Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[DRBUZZ0]

Dammit you're right. I honestly thought it was a more neutral organization. You point out that the IAEA says we have a lot of uranium. Forgive me for saying so, but that's not really necessarily convincing. The oil companies say there's plenty of oil. And in the nuclear field I don't see any assessments at all that could be described as neutral.

Again, the energy density of this stuff is INSANE. The fact that we have "A lot" is not as important as how little of it you need. You can run a multi-gigawatt nuclear reactor using low-enrichment uranium for a good few years with a single truck load of fuel. Factor in breeding and fast neutron integral reactors and you literally could produce gigawatts of energy for decades even CENTURIES in a highly effecient reactor...

Uranium is not "rare" it's not considered "valuable" because it's relatively common. We're not talking gold here. We're not even talking silver.

There's three to four times more thorium in the world than uranium and if you consider than thorium is nearlu 100% Th-232, you have nearly 100% potential fuel, and it's more effecient for fission than uranium.

This is not about just how much is avaliable, it's not like you need a huge volume of the stuff. It's in no way comparable to coal or oil, because a single deposit of the stuff is a massive amount of energy.

Seriously... there's enough uranium and thorium just in the pottery glazes and welding rods of the world to meet a good portion of energy needs. if it came down to it we could start collecting antique vaslene glass... but it never will!

I know of at least two people personally who favour nuclear but think it has very limited potential. One of them has worked for 37 years in Natural Resources Canada and sits on the National Energy Board as well. So I'm reserving judgment.

Okay... they have a list of "scientists" who think evolution is bull. But it doesn't really matter what two people think on the national energy board of Canada. Show me scientific consensus against nuclear energy by physisists in general and I'll start to take notice...

I appreciate and have absorbed your point about seawater. Let's see how it works out. The thing is, a lot of things are about to change. For example, if the plant that extracts uranium from seawater uses fossil fuels to operate, it may get more expensive.

Well obviously if you start getting fossil fuels into the equasion. But then again the very notion that sea water extraction would be warented is a good couple of centuries away at least... personally I think it will never reach that point. But if in 700 years we start running out of it and have to look to sea water that will be a concern. Of course, by that time everything may be nuclear powered.

In any case, we've got at least a few hundred years and possibly a few millennium or eons to worry about the details...

Conservation is going to look better and better. I'm going to accept the potential. But I think you should accept the potential for conservation. And we should both accept that we have no crystal ball to predict exactly how the economy will fare in the future, how much of any resource will become practicable.

There's a difference between reasonable conservation and rationing. Yes, people should be encouraged to get more insulation to use weather stripping and replace their old appliences. High effeciency light bulbs and engines with high thermal effeciency: All good stuff!

But after that comes "rationing" and making energy use the a factor which must be considered for all activities. That's limiting. It hurts human progress, it hurts the economy. And it's really pretty unfair. Because you can't really eliminate market forces and if you end up without enough energy to go around you're going to increase the class divide. Only the rich will be able to afford the comfort and quality that energy offers and that's really a shame for everyone else.

The more energy you have at your disposal the more you can do. If you're going to be counting kilowatts and trying to squeeze every ounce of effeciency out of everything you shoot yourself in the foot and you'll find that everyone ends up reading by the light of a single LED and listening to wind-up radios with big antennas because the transmitter is very low power. That's no way to live. That's a pitiful end to centuries of human progress and technology.

I think there is a similar impasse with prices. You assert that nuclear is second only to coal in price, whereas I've seen no unbiased studies at all. The pro-nuclear studies conclude that nuclear is cheaper either by comparing it to solar or by grouping all renewables together and including things like ethanol.

If anything ethanol would be less expensive than solar. Solar is ASTRONOMICALLY expensive. But ethanol and nuclear are not comperable anyway. I don't think anyone ever suggested ethanol as a source of base energy and electricity.

Ethanol is ethyl alcohol. It works okay as a motor fuel, but using it in power plants is a joke. Also it creates carbon dioxide when it burns. No, not as much as gasoline, but enough to be worth considering. And it's not "Carbon neutral" becasue that presumes that if it's not made the plant matter would decompose with 100% effeciency to co2.

Also, there are other issues with making a lot of ehtanol... but that's totally off topic.

They often do not address the fact that in many countries, nuclear has only progressed as far as it has because there are additional subsidies in insurance or decomissioning or waste storage or debt retirement or research and development or all of the above.

Well... the French managed to run their whole damn country on nuclear without going bankrupt. I don't see anyone doing the same with solar or wind. The Danes have sunk billions into a wind program which only works at all because they're tied into the european grid as a whole and produces a lot less energy than it had promised. The germans are installing solar panels as fast as they can and they're still importing more electricity each year.

But as far as decomishioning and waste and building. Okay, there are subsidies. I don't have a problem with the government shelling out money to make stuff happen that helps the enviornment. Way more money has been spent on renewable subsidies with less payback.

Once a plant is built, it's cheap. Nuclear is dirt cheap except for the initial cost of building the plant. Hence it's an investment. Once paid off you cruise. But okay, they do have limited lives before the reactor must be changed or the plant retired.

Sure, you want to see how cheaply, safely, efficiently reactors can be built when the regulations promote it? Take a look at the US Navy. They design modular reactors for subs and surface ships. They're prefabbed, tested standardized and good to go. And they work with terrific economics and reliability.

The anti-nuclear studies come up with these insane disparities where nuclear comes out several times the price we pay for energy. I haven't quoted those studies because I know they are biased. But what's the middle ground? I don't know.

You don't need to use "studies" then... just look at the real world. France gets nearly all electricity from nuclear. They've spent a lot of money to build the infrastructure and develop the systems, but not a break-the-bank amount of money.

Plenty of other countries, the US included, have shown that it's entirely economically possible to crank out gigawatts and gigawatts without spending inordinant amounts of money on it. Sure, the US has spent billions on research, but that goes all the way back to the 1940's when it had to be invented from scratch.

I do know that whether you dispute the 10-year figure or not, wind turbines can go up much faster. As little as 3 months if the permitting process is paved. They are also more modular and their production can be ramped up faster. But that's not saying much, because you're not arguing against them. What will change a lot is conservation. While both wind and nuclear will benefit from carbon taxes or other vehicles of discouraging carbon emissions, it is clear that the biggest winner will be conservation.

I'm not sure what you mean bu "winner will be conservation" means. Conservation doesn't provide energy, it can reduce energy need, but never to zero. And I'm not sure why we need to run around on the "conservation" bull again and again. If we're going to maintain a decent economy and standards of living, then just keeping energy needs at what they are will be... damn difficult. Reducing them will require some real sacrafices of quality of life and progress. And really.. that ain't gona happen. And it shouldn't either.

"Carbon Taxes" are really the worst way to go about things. Just forcing people to use less energy without actually providing an alternative is bad bad bad policy, because it'll cause rationing, inequality, economic problems and possibly absolutely rampant inflation.

Destroying the economy tends to end up not benefiting the environment. When people are living paycheck to paycheck they don't worry as much about keeping the car tuned up and recycling. You know why cars spew exhaust in India? because a lot of people there are really poor and have way more to worry about than air quality. So if you think economic limitations are gona help the earth, you are up for a rude awakening.

After dawdling here this morning on this forum and missing half of a climate change conference at the University of Toronto, I scurried off in time to hear Thomas Homer Dixon deliver the keynote address. He spoke about climate feedback mechanisms and how in the arctic melt we are now seeing the first non-linear climatic response. He anticipates an ice-free arctic within a decade. The whole conference was kind of depressing. One piece of dismal news after another. Study after study indicating we are a lot more screwed than we thought we were. And one after another concluding we have no time to waste.

Yes agreed, We need to do some major stuff about this like yesterday. Honestly, this kinda scares me a bit. And we havent even really seen the direct effects in any major way YET. I'm pretty worried about what it might be like in 30 years.

So we need to go after the things that can most economically deliver immediate results. There were hundreds of people in the room. There are few nuclear proponents. You must understand that in Canada the nuclear experience has been an economic fiasco, whatever the global outlook. More importantly, the two people who felt there was a need for nuclear power also asserted that the lion's share of the work would have to be carried by conservation. There simply wasn't time to ramp up that much generation.

Of course, conserve as much as reasonably possible. Also we need to get CO2 free energy as quickly and as much as possible. But conservation at best can just buy you a little time.

In Canada, that's the choice. There are "big energy vision" people, and conservationists. The conservationists, whether they support nuclear or not, say we have a slim chance of averting climate catastrophe. We'll need to cut emissions by 80-90% within 30 years, about half of that in the next decade.

Yeah, that's a real lot. But "big energy vision" does not mean don't conserve. It means don't completely reverse our increasing ability to have good health, comfort, economic benefits and such.

Conservation is a strawman. it's a stupid deception. Cutting energy needs by 80% to 90% by conservation can be done two ways: Living in mud huts with little led's and a tiny solar cooking box or killing 80% 90% of the population.

The big energy vision people aren't making any claims at all about how much we can save. They may support nuclear as a panacea to climate change, but they don't care enough about it to attend climate conferences to understand the scope of the problem. And the nuclear proponents I know all say we better not close the coal plants either, unless we want the lights to go out.

Well, are the "renewable" people claiming we should close coal plants and that the lights will stay on? No. Coal plants are a necessary evil until we can get the capacity from soemthing else. And we need to do that... ASAP.

"Understanding the scope of the problem" That's bull. The scope of the problem is huge and it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. I don't go to climate conferences because it's a hostile audience. I went to a climate summit at Yale two years ago. My mistake was it was a student thing and none of the studfents were actually engineers or anything. If it had been with actual scientists I may have gotten respect. But I got told everything from "Nuclear? Wow. You're such a terrible person" to "I hope you and people like you die for the sake of the earth, but then again, why should you care about dying... you seem to think death is great for all those people in Hiroshima!"

Robinson pointed out that in order just to replace coal, we'd need to build a nuclear power plant every 3 days for 40 years. In order to replace the oil used in transportation, I suppose another 40 years would be required. And if you accept a 10-year delay between project proposal to first power, you need to add that in. That's 90 years of burning fossil fuels. That cannot work. That's not a responsible plan.

It's a HELL OF A LOT EASIER than building windmills. In any case, I'd tend to think that's probably bull. And they can certainly be built faster.

The argument that "We can't build nuclear plants fast enough to stop global warming" is basically valid for one reason: We haven't been building them. If we had, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. But if we start building now it'll be a hell of a lot easier than if we wait even longer.

The sooner we start the more difference it can make.

Glenn, do you think it's possible to build 121 plants in a year? If not, if we need to ramp up, add some more years to that.

Define "plant" as in what capacity. But could you built 121 plants a year? Yes, I think it's possible. Difficult... not impossible. if you take the navy's lead and ramp it up... it could be done.

But actually one of the best proposals I've heard involves using coal plants and replacing the boilers with modular reactor-driven steam generators. All the wiring and distribution is already in place. The turbines don't care how you feed them. It's one of the most novel and valuable plans I've heard.

So even if I warm up to a place for nuclear, it's hard to see how I can ever make the leap to where a lot of people on this forum are, envisioning nuclear taking over as the primary source in an energy supply as plentiful as the one we have now.

Can nuclear ever be the primary source of energy? Like it is in france? or some parts of Japan? I would think so.

But okay, maybe it's a challenge. It sure as hell has better prospects than SOLAR OR WIND.

Thomas Homer Dixon ended his address by pointing out that next week he will be in a place he had hoped he would never have to resort to going to. He will be in Harvard University at a conference on geoengineering. He is resigning himself to the fact that even if we do everything right from now on, within 2 decades we will have to be doing crazy things like mining the seas with iron and sending mirrors into space in a desperate attempt to mitigate the harm we're doing now.

And is this because we built too many nuclear plants in the past or too many non-nuclear plants?

And would the best policy be to try to start doing what we should have all along or to sit on our asses for a few more decades and then say "If only back in 2007 we had realized..."

There are some very dark days ahead. Addressing climate change will be difficult and expensive. We will have to make some hard choices. I don't foresee a lot of spare change for research and development. Mitigation money, adaptation money. Quickest, most economical and surest means first.

There sure as hell won't be much money for anything if we spend it all on a roof solar panels to power a single damn freezer.

The quickest most economical way is to actually... stop with the talking and start with the building of non-co2 energy sources.

And unfortunately, what has gotten us into this desperate place has been the vain hope that some technological miracle would save us and enable us to live the same cheap, high energy lifestyle we've become accustomed to.

No, we did so by ignoring the technology which would allow us to do so because it made us think of mushroom clouds and scary things. So we sat on our asses and burned coal until it was impossible to deny.

That hope has led us to continue building stupid inefficient structures for decades when we were aware of the problem and had the technology to do better. It has led us to continue building coal plants imagining we'd replace them with something smarter.

On that I agree entirely. And actually... they're still building new coal plants. Oh yeah, they're building wind turbines too, but they can't build them fast enough to keep up with demand, much less replace coal.

I'm a newbie to the environmentalist movement. I had, until recently, hoped for a technological breakthrough myself. But I think I'm also a realist. And I'm careful and concerned about the world I leave my children.

If you think being a "realist" means perusing the idea of getting the world to throw out all the comfort, safety and quality of modern life and start living like Cuba... Well we have a different idea of what "realist" means.

I've become convinced that the big energy vision is crippling, not empowering. Today's conference highlighted that for me.

it doesn't matter whether your energy comes from "big" energy plants or "small distributed generation." That's an issue of philosophy and power generating stablity.

One big coal plant vs a bunch of small ones is effectively the same. It's not where it's generated or how it's distributed. The issue is what's going out into the atmosphere.

So while I try to be open minded, I think the big-energy nuclear vision faces a huge challenge for me. I cannot see it reconciled with 80-90% emissions reductions in 30 years. And even that may not be enough.

Okay, and your proposal? "Conservation" Again, sorry but the whole technical progress of mankind and shaping our world and seeing developing nations move forward and start to move into the first world... that's too important to some of us.

I'd rather see a world where african villigers can move toward living more like US citizens than a world where US citizens start living like african villigars.

if that's the world we're moving toward, I see no point in saving it, because in addition to the earth, the spirit of human endeavor is the most important thing we have. It's not worth saving the earth if it means destroying the future and of our species and reversing what we've managed to do to make our species unique.

We're different... we're not especially strong or robust physically, but with our brains we've been able to send stuff into orbit, travel at the speed of sound and wipe out diseases. That's something special. That's not something you want to turn in the other direction.

 

[Hindmost]

Dammit you're right. I honestly thought it was a more neutral organization. You point out that the IAEA says we have a lot of uranium. Forgive me for saying so, but that's not really necessarily convincing. The oil companies say there's plenty of oil. And in the nuclear field I don't see any assessments at all that could be described as neutral.

The IAEA numbers coincide with much of what I had read in the past. Scientific American had 50-60 years minimum with once through fuel. Even back in the 70s when I was in school, these were similar to the amount of uranium that would be available. Breeders were expected to extent the use of nuclear about 1000 years. Oil companies are not saying we have a lot of oil...oil company executives are and they are lying to keep the stock prices up. If you look at various oil analysis on the web...from geologists etc...they will show the oil issues that exist. See Peakoil.com. Anyone that has followed the oil industry knows that there hasn't been a major oil discovery since the 70s and with modern technology for finding oil, we know where most of it all is. Eventually we will be drilling off the coast of calfornia again and in ANWR and any number of places.

I know of at least two people personally who favour nuclear but think it has very limited potential. One of them has worked for 37 years in Natural Resources Canada and sits on the National Energy Board as well. So I'm reserving judgment.

I appreciate and have absorbed your point about seawater. Let's see how it works out. The thing is, a lot of things are about to change. For example, if the plant that extracts uranium from seawater uses fossil fuels to operate, it may get more expensive. Conservation is going to look better and better. I'm going to accept the potential. But I think you should accept the potential for conservation. And we should both accept that we have no crystal ball to predict exactly how the economy will fare in the future, how much of any resource will become practicable.

I think there is a similar impasse with prices. You assert that nuclear is second only to coal in price, whereas I've seen no unbiased studies at all. The pro-nuclear studies conclude that nuclear is cheaper either by comparing it to solar or by grouping all renewables together and including things like ethanol. They often do not address the fact that in many countries, nuclear has only progressed as far as it has because there are additional subsidies in insurance or decomissioning or waste storage or debt retirement or research and development or all of the above. The anti-nuclear studies come up with these insane disparities where nuclear comes out several times the price we pay for energy. I haven't quoted those studies because I know they are biased. But what's the middle ground? I don't know.

I do know that whether you dispute the 10-year figure or not, wind turbines can go up much faster. As little as 3 months if the permitting process is paved. They are also more modular and their production can be ramped up faster. But that's not saying much, because you're not arguing against them. What will change a lot is conservation. While both wind and nuclear will benefit from carbon taxes or other vehicles of discouraging carbon emissions, it is clear that the biggest winner will be conservation.

After dawdling here this morning on this forum and missing half of a climate change conference at the University of Toronto, I scurried off in time to hear Thomas Homer Dixon deliver the keynote address. He spoke about climate feedback mechanisms and how in the arctic melt we are now seeing the first non-linear climatic response. He anticipates an ice-free arctic within a decade. The whole conference was kind of depressing. One piece of dismal news after another. Study after study indicating we are a lot more screwed than we thought we were. And one after another concluding we have no time to waste.

So we need to go after the things that can most economically deliver immediate results. There were hundreds of people in the room. There are few nuclear proponents. You must understand that in Canada the nuclear experience has been an economic fiasco, whatever the global outlook. More importantly, the two people who felt there was a need for nuclear power also asserted that the lion's share of the work would have to be carried by conservation. There simply wasn't time to ramp up that much generation.

In Canada, that's the choice. There are "big energy vision" people, and conservationists. The conservationists, whether they support nuclear or not, say we have a slim chance of averting climate catastrophe. We'll need to cut emissions by 80-90% within 30 years, about half of that in the next decade. The big energy vision people aren't making any claims at all about how much we can save. They may support nuclear as a panacea to climate change, but they don't care enough about it to attend climate conferences to understand the scope of the problem. And the nuclear proponents I know all say we better not close the coal plants either, unless we want the lights to go out.

Robinson pointed out that in order just to replace coal, we'd need to build a nuclear power plant every 3 days for 40 years. In order to replace the oil used in transportation, I suppose another 40 years would be required. And if you accept a 10-year delay between project proposal to first power, you need to add that in. That's 90 years of burning fossil fuels. That cannot work. That's not a responsible plan.

Glenn, do you think it's possible to build 121 plants in a year? If not, if we need to ramp up, add some more years to that.

There is no way coal is going to be replaced by nuclear. There are only about 450 plants on the planet now. I am not sure of the industrial capacity around the world to build nuke plants, but even the Japanese could probably supply about 8 reactors per year. The Koreans have most of the manufacturing equipment from my old company and they could supply a few, but they have their own plants to build. And it needs talented engineers and technicians. It takes years to build reactor vessels and steam generators. The US would have to rebuild the technology and it would take awhile.

So even if I warm up to a place for nuclear, it's hard to see how I can ever make the leap to where a lot of people on this forum are, envisioning nuclear taking over as the primary source in an energy supply as plentiful as the one we have now.

No one here has said nuclear power is a panacea. If the US builds some capacity...and I don't even know if we can build a vessel, steam generators, pumps and motors here anymore, we might be able to start up about 3-6 reactors a year in about 20 years. I do think we have shown enough evidence that nuclear is competitive. The MIT 2003 study is a very good example and I am going to believe an MIT panel over some anti-nuke stuff.

It is not like we can build a 100,000 wind generators overnight either. And that's how many would be needed to put a small dent in the US grid.

We need all sorts of power: solar, geothermal, wind, nuclear, coal if all the world is going to come close to surviving the next 50 years without severe issues. All oil and natural gas should be reserved for transportation and space heating.

As far as global warming, CO2 capture needs to be advanced and quickly. But I think we are way over the hump on this and will see real problems.

Thomas Homer Dixon ended his address by pointing out that next week he will be in a place he had hoped he would never have to resort to going to. He will be in Harvard University at a conference on geoengineering. He is resigning himself to the fact that even if we do everything right from now on, within 2 decades we will have to be doing crazy things like mining the seas with iron and sending mirrors into space in a desperate attempt to mitigate the harm we're doing now.

There are some very dark days ahead. Addressing climate change will be difficult and expensive. We will have to make some hard choices. I don't foresee a lot of spare change for research and development. Mitigation money, adaptation money. Quickest, most economical and surest means first.

And unfortunately, what has gotten us into this desperate place has been the vain hope that some technological miracle would save us and enable us to live the same cheap, high energy lifestyle we've become accustomed to. That hope has led us to continue building stupid inefficient structures for decades when we were aware of the problem and had the technology to do better. It has led us to continue building coal plants imagining we'd replace them with something smarter. I'm a newbie to the environmentalist movement. I had, until recently, hoped for a technological breakthrough myself. But I think I'm also a realist. And I'm careful and concerned about the world I leave my children. I've become convinced that the big energy vision is crippling, not empowering. Today's conference highlighted that for me.

So while I try to be open minded, I think the big-energy nuclear vision faces a huge challenge for me. I cannot see it reconciled with 80-90% emissions reductions in 30 years. And even that may not be enough.

I agree that there will not be any techological miracle unless someone figures out a way to make hugh amounts of antimatter cheaply. Unless fusion becomes cheap and feasible within the next 50 years, it won't be able to help either.

glenn

 

[DRBUZZ0]

We don't need energy. We need the things it provides us. And not all of those. We need shelter and food. No argument there. We also need availability of medicine and education. We need to get between work and home and school and hospitals. We need to be able to communicate with friends and family.

"A man cannot live by bread alone." There's a difference between surviving and doing something more. About traveling and enjoying life. About being able to expand capabilities and comfort...

If the basics are all that matter you will find yourself in some sort of cross between the middle ages and the terrible communist drudgery of that hung over eastern Europe.

Beyond those basics, what we need most is to leave a livable world for the next generation. That means we flood as little of Bangladesh, Shanghai, Vancouver and Florida as we possibly can.

The world which you seem to envision would be a miserable place for the next generation. Florida would not be underwater. But what what would be the use of Florida? it's terribly uncomfortable in the summer without air conditioning. And the economey is based highly on tourism. Without vacations, there's not much ecomic activity in florida. Well there's the space center, but launching rockets takes HUGE amounts of energy, so that's a no-no

That may mean that how we get between work and home changes. It may mean that where we live and where we work changes. It may mean that how we communicate changes. It may mean that our shelter changes. It can be smaller or more efficient or closer to other structures or more rural or more urban. It may mean that jobs change. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Beyond the basics, a lot of details are negotiable.

If we can do the basics and still have a lot of energy, I'm all for it. I don't think that's possible.

The world you describe and lifestyle which would be lived can be described best with one word: subsistence.

That's not a world I'd ever want to live in... hardly worth preserving if that's what life is to be.

 

[luddite]

No.. hunger has nothing to do with farming and production of food. We can easily provide enough food to feed the world. The US and Western Europe both throw away enough food becasue it's stale or someone isn't hungry to feed all the starving nations. It's a combination of politics, corruption, wars and countries not having the infrastructure to distribute food.

Agreed. Except I'll add that the global economy that sells food to the highest bidder can, in some cases, contribute. It can mean that tropical gourmet foods for western markets can displace staples in some countries. And those delicious mangoes can be thrown out in Canada.

A good example is North Korea. China has and South Korea and other countries in the area have plenty of food. They'd sell it to the North no problem for pennies. Kim Jong Il could feed his people for the price of a couple of his Dongs (the missiles). It's even been offered for free. He won't accept it. That would show weakness and allow foreigners into his country and reduce his absolute control.

Farming in North Korea could be better too, but all funds avaliable are diverted to military functions and such. They have irrigation resources that could help provide much more food, but nobody will pay the relatively small price for a canal or pipeline to use them. Sad, really.

Such is typical of many starving countries. it is certainly not because the food does not exist.

I'm well aware of Korea. It's one of the cases Amnesty International is looking at in its expanded mandate. Though I would call it very atypical.

But why? I mean, sure you can grow it locally, but I like the fact that I can have bananas and oranges and stuff. I'm glad that I don't have to rely on canned cabbage in the winter to prevent scurvy. Is that so wrong?

No and yes. It's not wrong to want it. It's not wrong to have it if you can do so without harm. It is wrong to demand it if the only way of doing so is to contribute to the drowning of Bangladesh. Bananas are still routinely flown into Canada. And fuel is so cheap that they're the cheapest fruits around. I buy them myself. But is it right? No. Maybe I should stop.

I really don't want to have to tell my kids things like:

"Back when I was your age people with a reasonable income could go to visit other countries on airplanes. I went to Europe and Australia and Fiji. It wasn't like today where you have to wait five years to apply for a permit from the department of energy conservation to fly on an airplane"

"Back when I was your age we had this stuff called icecream. Wow, it was great, especially on a summer day. They banned the stuff with the Energy Conservation Act of 2020. Apparently freezers are only permitted for biomedical use now and you need a license"

"You wouldn't believe this, but when I was your age, if it was hot out, it was legal to have your whole house cooled by this evaporative system called 'air conditioning' it was great, because you could be comfortable and get a good sleep and work efficiently even when it was really hot out"

I don't want to tell my grandkids that when I was a kid, we had things like polar bears and ice skating and skiing. I don't want to tell my kids that there used to be a country called Bangladesh but we drowned it because we wanted our ice cream. I especially don't want to explain to my kids why we kept building poorly insulated detached suburban frame houses with grassy lawns in the desert when we knew the risks that the Amazon would burn, that China would become parched, that all of Africa would be overrun with resource wars and so on. I cannot explain to myself even now how Dubai operates an indoor ski hill.

And by the way, I think ice cream will survive. I can live with telling my grandkids that when I was a kid, we kept it in our freezer, while my grandkids will get it as a special treat on their birthdays. I can definitely live with telling my grandkids that when I was a kid we had to cool houses with air conditioners because we built them so stupidly. I've hung around on wide, cool porches bathed in tree-shade in the baking heat of Brazilian summers. And I look forward to telling my grandkids that when my kids were little, I didn't let them on the streets with their bicycles, because streets were for cars and bicycle riders simply weren't safe. I look forward to telling my grandkids that when I was a kid, you couldn't swim in Toronto's rivers because we had a stupid idea that rainwater needed to be got rid of, even if it destroyed the river.

As I said to Schneibster, I don't think there's a correct answer here. Competing visions of the future. We cannot predict how things will work out. But grant me that my vision is as compelling to me as yours is to you.

When I started looking into what would need to be done to achieve the necessary emissions reductions, I was afraid. It was very hard for me to imagine how it could possibly be done. And the people who brought me around to see how it could be done are amazing people. They are engineers and urban planners and energy analysts. They are creative and visionary. They foresee skyscrapers as giant greenhouses to feed thriving urban hubs, for example. And once I could see it, it was both thrilling and deeply satisfying. Because it involves clean water and air, safer streets, and homes far more comfortable than those we're building now. It involves better integrated communities and corner grocery stores I remember from my childhood. So that's why I'm resilient to the idea that we need to build a bunch of nuclear plants and maintain a high-energy lifestyle. That's why I'm not excited by the prospect of keeping our cars. It doesn't mean I want to take them away from people. But I'd like to engage people to see that they are an encumbrance. That life can be better. That we don't need so much energy.

I recognize that by trying to engage others in my vision, I have to be prepared to entertain theirs. And I must say that when you spoke about desalination and other high-energy delights, I understood more.

And maybe, just maybe, I can be brought around to seeing how nuclear generation can be built up in time to save us from global warming, though that's pretty hard to see.

You all have complained about how I'm not getting the messages you send. If there's one thing that I can't seem to get across no matter how hard I try, it is that low energy does not necessarily equal hardship. I've been in extremely low energy buildings. They are not just comfortable, they can be spectacular. I keep getting the message over and over that living without air conditioning is intolerable. Whereas I've been in sensibly built houses and I don't understand the advantage of air conditioning.

Long before I became involved in climate action, I wanted to live on the Toronto Islands. There's a community there of little houses. There are no cars. People leave their doors open, so their neighbours can pop in while they're out. Children waddle out of their houses in the morning, still in their pajamas, and go to the local grocery store and order a muffin to put on their parents tab. It's difficult, when you look at that, to see the advantages of the automobile. Why is it, exactly, that we can't conceive of living without them anymore?

I could go on, but I hope you get my point.

Cheers. And thanks for the conversation.

 

[luddite]

I don't go to climate conferences because it's a hostile audience. I went to a climate summit at Yale two years ago. My mistake was it was a student thing and none of the studfents were actually engineers or anything. If it had been with actual scientists I may have gotten respect. But I got told everything from "Nuclear? Wow. You're such a terrible person" to "I hope you and people like you die for the sake of the earth, but then again, why should you care about dying... you seem to think death is great for all those people in Hiroshima!"

It's late and I'm not going to stay up. But I wanted to answer this.

You need to go to climate conferences. Because most of the people who understand the climate problem don't buy into a nuclear solution. So when the **** hits the fan and policymakers look around to see who can solve the problem quickly, the people they will turn to won't buy into your ideas. I have a friend who is a lead author of the IPCC reports (that sounds a lot more impressive than it is, there are a lot of lead authors). He's anti-nuclear. And he's talking to the others. And the lead author of Canada's climate change strategy is anti-nuclear. On economic grounds primarily.

I may not be in love with a nuclear idea, but I think it's really pointless to stay in separate little hidey-holes afraid to talk to each other. It there's merit to your solution, it needs to be articulated.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

A very dark future indeed. A very sad and pitiful turn for a species which had so much potential.

Although I could see this future vision of yours as a good setting for a movie...

Imagine the voice of that announcer guy..

"In a world turned backward... where in a matter of decades humans have regressed my millennial, mankind is now less unique amongst the animals...
Conserving energy, tribes with spears hunt amid the ruins of the once great civilization from which they descended.

In a place once called "New York" a witch doctor makes an offering to their green copper goddess, once built to symbolize liberty. Now an idol for a people ruled by superstition, hunger and fear, who stare blankly at the hulks once built as homes offices and now believed a place of magic and demons...

But in one remote corner of the world, the flame of civilization still smolders. Here, the ones they once called "the big power people who are bad for the environment" cling to hope.

Here, where the sounds of computers, electronics and communication still can be heard, a band of throw-backs to a better time lives in a community where warmth, safety, health and hope still burn strong, powered by the reactors of several aircraft carriers.

It was 2010 when the "Greens" finally took over and destroyed civilization. Had these vessels not escaped, all would have been lost... but here, they plan for a day when man will once again, have a bright future... "

 

[luddite]

If anything ethanol would be less expensive than solar. Solar is ASTRONOMICALLY expensive. But ethanol and nuclear are not comperable anyway. I don't think anyone ever suggested ethanol as a source of base energy and electricity.

Ethanol is ethyl alcohol. It works okay as a motor fuel, but using it in power plants is a joke. Also it creates carbon dioxide when it burns. No, not as much as gasoline, but enough to be worth considering. And it's not "Carbon neutral" becasue that presumes that if it's not made the plant matter would decompose with 100% effeciency to co2.

Also, there are other issues with making a lot of ehtanol... but that's totally off topic.

That was my point. That comparing nuclear to ethanol was pointless.

 

[luddite]

Well... the French managed to run their whole damn country on nuclear without going bankrupt. I don't see anyone doing the same with solar or wind. The Danes have sunk billions into a wind program which only works at all because they're tied into the european grid as a whole and produces a lot less energy than it had promised. The germans are installing solar panels as fast as they can and they're still importing more electricity each year.

Good point about the French. You're right that their economy is fine. That doesn't mean, though, that it couldn't have been done with wind. Interest in nuclear predated greater interest in wind. Also the pattern has been that utilities build "power plants" while solar, wind and other micro-generators have been left to independent investors, often individuals. I'm not sure about France's situation, but I'd venture to guess that building up nuclear plants was a governmental decision. So while it certainly demonstrates that nuclear is perfectly viable, it doesn't show that wind is not.

 

[Lonewulf]

Has anyone provided a side by side comparison with costs per kw/h between nuclear and wind yet? Or is it just speculation?

 

[luddite]

I'm not sure what you mean bu "winner will be conservation" means. Conservation doesn't provide energy, it can reduce energy need, but never to zero. And I'm not sure why we need to run around on the "conservation" bull again and again. If we're going to maintain a decent economy and standards of living, then just keeping energy needs at what they are will be... damn difficult. Reducing them will require some real sacrafices of quality of life and progress. And really.. that ain't gona happen. And it shouldn't either.

"Carbon Taxes" are really the worst way to go about things. Just forcing people to use less energy without actually providing an alternative is bad bad bad policy, because it'll cause rationing, inequality, economic problems and possibly absolutely rampant inflation.

Destroying the economy tends to end up not benefiting the environment. When people are living paycheck to paycheck they don't worry as much about keeping the car tuned up and recycling. You know why cars spew exhaust in India? because a lot of people there are really poor and have way more to worry about than air quality. So if you think economic limitations are gona help the earth, you are up for a rude awakening.

By "winner will be conservation", I mean that when evaluating methods of meeting demand, the impact of a carbon tax would benefit conservation most. You can't get lower carbon than that.

Of course I understand that conservation doesn't produce energy. But if it displaces energy required, it amounts to the same thing. I know it can't go to zero. But when I've thought carefully about how much it can displace, when I've read other analysts speak about the potential, well, it isn't trivial. And it doesn't involve dire straits either.

Obviously, I'm not advocating not providing alternatives. One of the reasons I got involved in climate action is because I recognized that we're all in this together and government action and support are critical. You can't build your own personal public transit system. You suffer with buying homes built under whatever building code you have. You can't choose to buy the low-emissions vehicle that hasn't been built, and regulations can make sure that it's an option. We absolutely need government support for a massive energy retrofit program for all existing structures. And so on.

Cars in India may spew more exhaust, but the average Canadian is responsible for 18 times the emissions of every Indian. And that's not including the stuff we buy that's manufactured in India and China and carted across the ocean. There is a very strong correlation between income and emissions. I'm not advocating that we make everyone poor. But countries like Norway have had a carbon tax for decades and have coupled it with strong environmental regulations, carbon capture and so on.

I don't think carbon tax is the only way to go. Britain's Department of the Environment is advocating a carbon quota. I think that's harsher, but has some benefits, too. There are other methods. Voluntary measures don't work.

 

[luddite]

Has anyone provided a side by side comparison with costs per kw/h between nuclear and wind yet? Or is it just speculation?

Kind of, sort of.

The problem is that all the reports are biased one way or the other. And when you look at the details, various things are lumped together or omitted. There's no definitive study all sides can agree on, that I can see.

 

[Lonewulf]

In spite of biase, there has to be some accurate assessment out there somewhere. People aren't in the habit of spending invisible "mystery money", unless they cook their books.

The question is, why should I accept the claim that wind energy is cheaper or more easy to put into place than nuclear? What estimate is there for such a claim?

 

[luddite]

Yeah, that's a real lot. But "big energy vision" does not mean don't conserve. It means don't completely reverse our increasing ability to have good health, comfort, economic benefits and such.

Conservation is a strawman. it's a stupid deception. Cutting energy needs by 80% to 90% by conservation can be done two ways: Living in mud huts with little led's and a tiny solar cooking box or killing 80% 90% of the population.

Nope. 10-fold reductions in energy use in built form are achievable. They're being done right now. 10-fold reductions in transportation are more challenging. Public transit can do a lot. Economic incentives need to put people closer to where they need to go. Industry and agriculture need to move closer to their markets. This is basically reversing some of the changes that have occurred in the last few decades, but it's not stuff that makes life worth living. Do I really need to have my toothpaste made in China for my life to be complete? It can't be done overnight, of course. What we can do very quickly is encourage carpooling and, where possible, telecommuting. In the meantime, we build up the transit system. Emissions standards need a shakeup. And I agree with Schneibster that electric cars are the way to go. They can double up for grid stabilization.

Industry is where I've admitted greatest ignorance. Monbiot has some ideas about cement. I've toyed with the idea of manufacturing steel in the winter, when the waste heat can be used for district energy, and employing agricultural workers in the off season. I wouldn't put my money into Boeing or GM. Industry manufactures a lot of stuff that, frankly, doesn't contribute much to our lives. In a low-energy economy some of this can disappear and not be missed. Plastic garden gnomes. Plastic walking dollies. Dixie cups. Nosehair trimmers. Rubber kneading toys. Charger plates. Chandelier decorations. Mickey Mouse switchplate covers. You may want to keep some of these. I doubt you'd miss them all. We may even own fewer clothes. If this seems like an intolerable sacrifice, well, I gotta really wonder.

There are tradeoffs, too. I'm pretty sure we'll have full employment because more things will be done manually. But we're likely to have more time too. So you can garden, take hikes, go swimming.

Mud huts would be disastrous. They're worse than existing structures, so why would we switch? You're bringing up ridiculous propositions.

We will not go back to the past. Yes we need to relearn some aspects of the past low-energy lifestyle, but there are things we need not give up and innovations we need to embrace. I've talked about naturally cool buildings for hot climates that are centuries-old. The same is not true for buildings in cold climates. Older buildings tend to be drafty and difficult to heat. We can and should improve them. We should improve buildings for hot climates too. My maternal grandmother saw siblings die of tuberculosis and meningitis. In my father's family, that generation protected against the grief of such losses by having families of 19 and 22 children. My great-grandmothers look bone-weary in their pictures. We will not go back to that. And our grandkids will go to school and, I hope, use computers to blog on fora and share information.

There are other points to make, but I think they're addressed in your other questions.

But my point here as that the constant refrain of "such hardship, you're asking me to live in mud huts" is ridiculous. I'm asking you to live in a house that's probably more comfortable than the one you live in now. It will be more shielded from the elements, it will have no fan noise, no problems with humidity and dryness, it will be better ventilated, it will maintain a more comfortable temperature year-round. It may have more natural light. It will be less prone to flooded foundations, and it will have lower heating bills, cooling bills, electric bills, water bills, sewage bills.

 

[luddite]

In spite of biase, there has to be some accurate assessment out there somewhere. People aren't in the habit of spending invisible "mystery money", unless they cook their books.

The question is, why should I accept the claim that wind energy is cheaper or more easy to put into place than nuclear? What estimate is there for such a claim?

I did provide sources for Kevin way back. I can dig those up again. Or I can get you more.

Would you accept the Pembina Institute? The Suzuki Foundation? Sierra Club? Energy Watch Group? Rocky Mountain Institute? Energy Probe? Ontario Clean Air Alliance? Ontario Sustainable Energy Association? Canadian Wind Energy Association? The Goldberg Report on relative subsidies during the development period? I think there was one by the EU Environmental Agency, too. I know you won't accept Greenpeace. I saw several from American renewables groups.

It's easy to find reports. But I can just as easily find reports that say the opposite by IAEA, ACLU, that Australian Uranium Group, various energy companies that build nuclear plants and so on.

I've always found the anti-nuclear reports more compelling. But I can't expect you to agree. The thing is, I know the Canadian experience. Every reactor over budget and behind schedule. Every reactor requiring refurbishment greater than its original cost within 20-30 years. Reactors going off line all the time. We inherited a "stranded debt" primarily from nuclear that we're paying on our energy bills. And we all know that no Canadian reactor is ensured beyond the 1% of hypothetical costs in the case of a serious accident. No other insurance money has been set aside by the government, no decommissioning money is set aside, we haven't got a clue what we're going to do with the waste (and Canadian reactors produce a lot of plutonium). A few years ago, we decided to privatize our energy system and sold a few reactors for less than the cost of decommissioning, but maintained the responsibility for decommissioning firmly in public hands.

I'm willing to accept that the experience is different in other parts of the world. But for me, I'd put my money on wind any day. In fact I have. I've bought into a wind co-op.

 

[Lonewulf]

Why isn't France in the same boat as Canada, then, if it's so bad there from nuclear?

 

[luddite]

Well, are the "renewable" people claiming we should close coal plants and that the lights will stay on? No. Coal plants are a necessary evil until we can get the capacity from soemthing else. And we need to do that... ASAP.

That's the problem. The pro-nuclear people (I'm not talking about the conservationists with a sprinkling of nuclear, I'm talking about people who basically want to retain the same scale of grid with a lot of baseload nuclear) don't want to get rid of the coal ever.

It's like old school versus new. The Ontario Clean Air Alliance lobbied heavily to close down the coal plants. The current government was voted in initially in 2003 on a platform of phasing out coal by 2007. We just had another election, and they were voted in again on a platform of phasing out coal by 2014. It's a little surreal. But the power workers unions are lobbying heavily to say it can't be done at all. And we need nuclear too. We just need that energy, there's no other way. They are used to crunching their numbers in a particular way, and they just can't squeeze it into that box. Though I think that the fact that nuclear and coal between them account for 90% of the power workers has something to do with it.

Meanwhile, the Pembina Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, the Suzuki Foundation, the Ontario Clean Air Alliance have all demonstrated that it can be done on conservation/renewables/cogen, and by 2009. The thing is they are starting from different premises. The utilities are used to looking at demand and saying we need x reliable steady baseload and y dispatchable power, and there's really no alternative. These other organizations are looking at it and saying, forget what you're used to doing, our planet is dying, so some creativity is going to be necessary. The Pembina/WWF study actually hired the same consultants who evaluated the provincial plan to evaluate theirs, and used the same price inputs. And they still came up with a cheaper plan. It's hard to look at that and say nuclear is economical.

So in Ontario, you have pretty much no allies if you're going to argue for meeting climate change with nuclear. Pretty much anybody here who says we can do anything to put a dent in our emissions is proposing the conservation/renewables/cogen route.

 

[luddite]

Why isn't France in the same boat as Canada, then, if it's so bad there from nuclear?

I don't know. Want me to hazard a guess?

 

[luddite]

The argument that "We can't build nuclear plants fast enough to stop global warming" is basically valid for one reason: We haven't been building them. If we had, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in. But if we start building now it'll be a hell of a lot easier than if we wait even longer.

Yes and no. The thing is, just like we can't evaluate different visions of the future, neither can we necessarily construct an alternate past reliably. Cheap oil and gas and coal were there. When oil came on line, we found new uses for the coal it displaced. When natural gas came online, we continued to use increasing amounts of coal and oil. I see no reason to believe that more nuclear wouldn't have just continued this pattern.

And today you'd be telling me "I don't want to tell my kids that when I was a kid I used to be able to fly to Paris for breakfast", and it would seem even more impossible to imagine doing without fossil fuels.

I'll agree that we certainly better start doing something now. But I recommend building a transit system while retrofitting every building. Because that's not going to get any easier either.

 

[luddite]

it doesn't matter whether your energy comes from "big" energy plants or "small distributed generation." That's an issue of philosophy and power generating stablity.

One big coal plant vs a bunch of small ones is effectively the same. It's not where it's generated or how it's distributed. The issue is what's going out into the atmosphere.

You misunderstand my meaning. I'm not talking about the size of the individual units. I'm talking about the size of the whole grid. I'm saying target at least 50% reductions through conservation.

 

[luddite]

Okay, and your proposal? "Conservation" Again, sorry but the whole technical progress of mankind and shaping our world and seeing developing nations move forward and start to move into the first world... that's too important to some of us.

I'd rather see a world where african villigers can move toward living more like US citizens than a world where US citizens start living like african villigars.

if that's the world we're moving toward, I see no point in saving it, because in addition to the earth, the spirit of human endeavor is the most important thing we have. It's not worth saving the earth if it means destroying the future and of our species and reversing what we've managed to do to make our species unique.

We're different... we're not especially strong or robust physically, but with our brains we've been able to send stuff into orbit, travel at the speed of sound and wipe out diseases. That's something special. That's not something you want to turn in the other direction.

This just makes me sad. You're saying that if you can't travel at the speed of sound there's no point in living. And basically that in order to travel at the speed of sound, you're willing to drown a Bangladeshi or two. Well, who cares, their lives are not worth living anyway, their species is not unique because they haven't been into orbit.

When I thought about what I'd want to tell my kids, I thought I could never explain to them how I had the colossal hubris to stand by and watch the world collapse. The first priority is to preserve a world for them that continues to nurture and sustain them.

I'm not suggesting we turn off our brains. I'm suggesting we turn them keenly to more productive channels. I'm not suggesting we wipe out progress and medicine. I'm suggesting we build on it. I'm suggesting we apply existing building technologies now.

But first we have to recognize the scale of the challenge and what is possible to do to address it.

I've said we cannot redo all our power generation in the next decade. It's not possible. A huge portion will have to be done with conservation. That's not what I want to see, that's the conclusion I inevitably come to. The alternatives are simply unthinkable.