Debating Nuclear Power

Regarding the whole sustainable energy issue I would like to recommend the highly acclaimed book:
David JC MacKay:Sustainable Energy - without the hot air
http://www.withouthotair.com/

It is a level headed, no nonsense, feet on the ground study of the situation - with real data and numbers and realistic scenarios. Recommended by representatives of both the 'Environment' and 'Industry' -sides - check it out.

Sharon's post today on planning for failure is also a must-read in this context: http://scienceblogs.com/casaubonsbook/2011/03/inconceivable_why_failure…

I'm all for looking at nukes vs renewables. Nuclear plants could take over baseload as soon as we can build them. Renewables on the other hand seem better matched to handle peak loads. I don't see the controversy in replacing dirty coal with much, much cleaner nuclear power, and doing it now. We don't have any perfectly clean technology for generating the gigantic amounts of power we use daily, and that is a simple, if unwelcome fact. I cant help but be reassured by the events in japan. It looks like the end result will be that an 8.8 earthquake, and a massive tsunami end up causing a minor release and the permanent disabling of 2 or 3 reactors. When I compare that to the destruction that went on everywhere but the plants I can't help but think nuclear power is very very safe indeed.

The real comparison should be between renewables and nuclear, sure. Of course, since both options are going to sit undeveloped for the foreseeable future while we continue to burn dirty coal, any such discussion not involving coal or how we replace it will be irrelevant.

Many of you may not remember (or even believe this) but one of the main reasons we are not much farther along with wind or solar is because of the traditional fuel sources as well as the nuclear industry working against that development, as well as the right-wing anti-science and anti-environment but firmly pro-nuclear and pro-coal activities that have linked windmills to treehugging hippies and solar to acid-dropping swamis. Or whatever.

The Nuclear Power industry is not a technology or a business. It is a political faction. Which needs to go fuck itself. This series of events in japan will, thankfully, send us once more back to the drawing board Perhaps this time we can have a rational instead of political discussion about what we need to do.

Historically, there's been a steady stream into the pro-nuclear-on-the-basis-of-"green" world of climate denialism veterans.

Go back far enough and they're all denialists. And of course, they all support nuclear power because market fundies worship the military-industrial complex.

Then some move to a fallback position of "not too bad" and delay, delay, do nothing. The Pielke and Lomborg types - who are going to call you unserious about climate change if you're not indiscriminately in favor of the nuclear industry.

Some of those see nuclear as the least-concession-you-can-make-to-environmentalists next fallback. It's also a bargaining chip - if we admit reality on climate change to a degree, you have to support corporate welfare and pushing the largest corporate solution possible. It's also a pretty slow solution.

Greg -

Fine. As part of this rational discussion, show your evidence for the nuclear industry blocking renewables. Otherwise we would just be spouting propaganda.

Andrew, I don't believe I used the word blocking. What did in fact happen back in the 1970s is that the same funding sources that pushed nuclear industry tilted against actual windmills and solar. I was there. I remember it. Take my word for it. It is not my job to feed you Internet links to assuage or repair your ignorance of recent history. Perhaps some American Studies major who has their hands on appropriate references will come along and provide the information.

So basically, Greg, with the "go fuck itself" remark, you put the lie to the "if blah blah blah then I'll look at nuclear" charade you used in the lead.

I'm with Andrew, actually. You are shoring up your anti-nuclear inclinations with some conjectured conspiracy theory from the seventies. Re-read your own entries and see how far you weakened your original statement when challenged. And I speak as someone who also supported wind and solar power (AND nuclear) in the seventies.

Joffan, you have no clue what my position on nuclear power is. I've not stated it.

I have expressed my distrust of the nuclear power industry. This comes from observation as well as personal experience as one who has worked for the nuclear power industry.

I do wonder if there would be so many voices insisting that nuclear power is safe and that we should switch to nuclear power asap during a period of time when five nuclear power plants were having serious troubles, two with partial meltdowns and major explosions of infrastructure if this was all happening in California. Or would you then be able, with your own people being threatened, to have the grace to shut up until it's at least mostly over. But since it's only the Japs, I suppose you don't really care about such sensibilities.

IOW, listen to yourselves. You are being assholes. I know this may not matter to you, but it matters.

Joffan, it's not our fault that you guys are pushing vaporware, and can't understand the precautionary principle.

BTW while 90-something percent of pro-nuke absolutism comes from market fundamentalism, some market true-believers oppose it on the unprofitability basis, for instance Amory Lovins (who I had the pleasure of hearing when I was in high school).

James Hansen has supported IVth gen nukes all along, and he's rightly a highly-admired person in the AGW community, so the problem is not that community. One problem is that what the industry - which is a heavy lobbier against renewables - builds is not what they advocate for building.

I fully support IX generation nukes. M problem is that I have learned to not trust the nuclear power industry at all, by default, and I'm sujspicious of most pro-nukers because they act too much like gun nuts. When some 9 year old kills his 3 year old sister with daddhy's unsecured pistol, the gun nuts come out and scream that we need to arm ourselves. When there is a nuclear accident underway and a very tragic situation developing, the pro-nukers-no-matter-whaters come out and scream scream for more nukes and claim that anyone who questions the motivations of the industry or shows concern over safety is not being rational.

And that IX was not a typo.

I'm 100% with Greg: the nuke industry is pathologically dishonest. They hide behind as much secrecy as they can muster from "national security issues" in order to cut corners and rip-off the taxpayer in order to bank inordinate profits.
If the nuke industry could function in a totally free market, there would less problems with it, however it can't, and the taxpayer has to fund it to the hilt to make it work.

- disposal of waste: 60 years on and the nuke industry still has no answer to this. Nuclear waste sits all around the country in leaky barrels and exposed ponds. (surreptitiously pouring it into rivers or dropping it into the oceans no longer takes place. We hope.) At vast expense to the taxpayer, Yucca has proven to be an unmitigated failure.
** and this is the next big story that hasn't come out of Japan yet: what has the Tsunami done with all the ponds holding spent fuel rods? It's not just the reactor that represents an uninsurable risk, the waste is also an extreme risk.

- insurance : the industry cannot insure itself. The taxpayer absorbs the liability.

- decommissioning : another impost on the taxpayer - sites can't even be worked on for a decade or more prior to being decommissioned, and the nuke industry isn't paying for the land use nor the remediation while this goes on.

I'd also like to point out that for all the "Chernobyl was a one-off, it could never happen here", this earthquake has demonstrated that not only it can, but it inevitably will.

And before you get too keen on GenIV nukes, do a run through on paper of the current scenario, where the failed cooling system contains, not water, but a huge quantity of liquid sodium.

mmmmm.

Indonesia has just started a project to build over 30 nukes all along their share of the 'ring of fire'.
What could possibly go wrong?

Greg, I thought you were a more rational blogger than this; you are inadvertently feeding into the hysteria around this situation with the Fukushima nuclear plants by referencing shoddy media reporting. I suggest you and others here take a look at my blog post on the matter:

Know Nukes: The Japanese Earthquake & Anti-Nuclear Hysteria
[url]http://skepticalteacher.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/know-nukes-the-japanes…]

Please take some time to read up on information regarding the Fukushima incident from reputable sources that understand the nuclear physics & engineering involved. Otherwise, you are merely feeding the hysteria.

Sorry, my link in the previous comment got screwed up...

Know Nukes: The Japanese Earthquake & Anti-Nuclear Hysteria
http://skepticalteacher.wordpress.com/2011/03/13/know-nukes-the-japanes…

Mattus, the information at your link appears to have been superseded by events.

At some point the nuke-spruikers are going to have to stop trying to spin this.

I'd also like to point out that for all the "Chernobyl was a one-off, it could never happen here", this earthquake has demonstrated that not only it can, but it inevitably will.

The technological characteristics that made the Chernobyl event possible are not shared by any reactors currently in service in the United States, or to my knowledge anywhere. (I'm less confident that the problems with defective chair/control-panel interfaces have been fully resolved). And nothing about this incident suggests it's even approaching the severity of Chernobyl. This is a worrisome event and there are lessons to be drawn from it and work to be done on top of the tsunami and earthquake cleanup, but keep some perspective.

Number 1 lesson to be learned is that in the long run it is far, far cheaper to sanely invest in technologies that don't entail the extreme and uninsurable risks posed by trying to boil water with a nuclear chain reaction.

Number 1 lesson to be learned is that in the long run it is far, far cheaper to sanely invest in technologies that don't entail the extreme and uninsurable risks posed by trying to boil water with a nuclear chain reaction.

Depending on which technologies you mean, that may or may not actually be true for human-scale definitions of "long run," and it's not clear that this accident demonstrates it.

MattusMaximu, do you realize how dumb you sound scolding me on not being the blogger you thought I was?

I'm not "referencing" any media reporting. On this thread but mainly a different post I'm putting up pointers to the news healines as they are produced . If you read that post (http://tinyurl.com/4z2chcb) you'll probably be able to figure out why I'm doing that, if you use your brain instead of your emotions. And please don't use the word "hysteria" on my blog.

Also, it is not the case that the entire world is a bulletin board. Learn HTML. Thanks for the link, though, I'll have a look when I get a chance.

Oh, that link is to your blog. OK, then, I appreciate your posting references to some of the crazy stuff out there and debunking it. Just keep it honest and clear.

nuclear power plants are the honeypots of evolution to eliminate the human species.

I'm disappointed that we're still into this YES/NO style of argument.
Five years ago, when I started thinking seriously about alternative energy and the possibility of ditching nuclear power, I realised that there were so many arguments wither way, I was going to have to write a whole damn book about it!
I did it in the style of crime fiction or detective thriller, hoping to pick up some casual readers, who might enjoy the car chases and then, hopefully, consider some of the issues. I'm not saying I even arrived at the answers, but I did conclude that we all need a bit of time and space to really get to thinking about this stuff. It's our future.
You can find the book on Amazon or follow the link below. All profits go to the World Watch Foundation.
http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/new-clear-vision/2374926