Actresses Unite in Support of Replacing Nukes With Clean Energy

[bananas]

This discussion thread was locked as off-topic by NancyBlueINOklahoma (a host of the Latest Breaking News forum).

Source: EcoWatch

Today, actresses Amy Smart, Eva Amurri Martino, Emmanuelle Chriqui and Dawn Olivieri joined the Sierra Club in an online video asking Gov. Jerry Brown to make a “clean break” with fossil fuels, and commit to replacing the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station with 100% clean energy. The California Public Utilities Commission is expected to begin its decision-making process within the next few days as to how much of the shuttered nuclear plant will be replaced by clean or dirty energy.

The video cuts between the different actresses in the midst of classic break-up scenes—packing up their things, talking over coffee and breaking the bad news as they tell fossil fuels that it’s time to move on: “I just don’t think it’s working out any more—our relationship is toxic. I need something I can commit to for the long term: clean energy.”

The video ends with a link to a petition, where viewers can send a message to Gov. Brown asking him to only use clean energy to replace the power from the retired San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, instead of building new gas-fired power plants.

“Doubling down on dirty energy is not the right answer,” said Emmanuelle Chriqui. “Fossil fuels have been nothing but trouble for California—causing smog, spills, carbon emissions and health hazards all over the state. The upcoming transition of San Onofre is an opportunity for us to move forward and show that our state is going to be a leader on clean energy.”

<snip>

Read more: http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/05/actresses-replacing-nukes-clean-energy/

[bananas]

1. The video

Make a Clean Break, California!

NationalSierraClub
Published on Feb 5, 2014
http://www.sierraclub.org/GoCleanCA

Actresses Amy Smart, Eva Amurri, Dawn Olivieri, and Emmanuelle Chriqui ask Gov. Jerry Brown to make a "clean break" with fossil fuels and commit to replacing the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station with 100% clean energy. Clean energy creates jobs, cleans up the environment, and it's how we're going to grow our economy in a sustainable way. That's the commitment we should make.

[anasv]

2. nuclear power plants

well built, well sited, and well maintained are the only hope against global warming. There simply isn't enough capacity in solar or wind, plus the damage wind turbines do to bird and bat populations, to replace fossil fuels.

These people, although well-intentioned, are morons when it comes to science.

[bananas]

3. Nope - Restricting nuclear power has little effect on the cost of climate policies

Published in the highly respected Proceedings of the National Academy of Science

By the highly respected Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-10/pifc-rnp092812.php

Public release date: 1-Oct-2012
Contact: Mareike Schodder
[e-mail]
49-331-288-2507

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)

Restricting nuclear power has little effect on the cost of climate policies

Incremental costs due to policy options restricting the use of nuclear power do not significantly increase the cost of even stringent greenhouse-gas emissions reductions

"Questions have been raised if restricting nuclear energy – an option considered by some countries after the accident in Fukushima, Japan – combined with climate policies might get extremely expensive. Our study is a first assessment of the consequences of a broad range of combinations of climate and nuclear policies," lead author Nico Bauer says. Restrictions on nuclear power could be political decisions, but also regulations imposed by safety authorities. Power generation capacities would have to be replaced, but fossil fuels would become costly due to a price on CO2 emissions, this in sum is the main concern.

"However, in case of restricted use of nuclear power, the flexibility of allocating a long-term carbon budget over time enables higher near-term emissions due to increased power generation of natural gas," Bauer says. Along with demand reductions and efficiency improvements, these provisions could help fill the gap on electricity. The price of natural gas is projected to decrease due to demand reductions, according to the study. Decommissioning existing plants will also avoid refurbishment costs for expanding lifetimes of old nuclear power plants.

As a result, early retirement of nuclear power plants would lead to cumulative global gross domestic product losses (GDP) that amount to about 10 percent of climate policy costs. If no new nuclear capacities are allowed, the costs would amount to 20 percent.

For their study, the scientists looked into different nuclear power policies. These cover a range of scenarios from "Renaissance", with a full utilization of existing power plants, a possible refurbishment for a lifetime expansion and investments in new nuclear power capacities, to "Full exit", with a decommissioning of existing power plants and no new investments. They contrasted each scenario with climate policies implemented via an inter-temporal global carbon budget which puts a price on carbon emissions. For the budget, the cumulative CO2 emissions from the global energy sector were limited to 300 gigatons of carbon from 2005 until the end of the century. This represents a climate mitigation policy consistent with the target of limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.

"A surprising result of our study is the rather little difference between a 'Renaissance' or a 'Full exit' of nuclear power in combination with a carbon budget when it comes to GDP losses," Bauer says. While the 'no policy case' with a nuclear phase-out and no carbon budget has only negligible effect on global GDP, the imposition of a carbon budget with no restrictions on nuclear policy implies a reduction of GDP that reaches 2.1 percent in 2050. The additional phase-out of nuclear power increases this loss by about 0.2 percent in 2050 and hence has only little additional impact on the economy, because the contribution of nuclear power to the electricity generation can be substituted relatively easy by alternative technology options, including the earlier deployment of renewables.

###
Article: Bauer, N., Brecha, R.J., Luderer, G. (2012): Economics of nuclear power and climate change mitigation policies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Early Edition) DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1201264109

[bananas]

4. Renewable capacity dwarfs non-renewable resources

The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined

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

edit to add: from an earlier version of another wikipedia page:

The estimates of remaining non-renewable worldwide energy resources vary, with the remaining fossil fuels totaling an estimated 0.4 YJ (1 YJ = 10^24J) and the available nuclear fuel such as uranium exceeding 2.5 YJ. Fossil fuels range from 0.6 to 3 YJ if estimates of reserves of methane clathrates are accurate and become technically extractable. The total energy flux from the sun is 3.8 YJ/yr, dwarfing all non-renewable resources.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_energy_consumption&oldid=574980905

[bananas]

5. MIT: "The Future of Nuclear Power"

In 2003, MIT listed the four major problems with nuclear energy and what to do about them:

"To preserve the nuclear option for the future requires overcoming the four
challenges described above—costs, safety, proliferation, and wastes. These
challenges will escalate if a significant number of new nuclear generating
plants are built in a growing number of countries. The effort to overcome
these challenges, however, is justified only if nuclear power can potentially
contribute significantly to reducing global warming, which entails major
expansion of nuclear power."

- MIT, The Future of Nuclear Power
http://web.mit.edu/nuclearpower/

Read that carefully.

Ten years later we know that these problems were severely underestimated and aren't close to being overcome.

And since we know there won't be a major expansion of nuclear power, the effort to overcome them isn't justified.

There is no justification to preserve the nuclear option for the future.

None.

(Note: This is about fission, not fusion.)

[Pterodactyl]

6. Whenever I need advice on energy and science, I always turn to the actresses.

[marions ghost]

7. Excellent

Celebrity endorsement has the power to persuade people who would not be informed about the issues any other way.

actresses

[Adrahil]

8. I have no idea who any of those women are....

... but I endorse this product and/or service.

[OKNancy]

9. Locking - date is Feb 5th

way over 12 hours old