Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Meteorologist and Grist author Eric Holthaus thinks the only way to save the planet from rising CO2 emissions is to embrace nuclear power.
It’s time to go nuclear in the fight against climate change
By Eric Holthaus on Jan 12, 2018
After holding steady for the past three years, global carbon emissions rose in 2017by an estimated 2 percent. That increase comes amid the largest renewable energy boom in world history.
That irony points to what I see as an inescapable conclusion: The world probably can’t solve climate change without nuclear power.
Something big has to change, and fast, in order to prevent us from going over the climate cliff. Increasingly, that something appears to be a shift in our attitudes toward nuclear energy.
By nearly all accounts, nuclear is the most rapidly scalable form of carbon-free power invented. And, the technology is rapidly improving. But lingering concerns about waste and safety have kept nuclear power from staying competitive.
Solar power has grown at a whopping 68 percent average rate over the past 10 years, but still accounts for less than 2 percent of total U.S. electricity generation. The 99 reactors in the U.S. generate about 10 times that amount. Roughly 30 nuclear facilities are set to retire in the next few years because those plants have become economically infeasible. (California regulators voted unanimously Thursday to shutter Diablo Canyon, the state’s last remaining plant, in 2025.) That’s despite these facilities producing more than double the amount of electricity than all the solar panels in the United States combined.
…
The sheer urgency of climate change demands an all-of-the-above approach to making carbon-free energy.
“If we discovered nuclear power today, we would be working like mad to make it as safe and cheap as possible,” Stanford University climate scientist Ken Caldeira tweeted last summer.
But resistance by mainstream environmental organizations has helped stymie that progress. And the most ardent supporter of climate change legislation in last year’s presidential election, Bernie Sanders, ran on an anti-nuclear platform. (In December, Shellenberger announced he is running for California governor as an explicitly pro-environment, pro-nuclear independent.)
…
If we were smart, we’d see nuclear power for what it is: A good bet to save the world.
Read more: https://grist.org/article/its-time-to-go-nuclear-in-the-fight-against-climate-change/
Note the quote “resistance by mainstream environmental organizations” above links to the anti-nuclear policy of the Sierra Club.
I always find it encouraging when greens advance rational arguments for embracing nuclear power, even if those arguments are based on misconceptions about climate change. Reason is the keystone of climate skepticism.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Except that the world doesn’t need saving from climate change.
The world needs saving from ‘climate change’ alarmists…
Exactly! Nothing more truthful can be said than “The (“Climate Change”) (non-)”cure” is worse than the (non-existent) (“Climate Change”) “disease.”
I support the assertion that there is no global warming problem to solve.
It would however be ‘handy’ to have a couple of tested, de-bugged (say 7 years of operation for the first commercial test), advanced fission reactor designs, that are failsafe, minimize waste products, and that are cost effective.
I agree, and the technology that is already being considered and tested in other nations may provide this, but as along as a misguided push towards solar and wind with exclusion of everything else is the only a acceptable soloution to environmentalists, there may be no economic support for nuclear research and development.
William
The latest CANDU reactor is designed to run on nuclear power station waste. The design exercise is now complete. I guess this qualifies as ‘new and improved’.
Crispin, Candu has had this capability from the start (perhaps they’ve improved it?) but there has always been a bullying international industry of US and European which in ordinary trade would be illegal. Candu has been the quietly most reliable tech – and can burn waste from LWR reactors and unrefined U and plutonium. It even burns Thorium! That only a hand full of Canadians even know this is most telling.
Buy this remarkable technology that has been produced for over half a century and stop wasting billions on international consortiums trying to invent Candu all over again!! China will come up with the new tech Thorium on this because they bought Candu years ago and they are partners as constructors with the Canadian engineering company Lavalin who now owns the technology.
Incidentally, following an accident at Chalk River, Ontario, the nuclear design and test facility (1952 NRX accident), US Navy officer Jimmy Carter was sent to assist w/o the the cleanup. Chalk River was fully engaged in the Manhattan Project as well. Yeah, we got game!
Oops I meant China bought reactors from us.
William Astley
Did we have 7 years of wind turbine and solar panel testing before they were declared safe and suitable?
No, they just slung the creations up, irrespective of their performance.
We already have it. An advanced fail-safe closed cycle Integral Fast Reactor ran at Argonne National Laboratory from the late 80’s until Clinton cancelled the program in 1993 or so thanks to pressure from fossil fuel lobbyists.
We should be building nuclear reactors regardless of the facts regarding climate change.
It is a waste of materials to use fossil fuels for a task that can be accomplished more efficiently using some readily available metals.
Producing electric power is not the best use for coal or for natural gas.
And it just might prevent all of the migratory birds in the world from being chopped up or incinerated.
Uranium is not easy to mine. It is the same as gold.
The CANDU is a different type of fast breeder reactor, analogous to reactors used decades ago to breed plutonium-239 from uranium-238 to make nuclear weapons. It is the Pu-239 that fissions, not U-238 (even mass nuclides (including thorium-232) basically do not fission). The use of deuterium water, rather than ordinary water, increases the efficiency of the Pu-239 breeding and enables less-enriched uranium (here referred to “waste”) to be used. But the CANDU retains some of the concerns of most reactors — radioactive, long-lived plutonium and fission products, which must be safely stored for very long times. In this regard, the Thorium reactors (which actually use breed U-233 as fission fuel) have an advantage.
But I agree that more attention and effort should be given to fission reactor design and operation.
CANDU is not a fast breeder reactor. The heavy water moderator thermalizes the neutrons.
MSRs offer low pressure walk away safety and lower waste stream. CO2 grows life and sun cycles 24-27 end the modern Holocene warming, we will need cheap 24/7 non nature killing energy. Greenpeace needs to back nuclear not Massively unsustainable RE: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/07/05/monumental-unsustainable-environmental-impacts/
Case for the Good Reactor https://spark.adobe.com/page/1nzbgqE9xtUZF/
Fast reactors always had trouble breeding because the cross section is way to small. Thermal has a cross section 25 times as large as a fast cross section and thorium breeds well in thermal, when U and Pu do not. We developed both breeding of Thorium and molten salt reactors for thorium in the 60’s and 70’s. We should do what they did at Oak ridge. Thorcon wants to do exactly that making them in a shipyard assembly line. Believes that they can turn out 100 plants of 1GWe each in a few years with that shipbuilding model.
http://thorconpower.com/
Bingo! Discussion could end right there!
How does proving that CO2 does not cause global warming stop the energy crisis and the wars for oil?
There isn’t an energy crisis. We have plenty of coal, oil and gas and will for generations.
Right, as the assumed warming is nothing but propaganda and altered data, there is nothing to save us from.
Wait, yes, there is. COLD. Cold kills and cheap energy is the cure. Thus, we do need to adapt to climate change as we cool and, along the way, install the greenest, smallest footprint, safest energy there is, nuclear. Thorium molten salt reactors would be wonderful, and we have a lot of easy to process thorium. These reactors can be fully automated, taking human error out of the equation. They can be scaled to any size, which means each major building or factory could have its own energy source. The grid would be gone, along with higher level control of energy. We can recycle the millions of tones of iron and copper that make up the transmission lines that crisscross the country. Imagine all of those towers and lines all gone. How nice. Oh, no blackouts, no rolling brown outs, no large scale power failure is possible. People living far from the beaten path could have their own high quality energy source and not have to beg (and pay) to have electrical lines installed.
Ah, molten salt reactors can also return old nuclear waste, releasing the other 50% of the energy that was not used the first time around, reducing the waste to a much more manageable and even useful form, and is inherently immune to xenon-poisoning problems that plague solid-state nuclear reactors.
There is no downside to nuclear. But, it would be adult of us to admit that it has nothing to do with emissions. CO2 is not a pollutant, does not warm the planet (in fact, CO2 and water vapor are radiative gases that cool the planet at night and have no effect during daylight, being saturated in sunlight), and is PLANT FOOD.
With our coming planetary cooling for 70 to 120 years, we need more food, which means more CO2, and cheap, reliable electricity, which means no wind and solar to make it more expensive and unreliable. There is no upside to wind and solar, except to those benefitting from the subsidies and tax breaks.
Do old tech nuclear reactors extract 50% of the energy ? I read somewhere that they only extracted 1% of the energy, hence the reason why the waste had to kept safe for thousands of years.
You have the same type of faith as warmunists, just in the opposite direction. You believe you know how climate is going to be 100 years from now. What makes you different? The sign before the number of degrees?
Javier
there are some with evidence who predict the planet may have started cooling already. That cooling may go on for 70 to 120 years, it may not. It might go on for 1,000 years, it may not.
The point is, I think, that the objective is to anticipate and adapt to change, not use the event (either cooling or warming) as an excuse to overturn capitalism. That’s what the alarmists are doing.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong in hypothesising future climate events, that’s the nature of man, even if one defines a time frame that’s likely to be wrong.
We only have a few decades of accurate climate data, badly maintained stephenson screens, boys throwing buckets overboard from ships, and all the other data, including ice cores and tree rings etc. are nothing more than possibilities. Scientists have always been cock sure about their studies, until someone comes along and overturns their research, and climate science is probably the shonkiest of all sciences. An old wife with a bit of seaweed is as likely to predict future climate as innumerable scientists with the best kit available.
It’s notable that higley7 didn’t demand political change with his statement of the next century or so, he just stated a belief. So he’s nothing like the alarmists.
Exactly. Of all the reasons I support LFTR (and other next gen nuclear) research and deployment CO2 and/or climate change are not on the list.
Belief that CO2 drives the climate is getting more like a religious cult..However, greatly expanding nuclear power is a great compromise . Let them have their fact free alarmism. It serves them well at the election polls and they are not about to let it go… But we can all agree on nuclear power because it works and works well..
It does not work. Too expensive.
Most environmental organizations started out with antinuclear advocacy. It’s no accident solar and wind are replacing nuclear and natural gas is replacing coal. Only the latter Is reducing CO2 emissions. Only the latter is reducing the price of electricity while increasing economic growth.
Except they’re now campaigning against natural gas, under the guise of ‘fracking.’
Go figure. Money talks.
Yes and remember those crack scientists—Jack Lemmon, Martin Sheen and Jane Fonda— if crack was available then I would have concluded that was what they were on—I guess it was Mary Jane?
Michael Douglas?
Solar and wind are not replacing nuclear. Two separate issues.
Theiretically speaking solar could replace nuclear if the Earth were flat and we could keep the sun hanging overhead fulltime while making clouds transparent to visible light.
The areas with the highest population density and power usage could never supply their needs with the solar power available in those areas, even with a nonexistent way to store it overnight and for weeks of cloudy weather and months of low sun conditions in Winter.
“The world probably can’t solve climate change without nuclear power.”
Need to reconsider the goals. If the goal is to “solve climate change”, then changing CO2 is shown by many not to have much impact and could be a waste of resources while increasing the risk to civilisation. If the goal is to provide a reliable source of power (with capacity to grow) to sustain a modern civilisation, then maybe the idea has merit.
Nuclear yes .But not in its current form.
maybe
https://youtu.be/xIDytUCRtTA
But do those in power want free energy ?
+232.
TANSTAFE. Making use of energy requires knowledge/information (including of thermodynamics, entropy…), energy gradients, machines, tools… all of which are costly.
“Free energy”=”perpetual motion machine”=”alchemy” People never grow out of the fantasy, do they?
Can Government Electric make the most bucks from this or from 40 million turbines that must be serviced and replaced with regularity? Or from the huge number of megabatteries nered to make it work? Sustainable profit / sustainable subsidy.
Then the only possible way it can be done is for the “conservatives” to take back control of the Public School Systems and their teaching curriculum content.
Get the teaching of Political Correctness and “junk science” out of the schools.
Otherwise, one is just fighting a losing battle for control of the “minds” of the adolescent populace.
+ 1000
+575!!
rms the goal has been to destroy western civilization and have us under a global fiefdom of Champagne Elites. That has been the goal it was all designed for!
If some people want to do the right thing for the wrong reason, it would be senseless and counterproductive to do anything but let them proceed.
The facts will emerge over time in ways that no one can fudge or paper over or adjust out of existence.
The tried that in Hawaii yesterday and they didn’t like it.
https://news.sky.com/story/hawaii-accidentally-warns-citizens-of-incoming-missile-11206944
Remember government doesn’t make mistakes.
Global Warming/Climate Change is a welfare scam paid to the high class in poor nations; and financed and supported by the middle class in the rich nations.
It seems quite possible that the gallows constructed for the President will serve to hang the very people who invested so much effort to design and build it.
When a true genius appears in this world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.
“The first principle of data collection and analysis is that you must not fool yourself, for you are the easiest person to fool.” “Science is the belief in the Ignorance of Experts.” Richard Feynman
“Good decisions are often the result of wisdom.” Wisdom is usually the result of many bad decisions.
Albert Einstien
That incoming missile alert was good training.
People need to think about these things. That’s the kind of world Clinton, Bush and Obama left us. We have irrational leaders in several countries that have been allowed to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and they may just use them on the U.S. if given a chance.
We should not give them that chance. But just in case we are too late, we should be prepared for whatever comes our way.
The people of Hawaii have a whole new perspective on this issue now. The entire United States needs to get the same perspective.
Surely Trump is the one who has started a new round of nuclear escalation?
not least in his determination to override the Iran agreement?
Surely Kim Jong Un, his father, and grandfather, have been preparing for these days since WW-II. North Korea has been working to get nuclear weapons for decades.
Griff,
Even you must realize that a nuclear capability and ICBM technology cannot be developed in the first year of Trump’s presidency; they are the fruits of continuous research over decades. The nuclear escalation was permitted by previous presidents from Clinton onward who gave bribes of food and fuel to North Korea and let North Korea continue weapons research as any capability would not be created inside their term of office. The Iran deal was similar and did nothing to prevent Iranian research, as there is no formal monitoring. Indeed it is probable that the North Korean and Iranian research are one and the same.
Trump has now been given the bag of bolts from the previous administrations. Rolling over and letting the Iran deal continue and ignoring North Korea, like hiding under your desk is not an option.
Griff, surely even you are dumb enough to actually believe that Iran’s agreement with Obama did anything other than speed up their nuclear weapons program.
Griff wrote: “Surely Trump is the one who has started a new round of nuclear escalation?”
Trump isn’t doing anything the previous three U.S. presidents haven’t done. All of them have threatened North Korea with military action if North Korea doesn’t give up its nuclear weapons program.
The difference with Trump is he is serious about taking military action against Kim Jung-un.
Kum Jung-un is the one starting a new round of escalation by continuing to defy the world over the nuclear weapons issue. If he stops, then there is no more problem. If he doesn’t, the he is dead.
Trump has a “red-line” in his head and if Kim Jung-un isn’t careful he is going to cross that line and then all the rhetoric and Elitist/Leftwing handwringing in the world isn’t going to prevent Kim from being removed from this Earth.
The U.S. is not going to put itself at the mercy of a madman like Kim Jung-un, or the Mad Mullahs of Iran. At least not while Trump is in Office.
If they push too far, they are going to burn.
China and Russia will NOT intervene to stop Kim’s demise. There is no reason for them to commit suicide over Kim Jung-un, and that’s what they would be doing if they got involved militarily. There won’t be any short, limited nuclear wars with China and Russia. The U.S. has enough nuclear weapons to destroy all of them if that becomes necessary.
Trump has given them fair warning. Trump has given everyone fair warning. People better listen.
Griff
Trump is either a genius or a fool, only time will tell.
What he seems to be doing, is saying what the man in the street is saying, the western world is of being held to ransom by tin pot dictatorships like N. Korea. He’s also saying America first, which is his sworn duty, and if the Paris Accord is bad for America, then he would be negligent not to withdraw from it.
In the same way Britain has been forced to feel guilty about Colonialism, which in my opinion did more good than harm, America has been made to feel guilty about weaponising nuclear technology, which brought WW2 to and end before millions of others were killed. I’m sorry for the victims, but that’s just the way life is.
Meanwhile, nuclear technology has progressed to not only save millions of lives, it’s enhance them.
America and the UK have watched the world wash over them, simply because they did something liberals said was wrong, without which, those liberals wouldn’t exist. But neither the UK nor the US did anything wrong, they simply took a path in life that was good at the time, but which didn’t suit liberal opinions several decades, or hundreds of years later.
Does America or the UK owe the world something? No, I rather think it’s the other way round. Nothing worthwhile on this planet would exist without Capitalism. Perhaps consumerism has gone too far, but that may be the negative aspect to a wholly good concept that the world remembers, as with the foregoing examples.
Not that liberals will ever surrender the good stuff they have accumulated, they’ll just condemn everything that’s been accomplished in the past as some Capitalistic movement to dominate the world. But Capitalism does dominate the world. It has done for thousands of years, and the communities that have flourished have been the ones to embrace it.
China and Russia didn’t do too well without Capitalism, but somehow, we’re meant to feel guilty about that. I’m sorry, but they should feel guilty about depriving their comrades of the Capitalist benefits we have enjoyed for generations.
Trump tweets. Kim tests ballistic missiles. Trump objects and say’s “try it little man” and Kim announces he’s going to talk to South Korea. How strange. How long has Obama been trying for that result?
Trump tweets, and everyone deludes themselves into believing he does it without consulting his advisers. So far, Trump’s tweets have forced Kim to the negotiating table. less than 18 months, a dozen tweets, and Trump has done what no country leader has done in the 21st Century. But of course, Donald Trump is insane.
Trump tweets he’s moving an embassy to Jerusalem, Palestinians object and say they’ll not negotiate peace, so Trump says he’ll withdraw US funding if they don’t. I wonder if something will change now?
Iranians are rioting in the streets, not about Trump, but about their own oppressive government, but at least Trump offers them some hope. Go and read Melanie Phillips on that subject.
What was it Einstein said about insanity? Doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result. Thankfully, it seems, according to Einstein’s definition, after generations of Middle Eastern impasse,Trump isn’t insane, he’s doing something different.
But liberals declare he is. So do liberals consider Einstein insane as well?
If not, they condemn themselves to their own definition of insanity.
Griff, sometimes you just gotta kill the bad guys in order to move on.
“Surely Trump is the one who has started a new round of nuclear escalation?”
More ignorant drivel posted purely to provoke…
Now, what was it you posted on Guardian CIF about ‘tweaking the tails of the den1alists”?
Beware of those who want to save the world.
They usually have a god complex.
No, they usually want to rule the world.
As H.L. Mencken put it, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”
Instead of joining the debate about the necessity of reducing CO2 and therefore, by implication accepting the “science”, we should concentrate on disproving the fallacy that mankind’s contribution to the total atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 0.0003% is somehow changing the climate. The only way of dealing with this myth is to discuss how much CO2 emissions are curtailed by wind turbines, solar panels etc when emissions for their construction and maintenance are also taken into account. Likewise for wood powered power stations. We also need to disprove the myth that contemporary extremes of weather (not climate), have occurred historically too.
The science is not settled, if it was we would have a “Law” about CO2 induced climate change, the same as the Laws of Gravity (of which the Newtonian version has been recently disproved with the discovery of gravity waves) and the Laws of Thermodynamics and of Motion.
The total atmospheric concentration of CO2 is ~ 0.04%.
Re “…mankind’s contribution to the total atmospheric concentration of CO2 of 0.0003% is somehow changing the climate…” I believe Mr Harding was pointing out that Man’s contribution to that ~0.04% was less than one-tenth of that 0.04% total, i.e., 0.0003%.
R. Shearer,
Indeed,
The concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere – to the nearest one-tenth of one percent – is Zero.
Not a lot of watermelons will recognise that fact – let alone acknowledge that.
Auto
Atmospheric CO2 is 380 to 400 ppm; 400/1000000*100% which is 4/100% or 0.04%
To andrewmharding The CO2 concentration is (approx) 0.04% or 0.0004 or 400 parts per million or 4 parts in 10,000.
It is considered that 95% of the CO2 in the air that we breathe. If we take mankind’s contribution to that 0.04% as 5%, the total contribution by man is 0.002% or 0.00002 or 20 ppM or 2 parts in 1000.
Sorry Andrew, you can’t “disprove” something. Why did you stop beating your wife? Prove you didn’t beat her.
Science disproves the null hypothesis, in this case the possibility that increasing CO2 has no effect major on the earth and normal climate flucutations are the cause of changes we see.
What can be easily proved is that human-caused CO2 was a basic assumption, made with no systematic proof. The UNFCCC and the conferences leading up to it assumed it was, because it was an ideal sock puppet, along with the precautionary principle.
The precautionary principle only makes a modicum of sense if it is limited to doing things that are shown to be strong causes of the possible future problems, relatively cheap and easy, and also have other useful side effects, such as building dams to control floods or store water.
How does proving that CO2 does not cause global warming solve the world’s energy crisis? Just how long will fossil fuels last?
Currently there is no energy crisis, nor with fracking is there likely to be one within the next century. Wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars save very little, if any, CO2 in their construction, deployment,maintenance and their use. The future has to be nuclear, ideally with Thorium Reactors.
The issue here is that same as with CFL lightbulbs – A poor product rushed in under panic climate change legislation, when by waiting a few years the problem of inefficient lighting would have solved itself naturally anyway.
Likewise a push to proliferate the primitive and non-ideal BWR/PWR reactor designs would be crazy when LFTR is probably only a few years away, and fusion now in sight.
fusion has been 10 years away for the last 40 years …
Wind power has been 10 years away since pre-Roman times.
Ian Macdonald January 14, 2018 at 1:59 pm
“Wind power has been 10 years away since pre-Roman times.”
Yet wind power started the industrial revolution – with increasing contributions from steam, and later the IC Engine.
Look at windmills into the 19th century – and sailing ships [like the Cutty Sark, and HMS Victory – then HMS Warrior] into the mid-19th Century.
Today, their intermittency [and I note that, as I write this, per http://www.gridwatch.templar.co.uk/ Wind and Nuclear are both producing about 29% of UK Demand. Gas about 22%] makes wind and solar silly choices for dispatchable power.
I want my kettle to boil when I switch it on – not at 3-54 a.m. . . . .
Auto
PWR and BWR are good enough
LFTR doesnt yet work
Pressurized water reactors are very dangerous and aren’t good enough. They also are very inefficient, and require extreme care in construction and operation.
The primary reason we were stuck with them is that they produce plutonium, way more than was ever needed for bombs, they’d already been run, and the preliminary design work was done. At the time there was no great need for them. Pollutants from coal and other fossil fuels hadn’t been realized as a problem, and when they were, scrubbers and other add ons were relatively cheap and easy. Same goes for auto pollutants.
Yes, well said. CFLs were a disaster—considered toxic waste, never really worked quit right, nasty yellowish light…..Then we got LEds. I just gave all my CFLs to Goodwill. LEDs are the way to go!
I see this everywhere on the net. People believe, because of slick advertising I guess, that LFTR and other nuclear power ideas are just behind the gate, waiting for the gate to open and dash out to save humanity. Except they aren’t. It explains why EVs are always going to save the planet—just right around the corner, you know. Sure.
We need to keep up the research, but we are not yet there on many of these ideas and may never arrive there at all.
Don’t be so sure. Alvin Weinberg was a pretty smart guy. He holds the patent on the light water reactor and didn’t like it for very good reason. He knew that molten salt reactors were much better. He never thought light water reactors would be around for long.
I keep hearing the same old crap all the time on this site and it always seems to come from the fossil fuel people. They don’t seem to want to understand because understanding could affect their wallet.
All they want to do is disprove that CO2 is not going to cause global warming. They seem totally disinterested in what the world might look like once we run out of fossil fuels.
“They seem totally disinterested in what the world might look like once we run out of fossil fuels.”
Which isn’t going to happen for hundreds – possibly thousands – of years yet, taking into account the shale reserves and the trillions of tons of coal in the North Sea alone that are now accessible using the new in-situ gasification technology which uses the steerable drilling gear as shale extraction, not to mention the unimaginable amounts of methane hydrate in the oceans.
“Peak Oil” is so twentieth century…
There are certainly way more fossil fuel reserves in the World than necessary to ensure us the leisure to develop something far cleaner, more convenient and more efficient than any of today’s solutions, remember the Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones.
https://bsnews.info/monbiot-not-hypocrite-bully/
George Monbiot is a classic study of one who champions warming theory, and the Assad must go message. One must ask who is he working for? Writing for the U.K. Guardian in 2011, he headlines a piece: “Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power” – an absurd position, given the catastrophe that culminated in radioactive pollution leaking into the Pacific Ocean from the reactors, with a half-life of 30 years.
“You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.”
He also wrote: “Monbiot’s royal flush: Top 10 climate change deniers. My shortlist of people who have done most for the denialist cause – in playing card form”.
Monbiot’s work brings two themes to converge: the dream of nuclear clean green energy replacing coal and Syria being stage set for the same fate as Iraq. However, these two political agendas are in trouble; the nuclear lobby has failed, and those who want to invade Syria have seen their proxy armies defeated, for the time being. ‘The Murky Future of Nuclear Power in the United States’ (Diane Cardwell 2017) tells how the United States government earmarked billions of dollars for atomic energy research and development, “in part to help tame a warming global climate”. Certainly, the nuclear energy industry stood to greatly benefit from catastrophic predictions by the warming climate lobby, that coal is a more dangerous source of energy than nuclear, but Fukushima changed all that. Jonathan Cook on January 12, 2018, writes: ‘Monbiot is not only a hypocrite, but a bully too’.
“Turning a blind eye to his behaviour, or worse excusing it, as too often happens, has only encouraged him to intensify his attacks on dissident writers, those who – whether right or wrong on any specific issue – are slowly helping us all to develop more critical perspectives on western foreign policy goals than has been possible ever before.” Jonathan Cook on January 12, 2018
An absurd position given that’s there is 4 billion tonnes of uranium of which about 280 million tonnes is fissile U235 in there already with a half life of 703.8 million years.
I mean really, the world oceans are a huge place and already radioactive.
The amount of radioactive material leaking into the Pacific is literally drops in a bucket. It’s diluted so heavily by the ocean that you will likely find a higher concentration of the active ingredient in a glass of homeopathic remedy than the concentration of radioactive contaminant in a glass of pacific ocean water.
Like Three Mile Island, Fukushima demonstrated that the design of modern nuclear power plants makes them unlikely to kill anyone, even when a design flaw coupled with poor operational response initiates and exacerbates a significant accident. In both cases you had release of fission products into the primary coolant system and that system leaking into the environment. In both cases the danger was confined to a very small area within the perimeter of the plant.
Three Mile Island and Fukushima both demonstrated that with nuclear power plants, even when worst case accidents happen, there are no really bad consequences.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/05/26/claim-new-chinese-nuclear-plants-are-unsafe/#comment-1946251
Fearless Fukushiming Leader: “We’ll put the emergency cooling water systems down near the beach – what could go wrong?”
Newby on Team: “What about tsunami’s?”
Fearless Leader: “Screw it! It’s time for lunch. Are you a team player or not?”
Team: Hai ! ( Yes! )
….
Later…
Team: “Oh Fukushima!”
I believe that the reason that many of the scientists that warn us of catastrophic anthrapogenic global warming (CAGW) are doing it to stop the resistance to nuclear power. I think their noble lies have backfired and they have only succeeded in damaging the world’s economy and the reputation of all scientist. My reading of history is that result of heavily damaged economys lead to war.
not noble lies … self serving lies …
That is why I said many scientists and not all scientist. Sure some are self serving. The other good question is why does the mainstream news media (MSM) support only the CAGW scientist.
So what? As for damaging the economy, if we had developed nuclear power like we should have the economy would be fine and we wouldn’t be fighting these ridiculous wars for oil. You seem to worry about the economy far more than you do wars.
Their climate cliff wouldn’t have something to do with the cobalt cliff now would it?
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4127448-cobalt-cliff-two-dire-warnings-musk-soliloquy
The cobalt cliff is actually a cliff. The climate cliff is about this high (@1:47 in video)…
https://youtu.be/TSqkdcT25ss
Do the Twits of the Year hang out on Twitter?
To his credit, Hansen has been advocating Nuclear for years, so the thought is a little late coming to these guys. The problem is they have been using the same people who hate nuclear as shock troops in their war against carbon dioxide. Their hypocrisy of convenience is now biting them in the butt.
I enjoy reading the comments on Holthaus’ twitter posts more so than on his Grist articles. In this case it was funny to watch him stir up a sh!t storm. IMO the guy’s a gullible pants-wetting simpleton. On one of his posts he actually said, “Yes, except that nuclear energy isn’t dangerous.” LOL OK whatever you say.
https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/951796092110336000
Hopefully the comments will show up in this. If not, I tried.
https://twitter.com/EricHolthaus/status/951796092110336000
Click the date if you want to read the comments.
Nuclear power kills way fewer people than any other source of power.
You’re right. Solar energy is pretty darn dangerous. link
Compared with solar, wind is quite safe. link 😉
Wind turbines, safe as they are, have still killed more Americans than nuclear power. link
There are a number of technologies that will provide safe economical nuclear power. link
The greenies don’t want to solve global warming per se. They want to demolish capitalism. Cheap, safe, plentiful, nuclear power would not produce a crisis. Trying to rely on wind and solar would provoke a crisis. They need a crisis to get people to agree to overthrow capitalism. Overthrowing capitalism would lead to the collapse of civilization and (supposedly) nature would reign supreme again. The greenies are the enemies of humanity.
Freeman Dyson has written a wonderful essay. In it he points out that the human mediated environment of England is, by almost any measure, superior to the boring and non-diverse forests that would otherwise prevail. Mother Nature does not always know best. The greenies are wrong, the humanists are right.
CAGW is a false flag operation. It will not succeed in collapsing civilization. The Chinese and Indians are not deceived. What it will do is hasten the descent of America and Europe.
absolute nonsense.
There is no anti capitalist agenda in renewable energy…
Capitalist societies like Germany and huge multi national firms are amongst the biggest agencies taking up renewable energy.
More nonsense Griff – Germany is not abandoning coal – the renewables are failing and costly. Try reading all the facts.
Christiana Figueres says the agenda is about changing the economic development model. link She didn’t use the word ‘capitalism’ but that is obviously what she meant.
You have been around here for long enough that the above shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. Do you think it’s fake news? As far as I can tell, she never denied saying what she said.
Lol—-Without huge government support and the payment of investment by the other energy users, the renewable energies would still today in the Bavarian Forest Nature Park on the trees from Ast to #Ast shimmy.
Funny how the words of actual green advocates is ignored by Griff.
I guess he didn’t read them, like he never reads the articles that he cites.
Capitalist societies like Germany …
I guess Griff is one of those people who believes that everything that isn’t pure communism, is some form of capitalism.
“Capitalist societies like Germany and huge multi national firms are amongst the biggest agencies taking up renewable energy.”
You’re not keeping up with the latest news are you, Grifter?
German coalition negotiators agree to scrap 2020 climate target – sources
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-germany-politics/german-coalition-negotiators-agree-to-scrap-2020-climate-target-sources-idUKKBN1EX0OW
In shadow of Germany’s climate conference, the village Immerath will make way for a coal mine
https://www.domain.com.au/news/in-shadow-of-germanys-climate-conference-the-village-immerath-will-make-way-for-a-coal-mine-20171112-gzjsp1/
Also the Chinese and Indians are massively anti coal and pro renewables… the Indian 2022 target is 175GW of renewable electricity capacity.
BS Griff – China is not planning on cutting coal use til 2030. The “increase” in solar is for propaganda.
Griff, you are either hopelessly delusional, a liar, or both.
My money’s on both.
Also , China are helping build many of the 1600 new coal fired power stations around the world.
China knows the AGW scám for what it is, and are sucking renewable funds from those foolish countries that embrace them. Playing the game… and winning.
Making stuff up again, [snip]?
[Let’s just dispense with the name calling. -mod]
Aside from the fact that AGW advocates should never be encouraged, nuclear power produces deadly waste and deadly risk. How is that a viable option?
Even if what you say is true, how can deadly waste and deadly risk on a small regional scale be worse than the end of the world?
Linda,
Maybe you should schedule a trip to Lac-Mégantic, Quebec to talk the folks there about how dangerous nuclear is.
Fukushima would be better. The consequences of the Lac-Mégantic disaster were localized and non-persistent (personal grieving from death losses excluded). Fukushima spread fallout everywhere, and it will never be cleaned up. That’s the difference.
Icky,
How many people have died from Fukushima fall-out?
How many people die everyday across the world for lack of access to clean, safe water and sanitary sewer systems?
Without affordable electricity there is no such thing as affordable, clean municipal water supplies and sanitary sewer systems to deal with the human waste, far deadlier by historical standards than radioactivity.
Properly sequestered, Nuclear can power clean water systems across the globe to lessen mankind’s impacts and deaths due to water-borne disease.
“How many people have died from Fukushima fall-out?”
Lots according to unofficial reports. The problem is if you’re a doctor in Japan and list a person’s death being due to radiation, you will loose your ability to practice.
icisil, are you going to tell how Fukushima has killed all the whales in the Pacific again?
The amount of radiation that leaked from Fukushima is small and has been diluted way past the point of harmlessness.
Why is it that when activists can’t find the data to support their delusions, they always start screaming about official cover ups.
Who was that arctic “researcher” who claimed that the CIA was killing his colleagues?
MarkW, I don’t recall that I ever said that all whales have been killed. That info is not part of my dataset. And FWIW, radiation in the Pacific follows currents in plumes. It takes years for it to become fully diluted. We don’t know enough about the matter to say what damage it does or doesn’t do.
Icisil
The real story about Fukushima is the Tohoku tsunami which really killed a lot (over 15,000) of real people (around 2500 are still ‘missing’). All the anti-nuclear nuts just forget about them.
The only recorded injuries from Fukushima were a couple of clean-up workers who stood in some radioactive water and were off work for a few days with burns (like sunburn) on their feet.
Otherwise, exposure to radiation was about equivalent to taking a long haul flight somewhere.
Lots of deaths? Bullsh1t.
“icisil January 14, 2018 at 7:42 am”
More people have died from mercury poisoning from contaminated fish than the atomic bombs in WW2 and Fukushima disaster and any other nuclear power station incident anywhere!
How do you define “fully diluted”?
The radiation from Fukusima was diluted way, way below dangerous levels long before it left the bay.
It is measurable, but only by using the most sensitive of instruments made by man, and even then, only barely.
“nuclear power produces deadly waste and deadly risk”. Correct me if I am wrong but I don’t recall hearing about a nuclear disaster in France, which produces much nuclear power. How do they manage that? Chernobyl was using old technology. Three Mile Island had a problem when humans over-rode the automatic controls. IMHO, nuclear power is being strangled by over-regulation. Just for reference, I recall the 50’s when we were told to sit at least 6 feet away from the TV due to radiation exposure. Evidently the harmful effects were not from radiation but content!!!
Chernobyl still used technology analogous to the brakes of a Ford T in a Porsche 911. The technology continues and so does the technology of nuclear fission. It is even possible, if it is wanted, to turn all the old waste of old nuclear power plants into energy. With the right formats like the Molten Salt reactor. The leafy greens will have to learn a lot in order to become adults.
Chernobyl used a technology that was specifically rejected by the west as being unstable. It was used by the USSR because it was cheap. They also saved money by not building a containment vessel around it. Something that is required in the west.
Finally they disabled most of the safety systems that did exist in order to run a test and failed to react properly when the test got out of control.
Even so, only a few dozen brave volunteers died when they manually poured concrete onto the remains of the pile in order to contain the radiation.
The other reactors at Chernobyl are still running to this day, and the wildlife in the areas around the reactor are thriving.
Most of the waste from fission reactors isn’t waste. Only a couple of percent of the uranium in a fuel rod is consumed. Reprocessing can recover the remaining uranium as well as the useful reaction products.
Most of the stuff that isn’t useful for producing power has short half lives and is pretty much gone in a couple of decades.
The risk from nuclear power is lower than that of any other major source of electricity. I suggest that you do a bit of research into risk.
Well Linda, No, it doesn’t.
Like AGW. the more you know about nuclear power the more you realises how much you have been lied to.
It is in fact the safest form of energy on the planet.
All of life produces deadly waste and deadly risk. Only death is safe.
Deadly waste can be handled and is. Lots of things produce deadly waste.
Lots of things produce deadly risks as well. Nuclear power kills way fewer people per megawatt generated than does any other source of power.
Linda: your body creates deadly waste via bacteria. Controlling the deadly effect of this waste is done by engineering, such as human waste management facilities. The same is true for nuclear wastes. Both waste management technologies have challenges, but both have been largely resolved.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5887e7368419c20e9a7e557b/t/5892b73bc534a53f820d0866/1486010174829/?format=750w
I’d like to know when its going to get a bit warmer; I’m freezing here even with the central heating on.
Same here! We’ve had 70 years of “catastrophic “CO2 rise and I can’t tell the difference.
Any sane human would call b.s.
70 years of catastrophic warming, and it’s still freezing outside.
Another desperate ploy by the Warmunists. They want to join forces with those who favor nuclear energy for other reasons; that nuclear can provide reliable baseload power, albeit at a higher cost (currently) than coal or gas. The hope is that they will go all Maggie Thatcher on Climate Skeptics/Realists.
Sorry Charlie; ain’t gonna happen. Nice try though.
And 2018 is going to dwarf 2017.
It’s not “lingering concerns about waste and safety have kept nuclear power from staying competitive”. It’s over-regulation and various bureaucratic obstacles.
It is happening anyhow, regardless of what any think-tank considers. China is now finishing 5-10 nuclear reactors every year, and the pace is likely going to increase. They could use like 300+, even 500 of which.
Where are they getting their expertise from I’d like to know; a few years ago under chairman Mao ‘steelmaking’ was a cottage industry with smelting furnaces in the back kitchen. Now the chinese are technology world beaters.
When Greenies fight, we all win.
I have nothing against nuclear. Butbit makes little sense to build gen 3 wherever there is coal, natural gas, or reasonably priced LNG. Better to thoroughly evaluate all the gen 4 options (there are several, all discussed in essay Going Nuclear in ebook Blowing Smoke),select a couple of the ‘best’, build one of each to shake out the engineering detIls, then make a decision on how to roll out the chosen gen 4 (s). At last in the US we have a couple of decades to accomplish that while building CCGT. Just got to get started.
I’m 100% for nuclear if they can develop a technology that can’t melt down and irradiate the environment. I wish they would take all of the subsidies for renewables and plow them into gen 4 research.
So you are NOT for nuclear then.
“I’m 100% for nuclear if they can develop a technology that can’t melt down and irradiate the environment. I wish they would take all of the subsidies for renewables and plow them into gen 4 research.” They are already design that do that, the US had a pilot plant it was called a fast reactor it was safe and produced little waste, you could shutdown the cooling system and the reactor was design so as it heated the fission process shutdown. The fuel would expand to far apart to keep the reaction going due to the fact the fuel was already in a liquid state. You can thank Bill Clinton for killing it off.
icisil is one of those people who believes that all radiation, no matter how minuscule is dangerous.
Not an accurate characterization. I believe that man-made radioactive isotopes that mimic elements like calcium, potassium and iodine don’t belong in the human body, which invariably happens when there are catastrophic meltdowns. There’s no question that such can be deadly.
Good thing most of those things aren’t released in any major quantities by modern reactors.
Beyond that, there are medicines that can drastically reduce the ability of the body to take up these chemicals.
Thirdly, dose makes the poison.
To the Church of CAGW True Believers in the evil powers of The MagicMolecule™, what you say as “makes little sense” …is blasphemy.
That’s the way we try to do it in the airplane business Robert. By the way thanks for all your inputs. I read all of yours and believe them to be most useful and correct.
Rud not Robert. My bad.
I thought the article quite sensible. The greens have rejected nuclear for decades but now they believe there is a bigger threat, a few are trying to embrace the technology that will help their climate cause. However the sentiments expressed in the article are totally rejected by numerous green activists.
From the twitter thread Eric references above, comes this comment which is pretty typical of many deep green activists
“Jon Reynolds
Please do not conflate “civilization” and electricity. Humans have lived in manners we call “civilized” for millennia without electricity. And all the other cultures we somehow deem as “uncivilized” have likewise survived without ‘
With that sort of attitude, that putting us back to the dark ages is the preferred option, I think that the author of the original article will have a hard job persuading his fellow environmentalists of the desirability of looking elsewhere for electricity generation options in order to ‘save the planet’
Tonyb
“I thought the article quite sensible. The greens have rejected nuclear for decades but now they believe there is a bigger threat, a few are trying to embrace the technology that will help their climate cause.”
I think the threat Eric Holthaus sees is it is becoming obvious that “renewables” are not going to be able to replace other electrical generating technology, so he is looking at nuclear as a CO2-free alternative.
What is considered “civilized” changes with each generation.
What was considered the heights of civilization during the middle ages, would be considered barbaric today.
Civilization without electricity. Yep, but would you want it?
We need folks like “Jon” to read “One Second After”. Wouldn’t hurt all of us here to read few of the “disaster” novels and get past the societal breakdown issues. As they point out many things that would go away we have not thought of besides the obvious high tech phones, puters, auto engines, jet planes, etc.
Sure, we could live, and die, as our ancestors – few, if any anti-biotics or insulin, no xray or CAT scan devices, no laser dental or eye surgery, many shovel ready jobs for the “proles” to scoop the horse manure in our streets, maybe a few steam powered autos and more likely some trains to replace Boeings, no power from windmills other than pumps and pulley-driven doofers, telephones? huh? and the beat goes on.
Gums….
Once you realise that AGW and anti-nuclear greenery are simply ways that Big Gas has kept coal and nuclear out of their market, whilst foisting expensive renewables that haven’t reduced gas or coal or oil usage one iota, on us, you realise that actually what we probably need is more nuclear and more coal, and less money into cronies’ pockets..
After coming close to a site where nuclear waste is being stored, I am of the opinion that nuclear is not good and safe. Please keep it out of my backyard. There is also some kind of Russian mafia that bribed our president to get nuclear from Russia.
In any case, the belief that nuclear energy produces no GH gases is incorrect. In comparison to gas powered stations, the nuclear power stations need enormous amounts of cooling water, which, YOU GUESSED IT, produces more warm water. This ultimately affects the amount of H2O (g) being produced in the environment [as the sun will shine on the warmer water during the day]. I am also concerned finding that the maritime life here in the area around the Koeberg power station was severely affected by the warm water output of the station.
Hydro outputs warm water, too. So we shut down all the hydro? Let’s just live in caves and scrounge for worms and berries. Can’t hurt much that way, right?
They can put the nuclear power plant in my backyard or store waste there any time. I’m fine with it.
How does hydro output warm water? Penstock entrances are located at the bottom of reservoir dams where it is much colder. I used to kayak on a river that was fed by a hydro facility. In the middle of summer the water temp was about 45*F and the fog was so thick sometimes you couldn’t see 50′ in front of you.
You must be clueless as to the rules on storing nuclear waste. Go have a look at a site and tell me at how many km away you were told to stay away?
You can safely camp outside a nuclear waste dump.
The only reason why nuclear dumps exist is because the paranoids banned reprocessing.
You could safely camp right outside a nuclear waste dump. The stuff isn’t that radioactive, and it is shielded.
Regardless, the only reason those dumps exist is because people such as yourself demanded that reprocessing be banned.
Using Bernoulli’s theorem an energy balance between top and bottom shows the potential energy heads in ft or m of water are converted into pressure, velocity and turbine heads:
Xt +ut^2/2gc+Pt/pt-F-w=Xb+ub^2/2gc+Pb/pb
This balance can be applied at any point in the circuit. F is the friction loss which shows up as heat.
“There is also some kind of Russian mafia that bribed our president to get nuclear from Russia.”
Henry, what happened is the Russian mafia bribed the Obama/Clinton mafia into selling Russia 20 percent of the U.S. uranium supply.
It was reported this morning that the Clinton/Russian Uranium One scandal has now produced the first indictment of a person involved in this illegal deal. Many more indictments to come, including some who you may know by name. 🙂
TA
no, no, no.
I am talking about our president (in South Africa)
This was told to me by a reliable (black) friend of mine. Various subsequent actions during his downfall, e.g. desperately trying to get his ex-wife into power, makes me thinking that it could be true and that if he does “not deliver” he will have to pay the money back…..
HenryP – Here in Florida the warm water output of the nuclear power stations is saving the lives of manatees and other warm water marine life that go there for the warmth. Perhaps we need to build more.
Ian
I guess that is correct. Other lifeforms jump in when others have to let go.. Still here around the coast of South Africa the life forms noted around the coast are pretty unique and I think we should preserve it. Putting nuclear in will make lifeforms disappear.
Anyway, with nuclear we also still sit with the waste, the hairline cracks in the reactor vessels (Belgium) and what happens when there is another earthquake near a reactor?
Let us not go that route.
Gas is best.
Every single practical form of power generation produces warm water. Your belief that nuclear is somehow unique in this just shows how deeply your paranoia regarding nuclear has become.
BTW, why does coming close (whatever that means) to a place that stores nuclear waste convince you that nuclear is bad?
Furthermore, the only reason why we store nuclear waste is because the paranoids banned the reprocessing of those same wastes which would get rid of them.
No. Not all power generation produces warm water and nuclear produces the most warm water of any process. To control the process…
I have given some hints as to how hydro and wind can work together with great safety.
Nuclear is not safe. As explained elsewhere.
Gas is probably the best option.
Oh
and coming close to the nuclear waste site I noticed all these warning signs….
Must be some truth to the danger or else there would be no danger signs…??
The amount of warm water produced is directly proportional to the amount of electricity being produced.
The government puts warnings on lawn mowers telling people not to put their fingers under them.
Are you really crazy enough to determine what is and isn’t dangerous based on what the government decides to warm people about?
Henryp: there are warning labels on Superman capes (sold for children) saying said capes do not confer the ability to fly. Most warning labels are not because something is particularly dangerous, but because some people are extremely stupid.
Without such warnings, some fool would break into the facility for some idiotic, illegal purpose, then sue for damages when exposed to radiation, because an adequate warning was not posted.
All practical forms of power generation produce warm water.
how is that with hydro?
as explained to Sheri
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/01/14/grist-bernie-sanders-sierra-club-impeding-co2-reductions/comment-page-1/#comment-2717153
Internal friction and electrical resistance of the turbine produce heat.
Causing the water to back up behind the dam gives the sun time to warm the water.
Warm water flushed into rivers from numclar isn’t material to the overall picture. A similar argument is the heat of combustion which also is not material to the GMST, meaning it contributes less than about 1% to it.