K: "There is no critical area where these rare earths are in a position to derail or significantly impact a shift to renewables. There are some marginal improvements that depend on some that are currently in short supply, but that supply can be met through the normal economic response to supply/demand signals."
AC: "Rare earths are used in distributed generating scenarios such as low-utilization wind turbines, in far greater tonnage per watt than a nuclear reactor's turbines. But you intentionally downplay any challenge facing renewables. I don't have a problem with that. I think it's a fine thing, and I don't even call you a shill for it. I think it's perfectly understandable. It would be nice if you would extend the same courtesy to pro-nuclear people trying to minimize CO2 emissions by any and all means available."
K: "No critical area" means just that, no critical area. The rare earths used in wind turbines are a minute part of the overall potential of current technologies and if they didn't exist at all, it wouldn't change the calculus related to the potential of wind turbines. We KNOW THAT DEFINITIVELY because the marginal improvements (do you know what that means) resulting from rare earths are only recent developments and as sucj come long after the the question of whether existing renewable technologies could deliver the energy needed by global civilization was settled in 1992.
The shortage of rare earths for nuclear impacts reactor vessels, not turbines.
Exotic metals: The nuclear containment vessel is made of a variety of exotic rare metals that control and contain the nuclear reaction: hafnium as a neutron absorber, beryllium as a neutron reflector, zirconium for cladding, and niobium to alloy steel and make it last 40-60 years against neutron embrittlement. Extracting these metals raises issues involving cost, sustainability, and environmental impact. In addition, these metals have many competing industrial uses; for example, hafnium is used in microchips and beryllium by the semiconductor industry. If a nuclear reactor is built every day, the global supply of these exotic metals needed to build nuclear containment vessels would quickly run down and create a mineral resource crisis. This is a new argument that Abbott puts on the table, which places resource limits on all future-generation nuclear reactors, whether they are fueled by thorium or uranium.
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htmlK:"Because what I've read tells me that large-scale deployment of nuclear technology leaves us with emissions that are on par with natural gas."
AC: This ignores the ample supplies of fuel that will last for MANY decades, de-milling Russian and American warhead stockpiles, and other weapons programs where the CO2 cost of obtaining the raw ore has already been invested, and further CO2 investment exists only in physically moving the material from one location to another.
K: No, it doesn't ignore anything. The issue at hand is how to meet global energy needs going into the future. 20 years into the future isn't the criteria by which energy sources must be judged. And even on that kind of time horizon, meeting our carbon reduction goals in the manner proposed by the nuclear industry would require 1500-2000 new 1GW reactors within that time frame, a rate of new build averaging 1-2 new reactors being brought online every week. Nuclear doesn't scale up in a friendly fashion from a number of perspectives:
...As Abbott notes, many of these same problems would plague fusion reactors in addition to fission reactors, even though commercial fusion is still likely a long way off.
Of course, not many nuclear advocates are calling for a complete nuclear utopia, in which nuclear power supplies the entire world’s energy needs. But many nuclear advocates suggest that we should produce 1 TW of power from nuclear energy, which may be feasible, at least in the short term. However, if one divides Abbott’s figures by 15, one still finds that 1 TW is barely feasible. Therefore, Abbott argues that, if this technology cannot be fundamentally scaled further than 1 TW, perhaps the same investment would be better spent on a fully scalable technology...
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-05-nuclear-power-world-energy.htmlK: "The first cite comes from wiki, and begins with, "Over the years of its operation, the plant has experienced several incidents, none of which have resulted in exposure to dangerous levels of radiation."
That is the "reassuring message that is standard from the industry. The second cite is from the UCS and is from a discussion of the role of regulatory failure in the safe operation of NPPs. It is far, far less reassuring than the claim that "no dangerous levels of radiation" have been released.
PS Did you know that before the NRC released any information on this to the public, they first coordinated for several days with the nuclear industry's lobbying group? "
AC: "Here you injected problems at the wrong reactor type into a concern thread about the GW LWR design."
K: Since you don't include the links (why not?) I'll go by memory - You made a comment that tried to portray the lessons learned from Fukushima as being limited to 1) siting and 2) "GW LWR" reactor design. That is the narrow view that is promoted by the nuclear industry in ALL accidents. They wish to exclude any discussions of lessons learned that actually challenge the wisdom of using a technology with such extreme consequences for failure. Showing what happened at Davis Besse exposes the fact that the common thread running through ALL accidents and near misses like Fukushima and Davis Besse is the element of human failure and the inability of any oversight structure to perform its role in a manner that allows the industry to compete economically in an open market AND do so safely.
It might not have comported with your messaging objectives, but it followed the topic and was an accurate representation of reality.