Can common ground be found between “warmers” and “skeptics”? Can we identify energy sources that satisfy the concerns of both groups?
Guest Post by Charles Hart
Warmers want energy that does not emit CO2 because they look at the climate data and conclude that CAGW is a credible threat that needs to be addressed. Their energy sources of choice are typically wind and solar.
Skeptics look at the same climate data and conclude the evidence for CAGW is just too weak to justify accepting the current high cost and unreliability of wind/solar. They look at Europe and notice that nuclear has given France the smallest carbon footprint and wind/solar has not been effective in any European country in keeping energy both low cost and low carbon.
What about nuclear? Some warmers support it (e.g. Dr. James Hansen) but others do not because of toxic waste streams, lingering concerns about safety, cost, and the potential for proliferation.
What if we could have nuclear power that was far “greener” than current technology, cost considerably less, was even safer and more proliferation resistant? What if this “greener” nuclear technology had already been proven in working prototypes?
Welcome to LFTR (liquid fluoride thorium reactors) technology. Demonstrated in the 60′s, the thorium/uranium fuel cycle molten salt reactor (LFTR) approach was abandoned to concentrate efforts on the uranium/plutonium fuel cycle pressurized water reactor (PWR) during the cold war bomb making era, an era when lots of plutonium was considered a good thing, not something to be worried about.
LFTR (compared to current PWR): A waste steam 10,000 times less toxic (some variations of LFTR can actually burn PWR waste). Cost <50%, thus competitive with coal. Even safer (no fuel rods to melt, no high pressure radioactive water to escape, passive criticality control ….). More proliferation resistant.
What about the politics? Replacing coal with LFTRs is far easier politically than imposing cap n trade or carbon taxes. $10B invested over 10 years could update this technology and make it ready for commercialization. LFTR is attractive to both Democrats/warmers and Republicans/skeptics. It is very green, cost competitive and can be put into production for a realively modest sum.
Short version:
Long version:
For more information see:
American Scientist “Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors”
http://energyfromthorium.com/2010/07/01/welcome-american-scientist-readers/
“Energy Cheaper Than From Coal”
http://energyfromthorium.com/2010/07/11/ending-energy-poverty/
Mechanical Engineering Magazine “Too Good to Leave on the Shelf”
http://memagazine.asme.org/Articles/2010/May/Too_Good_Leave_Shelf.cfm
Dr James Hansen LFTR endorsement
20081229_Obama_revised.pdf (application/pdf Object)
LFTR nuts to bolts.
Absolutely right. The technology to watch for transportation fuel is alcohol and biodiesel from genetically modified (GM) organisms. The transportation fleet is largely ready for it now including distribution infrastructure. Various plants & fungi produce it today just not very efficiently because alcohol and biodiesel are byproducts of metabolism. A little genetic cutting and pasting and they can become products instead of byproducts. Genetic engineering is advancing at such a rapid pace it reminds me of the early days of semiconductors replacing vacuum tubes. I consider Craig Venter’s artificial bacteria genome to be equivalent to the creation of the first transister. The only difference is that the artificial organism has orders of magnitude more potential for practical applications than the transister ever did.
Nuclear is great.
Over a year ago, Joe Romm on climateprogress mentioned several decades since America had brought a nuclear power plant on line.
I posted the link of the George H W Bush aircraft carrier commisioned by GW less than 2 years ago. Thousands of Navy seamen live near the reactor. Jan 10, 2009
It is nearly impossible to pull on your Birkenstocks and stage a protest in front of a boat offshore. The media trucks can’t come out there.
My mention of a successfull aircraft carrier was immediately censored.
The extremists not only want wind and solar, they want nuclear, hydroelectric and coal plants removed. To put us in a corner.
I am not an idiot. If I was told to drive a car that ran for 40 minutes and required 4 hours charging, I would not want to get rid of my backup car that can drive 24 hours with 5 minute stops for fuel.
ad says:
August 10, 2010 at 1:16 am
Alan the Brit says:
The only sensible solution to CAGW/CC is the creation of an unelected, undemocratic, unaccountable, unsackable, Global Government, run by Marist Socialist Intellectual Elitists who will tax the poor people in rich wicked free democratic countries & dole the dosh out to rich people in poor, dictatorial, leftist, self-enriching countries, & enrich the new Global Government to boot along the way – they need the money (don’t we all?)! Simples! What use is scientific advancement if politicos can’t control it?:-))
As a graduate of a Marist Brothers high school, i’d like to put my name forward to join the Marist elite that will run the planet.
Apologies for spelling mistake, at least the “socialist” bit was spelt correctly! I’m sure the muti-millionaire Socialists like Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, Maurice Strong et al will put us all right.
A lot of the green agenda seems to be focused on the perception that there is a sustainability crisis. When you look at demographic data you see strong evidence for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition occurring in all post-industrial societies. I’m not sure why this agenda is so misanthropic. Isn’t it possible that by studying demographic transitions further we can make this occur on a global scale and render the question of sustainability a non-issue?
That should read multi-millionaires – getting caught in the rain with the dog at lunchtime must have done it, either that or it’s yet another thing caused by Global Warming!
Lots of good solid commercial designs for small-scale nuclear power generation from Toshiba, GE-Hitacji (S_PRISM), and from Hyperion Power Generation. Just need some money to built test commercial plants and the political will to do it.
LFTR can then be developed at leisure and will fill the gap before, hopefully, fusion power comes on stream.
“Regardless Nuclear still cannot replace hydrocarbon energy because it nor the electricity it generates can be used as a practical transportation fuel.”
Fuel from Nuclear
I wonder if this would work with “Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors”?
Folks may I remind you that even nuclear reactors emit heat, in fact all methods of producing anything emit heat and that will be the next thing the eco idiots discover and want to regulate.
After all to have increased temperatures one must have additional heat, so if CO2 is the devil what will heat be?
GM
You’ve moved
“But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao (Holdren)
You ain’t going make it with anyone anyhow”
Ed says:
August 9, 2010 at 11:41 pm
“Nuclear energy, in whatever form, is definitely the way to go for energy that doesn’t produce carbon dioxide.”
What is wrong with CO2? It increases agricultural productivity and thereby helps to secure a safe supply of food for the alleviation of world hunger. As to coal-fired power generating plants, the greatest danger they pose is not CO2 but fly-ash and therefore heavy-metal pollution. Moreover, a coal-fired power plant puts a lot of radioactive pollution into the air.
As to the Greens, even if it were possible to alleviate their alarmism concerning CO2, they will then still have two other topics about which to raise alarm: the dangers of radiation and waste heat.
If it were possible to alleviate all fears of the dangers of radiation, there would then still be Greens who complain about waste heat being released into the environment through nuclear and fossil-fuel-fired power generating plants. They cannot be reasoned with. The only thing that will make them happy if there are no humans left to complain about.
Greens are driven by their ideology, an ideology that cannot be defeated through facts and can be defeated only through all-pervasive and intensive counter-indoctrination.
Still, if facts about the dangers of radiation (or lack of them) are wanted, check these links:
Nuclear Power — Comparisons and Perspective
http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=498
The Real Chernobyl Folly (232 kB PDF file), by Zbigniew Jaworowski; 21st Century Science & Technology, Spring-Summer 2006
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/2006_articles/spring%202006/Chernobyl_Folly.pdf
Belarus to Repopulate Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, by Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, July 28, 2010 (PDF file, 83 kB)
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Chernobyl_repopulation.pdf
U.S. Urgently Needs to Develop Nuclear, States Letter from 300 Nuclear Experts and Others, Feb. 1, 2010 (PDF file, 34kB)
http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/Articles_2010/Announce_nuc_letter.pdf
The home page at http://www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/ contains links to many more articles of interest, not only on nuclear power but also on “global warming,” amongst others.
M. Simon says:
August 10, 2010 at 3:20 am
“I have a dream that someday folks will actually run the numbers before shooting their mouths off. Nothing difficult: BOE (Back Of the Envelope) will be good enough.”
Right, just check “Nuclear Power — Comparisons and Perspective”, at http://www.energypulse.net/centers/article/article_display.cfm?a_id=498
The numbers there are a bit more precise than your BOE figures.
Aside from that, given that France produces energy for a competitive market and that most of their energy exported to other nations in Europe is being produced by nuclear generation, do you think they could stay in the energy-production business if their prices were not competitive?
On the other hand, Spain went in for subsidizing solar power on a large scale and is on the verge of going into bankruptcy on account of it.
Roger Knights says:
August 10, 2010 at 4:14 am (Edit)
GM says:
Just to let you paranoid %#$ know, nobody is any particular rush to phase out coals and gas powered power plants and replace them with solar and wind.
They are in the UK.
Ahem, [*cough*]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1301560/New-nuclear-power-stations-built-2018-promises-Energy-Secretary.html
The first item on your new plant building list, even before construction begins, is to purchase insurance against all likely catastrophes and to demonstrate you will have enough cash on hand to decommission the site when its time has come.
Good luck.
I’m told some locales in New Mexico that are keen on creating wind farms intend to delegate that last part to the land owner whose property has been appropriated for the purpose.
Incentive needed?
Abandon Earth or Face Extinction, Stephen Hawking Warns — Again
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/08/09/abandon-earth-face-extinction-warns-stephen-hawking/
It’s time to abandon Earth, warned the world’s most famous theoretical physicist.
In an interview with website Big Think, Stephen Hawking warned that the long-term future of the planet is in outer space.
“It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster on planet Earth in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand, or million. The human race shouldn’t have all its eggs in one basket, or on one planet,” he said.
“I see great dangers for the human race,” Hawking said. “There have been a number of times in the past when its survival has been a question of touch and go. The Cuban missile crisis in 1963 was one of these. The frequency of such occasions is likely to increase in the future.”
“But I’m an optimist. If we can avoid disaster for the next two centuries, our species should be safe, as we spread into space,” he said.
——————————-
Our species is once again under assault from elitists, this time under global organizations, who wish to separate us from any technology or chance to continue on as open societies. I call them Aliens, as they exhibit little, if any, traits of humanity.
It is they, and thier plans, we must survive.
Ah the cagw elephant in the room. We are all going to fry or drown because we are emitting co2 and there’s this nifty energy solution that quietly powers france, has been around for years and is just a bit pricier than trickery from that terrible coal. I`d rather work in a nuclear power plant than a coal mine, and dont get me started on the chemistry needed to make batteries for electric cars.
For cagw and against nuclear makes no sense at all.
The purpose of many of the crazies is not to solve the CAGW crisis, it is to generate taxes to do social engineering with. It is to take from the middle class and poor [because there are more of us] and give to some politician to buy votes.
The worst crazies want to roll back civilization so they will hate the reactor.
For may of the crazies the so called climate crisis is just an excuse not a reason.
Dave F says; “I think the transition from oil as a fuel source for transportation of industrial goods over land is an important problem to solve because without a solution, we are at the mercy of oil producers”
But so what? We are also at the mercy of food producers, water utilities, electricity producers, health care providers etc.
People are NOT afraid of Nuclear Energy!
Their concern, their FEAR, is with respect to the people who a.) Select the site, b.) Build the facility, c.) Run the facility, and d.) Regulate the facility. They DO NOT fear Nuclear Energy!
People ARE NOT AFRAID of NUCLEAR ENERGY!
People ARE Afraid of FOOLS!
I have always felt that the AGW mitigation plans that pointedly excluded the nuclear option, aren’t serious. I frankly refuse to embark on a CO2 reduction effort without this important tool available to us, and nuclear power inclusion is my litmus test of a serious discussion on America’s energy future. But Green angst on this is real. Did anyone else notice that the recomendataion of nuclear power is the one part of the IPCC report that Al Gore didn’t include in “An Inconvenient Truth’? The omission is quite glaring if you compare closely. Well, I have an inconvenient truth for you, Al, solar and wind won’t get us where you want us to go!
P.S. I pretty much disagree with everything that the previous commenter, Pascvaks, just said.
The warmers have no power without the support of politicians. It seems to me the corruption in politics must be cleaned up to have the energy needed to prosper. To see where our politicians are leading us all you have to do is look at what is happening in Europe and the UK.
Okay, this sounds great, and I hate to nitpick about grammar, but phrases like ” A waste steam 10,000 times less toxic” are nonsensical. Actually, it’s not a grammatical error – it’s grammatically correct. However, it is mathematically incorrect, in a huge way.
For any exclusively positive measure, you cannot be more than 1 time (or 100%) “less than” some initial value. One time less than that initial value is exactly zero. Say X is the initial value, as in I have X grams of thorium. You, on the other hand, have 1 time less thorium than I have. So, mathematically, you have 1(X) less thorium than I have, for a total of X – 1(X) grams of thorium. You can easily see that what you have is exactly ZERO grams of thorium. You cannot have any less thorium than that, because there is no such thing as negative quantities of thorium.
In the article above, I presume that when the author is comparing the toxicity of the thorium reactor to conventional nuclear reactors, he’s using some measure of toxicity, probably a measure of radiation, specifically, so we’ll use “rads” as the unit of toxicity. So, lets’ say a conventional nuclear reactor gives off 100 rads. Thorium reactors, according to the author, would give off “10,000 times” fewer rads than conventional reactors. Okay, 10,000 x 100 = 1,000,000. And 100 – 1,000,000 = -999,900. Thorium reactors, therefore, give off NEGATIVE 999,900 rads. Not possible.
I suspect what the author MEANT to say was that conventional reactors are 10,000 times MORE toxic than thorium reactors, which is NOT the same thing as thorium reactors being 10,000 times “less toxic”. Technically, there’s a difference between “X times MORE” and “X times AS”, but at values this large and imprecise, the difference is far smaller than the estimation error, so we’ll ignore it and say that conventional reactors are “10,000 times AS toxic” as thorium reactors. The inverse of this statement is that thorium reactors are 1/10,000 as toxic (or 0.0001 times or 0.01% as toxic) as conventional reactors. That’s 0.9999 times (or 99.99%) less toxic. But “10,000 times less toxic” just SOUNDS so much better, doesn’t it? Anytime someone is using inaccurate language to make something sound better than it actually is, you’d be wise to take EVERYTHING he says with a grain of salt. Thorium salt, if you prefer.
Regards,
Trevor
It’s important to remember that there can never be an energy compromise with warmers because ultimately they seek energy/resource deprivation……………………………. to the point of genocide.
The good folks over at The Resilient Earth blog had a writeup along the lines of Mr. Hart’s essay, describing this technology being used in Hyperion reactors:
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/americas-atomic-folly
Cassandra King makes a good point.
Warmism involves emotion, mal-de-siecle, fear of divine retribution etc. Above all, there is much exclusivity and snobbery at the heart of environmentalism. Do the new overclass really want cheap, abundant resources for the masses? Or do they favour useless and experimental technologies because the very cost and impracticality of their “clean solutions” will keep the mall-shoppers and Nascar dads in their place.
Multi-million dollar homes in Sydney are now being built without adequately hot water for washing or adequate flush for the toilet. Of course, water and energy are wasted shamelessly on vanity fittings and hipster architecture and no-one cares. But cheap and abundant basics are a no-no, and the overclass feel they must lead the way.
These new top-dogs may be wearing Arcteryx jackets over Che Guevara T-shirts and sipping Free Trade Yirgacheff…but their hatred and fear of the masses is as deep as ever.
So no, I don’t think it will be possible to “come together” on these issues.
I care about the environment and think CO2 is good for it. I’d rather be around a plant with CO2 waste vs concentrated radioactive waste.