Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to NPR, since 2001 there has been a surge in young people graduating with nuclear engineering qualifications, who are driven by the desire to convince their fellow greens to embrace the nuclear path to a zero carbon future.
As Nuclear Struggles, A New Generation Of Engineers Is Motivated By Climate Change
June 15, 20185:01 AM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
JEFF BRADYThe number of people graduating with nuclear engineering degrees has more than tripled since a low point in 2001, and many are passionate about their motivation.
“I’m here because I think I can save the world with nuclear power,” Leslie Dewan told the crowd at a 2014 event as she pitched her company’s design for a new kind of reactor.
Dewan says climate change, and the fact that nuclear plants emit no greenhouse gases, are the big reason she became a nuclear engineer. And she is not the only one.
“The reason that almost all of our students come into this field is climate change,” says Dennis Whyte, head of the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
…
“If you are concerned about climate change, or concerned about the environment, you should be very concerned about the future of [Three Mile Island],” says David Fein, Exelon’s senior vice president of state governmental and regulatory affairs.
TMI parent company Exelon announced last year it will close Three Mile Island Unit 1 in 2019 unless there are policy changes that would make the plant profitable again. A different reactor on the site near Middletown, Pa. — Unit 2 — was involved in the country’s worst nuclear accident in 1979.
Fein is among those who argue that nuclear plants should be recognized as clean energy and paid for the public benefit of not emitting greenhouse gases or other pollutants. It’s a strategy that has worked in other states: Illinois, New York and — most recently — New Jersey.
…
I’m good with green nuclear engineers. Even if they are wrong about climate change, at least their vision for the future makes economic sense.
France proved in the 1970s that you can go full nuclear without ruining your economy. France kept costs down with mass production, by churning out standardised nuclear modules and by large scale reprocessing of spent fuel.
I suspect the green nuclear engineers may have trouble convincing some of their fellow travellers. On the other hand, maybe its the old style watermelon greens who are out of touch, who foolishly believe there is any chance of convincing Generation Z to give up all their electronic toys and embrace a repressive shivering cold green dictatorship for the sake of the planet.
I suspect these green nuclear engineers will find a receptive audience with a younger generation of greens who are used to unlimited convenience and lifestyles of profligate energy expenditure and long distance travel, who view their green parent’s low energy vision of regimented communities living off the land like medieval peasants with something between incomprehension and disgust.
Let’s hope the drug-addled and ageing brains of the baby-boomers don’t take that opportunity away from them. New clarity of thinking will lead to correct non politically biased decision making on energy.
Why take cheap shots at Baby-boomers? Stereotype much?
Hay una mínima posibilidad de que se produzca un accidente nuclear,pero si se produce las consecuencias son desastrosas.
Esta casi listo un novedoso sistema para generar Energía Eléctrica,abundante y barata,no produce gases de efecto invernadero,no contamina,funciona las 24 horas del día los 365 días del año,no afecta a nada ni a nadie,es EXTRAORDINARIO.
Just now I’m reading “Death Traps” by Belton Cooper, the historical novel about his experiences as a member of the maintenance / ordnance unit attached to the third armoured division in its WW2 campaign from Normandy to Germany. (The Brad Pitt film “Fury” was based on this book.) Handicapped by a main battle tank with armament and armour grossly inferior to that of the German tanks they faced, his unit fulfilled the enormous task of repair, replacement and re-supply of the fighting divisions. What is remarkable in his account is the ingenuity of the engineers in solving engineering challenges in repairing shot-up tanks, pulling vehicles from deep mud and keeping the fighting divisions supplied and mobile. They were continually innovating, even using nose cones from the shells that took out a tank to repair that same tank. Damaged vehicles were creatively cannibalised and even new hybrid vehicles created.
One senses that this inferno created a generation of creative engineers that would drive forward innovation in commercial sectors such as automobiles, aircraft etc for a generation after the war. It was certainly true that the vast number of pilots trained in WW2 were the mainstay of civil aviation until the 80’s, when their mass retirement caused a near crisis in pilot recruitment.
It is a hopeful sign that the nuclear sector is attracting youthful idealism. At least some in the new generation are realising that negative Luddite dystopia and catastrophist fantasies will solve nothing.
My big concern is that the modern version of degree class thinking and competence seems to be limited to the ability to Google it and read and plagiarize Wikipedia. Perhaps the search term, “How to be a Nuclear Engineer” may not be enough to create a new generation of nuclear power .
I mentor engineering students in an elite program in a Spanish university, and I don’t see trends towards a softer curriculum. They do have a very Darwinian system, only 60% will move on to second year. 20% will drop engineering or move to a different school, and 20% will go to the non elite level section.
Maybe Homer could mentor them.
And France has very high electricity costs…
Anyway, we need to get CO2 up to 1000 ppm at least, so we should burn as much coal and oil as we can dig up.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/04/04/19297/
“But Foster’s study shows that if humanity sticks to business as usual, by next century, Earth will have more carbon dioxide than at any time in the last 50 million years. That’s roughly 700 to 900 ppm”
Current CO2 levels in the atmosphere are about 420ppm so if we continue to burn fossil fuels we will roughly double the current number. The Estimated Climate Sensitivity (ECS) of CO2 is about 1.5C or less, which means if we double CO2 that is about how much additional warmth will be added to the atmosphere accourding to the Greenhouse Gas Theory.
So burning our fossil fuels without restraint will only result in a minor temperature increase, and there is a chance that ECS is much lower than 1.5C, so we have nothing to worry about.
CO2 levels have been much higher in the past and have not led to any runaway greenhouse effect as the alarmist predict will happen if we add a couple of hundred ppm to the atmosphere now. History shows they are wrong. It’s not going to happen.
Eric says, “I’m good with green nuclear engineers.” Hmmm. I agree in so far that if support for nuclear energy can be the common ground for policy direction, that is desirable. But I cringe at the idea of nuclear engineers who fail to see the misconception of the “heat-trapping” narrative about CO2. Heat is not trapped inside a nuclear core, and it cannot be trapped on the surface of a planet with a mobile atmosphere, flooded and spritzed automatically with natural refrigerant.
‘TMI…2019…. plant profitable again. Amending the AEPS is one of many potential solutions… Other option….. zero emissions credit program.,…’ Interesting. Three Mile nuclear plant opened in1974. So why has Three Mile Nuclear Plants be come unprofitable? I bet they can’t compete with subsidized wind and solar power plants. The solution should be to stop subsidizing wind and solar power plants.
I worry about the quality of the courses these people are doing, if at the end they do not have enough math to see the impossibility ofCO2 causing any serious global warming.
If they do have the math it appears they are dishonest enough to want to use the global warming scam to promote nuclear generation.
What a sad, sad, indictment of our society! Young and intelligent students are so imbued with the global warming religion that they wish to devote their lives to a false hypotheses. Let’s hope the warmunists get due retribution for this evil deception!
That’s simply good news. Having young newly qualified people disseminating facts and physics about nuclear’s superiority in evry green and technical way must be a great way to confront the pseudo science of the delusional greens, and disprove their propaganda to anyone who checks the facts..
Claiming that AGW its the motivating force for most, or even very many, of those developing Gen 4 nuclear reactors is dead wrong. The biggest pluses for devices like molten salt reactors are 1) low cost, 2) quick build in factories and little site preparation, no need for cooling lakes nearby,
inherently ,3) walk away safe – physically incapable of doing any significant harm. 4) Load following capability – these plants can ramp power up and down quickly and don’t herefore require additional peak load powergenerators, like natural gas. Cost of power generated should be cheaper than any other technology. 5) These plants can be safely located ANYWHERE – in cities and towns, etc. 6) They have a very small environmental footprint.
More power to these new nuclear engineers. Nuclear is the future.
Even Hansen is onboard with nuclear. In fact, I bet a lot of alarmists will get onboard eventually when it becomes obvious that unreliable power generation such as wind and solar, is not going to get the job done. And that time seems to be rapidly approaching.
In Illinois, it required new subsidies to keep 4 plants open and “compete” with subsidized wind. This should not be any model – but a lesson. Supporting anti-global warming as a motive for this ensures competing for subsidies as the primary task instead of producion of cheap, reliable and reasonably clean energy.
I’m pretty sure most or all of the Green Cult leaders are fully aware that nuclear will power our world in the future, but providing clean and reliable energy or “stopping” climate change isn’t their actual goal in the Climate Crusades. Their goal is to become filthy rich by skimming money from wealth redistribution schemes where they get to act like the “good” guy because they’re “helping” poor nations. They have stated this in only a slightly less frank manner.
What I’ve read is that only a minority (25%?) of greens are adamantly anti-nuclear; the rest have gone along with them to avoid fracturing the anti-carbon crusade.
Quite the paradox:
Smart enough to be a nuclear engineer
Dumb enough to believe “carbon this or carbon that.”
The future lied in new designs of aneutronic nuclear fusion reactors which may be close in hand.
Fusion energy using new principles and designs (NOT tokamak designs) is on track to be commercialized by the Early Twenties… Dense Plasma Focus (DPL) produces no ionizing radiation at all. The Hydrogen- Boron fuel supply is essentially unlimited. Operating Costs are ultra-cheap producing inexpensive electricity (1 cent a kWhr) because DPL Fusion directly produces electricity by induction, without turbines and boilers
How it works
Reaching ignition
Complete Album of Videos
Device video:
LPPFusion.com
UC San Diego Collaboration with LPPFusion
https://cer.ucsd.edu/_news-events-articles/2017/news-LPPFusion.html
???????????
Marcus
Not sure where this diversion is occurring. I refer you to the LPPFusion.com website to find the videos posted there. Apologies for any inconvenience.
The links to this post were sabotaged.
They should be:
How it works
Reaching ignition
Complete Album of Videos
Device video:
LPPFusion.com
UC San Diego Collaboration with LPPFusion
https://cer.ucsd.edu/_news-events-articles/2017/news-LPPFusion.html
There’s no “sabotage” the links between posts are identical.
I can assure you Anthony that the links I posted don’t lead to Gansta’ Rap videos… You can confirm that by opening the links I originally posted which I just emailed you.
I don’t know where the snafu is occurring ….
Old good client-side malware? Let’s try:
https://lppfusion.com/where-can-you-get-aneutronic-fuel/
Leaving this here as this article is more relevant to the topics I brought up.
I wish there was some other term than lefties to describe the political tendencies of the liberal. I am left handed and have to keep reminding my self that you are not talking about me.
My own personal thoughts on energy production is that we really need to build more nuclear fission plants. I also would like to see the use of Thorium based fission with a “tabletop” fusion generator based on the Farnsworth–Hirsch fusor design that would provide fast neutron bombardment that is easily controlled by adjusting a voltage.
Our current Uranium/Plutonium breeder reactor designs were meant to provide usable material for constructing nuclear weapons and were not really focused on electricity production. I expect the Japanese and Chinese to outpace the USA in this area. The Japanese due to their ability to refine and perfect quicker than the USA and the Chinese due to their use of existing coal to fuel their economy and provide the means for them to devote research and refinement towards nuclear fission development.
I wonder how much Thorium gets thrown into discard piles after the coal is mined in the USA?
Someone is sabotaging links to LPPFusion that I included in my post. How it works
Reaching ignition
Complete Album of Videos
Device video:
LPPFusion.com
UC San Diego Collaboration with LPPFusion
https://cer.ucsd.edu/_news-events-articles/2017/news-LPPFusion.html
You keep posting the same vimeo link. I just scoured vimeo to see if I could find an LPP Fusion video with “ignition” in the title. “No matches” Same for “How it works” – no matches.
Here are the video results for LPP fusion:
► edited to delete link to search results, because vimeo converted the link to an embedded video having no relevance!)
Note that, as with the LPP Fusion wesbsite, there are no updates since 2015. Perhaps Mr. Lerner has run out of money?
Anyway, when you see that the wrong videos turned up not just once but twice and thrice, you could have use the new edit function to clean up the big ugly gangster-rappin’ mess you left on the page, with an explanatory note saying,
“Hey, my videos came out wrong on this 2nd/3rd attempt, so I deleted them.”
Test embed for LPP fusion video on VIMEO (vimeo reference number 90680315):
► test failure (nothing embedded using iframe)
test #2 direct link to Sarastro’s referenced video number:
Bingo – no problem. So what are you doing wrong?
All the videos on vimeo can be found by searching under LPPFusion… the “how it works” title is one I added for clarity in the posting and naturally would not be found by using that as a key word with Vimeo.
Your claim that LPPFusion.com has not updated in three years is complete nonsense. There are updated postings from March- April on the cover page and news button. Somehow you seem managed to miss these postings.
LPPFusion has just raised almost a $1M via crowd sourcing so your speculation about a funding deficit is as wrong as is your ability to load a webpage.
In the wide world beyond the green filtered, uncurious NPR vision of McKibben schooled Middlebury Enviro Journo Fellow, Molley Samuel, a lot of Gen IV nuclear engineering is going on.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-power-reactors/advanced-nuclear-power-reactors.aspx
As some of these projects are already at the prototype testing stage, well beyond Dewan’s computer modeled but “obviously incorrect based on basic physics,” design which ended up when tested, confirming that “their claims were completely untrue”, she is probably not going to save the world.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603731/nuclear-energy-startup-transatomic-backtracks-on-key-promises/
Will Peter Thiel get his money back?
Here we see the right hand of the Green Movement wrestling with the left hand of the Green Movement. This is good news, as “Idle Hands are the Devil’s Workmate”.
Nuclear power is diabolical.NOT green because it needs uranium mining for fuel and the waste is far from biodegradable and poses the biggest health threat long term to the entire planet!! Thorium reactors at least dont have a run away effect like fukashima…
This is good news in its way. The trouble is, we really need that CO2. The satellite observations of increased primary production particularly around desert margins is evidence of this. And anyone trained in geology and ware of the steady decline in available carbon knows there is a limit on how scare carbon can get without dire consequences.
It would be GREAT if there was a class of young nuclear engineers, and if they could figure out how to build nuclear reactors with a capital cost competitive with natural-gas-fired turbines, so they should buckle down and get to work.
If they are really politically motivated, they will have to overcome the objections of the Jane Fonda generation that instilled fear of all things nuclear because of the Three Mile Island burp that inspired the “China Syndrome” movie, and the NIMBYists who always want nuclear wastes buried “somewhere else”.
They should also be careful about voting for Democrats, since it was former Secretary of State and wannabe president Hillary Clinton that took a Russian bribe to give away 20% of our uranium supply, which would have been useful in American nuclear reactors.
If you truly believe in climate change due to carbon emissions, a massive shift to nuclear energy is the only rational and humane choice to make at this point. That’s why I am baffled at the foot dragging or outright resistance to it on behalf of the True Believers. When I drill don on them they will eventually admit they know their chosen policies will cause most of the world to die – they are just sure they and their family will be part of the few who won’t. Given the lifestyle choices of most of the people I know who believe these things, I have severe doubts they would make it through a return to stone age era.
A contributing cost of a nuclear electric generating plant is the “seismic” testing of separate components. I worked at a testing lab that was certified to test valves to nominal seismic values at the time. IIRC we shook a manual valve in 3 axis at up to 1.5 G and up to a low Hz (can’t remember the parameters). It was funny to watch a valve designed to handle high pressure and flow to be shaken by itself. The valve never failed in testing.