Is it anti-environment to be pro-nuclear?

Slice

Perhaps this has come up plenty of times before.

I don't understand the position most environmentalist take up against nuclear power. The potential dangers are obvious but as damaging as nuclear energy may be is it not also the best way of avoiding global warming for the time-being while preserving today's way of life? From my point of view global warming represents a far more immediate threat to the environment than the radio-active waste that nuclear energy produces. It's not a viable alternative but definitely the lesser of two evils until such viable alternatives become available. At the moment is it not the case that there are really no viable alternatives? I wouldn't say I'm pro-nuclear, but why are these questions not being asked in the media, by environmentalists and anyone with a vested interest in Ireland's future "energy security"? I don't mean for this question to become one of politics because that would be a narrow perspective.

Mostly looking for opinions, I'm also curious to see if such opinions are clouded by political ideology and if there is a distinction between 'green' and 'environmentalist'.

Furthermore, where do people stand on nuclear fusion? Are we missing the boat on this because we haven't gone nuclear?

bonkey

Slice wrote:

I don't understand the position most environmentalist take up against nuclear power. The potential dangers are obvious but as damaging as nuclear energy may be is it not also the best way of avoiding global warming for the time-being while preserving today's way of life?

Do you mean this question rhetorically, or are you actually asking for an opinion? Its not clear, because it seems like you're uncertain and are asking for an opinion, but then you go on to say:

It's not a viable alternative but definitely the lesser of two evils until such viable alternatives become available.

Definitely, eh? So then it is the best way of avoiding global warming, and the above question was rhetorical.

At the moment is it not the case that there are really no viable alternatives?

Again I'm wondering if this is rhetorical.

I wouldn't say I'm pro-nuclear, but why are these questions not being asked in the media, by environmentalists and anyone with a vested interest in Ireland's future "energy security"?

What makes you think they aren't? Or do you mean "why isn't the media telling us that such people are asking such questions" ????

Mostly looking for opinions,

Opinions are deeply divided, regardless of the level of education on the issue.

I know some people who utterly agree with your stance with one exception...they don't accept that the lesser of two evils is good enough. They don't accept that replacing a short-term problem with a longer-term problem is a solution, but rather symptomatic of what got us here in the first place.

I know people who are 100% pro-nuclear and others 100% against it. There is no simple dividing line such as how well educated one is on the subject, much as many would like to tell you that this is the only issue that divides the "pro" (informed) from the "anti" (scaremongerers).

Furthermore, where do people stand on nuclear fusion?

Its a pipe-dream. Personally, I'd be amazed if we see it as a practical means of generation in our lifetimes.

Are we missing the boat on this because we haven't gone nuclear?

What boat? There is nothing that fission-based nuclear power provides that would be beneficial to have if/when fusion is realised.

RedPlanet

I don't see why we should go nuclear when we live on very windy island tbh.

silverharp

RedPlanet wrote:

I don't see why we should go nuclear when we live on very windy island tbh.

I gather that during the windy weather we had a couple of week back there was 500mw of wind power coming on to the grid then at some point in the next couple of days the total was 11mw. That is a huge variance that needs to be backed up by something.

All I would say on the nuclear debate is I don't agree with the scaremongering tactics used to frighten people, the media and public are easily manipulated when it comes to inceneration or nuclear issues.

In general people dont care/undersatand where energy comes from. Petrol comes from the petrol satation, electricity from the flick of a switch, throw in a healthy dose of NIMBYism and you end up with a society living on borrowed time.

My own view is that if people want to continue the complex societies we live in (assuming we are near peak oil) then Nuclear is part of the solution (globally) , if people want to get back to basics and are prepared to reduce consumerism, commuting etc then nuclear will not be a huge focus. however I would bet that the global public will not be so enlightened and would vote nuclear if it means the lights in the mall staying on.

RedPlanet

I don't know.
I think it comes down to whom you believe.
Harvesting solar power like these guys propose looks promising.
http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/press.htm#press_release_1

SolMate

I agree with RedPlanet that it comes down to who you believe.

Simply, if it is true as some claim that it is possible to meet all requirements through use of renewables, then why would anyone want to take the risk, however well managed and mitigated, that goes with nuclear power? Of course if that proposition is not true...then clearly we need nuclear power!

If anyone knows of a clear, dispassionate, unbiased analysis of how realistic it is (or isn't as the case may be) to meet our energy needs as a planet without resorting to nuclear, I would love to read it. So far most of the analysis I see comes from passionate advocates of one camp or the other.

S

silverharp

Please feel free to challenge , but for large cities for eg NewYork, London, Tokyo etc. in a scenario of depleting fossil fuels and/or an unwillingness to burn coal, it is not possible to run these cities on renewables (solar,wind) and demand management/efficiencies alone. Either the concept of the mega city is unsustainable or they are kept humming with the aid of nuclear, (this ignores the fact that being rich cities they will continue to consume oil at the expense of poorer economies)

Good discussion though, instread of focusing on the merits or not of Nuclear, the real question is what type of society do you want and believe in in the light of a likey reduction in net energy inputs going forward

RedPlanet

If you read that website i linked for Condensed Solar Power, they are suggesting harvesting solar power in the great deserts of our planet, and piping it to europe.
Not different than what we are doing today with fossil fuels.
So if we can run these great cities from fossil fuels mined on the other side of the planet, then surely we can also run them on solar power harvested on the other side.
Besides, we don't have a choice but to go with renewables.
Even uranium is finite.
Investing in nuclear is only delaying the very same scenario we face today.

SeanW

I know people who are 100% pro-nuclear and others 100% against it. There is no simple dividing line such as how well educated one is on the subject, much as many would like to tell you that this is the only issue that divides the "pro" (informed) from the "anti" (scaremongerers).

I believe that in a lot of cases, it really is that simple, for example, if you look at the Greenpeace website, it's all nuclear-accidents this and "this Chernobyl child is more than a number" that. Greenpeace's nuclear policy is lots of name-calling, scaremongering, and basing everything on emotive relations to Chernobyl and nuclear weapons. Neither of which have even the slightest connection to a modern, Western, peaceful nuclear programme, which anyone can see if they do a few hours of unbiased research.

Honestly, some of these guys advocate their anti-nuke cause with enough spin, propoganda and scaremongering to make George Bush and the much maligned Neo-cons look tame by comparison.

If you look at the facts surrounding nuclear power, you find that it's a safe, clean way of providing plentiful amounts of energy, and as for Chernobyl, the disasterous chain of events that lead to the catastrophe are totally unrepeatable outside the former Soviet Union.

Uranium is of course finite but that excludes some key points:
1: There are 30 years of assured reserves but no-one has been seriously exploring for the past 20 years or so. He who explores, finds, but it will take market signals of shortage for anyone to do more exploring.
2: Uranium fuel is reusable about 20 times over, yet only 3 countries, the UK, France and Japan, reprocess spent fuel. Everyone else (ab)uses Uranium on a once-through cycle. If Uranium starts to run low, this will change.

RedPlanet

Regardless of how it's dressed-up, digging great holes into the earth to recover uranium, then digging even bigger ones to bury it again once we've finished with it, doesn't strike me as particularly "environmental" nor "clean" as some claim.
Whereas solar and wind generation can be manufactured from materials we've already mined.

bonkey

SeanW wrote:

I believe that in a lot of cases, it really is that simple,

You believe that its just down to education?

for example, if you look at the Greenpeace website, it's all nuclear-accidents this and "this Chernobyl child is more than a number" that. Greenpeace's nuclear policy is lots of name-calling, scaremongering, and basing everything on emotive relations to Chernobyl and nuclear weapons.

So what you're saying is that none of the Greenpeace people actually know the full details. It couldn't possibly be that they are as well informed as you, but see tings in a different perspective?

Neither of which have even the slightest connection to a modern, Western, peaceful nuclear programme, which anyone can see if they do a few hours of unbiased research.

Limiting the argument to modern, peaceful, Western programmes isn't really relevant. If there is a large-scale increase in adoption of nuclear power, then it won't be limited to just the cherry-picked "won't be a problem" situations, so you have to deal with not-exclusively peaceful, done on a corrupt shoerstring budget situations as well as everything in between.

Honestly, some of these guys advocate their anti-nuke cause with enough spin, propoganda and scaremongering to make George Bush and the much maligned Neo-cons look tame by comparison.

I'd never deny that. However, thats not exactly a fair-and-balanced overview of the full spectrum of anti- standpoints...which then calls into question how fair and balanced an overview in general you are giving. You say they're wrong...they say you're wrong...you say they're ignoring the facts...they say you're choosing only those issues which suit you to look at...and each of you blames the other for being less than completely honest.

Sounds to me like thats exactly the point I was making. Its not just a question of how well informed you are.

If you look at the facts surrounding nuclear power, you find that it's a safe, clean way of providing plentiful amounts of energy,

You also find it need to be done right, but that there's a surprising history of complacency and short-cutting of safety and security investment. You'll find that its impossible to fully seperate peaceful uranium processing capabilities
from non-peaceful ones. You'll find that the best waste-storage solutions we have are only theoretical, expensive, and the basis on which decisions like the selection of Yucca Mountain in the US is far from unquestionably thorough.

But thats the type of information I guess I shouldn't be looking at, right? I shouldn't be thinking that maybe we're lining ourselves up for a bigger disaster 50 or 100 years down the line then what it is we're purportedly adopting nuclear to get away from. I should just see it as making tomorrow better, and not worry about those questions because people like you assure me that my skepticism is just cause I'm not well informed enough and I should ignore the anti-nuclear campaigners who also tell me I'm far to pro-nuclear because I'm not well informed anough.

So like I said...its not that simple. People from both sides want me to believe it is, and to date not one of them has ever convinced me that its all just down to being better informed.

yet only 3 countries, the UK, France and Japan, reprocess spent fuel

Ever look at how insecurely the UK transfer their material around for this reprocessing. Nothing to worry about there? It is, after all, a peaceful, modern, Western system...right?

jc

Glenbhoy

bonkey wrote:

Fusion:

Its a pipe-dream. Personally, I'd be amazed if we see it as a practical means of generation in our lifetimes.

According to 'Scientific American' magazine in their sustainable energy special (Sept 06), some commentators feel that a commercially viable plant could be up and runnning by mid century. By 2016 there will be an experimental reactor in operation in southern France.
The magazine is well worth a read for the uneducated like myself in that it's a quick A-Z of everything being done and planned for the future.

bonkey

Glenbhoy wrote:

According to 'Scientific American' magazine in their sustainable energy special (Sept 06), some commentators feel that a commercially viable plant could be up and runnning by mid century.

Yup...I know. But the thing to remember is that these are the most optimistic of commentators - no-one is putting a closer date than about 2035 and many admit that such dates are really just an "if everything worked out well, we could be there by then" estimate. Remember mind that optimists have had fusion generation 30-50 years away for the last 30-50 years. I'll start giving them some credibility when they drop that figure so we're 20 or 25 years away, rather than simply keeping it static in the face of progress.

By 2016 there will be an experimental reactor in operation in southern France.

Yup, and lets not forget the Chinese are forging ahead too and making great progress.

At the end of the day, however, these reactors will at best only achieve the goal of establishing that we can sustain a stable fusion-based reaction over non-trivial time. They will not establish that we can maintain it as a commercial model over decades and the hurdles twixt those two points are as great if not greater as the hurdles that will have been faced by 2015, even allowing for technological advances.

I've yet to see someone offer as much as a theoretical solution to the problem of brittleness brought about by neutron irradiation...other than periodically shutting down the recator and rebuilding most of it entirely. This is problematic in and of itself for a number of reasons, but the primary two are the impacts on cost and availability....cost being the more problematic. Bear in mind also that the rebuilding work couldn't be safely carried out by humans, so not only do we need to build rebuildable tokamaks, but we need to design and build the robots or other tech which will do the rebuilding remotely for us.

This, incidentally, isn't a problem for ITER. If they get up and running and get to the point where teh reactor needs to be rebuilt because its run itself into the ground....that will be hailed as an unbelievable success, and rightly so. But it does illustrate how ITER is nowhere near the end of the line with all serious problems solved.

The magazine is well worth a read for the uneducated like myself in that it's a quick A-Z of everything being done and planned for the future.

Aye...its a good read.

SeanW

bonkey wrote:

You believe that its just down to education?

Education, and honesty.

So what you're saying is that none of the Greenpeace people actually know the full details.

Either that or they just don't want YOU to know the full details.

Limiting the argument to modern, peaceful, Western programmes isn't really relevant. If there is a large-scale increase in adoption of nuclear power, then it won't be limited to just the cherry-picked "won't be a problem" situations, so you have to deal with not-exclusively peaceful, done on a corrupt shoerstring budget situations as well as everything in between.

It is. Who are the greatest consumers of energy? The U.S, the E.U. ... maybe also Russia and China who already have both civilian nuclear power and weapons. It's in places like Ireland where a couple of reactors would do a lot of good, both for our energy security and environmental impact, and already nuclear nations like the U.S. where a new nuclear programme including reprocessing (banned under the Carter administration) would have positive benefits for everyone.

No-one's suggesting that craphole kleptocracy governments in Africa should commission nuclear power, because that would be just plain stupid, and the situation with Iran is rather complicated.

Sounds to me like thats exactly the point I was making. Its not just a question of how well informed you are.

True. Honesty comes into it as well.

You also find it need to be done right, but that there's a surprising history of complacency and short-cutting of safety and security investment.

The only nuclear accident ever to cause environmental destruction, Chernobyl, is the only accident really worth talking about in the grand scheme of things. I used to be in the anti-nuclear camp because of Chernobyl. Until I did some research, then I found out that Chernobyl's don't just happen. The Soviet government and it's nuclear programme was so awful, they practically begging for it.

You'll find that its impossible to fully seperate peaceful uranium processing capabilities from non-peaceful ones.

Not true. Some reactor designs do not require enriched fuel at all. Furthermore, for those that do, such as the Light Water Reactor, require enrichment of U235 to U238 only to the order of 3-5%. Nuclear weapons need enrichment to the order of 90%. big difference.

You'll find that the best waste-storage solutions we have are only theoretical, expensive, and the basis on which decisions like the selection of Yucca Mountain in the US is far from unquestionably thorough.

See my point about the U.S. wastage of Uranium. The only two countries now proposing final solutions for their 'waste,' the U.S. and Finland, don't reprocess their spent fuels and therefore generate many times more waste per GW/h generated than countries who do.

But thats the type of information I guess I shouldn't be looking at, right?

Wrong. Feel free to ask all the hard questions. I'm convinced nuclear power is the right thing for the 1st World to do, and I for one will attempt to answer just about any question.

Ever look at how insecurely the UK transfer their material around for this reprocessing. Nothing to worry about there? It is, after all, a peaceful, modern, Western system...right?

Yes, the UK system has had some problems alright but in good conscience I don't see what choice they have, if they were to abandon any of the nuclear programme, they'd have to burn more coal, cause more greenhouse gases, pump more arsenic and mercury into the atmosphere and leave the Scandinavian govnerments with an even bigger acid-rain cleanup bill.

The U.K. needs to fix what's broken in their nuclear indistry at some point, but not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

\m/_(>_<)_\m/

modern, and i emphisise modern, nuclear technology is undoubtedly the cheapest, cleanest and most environmentally friendly energy we can create today, of course that's beside the much better option of wind, sea and solar... but lets face it those forms of energy will never completely give up the energy modern society craves today.

DadaKopf

Nuclear power may be 'cleaner' because it doesn't pollute the air with greenhouse gases.

Nuclear waste pollutes in other ways. It's not a zero-cost solution.

Nuclear power stations are also hugely inefficient and wasteful. Historically, they depend on state handouts. The only way to make them efficient is to make them huge, which means using huge amounts of concrete, which is one of the biggest culprits of global warming.

We need alternatives - the 'lesser of two evils' argument only means that insufficient leadership by governments has failed to create incentives to develop alternative energy sources. We have 30 years to fix this, so we have 20 before we should think about going nuclear.

Friends of the Earth think that we should move towards locally-owned, decentralised power production. One example of where this could work is the production of energy through the burning of 'Elephant Grass', a very good biofuel that loves the Irish climate. Also, it's commercially and environmentally viable. Elephant grass is 'carbon neutral' because the greenhouse gases produced when burned is soaked up again when a new crop is planted. A locally owned plant has recently been set up in England and powers 2,000 homes. This magazine (last few pages) interviews a farmer in Limerick who is making a living from growing Elephant Grass.

Perhaps we should think about 'energy security' being energy which is under the control of and serves the interests of smaller communities rather than it being the mainteance of a wasteful national grid system which is driven by pollution and national interest. If companies require oodles of power to fuel their businesses, maybe they should provide the power themselves like early factories were powered by water mills. Sounds more secure to me.

\m/_(>_<)_\m/

DadaKopf wrote:

Nuclear power stations are also hugely inefficient and wasteful. Historically, they depend on state handouts. The only way to make them efficient is to make them huge, which means using huge amounts of concrete, which is one of the biggest culprits of global warming.

again i emphasise modern nuclear technology which is not hugely inefficient and wasteful.

and building a medium sizes hydro dam would use up more concrete than about 4-5 big modern nuclear facilities.

but ya i see your point and that would be a great option.

SeanW

First of all, I must give DadaKopf recognition for carrying his argument with dignity and intellectual honesty. Most anti-nuke people would've started their argument with some stupid, sloganized reference to Chernoybl. Credit where it's due.

Down to business: While I think the elephant grass idea makes sense, as does further investment in renewables such as wind, and I like the plan by the Trans-Mediterranian Energy Cooperative, which offers a credible plan for large scale renewables use, I don't think any of this is adequate on its own.

Renewables such as wind and solar will always be limited by their reliance on the weather, a.k.a their unrelaibility. If you look at historical data on wind power generation in Ireland, provided byEirgrid, you'll see violent fluctuations in the amount of MegaWattage Ireland's fleet of wind turbines provides. So if we wanted to rely on wind power to a large extent, we would have to either reduce demand when there's no wind, or come up with one hell of a good energy storage system.

Either that or renewables will still have to be backed by other non-renewable sources and building windfarms will do nothing to negate the need for traditional power stations.

Which IMO kinda defeats the whole purpose of investing in renewable energy.

As for the TREC plan, which calls for the bulk of Europe's energy to be generated through condensed solar panels in North African and the Middle East, sounds like a good idea, but for energy security reasons is not something I think could be relied on 100%. To a certain extent, I believe, the current politics over Middle Eastern oil would migrate to solar energy.

As for the elephant grass, again it's a very good idea, but it brings land use into question - for example if you dedicate X hectares of land to growing Miscanthus for electricity, you incur the environmental opportunity cost of NOT using the land for the growth of sugar/rapeseed for transport biofuels to directly replace petroleum oil, or to dedicate the land to be a nature reserve.

With safe, clean and reliable, nuclear power as a credible option, my opinion is that the environmental Opportunity Cost of growing elephant grass is simply too large.

And if you want small-scale and local, how would some of these grab you? With the invention of Micro-Nuke from Toshiba, nuclear power is now scalable to as low as 10 MW.

BTW, the volume of high level waste generated for the average persons lifetime use of nuclear energy is so small that a volumetric representation of it would comfortably fit in the palm of your had. What's more, these HLWs will chemically stabilise over time. When you compare your legacy to future generations as user of nuclear power over your lifetime, with your legacy as a consumer who sends a considerable amount of non-biodegradeable trash to landfill in a week, you start to realise that there are bigger problems than some imagined nuclear waste mountain.

The only real "dirty little secret" nuclear power has, is that it makes sense. And that it beats the living bejesus out of fossil fuels on just about every count.

RedPlanet

How do advocates of nuclear power propose powering our transport system?
Surely nuclear powered trains/buses/cars are out of the question.

ardara1

RedPlanet wrote:

How do advocates of nuclear power propose powering our transport system?
Surely nuclear powered trains/buses/cars are out of the question.

Surely most renewables - wind, waves etc are aimed at producing electricity like nuclear - electric trains cars etc?

Electric is the dirtiest most costly fuel at present - but crerated by nuclear becomes cleaner

ardara1

RedPlanet wrote:

How do advocates of nuclear power propose powering our transport system?
Surely nuclear powered trains/buses/cars are out of the question.

Surely most renewables - wind, waves etc are aimed at producing electricity like nuclear - electric trains cars etc?

Electric is the dirtiest most costly fuel at present - but created by nuclear becomes cleaner - less CO2

All the renewables that we can throw into ireland will not create the 60% reduction thats needed now

I'm not a nuclear fan - but I can't see an alternative

SeanW

RedPlanet wrote:

How do advocates of nuclear power propose powering our transport system?
Surely nuclear powered trains/buses/cars are out of the question.

Nuclear power provides clean electricity which can be used for a number of transport related purposes.

1: Electrify all the main railway lines.
2: Use surplus electricity to create hydrogen.
3: Provide electricity to biofuel factories.

Liquid fuels will probably continue to be the biggest source of transportation fuels, so the time has come IMO to go hell-for-leather with biofuels. I mean total backing by national governments, and dedicate most 1st world agricultural subsidies to the production of energy crops for the home market in a no punches pulled dash to replace imported petroleum oil.

Similarly, biofuels could contribute nicley to greening nuclear. For example, the Uranium miners and hauliers could use biodiesel in their equipment.

My view is simple:
Nuclear power + biofuels =

silverharp

I don't have any numbers to hand but at some point you hit an opportunity cost between bio fules and food production. There are many areas in the US where agriculture depends on underground water which is running out and gas to run the irrigation.

Lennoxschips

I see three major drawbacks for nuclear power:

- The risk of meltdown

- The nasty waste and the fact that a decommisioned power plant takes hundreds of years before it can be demolished and/or left unsecure.

- Uranium-235 is a non-renewable, and there is only 50 years of it left in the ground at current usage levels. And none of it is in Ireland.

bonkey

Lennoxschips wrote:

- Uranium-235 is a non-renewable, and there is only 50 years of it left in the ground at current usage levels. And none of it is in Ireland.

The 50 years figure is generally challenged on the grounds that it ignores the proven possibility of increased reprocessing.

I also seem to remember someone here did post stuff about Ireland having Uranium deposits - they've never been mined, but apparently they're there.

Even if they weren't. importing energy isn't anything new or unusual.

SeanW

silverharp wrote:

I don't have any numbers to hand but at some point you hit an opportunity cost between bio fules and food production. There are many areas in the US where agriculture depends on underground water which is running out and gas to run the irrigation.

Very true. I don't see a situation where we would have enough land to house, feed, and provide biofuels for both electricity and transportation for all the peoples of the world.

That's why I oppose the use of farmland for the growth of elephant grass - better to use atomic energy to make electricity and use the land to grow crops for liquid transport biofuels.

The risk of meltdown

Reactors dont just uncerimoniously go "pop" and blow a gazillion curies of radiation into the atmosphere. Remember there have been no meltdowns outside the Soviet Union in roughly 30 years.
The last one, Three Mile Island, didn't cause anything worth talking about in the way environmental damage, because, among other things, TMI had full primary and secondary containment systems.

Chernoybl-4, the only nuclear accident worth talking about, had, among a long litany of other Soviet government blunders, only partial primary containment, which of course failed miserably. To anyone who still fears the risk of a nuclear meltdown, I would say to research the history of the Chernobyl plant and the causes of the accident.

I feel confident in saying that - with the possible exception of the 11 RMBK reactors still in operation in former Soviet countries, that a Chernobyl style catastrophe cannot, and will not, ever happen again.

Uranium-235 is a non-renewable, and there is only 50 years of it left in the ground at current usage levels. And none of it is in Ireland.

This ignores a number of key points:

1: The lack of reprocessing at the moment, when a fuel assembly ceases to be useful in a nuclear reactor, 95% of the origional fuel is still there, mixed with about 5% hot fission products. Reprocessing removes these products and allows new assemblies to be made from the remains. However, most Uranium is (ab)used on a once-through basis.

2: There has been little or no Uranium exploration over the last 30 odd years. Not because of any shortage per-se, but because the Uranium industry has taken a number of hits: less nuclear optimism after TMI and Chernobyl = less demand for Uranium, and in the 90s, large US and Russian stockpiles of fissile material were both dumped onto the civilian markets = uranium oversupply.

If the same were true of oil and gas, there would be much less fossil fuel exploration than there is today, and we probably wouldn't have much in the way of proven reserves of hydrocarbons either.

3: There are, or soon will be, methods to allow Thorium to be used as a nuclear fuel.

4: Uranium is largely imported from countries with which the West better/more equal relationships with. For example, the U.S. can screw around in the affairs of South American and Middle Eastern countries all it likes and only liberals will care - or even notice. Similarly many of those countries don't like the West too much. This is not true of the two biggest Uranium exporters, Australia and Canada.

A Uranium economy would be better and more secure for everyone.

As for nuclear wastes:

This is a volumetric representation of the amount of High Level Wastes generated per person/liftime of using nuclear power.

It's manageable. But the waste created by the burning of fossil fuels, is never managed, it's simply dumped into the air, the lakes, and into our lungs and bloodstreams.

This page in my view, makes THE case for nuclear power, succintly and irrefutably.

silverharp

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/china.html

Here is a couple of sections from the article above about the Chinese developing Pebbel Bed reactors. In light of these kinds of developments any arguments that mention Chernoble is pure scaremongering designed to scare the public to your way of thinking.




Quote-In the air-conditioned chill of the visitors' area, a grad student runs through the basics. Instead of the white-hot fuel rods that fire the heart of a conventional reactor, HTR-10 is powered by 27,000 billiards-sized graphite balls packed with tiny flecks of uranium. Instead of superhot water - intensely corrosive and highly radioactive - the core is bathed in inert helium. The gas can reach much higher temperatures without bursting pipes, which means a third more energy pushing the turbine. No water means no nasty steam, and no billion-dollar pressure dome to contain it in the event of a leak. And with the fuel sealed inside layers of graphite and impermeable silicon carbide - designed to last 1 million years - there's no steaming pool for spent fuel rods. Depleted balls can go straight into lead-lined steel bins in the basement.


The key trick is a phenomenon known as Doppler broadening - the hotter atoms get, the more they spread apart, making it harder for an incoming neutron to strike a nucleus. In the dense core of a conventional reactor, the effect is marginal. But HTR-10's carefully designed geometry, low fuel density, and small size make for a very different story. In the event of a catastrophic cooling-system failure, instead of skyrocketing into a bad movie plot, the core temperature climbs to only about 1,600 degrees Celsius - comfortably below the balls' 2,000-plus-degree melting point - and then falls. This temperature ceiling makes HTR-10 what engineers privately call walk-away safe. As in, you can walk away from any situation and go have a pizza.
"In a conventional reactor emergency, you have only seconds to make the right decision," Zhang notes. "With HTR-10, it's days, even weeks - as much time as we could ever need to fix a problem."

This unusual margin of safety isn't merely theoretical. INET's engineers have already done what would be unthinkable in a conventional reactor: switched off HTR-10's helium coolant and let the reactor cool down all by itself. Indeed, Zhang plans a show-stopping repeat performance at an international conference of reactor physicists in Beijing in September. "We think our kind of test may be required in the market someday," he adds. -end quote

RedPlanet

SeanW wrote:

4: Uranium is largely imported from countries with which the West better/more equal relationships with. For example, the U.S. can screw around in the affairs of South American and Middle Eastern countries all it likes and only liberals will care - or even notice. Similarly many of those countries don't like the West too much. This is not true of the two biggest Uranium exporters, Australia and Canada.

I take exception to this.
Earlier you were saying that you thought "currrent politics over Middle Eastern oil would migrate to solar energy", to an extent.

And that maybe true, however i don't see why Australia and Canada having "more equal" [?whatever that means] relations with the US would mitigate against those same "politics" over energy security.
No one can predict the political future.
What might occur in those countries once Uranium deposits become a source of insecurity?
I don't know.
What might occur in USA if the present course of nationalism, corportism and militarism continues or becomes a popular political movement?
I don't know.
But i do know that if energy security is a of concern then self-sufficiency is the better answer.
Your nuclear position seems be a sort of us versus them approach.
Are you advocating nuclear power for all the world's population or just the rich ones?
The problem i have with proponents of nuclear power is that it seems to come from large corporations whom sometimes have a poor environmental track record.
For example Pacific Gas and Electric Company from the film Erin Brockovich.
Just look at this site:
http://www.nei.org/
It's paternalistic, heavy on the propaganda and is just plain offensive.

silverharp

RedPlanet wrote:

But i do know that if energy security is a of concern then self-sufficiency is the better answer.

My view of the world is that within 10 years energy derived from oil will decrease and I don't see renewables bridging the gap (worldwide) for decades after. Are you comfortable with the effects of an energy gap globally? isn't it logical to make use of all potential energy sources even as a transition. Take china for instance, development of nuclear is not displacing renewables but I would hope it is displacing coal and oil

RedPlanet

silverharp wrote:

Are you comfortable with the effects of an energy gap globally? isn't it logical to make use of all potential energy sources even as a transition. Take china for instance, development of nuclear is not displacing renewables but I would hope it is displacing coal and oil

I personally am comfortable with a low-tech/low energy future.
I believe that our current course is unsustainable.
I think re-tooling our societies from one finite energy resource to another (coal->oil->gas->nuclear) is just delaying the inevitable (renewables).
I think we may have to change our way of life.
I look forward to it.

silverharp

RedPlanet wrote:

I personally am comfortable with a low-tech/low energy future.
I believe that our current course is unsustainable.
I think re-tooling our societies from one finite energy resource to another (coal->oil->gas->nuclear) is just delaying the inevitable (renewables).
I think we may have to change our way of life.
I look forward to it.

Interesting, although I share your view that some of this is going to happen, and will look forward to some of the life style changes I believe your view has an implicit higher "death count", if the world exceeds it's carrying capacity as oil flows decrease, the steepness of the energy decrease cure will have a relationship with population reduction. I would like most of this reduction to be natural!

SeanW

Earlier you were saying that you thought "currrent politics over Middle Eastern oil would migrate to solar energy", to an extent.

With the TREC plan, I feel this is a slight danger. Relations between Europe and some parts of near Africa and the Middle East simply are not perfect and fully harmonius. So I do fear that exported solar energy might become a political football. That's not to say we shouldn't DO it, I just said don't DEPEND on it.

And that maybe true, however i don't see why Australia and Canada having "more equal" [?whatever that means] relations with the US would mitigate against those same "politics" over energy security.
No one can predict the political future.

I personally don't think much of the way the 1st world treats the 3rd world, and, among others, my view is that if Iraq were a rich country closer to the Atlantic Ocean with a less notorious leadership, the recent war there would not have happened regardless of the fact that it holds 20% of the worlds oil.

What might occur in those countries once Uranium deposits become a source of insecurity?

A troubling question, alright, but it's a very big jump to conclude that this is going to happen any time soon, especially in light of the 3 other points I made which you dodged.

Your nuclear position seems be a sort of us versus them approach.

If by "us versus them" you mean nuclear power versus fossil fuels, then yes, that's exactly my position.

Are you advocating nuclear power for all the world's population or just the rich ones?

Just the rich ones. For two reasons.

First of all, we're the biggest users of energy - the USA at 5% of the worlds population, uses 25% of the worlds energy. And on a per-capita basis, we're probably not very far behind them.
Second, nuclear power costs money, and needs a good government and regulatory framework. It has to be done right.

Just look at this site:
http://www.nei.org/
It's paternalistic, heavy on the propaganda and is just plain offensive.

And I suppose this is more factual?

Or what about No More Chernobyls. See in the flash animation

Chernobyl Certificate 000358. This is Annya. She's more than just a number.

*pukes* please spare me the emotional irrelevant pile of BS.

As I've pointed out before, by going through what actually happened at Chernoybl, and as silver harp added to with his/her review of the new PBRs, anyone who plays the Chernobyl card in an anti nuke argument isn't dealing in facts but rather in scaremongering.

But for Greenpeace, Chernobyl is their ace in the hole, a never ending inspiration for more propganda. Because let's face it: pictures of poor, broken, children in pain tend to pull all our heartstrings: and in the process cause our emotions to superceed logic. So it ceases to matter how long the string of abominable Soviet government blunders was, or how impossible it would realistically be for a simliar condition to ever arise again.

You think that NEI document is "paternalistic, heavy on propoganda?"

It doesn't even come close.

\m/_(>_<)_\m/

Lennoxschips wrote:

I see three major drawbacks for nuclear power:

- The risk of meltdown

- The nasty waste and the fact that a decommisioned power plant takes hundreds of years before it can be demolished and/or left unsecure.

- Uranium-235 is a non-renewable, and there is only 50 years of it left in the ground at current usage levels. And none of it is in Ireland.

.

so compared to the others fuels, its very clean and safe, and looking at only 3 major drawback.... much better for the environment.

RedPlanet

SeanW wrote:

With the TREC plan, I feel this is a slight danger. Relations between Europe and some parts of near Africa and the Middle East simply are not perfect and fully harmonius. So I do fear that exported solar energy might become a political football. That's not to say we shouldn't DO it, I just said don't DEPEND on it.

The fact that both oil and uranium are finite resources may mean that the same energy security politics apply, whereas the fact that solar is infinite may mitigate against those politics.
I'm not 100% of the reasons for these energy security politics, but certainly oil, uranium and in the context of the TREC plan, Solar; all share similar import/export design which might have an insecurity built-in.

SeanW wrote:

I personally don't think much of the way the 1st world treats the 3rd world, and, among others, my view is that if Iraq were a rich country closer to the Atlantic Ocean with a less notorious leadership, the recent war there would not have happened regardless of the fact that it holds 20% of the worlds oil.

Well I mostly agree. Certainly USA doesn't wage war on countries with the ability to defend themselves. However the fact is they have done so, and meddled with the internal affairs of countries that possess finite energy sources that USA are dependant upon. Therefore it is rational to believe they will do so again, in other countries with other finite resources.
It may be that being a wealthy other country would mitigate against that, I don't know.

SeanW wrote:

A troubling question, alright, but it's a very big jump to conclude that this is going to happen any time soon, especially in light of the 3 other points I made which you dodged.

I didn't mean to dodge any other points, just that i didn't offer any refutation of them, for various reasons i suppose.

SeanW wrote:

If by "us versus them" you mean nuclear power versus fossil fuels, then yes, that's exactly my position.

No, i meant Us -in-developed-countries VS Them -in-developing-countries

SeanW wrote:

Just the rich ones. For two reasons.

First of all, we're the biggest users of energy - the USA at 5% of the worlds population, uses 25% of the worlds energy. And on a per-capita basis, we're probably not very far behind them.
Second, nuclear power costs money, and needs a good government and regulatory framework. It has to be done right.

Which is exactly the sort of scenario i so dislike.
It's imperialistic.
Can you imagine for example, how someone in Iraq may interpret Western behavior in regards energy?
We'll greedily take their oil from under them, threaten wars when their politics don't suit us, then after we've sucked up the oil we'll up and leave and no, they can't have nuclear power because they can't be trusted.
What a rotten civilization we must be.
Can you also imagine a world in which the "civilized" West runs on "clean" nuclear energy while the rest of the world consists of poverty and polluting our dear planet with their "dirty oil" and fossil fuels? I can just imagine the sorts of disgusting attitudes we see already in the west, regarding peoples and cultures in other poorer countires, magnified by ten.
That is not a world i desire.

I agree with you on the Greenpeace website.
I note you never mentioned or rationalized Sellafield.

SeanW

RedPlanet wrote:

Well I mostly agree. Certainly USA doesn't wage war on countries with the ability to defend themselves. However the fact is they have done so, and meddled with the internal affairs of countries that possess finite energy sources that USA are dependant upon. Therefore it is rational to believe they will do so again, in other countries with other finite resources.
It may be that being a wealthy other country would mitigate against that, I don't know.

If some neo-con leader decided to invade Canada or Australia, I think even the biggest bible thumping idiot might get around to asking "wtf is going on here?"

I didn't mean to dodge any other points, just that i didn't offer any refutation of them, for various reasons i suppose.

Well, they'd need to be refuted before anyone could reasonably conclude that an increase in nuclear power use could lead to imminent Uranium wars.

No, i meant Us -in-developed-countries VS Them -in-developing-countries

Which is EXACTLY what is going on now with hydrocarbons, and what nuclear power gives us the ability to get AWAY from.

Can you imagine for example, how someone in Iraq may interpret Western behavior in regards energy?
We'll greedily take their oil from under them, threaten wars when their politics don't suit us, then after we've sucked up the oil we'll up and leave and no, they can't have nuclear power because they can't be trusted.
What a rotten civilization we must be.
Can you also imagine a world in which the "civilized" West runs on "clean" nuclear energy while the rest of the world consists of poverty and polluting our dear planet with their "dirty oil" and fossil fuels? I can just imagine the sorts of disgusting attitudes we see already in the west, regarding peoples and cultures in other poorer countires, magnified by ten.

Some of the countries that are poor, are poor because corruption is a way of life and their governments are all incompetent Kleptocracies or religious extremeists. Take Nigeria, the scam capital of the world, where bribery and payoffs to government officials is part of the lifestyle. Or the 'Democratic Republic of' the Congo - which is a basket case, or Sudan whos people live in poverty while their governments number one priority seems to be to sponsor the "janjaweed" paramilitary to slaughter every single non-muslim in the country. So Darfur's economy is in the toilet and the only thing people there use energy for is running away from the janjaweed. Or Zimbabwe, where Robert Mugabe (who in between election riggings) sponsored those big land grabs, caused a famine, economic collapse and, hyperinflation in his wake.

After my research of the Chernobyl accident, I've found that the primary cause of the catastrophe was not some inherent flaw in the concept of nuclear power, but atrocious governace on an unimaginable scale. The problem of course is that some parts of Africa have bad governace on a scale that would make the Soviet Union look like Utopia by comparison.

Obviously I'm learned enough to realise that not all 3rd world countries are like that, and some of them actually have good governace and are actually developing, but I think we would all be worried at the prospect of some of these governments or quasi governmental militias getting their hands on a nuclear reactor.

All or most of these countries, as signatories of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, are fully entitled to pursue peaceful nuclear activity. But for some of them, Sudan, Nigeria, the Congo, Zimbabwe etc, it would be inherently stupid and pointless to do so.

I agree with you on the Greenpeace website.
I note you never mentioned or rationalized Sellafield.

Sellafield has no not a nuclear reactors, but it is one of only 3 spent fuel reprocessing stations in the world. France has one, so do the Japanese.

I don't know enough about its safety record to make a detailed comment - though I understand it's not good - I'm inclined to support it on the basis of getting any outstanding problems fixed. If a machine or storage pool is insecure, fix it. If there's a complacent culture of safety, fire and replace the management. Fix whatever needs to be fixed. Sort out any problems but keep the facility. "Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater" is the phrase that comes to mind.

Lennoxschips

\m/_(>_<)_\m/ wrote:

.

so compared to the others fuels, its very clean and safe, and looking at only 3 major drawback.... much better for the environment.

plus nuclear power is very expensive, when you factor in security, transport, processing, decomissioning.

there is a risk of the fuel being used for weapons

there is a risk of meltdown, which is often played down shamelessly. somebody here suggested three mile island wasn't that bad, but the facts would seem to dispute that. chernobyl rendered vast swathes of belarus and ukraine uninhabitable for hundreds of years. then there are the odd "nearly" incidents every now and then, the last one being in july 2006 in forsmark, sweden. seeing as we can't even build a port tunnel properly i wouldn't trust the irish government to run a nuclear station. equally i wouldn't trust a private firm. i think it is arrogant to think that we have solved the safety problems in only 20 years.

in a nation like ireland, with massive wind resources, nuclear power should be an absolute last option. also, as somebody else here suggested, we should be looking at efficiency as well. ireland is the second highest per capita user of energy in the EU-25. our cars travel twice as many kilometres as the EU average. to think nuclear power is some kind of a magic wand that will solve our problems is simplistic.

and of course, nobody knows what to do with the radioactive waste. where in ireland are we supposed to put it?

Jimoslimos

No I would say. Its probably more anti-environment to support the large scale clearance of land to grow biofuels (which are at best carbon-neutral over a long period of time).

Wind, solar and even a small amount of biofuels (though not as a long-term replacement for diesel in car engines) should all be used to supplement nuclear power until other alternative energy sources can be found

Lennoxschips

Its probably more anti-environment to support the large scale clearance of land to grow biofuels

yeah, that's a total disgrace. i'm against biofuels as much as nuclear. there are people in the world who can't eat and people are proposing using agricultural land to run cars. the usa decided to use corn oil in diesel and the world price of corn went up. that can't be good for people who need to eat corn to survive!

brazil is held up as an example of biofuels, but we must remember that a lot of that is grown on land that used to be virgin rainforest

i think people just need to realise that current lifestyles, especially in ireland, are simply unsustainable.

SeanW

Lennoxschips wrote:

yeah, that's a total disgrace. i'm against biofuels as much as nuclear. there are people in the world who can't eat and people are proposing using agricultural land to run cars. the usa decided to use corn oil in diesel and the world price of corn went up. that can't be good for people who need to eat corn to survive!

brazil is held up as an example of biofuels, but we must remember that a lot of that is grown on land that used to be virgin rainforest

i think people just need to realise that current lifestyles, especially in ireland, are simply unsustainable.

:eek: ZOMG, did you actually bother to do ANY research AT ALL, before forming those opinions/posting this nonsense?

Because it very much looks to me like you have not.

The reason there are people going hungry today has nothing whatsoever to do with a shortage of agricultural capacity. In fact it's quite the opposite. There's too much agricultural capacity especially in the 1st world. The most damaging agricultural support schemes by first world governments are the market intervention price supports, whereby the government keeps prices high by commissioning X tons of domestic produce. which of course it has no use for so the produce is dumped on 3rd world markets at rock bottom prices to the peril of local agriculture and food processing businesses. This damages an already weak economy and causes poverty. Lack of money leads to hunger.

So you see? One of the fundamental causes of 3rd world poverty and hunger is TOO MUCH agricultural capacity. It's time for a new plan IMO and biofuels is it, since realistically 1st world governments aren't going to scrap these stupid wasteful and destructive intervention schemes, we might as well try to persuade our governments to commission stuff we could actually use.

Hell, we could even IMPORT biofuels from the developing world if we began to rely on the stuff and that would give their people a chance to set up businesses, get some money and a life for themselves.

Biofuels are the answer, not the problem, and if you'd bothered to do any research this would have become abundantly clear.

there is a risk of the fuel being used for weapons

there is a risk of meltdown, which is often played down shamelessly. somebody here suggested three mile island wasn't that bad, but the facts would seem to dispute that. chernobyl rendered vast swathes of belarus and ukraine uninhabitable for hundreds of years. then there are the odd "nearly" incidents every now and then, the last one being in july 2006 in forsmark, sweden. seeing as we can't even build a port tunnel properly i wouldn't trust the irish government to run a nuclear station. equally i wouldn't trust a private firm. i think it is arrogant to think that we have solved the safety problems in only 20 years.

in a nation like ireland, with massive wind resources, nuclear power should be an absolute last option.

This is so ridiculous I don't even know where to start. It seems you've taken a lot of what I said and twisted it out of context.

First of all, the safety problems were solved 20 years ago - if you're referring to Chernobyl, as your 20 years would allude to - the problems at the Chernobyl power station simply never existed outside the Former Soviet Union.

I used to be in the "no nuclear ever" camp because I thought reactors could just uncerimoniously go 'boom' and blow a gazillion curies of radiation into the environment - like Chernobyl. Well, I was wrong and this opinion was purely down to a lack of research on my part which I corrected earlier this year.

What I found was that the accident was caused not by some inherent flaw n the concept of nuclear power, but by a combination of a wierd and flawed reactor design, an incompetent staff, worse management, and an abosultely atrocious central government in Moscow overseeing the whole thing practically blind.

Indeed the whole Soviet nuclear programme from start to finish, including mining, nuclear submarines, weapons and commercial power, was - much like the Soviet Union itself - a tragedy of unimagineable proportions which will haunt mankind for generations to come.

You can't say the same about Bertie Ahern or the Port Tunnel.

Whatever happened in the Soviet Union is a non-issue in terms of modern, civilian nuclear programmes.

As for Three Mile Island, I never said it was no big deal, in fact my mother was living in New York at the time and apparently there was pandemonium, all that I said was that a number things that were wrong at Chernobyl weren't wrong at TMI, among them being a decent containment system, which Chernobyl sadly lacked. I didn't bother reading your link because there has been no major permanent evacuations of the TMI area so there's no comparison between the two accidents. Which is the point I was initally making.

As for proliferation - seriously. Anyone who wants nuclear weapons already has them, or could probably buy them very easily off Kim Jong Nutjob in North Korea and his morally and financially bankrupt regime.

what's more there are reactor types that can use natural uranium. But what possible danger of "proliferation" could there be by for example Ireland, enriching uranium for a Light Water Reactor, or indeed a whole bunch of other countries that already enrich fuel and are known to have absolutely no interest whatsoever in nuke weapons?

Finally, if you want to know just how great the Irish wind is: just look at Eirgrid's portal, it has a nice graph and data about wind generation - the figures fluctuate violently. The national windfarm fleet goes from one extreme - being a net drain on the grid - to another - generating up to 500MW, and everything in between with no apparent logic or pattern. i.e. wind power is simply too unreliable unless someone comes up with a kickass energy storage system to compliment them. Oh and look up "Derrybrien" for a close example of windfarms doing environmental damage.

piraka

SeanW there is a grain of truth (excuse the pun) in what Lennoxschips has to say on land use change.

In the past five years 22,000 sq km per anum of Amazon rainforest was cleared for Soya bean oil, sugar cane and beef production.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Rainforest


http://www.mongabay.com/brazil.html


It is interesting to note that in the IPCC reports, Land Use Change is not featured as a one of the major mechanism of climate change.

Lennoxschips wrote:

in a nation like ireland, with massive wind resources, nuclear power should be an absolute last option. also, as somebody else here suggested, we should be looking at efficiency as well. ireland is the second highest per capita user of energy in the EU-25. our cars travel twice as many kilometres as the EU average. to think nuclear power is some kind of a magic wand that will solve our problems is simplistic.

Yes we have a massive wind resources, but is useless as an on demand large scale energy source.

While the Minster for MCNR, Dempsey wants 30% increase in renewables, mainly wind as set out in his Green paper on Energy. The Delotte report, Review of the Electricity Sector in Ireland ( completed on Dec 9th 2005 and heavily censored !!!) says

...that greater the wind generation within the electricity system the greater the level of conventional capacity (reserve) needed to provide electricity when the wind is not blowing

ie we need more power stations if we increase wind penetration. Since we are trying to move away from Carbon Dioxide producing power plants, nuclear has to be an option.

http://www.dcmnr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/54C78A1E-4E96-4E28-A77A-3226220DF2FC/26726/DeloitteReportOctober2006.pdf


http://www.dcmnr.gov.ie/NR/rdonlyres/54C78A1E-4E96-4E28-A77A-3226220DF2FC/26716/EnergyGreenPaper1October2006.pdf

turbine?

Dr David Flemming gives a good lecture on why nuclear isnt an option for the future:
http://www.feasta.org/documents/energy/nuclear_power.htm

Lennoxschips

SeanW wrote:

:eek: ZOMG, did you actually bother to do ANY research AT ALL, before forming those opinions/posting this nonsense?

Because it very much looks to me like you have not.

I really don't care for your condescending attitude.

Have a read of the very comprehensive going over of biofuels in the New Scientist of 25/09/06. (Subscription required)

A brief overview of the consequences for tropical rainforests can be found here: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825265.400

Whatever happened in the Soviet Union is a non-issue in terms of modern, civilian nuclear programmes.

Yet there is a whole list of mishaps and near meltdowns in the past 20 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidents

I didn't bother reading your link because there has been no major permanent evacuations of the TMI area so there's no comparison between the two accidents.

perhaps you should have. a study found that fatal cancers in children in the three mile island area over the last 25 years are well above the U.S. average.

SeanW

Lennoxschips wrote:

I really don't care for your condescending attitude.

My apologies for that, I should have used much more reserved language.

But when I see statements like this:

there are people in the world who can't eat and people are proposing using agricultural land to run cars.

I tend to assume that the person who wrote it is not fully informed. The people who can't eat, can't eat because of economics, not a shortfall of agricultural capacity.

Have a read of the very comprehensive going over of biofuels in the New Scientist of 25/09/06. (Subscription required)

A brief overview of the consequences for tropical rainforests can be found here: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18825265.400

I'm not disagreeing with you about the rainforests, I've heard about this before, I scanned through that article you posted, and I tend to agree that it's not good to destroy these rainforests to grow palm oil.

But it's a case of triage. We need to balance a total rejection of biofuels, which is what you seem to advocate, citing concerns over these rainforests, against the many positives biofuels offer:

• Reduce our CO2 emissionsand other air pollutants
• Improve domestic energy security
• Help all farmers by finding a use for existing surplus 1st and 3rd world agribusiness capacity.

I for one, do not think those benefits should be ignored just because some tossers in Southeast Asia are going to make vegetable oil in an enviornmentally inconsiderate way.

Yet there is a whole list of mishaps and near meltdowns in the past 20 years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_civilian_nuclear_accidentsNone of these incidents except Chernobyl have caused noteworthy environmental damage and many of them were internal accidents, fatalities therein are few.

It's a lot cleaner than fossil fuels. Nuclear power's main competition is coal. It's not a pretty business.

We need something better than fossil fuels - and we need it FAST. IMO nuclear power and biofuels are those answers.

Lennoxschips

i'm just not sure how carbon neutral nuclear and biofuels are

according to the new scientist article biofuels aren't carbon neutral at all

and depending on what source you look at nuclear power is either incredibly carbon free (according to the nuke industry) or not at all (according to the environmental activists). according to the link turbine? posted up, there's only six years of uranium fuel left if the whole world were to use nuclear fuel, and after that the fuel left is so hard to get to that more energy is needed to get at it then can be generated from it. who are we to believe? there are so many conflicting accounts all with their own agenda.

and of course we have the waste problem. we've seen how the people of mayo reacted to a gas pipeline. i don't know where in ireland people would put up with a nuclear waste storage facility.

I tend to assume that the person who wrote it is not fully informed. The people who can't eat, can't eat because of economics, not a shortfall of agricultural capacity.

i can see how you can misinterpret that. what i mean by this is that it disappoints me that the international community can mobilise itself so well to grow crops to meet a biofuel target, yet we haven't seen the same mobilisation and motivation to use agricultural over-capacity to help feed people who can't afford to feed themselves. when the push comes to shove, cars are more important than starving children, it would seem.

\m/_(>_<)_\m/

SeanW wrote:

We need something better than fossil fuels - and we need it FAST. IMO nuclear power and biofuels are those answers.

i have to agree,

RedPlanet

I agree with the Feasta article linked.
Bottom line:

Nuclear power, even as only a short-term strategy, is about conserving the bankrupt present; Lean Energy is about inventing and building a future that works.

silverharp

RedPlanet wrote:

I agree with the Feasta article linked.
Bottom line:

I see nuclear as being a transition to the future not propping up a bankrupt system. There will be global chaos and more wars if the transition is not smooth. I would hate to think that hardline greens want to sit back smugly and say "I told you so!"

RedPlanet

silverharp wrote:

I see nuclear as being a transition to the future not propping up a bankrupt system. There will be global chaos and more wars if the transition is not smooth. I would hate to think that hardline greens want to sit back smugly and say "I told you so!"

Actually if you read that article the author warns against that very idea.

What appears to follow from this is a best-of-both-worlds strategy: to develop nuclear power as far as the uranium supply allows, and at the same time to develop Lean Energy. There is clearly a discussion to be had about this, but here again there is a catch. The problem is that the two strategies are substantially incompatible. A dash for nuclear power would reduce the funds and other resources, and the concentrated focus, needed for Lean Energy. Nuclear power depends on the centralised grid system, which depends on a reliable flow of electricity from gas-powered stations if it is to function at all; Lean Energy is organised around local minigrids. Nuclear power inevitably brings a sense of reassurance that, in the end, the technical fix will save us; Lean Energy depends on the recognition that we shall need, not only the whole range of technology from the most advanced to the most labour intensive, but the whole range of opportunities afforded by profound change - in behaviour, in the economy, and in society.
For these reasons, the best-of-both-worlds strategy of backing both nuclear power and Lean Energy could be expected to lead to worst-of-both-worlds consequences. Lean Energy would be impeded by nuclear power; nuclear power would be hopelessly ineffective without Lean Energy. Result: paralysis.

democrates

Nuclear is at best a temporary fix. At worst, I can't say without being labelled a scaremonger, so I'll park the risk analysis for this thread.

Human overpopulation is the inescapable number one problem, not just for energy but for food and water. I think many people are receptive to the posit that infinite economic growth, the 'current way of life' is an addiction we have to kick on our finite little orb.

For others no amount of reason will convince them to change tack. For example climate model forecasts are dismissed as readily as the forensic evidence against O.J., undeniable trends are to be explained away as natural and when that fails in the face of overwhelming expert consensus the trends are acknowledged but the crisis downplayed, anything to keep the wealth concentration party going.

But free condoms and family planning education for burgeoning nations may be the single biggest thing this generation can do for the environment. Bill Hicks was spot on: "Too many of ya! Somebody needs to say that by the way." That and sanctions against polluter nations. And kyotoII needs to cover humans, the ultimate pestilance.

silverharp

[Q++UOTE=RedPlanet]Actually if you read that a prsy+coloticle the author warns against that very idea.[/QUOTE]

I don't understand his point about nuclear needing gas to back it up. France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear?

Even if local grids are the way to go , youll never get central gov support for it. the best one can expect from the EU would be to create a european grid for wind power, even the head of Airtricity had a letter in the Irish Times making this point. Under these conditions a central wind grid with Nuclear backup will be a strong possibility. I really can't see a change in psycology around the world that will tolerate a voluntary giving up in living standards even if the Standard is a fraud.

Looking at china and using his arguments if they didn't go nuclear they would put their effeorts into building more coal plants or damming up every river in China.

SeanW

Nuclear power is a safe, clean, powerful replacement for fossil fuels especially coal.

One truckload of Uranium, 2 tons, replaces 25 trainloads, or 260,000 tons of coal. Coal has to be mined, processed, transported, loaded, and burned, with the attendant air pollution, all in obscenely vast quantites to get the same 'bang' as Uranium shipment 5 orders of magnitude smaller. Source

France is about to build a newest reactor type: The European Pressurised Water Reactor which will use 17% less fuel, be safer and more efficient, and has a 60 year expected lifespan. The UK just did a U-Turn on it's nuclear strategy and Germany is showing the first signs of doing the same. The U.S. is also expecting a nuclear renaissance.

This is happening because nuclear power makes sense. It's clean, the plants themselves are emissions free, and is getting safer and more efficient as time goes by.

i'm just not sure how carbon neutral nuclear and biofuels are

according to the new scientist article biofuels aren't carbon neutral at all

and depending on what source you look at nuclear power is either incredibly carbon free (according to the nuke industry) or not at all (according to the environmental activists). according to the link turbine? posted up, there's only six years of uranium fuel left if the whole world were to use nuclear fuel, and after that the fuel left is so hard to get to that more energy is needed to get at it then can be generated from it. who are we to believe? there are so many conflicting accounts all with their own agenda.

My advice to you would be do some serious research in an attempt to answer those questions.

Some people argue that biofuels are a waste of time: that it takes more energy to make them than you get by burning them: but to that I have to ask why Rudolph Diesel (who invented what we now call the Diesel engine) and Henry Ford both thought that biofuels were going to be the future.

Rudolph Diesel, who in his day was smarter than a lot us will ever be, had this to say about the use of vegetable oil in his engines (the first Diesel engines ran on peanut oil)

Rudolph Diesel wrote:

The use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today. But such oils may become in course of time as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time.

He expected everthing from agricultural equipment to ocean liners to run on veggie oil, and clearly felt it was do-able. The first Ford cars ran on Ethanol.