Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant

[Schneibster]

I think sea water may fall into the same category.

Experiment (the data from which has been presented here) says you are wrong. You need to either respond to presented data with some substantial reason to believe it is incorrect, or you need to accept that it is correct. You're just re-asserting the same things you started with, and ignoring data presented that says that your assertions are wrong.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Schneibster, I'll answer your questions one by one as time permits.



I was talking about routine venting of gas, with radioactive particles. This has been agreed to by Buzzo. Also, at least in Canada, there is an issue of tritium releases into water. As I said, these are not trivial concerns, but I recognize that the routine emissions from coal burning, or even burning natural gas are far more serious.

Well the issue of venting radioactive gas is definitely something which is worth looking at and assuring it's within reasonable limits. It's really a safety issue that the gases are vented. You *could* hold stuff like radon and radioactive xenon, because the half lives are short enough. But that adds unnecessary complications and such. For the safety of workers and to have the more reliable system, best to just ventilate that stuff out.

The problem with radiation theory is that the most accepted is "Linear Non Threshold Theory." Basically that means you want to keep radiation exposure as low as you reasonably can and there is no level which doesn't cause some health problems. So you can't ever really say "That won't cause any problem for anyone ever"

In my opinion, it's reasonable to set exposure limits which are on par with what you might get from natural sources like radon from rock formations. Once you get to the point where a nuclear power plant produces exposure levels similar to non-nuclear structures it seems silly to me to worry about it. If you are standing next to the power plant and the majority of your dose of radiation is coming from the concrete of the containment dome, which contains naturally occurring radioisotopes it's getting to the point of ridiculous to worry about exposure, because you'd get the same from ANY concrete structure.

So if the dose is equivalent to... say.. a big granite building and it produces about as much radioactive gas as you get from running the ventilation systems in a few deep basements of standard structures... Well, at that point I don't see the point in worrying about it. It's no worse than other structures and we can't go around obsessing over radiation every time we build ANYTHING.

So as far as Tritium... you don't get any tritium problems from light water reactors, but in Canada they have heavy water moderated reactors. The CANDU reactor is a really great piece of efficient engineering, but it does collect some tritium in the moderator over time. But light water reactors can produce some tiny amounts of tritium if the coolant is run through for a very long period of time.

The coolant/moderator of reactors is contained and doesn't usually get out in significant amounts, but it's true that it does sometimes evaporate a little bit and it is sometimes vented in the form of steam. Also, since it's liquid and there's the potential that it could *all* come out if you had a bad leak, it's worth considering. So at that point, it's not a misplaced concern to ask how tritium from reactors could effect populations and the environment.

Tritium is a low-energy beta emitter. Because of it's extremely low energy it can be hard to detect. Actually you can't detect it at all with a standard geiger counter.

A couple of good things about tritium:

It has a half life of only 12.3 years, which means it's not so much of a concern about "leaving a toxic legacy for our childrens children" sort of crap

It's a very low energy beta emitter. Harmless outside the body. Inside the body it can be incorporated into cells. But the low energy of the beta particle (which for all intents and purposes is a 6 thousand volt electron it spits out) means that any damage is going to be a lot less than higher energy emitters. it only have the ability to inoize a couple of atoms... if that. And it won't travel far at all before being captured. It's possible that the transition from hydrogen to helium-3 could break apart a molecule it is part of, but this hasn't really been shown to be a signifficnat source of damage.

It's only dangerous in water and hence, if it gets into a large lake or ocean, it gets diluted pretty fast before it ends up in anyone's glass.

The best way to deal with possible exposure to tritium is to drink lots of water and do lots of peepee. That pretty much will dilute and replace tritated water in your system and even tritium in biological molecules by ion exchange.

It's also worth noting that high levels of tritium are found in consumer products like exit signs and wrist watches.

Despite this, it is a concern and certainly something that you don't want to cause any undue exposure to for the public. It can cause problems, so it becomes a question of how potent the stuff is.

The science seems to indicate that the levels and conditions which could reasonably be expected to be associated with nuclear energy are low enough to not be of a health concern beyond normal background radiation as well as above mentioned consumer devices, which are so common that they are breached from time to time.

You'll find some good information here:

http://hps.org/

Go to the publications and media section and look up sources on tritium.

If anyone wants to educate themselves on the dangers/safety/enviornmental concerns of radiation and nuclear energy I really cannot say enough good about the health physics society. They're the experts in this and their "Expert Answers" is about the best professional public outreach info program I have ever seen. They're not directly funded or affiliated with the industry and radiation safety is all they do. This isn't an activist organization as such, it represents the profession which is employed by power producers, enviornmental regulators, hospitals and radiology, universities and so on.

 

[Schneibster]

What am I ignoring?

Actually, I can answer that, maybe. Thorium I have not addressed. I know relatively little about it. There's also some plutonium we've produced that could be burned. I've not seen studies that show how much there is. Sorry.

First, you have not addressed uranium from seawater; you've dismissed it without looking at it, and attempted to cover it up like a cat covering its **** by ignoring it, twice now. And I mean on two occasions; the number of occurrences on each occasion has been multiple.

Second, plutonium (as has been repeatedly made clear) is not a natural fuel; it is produced when U-238 is bombarded with neutrons, as in a reactor. Special reactors called "breeders" maximize the production of plutonium from U-238. This has been covered extensively in this thread. I have no idea why you are saying the same thing about it you were saying originally, nor why you are ignoring the fact that production of plutonium reduces the waste that needs to be dealt with, and increases the amount of nuclear fuel. You just keep ignoring it, and you also keep ignoring the fact that it is an assumption of the sources you present that the fuel cycle will be burn once.

Third, thorium increases geological resources by ten times.

Fourth, the energy density of uranium is so high that comparing it to oil is ridiculous. I will not accept (nor should anyone else) any argument based on oil geology as a valid argument about the extraction of nuclear fuel.

So here are four serious faults in just this one point. And here is positive proof that you're just recycling your old arguments and ignoring the ones that are presented. Basically what you've done is admitted that you had no idea what you were talking about on waste, and used that admission to justify bringing the same refuted arguments around again, as if they had not been refuted. If you intended to do this, it is a dishonest rhetorical trick; if you did not, then you have not been keeping track and need to if you want to have a sensible conversation.

 

[Schneibster]

Look, if you want to have a conversation, you need to pay attention. If you just want to spread propaganda, go do it somewhere else. Is that clear enough for you?

 

[luddite]

The question is, can renewables provide the power needed to grow, process, and transport enough food for the world? And that is a question that needs to be explored in far more depth before nuclear is rejected, because we cannot afford to be wrong.

Can renewables provide the power to grow things the way they are currently grown? Maybe. You're right. We can't afford to go on hope here.

But I think you're asking the wrong question. The question is can we feed the world without nuclear energy? And I think the answer to that is a lot more hopeful.

When Cuba was starved of oil imports from Russia, and left with a US-led embargo, it had a sudden serious food crisis. What has happened is that in less than a decade, there was a conversion where more than half the food eaten in Havana is grown within the city itself. People grow cabbages instead of grass. Balconies produce food and provide additional income. In the agricultural areas, there has been a shift to small and collective state-run farms with few chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Elderly people were trotted out to teach a new generation how to control donkeys to plow up the fields. More people are employed in agriculture. But the food security is greater. There is actually more food. And no nuclear reactors. And a better literacy rate than the US (I'm not advocating the political system by the way, just the technical solutions).

I pointed you to several articles that indicated that the shift to organic farming with low energy inputs would only marginally decrease food productivity, and in some cases would actually increase it. I also pointed out a link to a video which showed how in some cases, the current system has led to hunger, and that a more local economy would be beneficial.

Food will have to be grown more locally. With oil becoming increasingly scarce and oil security becoming an increasing problem, we should be focusing on food security anyway, not relying on moving food around the world.

From my readings of energy security, it would be a lot more dangerous to count on a high energy future than to adapt to low-energy methods.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

First, you have not addressed uranium from seawater; you've dismissed it without looking at it, and attempted to cover it up like a cat covering its **** by ignoring it, twice now. And I mean on two occasions; the number of occurrences on each occasion has been multiple.

Second, plutonium (as has been repeatedly made clear) is not a natural fuel; it is produced when U-238 is bombarded with neutrons, as in a reactor. Special reactors called "breeders" maximize the production of plutonium from U-238. This has been covered extensively in this thread. I have no idea why you are saying the same thing about it you were saying originally, nor why you are ignoring the fact that production of plutonium reduces the waste that needs to be dealt with, and increases the amount of nuclear fuel. You just keep ignoring it, and you also keep ignoring the fact that it is an assumption of the sources you present that the fuel cycle will be burn once.

Third, thorium increases geological resources by ten times.

Fourth, the energy density of uranium is so high that comparing it to oil is ridiculous. I will not accept (nor should anyone else) any argument based on oil geology as a valid argument about the extraction of nuclear fuel.

So here are four serious faults in just this one point. And here is positive proof that you're just recycling your old arguments and ignoring the ones that are presented. Basically what you've done is admitted that you had no idea what you were talking about on waste, and used that admission to justify bringing the same refuted arguments around again, as if they had not been refuted. If you intended to do this, it is a dishonest rhetorical trick; if you did not, then you have not been keeping track and need to if you want to have a sensible conversation.

I don't think there are really any professionals or researchers who actually argue about the possibility of running out of nuclear fuel anymore, are there?

I mean, really, uranium isn't even considered a "rare" material and thorium is certainly not. And again, the energy density of this stuff is absolutely ridiculous... beyond comprehension in chemical terms.

hell, you can run a massive submarine on a golf-ball sized piece of U-235 for decades continuously while it pumps out megawatts to have the thing constantly cruising at 25+ naughts while making oxygen, circulating air, running sonar and many other things. That's... almost unfathomable in terms of the amount of coal or diesel or batteries that would be equivalent to.

I mean, for all intents and purposes I think the debate has been closed for some time that fission fuel is just about inexhaustible in human terms. Worrying about that is like worrying that we'll run out of air because cosmic rays strip away tons of atmosphere into space every day. It's just... it ain't gona happen in my lifetime or my grandkids or the next million years and probably billion years.

Hasn't this been put to rest a LONG time ago?

 

[luddite]

Look, if you want to have a conversation, you need to pay attention. If you just want to spread propaganda, go do it somewhere else. Is that clear enough for you?

Schneibster I'm trying to answer as best I can. And I do listen to the answers. I'll answer your previous post in a bit.

But here's one thing I would suggest for you. You can be, well, a bit of a bully. Sometimes it's amusing. Sometimes it's not.

Where you excel, and where I value your opinion, is when you know how things work. I absolutely trust your insights into dangers and emissions and details of fission reactions. That's great, and I thank you, even when you abuse my stupidity. It's rightly deserved in some cases.

For visions of the future, there's no answer to how it's going to work. We can't know. We can only make best guesses. You'd like to believe that seawater will work. I'm more cautious and trust organizations that do a careful analysis of what's economically viable at what cost. And if they say 32 years to peak, I don't think "It's gotta be more because Schneibster says so". You may be right. But so might the Energy Watch Group. And saying "Hey, I told you there's seawater" repeatedly isn't going to convince me to ignore what EWG says. Threatening not to talk to me is not persuasive. I'd like to keep having your input, even on things we disagree, but at some point, when we run out of sources, we just have to come to an understanding that I take a more conservative view of resource potential than you do. Maybe we stop flogging that horse and move on to more productive avenues of discussion.

Or maybe there's something I genuinely don't understand.

 

[Belz...]

But I think you're asking the wrong question. The question is can we feed the world without nuclear energy? And I think the answer to that is a lot more hopeful.

Why ? Why in the world would you want to ask that question ?

The question is: is nuclear power safe, economical, and do we have enough fuel to run on it for a very long time ?

If the answer is yes to those questions, then why worry ? Why would you want to word your questions this way ? When do you look at a potential purchase and ask yourself: "Can I live without this" ? Of course you can live without it. If that's the way you shop, then you never buy anything, except the most basic foodstuff.

I get the distinct impression that you are far, far less open-minded than you claim. In fact, it's pretty obvious. I've learned a LOT by reading this thread, not that I was ever against nuclear plants to start with. And it seems you haven't. I don't understand how you can read this thread and NOT grasp the content that's in it, or at least check the data presented and make sure that it is factual. And if you do, why do you always come back to square 1 and keep claiming the same thing over and over ?

Again, I get the impression that this nuclear fear of yours is based on emotion. "Yeah, sure, all that looks good, and all, but I still don't feel right about nuclear..." seems like your main argument. That's just not very smart. A lot of people feel their way through life, but when you're talking about an important subject like energy needs, can we please dispense with the emotional baggage ?

Many people have been very patient with you, explaining all those things in great detail, and I think it shows a great deal of disrespect when you simply seem to ignore everything that is told to you, hit the reset switch and start all over, again.

 

[Belz...]

From my readings of energy security, it would be a lot more dangerous to count on a high energy future than to adapt to low-energy methods.

Again, why are you going in that direction ? You can't argue for a step backwards in time. We simply NEED that energy and it ain't going to come from the sun or wind.

Or maybe there's something I genuinely don't understand.

Personally, I think it's something quite willful.

 

[luddite]

Second, plutonium (as has been repeatedly made clear) is not a natural fuel; it is produced when U-238 is bombarded with neutrons, as in a reactor. Special reactors called "breeders" maximize the production of plutonium from U-238. This has been covered extensively in this thread. I have no idea why you are saying the same thing about it you were saying originally, nor why you are ignoring the fact that production of plutonium reduces the waste that needs to be dealt with, and increases the amount of nuclear fuel. You just keep ignoring it, and you also keep ignoring the fact that it is an assumption of the sources you present that the fuel cycle will be burn once.

When I brought up plutonium, I referred to it as the "plutonium that we've produced". I'm well aware that almost all of the plutonium around is reactor made. I know it reduces the waste. I just don't know how much of it there is. How long it will last. Which is why I didn't address it. Until you mentioned gaps. And I pointed out that here was a gap. You want to fill that gap?

Schneibster, I get the feeling you misunderstand me. What thing am I saying over and over? I don't even think I mentioned plutonium before this, except to suggest that maybe Litvinenko was poisoned by it (which I was wrong about). And all I said now is I don't know how I would assess how much of it there is or how much power it can produce.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Can renewables provide the power to grow things the way they are currently grown? Maybe. You're right. We can't afford to go on hope here.

But I think you're asking the wrong question. The question is can we feed the world without nuclear energy? And I think the answer to that is a lot more hopeful.

Can we? Possibly. Probably if we're willing to stretch out resources to the limit, make a few gambles and be willing to have everyone make some massive sacrifices. Then yes... just maybe we can scrape by.

When Cuba was starved of oil imports from Russia, and left with a US-led embargo, it had a sudden serious food crisis. What has happened is that in less than a decade, there was a conversion where more than half the food eaten in Havana is grown within the city itself. People grow cabbages instead of grass.
<snip>

I don't want my standard of living to be decreased to that of an empoverished latin american island nation. I don't think I'd want anyone's to. However I would like to see those in impoverished nations be able to have a standard of living akin to mine.

I pointed you to several articles that indicated that the shift to organic farming with low energy inputs would only marginally decrease food productivity, and in some cases would actually increase it. I also pointed out a link to a video which showed how in some cases, the current system has led to hunger, and that a more local economy would be beneficial.

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.

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.

Food will have to be grown more locally. With oil becoming increasingly scarce and oil security becoming an increasing problem, we should be focusing on food security anyway, not relying on moving food around the world.

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?

From my readings of energy security, it would be a lot more dangerous to count on a high energy future than to adapt to low-energy methods.

Well if we go with the "low-energy" thing... okay, we can possibly squeeze some more use out of renewable without going nuclear.

You can really only save so much with compact florescent bulbs and better insulation though. Really, that stuff can at best, just slow the growth of energy demand a little bit. it will never reduce it.

If you want to reduce it you have to turn the history of human progress upside down and start going to an energy-rationing system, where energy becomes the number one priority to the exclusion of all other things, including economic progress, comfort, standard of living, science, health and so on.

I'm sorry but I just don't see the purpose of working to save the world from global warming if all of humanity has to give up all the things we've achieved from science and technology in the past few hundred years and live a lifestyle that basically rejects our own ability to shape our environment and create things for human benefit.

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"


Really if you want to get by with low CO2 and rely on renewable energy you have to move to energy rationing and energy conservation as the number 1 priority. But that's just so... missguided to me.

Enviornmentalists will say that "You don't need a big tv" or "you don't need air conditioning" No. You don't *need* it. But isn't that what makes humans different? We've gone beyond filling out basic needs. We have the ability to create things to make life *better* or just *more enjoyable* and through the years these things have become more and more common. More and more people can enjoy them. Standards of living have increased. Countries are developing. People can talk to others around the world. We can enjoy exotic foods and go to visit cultures far away. All these things have really made the world a broader, better place.

It would be such a pitty to take a step backward. Such potential in our species... such great things we can do.

Better health, more travel, more information, better science, new medicines, more people who can be kept warm or cool in the heat. More comfort... hell.. MORE FUN... more enjoyment.. more options... more possibilities.. That's what I hope for the future.

 

[Schneibster]

The IAEA says you're wrong about supply, and the Japanese are building a plant for uranium extraction from seawater that is economically feasible at US$40/kg and highly profitable at US$70/kg. I suggest that you might want to compare that with the price of coal per kilowatt hour; you'll find it's still the most economical way to make power, and the environmental considerations and the likelihood of carbon taxes means that it will be far better. Coal is the cheapest per kilowatt hour other than nuclear, so that lets oil and gas out too.

The Energy Watch Group has a strong political and financial agenda; I had little trouble finding out about it and suggest you might want to do the same before you rely upon their figures. Check the companies that the authors of the studies available from their site work for. You'll find they have a financial stake in renewables.

 

[Belz...]

Buzzo, Luddite's arguments are feeling-based. He doesn't like nuclear. He doesn't know why, and he'll say ANYTHING to prevent himself from even considering it as a potential source of energy.

 

[Schneibster]

When I brought up plutonium, I referred to it as the "plutonium that we've produced". I'm well aware that almost all of the plutonium around is reactor made. I know it reduces the waste. I just don't know how much of it there is. How long it will last. Which is why I didn't address it. Until you mentioned gaps. And I pointed out that here was a gap. You want to fill that gap?

Practically all the U-238 can be converted to Pu-239. The 85-year figure the IAEA gives is for U-235 only. The 2500-year figure is for use of the U-238 as well, either by breeding or in an integral fast reactor. Since breeding and processing are dangerous and messy, integral fast reactors are the way to go; but that's not going to happen until much of the U-235 is burnt up, and that's a long way off. Finally, all of this is based only on the proven reserves on land; it doesn't take the Japanese seawater extraction method into account, and the recovery from that is three orders of magnitude greater than known mineable reserves; three orders of magnitude is a thousand times. And that means available uranium is sufficient for 85,000 years if we use only the U-235, and 25 million if we use fast reactors. Supposing only half of the uranium in the sea is easily extractable, we "only" have enough to last 42,500 years.

Schneibster, I get the feeling you misunderstand me. What thing am I saying over and over?

That there's not enough uranium. The information I've presented here has all been presented before on this thread. There are no surprises here, other than the fact that you don't appear to have read it. Which is rapidly becoming unsurprising.

I don't even think I mentioned plutonium before this, except to suggest that maybe Litvinenko was poisoned by it (which I was wrong about). And all I said now is I don't know how I would assess how much of it there is or how much power it can produce.

It can produce about the same amount of power per unit mass as U-235. Because it's made from U-238, and because U-238 is 99.3% of all uranium, that means that there is about 140 times as much energy available from bred plutonium as from enriched uranium, and you can get at that energy using a breeder, or an integral fast reactor.

As far as living like in Cuba, good luck getting people to vote for that. And I don't mean the politics, either. You're going to need to convince about 5 billion people they need to. I'd get started pretty quick; you're wasting time on this forum arguing with people who at least agree with you that we need to pursue renewables aggressively.

 

[DRBUZZ0]

Buzzo, Luddite's arguments are feeling-based. He doesn't like nuclear. He doesn't know why, and he'll say ANYTHING to prevent himself from even considering it as a potential source of energy.

Alright, lets be fair here. I think that's implying something which has some undertones of being a bit... condesending.

In disagree with Luddite... strongly... and I think that his arguments against nuclear energy are basically the same as many in the anti-nuclear movement and are basically just not valid or supported by the facts.

That having been said, a fair portion of the population feels the same way. That may be because of all the propaganda or becasue of real fears from seeing things like Chernobyl and not having all the knowledge of the systems in use. Plus, I mean... people tend to hold on to beliefs... I'm guilty of that as well.

I think the dogmatic knee-jerk anti-nuclear reaction is prettymuch loony, but yes there do need to be people to ask the tough questions, because if the system is safe then they shouldn't be too hard to answer. And there always needs to be skeptism about how safe and environmentally friendly it can be..

Luddite seems to be a good natured skeptic from what I can see. I'd hope folks like him could be persuaded to take another look at nuclear energy, but if he's willing to listen to me and consider that, then i really ought to listen to him. In any case, you can only get so far before at least trying to work with the opposition.

Lets be nice...

 

[luddite]

The IAEA says you're wrong about supply, and the Japanese are building a plant for uranium extraction from seawater that is economically feasible at US$40/kg and highly profitable at US$70/kg. I suggest that you might want to compare that with the price of coal per kilowatt hour; you'll find it's still the most economical way to make power, and the environmental considerations and the likelihood of carbon taxes means that it will be far better. Coal is the cheapest per kilowatt hour other than nuclear, so that lets oil and gas out too.

The Energy Watch Group has a strong political and financial agenda; I had little trouble finding out about it and suggest you might want to do the same before you rely upon their figures. Check the companies that the authors of the studies available from their site work for. You'll find they have a financial stake in renewables.

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.

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.

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.

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.

 

[luddite]

I get the distinct impression that you are far, far less open-minded than you claim. In fact, it's pretty obvious. I've learned a LOT by reading this thread, not that I was ever against nuclear plants to start with. And it seems you haven't. I don't understand how you can read this thread and NOT grasp the content that's in it, or at least check the data presented and make sure that it is factual. And if you do, why do you always come back to square 1 and keep claiming the same thing over and over ?

Again, I get the impression that this nuclear fear of yours is based on emotion. "Yeah, sure, all that looks good, and all, but I still don't feel right about nuclear..." seems like your main argument. That's just not very smart. A lot of people feel their way through life, but when you're talking about an important subject like energy needs, can we please dispense with the emotional baggage ?

I hope that my last post clarified this a bit. I think my argument is less with nuclear per se, and more with the notion that we can maintain the current level of generation and tackle climate change. 80-90% in 30 years. Can't see it. Even if I accept assertions that there's plenty of uranium and it's safe and cheap as dirt.

 

[luddite]

Again, why are you going in that direction ? You can't argue for a step backwards in time. We simply NEED that energy and it ain't going to come from the sun or wind.

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.

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.

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.

 

[luddite]

Schneibster, I'll grant you one thing about seawater. It would seem to be a big improvement over uranium mining, which is a really big sticking point with me.

 

[luddite]

I think the dogmatic knee-jerk anti-nuclear reaction is prettymuch loony, but yes there do need to be people to ask the tough questions, because if the system is safe then they shouldn't be too hard to answer. And there always needs to be skeptism about how safe and environmentally friendly it can be..

Luddite seems to be a good natured skeptic from what I can see. I'd hope folks like him could be persuaded to take another look at nuclear energy, but if he's willing to listen to me and consider that, then i really ought to listen to him. In any case, you can only get so far before at least trying to work with the opposition.

Lets be nice...

Thanks Buzzo.