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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.
What was posted in the abstract is not enough to justify the conclusion. Battery storage, wind and PV are dropping on a curve that now makes energy much cheaper than that provided by fossil fuels and much cheaper than nuclear, who's cost have been going up. I'm actually a fan of nuclear and think while it needs to be carefully regulated we could use more of it. But there's no clear reason other sources can't grow at a fast enough pace. We do need to commit to do required items. For example, we need to build a newer smarter grid than the US, which will require some work that's not just engineering. 10 years ago it would have been sensible to say we could not replace fossil fuels without nuclear. That's no longer a reasonable position to have. Saying that nuclear is a good component to be in a mix is reasonable but is not what the abstract states.
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
Unfortunately the environmentalist fake news machine has been in high gear for nearly forty years convincing millions of otherwise intelligent people that nuclear power equals three-eyed fish and glow-in-the-dark babies. Same people who want to shut down coal-fired power plants but also don't like natural gas pipelines or LNG terminals to replace the electricity. Same people who demand solar on every roof but would flip a shit if they knew how "dirty" solar panel and power electronics manufacturing is.
As usual, I blame society. For real this time. Too many people seem to have grown up with the idea that it's possible to have all the good stuff without paying for it in some way, either with cash, lack of reliability, pollution of one form or another, and usually some combination of all of the above.
For the record, I'd prefer to live down the street from a nuclear plant than a gas or coal or oil-burning power plant. And I did the math: if I covered my roof in solar panels, I'd lower my electric bill by at most 50-60% on sunny days, and only 30% averaged year round. If I covered my whole property in solar panels and battery energy storage, I might reduce my electric bill to zero, but with the money it would cost to do that (batteries being the biggest drain), I could buy enough electricity, even at inflated Taxachusetts rates of close to 25cents/kWhr, to last me more than a lifetime, and certainly way more than the lifetime of the batteries. Aggregating this stuff in centralized facilities won't make it cheaper by any significant amount.
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.
And his argument is "Proof by I Can't Believe The Alternative Because It Involves Large Numbers"
Nuclear power plant construction is exceedingly slow and exceedingly expensive. You can produce power much faster by instead sinking that capital that he wants to sink into nuclear power plants instead into factories to produce solar panels, wind turbines, HVDC lines, and grid-scale storage.
The ability to produce solar panels and wind turbines - per dollar of capital invested - are reflected in their power prices. Which are much cheaper than nuclear. Regardless of whether the numbers sound large to one Joshua S. Goldstein.
Or to put it another way: Coal is already dying. Quickly. And it's not nuclear that's killing it. It's a mix of NG (low carbon), solar (near-zero carbon) and wind (near-zero carbon).
Hey, guys, I'm just pleased as punch to report that it's a fleet of a hundred Vogon Battle Destroyers!
But let's keep investing into archaic unsafe technology and pollute the environment when they fail
People like you spreading this complete strawman bullshit and generations of Greenpeace psychos before that are the reason that we have no modern, safe nuclear options. Updated designs using passive reactor safety, such as Generation IV, *can't* have an uncontrolled meltdown -- in the event of a problem, gravity automatically shuts down the reaction. Ask the French -- they generate 40% of their own power via nukes plus they generate electricity for a good chunk of the rest of Europe using nuclear. Please educate yourself instead of using 70 year old stereotypes about nuclear power -- because thanks to the misinformation you are spreading, we are stuck with ancient, unsafe reactor designs.
You don't need to plaster the US with that much wind and solar. It would take about a HALF of a percent to power the nation.
There was an interesting interview recently on the new nuclear power plants being built in Finland (one is by AREVA, and other is by Rosatom). Both are besieged by delays.
Problem appears to be that while tech is found to be perfectly adequate and safe, regulatory regime handling nuclear power construction has effectively been sabotaged by our green party, who sat in the government a few times at this point. They now require full vetting of the entirety of design process of the power plant down to the last designer (as in people, not just plans), arcane requirements on leadership systems within organisations designing, building and running the power plant and so on. Things that have essentially nothing to do with building and running the actual power plant.
It has little to nothing to do with safety, but it basically puts a massive bureaucratic paperwork load on every company involved, making building new power plants almost impossible. Rosatom apparently literally hired the former head of the regulatory body and several former officials to help formulate the paperwork needed, and even they couldn't do it because it was so arcane.
Morale of the story: don't underestimate the willingness and ability among the most zealous green activists to actively sabotage any form of power generation that isn't halal with their religious convictions by penetration of both elected and unelected power structures within the state and corruption of these institutions. We used to have nuclear regulatory body that was hailed as so good in handling its job efficiently without compromising safety, that it was literally getting paid by foreign governments to come and provide its expertise to them. Not any more.
1. When you have a viable (politically and otherwise) solution to long term waste storage.
That's an unfair burden. We do not have a viable solution to global warming by this measure. His advocacy is an attempt to change the political situation such that it becomes viable.
#2 is an actuarial exercise.
#3 is also an unfair burden - we do not currently have an emergency fund pool for when Florida goes underwater. We use our national resources to deal with disasters.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Former is solved by cutting down the more recent regulatory items that have little to nothing to do with actual safety of operation, and everything to do with making nuclear power less competitive.
Latter is solved by either storing it underground or recycling it. Former is currently being held back by NIMBY style green activism, latter is being held back by nuclear proliferation fears.
There are no unsolved technical issues here, unlike with solar and wind. Issues here are political, ideological and bureaucratic.
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.
It takes about 30 years to build one nuclear power plant.
When arguing that an alternative is too slow to construct, you really shouldn't be pushing something that is even slower to construct.
The swath of nuclear enegy's death toll per terawatt tell a different story. It is in a bloody category to its own compared to every other form of energy out there, even solar.
I can't tell if you are saying nuclear is the safest or deadliest. I'm assuming you mean the safest. At least that's what the WHO seemed to think in 2010. The WHO ranked them as follows:
Coal: 170,000 deaths per trillion kilowatt hours. 1,963,500 annual total deaths
Hydro: 1400 per trillion KW. 4851 annual deaths
Solar(rooftop): 440 deaths per trillion KW. less than 102 deaths per year
Wind: 150 deaths per trillion KW. 102 deaths per year
Nuclear; 90 per trillion KW. 353 total deaths per year
Nuclear was rated as 1889 times safer than coal. Wind was rated 1133x safer than coal, solar was rated 386x safer than coal.
Granted, this was published one year prior to the 2011 Fukushima disaster. However as far as I know there has only been one death which was tied directly to radiation exposure as of 2018. There were four workers who received compensation who were diagnosed with leukemia and thyroid cancer as a result of exposure. In comparison, over 18,000 were killed by the earthquake and tsunami. Another 500 some died afterward do to disaster related reasons. This included patients who starved to death in a hospital.
What's practical for an investor isn't necessarily what's practical for society at a larger scale. The risk of a specific power plant may be more than an investor can stomach (compared to other investments), but the risk spread over a nation or planet may be low on average compared to the alternatives.
For example, Warren Buffett has said that his Berkshire Hathaway fund can accept investment risks that small funds cannot because BH has shares or ownership in a large volume of companies. Any single new investment may be risky by itself, but since it's pooled with a diverse set of other such investments, the extra risk does not matter to BH. It's partly why the "rich get richer": the big cats can gamble and profit off of things smaller cats can't simply because they are smaller.
No, BH is not investing in power plants that I know of, but I'm just making a point that risk is a matter of size and perspective. The risk and payoff equation of an investor will be different than that of society as a whole.
Table-ized A.I.
Meanwhile here in South Australia with our world leading renewables, our grid is holding fine under the extreme load of a record breaking heatwave of 4 days above 41C. We now increase grid stability nation wide. Want to try some other discredited talking points?
1. When you have a viable (politically and otherwise) solution to long term waste storage.
Maybe we could just blow it into the air and/or dump it into the sea, just like the coal-fired plants do.
https://www.scientificamerican...
No sig today...
1. In the US, at least, we do. It's called Yucca Mountain. it wasn't politically acceptable to the previous Administration for #UNKNOWNREASON, but the current Administration would probably be fine to use this purpose-built facility for what it was built for - long-term storage of nuclear waste.
2. Done. All nuclear plants already pay into a decommissioning fund that is controlled and overseen by the NRC.
3. Every nuclear power plant buy insurance from the Government to cover people and property.
So, we're where you want to be (at least in the US); what's the hold-up to rolling out more nuclear?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!