This is in the UK Daily mail today, and it’s like sacrilege to the greens to have one of ther own say this:
This sums it up, he writes:
Our environment and energy problems are solvable — but can be tackled effectively only with pragmatism, rather than ideological wishful thinking. And the litmus test for that may well be the issue of nuclear power.
h/t to Barry Woods
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Its hard to get excited when it still shows that our future depends on know-nothing ideologues changing their minds. Why don’t we let engineers decide what we should do. Should Greenpeace and their party decide on how a bridge should be built or whether we need one?
At the Guardian newspaper in the UK, there is an article that provides a larger view of what is happening to the Greens.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jul/02/green-movement-lost-its-way
Daily Mail continues the propaganda: Nice picture illustrating the REAL “greenhouse gas” – water vapor from the cooling towers, yet you label it “Pollution”!
As I’ve noted here in the US most of the scientists and engineers have been moved out of the commissions the government initiated, and replaced by lawyers that have little background in anything but misdirection and obfuscation. Yes, we need lawyers, but are they the best way to legislate laws, interpret laws, and finally judge those laws? Shutting down the rules, regulations, and policies made without voter approval would go a long way toward correcting a lot of our societies ills.
Roger Sowell says:
July 4, 2011 at 8:10 am
There are many systems for grid-scale energy storage, but none are yet cost-effective. The exception is pumped storage hydro-electric, but that is not available in sufficient quantity.
One of the issues of alternative energies is scale. An analogy is making chocolate at home or in a small store front and viewing the vats and watching the production line for Hershey’s Kisses.
An actual example of pumped storage can be seen using Wikipedia and Google Earth. Of interest is the “pumped storage” associated with Kinzua (kin-zoo) Dam in northern Pennsylvania. Read about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinzua_Dam
Use these coordinates [ 41.839736 n, 79.002619 w ] to get a better look. Zoom out until you can see the entire reservoir and compare it to the small circular storage basin on the ridge-top to the south. Can you scale this up to be really helpful? In whose back yard?
Here’s an idea: Disband the UN-IPCC and its nonsense and divert all the money and brainpower to study electricity storage possibilities.
Sera says:
July 4, 2011 at 3:36 am
And no sooner than this story praising French nuclear, guess what?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/04/french-nuclear-power-plant-explosion-safety-fears
The ‘explosion’ was a fire in a transformer.
For the Grauniad (sic), it seems any weak excuse is good enough to bad mouth nuclear power plants in general.
Lynas is a heretic against Gaia! Burn him! Burn him!
Oh dear, but what about the carbon footprint? Ah.
ROFL
“Had the Green movement of the Seventies and Eighties supported nuclear power…we would not be facing the climate crisis we are today.”
Now he blames the Greens. How I love the irony!
I hate seeing people say this, whenever I see someone state “renewable” I always get a little ahead of myself. What is renewable about mining “rare-earth elements” for use in wind turbines which is actually renewable? I mean we can mine coal and we can mine “rare-earth elements” but to state that both are different somehow misses the point. Rare-Earth elements would not be called rare if they were common on the Earth, so therefore this is directly opposite of renewable, and more along the lines of fitting some “peak wind” theory then oil would..but I digress on that point. (Which I just point out to show that greens just ignore facts when it does not suit their agenda.)
Wind turbines in addition to that are made to last only 30 years and then you have to replace them from scratch, so no the myth of a wind turbine being built and lasting forever is just a myth….
In addition, solar panels have a similar issue. In real experience, neither source last as long as they are designed to due to weather issues such as cold temps. In the end, there is no such thing as renewable power, its just a buzzword that has no meaning. Back to the drawing board I think, maybe if we put money into research and development of new technology that was actually BETTER then what we have now, it would be something we could use to replace current power sources. Until then, might as well just forget solar and wind except for those costly times when they are the only solution available and spending the extra money is the better bet.
Sure, they have their usage, but they will never be better then high efficiency coal or even nuclear. Subsidies are not the solution to anything. And for any environmentalist to pah or ignore birds being killed is not a true environmentalist. Not sure what else to state about this…but I saw several posts that had comments to that effect.
As far as energy goes, we should demand a good and reliable power grid. If nuclear is a way to save the world, I am willing to listen even with higher energy costs as long as the talk is about facts and about why we should do it. But I am not willing to accept the age old green mantra of “Anything is worth it to save the world” when they have been wrong on just about every topic they advocate. I prefer my facts to be facts and not based on feelings.
Well, in any case their solutions suck
http://notrickszone.com/2011/07/04/weed-covered-solar-park-20-acres-11-million-only-one-and-half-years-old/
Following the link to the Daily Mail story we find this photo caption “Pollution: Man-made carbon emissions is contributing to climate change” on a photo of nuclear plant cooling towers releasing water vapor.
Oops. My comment is redundant. Just saw PhilM (July 4, 2011 at 9:46 am) noted the same thing.
We don’t know that it is not a problem. But we need to stop pretending it is until we do understand it.
BenfromMO says July 4, 2011 at 10:12 amIn the end, there is no such thing as renewable power, its just a buzzword that has no meaning.”
I’m not sure the people of Denmark would argue with you Ben. In 2009, wind power production accounted for 19.3% of domestic electricity supply, compared with 18.8% in 2008 and only 1.9% in 1990.
http://www.ens.dk/en-US/Info/FactsAndFigures/Energy_statistics_and_indicators/Annual%20Statistics/Sider/Forside.aspx
Roger.
The reason why no “island” ( i guess england doesnt count as an island) uses nuclear as its SOLE provider of energy is rather simple. It’s not about the cost. Its not about the risk.
It’s about the necessity of diversifying your supply. If for example you had a middling size island where one nuke could supply 100% of the supply, guess what? you would need two. It can also be about available space to build.. take hong kong for example.
I suppose if you get to residential sized nuke then you’d see uptake. The only people who want to rely 100% on one nuke for ALL their power are people who are ordered to. guys in subs.
Oh! for crying out loud … what now from the Graun:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/punctuated-equilibrium/2011/jul/04/1
Desperate.
At 12:04 PM on 4 July, Bystander had responded to BenfromMO, who had observed that “In the end, there is no such thing as renewable power, its just a buzzword that has no meaning,” writing:
Still doesn’t work. The great unrecyclable whirling noisy bird-whackers require not only considerable unrecoverable investment of land, labor, and capital to erect, but also electrical power to maintain in operable condition (when you see them turning, much of the time it involves the consumption of electricity to prevent the machinery from succumbing to the stresses imposed by the weight of the blades when there’s not enough wind to keep ’em milling around), replacement parts, lubricants, maintenance personnel, and what-not else.
And they do most definitely have limitations on their service lives. I don’t know about the Danish, but honest economic assessments of wind farms in these United States indicate that they deliver a really crappy return on investment, skating along on the thin edge of just barely generating enough salable electricity to achieve a payback on what it costs to put ’em up and to run ’em.
What this means is that resources which could – heck, should – be put to use in more effective, more efficient modalities of power generation are instead being diverted to this windmill idiocy. There’s a helluvan opportunity cost being imposed upon the private sector (i.e., the productive sector) of human society, and for …. what? So ‘viro idiots can feel good about themselves?
Why the heck d’you think that the power companies won’t build and run these things without beaucoup government arm-twisting to screw the consumers into coughing up more for this “renewable” bullpuckey?
That increase in the percentages of windfarm generated electricity in Denmark? You wanna bet that the monetary costs suffered by the average Danish private person in order to pay for his electricity (and the goods and services dependent on that power) haven’t increased by even higher percentages?
PaulH: the concept of nuclear “getting us off the oil hook” is simply stated. Use nuclear power to produce hydrogen or electricity for electric vehicles.
The statement is simple but the reality is far more complex. The problem with electric cars is and always will be the low energy density of batteries and their very long recharge time. The problem is essentially insoluble, as all of the possible electromotive series were all identified decades ago.
With hydrogen there are several problems. The first and smaller one is low energy density if burning elemental hydrogen. Along with that is the problem of storage and production. The most effective way to store and release hydrogen is through fuel cells, but these have proven to be extremely expensive despite all the technology development of this in the 1990s. This may well be the transportation technology of the future, but not until the price of oil and production of gasoline has risen high enough to make it economic.
It looks like Mark Lynas’ new book will be a rehash of the recent (17 May 2011) Stockholm “Humanity on Trial” sustainability symposium.
He’s a quick writer … and opportunist? 🙂
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/10549/
Here the esteemed Nobel Laureatres published a list of “dynamical boundaries” that should not be crossed … or else!
They demand: “… the ‘strengthening of Earth system governance’, which calls for a range of institutions to be created or given greater power to ‘integrate the climate, biodiversity and development agendas’
Mark Lynas writes proudly of finally climbing out of the Green anti-Nuclear hole as he now falls right into the “ecological boundaries” cesspit.
Mark should watch where he is going.
P. Solar says:
“Nuke has never been economic without subsidy in one form or another: Now they need to set up ficticious AGW tax to rig the “free” market.”
Actually in most EU countries, and I believe USA, nuclear power was expensive because it was new technology when most plants were built, and has become expensive due to the illegality of building new and approved ones, plus a whole assortment of national and local law prohibiting everything else other than maintenance and the occasional efficiency boost.
It’s actually not that different from hydro power in rivers and stream in EU, because that to the greenbillies made sure pretty much prohibit new ones, thereby making it horrendous expensive compared to what it would have cost otherwise.
jazznick says:
July 4, 2011 at 12:40 am
Let’s not get carried away here. This guy still ‘believes’ CO2 is a problem when it clearly is not.
It is not a problem now. But it will be one in several hundred years. Therefore it makes perfect sense to look for alternative energy sources.
The ultimate solution seems to be twofold. One is certainly nuclear, but not the kind of technology deployed in present day plants, which was optimized to produce as much long half-life fissionable material (primarily plutonium) as possible to provide for nuclear weapons. The cost is extremely low energy efficiency and possible nuclear proliferation.
With advanced nuclear breeder technology all the long lived stuff can be burned as well, which gives two orders of magnitude more energy for the same amount of fuel than the one we are using right now. On top of that spent fuel only contains short-lived isotopes, so its radiation gets down to background level in several centuries, not in hundreds of thousand years.
With higher energy efficiency cost of fuel is negligible, even if prices are high, so we can afford to go for low grade ores, even for dissolved stuff in seawater. It makes the process sustainable indefinitely, at least for the rest of time before Earth becomes uninhabitable anyway due to increasing solar luminosity (up to a billion years).
Of course, we can also use Thorium (instead of Uranium) which is more abundant and has several additional advantages as well. It breeds 233U, which is short lived but is a strong gamma radiator, so not even the intermediate stuff is suitable for bombs.
The other one is of course solar power. Once we have this huge fusion reactor online (with some 3.8×10^26 W output) anyway and there is no way to turn it off whatsoever, it only makes sense to use it. The biosphere does it for billions of years after all, pretty successfully. However, there is a lesson to learn before it becomes feasible.
The thing is the sun shines predominantly in daytime during the summer, while we need most of the energy at winter nights. Therefore solar cells should not produce electricity, but some energy rich non-toxic, not flammable chemical compound (like sugar) which can either be stored locally or shipped off where it is needed (to power vehicles for example). Then we need separate devices (fuel cells) to produce electricity on demand using this stuff. With advanced molecular nanotechnology this cycle is entirely feasible and can be made cost-efficient. A closely packed array of micron sized chemical solar and electric fuel cells is the way to go.
The only caveat is default building material of advanced molecular nanotechnology is carbon (diamondoid sructures, carbon nanotubes and the like). And the most obvious source is airborne carbon dioxide, because it is available everywhere on the face of Earth. However, there is not that much of the stuff in the atmosphere. As soon as heavy industrial usage kicks in, it can be depleted fast. So it has to be replenished somehow (possibly from limestone deposits, provided subsequent ocean basification can be handled) and the current practice of preloading air with it abundantly gives the much needed time for accommodation.
For Mike Lynas is right in one respect. Any solar technology is in direct competition with plant life (for land area, sunshine and with sufficiently advanced technology for carbon dioxide as well). The most serious problem is land use, because raw land area is one of the two resources for which expanded reproduction is inherently impossible, even with the most advanced technology imaginable (the other one is span of human attention). Therefore in a sane world one would cover rooftops and possibly road surfaces with solar cells, but nothing else. Relative price of land is expected to increase tremendously in the long run.
It is only outer space in the inner solar system where solar power is unbeatable.
There is one more reasonable option for solar power on Earth, but that’s also done already (in this case by the climate engine). It is the production of fresh water (which can also be stored as needed). I am sure we can do better than nature. Israel already does this desalination thing on industrial scale with an energy source which, although it could readily be substituted by solar power, but it is not (prices should still fall a bit).
All the other so called “alternative” energy sources are either unable to scale up or extremely destructive to the environment, because they try to use very diluted sources, so their land use efficiency is awful.
This is why we need nuclear in the long run, its land use efficiency is a thousand times better than that of solar.
I work at a nuclear plant but we do not NEED nuclear. Coal and nat gas would do just fine. Nuclear costs a lot to build and is cheap to operate. Building nuclear plants simply eliminates inflation from your cost of generating electricity for 60 or so years. No exposure to future changes in the cost of coal or nat gas………that is its advantage…..period. Now I believe it makes some sense to generate some of our electricity from nuclear and eliminate this risk of future price increases…..reasonable people can disagree with me on this point and that is fine.
On CAGW:
There is no solution to CAGW without nuclear……….of course there is also no evidence of CAGW.
Jim Cripwell @ur momisugly 8.27
I think you are about right.
Why is it that nearly every time that there’s a article with anything touching on nuclear power, and steam coming from a cooling tower there’s a ‘pollution’ or something under it. My brain…the stupid makes it hurt.
Or it could be an approaching migraine. But I’m pretty sure it’s the stupid this time.
@Doug Badgero : 3:15
Nuclear costs so much now because most designs are based off old technology, and current plants are based off even older technology. Take Japan and most of their reactors. First generation BWR’s. The US? Same deal. Most of the ones in Europe? I’m seeing a pattern here. Molten salt, LPS, pebble bed, and so on have a lower per-cost run because they’re safer technologies and don’t require the convoluted methods to stop a reactor from going critical all on it’s own without cooling. PB’s, LPS, and molten salt if something catastrophic happens it will only run with as much fuel as it has then stop all on it’s own. They are all ‘new’ technologies, but until they’re off the ground people will still be building based off old technology that should have been mothballed 40 years ago.
Let the lad be. He has a book to sell. Everyone needs to make a living.
Integrity? From a green?
“Bystander says:
July 4, 2011 at 12:04 pm
BenfromMO says July 4, 2011 at 10:12 amIn the end, there is no such thing as renewable power, its just a buzzword that has no meaning.”
I’m not sure the people of Denmark would argue with you Ben. In 2009, wind power production accounted for 19.3% of domestic electricity supply, compared with 18.8% in 2008 and only 1.9% in 1990.”
First, thanks for the help tucci, I think most people who defend wind miss the point. I was pointing out how no matter how you cut it, wind turbines are not renewable sources of power. They last in real world conditions ~17 years (they are made to last 30) and they require a very difficult form of mining large swarths of Earth. Not sure what makes these things renewable, but in the end they are no more renewable then coal, gas, oil etc. Now for pumping water up-hill without the huge magnets, sure…wind has been used in that capacity for hundreds of years…and its about the only thing wind power is really good for.