For the last few weeks, I’ve been planning a Slate-style contrarian post, arguing that the US and maybe other countries should increase the subsidies for nuclear power associated with the attempt to launch a ‘nuclear renaissance’. My argument would have been two-fold. First, the straightforward point that it’s desirable to explore all options for non-carbon based electricity, and that the existing subsidies (combined with the absence of a carbon price) were not sufficient to make this happen (a decade after Bush launched the program, there are only a handful of starters, and most of the early proposals have been abandoned).
The second was political – for a substantial group (mostly on the political right), the desirability of nuclear power is an article of faith, and their (outdated) view that environmentalists resolutely oppose it forms part of the reason for adopting anti-science views and do-nothing policy positions on climate change. More funding for attempts to develop the nuclear option might convert some of them, and embarrass some others into dropping this particular talking point.
But after the disaster in Japan, and the failure of cooling systems at nuclear plants there, it’s most unlikely that anything along these lines will happen.
We have yet to see how bad the outcome will be, but it’s already apparent that two plants have suffered partial meltdowns or something close enough that they will never operate again. As cooling systems continue to fail, more are being affected. It’s likely, based on past experience, that plants in the same complex will be offline for a long period. So, even in the best case, the economic effects will be severe. The worst case could be disastrous.
The economics of building a new nuclear plant in the developed world were marginal at best before this disaster. The political climate was much more favorable than it had been, but still fragile. In the best possible case, the response to the failures will involve new, and expensive safety equipment, and more restrictions on the location of new plants. But that will almost certainly be enough to stop any new projects, and maybe even the handful (two sites in the US, and one in Finland) currently under way in developed countries other than Japan.
In Japan itself, political support for nuclear power has been fairly solid until now, but construction of new plants was already slowing down. In the wake of the disaster, it seems likely (if only because of the need for diversification) that the replacements for the plants destroyed or taken off-line will be non-nuclear, probably either gas-fired or renewable.
That leaves China (and perhaps India) as the only real hope for large-scale construction of new nuclear plants. It remains to be seen how that will play out.
Having said all that, the risks from the nuclear plants are insignificant when compared to the catastrophic loss of life and economic destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami. It’s hard to know what can be done in the face of such destructive force, other than to help the survivors as best we can.
John Quiggin 
Nuclear advocates ‘on the hit list’, Japanese crew ‘facing near certain death’. Ooh dear. By mid century I believe the net energy return from coal and gas will be a lot lower than for uranium as their depletion rates are faster. By the second half of the century we’ll need to replace the lot as well as oil which has already peaked. Our western class lifestyle is equivalent to about 5 kilowatts of continuous power (Mackay) and another 2 billion people aspire to that level. For that much renewable power I can’t conceive of finding either the capital, affording the recurrent cost and putting up with intrusiveness and necessary rationing that would entail. The cost would be trillions, the physical size daunting with new structures everywhere and our energy supply would be fickle.
No doubt China will draw on the recent Japanese experience and incorporate more safety features into their nuclear program. The payoff is that I’d expect many Chinese to eventually become relatively wealthy, wealthier than the Germans for example. The current fears over nuclear will give way to envy of those who have it.
@frankis
“Fukushima then is already a worse crisis than Three Mile Island was, as claimed by an interviewee for Ernestine’s NYT article”
Frankis, I don’t have an article in the NYT.
You surprise me Ernestine. Pardon my shorthand.
How do you incorporate safety measures when the risks cannot be completely identified?
Frankly, I am incredulous that anybody could still support nuclear power generation. The Japanese nuclear crisis is now spiralling totally out of control. All workers have been pulled out of the Fukuchima plant. It is doubtful that any will go back in the near term. This means they have totally abandoned a situation which is totally out of control. There is no other construction that can be put on it. All official and corporate protestations that the situation is still being managed are total glozing lies.
At least four reactors are stricken and one or more are probably partially melted down. Massive cooling ponds storing many tons of spent fuel rods (still highly dangerous) are boiling away. None of this is even being managed now. The site has already become a total no-go zone for humans even in protective gear. The final outcome of this event could exceed the Chernobyl disaster. How many more proofs are needed of the completely unsafe nature of commercial nuclear energy?
Going nuclear is actually the path to destruction and penury. It is totally unsafe, destructive of wealth value and unsustainable as peak uranium is already past. All the links to these facts are in the discussion thread above. It’s time that nuclear power supporters cease their dangerous, delusionist nonsense and face reality. It’s game over for nuclear power.
Ok, I totally used the word “totally” too much but my essentially message is… totally correct.
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/03/japan-nuclear-situation-out-of-control/
Let’s not get all hysterical simply because one plant in a far away land has a few well publicised problems with one or two or four (or more?) of its reactors.
I must admit, that personally, I do not favour or see the need for our countryside to be pock marketed with nuclear plants simply to satisfy our unquenchable thirst for electricity.
That said, I do see a need for one or two nuclear reactors (located up in the Northern Territory). But only to be used as the good Lord intended, to provide medical and research isotopes, and to augment our weapons stockpile.
@Freelander
You obviously do not know what “hysterical” means.
Please provide evidence for your strange label.
If radiation peaks at 1 sievert, if workers are forcibly withdrawn from a nuclear crisis, if local nuclear engineers have to call for American assistance, if fuels rods suffer a partial meltdown, if containment structures are damaged, if WIN News 5pm news report concludes “All you can do is cross your fingers and hope”, if Stephanie cook (editor of Nuclear Intelligence Weekly ) says “you can’t think of every eventuality”, if Barry Brook (BNC) pretends “the situation is clearly (but slowly) stabilising”, then what response do you expect?
The sheer incompetence, of some, to accept moral responsibility for this rotten nuclear nightmare is beyond belief. Your dream of Northern Territory nuclear reactors to “augment our weapons stockpile” is sheer obscenity.
So I see your ‘hysteria” and raise you “obscenity” and indolence.
@rog
Obviously you wouldn’t build nuclear power plant in place that had a history of Richter 7+ quakes or large tidal waves. The newer designs are supposed to have passive cooling that doesn’t require diesel backup. I think a big surprise is that a fuel rod cooling pond leaked or evaporated (if I understand it right); that’s another new consideration. The domes are designed to withstand one aircraft crash perhaps that should be increased and there should be more layers of containment. Viruses in the operating system are another issue.
Put this in perspective; nearly a million people a year are killed in car crashes. So far as we know only one Fukushima nuclear worker has been mortally harmed. In China alone 5,000 people a year are killed in coal mine accidents and countless more succumb to respiratory problems. Some of the harm caused by Cyclone Yasi, the Brisbane floods and the Victorian bushfires can be attributed to AGW from coal burning. Thus I consider nukes to be relatively safe compared to other managed risks.
Arn’t they they new designs that have reactive metal coolant like liquid sodium? What happens if an earthquake cracks the housings? How much passive cooling is provided by an inferno of sodium caused by its contact with air or water?
@Freelander
Freelander – you are at it again – not switching on your tongue in cheek irony alerts
with this one..
“Let’s not get all hysterical simply because one plant in a far away land has a few well publicised problems with one or two or four (or more?) of its reactors. ”
one, two, three four five six??? Lets not get carried away definitely. People and corporations leaving Tokyo in droves, the sharemarket punishing severely..
no – problems here a’tall, a’tall… (jeez how do I put up with these pro nuclear denialists?? I have to breathe deeply and chant ommmmm… with that much energy to get in here and post monkton style “evidence” ie the evidence you get when you dont want the truth…all I can say is what a human wastetrap of evidence – a literal S bend or fat trap of accummulated waste on the march towards progress).
@Hermit
Hermit, 100,000+ (and counting) dead from Chernobyl doesn’t seem to be included in your balanced “perspective”. We still haven’t fixed Chernobly 20 years later, and now we have another meltdown. How many more new plants and meltdowns will we have? Can you guarantee that in 10,000+ years time all nuclear waste will be safely managed? How can you make this guarantee?
@Alice
Oh and Im not referring to Freelander in post 10 – the very charicature..a send up… of a free markets type person…Chris missed it this time.
@Hermit
What was the question to which you provided the answer to rog @8, p4? I can’t find it.
As Hermit points out, obviously you wouldnt build a nuclear power plant in place that had risks, known and unknown.
Its worth reflecting on Rumsfelds advice about knowns and unknowns and just how accurate it proved to be.
@Hermit
The official figure is about half that over the last decade but yes the point is valid.
@iain
That’s because it isn’t the case. It’s possible that about 4000 may eventually die prematurely as a result of Chernobyl. Chernobyl is irrelevant however because as has been repeatedly pointed out, plants aren’t designed or operated in that way any more. You might as well cite road safety figures from the 1980s against contemporary motor vehicle usage.
@rog
The problem is often not with the knowns and the unknowns, often its with what you are sure you know which turns out not to be true.
@Fran Barlow
Fran, what you have just said was never true, and it’s usefulness even as a tired old cliche has come to an end. It is quite clear that if in the current situation the public’s radiation exposure is less than at Chernobyl, it is due in large part to chance. If the wind had blown the other way today, if the reactors had cracked open just a little more, the world could very well be facing the worst ever nuclear disaster.
Rejecting nuclear derived power may be counter productive if coal and/or gas was the replacement energy.
Once again Fran – you are simply manking stuff up and parading it as statistics.
You say “It’s possible that about 4000 may eventually die prematurely as a result of Chernobyl.”
You have no idea (none whatsoever) for the simple reason epidemiological studies were done after Chernobyl. None were done after three mile island and none will be done after Fukushima.
The sad fact is
*Businesses always want the cheapest costs despite what they say, write and disseminate through the blogosphere about nuclear safety (eg http://www.bravenewclimate is one such site but there are more)
*Businesses will build nuclear eactors in unsafe areas (eg earthquake zones on the coast – how stupid is that?) if its cheaper to access the water needed to cool the reactors (desalinistaion plants are easily built on the coast – piping water to cool reactors inland is just that much more expensive).
*They will build reactors close to capital cities for the same reasons as for 2. It is cheaper to pipe/cable energy not far away than further away.
*That makes business short term immediate cost concerns trump the safety concerns with nuclear.
Yes. I wish I could subscribe to Fran’s idea that “things aren’t done like that anymore”, not only as to nukes to but a whole crate of ecological and development issues. A step too far, especiallyafter last weeks announcement re
Gunns in Tasmania.
Oh yes, Fran we DO do things differently these days. These days days the science is ignored totally when applied to inconvenient truths it presents, rather than partially, like ten years ago. After watching the “New World Order” in action in places like Tasmania, Queensland and NSW, let alone the rest of the planet, I’d say Fran is naive at best.
I think you mean well Fran, but I don’t think you understand how politics is done and why it’s such a problem for science and rational planning.
No worries here…..
If baseload renewables get the same research funding and effort, plus the same subsidies as nuclear has over the last 20 years, we are home and hosed.
Geothermal, tidal, wave, hydro, fresh-saltwater membranes, and pumped hydro can all combine to construct a viable Australian renewable energy baseload plan. It may cost more than the short-term operating costs of a nuclear reactor, but nonetheless is a much preferable outcome.
New storage capacity, such as liquid metal batteries, can also improve the role of solar panels and wind generators.
However there are associated issues – you cannot run a sustainable energy policy if you have increasing population over the environmental constraints. There is also the problem of loss of competitiveness if rancid regimes using cheap labour and cheap nuclear energy pollute world markets.
But at least Australia will not be complicit and we will not be associated with any such race-to-the-bottom.
The Japanese nuclear crisis is now spiralling further and further out of control.
“The EU’s energy chief, Guenther Oettinger, told the European parliament the situation was out of control. “We are somewhere between a disaster and a major disaster,” he said. “There could be further catastrophic events, which could pose a threat to the lives of people on the island.” He said it was impossible to “exclude the worst”, adding: “There is talk of an apocalypse and I think the word is particularly well chosen.”” – Guardian UK.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/16/japan-nuclear-crisis-escalates
This disaster along with the reality of Peak Uranium* means a death blow has been dealt to nuclear power generation. Nuclear power is dead. Time to get on with renewable energy!**
*Note: Peak Uranium production occured in 1980. That peak level has never been approached since.
** Note: We don’t yet know whether renewable energy can sustain our current economy, a bigger economy or a smaller economy. This point is actually immaterial now. Renewable energy is our ONLY option. We have to go as hard as we can for a renewable economy and achieve the best we can with it.
Talk of an apocalypse? – it has already happened, first the earthquake and then the tsunami.
@Ikonoclast
More precisely, we do. We know that at this stage renewables can’t even bear the load carried by nuclear power (let alone that of coal, gas and oil) at acceptable economic and environmental cost, nor is there any realistic basis for thinking they will even in the long term. Some astonishing technological breakthrough will be required.
A more paradoxical juxtaposition of claims rarely occurs in cyberspace. “Renewables” can’t be our only option if it’s not an option. One might as well say that we don’t know whether we will be able to develop time travel or telekinesis but these are our only options. If nuclear power is rejected then the fossil hydrocarbons are are the only ubiquitously available option that humans have the resources to deploy. This would imply an acceptance of catastrophic reversals in human life chances in the long term, but hey, if accepting prospective catastrophe is the only option for avoiding taking our responsibilities seriously and making nuclear technology do what we want it to do then I guess people can make that trade.
No, we don’t. That would be utterly futile. Hardly anyone is going to accept misery in the short medium to long term simply because they fear that future generations will be up against it. They will accept coal and gas and whatever until it runs out and the biosphere irreversibly harmed and then hope they aren’t about to see what happens then.
There will be massive squabbling over resources and people looking the other way ans tens of millions and hundreds of millions are left to fend for themselves in conditions authored by reckless first worlders who decided to look after themselves because anything else was just too hard. They may of course comfort their troubled consciences by making frivolous and showy attempts at abatement like renewables and soil carbon before shrugging their shoulders.
We had just better hope that sense prevails and nuclear power is enabled to step up and make clean energy economies on a world scale viable.
@Fran Barlow
More precisely, everything Fran is saying about renewables is wrong.
You keep ignoring it, Fran.
Since, on historical evidence have people running things, ever based decisions on science, logic and rationality?
“Trust Us”(?).
And on a whole gammut of issues, what’s more.
@Ikonoclast
Oettingers comments seem out of place with his previous calls for calm and patience.
It’s terrible watching an escalating technological failure unfold. I’m relieved that the italics meltdown is fixed. That’s one small positive.
@Fran Barlow
Fran, all of your assertions are incorrect and provably so from an empirical and scientific standpoint. In 2005, nuclear energy provided only 6% of the world’s total power needs. In that year biomass and hydro combined provided 7% of the world’s total power needs. From this standpoint, nuclear energy is more marginal than biomass and hydro.
Of course, the picture is somewhat different when we consider stationary energy for elecricity generation. The world picture is that about 64% of electricity generation comes from fossil fuels, 19.5% from renewables (18% from hydro) and 16.5% from nuclear. Once again, nuclear energy is the smallest category contributor although one can’t call 16.5% marginal.
Again, the picture is different for individual countries. Australia and many other countries use 0% nuclear energy. The USA gets 20.3% of its electrical generation from nuclear power and France gets 78.1% from that source. It is clear that countries like the USA and France cannot close down nuclear power generation overnight. For the mid-term it is an inescapable committment for these countries. (These are 2009 figures.)
Going back to the world picture, we note that 6% of all the world’s energy comes from nuclear sources and 16.5% of all stationary electrical generation. This is about the best that nuclear power can do due to the phenomenon of Peak Uranium. Peak Uranium production has already passed (in 1980). I have posted enough links and facts above in this blog thread to establish this as fact. Admittedly, this peak was due to political and economic factors rather than resource scarcity. However, the fact is that subsequent production which continued the depletion of the best grade ores and the use of weapons cores for fuel now means that that peak can probably not be attained again. If it is, a rapid drop away in production will ensue in any case.
This means that 16.5% of current electricty demand (and a lesser percentage of greater demand) is that best that nuclear power can ever do. And it will fall way from that peak. Absurd claims about getting uranium from seawater and large yet to be discovered speculative reserves have been comprehensively scientifically refuted. (Again the links have been posted in this thread.)
Claims about using breeder reactors and thorium (which requires breeder reactors) founder on the performance of breeder reactors to date. All commerical breeder reactors have been expensive and dangerous failures. Safety and technical rpblem with breeder reactors have proven insoluable to date. They are just too tempremental and dangerous. Reprocessing safety issues have never been solved. Again, links and quotes on this have been posted above.
Your statement, “We know that at this stage renewables can’t even bear the load carried by nuclear power” is refuted by current facts. As stated above, renewables carry 19.5% of world electrivity generation load. Nuclear carries (or did until the Japan crisis) 18%. This clear obvious and immediate refutation of your blind ambit claim is devastating to your argument. Not only do you not know how much more of the load could be carried by renewables, you didn’t even know that your claim is refutable right now without one more watt of renewable generation.
This demonstrates that there is nothing frivolous and showy about current renewable energy and arguments in favour of more renewable energy.
I hope you have the intelligence and grace to know when your arguments have been comprehensively demolished. And to also know that the supercilious scorn you poured on my argument evaporates like… well like puny amounts of seawater on 1,700 tons of spent fuel rods, when hit by a few real hard facts.
I don’t claim that renewables can “save the world”. I still consider that an open question. But I do know, to a high probability of certainty from the science, that fossils and nuclear cannot save the world and indeed can only further destroy our world with climate change and nuclear disasters.
@Fran Barlow
This is not appropriate. If baseload renewables get the same funding and subsidies as nuclear has over the last 20 years, this will resolve.
potential baseload renewables are many:
Geothermal,
hydrogen,
tidal,
wave,
hydro,
fresh-saltwater membranes,
biodiesel,
and pumped hydro.
There are also new technologies on the horizon – salt water capacitors.
Also improved storage, eg liquid metal batteries, can turn wind and solar into baseload.
Renewable baseload will be more cash-expensive, but in the long-run economically cheaper.
@paul walter
More often than you might think. Knowledge and insight is always partial — our science suffers accordingly and of course matters of pernicious stakeholder interest also mess with evidence based policy.
Yet as frustrated as one gets at times with the operations of contemporary society, it is several bridges too far to imply that science, logic and reason have played no part, or less than a very significant part in authoring contemporary society. That it has is how we can see that both Pell and Plimer are prattling fools. It’s why almost every human life statistic has improved for most classes of person not just in the last 300 years or 150 years but even in the last 3 decades as well. We are frustrated precisely because when governments and societies make errors, more of us can see not only that they are errors, but how they are erros and how it might be otherwise. If science, logic and reason had not played a significant part in authoring us, very few of us would be any the wiser and those who thought things seemed wrong would, Pell or Howard-like, be appealing to the deity for relief.
The mere fact that humans have messed up in the past and will certainly do so in the future is not a sound argument against trying to do better, especially when our past errors and Unsinn are authoring future problems.
Look, so they’ve had a few problems with that old reactor built in 1971. They assure us that the latest ones are just fine. In fact, they practically decommission themselves at the slightest sign of trouble. I believe them, just as I did in ’71 when they said the same. Surely, you don’t believe they would lie to us twice?
@Ikonoclast
Yes but it was roughly 16% of supplied electricity. The fact that people burn wood and cowdung to keep warm or power motor vehicles with petroleum is not germane to this discussion — or at least, not germane in a way that helps claims against nuclear power.
Whether you do or not, you are clearly not replacing this 16.5% with renewables, much less challenging coal or gas or oil.
You haven’t even established it as a useful concept. And this is why:
The most germane question is how people would meeet their needs without nuclear.
“Whether you do or not, you are clearly not replacing this 16.5% with renewables, much less challenging coal or gas or oil.”
This what people disagree with Fran. You can’t go around saying that something is “clear” when it isn’t established. Please provide evidence.
@Freelander
“They”* must be lying because the 1971 technology is the identical to current, or, because they always lie?
* The Nuclear Falsehood Propagation People, I guess.
Those who write stuff like “authoring us” might have a fruitful conversation with Pell and other people of the book(s) where ‘the word’ is all there is.
@Fran Barlow
You are possibly reading my post a little too quickly. I admit it is a bit of a “wall of text”.
I did mention that electricty generation was a different issue, right there in my second parargraph, so I wasn’t skirting that issue. I did admit that a 16.5% contribution by nuclear was not a marginal proportion. I also pointed out that the reliance on nuclear power for electricity generation varied markedly by country. I then conceded “It is clear that countries like the USA and France cannot close down nuclear power generation overnight. For the mid-term it is an inescapable committment for these countries.”
You then state “you are clearly not replacing this 16.5% with renewables”. By this I infer you are stating categorically that the world economy cannot find another 16.5% share of renewables for electricity generation in the next (say) 20 years. Let us assume that my “mid-term inescapable committment” admission re nuclear power translates to decomissioning it progressively over 20 years. In the case of hydro I would agree, especially in the first world and BRIC countries. We can accept that hydro is maxed out on feasible sites in those countries.
This leaves wind, solar and possibly tidal as the next significant sources. I really do not think that you can state with categoric certainty that wind, solar and tidal potential cannot be ramped up to provide another 16.5% of world electricity generation in the next 20 years. For example;
“The share of electricity produced from renewable energy in Germany has increased from 6.3 percent of the national total in 2000 to about 16.1 percent in 2009.” – Wikipedia
If Germany can produce that progress in 9 years then progress, on the scale I imply namely 16.5% worldwide, is certainly possible in 20 years, especially in the First World and BRIC. Bear in mind that Germany is not even a notably sunny or windy country and its tidal potential most be negligable.
You are right that this scale of improvement will not challenge the contribution of fossil fuels to electricity production nor to total world energy production but it will completely replace unsafe nuclear.
I HAVE established Peak Uranium as a valid concern. Following on from mentioning political and economic constraints I did mention that resource constraints are now a near limiting factor in any case. I established this with links to overviews of the best scientific data available to this point in time.
I share your concern that replacing the overall contribution of fossils to world energy use (oil 37%, coal 25% and gas 23% in round numbers) for a total of 87% will be our main problem. This will be a 50 year task at least. The thing is sooner or later it has to be done. Oil, coal, gas and uranium are all non-renewables. They will all run out. The process is basically under way now with peak production of oil, coal and gas occuring in 2010 plus or minus 5 years.
The real problems being very rapidly after peak production so we need to begin a crash program of implementing renewables right now. Countries like Germany are on the right track. And if renewables can’t save us then nothing can save us because everything else runs out and thus cannot sustain a large global population in the billions indefinitely.
You know, we could actually survive without our vast fleet of personal automobiles. Yes, we would need foot travel, bicycles, some public taxis, buses, tractors, machinery, emergency vehicles, trucks, trams and trains. But I am sure if we removed personal automobiles entirely we could cut oil consumption by at least 40%.
@Sam
On the contrary, the onus is on those who say renewables can shoulder this burden to offer evidence that it can. Right now, nuclear power is supplying this energy. If people such as you say that, rather than being developed to supplant coal and gas, it should be abandoned in favour of renewables, then you need to show that this is feasible in technological, cost and operational terms. I don’t have to prove the negative, even though I do note a lack of evidence from proponents of renewables to support the contrary.
Let us be very clear. At least since 1979, people such as you have loudly expressed concerns about nuclear power. I know because I was amongst those doing so too. During all of the time I was doing that, I earnestly believed that renewables could do, not only the job nuclear was doing, and better, but that coal and gas were doing too. I strongly believed that solar power, especially solar thermal plus storage could scale up enough to do it. I was very keen on wave and tidal power, and on algal biomass, on geothermal, and on technologies liked pumped hydro storage. The more I looked at the sheer scale of the demand on the one hand and the costs of implementing the technological solutions on the other, the less certain I became. Those costs are not merely monetary either — the ecological footprint of renewables — the amount of concrete and steel and copper and plastics is very considerable.
Personally, if someone could show me how some suite of renewables really could underpin life on the planet approximately as we know it now in the first world ((but extended to everyone) for the foreseeable future, even at three times the cost of nuclear and with no bigger a footprint and on a timeline commensurate with the need to abate CO2 emissions , I’d be OK with that (though I suspect in this as in many things I’m at the more generous end of the spectrum – I think we should be willing to pay a premium to protect the integrity of ecosystem services), but as things stand I think this would be heroically optimistic. I suspect most people aren’t willing to pay a lot more than 10-20% on the price of coal and gas and oil. Recently, when Abbott suggested petrol might rise as a consequence of a Co2 price by 6.5cents per litre (about 4%) this was the cause of enormous wailing and gnashing of teeth about how dreadful it all was. I don’t see a proposal to raise energy costs by more than an an order of magnitude as politically sustainable — and at this stage — that’s where renewables promise to go, if we really are replacing 100% of fossil HC.
Bear in mind also that we are not, in this discussion, merely speaking of Australia — a relatively privileged country after all. Large parts of the world’s population fancy it as their right or at least their aspiration to live somewhat as we do. Bear in mind also that the world is going to need to pump a lot more potable water than in the past and probably have to resettle people displaced by climate chnage in large numbers, so future energy demand both in per capita and absolute terms is going to be rather higher than at present, even if we achieve significant energy efficiencies. World population may well stabilise at 9 billion by 2050 and then start trending back — let’s hope that it does — but that still leaves us with a significant problem between now and then. Can it really be ethical to advocate a solution that, if implemented, would demand acceptance of the persistence and probably the insensification of misery for 2-3 billion people? Isn’t the onus on those proposing renewables as the solution to show that what they propose does not entail this scenario in practice?
Fran,
how about you stop worrying about ‘the world’ and focus your attention on the few people – about 50 I read – who have been and are still working at the damaged nuclear power plant in Japan. These volunteers are risking their own lives in the hope of saving that of thousands if not millions of other people, although it may not be ‘the world’.
Consider the lives saved by those individuals in Chernobil who sacrificed themselves to save the lives of others.
To publicise shonky statistics on the number of people who died despite the efforts of those volunteers is, IMO, an outragious insult to those who prevented even bigger damages to ‘the world’ by paying the ultimate price themselves.
When you, Fran, fly to Japan, hose down whatever someone thinks needs hosing down at the destroyed reactors, and come back, then I’ll listen to you.
I’m sort of at a loss now. I’ve made all my arguments. My arguments are logical and based on a much broader energy survey and much better science (supported by links) than nuclear proponents ever demonstrate in this forum. Yet, it seems to make no impression on staunch nuclear supporters. In reality, it does not matter. The physical realities will put nuclear power generation out of business. All I can is this;
“There is only one thing sadder than a person with an idee fixe supported facts… and that is a person with an idee fixe not supported by facts.
@Fran Barlow
Ok, you want a link to back up my contention that renewables are economically feasible? In the next thread, Aidan provides this
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=smaller-cheaper-faster-does-moores-2011-03-15
What do you say to that?
@Ernestine Gross
Well they are much to be commended — of that there can be no doubt. Let us hope they survive unscathed and get the very best of treatment and support. They really are examples to us all of courage applied to a compelling cause. One may say the same of the heroes of Chernobyl.
The rationale for their acts is/was of course the wellbeing of people beyond the perimeter — to some extent, the rest of the world. It would dishonour the risk they were taking if I were to worry only about them when they, through their courageous acts, have shown they are concerned more for others.
@Ikonoclast
If it is done too late, it will almost certainly be moot. Catastrophe will be upon us. That is why we cannot afford to place all or even a substantial porpotion of our metaphorical eggs in the renewables basket. Let us by all means continue to do do serious R & D on them, and aim for energy efficiency in business process and in housing and residential and transport. Let’s try to ensure that we reduce our call on potable water both in agriculture and in industrial, commercial and residential. Where renewables are feasible, by all means, let us support them. Let’s try really hard to ensure that ruminant livestock becomes a boutique activity and to restore, as far as we can, the ecological integrity of wilderness biomes that existed prior to the industrial revolution. And let us too ensure that women in the developing world are empowered — and not the mere chattels of their fathers, brothers and husbands, and that they are able to acquire the skills they need to be able to approach personal autonomy and to decline to be in perpetual motherhood.
It’s very clear though that even if we pursue all of those things with the vigour and insistence that we should, we will need reliable power at acceptable cost, and especially in the developing world. We will certainly need it in Japan too. If you doubt renewables can do this when we need to do it, then unless you are genuinely indifferent to human suffering it’s hard to accept your claims.
@Sam
That sounds fabulous.
What would you say is the lead time on getting 50cents per watt PV installed on the scale needed to perpetually supply all projected energy demand?
What would the lifecycle footprint of such a manufacturing project look like?
What would the projected decommissioning costs amount to and when would these fall due?
@Fran Barlow
Well these are valid questions. But does this piece of evidence lead to retract your claim that renewables are economically feasible?
should be infeasible
@Sam
No. More information is required. As things stand it’s claimed that PV can be produced at $1 per watt and may be 50 cents per watt by 2018. At $1 per watt that’s $1bn for a 1GW PV facility. Allow for about 25% CF and the cost per firm GW is about $4bn per GW — i.e. about the same as that of nuclear power assuming no learning curve for the latter and about 90% availability. The life of a nuclear power plant can be forty-sixty years — but for PV? It’s not clear. It’s also not clear what installation would add to PV.
If the cost does indeed drop to 50 cents per watt that would be impressive indeed but there’s still the question of overnight storage. Do you have vanadium flow batteries? How does that affect the cost of the installation in lifecycle terms?
Much as it might seem otherwise, I am not fixated on nuclear power. I’m fixated on what will work for humanity in practice on a world scale for the next 100 years or so. On the day a solution or combination of solutions ticks the boxes better than nuclear, I’m for that. In Iceland, for example, they are able to run their stationary supply and district heating almost entirely on a combination of hydro and geothermal. I wouldn’t favour nuclear power there because something else is working well enough. Sadly, hardly any of the world is as well-placed as Iceland is for renewables.