Dr. James Hansen’s reply to my question about Nuclear Power
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A a few years ago, Anthony Watts posted a link “The Middle Ground where AGW skeptics and Proponents should meet up“. At AGU2013, Anthony asked Dr. Hansen a question in full session about the very same topic and a video of that exchange follows.
The proposition is, that in the highly polarized global warming debate, there are, or should be, some surprisingly broad areas of agreement. A video also follows showing Anthony asking Dr. Hansen about this at AGU2013
One such area of agreement appears to be support for nuclear power. In addition to the Middle Ground article, WUWT has posted many other articles, on Thorium and next generation nuclear technology, which have been well received by regular readers of this blog.
Dr. James Hansen is also a supporter of nuclear power. A few months ago, James Hansen, Ken Caldeira, Kerry Emanuel and Tom Wigley published an open letter, calling for and end to opposition to nuclear power, for the sake of the environment.
If I have understood correctly, scientists who are truly concerned about CO2, such as James Hansen, support nuclear power, because nuclear power a plausible route to decarbonising the economy, without the difficulty of convincing voters to accept drastic curbs to their lifestyles.
Skeptics like myself tend to support nuclear power, because it is the future – we tend to love high technology and the glorious rise of human civilisation, and yet we are, contrary to the straw man stereotypes projected by many of our opponents, concerned about environmental issues, such as the megatons of toxic ash and sludge produced by coal power stations. We see next generation nuclear power as the clean, inexhaustible energy source of the future.
So I sent an email to Dr. James Hansen mid March this year, asking whether he had ever considered sharing a platform with Anthony Watts, to jointly promote acceptance of a nuclear powered future. I made it very clear I was asking this question on my own initiative, and had not discussed it with Anthony.
This was Dr. Hansen’s reply:-
“The more important matter is the need for a slowly rising revenue neutral carbon fee, 100% of the funds distributed to the public, equal amount to all legal residents. This would cause nuclear power to win out for electricity. Otherwise we are going to get a very expensive dual renewables–fossil fuel system. This fee-and-dividend approach is by its nature a conservative agenda, allowing the market to work. It is also a winning populist political strategy, providing some correction to the increasing disparity of wealth, allowing the hard-working careful low-income person a chance to make some money and contribute to a cleaner, healthier world. This is what conservatives need to understand. If they don’t, the changing demographics will sink them, and we will all suffer under a screwed up energy system.”
I replied to Dr. Hansen, pointing out that Conservative opposition to carbon fees was entrenched, and asked whether the issue of how to make nuclear power economically attractive, on which there was no agreement, could be set aside for now, for the sake of jointly promoting research into next generation nuclear technology.
So far I have not received a reply to my second email to Dr. Hansen.
The conversation and questions I put to Dr. Hansen were meant in good faith. I hope the dialogue I have had to date with Dr. Hansen is not the end, that the conversation goes further, perhaps with other participants. Perhaps I am being naive, but I really am a keen supporter of nuclear power, and would like to find a way for everyone who supports a nuclear future to join forces, to overcome the decades of propaganda against nuclear technology, which has retarded its development in the West.
Here is Anthony asking Dr. Hansen about Thorium power at AGU2013
The more important matter is the need for a slowly rising revenue neutral carbon fee, 100% of the funds distributed to the public, equal amount to all legal residents. ……This fee-and-dividend approach is by its nature a conservative agenda, allowing the market to work.
Sue, great in theory, and within a state, a market based approach is very workable … if you keep the broader market out of it and make it a realistic trade between involved parties (witness the sulphates licences – USA – early 90s, which was very successful.
But, if you are going to tax and redistribute, you then have governments and financiers to deal with …. and they are just getting too good at pillaging and looting….
And if you are doing it on an international scale, then you have to deal with all the issued of different stages of development, national GDP differences, currencies, levels of education, levels of unemployment etc. In short, all the down-falling factors of ‘Free Trade” and the Euro… where you can make these things appear to work for a few decades… but eventually they fall over.
Great discussion in here, by the way. Some great info on nuclear power, much appreciated.
typo above… “Sure, great in theory….”
Roger Sowell says:
March 31, 2014 at 6:22 pm
@ur momisugly phlogiston March 31, 2014 at 12:55 pm
“France falsifies your argument.”
That talking point is full of misdirection. France nationalized the entire power industry. Then charged whatever price they wanted to. It makes sense, too, because one of the few things that France exports is, well, nuclear power plants. It would make for very bad PR if the home country had realistic power prices, not fully subsidized by the government.
Put up or shut up. So far you’ve just managed to pull numbers from extremely biased sources or simply made them up. If you want to claim that France is subsidizing the price of electricity, then provide the source linking to the numbers. The reputable sources all show that France has some of the lowest electricity prices on the continent and that includes the lovely “renewable” subsidies in Germany and Denmark.
MSRs are the future due to safety, 99% fuel burn! walk away safe, low pressure! high thermal efficient design. Green Energy’s waste stream of rare earths tosses yearly enough Thorium to power the planet. Most issues with the MSR were worked out in the 60s at ORNL including the freeze plug, and alloys for the Fluoride salt metallurgy. Problem is our DoE is in a NDA agreement with China allowing them to walk away with our design while suppressing US designs. US has a choice counter China with full out MSR design or buy emission free power from China for the next 100 years.
bair polaire says:
March 31, 2014 at 2:32 pm
WUWT has posted many other articles, on Thorium and next generation nuclear technology, which have been well received by regular readers of this blog.
Count me out. I’m not ready to accept the proliferation risk of the thorium reactor. Bad people could feed it a lot of ugly stuff and get really dangerous stuff out… And as usual we would develop the technology that they might one day use against us.
And I’m not accepting nuclear waste that is still hazardous when my grandchildren grow up. A half-life of more than 100 years is simply not acceptable. 30 years would be the upper limit. That brings the original waste down to 10 percent in about 100 years. (Still not gone!)
Here is quite a good summary of the issues with thorium reactors:
Not ‘green’, not ‘viable’, and not likely
Then you’re a fool. All of the points in your linked article are easily debunked. Here are a few of my favorites:
“thorium reactors do not produce plutonium. But an LFTR could (by including 238U in the fuel) be adapted to produce plutonium of a high purity well above normal weapons-grade, presenting a major proliferation hazard. ”
Dump in a bunch of 238U and the reaction stops because the Thorium neutron economy just isn’t that great. It’s an extremely poor way to generate plutonium. It’s far easier to get plutonium from a conventional LWR reactor run in a short cycle and then with its fuel rods reprocessed. 233U? Umm, it has a bunch of 232U mixed with it. Your paper glosses over the fact that 232 is a hard gamma emitter that a) kills those trying to work with it and b) is very easy to detect globally and at a distance.
But Oliver just glosses over the 232U problem by claiming that since the US detonated a 233U bomb decades ago, then there simply must be a way to separate the 232U from the 233U. What’s really amusing is just a page or two later he goes on to complain just how toxic 232U is in the reactor and how big a problem it is. So, 232U isn’t a problem for making a bomb, but it is a problem for running the reactor. Cognitive dissonance much?
Here’s a thorough debunking of Olle’s nonsense:
http://pche-sts.blogspot.cz/2012/09/response-to-oliver-tickells-anti.html
@ur momisugly Tsk Tsk, re France.
Perhaps you will accept the words on nationalization from France’s power company’s own website, EDF. http://about-us.edf.com/profile/history/1990-to-today-and-beyond-43674.html
“On April 8, 1946, a law nationalizing 1,450 French electricity and gas generation, transmission, and distribution companies led to the creation of Electricité de France (EDF), a state-owned industrial and commercial entity also known under the acronym EPIC (établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial).
On July 1, 2004, 70% of the electricity market was opened to competition. On November 19, we changed our corporate status to become a limited company.”
Therefore, from 1946 until 2004, EDF was a state-owned, nationalized electric utility. The monoply can and did charge whatever price it wanted to, without the need to show a profit.
You can believe whatever you like, of course.
If the US had spent as much time and as much money on researching liquid salt thorium reactors as it did fusion, we’d have a viable commercial reactor by now. It’s not too late though.
The great safety advantage of thorium liquid salt is that it can’t explode because it won’t produce hydrogen gas during an accident. The fuel will simply be dumped into a vessel below the reactor and will cool down on its own without water. Because there’s no risk of explosion, there is no need for very costly containment structures.
If a president made the research a priority he/she could convince , over time , the public on its merits. After all, the AGW crowd has laid the ground work.
If you want the truth about nuclear power, read Sowell’s Law Blog. There are currently four articles in the series The Truth About Nuclear Power – all carefully researched and documented. Many more articles remain to be published.
1. Nuclear Power Is Not Competitive – wind and natural gas drive down off-peak prices and nuclear plants are shutting down because they cannot compete. (examples shown)
2. An All-nuclear grid would require outrageous power prices to pay for the nuclear plants, especially when they cannot run at baseload but must (somehow) follow the load. Capital charges must increase when the kWh are reduced to follow the load.
3. Nuclear Power Plants cost far too much to construct – $10,000 per kW (examples given, South Texas Nuclear Plant expansion, Vogtle plant expansion)
4. Nuclear Power Plants consume far more cooling water than the best natural gas plants – 4 times as much water. (examples given – South Texas Nuclear Plant’s water purchase agreement)
Facts are facts, no amount of repeating glib talking-points from the nuclear industry can refute the facts.
Roger Sowell says:
March 31, 2014 at 10:16 pm
@ur momisugly Tsk Tsk, re France.
Perhaps you will accept the words on nationalization from France’s power company’s own website, EDF. http://about-us.edf.com/profile/history/1990-to-today-and-beyond-43674.html
“On April 8, 1946, a law nationalizing 1,450 French electricity and gas generation, transmission, and distribution companies led to the creation of Electricité de France (EDF), a state-owned industrial and commercial entity also known under the acronym EPIC (établissement public à caractère industriel et commercial).
On July 1, 2004, 70% of the electricity market was opened to competition. On November 19, we changed our corporate status to become a limited company.”
Therefore, from 1946 until 2004, EDF was a state-owned, nationalized electric utility. The monoply can and did charge whatever price it wanted to, without the need to show a profit.
You can believe whatever you like, of course.
You are thick, aren’t you? Show me the subsidy. You do understanding that just calling something nationalized doesn’t make money appear, don’t you? You do understand that France actually exports electricity, don’t you? It’s one thing to subsidize something for internal consumption, but export of electricity actually requires one to make a profit unless you want to claim it’s all a jobs program. Regardless, you failed to address the point raised.
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2353305
The Fukushima disaster has lead the French government to release novel cost information relative to its nuclear electricity program allowing us to compute a levelized cost. We identify a modest escalation of capital cost and a larger than expected operational cost. Under the best scenario, the cost of French nuclear power over the last four decades is 59 d/MWh (at 2010 prices) while in the worst case it is 83 d/MWh. On the basis of these findings, we estimate the future cost of nuclear power in France to be at least 76 d/MWh and possibly 117 d/MWh. A comparison with the US confirms that French nuclear electricity nevertheless remains cheaper. Comparisons with coal, natural gas and wind power are carried out to the advantage of these.
It’s pretty clear that you believe what you like regardless of actual facts.
As usual, Sowell is here to be nothing more than an antinuclear propagandist. What’s interesting is how the real world contradicts his fantasies. France is far from being the only predomiantly nuclear jurisdiction in the world. Ontario has had nuclear power as more than half its total electricity generation for more than 25 years. And until the passage of the Green Energy Act subsidizing solar and wind, it was one of the lowest cost jurisdictions in North America for either residential or industrial rates.
Moreover, for Sowell’s economic mythology to be accurate, it would mean an entire continent has gone insane. Just two countries, China and India, have declared the plans for and begun building what will be more than 300 power reactors in service before 2040. Both countries are building reactors at a rate of two a year and accelerating. And the scope of the forward commitment can be illustrated by the forward commitment on large forgings by large steel companies and boiler shops. So what do thousands of Chinese and Indian engineers, scientists, politicians, utility managers and economists fail to understand that only Roger Sowell does?
The hubris is astonishing.
And there’s a lot of rot in this thread about thorium. There is of course no need for thorium at this time. The OECD Red Book outlines the resources available and the production price regimes at this time. There’s at least a century’s worth of uranium currently in known reserves and that despite the fact that exploration activity has been at an all time low for more than 10 years.
Secondly, there’s no need to develop new technology. CANDU reactors can use thorium fuel in many different fuel configurations without any modification to existing reactors.
Bob Ramar: ” Another benefit from a Thorium reactor is using the process heat to convert any carbon rich feedstock into liquid hydrocarbon ”
Yes, that would be the real sweet spot for our society. Produce our own fuel for transportation, keep the CO2 levels up to benefit forests and wild life while keeping our money out of the hands of religious fanatics in the Middle East. The future can be very bright indeed.
We are nothing more than a death cult if we deny our planet the molecule of life.
A solid gambler’s rule of thumb is “don’t risk any bet you can’t afford to lose”. At present, nuclear power is such a bet. That climate change zealots and climate change “skeptics” can agree on the desirability of pursuing nuclear power development “ready or not”, shows what desperately inept gamblers they both are, and doesn’t bode well for the future of humanity, or any complex life forms on earth, for that matter.
Agreed. But if you want to convince me that thorium reactors are a solution to our energy problems you must do better than a little name calling and – please excuse – snake oil selling on your part. What has poor Al Gore and the corrupted IPCC process to do with this issue?
I’m hearing this “argument” for nuclear power since I was a kid in the seventies. Since then we had Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima – and we still don’t know where to safely store the nuclear waste for millennia. I know we can and will find a lot of technical solutions. But the main issues with ANY nuclear power generation are still not resolved: Waste, accidents, terrorism and proliferation. It’s only partly an engineering problem.
My main argument was: I find nuclear waste that remains hazardous for more than three generations – the people that we still can talk to – not acceptable. Thorium is not a solution to this problem.
For the next 50 to 100 years we should use our engineering skills to make conventional energy use more efficient. Why take the risks of nuclear power just in order to continue wasting most of that energy?
Frank says: “The important thing to see about Hansen’s response is the sequence. Carbon taxes first. Then nuclear. Does anyone believe that the greens would stick to their word and go for nuclear–they would fight it tooth and nail….”
Yes, you’re right. If one is suffering from a severe messiah complex, any solution that permits saving the world without the assistance of the putative messiah is totally unacceptable. Watch the pea.
Robert Sowell, for the record I do think it plausible French nuclear power is probably expensive, but the true cost is covered by the government.
EU states often do odd things with subsidies. For example, an ongoing problem with EU relations with Africa is that the EU subsidies EU based farmers to produce food, then dumps the food on the global market at subsidised prices. This has been identified by organisations such as Oxfam as a major issue for farmers in poor countries – it is hard to compete with a government backed business which is prepared to absorb endless losses.
However, my proposition to Dr. Hansen was that, with more research, it might be possible to create nuclear systems which were so inherently safe, that most of the elaborate safety systems currently employed would be simply unnecessary.
Passive safety appears to be a priority goal of nuclear research.
For example, Pebble bed reactors attempt to attain passive safety through a core design which simply shuts down if it overheats – the “pebbles” expand as they heat, which along with other physical constraints causes the chain reaction to subside if the core overheats – a larger, less dense core means a higher probability of neutrons escaping the core without contributing to next step of the fission reaction.
Similarly, LFTR systems use a plug of solidified salt at the bottom of the liquid salt core, to keep the reactor running. The plug is kept solid by an electric fan powered by the reactor. If the electric fan stops, for any reason, the core melts the salt plug, and drains into a holding tank, away from the moderator elements required to keep the nuclear chain reaction running.
Contrast this to the Fukishima disaster, where the destruction of the active cooling system resulted in a meltdown, and the advantage of passive safety becomes obvious.
However, even if research does produce and confirm a Passive safety system, which is so reliable, that we can do away with containment domes and other paraphernalia of current generation reactors, significant political effort will still be required to overcome entrenched public fears of nuclear power – fears which are at least partly justified in my opinion, by the rather scary track record of nuclear disasters to date.
Max Hugoson, take heart mate – there is still hope.
It’s a 100.00% certainty that the world will have to move from fossil fuels to thorium in the near future. It’s no longer a question a question of IF, but merely a question of when.
There aren’t enough uranium reserves available to meet the planet’s power needs when the population hits 10 billion by around 2050; a mere 36 years away.
Wind & solar energy sources are too diffuse, expensive, intermittent, unreliable and inefficient to be relied upon as a primary or even secondary sources to feed a power grid. Wind and solar may be viable alternatives for individuals looking for a backup power system for their homes, but that’s about it.
Thorium is about as abundant lead and is found in large quantities all around the globe. One average sized rare earth mine accidentally produces enough “waste” thorium to meet 100% of the earth’s energy needs for 1 year and there are thousands of such mines scattered all around the world. Thorium used in LFTRs requires no special processing: just dig it up, refine it and burn it. About 1.5 grams of thorium is all that is required to supply an individual’s entire energy needs for a year…
Perhaps the biggest advantage LFTRs have over conventional Light Water Reactors (LWR) is safety as LFTRs run at single atmospheres pressure and require just ONE passive fail-safe safety system: GRAVITY… As longer as gravity works, LFTRs are safe. LWRs require 70~100 atmospheres of pressure, cooling towers, containment domes, many redundant safety mechanisms to keep them from melting down.
Since I live 150KM south of Fukushima, I must admit I’m strongly against LWR reactors… My family had to carry Iodine pills in our pockets for 2 months following the Fukushima meltdown… I don’t want anyone in the world to go through that.
The Thorium Age officially starts from June of next year when China throws the switch on their first test LFTR. China will be building 100’s of LFTRs over the coming decades to replace their filthy coal-fired plants, which are destroying their environment.
If the West doesn’t follow China’s model of rapid development of LFTRs, it will be economic suicide as a second wave of production will flood China’s shores to take advantage of the cheapest and most unlimited quantity of near free energy available in the world.
The cost/kWh of LFTRs could perhaps as low as $0.02~0.03/kWh; or even less when calculating the additional revenues steams from sales of rare radioactive isotopes, desalination of seawater and synthesized hydrocarbon products, which can be produced at LFTR facilities.
The geo-political and socio-economic ramifications of transitioning from a fossil-fuel based world economy to a thorium based one will be phenomenal. $Trillions in energy savings will be available for new technology development, business expansion, production and transportation costs will decrease, cost of living will drop, real wages will increase, no senseless wars for oil will need to be fought, cleaner air/water, the petro-funding for Middle-East terrorist groups will dry up, oil embargoes will be meaningless, land grabs like Russia is doing in Ukraine will become more difficult to pull off, 3rd-world economic development will explode, etc. etc., etc…
We live in exciting times.
I’m contrary to the idea of trying to find any level of agreement on anything with James Hansen. That’s providing an escape route for him, a way to slowly redirect his message. Someone who has done so much to try to hurt skeptics and who has always shown such an antiscientific behaviour should never receive such a benefit. James Hansen should finish his days fully discredited and, if possible, being ridiculed by his colleagues. I wish him as long a life as needed for him to see that happen.
Regardless of the merits or otherwise of a carbon fee, Hansen’s reply is pure political economy, and completely science-free. Activists go ape when, say, an experienced economist and politician like GWPF’s Nigel Lawson shares a media platform with the “scientists”, yet fall straight into their three monkeys act when it’s the other way round.
Hansen’s inability or unwillingness to separate the means from the ends rather sums up the whole debate. For too many of these guys, it’s not enough to control CO2 emissions – there also has to be some mix of “de-growth” and redistributive taxation policies. To be as fair as possible to Hansen, at least he recognises that the more extreme de-growth scenarios, such as those peddled by “stinky” Kevin Anderson, are not feasible.
You would think that if folk really were desperate to save the planet from a sure and terrible fate, they would gladly reach a compromise with those that don’t share their doom-laden vision. That compromise is on the table – nuclear power, with fracking as a bridge technology buying much-needed time to meet the engineering challenges associated with scaling up intermittent technologies such as solar. No need to bring tax and politics into the mix.
But they don’t want that compromise. Hansen has only confirmed what Delingpole and others have repeatedly observed: it never was about the science.
“My main argument was: I find nuclear waste that remains hazardous for more than three generations – the people that we still can talk to – not acceptable. Thorium is not a solution to this problem.”
Then you main problem is with your own ad hoc time limit on an undefined hazardous waste and what somebody might do with it. Of course thorium cannot solve that, only you can solve that. But why should we care.
Just to address your three generations limit set by “people we can talk to”. Why? Our society has proven that it is capable to pass on written communications and traditions over time spans that exceed your three generations limit. Heard of Pythagoras? 2500 years right there. We are able to maintain structures much more fragile than underground storage facilities for many more generations than three. Hagia Sophia, Pantheon. Even societies that lacked the knowledge of writing were able to pass knowledge and traditions over more than three generations.
“There aren’t enough uranium reserves available to meet the planet’s power needs when the population hits 10 billion by around 2050; a mere 36 years away.”
But this is the reality of economics of reserves. It is pointless to look for them beyond that time span. The 40 year limit has been almost the norm for many reserves for at least the last 40 years. I agree with your main point though, that Thorium is not a question of if but when.
How can you find common ground with Dr. Hansen. According to his predictions half the earth landmasses must have disappeared into the ocean by rising sea levels right now..
Doesn’t he live on a boat?
“The more important matter is the need for a slowly rising revenue neutral carbon fee, 100% of the funds distributed to the public, equal amount to all legal residents. ”
Note way he tries to refer to carbon tax as a “fee”. Oh, I’d much rather pay a “fee”. Great idea doc.
Then duplicity of pretending that 100% of funds would “distributed to the public”. BS! When did any scheme run itself , cost free and redistribute everything. By the time we include collection costs, bureaucratic bundling and corruption we’d be luck if 50% got handed out.
@Steven Mosher
Trouble is RSS Lower Stratospheric Temperature, while cooling indeed, shows a rather curious pattern. Trend for the entire 35 years is -0.28°C/decade, but for the last 20 years it is only one seventh of it, -0.04°C/decade. In other words, robust “fingerprint” stuff is a twenty years old story, since then — nothing.
Let’s go all in with Hansen for phase 1 – build zillions of nuke plants. In phase 2 we’ll quietly build synfuel hydrocarbon manufacturing plants under the greenie “recycling” mime. We’ll use all that CO2 and make completely pure hydrocarbons and all the excess electricity. Should work for a few billion years. Hey! It’s “sustainable”.
One might as well use even the loons like the politicians use them.
It’s fun! It’s Green! It’ll be Great! Might even see him chaining himself to Harry Reid’s Senate door demanding more nukes. He could even win a real Nobel or Pulitzer or Academy Award. If not, then let’s chip in and build him a new Greenhouse.
Roger Sowell says: March 31, 2014 at 6:15 pm “Re thorium as a future basis for nuclear power: [ … ]”
I glanced at the operating history of the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment to see that THORIUM FUEL WAS NEVER LOADED.