4 Prominent Scientists Say Renewables Aren't Enough, Urge Support For Nuclear 776
First time accepted submitter Paddy_O'Furniture writes "Four prominent scientists have penned a letter urging those concerned about climate change to support nuclear energy, saying that renewables such as wind and solar will not be sufficient to meet the world's energy needs. Among the authors is James Hansen, a former top NASA scientist, whose 1988 testimony before the United States Congress helped launch discussions of global warming into the mainstream."
Easy for them to say (Score:4, Interesting)
Five nuclear power plants in the US have closed this year, [upi.com] due to a combination of competitive and operating issues. An industry analyst quoted in the article expects more plant closures to come.
Now we're stuck with these decommissioned plants. Anybody want a high-paying job? Sign up to help clean up and tear down those zombie plants.
Quite the opposite: Nuclear is not enough (Score:4, Interesting)
Why does everybody overlook that uranium resources are limited and that what is available today barely can feed the existing reactors? Money talks is the only explanation I have. Nuclear energy has brought nothing but trouble and wasted shiploads of money.
Re:Logic! (Score:2, Interesting)
Lowest pollution? I guess little things like Windscale, Tchernobyl, and Fuckushima are removed from that calculation...
Not good at math (Score:5, Interesting)
You only need to cover a half a percent of the Earth's surface with off-the-shelf 15% efficient PV panels to provide all of humanity all of its energy needs. If we covered all residential rooftops in the States with PV panels, we'd generate about as much electricity as the industrialized world needs -- and that's just residential rooftops just in the US.
To suggest that solar somehow isn't enough is just laughable. Hell, with the kind of abundance that solar offers, we've got far more than enough available to distill CO2 out of the atmosphere and turn it into hydrocarbons -- an incredibly energy-intensive process -- and use those hydrocarbons as our storage and transportation mechanisms just as we do today.
What we don't have is the willingness to invest our hydrocarbon inheritance in bootstrapping ourselves into such an energy-wealthy society. Instead, we'd rather squander our inheritance on monster SUVs and petroleum-based fertilizer to feed dozens of billions of people.
Here's some perspective from somebody who can actually do the math:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2012/02/the-alternative-energy-matrix/ [ucsd.edu]
Cheers,
b&
My problem with nuclear (Score:4, Interesting)
So the myth of bureaucratic waste passes the 'truthiness' test, and it gets applied to stuff like Nuclear safety inspections. They get privatized and before you know it a perfectly safe plant is now a disaster waiting to happen. The rich guy that pocketed the savings is 1000 miles away from ground zero so he doesn't care either. Worst case scenario he pays a $1 million dollar fine on $1 billion in profits...
I haven't been able to come up with a solution for this. Heck, most people don't even recognize it as a problem. They focus on the technical problems not the human ones. Until Nuclear can be done so safely that there's no money in ignoring safety it won't work...
Re:Logic! (Score:5, Interesting)
How many square kilometers of land have been made completely uninhabitable for the next 200 years or so as a result of coal power?
A lot. Not only for discarded waste, but mine fires. Centralia, Pennsylvania [wikipedia.org] has been burning since 1962 and will be burning for the next 1000 years by most estimates. Then there are other mine fires [wikipedia.org] all over the planet. It does look like there may be some success with extinguishing these on the horizon. But regardless, they are devastating to the local ecosystem and have all of the problems with burning coal for energy ,but with none of the energy.
Need it if we want to get rid of the nuclear waste (Score:4, Interesting)
What most people don't realize is that nuclear waste can be treated to render it harmless more quickly. And it can be done with a sub-critical reactor design. [wavewatching.net]
I don't understand how you can call yourself an environmentalist and not be in favor of this technology.
Re:thorium OR ??? (Score:4, Interesting)
This, this this, a thousand times this.
Renewables absolutely have the capability to meet out energy needs. Solar alone has reached to point where a sub-$10k installation can power a reasonably efficient house, even in the Northern US; in places that get enough wind (a lot more places than you might expect), a single small turbine can power a house, or a modest sized tower can power an entire neighborhood.
It absolutely amazes me that building codes haven't evolved to require incorporating one of those two technologies into every new building. The baseline residential load could become a net generator within a decade.
But, it then becomes hard for the utilities to justify charging people for power the people themselves produce. I don't want to suggest we have any sort of vast conspiracy here - More like hundreds of individual companies all actively dragging their feet and refusing to upgrade their infrastructure to make distributed generation practical.
"Funny" story - Five years ago, I started playing with a small plug-and-play solar installation at my house. During the day, with no one home, my old analog electric meter would actually spin backward and credit me for excess production. Two years ago, my local power company rolled out a forced upgrade to digital smartmeters (and when I say "forced", I mean we had actual protests and lengthy court cases trying to block the change). And whatd'ya know, the new meter doesn't go backward. I effectively give my extra power production to the grid for free.
Of course, I have the option of contracting with the utility for a second meter basically installed backward - For which they charge me to sell them electricity. Last time I checked the numbers, I'd realistically need to produce over a megawatt hour per month just to break even on their BS fees - And with my current toy 400W installation, that won't happen.
Re:Regulations are needed (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not anti-nuke, I'm anti-greed.
I have no (ZERO, None, nada, zilch) issues with nuclear energy as long as it's done properly.
I have major issues with letting companies like ConEd run anything dangerous. They will cut corners to make more money, they will leak radioactive waste into the groundwater, they will eventually cause a disaster. It's in their nature. They need to earn a never ending growing profit, the quick way to that is to cut corners.
So, YES, we must invest in nuclear, but must do it properly.
Re: Energy shouldn't be cheap. (Score:3, Interesting)
Degenerating into primitive fighting over the scarce resources is precisely what society strives to avoid.
Really? Because over here in the United States, we seem to be encouraging exactly that scenario -- cut education, oppose health care, restrict labor unions, drive wages down, concentrate wealth, ignore environmental initiatives, and create a debt-based economy for the poor and an investment-based economy for the rich.
Are you suggesting the United States is striving to leave modern society? Or perhaps, what you meant to say that fighting over the scarce resources is what an idealized society strives to avoid.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:thorium OR ??? (Score:4, Interesting)
The sun always shines somewhere. The wind always blows somewhere. And the tides ebb and flow with the regularity of... Well, of the tides.
Now consider that household power only accounts for 21% of the U.S. energy consumption.
So every household needs to make 5x as much as they use. Hey, there you have an opportunity for the utilities to stay relevant - Pay me to install more capacity than I need, and sell the excess to industry.
Sure you have lots of open space in Arizona, but you have to get the power from Arizona to Manhattan and its just not that simple.
'Fusion" counts as hard in the sense of "we don't quite know how to do it yet".
A superconducting cable from the Mojave to Manhattan amounts to a mere matter of logistics. We have a known solution. We know how to build that solution. Doing so would cost less than many of our foreign boondoggles. The only real "limitation" to doing so amounts to debates over NIMBY and profit sharing.
Pave Death Valley with solar panels. The rest amounts to political pissing contests.
A group of very intelligent individuals from some of the most highly recognized institutions of the world
I can find you "four prominent scientists" who believe that God created mankind, who roamed the planet concurrent with the dinosaurs, 6000 years ago. Argument from authority [wikipedia.org] doesn't validate; and when the argument flies directly counter to what anyone can plainly see for themselves, that argument has a higher than normal burden of proof.
If you want to tell me the world doesn't have enough gallium to pave Death Valley with CIGS-based PV panels, we can work with that. "Dr. So-and-so said so!", however, doesn't amount to squat.
Re:Assumptions (Score:4, Interesting)
You assume that there is a "market" that decides that the "cheapest energy" will win in the long run.
That is wrong on two scales.
First of all there is no market. Everything right now was casked in concrete over the previous 50 or more years mainly by government interests.
So in the actual situation a 30 year old nuclear plant produces energy relatively cheap (but not as cheap as you might think: maintanace and fuel costs and waste storage still cost money).
A new build nuclear plant would produce energy very expenisve, much more expensive than wind e.g.
You mix up scaling factors.
A new build nuclear plant, if we start today with the planning, will be ready in 15 years, at the soonest, if no court or other interference kills it mid term. That means we have a delay of 15 years to scale up in energy production by 4 - 6 GW. Or a similar delay in replacing a similar amount of coal power.
Wind and solar on the other hand makes it easy to connect power generation in small chunks to the grid continiously.
I can plan for a 4GW wind farm and comnect it while I build it in 100MW chunks to the grid. So instead of waiting 15 years for a new nuclear plant TO HAVE ANY EFFECT I have an imediate effect if I build wind and solar plants.
And obviously: a new build wind/solar plant generates energy cheaper than a new build nuclear plant.
Re:Assumptions (Score:5, Interesting)
There are ways to look after the poor without encouraging profligacy with energy.
We do it already: this really isn't black and white.
One way is to keep the first kWh cheap and have a rising block price per kWh against usage: if you're not running a McMansion with the windows wide open in winter you need never hit the punitive tariff bands. Just for example.
Or directly subsidise the energy bills of the poor. Take taxes from the top end (of energy usage or general taxation) to compensate.
I'm a fairly right-wing (at least by EU standards) investment banker "greenie" and I have no desire to mess up anybody else's life, including those further down the line when we've burnt way more fossil fuels than was in any way necessary and (a) certainly squandered the cheap stuff and (b) possibly ruined the climate.
Rgds
Damon
Re:My problem with nuclear (Score:3, Interesting)
Thorium reactors by design are meltdown proof.
You know, I'd go with "citation needed", but how about I just bust this myth right here and now.
Thorium reactors require uranium [wordpress.com] and/or other fissile material. They are not any safer than conventional reactors on this basis. A shorter explanation of just how much of a pipe dream thorium reactors are is here [beforeitsnews.com] along with the caveat that dropping a bomb on one would be a very messy affair.
And they are not meltdown proof; if the safety controls [oilprice.com] fail. Thorium reactors are so-called "meltdown-proof" because they have a plug in the bottom of the reactor that will disintegrate and drop the core into a large holding tank. As the molten salt that acts as the coolant is now spread out, the theory is this is safer. But it all depends on that plug giving way, and this is only a theoretical model.
Meltdowns are one possible failure mode of a reactor. They aren't even the most common, nor most dangerous, depending on the design. A thorium reactor can still fail catastrophically if the piping becomes plugged. Think about this for a second; the primary coolant is molten salt. What happens if it becomes too cool or solidifies in places; The plug as at the bottom, and heat rises. Impurities could slowly build up, the plug could fail to melt away due to corrosion, etc.
Thorium reactors are not meltdown proof; Poor maintenance is as much as hazard for them as any other. And as a bonus... they're about 50 years away from being feasible anyway.
Thank you for playing though... now kindly stop spreading bullshit.
Re:Assumptions (Score:3, Interesting)
"Can't handle?" What does that mean?
You do realize that 90% of what you hear about Fukushima in the news is BS, right? You realize that the source of your information is heavily funded (through advertising) by the same people who will directly benefit (via increased use of natural gas for electricity production) in reduced nuclear power use?
The media isn't exactly smart, but they know not to piss off the money people.