As far as I can tell, there are precisely three environmentalists of any note who have come to support nuclear power: James Lovelock, Stewart Brand, and Patrick Moore. It's become something of a parlor game for journalists to mix and match those three names in an effort to claim that there's a "growing debate" among environmentalists about nuclear.
As far as Moore goes, I wonder how much time has to pass before journalists stop calling him "the former head of Greenpeace" and start calling him an industry lobbyist? This Wall Street Journal mash note manages to burn through several hundred words about Moore's miraculous conversion without ever mentioning that he's a paid shill for the nuclear industry. Isn't that relevant?
Anyway, it's always amusing to see mainstream journalists' unshakable conviction that greens oppose nuclear power because their brains stopped working in the '70s. It simply never crosses their minds that greens have "re-evaluated" nuclear power and found it (still) wanting. This notion that global warming is supposed to spur new support for nukes makes no sense -- global warming just means we need to allocate our resources as intelligently as possible, and sinking billions of taxpayer dollars into trying to revive the moribund nuclear power industry is a waste of money that would have more impact spent elsewhere.
Comments
View as Flat
dbinid Posted 3:43 am
12 Feb 2007
Wind $70 / MWh and variable
Solar $160 / MWh and variable
IGCC+CCS $80 / MWh and baseload capable
One of these has the lowest carbon footptint, http://www.parliament.uk/documents/upload/postpn268.pdf
That same one also has the lowest cost. If we use the lowest carbon footprint, lowest cost electricity source we maximize GHG emission reduction for dollars invested.
What else? The world is already radioactive. Learn about cosmic and terrestrial natural background radiation.
What else? Nuclear weapons? Proliferation? Nobody needs nuclear electricity generation to enrich U for a simple gun-type U-235 bomb. Denying ourselves emission-free nuclear electricity does nothing to prevent nuclear weapons proliferation. In fact, the opposite is true, you can police/safeguard materials only if you ARE involved.
Waste? Let's talk about it. Spent fuel. A contained solid, held in posession, not sent up a stack. Meanwhile, 900 tons of CO2 per second are being dumped into the atmosphere. That makes nuclear energy a model of responsible waste management.
What about longevity of nuclear waste? What about longevity of CO2! Study ocean carbonate chemistry. Study what we know about the ocean's rate of response to the PETM. Study the work of such authors as Christopher Sabine or David Archer (U of Chicago). Be assured, the CO2 event we're starting is every bit as long lasting as nuclear issues. Did you know 7% of today's CO2 emissions will still be in the atmosphere 100,000 year from now? True. Remember the glacial maximum that was supposed to be peaking in 80,000 years? Cancelled.
This whole thing is much, much, much bigger than most of you realize. Your great-great-grandkid's lives? Have you seen Mad Max? Their great-great-grandkids lives . . . have you seen Clan of the Cave Bear?
If you think we have the time and luxury of not choosing nuclear, then you don't understand the science of climate.
Learn ocean carbonate chemistry. Study the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum carbon incursion. Study natural background radiation. Think about the fact that life evolved in a world that was already full of ionizing radiation. Think about that.
Radiation ... life evolved in it!
Study. Learn. Think.
Permalink
Andrew Dessler Posted 3:46 am
12 Feb 2007
there will not be a single "silver bullet" in the climate change debate, but I think that nuclear will play an important role in helping us solving the problem.
Permalink
GRLCowan Posted 4:02 am
12 Feb 2007
Note how Roberts apparently saw some mention of coal in what I wrote in that earlier discussion.
The American public's majority approval, when they live within a few miles of a nuclear plant but don't work there, for new reactors to be built there and the general public's belief that they are safe shows they are not irrational about nuclear energy. Neither are Greenpeace contractors when it's their personal skins that are in need of a nuclear boat ride.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen-energy fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes
Permalink
John McGrath Posted 4:08 am
12 Feb 2007
Insurance -- the market simply won't insure nuclear power, the govt does it.
R&D -- the US nuclear industry is an offshoot of weapons and propulsion research for the military, nothing more.
Waste disposal -- Nevada taxpayers paying to foul their own water. Nice work, if you can get it.
If solar and wind had the kind of subsidies that nuclear has, you'd see those numbers above flip quickly.
As you say, dbinid, learn. Think.
Permalink
dbinid Posted 4:43 am
12 Feb 2007
R&D: don't understand your point ... ? Maybe you would enjoy studying the history of the National Reactor Testing Station, which later had other names and is now known as the Idaho National Laboratory. A fifty year history, 50-ish some odd reactors built, pushed to limits, fuel tested, all to learn lessons needed to enable commercial nuclear power. The Idaho site never had anything to do with weapons (Los Alamos, Livermore, Oak Ridge, Hanford ... those are the Weapons labs).
Subsidies? What nuclear subsidies? The trivial support in EPACT05 to pay for losses incurred for the first few reactors if their opening is slowed by government liscensing delays? That's not subsidy, that's the government covering risks created by the government's own new untested liscensing process. Maybe you don't know what "subsidy" means. Or, maybe you're thinking of ethanol which can't even exist subsidies. Or, maybe you don't remember the wind industry collapsing when its Carter-era tax credits expired?
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 6:06 am
12 Feb 2007
Who re-evaluated nuclear, and in what way(s) did he/they find it wanting?
Permalink
JMG Posted 6:31 am
12 Feb 2007
Insurance? You think owners/operators of nuclear power plants operate without liability insurance? ! ?
Yes--under Price-Anderson, nuke owners are absolved from all liability over $540 million.
----------------------------------------------
R&D and subsidies:
for more on subsidies, see your own response to the comment on R&D.
================
As for "the government covering risks created by the government's own new untested liscensing process," do you propose eliminating the licensing system and regulating nuclear power through tort? Not many nuclear industry officials I know would agree with that.
Permalink
GRLCowan Posted 6:50 am
12 Feb 2007
Permalink
Delay And Deny Posted 6:55 am
12 Feb 2007
80 percent of electricity production in France comes from nukes.
They do it right and they do it well.
This country has been retarded by neer-do-well hippies.
The Texeme Construct offers international text memetics construction and textcasting services.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 7:46 am
12 Feb 2007
grist.org/news/daily/2004/10/22/4
England's Reverend Hugh Montefiore -- member of the Church of England, former Bishop of Birmingham, and long-time champion of the environment -- has been forced to resign from the board of Friends of the Earth for arguing that nuclear power is the only viable way to avoid the oncoming catastrophe of global warming.
Permalink
stringy Posted 10:35 am
13 Feb 2007
Just recently in an interview he said that China may have to consider it as well if they want to get away from coal, and that he doesn't expect to see it in Australia in his lifetime due to costs/time to construct.
He's cautious about it, but seems certain that it will eventually happen.
Permalink
Nucbuddy Posted 3:13 pm
13 Feb 2007
youtube.com/watch?v=C-C7OPUg9Lo
(length - 10:34)
Permalink