Guest essay by Eric Worrall
In the face of the utter failure of large investments in renewables to deliver CO2 reductions, greens are increasingly embracing nuclear power as the solution to climate change.
Nuclear Power Can Save the World
Expanding the technology is the fastest way to slash greenhouse gas emissions and decarbonize the economy.
By Joshua S. Goldstein, Staffan A. Qvist and Steven Pinker
Drs. Goldstein and Qvist are the authors of “A Bright Future: How Some Countries Have Solved Climate Change and the Rest Can Follow.” Dr. Pinker is a psychology professor at Harvard.April 6, 2019
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Where will this gargantuan amount of carbon-free energy come from? The popular answer is renewables alone, but this is a fantasy. Wind and solar power are becoming cheaper, but they are not available around the clock, rain or shine, and batteries that could power entire cities for days or weeks show no sign of materializing any time soon. Today, renewables work only with fossil-fuel backup.
Germany, which went all-in for renewables, has seen little reduction in carbon emissions, and, according to our calculations, at Germany’s rate of adding clean energy relative to gross domestic product, it would take the world more than a century to decarbonize, even if the country wasn’t also retiring nuclear plants early.
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But we actually have proven models for rapid decarbonization with economic and energy growth: France and Sweden. They decarbonized their grids decades ago and now emit less than a tenth of the world average of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour. They remain among the world’s most pleasant places to live and enjoy much cheaper electricity than Germany to boot.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/06/opinion/sunday/climate-change-nuclear-power.html
The rise of mainstream green advocacy for nuclear power is long overdue.
I have never understood how anyone who thinks CO2 is a looming threat can argue in good faith against the evidence of two countries which have affordably reduced their CO2 emissions to a tenth of what everyone else emits, by embracing nuclear power.
Mark Jacobson, call your office.
Molten salt reactors need to be moved from always ‘just around the corner’ to actuality through realistic funding and research that could reify the concept. This would also help separate the environmentalists from the one-worlders. One worry, where would green plants get enough CO2 to keep up the ‘greening-of-the-Earth.
Molten salt reactors are on their way. We do not ‘need’ them at present, but there is a growing number of people who want them, and for a lot of good reasons. Climate change is not one of those reasons, as going nuclear will not have much of an impact on climate. This is because CO2 does not have much of an impact on climate, as the geological history of the planet clearly demonstrates.
This is a case of “building a better mouse trap”. Scalable reactors will simply be a better, more efficient way to produce electricity in a growing number of applications. Government support for the R & D is growing in India and China, but the technical stuff will be figured out with or without government support. I would not be surprised if the private sector ends up producing nuclear solutions before the governments do. It’s just a good idea that has been suppressed by fear and government interference.
We would probably be even more flush with cheap energy today if politicians didn’t make such poor choices around nuclear energy in the 1950s and 60s.
High density regions need a cheap, safe burn reactor, as it pollution free.
The molten salt reactor is cheap as it simple, safe, six times more fuel efficient, produces 1/9 th waste, and the waste is chemically bond in the thick vessel.
The molten salt reactor is just a pot with six internal screw type pumps and six heat exchangers.
The molten salt reactor can compete with coal and natural gas.
It would be interesting to compare the molten salt reactor that can be mass produced and constructed in four years/site to large scale wind and sun gather vs amount spent and CO2 reduction.
I agree.
There is no technical solution to CAGW.
A realistic nuclear solution would change the conversion with the cult of CAGW. i.e. They would have a good choice and spending money on the good choice would help everyone. There is a win-win realistic solution
We are at point A. We need to get to point B.
Point
Roughly 70% of the public is scared of the nuclear power. (Almost all women are against nuclear power)
The fuel rod, water cooled reactors are expensive and take too long to build.
The fuel rod, water cooled reactors are inherently unsafe.
Fuel rod, water cooled reactors have melted down and spread radioactive material.
To get to Point B.
Nuclear reactor is as cheap as coal, it is has no catastrophic failure modes, and can be mass produced/
The main thing is that the Deep State newspaper printed such an op-ed.
We even have a repository for spent fuel rods, Yucca Mtn., for which taxpayers spent billions. Harry Reid killed it, ostensibly because it was in the same time zone as Las Vegas, but actually because envirofascists have always rejected nuclear.
There’s also the NIMBY objection by those who live near the site too.
Jim
” … greens are increasingly embracing nuclear power as the solution to climate change.”
“The Solution” implies that there is a problem. There isn’t a problem. Just because the green mob realizes that their prescription won’t work, doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to continue to be on course to tell everyone they don’t like that they have to play by their rules or suffer consequences.
There is no mob quite so terrifying as a self-righteous mob. Norm Pattis (Source)
“massive light water nuclear reactors”
The only thing massive about LWR is thermal output.
A LWR is so small that it can fit in the hull of a submarine. My initial training was on naval propulsion LWR which also produced electricity.
This small size allows LWR to be placed in a relatively small containment building for stationary power plants. This passive safety features ensures 100% safety for my children living near the nuke plant.
I have worked at stationary LWR in the US, Spain, and China which was the last before retiring. China being a communist country was different. A small city was built near the power plants for the workers. My wife and I lived in a high rise apartment with an ocean view. I walked to work although there was a shuttle bus.
So why did China plan a site for multiple 1600 MWe LWR? Each plant would require two mile long coal trains a day from the coal fields on the other side of China. There was a massive 5000 MWe coal station 5 miles down the road importing coal from other countries including the US.
There is just a bit of irony in that left coast greens oppose both exporting Powder River Coal a 1000 miles across the rockies and nuclear power at the same time.
The point is simple. We build power plants to make electricity we need. We build nuke plants when the cost of getting fossil fuels to the power plant make nukes economical. We build wind and solar that we do not need so those who skipped science in school can feel good about themselves.
Good grief !
After all these years, did Pravda finally get around to hiring somebody who can add, subtract, multiply and divide?
Either way it’s encouraging. I think Moore and Gates have gave nuclear power a huge shot in the arm. Wish Trump would get behind it quite actively, but I don’t think so.
Fukushima was a huge setback for the technology, but people need to understand its old technology and that already very safe nuclear can be made even safer.
“Fukushima was a huge setback for the technology, but people need to understand its old technology and that already very safe nuclear can be made even safer.”
Not just old technology, but a really evil, greedy corporate decision. TEPCO engineers lowered the elevation of the Fukushima Daiichi plant in order to make it closer to sea level and thus reduce cooling water pumping costs (documented in TEPCO communications).
And yet no one didd, or will die, from radiation at Fukushima..
Only a fool could say such a thing.
Reality is not your friend, is it?
I think Shellenberger deserves some credit too. He presents a convincing case for nukes in his TED talk and I expect that being an anti-nuke to pro-nuke convert might give him some street cred with those still opposed.
Coal burned with the ZECCOM™¹ *(Zero Emissions Coal Combustion) Process and Natural Gas burned with the ZENGCOM™¹ (Zero Emissions Natural Gas Combustion) Process will be much quicker than Nuclear, solar or wind power, and much less expensive than any other option, because most of the conventional power plant continues to be used as it is now.
CCS is dead and buried.
Pun intended.
No matter how many times you re-post your ad, you don’t seem to be picking up many new investors.
I think this will become a trend on the Left.
Nuclear electricity generation is the only solution to the problem they have set themselves. Fossil fuels can power the world, but they don’t reduce CO2; windmills and solar thermal reduce CO2 but they can’t power the world; nuclear can power the world and reduce CO2. The Left just has to get over their unjustified aversion to nuclear.
The realization will start out slowly and grow from there.
Every AGW proponent claims we need to electrify transportation. Have any of them thought through the scope of that endeavor? Problems that never seem to be addressed.
1. The energy needed for transportation in the USA is equivalent to 75% of that used presently by present electrical use.
2. To make all transportation electrical means that electrical usage will increase by 75%.
3. Using excess Solar for charging of automobiles will have to be during the day and require charging stations at their place of employment.
4, The Peak power usage will more than double because of the new load from EV and Battery charging for night time use.
5. Distributed small scale generation [ roof top solar ] will require extensive, costly replacement of the present protection system used on the electrical grid. the present system is designed to protect from the center [power plant ] outward to the end users. Distributed generation turns that problem upside down and backwards and must protect in both directions at the same time for different currents. That will require a control system as complicated as the internet to communicate the control signals the the end user protective devices.
6. The cost of all of this Green Dream electricity is going to necessarily cause the cost of your electricity to skyrocket.
7. The Green Dream can not be paid for by allowing an end user with a rooftop solar system to get paid the same for the electricity that he sells the electric company when the sun is shining and his house is empty as they pay electric company for their electricity when the sun is not shining and using electricity during the Max Peak load period. The electric company will go broke under that price plan.
ONLY Nuclear Power reduces CO2 AND keeps the cost of electricity affordable to support manufacturing and the economy development. Nuclear power is already safer than Air Travel – The last major Air accident Instantly killed more people than commercial nuclear power in total or will die from any previous events.
And herein lies the environmentalists’ dilemma that they’ve boxed themselves into. Being good useful idiots they’ve successfully demonized fossil fuels and nuclear energy on the premise/promise that wind and solar can replace them. Realizing that their assumptions are wrong what is their fall back? They don’t have one. They can bitch and squeal and demonstrate until the cows come home but it won’t change the truth that we can’t get there from here and gullibility has been over ruled by reality. The fact is people are not willing to take a step back in living standards and would rather put up with the consequences and adapt when it really comes down to it even if the AGW scam were true. Nuclear can solve most energy demands but will only delay the inevitable. Even nuclear is a finite energy source but at least it’s a viable for the foreseeable future. Maybe this time they’ll have a proven replacement ready before pulling the plug. Just another example of shoot, ready, aim that they’ve become experts at…… and missing the target.
We have used far less than 5 percent of the energy in the fuel rods in a NPP. All of the fuel rods used to date in the USA could be reprocessed and “New” fuel made rather than storing it. Then this could be done again and again at least 20 more times. That is enough for another hundred or more years. Then, before this already mined Uranium runs out we could start extracting all of the Uranium in the ocean or even mining it from the earth. By then, robots could do this and not cause the workers to be subject to the uranium ore. Hopefully before then we will have discovered how fusion works and not even need that or the Green Dream. Even Scientific American claims there is another 250,000 years of nuclear fuel – for all energy needs.
No, there is only about 10,000 years,.
Even using breeder technology.
” Hopefully before then we will have discovered how fusion works and not even need that or the Green Dream. “
Not defending the Scientific Americain claim, However all guestimations most people give for nucler fusion are based upon the methods used today to extract energy for generating electrical power. that is heating water, making steam, staem driving a turbine, the turbing rotatinh a generator. That givs us less tha 35% of the Thermal power of the nuclear fission process of that concersion process. Just as people are expermiting with new ways to collect energy from the sun into electricy, eg Nanoantennas or ‘Rectennas,’ methods such as that could be used to greatly increase the production of electricity from nuclear fission. This would be acheived by collection more of the fission products and turning them into electricity. A 3 timed improvment is easily achievable, by collecting a broder spectrum of fission products I believe a tenfold increase could be achieved – and that is still less than the result of E = MC^2
Sounds a lot like those who have been claiming we only have a few decades of oil left.
There is lots of uranium in the crust. As technology improves, our ability to get at smaller and less concentrated deposits improves.
The problem is that nuclear is extremely costly due to the inevitable political opposition from greenies and other lefties, which makes cost overruns inevitable and extreme. Other than that, it is safe and environmentally and human friendly.
The reality is that the climate change that we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which mankind has no control. They could stop using fossil fuels altogether but so doing would have not effect on the Earth’s climate.
A summary of the world-wide nuclear power situation at 2018.
No. Ideological Green don’t want this.
You’ve got to take on board: Green ideology doesn’t want “non-polluting” growth. For Greens ALL economic growth is by definition pollution. You’ve got to grasp that. Or you never will understand the irrational ferocity with which Greens assert that the world is doomed and humans are the cause.
For Greens, man in any role but beast among beasts is creating pollution. Man lives by using reason to understand, control, and change nature to meet his needs. For ideological Greens, that is the essence of pollution. Man, adapting nature to himself when other species adapt themselves to nature, is the metaphysical FREAK destroying the natural order. Man is unnatural, a perversion created by evolution. The Green battle is to reverse economic progress of all kinds. Green progress is the unwinding of the Scientific/Industrial/Technological Revolutions. If nuclear power is the cheapest, most efficient way to meet human needs, to grow the economy–and emits less carbon than one Green’s fart–they don’t want it. The solution isn’t non-polluting energy. The solution is to undo the perversion that is man.
Steven Pinker is genuinely an Enlightenment thinker with the view that reason, science, technology and engineering can solve problems like “global warming/catastrophic climate change” and permit economic growth to continue unchecked. The ideological Greens are Postmodernists who reject the Enlightenment root and branch. And reject its chief productions: the scientific, industrial, and technological revolutions.
Warmistas and Greenies are being drawn inexorably away from their failed fantasies of wind-turbines and solar farm non-solutions by the huge forces of finance and cost. The fact that the push to reduce CO2 remains completely on unproven grounds is of no interest to them. At least the return to nuclear solution does not pose a huge threat to the future of civilisation as wind and solar do. These Warmistas and Greens can be identified as they are the Luddites moving about in Teslas usually.
Anyone familiar with corrosion issues is repulsed by the thought of “molten salt” in or around a nuclear reactor. (Hasteloy N doesn’t even come close to solving the materials problem). Suggesting that molten salt reactors are ready here and now is wrong by decades. Molten salt reactors are a distraction from serious debate about the near term implementation of nuclear energy. The only chance for a nuclear renaissance that we in America have is the NuScale SMR, currently scheduled to be on line in 2026. Lets show support!
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NuScale SMR enters first manufacturing phase
26 September 2018
NuScale Power has selected BWX Technologies Inc (BWXT) as the first manufacturer of its small modular reactor (SMR). This marks the transition to the manufacturing phase and represents major progress in bringing the technology to market, NuScale said yesterday.
There will never be a place for nuclear energy in the GND.
The nuclear path might actually fix the (non)problem…or at least satisfy CO2 emissions targets …without renewables.
The problem with that:
1.) No need to transfer $50Trillion (more) to the government/CC industry.
2.) Couldn’t pull off establishing a communist utopia in North America (under their supervision, of course).
I like nuclear, particularly small modular, but recent idaho PV plant has signed long term supply contract for $0.03/kWh. That is cheap enough to (combined with batteries for night time and liquid hydrogen from water electrolysis to get through winter and other PV interruptions) undercut all other power production other than existing hydro electric.
PV/battery/hydrogen is going to take over because it is now the cheapest option – which is a pretty good result in my opinion. Nuclear and Fossil Fuel and probably wind will slowly die out, and Greens will need to find something else to blame/complain about.
You’re living in a fantasy world.
Have you actually investigated the cost of batteries? Especially enough batteries to power the country through the night.
And let’s not forget that you are going to need at least 4 or 5 times as much PV in order to charge those batteries during most days.
Leftists are slowly beginning to realize their imaginary Utopian State run on grid-level wind and solar power would lead to, like almost all their hair brained ideas, economic collapse…
The REAL energy cost/kWh of wind/solar is up to 5 times more expensive than natural gas/coal, combined with the inextricable problems of being too: diffuse, intermittent, unreliable, fluctuating, and inefficient, and the requirement of 100% immediate backup by conventional power, and it’s laughably low energy desensity, make grid-level wind/solar an impossible proposition.
Eventually fossil fuels will need to be replaced by another energy source, and the ONLY viable options are: hydroelectric and nuclear, but just let the market decide when and what form of nuclear power is best.
Liquid Floride Thorium Reactors (LFTRs) seem to be the safest, cheapest, and most sustainable type of nuclear power, and China is on track to have a commercial LFTR design available in about 10 years.
Rather than wasting $trillions on stupid wind/solar projects, which will never be able to replace fossil fuels, just let the free market decide what and when the next generation nuclear power source is best.
If CO2 emissions are a serious problem then nuclear power is the ONLY answer. The reason greenies have been reluctant to accept the obvious is that they have spent their entire lives preventing and obstructing the development and implementation of nuclear power.
Think what it means to reverse course. Who gets the blame for the current risk of destruction of the planet? It’s just too much for them.
I doubt that the Luddites of the Left will buy it. It is significant that the NYT chose to publish the article.
why do we build any unreliable renewable power like Wind and Solar when they have to have 100% non renewable backup. why not just use the backup power supplies in the first place and save the extra expense and degradation caused by bird Choppers and bird fryers.
One has to wonder why the NY Times is suddenly a tad pro-nuclear. For decades they have been singing the praises of wind and solar while anyone that has spent a few hours studying the issues realizes that wind/solar is a hoax. Could it be we’ll be seeing more “truth telling” now that Trump’s Climate Commission is gearing up”? Fine line between a hoax and criminal fraud. Doesn’t hurt to show a little “fair and balanced”to keep the legal department happy.