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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Greenpeace has strongly condemned investment in the International ITER Fusion Project, claiming the money spent on ITER should instead be spent on renewables.
According to Australian SBS;
… Greenpeace nuclear and energy campaigner, Sebastien Blavier, said the cost and uncertainty of fusion mean investing in thermonuclear reactors at the expense of other available clean energy options is risky and ignorant.
“We are opposed to this argument of fusion being the future of power for humanity, that’s totally false for us,” he said. “Today the world is facing massive challenges like poverty, like access to electricity for people, poor people, for development.”
“We now how have the solution with renewables like solar and wind – they are affordable, they are cheap. For the moment ITER is presented as being the solution for the future power of humanity and I think that’s a big mistake.”
“If you look at the costs, it’s a massive amount of money that could be invested in renewables that are already ready to take off and be competitive; so it’s not a solution to future power, it’s only research.” …
Read more: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/12/06/nuclear-fusion-shadows-clean-energy-debate
Greenpeace also opposes nuclear fission. From their website;
End the nuclear age
Greenpeace has always fought – and will continue to fight – vigorously against nuclear power because it is an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. The only solution is to halt the expansion of all nuclear power, and for the shutdown of existing plants. …
Read more: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/campaigns/nuclear/
Given that leading greens like James Hansen, former NASA GISS director, think nuclear is an essential part of any plausible low carbon energy scenario, because renewables can’t be scaled up economically, and given that even Google couldn’t find a way to make renewables work, it seems likely that renewables will not “take off” anytime soon, regardless of how much Greenpeace thinks we should.
In my opinion, the evidence suggests Greenpeace vigorously opposes all low carbon energy solutions which might actually work. The question is, why?
Quelle surprise!
Greenpeace strategy #1 – oppose the possibility of energy that is plentiful, cheap, easily accessible, reliable & very quickly scalable to rapid increases in demand.
Greenpeace strategy #2 – block major technologies, by isolating and attacking one-by-one, until there are no useful ones that will either increase wealth (per capita) or sustain current levels of wealth.
Greenpeace strategy #3 – aid in perception that wealth of individuals and organizations derived from new and improved technology is evil wealth, therefore claim those individual and organizations are evil.
Greenpeace Goal – to have humans live like wild animals; for instance, like polar bears or ants.
A word encapsulating Greenpeace comes to mind, ‘anti-mind’.
John
From the linked story:
Well they’ve gotten more pessimistic. Back when I first started hearing about fusion research 50 years ago, practical fusion power was only 20 years away. So 50 years of work and we are still at least 50 more years away from a practical application. That’s an entire century of sea level rise – the West Side Highway near James Hansen’s office will be underwater by then.
Is there a common thread here or am I missing something?:
A chain of vastly expensive, largely boondoggle money sinks, a boon to the many eager states and candy to their Senators:
The Space Shuttle, the International Space Station, the Super Conducting Super Collider, ITER, SLS (Space Launch System), and very likely the all eggs in one basket James Webb Space Telescope now at a mere $8.7billion? If this blows on launch or otherwise fails In it’s distant orbit, a total loss. How about the slew of Solyndra scale give aways, with more in the pipeline?
No reason to iterate the thousands of essentially wealth distributing, job creating but absolutely unnecessary high tech military weapons systems. Another nuclear aircraft carrier anyone? More $1 billion per copy super stealth bombers anyone? Why does all this seem more like stimulus/welfare than anything else?
Where is the taxpayer’s union to weigh in and comment, criticise and at lobby for changes if not outright cancellation of these grandiose, bloated mistakes in advance of their announcement as fait accomplies?
In favour of nuclear= dumb!
In favour of wind= dumb!
Some of the dumbest garbage on this subject occurs right here, on this blog. I’ve known for way to long how
this game is played. Corporations, Universities, The media, pseudo environmentalists, trolls/sock puppets, but most of all, its the foreign Corporate Democracies/tyrants and their friends at The Bar who really make it happen.
Its one big web of deception- that’s all! Let me tell you how I believe this works in the end:
You all keep running around debating with each other about subjects first suggested by them- not you! not in anyway original thought. Then you’re divided. You’ll go completely dependent on them for all your ENERGY needs (which by the way are over-rated) . Extreme fatigue will ensue from the endless work week just to ensure your pathetic energy needs and pathetic way of life. All the while the most important thing on the face of the earth- LAND is gobbled up via a vigorous propaganda campaign of LEGALESE. Its over you are a slave!
Or you can fix it and or prevent this from happening by: Cancel your cable, plant a garden, rid your home of shit like microwaves, if you smoke- stop it!, if you drink-stop it!. If you are living in something larger than 1400sq ft- sell it and down size. Save as much cash as possible to either build or by something smaller and ensure its properly insulated and burn wood damn it! If not, install solar panels and abandon the grid. Plant mulberry trees, serviceberry trees, plum, apple etc.
That was a quick and dumb down version of I wanted to convey, but I believe you should have got the message. I’m telling you guys, you really don’t know where this going. If you have kids……. oh man you had better wake up. It happens in stages folks, I’ve been there. When you what’s really going on and where they want it to go, you to will come to the realization that water and heat can all be produced on site without them.
All you need is family, friends, good food and most of all freedom! For me, its all about four walls, hardwood flooring and a fireplace. All the rest should and will go towards life and not t.v or shoving nuclear waste down a 5000ft hole deep under the Canadian shield, or pouring hundreds of thousands of tonnes of concrete for a stupid industrial windmill in my backyard just to push me off the land under the guise of climate change- no f’n way man! not me.
And while i’m at it: Screw hydro dams as well, but that’s for another day. Screw both sides of the argument, because in my opinion you’re both brainwashed. Screw Agenda 21 and screw anyone who ever worked for a government agency who tried to arrest people for harvesting rain water for their own private use on their property which they have a claim too.
Here’s a list of top down garbage that controls you, but not necessarily in this order:
1.Democracies/Lawyers and their word magic i.e. citizenship, resident, persons, nation, legal (not lawful), bylaws/codes, licencing
2. Their friends at the media
3. Agenda 21
4. The police/other policy enforcers (relentless harassment/and or intimidation)
5. Property tax (Ad valorem)
6 Economics as you know it (keeping you tired and distracted)
7. Schools brainwashing your children
8. Scarcity of resources= dependency=control
9. Remove all notion of Godhead
10. Endless surveillance of the general public through Facebook, twitter, phone conversations, emails, blogs, cameras etc etc.
11. Fear campaigns: people are violent and stupid and controlling.
It’s wonderful when you have all the answers, isn’t it?
Indeed. But it seems to involve an awful lot of tiresome ‘screwing’.
Poor, deranged individual. Please, by all that is holy, take your own adivce and don’t reproduce. You advocate not living, but simply existing. What a waste of your likely shortened life. I’d strongly suggest therapy. You have the thought characteristics of the Unibomber. By the way, if you are advocating the abandonment of technology, why and how the heck are you on this blog in the first place?
Really? Where do I abandon the use of “technology” in my post. Put the technology that matters most to good use i.e. An axe, solar panel, melting metals for making tools etc and technology for shit like nuclear energy so can watch t.v all day. Do you get my point? You forget my brother, that for the most part you are water, not screws, mercury and batteries that allow you to speak.
Machines and people got us into this mess and now you’re on your hands and knees begging for more technology to solve the problem. The technology you speak of must be for sinister reasons.
I love how you completely ignored about 99% of my post and focused on trying to make me look like a nut. What about where I said: “All you need is family, friends, good food and most of all freedom” No you won’t focus on that will you Don? I guess there nothing in my post you liked huh? Maybe you like agenda 21 or lawyers or how the media plays you like fiddle with brainwashing techniques from the 40’s.
[trimmed] dude
maybe you’ll get it one day.
[No, you need no help doing that. .mod]
Well that may be fine for you in your 1,400 sq. ft. home. But do think the rest of the world would like to have some steel, aluminum and concrete? Before you reply you should consider the world already answered that question in a big way: 1,660 million tonnes of steel, 53 million tonnes of aluminum and 4,000 million tonnes of cement in 2013.
This is not going to get done with wood-burning stoves and solar panels.
Alan, I appreciate your response, maybe I should have been more specific in my post, but how well can I express our need to more independent, that’s why I focused on the wood burning and solar panels. I think we’re delaying the inevitable and there comes a time when going back to basics and living a simple life will suffice. In fact, it looks like everybody missed the point of my post and strictly focused on one statement or sentence. About the 1400sq ft, I was being generous, I really don’t need that much and yes its obvious that others would like those same opportunities for steel, aluminum and cement at what cost…..ours?
kenin:
I appreciate you are trying to live a simple live, but I don’t think you appreciate the degree to which the larger industrial civilization you despise enables you to make that choice. Your house and the property it occupies are artifacts of legal conventions which require certain tangible foundations to exist. If those foundations go away, your property exists only as long as the strength of your arms can maintain it.
(I have totally lost the source of this quote, but I believe I saw it in an edition of History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides)
Industrial civilization makes it possible for more ordinary people to “hold what they can” than in any previous era of human history. It isn’t perfect, but nothing involving people ever is. If it falls, we have no reason to believe it will be replaced by anything better and every reason to fear it will be replaced by something much worse.
So I believe it is irresponsible to run away from the daily grind of maintaining a civil and industrial civilization.
But Alan,
Can we really consider the mining of Uranium for nuclear energy and its waste civilized?
As for other industry: well, there are those that I and the environment can support, but for others… I would rather do away with. I guess we can talk about this until we’re blue in the face, but it goes way to deep for me to explain my position and what I know; so for me I will leave it at that. Alan, I love your blog, I think you understand a lot more than most and I get your point- I really do, but I respectfully disagree. I believe we have just become to accustomed to the way things are.
I would really appreciate your opinion on the question above. Thanks Alan
I’m sorry Kenin, but you only have at least half of what you said is right.
Nuclear = Smart not dumb.
Regards
Climate Heretic
yeah sure, because we all know you can’t survive without splitting atoms.
Yes Kenin, you are sort of correct. We can’t survive without “fusing atoms”. We live because of that big reactor that rises in the east everyday, bringing energy to all of us. Well, most of us, there may be a few odd life forms deep in the crust that use thermal energy from the core of the earth – but same general idea. 😉
Given enough time and money, the Plasma Fusion people will drive their proposed success horizon out to 100 years!…pg
One of the greatest tragedies of modern times is that nuclear energy was used for a bomb before it could be used for cheap and nearly unlimited electric power to bring the masses of people out of poverty and into a better life.
Greenpeace may very well be right about ITER. Likely it’s a White Elephant. The ITER torus dimensions are far too large, creating a weak diffuse plasma, missing the sweet spot for plasma reactions.
The best hope for fusion lies with smaller scale projects that don’t rely on brute force magnetic confinement. Several of these novel approaches are reviewed in IEEE Spectrum
http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/nuclear/inside-the-dynomak-a-fusion-technology-cheaper-than-coal
My favorite is the underdog LPPFusion (aka Lawreceville Plasma Physics). Here’s a brief video of their configuration and physics of dense focused plasma. The process is aneutronic (no radioactive waste) and provides for direct electric current without steam turbines. Thus the LPPFusion recator can be extremely cheap.
http://lppfusion.com/next-generation-fusion-power/
LPPFusion is the best of class having achieved two of the three Lawson Criteria (temperature, confinement time and density). The density relies of achieving a clean burn plasma, so the engineering now is devoted to finding he right coatings of the reaction chamber that can withstand thermal shock and extreme temperature gradients.
LPPFusion is well within the ballpark of achieving a sustained, net energy fusion reaction. It’s probably the best bet, but other rivals have a lot going for them too. ITER is not really a contender.
sarastro92:
I did a quick check of the lppfusion site and did not see any news about a working prototype they have demonstrated. If you can find one, please post it. But I did find a link off their “News and Archives” page that in turn links to a DeSmogBlog post “Is Organized Climate Change Denial Criminally Negligent?”. Bit of a disconnect, no?
See
http://lppfusion.com/fusion-power/dpf-device/
(located under “FUSION” drop down- “DPF Device”)
The early results of the DFP device were published in the Journal of Fusion Energy
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10894-011-9385-4
This paper instigated a series of related queries:
“The first, and perhaps most significant reaction came in May, 2012, with the publication in the Journal of Fusion Energy of a paper by S. Abolhasani, M. Habibi, and R. Amrollahi, “Analytical Study of Quantum Magnetic and Ion Viscous Effects on p11B Fusion in Plasma Focus Devices”. The paper studied in greater detail the “quantum magnetic field effect” we discussed in our Journal of Fusion Energy paper in 2011, citing our work and for the first time independently confirming our calculations showing that ignition and net energy gain can be achieved with pB11 (hydrogen-boron) fuel, the key to obtaining aneutronic fusion energy. “According to the results of this paper”, they concluded,”…it could be said that p11B fueled plasma focus device is a clean and efficient source of energy.”
http://lppfusion.com/peer-reviews/
Yeah… I was disturbed by the DeSmogBlog post as well… Eric Lerner is by no means a greenie, but seems to appropriate the lingo to deflect adverse commentary.. Check out the video presentations (especially the Oxford U lecture) … it’s very clear Lerner advocates for a cheap abundant energy policy to support global economic development (real, tangible development not the fake “sustainable, mud-hut with a solar collector” type “development)
I checked sarastro92’s links. No mention of a working prototype anywhere. The plasma fusion will be practical in 15 years as always.
Curious George…
The link provided describes the device in great detail…
“The dense plasma focus device consists of two cylindrical metal electrodes nested inside each other. The outer electrode is generally no more than 6-7 inches in diameter and a foot long. The electrodes are enclosed in a vacuum chamber with a low pressure gas filling the space between them.”
I never used the phrase “working device” (you guys did) nor did I imply a finished product. I made it very clear that the third Lawson criterion must be met to achieve sustained fusion and that the LLP device is under development to achieve that goal.
“LPPFusion is the best of class having achieved two of the three Lawson Criteria (temperature, confinement time and density). The density relies of achieving a clean burn plasma, so the engineering now is devoted to finding he right coatings of the reaction chamber that can withstand thermal shock and extreme temperature gradients.”
But it is an operational research machine that has hit key performance criteria for fusion and well within striking distance of achieving sustained fusion reactions.
You want pictures?
Try viewing the video link provided above… the opening half minute contains several images of the FF-1 that is being upgraded to achieve a clean plasma that reaches fusion.
It’s here: http://lppfusion.com/next-generation-fusion-power/
I know fusion is possible. It’s been funded irregularly at times. Btw, thanks for the updated info. I haven’t followed it in awhile. I was pretty sure that if they could squeeze the gas down to a plasma without the enormous amount of energy necessary that it might go. The magnetic quantum effect is interesting. As I said earlier that if several fields come up with new insights, that the time to completion would shorten dramatically. One was hope that CERN might provide insight into gravity waves. LIGO was another. An applied gravity wave could really do some squeezing. The things we could do with a gravity wave. Just the thought of magnetic entanglement makes me think we could go beyond teleportation. Make an exact copy/s there. How many times can you divide a magnetic bubble? Let’s reconfigure that mathematical coefficient that is malfunctioning chromosome.
I realize this isn’t the technical stuff that most people on here like to see, but it is the ideas that shapes the tech.
For those who are interested, believe it or nor, cold fusion research is still in existence. I thought it was totally dead.
I like fusion just because. Sorry greenscape.
So when do we get Mr. Fusion to power our toasters?
We should know pretty soon whether the LPPFusion device can reach sustained fusion. They’re fiddling with coatings on the reactor chamber that will be tough enough to prevent atoms from being knocked off the walls and spoil the plasma. That coatings process should be finished this month, and then they can fire up the FF-1 and see if they can get it to fusion or near fusion. After that the final step is to load the Boron fuel. Either it will work or it won’t. That should be evident by Summer 2016. If it won’t work, the team can decide to abandon the project, or figure out what’s wrong and take corrective action.
Visit the website or get on their mailing list. Every 8 weeks or so LPPFusion published a newsletter that relays the latest status on the dense, plasma focus device.
Green people are really just human haters. It really is that simple.
Any form of energy which allows humans to thrive is evil in their eyes, because humans thriving is evil in their eyes.
Greenpeace is dependent upon the ignorance of people, which will assist in the acceptance of Greenpeace’s arguments about what to do about global warming, climate disruption, climate change or carbon pollution, or whatever you want to term this non-problem.
Nuclear fusion may or may not have a future in the world’s quest for a new power source. It is not something that should be dismissed out-of-hand by people like Greenpeace or the Obama Administration.
Wasting more money on current technologies related to solar and wind power will not provide a permanent or affordable solution to the world’s long-term energy needs. The current technology related to solar and wind power would result in a solution that is “unimaginatively” expensive. If we are to spend money on solar and wind power, it should be spent on research to provide such power that would actually be effective and affordable.
The best defense against the politically motivated course of action as pronounced by Greenpeace or the current political administration would be to actually study the problem so the problem (or non-problem) related to global warming (etc.) is understood.
Greenpeace vigorously opposes all low carbon energy solutions which might actually work. The question is, why?
Look at where Greenpeace and the Eco left came from, (CND, largely) who funded them, (Sovbloc) and what their political and commercial aims were/are.(destroying Western culture and making money out of gas).
From the article:
…Greenpeace vigorously opposes all low carbon energy solutions which might actually work. The question is, why?
Leo knows the answer.
That’s wht Greenpeace and every other eco-group has been infiltrated and co-opted by the erstwhile Soviet KGB (now the FSB). They understood the influence of those groups, and made the decision to take over those organizations (among many others). That’s why Dr. Patrick Moore is out, and the current gang of fellow travelers is in.
They were amazingly successful, no doubt because they are past masters at undesratnding human nature, and how to control it to get what they want.
The sad thing is that so many people blow that off as a “conspiracy theory”. It’s not. It’s simply reality.
Andrew Revkin has published a remarkable expose in his NYTImes DotEarth blog. Revkin dwells on the fact that under pressure from Green Malthusian forces Germany and now France have RECARBONIZED there energy system.
“[W]hile the world is huddled in Paris to map out the treacherous route to decarbonization, one major industrial country has already largely decarbonized that most central of emissions sectors, [electrical] energy – namely, the host of those other 200 countries, France. But there’s little celebration or even mention of its accomplishment: that is because it was achieved through the “dirty and dangerous” nuclear power, and France itself is now acting under a new post-Fukushima plan that would vitiate this achievement, cutting nuclear by a third unless it is reversed.”
So at the end of the day the priority is not in eliminating “carbon pollution”, but destroying advanced energy production systems starting with nuclear fission.
Revkin goes on the connect the dots in an extraordinary way, extraordinary at least for MSM:
“A group of radicals gathered on the periphery of the Paris climate talks Wednesday to issue a manifesto. “A transformation of the world’s entire economic system is essential,” their missive began in typically grandiose fashion. “Our economies are hard-wired to fossil fuels. To overcome this carbon entanglement, countries need to implement strong climate policies, including strengthening carbon pricing and … .”
Wait a second, I mixed up my notes. That was today’s joint press release from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the International Energy Agency, the Nuclear Energy Agency, and the International Transport Forum, four of the stodgiest policy groups around. It was issued from the heart of the United Nations Climate Change Conference and Twenty-First Conference of the Parties, known semi-affectionately on the inside as “COP21.”
The radicals were at another event, far outside the well-guarded hangar walls of the Le Bourget airport complex. With them were moderates, labor leaders, community advocates, progressive politicians, and a guy in a flannel shirt who described himself during the question-and-answer session as a “possibilitator.” Like the OECD and its partners, the group at the Salle Olympe de Gouges, a multipurpose theater less than a mile from the site of two of the November 13 suicide bombings, called for total transformation to stop climate change from wiping out much of the habitable world.
Unlike those groups, however, the event’s organizers have no faith that any sort of significant transformation will be possible in the accord being hammered out now. So they offered a plan of their own.”
So there you have it. It was never about Global Warming, CO2 emissions, Extreme Weather etc. It was always about “A transformation of the world’s entire economic system”, which fundamentally entails global depopulation and massive deindustrialization.
Fortunately the developing nations want no part of this kind of global genocide, but won’t object if the West wants to commit economic suicide.
“So at the end of the day the priority [of Germany and France] is not in eliminating “carbon pollution”, but destroying advanced energy production systems starting with nuclear fission.”
No, it’s placating a pressure group. That’s what politics is mostly about. (But it should be about resisting them.)
“No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!”
It’s all chitchat. Just because they are against fusion doesn’t mean they are for something else viable. They want you dead. They will say anything to get you to accept your demise.
Hey, you said it, too. I posted a longer one on this below.
Apparently we spend more money on ring tones than fusion research in the UK.
“The question is, why?”
Which leads immediately to why Greeneace is so out of touch with the modern world? Fusion and ITER are not part of any tangible solution apart maybe from maintaining the status quo. They are R & D in progress. The real question is whether Greenpeace et al are being used as usefull idiots. Again.
First up, reality. Where we’re actually at with Fusion …
Next, the immediate problem … Borg neutron moderation in DC and elsewhere, business as usual.
The complete disconnect here is alarming. If this is an example of governance in the modern world the energy question is the least of our worries. Imagine how much worse it would get with UN involvement.
Baubles, beads and Kumbaya …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdQMQqx4cxM
Why… One reason….
http://www.thegeorgiaguidestones.com/message.htm
The message of the Georgia Guidestones…
1. MAINTAIN HUMANITY UNDER 500,000,000 IN PERPETUAL BALANCE WITH NATURE
2. GUIDE REPRODUCTION WISELY – IMPROVING FITNESS AND DIVERSITY
3. UNITE HUMANITY WITH A LIVING NEW LANGUAGE
4. RULE PASSION – FAITH – TRADITION – AND ALL THINGS WITH TEMPERED REASON
5. PROTECT PEOPLE AND NATIONS WITH FAIR LAWS AND JUST COURTS
6. LET ALL NATIONS RULE INTERNALLY RESOLVING EXTERNAL DISPUTES IN A WORLD COURT
7. AVOID PETTY LAWS AND USELESS OFFICIALS
8. BALANCE PERSONAL RIGHTS WITH SOCIAL DUTIES
9. PRIZE TRUTH – BEAUTY – LOVE- SEEKING HARMONY WITH THE INFINITE
10. BE NOT A CANCER ON THE EARTH – LEAVE ROOM FOR NATURE – LEAVE ROOM FOR NATURE
Finally, we get a number. So the ideal human population is under 500 million. It would be interesting to know how they settle on that particular figure, but let it pass for now. The world had a population of 500 million around 1500 or 1600. No antibiotics, no fever reducers, no concrete, no aluminum, iron in limited quantities, steel in minute quantities. No steam engines, no electricity. No universal literacy; colleges and universities such as existed were primarily for theological studies. This is Europe; China at the time was more advanced.
Using charcoal it takes about 1.25 acres (0.5 hectares) of mature (25 year) hardwood to make the charcoal to smelt one short ton of iron. Simple arithmetic shows you must dedicate roughly 31 acres (12.5 hectares) of land to grow the trees so you can harvest the wood to make the charcoal to smelt one ton of iron every year, and do it “sustainably”. This is how iron was made in England from Roman times up to around 1700, when coal-fired blast furnaces appeared. By this time world population was roughly 600 to 679 million, so we’ve already overshot the ideal by more than 20%.
Coal-fired smelting caused iron production to skyrocket, making iron available and affordable for new uses.
The Bessemer process to make steel on an industrial scale was patented in 1856 (world population 1,200-1,400 million).
Aluminum was known about, but much too expensive to obtain until the Hall–Héroult process was patented in 1886 (1,400 – 1,550 million). Oh, and the process requires electricity — gobs of it, which didn’t show up until the first commercial power plant was built in 1882. First steam turbine power plant was built in 1903.
Concrete was used by the Romans although it was lost when Rome fell until the process was re-established in the mid 18th century.
I know the people who put out numbers on the ideal sustainable human population believe we are going to have all the advantages of modern industrial civilization, just without the traffic jams and crowds at Disney World, but it’s not going to happen. There is a reason we didn’t have steel, aluminum, electricity and other modern conveniences when there were just 500 million people in the world, and if we got down to that population again we would lose most of them in a generation. There simply would not be enough people and time left over from basic food growing and preparation necessities to support the specialized knowledge required.
Once we lose steel we lose the single most useful industrial material in history, the basis for tools which allow us to build, mine, travel efficiently, etc., etc.
Technology enables population and population enables technology. They rise or fall together.
No surprise that the Green Shirts have embraced eugenics, which false doctrine was to the early 20th century what the pseudoscience of CAGW was to the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and of course fully embraced by the N@zis.
The simple answer to greenpeace objecting nuclear of any kind is because of their hidden agenda, they are Marxist and will do and are doing untold harm with this renewables angle, they are relying on people’s fear and making mischief with it, the Indian Goverment had to make them a subversive organisation because of the damage they were doing, this connivance and miss truths by greenpeace and fellow travelers about anything other than renewables is a scandal, this is why India banned them, froze the bank accounts of Greenpeace, we should do the same if the Marxists inside of this organisation persist.
Progressives who demand diversity in everything except science and thought.
Color me unsurprised.
These are not progressives, but regressives.
People greatly overestimate the amount of power we would obtain by a fusion reactor. The amount of energy harvested minus the amount of energy required to keep the reaction contained and sustained is likely to be no very efficient. A reactor with the efficiency of the Sun would produce about as much energy per pound of matter as a compost heap. In other words, harvesting heat from composting manure would likely be more cost efficient.
Although the greens no longer say it public they still regard power as ‘to cheap’ and ‘to easy to access ‘ at the bottom of this is the greens hatred of modernity, much preferring some mythic golden rural past , and desire to see ‘wicked man ‘ punished for their crimes against the planet, This combined with the certain knowledge that normally no one is singing up to their madder ideas , such as the totally end to personal motorised transport, means they ‘want and indeed ‘ need an energy crisis has they see this has both an opportunity and has ‘just punishment ‘ with the misery it would cause be an ‘acceptable cost’
So pushing ideas they know cannot work , and acting those that can , doe with mind set, make sense.
The greenies are getting worried that one of the low cost shoestring fusion projects are going to pan out. Never mind the ITER boondoggle, General Fusion, Helion, EMC2, Lockheed Martin, Tri Alpha, all knocking on the door, practically have to beg for funding. Once one of them succeeds, they can kiss the whole cap and trade scam goodbye, the greenies will be even bigger bums than they already are.
Yes Chris, exactly this. Especially E=MC2, if boron is used (aneutronic). Then the fuel supply will last for millions of years.
Go to Talk-Polywell for more information on these fusion projects.
Regards
Climate Heretic
“The greenies are getting worried that one of the low cost shoestring fusion projects are going to pan out. Never mind the ITER boondoggle, General Fusion, Helion, EMC2, Lockheed Martin, Tri Alpha, all knocking on the door, practically have to beg for funding.”
The stupid party should have been calling for funding of these entities as a positive alternative to Obama’s greenie plans. Apart from the statesmanship of doing so, a business-as-usual political stance lacks sales appeal.
all they have to do is demonstrate a working power plant, and they will get all the funding they need.
Nothing succeeds like success.
They are not. What is more, they are intermittent, so a huge overexpensive backup and/or storage capacity is needed. And not only that, due to inherently low energy flux densities, their land use footprint is orders of magnitude higher than that of proper solutions, so they are destroying the environment by abusing an inherently scarce resource.
Thermonuclear reactors has their own problems, indeed. Besides always being ready in the next two decades or so, for half a century, they also emit much more neutrons for the same energy output than fission reactors, a kind of radiation that is extremely difficult to contain.
Now, that’s silly. There is a huge difference between nuclear and nuclear. Molten salt reactor technology was developed half a century ago, then shelved. It solves all the safety, anti-proliferation &. waste storage issues associated with current fission reactors, while providing energy for the rest of Earth’s lifetime, until the Sun becomes a red giant and consumes the entire inner solar system.
A ton of granite, the default stuff continents are made of, contains as much recoverable energy as fifty tons of coal.
Only unicorn fuels are acceptable to Greenpeace …. with the exception of their Rainbow Warrior ship running on fossil fuels.
Blavier’s background?
https://fr.linkedin.com/in/s%C3%A9bastien-blavier-84665751
KEDGE Business School
Master of Science (MSc), Master in Global Management & Organizational strategy
2005 – 2009
Rock solid nuclear scientist from the 29th best business school in Europe?
So, it seems Greenpeace is……..
Homophobic.
.. in need of more money. Why don’t taxpayers fund it more lavishly than ITER?
Greenpeace thinks that renewables like solar and wind are affordable and cheap. I disagree. Both are phenomenally expensive. Greenpeace say nothing about being reliable and scalable, which are key if the electricity supply on which you depend is to be provided in this way.
Solar and wind are dirty cheap – really free. Only the electricity generated that way is expensive. With solar, you can keep your lights on as long as the sun is shining.
Fundamentally, we will get practically all of our energy from controlled fusion sources sooner or later. We might as well do ITAR, and all the other fusion research, but we must be sensible and realistic. It will not be practical until we have some paradigm-shifting breakthroughs, genius breakthroughs, probably in materials, but maybe in the physics of fusion. It is nearly certain that no one who reads this note will live to see commercial fusion. It is likely the grandchildren of my readers will not live that long either. In other words, I think it is more than some decades, probably more than a century. But it will happen.
Wind will never happen. It is just a leach. It is simply political cronyism. Winds blow, and windmills suck. (They kill too.)
Solar, well, probably it will become significant within a decade or two, or three, maybe more, but it will never be reliable for primary energy.
Hype or whine all you like. That is the fact. It won’t change. We can cause pain and suffering, slavery, and death, and we can force it, but it will not work if we don’t coerce with the power of the state.
Swedish scientists claim LENR explanation break-through (Oct 15 2015)
http://animpossibleinvention.com/2015/10/15/swedish-scientists-claim-lenr-explanation-break-through/
For some of us following the LENR progress or diversion an interesting explanation is offered how neutrons can be shaken out by resonance and captured with energy release. This whole area is buzzing with an Edisonian atmosphere that something is truly going on. Some serious money is being speculated.
Ponderomotive forces explain it all. No speculation needed.