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Only Nuclear Energy Can Save the Planet (wsj.com)
Joshua S. Goldstein, a professor emeritus of international relations at American University, and Staffan A. Qvist, an energy engineer and consultant, writing for The Wall Street Journal: Climate scientists tell us that the world must drastically cut its fossil fuel use in the next 30 years to stave off a potentially catastrophic tipping point for the planet. Confronting this challenge is a moral issue, but it's also a math problem -- and a big part of the solution has to be nuclear power. Today, more than 80% of the world's energy comes from fossil fuels, which are used to generate electricity, to heat buildings and to power car and airplane engines. Worse for the planet, the consumption of fossil fuels is growing quickly as poorer countries climb out of poverty and increase their energy use. Improving energy efficiency can reduce some of the burden, but it's not nearly enough to offset growing demand.
Any serious effort to decarbonize the world economy will require, then, a great deal more clean energy, on the order of 100 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, by our calculations -- roughly equivalent to today's entire annual fossil-fuel usage. A key variable is speed. To reach the target within three decades, the world would have to add about 3.3 trillion more kilowatt-hours of clean energy every year. Solar and wind power alone can't scale up fast enough to generate the vast amounts of electricity that will be needed by midcentury, especially as we convert car engines and the like from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources. Even Germany's concerted recent effort to add renewables -- the most ambitious national effort so far -- was nowhere near fast enough. A global increase in renewables at a rate matching Germany's peak success would add about 0.7 trillion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity every year. That's just over a fifth of the necessary 3.3 trillion annual target.
Any serious effort to decarbonize the world economy will require, then, a great deal more clean energy, on the order of 100 trillion kilowatt-hours per year, by our calculations -- roughly equivalent to today's entire annual fossil-fuel usage. A key variable is speed. To reach the target within three decades, the world would have to add about 3.3 trillion more kilowatt-hours of clean energy every year. Solar and wind power alone can't scale up fast enough to generate the vast amounts of electricity that will be needed by midcentury, especially as we convert car engines and the like from fossil fuels to carbon-free energy sources. Even Germany's concerted recent effort to add renewables -- the most ambitious national effort so far -- was nowhere near fast enough. A global increase in renewables at a rate matching Germany's peak success would add about 0.7 trillion kilowatt-hours of clean electricity every year. That's just over a fifth of the necessary 3.3 trillion annual target.
The only reason nuclear is "viable" is because we've dumped thousands of dollars of research into nuclear reactors.
Geothermal and wave would be viable if we would do the same -- plus they don't leave that bullshit radiation nonsense WHEN(*) they fail.
But let's keep investing into archaic unsafe technology and pollute the environment when they fail while we 50+ years for the short-sighted consequences to go away! /s
(*) Anyone who rides motorcycles quickly learns it is NOT a matter of IF you will go down but WHEN.
They have proven him right actually. Everything from increasing grid stability issues to decommissioning costs is becoming more and more of a question mark on both wind and solar as they become less of a boutique and more widespread adopted forms of power generations.
And there are no solutions in sight to those problems as of yet.
A guy with a PhD in Nuclear Physics (and a consultant) thinks we should use nuclear power.>
In other words:
A guy who actually knows what the hell he is talking about comes up with great clean solution, is ridiculed by armchair pundit who apparently would rather watch the planet die than admit nuclear power was ever a good idea.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And don't think for one second that wasn't the intention.
Anti-Nuclear activist, including many in Congress, have done everything they can to gun up the nuclear power industry.
As a technology, nuclear is only in it's very first stages.Promising technologies like breeder reactors that can burn nuclear wastes to almost inert piles or rock were arbitrarily outlawed. Promising avenues such as micro reactors are mired in red tape and make no mistake, lawsuits will follow them where ever they think of putting one.
What is needed:
1. Two to Three standard designs, vetted by some group of nuclear engineers as safe. Facilitates factory production of components
2. Processes to fast track environmental reviews
3. Limited indemnity for developers to prevent frivolous lawsuits.
4. Some form of expedited processed in the courts to review lawsuits and settle them quickly.
5. Reopen Yucca Mountain. Fuck Harry Reid. Hell, bury his soon to be dead ass in it.
6. Ongoing research into new designs, module designs, etc.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yeah, but when you need to plaster a third to half the country with wind and solar to even get close to providing enough energy, then even the most blind of idiots must realize that this is probably not going to be our salvation.
Also: Do you believe the production of silicon for PV is not harmful to the environment? Especially in those amounts? Not to mention the question of whether we are even able to find enough raw materials for it.
I agree that nuclear power has been done wrong in many ways. And we can now see that companies haven't properly prepared decommissioning of these things.
However, those things CAN be solved.
1. When you have a viable (politically and otherwise) solution to long term waste storage.
2. Proper funding of costs for decommissioning of private reactors as they reach the end of their useful life.
3. A rational emergency fund pool.should, dear god, catastrophic failure occur to a private facility.
So does nuclear - namely, nuclear waste. Peak global nuclear energy production was ~2.7 trillion TWh/year. Increasing that to 100 trillion TWh/y using current technologies means 37x as much nuclear waste production, and we haven't even figured out a safe way to deal with the waste we're already producing.
Some newer technologies could eliminate a lot of that - but we haven't really tested any of them at scale yet.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
1. We do have workable fusion reactors. They were developed here, and are now in use in places we're not supposed to talk about. How do you think we power those weapons systems? You will not see them in commercial use before 2040, they're still being worked on. Kind of like fax machines and laptops, which existed in non-commercial usage way before they were in commercial usage.
2. Fission reactors are an absolute nightmare on the cradle to 250,000 year grave cycle, and a security nightmare. Stop. Just stop.
3. It's easy to replace fossil fuel energy today:
A. Implement 120 percent Renewable Portfolio Standards for every nation and state and province. For every new KWHr you need you have to decommission 20 percent existing grandfathered fossil fuel energy, and all new energy is renewables. If you mix renewables (many scientific papers show this) you get a power yield curve that closely matches the actual energy usage. It also makes you resilient and easier to recover from massive storms, massive floods, and other natural disasters.
B. End all tax subsidies for all fossil fuels: depreciation, exemptions, exclusions, incentives, fleet requirements. Period. No exceptions.
C. Stop whining. It's actually cheaper to use renewables than fossil fuels. It's why the West Coast is a cheap energy powerhouse. Adapt. Wind and solar jobs are way better than coal mining.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
HVDC lines, and grid-scale storage.
Nuclear might have issues, but so do these.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Nuclear waste is a political issue, not a technical one. It is hard enough to build a regular waste dump, never mind a nuclear waste storage facility
Sneaky bastard!
Utilization factor = power generated / (power that could be generated when the resource is available).
Capacity factor = power generated / (power that could be generated in all hours).
Solar and wind are typically dispatched as 'must run' being 'use it or lose it', so their utilization factor is near 100%. But that just shows that 'utilization factor' is a statistical lie cooked up to obscure CRAP capacity factors.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They included the people falling off ladders as "solar deaths" - is that SOLAR being dangerous? Nope, ladders. It's disingenuous illiterate shit, perfect for propaganda. People fell off LADDERS. Solar killed NOBODY.
The idea that nuclear power (including ALL spent fuel rods in ALL concrete pools in earthquake zones, derp, THOUSANDS OF POOLS) is perfectly safe, forgetting Chernobyl and Fukushima et all, is for RETARDED ILLITERATES.
Germany's effort was intended to get technologies going, and it did just that. You can thank us later. We're still paying for it with every kWh we consume. The guaranteed kWh price paid to solar, biomass, wind and some other renewable electricity producers come out of a surcharge which is currently at ~0.064€ per kWh.
It is quite unfair and misleading to compare that effort during an early phase of the technology to a future manufacturing ramp up. Nuclear was afforded many more decades to get the technology sorted, but it hasn't, despite massively higher subsidies. Instead nuclear power becomes more expensive all the time, and still defers the majority of the cost into the future, because of an unsolved waste problem. Nuclear fuel sourcing is an environmental and safety nightmare, which just like the waste problem would also need to be scaled up.
You just need to look at this discussion here on Slashdot to find the never changing arguments: "New nuclear power plants will finally be safe and not produce waste. We'll use thorium and pebble bed reactors." Well, talking about Germany, there was the THT-300 in Hamm-Uentrop, Germany. Was, as the problems with the technology couldn't be solved and it has been dismantled. A research reactor of the same type in Juelich has radioactively contaminated the groundwater and can currently not be dismantled because of the unexpectedly high radioactive contamination. Yeah, let's scale that up to replace fossil fuels. "But AC, we'll use some other new reactor type." Listen to yourselves. After many decades of strong financial and political support for nuclear power, you're still peddling some future as yet undeveloped technology that will finally make nuclear deliver on its promises, promises that were made about every generation of reactors, and have been broken every time. Meanwhile the disasters keep on coming. At the current scale, there is roughly one uncontained meltdown every 30 years. Would you like to multiply that accident count by the scale factor that would be required if we were to replace fossil fuels with nuclear power. Will annual meltdowns be news or will we get bored of that?
Besides, how do you think scaling up nuclear power will work technically? You do know that nuclear power plants need huge amounts of cooling water, don't you. That's why they're all built next to rivers or oceans. You can't build many more on rivers, because that kills the rivers. At the required scale, you would have to litter the coasts with them. There are no such problems with solar. You can put that stuff everywhere. It works in Germany, which is further north than Quebec.
The Free Market has spoken. It doesn't like the finances of nuclear power
I'd hardly call the political and regulatory nightmare behind nuclear power "The Free Market".
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
You seem to think people want to slow it down for fun but there are many legitimate concerns.
1. Two to Three standard designs, vetted by some group of nuclear engineers as safe. Facilitates factory production of components
If the designs are so safe, why isn't it already standardized? or is it because sufficient protections depend greatly on environmental and other factors?
2. Processes to fast track environmental reviews
Why does it need to be fast, and how do you define "fast" anyway? A mess up of nuclear can result in VERY large consequences (see Fukushima as a recent example). Large consequences I think deserve extra time and thorough review, not a rushed job.
3. Limited indemnity for developers to prevent frivolous lawsuits.
If it's so safe, why do they need indemnity? What do you define as "frivolous"?
4. Some form of expedited processed in the courts to review lawsuits and settle them quickly.
Why do you want to rush review of lawsuits? Complaints need to be fully explored because the stakes are big here. As I said earlier, the consequences are sufficiently large that it seems fair to me that it takes time to thoroughly investigate. Business profits don't trump my right to a livable environment.
5. Reopen Yucca Mountain. Fuck Harry Reid. Hell, bury his soon to be dead ass in it.
Either breeder reactors work or they don't. If we still need this, then it's a clear sign that the "promise" of nuclear you hailed has failed and is still saddling us with nuclear waste for thousands of years. If Yucca is needed, then we need to develop new technologies and not pretend this is any kind of long-term solution.
6. Ongoing research into new designs, module designs, etc.
I've seen estimates that especially if the whole world switches to heavily lean on nuclear, we can only expect about 100 years of fuel at most -- and already nuclear is actually very expensive and only made "cheap" by heavy government subsidy (for example my state is preparing a bailout package of BILLIONS of dollars to nuclear to keep their plants profitable and operating). And it may not even be that long if we don't get the message that we need SUSTAINABLE development which very likely means rethinking how civilization and society functions to get our energy usage down -- we shouldn't be planning on continuing this path or even increasing global energy use at this point. After 100 years, we'll be right back at this same juncture, facing an energy crisis.
So why not plan for a long-term sustainable future by investing those billions of research dollars and subsidies into renewables: solar (not just photovoltaics either), wind, hydroelectric, geothermal? Those would be massively useful investments that would keep civilization going into the forseeable future indefinitely, particularly if coupled with a society-wide effort to reduce consumption of energy and products. It's the only real solution we have, everything else is a bandaid that kicks the can down the road in one form or another to our kids.