Experts Say Nuclear Power May Be Our Only Hope

[FarCenter]

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Some of the world's top climate scientists say wind and solar energy won't be enough to head off extreme global warming, and they're asking environmentalists to support the development of safer nuclear power as one way to cut fossil fuel pollution.

Four scientists who have played a key role in alerting the public to the dangers of climate change sent letters Sunday to leading environmental groups and politicians around the world. The letter, an advance copy of which was given to The Associated Press, urges a crucial discussion on the role of nuclear power in fighting climate change.

Environmentalists agree that global warming is a threat to ecosystems and humans, but many oppose nuclear power and believe that new forms of renewable energy will be able to power the world within the next few decades.

That isn't realistic, the letter said.

"Those energy sources cannot scale up fast enough" to deliver the amount of cheap and reliable power the world needs, and "with the planet warming and carbon dioxide emissions rising faster than ever, we cannot afford to turn away from any technology" that has the potential to reduce greenhouse gases.

The letter signers are James Hansen, a former top NASA scientist; Ken Caldeira, of the Carnegie Institution; Kerry Emanuel, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Tom Wigley, of the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/experts-say-nuclear-power-may-be-our-only-hope-2013-11

[dairydog91]

1. Something like a LFTR design?

Some of the danger of modern nuclear plants derives from the fact that they are uranium-fueled. There are other ways to generate nuclear power, and power sources like thorium have a lot of advantages. MUCH shorter half-life, which makes waste storage easier. They're also lousy for atomic weapons development, which may explain why Washington historically prefers to lavish attention on uranium reactors.

[FarCenter]

2. international Thorium Energy Conference, ThEC13, at CERN, in Geneva Switzerland, October 27 to 31

http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceDisplay.py?confId=222140

The conference is just concluded.

[Warren Stupidity]

3. A fukushima in every garage!

[FarCenter]

4. I don't think that they are proposing obsolete and dangerous American designs.

There is the same General Electric boiling water reactor in New Jersey, but it is scheduled to be shut down in a few years. The GE BWR is as obsolete as the Apollo moon rocket.

[Warren Stupidity]

6. Proliferation of nuclear power generation on the scale required

will come with an increase in catastrophic incidents such as fukushima, and with a host of other problems. It is dishonest to pretend that this policy choice does not have negative consequences, it is dishonest and it is dishonest to the benefit of the nuclear power industry.

[gcomeau]

9. Not using modern designs it won't.

Consider reading up on the subject *before* throwing around accusations of dishonesty.

[Warren Stupidity]

16. The old designs were "safe" when they were deployed too.

And then they weren't. Unforeseen shit happened over the course of their 30 year lives. The consequences of the inevitability of design failure in nuclear power generation cannot be dismissed by hand waving. I'm not opposed entirely to nuclear power, I'm opposed to people pretending that this choice comes without risk.

[99Forever]

5. "...safer nuclear power..."

Cool story, bro.

[uponit7771]

7. Nuke power can be designed to be safe, don't use materials that can be weapons grade or close

[KittyWampus]

12. Nuclear will always involve creating a mess mining for it, processing it, using it for fuel. Plus-

For any energy to be "clean" it must be decentralized.

[uponit7771]

15. The older way of processing materials for nukes will. Thorium is abundant

[KittyWampus]

38. Unless Thorium falls from the sky everywhere, it's a waste and messy.

[MineralMan]

8. Nuclear Power Generation Is Not Safe. It Cannot Be Made to Be Safe.

That's my comment on that.

[gcomeau]

10. You are incorrect.

There's my comment on that.

[MineralMan]

11. We disagree, it seems.

[uponit7771]

13. Old nuke energy I agree, new nuke energy I disagree... Cars designed 40 years ago are less safe

... cars designed now are more safe.

Those are the facts, gone are the days when an accident happens and massive amount of people are affected IMHO

[MineralMan]

14. I disagree. One problem lies in the commercial nature of

energy generation. That is unlikely to change, at least in the United States. The profit motive gets in the way.

The other problem is radiation. Every method of nuclear power generation uses radioactive materials, which raises the question of disposal of wastes. Clearly, we have not created a solution for that issue, and I don't see one on the horizon.

This is not a theoretical problem. It is a real, physical problem. Any human-designed system can fail. Period.

[uponit7771]

19. Radiation during the generation of course is dangers but can be contained now vs before

... and the factors of danger aren't 3 times more than natural gas for instance.

The money motivation is there no matter what, that's not a bad thing if people win...

A consistant safe design can be had

Now days a nuke system doesn't have to affect as many people as it did generations ago.

Different tech, different day...

If nuke power can be made no more dangerous than some other forms of manufacturing it should be considered IMHO

[seveneyes]

20. Any and all systems, both human and nature made, will fail eventually

The one and only source of sustaining life on Earth is nuclear. It's only a matter of time before humankind can harness the power of the Sun cleanly.

[MineralMan]

23. That is true enough. Solar, hydro, and wind power

depend on the Sun. While it will eventually grow to consume our planet, that is far enough away in time to be inconsequential to our existence on this planet.

We cannot control the Sun in any way. So, we should make as much use of that source of energy as we can.

[FarCenter]

17. All courses of action to continue human civilization carry risk.

There are no risk-free alternatives.

Nature's only guarantee is that you can struggle to stay alive.

[MineralMan]

22. Indeed. Where we can see and measure the risks in advance, however,

we can make informed decisions. We do that individually all the time. We need to do that as a society as well.

Given the dismal history of nuclear power generation, starting from its very beginnings with the partial meltdown in the very first commercial nuclear power plant, I do not see any hope that it can be made to be safe in the future, either.

Risks can be measured and considered. In the case of nuclear power generation, those risks are real, palpable, and easy enough to understand. We're watching the result right now of one nuclear power generation decision. It's not a good experience.

We need to be working on different alternatives. Nuclear power generation has been thoroughly tested, and it has failed those tests.

You might have a different opinion, but that's mine.

[FarCenter]

24. The scientists in the OP opine that the risks of nuclear are less than climate change without it

They are fairly eminent in the climate science field. Whether they are competent to judge nuclear risks may be more in doubt.

[snooper2]

29. Nuclear power kicks ass, we need more, and about 100 billion a year

more into Fusion research-

Fusion power is the way of the future baby!

[MineralMan]

32. Yah, OK, then.

That's what they were saying about fission power in the 1950s and 60s, too. Power so cheap there wouldn't be any reason for an electric bill. That's what they said.

I grew up just a few air miles from the first commercial nuclear power generation reactor. While I was still in high school, it failed and had a partial meltdown. Look it up. Google Santa Susana meltdown. That was 1959. We still built nuclear power plants. Now, we have Fukushima.

The future always looks bright, technologically, to those who are involved in the technology. The reality often doesn't end up being quite so bright, though.

Good luck with that fusion stuff. I'm 68 years old. I'll be dead before it goes online.

[IDemo]

18. Never a single blip in any of these articles

about actually backing off the frenzied consumption which has come to define modern "civilization" or of the resultant resource decline and environmental destruction.

[FarCenter]

21. Even if the 3 billion in developed nations back off, there are another 4 to 6 billion using more

Actually, crude oil production is relatively flat globally since the mid-'00s, partly due to the global recession and partly due to the fact that less expensive fields are depleting.

OECD countries are flat to decreasing in their usage, but non-OECD countries are increasing usage.

[IDemo]

27. I wasn't speaking of petroleum resources, at least not exclusively

I'm talking about all of the minerals and materials that go into the latest iGadgets and motor vehicles, of the devastation of top soil, the depletion and poisoning of water from fracking, the paving over of valuable farmland for strip malls, the manufacturing of useless plastic junk that won't decompose for hundreds or thousands of years. And the need for more energy resources of any kind would be far less without the compulsion for every As Seen on the Internet item available.

[FarCenter]

40. Add to that the minerals and material that would go into alternative energy

Solar panels, mountings, wiring, convertors, grid enhancement, and electrical storage systems require lots of space and lots of materials per megawatt of generation capacity.

Same for wind, biomass, and other systems which are capturing fairly diffuse sources of energy instead of the concentrated energy of fossil fuel combustion and nuclear reactions.

[Tikki]

25. Then we need to rethink how much power we need and change our lifestyles BECAUSE:

NUKE KILLS….slow, fast, medium killing..but kill it does. Which one of your children do
you want to sacrifice to the nuclear corporate god?

We have had over 60 years and millions upon millions of dollars spent on just trying to figure out
what to do with the nuclear waste.



Tikki
p s these nuke scientist, remember it is to advantage to keep this scheme going and you and I
don't know a lot about what is really happening with nuke so they try to dazzle with their newest theory
to keep the gravy train going.

THEY are desperate after Fukushima.

[Laelth]

26. I tend to agree. k&r n/t

-Laelth

[Douglas Carpenter]

28. if one wants to sustain current levels of electrical usage - solar and wind would not be enough

if you add geothermal and other mechanisms - you still on practical grounds fall short - I suppose if one wants to sustain anything anywhere near current levels of electrical usage - nuclear is probably about the only option

[IDemo]

30. Or "electrical" usage?

[Douglas Carpenter]

31. that was the spell checker fucking with me

[daleo]

33. If the human race really put a Manhattan Project scale effort into renewables

It would probably have an amazing result. So far, we have just tinkered at the edges, in terms of research and development. Even these scientists, whom I think are credible and honorable people, would be surprised.

[RobertEarl]

34. Up fast enough?

The sun comes up pretty fast every day. Well, it doesn't really 'come up' as much as the world turns. Anyway....

It takes about 10 years for nuke plant to be built. In ten years time, once we decided to do so, we landed on the moon. The negative "we can't catch enough sunrays" is really quite stupid. But these are supposedly not stupid people....

They must be paid, then, to be so negative about using the sun?

[mother earth]

35. Then we are truly fucked. nt

[Zorra]

36. Fuck that. We could scale up in 2 years if it weren't for capitalists/capitalism preventing it

from happening.

Tax the rich and cut defense spending to pay your civilian labor force, put the military and the National Guard to work on the project, and do worldwide New Deal type jobs programs.

As evidenced by WWII they can build a major war machine in no time flat.

With the technology we have today, we could build a major peace machine even quicker. But we'd need to prevent RWers and RW corporations from sabotaging the project.

[hunter]

37. Nuclear power IS our only hope if we want civilization to continue as it now exists...

Personally I'm a pessimist. We are fucked. We won't ban the use of fossil fuels, therefore Mother Nature is going to deal with us the old fashioned way, by killing off large numbers of us. Our current civilization is a fragile thing. We can't keep this up. Exponential growth of a species always ends poorly. Humans are not exceptional, the earth has seen this kind of thing before.

If our entire civilization had gone nuclear as France did, sure there would still be accidents, but nothing to comparable to the damage done to earth by fossil fuels every day. Industrial toxins are what they are, radioactive or not. The toxins of industry fueled by fossil fuels are often far worse than minor accidental releases of radioactive toxins like tritium or iodine from nuclear power plants. Our use of coal spews more radioactive toxins into the environment daily than any properly running nuclear power plant, but nobody pays attention to that. And then there are the greenhouse gases...

I'd much rather live near a competently run nuclear plant or even a nuclear "waste" repository than an oil refinery or fracking fields. I'd rather get my power from a nuclear power plant than a fossil fuel power plant, either coal or natural gas. Natural gas is especially bullshit; it never was clean or "natural," and is even dirtier when it is obtained by fracking. Sure it has less carbon, but that only means our civilization dies a little later rather than sooner.

Solar and wind are not "drop-in" replacements for fossil fuels. Nuclear power potentially is, especially with the development of modern electric transportation systems like high speed rail and electric automobiles.

An advanced solar and wind powered society would look very different. It would not be a "consumer" society. The most common form of transportation would be walking or bicycles (and for the mobility impaired, electric legs, wheelchairs, etc...) There would be no personal automobiles, no airlines, no great highway projects. The pace of life would be slow.

I strive to minimize my own participation in "consumer" society. I don't respect our consumer society, and it doesn't much respect me.

When I was a young and foolish man I bought a new car. My kids learned to drive in it that car. I won't buy a new car again. And I'm not at all ashamed of the car I drive now, an $800 special that is older than our adult kids and has a salvage title. I don't care what the neighbor's think. My computers, my cell phone are all salvage too. I only replace my computers when I find a better one that's been discarded by someone else.

Even my wife thinks I'm on the far fringes, but we do agree on the larger lifestyle issues. We met in Los Angeles in the mid 1980s. We were automobile commuters then. We haven't been commuters for nearly a quarter century now. (That's a lot of fossil fuel we didn't use...) We both like to make, repair, or repurpose things, so we have that in common.

There are many things worth saving in this society. Much of the medicine, the science, the two-way worldwide communication systems, the arts... these are all worth keeping. But that still leaves a lot of crap.

[RobertEarl]

41. We just have to change our mode of thinking

We can clean up emissions from fossil fuels. It has been done, we can do more. Much more.

Then we need to make sure all of our uses of fossil fuels are as economical as can be. Meaning we get the most from every gallon, every lump of coal, every whiff of gas.

The problem is, as it is with the use of nuclear, that we put away thinking about what is the end result of the use. We do that because thinking beyond profits is not our current way of operating.

The reason solar is so unused is that there is not continuing profit stream like there is with nukes and fossil fuels. There are no taxes collected from solar power. It is too cheap to meter.

People who think nuclear is clean and safe are people who can't see that leaving the waste for the next 100 generations to deal with is a sinful, slothful and absolutely asinine mode of thinking. The science says so.

[roamer65]

39. How much electricity would we generate...

if we simply put a solar array on every rooftop of every house in the country? I would think it would be quite a bit.

[WinkyDink]

42. Fukushima laughs at this.