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.
Oh, well. The rising, ever hungry, population will sort the problem quite soon.
Geologic evidence shows that the world does not need saving nor does it care about humans or even saving them for that fact.
Ha ha
The other reason for the CAGW fanatics to consider nuclear power is renewable energy does not work if ‘work’ is defined to be the goal of reducing CO2 emissions by more than around 30%.
Germany has led the effort to determine the absolute limit of green energy. German CO2 emissions have reached a plateau.
To reduce CO2 emissions below about 30% with wind and solar requires battery systems. Ignoring astronomical costs to install battery systems, the energy required to construct the battery systems exceeds the energy ‘savings’ to use wind and solar. The green scams do not include the cost and energy to build and then replace the worn-out wind turbines and battery systems.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/22/shocker-top-google-engineers-say-renewable-energy-simply-wont-work/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamas-renewable-energy-fantasy-1436104555
https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-energy-consumption-and-power-mix-charts
the link above showing the electrical power generation for Germany is interesting. It looks like intermittent renewables will soon be over 50% for electrical power. BUT . Dont forget that electrical power generation is only part of the total energy usage. Total solar wind and biomass = 30% of total energy supply. That has been achievable with massive subsidies which in the long run are not sustainable. Who knows what the eventual % will be when the subsidies come off. As previous posters have pointed out the economics of intermittent renewables without subsidies dont justify the investment. Even the economics of nuclear dont justify it in the western world. The only reason nuclear works in China is that the safety regulations are ignored and thus nuclear is a an economic alternative and the Chinese are going nuclear like crazy. That could never happen in North America unless the newer nuclear technologies are game changers but that will take awhile. In the meantime we are all struggling with much higher electrical pricing because of paying for these massive intermittent renewable subsidies. Intermittent renewables for large public power generation are a scam in the long run because without storage the utilities practically give the extra power away when too much is generated. They only make economic sense for individuals with lots of land and who want off the grid. Hydro and biomass are viable options but not everywhere has lots of elevation change with fast flowing rivers. I cant understand why coal plants cannot have scrubbers on them to eliminate 99.9% of the pollution. I am not worried about CO2 production
Geology has had a very implacable history.
And then there is the irony of those with advanced degrees in Climatology, Meteorology, Physics and even Biology who have the audacity and ego to claim that modern society can materially alter climate history. The belief includes that the ignorant can involuntarily destroy the climate. The other delusion is that only a committee of “experts” can create the perfect climate.
History knows what happened when the Communists set out to create the “Perfect Man”.
And with the Nazis when they attempted to create the “perfect” land-space and race.
Throughout our history, authoritarians have been motivated by power and money. Only the story changes.
As Rome was corrupted into a police state the banner was the “Genius of the Emperor”. In the 1500s, when the Church was corrupted to a vehicle of brutal power, it was the “Infallibility of the Pope”. Now, it is “The Science is Settled”.
In each case, any opposition was repressed.
Geological history is setting a Solar Minimum, that with natural cooling will soon instruct the public on real science. Wow, it may even be taught at schools.
Bob Hoye
Bob
true!
I noticed this article from Andrew Kenny the other day. He and I had some communications about ‘global’ warming
which is not so global, after all.
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2015-12-09-right-of-response-climate-ideology-and-climate-science/#.WlYP_6iWaMo
Might be a good post for WUWT to publish?
Our Green friends would prefer that we all starve in the cold and the dark.
Sheri
please explain to us how hydro energy produces warm water…
The water falls down into a turbine which then starts rotating which gives electricity?
Where, in this process, do you need anything to cool anything at all?
Hydro is good!
In fact, wind is also good but you have to do it differently to how it is done now.
Just use the wind to pump up water from the bottom to the top of the reservoir where you are getting the hydro from.
That way you can synchronize your power output with demand, even if there is no wind…..
Must say also,
I had some solar up here on the office and it did not work out, i.e.
too many hassles with batteries and dust on the panels.
I know Anthon(Y) put some solar up on his house.
I wonder how that worked out for him?
I am a safety expert. Let me put ‘safer’ in a context that will help some of you understand.
If Bill Gates finds a quarter in the seat cushions, he is ‘richer’.
I am specifically a safety expert on US designed BWRs and PWRs. US commercial and naval reactors have a perfect safety record. No one has been hurt by radiation. Even when the core is damaged.
Exposure to radiation is the mechanism for causing harm. The hazard is mitigated by time, distance, and shielding. The first weapons reactors at Hanford were out in the desert. Distance was used in case of an accident.
Safety criteria for making weapons in time of war is much lower.
Safety criteria is based on existing best practices. Nuclear power had to be safer than a coal plant built in 1950 which would not kill neighbors if there was an accident. The risk from nuclear power had to be less than getting hit by a coal train.
This achieved for LWRs by putting the reactor in a containment building. The next major passive design improvement was to make containment building bigger and build a shield building around the containment building. Shielding prevents exposure.
The interesting thing about the nuclear safety record is that other industries have adopted similar methodologies. For some like oil, gas, and chemical it was forced by regulations.
So maybe safety concerns were valid in 1970 but the 40 year record invalidates those concerns.
Kit
I am impressed with your credentials.
I am sure that you must be aware of a number of reactor vessels in the US showing the same fault as the ones in Belgium, i.e. hairline cracks in the reactor vessels.
Please tell me the reason for these cracks and why were the reactors for repairs and if you know, how they repaired the faults?
Henry
I am not a metallurgist but I am trained in the fundamentals. As I understand the lattice structure of any piece metal has numerous imperfection. After initial forging and during outages, the vessel is inspected and evaluated to check that the imperfections are not growing.
One factor is the number of thermal cycles during the life of the plant. For one plant I did the calculation for input to the metallurgist. Another factor is fast neutron embrittlement, reactor engineers would provide this information to metallurgist.
The point is that safety issues are evaluated and reviewed by regulators. In the US, this is a public record. If safety requirements are not met, the plant will not operate,
Retired Kit P
Thanks for the info. But it adds no confidence in nuclear. Neutron embrittlement? Do you think a developing country [like South Africa} has the capable guys fixing a problem like that here? Do you get why I don’t want it in my backyard?
I was merely observing that the cracks in the Belgium reactors caused a considerable shortage in power there and nobody could tell what caused it…Now all reactors are up running again and everyone is quiet about the repairs…
Watch the next disaster coming up. Could be either in France or Belgium.
I read a number of years back that they were working on ways to anneal the metal in place in order to help with these problems. Did this ever work out?
henryp,
IIRC, I don’t think the flaws in the vessel base material were significant in terms of safety. The base carbon steel is 8″ thick, with a stainless cladding ( 3/16″) over it. The flaws or inclusions in the base material weren’t on welds or heat affected zones, and neither were they through-wall type indications. Thus, they were evaluated as ok (again, as I recall). They are not cracks in the sense that they formed due to hydrogen embrittlement or IGSCC (intergranular stress corrosion cracking). These were most likely just flaws from the forming process.
As for Koeberg, SA may not maintain the expertise…but that’s why they contract with Westinghouse and AREVA (now Framatome again). There’s plenty of expertise out there, and believe it or not, people working in the industry are, by and large, highly dedicated and motivated to keep things safe. They understand that their whole industry depends on it. That’s why you see diehard competitors helping each other.
rip
Adding to RK’s comment:
The four pillars of radiation safety are taught at the earliest ages when we teach our children about fire.
1) Time: do not stick around in a fire. The longer you stay in a fire the more you get burned. The same principle applies for ionizing radiation.
2) Distance: move away from the fire to prevent getting burned. The same principle applies for ionizing radiation.
3) Shielding: putting a shield, such as your brother, between you and the fire which will lessen the heating effect if it is too hot. The same principles apply for ionizing radiation.
4) Contamination control: get upwind of the smoke or wear a bandana;watch out for embers; and for goodness sake do not track any soot in the house or your mother will kill you. The same principles apply for ionizing radiation.
Protecting oneself and others from radiation is surprisingly simple and intuitive when one uses the campfire analogy. However, the protection engineering for large sources can be complex principally due to damaging effects that radiation in large quantity can have on materials. Nevertheless, engineering has largely resolved the time, distance and shielding problems – which is why nuclear power plants have been amazingly safe and provide great protection for not only workers but for those who live nearby.
The issue of contamination control and the effects of contamination on a biological entity is more complex and requires a solid understanding of how radiation is created, the (very important) chemistry of the radioactive material, the biological pathways for ingestion and egestion of the radioactive material, and of course the biological effects of the radiation at the cellular level. This is the area where many opposed to nuclear power and all things emitting radiation fail to understand the science or deliberately confuse people with bogus science. Good folks have been taught by the anti-nuclear leaders that any amount of radiation will kill you, give you cancer, and turn your sister into a monster, et cetera ad nauseum. The truth, the science is a far different thing.
Having taught radiation safety as a career, I can go all day but I’ll happily entertain any comments with further thoughts.
In addition to the above I would also like to correct misperceptions about the Fukishima accident’s contamination of the ocean.
Dilution is a solution when it comes to long lived radionuclides. Here is why.
1. When a single radioactive atom has a long half life, it has a 50-50 chance it will emits its radiation during the half-life. For example, a 50,000 year half life atom may or may not emit its radiation during that period. What is it doing the rest of the time? Nothing, certainly not emitting radiation, other than behaving as its chemical composition will normally behave.
2. If you ingest that atom and it remains in your body, the odds are very high that it will not emit its radiation in your life time. 50,000 divided by the average lifespan is a simplistic odds ratio but gets the picture across. If the atom does not emit its radiation in your lifetime, then no harm-no foul unless there are some chemical properties that may be harmful.
3. Dilution is the solution for long-lived radionuclides because dilution reduces the odds of large quantities of atoms getting into your body. In the example of Fukishima, there is some valid evidence that within 50 miles, IIRC, of the accident there was concentration of radionuclides in fish, but past that point dilution took over in a big way and there is zero evidence of higher than normal radioactive materials in fish outside this area. Anti-nuclear types claim there is concentration in fish beyond the area, but their so-called science is junk science. Regarding the reported and highly suspect activities that supposedly reached the US shores, it would require a person to drink or ingest a huge quantity of salt water to potentially get any kind of appreciable radiation exposure. The salt water would kill them long before the ingested radioactive materials would kill them.
These days “nuclear power” is an imprecise term. The differences between a light water reactor and a molten salt reactor are so vast that knowing something about one means you may not know much about the other. Molten salt reactors come in a varierty of designs, all of them approaching prototype phases. While conventional nuclear power is the safest form of power generation, molten salt power is intrinsically, walk away safe.It also is cheap to build, cheap to operate and can be built in factories , can be located virtually anywhere, does not require water for cooling, The nuclear core cannot melt down because it is already melted , and under no significant pressure – even a gaping hole in the reactor would not be of much concern. Requires very little concrete on site,
and sites can be prepared easilly. Cost to build roughly $2 billion per gigawatt – cost of power – roughly 3 to 4 cents per kWhr. As for nuclear waste, one has proclaimed that spent nuclear fuel is far from being a waste rather than burying it underground, it should be retained in concrete vessels and its residual thermal heat used to do many things – desalinating enormous quantities of Pacific Ocean water would be one. These reactors can ramp up and ramp down power quickly and thus be used as both base and mid level generators. China and India are rushing to get these reactors to market.
There is as much BS talked about Chernobyl and Fukushima as there is about climate change. There are likewise the two sides, one trying to play the incidents down, the other to exaggerate them.
Chernobyl was bad. Make no mistake about that. What is more alarming is that it was not as bad as it could have been. Had the entire core been ejected, the whole of Europe could have been exposed to radiation levels above internationally agreed limits.
Fukushima, it seems, was not as bad as was originally thought in terms of radiation release. However it WAS bad in that four buildings, all designed to comply with relatively modern safety standards, all suffered explosions which breached their containment. This in itself ought to be enough to force a rethink on such designs.
The safety issues at Fukushima were not nuclear, either. They were the use of pressurised water as a coolant and, and the use of zirconium metal in fuel rod cladding. Together with overheating fuel, these give rise to two mechanisms whereby hydrogen gas can be liberated. It was this which caused the explosions.
The only way to eliminate these hazards is to eliminate the water and the zirconium. Molten salt is the known and tested way to do this.
Zirconium was the metal used in pre-electronic camera flashbulbs. It is chemically similar to magnesium. Putting that in a reactor is functionally about as wise as giving tap-dancing lessons to EOD operatives.
It’s not just the melted cores that are a problem. Between reactors 1, 2 and 3 there are approximately 1500 spent fuel rods immersed in spent fuel pools perched 100′ in the air atop those structurally compromised buildings. If those buildings collapsed, or spent fuel pools cracked and lost water, let’s say due to an earthquake, the zirconium cladding would catch fire. “Uncontrolled spent fuel rod fires could pour enough radioactive waste into the atmosphere to cause what a nuclear engineer (at a Vermont plant identical to Fukushima reactors) calls “Chernobyl on steroids”.” – https://shadowproof.com/2011/03/15/why-fukushimas-spent-fuel-rods-will-continue-to-catch-fire/
To complicate things, they built an ice wall around the facility to try to contain radioactive groundwater from flowing into the sea. It didn’t work, but it did cause the ground water to rise underneath the plant and destabilize the ground beneath the reactor buildings.
It took several years to remove 1535 MOX fuel rods from reactor 4, which would have caused a very very ugly fire if it had collapsed. I don’t know if they’ve started removing the other rods yet.
So we’re not out of the woods yet…
Similar risks exist in the US
https://www.ocregister.com/2017/06/02/fire-in-nuclear-fuel-pools-could-cause-far-more-damage-than-regulators-acknowledge-study-says/
My bad. Reactor 3 has the MOX fuel.
My bad again. I thought it was 1500 fuel rods. Not so. 1500 fuel rod assemblies. Each assembly contains 63 fuel rods.
“That irony points to what I see as an inescapable conclusion: The world probably can’t solve climate change without nuclear power.”
Welcome to 1988. You have wasted a trillion dollars doing nothing when a solution was in front of you. Welcome to the Denier club. Enjoy your stay.
Lack of nukes threatens the bitcoin mining industry.
henryp, the water turbine isn’t 100% efficient. The water gives up potential energy some of which is used in the turbine and converted to electricity. What happens to the rest of the PE? Figure it out.
As for nuclear waste heat from a reactor you can air cool it or better go to a high temperature design like the LFTR which also operates at essentially atmospheric pressure and because of the high temperature the thermo efficiency is higher. The LFTR type was first developed for nuclear powered airplanes (bad idea) but can even be made load following.
The problem with embracing ANY ‘environmentally acceptable’ is, they are never satisfied. At its heart the more aggressive segment of the environmental movement is basically anti-human, i.e., humans, especially a bunch of them, are responsible for all of the worlds woes.
If you build nuclear power plants, they want them shut down due to their inherent risks.
If you build wind farms, they are shut down due to their negative impact on birds.
If you want to build solar farms, permits will be denied because they require too much acreage and are an eyesore.
The fact is, the only acceptable solution, if they have their way, is far fewer people, living in more primitive and difficult circumstances to discourage reproduction.
That was supposed to be ‘environmentally acceptable’ solution
Terrapower and Toshiba had agreements back in 2010 for building traveling wave reactors (TWRs), which is relatively mature technology. In 2015, Terrapower signed an agreement to build a prototype 600 MWe reactor unit at Xiapu in Fujian province, China, beginning this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TerraPower
TWRs can generate electricity from the “nuclear waste” some activists use as reason to abandon nuclear power entirely. You might think such activists would be enthused about neutralizing that waste through additional power generation. That doesn’t seem to be the case.
Chernobyl to become a solar plant.
http://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/chernobyl-nuclear-power-plant-transformed-into-a-massive-solar-plant/news-story/2d8d365ca1a6a7bde0c75c2372e888ed
It says 1 megawatt. Did they add a lot more later?
“Thanks for the info. But it adds no confidence in nuclear. …
I was merely observing that the cracks in the Belgium reactors caused a considerable shortage in power there and nobody could tell what caused it…Now all reactors are up running again and everyone is quiet about the repairs…”
Henry’s comment is very contradictory. There is a potential problem at a nuke plant. The plant stays off line while it is resolved. I would be worried if the plant continued to operate without resolving the issue.
Henry wants someone to spoon feed him information that is readily available from regulators.
Ever notice that those with concerns are not concerned enough to research the answer. They say things like there are too many unanswered questions. Yet I know every question has been answered. I even answered some of them and the NRC accepted the answer and it was placed in the federal registrar as public record.
We live in a motor home. I have concerns about fires and tires. I have done hundreds of hour research. There is plenty of smoking gun videos. I have a plan to get to the side of the road and be safely away in less than 2 minutes. I have extra smoke detectors ect.
In the 60+ year history of US navy nuclear propulsion and US commercial plants has anyone even been hurt by radiation. No smoking gun.
retired kit
poor choice to go ad hominem on me.
I respect your expertise and I would be less worried if you were here supervising maintenance here [in South Africa}
unfortunately you are not here and I hear of stupid mistakes here at Koeberg during maintenance.
“I read a number of years back that they were working on ways to anneal the metal in place in order to help with these problems. Did this ever work out?”
Yes but not for something as large as a reactor vessel. They warped large pipes with cables to induce a current to heat the welds.
One of the design basis for the 40 year life of a nuke plant is the reactor vessel. Experience has shown that this was very conservative. To my knowledge no reactor vessel has reached the end of its life.
Again, metallurgy is not my wheelhouse.
A typical forced could down rate limit is 100 degrees F per hour to limit thermal stress. Been there and done that!
One of the important design consideration is a crack is going leak before it breaks. Also certain failure only occur at lower temperatures. There is an lower operating limit of +40 degrees F.
not sure what caused the Chernobyl disaster but I heard the problem is not over yet…
They say it must be re-encapsulated but the Ukraine government does not have enough money for it….
So they asked the EU for the money (via the AEC)
now I hear another story, turning it into a solar plant?
Must be to camouflage the cost of ‘solving’ the problem…
No more nuclear, please, everyone?
We really don’t need it.
The re-encapsulating has been done, I watched a UK documentary of the process carried out by a huge team of (mostly) European engineers.
Absolutely fascinating. The new housing includes a massive gantry system in the roof which will enable remote controlled cranes to demolish and remove the old building from within and seal up the contaminated parts for removal.
The massive new housing was built in two halves, joined together and slid into position by computer controlled jacks all pushing simultaneously. Apparently it was too heavy to use wheels because axles could not manage the weight.
The new housing was estimated to be good for 100 years, by which time they expect to have dealt with the old reactor building and removed the radioactive debris.
SteveT
Steve,
Thx. I noticed from the link here given by someone that the job had been done. Must have cost a fortune… and now somebody suggested to put solar up on top….to get some money back from this investment in the safety of Europe?
Guys don’t make a mistake. The more ‘safety’ regulations the more expensive the energy gets.
Nuclear is the last on my list for producing cheap energy.
Go Hydro, Go Hydro with wind. Gas is best.
Whether or not one believes that CO2 in the atmosphere could cause significant global warming, it makes sense to use nuclear fission to generate electricity. While coal and natural gas are relatively cheap right now, neither of them has the energy density (energy available per mass of fuel) of nuclear fuel. Nuclear power plants are more expensive to build than coal or gas-fired power plants, but the operating cost per kWh is much less. The known reserves of fossil fuels will probably last a few centuries, but the known reserves of nuclear fuel will last much longer.
In an idealized world where common sense ruled, most electricity would be generated from nuclear fission, and oil and gas would be used for transportation fuel and home heating, because it is impractical to build a small nuclear reactor to power a truck or bus, or heat a home.
But nuclear power plants have gotten an undeserved reputation as being too dangerous, due to a few incidents whose adverse effects have been overblown. Three Mile Island was a relatively minor hiccup whose
effects were hyped in the media, to coincide with Jane Fonda’s “China Syndrome” scaremonger film. Chernobyl was more dangerous, due to the lack of containment in Soviet-designed nuclear plants, but it was fortunately in a sparsely populated area.
The Fukushima plant in Japan was relatively well-designed, but nobody had planned for the possibility of a tsunami, or allowed for the starting of the water pumps from a remote location on high ground (there were two hills around the Fukushima plant which basically channeled the tsunami water over it). The same mistake was made near the levees protecting New Orleans, which prevented the pumps from being started after Hurricane Katrina broke the levees and flooded New Orleans.
In the United States, politics got in the way of common sense, as it usually does. It had been decided that the safest place to store nuclear waste was under Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert, but since Harry Reid of Nevada was the Senate Democrat Leader (sometimes in the majority, sometimes in the minority with filibuster power), he single-handedly nixed any possibility of storing nuclear waste, bringing the U.S. nuclear power industry to a standstill.
With Dirty Harry now out of the Senate, now is the time to give the US nuclear power industry a new start, as part of an all-of-the-above energy policy. Not to reduce CO2 emissions or “save” the planet from “global warming”, but because it could provide abundant energy for many centuries into the future.
Like I said. Uranium is really not that easy to mine. Same problems as mining gold.
I have given some hints here on how to use wind and hydro together.
Gas is best. I.e the cheapest
Thorium is ridiculously easy to mine. In fact, it is a waste product for rare earth mining and since it is radioactive, it prevents the US being competitive in the rare earth market since we have regulations that prevent disturbing it or require costly disposal of it.
David
Where do I find a thorium reactor?
I’d be happy to embrace nuclear.
But does anyone actually think there is a chance in Hell of progressive eco-activists allowing it?
I am working on it. And you would be surprised at how receptive many have been to LFTR’s. Apparently people who watch Pandora’s Promise get a very high flip rate.
Am crazy socialist and a clinically depressed meteorologist. What could go wrong
*A
Henry writes
“poor choice to go ad hominem on me”
Is it an attack or a description?
A few minutes later Henry writes, “No more nuclear, please, everyone?
We really don’t need it.”
Apparently Henry does not understand the difference between a LWR with a pressure vessel and containment building; and a hot dog stand.
I sure Henry will think I am comparing him to a fence post but a fence post has a purpose.