up by nuclear or coal-fired or gas-fired plants to provide reliable power whenever the sun sets, the waves decrease, or the wind abates unless the public is going to be forced to deal with continual "rolling blackouts". Such a "green" grid needs a huge number of fully-maintained, staffed and fueled power plants on standby to fill-in any dips in power at a moment's notice. All current solar wind and tide generation SEEMS good now because it is a tiny fraction of the grid that is otherwise sustained by the existing nuclear, gas-fired, and coal-fired plants which the greenies hope nobody notices. In the glorious 100% renewable future these morons dream of, none of those other sources of power exists in sufficient quantities to keep a stable power grid and keep the lights on. In fact, most of the problems with expenses of nuclear plants are cause by the very leftists who then make the "too expensive" arguments --- it's THEIR lawsuits and environmental impact studies, and constant threats of political action to shut down nuclear plants before they can become profitable etc that are the cost drivers.
"Think Progress" is ground zero for brainless Obamabots and propagandists - it's about as neutral and unbiased a source of information as a Klan rally, which is not surprising given its association with the planet's last proud actual WWII-era NAZI collaborator (Google: George Soros and "60 minutes"). Sorry, but groups who associate themselves with such PURE EVIL deserve nothing but scorn from anybody with a soul and a brain. NO high-profile Republican or conservative group openly associates with and takes money from an actual WWII-era NAZI collaborator the way so many of these "progressive" left wing groups do.
Oh, to any Obamabot who sees this and gets outraged and is tempted to immediately score it "-1 Troll" to drive it under the filters of many readers: I challenge you to make a cogent argument rather then just trying to censor speech you do not like.
But then we get 100 really crappy reactors built each "year" so long as you define year one as about eight years after work starts on the first. Alternatively - R&D to develop pilot reactors and then the procedure is developed to build reactors that may be far better and take less time to construct. That's how we got the current generation based on 1970s technology after all, and we can ramp up R&D to apply a lot of improvements in technology to the nuclear sector to make up for the almost complete lack of development in civilian nuclear for decades
Get it right (note I didn't say perfect) and then do it.
The things run for decades so a few years to get it right are well worth it.
In the long run the potential savings in construction time could mean being well ahead after committing a bit of time to R&D, especially if the answer is smaller reactors.
Why build hundreds of AP1000 dinosaurs when the technology is available to develop into a better working reactor?
This is what people don't seem to get. They compare Fukushima to a single wind turbine failure and proclaim wind is safer. Um no, Fukushima's generation capacity was equivalent to about 7,000-10,000 wind turbines.
So much of the story is left untold, thank you for telling. No one ever seems to ask: What is good about Fukushima Daiichi?
Fukushima's first reactor went on-line in March 1971 [cite] and 5 others followed up to 1979. Without accounting for cumulative downtime (hard to find), let's keep it simple, cut everything here by a third if you like, I come up with a combined total of ~159.12 Gigawatt-years of electricity. That's ~636.5 million tons of coal [cite] that did not have to be expensively imported and burned to help resource-poor Japan become the industrial giant it is today. Think of it as ~1.8 trillion tons of CO2 [cite] that did not enter the atmosphere, if you like. That's just one nuclear power plant with reactors that are not big by today's standards. More stats, and the interesting observation on how the hysterical press of Japan does not necessarily reflect public opinion,
"A poll taken in February 2015 by the Mizuho Information & Research Institute of Japan asked whether or not the respondent would use nuclear-generated electricity if the costs were the same or less than they were that month, and 67% said âoeyesâ. Only 32% replied in the negative. This contrasts with a number of media polls with voluntary and hence non-representative participation, and the distortion is compounded by a 2012 news media survey finding that 47 of the 50 most popular press outlets in Japan said they were antinuclear."
Japans few nuclear plants have provided as much as ~30% of Japan's electricity and I am confident they will pass that figure once more. Nuclear has contributed greatly to the country's wealth in ways that no other energy source could have, or ever could. There is a great deal of hidden peril facing the entire human species that is a direct result of stalling the Industrial Revolution --- by sweeping nuclear energy under the rug. As Kirk Sorensen says so eloquently,
"Every time mankind has been able to access a new source of energy it has led to profound societal implications. Human beings had slaves for thousands of years, and when we learned how to make carbon our slave instead of other human beings, we started to learn how to be civilized people. Thorium has a million times the energy density of a cabon-hydrogen bond. What could that mean for human civilization? Once we've learned how to use it at this kind of efficiency, we will never run out. It is simply too common."
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
You don't turn your nuke off if you can help it while you can bring a windmill on or offline at a whim.
That's all those numbers you are misrepresenting mean.
If you already knew that you are manipulative lying scum but I suspect you are just a victim of such types.
Think progress...what an oxymoron "Progress" to them, is shutting everything down, living in caves, eating sticks & berries. Nuke power would be viable, if it wasn't for all the red tape involved.
Rather than spend $B on nuclear spend those funds on developing trees that
(1) convert wind to electricity
(2) convert solar to electricity
(3) preserve the beauty of a natural environment
MdSolar regularly fucks the Chinese solar panel producers. Or, they fuck him up the ass.
I've seen Shills before, but he tops them all.
...You take an industry that really has the best safety record of any energy producing industry, and demonize it for years on end. Protests, Movies (Stupid ones at that), over regulation, lawsuits (endless, countless lawsuits), and then you bitch and moan that it's too expensive.
I see.
That is shit costs too much to build. Why does it cost so much to build. Because all the faggy ass whining liberals do not like anything that sounds like nuclear, so they raise crazy legal and political barriers to nuclear. Whiny liberals also do not like smoke because it is black and they like keeping black things locked safely away. (true fact. not only did democrats invent slavery, the highest African American incarceration rates are in liberal states) So there is a catch 22. You can't have safe and clean nuclear energy. You cant use fossil fuels. You are left with solar and wind energy. But w8. Some liberals do not like ugly unsightly bird killing wind turbines in their back yard. Solar is good. However making actual solar cells requires chemicals and mining that has been proven to cause cancer in California. So the only solution is to buy solar cells from China and ship them over to California in dirty fossil fuel burning ships. That way Californians can use the clean photovoltaically produced electrons to power their refrigerators that chill their Fuji brand water that that has been imported from overseas and stored in plastic bottles. Yes. It is truly a brave new world. I wish we could use the executive powers of the next president to create a zone for liberals. The zone would have no guns. No hunger as the state would provide them with food. (making sure they do not eat over 16oz of soda water a day). All their electricity would be produced in an environmentally conscious manner and be free. And finally we could combat the high price of housing by giving it to them free. We would look after their safety by enclosing them in gigantic walls. We would place cameras everywhere so there was no crime. We would take away all their cars, because they are dangerous. Yes. If we could only keep all our liberals locked safely away in theses institutions we could finally make America gr8 again.
Mainland China has 30 nuclear power reactors in operation, 24 under construction, and more about to start construction.
China is planning to get to 200 GWe nuclear by 2030 and 400 GWe nuclear by 2050 (about 20% and 40% of current electrical power generation).
No, that is not 100%, but a substantial chunk.
There is more than one kind of nuclear reactor. Unless you read up on thorium reactors, please shut up.
There are already several production reactors using cheap and plentiful thorium. Old uranium reactors can be refitted.
Thorium reactors are also pretty useless for weapons production.
While there is a lot of new proposed designs for reactors, the nature of nuclear energy is that there is waste. Waste that is insanely toxic, some of it for an incredibly long time. In the end, all nuclear energy creates a very, very long term problem that is much harder to address. Building a reactor is fairly easy compared to figuring out what to do with what it leaves behind.
The elephant in the room is that the only way to really address the issue is or homo sapiens to use less energy. Less carbon based energy that cannot reasonably be replaced fast enough. Since energy is fairly closely related to wealth, that means as a whole, homo sapiens will be less wealthy. If the population continues to increase, a high percent of people will be poor. It is possible that due to war, natural disasters, epidemics, war-epidemics via biological warfare, famine, etc, the world population may decrease in the next few decades. Decrease rate in population growth via birth control may slow down the rate of increase, but unlikely it will cause a decrease. People like to have sex. The world population have to decrease by a fair percent, but with a smaller population each person could have a bigger slice of the pie, so to speak. I am not saying this is something to aspire too, or have as a public policy. I am saying it is possible, and as the world population increases the fragility of society to stave off the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse lessens. Unless homo sapiens population increase levels off, there will be large die-offs. It may be tomorrow, it maybe in 200 years.
Also possible but unlikely is that people will change values and be satisfied using less energy. Beyond food clothing and shelter, people want ipods, fast cars, fast air travel, BIG SCREEN movies, big houses, etc. etc. When I mention such concepts to one of my ex-friends, he would say, "If you really believed that, then you are arguing that you should kill yourself because you are using too much energy." I said ex-friend. It also is a fairly common viewpoint, especially among global warming deniers.
You actually used the phrase "catastrophic global warming", instead of the meaningless term 'climate change' - bad Climatedot!
There is no such thing as 'catastsrophic man-made global warming' (you missed out the 'man-made' part - why?)
www.climatedepot.com
www.wattsupwiththat.com
Technology is well on its way to disentangling standard of living from a reliance on fossil fuels.
Anything specific you are talking about?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
When they look at the cost of power plants, they always go with the old gen1 or 2 style multi-billion dollar nuclear plants from 40 or 50 years ago. There are dozens of better and safer ways to build nuclear power plants and that includes the new sexy ideas of small 'unattended' modular power reactors. Then there are the innovative designs that rewrite the whole idea behind nuke power altogether, like LFTR reactors. Hell, even if you don't go full bore Thorium reactors there are a lot of intermediate designs that use fluorine salts as a moderator and other of that ilk as well. If we put a fraction of the time and energy into building modern reactors as we did to upgrade fucking cell phones we'd all have a modular reactor in our neighborhoods by now. Jesus.. can we prioritize at all here people?
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
Anything specific you are talking about?
Sure, biofuels, nuclear power, renewable electric power, that sort of thing. Just because fossil fuels are more economical now, doesn't mean they'll stay that way. I just think that expecting a standard of living to require a certain amount of fossil fuels burned is a blindered view of things.
Like yesterday, my standard of living wasn't burning half a gallon of gasoline or using a modest amount of electricity, it was getting from point A to point B for a social affair. There's no law of physics that requires me to have dinosaurs and fossil fuel-derived corn in the tank or 300 million year old plants in my local power plant. It just happens to be what is used now.
While I think that the current alleged consensus on catastrophic global warming and other climate change is grossly exaggerated, I don't see fossil fuels being used as they currently are forever. There will come a time when we'll switch to other things. I'm just not in a hurry to do so.
While I think that the current alleged consensus on catastrophic global warming and other climate change is grossly exaggerated,
What do you mean?
I don't see fossil fuels being used as they currently are forever.
How will they be used?
There will come a time when we'll switch to other things.
Like what?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
While I think that the current alleged consensus on catastrophic global warming and other climate change is grossly exaggerated,
What do you mean?
For example, the media routinely exaggerates any research that even hints at climate change being involved. The IPCC which alleges to be a neutral party routinely exaggerates the extent, impact, and certainty of global warming as can be seen in the variation between the summaries for policy makers versus the actual research described in their multiyear assessment reports.
I don't see fossil fuels being used as they currently are forever.
How will they be used?
Like most resources, as they become more scarce and more costly to extract, fossil fuels will be continue to be used for higher value purposes. For example, pesticides, plastics, and fertilizer (nitrogen fixing).
There will come a time when we'll switch to other things.
Like what?
I already mentioned some in my previous post:
Sure, biofuels, nuclear power, renewable electric power, that sort of thing.
The technical arguments can and will continue until someone decides the best trade-offs against the future needs and complications. The real impediment is the costs that will need to be allocated for attorney's fees ad infinitum. The involvement of politicians and their attorneys, the EPA and their attorneys, and various NIMBY and other group's attorneys is why it takes so long to permit and build a nuclear plant. Moreover, that's why so few are in operation anyway. Power companies will not pay the lawyer tax if they can help it, and that's what has made investment in coal and natural gas generating plants so much more financially rewarding. Even the subsidies for renewable energy pale in comparison to attorney's fees in a balance sheet.
Uranium isn't exactly a common metal. Not only that, U-235, which is required for Nuclear reactors is a tiny fraction, say a few percentage points at most, of the total uranium available. As I understand it, if all the world's energy were met by U-235 alone, we would be out in less than 20 years. Breeder reactors could provide more, but they are limited by various regulations.
Thorium reactors hold a lot of promise. There is a lot more thorium available - much more than uranium - and there is only one isotope. Give it an extra neutron by putting it in a layer around a reactor and you get U-233, fissionable and useful just like U-235, but man-made. Oh wait, Ooops, EPA regulations limit the availability of Thorium by making it illegal to mine especially as it occurs in mines that have rare-earth metals. To be honest, I'm not sure if the problem is the Thorium that they try to limit or the rare-earths, but there goes another possibility.
Watching arguments for going nuclear is like watching a race where favored participants all have a length of rope tied around their ankles. As soon as one starts to show promise, the rope is shortened and the runner is told to go faster. Perhaps this is all just a show. It is easier to convince someone to drop one form of energy (carbon based) if you feel another promising form of energy is readily available. But at the very least, don't call nuclear energy cheap energy. Replacing fossil fuel energy with nuclear energy is simply replacing cheap energy that is available to everyone (private generators are available) with expensive, highly regulated energy that is controlled by the few.
Ummm, actually banks see nuclear power plants as risky investments. Hence why interest rates are high and why many banks won't provide loans.
Nuclear or not doesn't solve the world's problems. There's something like 70 billion cattle worldwide being raised for food, mainly eating starches, (in the Excited States they eat heavily subsidized corn) drinking 30 gallons a day and farting copious amounts of methane. Methane is 20-85 times more harmful to the environment(depending on whose figures you take). Add in the pork, chicken, veal, and other meat that being raised worldwide, and you'd need several earths to cope with that. Raising animals for food is so inefficient as a process for feeding ourselves that it will ultimately kill us all. And nobody can stop it - there's too many vested interests.
You don't. Stop lying.
I understand that nuclear fanatics have their own separate reality where war never happens so having the ultimate Achilles heel that nuclear plants represent, militarily, doesn't matter. OK, fine, wax rhapsodic about the wonders of fission, we'll listen. It's not like you don't have some good points!
But come on. You have to be able to see that thousands of us have installed solar and wind with no subsidies whatsoever, sometimes in contravention of law. Yeah, we did that. Since the 1970s, in fact, when used Arco panels cost almost $7 a watt. Shill for nuclear all you want but stop lying. People want solar and wind, with or without subsidies (and the majority of us want our taxes to subsidize solar if any energy technology will be subsidized).
Meanwhile, there's never been an unsubsidized nuclear plant. Ever. And less than 5% of the human race supports those subsidies. Fundamentally, nuclear is the choice for communist regimes and dictatorships that don't care what the constituency wants. Because regular people don't want it; we can see that it's too centralized and militarily weak to ever be part of a free and fair marketplace.
Stop lying.
What was that, I was playing candy crush
It would be nice to see more action being taken to investigate other nuclear options; molten salt reactors for example... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor and http://www.transatomicpower.com/ thoughts???
From above: http://science.slashdot.org/co...
I don't agree with Hansen on much of anything, really, except for this: if you really want to de-carbonize the energy sector, it *has* to be nuclear. There are a number of "safe" designs at the moment (Thorium/breeder/etc), the energy output is the only green source that rivals carbon energy in terms of footprint and fuel, and the only reason the construction costs are so high is because of the oppressive regulatory structure. Fix that, and the costs will probably go below carbon energy.
Uranium based fission power has its problems, and although the newer reactors are safer, costs and licensing are still prohibitive.
Liquid thorium salt reactors are much cheaper, quite safe, easier to build as they have fewer moving parts, and look like the optimum solution to base power generation. There is no shortage of the thorium ore in the USA. We hardly ever hear thorium considered by the climate media. Why is that? Is thorium the industry-buster I think it is?
http://science.slashdot.org/co...
Quoting The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (discussed here):
So, someone who is completely anti-nuclear is in conflict with the IPCC, which is supposed to be the standard for technical consensus, right? It's only those crazy global warming denialists who think they know better than the IPCC.
In this piece by Joe Romm (linked to here by timothy) I think the first step is to note that he's critiquing something over at the Guardian UK site written by James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley, Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change (it's distantly possible that you're better off reading something by James Hansen rather than by some guy who actually quotes Mark Jacobson approvingly).
Please note the sub-title on that Hansen piece: "Alongside renewables, Nuclear will make the difference". Joe Romm insists it's likely nuclear power will be just a "bit player", but conceeds we should keep working on it, e.g. he likes research into small, modular reactors. Hansen and company don't dispute that renewables have a role to play, they just insist we can't solve the problem without nuclear. Arguably, the great fight here is over whether we need renewables plus nukes, or nukes plus renewables.
Hansen and company say:
Joe Romm argues:
Actually, 58 reactors over two decades is in fact nearly 3 per year, and that's built by a single country.
Why, that would mean that to build 115 reactors per year we might need the efforts of nearly 40 countries! Oh my god where are we going to find that many?
Seriously: you need to grasp the sheer scale of the problem of decarbonizing the world economy. If you look at what we need to do to ramp up any clean energy source, it's absolutely huge. Take a look at some of the numbers Saul Griffith crunched back in 2009:
Another version of that talk is here. Anything we do is going to involve incredible magnitudes of rapid construction, and we really need to get started on it.
By the way, Hansen and company did an extended presentation at COP21.
For omni-obstructionists who kvetch about the safety of glassified waste stored at Yucca Mountain, or those who might be swayed by such kevetching, go to Google Earth, search for "Sedan Crater", and scan south. *THAT* is what's already there. Nuke crater after nuke crater, with no containment whatsoever other than it happens to be underground. Mostly.
No one has ever given anything even close to vaguely resembling a cogent argument as to how glassified waste could be anywhere in the same galaxy as much of a hazard as what's already there.
All this is based on Gen I & II reactors; Gen III & IV reactors could be much smaller (& safer, & efficient: (gas turbines instead of steam)); Thorium is plentiful (and we'd use most (99%) of it instead of only 1% of the Uranium that's in a fuel rod) and cheaper (because you don't need the expensive building necessary to hold the cooling water that flashes into steam when water cooled reactors lose containment).
Much of which is created to mitigate public opinion which has the nuclear industry demonized for decades. Not quite the same issue, but not a lot of new oil refineries get built for the exact same reason.
One of the more unique issues that nuclear generation does have to deal with that most don't are a) decommissioning and b) insurance. Much of which is associated with private VS public ownership. In both cases much of the regulation is probably because of privately run operations, which for both a) and b) generally revert back to public responsibility anyway due to scope.
I'm a proponent of nuclear generation done right, however even I am a bit leery of the idea of having a privately run nuclear plant where should anything go wrong the public not the company is on the hook... It's about responsibility. If I'm a company and operating an aging plant, am I more concerned with ensuing that all safety measures are in place, or that decommissioning (usually a fund) in on track, or profits for the next quarter?
Nationally I think build more and research better. I keep hearing about safer, smaller scale reactors, but I think there is a lack of incentive/appetite to build/research and everyone is getting distracted by the shiny renewables.
That said, I think if the last ten years has taught us anything it is that even things like wind can have a lot of public resistance, particularly in the best areas, near or off shore, because of very wealthy people that own cottages, who think the turbines wreak their view, or have a negative impact on re-sale value (but will cite environmental reasons).
That is where democracy falls down a bit. Politicians need to get elected. If the public is made fearful of nuclear, few politicians are going to risk re-election. Far better to shine up some friendly (if useless) solar panels. China sees a need, comes to a conclusions as to how to best process for the country, then does it. There isn't a debate.
In fact, this is even more pronounced in energy due to the long term thinking necessary (i.e. past an election cycle). Just look at some of the hydro projects where they literally re-located millions of people, where geographically it made sense to do so for hydroelectric power.
I think at some point people will look back in history and be baffled at some of the decisions being made that had more to do with political cycles than any logical thought.
That said I don't really want to live without democracy, it just makes long term visionary projects that might be unpopular pretty hard to do. Heck it seems with current politics, they want to take whatever the previous party managed to get done, ruin it, and then blame them for the failure in the next election.
Nuclear is important but alone cannot solve all our problems. Wind and photo-voltaic are also critical components. Because the goal is to reduce CO2 emissions, converting shipping away from bunker fuel, the manufacture of cement and many other contributors to man made CO2 emissions needs to be addressed. Its not A,B or C, its D - all of the above.
Greed is the root of all evil.
The `unprecedented" growth needed for nuclear to do most of the job is not unprecedented. The relevant rate of growth is not (new reactors per year), but (new reactors per year)/(population of advanced countries). Furthermore one wants to take into account increased productivity:
(new reactors per year)/(population of advanced countries) x productivity index
This has it all backwards. Hansen is right about nuclear power (youtube Kirk Sorensen and LFTR) but Hansen is wrong on global warming.
A question for everyone who thinks that CO2 controls the climate. How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit your theory is wrong? 20 years? 30? Never?
Both of the satellite datasets (RSS, UAH) show no warming for over 18 years. In that time CO2 has risen 8-10%.
Why do I use the 2 satellite measurements?
First they have the greatest coverage. RSS goes from 82.5N to 82.5 S and UAH, 85N to 85S.
Second they are the least adjusted. Unlike NOAA which makes completely unjustified adjustments by raising good data (ARGO bouy temps) to match what they themselves admit is bad, corrupted data (ship engine intake temps).
Lastly they are run by 2 scientists with good credentials (Dr Mears & Dr Spencer respectively) and despite looking at what is almost the same data come to different conclusions. Dr Mears thinks CO2 does control the climate and Dr Spencer does not. I like that. Not only does it keep them honest it makes me think and read both sides to see why they are so different in their conclusions despite almost identical data. So far I side with the position of Dr Spencer.
Ok, I'll grant you that our current nuclear reactors leave a lot of long-lived transuranic elements with extremely long half-lives. That's why In most of the enlightened posts up to now (that you probably didn't read or can't understand) people are suggesting newer and better designed reactors. A Thorium based reactor, especially one that is in a liquid fluoride moderator has NO long lived (at least none longer than say 100 years or so) fission products. Most of the ones it DOES produce would be useful in medical research and other scientific endeavors, AND to top it off, the current waste that we have laying around can be BURNT OFF in them. That's right, the leftover mess from 60 years or so of playing with nuclear power can be safely disposed of, making useful power instead.
Your supposition that we'll all be back to beating on rocks at some undetermined point in time is fatalistic at best. I can say that the cornerstone of a modern society is POWER. Before we harnessed chemical energy in a large scale manner that power came from people in the form of slavery. At every juncture in the timeline of humanity when there was a breakthrough in the production and dissemination of power the standard of living for the common man improved dramatically. There are huge swaths of humanity that still do not have access to the limited resources of dinosaur fuel we used predominantly today. You want to raise up the poor unwashed masses around the globe, and feed them better? Provide them with affordable cheap and safe power. Without power, agriculture, sanitation, construction etc etc etc are stifled. With it, clean water is made easy, sewage treatment becomes trivial, medicine, education, clothing, heating, cooling etc etc etc, all become possible. Cheap plentiful power is the ONLY way to advance the cause of the human race. PERIOD. Fossil fuels can not provide it for all of us. "Renewables' like solar and wind can provide trickles of what's needed, but they'll never ever be able to completely meet the needs of an advanced society.
I am disgusted by the droves of mindless nay-sayers who vilify nuclear power without any understanding of what it is they talk about. Endlessly belching out their vitriolic toxic idea that they've parroted from others w/out understanding what it is that they are talking about. You're worried about education in remote places in the world? How about we review what our own children are learning in the schools in our first world countries. When children know more about the pop-top 40 charts than they do the periodic chart of the elements, that's a problem. When modern adults can tell you all about pookie's day on some reality show but can't tell you anything about the history of the human race, that's a problem. I say take away their goddamned 'selfie-sticks' and give them a slide rule, and the know-how to use them!
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
http://midwestenergynews.com/2...
Over 100,000 refugees Fukushima. You've got a screw loose.
History is loaded with examples of the "police state", which is the historical norm for human beings. Most people in human history have not, however, had nuclear power.
Furthermore, a decent population can be trusted with anything from guns to nuclear power but an anarchic population cannot be trusted with pointy sticks.
Go take your assumption that all people are untrustworthy with even pointy sticks back to troll-ville where I'm relatively sure you think those same crazy and untrustworthy people who clearly need "gun control" can be trusted to run every detail of the lives of other people and can be fully trusted with guns if you stuff them into government uniforms.
There is a lot more to it than that, such as a bit of loss of remaining life due to thermal fatigue every time you do a cold start.
In simple terms base load is designed for base load so if you use it for anything else you do not get good value. Solar thermal with molten salt would also be designed to be online as much as possible as distinct from peak power sources.
You've been tricked by someone that wanted to simplify everything into "energy" like a bad episode of Star Trek. They are pretending that a power supply that is used to make up peaks is unreliable because the demand is not constant - a misdirecting trick to fool those who are not paying attention.
Grids are very large now and there's always wind somewhere - continent size calms are like arguing for a flat earth. Similarly it's very rare for cloud to cover an entire continent for days at a time so solar is not "unstable".
perhaps not.
GENERATION 26: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation.
I for one am glad we are not running HURD.
http://michaelsmith.id.au