Climatologist James Hansen Defends Nuclear Energy 345
First time accepted submitter prajendran writes "James Hansen, the former director of the Goddard Institute of Space Sciences, has been a strong defender of using nuclear energy to replace coal and renewable energy. He and three other researchers had written a letter, arguing just this. In this interview with rediff.com, an Indian news site, he was asked to address some concerns surrounding the issue, especially given the strong feelings generated by it. It may not be Hansen's best interview, but it did bring out his passionate side."
I like my letters better (Score:2)
Yeah, I have a passionate side too. And I like to take long walks in the park. And it's not just about 'climate change', it's about survival.
Every little bit helps though.
___
My letters on energy:
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate [scribd.com]
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate [scribd.com]
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Every little bit helps though.
Sometimes it does, and sometimes it makes no difference whatsoever...
There are things in life that are all or nothing, this is one of them. Either we stop burning coal, oil, and gas, or we don't. Burn them in 20 years, 50 years, or 200 years, if we keep burning them, we'll burn them all.
It is like flying across the ocean in a plane, saying that a little bit of extra fuel helps only if it gets you to the land on the other side. If you run out of fuel 50 miles from shore, is that any better than runni
The thing I can't figure out (Score:2)
Basically, Nuclear power can be safe, but it
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I am not convinced (Score:3)
In summary he states that present nuclear technology is too dangerous, but that it is possible to create systems without the flaws. Well in that case we need prove. In addition we need a plan to do when we run out of what ever the source is for such nuclear technology. However, I cannot see how they can build a device which is able to recycle all waste.
Renewable sources are much easier to build, they allow to produce energy in a distributed matter reducing the risk of blackouts by plant failure. The only open issue is cheap and reliable energy storage. Presently, there exist technology to fill this gap, but they are not convenient enough due to their cost or their requirement (like pumped-storage power stations). Still this is much closer to a solution than the save and clean nuclear technology.
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"Renewable sources are much easier to build,"
Easy to build is one thing - easy to build AND make them viable is another.
"reducing the risk of blackouts by plant failure"
Riiight. And how often do you hear of a power plant , regardless of its fuel , going completely unplanned offline? And even if it did there is usually enough resilience in the system to cover it. Whereas wind and wave power goes offline every time its a calm day and solar power is useless at night! I'll go with the minute risk off a whole po
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And how often do you hear of a power plant , regardless of its fuel , going completely unplanned offline?
http://umm.nordpoolspot.com/ [nordpoolspot.com]
It happens daily.
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Supply must match the demand curve
And to do that you conventionally used a mixture of plants. You used something with high capital costs but low running costs (coal, nuclear, possiblly CCGT) to run all the time and then you use something that has low capital costs but high running costs to cover the peaks. You may also use hydro dams (which have the unusual characterstic of having a peak power much higher than their continuous power due to the limited water supply) if they are available.
So where do wind and solar fit into this? not very wel
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Most designs in service today are only too risky (Score:2)
...because nuclear plants represent the closest thing to absolute power in our economy, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. It becomes a confidence trickster game of convincing a community to commit their ratepayers to large projects where the costs can then be jacked up 900%.
Nuclear energy "works", but only certain cultures in certain eras have been able to manage it responsibly.
Let me also point out that the French are very lucky to have such a mild environment and geology; they too blew some tops imm
passionate (Score:3)
It makes me wonder: Do you hate science? Did your mother beat you with a stick and say this stick is science? I'm just kidding, but it is bothersome that you seem to have swallowed a lot of anti-nuclear propaganda.
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Good questions, actually. The interviewer was an idiot.
it is all about context (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ask questions about our energy future from a nuclear context, you will get nuclear answers. If you think about it from en environmental viewpoint you get environmental answers. If you think about it from the economic perspective you get economic answers. If you think about it from the renewable context you get renewable answers.
Unfortunately, the solar industry looks at the issue from the context of huge solar power plants instead of dispersed solar installations. That is where the money is. If the solar energy issue is addressed from the dispersed solar context it looks way different. Imagine empowering businesses like WalMart to cover every store with solar panels. Imaging requiring every new home to have solar panels. Imagine retrofitting all the appropriate buildings in the country with solar panels. Imagine the hydroelectric power plants changing their generation schedules to generate at night when solar power goes away, instead of in the day like they do now when demand is highest.
This can be done much quicker and more cheaply than the nuclear path. It takes twenty years to get a nuke online. Dispersed solar can be online in a year or so. The cost of solar panels comes down almost every day. If you think dispersed solar, the equation changes on everything.
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Imagine empowering businesses like WalMart to cover every store with solar panels.
Ok, so, what is stopping them now?
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Nothing. Wal-Mart is one of the non-energy businesses with the most installed solar. But they'd install more if the power companies had to pay a fair price for the power when it's sold back to the grid. In states where this is the case, there's a lot more solar installs. The power companies have a state-granted monopoly for good reason, but part of the tradeoff is being forced to actually serve the interests of the people. Well, it's supposed to be, and more to the point, it is fairly so.
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Actually, Walmart has solar panels on a number of their facilities, and has for 20 years. They do it for both green-washing and because it has a positive return on investment.
Distributed generation is an important concept for both efficiency and reliability.
The simplest way to push for rooftop solar is to change the structural design codes so they must add 5psf dead load for solar panels in every building.
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Imagine a world full of solar tax subsidies. If you ask in a political context, you get a political answer.
Today, the price point of solar depends on those subsidies. take them away and one of two things will happen: Solar will fall flat on its face. Or the supply-demand curve will shift to a point where non-subsidized solar will make sense. Until that happens, the cost will stay high enough (and the payback low enough) that the only place solar will pay is in the magic fairy land of subsidy. And that is s
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"you pollute, you pay"
Pay what? We can't even get a climate model to work yet. Never mind attaching a dollars per 0.1 degree C figure to the resulting temp rise. So it all comes down to how much various parties whine and stamp their feet.
There are some proposals to create a carbon emissions marketplace. Just let the free market pick the dollars per ton number. But then we run into the 'magic trees' problem, where one pound of carbon credit sequestered by a rain forest tree in some third world tribal country (owned by Al Gore In
LFTRs most intriguing nuclear option (Score:4, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_fluoride_thorium_reactor
What makes them interesting is being able to "burn" up existing nuclear wastes. So use LFTRs to clean up existing long term nuclear waste and get power as a byproduct.
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This explains a lot . . . (Score:2)
Safer nuclear energy systems (Score:2)
This is the primary call of the open letter, Responsible Nuclear Advocacy. Despite my criticisms of the Nuclear Industry I support the development of a reactor that addresses the issue of 70,000 tons of Pu-239 (and much more U-238) currently stored in reactor sites around America, simply because it's irresponsible for our generation to foist these issue onto later generations.
One of the core reasons I support the development of such a reactor because it is capable of utilising weapons grade plutonium as fu
One Question for the Learned Scholar (Score:2)
The golden boy becomes a heretic (Score:3)
This should be fun.
Also fun, watching the Republicans praising him for suggesting more nuclear energy.
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If only we had the time.
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Surely you're not saying that other means of generating energy don't have similarly massive pollution concerns? Or are you really that naive as to think that nuclear waste tech is still at the same state it was in in the 1950's? Or are you still hoping that we can solve all of our problems with solar?
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Funny)
Dear kids from the future,
Well, we went nuclear so we wouldn't cook the entire planet (and thus allowing you to live).
On the other hand, there is a one small cave in Nevada with some nasty stuff. Seems to me like you guys should be able to handle it with your quantum teleportation technology or whatever you come up with. Or just keep an eye on it.
Re:TL;DR (Score:4, Insightful)
>On the other hand, there is a one small cave in Nevada with some nasty stuff.
This is the dream solution so far, but this does NOT exist. Hanford - nasty waste tanks buried in the ground. Fukushima - fuel pool at reactor 4 dangerously tipping and leaking. Yucca Mountain plans closed.
At this point, a lot of nuclear waste sits in fuel pools because there is no long-term solution. We need to get on this and make a place like you describe, pronto. Nuclear can be clean and safe, but so far nobody is really running it clean and safe. Money and greed are too human.
Re:TL;DR (Score:4, Informative)
A lot? Practically all of it that was ever accumulated sits there, in the US at least.
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot? Practically all of it that was ever accumulated sits there, in the US at least.
So? The pools are a pretty good long term solution, if by "long term" you mean at least the next century or so, until future generations figure out a better place to store it, or more likely, an economic use for the "waste".
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That comment is an insult to your intelligence. I flat out don't believe that you believe that.
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Insightful)
Talk to Harry Reid. The scientists figured it out decades ago, but some politicians refuse to act.
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Talk to Harry Reid. The scientists figured it out decades ago, but some politicians refuse to act.
Indeed. It's so dead (for purely political reasons, BTW), that the courts have said the DoE needs to stop charging consumers for it [reviewjournal.com]. Don't expect a refund for all the money they wasted, though.
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the dream solution so far, but this does NOT exist.
Wrong. [wikipedia.org]
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At this point, a lot of nuclear waste sits in fuel pools because there is no long-term solution.
Actually, leaving it in those pools until the hottest stuff burns itself out and what's left is the lower-level stuff, is not such a bad idea...
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Insightful)
+5 insightful
Seriously, all of the people who freak out about the waste are just being ridiculous. So what if the stuff is dangerous for 10,000 years? We don't have to solve that problem, all we have to do is to keep it safe for a few centuries, and make sure that our descendants understand what it was that we did and what the potential issues are. They'll be better-equipped to deal with it than we are -- and it's a much easier problem for them to solve than a planetary climate that has been pushed to extremes.
Yeah, it'd be nice if solar, wind and wave energy could address all of our needs, but at present they can't provide the baseload coverage needed to eliminate coal and oil burning.
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Right now no one knows how to solve the waste problem. ;D
That is likely the reason why now country on the world has a long term waste deposite.
If you have ideas regarding that, publish them
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Right now no one knows how to solve the waste problem. ;D
That is likely the reason why now country on the world has a long term waste deposite.
If you have ideas regarding that, publish them
You are completely wrong about this. There are plenty of ideas how to deal with "waste". You simply use it as fuel in fast neutron reactors. For example,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_fast_reactor [wikipedia.org]
Then you have real waste that only lasts 300 years before it is less radioactive than the ore original uranium was extracted from.
But of course, why build a reactor that uses $120/lb fuel when you can just dig up new uranium for $50/lb and store the current waste for later?
Things that are dangerous for longer (Score:2)
Mercury, cadmium, and other chemical poisons are poisonous forever. They are also harder to detect.
We've found tolerable solutions to our other toxic waste problems. Spent fuel adds the proliferation problem but is otherwise the same.
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We've found tolerable solutions to our other toxic waste problems.
Yes if you consider shipping it off to some place in the third world to poison them instead of us a tolerable solution.
Most of solutions to other toxic waste were really only ecologically sustainable when the population was a few billion people small. We are going to eventually run out of places to dump stuff.
Re:TL;DR (Score:4, Interesting)
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THAT case was just a stupid case of ignoring scientific criticism for profit. The Swiss did it a bit better, they invited everybody to review the proposals for multiple sites and only after all criticism was resolved did they start construction on a site. The Asse site was just a, oh look I have an abandoned salt mine, hmm, how can I get rid of it as profitable as possible...
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Informative)
+5 insightful
Seriously, all of the people who freak out about the waste are just being ridiculous. So what if the stuff is dangerous for 10,000 years? We don't have to solve that problem, all we have to do is to keep it safe for a few centuries, and make sure that our descendants understand what it was that we did and what the potential issues are.
The key thing to understand in our generation is the cost of the infrastructure to transport the spent fuel around. In the U.S this is estimated to be a 30 year project with significant costs attached to it, in and of itself. Fukushima has demonstrated the danger inherent in the spent fuel cooling pools, that is why any infrastructure project has to start with an actual location to transport it to.
In the U.S Yucca mountain does not meet the requirements Studies of the Yucca mountain hydrology [sciencedirect.com] revealed that the passage cl-36 from atmospheric nuclear testing took less that 50 years in ground water through Yucca mountain so the reality of Yucca is it is inappropriate to contain *any* kind of radioactive products, especially the ones you are referring to. Yucca is pumice and volcanic ash, you *need* granite if you want a serious facility. Even the Swedish test facility [google.com] is better designed than Yucca and the design of the actual facility [geoprac.net] shows the U.S how it *should* be done.
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"potentially ecosphere-killing crap"
The longer lived the radioactive byproduct, the _less_ harmful it is. I'll take waste with a 10,000 or 100,000 half-life over something that decays in 1 year any day. Heck, just put it in my back yard. I could use the steady income.
I'm no nuclear physicist, but I'm pretty sure that in substantially less than a few hundred years, the waste from your typical nuclear power plant will asymptotically approach background radioactivity levels. The tail that 10,000 year half-life
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Is Nuclear Waste Really Waste? [youtube.com] It is an immense energy resource of which still contains roughly 99% of the original energy content. The actual waste remaining once the rest of the energy is released is very small, with lifetimes measured in decades, not millennia.
Re:TL;DR (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:TL;DR (Score:4, Interesting)
Where do you think it came from in th first place? (Score:4, Interesting)
Underground. But I don't see any envirohippies making a big fuss about all the uranium ore in the ground and the massive fission reactor thats probably at the heart of the planet so why the big fuss when someone suggests burying the radioactive waste underground later?
There's so much knee jerking going on in the enviromental movement with regards to nuclear power that they could probably audience for starring roles in Lord of the Dance.
Re:Where do you think it came from in th first pla (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. Absolute safety with nuclear materials is unattainable. But we can certainly make it as safe as it was before we dug it up out of the ground.
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so why the big fuss when someone suggests burying the radioactive waste underground later?
Ummm, because it's a bit tricky to turn transuranic elements back into uranium before their reinterment?
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Most nuclear waste is NOT transuranic. MOST of it has a half life measured in years, not centuries.
Store the stuff a hundred years, and 90%+ of the radioactive waste is no longer radioactive, and the rest can be stored that much easier (what with not being nearly so radioactive and all).
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Re:Where do you think it came from in th first pla (Score:4, Informative)
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Well the problem is the best way to "fix" the waste problem is to reuse the waste from step N-1 in step N after N = >6? you have stuff that is very short term radioactive (but has a very bad temper in large enough amounts).
Keeping the number of Nations that have used Nukes in Acts of War to 1 is why this does not happen.
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Right, the problem is solved but we need to get real about the proliferation issue.
I say the genie is out of the bottle at this. The policy might have made sense in the past but now our insistence on not having breeder reactors around is creating more risk then its preventing. Lots of people we did not want to get the bomb have the bomb now. China -check, North Korea -check, Pakistan -check, India -check, and Iran is so near it now that the Iranian nuclear issue is a political play thing. The President
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Would you prefer to inherit an industrial civilization or a pristine planet? Because you can't have both.
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You can't have EITHER, at this point. Civilization is doomed by the whackos, and the planet is already far from pristine.
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Now, how long do you think we can mutually sust
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey nuclear advocates, how about you fix the waste issue first, then we'll talk. Sincerely, the kids from the future.
Dear kids,
Extremely small volumes of waste needing safe storage for only ~300 years is probably the best we can do. Shall we do it -- or will you prefer to be sharpening sticks to hunt among the silent rusted remnants of wind turbines? [2112design.com]
Sincerely, LFTR [youtube.com]
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So the small amount of waste (from a commercial reactor that doesn't exist yet) stored today needs to be stored until 2313 to be safe (for some definition of safe). What about the small but slightly larger amount of waste produced next year, and the year after, and the year after? The nuclear waste dump does not become safe until 300 years after the last thorium waste product is added to the pile and the pile has grown exponentially in the meantime. There's also the mounting pile of lower level nuclear
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So it's a low-output power plant, as well as a waste dump.
LFTR (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing that has me really worried about LFTR is the removal of fission products.
In a conventional nuclear reactor, the fission products are confined within the fuel cell cladding. The only place rendered long-term insanely radioactive is the reactor core, which is mechanically pretty simple.
In a LFTR, there is a facility for removing fresh fission products from the liquid fuel. This is a combination of multiple processing steps, high temperatures, corrosive chemicals, and way too much radiation to let humans anywhere near for running or maintaining the equipment. Then the removed products either need short term storage, or to be rendered into a form suitable for long term storage - requiring still more processing.
I'll grant you that the core of a LFTR isn't going to cause an accident, but removing and dealing with those fission products on a regular basis with such a huge price on failure sounds like an engineering nightmare.
Re:LFTR (Score:4, Informative)
Actually the core of a regular PWR or BWR and even CANDU, Magnox, AGR or even the dreaded RBMK-4 graphite moderated reactor designs don't get very radioactive thanks mostly to careful choices of the steel alloys and other materials used in their construction (no cobalt, for example). The vessels can be removed from the containment after shutdown during decommissioning within a year or two with minimal shielding or after forty or fifty years of Safstor on site they're no more radioactive than, say, granite and can be treated as low-level waste. It is common for the inside and outside of a BWR/PWR reactor vessel and its core structures to be manually inspected during refuelling outages, for example.
The really intense radioactivity in a conventional reactor is contained in the spent fuel rods which, if undamaged, can be easily handled, transported and after a few years dry-casked for storage or shipped to a reprocessing plant to be recycled. It's done all the time in hundreds of reactors around the world during refuelling operations and has been for decades.
The LFTR concept involves moving intensely hot radioactive fuel in a salt stream through a carbon moderator for decades with no capability to repair or even properly inspect this part of the reactor as the piping will be mindbogglingly highly radioactive even if the fuel stream is removed to permit inspection.
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey nuclear advocates, how about you fix the waste issue first, then we'll talk.
Gee, 300 years of storage for a small segment of the waste. The rest of which can be reprocessed into fuel, unless of course you're in the US and have this boogyman fear of plutonium.
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Interesting)
Already Solved (Score:3)
Hey nuclear advocates, how about you fix the waste issue first, then we'll talk.
It is (was) called "Yucca Mountain".
Simply put, if you aren't for nuclear you aren't serious about helping the planet or climate change. You are just pushing some other far worse alternative to line someone's pockets.
Re:TL;DR (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey coal/gas advocates,
The nuclear folks have a better handle on the waste than you do.
Sincerely,
Someone from the present
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What Hansen is advocating are plutonium fast breeder reactors. Like the Clinch River plant that was cancelled in the 1980s. He wants to mass-produce them on an assembly line. He wants small distrubuted plants full of plutonium. This is one crazy dude.
He never defends his assertion that nuclear can ramp up faster than solar and wind. He ignores the fact that the government continues to massively subsidize nuclear via the Price-Anderson liability limitation and support for research. He ignores the fact
Do you work for an oil company? (Score:3)
Hey nuclear advocates, how about you fix the waste issue first, then we'll talk.
Hey fossil fuel advocates by default, how about you fix the waste issue first, then we'll talk.
Sincerely, everyone not working for an oil company
(Given present technology if you argue against nuclear power you are by default arguing for fossil fuels because that is the only available alternative for the foreseeable future even taking advances in renewable energy into account.)
Re: common sense (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact nuclear and fossil fuel has the same issue. What to do with the waste. With coal and such, we push the waste into the air. This, to me, is like pissing in your neighbors lawn. It is frowned upon so we mandate indoor plumbing so your waste gets to a place it can be dealt with. While there is no reason why we could not mandate indoor plumbing for coal fired plants, it is deemed not economically viable to do so.
An issue with nuclear plants I'd they were in part developed as response to the pollution
Re: common sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Science has solved the waste issue. Titanate nanofibers. One gram cleans a ton of waste water.
Re: common sense (Score:4, Interesting)
Hm, no, that doesn't solve "the waste issue" it only makes one aspect of it easier to deal with. It's useless for spent nuclear fuel, for example.
The problem with SNF is that it's all mixed together. Most of the isotopes are actually quite useful for medical or industrial uses, but only if they are isolated from each other. As described in this video [youtube.com] SNF from today's nuke fleet is like taking everything from your pantry and dumping it out on the floor in one big pile. There isn't much you can do other than shovel it into the dumpster. But if you have flour, sugar, salt, etc. all in separate containers you can use them to bake a cake.
This level of fine-grained reprocessing is difficult and expensive for solid nuclear fuels, but relatively easy and cheap to do with liquid nuclear fuels. This is one reason why molten salt reactors are getting more attention in recent years. It's just so much easier to chemically separate the various byproducts "on the fly" while the reactor is online.
Re: common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
So if we replaced coal energy generation with nuclear generation, we would have roughly 5750 tons of radioactive waste to handle instead of soot and particulate emissions from burning roughly 174000 times as much mass in coal.
So you have a choice between unsightly outhouses here and there (storage facilities for nuclear waste) or pissing all over the lawns of everybody all over the country. The difference in scale is mind-boggling.
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But terrorists! And NIMBY!
Actually, NIMBY applies to everything (nuclear, coal, wind, solar, power lines, pipelines [above and below ground], every other method of power generation and transportation).
Re: common sense (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: common sense (Score:5, Informative)
Complete combustion of 1 short ton (2,000 pounds) of this coal will generate about 5,720 pounds (2.86 short tons) of carbon dioxide.
That means we're looking at dealing with 1 billion * 2.86 short tons = 2.86 billion short tons = 5,720,000,000,000 (or 5.72 trillion) pounds of CO2 per year. My calculator suggests that's around 497,000x the mass of the potential nuclear waste, not to mention more radioactive waste actually in the atmosphere. Do you really want to discuss which of these methods is contributing more radiation to the atmosphere and whose house all these byproducts are polluting? I'm pretty sure they don't usually entomb the resultant CO2 in concrete, even if half of (less than half [wikipedia.org], actually) fly ash winds up that way.
The energy density of coal pales in comparison [energyfromthorium.com] to thorium:
At these prices the value of the energy produced by the thorium is an average cubic meter of the Earth’s crust in a LFTR is worth (11000 to 17000)/(220) = 50 to 77 cubic meters of anthracite coal.
At this point, NIMBY is just mindless obstructionism. There is no scientific ground left to stand on, unless you happen to have an actual, implementable solution for long-term base power, and no, solar isn't cutting it. For that, you have toxic build and recycling processes, short life, low efficiency, the sort of thing that's okay on a small scale but hasn't shown real base-load promise due to the cost of storing energy en-masse for use during off-peak hours instead of throttling a nuclear reaction pulling energy from a very dense storage medium.
LFTR isn't just some pie-in-the-sky. It's a tried and tested [wikipedia.org] reactor design, and we learned from our initial failures (metal embrittlement, evolution of uranium and plutionium), and we came out the other side with a new process for decommissioning. This is how science and engineering work, folks.
Re: common sense (Score:4, Informative)
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...So if we replaced coal energy generation with nuclear generation, we would have roughly 5750 tons of radioactive waste to handle instead of soot and particulate emissions from burning roughly 174000 times as much mass in coal....
Actually the amount of waste would be far less than that. If we actually had sensible legislation in regards to waste, we could have a full nuclear cycle that includes reprocessing significantly reducing the amount of waste.
Re:common sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Until we have electric trans-atlantic pasenger air transport in six hours, we'll need more than just nukes.
Transport fuel especially air and ocean needs to remain chemical, even nuclear advocates are pretty unanimous on this.
0. LFTR for electricity and process heat ASAP
1. use oil, while it lasts
2. use synfuel made from coal or natural gas, using Fischer-Tropsch [wikipedia.org] and LFTR heat source
3. use hydrogen separated from water by energy from LFTR stored as liquid, gas or (preferably) oxide pellets
With number 3 we have attained a state of complete, virtually limitless energy with extremely small footprint of Thorium mining, zero CO2 emissions and zero use of agriculture for energy production. Oh, and we can make limitless amounts of ammonia-based fertilizer with hydrogen separated from water and atmospheric nitrogen.
(Nothing but win. Think of me as the hyper 'Trix Rabbit' of Thorium [youtube.com])
Re:common sense (Score:4, Funny)
"3. use hydrogen separated from water by energy from LFTR stored as liquid, gas or (preferably) oxide pellets"
Round here Hydrogen Oxide pellets fall out of the sky naturally - small ones at this time of the year but in the summer time you can get them as big as golf balls
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Re:Nuclear: only interim solution, permanent waste (Score:5, Informative)
Meanwhile, Germany is implementing soloar and energy efficiency and is AHEAD of its targets.
And buying nuclear power from France, Poland, and the Czech Republic. All the while, that solar energy is driving millions to make the choice between roof over head, food on table, or electricity. As prices start climbing towards of 40c/kWh.
Re:Nuclear: only interim solution, permanent waste (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nuclear: only interim solution, permanent waste (Score:4, Interesting)
And Poland is buying wind power from germany.
So what is your point?
Selling and buying beyond frontiers is exactly the point of an international continent spanning energy grid.
If we would only sell and never buy you would blame us, too. Won't you?
Re:Nuclear: only interim solution, permanent waste (Score:5, Informative)
Germany is not buying power in any significant amount from its neighbours.
We are still exporting roughly 30% of our energy production.
Prices for ordinary customers like me are about 17 - 18 c/kWh.
Don't get where from you have your crazy ideas.
not only buying "nuclear" electricity (Score:3)
Re:Nuclear: only interim solution, permanent waste (Score:5, Interesting)
And how much CO2 and other environmental damage would there be from covering vast swaths of land with solar panels? The manufacturing process is filthy, the disposal process even worse, and it results in more human lives lost than nuclear.
Nuclear can scale up very easily and rapidly. It merely requires the balls to bring down the miles of red tape standing in the way of building new reactors and reprocessing their waste. It handles base load and we know that it works because we've been using it for decades. If you want to bet the farm on something, bet it on something we already know works. As for the fuel, CANDU plants can already breed fuel from thorium and it can use MOX fuel including the weapons-grade plutonium from all those decommissioned nuclear weapons we have laying around.
There's plenty of fuel, waste is ridiculously tiny and low risk if you reprocess the fuel, it scales very well, and we know it works for all kinds of load. Why you'd want to bet human civilization on something new that's more damaging to the environment, causes more human fatalities, and has many unknown risks associated with it is beyond me, but I can say that it won't scale to what we'd need without obscene amounts of environmental damage and unknown risks to the overall climate.
The real solution involves using proven safe, clean technology on a larger scale.
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And how much CO2 and other environmental damage would there be from covering vast swaths of land with solar panels? The manufacturing process is filthy, the disposal process even worse, and it results in more human lives lost than nuclear.
Is this from solar panels falling onto people? I'll admit I have never heard of a nuclear plant falling onto someone.
The risks of nuclear are huge - companies demand lavish subsidies and government underwriting before they'll consider building a new nuclear power plant. And the "red tape" you so casually dismiss is government and safety regulations like "don't build in a known earthquake zone" and "don't use substandard materials."
Of course, I agree the waste problem has already been solved - it's not li
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And how long, and how much aluminum and concrete, does it take to build a 1GW solar plant?
Re:Name them. (Score:4, Interesting)
The truth is that there are no big advances in nuclear power plant technology. There are ideas from the 1960 and 1970, like thorium reactors, breeder reactors or the pepple-bed concept. They all have been tried out and failed for different reasons. Present reactor technology is still based on the same concepts from the 1960s. Improvements in safety have been made, but only in small steps issued after accidents in plants. This is the same principle as in aviation where every crash is analyzed and used to improve planes.
For the pebble-bed thing. Germany tried it and they failed (see wikipedia). The only one having one operational is China (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTR-10 [wikipedia.org]). While it is stated that the design is saver than present western reactors, it uses graphite for moderation. It cannot burn as cooling is done by a non-burnable gas. However, a leak might introduce O2 and that can reproduce Chernobyl all over again. So I am not really convinced that this is a better solution. Furthermore, it is not a solution to the nuclear waste problem. And it is not a solution as a long-time energy source.
While after 50 years of nuclear energy, industry and research where not able to provide a complete solution, while the re-newable energy fraction have working machinery and also the energy storage problem is solvable, as we already have that technology even if it is not yet cheap, reliable or implementable everywhere. However, these issues are easier to fix than come up with totally new technology.
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and also the energy storage problem is solvable
Why not do exactly that same as is already done for coal. The demand curve for a city is not flat like the output of a coal plant, during off-peak a coal plant is producing too much electricity and during peak it's not generating enough. They handle this by using the excess to pump water into a hydro dam, and using gas turbines to make up the shortfall during the peak.
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However, a leak might introduce O2 and that can reproduce Chernobyl all over again.
Please go back to your history books. Tchernobyl was an accident caused by the unsafe design of the reactor and human error during a system test...
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Do you say that human error is incapable of producing a leak in a pebble bed reactor?
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There are ideas from the 1960 and 1970, like thorium reactors, breeder reactors or the pepple-bed concept.
I need new glasses. I first read that as "the people-bed concept", which of course leads right to an image of North Korea working a reactor where political prisoners are used to moderate the reaction ;-)
Re:Name them. (Score:4, Insightful)
Liquid fluoride thorium [wikipedia.org] reactor.
Westinghouse AP1000 [wikipedia.org] reactor.
Something like the Argonne Experimental Breeder Reactor-II [anl.gov].
Do I claim the ultimate in safety has been achieved and is sitting on a shelf next to the holy grail waiting to be used as-is for the Final Ultimate Answer? No, but large advances in safety have been made and need to be pursued further, along with undoubtedly other fresh ideas.
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