Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Hindu reports on a fascinating top level debate occurring at a conference in India, between politicians and energy experts. The energy experts are struggling to understand why nuclear power is not the favoured Western option for reducing CO2 emissions.
… Pointing out that countries such as Germany, France, Switzerland and Austria were either committed to closing down nuclear plants or opposing nuclear renaissance, he [Governor P. Sathasivam] stressed the need to formulate a new approach between nuclear enthusiasts and opponents. A former Ambassador and governor for India at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Mr. Sreenivasan said India, China, and Russia were the only countries enthusiastic about nuclear power today.
Striking a different stand, Ashok Chauhan, Director (Technical), Nuclear Power Corporation of India, said the increase in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions posed a greater threat to the world than nuclear energy. “In fact, nuclear energy offers a solution to the threat posed by greenhouse gases that are responsible for climate change and rise in sea level.”
…
Mr. Sreenivasan, who chaired the session, pointed out that the Paris climate change summit had not endorsed nuclear energy as a solution to the problem caused by GHG emissions.
I suspect it won’t take the Indian energy experts long to conclude that Western opposition to nuclear power is irrational, which will likely lead them to question the legitimacy of other things Western “experts” have told them.
Former NASA GIS director James Hansen, and a handful of other leading climate alarmists, have repeatedly stated, that the only plausible means of reducing CO2 emissions, is a vast expansion of nuclear capacity.
But as the Indian energy experts will quickly discover, pointing out the bleeding obvious to green fanatics rapidly leads to bullying and name calling – even if you are James Hansen.
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It looks like the discussion shifted from “safety of brown and yellow people using nuclear power” to “tarts in high school”.
Hey, you started it !! LOL
Me, I’m OK with yellow, brown, and black people. I think it would be wonderful if they had plenty of affordable power. (I’d rather like affordable power for my own family too.) That would improve their safety. I also think there are plenty of yellow, brown, and black adults who could operate nuclear power plants safely, and if you don’t trust them yourself, just make sure their families live, work, and go to school next to the power plants. As for government regulation, I don’t know about your country, but in mine, we’ve seen too many cases where self regulation was in effect no regulation. Anyway, (electric) power to the people (of all colours)!
I for one don’t believe that brown and yellow people are incapable of protecting themselves.
Walt, you have to admit it was one of the more humorous typos we’ve seen lately.
I can’t tell how serious you are with your concerns over fission power, but I will say that when you start talking about all the bad things that *could* happen you’ve wandered beyond the limits of rational debate. There are no end of things that can go wrong with just about anything and certainly power generation systems, by their nature, are fraught with perils of all sorts. The only way to approach the subject is to calculate the relative probabilities of the known failure modes and measure them against one another. People are typically fearful of the unknown just because it’s unknown. In the 60 years we’ve had practical experience with nuclear power we’ve established real numbers we can use and those numbers tell us that nuclear power is relatively safe, inexpensive and clean. For each concern you’ve raised there’s a practical answer and other readers have given most of them. One I haven’t seen mentioned yet is that thorium cycle reactors are immune from being used in the manufacture of weapons grade nuclear materials (plutonium for example) because the fuel cycle doesn’t permit it (physically, it isn’t a design problem). This is one of the reasons the US didn’t spend any time developing thorium reactors during the 40’s and 50’s; the military wanted nuclear bombs not nuclear power plants. Thorium is much more common also, which is a further benefit.
Recent reactor designs are much safer than high pressure water cooled uranium reactors and don’t suffer from coolant failures in the same way reactors like TMI, Chernobyl and Fukushima did.
I live 40 miles from the Diablo Canyon nuclear reactors. My father died of plutonium poisoning, which he contracted from an accidental release at the Hanford breeder reactor in Washington State during the 1950’s, his death was attributed to an “exigency of war”. For 20 years I lived less than 75 miles downwind of INEEL (Idaho National Laboratory) in east central Idaho (I’ve eaten lunch many times in Arco). I’m not talking through my hat when I say I believe nuclear power is safe.
Powerful testimony from such a witness (given your excruciating personal experience).
If we are going to build nuclear plants, it should be done only because the power it provides will be economically competitive with coal and gas. Unless and until we stop talking about “carbon pollution”, we aren’t going to be able to get our energy policy right.
It is economically viable right now – if we can get the watermelon groups to stop lawfaring it to death. Lawsuit caused delays and injunctions typically double (or more) the cost of building a nuclear power plant, and almost never make any aspect of plant operations safer. In some cases watermelon interference actually caused issues that had to be addressed by plant operators and regulators before things could continue.
Owen
I’ve read your stuff before. You appear to have experience in the field and command of the facts. Have you had success convincing a large group of naysayers to overcome their nimbyness concerning nuke power ? What are their top three concerns that you’ve been able to address ? How did you do that ?
I’m interested because I’d like to learn how someone succeeded.
knutesea,
In my area, most people are very pro-nuclear power. We have a major DOE facility and several power plants within 70 miles, Nuclear is the third largest employer in the region. There is a very small, very vocal group that are scared to death of it and won’t listen to anything. They also get large funding infusions and activist assistance from outside groups to assist in their protests and lawfare.
I have been arguing since the 70s that TMI was actually a success story – everything failed, yet the containment worked. I read the after-action on that investigation and looked at some of the stuff that was released after they sent the robots into the dead reactor.
My training is in physics with a nuclear concentration, but I have never actually worked in the industry. For some reason they want younger people in the workforce. I did 24 years in the USAF before returning to college to finish my degree. I followed nuclear issues as part of my job as an intelligence analyst in the Air Force, and was part of the Chernobyl monitoring early in my career before I moved into intelligence.(I maintained the aircraft doing the monitoring so some could say that is a stretch). They classified most of the data so I didn’t see most of it, but we did wash those planes a lot after missions.
But my point was that economics, and nothing more should be driving the issue of whether or not to build. And since irrational fear, driven by long-standing myths and by money-grubbing Greenie groups is real, and does drive the costs up, then we have a problem. Nuclear could be economically viable, but only if we want it to be. And that will require lots of education.
The green view on Nuclear energy is easy to understand. The only thing you need to know is that it predates the global warming scare.
Nuclear=radiation=evil.
Exactly Matt, Barry Commoner did his job and the Union of Concerned Scientists was formed to keep the movement going. Commoner shared Ehrlich’s view that there had to be less people but that you could get there by a sort of world wide Luddite socialism resulting in lower birth rates rather than catastrophe as opined by Paul Ehrlich. All modern greendom stems from those two.
“Commoner shared Ehrlich’s view that there had to be less people but that you could get there by a sort of world wide Luddite socialism resulting in lower birth rates”
Actually, “world wide Luddite socialism” is more likely to result in higher birth rates and significantly reduced life expectancy than in lower birth rates.
Exactly…Commoner nonetheless thought that “sustainable” low tech no fertilizer, combined with education would do the job. I think that Pol Pot literally put that into practice
what if all the monies spent on CAGW over the past two decades had instead been invested in nuclear fusion R&D?
+ 10
Then by now, with all that additional spending – practical nuclear fusion would only be ten years away!! (sarc)
What?! with all that money it would be at least 5 years away for the next century or so…
Same rat hole, different name.
Hot fusion is essentially gravity power, the sun converts gravitational force into radiant energy. It’s completely impractical as a terrestrial power source and that isn’t going to change before humans are capable of manipulating mass and gravity in ways we can’t begin to imagine.
I have no idea how fusion ever made the list of possible human scale power sources, but I can guess it had something to do with anti-fission lobbies “tossing a bone” to their opponents to prove they weren’t complete Luddites and their only real issue was with nuclear “waste”. Fusion doesn’t have waste! It’s Good high tech energy! See! We aren’t cavemen! I have no other explanation. Fusion makes great science fiction.
If Walt here has issues with a containment breach,just imagine the fun he’d have worrying about a black hole getting loose in his neighborhood?
That is not how the sun works. The energy comes from fusion – the gravity just gets and keeps it all in the right condition for fusion to work.
There is more money to be gleaned through occupying large tracts of land with low-density, unreliable windmill and solar farms than in several hundred civilian operated nuclear reactors operating worldwide.
As long as they can successfully hide the toxicity and environmental disruption caused by “green” technologies throughout their life cycle from recovery to reclamation, it will be politically difficult to impossible to evaluate each technology and energy source on its unadulterated merits.
Don’t forget about all the chopped up and fried endangered birds !
I wonder how they taste.
. . .Like chicken ?
I’ve come to think that with the UK and US abdicating responsible leadership economically, politically and culturally of the English-Speaking world and Europe in general engaging in economic and cultural genocide, that we will come to consider India and Asia in general as our saviors from the madness of the past 30-40 years. Ask yourselves what leaders have the capability, moxie and policies to act in the best interests of their people (their constituents). Certainly Xi Jinping of China and Modi of India stand out. I would even say there is broad admiration for Putin, despite his somewhat reckless acts. He is strong and goes against the grain of Europe and America. Everywhere else we have kumbaya weaklings with no interest in promoting the interests of their citizens – worse – presiding over the destruction of the greatest civilization of all time that they created. India is definitely going to show us how it needs to be done. They don’t have that inferiority vis a vis Europe anymore, whereas we moronically do.
The far-left green fanatics are opposed to nuclear power simply because it works. They are against any power source that can deliver base-load power, which is what industrialized societies require – power on demand 24-hours a day. Their goal is global deindustrialization and massive depopulation – a completely evil, anti-human philosophy. Condemn them.
Far-lefts want to establish world government that will control everything. Commies learned that it is easy to control masses when there is shortage of everything. What about such thought: use of nuclear power will require such great regulation mechanism that it will be like a world government. No shortage of energy, but no freedom either, same as those far-lefts…
Does 1 + 1 = 5 in your little world ?? You make no sense…..
Dear Walter,
1. I refer you to Gunga Din here: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/07/indian-energy-experts-confused-by-green-hostility-to-nuclear-power/comment-page-1/#comment-2114768 .
2. re: “use of nuclear power will…” — it IS being used. All over the world.
3. Socialism existed for decades where nuclear power was unheard of. Socialism is a metastisizing disease that will always be with us, just a matter of when and where it rears its ugly head, for socialism is simply one variety of that perennial weed, “the dictatorship of the elite” (Friedrich Hayek in The Road to Serfdom). The good thing is, after millions of people have suffered and died under it…., it eventually d1es in each part of the planet it invades, for truth wins out in the end, every time. Even in China, it will not last. China will outlast communism. And it will make its ugly appearance again after that. Africa is large enough and has enough countries for it to occupy, each in turn, for millennia. To forego nuclear power to stop it is like stopping eating so you won’t get cancer.
As someone above exhorted you: fear not! 🙂
Janice
Marcus, he’s so afraid of nuclear that he’s willing to use even bad arguments to fight it.
If he were actually serious about the danger of govt regulation, he would be fighting against regulations in general. But it’s only in this one area that govt regulations are bad.
Great point Mark W..
To any of the readers who might be celebrating Orthodox Christmas (according to the old Julian Calendar) may I wish a happy Christmas and the forthcoming New Year, with the traditional greeting ‘Christ is born’.
Merry Christmas!
Walt
Usual traditional reply would be ‘In truth he is born’ but I will add thank you, as well.
And to you as well Vuk.
I’ll keep my lights up a little longer.
(since you instructed this ignorant non-Orthodox believer 🙂 )
In truth, he was born!
Vukcevic, Forgive me, but, I just can’t bring myself to say “is” born. He isn’t born over and over on Christmas Day (or any other day). He was born. He died. He rose from the dead. He is now in heaven. He will come again!
Shalom.
Janice
Ms Moore thanks for your comment
I am not an expert on any of the semantics be it old classic Greek where it came from, Slavic translations of it or for that matter into equivalent English past tenses (pluskvamperfekt and such like), and even less in the religious matters since I grew up in an atheist society. According to my grandma’s clandestine religious instructions it is something to do with being a ‘witness’ or whatever. I just know the dates, greetings and the custom of spreading some straw in the living room, burning the oak Yule log and putting out fire with red wine, all dutifully done last night, no Christmas trees, no shiny bobbles.
So, I’ll say Shalom Janice.
Hi again
I’ve just inquired with a friend of mine, he reckons it is what is supposed to have been said at the time by shepherds, something like “I bring you good news of great joy, Christ is born’ and then the reply followed ‘In truth he is born’ . Apparently, the greetings are direct repetition of the supposed ‘original’ .
Shalom.
Well, thank you, dear Vukcevic who I am SO GLAD is no longer living in that country… . And of COURSE your grandmother was right! 🙂 If it weren’t for the grandmothers (most of them, I mean, there are some mean ones, certainly) of the world… . Dear, dear, grandma… . I will see her (them, actually) again someday and that takes the sting out of the sorrow.
Your “is” makes sense. It is like the grand, older English, style lyrics of “Joy to the World.”
Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
It is hard to put the feeling of that “is” into words, it is like how “Behold!” is grander than “Look!” I like it. And I think I get it, now.
With best wishes for a very happy 2016,
may it be your best year, so far,
Janice
Greens and Warmistas do not want Nuclear or Hydro power sources as they actually work. They prefer to have people concentrate on Solar and Wind (or Hot Fusion), as these are a waste of time and will create Power chaos and confusion during which the Greens and Warmistas can strip the gullible Western proles of their wealth and make a getaway.
Here is a rather fun story.
My father ran a nuclear reactor safety division at a national lab for the bulk of his career. (Interestingly, he also did research into the effects of various nuclear exchanges between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. using GCMs he and his team built and was a world expert in this area. He is not impressed, at all, with the present GCMs and the hysteria surrounding AGW)
Anyway, one of the things that he had for testing was a pool. The pool had a strong beta source at the bottom (I can’t remember what the source was, however, I do remember that the pool had a lovely blue glow) used to irradiate various hardware components for testing purposes. Stick the hardware on a stick, stick it in the pool to irradiate it, pull it out and see if it works. Ok, a bit higher tech than that, but that was the basic idea.
So after a while he wanted to drain the pool. Some sort of maintenance which required pulling out the radiation source and securing it (lots and lots of lead), emptying the pool, doing whatever needed to be done, then refilling the pool.
Easy, right?
Well, no. He had to do some paper work to dump the ‘radioactive’ water into the sewer system. The press heard about the ‘radioactive’ water that was going to be dumped into the sewer system which was followed by stories about how the lab was going to kill everyone and the lab was pure evil for even thinking about releasing the water and PLEASE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN, etc.
After a year or so of hearings and meetings he dumped the water.
Which, incidentally, was *almost* as radioactive as beer. I know because, during one of the ‘family day’ visits when I was a kid, I took a Geiger counter and pointed it at the pool. Then a beer and a radium clock. It was a little demonstration for the kids to understand radiation and various levels.
So, I learned quite young that a huge number of people a) are scared witless whenever they hear the word nuclear and b) don’t understand radioactivity in the least.
Slee
Thanks Slee
Good story.
So what did YOU learn about how to communicate risk to people from your father’s experience ?
LOL, I learned that people don’t listen. You can show them numbers, explain the science, go over actual risks as compared to the perceived risks and talk until you are blue in the face. And most people won’t listen. There was a gigantic op-ed war in the local paper and no matter how many facts were laid out, the folks who were scared just wouldn’t listen.
Luckily, I don’t have to do that sort of thing.
Slee
No, they don’t.
It’s ironic that while we want the right as a community to influence a decision, we are often left in a state of no decision because satisfying most of the people is too darn hard. In your case it didn’t but I imagine that paralysis in decision making like that often leads to its own more urgent problems. It’s almost as if we as a people create our own drama and then temporarily have to give power to “the man” to fix.
Thanks for the story.
There’s nothing to be baffled about. Nuclear power doesn’t take you back to the stone age. Why is that so hard to understand?
Its simply the greens want an energy crisis, and so they oppose ideas that may its avoided.
For they consider this crisis offer two features which they find endlessly attractive , firstly it punishes humans for their ‘sins against the planet’ and secondly it offers the best chance to get their madder ideas , such as a end to all personal motorized transport and flying , forced unto people who otherwise would never have any thing to do with .
Your dealing with people who fantasy about a return to a early time , the rural ideal , when life in reality for most people was shorter and grimmer than now , so do you think that would support ideas that would get in of such ‘progress’
@knr, 203 pm, we live in a rural area and fully embrace the “rural idea” but in contrast to the “green” philosophy? We happily took with us every useful gadget our civilization has ever invented and are fully prepared to live a lot longer than these green jerks! ( and that includes a 5.7 ltr Hemi powered 4×4 that was very useful these past few days with over 18″ of snow, freezing rain and pulling those same “greens” out of ditches.).
Glad to see you post after that big storm up your way, Tobias. And good — for — you. Reminds me of the U.S. Coast Guard (not, after all required, but “always ready,” they were on the way) heading to the rescue of the Ship of Fools stuck in the Antarctic ice in January, 2014 … good ol’ fossil fuels (and nuclear! 🙂 . Tobias to the rescue! 🙂
There is a serious policy question lurking under the surface of this thread. Gen 3 fission could be done now (e.g. Westinghouse AP1000 type designs with enhanced passive safety). That is what China is building. But if CAGW is not an immediate action demanding crisis, then we collectively have the decade(s) to properly research, vet, and pilot Gen 4 concepts, of which there are at least three major variants, all three also solving the spent fuel problem: travelling wave (TerraPower and Bill Gates), uranium/plutonium molten salt breeder (TransAtomic Power– their white paper is well worth reading), thorium/uranium molten salt breeder (China pilot and Flibe Energy).
It is not only a yes/no question. It is also a what/when question. Discussed more comprehensively in essay Going Nuclear. IMO gen 4 fission solves any possible remaining nuclear objections. Perhaps that is why the warmunists are so insistent CAGW is an immediate crisis, when it plainly is not.
Ristvan
I purchased and read your book due to your relentless marketing. I figured if you tried so hard, I’d give you the 7 bucks. I like the analysis on conventional/unconventional oil. I noticed you moved the goal posts in a recent thread to 2025 as your book says 2020 for the shift away from more easily gotten oil.
Where do you think the price of oil will be in 10 Years from now ?
The minor goal post shift is because China demand has not grown as much as expected. Nothing more. And my most precise estimate for the peak total production in the book was 2023, essay Peeking at Peaks, last section. (Silly, I know. We will be lucky to bound it within five years given all the uncertainties).
There are IMF white papers saying $200/bbl before 2025. Those econometric models,relymtoo much on demand side elasticity, and not enough on supply side. I think it more likely between $150 and $170. The reason is that about $180 is the market clearing supply price for FT gas to diesel/kerosene synfuel based on Shell’s Pearl project in Quatar), and also for the EXXON natgas to methanol to syngasoline process (they say- no plant, only lab stuff and projections). Both would alleviate any shortages. It will for sure be well above $100, because that’s necessary just to bring the 5 stranded Yamal giants on line in eastern Siberia above the Arctic circle. Rosneft was muttering about $125.
Hope you liked the rest of the book, also. My favorites include High Stick Foul (Marcott affair), Shell Games (academic misconduct on OA), and No Bodies (IPCC misrepresentation of extinction risk).
Thanks for the reply.
I’ll dig into the other essays.
It’s depressing the number of people that I have talked to who believe that the worst case scenario for a nuclear plant would involve a really big mushroom cloud.
Where was this photo taken? Is that Chernobyl c. 1986?
So? So, don’t have Russia build your nuclear reactors.
I would say, quite confidently, that exploding a nuclear device on top of a nuclear power station, would be the ultimate worse case scenario. I can’t force myself to do the calculations to indicate resultant effect (tons of fissile material within a near infinite neutron flux…yuck). GK
G. Karst , replying to MarkW
From the above, prompt neutrons are responsible for more than 99% of all neutrons emitted during U235 fission. (We will ignore the Pu fission for brevity and clarity). Prompt neutrons are emitted between 10^-13 and 10^-14 seconds after each fission reaction, so, clearly, if the A-bomb (or North Korea’s almost-an-H-bomb) explodes above the containment dome at t=0.0, the existing (reactor-source) neutrons will all be gone at t=0.000000001 seconds. The bomb-source neutrons will have been emitted already, and will have already reacted in the bomb fuel and the bomb-surrounding fissile/fussile material. All will have either been absorbed or decayed (a few) or gone-the-wrong direction (away from the reactor core) BEFORE the physical bomb blast effects (heat, light, gamma rays, pressure waves, shock) reach the top of the containment dome.
So, no real problem. Now, a “real-world” A-bomb blast in nothing to sneeze at nor laugh at, but it really does only affect a very small area compared to the planet, a continent, a nation, or even a state as a whole. That particular city? Deadly effects.
But the greenies claim we “must destroy” 6.5 billion out of 7.0 billion humans now living “for the sake of our children”, so what’s not to like?
RACookPE1978 – I have never heard this complex scenario reduced to merely the initial pulse of prompt neutrons before. Russia and the US examined the issue separately, and quickly decided it was indeed too horrible to calculate and agreed to NOT target each others fissioning reactors.
If you do not think this is the worst case scenario for a nuclear power plant, I shudder contemplating your worst case scenario. That’s all I have to say on this subject.
ps – I am not anti-nuclear in any way. It was my life. We MUST build quickly and wisely.GK
The physical and heat effects of a surface nuclear blast directly above anything – even a nuclear power plant – are “imaginable”. Describable. Horrible to those locally present. Difficult for the nearby area. Survivable by those a few miles out. The removal and re-depostion of the nuclear waste and debris from the power plant merely adds to the millions of tons of debris and radioactive gasses swept up into the fireball, then blown down wind elsewhere.
The difference between blowing up over a nuclear power plant and “merely” blowing up an average city is simple. NO power plants are in the middle of city. Only a few are in the blast radius of a city – and that only if the largest possible H-bomb is used.
Thus, if you wish to destroy a power plant and the nearby 1-3 miles of country side and farms with your nuclear weapon, feel free to do so. You will NOT then be sending that nuclear bomb over to blow up above the next city, and thus will be harming many fewer hundreds of thousands with direct deaths and injuries in the fireball and blasts.
And, by the way, the very dome-like shape and reinforced concrete and lined steel of the nuclear power plant means that a nuclear bomb, like that of a nuclear bomb trying to destroy a missile silo below its steel and conrete shell at ground level, is much less likely to actually be “overwhelmed” by the nuclear blast than almost any other structure. While not surviving (the turbine building and coolers and support structure are certainly lost, like the hotel dome directly under the Hiroshima blast, the nuclear power plant dome is likely to remain partially in place. Maybe not intact, but in place after any but a direct hit.
Or a nearby truck bomb blowing it sideways. Again, distance is your friend. And your fiend.
That’s really big?
Are you actually as ignorant as your posts make you sound?
About the containment dome, I will ask my Father about a nuke hitting a dome or close to it. If you Google F4 Phantom wall you will find a video of a F4 hitting a wall at about 480 mph. Dad ran that test to see what would happen to a containment dome hit by a plane. So, in this particular area, he * is* the world expert.
I suspect the dome wouldn’t stand up to it. For the record, the. F4 dented the wall about 2.5 inches, iirc.
Slee
Hey Chaam, a single F16 bombing run is three times that size !!
+1
[OOOOh. Ahhhh. A bolded +1. .mod]
Yes, mod (toss of the head, flip of the pony tail). For Marcus… (wink). Nah, I just do it once in awhile, on a regular basis when I really like something ANYone has written (for about 4 weeks or so, now).
And, mod., YOU are still special to me, too. 🙂
Re: Ctrl – J (heh, heh) …. you don’t want to know.. bwah, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Bye for now!
Brrrrreeeeerrrrp! (sound of rear tires chirping as I get on the gas in my super-fast sports car, laying down 2 (count ’em) TWO tire tracks)
#(:))
Except the contamination didn’t spread.
You really got this thing about digging your holes deeper, don’t you.
Chaam, if that is one of the Fukushima storage pool explosions then it is purely chemical hrydrogen, produced from an improperly sited and improperly protected spent fuel pool. Gen 1 idiocy. Put the spent fuel pools above ground (stories up) with no containment, site the backup cooling water pump generators near sea level with no protection in an earthquake zone known to produce tsunamis. Early Stupid on stupid. I note for you to research that another Fukushima nuclear complex, only about 20 km away but a gen 2 rather than gen 1, survived unscathed.
If the earthquake and tsunami had occurred just a few months later, there would have been no problem as the plant was scheduled to be decommissioned.
This is all very simple to understand.
Coincidentally, the policies which the greens wish to promote happen to be exactly those policies which serve the interests of Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.
This is, of course, a really amazing coincidence.
And a really lucky break for the cash-strapped Russians.
It just so happens that at a time of crisis when they were most reliant on selling their gas to Europe, the Greens/Socialists in Europe happened to have successfully opposed homespun nuclear, coal, hydro, and gas extraction – WHILST promoting the installation of wind and solar.
Wind and solar which due to its unpredictable and unreliable output has actually increased the reliance on highly flexible but expensive CCGT gas generation.
How amazing is that.
If a person did not know better then they might suppose that the greens were actually a bunch of brainwashed zombies who have been fed exclusively on a diet of ideological propaganda extending back for 100 years.
Russian’s oil and gas export earnings are $362.2 billion, or 14.5% of GDP.
United Kingdom by building world’s first civil nuclear reactor in the 1950s was a leader in the nuclear energy industry, but now the new Hinkley Point nuclear power station will be built by Chinese, the world’s biggest builder of nuclear power stations.
Yeah – AND importantly, the electricity generated will cost £95 per megawatt hour (inflation adjusted).
So, quite frankly, this is a massive rip-off.
Several times the cost of most of the world’s coal and hydro.
More expensive even than some countries are paying for on-shore wind. And likely to be much more expensive than installed solar PV will be when Hinckley comes on line.
Even twice the price that the French are paying for their nuclear, it seems.
An embarrassment to the UK. At least it would be, if we had any pride left.
Vuk, as someone who actually working on a nuclear power plant, please note that should the US try and restart a construction plan, the old ‘Made in America’ clause will have to be changed. For one point, the heavy wall rolling of the reactor core (=3″ walls) is not available in the US. Only Japan, China, S. Korea and Russia have that sized equipment any more.
First, the US needs to clean up old policies dating from the amazingly wrongheaded Jimmy Carter administration–as in no reprocessing of spent fuel, as we would be setting a good example for the third world on proliferation. The Greens are still playing off that policy and claiming no means of waste disposal. Revising the approval process is a requirement, as the Greens can tie any nuclear project up in process for decades. Really, it is mostly an example of silly politics.
According to someone I knew in the nuclear industry, the decision to rebuild was put off just long enough so that all the experts we once had had retired. And no, that’s no conspiracy – it’s just that foreign based nuclear suppliers only saw their opportunity when our politicians threw away our ability to build our own.
The Green opposition to nuclear power is highly rational. It’s their principal method of fundraising.
+1
It is simple. There is nothing about making the world a better place but instead forcing their vision of how the world should work. Cheap, easily available power that you can get from hydro and nuclear power runs counter to controlling people via regulating power.
Indian Energy Experts Baffled by Green Hostility to Nuclear Power”. That’s because the warmists’ beliefs are based on ideology and not science or even economics. They get confused by quaint concepts such as facts when they can self-righteously survive just with faith and dogma!
Joking aside, some of the most ardent Green supporters now accept that Nuclear is probably an acceptable and available base load renewable power generation system. Others, reasonably not happy with the safety aspects of Uranium Reactors, are now openly supporting massive R&D work for Thorium Reactors, in the way that China and India are doing, which potentially can provide a safer and hopefully quicker and cheaper to build System and without the costly and problematic toxic waste management and disposal and the very expensive de-commissioning. Thorium Reactors can apparently also be fed and treat uranium reactor waste.
Actually, no. The nuclear fuel cycle that could use up most (never all) of the existing spent nuclear fuel ‘radwaste’ is molten salt uranium/plutonium. Please go to TransAtomic Power and read their free white paper. MIT spinout. No math. Explains the reasons an initial uranium rather than thorium fertile fuel cycle is probably a better gen 4 starting point. Thorium in the long run, after the additional transatomic issues are solved.
My request is merely to educate yourself for yourself rather than rely on internet blather–including mine. I have no brief for TransAtomic per se.
Nuclear energy doesn’t kill off Humans fast enough to make the greenies happy, but a hard winter with inadequate energy supplies that freezes a few thousand will put a smile on their face !!
Marcus
Make up your mind. NOW! Do the greenies only want to kill 6.5 billion out of 7.0 billion living right now, or would they be satisfied with a mere 10 or 20,000 more deaths each winter for the next 84 years? More specifically to this thread, how many does The Physicist want killed right away due to his/her/its policies and demands, and how many does he/she/it want killed over time?
….All of us…none of them of course..
After redefining the essential plant food of CO2 as a “pollutant”, it is only a matter of time before the green Nazis redefine the human population to be a pest that should be destroyed on sight.
RA,
There is an old saying in the military about a few of the adversary blowing themselves up before a battle: “It’s a start”
The road to 6.5 billion leads through a whole lot of 10 or 20 thousands.
7 billion will be dead in 85 years anyway.
it’s easy to understand this if you understand that fundamentally the global warming = anti-CO2 movement is a thin veneer to cover what is essentially an anti-industry, anti-capitalist campaign which only uses CO2 and fossil fuels as a convenient stick to try to force us to their “natural” world which means a world devoid of power, devoid of consumer goods, and by extension devoid of hospitals, medicine, computers, educations.
Nah, my impression is that the followers of the creed want both the trappings of the modern world and the preservation of nature. I don’t meet too many cave dweller wanna be’s … at least in the 18 to 35 year old bracket.
The followers don’t bother to think about the consequences of their green beliefs.. The leadership on the other hand knows very well what they are doing.
And then they get older.
The high end creeps into the 40s and starts to get more conservative.
They pay more bills. Have mouths to feed. College to pay for.
Reality changes for them.
The “leaders” have about 10 more years to pull off the transfer of wealth associated with energy unless they are successful at new fresh recruits. Political opinion is not a static entity. A backlash is coming because “backlash” is the nature of politics since at least Watergate. What will the backlash be ?
What will be the triggering events ?
A rather normal major correction to the current 30 year boom is what is most likely.
Lemmings don’t think about the cliff they are about to jump off of..
Marcus,
While the lemming imagery is compelling, the whole thing is reported to be the creation of a Disney producer looking for interesting footage to sell to the kiddies. Thus it is a perfect analogy for CAGW – compelling, but fake.
Yes Owen, but the name has become synonymous with foolish behavior ..
We need double blind lemming studies.
I debated a young fool a few years ago who was convinced that the hunter gatherer lifestyle was the best lifestyle for humanity and that the biggest mistake our ancestors ever made was inventing agriculture.
In years past I’ve dealt with other idealists who were convinced that prior to the arrival of the white man, native Americans were routinely living to 80 years of age and were healthy as horses.
They were so delusional that they believed there was no conflict or warfare prior to the arrival of the white man. One of them even told me that the tomahawk was actually used as a gardening implement until the white man taught the natives how to also use it to kill.
knutesea, the question is, who are you going to get to blind those lemmings and will be able to get it past the ASPCA.
Viability & acceptability of Nuclear Power by India as an alternate power production:
Nuclear power production process contribute to greenhouse gases and other hazardous pollutants
The nuclear power production process don’t fit into “security, safety & economy” on the one hand and on the other hand “environmental & social” concepts
Unlike other power production process, in nuclear power production process different stages of nuclear fuel cycles are counted as separate entities while assessing the cost of power production per unit and only the power production component is accounted in the estimation of cost of power per unit – that is government subsidies component is not included in this
Carbon dioxide is released in every component of nuclear fuel cycle except the actual fusion in the reactor – fossil fuels are involved in the mining – transport – milling conversion, processing of ore, enrichment of the fuel, in the handling of the mill tailings, in the fuel can preparation, in the construction of the plant and its de-commissioning-demolition as lifespan short, in the handling of the spent waste, in its processing and vitrification and in digging the hole in rock for its deposition, etc and in the manufacturing of the necessary required equipment in all the stages
Around the 60% of the power plant cost goes towards the equipment, and most of which is to be imported and in the manufacturing fossil fuel energy is used and thus it is a high fossil fuel energy intensive power production. While in the coal based power, more than 40% of the cost goes to fuel and here the stages are mining to power plant and unlike in nuclear power cycles the equipment required in this process is less than 10% of nuclear power cycle
Unlike other power production process in nuclear power production process majority share goes to imports and thus major beneficiaries in nuclear power process are multinational Western Companies
Finally, nuclear power is not a renewable energy as its fuel is non-renewable
Fuel – India has to depend on supplies from the developed countries – India has to accept their bargain agenda
The spent fuel storage is a critical issue, yet no solution was found
Mining has both radiological and non-radiological health hazards on life forms and help in the degradation of the environment
The life of the reactor is very short and the dismantling of such reactors is costly & risky
By adding subsidy component the nuclear power is not a cheap energy
It requires huge equipment during the several phases of the fuel cycle. Majority of them must be imported
Tail pond maintenance for years is heavy environmental hazard
USA government directly negotiated with the Indian government in weakening the liability clause in any eventuality to protect the suppliers of nuclear equipment.
With huge population size, nuclear power as an alternative a risky proposition to India.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Ya know, Dr. (Dr.?? of WHAT? How could you earn a doctorate in ANY subject making you a fit spokesperson for the Indian nuclear power industry and yet be so ignorant of what the average college hard science graduate in the U.S. knows about nuclear power??) Reddy, what you wrote is SO full of errors it is amazing to see it. Now, if you were writing about India in 1950, maybe so. But, now???
1.
— (water is the main one released by a nuclear plant) are not “dangerous” – there is NO evidence that they are. They are not “pollutants.”
2.
– So what?
3.
(taking this as given) – So what?
4.
– So? France, England, other countries manage just fine… .
5.
– So what? The MAIN beneficiaries are the Indian people who get the benefit of lower cost power (and jobs at plants built in India due to that lower cost power).
6.
– SO WHAT??
7.
– So? There is enough competition that the deal good enough, i.e., it will be worth Indian consumers’ while to make it.
8. Re: fuel – a little goes a looooong way.
9.
– Oh, come, now. Have ALL India’s nuclear industry experts fled the land?? They could tell you that there are several options. What’s wrong with dry cask storage (used in U.S. since the envirostalinists have kept the Yucca storage facility on lock-down)? France ships its waste to the U.S. What about Madagascar? Won’t they take it for a fee? NO ONE in your region will??
10.
— ??? This is nonsensical gibberish! You are a Dr.???
11.
– Wrong. And why talk about dismantling at all??
12.
– So, don’t.
13.
– Doesn’t have to be. Are you copying and pasting this out of your memo from the Chinese titled: How to Keep India Poor and Dependent on China?
14.
– So? Is the product supplied fit-for-purpose? THAT is the important thing in a contract – who pays damages for a highly unlikely failure is of relatively little importance. Key is: IS THE PRODUCT GOOD QUALITY? If not, buy from someone else. That is, if the risk of failure is high, don’t try to make up for it with a liability clause. If you do, you are a fool.
15.
– How in the world is this an argument AGAINST using nuclear power??
“Dr.” Reddy: with your Indian-sounding name, you are a disgrace to all Indians everywhere, many of whom are brilliant mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and engineers. I hope you never return to WUWT, for their sake.
Janice, staring at you right now with eyes that could vaporize steel…
Don’t even think about looking at ME Janice, I burn easy !! LOL
oh, by the way… + 1,000
(smiling at you with softened eyes)
Thank you, generous-hearted Marcus.
Wow JM … ::: making sure to have my shit together :::
Siting up straight.
Eyes front.
[The mods remind knutsea that it is important to be sitting up straight over an open site while siting the future when sh*t is being held out of sight. .mod]
Dear Knute,
Lol, never. No, that “look” is reserved for only a very few, choice, creeps. Keep on being wonderful you, “together” or not, and no glare will ever be aimed in your direction from this pair of eyes.
Thank you for your taking the time to have a little fun — such a welcome pleasure.
Your WUWT pal,
Janice
Gee!!! Janice remind me (asybot) to never get into an argument with you, and is +, ( I don’t know how many) 100 enough?:) and I am glad you sound like your chipper self these days!!.
Janice Moore — It is clear that you don’t the subject, you don’t read the full sentences, and so you put all garbage abusing others. It is a shame!!!
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
You missed the fact that he called nuclear energy a “fusion” process.
I love the way the good doctor dismisses all of your comments with a statement that you simply don’t understand the subject.
That’s the way ideologues always argue.
Well done, Janice, but you let one big one slip by you. Because of India’s isolation from the world nuclear community, it had to develop all its own industrial infrastructure for reactor components and services. Hence, the good doctor’s claim about benefits disproportionately going to foreign suppliers is simply a lie.
It should also be noted, for those who care about this issue, that on a life cycle basis, nuclear energy emits less CO2 than solar and wind. In terms of plant construction, nuclear uses about half the concrete and 1/3 the steel of an equivalent megawattage of wind. Given that wind has a quarter of the capacity factor of nuclear, that means essentially that wind requires eight times as much concrete and 12 times as much steel per kWh produced by the two systems.
A typical nuclear power plant of about 1000 MW will use about 150 tonnes of fuel per year. Think of a three-metre cube as the volume. By contrast, a coal-fired station of similar capacity will use about 1.5 million tonnes of coal per year. It’s because of the fuel transport problems that nuclear became essential in the late 1960s, and it remains so to this day.
Thank you, cgh (2:55pm).
From someone as well-informed and sharply attentive as you that is high praise. Lol, I didn’t even SEE that big rhinoceros charging past me! Glad you did. And shot it down — BAM!
With a respectful nod,
Janice
Actually the Yankee Rowe Nuclear Power plant that was the first commercial plant in New England it was immensely profitable and successful. It was extremely conservative but built to ASME standards before the nuclear QA 10CFR50 nightmare. and foolish Dr. Reddy and his likes. It produced for it’s useful life was dismantled and nothing is there now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yankee_Rowe_Nuclear_Power_Station
halftiderock — it is like a foolish man sitting on the banks of a flooding river and ask the man going with the flood waters, hay save your self — ha! ha! ha!
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Condescending as well as criminally stupid. The good Dr. makes the perfect spokesman for his side.
Yankee Rowe is one of many primarily prototypes that have been decommissioned over the years. Here’s the WNA’s full list:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/decommissioning-nuclear-facilities/
For the good doctor to allege that decommissioning is dangerous and without much previous experience is simply a lie.
Actually India is in a good position when it comes to nuclear fuel. India does not have a large supply of Uranium, but India does have access to substantial domestic Thorium deposits. India are a significant global centre of Thorium reactor research.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium-based_nuclear_power#India
Eric Worrall — stil to date there is no commercial viable technology to produce power from Thorium. In fact there no opposition to this unlike Uranium based. The only problem with this is, thorium is available in Beach Sand, signifcantly along the Kerala state coast. Once this is removed the strength of the coast line will be weakened unless the government takes precautionary measures to counter this. You are aware the fact that corruption over rides the safety in India.
After building Uranium based reactors, with the non-availability of fuel, they were running at around the half the capacity [older ones; but I don’t have for the Kalapakkam in Tmil Nadu plant with Russuan’s support].
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Dr. Reddy’s stupidity never stops. Indian heavy water reactors, like CANDUs, are ideal for using thorium fuel without any modification to the reactor.
cgs — people of your ilk are unfit to be called as humans!!!
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Shouldn’t ad homs be at least a bit creative … how about
“you are obviously part of a lower gene pool who can’t envision the wisdom of my magnificence” ???
Pretty sad.
Dr. S. has nearly reached the: “‘Shut-up!’ he explained” Level.
Next level: Spitting.
(hat tip to Mark Steyn to go with my own slightly misquoted version of the Ring Lardner quote )
supplement — I said that “Nuclear power production process contribute to greenhouse gases and other hazardous pollutants — — Carbon dioxide is released in every component of nuclear fuel cycle except the actual fusion in the reactor”. You can see here, nowhere I said carbon dioxide is released in actual fusion in the reactor.
Similar to Coal, the Uranium ore is mined that contain more hazardous pollutants than the coal. For 150 tons of Uranium how many tons of ore is required? Again this depends upon the ore type. Indian ore is of poor quality and thus require more ore per ton of Uranium.
If there is a simple technology for power production using thorium, Indian government should have started this.
Finally, If somebody wants to comment, learn how to comment — abusive language will discredit the blog itself.
If somebody putforth his views, and if you disagree you say so in a polite way. This is the style of educated people.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Wow Dr R.
Launch an ad hom, bad one at that and then launch a criticsm of ad hom. You have much to learn about how to be a master baiter.
Because it’s not about CO2. The Greens have decided the best thing for earth is to depopulate it. Cheap power of any kind is not on the agenda.
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
Someone should explain to the Indians that “Green opposition” is a matter of faith, not reason, and so doesn’t have to make sense.
Well…. I started in highschool as a Glenn T Seaborg recruit to the National Conference on Nuclear energy in Chicago in 1967. I ended up in a specialty steel fabricating facility with a class 1 N stamp. I left after Jane Fonda and 3 mile Island destroyed the industry. Three Mile Island was a curious “accident” enough said. Only whispered by licensed operators. It was however such a successful demonstration of the safety features that I offer this anecdotal evidence. You see the fields around the reactors, in those fields were milk cows. The milk cows were intensely monitored and yet supplied Hershey Chocolate all through and after the incident. Say What????
The article is expressing interest in why the Western Civilization is so dead set against Nuclear energy.
I don’t think that any one has touched on this and it is my perspective and like any theory it is only as good as it’s skill in prediction I doubt that there is any way that we will ever get a peek into the black box that contains the actual smoking gun. Science is like that, if the theory works it has value.
Dwight Eisenhower entered into a nuclear arms race with the Russians, The US had to build as many Nuclear Weapons as possible. The Russians had to build as many as possible. The most efficient source of weapons grade uranium is from spent nuclear fuel. If you want to understand painful understand the centrifugal approach to enrichment from Yellow Cake. The epiphany was to enlist the national utilities to build massive nuclear power plants. The promise to the utilities was to take the spent fuel reprocess it ( take the weapons grade material out) and return new fuel back to the utilities. Free fuel!!!! What about that was not to like? The Program was so successful that it was burying the Russian effort. They didn’t have a prayer against the US nuke machine.
If you were a student of American political history you would know that the first really effective foreign meddling in US politics manifested itself in the Hamilton Adams election. Jimmy Carter was “worried about” nuclear proliferation. Reprocessing fuel is the best source of weapons grade uranium soooooo For some reason he decided to set the “world example” and stop the reprocessing of the spent fuel in the US. He also put people in the NRC that hated the nuclear power industry and made life absolutely miserable. I have some personal experiences with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and low level transportation casks that still make me shake my head. WOOPS! Bankrupt utilities little old ladies pensions, because the government no longer accepted the spent fuel and reneged on the balance of the inducements. All of the anti nuke stuff was from the greens. You don’t think that Jane Fonda just materialized in Hanoi and did the processor to “Inconvenient Truth”with her “China Syndrome” by fortuitous accident. If they can shut down the supply you can shut down the production. There is more than one way to skin the cat. The Russians in my opinion were astute.
The facts were that the premise of the movie was completely ridiculous, but it did its job. I supplied equipment to the LOFT facility in Idaho. They were removing the cooling fluid fluid to see what would happen in such an accident. Any one with a basic understanding of the nuclear reaction would quickly realize that the water is the moderator and when the water boils the moderator doesn’t exist and the neutrons sped up and miss the atoms so the reaction slows down. It gets hot. and starts to melt the fuel rods and incorporates the boron carbide and stainless steel into a molten blob. The blob, because it incorporates additional material which reduces the concentration of the uranium the reaction essentially stays hot but goes no where, it is contained.
The problem then for simplicity becomes two fold, how to keep the dissociated water that separated into hydrogen and oxygen from exploding and how to keep the exposed reaction products in the containment. The containment is a 5 psi pressure vessel. The back up generators run massive fans and water heat exchangers that take the steam and cool it of by putting it through heat exchangers and through the water in the containment. This process cools the core steam and reduces the pressure so it doesn’t crack the containment. This happened beautifully at TMI. I built the Loss of Fluid Accident Turbines for Spencer Turbine.
In Japan they lost the back up generators. The gases exploded. Never the less life goes on. People will be back in time, just like they will be back in the area around Chernobyl.
So lets look at North Korea do you really think that they took Jimmy Carter seriously? Pakistan had to be laughing. India? Israel? Objective evidence after 40 years suggest it only effected our economy. Fankly it was a fools decision. Did any of the communist countries evoke protests from the US protesters as they continued their programs? it is ok for Canada and France to have nukes but not the US?The distinction only has skill in the context of of the now less significant legacy effort designed to stop the production of weapons grade uranium.
The Russians get it. Their approach to Iran’s nuclear power fascination was… knock yourself out but to prevent your making bombs return the spent fuel to us!
So in the end the progressives ultimately did the job for the Russians in the Western countries to stop large scale weapons grade uranium production particularly in the US. The distaste for nukes is the residual effect of a very successful PR campaign that outlived it’s master. This is too short a discussion to appropriately point out strategic laws in the plan to build multiple huge one off generating stations on grids that had to replace the power during scheduled and unscheduled shut downs. Flaws in the quality assurance system. and so on. Every misrepresentation to be robust has to include some demonstrable truth.
Right now the US supply of new fuel or reactors is horrifically expensive and less than required to refuel the industry and there is 100 years of reprocessable spent fuel for reactors sitting in spent fuel pools at bankrupt facilities all over the US. This fiasco was caused by the Government under Carter run by the progressives and the rate payers are still picking up the bill.
Politically no one wants to admit that the spent fuel storage problem would go away at low cost if the fuel was reprocessed. Reprocessing is by political definition an untouchable not to be considered alternative. The nasty product could be burned safely in breeder reactors. So yes go figure! But be advised that it will be a long haul to reverse a very effective slander..
I see huge similarities with the CO2 scam. But it is only that is so sad for what should have been the next generation of inexpensive energy for increasing the quality of life for humanity.
Only my opinion….
Thanks for sharing that post. It was educational. I especially liked the observation above.
What do you think it would take for the public to accept nuclear energy in America ?
Honesty.
(v. a v. the U.S.A., mainly)
1. Get Congress to open the Yucca Mountain waste storage facility and deregulate the nuclear power industry and take other necessary measures so that it can become profitable to enter the market again.
2. Nuclear power industry unbound will then will have the cash flow to fund first-class TV/internet documentary/advertisements educating the public about such things as:
1) truth about how safe storage of waste is;
2) truth about nuclear power plant safety;
3) truth about nuclear power safety in general (e.g., no one harmed by radiation by Fukushima)
4) truth about how lower-cost, highly reliable, nuclear power will bring JOBS to their town (e.g., Boeing plant in South Carolina)
5) truth about lower electricity bills (for some parts of U.S.) if nuclear power comes.
6) truth about nuclear power lowering average consumer’s electricity bills
7) truth about how nuclear power makes a country more secure from energy-blackmail by terrorist nations or communists…
etc…
In other words: pray that God works a miracle!
If we started reprocessing the “waste”, there would be very little need for a long term storage facility.
Yes, MarkW (6:44am) — great point! That (allowing reprocessing in the U.S. — it is done in Europe) would be part of the “de-regulation” of the U.S. nuclear power industry which needs to happen — now! 🙂
Also, thanks for pointing out what I DID miss, indeed, in “Dr.” Reddy’s screed about “fusion” nuclear power, lol.
I’ll never understand why “The China Syndrome” was considered such an anti-nuke power movie. At the end, the worst case accident did happen and … the plant automatically shut down. No meltdown, no loss of life. Just a big clean-up hassle.
I apologize for the high maintenance moment mods.
Thanks for the reminder.