This article was sent to me by Charles Hart, and I have to say, I really like this quote from Curt Stager in Fast Company. Between the extremes of Hansen’s pronouncements about coal death trains and people in Britain having to choose between food and fuel, this is where we need to be.
This is the middle ground I believe we can all agree on. Forget reconciliation attempts, let’s just get busy.
Stager writes:
In other words, I want you to help save the world. If green nukes are even half as promising as their proponents claim, then supporting their development may be our best hope for a sane, sustainable, and abundant energy future.
He’s talking about Thorium reactors, which we’ve covered here on WUWT before. Here are some of the stories:
Finding an energy common ground between “Warmers” and “Skeptics”
US Energy Independence by 2020
China announces thorium reactor energy program, Obama still dwelling on “Sputnik moments”
David Archibald on Climate and Energy Security
Curt Stager’s article in Fast Company is well written and appeals to the layman, cutting through a lot of the tech clutter related to thorium based nuclear power. It is also encouraging because we have a former nuclear protester having a “light bulb moment”, and it’s the good old incandescent kind, not a CFL twisty bulb. I recommend reading it, and passing it along. – Anthony
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Will Green Nukes Save the World?
BY FC Expert Blogger Curt Stager
Amidst the darkening clamor over global warming, declining fossil fuel reserves, conflicts over oil supplies, and rumors of heavy-handed governmental attempts to curb our carbon-hungry lifestyles, a welcome glow of hope is emerging on the energy technology horizon. To most viewers, it looks green, or at least “greenish.” And–perhaps surprisingly to those of us who remember Three Mile Island and Chernobyl–it’s radioactive.
As a climate scientist, I’m well-aware of the perils of global warming and I’ve long favored a timely switch to alternative energy sources. However, I’ve also drawn the line at nuclear power, having been an anti-nuke protester in college. I was therefore horrified when prominent environmentalists first began to suggest that nuclear power is preferable to fossil fuels, as though their apocalyptic climate rhetoric had trapped them into minimizing the risks of meltdowns, radioactive waste, bomb proliferation, and nuclear terrorism.
But my attitude changed recently when I raised this subject with an environmental scientist friend whose son is training to become nuclear engineer. “He’s working on a new kind of reactor,” my friend explained, “It can’t melt down, it makes only minimal waste, and it can’t be used for making bombs. It doesn’t even use uranium, which is rare and dangerous to handle; it uses thorium instead, which is common and safer to work with.”
…
Some proponents envision “a nuke in every home,” because self-contained thorium reactors can be built small enough to fit on a trailer truck bed. Such green nukes would dam no rivers and produce no acid rain or greenhouse gases, and their electrical output could create clean hydrogen fuels from water as well as seemingly limitless direct heating and lighting.
Full article here:
http://www.fastcompany.com/1727914/will-green-nukes-save-the-world
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Here’s what Thorium looks like:
Learn more about it here
You can even buy Thorium in the raw on as a refined rod, on Ebay.
Nuclear fuel is not so scary when you can put your hands on it so easily, is it?
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I think I saw thorium on an episode of Star Trek: TNG. Data crash landed and had a suitcase full of it. The local smithy made jewelry out of it, and everyone got sick.
Jaden (data) then made an antidote, but the villagers were already rampaging, and took him out like he was some sort of frankenstein.
Ah, good times, good times.
There’s a litmus test. A large chunk of the left will oppose ANY form of efficient cheap energy. Cheap energy means the whole world breeding and consuming and that’s what they hate most of all.
Any less CO2 intensive form of energy generation deserves investigation. This one can go into the mix with all the others. Like any other sort of energy generation, you need to count the full costs – after all, the problem with fossil fuels is that the environmental cost of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere has not been factored in.
Nothing like this will ever fly with a true blue Green.
(Their objective is revolution and chaos not inovation.)
This is a funny comment coming from a climate scientist. He is discussing comment threads on thorium reactors:
…There’s also an unhelpful dose of ego and machismo in some of the technical discussions online, as in “I’m right because my resume is longer than yours,” that can drive potentially informative dissenters into silence…
I wonder if he sees any irony there.
You can hold natural uranium as used in the Canadian CANDU reactors in your hand (I have done it) without harm, but the left recoils automatically against the word “uranium” so Thorium reactors may have a chance with them.
The thorium reactor is the orphan child that nobody wanted. Unable to yield weapons grade fissionable material it was dismissed from the house, never to be seen again. Until today, when its previous failings are seen as a virtue.
Thorium seems inevitable in some form. The tragedy is that we wasted so many years through neglect that we are decades away from commercial deployment.
While it is a well written article and does discuss a (potentially) much better alternative to energy future than windmills, etc… he does show his true colours and rather spoil the article with this statement:
I think that the first job climatologists need to actually prove is that CO2 (and other GHGs) will actually lead to a runaway super-hothouse.
For me that still hasn’t been proven.
With the UK government still totally wedded to wind power (or, properly, wind powerless) and their chief scientist, John Beddington harbouring Malthusian tendencies, I suspect that the prospect of cheap and reliable electricity from a nuclear source might be a bridge too far for their mad beliefs. Because of the rapidly-approaching power generation crisis, I suspect British industry will be shafted once again and cheap Thorium reactors will be purchased from China when the crisis strikes.
If one were to factor in all of the environmental costs of CO2, one would come to the conclusion that the govt ought to subsidize it.
“Forget reconciliation attempts, let’s just get busy.”
As a matter of fact, energy production and the nuclear vs wind debate got an airing at Lisbon, where some of us were ‘getting busy’ taking on the contrary views of those who hold them directly instead of preaching to the converted from the comfort of our keyboards.
As one of the organisers said:
“This isn’t an attempt to make people compromise. We are providing a place where the fight can take place in civility.”
I’ve always thought it a bit ironic, that many of those who believe in catastrophic warming, are also convinced that “cheap fuels are running out”. If the cheap fuels run out, then their other problem, catastrophic warming, is also solved. Obviously, no fuel, no new CO2. No need for govt to act at all.
Either they have failed to think through the consequences of their beliefs, or they aren’t revealing their real motives. Given the behavior of many warmists, it’s impossible to decide which option is more likely.
Are environmentalists bad for the planet?
BBC – Transcript of a recorded documentary
ROWLATT: A couple of years ago I was given a very
unusual job. I became the BBC’s Ethical Man. My
family and I were asked to spend an entire year
exploring what we could do to tackle global
warming. We gave up the car, stopped flying for a
year, turned down the thermostat – everything we
could think of to cut our carbon emissions. Because I
thought that was what tackling global warming was
all about. But the more time I’ve spent talking to
people in the green movement, the more I’ve come to
suspect that cutting carbon emissions isn’t the top
priority for all green campaigners. What worries me
is that the political objectives of some greens seem to
override their interest in solving global warming.
Solitaire Townsend runs a city PR firm, but one
which specialises in communicating a single issue:
sustainability.
TOWNSEND: I was making a speech to nearly 200
really hard core, deep environmentalists and I played
a little thought game on them. I said imagine I am the
carbon fairy and I wave a magic wand. We can get rid
of all the carbon in the atmosphere, take it down to
two hundred fifty parts per million and I will ensure
with my little magic wand that we do not go above
two degrees of global warming. However, by waving
my magic wand I will be interfering with the laws of
physics not with people – they will be as selfish, they
will be as desiring of status. The cars will get bigger,
the houses will get bigger, the planes will fly all over
the place but there will be no climate change. And I
asked them, would you ask the fairy to wave its
magic wand? And about 2 people of the 200 raised
their hands.
ROWLATT: That is quite shocking. I bet you were
shocked, weren’t you?
TOWNSEND: I was angry. I wasn’t shocked. I was
angry because it really showed that they wanted
more. They didn’t just want to prevent climate
change. They wanted to somehow change people, or
at very least for people to know that they had to
change.
SAUVEN: Well, were quite clear. We’ve actively
opposed nuclear power.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/shared/spl/hi/programmes/analysis/transcripts/25_01_10.txt
I wouldn’t put my money on it becoming a thing in every home’s trailer park since it still creates radioactive waste even if it isn’t as much it’s still radioactive waste.
But I wouldn’t put it pass crazed hippies though since they buy into everything that has a green label on it or is just green, glowing or not. :p
And as for acid rain . . . funny cyclical event of the common hippie. After every major volcanic eruptions the hippies scream acid rain and blame the motorists like the common combustion engine combust with such a force it is able to blow the exhaust up into the stratosphere just like the major volcano.
There are many good reasons to go nuclear, but “saving the planet” (including decarbonizing) is not one of them: just a good solution for a wrong problem.
John Brookes @ur momisugly February 16, 2011 at 4:24 am
“after all, the problem with fossil fuels is that the environmental cost of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere has not been factored in.”
What is the environmental cost? Enquiring minds want to know.
The real commercial test for power generation is: works anywhere; works all of the time; works safely.
Coal, for example, meets the first two criteria, but has some safety and many environmental issues [aside from the bogeyman CO2]. Natural gas improves upon coal as an energy source. Conventional nuclear power improves on natural gas because there is no continuous fuel delivery issue, but nuclear waste remains a problem. Solar power fails on the first two tests as does wind power. It remains to be seen if thorium reactors can deliver all three criteria.
Critics can always find something to criticize… for example, the act of mining for raw materials. The real test is to be found in the benefits versus problems. The fewer beginning-to-end of process problems versus benefits weighed against the overall unsubsidized costs should tell the real story.
I’m skeptical about liquid flourine thorium reactors (LFTR). Oak Ridge National Laboratory built one in 1964, a 7.5mw research unit, and operated it for 5 years. One might reasonably wonder why uranium reactors were chosen instead for both commercial reactors and by the military to power nuclear submarines. LFTR fans say it’s because uranium reactors produce plutonium which in turn is used in nuclear weapons and the US wanted the plutonium so much they ditched LFTR and went with the far more dangerous, larger, expensive water cooled uranium reactor. I’m as willing as the next guy to believe a conspiracy theory provided it makes sense but this one just doesn’t ring true. It’s like the 100 mile-per-gallon carburetor.
The second concern I have is that producing electricity isn’t really a big problem except for the ecoloons who think carbon dioxide is a pollutant. There’s plenty of coal and natural gas for generating electricity. Liquid transportation fuel is the big problem. It’s too expensive already and the US is too dependent on foreign sources many of whom are either commies or Islamic neither of which are particularly fond of the west or the US in particular.
Using hydrogen or electricity for transportation is blue sky nonsense no more capable of solving the transporation fuel problem than wind power is capable of supplying more than a fraction of our electricity for a variety of reasons.
I have no problem with research into LFTR technology but I suspect ORNL has done all the research already and knows of a reason why LFTR isn’t practical. If it were anywhere near the too-good-to-be-true means of generating electricity we’d never have abandoned it 40 years ago.
Too much nonsense, er, “non-science” in the arguments, such as “runaway” greenhouse effects and equating Three Mile Island with Chernobyl. One thing that always brings the “no nukes” protesters to a halt is explaining the political reason why the US has to bury so much waste, while France does not.
Ignorance (and disinformation) always breeds fear.
It’s not tragic, it’s economics. It’s now economically viable to investigate alternatives. This is nothing to do with AGW but simply a function of the oil price and the fact that “peak oil” may have passed.
Wired magazine had a January 2010 cover story on this topic, “Uranium Is So Last Century — Enter Thorium, the New Green Nuke”
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/
Aha! Some common sense.
Although I do not believe that ‘man made’ Carbon Dioxide is a problem it just stands to reason that any form of economically sustainable energy production that minimises the production of COx, NOx and Vox is to be investigated fully. Bring on the Thorium technical debate.
Build it and they will come -hopefully based entirely on the economics. Talk about it and they will talk about it.
China leads in current R&D, si? I really like their approach in that they don’t really care except in terms of what works for them. The U. S. government is obstructionist based on green socialism.
Only three questions yet to be answered: Is anthropogenic CO2 a statistically significant controller of climate? Are current measurements of global temperature better than their degree of uncertainty? If we applied IPCC preferred predictive methods to climate in the height of the Little Ice Age, shouldn’t people in Chicago expect to be buried under a mile of ice?
This is a far better solution for our energy needs than wind which is noisy, unreliable an eysore and slices wildlife to pieces.
John Brookes says:
February 16, 2011 at 4:24 am
Hi John, we haven’t chatted in a while.
How about you list and quantify those environmental costs for us.