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
=============================================================
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
===========================================================
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?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
I don’t see that it’s mentioned in the article or comments, so for those tracking fusion power development…
https://lasers.llnl.gov/about/missions/energy_for_the_future/life/
The National Ignition Facility is still on target for fusion power generation in 2012 (test) and commercial availability in the 2030’s. Note that the LIFE concept is a hybrid fission/fusion plant, in which the fission reactor generates electricity and waste, but the waste is then used as fuel for the fusion reactor.
It’s not quite true that nuclear reactors are good only for producing electricity. Mainly, they produce thermal power. We have excellent technologies for transforming thermal power into electrical power.
However, we also have an excellent mastery of petrochemistry. For example, we can take 3 pounds of abundant coal (mostly carbon) and 4 pounds of abundant natural gas (CH4) to produce 7 pounds of any liquid hydrocarbon you desire (approx. CH2). It just takes a little heat to nudge things along…which could easily be provided by a nuclear reactor. This might give us the ability to outproduce the rest of the world in petroleum fuels and thereby control the market price by dropping it. There’s not much wrong with our economy, or society in general, that can’t be greatly aided by cheap energy.
Hydrocarbon fuels are, primarily, convenient. They are liquid and dense, both qualities that are useful for storage and application, particularly for transportation. If we didn’t have them in abundance, we might be strongly motivated to create them for their convenience.
The comments assume that conventional technology will not be extended or revised. There are several concepts that call such assumptions into question…see, for example:
http://www.focusfusion.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywell
http://www.newenergytimes.com/v2/sr/WL/WLTheory.shtml
The Widom-Larsen theory claims to resolve the difficulties with Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) concepts, better known by the original term, Cold Fusion. There are other radical claims that can be found by google search. The noble gas engine saga is one of more curious ones:
http://www.infinite-energy.com/iemagazine/issue51/papp.html
If any of the radical concepts work, it would have revolutionary effects in geopolitics, economics, and climate controversies. Confirmation of any radical idea would lead to examination of the other claims. The curtain of ridicule would be stripped away.
I interact with a lot of folks who care about sustainable energy, who think climate change is a serious problem, and who are (in their own minds) environmentalists or conservationists. Those who are serious thinkers are absolutely behind expanded nuclear. It’s a bit of a strawman to suggest that those worried about AGW are also anti-nuclear … it doesn’t square with the folks with whom I interact. Even the major tree-hugging organizations, while hedging their bets in official pronouncements, aren’t the anti-nuclear watchdogs they once were. This is indeed common ground.
Prediction: the 112th Congress will pass a relatively modest but still significant federal RPS combined with enhanced nuclear (probably a streamlined regulatory process plus expanded DOE guaranteed loans) and some lip service to expanded domestic drilling (though there is no legislative impediment to more offshore drilling right now). The fight will likely be over how much EPA authority to strip, and the guess is that they will allow but freeze current regs (the ones that went into effect 1/2/11) and hold off on enforceable NSPS standards for some period of time while the new law does its thing.
There are areas of mutual interest between the alarmists and the deniers (and everyone in between).
For a scientific site I am continually amazed at the lack of knowledge of some very fundamental issues.
There is not, and never has been, any fuels made from fossils… tis all a myth.
Thomas Gold was right..
http://trilogymedia.com.au/Thomas_Gold/
http://links.veronicachapman.com/OriginsOfOil.htm
http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2150&start=0
http://www.gasresources.net/
By the way.. he has also been proven right about his electric universe theory.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-qrnsh83f4
http://www.thunderbolts.info/
As far as alternative energy goes..
Cold Fusion, Zero Point Energy and harnessing energy from the waves from the sea have all been proven to work.
No need to mess with dangerous or inefficient methods.
Thorium may be LESS dangerous than other nukes, and cheaper, but that does not mean harmless.
The worst thing about AGW being NOT “extreme” but utterly WRONG 180 degrees is the attack on the source of Life–carbon dioxide. With wind or solar or thorium, you cut CO2. I believe CO2 has no NET effect on temperatures, but that doesn’t really matter, since warm is better. It is one of the inputs to photosynthesis, and a limiter. Reduce CO2 and you reduce food supply for every endangered species as well as man.
AGW-damaged economies caused the recent riots in the near and middle East, and contrary to the silly hysteria that these people are fighting “for freedom,” it was food prices that sparked all the riots, and riots do not bring freedom. More developed countries could also see food riots, and the fall of governments, with destructive, not beneficial, consequences to freedom.
If thorium was ‘a cheap source of electrical energy’ then there would be commercial outfits producing thorium reactors now, though not in the USA, of course, since private development of reactors is not permitted. But there are plenty of countries which would be willing to make them if there was a profit involved. Praising thorium reactors while knowing nothing about the technology is exactly the same as praising ‘wind power’ or ‘wave power’. If they were viable, businesses would be making the generators NOW.
Well you know what Margaret Thatcher said about “concnsus” concensus is geting everybody to agree to something than none of them believe.
So much for the common meeting ground. There is no place where the AGW crowd can stand alongside the realist crowd.
One of the two positions is quite wrong; moreover there isn’t even any evidence that supports their position. You don’t agree with somebody who is only talking half nonsense.
Spence_UK says: February 16, 2011 at 6:30 am
. . . which is rare and dangerous to handle – uranium dug out of the ground is neither rare nor terribly dangerous to handle. They used to use it in glass making not that long ago. You can buy it on eBay in fact! As if that proves anything.
Back when I was in AF pilot training, the local Diamond Shamrock gas stations were giving out dinnerware with each so many gallons of gas. Really bright orange, nice enough for a bachelor, and I had a good collection started when word came out that the stuff was radioactive.
I’d always wondered why we didn’t need candles to get that warm glow during dinner.
Naturally I disposed of it in a responsible manner (dumpster).
India is pushing development, and so are a few other places. The devil is in the details, such as molten fluorine salts, etc.
Actually, the Iron Female Person said not a word about either “concnsus” or “concensus”. She did make a comment like that about consensus, tho’.
😉
Lucia’s Blackboard had a very interesting discussion of things nuclear, including the french layout:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/02/16/going-bananas-over-radiation/#more-34152
Bob
@pyromancer76 says:
February 16, 2011 at 8:20 am
I couldn’t agree more. Truth should out, pure and simple.
You also ask: “…(where is France’s waste going?)…” I think it’s going to Great Britain for reprocessing. Think of the energy involved to get natural uranium (~99.5% U238, 0,5% U235) enriched to the point of having enough U235 to work in a nuclear reactor.
Then, when you’ve used only a fraction of that U235 in the reactor, throw the whole thing away. This spent rod is “ore” in the terminology of economic geologists. It is relatively easy to recover the U235 and add to this to reach reactor grade again. Plus there are other nuclides than can be recovered for medical and other purposes. Stick the remainder in a deep mineshaft in an old Archean craton (portion of the earth formed >2.7 BYA, and extremely stable since then) somewhere in Minnesota or in Canada and be done with it. Or maybe it can be “ore” to somebody else. Our (USA’s) whole posture on reprocessing is incredibly stupid, particularly now that any sh*tty little tyranny like North Korea can make nukes.
“What will future generations do with our old oil sludge?”
————————————————-
I think you will find that it has broken down by then.
Short of blowing up the planet, the ‘future generations’ and its variant ‘what about the children’ arguments have become the refuge of scoundrels.
It is another version of Malthusianism – assuming that everything will stay the same except for one or two variables. We know nothing about what our great grandchildren’s world will be like, except for one thing – it won’t be the same as ours. Worrying about what to do with the horse manure when cities grow larger (as people once did) is pointless. It does, however, provide an emotive and irrational peg for those who fear or hate human progress to hang their hats on.
I don’t see a need to attach ideological tags to any energy source. If thorium, or cold fusion, or any of the other proposals around, measure up – the world will beat a path to their door. I absolutely object to them being subsidised to appease AGW alarmists, just like I oppose solar, wind etc being subsidised for that reason.
Legitimising alarmism through a different set of subsidies is wrong in principle, and bad tactics to boot. There is no forseeable shortage of combinations of coal, gas and oil for world energy needs for many decades. Plenty of time for alternatives to prove their worth in the meantime.
“Cheap energy means the whole world breeding” Actually history shows the opposite. The reason people have lots of babies is to use all that extra human power when they get older and need the help. Lots of cheap horsepower in the shape of electricity removes the need to breed excess humanity.
By the way, I think the common-ground that sceptics and TeamAGW should occupy is the idea of first testing the theory to each other’s satisafaction to see if warming is really happening. Once you start agreeing to daft energy projects of any kind then TeamAGW will happily pronounce the argument won.
Yikes – let’s try that link again!
Lucia’s Blackboard had a very interesting discussion of things nuclear, including the french layout:
http://rankexploits.com/musings/2009/nuclear-power-in-deserts/
Bob
Fort St Vrain in Colorado used thorium until re-commissioned as gas fired. See e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_St._Vrain_Generating_Station
At one point I was very worried about the “25000 year toxic waste” of a nuclear reactor… until it was pointed out to me that that was for time to “reduce to background” but that the fuel had not started out “at background”. If you make the standard “decay to match original ore radioactivity” it’s about 250 years instead.
I’m quite comfortable we can inter ‘nuclear waste’ as well as the original ore was burried and do so for 250 years. Kind of changes the whole perspective on it… (And this was for Uranium reactor wastes…)
FWIW, you can make Thorium fuel bundles that work in our exiting reactors too. They are already in demonstration.