Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood.
—Marie Curie
This is the banner quote in the excellent article entitled “Green to the core? How I tried to stop worrying and love nuclear power”, by Judith Lewis in this week’s LA Weekly. In view of the issues I mentioned in my article about energy a while ago, this is very interesting reading, since it seems that there may be a huge reinvestment in nuclear energy in our near future. In case you don’t know (and most people don’t), here in the USA there is nuclear energy in our present in a big way. 20% of the electricity we use is generated in this manner. Pretty much all the stations generating this energy are rather old, and with the growing realization (or at least suspicion) that we should not continue to distort the environment by burning fossil fuels (in fact, it looks like we must stop urgently), the political (and other) will is beginning to change, and since nobody really wants to try something truly radical (such as a massive investment in research into solar power, as Nathan Lewis argues – convincingly, in my opnion – is the only sensible long term option), the nuclear issue is on the table again.
You have to read the article. It is very well written and quite satisfyingly long, as such an issue deserves. One excellent aspect of the article is the fact that it takes a little time here and there to talk about the terminology, and even some of the physics! This is great, since, as the article reports:
He [Golden, one of the interviewees] accuses the nuclear industry of “falling down on the job” by keeping so many secrets about its world, and holds that if the American public, like the more nuclear-friendly French, knew all the facts — what happens when atoms split, how unstable nuclides decay, how uranium is enriched and waste is transported — nuclear energy might be more popular with the American public. “Most Americans think they know about radiation because of Chernobyl, science fiction or the three-eyed fish in The Simpsons,” he says. “So as a country, we are phobic about radiation.”
and so Judith Lewis, in the early parts of the article, does a good job every now and again of stopping and talking a little about the terminology and the science in a very accessible way.
I’m not going to do any more extracts since it is a complicated matter. There’s political, engineering, science, sociological, safety, financial, and other issues all tangled up. No clear good-vs-bad division. So please go and read it when you have time. Come back and tell us what you think, if you’d like to.
I cannot over-emphasize how important I think it is to take the time out and read this article or an article like it. This is so important. All of our futures, and those of our decendants, are going to collide with this issue. Get yourself ready for the jolt.
-cvj
November 10th, 2005 at 8:08 pm
And just this week the Congress cut all future funding for Yucca Mountain repository, accepting for now that it would not be a stable and safe place to store our nation’s nuclear waste. That leave the indian reservation 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City as the most likely spot for now.
November 10th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
Check out this site for an interesting idea for solar energy. The Australians are developing the Solar Tower:
http://www.enviromission.com.au/project/project.htm
There’s a cool video to go along with it. We need more innovative and creative ideas like this floating around.
November 10th, 2005 at 8:26 pm
Oh great, so now, 35 years too late, people start coming around to the fact that gee, maybe it might be a good idea to *think* about nuclear power rather than running on raw emotion.
Wake me up when the same breakthrough occurs regarding over-population. Here’s a guess — it will likewise occur 35 yrs too late, and those responsible (eg JoAnn “everyone has the right to a child”) will never admit any wrondoing.
Right now pretty much every supposed environnmentalist in the country (apart from the few brave souls who quit the Sierra Club in disgust over the matter a few years ago) refuses to accept this basic reality and prefers to engage in demagoguery about how talking about this issue equals racism, immigrant-bashing, anti-feminism or whatever taboos of our time they can drag up.
November 10th, 2005 at 8:39 pm
Maynard Handley: I’m puzzled. How does someone who says that everyone has a right to a child become responsible for over-population? Acknowledging a right to do something is not the same as insisting that everyone do it.
For example, insisting on freedom of speech does not mean insisting that everyone must talk about anything, at the same time, for ever more.
Cheers,
-cvj
November 10th, 2005 at 8:43 pm
Clifford, I thought that was the idea of the blog…
November 10th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
Ah! -cvj
November 10th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
Is there an overpopulation problem? If we can resolve the energy issue (perhaps nuclear is the right path with electricity as the common energy currency or nuclear and sustainables in combination), stop consuming animal protein, address global warming, ensure a long term supply of fresh water, and focus on sustainable agriculture, the planet can easily support many more people.
It is interesting that projections of population increases in Latin America have fallen short precisely because women have become educated and exposed to the media and chosen NOT to have more children.
You should double check your facts on population growth. There are a variety of different scenarios, some with population levelling off and even declining. (peaks at about 16 billion)
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange/longrange.htm
But one of the key drivers in stabilizing and/or reducing population growth is the education and empowerment of women.
Elliot
November 10th, 2005 at 10:38 pm
Maynard Handley: I’m puzzled. How does someone who says that everyone has a right to a child become responsible for over-population? Acknowledging a right to do something is not the same as insisting that everyone do it.
What does “right to a child” mean? In JoAnne’s case it apparently means that society should make it easy for her to have children. This is precisely the wrong message for society to be sending out.
What can one say to a comment as idiotic as
“If we can resolve the energy issue (perhaps nuclear is the right path with electricity as the common energy currency or nuclear and sustainables in combination), stop consuming animal protein, address global warming, ensure a long term supply of fresh water, and focus on sustainable agriculture, the planet can easily support many more people.”?
Why not add that “if we can discover how to make wormholes using using microwave ovens and can thereby travel all over the galaxy there will be even less of a population problem”?
We have the situation we have right now, with the technology we have right now. Resources being used up too fast. It’s kinda irrelevant that the US birth rate is declining — the US population is using up more resources than the US has available, just as is happening in every other country. Simply freezing the population at what it is right now is not enough, the numbers have to actually go backwards. People running around making up fake rights to children is not a constructive response.
Education and empowerment of women is great. I am all for that. That gets us to about a static population, perhaps growing very slightly (US) or shrinking slightly (Western Europe). But that slight shrinking is not, IMHO, fast enough. Yes there will be social problems caused by a society lop-sided by age. They will pail compared to the problems caused by by the perfect storm of peak oil, global climate change, empty fisheries, growing deserts, disappearing aquifers etc etc etc that we are creating.
November 10th, 2005 at 11:15 pm
Maynard,
Simple Question: What do you think the correct sustainable number of humans on the planet is? You seem to think we have too many.
Elliot
November 11th, 2005 at 12:03 am
Paul Ehrlich has spoken very eloquently on this issue, pointing out the obvious fact that the sustainable number of people depends on all sorts of choices people have to make, eg
* how much biodiversity do people want
* what sort of lifestyles do people want
I, personally, think a world bereft of biodiversity, and with people forced to live the most minimal lifestyle imaginable is absolutely pointless. I’d rather a world that allows everyone to live better (and, of course, less wastefully) than wealthy Americans, along with the current biodiversity we have. My guess is that this could be done with 1 billion people, but that might be too ambitious and might have to drop to 1//2 billion.
November 11th, 2005 at 3:37 am
If you want to argue for public understanding of nuclear power I think Sweden is a better example than France. In France nuclear power is pushed by the government and the people are just along for the ride. It’s still a running joke how after Chernobyl the radioactive cloud in some mysterious way never passed over France. It just got edited out of the news.
In Sweden, on the other hand, we have a government that has for decades been rather hostile to nuclear power. On the other hand polls show that most people support it, and interestingly it is people living close to the power plants that like them the most.
One example of different attitude is iodine pills. I understand that in USA the industry has been fighting against ditributing these to people living close to reactors, fearing it would scare them. In Sweden we did that long ago and yet people didn’t fear nuclar power more.
November 11th, 2005 at 3:39 am
From the article (2nd part, half way down):
“A fair question you could put to one of your concerned scientists would be, How many Chernobyls equals one abrupt climate change?” says Brand. “A climate change where we have warmer and warmer oceans and deeper and deeper waters, where Florida goes under, and Bangladesh goes under, and we have more and more New Orleans—type events every year? A climate change where the Gulf Stream turns off, and not only Europe but the whole world gets much colder, drier and windier, and the Earth then drops its carrying capacity by 20 or 40 percent? ”
A (perhaps the?) key political question to come out of the article (this para) for me, is whether it is possible to convince the public that Chernobyl is less worse than climate change. Especially given how hard it has been to convince people of Climate Change. Chernobyl was immediate and confirmed all the “China Syndrome” fears. Is hurricaine Katrina enough to confirm the “Day After Tomorrow” fears?
People seem to fear the nuclear waste issue for ‘future-generations’ yet still a general “so it will get a little warmer? why is that a big deal? but Radiation!? RUN FOR THE HILLS!! (or away as the case may be…)”
Which of course returns to Clifford, et al’s continous refrain: Science Education.
as an aside: from “who’s reading CV” i gather only a small number of australians read CV. (or maybe it was just the time zone…) i’ll provide a little australian view….
Australia has no nuclear reactors for electricity generation, only exeperimental/medical type reactors. (which create enough of a thorny political issue.) The majority of Australian power is provided by Brown Coal. Some Hydro, Wind, and natural Gas. (and the soon to be complete Solar Tower mentioned above will provide a few more MW.)
This is despite the fact that Australia exports a lot of Uranium from its mines in Northern Australia, and I don’t have the figures but Australia holds around 15-20% of Uranium reserves.
In recent times politicians have started talking Nuclear, but while Coal remains so cheap, and as we haven’t signed Kyoto (yes, same excuses as the US) there is no pressing need to look elsewhere, beyond the typical lip service. Of course, without Nuclear, I don’t see how govt can provide the bass load capacity required for current energy consumption rates.
A nice little quandary we have got ourselves into, eh?
m
November 11th, 2005 at 7:26 am
it would be nice to make a “bubble popping” idea work, though?
Round off, a nice way to complete these theoretical ideas?
Was it not Roosevelt who said “let’s not fear, fear itself?”
Michael Crichton’s version is a portrayal of ignorance being allowed to infiltrate and cause a 911 by envirnomentalism terriotism idealizations. My friend Thales, the father of geometry, understood this.:)
November 11th, 2005 at 12:13 pm
Dear Clifford,
Thanks for the article: the “energy gap” has been increasingly featured in the news in the UK lately, with some dire predicitions of a potential energy shortfall this winter. So questions and conversation about energy sources have been cropping up more and more in the limited circles I move in. I have increasingly faced questions about nuclear power and there are a few answers I wish I knew. So I thought here would be a good place to pose them, perhaps some of your readers will be able to help my party conversations out!
From the article: “Uranium, by contrast, is abundant, inexpensive and not controlled by any cartel.” According to the wikipedia article with the current mix of nuclear reactors (and at the current energy demands) the estimates are of 50 years or so of low-cost uranium ore remaining. I didn’t. Using fast breeder reactors we have many, many more years of nuclear energy. And with uranium from the sea we have even longer!
I think it’s important to understand that not all nuclear power solutions are a panacea for our global power demands.
There are three questions I keep wishing I had an informed answer to:
1. Supposing that oil reserves will run out in X years, what rate do nuclear power stations have to be built at to entirely replace oil-reliant power stations by then? (I would appreciate a back-of-the-envelope answer to this which considers: that power demand is growing (so X is decreasing) and that if the construction rate is large enough then maybe the power required to construct the nuclear power stations may be significant!)
2. Does the current US shift towards nuclear power have the intention of constructing some fast-breeder reactors in the next few years?
3. Recently I was looking at the schedule for fusion from ITER and it is 30 years away from providing fusion power: 10 years to get plasma, then 20 years of testing! Can anyone explain to the uninformed why 20 years of testing (and perhaps testing is the wrong word) is needed?
Maybe I should stop going to parties.
Best wishes,
Paul
November 11th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
Paul,
Thanks!
Please follow the links I gave in the article to Nathan Lewis articles…. (will, it is a link to a link)….
He has real numbers there, and very interesting analysis…..which might inform further your remarks….
Note that I am not a supporter or detractor of nuclear energy. I’m still learning…. Just thought I’d put this all up for discussion.
Cheers,
-cvj
November 11th, 2005 at 12:27 pm
Although he has been characterized by some as a crackpot , John McCarthy (the inventor of the LISP programming language) has been out in front on this issue for many years. I will not make judgements about the validity or gaps in his reasoning but I think it is worth reconsidering his line of thought as there seems to be a sense that nuclear power may be one of the pathways out of our current energy dilemma.
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
Nothing here is going to be simple but it is time to develop (and execute) a coherent strategy to deal with this over the next century.
Elliot
November 11th, 2005 at 12:51 pm
Hi Clifford,
Thanks. Following links. In fact I will print them out and keep them in my bag, I’ll be the life of the party!
Best wishes,
Paul
November 11th, 2005 at 5:09 pm
As Ms. Lewis has now noted on her blog, there is a thriller novel about nuclear power, “Rad Decision”, written by a longtime engineer in the US nuclear industry (me), that is available at no cost at RadDecision.blogspot.com.
Ms. Lewis comments are at:
http://laweekly.blogs.com/judith_lewis/2005/11/rad_publishing.html
The novel also has a significant endorsement:
“I’d like to see RAD DECISION widely read.” – Stewart Brand.
Those interested in future energy issues will benefit by taking a look at Rad Decision – - and I think they will be entertained as well.
Of course, if you find my site useful, please pass the word.
James Aach
20+ years in the nuclear industry.
(sb quote used with permission)
November 11th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
James Aach:- thanks for the link!
-cvj
November 15th, 2005 at 10:55 pm
Nucular power not so grand.
#) it doesnt do much for transport, which uses oil, mostly
#) it makes electricity – is electricity the critical shortage?
… if we decide we need to minimise coal-burning, a whole range of efficiency options emerges..to start with… timers on electric water heaters.. etc etc
#) you need a whole centralised culture of armed security guards to transport and guard the uranium products, for a few hundred thousand years. Not my ideal state.
#) there is only a few years worth of cheap uranium, if it is to make all the electricity. Liquid Sodium (Urrgh!) breeders have been abandoned everywhere.
#) technophiles still have difficulty talking sensibly about safety. eg PIUS “inherently safe” (sic) reactors have been proposed made of thousands of graphite balls. Well the name is great, if youre an old altar boy, but get a grip people.
Graphite burns!…. what the heck do you think Wormwood pile#4 was made of?
November 15th, 2005 at 11:22 pm
I read the Lewis article in LA weekly:
and noted these:
“which for every megawatt of power blasts a ton of heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the skies”
-this is meaningless, an ignorance of physics terminology which would be the first item mentioned in techno-journalism 101
“It is widely accepted that one nuclear power plant spares the atmosphere the emissions of 93 million cars”
– this is tendentious to the point of deception – nuclear electricity doesnt replace oil
The Uranium cycle may be OK if everyone acts correctly. …Nobody would turn off all safety systems, would they? – except they did at Wormwood#4
Heres a true story from the front end of the cycle. At a uranium mine in Australia [in a World Heritage Park!], radioactive waste water was accidentally connected to drinking water pipes. Employees chugged it down.
November 16th, 2005 at 12:09 am
G Bruno, thanks, but there’s something that you need to know. Energy for transport is only a relatively small percentage of the energy demand that we make on our resources, and so she is correct to emphasize electricity. See the Nate Lewis links.
Cheers,
-cvj
November 16th, 2005 at 12:43 am
G Bruno, what is your alternative solution?
I see very limited options over the next 50-200 years. If we get to controlled fusion great but fossil fuels are finite, pollute the environment and “may” be contributing to global warming. Alternative sources, solar, wind are challenging economically and are pretty diffuse. Conservation and lower consumption is a good goal. For example I wonder what we could save in imported oil if we applied the 80 billion per year from the war to public transportation infrastructure here. Electricity will be the common energy currency in the future both for transportation and non-transportation applications.
I think nuclear power is something we need to take very seriously at this juncture. I am not thrilled about it for a variety of reasons, but I don’t see any significant viable alternatives that jump out and scream at me that they can be adopted on a macro scale anytime soon.
Elliot
November 16th, 2005 at 8:31 am
Bruno wrote:
”#) you need a whole centralised culture of armed security guards to transport and guard the uranium products, for a few hundred thousand years. Not my ideal state.
#) there is only a few years worth of cheap uranium, if it is to make all the electricity. Liquid Sodium (Urrgh!) breeders have been abandoned everywhere.”
The breeder reactors can potentially solve both problems. Also note that one of the reasons why breeder reactors have been abandoned is precisely because we don’t use much nuclear energy. There isn’t much of a demand for nuclear fuel, so it’s not economically viable to build breeder reactors.
A different kind of breeder reactor is the Heavy Metal Reactor, which can also be used to get rid of radioctive waste with long half life:
http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/physics/sobel/Nucphys/breed.html
November 16th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
Interesting article on “peak oil”
http://www.ameinfo.com/71519.html