Monbiot on nuclear 6

Comments View as Flat

1. 

   Russ Posted 8:15 pm
   22 Feb 2009

   monbiot's nukes
   
   But I have not, as many people have suggested, gone nuclear. Instead, my position is that I will no longer oppose nuclear power if four conditions are met:
   
   
   Its total emissions - from mine to dump - are taken into account
   We know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried
   We know how much this will cost and who will pay
   There is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will be diveerted for military purposes.
   
   
   I notice immediately that he doesn't care about the ravages of mining itself. This is characteristic of the many who are concerned about the climate crisis but don't seem to be environmentalists beyond that issue.
   The same goes for his support of CCS and implicit lack of concern over coal mining itself.
   Getting to his critieria, 2-4 are of course not guaranteeable. Once we've embarked upon the buildout, any such concessions and guarantees will then become negotiable, and negotiating them down will be the next order of business for industry and conservatives.
   I don't see how you could know the cost, who will pay, or the waste disposal plan ahead of time. Costs in this industry are notoriously prone to bloat, and especially under current economic circumstances any massive capitalization plan which would take years to unfold is bound to be precarious.
   Nuke bailouts, anyone?
   As for waste disposal, America supposedly had a plan 30 years ago, yet here we are still trying to figure out whether it's acceptable. (And even if Yucca were a good plan, it wouldn't be sufficient to handle the waste from a significant expansion.)
   The civilian guarantee would just be window dressing. If it was ever judged that there was a military necessity involved (a generally low bar to meet for decision-makers), they'd convert anything and everything to military use.
   As for my own conditions, I doubt I could ever support it. But a prerequisite would be that any expansion was taking the place of decommissioned coal plants, and that it was doing so within the context of a general, rational deconsumption plan.
   I'd never support anything, let alone nuke expansion, which was just going to feed the monster of energy gluttony.

   Permalink

2. 

   VCF Posted 10:17 pm
   22 Feb 2009

   In fairnessRuss
   Monbiot is one of the few media commentators in the UK to try raise awareness of opencast coal mining here.
   http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/18/cpre-op ...

   Permalink

3. 

   Russ Posted 11:57 pm
   22 Feb 2009

   Thanks VCFYes, I didn't mean to say I know he doesn't care at all (though some seem not to).
   Still, it's true that he didn't see any need to mention uranium mining in his criteria. Since if anything the direct rape of the land is to me prior to climate change itself, that's the first thing I think of whenever I think of nukes or CCS.

   Permalink

4. 

   Joffan Posted 1:29 am
   23 Feb 2009

   Getting uraniumHey Russ, what would you think about extraction of uranium from seawater? The current state of research on that is that by letting some selectively-absorbent (and reusable) material hang in the ocean current for a month or two at a time you could extract useful amounts of uranium.
   It's not large-scale technology now but the projected costs are in the $130/kg region for uranium.

   Permalink

5. 

   Russ Posted 5:17 am
   23 Feb 2009

   seawaterHmm, don't they say the same thing about the deuterium which is supposed to fuel fusion reactors?
   I don't dogmatically say there will never come any techno-deus ex machina which will end all energy and carbon problems overnight, but all the evidence is that, to paraphrase Auden, "no glorious creature will rise from the water", and we're stuck with the stuff we have now.

   Permalink

6. 

   Joffan Posted 5:35 am
   23 Feb 2009

   No, fusion is different, totally unprovenI'm just talking about an alternative mineral source for existing fission technology which doesn't involve mining.
   I should also like to take minor issue with the blanket use of "energy gluttony" since I doubt you could apply that term to many in India for example. We certainly need more energy availability there to lift people out of poverty and hence (sure as day follows night) reduce population growth pressure.

   Permalink