How nuclear power can save the planet 18 August 08

Interesting that the pendulum in the green movement maybe is starting to swing more towards nuclear now. I totally agree. Renewables like wind/water/solar power, in all their glory, seem like they´d take too long before they really could be considered for effectively replacing most of the coal power worldwide. And time, of course, is a luxury that we don´t have. I believe if we´re to even have the slightest chance of seeing CO2 actually starting to drop anytime soon, the only “realistic” option is making an initial switch to nuclear, with all it´s known flaws, to quickly try to get rid of most of the coal plants. Maybe later those nuclear plants can then be phased out by renewable sources. My fear is that otherwise the coal power will linger much too long spewing out enough CO2 to surpass all the recommended levels and goals everyone talk about, as people argue how the planned wind stations might ruin nice views and bird nesting grounds. The real Lovelock recipe I guess. By the way, great site Mark, keep it up!

It would be much more ‘inherently safe’ for nuclear reactor designs that are available now to be built underground. I have raised this issue in the recent (now closed) British government consultation on future nuclear development. The reasons for suggesting this are fairly obvious and summarised here. There is insufficient time for new designs to go through the prototype stage.

The best way forward will ultimately be necessity i’m sure. Despite all the “crunch” problems people face at the moment, credit, food and climate it is always ultimately survival which causes global sea change of opinion. We will eventually ditch coal fired power stations as a source of power and after some time bio power as well. Nuclear will be the answer as it will buy time for what is left of humanity. It will be the lesser of many evils, but how many poeple will survive ? The species will certainly decline, the only question will be by how many and over what period of time?

Why is it that you support 4th Gen when Concentrating Solar Power can provide such an enormous slice of the baseload generation required, without any of the detriment of nuclear – CSP is mature technology, overnight storage is not a problem, it will be fully commercialised by 2011 – 2012, when (going by current known contracts) 9GW will be online globally, and it is anticipated if expansion continues at a conservative rate of 29% per annum, then 200GW will be online by 2020 (compare with 100GW online for wind as of this year, after 25 years), it’s environmentally benign – even positive when you combine it with desalination, fast build (2 – 3 years from granting of licence to grid connection: Daniel take note), no high insurance costs, no decommissioning and waste headaches, no trans-border devastation when bombed by an irate terrorist – only 7 years bad luck (and why bother to bomb a bunch of mirrors where each fresnel mirror can now be built and replaced in 3 minutes in any event) ...and even the political will is cranking into action now with the Med Solar Plan (20GW in North Africa by 2020) under the recently endorsed Union for the Mediterranean, the removal of the Feed-in Tariff cap in Spain due later this year (20GW by 2020), another 16GW is expected in other southern sunbelt EU countries, the generous state credits in South West America esp in California (30-50GW by 2020 thanks mainly to Arnie’s ambitious targets), the Masdar Project (500MW by 2013), India (generous FIT’s for solar put in place earlier this year), China (test plant outside Beijing) etc etc. CSP does not pose an energy security risk; it is not a finite resource that is being threatened (and therefore one that we go to war over). It’s dependent on the heat from the sun in the deserts – an abundant resource and, do not forget, less than 1% of the world’s deserts can give us all our global electricity requirements – so no worries on that front either. We can therefore switch all land-based transport over to clean electricity. As for transporting the stuff – easy: High Voltage Direct Current lines (which have been in use since the 1950’s), such as the HVDC links that run from the 3 Gorges Dam in China to Guangdong – 2,000 kilometers away – with just 3% losses per 1000 km.

So, why do we not hear more from you guys – the heroes of the environmental world – supporting, lobbying, promoting, fighting, shouting for CSP, rather than announcing your qualified support of nuclear? Shame on you.

If you would like to know more about CSP, check out http://www.trec-uk.org.uk, and for an easy intro: http://www.concentratingsolarpower.info.

Absolutely Mark. I’ve always thought apart from solar thermal for hot water and a large focus on improving our own energy efficiencies, nuclear fission really is the only serious zero-carbon game currently in town.

Consider the French transport system as a demonstration of what is possible – TGVs running on 80% nuclear, 10% hydro and just 10% fossil.

“Nuclear waste” far from being its drawback is I believe its trump card; what other energy source lets you keep it’s waste in a nice concrete package that can be completely isolated from the rest of the enivironment ?

Fission of course is just a stop gap until better sources become available, but one we must embrace now.

Mark, you really should provide some references when you promote whatever type of nuclear. Otherwise we just have to take your assertions on trust. Much as I admire your work I’m not prepared to do that!!

Oh … and the comment counter is bust showing zero comments for the first two posts.

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What do you think of Rocky Montain Institute paper “The Nuclear Illusion”?

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid504.php

“Deployed entirely in tandem with renewables, fourth-generation nuclear could offer a complete decarbonisation of the world’s electricity supply”

This is just patently false, Mark. While it might theoretically be possible to replace all fossil fuel inputs with renewable (or nuclear) electric sources - for mining, milling, conversion, enrichment, etc. - that is categorically not the case now. Life cycle analysis shows that GHG emissions from the uranium fuel cycle may (at worst) be as high as combined-cycle natural gas plant.

But more important is the fundamental lack of uranium as the ultimate fuel source, especially when one considers that net energy balance rapidly becomes negative once higher-grade ores are exhausted. While the uranium industry claim upwards revisions in recent years, even they state the resource is sufficient for some 80 years or so.

It may be more. The point is that this is a FINITE RESOURCE and if we were to begin massive expansion of uranium-fission nuclear energy, that supply would soon become exhausted, by some estimates in as little as a decade.

How, then, is this an answer to anything? It’s shifting from one finite heavily polluting resource to a somewhat less polluting (in GHG terms) but dramatically more finite substitute.

I heartily agree with Polly Higgins above that solar thermal - and of course the whole gamut of renewables - are the realistic solution and where persons such as yourself should be throwing your support.

It’s only an postgraduate student paper, but these themes are laid out in detail by myself here: http://civilisationshift.wordpress.com/2008/08/14/uranium-no-solution-to-climate-change-even-without-the-overarching-threat-of-nuclear-waste-and-nuclear-weapons/

I’d urge to you to look at the references.

Advocating credible solutions to mitigating the worst effects of climate change requires commentators and campaigners to as much as possible fully understand what they advocate. To claim that deploying the Integral Fast Reactor is part of the solution to climate change exposes a profound and dangerous lack of knowledge. Even the nuclear industry admits that fast reactors will not be commercially available before 2050 (having spent the last fifty years claiming it was only a decade away). If you except the need to act within the next decade to move rapidly away from carbon based energy systems, the IFR or any so-called generation IV design, does not do it. Leaving this small matter aside a scenario of 500Gw of fast breeder reactors (IFR) type deployed by 2100 even if possible would have some nasty hazards – for example it would require 750 tons of plutonium separated and in global circulation every year – that’s around 70 Sellafield’s ! For all the nightmarish risks this would entail you’d supply 2% of estimated global electricity demand 90 years from now. Mark Lynas may be absolutely terrified of human induced climate change – and he is right to be – but he directly undermines the prospects for real energy solutions by advocating nuclear power. Those of us who have spent decades fighting to shut down the nuclear industry were at the same time pushing efficiency and renewables – I’d suggest that effective climate campaigning does not include the nuclear option. So Mark, if you’ve got the time, read the history, understand energy, and stop this nonsense. A good start would be @

http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008_04/LymanVonHippel

Shaun writes: To claim that deploying the Integral Fast Reactor is part of the solution to climate change exposes a profound and dangerous lack of knowledge. Even the nuclear industry admits that fast reactors will not be commercially available before 2050 … In an attempt to address the aforementioned lack of knowledge about fast reactors, I’ve written a book that deals specifically with that technology (and two others), which will be published in about a week. It is completely untrue that we have to wait until 2050. We could build a PRISM reactor today, which is the commercial version of the design developed at Argonne National Laboratories in the States. India is building a fast reactor right now, Russia has one that’s been running for years, Japan is reopening theirs at Monju. The Soviets had one that ran just fine in what is now Kazakhstan all the way back in 1972. Deploying fast reactors using the IFR concept will NOT require any separation of plutonium whatsoever, and IFRs would not require the mining of a speck of uranium for literally hundreds of years, even if we produced all the energy humanity needs just with them. My book lays out an entirely workable scenario to use Gen III reactors (such as the AP-1000 and ESBWR) and Gen IV reactors (like the PRISM) to achieve virtually complete elimination of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (and nuclear waste and old weapons to boot) by 2050. Shaun, I have friends who, like you, “spent decades fighting to shut down the nuclear industry.” Yet they are completely convinced that the IFR deployment plan I propose is the way forward. I suspect you will be likewise persuaded if you allow yourself to look at the facts. Please don’t accuse Mark of writing nonsense when you yourself need to be brought up to speed and get accurate information. Please check out my website (click my name) for an update on when the book will be available.

Justin writes: Life cycle analysis shows that GHG emissions from the uranium fuel cycle may (at worst) be as high as combined-cycle natural gas plant…this is a FINITE RESOURCE and if we were to begin massive expansion of uranium-fission nuclear energy, that supply would soon become exhausted, by some estimates in as little as a decade. The IPCC states: “Total life-cycle GHG emissions per unit of electricity produced from nuclear power are below 40 gCO2-eq/kWh (10 gC-eq/kWh), similar to those for renewable energy sources.” Not only is that old argument baseless, but with IFRs it wouldn’t hold any water at all, since we wouldn’t mine uranium for several hundred years. As for the GHGs produced in constructing the plants, the new designs are so simple and small that they use a tenth as much concrete and steel as wind turbine systems of comparable capacity. As for the supply of uranium, if we use IFRs the supply is essentially inexhaustible, even after we would start mining nearly a thousand years hence once we’d finally have used up all our current stores of depleted uranium. As for solar thermal, I’m wondering what tens of thousands of square miles of solar panels in the desert are going to use for water? In California solar installations they’ve found that in order to keep them working efficiently they have to be pressure-washed every ten to twenty days. There’s virtually no fresh water available in the Sahara, much less quantities like that. You’d have to build a fleet of nuclear reactors on the edge of the Med to desalinate the fresh water to wash off your solar panels. Here’s a novel idea: how about building that fleet of reactors in the countries where you need the power, and forget the solar panels in the desert?

This - “net energy balance rapidly becomes negative once higher-grade ores are exhausted” - turns out to be misleading for uranium, because it turns out that just about any piece of ground anyone has ever stood on is, in terms of energy balance, higher-grade ore.

Pulverizing a tonne of hard rock to liberate its uranium takes the electricity that a CANDU reactor can make with 0.0000005 tonnes - half a gram - of uranium.

An average tonne of continental surface material contains five times this much, and there are tens of millions of cubic miles of crust that is richer still.

I recommend taking a look of the 2008 World Nuclear Industry status report from the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists to see what its problems are …

Regards!

http://www.thebulletin.org/web-edition/reports/2008-world-nuclear-industry-status-report/2008-world-nuclear-industry-status-re-1

Anybody who thinks we should redevelop nuclear power should read “Killing our Own The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation” by Harvey Wasserman and should also read:

“Secret Fallout” by the eminent Dr Ernest Sternglass (http://www.nucleardemolition.com/SF.pdf).

25% of the population of France will die by the age of 65 from cancer from official statistics and analysis. What is the reason for the global cancer epidemic? Nuclear power – Xenon, Radon, Tritium and other radionucleide emissions. We have 60 years of vile toxic waste built up that cannot even be approached, rotting in ponds at power plants all over the world, let alone “cleaned up” that will be toxic for billions of years and you want to produce more?

If we build another round of power stations, you may as well just shoot everybody now, it would be more merciful than killing them with cancer slowly.

Nuclear power has only ever been viable economically with massive state taxpayer subsidies and is a technology that cannot be divorced from bombs and weapons production – any third world country with it cannot be stopped from bombs production.

Wind and even wave power are cheaper, need no fuel and are completely clean.

What is so difficult about the choice?

What an interesting point of view! I have never thought that nuclear power can go along posotively with climate change! that’s simply great that someone has found another way out of the situation we are in. Hope these ideas will work for the better…

not that which i needed.

Next stop was Britain, where Hansen received a letter from the environment minister Phil Woolas in response to his earlier petitioning of Gordon Brown to lead a moratorium on new coal plants. The letter – available on Hansen’s website – is notable for its “self-deception” (in Hansen’s words): the government pretends that new fossil-fuel plants can be built almost with impunity as long as they are “carbon-capture ready”, allowing “economic retrofit of the technology when commercially available, by 2020 if possible”. In essence, the government is putting all its environmental eggs in the basket of a technology that has not yet been invented. Self- deception indeed. Thanks for this great article that mapped all the event as they happened.

Absolutely Mark. I’ve always thought apart from solar thermal for hot water and a large focus on improving our own energy efficiencies, nuclear fission really is the only serious zero-carbon game currently in town.