Nuclear Power = Clean Air?

[BeFree]

The solution, some are saying, is that more Nuclear power generation is the way out of global warming. Their case makes a great deal of sense.

However, given that Nuclear power is nothing if not another big government program, and that all the facts and figures trickle down on us from one of the biggest PR campaigns ever instituted, and that the questions emanating from the use of Nuclear power are unanswered and with the realization the answers are mostly unknowable in this lifetime, the argument for Nuclear power seems immoral and highly misleading.

Any trust placed in Nuclear power is trust placed in big government programs, the same type of programs which have already given us dirty air and spoiled waters.

[cprise]

1. "Nuclear Power is Not a Solution"

Changes in electric market structure -- generally termed deregulation -- have only added to the risks that utilities and investors must consider. In a deregulated market, there is no certainty that costs incurred will be recovered. Even in fully regulated markets, utilities must consider the possibility that any number of technologies -- fuel cells, photovoltaics, coal with carbon sequestration, gas-fired combined cycles, geothermal, conservation or wind -- could undercut their investments long before the capital costs are recovered. Peter Bradford, former Nuclear Regulatory Commission member, argues that nuclear power is fundamentally incompatible with a deregulated industry, and he is probably right.

Global warming deserves our urgent attention but it pays to think about what nuclear power can and cannot contribute. One respected global energy scenario developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates a three-fold increase in carbon emissions between 1997 and 2100, even with an eight-fold increase in nuclear generation. If coal replaced all the nuclear generation in this scenario, carbon emissions in 2100 increase a mere 20 percent. Working the other way, if nuclear power were to replace all coal, carbon emissions would fall 20 percent. To achieve that goal, 1,000-megawatt reactors would need to be built at a rate of 85-90 plants per year this century.

Neither Schwartz nor Brand considers the weapons proliferation risks. If uranium limits force a shift to breeder technology, the amount of weapons-usable plutonium circulating in global commerce would be about 5 million kilograms per year; only 10 kilograms are needed to make a nuclear weapon.

Perhaps we will find more uranium and not require breeder technology. In that event, this scenario would require 2,000 uranium enrichment facilities around the world. If they were making fuel for pebble bed reactors, each plant would be doing about 84 percent of the enrichment necessary for producing weapons grade uranium. Suppose a plant chose to start with the pebble bed fuel and make weapons grade uranium instead -- each facility could make 875 bombs per year. Weapons grade uranium bombs, in sharp contrast to their plutonium cousins, are almost foolproof to design and require no testing, an important distinction for diplomatic intervention.

MORE http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0614-34.htm

If anything could get me to consider membership in Greenpeace, it would be just such an article.

I don't agree with your assumption that "government programs" or utilities are bad. But the pro-nuclear camp (Dick Cheney et al) seems to want it both ways: fission and deregulation. It smells like a dangerous mixture of incompetence with greed.

[BeFree]

3. Disagree?

I don't agree with your assumption that "government programs" or utilities are bad.

I didn't say they were all bad, I said it is nothing more than another.

Some gov. programs can be good, indeed. But inherently, those good programs are ones which owe their success to having all the facts established before the program takes hold. In the Nuclear case the unknowables are too numerous for a correct decision or action to be made. Instead what we have here is a failure of the governemnt to do it's duty and establish the science in an open and forthright manner.

The only places moving forward with Nuclear power are places where the government is the main power behind the programs since free market forces have declined to invest, eh?

[skids]

2. The real solution...

...is not in power generation, but in power storage. There are reams of ways to generate power, and despite all the detractions most of them can and have been made cost efficient both on a micro-cogeneration scale and on a large power plant scale. However, several of these (solar and wind, most prominantly) generate power unevenly, when conditions permit it.

The main thing that makes small, local co-generation less attractive to consumers, though, is not the cost of the power source (though that needs to come down, too) but the cost and hassle of maintaining a battery bank to store the charge. This is also a hassle to the large electric companies -- sometimes they have more power than they need, and no way to store it. They have started investing large amounts of money into new storage technologies like vanadium redox batteries and maglev flywheels.

(As nice as photovoltaic panels seem, if I had to offer advice for anyone considering putting money into their own power system it is this: forget electricity for the time being and concentrate on heat. Install a solar hot water system with a storage tank system a good bit larger than needed to provide a steady supply of hot water and household heat. Products (thermopiles and stirling engines) are already on the market to convert that hot water to electricity; it is just a waiting game for their price/watt to come down. In the meantime your heating costs are taken care of. The hot water storage tank takes the place of the battery this way, by storing the energy before it is converted to electricity instead of after.

Oh, and leave space for a second tank of cold water, to be cooled at nighttime. The colder your cold reservior, the more power you can get out of your hot reservior.)

[BeFree]

4. Good points, Skids

The storage is the key. Hydro makes use of stored energy very economically altough certain environmental effects are quite damaging, eh?.

I'm in the middle of a building a small wind power facility and I came to the realization that using the wind to compress air into a storage tank might make better since than battery storage. The problem is how to use that compressed air. Any ideas?

[skids]

5. Unfortunately that's a ways out.

There will be a solid-state solution for pressure-to-electricity, using carbon nanotubes that rob electrons from the outside of capilary water columns forced through the nanotubes. But it's a ways away from mass fabrication.

Also I don't recall ever seeing an efficient "wind funnel" that didn't just build up an air cushion in front of it -- as far as I know, mills are more efficient at getting the power out of the wind than a compression funnel ever will be.

So wind can only really be used for direct generation at this point.

Another use for it, though, is for evaporative cooling of a cold reservior (I suppose compressed air would also work here -- it would generate a source of cold when expanded.) Note that the equation for maximum theoretical efficiency of a heat-to-power system is determined by equation 3 at the following URL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnot_cycle

... that means that you get more power if your cold reservior is 1 degree colder than you do if your hot reservior is one degree hotter.

...and other than the water pumps, wind cooling has no moving parts. You just have to deal with buildup from deposits from impurities in the water.

[cprise]

7. Solar heat is a great suggestion.

Its too bad SH is not disscussed more. It lacks controversy I guess. How do we fix that? :)

As for electricity, efficient storage is one of the mechanisms used for "peaking" (bringing more power online as needed).

Two other tools for meeting peak demand have been natural gas power plants and solar. As far as I can tell, NG plants are designed to add capacity as needed, so they act as an enabler for uncontrollable renewables like wind and solar. Plus NG generation emits about 1/2 as much CO2 per unit of energy output compared to coal.

So I think an important question is: How much farther can we go with NG in replacing coal?

Another question: How far can wind and solar expand with a given coal, nuclear and NG mix?

[NickB79]

12. Natural gas supplies are currently peaking in North America

You don't have to worry about particulate emissions with natural gas like you do with coal, but the supplies are far more limited, and NG is much harder to transport to areas that need it than railroad cars of coal.

[hunter]

6. People in much of the United States live in Smog Hell.

I've just returned from an extended trip to the east coast. It takes a lot of coal to keep all those air conditioners running.

My explorations of the east coast have reinforced my opinion that coal is more dangerous than nuclear power. It would be a grave mistake to shut down nuclear power plants if it increases our dependence on coal.

At this point in time it is very unlikely that any new nuclear power plants will be built in the United States, no matter the biggest PR campaigns ever instituted (sic).

It is very likely that our use of coal will increase, and many people will suffer for this.

[dcfirefighter]

8. Fear & Misunderstanding

I've come a good ways in my understanding of radiation and the design and operation of nuclear plants over the last year.

I will begin by saying that I have no problem with energy sources competing sans<\i> subsidies, though I recognize that the failure to capture externalities such as the emission of metals, sulfides, nuclides, and carbon dioxide are, in effect, subsidies.

In the absense of taxes / fees for such emissions, it makes economic sense, in some manner, to subsidize those sources that do not make such emissions. It's not as economically efficient as taxing pollution, but it may be better than nothing.

The authors emphasize two points in opposing nuclear energy: high initial cost and nuclear proliferation.

Initial costs are high, but can be reduced very significantly by approving and using boiler plate 'assembly line' designs. There are several 'modular' designs coming out of the pipeline now, with costs in the range of $1000-$1200 per installed kWe ($1B for 1000MWe), with some designs in the 200-350MWe capacity range ($200M to $420M). The advent of such designs will surely change the economics of the situation.

The other opposition point is that of nuclear proliferation. I have several thougths on that: 1) the cat is out of the bag already, 2) Good world citizens have less to fear from their neighbors, 3) 'Payback's a MuthaF*er' has worked for years 4) New designs can run on unrefined U, or on fuel that's refined far below weapons grade 5) failure to establish alternatives means more and more wars for oil, or a reliance on coal, which may mean wars for water, or un-glaciated land.

[cprise]

9. Two points

A response..

1) Renewables are also waiting to benefit from more standardization and economy of scale.

2) These mostly look like an attitude problem, wishful thinking, or both. The comment about payback isn't bourne out by history. The fewer disparate factions there are which can deploy the Ultimate Provocation (the one which demands instant unthinking retaliation), the less large-scale war we are likely to suffer. That kind of cold, statistical outlook is how climate change is predicted in the first place.

Even as nuclear fission plays a role in mitigating GHGs, it seems probable that it also promotes the development of new eco catastrophes by propping-up careless consumption patterns.

There are also the caustic effects of needless double-standards and paternalism administered militarily on a global scale: With energy becoming a critical issue, who are we to determine who can and cannot live high on this economic lifeblood?

Finally, much of the world is still without electricity. Yet as villages electrify, they are increasingly turning to solar and wind inserted into the traditional village. Why don't they want power grids and centralized power stations? Answer: They're not seeking heavy industry or to emulate 1890s USA, so why spend vastly higher sums on electrical lines when a few clusters of PVs wlll do? Many of them prefer village life with cellphones and an electric irrigation pump. These people are creating a different way of life that WE will be learning from before long.

[NNadir]

10. Well, if you repeat a lie enough people will believe it.

Greenpeace and George Bush both believe this.

Quick, what's the answer to how much carbon dioxide a 1000 MWe natural gas fired plant produces?

I assume with all of this balderdash about unanswered questions, that the insipid crowd knows what to do with carbon dioxide, or is this just the usual Bush-Greenpeace propaganda that carbon dioxide is not air pollution?

Carbon dioxide isn't a pollutant? It isn't a form of waste that know one knows what to do with? There are no questions about what it will do in the future, both short and long term?

I submit that anyone who proselytizes for say, the immersion under the sea of the entire nation of Bangladesh, with over 100 million people living in it is completely unequipped to lecture any other human being on the planet about what and what does not constitute immorality.

As always, we need to ask immoral uneducated twits who are indifferent to poverty, indifferent to human suffering, and indifferent to the environment to find one person, just one, at any time or any place that has been injured by the storage of so called "nuclear waste" from commercial nuclear power in the United States.

They can't. Why? Because there aren't any.

Then, find out how many people die each year from air pollution alone just in New York City, completely ignored by uneducated clowns who carp about how dangerous nuclear energy is.

Now I know that one of the hallmarks of being an anti-nuclear twit is having no conception of how to read the scientific literature, but here's a scientific reference on the subject: Luis Cifuentes, Victor H. Borja-Aburo, Nelson Gouviea, George Thurstson, and Devra Lee Davis, Science, Vol. 293, pp1257-1259 August 17, 2001

Let me ask an immoral anti-nuclear twit, anyone of them: What does it say?

None of you know and what's more none of you give a shit?

I didn't think knew. I didn't think you gave a shit.

Oh and before we start hearing about some illiterate pontificating about the "bright" future of PV solar power and all sorts of connected religious chanting, (The Big Lie is the best lie) I reference my post #51 here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=26163&mesg_id=26903


I note that there, with hard numbers, the state of California reports that the percentage of power being provided in California by PV solar power - and this after all is the "Sunshine State" - is still, after 4 decades of hype, an abysmal 0.3% of the power production there. Moreover the production is declining. In fact it has declined by 12% since 2000, probably because it is too expensive and because it doesn't work very well.

Let's be clear then, what anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists are selling: Coal, oil, natural gas. They have nothing more than that. They apologize for it endlessly - and they misrepresent it endlessly - and they apply selective attention to it endlessly, but this is what they are selling.

They are selling a dangerous threat to all humanity - indeed to every living thing on this planet.

Why? Because they can't think.

Next we can expect them to begin drooling nonsense - a la George Bush - drivel about hydrogen.

[cprise]

11. Questions.

As always, we need to ask immoral uneducated twits who are indifferent to poverty, indifferent to human suffering, and indifferent to the environment to find one person, just one, at any time or any place that has been injured by the storage of so called "nuclear waste" from commercial nuclear power in the United States.

They can't. Why? Because there aren't any.

Surely you're not arguing in favor of the "anti-nuclear" policies that have dominated for the last three decades. Well, not intentionally I suppose.



Quick, what's the answer to how much carbon dioxide a 1000 MWe natural gas fired plant produces?
I assume with all of this balderdash about unanswered questions, that the insipid crowd knows what to do with carbon dioxide, or is this just the usual Bush-Greenpeace propaganda that carbon dioxide is not air pollution?

Still trolling for atomic purity?

Seeing all this posturing to make most of us 'unwashed' here look like drooling idiots, I have to wonder if your views are representative of the scientific community. I am quite interested, in fact. I have to wonder how Europe and Japan can have such research-oriented cultures that respect scientific inquiry and the precautionary principle, and how they can outperform us in many respects both ecological and humanitarian, and yet they are among the most sceptical of nuclear fission. Meanwhile the USA pushes nuclear energy, celebrates astounding concentration of wealth and power, invades countries and topples elected governments to "open" their markets, and engages in subterfuge and censorship against environmental science.

And after reading contortions like "Bush-Greenpeace propaganda" from a one-issue engineering pedant who mewls about being a "pacifist" twice a year but seemingly takes zero interest in anything else on DU, I have to say I am not anticipating a high-quality response. Not only that...

I Smell Fish.

[NNadir]

13. Some answers to your kind questions.

The issue of energy involves engineering, a noble profession practiced by people who know what they are talking about. I am not, though an engineer. I am a chemist.

My biggest issue is in fact global climate change. I make no apologies to anyone for that. Most other issues pale in comparison in my mind, because no other issue has as high a probability of irreversibly damaging the biosphere on a massive scale. This may surprise some people, but I am hardly alone in having this concern; nor am I the only person who believes nuclear power to be an important part of the solution.

My means addressing this issue is simply to explore the distortions that anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists (and yes, I think they are twits, poorly educated middle class brats, religious dogma pushers and a whole lot of other things worthy of contempt, which I freely extend.

I believe, like Hans Bethe, Nobel Laureate, that the only way of making the wrong energy choice about nuclear energy is to make it in isolation, that is to ignore all drawbacks of other forms of energy.

Speaking of Japan, it's nuclear capacity is expanding, not declining.

Electricity is the 4th largest product exported by nuclear France. In Europe as a whole. Most technical people recognize - and more and more environmentalists - are recognizing that the cute dogma of the 1970's and 1980's doesn't stand up to scrutiny - and public opinion about nuclear energy - never endorsed by technical opinion, is changing. After all, they actually die there from heat waves.

I have frequently referenced the report of the European Comission on the costs of external energy which supports everything I say here.

The quality of my responses may or not impress particular poorly educated anti-environmental twits - all of whom smell like the soot they promote. Always my antagonists attempt to make their responses about me because they cannot address what I say: To wit, they can demonstrate no solution to global climate change that doesn't impoverish even a larger fraction of humanity.

Many people have written me here to tell me privately and publicly that they value what they say. It is for these people I write. There are many people of whom I hold almost as low an opinion as they hold of me.

If we must get personal, I note that I am occassionally taught something by people who are my antagonists. You for instance, convinced me that biodiesel has some value. I don't think its some kind of magic bullet, but it is a tool.

Clearly though, you don't think much of me, but to tell you the truth, I really am not interested in your opinions of me. Nor am I interested in your opinions of nuclear energy. Your just another chanter of the cant.

[hunter]

14. You smell fish, cprise??? Sorry, that's probably me. I've been fishing...

:evilgrin:

[dcfirefighter]

15. catch anything?

Regarding village power: You are almost certainly right, PV is economically advantageous when total infrastructure to rural areas is considered. Many of PV's drawbacks can be overcome if they're used to store energy in other forms: water pressure in storage tanks, thermal energy (out of) refrigerators, etc. However, such a low use of energy, while laudable in some situations, does not allow for the economic development that allows for the vocational specialization that gives us the doctors we're going to need to survive the next pandemic, or cure cancer, or what have you.

It also does not give us the vocational specialization that will, millennia from now, get humans off of Earth, and on to another planet, in another solar system, without which, the species will die.

I'm also with you on your wasteful energy use patterns, and personally feel that the only way to fix them is to make electricity more expensive. A Carbon tax would do so: making PV, Wind, and Nuclear more attractive than Coal, Oil, Gas, and Methane Hydrates.

I'm kicking around the idea of a town-scale gas & biomass powered cogeneration plant. Apparently with district heating and cooling using waste heat from a gas turbine, efficiencies approach 80-90%. If the sewage from said town could be digested for additional gas, and further processed in algae tanks, where CO2 bubblers from the turbine increase the rate of algae production, I wonder what percent of energy could be maintained by the waste stream and algae ponds.

[hunter]

17. It was my first trip to Washington D.C.

It is a place of many wonders... all my stuff has been x-rayed multiple times, and Homeland Security has gone through my luggage and left nice little notes. Meanwhile the ducks and the geese are pooping on the banks of the Reflecting Pool.

Myself, they tell me, "take off your shoes and your belt please. Drink the water." But OMG, it seems I'm built upside down! My feet smell and my nose runs. My stomach churns as I drink the water and I have to hold up my pants.

Hah, hah. I haven't had so much fun since our dear sweet departed Saint Ronald Reagan was queen of this empire.

Paging Agent Mike, Paging Agent Mike...

:evilgrin:

[dcfirefighter]

18. Tell me about it

I work there.

A housemate and I were returning from a trip to the hardware store, and noticed the smog - his comment was that it was much worse in LA. We then got stuck behind a dumptruck that belched thick black smoke under accelleration.

[suneel112]

19. There is only one major concern I have about nuclear energy...

...and that is that nuclear energy is nonrenewable. I think that with the progress of science, we can minimize the environmental impacts of Nuclear energy to be less than that of oil. Think of it as "super-oil". It is used on an even larger scale than oil. It cleanly produces massive amounts of energy in huge generating plants (preferrably under large hills) with a few deliveries of yellowcake per year. However, super it may be, it is still "oil", and faces the same non-environmental issues as oil does, such as peak production, the location of reserves outside the United States, the location of reserves in politically unstable regions, trade deficits from importing uranium or thorium, and the list goes on and on.

Canada currently has the world's largest reserves of Uranium and India has the largest reserves of Thorium, but then again, at the dawn of the oil age, the United States had the largest reserves of oil in the world. As miners dig deeper for Uranium, it will be found in some interesting locations (probably locations which I would not want to interfere in). Then again, Uranium may actually have the luck of being in friendly locations (Europe, The United States, India, etc...)

The worst effect of the nonrenewable property of nuclear energy could be the birth of TUPEC (Thorium, Uranium, and Plutonium Exporting Countries) Shakur. The last name was just a pun on the best rapper ever. Like Tupac, TUPEC Shakur will be vicious and supportive of the Africans in poverty, and will fight the white power structure to the core. The formation of TUPEC Shakur will be a horrible event for the industrialized world.

[BeFree]

16. Global warming and air pollution...

...were created through big government programs. The co-mingling of the government with big business has wrought the coming climatic changes. Now we have folks saying that more of the same is the solution, whilst belittling those who say wholesale changes need take place. The "More of the Same" people are nothing if not big government/big business supporters, and their case must be viewed in such a light.

It has been claimed that "no deaths" have been caused from nuclear waste. I doubt that claim, because of the common sense knowledge about the dangerousness, and realizing that the precautions taken to ensure the safety of people in close proximity to nuclear waste have kept the deaths to a minimum. Then, too, are the nuclear fan club websites who mention in passing that the studies of human deaths are not yet complete.

The "More of the same" operatives here have really gone of course in an attempt to influence this audience. They don't have answers but mainly rely on the big government/big business partners who are the same ones who allowed pollution in the first place and are allowing it to continue. And now we are being asked to throw our trust even further behind the big government efforts?

From most of the reading I have done here, it seems we are all on the same side with the differences being that some here realize things cannot continue as planned without major environmental changes taking place vs. those who think continued growth and waste is sustainable.

I figure it boils down to a lack of environmental awareness, or an utter lack of concern for what comes next: the "I just want it all now" syndrome which will be the downfall of the human species on this little blue ball spinning in in the deep dark blackness of space..

[hunter]

20. An ugly truth...

The existing human population of the earth cannot be sustained without resorting to some sort of "big business" and "big government." The survival of billions of people now living will require grandiose solutions to the environmental problems we have created for ourselves.

In the United States we may be fortunate that our Constitution provides for the peaceful replacement of broken and destructive governments.

Our current business and government leaders will fight to maintain their power, but they cannot prevail. The foundations of their empires are built on inexpensive oil. Without inexpensive oil those foundations will crumble. Other forms of energy, even nuclear energy, cannot support the levels of corruption we find in our current government.

[NNadir]

21. Government is intrinsically bad is a "liberal position?"

Government = bad, individual = good is of course a familiar position. I believe there is a subset of people in Idaho with the same ideology. They are, as I recall, survivalists.

As for the issue of what constitutes "common sense," and what constitutes environmental awareness, and for that matter whether doggerel about blue balls constitutes poetry or presumption, I definitely have my own opinion.

I seriously debated with myself whether I needed to dignify wet behind the ears adolescent twerps who question my liberal credentials because I am passionate about the need for nuclear energy. After all, my involvement in liberal causes, the end of racism, the struggle for women's rights, the construction of a body of international law, rights for the impoverished etc, etc, began not just before when some of my critics were in diapers, but before they were even imagined. I really don't feel a need to justify myself to neonates for whom I have little respect at this point in a long life.

Of course, I did have my own scientifically illiterate period of self-serving middle class immature myopia, in which I had a rather dogmatic (and limiting) approach to what is and is not liberalism. For instance, I would have not been caught dead supporting nuclear power, because it wasn't part of "the program" back in the late 1960's and the entire decade of the 1980's. For me at that time, liberalism was a lock step adoption of quasi-official "liberal" positions, including suspicion of all things nuclear.

Of course, a fellow I keep evoking - the Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe - was involved in liberal causes, the end of racism, the struggle for women's rights, the construction of a body of international law, rights for the impoverished etc, etc, not just before I was in diapers, but even before I was imagined, held views very close to the ones I now hold throughout his 98 glorious years of life.

I can only imagine how he might have regarded me when I was protesting Shoreham, grousing about the certain disaster that I claimed, with great self supposed authority and gravity, would accompany bringing Seabrook on line. Probably he would have thought of me (privately perhaps because he - unlike me - was a gracious and tolerant man) as a wet behind the ears adolescent twerp. Moreover, he would have been right.

Now our self supposed poets of little blue balls in the blackness of space (gag me) want to represent that all of the world's environmental problems can be addressed with some glib puerile, almost meaningless, commentary about reversing the "the 'I just want it all now' syndrome."

Think about that.

There are more than six billion people on the planet right now. Not one among them asked to be here. Most of them are not - in spite of the limited consciousness of middle class self-absorbed twits - addressing issues of whether or not they can have it all now. Most of them are facing issues of whether or not they will have something to eat tomorrow, whether they find potable water to drink, whether they will have protection from the elements, whether or not their children will ever have access to medical care.

In magical middle class twit thinking, the issues of these people are not just ignored - they are despised. With glib certitude, and disgusting evocations of morality - the same kind of morality embraced by Himmler when addressed the issue of how one remains decent - http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/q-evil.html we hear that the issue is not the issues of the impoverished, but the issue of how piggish the middle class is. To me this is a kind of reprehensible inward looking thinking - thinking that posits that one's own ethics are unassailable and then justifies any criminality in terms of such a dubious assumption.

Now.
I am a Democrat, specifically an Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat. This means I am NOT a socialist. This means that I believe that people have the right to become wealthy through their own efforts. This means I believe in well regulated lawfully restrained capitalism. This means that I believe in a culture that prizes justice, a culture that prizes and rewards effort, a society in which bigotry of any kind is abhorred, a society that asks questions, struggles for answers and revises those answers as experience dictates. This means that I believe that such will ultimately find the moral course of action that it not just a theory but is rather a working entity.

An Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat does not, like an Idaho survivalist, automatically assume that government participation in the economy, in the creation and administration of wealth is automatically evil. On the contrary the great liberal thinkers, from Abraham Lincoln to Mrs. Roosevelt (and of course her husband) regard government as a participant in the creation of wealth, as a partner, as a friend. Mr. Lincoln phrased it in terms of support for "internal improvements," what today we call "infrastructure." Mr. Roosevelt phrased in terms of a "New Deal." Mrs. Roosevelt - in many ways a greater human being than her husband and a prime mover in the United Nations - phrased it in terms of the rule of law predicated on a basic law of human dignity.

One of the important qualities that Mrs. Roosevelt, my heroine, brought to the world stage - and never lost sight of from her youth until her old age death - is measured pragmatism that never loses sight of its idealistic goal. Mrs. Roosevelt probably sat for dinner with the segregationist Democrat James Eastland. Mrs. Roosevelt was probably gracious even with the mass murderer Stalin. Hell, she even supported (albeit with much misgiving) Joseph McCarthy's good friend John F. Kennedy. Even so, she did this with a clear eye on the prize: A decent and sustainable and fair world.

The environment is not collapsing because not enough people drive Volkswagens powered by biodiesel, although this has peripheral bearing. It is not collapsing because too many people want big screen TVs, although this has peripheral bearing. It is not collapsing because people run their air conditioners at too low a setting, although this has peripheral bearing.

The environment is collapsing because the human population is beyond the carrying capacity of the planet. Were the population 1/12th of what it now is, everyone could drive an SUV without too much consequence. As it is, no one can really afford to drive an SUV.

It seems I have to repeat this frequently for the benefit of the stupid and the ignorant, for whom I have so much undisguised contempt, but there are two options for addressing this crisis, one involving attrition. The first is the rational commitment to reduce the birth rate below the replacement rate. The other is mass execution by either deliberate or passive means (ie through famine and/or environmental collapse).

Two options will not be available forever. If the first option is not embraced in a timely fashion the second option will force its way through in all the ugliness we associate with Easter Island, albeit on an unimaginable scale.

http://www.netaxs.com/~trance/rapanui.html

Now people suppose I think, that I should shut up because they don't like me. They seem to think that I should credit their suppositions and their vague claims and stupid appeals to the question of whether or not "studies are complete." Fuck that. We don't need studies to show that air pollution kills. In spite of what Dick Cheney and his insipid puppet say, we don't need studies to determine whether global climate change is happening. If stupid people haven't assessed these realities right now, they never will and all the studies in the world won't help them.

Here's a surprise: The worst case nuclear catastrophe happened at Chernobyl. No one wished for it, but it happened none the less. Everybody in Kiev is not dead. The anti-environmental anti-nuclear crowd - of which I was once a member by the way much to my own chagrin and detriment - has engaged in the sure fire method of destroying credibility: They have over promised and under delivered. Clearly such people have no clue about credibility however. Just look at the endless promises about solar power. The fact is that we've run out time while waiting for its delivery.

It's not here. If we continue only to wait we may not last long enough to reach it.

If the population of the planet were sustainable - a billion or less perhaps - an agreement might be possible through the hand waving and posturing of the so called self proclaimed "leftists" (I call them something else entirely) who claim in spite of all practical experience, that everything can be addressed by hand waving and dancing. Then we might have time to muddle through their specious consumerist fantasies of zero risk solar panels and switch grass ethanol plants. Certainly under circumstances where the population was small, the consequences of their being deluded and wrong on these scores would be retrievable.

I have to repeat this again and again and again as well: It is well understood that populations that manage their growth are populations where rates of poverty are low. The means to reducing poverty and reducing thus population are well understood experimentally. They are consistent with most of liberal principles, respect for the rights of women, respect for the rights of gay people, respect for the right of equal educational opportunity, provision of decent health care, emphasis on the rule of law, emphasis on the importance of the maintenance of peace, etc, etc, etc.

Finland, which is a wealthy country where they are building new nuclear capacity, has stable population growth. Nigeria, where they have no nuclear plants does not. Germany, where huge nuclear capacity has stable population growth. Zimbabwe, where there are no nuclear plants does not. Japan, where they are building more nuclear power plants has stable population growth. Indonesia, where they have no nuclear power plants does not.

Of course the real difference in these countries is not nuclear or non-nuclear. The real difference is per capita wealth. Note that this is not about consumption, just about wealth. It is possible to be wealthy without being a consumer.

I contend that in the age of carbon dioxide induced global climate change, the last option available for the creation of wealth, and therefore the creation of distributed justice, including environmental justice, is none other than dubiously maligned nuclear power. Shoot me for saying so, but the facts will not change.

Now, I have no doubt that I will have to repeat these facts over and over and over again for the preternaturally stupid. Moreover, I am sure that the preternaturally stupid will nonetheless continue to chant selectively about issues of waste and risk and environmental degradation as if such issues were only present in the nuclear case. They will, for instance, insipidly and immorally ignore the question of whether carbon dioxide is a dangerous waste or not.

People sometimes write me and ask me why I bother. The answer is, of course, that truth is often subverted by the unchallenged repetition of lies. It worked for Hitler. It works for George W. Bush. This is why I bother. The world would be a better place if Bush and Hitler had consistently been addressed with the derision they deserve. So it is with all liars and their lies.

My antagonists will continue to try to divert attention from the fact that - for all of their dopey evocations of the dangers of so called "nuclear waste" - they cannot produce one dead body, to the question of whether or not I am nice to them, to whether or not I am obnoxious.

Well, let me help them by repeating myself yet again: I have no intention of being nice. I am not nice. I am indeed obnoxious.

I am also correct.

[dcfirefighter]

22. government is like fire

a dangerous servant and a fearsome master.

A central tenet of classical liberalism, which does hold the individual paramount. As do I.

Nice Rant NNadir, though I always look forward to your more technical posts. Particularly I was hoping you would elaborate on how limited fissile fuel is (or isn't).

You can't belittle people who are arguing from emotion, you won't win. But for the rest of us, you can share your knowledge such that we don't have to rely on feelings and emotion to make what must necessarily be a rational decision.

[cprise]

40. Besides engineering and emotion

...geopolitics is another perspective that matters here. And NNadir is unable to respond to the concerns it raises about proliferation.

Perhaps people who cannot deal with human emotion and its potential for conflict (and who think that racism was eliminated by crewcut modernism's flight to the suburbs) ought to advocate for ubiquitous nuclear power in a more agreeable environment... such as a planet populated by robots.

[BeFree]

23. Well,

It is rather odd that folks who claim they don't care what others think about them, lead us to think highly of them by publishing long winded dribble about themselves. Rather odd, eh?

[NNadir]

32. I'm not necessarily addressing you. Strike the word "us."

I already have an opinion of what my antagonists are capable of understanding. They are merely foils.

The point of my long winded self-explanatory diatribe has a point, but as usual, the anti-environmental anti-nuclear coal apologists are not very good at all at getting points.

And the point is:

The assumption is often made that being a liberal automatically means that one is anti-nuclear energy. Like most of what our coal apologists say, this is pure unadulterated nonsense.

Now, the politician about whom I have been most enthusiastic about in recent years is none other than the 2000 President-elected, Al Gore, because he has been at the forefront of the issue that most presses on humanity and the ecosystems on which humanity depends, global climate change.

Here is a quotation from one of Gore's speeches at the Chernobyl museum:

" The lesson of Chornobyl is not an indictment of nuclear power as such. Nuclear power, designed well, regulated properly, cared for meticulously, has a place in the world's energy supply. And certainly the lesson of Chornobyl is not that we should retreat from new technology. Technology used for human reasons, in humane hands, holds the promise of improving the quality of our lives. Today, for example, Liubov Kovalevska's prophetic warning about Chornobyl would have been instantly spread on the Internet throughout Ukraine and the rest of the world. Wisely used for compassionate purposes, technology is part of the answer, and not itself the problem.

The heroes of Chornobyl did not die so that we would remain in ignorance..."

http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1998/319818.shtml

I pretty much agree with everything Mr. Gore said.

So we see the rote claim that one must be anti-nuclear to be liberal is balderdash. Moreover it has always been balderdash. Most (not all) of the men who invented and developed nuclear power technology were liberal thinkers.

Of course, in opposition to this reality - as it is with so many other realities - we have our dogmatists. These are people who assume a lot and know very little.

Here are some other characteristic assumptions made by such people as constitute the anti-environmental antinuclear crowd, people who assume a lot and demonstrate (rather graphically and overtly) that they know very little:

1) So called "nuclear waste," even if it not dangerous today since it has harmed no one, will be dangerous some day.

2) Carbon dioxide is a waste that we can assume that someone someday will know something about how to deal with.

3) That everything that will be known about the long term effects of say, mercury pollution, associated with coal will be less than the effects that may be discovered about long term harm from so called "nuclear waste."

4) That biological fuel strategies are sustainable in spite of the massive environmental costs of industrialized agriculture.

5) The global climate change won't undercut biological fuel strategies percipitously and without warning.

6) That solar PV capacity has no toxic side effects associated with its use. (We have escaped finding this out because the PV industry is still after 40 years of hype, still an economic failure.)

7) That dependence on fossil fuels will not so destabilize the planetary political system as to make it collapse in an orgy of war and anarchy.

8) That global climate change induced changes in the distribution of pathogens will destabilize the economic system so severely that it collapses...

Now, this list is not comprehensive by any means. We could certainly go on for hours and hours on the subject of what our anti-environmental anti-nuclear coal apology squad ignores either out of ignorance or deliberation.

[BeFree]

36. Technology

Used in humane ways can be a good thing. However, was it not technology that gave us coal fired plants?

Thank goodness there has been placed a limit on the use of nuclear technology before it got out of hand, when compared to the way coal technology did before it's consequential pollution of the atmosphere.

It amazes me that some say chemists and engineers can't clean up coal. Use technology, damnit!

[NNadir]

37. I am a chemist and have been one for decades.

I have also taught myself nuclear engineering.

It is impossible to "clean up" coal. When you hear someone say "clean coal," they are lying.

Rather than order technical professionals about and make demands that they do the impossible, it would be useful for those who wish to make commentary to educate themselves about what can and cannot be done in the current crisis. One need not, in spite of what one may think, go formally to a university to learn these facts. They are still freely available to anyone who takes the time to understand them. It is not easy, but it is certainly doable.

Nuclear technology is the safest and cleanest energy technology known, save possibly, wind power. Anyone who intimately understands the details knows this. Given that wind power is inherently available unpredictably, nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest form of energy available on demand. That is not the same thing as saying that it is 100% safe, only that it is the best we have. The others are not even close when compared on safety, sustainability, social effects, environmental impact and cost. It is reasonable therefore that such "limits" as may be made should be applied to nuclear energy only when other forms of energy generation are functionally eliminated. When there are no coal plants left on earth, I will be the first who is willing to discuss how we might limit nuclear energy production. Until then, I am rabidly pro-nuclear power.

For now, there are effectively no limits on nuclear energy production. Between the plants under construction, on order, and in planning stages, world nuclear capacity will increase by about one third in the next one or two decades. This is a ray of hope in an otherwise bleak state of affairs.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/reactors.htm

[BeFree]

38. Man will never make it to the moon, they said

Now they say--
"It is impossible to "clean up" coal."

Some also say it's impossible to clean up nuclear waste. But I think, if cost is no object, they will find a way to do both. See, I believe man can do things with technology that are seemingly impossible.

It's just that the cost is always too high for most, but they did make it to the moon, eh?

[Massacure]

39. But you have to build the base of the pyramid before the top.

It would be foolish to assume we can make the technology appear right when we need it most.

[BeFree]

24. Nuclear power - brought to us by the same people who...

...brought us polluted air. Yes, the same partnerships that have created this problem are the same who now want to foist nuclear power upon us.

Instead of doing the right thing and cleaning up the pollution, they propose a new way of generating a scource of pollution which is longer lasting and potentially even more dangerous.

It's odd that proponents of nuclear power profess that their new way is a-ok because it will all work out- trust us. But they seem to claim that there is no way of cleaning up the mess we are making because, well, just because.

An overflowing population is the problem. Is nuclear power a solution to that problem? Yes, and no. On the one hand nuclear proliferation could be the end of it all, but in no other way could it possibly have any bearing on the problem other than to allow more and more population growth and thereby more and more consumption.

And the fact is: we are nothing more than grains of sand on this little blue ball spinning in the deep dark space.

[dcfirefighter]

25. You sir, are a pessimist

of the Malthusian variety.

I am an optimist. NNadir does have a point: in first world countries, population is stable or declining. In less developed countries, the population is growing.

Free trade and globalization will solve your Malthusian problem; unfortunately we've never seen free trade. Agrarian folks must sell their crops at depressed prices due to first world subsidies of agriculture, and they must do from countries that have little or no transport infrastructure. As soon as we stop using third world countries as sources for raw materials and noncompetitive labor, we'll see living conditions there improve.

Nuclear power offers large amounts of energy for desalinization, even lighting for growing plants, at the cost of dealing with a relatively small volume of waste that can be 1) reprocessed/reused or 2) stored in a compact area (unlike the byproducts of burning fuel, which have a half life of infinity). Conversely, PV, solar heat, and wind, offer niche and supplemental power sources, but do not offer steady power, and they tend to require a lot of land area, area that may be better used growing food or preserving planet biodiversity.

[BeFree]

26. More labels, eh?

I consider myself to be a realist. The huge changes on this planet since I was just a wee lad have made me realize what the overflowing population has created. And, yes, I have contributed to those changes.

Now, I would say that if every American was as conservation minded and economical as myself with electricity, water and material goods, this old world would be quite a bit better prepared to sustain such an overflowing population.

But they are not. In fact, from some calculations, even my self imposed limits on consumptive activities would require, at the least, one other earth to sustain my lifestyle.

So, there ya have it. The balance has been broken and will be forevermore be broken. No amount of tech-no-logic doo-dads will bring the balance back. But a balance will be reached. It is just a matter of time. Really.

What we all should do is work together to get coal fired plants to control their emissions better. Such controls should be easily done. Why, if we can control the atom, we should be able to control coal emissions, eh?

[hunter]

27. Controlling coal emissions would be a neat trick...

Maybe we can shoot them into the ninth dimension or something.

:sarcasm:

It is much more difficult to control coal emissions then it is to control nuclear power plant emissions simply because mining and burning coal produces such incredible amounts of waste -- starting with carbon dioxide. When you burn a ton of coal you get well over three tons of carbon dioxide. What do you do with that? The only realistic option is to dump it into the air.

Then what do you do with the sulfur, the oxides of nitrogen, the mining wastes, the (gasp) radioactive ond otherwise toxic ash?

It is my opinion that "clean coal" is an oxymoron, and yes, I am very familiar with those technologies, going all the way back to the Clear Water demonstration project in the Southern California desert.

http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/gasificationpioneer.html

You might want to check out this link too:

http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/sequestration/index.html

That page amused me because it starts off with a small spew attributed to President Bush which pretty much destroys any credibility the pages might have had:

"We all believe technology offers great promise to significantly reduce emissions --
especially carbon capture, storage and sequestration technologies."

George W. Bush
June 11, 2001

I think "The Office of Fossil Energy" at the DOE, which publishes these pages, has a disturbingly cynical and ironic name.

[BeFree]

28. Well, being the realist..

..We have to have a solution to controlloing the emissions from coal, because coal will be burned for many more years, like it or not. Nuclear, like it or not, will also be around for awhile, but for the time being it is under tech control.

The naysayers who claim we can't clean up coal must be anti-tech, is all I can figure. The chief argument is how much will it cost? I say no price is too high. It must be done whatever the costs.

It can be done. It must be done. And if we all work together at it, it will be done.

There are many paths, but only one future, and that future is cleaner.

[hunter]

29. "Whatever the cost???"

No thanks. I'd rather spend my money on something else, and leave the coal in the ground.

[NNadir]

31. And here it is, coal, coal, coal, and a complete lack of technical insight

The energy content of coal is between 25,000 - 32,000 kilojoules per kilogram, sometimes less. A 1000 MWe plant runs at 30%, producing therefore about 3000 MWe of thermal energy. If we take conveniently that a coal plant that runs on 30,000 kJ/kg coal we will se that it burns 100 kg of coal each second, or, in an 86400 second day, 8,640,000 kg of coal, or 8640 metric tons per day.

In this link, http://www.cpplatform.ch/technology/pdf_docs/1122a.pdf we will note that on page 511, the amount of other pollutants released will be on this order: "For example, a 500 MWe plant using
coal with 2.5% sulfur (S), 16% ash, and 30,000 kiloJoules per kilogram (kJ/kg) heat content will emit each day 200 metric tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2), 70 Thermal Power-Guidelines for New Plants 512 metric tons of nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and 500 metric tons of fly ash if no controls are present. In addition, about 500 metric tons of solid waste will be generated and the plant will have about 17 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of thermal discharge."

Note that the plant described is half the size of the plant I am describing so, my plant will produce 400 metric tons of sulfur dioxide in a single day.

Let's do some further calculations: Now we know that anti-environmental anti-nuclear coal apologists understand zero science, so clarifying for them is almost certainly useless, and they will go along happily arguing for the destruction of the environment by selectively whining about so called "nuclear waste" - about which they know their usual zero. Many people who have taken science courses and therefore are not eligible for membership in Greenpeace will understand the following:

How much CO2 does 8,640,000 kg of coal produce? The molecular weight of carbon dioxide is 44 and the atomic weight of coal is 12. Taking out the 160 grams of ash and the 25 grams of ash, we see that the kilo of coal referenced in the link above has 815 grams of carbon. Dividing by 12 we see that a kilogram of coal contains about 68 moles of carbon. Multiplying by the molecular weight of 44 we see that a single kilogram of coal produces about 3000 grams or 3 kg of carbon dioxide. Multiplying 8,640,000 kg by 3kg CO2/1 kg coal: we get 26 kg of carbon dioxide per day or 9.5 billion kg of carbon dioxide per year from a single power plant.

Converting back to moles we see that in a single year a 1000 MWe coal plant produces about 220 billion moles of carbon dioxide. Using the ideal gas law in SI units at 298K and 101325 Pa pressure we see that the volume of the pure gas if isolated would be 5.3 billion cubic meters of gas, or 5 cubic kilometers. This is enough gas to fill a balloon that is 1 kilometer in radius, for a single plant. Note that carbon dioxide doesn't need to pure to kill. A 10% concentration in air is fatal to human life.

Note that there are no existing carbon dioxide sequestration plants anywhere. People talk about them endlessly, but they don't built them. Because of the vast mass and volume, in fact, it is no really feasible: It is just more blather to appeal to the vast scientific illiteracy that follows Americans around like a cloud of belched soot.

Now one of the dodges that weak minded puerile twits use when speaking of nuclear energy is that they fail 100% of the time to compare. The very same people who whine about the alleged costs of confining so called "nuclear waste" declare that "no price is too high" to contain the wastes of the toxic coal plants that kill people every day in their normal operations.

Like I said in my long winded post in this (dumbly conceived) thread about my liberal credentials: I'm in the business of confronting lies and misreprentations here. So I am going to compare.

Let's compare the volume of so called "nuclear waste" (fission products) created by a 1000 MWe plant, again assuming 30% efficiency, ie a 3000 MW(th) nuclear plant. 3000 MW * 86400 seconds/day * 365 days/year gives a value of 9.5 X 10^16 Joules. Each fission produces 3.2X10^(-11) Joules, meaning that in a typical year a nuclear plant fissions about 3 X 10^25 atoms of fissile material. Converting to moles by dividing by Avogadro's number, 6.0 X 10^23, we see that the amount of material fissioned is about 5000 moles. If the fissioned material is U-235, it weighs about 1200 kg, or a little over a metric ton.

Since the density of uranium is around 19,000 kg/m^3, http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/U/phys.html the volume of this 1200 kg is 0.060 cubic meters or sixty liters, most of it solid.

Here we have an example anti-environmental anti-nuclear coal apologist who is saying - in complete contempt for the conditions of the impoverished - that "no price is too high" to burn coal. "No price is too high" is a comment one associates with the rich, especially the idle rich - those born into money rather than those who have earned it - who avoid thinking under all conditions. Obviously this person is living a very sheltered life and so this person's coming impoverishment will in many ways be highly ironic to watch. (Believe me, in the coming tragic times, intellectual impoverishment will be accompanied by economic impoverishment: So be it; these people deserve what's coming to them.)

Everybody else knows that it is much easier, safer, and cleaner to contain a solid with a volume of sixty liters than it is to contain wastes with a volume of billions of cubic meters.

What always appalls me about anti-nuclear anti-environmental activists is that they don't have a clue about who weak and pathetic they are. They blithely chatter on same old oblivious dreamy bullshit, not seeing, not hearing, not thinking.

Ignorance is frightening. Ignorance kills.

On one hand, the sheer mass of ignorance we see evoked here and elsewhere explains for instance not only Greenpeace but also George W. Bush. One understands how this country is racing toward oblivion with great such great enthusiasm for its own demise. On the other hand, one would rather not have to try to explain George W. Bush at all; one wishes he were pumping gas somewhere at a Kwik Check in Texas, his run down truck plastered with right wing bumper stickers. But sadly, that is not to be.

We are living in the reign of error. The lie merely insists upon itself.

[BeFree]

33. Wow

You make a good case.

I know nothing. I don't. The sum of my knowledge is like a single grain of sand on a mile wide beach. So be it.

But, I do know that coal fired electrical generation plants will be used for some time yet. I do not condone those plants being used. I didn't design them. Chemists and engineers designed and built them. And they are a terrible mistake- not only in the way they pollute but also in the inefficient way they burn.

I work, in a small way, on the streets to ameliorate the coal plant situation. I can't chnge the world all alone, and yes, the idiots who do condone the way coal is used deserve derision. But I'll not deride them. I'll not let myself slip into thinking I am better than they, for I have my faults and for those faults I shall pay, and I shall not make them pay me for their faults just as I would not want to pay them for mine. That's what being free means.

I do not know much about nuclear, and the words I have read here have been minute of educational value. However, I do trust certain groups who do know more than I about nukes, and they are waving the red flags. To them, I do pay attention.

Like I said: No cost is too high to de-pollute coal burning plants, and I'd say, no cost is too high to de-pollute nuke plants. (Take note that I am talking about price in a monetary, economical, and ecological term, with costs and the gains, spread across society.)

Solar, however, causes no discernible long term pollution, and that pleases me. No cost is too high to bring solar online, as coal and nuke plants are retired.

[Massacure]

34. But the costs are too high.

Maybe you want to live under a rock like humans did 10,000 years ago, but your not going to convince 6 billion people to.

[BeFree]

35. Yes.

I won't convince them to do anything, you are right.

But since the chemists and engineers, in cahoots with big government/big business has brought us a polluted earth, they are the one's who have decided, (unknowingly?), that the remnants of this human civilization just may.

Too bad the chemists and engineers didn't think: What are the consequences of our actions? Too bad Nadir didn't get a chance to tell them all about coal.

I don't buy into the argument that we can't clean up coal emissions. Or that the cost of doing so might be too high. Because, as Nadir has pointed out, the costs of not doing so will be beyond belief.

[Kool Kitty]

30. hunter,

I love that Bush quote that you cited in your post. I would pay good money to hear him try to explain it.