Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Zion Lights, who featured in WUWT last October when BBC Andrew Neil shredded her defence of Extinction Rebellion on national TV, has quit Extinction Rebellion and defected to the pro-nuclear Environmental Progress group.
Extinction Rebellion spokeswoman Zion Lights quits green movement to become lobbyist for nuclear power saying: ‘I changed my mind’
- Zion, 36, dramatically quit the group to join pro-nuclear Environmental Progress
- Miss Lights said she felt she had been duped by anti-nuke activists around her
- Now she believes the energy source is the future to save the planet
- She became worried about the environment after seeing an advert as a child
PUBLISHED: 01:11 AEST, 26 June 2020 | UPDATED: 01:23 AEST, 26 June 2020
Extinction Rebellion’s spokeswoman has quit the protest group to become a nuclear power campaigner.
Zion Lights, 36, has left the climate change cause, which brought London to a standstill last year, to join pro-nuke outfit Environmental Progress.
…
Mother-of-two Zion said: ‘The facts didn’t really change, but once I understood them I did change my mind.’
…
I’m really impressed at Zion’s courage. It takes a lot of guts to admit you made a mistake, after working hard for the wrong team.
Environmental Progress was founded by Michael Shellenberger, a high profile pro-nuclear environmental campaigner whose no nonsense pragmatic views are frequently praised by WUWT.
Michael Shellenberger wrote the following about Zion leaving XR;
Why Climate Activists Will Go Nuclear—Or Go Extinct
Published on June 25, 2020…
Lights told me she changed her mind after a scientist told her nuclear energy was, in fact, safer than other energy sources. “I said, ‘That’s not what I’ve been told.’ And he said, ‘Don’t just listen to what people tell you.’ And so I looked it up and he was right. The data shows it is safe. And I realized solar panels and batteries are not going to meet demand. The more I read the more I realized, ‘Oh no! These things I believed aren’t true!’”
“I then—perhaps somewhat naively—went to people thinking they’d want to know the truth, and then realizing that they don’t. And that’s always difficult. I really struggled to get Greenpeace to listen to the evidence. At times, they have made things up, disingenuously, and they don’t care! It was like dealing with anti-vaxxers,” she said with a rueful laugh. “I couldn’t deal with it. It was like identity politics. I got fed up.”
Lights said she pushed back against other Extinction Rebellion activists who wanted to promote renewables and criticize nuclear. “When they’re pushing solar, or battery storage, and I say to them ‘I heard that 10 years ago! We have nuclear! We have an option! And what we’ve done is descale all of that and shut it down and look at Germany when they did that! Their emissions went up!’”
…
Read more: https://quillette.com/2020/06/25/why-climate-activists-will-go-nuclear-or-go-extinct/
Zion Lights has appealed to other environmentalists to embrace nuclear power;
A message from a former Extinction Rebellion activist: Fellow environmentalists, join me in embracing nuclear power
Zion Lights
Thursday 25 June 2020 6:04 am
Zion Lights is director of Environmental Progress UK. She was formerly the editor of The Hourglass newspaperAs the lockdown measures we have become so familiar with over the past three months are slowly eased, discussions are turning to how to move forward with recovering from the economic hit of Covid-19 in a way that also addresses climate change.
I have a long history of campaigning on environmental issues, most recently as a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion UK and the founder of its climate reporting newspaper The Hourglass.
Now, I have quit the organisation to take up a position as a campaigner for nuclear power.
…
For many years I was skeptical of nuclear power. Surrounded by anti-nuclear activists, I had allowed fear of radiation, nuclear waste and weapons of mass destruction to creep into my subconscious. When a friend sent me a scientific paper on the actual impacts, including the (very small number of) total deaths from radiation at Chernobyl and Fukushima, I realised I had been duped into anti-science sentiment all this time.
Reading up on safety, I found that the nuclear accidents that have occurred in my lifetime were due to unusual and extreme circumstances, or human errors. Chernobyl, for example, occurred due to the use of a flawed reactor design which caused a power surge and explosion at one of the reactors, and Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster was triggered by the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
However, even when including these disastrous events, scientific research has found that nuclear power is still safer than fossil fuels, once air pollution, accidents (from energy extraction) and greenhouse gas emissions are taken into account.
What of renewable alternatives? Alongside my fellow activists, I had been singing the praises of renewable energy for years. But while renewables can and should be part of the mix in supplying energy to the UK, the technology simply doesn’t stretch to powering our country 24/7.
…
Read more: https://www.cityam.com/a-message-from-a-former-extinction-rebellion-activist-fellow-environmentalists-join-me-in-embracing-nuclear-power/
For every courageous green like Zion Lights, no doubt there are thousands of greens who choose to stay silent. But if you are a green, and you truly believe CO2 is a major threat to the planet, the time for silence has passed.
I’m not saying every climate skeptic is pro-nuclear, but many of us are. If you really want to end decades of pointless policy paralysis, deadlock and stalemate, please consider following Zion Lights and Michael Shellenberger’s lead.
Red pilled. Well done, Zion. Now, question your other assumptions.
It’s commendable that she is able to READ and change her mind according to facts. That seems to be a rare quality these days.
But if she thinks ionising radiation and nuclear waste is more dangerous the life giving CO2 she’s not out of the woods yet.
Maybe she will change her silly name to Ionising Lights now.
I can only applaud her for doing the right thing, even if for a partly wrong reason. Well done girl! That took courage.
What I find more disturbing about so-called renewables than anything else is the destruction of habitat for wildlife, the indefensible use of non-degradable products like turbine blades for wind turbines, the destruction of wildlife (e.g., birds, bats, ground animals such as reptiles and insects, etc.) , and other, similar issues which have been discussed on WUWT before. The trash that comes out of the wind turbine industry alone is never going to leave us, even if it’s somehow chopped up and buried. It is horrible stuff and not something that should ever have been allowed to start up.
Nuclear power plants have been around for decades and are more reliable, far safer and less destructive of the environment than any of that green garbage, period.
I’m glad to see that this young woman has been able to understand the different point of view. There is hope, after all.
She is right. We have a nuclear/hydrogen future, but:
Without government subsidies for either.
Let the consumers and the energy market determine if and when.
It will take time for any of this to happen.
Get out of the Green Energy Business now. Hear that California?
Rather than huge government subsidies, let’s take the route of exterminating the insidious onerous regulations that have been piled higher than Mt. Everest atop the permit process for nuclear power stations. Removing those decades of barriers would be more valuable than subsidy money.
Salute!
To be honest, Rhee, it is not all that difficult to satisfy the mountain of onerous regulations, but takes lots more time than it should.
It is the constant use of the U.S. and other country green outfits that keep filing one injunction request after another. And more investigations concerning the bait fish in the estuary, and the, the, the…… Just look at the U.S. border wall ruling this past week. The legal action was filed by the Sierra Club using nefarious claims besides constitutional assignment of fund allocation.
Maybe we can finally get “the truth out there”, huh?
Gums sends…
I applaud Ms. Lights for being willing to be open about looking at the data and change her mind. Too many people out there are just living in the echo chamber.
I wonder if this is fallout from Michael Moore’s film. Maybe he did reach some key people and make them think about the current situation with Wind/Solar/Biofuels. It would be an interesting question to ask her.
Yes, it would be a good question to ask of her. Of course, Moore’s film does not promote nuclear energy, but as you say it may make some examine the current situation around wind/solar/biofuels.
As of the end of May, Planet of the Humans has had about 8 million views online. Using leftist think, that does not seem like many. For example there are already 10 million COVID-19 cases globally.
Good “fallout” pun, BTW.
“I applaud Ms. Lights for being willing to be open about looking at the data…”
I question why she didn’t look at the data for the last 5+ years, when it was readily available for her to see…
Now if Zion could only learn of the Gen 4 molten salt small modular nuclear reactors, fueld by uranium or Thorium, she would lose any notion that nuclear is anything but the cheapest, cleanest, lowest carbon, most quickly employed , safest means of producing power. And these reractors can load follow, meaninfg they don’t need much peak generation auxillery generators.
Thanks to Zion Lights and her friends, the current nuclear reactor technology is 50 years old. I am all for more research and development. If it results in molten salt reactors I can’t say. Meanwhile we are using depleted uranium for artillery shells.
CG
Using depleted Uranium for artillery shells.
How’s is that working out. The narcissists perfect brew.
Its working out very well.
Well, not exactly the shells, but as far as working out, the targets are impressed speechless!
“…using depleted uranium for artillery shells.”
No we are not.
We are using depleted uranium as the penetrator in the projectiles fired from MBT main guns.
Completely different things.
Crumbs. You will be calling a M88 a tank next 😛
It is amazing how people lose their logical, and inquiring abilties once the word nuclear or uranium is mentioned. This Bozo actually thought the shells were all made up of radiating uranium and therefore to him horrifyingly dangerous.
If that were true, imagine how long it would take to put a soldier out of action — 100, 200, 300 years?
Thanks for putting him right.
When someone builds one you can make those claims, Col. We would be much quicker building something that has already been proved to work – take your pick, Russian VVER, Korean APR1400, Chinese ACPR-1000, even the benighted French EPR we are building here in the UK. All have examples built in under 10 years and connected to the grid.
It will be 10 years before we see a working molten salt reactor. Why do you keep banging on as though these things exist?
Maybe Col invested his life savings in molten salt futures, and would like to see some return before his will is probated.
re: “When someone builds one you can make those claims …”
Well, here’s a lab demo of that technology, a time lapsed, one hour duration steam production run in a 120 gallon vigorously stirred water tank:
https://youtu.be/x7CeIbmwIVk
Isn’t it supposed to be a demo of cold fusion? Yes, they filmed a water tank.
@Curious George
No. That’s demonstrating an output of a small reactor at some 40 kW thermal output for a period of an hour, raising the water temperature to boiling. This amounts to a crude calorimeter, if you’ve ever done any work in a lab measuring energy output from a device (like, say, a pulsed RF transmitter).
40 kW thermal output is in the vicinity of over 165 Amps on a 240 V circuit dissipated in a resistive load. Not an insignificant power output! Consider the electric service in a North American house is commonly “100 Amp service”.
If ColMosby could demonstrate something along those lines for a scale model “Gen 4 molten salt small” would that not be impressive?
re: “Yes, they filmed a water tank.”
Assuming chit; read the specifics I posted above, and please, next time, just ask.
PS: A vastly simplified bench model. That’s like comparing a ham radio to NASA’s deep space array.
I’ve lost track of the number of miracle inventions that worked fine in a lab but could never make the jump to production.
Having a highly simplified mode working in a lab is pretty much meaningless. Build a production scale plant and start producing electricity for the grid. Then call me.
re: “Having a highly simplified mode working in a lab is pretty much meaningless.”
Next you’ll demand to see the injury that the Roman’s left in Jesus’ side, oh yea doubting Thomas MarkW …
It’s people like you that give, um well, doubters the bad rep they have, pretty much like Nick Stokes. In fact, in this area, you MarkW (noted board ‘fly’ by some), you DO appear as Nick Stokes on this subject. You’re immune to ANY amount of logic, proof and demos to this stage … why? You’re “obstinately set in mind and ways”, and that is not a good thing.
It appears at this point your ability to read a ‘white paper’ or interpret a lab test result (like that of a gas chromatograph) is parked on zero; this is NOT a compliment. Let’s do a “for instance”: Do you KNOW what a gas chromatograph is? Do you KNOW what its usefulness is in determining, oh, say, the size of the atoms coming from the specimen bottle? No, you don’t. UNLESS one of your ‘recognized’ experts takes a ‘stand’ on some subject and “educates” you on a subject you’re as ‘dumb as a rock’ and uninformed, for you have no intrinsic ability to think or reason for yourself, unlike some few others here. What you possess, MarkW, is strictly ‘rigid’, Pavlov-like training, devoid of reasoning, unable to entertain LET ALONE explore something new. For you, MarkW, the world is truly flat.
MAYBE you need a ‘primer’ (AGAIN) MarkW on all this, b/c, a LOT of history preceded that quick little ‘demo’ (actually, only offering proof that the ‘box’ in the video can bring 120 gallons of water up to the boiling point in an hour).
This semi-critical article (b/c, Mills has under-estimated time frames necessary to bring competitive product to market, in the same vein HOT FUSION has burned up B for Billions of dollars and NOT delivered either) gives a history and timeline on Mills’ efforts the last few decades:
http://www.altenergystocks.com/archives/2020/04/brilliant-light-power-commercialization-status/
Now, I said this gives some history, it does not pretend to represent the present state of development (longevity testing of reactors in cooled water baths). Note that product developed in the past did work, but was not scalable economically to “utility scale”.
So much angst, so little actual data.
I see you can’t refute the point I’ve made, so you’ll just insult me instead.
How boringly typical for you.
You haven’t presented any data, just advertisements and investor prospectuses.
Just like your imaginary hydrinos.
“but was not scalable economically to “utility scale”.”
PS: Thank you for proving my point.
We had them back in the 1960’s – they were called Breeder Reactors then.
https://infogalactic.com/info/Breeder_reactor
Thorium does not go Ka-Boom and the nuclear arms industry needed Uranium and Plutonium. The government and the corporations did not want to pay for two separate fuel processes.
Thorium is a lot cheaper – it is about as common in the Earth’s crust as lead. Uranium? More like Platinum.
run for 5 years at oak ridge under Wineberg ‘s supervision
Henry, I think you were replying to me? Yes, Oak Ridge ran an experimental molten salt reactor (MSRE) in the 60s partly based on the similar U235 fuelled Aircraft Reactor Experiment. It’s a while since this armchair expert looked into it, so any other pointers to information would be interesting.
But neither was a commercial reactor, and neither was even connected to a turbine to make electricity as far as I know. There were not, and aren’t today anywhere on the planet, any other examples except on paper.
I like the idea, but ColMosby’s endless assertion that we could just start building them tomorrow has started to irk.
+100%
I am jumping-up-and-down excited by Shellenberger’s new book.
My understanding is that the book is available June 30.
I think we’re seeing a sea change where people who actually care about the environment are beginning to embrace nuclear power as a green alternative. That’s as opposed to people who use CAGW and anything else that comes to hand to push a Marxist agenda.
Great link.
Now she needs to take the next logical step and advocate for the potentially much safer gen 4 technology. That will take another act of intellectual honesty and courage to stand apart from Shellenberger’s not always honest shilling for the PWR status quo.
Certain unscrupulous individuals could feign support for nuclear power, initiate a large-scale switch from fossil fuel power plants, and then push to drop it all after just one nuclear accident.
We have many such rulers in our world who are schemers, quite skilled at long-term strategies and widespread manipulation (not suggesting Zion Lights falls into that category).
And then what happens, when it gets dark and cold out.
I’m not sure I would trust anyone that had nailed their colours so high on XR’s mast not to have a hidden agenda.
Go for the Small Modular Reactors. Ideal power source. Development suppressed by many activists…
I would say nuclear is also safer than renewables, not just safer than fossil fuels, considering the number of falls and electrocutions during installation of panels and wind turbines, as well as the loss of life due to their intermittency.
Not just during their installation, but during their maintenance as well.
Not to mention the bird and bat deaths. They vote for the safer nuclear option too!
For some greenies, energy is the fertilizer that stimulates the growth of world population. If you’re radical enough, you’ll want to eliminate most technological advances since the industrial era began, so that humans will become a small part of some Edenic utopia.
Have you noticed all those deep thinkers that want the human population reduced never seem to volunteer. Just thinking.
There is no doubt. They is some sick crazies.
Why did she take so long to come around? I smell a rat.
What I suspect is that none of these activists really believe in what they are proposing – they are simply in it because it’s their ‘job’. They make their living at it.
And like any job, there is internal politics, promotion, demotion, winners and losers. Has she just been passed over for a plum position researching beach solar energy in the Bahamas? Did a nuclear company make her an offer she couldn’t refuse? What lies behind this sudden change of direction?
I can’t believe that even the head activists are so ill informed that they don’t bother to read any data on the ‘opposition’. If that really IS the case, then the big, world-wide movements which so affect our lives are being run by uneducated morons…
“If that really IS the case, then the big, world-wide movements which so affect our lives are being run by uneducated morons…”
Not “uneducated”, miseducated… and deliberately so. Most of them have been fed nothing but propaganda their entire adult lives, if not their entire lives, and have never been taught critical thinking skills to sort the lies from the facts.
You might be right but I suspect she was sincerely committed to “The Cause”.
She dismissed what came from “the opposition” as she was told she should.
Then she started to consider what she was told not to consider and think for herself.
Good for her.
Well, yes.
But they can change.
… I smell a rat.
My first thought too.
Yep, possibly a rat leaving a sinking ship, and the ship really is sinking. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt though, even if she doesn’t really deserve it.
Looking forward to what she says next.
re: ” Did a nuclear company make her an offer she couldn’t refuse? ”
Ya – “A follow”.
Follow da money.
It’s entirely unsurprising.
I would think she could get a high-standing job in a greenie org elsewhere without having to sabotage any hopes of getting a job in a greenie org ever again.
It would be more believable if you proposed that she was becoming a plant/spy.
Dodgy, there was something on TV where a Scientology guy who was heavily into studying cults never considered (until much later) that he himself was in a cult. Self-deception…..
I congratulate her. Not least because she will now probably discover just how much courage it takes to defy the green priests.
She will lose many “friends” but gain some better, true friendships if she can maintain an open mind to assessing facts.
From her Wiki:
“..In September 2015 Lucy Siegle, writing in The Observer, described Lights as “an eco pragmatist, happily heavy on evidence. She has no truck with hippy myths..”
Heavy on evidence? If so, what was she reading about nuclear power for the 5 years since 2015?
The GreenSlime billionaires that financially backs the Greenblob and their militant arms like GreenPeace and XR, are in in this for the vast amounts of wealth to be extracted via the renewable energy scams on the public.
As a result, XR (and much of the radicalism in GreenPeace) would not exist were it not for the financial support from the GreenSlime. That is why Michael Moore’s film Planet of the Humans becoming public and free access on YouTube was such an existential threat to the Climate Scam. It can turn insider opinion away from the renewable scam, just as we’ve seen here with Zion Lights who then gets her eyes opened to what is driving this anti-fossil fuel movement and how they are being used to make an energy industry that is far worse for the environment than drilling for oil and gas.
Some are getting the smell of the Slime Mold, that swamp that Pres. Trump promised to drain.
Just look at Bolton for an example.
But why Slime Mold?
Empire has always propagated as such a mold. Since the only giveaway is a swampy smell, most do not believe that most important sense, predating all other evolutionary senses. Even when that mold propagates rather like a fungal variety of COVID19.
So let’s call the Slime Mold COVID 1620 – the mold the Pilgrims fled from to America in 1620.
Now have a look at the planned Great Reset of the Davos Men, for the next World Economic Forum, with keynote speaker none other than Price Charles.
Still that vague smell is not recognized, even with cultural memory – it’s that rank reek of the Imperial swamp.
It’s been clear since they implemented the so called “Endangerment Finding”. +100. We’re not in a fish tank, we are a part of the eco system. A poster here names themselves CO2isnotevil. They are correct.
bonbon:
I reckon the aroma emanates from the UN/Davos corridors of power these days.
Maybe I’m a little too sceptical, isn’t she just jumping from one advocacy group to another in order to keep a roof over her head and food on the table?
I think her jumping over to favor nuclear power is a logical progression. Once you realize that nuclear waste can be handled safely and that nuclear powerplants are very safe in comparison to other means of producing electricity, then it dawns on you that nuclear energy can supply all the power needed with the least negative impacts on the environment.
She had an epiphany. It’s like the saying: People go mad in crowds, and come to their senses one at a time. Zion Lights has come to her senses. This is a good thing. It should give us hope.
Speaking of waste:
———–
Nuclear power offers an abundant supply of low-carbon energy. But what to do with the deadly radioactive waste?
The race is on to develop new strategies for permanently storing some of the most dangerous materials on the planet.
Ensia Aug 16, 2019 · 11 min read [click to read remainder]
Originally published at ensia.com on July 31, 2019.
Skip forward to Cameron, Texas, on January 16, 2019. This was a nerve-wracking day for Liz Muller, co-founder of California startup technology company Deep Isolation and her father, Richard Muller, professor emeritus of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and now chief technology officer at Deep Isolation.
The father-daughter team had invited 40 nuclear scientists, U.S. Department of Energy officials, oil and gas professionals, and environmentalists to witness the first-ever attempt to test whether the latest oil-fracking technology could be used to permanently dispose of the most dangerous nuclear waste.
At 11:30 a.m., the crew of oil workers used a wire cable to lower a 30-inch (80-centimeter)-long, 8-inch (20-centimeter)-wide 140-pound (64-kilogram) canister — filled with steel rather than radioactive waste — down a previously drilled borehole. Then, using a tool called a “tractor” invented by the industry to reach horizontally into mile-deep oil reservoirs, they pushed it 400 feet (120 meters) farther away from the borehole through the rock.
Five hours later, the crew used the tractor to relocate and collect the canister, attach it to the cable and pull it back to the surface — to the cheers of the workers. Until then, few people in the nuclear industry believed this could be done.
By avoiding the need to excavate large, expensive tunnels to store waste below ground, the Deep Isolation team believes it has found a solution to one of the world’s most intractable environmental problems — how to permanently dispose of and potentially retrieve the hundreds of thousands of tons of nuclear waste presently being stored at nuclear power plants and research and military stations around the world.
https://medium.com/ensia/nuclear-power-offers-an-abundant-supply-of-low-carbon-energy-5bfe066e7568
Isn’t nuclear waste radioactive and therefore a potential source for energy? Maybe instead of burying it, we should be looking at strategies that would find some way to reuse it.
We already have such strategies. Currently they are against the law thanks to Jimmy Carter.
Why waste it? Pick a particular crater on the moon. Use it for years, until we’re space-going enough that the lunar colonies can use the “free” energy.
Re-use is far better than recycling.
“jumping from one advocacy group to another in order to keep a roof over her head and food on the table”
Everyone is going to have problems with food if the Greens get their way. See Venezuela.
As I recall, Saul of Tarsus had a very tough sell persuading Christians that his conversion on the road to Damascus was genuine. There is significant serious opinion even today that he hijacked Christianity and what came to pass would be better called Paulism.
Now , with Gen4 small Molten Salt reactors, everyone. not just the west could could have a reliable non interruptible energy source. it would eliminate third world conditions-in other words the grrees biggest fear-healthy, happy prosperous,dark skinned people..
Can’t have that now can we?
The US Navy’s latest nuclear powered Virginia-class submarines, such as the 2016 launched USS Colorado (SSN-788), incorporates the S9G nuclear reactor. The S9G is designed to have an unrefueled core life of 33 years, the entire length of service for the boat.
The reactor is estimated to generate 210 megawatts (MW) driving a 30 MW pump-jet propulsion system built by BAE Systems. According to open-source budget documents, Virginia-class submarines are also planned to be equipped with a high-energy laser weapon likely to be incorporated into the photonics mast and have a power output of 300–500 kilowatts, based on the submarine’s 30 megawatts reserve reactor capacity.
That’s a pressurized water reactor (PWR). I suspect it will take some time before it will be apparent which reactor type fits a given situation. Perhaps both types will find their application.
Pressurized water reactors were developed for military use because 1) They were the only design familiar to Naval personnel at the time, 2) They are easily designed for different power outputs and usage, 3) Now they can be designed to be more intrinsically safe and easier to control. 4) they are also viable for factory production instead of individual design of every reactor system.
In the long run though, to me a PWR design is only suitable for perhaps once cycle of nuclear power reactors because other designs have not been proven for intrinsic safety and modular production. Once other intrinsically safe an non-proliferable designs are made they would almost automatically take over the power generation sector.
Are you saying the USS Colorado is running a British Aerospace Engineering BAE reactor? Who exactly built the reactor?
I think Joel, above, meant that the uses a BAe pump jet propulsion system, powered by a [Westinghouse, possibly] reactor.
Auto
Exactly. BAE designed the propulsion system for British subs but ended up selling it to the USNavy. The PWR company is a spin-off of Westinghouse. Nuclear business. Al, this is public info that can be googled and cross checked.
In the international arms trade, is there really any difference between a British weapons system and and American one? If you look under the hood, you’ll find that a lot of modern weapons systems were first designed by the British – starting with Radar and Jets, or the Germans, such as Rockets.
The Americans tend to just employ foreign designers, then call the output American…
re: “The Americans tend to just employ foreign designers, then call the output American…”
That wasn’t the case with the NATO country Panavia “Tornado” MRCA aircraft fighter-bomber (IDS or interdiction strike) nose-mounted multi-role (TF and GM, terrain following and ground mapping) RADAR with which I spent a decade plus, working on both the prime contract and test equipment sides … (in TI’s DSEG, formerly the Equipment Group in Dallas).
Where/why do people ‘make these things up’ anyway?
So the fact that the British developed the first large scale klystrons proves that every development in radar since then is actually a British invention?
The fact that the Germans built the first large scale rocket engines proves that no matter where further development occurs, it’s actually a German invention?
As far as jets go, it seems like everyone did it better than the British.
Bonbon, BAE is now just BAE.
It doesn’t stand for anything. Typing out British Aerospace Engineering is simply wearing out your keyboard.
Also, the Industrial Military Complex is your friend. Don’t try and read too much into who actually builds what. For example the M777 howitzer (as used by the US Military) is also a BAE product and the 120mm on the current M1 tank versions is a Rheinmetall product and the prior 105mm was effectively a rebadged British L7.
Don’t over think it 😀
Thanks for that interesting info, Joel.
Mother-of-two….
oh good grief….(sigh)
Sorry can’t get excited over one middle class dum-dum coming to her senses, the battle is far from over.
Extinction Rebellion => Environmental Progress
One step forward, two steps backward. Baby steps.
No doubt The Guardian and the BBC are planning to assassinate her character as we speak…
I doubt it, they will ignore the whole story. If they use it, someone might follow it up and come to the same conclusion that she has come to, and then the BBC and The Guardian could be accused of encouraging “deniers”.
“For every courageous green like Zion Lights, no doubt there are thousands of greens who choose to stay silent.”
Silence is violence!
Speaking as an ex-Submarine sailor, so my views can be taken with a rather largish grain of salt. People that are anti-nuke can’t even begin to imagine the magic of E=mc2. For those of you who haven’t, just sit back and think about it. Energy equal mass times the square of the speed of light. Limitless, boundless energy – and we’ve already learned how to tame it. Give the wonks and engineers some time and funding (and stop trying to sue them into non-existence every time they try), and things will get much better – and safer. You want CO2 emissions free 24/7 base load electricity generation? There’s already an answer.
“You want CO2 emissions free 24/7 base load electricity generation? There’s already an answer.”
Zion has now figured that out.
Btw, Zion, a lot of skeptics would get onboard that nuclear train with you.
I don’t see the good comrades in China switching from coal to nuclear to any extent. Could that be because coal works out cheaper than nuclear? Or maybe its because co2 is good for the plants and greens the planet.
Seriously though the Chinese would want the West to go nuclear not coal. Because together with cheep non-union labour they can manufacture more cheaply than anyone else.
Depends how you look at it. For China, growth in primary energy:
Nuclear – 2.64EJ in 2018, 3.11EJ in 2019
Coal – 79.83EJ in 2018, 81.67EJ in 2019
(BP Statistical Review of World Energy)
So that’s an increase of 18% for nukes versus 2.3% for coal – 8 times more growth for nukes.
Or an increase of 1.8EJ for coal vs 0.5EJ for nukes – 4 times more new energy from coal.
Pick to suit your argument…
Is there not more to the energy when 1Kg of rock will not produce the same energy as 1Kg of uranium?
I have some reading to do.
Full interview with Andrew Neil on BBC:
Austin Powers’ baby done grown up.
https://youtu.be/JCSMpRHcNuM
I wish folk would study some Physics and Engineering before being so positive about the future which will be exactly the result of Physics and Engineering.
re: “I wish folk would study some Physics and Engineering”
I do too, fella. Some of these blokes (like the guy with the handle M***W) could use an ‘upgrade’ from the 1920’s atomic physics he (maybe?) learnt in school (decades back now?)
The fact that I’ve refuted your claims regarding hydrinos, really sticks in your craw.
“Mother-of-two Zion said: ‘The facts didn’t really change, but once I understood them I did change my mind.’”
That’s the funny thing about facts.
“Environmental Progress was founded by Michael Shellenberger, a high profile pro-nuclear environmental campaigner whose no nonsense pragmatic views are frequently praised by WUWT.”
“Now she believes the energy source is the future to save the planet”
They still think the planet needs saving. They haven’t learned much.
She “looked it up”. Funny, that’s exactly the same thing many of us did vis a vis CO2 and its supposed magical powers. If she was able to do that with nuclear, then she damn well can with CO2. Unless she just doesn’t want to, which I suspect is the case. She still has that axe to grind, and refuses to let it go.
One big step forward- she has recognized the lies her side has put out.
That does not make her a member of the Heartland Institute- not quite yet.
“I’m really impressed at Zion’s courage. It takes a lot of guts to admit you made a mistake, after working hard for the wrong team.”
This is something so rare in the world (not just today) that it should be celebrated.
I read this article in the Daily Mail two days ago. There was a blog with it. Most posters did not commend her for her actions. Most posters criticised her for not doing her research earlier thus not bringing parts of London to a standstill.
Nuclear energy is the death of the CAGW movement. She’s in big trouble.
If you punish people for doing the right thing you make it harder for others to follow.
“If you punish people for doing the right thing you make it harder for others to follow.”
Where did I say anything about punishing people, Eric? Are WE going to punish her?
She’s still in big trouble from her former XR “friends”. They might punish her.
Man it is said goEs mad in a herd but recovers one by one. Michael Moore, Zion Lights are a start , many more to go. For sceptics there is a Lights at the end of the tunnel.
This is some of the best news I have seen here on WUWT in a long time. Why? Because it shows there is a growing list of one-time leaders of the “CO2 is bad” movement that realize the wind and solar solution pushed by UN bureaucrats and green NGO’s, will not work.
Why is this important? Because the UN and NGO’s don’t support wind and solar because they think it works, but because they KNOW it doesn’t work. If it really worked, Capitalism and Democracy would supply the means for it to be put into practice. So their argument is that the world must give up Capitalism and Democracy, so that they can save the world from over heating.
They fear people like James Hansen (of NASA GISS), Patrick Moore (co-founder of Greenpeace), Roger Moore (rabble rousing film maker) and now Zion Lights; leaders who are proposing a solution to lowering CO2 that actually works, and doesn’t destroy capitalism or democracy, In fact, it strengthens them . This is not the aim of the UN or the Green NGOs.
Should we, who don’t think CO2 will cause our temperatures to rise dramatically, oppose these people because they are doing it lower CO2? I say no, we don’t oppose them, We should support them. There will be plenty of time to show that CO2 is beneficial plant food, after the UN and the green NGOs, with their Capitalism and Freedom destroying agenda, are defeated.
Michael Moore? Roger Moore was a Templar and a Saint:
https://www.memorabletv.com/features/classic-tv-revisited-saint/
“Roger Moore was a Templar and a Saint”
My left eyebrow raised itself at this comment, phil.
Dooo-doo-doo-dooo-doo-doo-dooooooo
He was also James Bond.
…and Beau Maverick
“Because it shows there is a growing list of one-time leaders of the “CO2 is bad” movement ”
But she still thinks CO2 is bad.
This is some of the best news I have seen here on WUWT in a long time. Why? Because it shows there is a growing list of one-time leaders of the “CO2 is bad” movement that realize the wind and solar solution pushed by UN bureaucrats and green NGO’s, will not work.
Why is this important? Because the UN and NGO’s don’t support wind and solar because they think it works, but because they KNOW it doesn’t work. If it really worked, Capitalism and Democracy would supply the means for it to be put into practice. So their argument is that the world must give up Capitalism and Democracy, so that they can save the world from over heating.
They fear people like James Hansen (of NASA GISS), Patrick Moore (co-founder of Greenpeace),Michael Moore (rabble rousing film maker) and now Zion Lights; leaders who are proposing a solution to lowering CO2 that actually works, and doesn’t destroy capitalism or democracy, In fact, it strengthens them . This is not the aim of the UN or the Green NGOs.
Should we, who don’t think CO2 will cause our temperatures to rise dramatically, oppose these people because they are doing it lower CO2? I say no, we don’t oppose them, We should support them. There will be plenty of time to show that CO2 is beneficial plant food, after the UN and the green NGOs, with their Capitalism and Freedom destroying agenda, are defeated.
“Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster was triggered by the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.”
As I understand it, too, that disaster was due in large (ALL?) part because the backup diesel generator sets (for emergency cooling power – last resort to disaster is lack of cooling water), were located BELOW sea level. HELLO!!!!
I have not seen Fukushima plans, but I don’t think they were designed to withstand a tsunami triggered by a 9.0 earthquake. Just like intensive care units in our hospitals are not designed to cope with COVID-19. Would you call a hospital design with 6x more intensive units than usually needed a total waste?
The other two reactors, that had their emergency generators located higher, survived just fine.
Very poor example since we should have been prepared for Covid-19 since there have been warnings since 2005 and even a request from the WHO to have a plan for a SARS pandemic. Such a plan would NOT have virus patients taken anywhere near a normal hospital but to isolation units. These could be rapidly set up in suitable buildings that have been designed from the start to be able to carry out that function. Sports halls, exhibition spaces etc. It is much easier and cheaper to make a few little design tweeks at the start. I only recently learnt that cross channel ferries used to be built with strengthened lower vehicle decks to carrier heavier vehicles. What sort? Tanks. The MoD covered the extra costs so should a Cold War Soviet attack on the west have started the ferries could be used to transport equipment across the Channel immediately.
We’ve known that a pandemic is possible for hundreds of years. The problem is that being constantly vigilant costs money. Year after year, the predicted pandemics failed to pan out, and people got tired of spending the money on preparation.
I never understood why the island nation that invented the word “tsunami” built a nuclear power station on the coast..
If you want to use water for cooling, building on the coast makes a lot of sense.
Had the emergency generator not been flooded, the world would have ever heard of Fukushima.
I’m a fan of passive safety, reactors which can’t melt down.
Fukushima was a disaster of a design, no containment dome, next to a big fault line, no backup water tower, no plan to fly in extra pumps if everything went wrong, pumps in the basement.
You wouldn’t have needed much pump capacity to save Fukushima, even a man carryable 2KW pump can move many tons of water per day
The explosions of containment domes were dramatic.. Next to a big fault line? Sure, it is Japan. Please realize that this reduces a credibility of your “facts”.
Yeah, LFTR plants can’t meltdown, and they self shutdown – Elvis can leave the building with all plant employees, fly to Las Vega, and the if trouble hits, the plant will shut itself down. Still, I guess, never say never. Murphy is a lurker.
No containment dome? You are thinking of Chernobyl.
There is no where in Japan that isn’t next to a big fault line.
I don’t believe they were below sea level. However they weren’t 10 meters above sea level, and weren’t in water tight rooms.
FYI
The largest tsunami wave was 13 m above HWM:
The ‘basement generators were 6m above HWM;
they were all in water tight rooms fitted with small ‘header tanks’ fed from external bulk tanks (these were damaged or washed away). When the header tanks ran out ~ 9hrs & the emergency battery system kicked in, after 8hrs ALL power failed, a day after the wave hit.
1 water tight room was smashed open.
The other 3 emergency generators in a building up the hill were unaffected…BUT the control room at the plant was flooded & part demolished so power couldn’t be distributed.
Then it all got a bit challenging !!!
I’m told through the grapevine that in the mid-2000’s, well before the 2011 earthquake, TEPCO’s management and Japan’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) had been warned that clear evidence had emerged documenting the past occurrence of a high wave tsunami capable of breaching the Fukushima sea wall.
Those in charge of reactor safety in TEPCO and in the NRA were aware of the issue. Reasonably timely and affordable modifications could have been made to the Fukushima reactor safety systems and to the reactor control systems to harden the complex against the threat.
It is not hyperbole to say that a loaded cannon, in the form of a high wave tsunami, was pointed directly at the Fukushima reactor complex. But neither TEPCO nor the Japan NRA took any substantive action prior to the 2011 earthquake to deal with the problem.
The Fukushima meltdowns happened because those in TEPCO’s high corporate management and in the Japanese government’s regulatory authority who were responsible for protecting public health and safety were totally derelict in their duty.
These managers had all the resources needed to deal proactively and cost effectively with the threat of a high wave tsunami. There was plenty of time available to do the work. But instead of acting in accordance with their clear responsibility, they stood by and did nothing in the face of a clear and present danger.
“…the time for silence has past.”
passed, not past
Fixed, thanks 🙂
Zion Lights has shown intelligence and courage in her pivot to nuclear – both deeply unpatriotic qualities in our UK society. Sadly it won’t change the country’s self destructive energy trajectory. The UK has self-righteously decided to abolish energy. This will be fun to watch.
Only 36 too. Wish I’d had my road to Damascus that young.
For mine it was the Australian ABC trotting out Helen Caldicott to sprout her claims unchallenged that raised serious doubts about a lot of people and sources of information. To quote Pythons (my favourite programming language) “You have to work it out for yourself”.
Ah, yes! Suddenly, I’m WOKE! But with another cause! This one is BETTER!!
Call me a skeptic, please! She is no more enlightened than the previous cause. Once famous, always famous!
I cringe at the accolades for her sudden WOKENESS. She seeks fame and is granted it.
Watermelons hijacked the resurrection of Callendar’s theory. The actual resurrection was the fault of others. It started in the mid 50s.
I’m all for a smaller footprint of humans, in more ways than just carbon, but for the sake of not wasting a resource. But I can’t back poverty causing policies to achieve it, and I can’t back the use of science (or academia) in propaganda. The latter will be the undoing of society.
Nu attempt tot right irrational Gear of radiation: https://youtu.be/JpcUCo0ebNA
Sorry. My attempt to fight irrational fear of radiation. Video No More Radiophobia https://youtu.be/JpcUCo0ebNA
Someone from the woke extinction rebellion is finally ‘awake’, most unusual.
It gets even better. There is a report by professor Edward Calabrese of Massachusetts university that exposes the fake science of radiation toxicity – the so called Linear No Threshold model (LNT). He has described poor science, flawed experiments and data manipulation going back to Herman Joseph Muller. In his preamble, he shares the results of an experiment in which one group of mice were exposed to ionizing radiation 60 times background levels their whole lives. Instead of developing disease, they appeared healthier than the control group and lived 30% longer.
The report is too long to give justice to here, but is available on the Global Warming Policy Forum website, link below
https://www.thegwpf.org/dangers-of-nuclear-energy-much-less-than-previously-thought/
I am an extreme datum ~3 REM WBE of Genevieve M. Matanoski’s seminal NSWS that concluded that low level ionizing radiation is correlated with good and better health – radiation hormesis.
Well, there’s a simple reason that nutty environmentalists, greenies, watermelons—whatever you want to call them—go insane when you mention reasonable, practical alternatives to their looney ideas.
They’re not very smart. Dumb, low IQ, bereft of basic reasoning. It’s sad (for them) but luckily there are organized groups where they can socialize, share similar wacky ideas and interests, and go on vacations together, chaining themselves to fences and trees, harassing merchant ships and whaling vessels, and generally making fools of themselves. It’s loads of fun.
I’ll hazard a guess and predict that one of the applications of nuclear will be the synthesis of liquid fuels to power things that move. The energy density of liquid fuels is so much larger than of batteries and their handling is so much less cumbersome than hydrogen. It’s a no-brainer.
You might want to watch this video. She has just joined this guy.
Excellent talk by Michael Shellenberger.
His kind of rational scientific environmentalism is the best chance for a non-suicidal national energy policy. The green imperative is irresistible, like it or not. So it boils down to the nuclear question. It’s back to nuclear or back to the jungle.
I’m thinking “no”. Not given the physics of how a bolt starts, propagates (leader stroke, return stroke, etc.)
I am just home from a 400 mile bicycle ride that took me past decommissioned Point Beach and Kewaunee NPP, to see their replacement with uncounted thousands of PV panels in productive farmland.
It is a good time to be Septuagenarian.
Zion Lights, and many other, may believe nuclear power is the way of the future, however in reality the money and manufacturing countries are making a ‘Dash for coal’ with many big investments.
Meanwhile in the India, China, Japan, and some parts of Africa they understand that fossil fuels have more utility and are cheaper.
From https://www.globalconstructionreview.com/markets/japan-plans-dash-co7al-43-statio7ns-12-yea7rs/
From https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/15-countries-most-dependent-on-coal-for-energy.html
2018 figures …
The future is still powered with the vast majority of electricity and motive power coming from the burning fossil fuels.
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent”
Well done, good decision.
Can’t be done. Too long to install enough to replace even a decent fraction of regular power with nuclear. Moreover, boiling water reactors are very dangerous. Go to http://www.fairewinds.org for the details.
Zion Lights ??? What kind of name is that ?
Glad she’s figured out that renewables can’t meet global energy demand… Maybe next she’ll look a little deeper into her belief that anthropogenic CO2 is destroying the planet? Nothing against nuclear energy but we’ve already got plenty of cheap energy sources.
I hope those designing the next generation NPPs are taking a serious look at the metallurgical aspects of the design. I started my career in Nuclear Power in 1965. As part of my initial NPP training I learned about a form of metal corrosion not taught at the university I graduated from. Every few year after that there were NRC bulletins and the need for design changes, operational changes refits, re-designs etc. to correct and prevent a new form of metal corrosion in the Nuclear Steam Supply System – Primary and or Secondary systems. Those corrections are expensive – VERY expensive some costing about 25% of the initial cost of the plant. Operating at different plant temperatures, pressures and configuration and with different cooling mediums is going to revel a completely new family of chemical and stress corrosion. The plants had the ten year history of the Shippingport Nuclear Power Station and the US NAvy reactors to give them a head start on these problems.
I was on one team that had to come up with a method to reseal the Steam Generator tubes to the tube plate through an inspection port that was not large enough for a person to stick their head through. This then required testing on a Test Steam generator to both prove that it could be done then to prove to the NRC that it would meet ASME Pressure Vessel requirements. And there are over 10,000 tubes to be sealed – both ends. Normally this is done long before the end-bells are attached to the SG.
“… Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi disaster was triggered by the aftermath of the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. ”
Let us ignore the discussion about the design of Fukushima for a moment and concentrate on the other words here:
“Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.”
Our Ms Lights make her statement in a manner that suggests she never made the connection before. It suggests that this massive natural disaster that killed thousands no longer registers on their mental radar but Fukushima – which DIDN’T kill thousands – remains prominent.
Nuclear Bad clearly trumps thousands swept out to sea in these people’s eyes.
Zion Lights still supports renewables thus has a lot more learning to do.
Wind turbines do not produce 50/60Hz energy. They are useless. A massive scam.
PV solar is not scalable and cannot power industry. Next to useless. OK to heat a water cylinder.
Don’t even mention batteries.
“Zion Lights still supports renewables thus has a lot more learning to do.”
No there’s a place for solar and wind if you can store the energy easily and cheaply. Desalinating water and pumping bores obviously but for the average household it’s using solar power to heat water. Use it with a solar diverter controller for an electric storage HWS and then use any surplus to RC aircon the home for comfort at night. No dumping on the communal grid and your neighbours of course.
While I don’t agree with her climate views, at least this move makes her credible. If CAGW is real, nuclear is the only solution. All the other ‘solutions’ being pushed have no chance of success. But I guess that is the point. It creates a never ending battle. They can always push for “More, More” knowing that nothing will ever be enough as long as nuclear is not considered.