Don't mention the Nuclear Option to Greens

Greens are fundamentally opposed to anything that works.

First post from Roger Sowell directing us to the ~24 part series of posts on his blog where he explains how nuclear energy is too expensive without government help and is too dangerous and always has been and always will be despite the technology advances as the extreme risk and cost is inherent, will be showing up in:
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Most greens have been anti-nuclear for as long as they can remember, so to countenance an embarrassing about-face from a lifelong (and passionately held) position to ‘tackle climate change’ is anathema to their pride.
The other big problem isn’t so much that nuclear carries risks – historically it’s been ultra-safe. No, the risk they least want to face is that it will work too well – which at a stroke renders their anti-capitalist stance royally buggered.
More and more it’s obvious ‘Big Green’ is the chosen vehicle of global political restructuring. Look at this for a perfect example:
Guardian reader event: Naomi Klein
In her provocative new book Klein argues that radical political change is needed in the fight against climate change. She will be in conversation with columnist and writer Owen Jones
http://www.theguardian.com/reader-events/naomi-klein-guardian-reader-event

http://climateandcapitalism.com/2014/01/10/300-groups-urge-hansen-to-rethink-nuclear/
Environmentalists urge Hansen to rethink nuclear
300+ groups say: “It is simply not feasible for nuclear power to be a part of a sustainable, safe and affordable future for humankind.”
In the letter posted below, 311 U.S. and international environmental and clean energy groups say that, while they respect the climate change work of Dr. James Hansen and three of his academic colleagues, they take strong exception to the notion that nuclear power is the solution to global warming.
The joint letter was released January 8, in response to a November 3, 2013 statement from Dr. James Hansen and three of his academic world colleagues, Ken Caldeira, Kerry Emanuel, and Tom Wigley, in which they voiced support for increased use of nuclear power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The statement, organized by the Civil Society Initute  and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), urges Hansen and his colleagues to publicly debate the question of climate change and nuclear power.
Gentlemen,
Although we greatly respect your work on climate and lending it a much higher profile in public dialogue than would otherwise be the case, we read your letter of November 3, 2013 urging the environmental community to support nuclear power as a solution to climate change with concern. We respectfully disagree with your analysis that nuclear power can safely and affordably mitigate climate change.
Nuclear power is not a financially viable option. Since its inception it has required taxpayer subsidies and publically financed indemnity against accidents. New construction requires billions in public subsidies to attract private capital and, once under construction, severe cost overruns are all but inevitable. As for operational safety, the history of nuclear power plants in the US is fraught with near misses, as documented by the Union of Concerned Scientists, and creates another financial and safety quagmire – high-level nuclear waste. Internationally, we’ve experienced two catastrophic accidents for a technology deemed to be virtually ‘failsafe’.
As for “advanced” nuclear designs endorsed in your letter, they have been tried and failed or are mere blueprints without realistic hope, in the near term, if ever, to be commercialized. The promise and potential impact you lend breeder reactor technology in your letter is misplaced. Globally, $100 billion over sixty years have been squandered to bring the technology to commercialization without success. The liquid sodium-based cooling system is highly dangerous as proven in Japan and the US. And the technology has proven to be highly unreliable.
Equally detrimental in cost and environmental impact is reprocessing of nuclear waste. In France, the poster child for nuclear energy, reprocessing results in a marginal increase in energetic use of uranium while largely increasing the volume of all levels of radioactive waste. Indeed, the process generates large volumes of radioactive liquid waste annually that is dumped into the English Channel and has increased electric costs to consumers significantly. Not to mention the well-recognized proliferation risks of adopting a plutonium-based energy system.
We disagree with your assessment of renewable power and energy efficiency. They can and are being brought to scale globally. Moreover, they can be deployed much more quickly than nuclear power. For instance, in the US from 2002 to 2012 over 50,000 megawatts of wind were deployed. Not one megawatt of power from new nuclear reactors was deployed, despite subsidies estimated to be worth more than the value of the power new reactors would have produced. Similarly, it took 40 years globally to deploy 50,000 megawatts of solar PV and, recently, only 2 ½ years to deploy an equal amount. By some estimates, another 100,000 MW will be built by the end of 2015. Already, renewables and distributed power have overtaken nuclear power in terms of megawatt hour generation worldwide.
The fact of the matter is, many Wall Street analysts predict that solar PV and wind will have reached grid parity by the end of the decade. Wind in certain parts of the Midwest is already cheaper than natural gas on the wholesale level. Energy efficiency continues to outperform all technologies on a cost basis. While the cost of these technologies continues to decline and enjoy further technological advancement, the cost of nuclear power continues to increase and construction timeframes remain excessive. And we emphasize again that no technological breakthrough to reduce its costs or enhance its operation will occur in the foreseeable future.
Moreover, due to the glacial pace of deployment, the absence of any possibility of strategic technological breakthroughs, and the necessity, as you correctly say, of mitigating climate risks in the near term, nuclear technology is ill-suited to provide any real impact on greenhouse gas emissions in that timeframe. On the contrary, the technologies perfectly positioned now, due to their cost and level of commercialization, to attain decisive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions in the near term are renewable, energy efficiency, distributed power, demand response, and storage technologies.
Instead of embracing nuclear power, we request that you join us in supporting an electric grid dominated by energy efficiency, renewable, distributed power and storage technologies. We ask you to join us in supporting the phase-out of nuclear power as Germany and other countries are pursuing.
It is simply not feasible for nuclear power to be a part of a sustainable, safe and affordable future for humankind.
We would be pleased to meet with you directly to further discuss these issues, to bring the relevant research on renewable energy and grid integration to a dialog with you. Again, we thank you for your service and contribution to our country’s understanding about climate change.
The energy choices we make going forward must also take into account the financial, air and water impacts and public health and safety. There are alternatives to fossil fuels and nuclear power and we welcome a chance to a dialog and debate with each of you.
For the full list of signatories, see: http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/hansenletter1614.pdf
See much more here: http://climateandcapitalism.com/category/nuclear/

From Eric’s post …
“Of course, America’s coal producers are still mining as much coal as they ever did – and exporting it to Europe, whose disastrous policy failures have increased costs and CO2 emissions.”
Unfortunately, this just isn’t true. I follow some coal companies, and they are in the dumper. For example, one coal company I follow is Alpha Natural Resources.
“Coal miner Alpha Natural’s quarterly loss widens”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/coal-miner-alpha-naturals-quarterly-110637487.html
“1,100 layoffs planned at Alpha coal mines in W.Va.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/31/1100-layoffs-planned-at-alpha-coal-mines-in-wva/13428945/
Since West Virginia is a blue state, one silver lining might be that they finally start voting for conservatives or libertarians.

The nuclear power people know, and that has had problems was designed and built in the 1960s. The public discussion about nuclear power today is like trying to deal with people who think TV is a big monsterous wooden box in the living room that gets 11 channels of black and white programming in analog and has crappy monophonic sound. That’s old nuclear power and nobody wants more of that. Modern modular reactors can’t melt down. Believe it or not, we’ve made progress over 60 years. How to you explain a 60 inch HD flat screen TV with 7.1 surround sound to someone from 1968? The problem is we don’t have much to show people yet. but modular reactors are planned to be built soon in GA, and TN.
http://www.energy.gov/articles/energy-department-announces-new-investment-innovative-small-modular-reactor

I am always puzzled that the greens insist that we use unperfected wind and solar technologies right now by claiming that they are advancing technologies that will improve but reject the idea that nuclear or carbon-based fuel technologies can be improved.

“The statement, organized by the Civil Society Initute and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), urges Hansen and his colleagues to publicly debate the question of climate change and nuclear power.”
“Nuclear power is not a financially viable option.”
What they left out:
“Mostly because we’ve spent most of the last 60 years making it as expensive as possible due to extreme ‘environmental’ restrictions that make no sense with modern designs.”

“Most skeptics are supporters of power generation solutions which would, as a byproduct, significantly reduce CO2 emissions.” That doesn’t go far enough. Power sources that most skeptics support have reduced CO2 emissions vastly more than all the power sources greens support.

@ mpainter
You are full of BS. Show us the data proving nuclear is more dangerous than driving a car.

The greens feed on fear, scares and have an agenda to wreck economies, at least that is the Australian outcomes of the fearful scaremongering to prevent anything working. Mention nuclear and they just about faint, the blood rains from their faces, brains go into mortal lockdown and common sense or any semblance of coherent conversation ends and a scattergun rant erupts.
Seems that the mere mention conjures up images of devils and accusations of environmental vandals.
I simply prefer that whatever emissions that we cause are the cleanest for the environment and that whatever energy that were need for daily life be produced at the lowest clean environmental cost.
On that basis I look for the day that we eventually replace those energy sources with the best range of nuclear devices under the safest controls. Even better if we can reduce the size and complexity of those nuclear generators that it becomes viable to give them to poorer economies as a form of peaceful aid so they can develop basic clean cooking, bathing, heating/cooling to lift their people out of poverty.
This may mean continuing to burn/consume cheap fossil fuels while these small safe reliable reactors are developed in a way that the by products cannot be used for military purposes and several of the modern reactor proposals seem to be viable in that respect.
We already remove most of the particulate and chemical mix from the emissions in the developed world and it seems a no brainer to ensure the energy needs of the human race are supplied and new sources of energy harnessed for the true benefit of mankind AND the planet we inhabit.
But try explaining this to a greenie you will draw a blank every time, its not in the Great Green songbook of agenda!

fenbeagleblog says:
August 9, 2014 at 6:02 am
Well the main reason in the UK Eric is the current proposal is the most expensive nuclear power station in the world. And with strike prices at £90 kw/h it’s barely cheaper than onshore wind at £95 kw/h.
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I think comparing kw/h between energy sources can be mis-leading.
In 2012, the average nuclear power plant in the United States generated about 11.8 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh). A 1.8-MW turbine can produce about 5 million kWh a year using an average wind speed of 12mph. I know where I live we do not manage 12 MPH windspeeds annually, but lets use that number. It would take about 2,400 wind turbines to equal one nucluer plant in annual output, again assuming 12mph average wind. Can’t imagine the logistics of a 2,400 wind turbine farm nor the impact to the environment.
And then there is the issue that the wind don’t always blow, so power output from wind is not 24/7 as nucleur power would be, requiring further mitigation and expense or a change to our lifestyles.

I’m reminded of a great book by Petr Beckmann called The Health Hazards of NOT Going Nuclear. As a counter example, for all of John Daly’s great work with documenting a lack of sea level change and fighting consensus climatology, he was quite rabidly against nuclear power.

Birkenstock liberals are not about solutions – they are about the unrestricted show of caring for the down-trodden in all walks of life except for white males who are fair game. The only way to care in their world is by way of government programs that ensure the down-trodden will remain so thus satisfying the “unrestricted” requirement. There’s nothing happier than a caring liberal with a good cause to bray about and a good tax lawyer to ensure someone else pays for the programs.

Never letting a crisis go to waste, means not fixing it either.

The waste issue was always there. However, I recall a conversation I had a while ago with someone for the life of me I cannot recall who (senior moment). The issue of containment is pretty much settled. In the UK we’ve tested the steel encased concrete surrounded waste vessels by colliding them with trains moving at 100mph, or there abouts, & they survive. The conversation moved on to storage & or disposal. What was proposed was to fill a tanker with the waste, & the ship be fitted with doors open to the sea, obviously such that the vessel remains seaworthy. The ship is then taken to the nearest subduction zone & the waste guided down to it. In theory once subsumed into the Earth’s crust it would never be seen again! I thought it had merit although it would horrify the Greens despite informing them of the origins of the original material being disposed of!

kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
August 9, 2014 at 6:11 am
First post from Roger Sowell directing us to the ~24 part series of posts on his blog where he explains how nuclear energy is too expensive without government help and is too dangerous and always has been and always will be despite the technology advances as the extreme risk and cost is inherent, will be showing up in:
3..
2..
1..
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KD,
It took him 18 minutes. Do you have any picks for the Lotto next week?
Richard

From Roger Sowell on August 9, 2014 at 6:29 am:

In addition, Professor Derek Abbott asserts that nuclear power is simply not possible as a long-term solution for electrical energy. (…)

From the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the world-class geniuses behind the famous “Five Seconds to Midnight” Doomsday Clock:

THE ENERGY ISSUE
05/30/2013 – 16:18
Limits to growth: Can nuclear power supply the world’s needs?
Derek Abbott
(…) One particular resource limitation that has not been clearly articulated in the nuclear debate thus far is the availability of the relatively scarce metals used in the construction of the reactor vessel and core. While this scarcity is not of immediate concern, it would present a hard limit to the ultimate expansion of nuclear power. This limit appears to be a harder one than the supply of uranium fuel. An increased demand for rare metals—such as hafnium, beryllium, zirconium, and niobium, for example—would also increase their price volatility and limit their rate of uptake in nuclear power stations. Metals used in the nuclear vessel eventually become radioactive and, on decommissioning, those with long half-lives cannot be recycled on timescales useful to human civilization. Thus, a large-scale expansion of nuclear power would reduce “elemental diversity” by depleting the world’s supply of some elements and making them unavailable to future generations.

Limits to Growth, the famous “Club of Rome” publication useful for justifying the incidental extermination of 13 out of every 14 people on Earth? Good reference to start with.
Welcome once again to the “reserves misunderstood as resources” discussion, with the addition of metals that are byproducts of looking for other metals. From Forbes, by Tim Worstall on 1/24/2013 @ 11:16AM:

It’s 2013: Let’s Check Those New Scientist Claims About Running Out Of Terbium And Hafnium
…
With hafnium this problem is even worse. Their misunderstanding of metals and metals extraction that is. On this chart they seem to have global reserves of hafnium at 1,124 tonnes. Which is a number that had me howling with laughter when I saw it. This is simply nonsense.
Here are the USGS numbers for hafnium. You will note that there are no statistics for world production of hafnium. And most certainly none for either reserves or resources. That is, there are no reserves. But you will see this:

Typically, zirconium and hafnium are contained in zircon at a ratio of about 50 to 1.

Ah, OK: 2% of zircon is hafnium. So, what are the reserves of zircon then? 52 million tonnes: meaning that there’s about 1 million tonnes of hafnium out there. That’s reserves recall: not resources. This is the stuff that has been measured, weighed and drilled.
So how can we have these people insisting that reserves are only 1,124 tonnes? Quite simply, because they are ignorant of how the market for this metal works.
Hafnium and zirconium are chemically very similar indeed. So much so that we usually don’t bother to refine the 2% of Hf out of the Zr. The only time we do care is for the nuclear industry: Hf is opaque to neutrons, Zr transparent. Thus when we make the zirconium to make reactors out of we have to extract the Hf. And this is where the world’s supply comes from. It’s waste from the nuclear industry. This is where we get the few hundred tonnes a year of Hf that we actually use from. The other 25,000 tonnes a year that’s in the zircon we don’t bother to extract and we just let it get used with the zirconium/zirconia for non-nuclear uses.
…

This Derek Abbott fellow that Roger Sowell trusts sounds like a really smart guy, for someone aligned with anti-nuclear Malthusians.
To mention it, even though (from first link) “Derek Abbott is a professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Adelaide in Australia”, I haven’t found any direct relation to Tony Abbott, current Australian PM.

Roger Sowell,
I have a question regarding your post: What is your position? Do you favor coal, oil, and natural gas while we have it cheaper than nuclear? Or do you prefer wind and solar at its high cost? Just seeking clarification, thanks.

. Most skeptics are supporters of power generation solutions which would, as a byproduct, significantly reduce CO2 emissions.
===============
I don’t give a fig whether CO2 emissions are reduced or not. CO2 is only beneficial. Reduction of CO2 should not be a consideration when discussing power generation.

I find that what I support most is the actual policy evolution that is taking place, slowly and surely. Let places like Germany and the UK tax and regulate their energy sources to death. All they will do, in the end, is to destroy their economic competitiveness and send all of their manufacturing jobs to areas with more competitive cost structures. At the same time, other areas (Texas! North Dakota! Oklahoma! Western Pennsylvania!) are allowing the development of large amounts of cheap and easily available energy, which translates into cheap electricity, which translates into a huge advantage for any heavy manufacturing which uses energy. (btw, don’t get pulled into the trap of trying to compare retail electric rates, because a large enough plant is always able to get long term contracts at a steep discount, or to just generate the power they need themselves from the available source)
So, the end game is that these areas with lots of cheap energy are going to draw all of the job growth that happens not just in the US, but in the world, and as such their wealth, power, and influence are going to grow, and those areas that stick to the Green Dream will continue to see their wealth, power, and influence decline. (Case in point: Great Britain, which in international affairs has now become the illegitimate offspring of an afterthought and a joke – how sad, really, to see the one-time seat of empire sink into total irrelevance and obscurity, as it has today)
To put it in its most simple terms – so you want to give us all of your money and become slaves to the people who think more clearly than you do? Okay, whatever. Your choice.

Dr Phil Jones is wrong about something else, too:
“Our population is only 25% of yours…” No it isn’t. The UK’s population is 20% of the USA’s.

MikeH says: August 9, 2014 at 6:33 am
But choose a state like Nevada for a Thorium plant. No cooling water is needed.
Why would anyone think that a Nuclear plant would not require cooling water?
Is it a heat engine?

“What am I missing?”
The 800-lb watermelon in the room.

Maybe it is time for another LENR update. GK

While everybody debates their favourite nuclear position, it might be instrumental to remember that the problem to be solved here is not CO2 emissions, climate change or global warming, it’s Dana Nuccitelli…

Chris Moffat @ 8>27 pretty much nails it.
I have no reason to reject alarmist science.
I just wish they would produce some, you know good old fashioned testable ideas.
At the moment their efforts are Opinion.
Their conjectures of Global Doom brought on by the rising production of that magic gas, CO2, are not science.
They are soothsaying.
I for one would love to see some Alarmist Science.
How about they do this;
Define their terms.
Definite and document their data.
Test their ideas.
Acknowledge history.
Refrain from hysterical pouting.
There is very little Alarmist Science, this has always been the cause of scepticism.
Dressing up in white lab coats and cloaking oneself in the authority of the institution does not make ones utterances science.
Unsupported opinion remains the only “proof” of the magic gas theorem.

Paul, they are annoying and childish….

What am I missing?

Have you forgotten? There is no need to limit CO2.
With nuclear power there are numerous issues that get short shrift, such as security. Nothing can be made fool-proof because fools are too ingenious. Anything built by man can be hacked by man. In addition to considering what nature might do, we also have to consider what foolish men or foolish regimes might do.
We don’t need nuclear power, nor do we need wind and solar polar. All of these power generation technologies cost far more than they are worth and entail various liabilities often swept under the carpet, i.e. Fukushima.
We have abundant reserves of fossil fuels, and we are expert at exploiting these resources responsibly. Arguments and restrictions against coal read like something from the pages of Swift or Pynchon…surely such fools could not trespass on the realms of reality? But there they are, in all their folly, participants in the Great Carbon Dioxide Scare, and here the reader must finally turn to the telling question:
Who profits?

The only item in my energy portfolio is logic.

Roger Sowell’s greatest hits:
“2 Why do small islands have zero nuclear power plants, but burn expensive oil or diesel resulting in power prices of 25 to 35 cents per kWh?”
Taiwan, an island only 27% larger than Hawaii, has three nuclear plants hosing six reactors. I guess Sowell will now declare that this is not “small” enough. Apparently, this lawyer won’t be satisfied unless Robinson Crusoe has his own nuclear reactor.
“3 Why do nuclear utilities never, ever, ask for a rate decrease when they build a nuclear plant?”
First of all, there is no such thing as a “nuclear utility.” There are only utilities who use a variety of technologies in their electricity generation portfolio. Exelon, the largest operator of nuclear plants in the US, gets 35% of its electricity from fossil fuel plants. The question should be, why do utilities never, ever, ask for a rate decrease when they build a power plant?
A more pertinent question would be, why do utilities get to pass along the volatile cost of fuel, such as natural gas, to their customers without any additional oversight?
“6 Why does nuclear power in the US require heavy subsidies from government – and almost total indemnity from costs of a massive radiation disaster?”
Do you really want to compare subsidies provided by the US government? When it comes to energy, the largest recipient of subsidies from the US government, by far, is the oil companies.
“7 Why are nuclear plants shutting down in the US, with owners saying they are losing money?”
Why are owners of nuclear plants paying exorbitant fees to relicense their plants to run an additional 20 years? Do you really believe that they would volunteer to pay regulatory fees in order to lose money for 20 more years?! Could it be because these plants are cash cows?
“8 Why are there so many near-misses on meltdowns in US plants, on average every 3 weeks?”
Mr. Sowell should stay off the drugs or back up such ridiculous claims.
“9 Why were there three serious meltdowns worldwide in just a bit more than 30 years? (Fukushima, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island)”
For something that provides 11% of the world’s electricity and 5% of the world’s total primary energy supply, I’d say that only three events in 60 years is a pretty damn good record.
Compare that to the environmental impact of oil, coal, and natural gas. If you want to talk about serious accidents, try the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill, the Exxon Valdez spill, and Deepwater Horizon. Those in glass houses ….
“10 Why are new reactor technologies being researched and developed?”
Because technology moves on. Why would anyone want to develop those darned horseless carriages when we have horses or those darned aeroplanes when we have boats?

A war against reason waged with weapons of mass delusion.

RACookPE1978 says: Gee, Greg. etc.
How about read all the bits you chose not to quote and try again before trying to misrepresent what I said?
richardscourtney says:
Humans are NOT a cancer on the planet. We are sentient beings who – in common with all other organisms in nature – modify our environment for our benefit.
As individuals we are sentient beings , that was part of what I said you may recall. The question is whether, having over-come the usual limitations that limit natural species, we are “sentient” enough collectively to chose between being an over developed brain or a malignant tumour.
“And we only inhabit a small part of the fifth of the world which is not covered in water.”
How large does metastasis have to be to kill the host?

Brian@10:03am evades the very pertinent issue of paying the cost of a massive radiation disaster.
Brian will never address that issue nor will any advocate of nuclear power.
Brian, for your benefit and for the benefit of all, let me put the question directly to you:
Who pays for cleaning up a massive radiation disaster?

Hans Erren says:
“Come to think of it that the whole global warming scare was initiated by rightwing Margaret Thatcher to promote nuclear energy and break the the coal mine unionists. ”
She had already broken the back of organised labour by that time. The objective was remove labour intensive industries, where the average worker could organise and have some say, form the economy and rely solely on the financial sector as the mainstay of the economy.
The government now has to go cap in hand to the bankers and ask them really nice, pretty please, could they be a little less obvious about raping the country and still giving themselves big bonuses. Not that they are against rape, you see, ” just be little more discrete if you would. “

mjc
“Nope…coal producers, over the past few months (probably not showing in available data, yet), at least here in WV have slowed production and will be slowing it even more. ‘Warn notices’ for at least 1100 miners just went out, a few days ago. These are lay-off/shutdown notices. ”
Crap. So this is no longer and intellectual, scientific argument. The stupidity and deceit is starting bite.

cnxtim says:
August 9, 2014 at 6:11 am
The right path is absurdly simple, stay with coal, oil and gas until it GENUINELY begins to reach peak supply, then switch to nuclear.
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I agree with the first half. Let the people of the future decide the second half. Maybe they’ll go nuke, maybe not. It’s not our call.

i have come to the conclusion that evirowackos will go against anything which does not give them control over the populace. Control of CO2 was that magic wand but it is rapidly fading and they are desperate to retain control.. This has always been about agenda and control.. it always will be. They place stupid regulations and taxes on products making them extremely expensive like Nuclear power and they do the same to every other item which would threaten their control.

Paul Coppin: “This discussion is nonsense. There is no reason to conjure up proxies to describe human population dynamics. We are following fairly standard pop curves for most generalized species. All that differs are the rates. We simply haven’t reached the oscillating plateau that most species eventually reach once their resource limits have been reached. Our ability to overcome population limiting factors isn’t infinite, as we will find out eventually. Nature might impose a few new ones along the way (as an epizootiologist, Ebola comes to mind to me at the moment…). It’ll be interesting to see if the limits will be externally natural or internally sociological…. ”
Leave the proxies out if you prefer. It does get emotive.
“Our ability to overcome population limiting factors isn’t infinite” Indeed the planet if finite however clever we get at devouring every last resource.
It may be better if we are smart enough to limit ourselves ( preferably without resorting to genocide ) instead of suffocating the host or counting on nature to defend herself and deal us some negative feedbacks like ebola.

Richard:” it provides a link to an account of how and why Thatcher really started the global warming scare.”
Sounds interesting. Could you repost it without hitting the moderation trip?

rcs says:
August 9, 2014 at 6:00 am
Greens are fundamentally opposed to anything that works.
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Not exactly, although it is okay if a program doesn’t work.
They don’t want to improve people’s standard of living by improving power generation but rather reduce consumption and power use worldwide.
They don’t want to improve the lives of billions but rather eliminate those billions.
Their philosophy on poverty is reduction through a slow die off.
It’s worked every time it’s been tried.
cn

SAMURAI says:
August 9, 2014 at 8:00 am
Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) will be what powers our future because it’s the cheapest, cleanest, safest, most efficient, scalable, unlimited and energy dense form of energy ever developed.
==================
It hasn’t been developed. You ascribe to it imaginary properties.
Maybe the Chinese will get it to work. Even if they do, it’s not economically feasible at this time. Your declaration “If China is allowed to pursue LFTR development exclusively” sounds like a certain president telling us “we can’t let China get ahead of us in developing solar power.”

Environmentalists urge Hansen to rethink nuclear
300+ groups say: “It is simply not feasible for nuclear power to be a part of a sustainable, safe and affordable future for humankind.”
=============
As if these groups or Hansen or WE had any say in the existence of nuclear power generation in the world.
Nuclear WILL EXIST in CHINA, INDIA, RUSSIA, and any other country that wants it. They aren’t asking US.
From World Nuclear Association website:
(
Mainland China has 20 nuclear power reactors in operation, 28 under construction, and more about to start construction.
Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world’s most advanced, to give more than a three-fold increase in nuclear capacity to at least 58 GWe by 2020, then some 150 GWe by 2030, and much more by 2050.
The impetus for increasing nuclear power share in China is increasingly due to air pollution from coal-fired plants.
)
Coal fired plants….China currently brings a new on onstream EVERY 5 DAYS. By 5 years from the present, it will have 350 MORE than today.
India is on its way on both counts.
Oppose nuclear all you want, it is already a done deal, no matter WHAT Hansen or ‘environmental groups’ or anyone else says about it. Further, China will likely be one of the major suppliers of the technology in the coming years, with its own designs, installers, operations companies and manufacturers.
Just a fact of life in the 21rst century. Better to get really good, safe, current designs out there than pretend it is going to go away.

Col Mosby resorts to calling those opposed to nuclear disaster as “ignorant”. Like other advocates of nuclear power generation he pretends that Chernobyl, Fukajima, Three Mile Island did not happen or posed no threat. As put above, you cannot build a fool-poof nuclear power reactor because fools are ingenious.
Nor does he address the question “Who pays for the cleanup of a radiation disaster?.”

“The Malthusia:n idea is wrong because it ignores basic economics and applies a wrong model; human population is NOT constrained by resources like the population of bacteria in a Petri dish. There is no existing or probable problem of overpopulation of the world by humans.”
__________
Richard, what hell are you talking about? I never mentioned Malthus, petri dishes, or overpopulation. Every species has a limit constrained by the dynamics of the carrying capacity of its environment: physical, ideological, sociological or biological. All you did was elaborate the sociological. The human curve will have a lot more noise in it than most vertebrate species, but it will approximate a plateau at some point. Note: I’m not talking about overpopulation – think homeostasis.

What am I missing?

You are not missing anything. You hit the nail on the head.
James Lovelock, the father of the Gaia hypothesis loves fracking and nuclear. When he used to worry about co2 I believe he was sincere. When he realized it was exaggerated, I believe he was still being sincere. That’s why he was baffled about nuclear opposition and fracking.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/james-lovelock-nuclear-power-is-the-only-green-solution-6169341.html
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jun/15/james-lovelock-interview-gaia-theory

mpainter trolls: “Nor does he address the question ‘Who pays for the cleanup of a radiation disaster?.'”
In the case of the Three Mile Island “disaster” (and I use that term loosely), the insurance purchased by the owner of the plant paid for everything. This is not idle speculation, this is history.
Had the “disaster” been worse, the pooled insurance scheme that was set up by the Price-Anderson Act and is funded by all nuclear plant licensees would have paid for the “disaster.” Nevertheless, in spite of all of the hemming and hawing and gnashing of teeth by the likes of Greenpeace, the nuclear “disaster” was so meager that this additional insurance was simply not needed. It’s there, just in case, but in the 57 years since Price-Anderson was passed it has never been needed.

Brian@12:00pm sidesteps, as I expected, the question “Who pays for the cleanup in the event of a radiation disaster?”
Jordan, @11:47 provides the answer: the public pays, as the source of last resort.

Note also that Brian @12:00pm refers to me as a troll because I had raised the issue of “Who pays for the cleanup of a nuclear disaster?”.
I am no troll but a regular commenter here and a confirmed skeptic. What about you Brian? Do you dare repeat that I am a troll?

It has been said but it bears repeating: We do not need nuclear power and conventional power is both cheaper and safer.
And do you raise the bugaboo of CO2 on this skeptic’s blog? This makes me smile that you would come and try to pass the coin of the alarmists.

mpainter – Someone who keeps repeating the same question, taunting people to answer it, and ignoring when they actually do is simply trolling. It’s no more possible to engage in a debate with such as person than it is to debate with a brick wall. If that’s all you’ve got, then you’ve got nothing.

mpainter says:
August 9, 2014 at 11:44 am
“China is a dictatorship and you espouse their policies as suitable here. Well, here the public has some say and note that we are not building nuclear power plants. ”
You don’t because you still get Oil imports for Dollars. That is about to change.

Brian,
To the question ” Who pays for the cleanup in the event of a radiation disaster” Jordan @ 11:47 gave the correct answer, and very authoritatively, too. This issue is most important and I am not surprised that you would eschew giving such an answer as “the public, as the source of last resort.”
It does not help your cause to call me a troll because I address this important issue. And Brian, please understand that I do not engage you for the same of debate, but rather to demonstrate to others the faults of the proponents of nuclear power.

DirkH:
Your comment seemed as a non-sequitor to mine.
We do not burn oil in power plants.
So what do you know about oil and dollars that is about to change, pray share your information.

Nuclear Energy sure brings out the opinions.
I shall surrender to the eco-nasties.. Nuclear energy is evil.. quick let us extinguish the sun.

“The Margarita Declaration at the UN backed conference in Venezuela last month makes their position totally clear…”
And how many Margaritas per attendee were required to achieve this total clarity?

Has anyone else noticed that Dana and his pal look like cast members from 60s children’s TV series ‘Thunderbirds’?

Richard
Oops, my iPad changed speech to preach!
Tonyb
[Nah, the iPod was write. Preach is probably more accurate. 8<) .mod]

Nuclear energy? are you freakin kidding me!?
It doesn’t matter whether or not you are in favor of nuclear energy or wind turbines: either way you are a victim of some serious brainwashing, brought on by the culture creators/ruling elite.
Energy is over-rated- plain and simple. And I highly doubt that any of you will be able to fathom that statement; which just indicates your level of ignorance.
Ponder the following:
You need all this energy because…..
-there’s steaks being kept in the freezer
-maybe you can’t live without all that street lighting
-or you need to watch 5 hours of t.v every night
-so you can run the dryer for 2 hours
-run the A.C (which is making you sick, but you don’t know it) after all 25C is now just to hot for most.
Keep boring holes into the Canadian Shield and maybe one day an earth-quake will bring all that sh#t back to the surface.
Keep signing over the rights to your land for a freaking tax break and some extra income while some foreign owned Corporation erects a turbine next to your home for 40 years.
pathetic…..

kenin
Well done for giving me a good laugh. Your post is like a scene from Monty Python’s “Life Of Brian” (What have the Romans ever done for us?)

Tragic. I have been an avid watcher of doings regarding Warming,in the US, since the late seventies. I believed then, and I believe the ensuing decades have proven my early read correct, that counting clouds and disentangling omni-scale vorticity would prove stubbornly intractable to applied math. If we have to make such profound judgments in the face of persistent uncertainty, a minimal cost shift from coal power to nuclear was an obvious early beginning. That the enviro-left was as enduringly opposed to this first step was sin enough, but that the right never rallied to nuclear was just tragic. Instead, they have organized around their never-ending attack against science itself–and appear to the younger generation as both uncaring and retarded.
Incredibly, the American voter has been given by this circumstance, no opportunity to vote for that first step, and even today, with the craft crews rotating off assignment at Watts Bar, their skills will soon go fallow. As have the SoCal plants in California, the Florida plant, and soon, Vermont Yankee.
Instead of plowing so much intellectual energy into your endless guerrilla campaign here, sniping and propagandizing amongst the shadows for a program that is intrinsically lethargic, why not shift some effort towards active remediation? After all, the warmists concede in their conventional depiction, that enduring three-fold uncertainty attends their theoretical anxieties. The minimalists harp on about their doubts, but never quite own up to the implications that they also, wield no magic knowledge that the planet will ultimately not register an outcome for posterity in the upper range of unpleasant possibilities.

Rogerknights@3:32pm:
Let us not be stampeded into nuclear power by some imagined fear of Green power.

Nuclear would upset the depopulation agenda.

DirkH
We buy oil Mexico, Venezuela, Nigeria but how much Saudi? Methinks little if any.

mpainter says:
August 9, 2014 at 4:43 pm
I hope you never fly in airplanes. You realize you get 5-10 times as much radiation up there as you do on the ground.

So why isn’t nuclear power the main focus of everyone’s attention?
==============
Because it is a messy, dirty, stupid & dangerous way to boil water; because it is heavily subsidized; because the slow deaths from cancers are statistically easy to hide (like 1/2 a million Vioxx deaths were easy to hide, and nobody cares anyway): because nuclear power is an industry built on a volatile core of lies and subsidies. Because Homo Simian is a lying and conniving animal. Because the word “tsunami” was made in Japan.
“Too cheap to meter!” – the nuclear promise.
Too cheap to meter – the hydrocarbon-based electrical reality in Qatar.

Eric Worrall asks a highly pertinent question in the lead to this thread. A large part of the answer lies in the historical roots of the modern environmental movement. It began with the “Ban the Bomb” movement in the late 1950s and 1960s, reaching a crescendo after 1. the Cuban Missile Crisis, and 2. the discoveries regarding the effects of atmospheric weapon testing that led to the Atmospheric Test Ban Treaty.
Antinuclearism is to this day at the very core of Green ideology. Dr. Patrick Moore has documented this fairly extensively in recent years. Their opposition as illustrated by a few commenters such as mpainter is visceral and absolute. This is not a matter of empiricism. All of Col Mosby’s statistics may be correct, and they make absolutely no difference. The Green opposition to nuclear power is theological, not empirical.
It’s no surprise that this is found most strongly in Germany. West Germany spent 50 years as the front line between two superpowers, both armed with tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. And the Greens have never made any particular distinction between civilian and military applications.
The modern environmental movement is more than just the “Ban the Bomb” types. It was reinforced starting in the late 1970s by increasingly large financial support from a number of charitable foundations, particularly in the United States. A significant part of this funding came from the oil companies, recognizing that nuclear could pose an existential threat to their business. Even as late as 2006, Enbridge was still funding the Ontario-based Clean Energy Alliance, an overtly and primarily antinuclear organization.
Without lavish corporate funding, the environmental movement would still be largely what it was in the 1950s, a gaggle of bare-ass hippies that one one either paid attention to or cared about. Instead today, it’s arguably the largest and best funded political lobby organization in both Washington and Brussels. And it’s corporate money, the commercial opponents of nuclear power, which put it there.
And that they have lavish funding for antinuclear activities is amply demonstrated by such antinuclear shills as Roger Sowell here present
The second reinforcement of the environmental movement came with the collapse of Soviet communism in 1990. As has been well established, the disintegration of various communist political parties over Western Europe in the 1990s resulted in their former members largely flocking into nascent Green parties. What they brought with them was the ability to organize politically, something the Greens in the 1980s and 1970s had notably lacked.
So these are the three main elements of the modern Green movement: visceral antinuclearism; corporatist funding; and a haven for communist/socialist political refugees from the collapse of state communism. None of them can be readily separated out from each other. Antinuclearism was and remains the central driving passion of the Greens. It does not matter that nuclear power is by far the safest way to produce electricity, and with existing technology. It does not matter that fissile materials will be available for fission at reasonable cost for tens of thousands of years at virtually any scale of use. There are NO facts or logical positions which can affect the antinuclear dementia in the slightest. There is only the Green theology and the paid shills of the fossil fuel companies, neither of which is subject to persuasion or reason on this matter.

cgh says:
August 9, 2014 at 7:46 pm
Very well said. I couldn’t have put it any better.
The anti-nukes, as far as I am concerned, are incapable of (or at least unwilling to) engage in careful, objective critical or analytical thought using facts and reasoning when it comes to nuclear power. The CAGW alarmists are the same way. Their emotional and spiritual devotion to their anti-nuke theological belief system trumps all else, facts be damned.
For them to suggest that we should listen to them instead of nuclear physicists, engineers, and other scientists with advanced nuclear education, training and experience is patently ridiculous and demonstrates the irrationality of their mode of thinking. I could try to explain the radiation hormesis hypothesis to them so they might understand that low-level radiation does not necessarily need to be feared, but it would be pointless.
If they are in fact being funded by the fossil fuel industry, then that is indeed ironic. This is because I have added up the number of deaths due to natural gas explosions worldwide over the past 50 years and came up with a total of in excess of 2,650.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_disasters_by_death_toll. (Explosions and Industrial Disasters tables).
I could try explaining to the anti-nukes that this natural gas death toll is many times higher than that of nuclear in the same time frame. Unfortunately, like most attempts at making them understand, it would probably be a waste of time. They would only make excuses to ignore it.
Like oil and vinegar, rational, critical analytical thinking and the anti-nuclear movement simply don’t mix.

From Paul Pierett on August 9, 2014 at 8:53 pm:

You should go on the web sites that show Chernobyl. Sad.

Or better yet, Take The Tour!

ITINERARY
We usually start our Chernobyl tour at 9 a.m.
SoloEast’s staff will meet you at the departure point, check passports, dress code, etc. If you need to be picked up at your location we can do that too – just let us know.
* Drive to Chernobyl with passing Dytyatky checkpoint (on the border of the 30-km Exclusion Zone). We show you an informative and stunning documentary you’ll like during a 2-hour ride.
* Entry to the 30km Exclusion Zone. Meeting the leadership of Chernobylinterinform Agency.
* Arrival to Chernobyl. Introductory briefing on the Exclusion Zone administrative division and regulations, RAW disposal, etc.
* Sightseeing Chernobyl town: Wormwood Star memorial, St. Ilya Church, Memorial “To Those who Saved the World”, photo stop at the place with robots and vehicles used to clean the radioactive fallout.
* Entry to the 10 km Zone by passing Leliv checkpoint.
* On the way to the Power Plant we stop at almost fully buried Kopachi village and check the kindergarten which we can still enter.
* Sightseeing Reactor #4 from a 300 m distance.
* Stop near the Red Forest.
* Sightseeing Pripyat town: Lenin Street, the palace of culture, Polissya hotel, supermarket; Ferris wheel, the stadium, school, swimming pool and the hospital.
NO ENTRY INSIDE THE BUILDINGS DUE TO THE SAFETY REASONS.
* Lunch at the Power Plant canteen- all ingredients are brought from the outside and ecologically clean. A vegetarian meal is available upon request.
* Visiting Paryshiv village, meeting the self-settlers (people who chose to come back to their homes after the evacuation (optional).
* Important – Rossokha village (contaminated vehicles graveyard) – ACCESS FORBIDDEN BY THE GOVERNMENT FROM APRIL 2008.
* Passage through Dytyatki checkpoint. Compulsory radiation control.
* Return to Kiev around 6 p.m.
NOTE! The itinerary can be changed by the guide depending of weather conditions or other unforeseen circumstances.

Wow. Site of the worst nuclear reactor disaster ever, and you can visit the town, see the sites, speak to the people who’ve moved back, look at the reactor building, and even get a vegetarian lunch. And all for a price that’s easily cheaper than a day at an amusement park!
See the links at the bottom for the photos and videos. The abundant wildlife is spectacular.

cirby says:
August 9, 2014 at 6:32 am
“The statement, organized by the Civil Society Initute and the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS), urges Hansen and his colleagues to publicly debate the question of climate change and nuclear power.”
“Nuclear power is not a financially viable option.”
What they left out:
“Mostly because we’ve spent most of the last 60 years making it as expensive as possible due to extreme ‘environmental’ restrictions that make no sense with modern designs.”
+++++++++++++++
From my reading of the history the nuclear power industry, faced with a market for weapons grade byproducts and a desire to make as much money as possible, manufacturer chose the most expensive possible technology available with the most expensive possible fuel processing and reprocessing requirements in the early 70’s. G.E.and those guys. The decision maximised costs and therefore turnover.
The strange union of ideas of the greens to try to make nuclear power as expensive as possible to render it economically unattractive exactly matches the nuclear power industry’s interest in making it as expensive as possible without killing the host, so to speak. The biggest threat to pressurised light water reactors is the much cheaper nuclear and far safer alternative nuclear options. Thorium in particular threatens the reprocessing industry because it is so much more benign.
Irrational opposition to ‘nuclear’ anything is the downfall of the anti-nuke arguments.
Re the real cost of power from various sources have a look at Ontario Power’s very public website showing nuclear, wind, gas, solar and biomass generation and cost on an hourly basis. Wind and solar are heavily subsidised by hydro and nuclear. Natural gas compensation stations are required for the wind farms. The whole ‘renewable’ scheme is subsidised by jacking up retail prices.
The back of my envelope calculation shows a $20 bn price tag for enough wind power to replace a nuclear power station of equal capacity. At that price only the windmill industry is interested in wind power, save for isolated communities.

Brian says:
August 9, 2014 at 6:09 pm
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/09/dont-mention-the-nuclear-option-to-greens/#comment-1705938
Absolutely! I couldn’t agree more.

The utilities decide on power generation options and they have rejected nuclear for mostly economic reasons: power generation by conventional fuel (coal, natural gas) is cheaper cheaper to build and to operate and without the expensive headache of disposing of the dangerous waste.
So the bloggers here who say “ignorant” and “irrational” to those who express their concerns about nuclear power generation should hurl such epithets at the utilities.
Concerning LFTR, this technology is still in the development stage and they would have us believe that it is on the showroom floor. So much for the reliability of proponents of nuclear power generation.

Gareth Phillips:
Regarding solar panels instead of power generation, you will need electricity at night and on cloudy days; solar panels are limited in their usefullness, unfortunately.

mpainter (August 9, 2014 at 10:41 am) “Who pays for cleaning up a massive radiation disaster?”
The ocean. Does it matter that the ocean has warmed from about 0.1C on average ostensibly caused by man? No. Maybe someday in the far future. Does it matter that the ocean has a bit lower pH on average due to manmade CO2 in the atmosphere? No, natural variation still far exceeds that decrease in all cases. Does it matter that Japan dumped a bunch of radioactive isotopes into the ocean? Not substantively but it could if they continued.
“So the bloggers here who say “ignorant” and “irrational” to those who express their concerns about nuclear power generation should hurl such epithets at the utilities.”
So far your concerns have all been ignorant and irrational. Not only that, but your very first post accused nuclear proponents here of being paid shills.

For most of the duration of the nuclear power generation era, we’ve been informed that a meltdown is the worst possible scenario for a nuclear power plant. Hollywood even made a blockbuster disaster film – The China Syndrome about one such fictional event, where the true extent of an accident was being covered up, in what IMDb calls “a modern nightmare.”
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078966/reviews?ref_=tt_urv
But now that we’ve had three total meltdowns, it turns out it’s no big deal. The ocean will take care of the clean-up. And besides, nobody has died so far, so obviously there are no health issues we need concern ourselves with at all, and we can all go back to counting fairies on pinheads, I mean, further discussions about the true role of the fantastic carbon dioxide molecule as an agent of climate change.

From eric1skeptic on August 10, 2014 at 6:51 am:

…
So far your concerns have all been ignorant and irrational. Not only that, but your very first post accused nuclear proponents here of being paid shills.

From mpainter on August 10, 2014 at 7:37 am:

Well, actually, no, I never said any such thing, not even by a stretch and you cannot show where I said such. The comment is at Aug 9@6:32. (…)

From mpainter on August 9, 2014 at 6:32 am:

Nuclear power in the hands of the power companies is dangerous. Anyone who advocates this ignores this danger. The advocates of nuclear power pretend that such danger does not exist, safer than our highways blah blah. (…)
All at the prompting of the nuclear power crowd and for their pockets?

Advocates of nuclear power pretending, at the prompting, for their pockets. That sure can read like you accused those advocates of being paid shills, except for that final question mark that transforms it to an implication, albeit a strong implication.