Nuclear Power, Global Warming and the Environment

More nuclear power less money for terrorists

2008-06-30T06:24:00.003-05:00

It's been said before but it bears repeating, we don't want to buy oil from countries that support terrorism. The faster we can move away from oil and build nuclear power plants, the faster funding sources for terrorism will dry up. From today's Wall Street Journal. Great article on the pros (and cons) of nuclear power

One final point about security: One of the biggest dangers to our security is from oil nations providing support to anti-U.S. terrorist groups. The faster we can move away from carbon-based energy, the faster we take away that funding source. Nuclear energy offers the fastest and most direct path to that safer future.

When will clarity rise through the mud?

2008-02-08T06:34:00.000-05:00

Life is a machine. It takes energy to run it. The living cells in plants synthesize chemicals from sunlight. We eat plants, and a few animals. Only nuclear power draws energy from a power source that life does not build upon. Of course growing plants for fuel (biofuels) impacts the environment, and in a way that non-scientist promoters fail to understand. Today's New York Times reports again on how energy choices impact the environment. It's called entropy for those who have studied thermodynamics.

The benefits of biofuels have come under increasing attack in recent months, as scientists took a closer look at the global environmental cost of their production. These latest studies, published in the prestigious journal Science, are likely to add to the controversy.

These studies for the first time take a detailed, comprehensive look at the emissions effects of the huge amount of natural land that is being converted to cropland globally to support biofuels development.

When will we wake up, get educated (or listen to those who are), and conclude as a society that nuclear power can displace the use of chemical fuels (fossil or bio) and liberate our planet from the burden that chemical fuels demand?

Nuclear Power delivers low cost, 24 hours a day

2008-02-06T19:58:00.000-05:00

In the no news is good news category, US nuclear power plants are running at a record capacity of 91.8%. In other words, they keep on ticking no matter the time of day or year. The article goes on to state that the average production cost of power was 1.68 cents per kilowatt hour. Now I wonder what the best solar power plants can do (of course only when the sun is shining, so at night you'll still be able to turn on the lights in your home, whereas the solar power systems won't be producing anything. So at best solar has a capacity factor of 50%, far less than +90% for nuclear. Now where are those solar power cost numbers, oh yes, here they are: Solarbuzz.com says 30 cents per/kwh, and they go on to say that is 2 to 3 times the average RESIDENTIAL bill. What they don't say is that it is 18 times the cost of nuclear power. I really don't want my electric bill to go up by almost 20 times, and of course there won't be any electricity at night from solar power.

U.S. nuclear power plants posted all-time record highs in electricity production and efficiency in 2007, according to preliminary figures released today by the Nuclear Energy Institute. U.S. nuclear plants generated approximately 807 billion kilowatt-hours (kwh) of electricity last year, exceeding by more than two percent the previous record-high of 788.5 billion kwh of electricity set in 2004.

The wikipedia entry on economics of nuclear power plants, claims that new nuclear power plan construction will cost $1,984 per kWe. So thats $2/watt, but that watt flows continuously while solar does not. Nanosolar claims $1/watt is that cost of coal, and they will match that. Is that in direct sunlight at noon? Do you have to track the sun? What do you do at night? Who dusts the collector panels?

Patrick Moore on Nuclear Power

2008-01-31T16:57:00.001-05:00

A great interview on CNET News.com. Patrick Moore is the founder of Greenpeace (what a name! ranks right up there with calling the world's biggest frozen island, Greenland). Patrick has some quite quotable answers in the Q&A on CNET. My favorite is his take on solar power:

Solar photovoltaic simply has no place on the grid. All the money that's going into subsiding solar is a waste of money because it could be being used on more effective technologies that we already have that are not unreliable and intermittent. The $3.2 billion that California is subsidizing in solar would build a 1,000-MW nuclear plant and provide 10 times as much power into the system and on a reliable basis.

Wow! so to equal a nuclear power plant, California taxpayers would have to spend $32 billion. Maybe that will get their attention. Also he notes that we have 1000 years of power available from existing mined uranium that is currently in the U.S. reactors. Not sure if he is multiplying 100 power plants by 1000 years. I think we should have 1000 nuclear power plants in the U.S. so that we can completely eliminate coal and save the 6,000 people per year he quotes. I think most of these coal miners are in China, but having spent a few months in Hong Kong, I can tell you those chinese people would really welcome some blue skies!

Biodiesel vs Food

2008-01-19T15:07:00.000-05:00

Interesting article in the New York Times today on fuel oil vs food oil. Basic economics. If one devotes cropland for growing biodiesel, food crops will be more scarce and prices for food will rise. Nuclear power does not divert resources (land, fertilizer, etc.) to produce energy. The best thing we can do for the world's poor is build nuclear power plants on a scale that lowers the per kilowatt cost way below that for fossil fuels.

If only science writers knew the three laws of thermodynamics, and basic economics. Then no one would be surprised by rising food prices in an era of expensive oil and crops being diverted for fuel!

Productive Climate Discourse

2008-01-14T06:25:00.000-05:00

Yeah! Finally. A focus on what to do, big thoughts, not stuck in the mud details.

A great summary by Andrew Revkin at the New York Times. Please stop by his blog page and add your thoughts on how nuclear power can be a positive force for global change! Andrew lists a number of actions to take, and this one focuses on the renewable option for energy. If only he had listed nuclear as one the options that does not come with significant environmental or security risks or social costs!

Finding renewable sources of energy that are cheap and do not come with significant environmental or security risks or social costs is a good thing, particularly in a world adding roughly 80 million people a year, and where two billion people today only have firewood or dried dung as an energy choice.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2007-04-08T04:58:00.000-05:00

Channel 4 News and the BBC in Britain have published a fantastic video about what really drives climate change, our role, and a lesson in how to have a proper debate about scientific issues.

I highly recommend this to all. Please watch before engaging again in the debate on global warming.

Also take a look at the summary on the Gliving.TV web site

and at The Great Global Warming Swindle"On the Channel 4 Website

Thorium Reactors - A New Type of Nuclear Reactor

2006-07-12T14:30:00.000-05:00

Hmmmm.. Thorium. Sounds Buck Rogersish. Now how do we get this going in the U.S.?

Being a more ‘gentle’ material, thorium also leaves less waste than conventional uranium based reactors whose half-life is tens of thousands of years. Thorium reactor waste has a half-life of a mere 500 years, much less dangerous and much much simpler to store. To sweeten things even further, thorium reactors actually incinerate other nuclear waste, solving the problem of the growing stocks of current nuclear waste.

Boy, I'd love to make this a reality. Maybe the next Presidential election will provide the political will to get serious about creating energy choices other than despotic oil.

Hitcahi and GE to build new nuclear plant in the US

2006-06-28T16:11:00.000-05:00

Well, this is welcome news. If we can get ten more announcements like this, we might be on to something.

China, Coal, and our Lungs

2006-06-10T11:23:00.000-05:00

And if you really need a kick in the pants to understand why the world need nuclear power read the article in the New York Times titled "Clouds From Chinese Coal Cast a Long Shadow"

A snippet:

Unless China finds a way to clean up its coal plants and the thousands of factories that burn coal, pollution will soar both at home and abroad. The increase in global-warming gases from China's coal use will probably exceed that for all industrialized countries combined over the next 25 years, surpassing by five times the reduction in such emissions that the Kyoto Protocol seeks

Nuclear Power works, Politics is the probelm

2006-06-10T10:19:00.000-05:00

Thorium fueled power stations, a little discussed concept, can provide energy for manking for the next 6,000 years. No air pollution. No coal miners dieing. No global warming. And no rich oil shieks.

The fuel is abundant in Australia, India, the United States, and Canada. Hmmmm these are all democracies! What a concept. The defining characteristic of the last century was the industrial use of oil, coal, and hydropower to lift millions out of poverty worlwide. We can build the future we all desire but it requires an investment in technical solutions such as Thorium reactors, not calls for impossible changes in fundamental human behaivor. Conservation of energy is the antithesis to growth and lifting our fellow citizens out of poverty. Only reductions in the cost of power generation can deliver wide spread wealth for all.

Our calculations shows that the known thorium reserves of Australia are sufficient for clean nuclear energy production for six thousand years at a rate equivalent of two million barrels of oil per day,' said Dr Hashemi-Nezhad.

France leads the way in new nuclear power plant construction

2006-03-26T13:46:00.000-05:00

And now, something nice to say about the French...

Great Summary of Global Warming Issues

2006-03-25T10:21:00.000-05:00

Scientific American has presented a wonderful summary of arguments around global warming. Everything form we don't know enough to predict the future to even if its true, it will be a good thing.

Highly suggested reading for those who wish to debate based upon fact not hysteria on this topical issue. My personal take is that life will go on, no matter what the future climate is, and we just need to be flexible. Stop worrying so much. Besides, in my personal micro-climate at home, I keep moving that thermostat up not down. If the Earth had a thermostat, which direction would you push it?

Reduce CO2? Build more nuclear power plants!

2006-03-23T21:12:00.000-05:00

So, now the scientists are saying we need to "Substantially reduce emissions of greenhouse gases". OK, but how? How about build power plants on a massive scale that emit no CO2? We could replace all the coal plants, all the natural gas plants, generate electricity for plug-in hybrids, if we built nuclear power plants again. We need to do it before it is too late!

The teams say their studies provide the first hints that during the last interglacial period, ice sheets in both hemispheres worked together to raise sea levels, rather than the Northern Hemisphere's ice alone. This raises concerns that Antarctic melting might be more severe this time, because additional melt mechanisms may be at work.

"It sounds bad," acknowledges Jonathan Overpeck, a University of Arizona researcher who led one of the two studies. He notes that rising temperatures are approaching a threshold. But "we know about it far enough in advance to avoid crossing it." The challenge, he and others say, is to take advantage of the remaining window by reducing emissions of greenhouse gases substantially.

What to do with nuclear waste?

2006-03-17T15:35:00.000-05:00

Burn it!

In a transmutator. :-)

The link above provides a nice summary and list of how to get rid of the long lived isotopes in nuclear waste so that it becomes far easier to deal with the waste. A nice part is that some of these solutions actually generate more electricity than they consume!

Medievel European Farmers and Climate Change

2006-02-27T13:07:00.000-05:00

It streteches the believable that farmers in Europe had a global impact on climate. Just because tree pollen and carbon dioxide fluctations are correlated does not even come close to creating a causal link. Ice cream sales and drownings are both correlated, but we don't outlaw ice cream sales. And oh, I believe ice cream sales and drownings both go up during the summer.

Back to climate change, the reality of the Little Ice Age is that the Earth's climate is variable. Humans in Europe did not change the global climate despite the following:

"Between AD 1200 to 1300, we see a decrease in stomata and a sharp rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide, due to deforestation we think," says Dr van Hoof, whose findings are published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

But after AD 1350, the team found the pattern reversed, suggesting that atmospheric carbon dioxide fell, perhaps due to reforestation following the plague.

The researchers think that this drop in carbon dioxide levels could help to explain a cooling in the climate over the following centuries.

Ocean damper

From around 1500, Europe appears to have been gripped by a chill lasting some 300 years.

There are many theories as to what caused these bitter years, but popular ideas include a decrease in solar activity, an increase in volcanic activity or a change in ocean circulation.

No civilian nuclear program can explain the Iranian nuclear program

2006-02-16T09:11:00.000-05:00

Wow! Even the French are turning to American style, blunt diplomacy. Calling a spade a spade.

France's foreign minister said Thursday that Iran's nuclear program was a cover for clandestine military activity, in an unusually direct attack on Tehran for a European diplomat.

So the question is, will Iran fold?. If it won't, will the West force the issue and disarm Iran?

Awesome! Senator Lugar

2006-02-13T07:56:00.000-05:00

I just had to add this. What a nice summary of the true costs of reliance on oil. From the Letters to the editors of the Wall Street Journal:

When Peter Huber wrote, "The question . . . whether corn and wood will ever be as cheap and easy starting points as fossils . . ." he repeated a common fallacy. Oil is neither cheap nor easy. The price of gasoline does not reflect its true cost. Properly calculated, fossil fuels are far more expensive than they appear. At least three externalities must be added to gasoline's current $2.50-a-gallon price. The first is the military expenditures we pay to safeguard the Mideast oil fields. There is a wide range of estimates: one of the lower ones, by the conservative National Defense Council Foundation, puts the figure at $50 billion a year (not counting one-time expenses like wars).

The second external expense, far harder to calculate, is the damage to our national interests and our security by petro-states made rich by the world's overreliance on petroleum. Iraq was one such troublemaker, causing two costly wars. Iran and Venezuela are just two of several governments engaging in anti-American behavior that is enabled by the more than $24 billion we paid for imported oil in November alone. The third externality is the pollution and greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

This fully accounted real cost of oil is already much higher than that of home-grown cellulosic ethanol, which will soon be commercially competitive with $2.50 gas. Unlike oil or natural gas, it is renewable, burns cleanly and makes virtually no net contribution to global warming. Switching to an ethanol-based transportation system, by adapting new cars to run on an ethanol-gasoline blend with inexpensive, off-the-shelf flexible fuel technology and piggy-backing on the existing gas station network, would be good policy and a great bargain for consumers.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R., Ind.)
Chairman
Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Washington

Melting Arctic Ice

2006-02-07T15:40:00.000-05:00

Someone needs to tell Dan at the Associated Press that when floating ice (e.g. the arctic ice cap) melts, it can't possible cause the ocean to rise. Ice that is on the land (e.g. Greenland, and Antarctica) needs to melt to cause the oceans to rise. So far the evidence shows that Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice mass, not losing it.

Scientists Warn of Melting Ice in Arctic
By DAN JOLING, Associated Press Writer Mon Feb 6, 10:49 PM ET
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Scientists on Monday painted a gloomy picture of the effects of global warming on the Arctic, warning of melting ocean ice, rising oceans, thawed permafrost and forests susceptible to bugs and fire.

America warms up to nuclear power

2006-02-06T07:59:00.000-05:00

OK. I am an admitted number jumkie. But sometimes, numbers are clearcut, without political agendas of their own. U.S. Coal alone produces 10% of the entire world's greenhouse gasses. To wit:

To Patrick Moore, who cofounded Greenpeace, nuclear power is the only realistic solution to future power needs.

"You can't solve this problem with windmills and photo panels alone," says the chairman of Greenspirit Strategies Ltd., a Vancouver, B.C., environmental consulting firm. These two power sources tend to be expensive. More important, they are "intermittent." They work only when the wind blows or the sun shines. Economies need "baseload" power that operates all the time.

Coal can provide an around-the-clock power stream. But the 1,300 coal-fired plants in the US already belch out 10 percent of the world's greenhouse gases. Do we want more climate-changing gas?

Now, I am not yet convinced on whether we want or don't want more climate-changing gas, but I know that I don't want to burn coal, have coal miners die, and pollute the atmosphere. I like to breathe clean air, and drink clean water. And I want the same for my kids.

Go nukes!

Exxon Valdez and the Seabulk Pride

2006-02-05T12:37:00.000-05:00

The untold story of the Seabulk Pride running aground in Alaska this week is that it did not create a crude oil spill like the Exxon Valdez. Why? Because the Seabulk Pride is a double hulled ship unlike the Valdez which was single hulled. Take a look at Seabulk Tankers and you'll see a DH next to the Seabulk Pride's listing. DH means Double Hulled and more than twice as safe for the environment. In the mid 1990s double hulled ships became a requirement. Here's a case where the regulation actually worked. Too bad the reporters aren't telling us.

from the Seabulk International website:

Seabulk International owns five new double-hull petroleum and chemical tankers. With their double hull construction, state-of-the-art electronics and safety systems, and skilled crews, the new tankers provide the safest form of waterborne transportation in U.S. waters. Under the terms of the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90), all single-hull vessels must be phased out of the domestic Jones Act trade by 2015. Because of their double-hull construction, the new vessels have no retirement date under OPA 90.

Removing Mountaintops for Energy

2006-02-05T12:31:00.000-05:00

This editorial in the New York Times about removing mountaintops to get at the coal is enough to make me wish that all of our electrical power was from nuclear power plants. This is just way too sad.

It takes just a dozen guys with giant D-9 bulldozers about a year to wreck a mountain. They dynamite it, then shove the shattered vegetation and topsoil (called spoil or overburden) down into the valleys, followed by chunks of bedrock.

Everything in this horrific pile dies. Even the streams are buried. Every rain is a flood. Slurry ponds spill black sludge. People living near mine sites hear the cacophony of dynamite, dozers and coal trucks 24-7. Their houses flood and crack. Their children come home from school sick, covered with coal dust. The well water is black.

Nuclear Power Reduces Greenhouse Gasses

2006-01-29T09:49:00.000-05:00

The Kyoto protocol calls for an 8% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Interestingly this is exactly the amount of greenhouse gas reduction that nuclear power already accounts for.

Nuclear energy also offers an alleviation of the global carbon dioxide (CO2) problem that the world can do without. About 1,600 million tons of CO2 annual emissions would have resulted if 16 percent of the world's electricity now generated by nuclear power were to have been generated using coal. This is a significant amount. In fact, it is 8 percent of CO2 now emitted annually from the burning of fossil fuels.

I'd support an international treaty for greenhouse emission reduction if it called for a meaningful reduction (e.g. 90%) and the means for achieving this, nuclear power, were explicitly agreed upon. To call for reductions without agreeing on a path to get there is just whistling in the wind.

Plugin Hybrids

2006-01-25T07:43:00.000-05:00

Today's Wall Street Journal has a great page one story on electric gasoline hybrids that plug in at night to your house power to recharge the batteries. 100 miles per gallon! 70 cents per gallon equivalent on electricity. 90% of power from your house electricity.

It is the last two numbers that gets me excited. Who wouldn't want to pay 70 cents per gallon? And who wouldn't want to rely on U.S. power rather than foreign oil for our transportation needs. Go Dr. Frank.... a quote from the article. I hope you have access to the Wall Street Journal to read more.

Dr. Frank estimates that if drivers regularly recharge their batteries at home, plug-ins may get well over 100 miles per gallon. By comparison, conventional hybrids must rely on gasoline-powered engines to recharge their batteries and get between 40 and 60 mpg.

While running on electricity, the plug-in's fuel cost drops to 70 cents a gallon, or lower, Dr. Frank estimates.

Energy Politics Will Do Us In Yet

2006-01-24T09:51:00.000-05:00

Great editorial in the Wall Street Journal by Goerge Melloan on energy policy today. Draws the connection between the lack of investment in oil, gas, and nuclear power and the emerging nuclear turmoil in Iran. If you've got a subscription to the Wall Street Journal, take a look. Here's the best quote:

One of the present-day ironies is that the same groups that stopped nuclear-power development years ago are suddenly warming to the atom. Those same seven Northeastern states that are trying to put caps on carbon-dioxide emissions have placed nuclear power in the same category as renewable sources of energy, acknowledging that nukes don't give off "greenhouse gases." The Progressive Policy Initiative, a Democrat think tank, has said nukes should be part of a clean air energy strategy for the U.S. Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore has signed on.

This easing of opposition to nuclear power enabled George Bush to win an energy bill last year that, for all its faults, opens the door for renewed construction of nuclear plants in the U.S. He predicted that the U.S. would start building such plants again before the end of the decade.

Other countries have the same idea. Eight new atomic power plants were completed last year, including three in Japan, and 24 are under construction. At the end of last year, there were 443 in operation world-wide, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and a hundred or so are on the drawing boards in places like China and India that are short on hydrocarbon fuels. Practically every nuclear plant in the U.S., which gets 20% of its power from nukes, has been or is being recommissioned to keep operating for another 20 years.