Atomic Renaissance Interrupted

[kristopher]

Rex Weyler was a director of the original Greenpeace Foundation, the editor of the organisation's first newsletter, and a cofounder of Greenpeace International in 1979.

He was a photographer and reporter on the early Greenpeace whale and seal campaigns, and has written one of the best and most comprehensive histories of the organisation, Greenpeace (Raincoast, 2004). His book, Blood of the Land, a history of the American Indian Movement, was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.

Deep Green is Rex's monthly column, reflecting on the roots of activism, is Rex's monthly column, reflecting on the roots of activism, environmentalism, and Greenpeace's past, present, and future. The opinions here are his own.

The nuclear industry has hitched a ride on the climate change bandwagon, proclaiming that nuclear power will solve the world's global warming and energy problems in one sweeping "nuclear renaissance."

Rex Weyler zoom
Rex Weyler



As you might expect, there's a catch. Nuclear energy faces escalating capital costs, a radioactive waste backlog, security and insurance gaps, nuclear weapons proliferation, and expensive reactor decommissioning that will magnify the waste problem.

The contention that nuclear energy is "carbon free" and therefore a global warming solution, fails to account for the nuclear fuel cycle - mining, milling, enriching, and transporting uranium; forging steel for pressurised vessels; building massive, complex plants; and handling, shipping, reprocessing, and storing waste - requiring substantial fossil fuel supplies. Nuclear fuel processing also employs halogenated compounds that both erode the ozone and simultaneously produce more global warming impact per volume than carbon dioxide.

This fall, at Stanford University, Dr. Mark Z. Jacobson published a "Review of Global Warming Solutions," comparing the lifetime CO2-equivalent emissions of energy sources. Wind and concentrated solar emit between about 3 to 11 grams of CO2 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity. Geothermal and conventional solar emit between 16 and 64 grams; wave, tidal and hydro power emit 34 to 71 grams. Nuclear electricity emits between 68 and 180 grams per kWh. Jacobson concludes that "Coal … and nuclear offer less benefit represent an opportunity cost loss."

A dollar invested in nuclear power increases global warming because it consumes scarce resources required by real solutions.

Nuclear economics

This year, billionaire investment wizard Warren Buffett withdrew financial support for a US nuclear reactor in Idaho, killing the project. Why? Nuclear power is not economical.

A full accounting of nuclear power remains obscured by...

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/deep-green/nov-08-atomic-renaissance-interrupted/

Jacobson's full article can be downloaded here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm

[nofurylike]

1. very important information! thank you for posting this, donheld! nt

[Confusious]

2. And another cofounder

Of green peace said we should use nuclear to fight global warming.

I think, in ten years, some will still be saying how renewables (solar, wind, tide, geothermal) will save us, but by then, it will be to late.

[kristopher]

3. Greenpeace Statement On Patrick Moore

You mean the guy that is funded by the Nuclear Energy Institute?

Greenpeace Statement On Patrick Moore

October 10, 2008
Patrick Moore often misrepresents himself in the media as an environmental “expert” or even an “environmentalist,” while offering anti-environmental opinions on a wide range of issues and taking a distinctly anti-environmental stance. He also exploits long-gone ties with Greenpeace to sell himself as a speaker and pro-corporate spokesperson, usually taking positions that Greenpeace opposes.

While it is true that Patrick Moore was a member of Greenpeace in the 1970s, in 1986 he abruptly turned his back on the very issues he once passionately defended. He claims he "saw the light" but what Moore really saw was an opportunity for financial gain. Since then he has gone from defender of the planet to a paid representative of corporate polluters.

Patrick Moore promotes such anti-environmental positions as clearcut logging, nuclear power, farmed salmon, PVC (vinyl) production, genetically engineered crops, and mining. Clients for his consulting services are a veritable Who's Who of companies that Greenpeace has exposed for environmental misdeeds, including Monsanto, Weyerhaeuser, and BHP Minerals.

Moore's claims run from the exaggerated to the outrageous to the downright false, including that "clear-cutting is good for forests" and Three Mile Island was actually "a success story" because the radiation from the partially melted core was contained. That is akin to saying "my car crash was a success because I only cracked my skull and didn't die."

By exploiting his former ties to Greenpeace, Moore portrays himself as a prodigal son who has seen the error of his ways. Unfortunately, the media - especially conservative media - give him a platform for his views, and often do so without mentioning the fact that he is a paid spokesperson for polluting companies.

The following provides a brief overview of Patrick Moore's positions and his history of working for corporate polluters.

TRUTH V. FICTION ON PATRICK MOORE:

Patrick Moore claims he is an environmentalist and represents an independent scientific perspective on forest issues.

TRUTH: Moore was paid by the British Columbia Forest Alliance, an industry-front group set up by the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller (the same PR firm that represented Exxon after the Valdez oil spill and Union Carbide after the Bhopal chemical disaster). The BC Forest Alliance is funded primarily by the logging industry. He also has ties to other corporations including Monsanto and Weyerhaeuser.



According to Moore, logging is good for forests causing reforestation, not deforestation.

TRUTH: Webster's Dictionary defines deforestation as "the action or process of clearing of forests." The argument advanced by forest industry spin-doctors that clear-cutting "causes reforestation, not deforestation" is without basis in fact. It is like arguing that having a heart attack improves your health because of the medical treatment you receive afterwards.



According to Moore: "Forward-thinking environmentalists and scientists have made clear, technology has now progressed to the point where the activist fear mongering about the safety of nuclear energy bears no resemblance to reality."

TRUTH:
- The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) concluded years ago that the lack of containment on Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored advanced nuclear reactor designs constituted a "major safety trade-off."

- Patrick Moore has recently begun touting the "safety" of nuclear energy at the behest of the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), which is being bankrolled by the nuclear industry to promote nuclear energy as clean and safe energy. The public relations firm Hill & Knowlton has been hired to roll out a multi-million dollar campaign to repackage Moore's propaganda to convince congressional leaders of public support for the building of new nuclear plants.

Hill and Knowlton are most well known for their public relations work defending the tobacco industry. The PR firm has also worked for industry interests to stall action to protect the ozone layer by executing "a carefully designed campaign attacking the science behind the ozone depletion and delaying government action for two years. This was enough time for DuPont to bring new, ozone-friendly chemicals to market." Austin American Statesman, Cox News Service Jeff Nesmith June 26, 2005 http://www.statesman.com/search/content/insight/stories/06/26doubt.html

More information on Hill and Knowlton can be found at: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Hill_%26_Knowlton

Moore's recent call that the U.S. should generate 60 percent of U.S. electricity from nuclear power is ludicrous. These plants are acknowledged by the federal government's own National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States - commonly referred to as the 9/11 Commission - as terrorist targets. An accident or terrorist attack at a nuclear plant could result in thousands of near-term deaths from radiation exposure and hundreds of thousands of long-term deaths from cancer among individuals within only fifty miles of a nuclear plant.

His proposal not only fails to address the risk posed to the American public by our existing plants, but also fails to address the urgent issue of global warming. According to Dr. Bill Keepin, a physicist and energy consultant in the U.S., "given business-as-usual growth in energy demand, it appears that even an infeasibly massive global nuclear power programme could not reduce future emissions of carbon dioxide. To displace coal alone would require the construction of a new nuclear plant every two or three days for nearly four decades…in the United States, each dollar invested in efficiency displaces nearly seven times more carbon than a dollar invested in new nuclear power."



According to Moore, "Three Mile Island was actually a success story in that the radiation from the partially melted core was contained."

TRUTH:
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission estimates that 10 million curies of radiation were released into the environment by the Three Mile Island Meltdown. Expert witnesses in the TMI law suits estimated that 150 million curies escaped, because the containment at Three Mile Island was not leak tight and the NRC ignored many of the potential escape routes for the radiation.

[Confusious]

4. Are you being critical of him for the same thing Amory Lovins does?

Would that be a Hypocrisy I hear?

[kristopher]

5. Are you being obtuse?

Of course you are:

Moore is hired to justify ecologically unsound actions and practices.
Lovins is hired to FIND WAYS TO CHANGE ecologically unsound actions and practices.


Moore greenwashes companies by making false claims to the public.
Lovins actually implements programs that measurably makes companies more green.


Huge difference.

Lovins has successfully dedicated his life to improving our environmental footprint when it comes to energy usage. It is easily verifiable that his actions with corporations seeking to find ways to improve energy efficiency in their operations produce significant, real, measurable results. Jared Diamond also believes that solutions to our current problems are best pursued by finding the incentives within the market that move corporations to act in ways that are positive environmentally rather than negative. (See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/06/opinion/06diamond.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all )

Lovins became prominent in the 70s with a thesis that looked at the cultural and social impacts of centralized thermal generation such as coal and nuclear power. His work (link below) is blamed by members of those who worship at the Throne of Uranus for the lack of support ended the first Bandwagon market for building of nuclear power plants in the 70s and now that the Church of Uranium is trying exploit climate change to achieve a Revival they are again focused on Lovins.


This is the link to download his 77 Foreign Policy paper: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E77-01_EnergyStrategyRoadNotTaken

Links for two of his more recent papers:
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E08-01_NuclearIllusion
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/E09-01_NuclearPowerClimateFixOrFolly


This a a selection from another of his open access writings on nuclear power. It is followed by Stanford professor Mark Jacobson's excellent analysis of the available and workable solutions to climate change, energy security and air pollution mortality. It shows that independent of Lovins' perspective on distributed generation vs. central thermal generation, nuclear power is still a third rate choice for meeting our AGW, energy security and air pollution mortality needs.

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed
journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic: that

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little
or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload”—able to run all the time;
2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more
than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;
3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to
protect the climate.

For specificity, this review of these four notions focuses on the nuclear chapter of Stewart
Brand’s 2009 book Whole Earth Discipline, which encapsulates similar views widely expressed
and cross-cited by organizations and individuals advocating expansion of nuclear power. It’s
therefore timely to subject them to closer scrutiny than they have received in most public media.

This review relies chiefly on five papers, which I gave Brand over the past few years but on
which he has been unwilling to engage in substantive discussion. They document6 why
expanding nuclear power is uneconomic, is unnecessary, is not undergoing the claimed
renaissance in the global marketplace (because it fails the basic test of cost-effectiveness ever
more robustly), and, most importantly, will reduce and retard climate protection. That’s
because—the empirical cost and installation data show—new nuclear power is so costly and
slow that, based on empirical U.S. market data, it will save about 2–20 times less carbon per
dollar, and about 20–40 times less carbon per year, than investing instead in the market
winners—efficient use of electricity and what The Economist calls “micropower,”...


The “baseload” myth

Brand rejects the most important and successful renewable sources of electricity for one key
reason stated on p. 80 and p. 101. On p. 80, he quotes novelist and author Gwyneth Cravens’s
definition of “baseload” power as “the minimum amount of proven, consistent, around-the-clock,
rain-or-shine power that utilities must supply to meet the demands of their millions of
customers.”21 (Thus it describes a pattern of aggregated customer demand.) Two sentences
later, he asserts: “So far comes from only three sources: fossil fuels, hydro, and
nuclear.” Two paragraphs later, he explains this dramatic leap from a description of demand to a
restriction of supply: “Wind and solar, desirable as they are, aren’t part of baseload because they
are intermittent—productive only when the wind blows or the sun shines. If some sort of massive
energy storage is devised, then they can participate in baseload; without it, they remain
supplemental, usually to gas-fired plants.”

That widely heard claim is fallacious. The manifest need for some amount of steady, reliable
power is met by generating plants collectively, not individually. That is, reliability is a statistic-
al attribute of all the plants on the grid combined. If steady 24/7 operation or operation at any
desired moment were instead a required capability of each individual power plant, then the grid
couldn’t meet modern needs, because no kind of power plant is perfectly reliable. For example,
in the U.S. during 2003–07, coal capacity was shut down an average of 12.3% of the time (4.2%
without warning); nuclear, 10.6% (2.5%); gas-fired, 11.8% (2.8%). Worldwide through 2008,
nuclear units were unexpectedly unable to produce 6.4% of their energy output.26 This inherent
intermittency of nuclear and fossil-fueled power plants requires many different plants to back
each other up through the grid. This has been utility operators’ strategy for reliable supply
throughout the industry’s history. Every utility operator knows that power plants provide energy
to the grid, which serves load. The simplistic mental model of one plant serving one load is valid
only on a very small desert island. The standard remedy for failed plants is other interconnected
plants that are working—not “some sort of massive energy storage devised.”

Modern solar and wind power are more technically reliable than coal and nuclear plants; their
technical failure rates are typically around 1–2%. However, they are also variable resources
because their output depends on local weather, forecastable days in advance with fair accuracy
and an hour ahead with impressive precision. But their inherent variability can be managed by
proper resource choice, siting, and operation. Weather affects different renewable resources
differently; for example, storms are good for small hydro and often for windpower, while flat
calm weather is bad for them but good for solar power. Weather is also different in different
places: across a few hundred miles, windpower is scarcely correlated, so weather risks can be
diversified. A Stanford study found that properly interconnecting at least ten windfarms can
enable an average of one-third of their output to provide firm baseload power. Similarly, within
each of the three power pools from Texas to the Canadian border, combining uncorrelated
windfarm sites can reduce required wind capacity by more than half for the same firm output,
thereby yielding fewer needed turbines, far fewer zero-output hours, and easier integration.

A broader assessment of reliability tends not to favor nuclear power. Of all 132 U.S. nuclear
plants built—just over half of the 253 originally ordered—21% were permanently and
prematurely closed due to reliability or cost problems. Another 27% have completely failed for a
year or more at least once. The surviving U.S. nuclear plants have lately averaged ~90% of their
full-load full-time potential—a major improvement31 for which the industry deserves much
credit—but they are still not fully dependable. Even reliably-running nuclear plants must shut
down, on average, for ~39 days every ~17 months for refueling and maintenance. Unexpected
failures occur too, shutting down upwards of a billion watts in milliseconds, often for weeks to
months. Solar cells and windpower don’t fail so ungracefully.

Power plants can fail for reasons other than mechanical breakdown, and those reasons can affect
many plants at once. As France and Japan have learned to their cost, heavily nuclear-dependent
regions are particularly at risk because drought, earthquake, a serious safety problem, or a
terrorist incident could close many plants simultaneously. And nuclear power plants have a
unique further disadvantage: for neutron-physics reasons, they can’t quickly restart after an
emergency shutdown, such as occurs automatically in a grid power failure...

From Amory Lovins
Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

Journal or Magazine Article, 2009

Available for download: http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2009-09_FourNuclearMyths

Some nuclear-power advocates claim that wind and solar power can’t provide much if any reliable power because they’re not “baseload,” that they use too much land, that all energy options including new nuclear build are needed to combat climate change, and that nuclear power’s economics don’t matter because climate change will force governments to dictate energy choices and pay for whatever is necessary. None of these claims can withstand analytic scrutiny.

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.

[Confusious]

6. No, I'm not being obtuse, that's your forte

I see you still do the usual parrot posting.

One is hired by the nuclear industry to make it look good.
Lovins is hired by the oil and gas industry to make it look bad.

Both are doing the same thing on opposite ends.

You just agree with one, so he is right, the other is full of it, in your mind, even though they both do the same thing when it comes down to it.

Hypocrisy.

[NNadir]

7. Thanks for telling us what Greenpeace thinks. Personally neither I nor the Secretary of Energy

- who as it happens to have won the Nobel Prize - give a rat's ass what that bunch of luddite consumer brats thinks.

World energy demand is a game for grown ups.

http://www.energy.gov/news/8584.htm">It appears the President of the United States didn't appoint Mark V. Jacobson aka "God," Secretary of Energy.

"As the United States responds to climate change and moves forward with a long overdue expansion of nuclear energy, we also need to work together to find a responsible, long-term strategy to deal with the leftover fuel and nuclear waste," said General Scowcroft. "I'm pleased to be part of that effort along with Congressman Hamilton and such an impressive group of scientific and industry experts."

I think we are all aware of how much Greenpeace hates reality. Those fuckers continuously talk about 2090 precisely because they don't believe themselves, and because they don't give a fuck about what's happening now:

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE49Q2I820081027

[madokie]

8. You didn't even understand what was being said did you?

dweeb comes to mind

[Confusious]

9. Sure he does

Usually activists have no scientific education, so they really don't understand the dangers or the benefits beyond those which they get from popular media, which usually highlight the most extreme "out of this world" dangers, none of the benefits.

[Kolesar]

10. "Usually activists have no scientific education"

really?

[madokie]

11. stupid people say stupid things

as you have just read.
I don't have to know the intricacies of nuclear energy to understand the dangers it poses and only a fool will try to tell me otherwise.
I don't have to know the intricacies of nuclear energy to know that it is a long way from being a greenhouse gas free way of providing our electrical energy. From the ground to the storage of the waste it is a very dirty process, co2 wise, not to mention the radiation dangers. That being a whole 'nuther story there.
May we someday find peace as we pay homage to this fateful day in our history. I'm not sure I used the right word there and if not please forgive me. :hi:

[DrGregory]

13. Really????

I don't have to know the intricacies of nuclear energy to understand the dangers it poses a
====================================

If you don't know how it works - how do you know
dangerous it is. You evidently have to rely on
someone else. But how do you know how good their
judgment is?

For example, the statement above that from the
ground on the material poses a radiation danger.

Until it gets to the reactor, all the radiation
is what Mother Nature made - the same radiation
that surrounds you all the time.

Additionally, the type of radiation from uranium
is alpha radiation which can be shielded by a
sheet of paper.

That's why you need to know something about the
technology. Your scientific ignorance has you
afraid of something there is absolutely no reason
to be afraid of.

Dr. Greg

[Confusious]

15. Back at ya

I don't have to know.... Etc, etc, etc

I usually learn all I can about something before I make a decision.

I know the limits of solar and wind and tide, I know the pace of global warming, and I know the dangers and how nuclear works.

If renewables aren't at 50% of power generation for the world, from it's current 1% (wind, solar and tide, no combustibles), in 10 years, we're fucked. At the current pace, we're not going to make that. Global warming wins.

[Confusious]

16. Really. Nt

[madokie]

12. You see the first mistake you made is assuming

the second is the lie about the dangers involved

[Confusious]

14. You stated yourself you don't know how it works

So how can you know the dangers, or it's benifits, besides what the media tells you?

Everything we do has it's dangers. We just perform a cost/ benefit in our minds before we do it, whether we know it or not.