How will this change the doomsday clock? ~ctm
Activist group finally recognizes that it can’t achieve its energy and climate goals without nuclear power.
Ronald Bailey|Nov. 13, 2018 4:00 pm
The activists at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) have had a partial change of heart about nuclear power. Back in 2007, the UCS’ Global Warming and Nuclear Power report declared, “prudence dictates that we develop as many options to reduce global warming emissions as possible, and begin by deploying those that achieve the largest reductions most quickly and with the lowest costs and risk. Nuclear power today does not meet these criteria.”
In its new report, The Nuclear Power Dilemma, the UCS now recognizes that nuclear power plays an important role in addressing the problem of man-made global warming by helping to keep U.S. carbon dioxide emissions considerably lower than they would otherwise be. The UCS notes that there has been a 28 percent reduction in U.S. power-sector emissions of carbon dioxide below 2005 levels. This is largely due to the switch from coal to cheap fracked natural gas, to increased energy efficiency, and to the deployment of some solar and wind generation capacity.
The UCS fears that this trend toward lower carbon dioxide emissions will be derailed because many of the currently operating nuclear power plants will close because they are being outcompeted by generation facilities fueled by cheap natural gas and subsidized renewable power generation. “More than one-third of existing plants, representing 22 percent of total U.S. nuclear capacity, are unprofitable or scheduled to close,” notes the report. “The possibility that the nation will replace existing nuclear plants with natural gas and coal rather than low-carbon sources raises serious concerns about our ability to achieve the deep cuts in carbon emissions needed to limit the worst impacts of climate change.” The UCS has evidently come to realize that closing down nuclear power plants will perversely “lock-in” fossil fuels and thus make it harder and more expensive to “save the climate.”
In order to avoid this outcome the UCS advocates either raising the price of electricity generated from burning fossil fuels by putting a price of $25 per ton on carbon dioxide emissions (to be increased at 5 percent annually) or adopting a steadily rising national low-carbon electricity standard. The UCS favorably cites the subsidy schemes adopted by New York, New Jersey and Illinois to keep open nuclear power plants outcompeted by natural gas and subsidized renewable energy generators.
Of course, the UCS’s mild embrace of nuclear power has provoked criticism by some progressives. Gregory Jaczko, former chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Obama administration, said to ThinkProgress that nuclear reactors “are a bad bet for a climate strategy.” Why? Because the costs of building nuclear power plants have risen steeply over the years.
Click here for the complete article
HT/Roger Knights
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Do everything in your power to increase the cost of nuclear power.
Then use the cost of nuclear power as an argument against it.
The hubris is earth shattering.
The madness is almost all of the nuclear safety problems in the last 50 years were due to the designer’s choice of water at 150 atmospheres and fuel rods.
The madness is also that the PWR problems are real problems which were covered up prior to three mile island.
There are massive amounts of water flowing through the reactor which has water soluble radioactive products.
The fission heat engine uses a salt that tightly binds the water soluble radioactive products.
The fission heat engine’s connection to the steam plant is a NaCl heat exchanger. The NaCl to steam is connected to NaCl to Floride salt which in turn is connected to the reactors Floride to floride heat exchanger.
After three mile island it was found that the fuel rods crack and leak.
Every 18 months 1/3 of 118 fuel rods must be replaced and the other fuel rods rotated.
The fuel rod in the center of the reactor was supposed to be run to just before failure. In practice to increase operating time the time before fuel rod replacement was pushed.
The fuel rods all contain two radioactive noble gases. Those gases are released when the rods crack.
The fuel rods when exposed to air release hydrogen gas in sufficient amounts to cause explosions.
In the fission engine, the noble gases rise to the space at the top of the reactor where they are removed cryogenically.
The “clock” is the silly stunt pulled by the “Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,” not the “Union of Concerned Scientists.”