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Go back and re-watch Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth from 2006 and you’ll find that he never once voices the word “nuclear” although there is a long visual scene of a nuclear warhead exploding and the subsequent mushroom cloud filling the screen. Early AGW enthusiasts never seemed to acknowledge that if fossil fuels were the problem, nuclear power would be the solution that would work.
But now it seems environmentalists are being told that nuclear power is not so bad after all. The current movie, Pandora’s Promise (http://pandoraspromise.com/), has as its major theme that nuclear power and radiation are not so scary, really. This is of course true, reiterating arguments that pro-nuclear advocates have been making for 70 years.
The selling point is that nuclear power will not lead to global climate change. Another webpage from the Breakthrough Institute is entitled Liberals and Progressives for Nuclear (http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/programs/energy-and-climate/liberals-and-progressives-for-nuclear/). Quoting such luminaries as Bill Gates and Richard Branson, it argues for the coming “Atomic Age,” again, because of the “urgency of climate change.” Even Al Gore (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/08/02/notes-from-a-mole-in-al-gores-climate-leadership-training/) seems to be slyly acknowledging nuclear’s possible role.
As a long-suffering nuclear engineer, I have to ask (in a conservative webzine, American Thinker http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/08/nuclear_powers_new_friends.html), is it in nuclear power’s best interest to make public alliance with the climate change crowd? I say no, citing the growing awareness of the “tells” on display, i. e. signs of fraud, we see documented here on WUWT and elsewhere. “Lie down with the dogs and get up with fleas” is my warning. Of course, any rational environmentalist SHOULD embrace nuclear just on its relative conventional pollutant profile and would be welcome to say kind words about nuclear – just don‘t ask that the support be reciprocated.
Yet, others in the nuclear power community disagree (http://yesvy.blogspot.com/2013/08/progressives-for-nuclear-progress.html#.Uf7Ly23pySr) (and here (http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/)) and embrace our new Best Friends Forever (BFFs). Many are sincere believers in climate change themselves, as I had been until I read the 2001 IPCC technical reports. Others just seemed hopeful that we might no longer be the pariahs of polite (PC) company.
Yet, my simple question is, should nuclear reactor manufacturers like Toshiba, General Electric, Areva, Bill Gates, Hitachi, Rosatom, etc publicly advertise that their products can help prevent climate change? Besides the expectation of further public trust deterioration for climate change, one has to look at the companies that would buy a nuclear power reactor. Almost without exception, they also have substantial fossil fuel powered generation assets.
Plus, environmentalists, like revolutionaries, have a habit of changing their minds as to who was good and who was bad. Probably the most infamous event was when Ansel Adams resigned from the board of directors of the Sierra Club over his support of nuclear power (http://www.anseladams.com/ansel-adams-the-role-of-the-artist-in-the-environmental-movement/).
The Sierra Club had been generally pro-nuclear although they could oppose specific plants on specific grounds, like the Bodega Bay nuke to be build about 400 yards from the surface trace of the San Andreas fault in the bay‘s headlands. To this day, the foundation diggings are called “the hole in the Head.” But a tide of anti-nuclear feeling swept over the organization and Adams gave up his seat on the board in 1971 due to the ill will and back biting.
My take-away lesson is political winds change, and so do the policies of environmental groups. I’d rather nuclear power not get involved.
From a Wikipedia entry on grief:
“Children grieving in divorce
Denial – Children feel the need to believe that their parents will get back together, or they will change their mind about the divorce. Example: “Mom or Dad will change their mind.”
Anger – Children feel the need to blame someone for their sadness and loss. Example: “I hate Mom for leaving us.”
Bargaining – In this stage, children feel as if they have some say in the situation if they bring a bargain to the table. This helps them keep focused on the positive that the situation might change, and less focused on the negative, the sadness they’ll experience after the divorce. Example: “If I do all of my chores maybe Mom won’t leave Dad.”
Depression – This involves the child experiencing sadness when they know there is nothing else to be done, and they realize they cannot stop the divorce. The parents need to let the child experience this process of grieving because if they do not, it will only show their inability to cope with the situation. Example: “I’m sorry that I cannot fix this situation for you.”
Acceptance – This does not necessarily mean that the child will be completely happy again. The acceptance is just moving past the depression and starting to accept the divorce. The sooner the parents start to move on from the situation, the sooner the children can begin to accept the reality of it.”
I agree with boballab – the safety record of nuclear is only marred by stupid.
Chernobyl was no accident, it was practically intentionally done. I have never considered that to count towards the safety record of nuclear power.
And Fukishima? It’s still amazing that those reactors were in service as long as they were. No matter what anyone says, there were ZERO fatalities or serious injuries, but a lot of tense moments and a few heroes.
I guarantee there have been more injuries and fatalities on the commute to and from working at nuclear plants than will ever be injured or killed due to reactor operations (at least during my lifetime, and I’m looking to be around another 50 years or so)
But we KNOW the numbers for people injured and killed in the oil industry, or the coal industry. And the windmill industry.
@ur momisugly pat. that DM article is rubbish, the 1st commercial Nuclear reactor in the U.K. came on line in 1957, it was a Magnox reactor and I believe it was at Sizewell in Suffolk, it was not the world’s first either, that goes to Russia who used a type similar to Chernobyl which according to the Russian Nuclear Industry started producing electricity in 1948.
The wind of change over nuclear began some time back in some unlikely quarters. The irony of all this is that in the desperate ‘fight against climate change’ (LOL) we are being pushed back to nuclear, burning wood in power stations, gas fracking, dams etc. All formerly highly opposed by greens. They can’t have their cake and eat it. Solar and wind can’t cut the mustard. There it is folks. Oh, and the damage to the environment has probably been made worse by greens. What a joke.
George Monbiot goes nuclear back in 2011
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/apr/05/anti-nuclear-lobby-misled-world
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/collideascape/2011/04/05/monbiot-goes-nuclear/#.UgInpZzm5hc
As does Gaia proponent Dr. James Lovelock back in 2004
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/james-lovelock-nuclear-power-is-the-only-green-solution-6169341.html
Good article. However, a nuclear resurgence would require considerable rethinking of how we do nukes. Many of the nukes in the last surge were made exorbitantly expensive by multiple redesigns during construction. My hometown bought in to a “guaranteed” electrical supply by buying into the Shearon Harris plant. The result has been decades of the highest electrical costs in the area because the plant construction was extremely over budget.
We also have no real solution for handling the waste from nuclear plants. We stopped reprocessing during the Carter administration because the Russians might think we had nuclear weapons or some such logic. We have never decided the long term storage strategy for the wastes, leaving us with potential environmental problems at every nuke site.
I’m all for nukes, but would oppose any new construction until we solve cost and storage issues. And since some judge decided that long term storage has to be safe for the next million years, the likelihood of a rational nuclear waste policy is about zero.
I’m a little surprised by the lack of comments on the up and coming Thorium reactors which both the Chinese and Indians are currently developing. And doing so using 1960’s American developed thorium technology as their starting point.
Had the demands for reactors that could produce fuel that could be further processed for nuclear weapons not been one of the major considerations during the late 1950’s and 60’s then it most likely that Thorium reactor technology would have been developed and would by now be the world’s major electrical energy source.
But with a Cold War on that could turn hot if anybody had at all slipped up and a full blown arms race under way between the western nations and the then seemingly all powerful Soviet Union and it’s vassal states in the east and China with it’s hundreds of millions turning communist with the victory by Mao Tse-tung’s Armies in 1948 plus the Korean war and communists apparently taking over all of SE Asia, the demands by the policy makers were for reactor types that could not only provide power and also run submarines and ships. And as well could also generate nuclear fuel byproducts that could be reprocessed into weapon’s grade fission bomb fuel.
And so the nuclear technology developers concentrated on the various forms of Uranium powered reactors particularly the Boiling Water Reactors from GE.
So Thorium with it’s very limited ability to generate anything that could possibly be reprocessed into weapons grade nuclear fuel was put on the back burner and eventually just quietly let fade away as a technology in the mid 1970’s,
As nc says above, it turns out that the Canadian developed but very capital demanding to construct, the CANDU reactors, can be converted fairly easily to run on thorium.
The Norwegians under an EU research project have just started running an experimental reactor using Thorium as one of it’s main fuel sources.
So Thorium which needs a small amount of an ignition fuel source such as Uranium 235 or Plutonium 239 to both start and to continue running [ although a high powered linear accelerator can also act as a non nuclear ignition source, something the Indians are looking at experimentally ] and can burn up the waste fuel products from the BWR’s and other uranium and plutonium powered reactors are likely to become the main power generating reactors
within the next quarter of a century.
The Thorium reactor technology that seems to have the most chances of becoming a major power generation source is the passive safety Liquid Fluoride Reactor [ LFTR ]
http://energyfromthorium.com/essay3rs/
However there are a couple of very large curve balls in play when it comes to reactor technology advances,
I am very surprised that nobody has yet mentioned the startling claims made by Charles Case of Lockheed Martins very famous advanced technology Skunkworks in a “Solve for X” presentation earlier this year.
Charles Case in the Solve for X video presentation has claimed that the Lockheed Martin Skunkworks is in the process of developing a compact fusion power source which they hope to demonstrate by 2017 and have in commercial production by the early to mid 2020’s.
http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/5388/Nuclear-Fusion-in-Five-Years.aspx
If the Skunkworks can pull this off and they have a long record of success in researching, developing and building some very advanced aircraft and space vehicles over the decades past, it will mean that all the end is now within sight of the nuclear and even fossil fuel power generation technologies sometime in the century ahead.
And mankind will finally have that clean almost radiation free energy source which will never run out. energy without limit, a great dream of mankind since time began.
As for a real nuclear disaster than possibly ranks close to the scale of Chernobyl and cost possibly hundreds of lives of the political prisoners who were sent in to clean up the disaster without ever being told about the intense levels of radiation involved then just look up the 1957 nuclear accident at Kyshtym in the USSR.
And it was all due to a monumental stuff up and sheer carelessness by the nuclear researchers at Kyshtym
The following link is the CIA report on that accident.
http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000498481.pdf
Or the UK’s near , very, very near nuclear catastrophe as in a couple of minutes and a few hundred gallons of water difference between a carbon moderated reactor fire being brought under control and a UK chernobyl type reactor explosion and melt down ;
The Windscale carbon moderated reactor fire of 1957
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windscale_fire
“CodeTech says:
August 7, 2013 at 3:41 am”
Add to that the most prolific killer of humans, has been and most likely will remain so, is malaria.
Mr. Somsel, you are wise to be reticent about embracing the weasel of AGW support. They are advancing an agenda, not looking for solutions. They ran into a stumbling block due to Wind and Solar just not being ready for prime time yet. But as Fukishima showed, they will turn on you at the drop of a dime. Their goal is not to replace fossil fuel power, but to eliminate all reliable sources of power. But they have come to realize they cannot do that all at once, so they will set the different sources at each others throats (like they did coal and Natural Gas) and then concentrate on the survivors.
Politics does make strange bedfellows. Extremism does not. Just wolves in sheep’s clothing.
Fuku is a disaster and getting worse. Can’t believe so many posters on this thread ignore this fact…
http://enenews.com/nytimes-400-tons-of-highly-radioactive-water-empty-into-pacific-each-day-from-fukushima-plant-top-nuclear-regulator-this-is-a-crisis
http://enenews.com/tepco-official-this-is-extremely-serious-we-are-unable-to-control-radioactive-water-seeping-out-of-fukushima-plant-video
http://enenews.com/cnn-nuclear-expert-fukushima-plant-is-in-uncharted-territory-highly-radioactive-water-to-either-be-boiled-until-it-evaporates-or-dumped-in-ocean
http://enenews.com/japans-top-nuclear-official-tepco-will-never-be-able-to-store-all-the-contaminated-water-at-fukushima-plant-they-will-end-up-dumping-it-in-ocean
Bob says: August 7, 2013 at 4:18 am “I’m all for nukes, but would oppose any new construction until we solve cost and storage issues. And since some judge decided that long term storage has to be safe for the next million years, the likelihood of a rational nuclear waste policy is about zero.”
Who is to say that the Yucca Mountain waste repository will not be safe for the next million years? It is only that we have not used their illogic against ‘them’, and the great expense of bad money thrown after good that Yucca Mountain is not defended. See The Black Swan-Pareto distribution argument above.
“Doug Huffman says:
August 7, 2013 at 5:05 am”
I do recall from the 1980’s suggestions for nuclear waste to be deposited as deep as possible in tectonic subduction zones.
I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Somsel. Nuclear should stand on its own as a cheap source of energy for generations to come. Backlash, especially by those who feel they have been misled can be nasty.
As a chemist who worked in pharmaceuticals and plastics, I rather see hydrocarbons turned into useful products instead of being burned.
“When was the last time you saw “China Syndrome” on a TV listing?
Has it become an un-movie?”
Actually, ask yourself when was the last time you saw any movie from the 70’s on a TV listing, especially those from the Carter years. (Excepting “Star Wars”, of course, but that’s sui generis) It’s like the entire decade is being flushed down the memory hole, even the Nixon years now that Obama is starting to look and act like a latter day clone of his.
@wws – Jaws has been a big player on the TV lately.
As for The China Syndrome, I saw a listing for it about 3 months back.
The victors (in the culture wars) write the history and the history of edutainment. Eschew television, embrace printed books for they will endure as long as their readers.
ferdberple says:
August 6, 2013 at 10:28 pm
1/2 of your annual radiation exposure comes from medical x-rays. the other half from naturally occurring radon gas….. The idea that all radiation at any dose is harmful is nonsense. If that were truly the case, then medical X-rays should be shut down long before nuclear power plants. Basements and well sealed houses should have been outlawed decades ago.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Dr. Petr Beckmann (Access to Energy news sheet) managed to get the idea accross that radon gas produced more radiation exposure than a nuclear plant. The Peoples Republic of Taxachusetts promptly passed a law that any house sold had to be radon gas tested and Radon gas Test kit became all the rage. (Rolls Eyes)
Now Granite Counter tops are being fingered has producing EVIL Radon Gas:
CBS News: Granite Countertops A Health Threat? “If you have granite countertops in your home, you might consider testing them for the amounts of radon gas they give off, experts say, due to the potential that those amounts are above levels considered safe.”
Granite Countertops and Radiation | Radiation Protection | US EPA
http://www.radon.com/radon/granite.html
***
As a long-suffering nuclear engineer
***
As a former power-plant engineer, I understand & offer my sympathy. And at a coal plant, I thought I had to deal w/excessive & wasteful bureaucracy.
I didn’t know much about Adam’s environmental activities. But a few years ago, here in Melbourne, Australia, I saw an exhibition of his photographs. They were breathtakingly beautiful.
crosspatch says:
August 6, 2013 at 11:44 pm
Also, I would consider folks read an article from the December 2005 issue of Scientific American. We are being exceptionally stupid in our decision to bury nuclear waste. It can be recycled. First pass through a reactor uses only about 5% of the available energy of the fuel….
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
If I recall correctly General Electric has a monopoly on the fuel rods and makes bundles of $$$ supply those fuel rods. (Don’t have link bookmarked)
All you can do is speak the truth. Nuclear reactors don’t produce CO2 emissions. Others will spin as they will, and in my view there is no predicting the exact way things will spin. Let them make of it what they will.
Can it be avoided? Nuclear power is part of the game whether anybody wants to play or not. In my view, any solution (and indeed almost any endeavour on this scale) is going to be subject to politics.
I guess my view can be summarized this way. Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn occasionally. Don’t take that away from the blind squirrels; it’s virtually all they’ve got.
Bob says:
August 7, 2013 at 4:18 am
“We also have no real solution for handling the waste… but would oppose any new construction until we solve cost and storage issues…..”
Doug Huffman says:
August 7, 2013 at 5:05 am
“Who is to say that the Yucca Mountain waste repository will not be safe for the next million years?”
——-
Take a look at the link crosspatch posted earlier here: http://www.gemarsh.com/wp-content/uploads/SciAm-Dec05.pdf
Nuclear waste does not need to be waste; it can be used as fuel and should be. The real waste left over after burning waste in a fast neutron reactor as described in the article is very, very small in volume and will only be dangerous radioactive for 300~500 year.
Yucca Mountain would be a good temporary storage place for this fuel so our grandchildren or great grandchildren can use it. All that need to happen is a change in policy. I sure that will not be any time soon though, but someday maybe.
Gail Combs says: August 7, 2013 at 6:25 am “If I recall correctly General Electric has a monopoly on the fuel rods and makes bundles of $$$ supply those fuel rods. (Don’t have link bookmarked)” I doubt that correct, if only for the variety of fuel assemblies in use. A very common NPP design does not even use “fuel rods”, desiring in stead to maximize fuel surface area.
Thanks. Scientific American is pariah. My subscription was thirty years old when my tolerance for its nonsense was exhausted.
The nuclear power industry funded many of the early climate change advocates in the 1980s. The Carbon Dioxide Information Center was hosted by the Oak Ridges Laboratory and funded Jones, Wigley, Mike MacCracken, etc. Michael Mann’s postdoc was funded from Oak Ridges. So there’s long precedent for an association.
Doug Huffman says:
August 7, 2013 at 6:40 am
Thanks. Scientific American is pariah. My subscription was thirty years old when my tolerance for its nonsense was exhausted.
—–
I total understand, but this article is good. Scientific even said at the time they were very hesitant to publish it… wonder why.
Want another reason to go nuclear?
The Navy’s SPAWAR department was just awarded a patent for a LANR/LENR procedure that cleans up radioactive waste.
http://ecatreport.com/lenr/u-s-navy-received-lenr-patent
With that objection eliminated, there’s no reason to hesitate on nuclear, unless it’s to go whole hog on LENR, or maybe hot fusion?
Ah, decisions, decisions… whether cold, split, or hot, nuclear is the predominant answer to a secure energy future.