Nuclear Energy - I need to vent/rant
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Well I looked that up, but one needs to bare in mind that solar capacity is not the same as solar energy production. You only get 400 MW on clear days and generally in the summer. In northern europe in the winter you get a few hours of semi-decent power production.
So fair enough: Solar energy could be a source of energy for peak power needs. It might be useful as a way of providing extra electricity for days when there will be heavy usage, because it tends to coincide....at a huge expense, of course.
But if you really want to reduce greenhouse gases then the "every little bit helps" approach is not going to cut it. We're producing way too much as is and the more it can be cut the better. If your ship is leaking and you want to keep it afloat, you best not concentrate your efforts on the bucket brigade. The bucket brigade may help, but only very marginally. I'd suggest you focus on getting the giant turbine pumps running and having the ships engineer evaluate the possibilities for sealing off the leaking areas of the hull or patching them.
Oh you can do the bucket brigade too and go with the "every little bit helps" mentality but I'd suggest it's not your best bet.
The question comes down to being realistic and considering that you need to go with a plan which actually has the potential of making a difference. And considering that energy demand is universally rising, you're not just in a position to replace carbon-based sources. You have to surpass them, even with conservation measures.
Hypothetically:
If you cut you send your nation into near bankruptcy, with regular energy rationing and dramatic cutbacks in quality of life, due to limitations on technologies that consume energy - and in the process reduce your emissions by 5%. This means than in 100 years the temperature has risen 6.99975 degrees. And if you manage to get all the major industrial nations in the world to do it you end up with the temperature rising only 6.99720 degrees.
If you had done nothing it would have risen 7.0000 degrees. And sea level would have risen about 6 millimeters more.
As far as I am concerned you may have well done nothing at all. At least then the economy, monetary solvency and general welfare of your citizens would not have been sacrificed. That seems like a lot to sacrifice for such a marginal change.
Right now, if all human CO2 production suddenly ceased, the world would continue to get warmer for decades. It's too late to stop it. If CO2 production were to stay at what it is, it would get much warmer. Even if industrial nations cut their CO2 by a few percent, CO2 production will continue to increase. There's really only one way to keep global warming at reasonable and managable levels: Dramatic and significant cuts in CO2 production.
There's something that I ought to point out about the subsidies for the nuclear industry. As mentioned they're not that high compared to numerous other energy forms. "Renewables" get massive subsidies. Oil and gas get subsidies because they were supposed to encourage drilling and better refining to give more domestic cheap fuel (seems like they have not exactly worked too well).
The nuclear industry is just like any other made of big companies. Try taking away a subsidy and they'll throw a hissy fit and send in the lobbists and run ads and their workers will say they'll loose their jobs and so on and so on. It's no different than anything else. Companies like money. If GE, a company which makes reactors has the opertunity to use government programs to increase sales and profit will they take it? If they got similar benifits for selling a combined cycle gas turbine power system would they take it just the same? Or for that matter wind turbines?
It's easy to pork up bills with extra funding for a local industry of some congressman and it may be with the best intentions of stimulating a needed or benificial industry. But try getting rid of it once it's there. That's going to be different.
The US passed legislation to subsidize synthetic fuels from non-oil sources in the 1970's. They're still there. Are there any major synthetic refineries? No. But there are a lot of companies.. some having nothing to do with that industry, who invest in pilot projects for synthetic fuels because it's a tax shelter. There are numerous other programs like this. Railraods get subsidies for keeping "stratigic" runs of track which have not been used in decades and lie rusting on runs to factories long ago torn down. It's the nature of the beast
The nuclear industry is just like any other made of big companies. Try taking away a subsidy and they'll throw a hissy fit and send in the lobbists and run ads and their workers will say they'll loose their jobs and so on and so on. It's no different than anything else. Companies like money. If GE, a company which makes reactors has the opertunity to use government programs to increase sales and profit will they take it? If they got similar benifits for selling a combined cycle gas turbine power system would they take it just the same? Or for that matter wind turbines?
It's easy to pork up bills with extra funding for a local industry of some congressman and it may be with the best intentions of stimulating a needed or benificial industry. But try getting rid of it once it's there. That's going to be different.
The US passed legislation to subsidize synthetic fuels from non-oil sources in the 1970's. They're still there. Are there any major synthetic refineries? No. But there are a lot of companies.. some having nothing to do with that industry, who invest in pilot projects for synthetic fuels because it's a tax shelter. There are numerous other programs like this. Railraods get subsidies for keeping "stratigic" runs of track which have not been used in decades and lie rusting on runs to factories long ago torn down. It's the nature of the beast
Obviously, if I believed that, I wouldn't propose it. Countries that take emissions cuts seriously have already achieved 5% cuts or more -- Germany at 18.5% in 2006 and the UK by over 12.5%, for example.
http://www.climateactionnetwork.ca/e/cop-12/kyoto-targets-dsf-2006.pdf
And their economies are not tanking. The German economy is the 3rd strongest in the world, and the UK 5th. Their quality of life is not dramatically compromised and neither has rationing been resorted to. Germany has offered to achieve 40% reductions by 2020 if the EU commits to combined reductions of 30%.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)
Germany is a nuclear phase-out nation. The UK hasn't added any reactors throughout the time period. They've achieved these cuts without nuclear.
And the reason is clear to me. While replacing a coal plant with a nuclear plant may seem like the more significant move, that's only because people think of it as one action. It's the same reason why I suggested utilities might prefer big power plants to a lot of dickery wind turbines scattered over the countryside. You think of it as a logistical nightmare to get all these things up, get all the permits in place, etc.
But the reality is that getting a nuclear plant up is also a logistical nightmare. The environmental assessments, the permits, the very long construction period... If you were to put in an equal amount of investment into nuclear and wind, by the time the nuclear power plant started producing electricity, wind turbines would have probably paid themselves off. More importantly, the coal plant the nuclear reactor would replace would be running full on until the reactor came online, whereas the wind turbines would have replaced the coal plant they meant to replace almost a decade earlier.
That's critical. Because it means the nuclear plant had better displace not only as much carbon as the coal plant produces, but it has to somehow make up for all the carbon that was produced during its construction period as well. It means greater and more sudden emissions reductions would be required, because it's the total carbon in the atmosphere that matters in the end, not the rate of emissions.
For this reason, all the economic projections I see for carbon emissions strategies warn that the longer we wait the worse the economic impacts will be. The Stern Report pointed out that if meaningful reductions are delayed by a decade, achieving the necessary reductions later would be far more devastating to the economy. And relying on nuclear power means effectively not putting a dent in our emissions for at least a decade.
From the Stern Report:
http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/9/1/Chapter_8_The_Challenge_of_Stabilisation.pdf
Because of the short lead times for wind turbines, production can be ramped up more quickly. Think of the difference between growing rabbits and growing cows. If you buy a cow, you can only double the number of cows you own in a single year. If you buy a pregnant bunny, by the end of the year you can have hundreds. So while both nuclear and wind currently are hampered by available experts to build the things fast enough, wind can be ramped up more quickly.
And while we're on the bunny analogy, think about how fast a few small bunnies spread across Australia, whereas the lumbering cows are still in their barns. Yes, bunnies are small and individually insignificant. But they have enormous potential together.
With the projections of the IPCC getting progressively more dire, with the UN reporting that climate and other environmental stresses are now putting humanity's continued existence at stake, and with reports such as the one below suggesting that we passed the point of catastrophic climate change 4 decades ago and that our only hope now is to set upon the far more onerous task of extracting carbon from the atmosphere, the responsibility is on us to put our money on the things that will deliver cuts quickly. And that's conservation and low-impact micro-generation.
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/Environment/article/270383
http://www.carbonequity.info/PDFs/Arctic.pdf
I think you might want to look more closely at what is going on in germany. Much of the emissions cuts have come from two sources: 1. Importing electricity from france 2. The high prices have forced conservation, even where not necessarily a good thing.
The economy of Germany is okay for the moment, but the rate of energy prices rising and the amount of money which the government is funding this is very alarming. Also, there remains no actual feisable plan to phasing out nuclear power.
Phasing out nuclear energy to prevent global warming makes about as much sense as cutting down all your trees to allow more grass to grow so it can soak up CO2.
The economy of Germany is okay for the moment, but the rate of energy prices rising and the amount of money which the government is funding this is very alarming. Also, there remains no actual feisable plan to phasing out nuclear power.
Phasing out nuclear energy to prevent global warming makes about as much sense as cutting down all your trees to allow more grass to grow so it can soak up CO2.
mhaze
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I disagree with your stated facts and conclusion on CO2 (but have no interest in derailing the thread and will not discuss the matter here) and want to make a very important associated point.
If in pursuing the goal of lowering CO2 emissions the US economy and/or that of major European nations saw gross national product nosedive, that will likely starve 10% of the world population. In the third world, and China/India, the movement of the population to the cities (50% in China in the cities now and growing) is based on industrial exports, right?
There is an exponential relationship between a 1-10% lowering of GNP in the first world and it's negative effects on the 3rd world.
Serious side effects.
Agreed. That's why in all countries there is a schizophrenic policy mix where policy objectives collide. I'm in no way "blaming" the nuclear industry any more than any other industry.
Addressing climate change will be very challenging and will require focused policy attention. I do not think we will succeed while maintaining subsidies to activities that contribute to emissions. So we're going to have to take the bull by the horns and insist that some subsidies just have to go. The absolutely first things to eliminate are all the subsidies to coal and tar sands oil, followed by those to conventional oil, natural gas and lumber. As to subsidies for renewables, the biggest recipient by far (at least in North America) is ethanol, which is also a waste of money, if not actively harmful. A lot of renewables subsidies actually have planned gradual phase-outs built in. I know that's the case both for Ontario SOCs and for the corresponding German renewables programme.
I'm agnostic about maintaining subsidies for nuclear and renewables. I'd like to see gradually increasing carbon taxes, and I think as carbon becomes more expensive, the low-carbon solutions will benefit without subsidies anyway.
The only reason nuclear subsidies come up is as an explanation for the current energy mix. Sources that are or have historically been heavily subsidized will be over-represented. It is also suggestive that a more level field in the future might produce a different mix.
I know you disagree with this, but the absolutely first objective is to reduce emissions and fast. Global warming will have far more devastating effects in China/India than any economic downturn. We are anticipating the flooding of coastal cities where much of the Asian population lives. We are already seeing droughts and associated reductions in agricultural productivity attributable to global warming in China. The rivers that originate in the Tibetan plateau and feed most of Asia have been running well as Tibet melts. Eventually, they are expected to slow down substantially. China and India recognize this threat.
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/North_China_drought_highlights_need_06172007.html
I suppose this comes down to a question of one's philosophy on energy use. Most plans for reducing CO2 emissions rely heavily on reducing energy usage through improved effeciency and using smaller cars, less air conditioning, less industrial.
I favor a policy where instead of using as little energy as you can scrape by with and then trying to fill that need one as the goal of having huge amounts of energy. To attempt to produce such plentiful amounts of energy without CO2 that you can use it in ways not feisable before or generally not considered "conservative."
These would include such things as nearly universal recycling of all solid waste. Anything organic, even sewage sludge can be turned into plastic or other products by thermal repolymerization. One could reduce strain on fresh water resources by desalination. Catch and recirculate fertilizer runoff. Synthasize super clean burning hydrogen rich fuels. Switch to an electricity driven transportation system with plug in hybrids that use batteries for short trips and something like methanol for longer ones. Pumping large volumes of fresh water, recycling water to 100% pure, heated sidewalks and roads that don't ice, high speed fright trains, reprocessing chemical waste and thermal treatment of contaminated soil. These are all entirely possible but just too energy intensive.
The only problem with nuclear energy is the waste, but I've seen a lot of alternative proposals. These include a gamma-neutron transmutation process tested in the 1980's, thorium-based reactors which produce less long-lived waste, spallation-based neutron sub-critical reactors for waste destruction and energy production. Photofission and neutron activation/energy amplification.
These are all universally opposed by anti-nuclear lobbies. Even fusion is totally opposed by greenpeace. Their rational: It would leave the reactor walls radioactive from neutrons. The waste produced would be tiny and not long-lived. Only when the reactor is retired would it be an issue. That doesn't matter. If a method of producing 100% effecient self-sustaining were developed tomorrow it would be opposed.
I favor a policy where instead of using as little energy as you can scrape by with and then trying to fill that need one as the goal of having huge amounts of energy. To attempt to produce such plentiful amounts of energy without CO2 that you can use it in ways not feisable before or generally not considered "conservative."
These would include such things as nearly universal recycling of all solid waste. Anything organic, even sewage sludge can be turned into plastic or other products by thermal repolymerization. One could reduce strain on fresh water resources by desalination. Catch and recirculate fertilizer runoff. Synthasize super clean burning hydrogen rich fuels. Switch to an electricity driven transportation system with plug in hybrids that use batteries for short trips and something like methanol for longer ones. Pumping large volumes of fresh water, recycling water to 100% pure, heated sidewalks and roads that don't ice, high speed fright trains, reprocessing chemical waste and thermal treatment of contaminated soil. These are all entirely possible but just too energy intensive.
The only problem with nuclear energy is the waste, but I've seen a lot of alternative proposals. These include a gamma-neutron transmutation process tested in the 1980's, thorium-based reactors which produce less long-lived waste, spallation-based neutron sub-critical reactors for waste destruction and energy production. Photofission and neutron activation/energy amplification.
These are all universally opposed by anti-nuclear lobbies. Even fusion is totally opposed by greenpeace. Their rational: It would leave the reactor walls radioactive from neutrons. The waste produced would be tiny and not long-lived. Only when the reactor is retired would it be an issue. That doesn't matter. If a method of producing 100% effecient self-sustaining were developed tomorrow it would be opposed.
Kevin_Lowe
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What a great idea! If only someone had thought of it before! All we have to do is find a way of making energy so cheap we can do whatever we want!
Yes, I'm being sarcastic. There's a finite amount of fission fuel available, it takes CO2 emitting activities to mine it, refine it and transport it, and breeder reactors would present an unacceptable risk of nuclear weapons proliferation if we built thousands more of them. Nuclear enthusiasts tried to sell this fantasy at the beginning of the nuclear age and it's still just a fantasy.
Heck, we can just get Luke Skywalker to fire it into the sun for us.
If the "only" problem with a process is that it creates dangerous waste that will outlive any existing nation/state by tens of milennia that's a pretty serious moral problem.
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Greenpeace is irrational, hold the front page.
The main problem with fusion is that it's still decades away from a sustained break-even reaction in the lab, and even if someone got a sustained break-even reaction going tomorrow nobody has any coherent idea about how to get electricity out of it. Yay, a fusing plasma in a containment field, now what? Pour water on it and make steam to spin a turbine? That's not going to work.
I'd be thrilled if we found a free energy machine, or a functional subsitute for one (as you seem to think nuclear reactors are), but fission power plants are not it, and fusion shows no signs of being it any time soon either.
Hindmost
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Every single power source on the planet releases CO2 at some point...see this link
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf100.html
If you look at the graph near the bottom, nuclear power releases less CO2 over its life than all other types of power shown. Your arguement is a non-starter in this case.
There is no evidence of Nuclear Enthusiasts selling this as some sort of golden age. As stated many times by me and others, the worlds doesn't have the industrial capacity or the educated people to even come close to providing the worlds needs. It would take over 100 years to building enough plants to even think about a nuclear based society.
The idea that building breeder reactors is going to cause nuclear weapon proliferation is also a bit of a stretch. If anyone thinks it is easy to quickly steal spent fuel...transport it to some remote place, quickly design a build a weapon and then deploy it, I really don't think they are hitting on all cylinders.
An advantage of breeders is that they can be used to burn all the long lived transuranics that would be part of the waste problem. That would reduce the storage requirements to about 300 years. The biggest issue would be building reprocessing plants to handle the spent fuel--that is truely a nasty business. Even back in my college days, nuclear fission was billed as a bridge to fusion power...although it looks like it won't be possible for a longtime. There is no accident issues and the waste problem is greatly reduced. And this is how you build one.
http://www.pppl.gov/fusion_basics/pages/fusion_power_plant.html
Finally, the world and it billions use over 400 quads of energy every year. The projections are for this to go up to about 600 quads in the next 30 years...renewables and conservation are not going to cut it...neither is hydrogen.
If you can pick up a copy of the sept 2006 issue of scientific american, it give a lot of info about the alternatives and issues discussed here.
glenn
Lonewulf
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Hey, why not? And while we're at it, we can sit around being sarcastic and not contributing at all to any sort of discussion. AKA, trolling.Kevin_Lowe said:
Actually, coal does that. Nuclear "waste" doesn't last that long, and if used with breeder reactors, the total amount of high priority waste would fit in a Boeing 747 (Or a similar vehicle). Radiation burns out, and the more high energy energy burns out much faster than the low yield radiation. And, I'll point out, some of this stuff from nuclear reactors considered "low yield" radiation is about as radioactive as my coffee. I can't stress this enough. Drinking coffee is drinking "low yield" waste.
Everything is radioactive. The sun is radioactive. Rocks are radioactive. You are radioactive. "Radioactive" is just a term that's thrown around like it's the boogeyman. Most of it is unjustified fear.
Yes, high energy radiation is very dangerous, and even long-time exposure of higher levels of low-yield radiation can be very harmful.
However, "tens of millenia after any existing nation dies out"? C'mon, be serious. Either that, or offer some reliable data. No reliable source of radioactive half-lifes has ever put dangerous radiation levels at "tens of millenia" for lifespan.
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The whole "secondary greenhouse gases" thing is a complete diversion. Everyone realizes that any form of energy is going to have secondary incidentals, such as the energy needed to make the donuts for the guys who work there and the methane from the farts of the protesters in front.
The mining/transportation of uranium will produce some some CO2, as will transporting anything. Enrichment does not really produce very much by comparison to the energy derived. If you go with nuclear powered enrichment, as in france where they have made it to a completely nuclear powered system the secondary co2 costs are nill.
Of course, if you had enough nuclear energy you could then also power the mining and transportation equipment by nuclear electricity or by some ultra clean fuel like methanol.
I always thought the waste/safety issue was blown way out of proportion.
The mining/transportation of uranium will produce some some CO2, as will transporting anything. Enrichment does not really produce very much by comparison to the energy derived. If you go with nuclear powered enrichment, as in france where they have made it to a completely nuclear powered system the secondary co2 costs are nill.
Of course, if you had enough nuclear energy you could then also power the mining and transportation equipment by nuclear electricity or by some ultra clean fuel like methanol.
I always thought the waste/safety issue was blown way out of proportion.
The is no "Current crisis" the fact that right now we're in a situation where we can just barely meet our energy needs with what we have and the fact that there are more and more problems caused by that is the status quo since the start of the industrial revolution.
The constant struggle for energy and it's role as the limiting factor in human endeavor is at least part of the reason for nearly every war in the 20th century.
Well I suppose it... kinda will... I mean, even if you reprocess it and concentrate the long-lived fission products in glass or syntherock, then in 300 years it will only be as radioactive as high concentration natural ore... which is way too much.
One thing I should also mention: NEVER eat a banana, because they contain a lot of potassium, including K-40 which has a very long half life and will be radioactive for millions of years. Since not all potassium will be absorbed with 100% effeciency some will pass through you. And thus, if you what a banana your poop will destroy the hopes and dreams of the children of a distant tomorrow.
Nobody I know does that. We understand the difference between things like radon and sunlight and the background radiation levels. And the difference between those and dangerous radioactive waste.
It isn't just the problem of storing long term dangerous radioactive waste and equipment, there is also the cost of storage and monitoring, as well as cleanup from leaks, and the threat of theft.
Schneibster
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While we may disagree on global warming, I think we nearly agree on the points you raise here.
I suspect you are an optimist. It could be considerably more, perhaps as much as 20%.
Yep, we sure agree on that.