Guest essay by Eric Worrall
If Greens want to decarbonise the economy to prevent climate change, why are they so opposed to nuclear power? A small but growing number of greens are also asking this question. Some of them accuse their fellow travellers of misleading the public.
Climate change is an energy problem, so let’s talk honestly about nuclear
Fear of nuclear energy runs deep but it may be the most efficient and clean energy source we have, albeit with complications.
…
The vast majority of the carbon and greenhouse gases we spew into the atmosphere are generated by our need for energy, prompting the late Prof Sir David MacKay to observe that “the climate problem is mostly an energy problem”. Clearly then, we must reduce our carbon emissions drastically, and it is likely that nuclear power will play a substantial role in this endeavour. Yet despite the pressing nature of the problem, there are few topics as consistently contentious as the one of nuclear power, and the long history of opposition to it cannot be ignored.
Fears about nuclear energy run deep: the 1986 Chernobyl disaster remains a towering linchpin in anti-nuclear narratives, presented as an irrefutable case that nuclear energy is inherently unsafe. These claims are so profoundly entrenched that it is almost accepted as common knowledge that the Chernobyl disaster killed thousands.
Yet, as I’ve written here before, these claims do not stand up to scrutiny and persist in the face of report after report to the contrary. Years of subsequent investigation place the death toll of the disaster at approximately 43 people, with deleterious health effects failing to materialise at any appreciable rate. That this information is surprising to many is indicative of quite how polarised the discussion on such a vital topic has been.
Much of the reason for this is ideological – Greenpeace is but one organisation that has been criticised for releasing misleading anti-nuclear information, claiming that up to 200,000 deaths are attributable to Chernobyl. This figure has been roundly debunked, but predictably strikes fear into the public conscience, encouraging panic in place of reason.
…
This is not the first time The Guardian has published a pro-nuclear article. Guardian environment columnist George Monbiot in 2011 insisted that Fukushima demonstrated the safety of nuclear power. Former NASA GISS chairman James Hansen is also a fan of nuclear power – a stance which upset Naomi Oreskes so much, she accused Hansen of being a “denier”.
I believe future historians will judge this irrational hatred of nuclear energy as the single greatest reason why greens lost the climate debate. The obvious contradiction between green claims that we face an existential climate crisis and their vehement opposition to nuclear power is what led me and I suspect many other skeptics to question their claims.
If greens had embraced nuclear power from the start, I would have accepted claims about the climate impact of anthropogenic CO2 emissions at face value.
On the other hand, there’s Lawrence Solomon who campaigns against nuclear power based on economics but is a CAGW skeptic.
I completely agree with Mr. Solomon’s analysis – and completely disagree with his conclusions.
Nuclear power is not economic – thanks to Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, and all of the others that have assiduously promoted irrational fears of it.
Which is the exact same strategy they are pursuing with fossil fuels – promote sufficient fear, lay immense economic burdens on generating power with them – and then argue that they are not “economically feasible” and should be abandoned.
They are a bit early on the curve, in my opinion – but they are already gearing up to do the same thing to “renewables,” and will undoubtedly go into full swing on that effort if they ever get to the point where we are dependent on those sources.
Their primary (actually, only) goal is a genocide that will dwarf even the best achievements of their Marxist forebears. Reduce the world population to a small group of the “elect” and whatever serfs / slaves are necessary to cater to that group’s needs. Everybody else is surplus.
Depressing but clinically accurate.
The largest fire in the United States right now is near Brian Head, UT. For numerous years now the environmentalists at SUWA and their lawyers have sued and obstructed all efforts to manage the forests in Southern Utah. We all saw a beetle infestation moving toward Utah from California and killing millions of trees in its path. When Utah tried to enact a beetle suppression plan, SUWA sued and stopped it.
After the beetles arrived, the forests in the area are now pock marked by dead trees all over. When foresters and logging companies tried to cull the dead and dying trees, again SUWA sued and stopped it.
But now that a fire is raging and all that dead wood is accelerating the spread, who is responsible for the millions of dead and dying beetles? Why doesn’t SUWA sue the fire to stop it and save the poor beetles?
In regards to the article, according to the anti-nuclear activists, it’s better for millions of birds to die from bird chopping windmills all over the globe than for a few thousand to die from Chernobyl radiation.
An argument that has been made many times over the years and will need to be repeated until people — most especially politicians — understand what environmental campaigners are actually campaigning for.
I’m not sure I go all the way with Writing Observer on genocide as the goal and if we “over-egg the pudding” all that will happen is that it will take that much longer to persuade people just what these nice, cuddly lovers of the environment (whose hearts are in the right place, bless them!) are really up to.
Climate is irrelevant. They are quite happy for useful idiots to argue that the aim is to prevent the human race from frying or the planet from exploding but their objective is to call a halt to economic progress, to halt growth, and to reduce population to what they see (on zero evidence) as some sort of “ideal” level. If it were otherwise they would be enthusiastic supporters of nuclear power and research into practical alternatives for motive power.
There is more than sufficient evidence from the environmentalists’ own words over the last four decades that this is their aim. If we pursue them on those grounds then we have a chance of ensuring their dream (our nightmare) does not come to pass. Talking of “genocide” and a small group of “elect” — presumably them — only makes us look paranoid. Whether that is their final aim or not!
Just when did killing off somewhere upwards of seven billion people stop qualifying as genocide? Just curious as to the new definition…
Quoting Writing Observer:
I personally believe that the “primary (actually, only) goal” of parasitic organizations such as Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, etc., is to be constantly touting “fear mongering” rhetoric about most any real or imagined “noble cause” of little to no importance …… for the sole purpose of soliciting millions of dollars in “tax free” donations from the gullible public.
Televangelists, “stationary” and “travelling” Biblical preachers and ministers have been conducting a similar “scam” for the past several hundred years.
One could call it the …… Elmer Gantry Syndrome, to wit:
Money is probably the goal for some – the most hypocritical. For those who are true believers (or with imagination beyond just wealth), though, I think my analysis is accurate.
(Note that with power, money is largely irrelevant – someone like Kim in NK points and it is his. The Marxists like the Chavezes and Castros largely accumulate money because their power is not assured; they need a “bail-out” fund.)
Years ago, I lived next door to a man who worked at the Las Alamos Labs. We spoke over the fence one day and our conversation turned to the safety of nuclear energy. He told me about a report he was instructed to write, concerning whether or not water coming off a uranium processing plant was meeting the Federal Guidelines for safety. He said that these guidelines were pretty ridiculous and cost a fortune to adhere to. To make a point, he wrote that the plant did indeed meet and surpass the guidelines, making that water far less radioactive than the drinking water of many major cities. It was also far less radioactive than a popular adult beverage that built it’s advertising around the purity of the Rocky Mountain water from which it was brewed.
Of course, his original report never saw the light of day. He was reprimanded and ordered to rewrite the report without the ‘incriminating’ comparisons.
Of course, there was nothing dangerous with the drinking water in those cities, or in Coors beer (other than the alcohol). He believed that nuclear energy was the obvious choice for a replacement of fossil fuels and might actually be a lot cheaper than fossil fuels if the safety guidelines for the industry were inline with reality, and not a product of completely irrational fears.
Certainly their rhetoric would support your position. Their number one fear is overpopulation on a planet of limited resources. In their mind this is their planet because their virtue signalling proves that they care more. They are secular followers of GAIA and we non-greenie weenies are an abhorrent blight on her beauty and usurpers of their natural resources. Nuclear power won’t prevent us from using fossil fuel it will only serve to fuel the population bomb and eventually despoil GAIA. to them we are a beetle infestation and require a cleansing fire.
I discovered that they believed ‘mankind is a cancer on the face of the earth’ and ‘the optimum population of the earth is 200 million’ way back in ’95 when I did a research paper on the environmental movement for a college english comp course. My instructor said “I’d never heard anything like that.” Even then academia was living in their own little bubble.
“The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it” — H L Mencken
And
“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” — John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001
A neomarxist does not accept the culture, economy and legal right that have been handed down to us trough history. They want a radical change of our society. They love to do things that don’t work?
They hope to drive away capitalism with expensive and lack of energy?
If capitalism move to countries with affordable and ample quantities of energy like China or India. Then the Western world would lbe poor and we would oose our middle class?
Yup! Get rid of the people and idealistic fantasy societies work like a damn!
I follow Lawrence and his economic arguments focus mostly on the CANDU – a reactor designed to operate at a specified size that was scaled up and has been subject to massive cost overruns.
My principal, when I was getting my P.Eng., was an engineer who worked on many of the control features of the CANDU and maintained that the cost overruns were all caused by scaling up the design. His view was a reactor reliably designed and built to be 250 was scaled to 450, then 600, 760, 1250 and bigger, and then lumped together in groups of 4 or 8, resulted in the massive cost overruns and that this never needed to be done. His claim was that the CANDU at 250, and twinned for 30 or 30 locations around the Province, was much better than the large installations of 4 to 8 650/750/1250 units, but that empire building lead to its reduced location and larger scale. In other words, the French got it right, Ontario did not.
It is noted that he was an advocate of the heavy water style reactor though later in life he accepted that the design may not have been superior to light water reactors, as he once thought.
The CANDU reactor uses the coolant as a moderator, which makes it pretty much impossible to melt down. This is a big advantage when you are arguing against the anti-nuke crowd.
CANDU is an elegant engineering design but uneconomical. Starting off with $1BB in heavy water isn’t good for your ROI when fuel costs are actually a small fraction of your total costs already.
Nuclear power economics are heavily impacted by over-regulation, the ‘safe’ limits imposed on these installations could be increased 1000-fold without creating health risks.
People opposed to nuclear power seem to think the natural environment is radiation free but this is not the case. A truckload of bananas or cat-litter could be shipped around the country but material with a similar level of radioactivity cannot leave a nuclear plant. It’s all a bit ridiculous.
Low Dose Radiation Research (LDRR) was making significant headway before the Obama admin shut it down around 2012.
This research identified the biological repair mechanisms within cells that deal with radiation damage. These repair mechanism can repair substantial radiation damage at the cellular level that occurs continuously due to natural background radiation. That these repair mechanisms exist should not be surprising given that life evolved in a radioactive environment (cosmic rays from the sky and radioactive decay from the ground).
As the rate of radiation damage increases as the level of radioactivity is increased, the repair mechanism is overwhelmed and radiation sickness and if high enough death follows.
The current radiation standards are based upon the Linear No Threshold (LNT) theory of radiation damage. There is no scientific basis for this theory and substantial evidence for its invalidity at this point.ie. the research coming out of the LDRR, epidemiological studies, and cancer radiation therapy.
The current radiation safety standards were established by taking the results of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb and straight line extending them back to zero radiation. Later these standards were arbitrarily tightened so that now the standard for nuclear plants is about 1/10 that of natural background radiation. There are places in the world where the background radiation is about 100 times greater that the average background radiation. People in these locations do not appear to suffer any adverse effects from these much higher levels of background radiation.
The radiation standards should be raised by a factor of about 1000. In addition “walk away safe” nuclear plants are about 1000 times safer that the current Light Water Reactors that are the safest source of energy that currently exists.
The airlines kill more people per year that the nuclear industry has in its entire history.
Nuclear should be regulated similar to the airlines. Any group requesting permission to build a new type of reactor should be given approval within 6 months and land at the Idaho National Lab to build a reactor up to 100 MWe. After it is built, it would be turned over to the NRC for 6 months. The NRC would try to break it by operating it incorrectly, braking its pipes, disabling its safety systems, cutting off electricity to the reactor, turning off the connection to the grid (its heat sink), etc. It the NRC can damage reactor in 6 months of trying, the design would be rejected, otherwise a license would be issued. Any utility could purchase the rector and install it with an ordinary construction permit. Once or twice a year the NRC would visit the plant and ensure that the utility was following the operations and maintenance guidelines established by the manufacturer. This regulatory regime is similar to that which exists for the airline industry.
Fossil fuels would most likely become a historical artifact within 100 years.
There is no evidence that shows the LNT theory is incorrect. Radiation makes double stranded breaks in DNA and when those are repaired they are usually repaired via nonhomologous end joining, which is an error prone repair mechanism. That is to say, the DNA gets put together okay, but there are errors in the sequence. If that sequence is in the coding region of a gene, not usually good. One hit on a chromosome is 1/1000 of the damage from 1000 hits.
I live in Saskatchewan, where many major uranium mines are located. Years ago I attended an energy expo in Saskatoon and encountered a display by one of the big mining companies. They had a raw ore sample of a prospective mine, a similar sized piece of yellowcake and a finished fuel pellet out on a table along with a geiger counter. I believe this was from what became the Rabbit Lake Mine.
The geiger counter showed that of the three, the raw ore was by far the most radioactive. The Rabbit Lake Mine was eventually brought into production with robotic mining techniques. I also recall reading an article many years ago that argued that it was safer to mine it and use it than leave it in the surface rock at that location.
ReallySkeptical June 29, 2017 at 1:27 pm
There is strong empirical evidence that LNT is wrong. This is a useful initial link:
http://junkscience.com/category/radiation/
If you mine the Low Dose Radiation Research site maintained by the DOE, you should be able to locate a very good history of the events that triggered the real doubts about LNT. Almost all research was triggered by anomalously low rates in situations where agencies were preparing to step in to mitigate “disasters.” One incident was a notorious incident in China where an apartment building was constructed with steel “recycled” from a reactor. Chinese authorities were concerned, expecting increased health problems due to the exposure to the low dose being emitted by steel. Contrary to expectations the expected health problems were significantly below background levels. Real world data has repeatedly found similar patterns elsewhere. In fact, there is evidence that when background radiation levels are too, low chromosome repair is compromised. The LDRR of the US DoE has conducted extensive research that supports this. It even makes sense from an historical, evolutionary view point, which the LNT does not.
Through the years there are a number of studies that argue that a low dose of your favorite chemical (name it) is okay even beneficial. All the studies I have looked up have problems, usually statistical, and are never repeated.
There is a huge $$ benefit in promoting these studies by the people who have to clean up the stuff.
The evidence that LNT is wrong exists in the billions of people who live in a world that is radioactive.
How typical of a troll.
All the studies that I disagree with are invalid because I assume that they are funded by groups I detest.
“All the studies that I disagree with are invalid because I assume that they are funded by groups I detest.”
Isn’t that typical for all climate studies on Whats Up? But irony is prob’ly lost on you.
“All the studies that I disagree with are invalid because I assume that they are funded by groups I detest.”
And I dismissed the studies based on their merits not on who funded them. The studies actually are not pushed by people that had funded them, but by people who have a financial benefit in the studies being true.
So you are double wrong
You can tell a lot about a person by how they react to what is, to any sane person, good news.
We all know how warmistas react to any good news about the litany of imminent disasters they have been soiling their diapers about, and they take it as anything but good news.
Tell a green bedwetter about radiation hormesis, and they do not react as if they have just heard good news…far from it. They spout all sorts of nonsense about how they know better than any findings of an epidemiological nature indicating that this phenomenon is both real and powerfully protective.
You can also tell who has a scientific bent by these same observations…warmistas and greens do not care about objective facts…they only care about defending their propaganda and scare stories.
Scientists, and those who are predisposed to accepting evidence based findings, do not reject evidence that that does not comport with preconceived notions…they take new information and integrate it into their base of knowledge.
When someone like our friend Really Gullible here speaks, anyone who is paying attention can discern exactly what sort of person he is.
He is no scientist…he is an advocate for the dogma of the scaremongers. No matter the topic, he and his like-minded ilk can be counted on to reject out of hand anything factual if it in any way contradicts or negates the fear-based narrative they live by.
They HATE good news.
Will not tolerate anyone who has any. Will not consider any evidence that points to any.
Radiation hormesis is only one of the many ways that billions of years of evolution has equipped the life forms that inhabit out planet of reacting to any stressors in a way that is adaptive and protective.
We have protective and repair oriented mechanisms at every level of our body…the cellular level, at the level of tissues, and that of organs as well as of organ systems. And we have mechanisms at the level of our entire being.
There are some that everyone is well aware of.
When we are exposed to sunlight, our skin increases production of melanin, which protects us from the harm that can be caused by the UV in sunlight. Additional repair mechanisms are also activated, such that those who spend a lifetime outside in the sun are among the least likely to get skin cancer.
When our skin is constantly abraded, we develop calluses that protect us from damage due to abrasion.
When our muscles are damaged by strenuous exertion, they heal themselves and in so doing they become stronger.
When our bones are stressed, they become denser and far stronger.
When our bones are broken they heal in a way which makes them stronger still at the site of the break.
When we are exposed to toxins, drugs, or other chemicals, our bodies react by becoming resistant to the effects of these substances.
Such effects and mechanisms are very powerful…seemingly without limit.
Is there a limit to how strong a persons muscles and bones can get?
If there is, athletes have not reached them, as there are new records being set with regularity.
Is there a limit to how strong and resistant skin can get to damage?
Just take a look at what martial arts practitioners can do to get an idea of what is possible
There are repair mechanisms at the intracellular level, and these take many forms.
And when the repair mechanisms that are constantly fixing our DNA are unable to repair some damage, there are secondary and tertiary mechanisms that protect us…apoptosis, immune response, etc.
Radiation hormesis is well studied, and whether all of the specific mechanisms have been elucidated is irrelevant to determining the extent of the effect.
For that we have epidemiology, which cuts through the how’s and the hand waving by looking at the real effects on large numbers of people over many years, by comparing outcomes among groups of people who have and who have not been exposed to some particular source of radiation.
There are regions in the world that have very high natural levels of background radiation, such as people that live in the Kerala region of India, where monazite sand that contains 1/3 of the world’s thorium is found, are exposed for their entire lives to radiation levels that are 80-100 times that of what most people get, and yet have no increased risk of cancer at all.
The case of the apartment buildings in Taiwan which were accidentally build with steel that had been contaminated by cobalt-60 is well known and well studied. The thousands of residents of these buildings lived in them for a decade and longer before the radiation level was discovered, with gamma radiation levels over 1000 times that of average background levels. These people had rates of all cancers that were 40% lower than the general population living nearby but unexposed.
Hormesis is not surprising, and it is not mysterious.
The big mystery is how some people are immune to good news.
And how many people who claim to “believe in science” actually do anything but that.
The reason greens are against ALL base-load power sources, including nuclear, is because they make our industrialized society possible. Without base-load power we would have mass starvation and poverty, the main goal of the greens.
Yeah, that’s the bottom line. Greens want blackness. They want poverty and misery.
https://youtu.be/8i-lHi5Hqpk
When I learned back in the ’80s that CACA adherents also oppose nuclear power, I was further confirmed in my conclusion that it was yet another Loony Left sc@m, like nuclear winter and the population bomb.
Granted, a lot of concrete goes into a nuke power plant, but, I mean, come on!
Maybe it’s the GHG water vapor from the cooling towers that has their panties in a twist.
Compare the amount of concrete in a nuclear plant, to the amount of concrete needed to form the bases for enough wind turbines to create baseplate equivalent power generation. (I used baseplate equivalent because I didn’t want to get into any fights over actual utilization and backup power.)
Somehow…I do not think it is the concrete.
There is an anti-technology, Arcadian socialist core to the green blob. As they do not understand technology in general, opposing nuclear fits their basic ideology. Remember, Paul Ehrlich said that having cheap and unlimited power would be like “giving an idiot child a machine gun”.
True.
The misanthropic Green Meanies not only have contempt for the 99% of humanity not on their approved list, hence not trusting the decisions they make, but harbor a delusional level of faith in their own competence, despite all evidence to the contrary since 1917 or 1848.
I agree. Their blanket condemnation for genetically modified organisms is an example of this. They are not, at their core, a scientifically based movement.
Some folks hearken back to a simpler time when humans lived in harmony with nature and each other. The reality is that primitive societies were rather violent. link
We seem to have quit celebrating the benefits of civilization. There is the danger that, if we no longer value it, we will lose it. Some people are working toward that end. link, link
Very few people are standing up to the Marxian postmodernists. Jordan Peterson is one of the few.
Thank you Bob.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/10/29/scientists-plead-with-greenpeace-for-blind-dying-children/#comment-2329917
Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace, wrote this article circa 1994. It still rings true today.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Greenpeace was taken over by Marxists of many different stripes: Trotskyites, Leninists, Harpo’s, Groucho’s… and evolved into the watermelon outfit it is today.
http://www.ecosense.me/index.php/key-environmental-issues/10-key-environmental-issues/208-key-environmental-issues-4
Excerpt:
The Rise of Eco-Extremism
Two profound events triggered the split between those advocating a pragmatic or “liberal” approach to ecology and the new “zero-tolerance” attitude of the extremists. The first event, mentioned previously, was the widespread adoption of the environmental agenda by the mainstream of business and government. This left environmentalists with the choice of either being drawn into collaboration with their former “enemies” or of taking ever more extreme positions. Many environmentalists chose the latter route. They rejected the concept of “sustainable development” and took a strong “anti-development” stance.
SURPRISINGLY ENOUGH THE SECOND EVENT THAT CAUSED THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT TO VEER TO THE LEFT WAS THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL. SUDDENLY THE INTERNATIONAL PEACE MOVEMENT HAD A LOT LESS TO DO. PRO-SOVIET GROUPS IN THE WEST WERE DISCREDITED. MANY OF THEIR MEMBERS MOVED INTO THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT BRINGING WITH THEM THEIR ECO-MARXISM AND PRO-SANDINISTA SENTIMENTS.
THESE FACTORS HAVE CONTRIBUTED TO A NEW VARIANT OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT THAT IS SO EXTREME THAT MANY PEOPLE, INCLUDING MYSELF, BELIEVE ITS AGENDA IS A GREATER THREAT TO THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT THAN THAT POSED BY MAINSTREAM SOCIETY.
************************
In harmony with nature – that’s hunter-gatherers. In harmony with each other, that’s Utopia.
If mankind was still hunters and gatherers in ‘harmony’ with nature, nature would be decimated by now.
CACA adherents are also mass murderers and thieves. In some cases, rapists as well.
I believe Amory Lovins said something similar regarding fusion power generation. Something to the effect of: having viable nuclear fusion power would be the greatest catastrophe the in the world.
Giving society cheap, abundant energy … would be the equivalent of giving an idiot child a machine gun.
– Paul Ehrlich, “An Ecologist’s Perspective on Nuclear Power”, May/June 1978 issue of Federation of American Scientists Public Issue Report
My thought as well.
To paraphrase Sir David McKay: “The climate problem is mostly an ignorance problem.”
With ignorance comes unwarranted fears.
The whole purpose of the CPP was to cripple coal fired economics with arbitrary and impossible performance standards.
Nuclear economics are arbitrarily crippled by scores of regulations many of which neither enhance safety nor add value.
Reprocess like everybody else.
Yes. Idiotic regulations have already achieved much of the antihuman Watermelon agenda.
Remember Green Peace was originally an anti-nuclear bomb group; actually anti-Western Democracies possessing nukes. It got more and more into “environmental issues” after the rebranding of the Soviet Union.
With the same goal of crippling western economies and bring about the downfall of western countries.
They should have been labelled ‘traitors” from the beginning and handled accordingly.
Yes, traitors. These green groups are the enemy within, exploiting the freedoms in the West in undermining their mother countries. One of the, Greenpeace IIRC, tried taking on Putin in the Arctic. Ended up wetting their panties.
The goals of Dr Moore were eventually replaced by the anti-industrial, eco-communist agenda which now drives it and The Sierra Club. The environmental issues they pursue are politically motivated scare tactics to influence the captive MSM discipleship.
I don’t think that is exact. I was there at the beginning in Vancouver at the University of British Columbia.
“Greenpeace” arose out of protests of a specific event – the underground nuclear test on the island of Amchitka in the Alaskan Aleutians. There was significant fear (perhaps unwarranted) that deep underground tests could trigger activity in a geologically active zone. It then grew into protests over the French nuclear testing I. The Pacific and the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior.
So in that respect, you are correct. Greenpeace was gradually taken over by more and more radical activists who are very far from the idealistic people that started the group.
Their original fears of triggering earthquakes were almost certainly unfounded.
Earthquakes are devastating when tectonic plates stop moving in relation to each other, allowing potential energy to build up from the stress. If a nuclear test triggered an earthquake, it would likely reduce the chances of a major earthquake in that region later.
No fear of properly run nuclear, or for that matter state-of-the-art fossil fuel generated power.
That is the informed consensus.
Re James Hansen: anybody that Naomi Oreskes hates can’t be all bad. If it weren’t for the 1988 charade in the Senate, I’d think he was worth listening to.
Sorry, but no.
His belatedly getting on board with nuclear in 2013 can in no way excuse his promoting the Venus Express before then, and cooking the GISS books for decades before his ignominious “retirement” to pursue activism, as if his whole shameful career weren’t activism.
He has cost the world millions of lives and trillions of dollars. If there is any climate cr!minal at large in the world today, it’s Jimbo.
Thanks Gabro. Well said.
Yup. No point picking good guys in a fight on death row!
In addition to new nuclear plants, California needs to build at lead two new dams similar to Hoover/Boulder Dam to produce more electricity for it’s growing population. Also it will prevent uncontrolled floods and an extra supply of much needed water which it now gets from other states. ###
One dam should be enough: Dam the Golden Gate and submerge the Central Valley under 200 feet of water. Berkeley, Sacramento, Silicon Valley, and San Francisco all gone. Hollywood is a different problem and probably requires a different approach.
+10 CG :>)
…build at least two new dams…oops
That is a non-starter in Hollywood leftist circles.
I would have still been very skeptical of the claims, but I would have at least accepted that THE GREEN believed them.
Between The Climate Faithful’s still strong opposition to any workable plan to reduce CO2 production (Nuclear, Large Hydro, Switching from Coal and Oil to Gas, etc) and the jet setting, beach front mansion lifestyle of many of their Most Holy, it has always come across as a scam.
Add to that just how many times they have been caught lying, cheating, forging, bullying, and all the rest, and I Gabe up giving them the benefit of the doubt years ago.
The best, loudest, argument supporting the fact that CO2 does not cause global warming is the fact that developed countries are not replacing all comercial electrical power generators with nuclear generators. Which produce essentially zero CO2. The US could have built almost 100 with the money wasted on solar, wind and subsidies.
Seems the 500 lb gorilla in the room is nuclear waste. I do not believe it is really a technical problem at all. I wrote this a while back and would love feedback
The media is full of stories urging us to reduce the amount of C02 we generate. Both as individuals and a society we are told the future of the planet as we know it depends on a change of course. Exactly how we institute this change is open for debate.
Modern societies require huge amounts of electricity. Unfortunately, power generation is a significant source of C02. Therefore the question becomes how can we continue to increase electrical power generation while we also reduce C02 emissions?
Approximately 60 percent of the electricity in Canada comes from hydro-electric generation. Certain regions of Canada are blessed with potential to expand hydro-generation. Even though the decision to dam rivers is always controversial, only BC and Quebec are fortunate enough to have the luxury of considering this choice. Other parts of the country are not.
While important, wind, solar and tidal generated electricity will only remain supplementary sources in the foreseeable future. Even these so-called “green sources” of power have environmental footprints that still require study. So what are we to do?
Nuclear energy is the best available choice. It will increase production of electricity without a corresponding increase in C02 emissions.
Today the mere mention of the word nuclear can send some people running in fear. However a careful examination of the world’s nuclear power industry does not warrant such a response.
If we want to expand power generation while maintaining our present lifestyle we must seriously consider nuclear power generation. Every discussion about nuclear energy always starts with safety.
The investigation in to the disaster at Chernobyl found it was a direct result of engineers turning off several redundant safety systems which pushed the reactor output to near 10 times its normal range. Excluding Chernobyl, the nuclear power industry in general and in Canada specifically has an excellent safety record over nearly four decades.
The first Canadian reactor came on line in 1971. Today we have 16 operational reactors supplying about 15 percent of Canada’s electricity. Most of these are in Ontario with one in both Quebec and New Brunswick.
Globally there are approximately 450 nuclear reactors generating electricity. Combined, the world’s nuclear reactors generate approximately 2500 TWh (a tera watt hour is one billion kilowatt hours) of electricity annually. If coal fired or natural gas facilities were used to generate this same amount of electricity the atmosphere would receive an additional 2.4 billion tonnes of C02 each year. Clearly, increasing the number of fossil fuel consuming generation plants is not a good option as they would add to C02 emission levels.
However the elephant in the room is nuclear waste. Presently in Canada there are about two million used fuel rods held under water in stable, secure interim storage facilities. This is equivalent to one soccer field five feet deep. Some will say this represents far too much of a danger while others are surprised to learn how little waste was actually generated by thirty five years of nuclear power generation.
Long-term management of the waste has been the focus of decades of study.
Two different government sponsored reports, the Hare report in 1977 and the Porter Commission in 1978 agreed that isolation of the used fuel in granite rock was the best option. In response the government created the Canadian Nuclear Fuel Waste Management Program (CNFWMP). This program was charged with developing the technology for long-term storage of our nuclear waste. In 1988 the CNFWMP submitted its generic (non-site-specific) proposal for long-term nuclear used fuel management to government.
This report initiated an Environmental Review process which took another ten years to complete. The proposal would have spent fuel rods placed in vaults 500-1000 feet deep in the granite rock of the Canadian Shield. The fuel would be encased in corrosion-resistant containers designed to last thousands of years. These containers would then be surrounded by bentonite clay to retard water migration. Finally the individual tunnels would be backfilled and sealed.
Keep in mind that even if the containment fails in a thousand years, at that point in time the level of radioactivity of the used fuel will be the same as the ore presently mined for fuel. Therefore this type of envisioned storage facility does not represent any new environmental risk beyond those already found near Saskatchewan’s radioactive ore deposits.
It has been estimated the total cost of such a facility would be 9-13 billion dollars spread over the 75 year lifespan of the site. In fact electricity users in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick already contribute 1 percent of their electricity costs to a fund set up to pay for the storage of the used nuclear fuel.
Technically the problem of used nuclear fuel storage has been solved but politically the answer has remained unacceptable. If we are going to get serious about C02 emissions then we have little choice but to move ahead with development of increased nuclear power generation. There is no free lunch and those who would stop progress by demanding zero risk need to step aside and let the rest of us get on with implementing viable options to our present C02 emission problem.
Robert Wager is a Laboratory Demonstrator at Malaspina University College in Nanaimo BC
Globe and Mail Update
June 15, 2007 at 1:07 PM EDT
Most of the issue with nuclear waste is due to the “once through” fuel cycle pushed in the US by Jimmy Carter. The very radioactive portion of the spent fuel is short-lived, and will rapidly decay if separated out. The “no reprocessing” notion was based on a damnfool notion that it would deter bomb proliferation. Since the 1970’s, no country has made a bomb by extracting plutonium from power reactor fuel.
However, it appears that North Korea and Iran shut down their reactors periodically to do just that.
Not to defend Carter, since there’s no way to stop rogue states from doing that.
As far as I know, the cycle to produce bomb plutonium is quite different than that used for power production. The Iranians have isotope separation facilities, so reprocessing is not the major approach they are using for bomb production. If the North Koreans did use power reactor plutonium for a bomb, it could account for the “fizzles” they have had.
Tom,
It isn’t. I live near Hanford. The Pu for the Nagasaki bomb came from reactors which produced Pu, without the heat being used to generate power. Such a waste, but it was a war expedient.
The Pu was separated, just as Iran and the Norks do now. Yes, they both also have other sources of fissile material, but also rely on Pu extraction.
Isotope producing reactors, like Hanford, are run differently than power reactors. There are at least two Pu isotopes, 240 and 241, and more Pu241 is produced in a power reactor, as the uranium is in the reactor longer. Pu241 predetonates at a much higher rate than Pu240, so it is undesirable in bombs. A purported power reactor could produce bomb-grade plutonium, but the management would be different.
i really should not comment past midnight. Pu 239 and Pu240, not 240 and 241.
Tom,
The management has been just as I mentioned.
Both Iran at Busher, and North Korea at its supposedly power reactors, shut them down to extract the Pu. They sacrifice power generation for Pu extraction.
Tom,
I knew what you meant.
But the fact remains that both Iran and North Korea have repeatedly shut down their supposed power reactors to extract the Pu, which was the real reason for their existence in the first place. As should be obvious in the case of oil and gas-rich Iran.
Gabro your remarks merit a specific response. The North Korean reactor is of a specific type which is no more used anywhere else in the world, it was initially conceived to generate plutonium and not power. It generates power from natural uranium and turning it into plutonium at the same time with gas cooling. It’s specifically conceived so that it’s much easier to stop it frequently and the North Korean actually don’t use it to generate any electricity, they just run it a short while, accumulate some plutonium, then stop it and extract the plutonium.
However even though all that, it tends to generate not only bomb-useful Pu239, but also bomb-poisoning Pu240, and it’s widely thought that the fizzle the Koreans got in their first nuclear tries was due to too much Pu240 in the plutonium they had extracted.
When we talk about the nuclear reactors that are usually used, water cooled, and running on enriched uranium, it’s much more complex to stop the reactor and extract the fuel, the whole process takes more than a week, the fuel comes as already enriched uranium surrounded by complex layers of metal and zirconium to protect it, so it would be a lot of work to remove that to get to the uranium. And in order not to accumulate Pu240, you would have to remove the fuel very fast to do it when it has also has had time to generate only a small amount of Pu239, you would not be able to put the fuel inside the reactor again as you had to destroy it to get the Pu239 out, so you’d have to order new one. But then your fuel provider would be more than suspicious seeing that you had fuel usable for 2 years, and you used used less than a month and already order new one. So in practice it’s not a real proliferation channel by a far stretch.
Even if you use fuel recycling, fuel that has spent the normal 2 years in a PWR contains plutonium within the range of 30% Pu240 or even more, and yet more other unusable plutonium isotopes, so is not usable in any efficient, industrial bomb.
About Iran, it’s not doing any of the above. It has a water cooled PWR reactor at Bushehr, there’s absolutely no suspicion from anymore, no question about the fact that it’s not using it for proliferation.
What it was doing is much simpler and more direct, it used centrifuges to concentrate U235 from natural uranium and going the way of uranium bombs instead of plutonium ones. And it also has a research, heavy water reactor, that is just simple uranium bars plunged inside a pool of water, that it might try to use someday to generate plutonium, but this has also nothing to see with an electricity generating reactor.
Iran’s enrichment program has been much reduced as a result of the international treaty:
“Iran, with cooperation from the “Working Group” (the P5+1 and possibly other countries), will modernise and rebuild the Arak heavy water research reactor based on an agreed design to support its peaceful nuclear research and production needs and purposes, but in such a way to minimise the production of plutonium and not to produce weapons-grade plutonium. The power of the redesigned reactor will not exceed 20 MWth. The P5+1 parties will support and facilitate the timely and safe construction of the Arak complex. All spent fuel will be sent out of the country. All excess heavy water which is beyond Iran’s needs for the redesigned reactor will be made available for export to the international market based on international prices. In exchange, Iran received 130 tons of uranium in 2015 and in late 2016 was approved to receive 130 tons in 2017. For 15 years, Iran will not engage in, or research on, spent fuel reprocessing. Iran will also not build any additional heavy-water reactors or accumulate heavy water for fifteen years.
Iran’s Fordow facility will stop enriching uranium and researching uranium enrichment for at least fifteen years; the facility will be converted into a nuclear physics and technology center. For 15 years, Fordow will maintain no more than 1,044 IR-1 centrifuges in six cascades in one wing of Fordow. “Two of those six cascades will spin without uranium and will be transitioned, including through appropriate infrastructure modification,” for stable radioisotope production for medical, agricultural, industrial, and scientific use. “The other four cascades with all associated infrastructure will remain idle.” Iran will not be permitted to have any fissile material in Fordow
Which is what Obama’s agreement is supposed to do with Iran. The US also signed an agreement with the North Koreans under Clinton, which was purported to stop their nuclear program. How did that one work out?
jmdesp June 29, 2017 at 3:53 am
There is not only suspicion but proof from the US and Israeli governments that the starting and stopping of Bushehr was to obtain Pu. Here’s an unclassified explanation of how it could be done (and in fact has been), from last year:
Iran’s Bushehr Nuclear Power Reactor:
A Potential Source of Plutonium for Nuclear Weapons
http://nebula.wsimg.com/0bde4bc34f1c736b5d635c12f23bec87?AccessKeyId=40C80D0B51471CD86975&disposition=0&alloworigin=1
Whatever problems the Norks had with separating out fissile Pu in the 1990s, they long ago solved.
Gabro June 28, 2017 at 10:22 pm
Tom,
The management has been just as I mentioned.
Both Iran at Busher, and North Korea at its supposedly power reactors, shut them down to extract the Pu. They sacrifice power generation for Pu extraction.
And then the Russians ship out of the country, seems rather pointless.
“ I wrote this a while back and would love feedback”
If you send me 3 kilos of Nanaimo bars, …
Sorry, it was just too hard to remain serious with the vision “Nanaimo” caused.
Greens tell us if we keep emitting CO2 we could make the planet uninhabitable.
How can any nuclear waste issue compare to the risk of total destruction of the biosphere?
Green opposition to nuclear still doesn’t make sense.
James Hansen claiming the oceans will begin to boil
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ACHLayfA6_4
Mr Worrall good sir, thank you for this little bit of entertainment, I needed a pick-me-up 🙂
Old Jimbo Hansen didn’t figure water is denser than air, he thinks they get to 100c at the same rate
Reminds me of the WMAP project, when they launched COBE they never figured water in the atmosphere emits microwaves that refract over it’s shield 😀
Run away Greenhouse…Run Away
One of my very favorite James Hansen speeches!
How is going to read this without paragraph breaks? Jesus.
All good Mr. Wagner—-but CO2 is NOT AN EMISSION—OR A PROBLEM.
Robert Wager June 28, 2017 at 8:07 pm
Has anyone in Canada seriously looked at SYNROC as a waste disposal option. Developed in the 1970’s at ANU in Canberra by Ted Ringwood it is a very sensible alternative to borosilicate glass encapsulation and burial. Uses carbonaceous shale rather than bentonite to pack around the fuel canisters…much better at trapping any radioactive material that might escape.
Nuclear waste is a not an issue except for the anti nukes.
A 1 GWe Light Water Reactor (LWR) produces about 25 tons of “waste” per year. Only 1 ton is fission products that are true waste except for radioactive isotopes that are very valuable medical material for cancer radiation treatment and tracing. The other 24 tons are fuel for fast reactors.
The French generate about 80% of their electricity from LWRs and have done so for at least 25 years. They recycle their nuclear waste and store what is left under the floor in a building the size of a basketball court.
If you really want to get rid of the “waste”, you could mix it in glass, encase it in ceramic, encase that in steel and drop it into the Pacific and let it drop 5 miles thru the water and bury itself 50 feet into a mud flat. After 3,000 years its radioactivity would be about the level of natural background radiation. If after 10,000 years some radioactive atoms managed to migrate out of the glass, thru the ceramic and steel, they would emerge into 50 feet of mud. Assuming they made it to the surface, they would dissolve into the Pacific Ocean, 5 miles deep and 7000 miles wide. More likely the density of the radioactive atoms would be greater than mud and the atoms would sink deeper into the mud. For the truly paranoid, the waste could be dumped over a subduction zone and would slowly sink into the center of the Earth.
For those who point out that it is illegal to dump radioactive waste into the ocean, I would point out the the the Organization of Islamic States/OPEC is the largest voting block at the United Nations with 57 member. The UN is also the source of the IPCC and the Global Warming hoax. Nuclear is the greatest threat to the $1 trillion dollars transferred annually from the West to OPEC.
“Big Oil” and “King Coal” allied with “Big Green” in the West to shut down the nuclear industry which because it is so efficient does not have the necessary voters to generate political power.
For LWRs, every year 200 tons of Uranium at .7% U235 is enriched producing 25 tons for the reactor at 3.5% U235 and 175 tons of depleted uranium at .3-.4 U235. The annual “waste” is 175 tons of depleted uranium and 25 tons of spent nuclear fuel.
In the US there is about 500,000 tons of depleted uranium stored. This is primarily U238. In a fast reactor it could produce all the electricity needed by the US for about 1000 years.
For Sodium Fast Reactors, 400 tons of U at .7% U235 is enriched to produce two 5 ton cores at 15% U235 and 390 tons of depleted uranium. Each core can fuel the reactor for 1 year. After a year the the core is recycled, the fission products are removed and 1 ton of depleted uranium is added to replace the removed fission products. The recycled core is good for another year.
Thus a regional enrichment plant would produce the two cores and 390 tons of depleted uranium. That would be shipped to a SFR site and provide fuel for 390 years. The recycling would occur on site using pyroprocessing. After 390 years, the site would have 390 tons of fission product “waste”. After storage for 300-400 years this waste would return to background levels of radiation and could be dumped into an abandoned mine.
There is no technical nuclear waste problem; their is a political nuclear waste problem. There are extremely strict radioactivity safety standards with no scientific basis, there is a ban on recycling, and the NRC makes it next to impossible to update 50 year old nuclear technology.
@ur momisugly Robert Wagne
Nuclear waste is a political problem, not a technical problem.
The French have generated 80% of their electricity from nuclear for about 25 years. They recycle their waste and store what is left under the floor of a building about the size of a basketball court.
For Light Water Reactors, every year 25 tons of fuel is fed into the reactor and 25 tons of “waste” emerges from the reactor. Of this 25 tons, 1 ton is fission products which contain very valuable radioactive isotopes for medical purposes. The rest of the fission products is the true waste. After 300-400 years, this waste return to radioactivity levels the same as natural background radiation.
The other 24 tons of “waste” is fuel for fast reactors primarily U238.
Supposing we really wanted to get rid of this 25 tons of “waste”, we could mix it in glass, encase it in ceramic, encase that in steel, drop it thru 5 miles of the Pacific Ocean, and then have it burrow 50 feet into a mud flat. After about 3000 years, the radioactivity of this canister would return to the level of natural background radiation. After 10,000 years some radioactive atoms may have migrated thru the glass, ceramic, and steel into the mud. If some of these atoms make it thru 50 feet of mud, they will be under 5000 feet of water that is 7000 miles wide and 5000 miles long. The Pacific is already slightly radioactive from natural sources and this addition will make no difference. However, the radioactive atoms will probably be more dense than the mud and they will fall even deeper into the mud. For the truly paranoid, the canister can be dropped into a subduction zone and it will disappear over a long period of time into the center of the earth.
For those who point out that it is illegal under international law to drop radioactive material into the ocean, the Organization of Islamic States/OPEC is the largest voting bloc in the United Nations with 57 members. Nuclear energy is the greatest threat for the $1 trillion that OPEC collects from the West every year for oil. Big Green is also allied with OPEC, Big Oil, and King Coal in their opposition to nuclear. Because nuclear is extraordinarily efficient, there are few voters in the nuclear industry to influence politicians.
Every year 200 tons of uranium is processed to produce 25 tons of 3.5% U235 and 175 tons of depleted uranium at .3-.4% U235. 199 tons of the uranium is wasted. Only 1 ton is converted to fission products. There are 500,000 tons of depleted uranium stored in the US. In a fast reactor, this could provide the US with all the electricity that it needs for about 1000 years.
For a Sodium Fast Reactor, 400 tons of uranium would be enriched to 2 cores of 5 tons at 15% U235 and 390 tons of depleted uranium. The two cores and the 390 tons of depleted uranium would be shipped to the fast reactor site. After a year, one core is removed from the reactor and the other core is put into the reactor. The removed core is recycled using pyroprocessing. One ton of fission products is removed from the core and one ton of depleted uranium is added to the core. This recycled core can fuel the reactor for another year. Thus the reactor site is fueled for 390 years with the initial delivery. Since the reactor has no moving parts (electromagnetic pumps) and sodium is not corrosive to ordinary stainless steel (no exotic alloys required), the estimated lifetime of the reactor at 60 years is a very conservative guess.
After 390 years, the reactor site has produced 390 tons of fission products. After the fission products have been removed from the reactor for 300-400 years, the radioactivity of the fission products will return to the level of natural background radiation. This nuclear waste could be dumped down an abandoned mineshaft.
Thus it should be clear that nuclear “waste” is a political problem, not a technical problem. Worst case the 25 tons of LWR “waste” could be dumped into the Pacific with no adverse effect. Better would be to lift the ban on recycling and introduce Sodium Fast Reactors to use the “waste” to generate electricity. NRC reform is required for this to happen.
Robert Wager wrote: “… the future of the planet as we know it depends on a change of course. Exactly how we institute this change is open for debate.”
If only that were true. The whole purpose of the global warming scare is to rake in tax money and take control of the worlds energy resources, on the path to a new world order. Those orchestrating the scare don’t want a cheap, reliable alternative to replace fossil fuels. They want us to use fossil fuels and tax the hell out of us for doing so, in the name of saving the planet. The so-called green energy solutions that are acceptable (wind and solar) have been chosen because they will not work.
It is obvious that the AGW theory is wrong.
It is obvious that warming is generally good for the planet’s biosphere.
It is obvious that more CO2 in the atmosphere is greening the planet
It is obvious that we could easily adapt to any change that might occur, now more than ever.
It is obvious that wind and solar will never replace fossil fuels
It is obvious that nuclear energy is safe, and there are good solutions to dealing with nuclear waste.
It is obvious that nuclear energy could satisfy our needs for energy well into the future.
While all of these things are obvious, it is almost a crime to point out any one of them. Debate is not allowed! The ‘science’ is settled. Anyone attempting to bring up the obvious is demonized as being against the noble cause of ‘saving the planet’!
We have seen this many times throughout human history:
Adopt a noble cause.
Exaggerate the threat to that noble cause.
Propose the one and only solution for saving the noble cause from the threat.
Demonize those who oppose your solution as being against the noble cause.
Require a sacrifice from the masses (freedom and wealth) to implement your solution
Every despot has used these 5 steps to seize power over the population. That is what is happening now. This is not about climate change or nuclear power or saving the planet. This is simply another in a long line of attempts to rule the masses. The amazing thing is that the masses almost never see it coming. They often cheer the approaching despotism, as if it will be their salvation, only to find that it was really their subjugation,
Fortunately, Mother nature is not cooperating and the obvious is becoming obvious to more and more people each day, as free communication is a serious thorn in the side of would be despots.. This particular assault on our freedom and wealth may fail in the long run. Of course, there will be others.
Whether green activists embrace nuclear power has never been relevent to me, because the whole CO2-warming the climate was a non-argument from the beginning, and still is, for common sense reasons.
To this day, there are no “experts” on Earth’s climate. No scientist or group of scientists understands what changes our climate even to the remotest degree, or can predict what it will do. To use the analogy that our climate system is a 1000 piece puzzle, we are aware of only a few pieces of the puzzle, and have little if any understanding of how the pieces interact, what time scales, of a hugely complex and largely chaotic system with 100’s of variables.
How climate variables interact and change climate has never been taught in schools because it isn’t known, other than a few theories for what causes ice ages etc.The shaming “Denier” label for those who question AGW, and the “scientific consensis” to promote the fallacy that the “science is settled” on this massive, complex, and little understood subject should be raising huge red flags to the public, but isn’t.
Attempting to accurately predict what the earth’s climate will be like five years, twenty years or a hundred years from now ……. is akin to accurately predicting the exact path of a steel ball bearing after it has been “shot” out onto the “playing field” of a Pinball Machine, …… like so:
Love those pinball machines!
Steam might actually be a climate crime?
Steam is actually invisible, what you can see is clouds or fog, tiny droplets of condensed liquid water. Liquid water and steam (water vapor) have significantly different spectral properties.
Liquid water and ice have far more similar spectral properties than either has with vapor. As far as I can tell, nobody knows if clouds/fog have different properties yet.
How ironic would it be, if human water vapor warmed the planet more than CO2?
Human Water Vapor has almost certainly warmed the planet to a far greater amount than human CO2. But CO2 is far easier to vilify than H2O though DiHydrogen-Monoxide certainly gets Ban Votes from unthinking ProAGW activists
https://www.youtube.com/#/results?q=ban%20dihydrogen%20monoxide&sm=1
Unlike CO2, water vapour and pollutants have short life span in the atmosphere with little cumulative effect and thus vary with season to season, region to region and location to location and thus we see sudden changes in temperature in a given day. In fact ecological changes part includes changes in land and water use and cover. We are changing land, we are changing water with the time. They come under urban heat island effect and rural cold island effect [when we put water on hot surface, the temperature falls].
CO2 with its long life in the atmosphere, we say global warming. While water changes with general circulation pattern though it is short lived and thus has two components (1) energy transfer in terms of heat adds to temperature and (2) solar and earth energy transferred in to temperature.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy June 29, 2017 at 3:57 am
And just what does the life span of a gas molecule in the atmosphere …….. have to do with the life span of the thermal (heat) energy that is/was absorbed by a gas molecule in the atmosphere?
The thermal (heat) energy that is absorbed by a gas molecule in the atmosphere is NOT cumulative from one day to the next or from one year to the next.
That absorbed thermal (heat) energy of an atmospheric gas molecule …… is here today, ….. but gone tomorrow, …… unless it is re-absorbed the next day.
So it matters not a twit to the temperature of the near-surface atmosphere as to whether it is the atmospheric CO2 molecules or the H2O molecules that are absorbing and emitting said thermal (heat) energy.
How do you measure a life span of water vapour in the atmosphere? If it condenses, is it gone forever? Does CO2 dissolve in condensed water droplets? Once it dissolves, is it gone forever?
Dr. Reddy, I would point out that the reason water vapour has a short duration in the atmosphere is because it loses energy readily, and the energy of vaporization is typically released at altitudes where the resultant LWIR will almost always return to space. That is, the water vapour might retain warmth for a short span, but it ultimately cools the system. You can observe this process where you can watch virga falling from a cloud. The virga can’t form unless the parent vapor releases energy. If the virga doesn’t reach the ground as rain, then it evaporates and takes another measure of energy of vaporization upward. In effect, H2O operates as a evaporative cooling subsystem in the the climate.
A response to “tit for tat comments” of little to no value except to the “warminist” agitprop’ers.
A response to “tit for tat comments” of little to no value except to the “warminist” agitprop’ers.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy June 29, 2017 at 3:57 am
Duster June 29, 2017 at 9:16 pm
Technically and correctly stated as a fact of science, when comparing ppm quantity to ppm quantity, atmospheric H2O vapor ppm DOES NOT HAVE a shorter life span in the earth’s atmosphere than does the atmospheric CO2 ppm, ……. except maybe in locales where near surface air temperatures are like -50F to -100F or at extremely high altitudes (Mauna Loa Observatory).
The fact is, the measured atmospheric CO2 ppm on June 28, 2017 was determined to be 408.24 ppm …… or as a percentage of all atmospheric gasses it would be stated as…… 0.040824%.
So, to prove that atmospheric H2O vapor has a shorter life span in the atmosphere than does atmospheric CO2, …… one would have to find a locale on the near-earth surface where the H2O vapor content of the air is LESS THAN …… 0.040824%.
A near impossible task, me thinks.
Wet bulb temperature [Tw] in degrees Celsius as a function of dry-bulb temperature [T] in degrees Celsius, relative humidity [h] in percent and station level pressure [p] in mbars is given as:
Tw = T [0.45 + {0.006h (p/1060)1/2}]
The total moisture content of the atmosphere is expressed by the precipitable water vapour [W in gm/cm2] in the atmosphere. This is defined as the depth of liquid water that would result by condensing all the vapour in the vertical column of the atmosphere over one square centimeter cross-section. W is a function of Tw is given below:
Tw = c [W] 1/2 or W = c’ [Tw]2
Simple formulae for the estimation of wet bulb temperature and precipitable water, S. J. Reddy, Indian J. Met. Hydrol. Geophys. (1976) 27: 163-166
This is a self explanatory — relative humidity is not a cumulative over years but vary with year and season based on the existing weather.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Wet bulb, dry bulb, ……. who cares, …… this discussion is not about the measurement of relative humidity.
So, tell me, Dr. Reddy, was the atmospheric H2O vapor less than 0.0408% on June 28, 2017, ….. which was what the atmospheric CO2 was?
If the H2O vapor was not less than 0.0408% on June 28, 2017, then how is it possible for one to claim that the H2O vapor has a shorter life span in the atmosphere than does the CO2?
Dr. Reddy, the literal fact is, some of the CO2 molecules that are emitted into the atmospheric have an extremely short lifespan therein, ……. whereas other CO2 molecules that are emitted into the atmospheric have an extremely long lifespan therein,
And the above literal fact also applies to the H2O vapor molecules that are emitted into the atmosphere whereas some have an extremely short lifespan therein, ……. whereas other H2O molecules that are emitted into the atmospheric have an extremely long lifespan therein,
Dr. Reddy, iffen you want to claim that H2O droplets (mists, fogs, clouds) have a shorter life span in the atmosphere than does the majority of CO2 molecules, ……. then I can agree with that.
I think you failed to understand [what I said in my first comment] the cumulative and non-cumulative impact. In CO2 with long life span the new emissions are added to the atmosphere CO2 and thus its impact on energy to convert into temperature. This is the whole philosophy of global warming — though there is no agreement on the sensitivity factor. In the case of water vapour in the atmosphere is not cumulative but vary with season to season and day to day as is seen in relative humidity. Though CO2 presents a seasonal and diurnal variation, it shows an increasing trend but no such trend with years is seen in water vapour.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
July 2, 2017 at 3:47 am
Excuse me, ….. Mr. Reddy, ….. but I understood perfectly what you stated in your 1st comment , ….. and in my opinion it was little more than the normal “tripe n’ piffle” being mimicked by someone who, for whatever reason, continues to avert their eyes and their mind to the factual science of the natural world.
Mr. Reddy, ….. I responded to your 1st comment via this post ….. which you completely ignored by averting your eyes and your mind to the contents/context of said posting, ….. as well as to my 2nd posting ….. and thus instead of responding to my commentary/questions it appears you attempted to “bedazzle the hell out of me with your expertise” …… by posting non-subject garbage commentary about “relative humidity and air temperatures”.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy, …… currently, in the near-surface atmosphere of 95+% of the earth’s surface the atmospheric CO2 ppm is currently measured and/or calculated to be an average of 403 ppm …….. whereas the atmospheric H20 vapor ppm in that same near-surface atmosphere of 95+% of the earth’s surface is currently measured and/or calculated to be an average of 25,000 to 30,000 ppm, with said H2O vapor ppm decreasing in desert areas and increasing to 40,000 ppm in tropical areas, ….. so tell me, ….. how is it possible that a 100 ppm increase in CO2 during the past 120 years caused a 1C or 1F, or whatever, increase in air temperatures ……… but a 15,000 to 25,000 ppm increase in H2O vapor ppm during most any of the NH mid-latitudes summer months will have no effect on air temperatures?
Seems to me that if a 100 ppm increase in the less potent greenhouse gas would cause 1+- degree increase in air temperatures …….. then a 20,000+- ppm increase in the most potent greenhouse gas would surely cause a 100 to 200+ degree increase in air temperatures.
Human combustion is close to the surface and it produces a lot of water. The alkanes we prefer to burn produce a lesser ratio of water to CO2 than human respiration or burning dung, but all combustion produces water.
Water has a shorter residence time in the atmosphere than CO2, but its absorption bands are weaker, unsaturated, and far more dispersed across the earth IR spectrum.
Samuel C Cogar — Scientific ethics in the usage of language is more important.
The impact of greenhouse gases versus the Suns energy in different wave lengths [short-wave and long-wave]. The major player is water vapour. That means global temperature is primarily controlled by water vapour, modified by the Climate System at the Earth’s surface.
The issue is not this in global warming. The increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is a cumulative, as the life span of CO2 is around 1000 years [recently through the articles in this web presented it is around 40 years] while Methane is few years.
The magnitude in numerical terms is not an issue here. The life of water vapour is around a day. Based on weather on a given day changes this, which is shown as a function of relative humidity. But this has no trend with years.
Your observation “Seems to me that if a 100 ppm increase in the less potent greenhouse gas would cause 1+- degree increase in air temperatures …….. then a 20,000+- ppm increase in the most potent greenhouse gas would surely cause a 100 to 200+ degree increase in air temperatures.” — I am not saying on this line. I am against the global warming theory, more particularly on the sensitivity factor. The details on climate change aspects presented in my latest book [2016] “Climate Change and its impacts: Ground Realities” and earlier (2008) book “Climate Change: Myths & Realities”:
In the case of global warming lifespan is the basic that integrates the cumulative effect. Whether this cumulative effect really transform in to raise in temperature depends upon the correctly defining sensitivity factor. IPCC goes on reducing this factor.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
Thank you, Dr. Reddy, I appreciated your reasoned response, …… and I agree 100% with this statement and was pleased that you posted said, to wit:
“The major player is water vapour. That means global temperature is primarily controlled by water vapour, modified by the Climate System at the Earth’s surface. ”
And I guess that we will just have to agree to disagree about what I call all those “silly claims” concerning the life span of atmospheric gases, …. specifically that of CO2.
When the current Interglacial ends ……. those “life span” numbers will decrease dramatically and the Keeling Curve will begin a downward swing of a few ppm/year
Cheers, Sam C
I’m sorry, but our largest nuclear power source has been credibly connected to such things as skin cancer. It is known to radiate at frequencies that demonstrably destroy ozone. It affects ocean currents on a global scale, and the evidence that it plays a role in the generation of severe weather is incontrovertible. While evidence that it fluctuates in a manner that influences the climate of the entire globe is not conclusive, it is logical given all the other effects we are certain of that this is a real possibility.
I demand that the Sun be turned off.
David,
NICE ! ! !
“You know what no one talks about anymore? Pussy farts.”
Nuclear power is so far off the Green agenda it will never come back. California, at this very moment, is gleefully decommissioning the Diablo Canyon plant (now there’s a name destined to be loved by the general public), which has been reliably and safely delivering one third of LA’s base load energy for about 50 years.
There’s no accounting for any of this.
PS: That was a quote from George Carlin, may he rest in gleeful peace…
Some people see a crisis has an ‘opportunity’ the Greens see an energy crisis has such. For it offers a chance to force unto people , in the name of energy conservation, ideas then never otherwise accept. Such as an end to any private ownership of motorized transport and forced communal living in the name of ‘saving the planet’ Although they longer say it in public , the Greens still consider energy to be to cheap to buy and to easy to get and if the price to pay for changing that is in bodies, they are fine with that too.
Quite so knr. green energy is NOT reliable as people are finding to their cost.
I recall reading long ago that the carbon scare was initiated by M. Thatcher in a bid to break the backs of coal unions through the promotion of nuclear power. Sting penned “Black Seam” to chronical this struggle and promote coal over nuclear. Always a brilliant singer, but always on the wrong of political arguments.
The Guardian has published two articles:
29th June 2017 “Failure to update building regulations could triple heatwave deaths by 2040” ans 28th June 2017 “World has three years left to stop dangerous climate change, warn experts
“https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/29/failure-to-update-building-regulations-could-triple-heatwave-deaths-by-2040
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/28/world-has-three-years-left-to-stop-dangerous-climate-change-warn-experts
Such poor quality articles appear in The Guardian written by people with little understanding of climate change. For example, there is vast differences between heatwaves and urban heat island effect and global warming is hardly 0.15 oC so far and how can anybody say “three years left” like Al Gore story of five years left and later withdrawn.
So also the case with nuclear power plants. The nuclean power plants are worst than thermal power plants. However, this helps people to earn illegal money by several ways in the process of establishing nuclear power plant and urnanium mining, process, etc. There are six stages in this fraud. People manufactured poor quality equipment and wanted to dump them in developing countries. I am one of the few fighting against urnanium mining and establishing of nuclear power plants in India. I wrote several articles on these issues.
Dr. S. Jeevananda Reddy
I understand – safety practices are far from ideal in some countries. I remember reading something about an Indian nuclear plant under construction. The foundations were heavily damaged by the Asian Tsunami. Rather than taking the Tsunami as a warning that the site was unsuitable, moving the plant to higher ground, the construction team washed away the mud from the Tsunami and resumed construction.
China is probably among those countries.
this reports a Chinese scientist’s view of nuclear safety in his country:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/25/china-nuclear-power-plants-expansion-he-zuoxiu
considering new reactors in the UK have a Chinese involvement and/or may be built by china, UK citizens are worried about new reactors
“Failure to update building regulations could triple heatwave deaths by 2040.” In the wake of Grenfell Tower fire this sounds extremely cynical. Does The Guardian intend to consider a fire a heatwave?
The environmental need for nuclear power was known by David Siri, head of the Sierra Club in 1966, and Ansel Adams, James Lovelock,..President Kennedy (http://tinyurl.com/6xgpkfa ), and today, scientists around the world…
https://en.tempo.co/read/news/2017/02/08/055844486/Nobel-Laureate-Underlines-Importance-of-Nuclear-Energy
https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/ecomodernist-podcast/id1187756406 (Allison)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/opinion/to-slow-global-warming-we-need-nuclear-power.html
http://climatechange.environment.harvard.edu/joseph-lassiter
http://www.nci.org/conf/rhodes/index.htm
Lovelock 2013 — “We nuclear power soon”…
http://tinyurl.com/kn22qcn (Hansen, Caldeira, Emanuel, Wigley)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2486894/Scientists-urge-climate-groups-nuclear-power-warn-wind-solar-fulfil-worlds-energy-needs.html
http://decarbonisesa.com/2014/06/30/another-climate-scientist-joins-calls-for-nuclear/
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/news/scientists-tell-greenies-embrace-nuclear-save-plan/2502717/
http://www.science20.com/news_articles/james_hansen_to_mitigate_climate_change_nuclear_energy_should_be_included-154923
http://tinyurl.com/m5qp8vf
http://tinyurl.com/necct2l
(Hansen vs Big Green)
http://tinyurl.com/nh3bsh6
“I also recommend that the public stop providing funds to anti nuke environmental groups. Send a letter saying why you are withdrawing your support. Their position is based partly on fear of losing support from anti-nuke donors, and they are not likely to listen to anything other than financial pressure. If they are allowed to continue to spread misinformation about nuclear power, it is unlikely that we can stop expanded hydro-fracking, continued destructive coal mining, and irreversible climate change.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNnaTKfUQ3Y (2017)
http://epillinois.org/news/2016/4/6/james-hansen-condemns-bernie-sanders-fear-mongering-against-indian-point
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/24/more-views-on-nuclear-power-waste-safety-and-cost/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1
http://www.slideshare.net/Revkin/dot-nuclear-1-2214-lettersigned-by-4-nuclear-scientists-and-engineers
https://www.facebook.com/download/823098194404759/An-Open-Letter-to-Environmentalists.pdf
http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/news/10.1063/PT.4.2433
Indeed, Fukushima is an example of nuclear power’s safety — even an improperly regulated plant built on a site that had 25 meters of natural elevation removed before construction, didn’t kill anyone. The Japanese govt., however, did kill ~18,000 people by allowing home/business construction in a known tsunami zone. And improperly-sited gas storage facilities also killed folks. http://tinyurl.com/o852xg5
So the obligation we have to all is to be honest brokers of information, especially given rapidly-approaching environmental tragedies we’re leaving our descendants. Anti-nuclear power writers/speakers are contributing to problems, not solutions. That includes uninformed management at today’s Sierra Club, NRDC, FoE, Greenpeace, etc. They could educate themselves and members, if they cared.
—
Dr. A. Cannara
650 400 3071
(You have a lot to say.but too many links will not help you here,suggest that you condense it into a smaller post instead) Mod
Problem with nuclear is a security (military and terrorism) rather than a safety (accidents) issue. Whereas safety is a matter of investing in technical layout the fear of security is more difficult to address. If only 10 percent of the funds dedicated to solar and wind had been invested in modernising nuclear (conventiona)l nuclear powerplants would be safer than windturbines. Safety issues arise from overaged poor design facilities.
I think not. Nuclear power plants are not a security issue. No fissile material from a power plant can be made into a bomb or even extracted from the plant within a time-frame that wouldn’t see half the army turn out to make you put it back.
It’s all a complete beat-up.
But, the same centrifuges that can be used to make fissile weapons grade Uranium can be used to make nuclear fuel. It is difficult to have one process without the possibility of the other. Nuclear proliferation is one of the main concerns.
Bryan A, that’s not an argument against using nuclear in ‘Western’ economies. The security issue is an old one used by green movements without any reasonable justification.
And even in the rest of the world, if a nation-state really wants a nuclear bomb there are easier ways to go about it.
North Korea and Iran are certainly not Non-Issues and qualify as Reasonable Justification for concern (just don’t misconcieve my intentions as being green)
Nuclear is a reasonable source of power..
It does have some major drawbacks as a primary source though.
By far the BIGGEST drawback, is that it DOESN’T return buried carbon back into the carbon cycle like coal and gas do.
Anyone who tries to steal nuclear material from a power plant won’t live long enough to make it off the property.
While there have been poorly designed plants, (Mostly in the former Soviet Union) they have for the most part been shut down. Those that haven’t will be soon.
Newer plants are much, much safer.
The reality is that we need large amounts of reliable and inexpensive base power to fuel a modern economy where the old fashioned industrial user such as steel making has often been replaced by the electrical demands that results from servers, computers and all the energy guzzling paraphernalia of modern life.
Renewables have their uses but are entirely dependent on the weather gods.
Until battery technology can practically store their intermittent surplus they will remain an expensive and unreliable form of power for a society that requires 24/7 access to energy.
Nuclear seems to tick many boxes, but probably not in the form of the giant reactors we have had in the past
tonyb
nuclear, outside of state enterprise, is just not economic/affordable at this point in history.
For example, the new UK nuclear reactor at Hinkley has been condemned as over expensive by all shades of political opinion in the UK, by the UK govt National Audit Office and by even senior members of the firm building it (who later resigned)… it is already over budget and 2 years late and they only started pouring concrete last year.
US reactor construction is not going anywhere: Westinghouse has gone broke.
“If it moves, tax it. If it still moves, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.” (R. Reagan of a role of government.) That’s exactly what happened to nuclear.
The one thing driving up the costs of Hinkley (and all other Nuclear Facilities) is the hurdles constantly placed in their paths by the Green Enviro-mentalists
The very people doing everything in their power to make nuclear more expensive, are claiming that nuclear is now too expensive.
Hypocrisy is lost on you guys.
If you think it’s expensive to build a power plant, you should see how expensive it is to clean up the mess when they have problems. Like Fukishima. Then there are two added expenses that don’t get paid for with the rate consumers pay. Decommissioning and waste disposal.
In a way it is almost encouraging to see the stupidity of The Guardian and other daft claims of imminent catastrophe because as these fail to materialise they merely demonstrate the absurdity of the AGW claims. I wonder how much further on we would have been in developing new and better forms of producing nuclear energy had the wasted billions been used for research and development instead.
The issue of “spent” fuel rods from the conventional reactors
is subject to a lot of research and development by
Transatomic and their development of the Molten Salt Reactors..
There is
already competition in this space.
If the Molten Salt Reactors are as good as they are made out to
be, then nuclear as an obvious option, becomes even more so
than with the conventional reactors. They are claimed to be able
to burn the waste from the conventional reactors down to non-
radioactive ash.
What more could we want?
Plasmoids produce more output than you need to put in to create one.
If we cracked that…
If so, good. But let’s not be like those who talk about non-existent battery technology as if it’s fact.
What more could we want? A working prototype.
Transatomic retracted the claim that they could burn radio-active waste from other reactors. Terrestrial never claimed that it could.