Pandora's Promise and the Problem of "Solutionism" 293
Lasrick writes "Kennette Benedict of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reviews Pandora's Promise, a new documentary that focuses on environmental activists like Stewart Brand who have gone from vehemently anti-nuclear to vehemently pro-nuclear views. Good points brought up by Benedict that weren't really addressed in the film."
From the article: "The flaw in the film's approach is its zealous advocacy of one solution — one silver bullet — to meet the tremendous challenges of providing for some nine billion people by 2050, while also protecting societies from the ravages of climate disruption. The kind of thinking that led some of these environmentalists to single-mindedly protest nuclear power plants during the 1970s and 1980s leads them to just-as-single-mindedly advocate a push toward nuclear power 40 years later."
Re:Assumptions (Score:5, Informative)
Empirically, across a pretty wide range of situations, energy efficiency improvements tend to actually increase rather than decrease net energy usage, an observation known as the Jevons paradox [wikipedia.org].
Re:How is it not a silver bullet? (Score:5, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:energy is like food (Score:5, Informative)
And that means one motherfucking hefty CO2 tax
So you want a War on Coal, do you, throwing thousands of miners out of a job? Heartless bastard. Raising the cost of a gallon of gas? Unthinkable!
and a big piggy bank full of money next to every nuclear plant to pay for dismantling when the time comes
A Lie That Will Not Die, the taxpayers have to pay for decommissioning nuclear power stations. False.
That "piggy bank" you speak of already exists, and has done so since the 1980s in most Western nations that have nukes. Operators of nuclear power stations in the US have to pay into a fund to cover future decommissioning of individual plants. It's more than the coal-fired station operators, wind turbine and solar generators do to clean up after themselves and after forty or fifty gigawatt-years of generating power for a given reactor it adds up to quite a large amount, including interest. The San Onofre nuclear power station, even though it's being shut down only 30 years after being built, has about 3 billion bucks in its "piggy bank" for decommissioning, and using a long-term custodianship system (aka SafStor) it won't spend much of that for another fifty or sixty years meaning more interest accruing into the fund.
Re:Disasters (Score:4, Informative)
Review those designs and accident reports. Two too many failures; but, they could have been mitigated.
Graphite moderated reactors were considered too dangerous for commercial use by the late '50's or early '60's by every country except the U.S.S.R. It was cheap and they needed power so they built quite a few of them. It is difficult to know exactly what happened; but, it appears an ill advised and unauthorized experiment was run on the system, with all the safeties turned off. When the reactor crashed, the operator(s) panicked and they tried to do something which was known to cause explosive power surges which could result in catastrophic failures. And it did. This should not have happened.
Fukushima Diachi was a 1960's design that is considered quite dated and had a few known failure modes. The company operating the reactors basically refused to do all the expensive updates to improve the reactor's safety. They also ignored warnings that the sea wall was inadequate for worst case tsunami, which happened. It flooded their electrical system(s) and generators, which were at or below grade level. Because the earthquake knocked out their grid power supply, they had zero options for power. This led to the loss of cooling. Then, for political reasons, the operator tried to downplay the damage, rather than ask for help when they desperately needed it. It did not have to be this way.
Frankly, with the aging inventory of reactor systems operating in the world, I do not expect these to be the last. Having said that, for the purposed of full disclosure, I live near two large power reactors, a major naval base, and one of the two shipyards where they build, overhaul and test nuclear powered ships in the U.S. I don't fear it.
Waste storage is something we do need to solve. Either through re-use or through deep storage somewhere. I don't have an answer for you that's based on real engineering.
Re:How is it not a silver bullet? (Score:5, Informative)
Let me help, what he said: "Nuclear fusion in stars actually has a very LOW power density." And that's extremely true. The sun gives off about the same energy per cubic meter as a compost pile, it's just that the sun is big, really big. The person you are replying to was pointing out that getting useful energy out of fusion requires energies that are actually much higher than those present in the sun. You are confusing power with energy. Yes, the sun has a crap ton of energy... but it releases that energy very, very slowly (i.e. over the course of several billion years).
Re:How is it not a silver bullet? (Score:4, Informative)
The problem comes during decommissioning where a site now has to be basically cleaned for decades (a cost not usually factored in or accounted for when pricing power - in the ideal case the money for the cleanup comes during operation and is banked up, but capitalism makes this an impossibility).
Nope. All Western nations, including the US require the operators to create and maintain a fund for decommissioning power station reactors at end-of-life, usually through a levy per kWh generated. No such funds are required for coal-fired power station operators, wind farms etc.
"the taxpayer is on the hook for decommissioning" is a common lie promulgated by anti-nuclear True Believers, easily disproved by a trivial search on the Web and elsewhere. Same thing for spent fuel, a standard levy per kWh generated funds disposal operations.
Decommissioning CAN take decades but almost all of that time the operation consists of building a wire fence and supplying a few security guards plus some weatherproofing, waiting for residual radioactivity in the core parts of the main building (reactor vessel mainly) to decay to the point where it's a conventional demolition job rather than involving hazardous low-level waste. The process is called SafStor if you want to look it up. Cost per Gen II/III reactor is generally $300-500 million per unit over 60 years or so.
Re:NIMBY (Score:4, Informative)
Those concerned about wind turbines spoiling the view tend to be climate change deniers.
Interesting assertion. That would be a surprise to people like the late Sen. Ted Kennedy and Walter Cronkite, vocal opponents of wind farms near their homes. Joe Kennedy has written much in support of wind farms, but oppose them near his own home.
Re:i bet they all make money from it (Score:4, Informative)
Go fuck yourself.
http://planetsave.com/2011/12/10/newest-epa-report-confirms-fracking-fluids-contaminating-pavillion-wyoming-water-supply/ [planetsave.com]
“The presence of synthetic compounds such as glycol ethersand the assortment of other organic components is explained as the result of direct mixing of hydraulic fracturing fluids with ground water in the Pavillion gas field”
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fracking-linked-water-contamination-federal-agency [scientificamerican.com]