Creator of the Gaia Hypothesis Urges Nuclear Power

SteamyMobile writes "Professor James Lovelock, creator the Gaia Hypothesis and long-time intellectual leader of the Green movement, says that global warming is a dire threat, more urgent than was previously realized. He compares the threat of global warming with the threat of the Nazis in 1938, and says that in both cases, the Left was not able to grasp the urgency of the situation and see the necessary solution. What is the necessary solution to stop the global warming problem? He says it's nuclear power. Needless to say, the Greens don't agree with him, and he chides them as having irrational phobias of a safer, cleaner energy sources. Even if the "Left" isn't fully aware of the urgency of the world's energy problems, it seems like Slashdot is."

Re:Great

We just don't have the time to develop those techniques into really usefull ones. Before we can apply them on a large scale and before we are able to get all our energy supplies from such sources we need to have a temporary solutation.

What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energy..

The sun? We've been harnesting the sun for thousands of years for our energy, why not keep going? We know we can grow things with the sun, we know the sun's rays can be converted into heat to turn a turbine, we know that the sun's radiation can be converted directly into electrical energy. From that alone, we have enough to power ourselves for quite a while.. Question is, when will everyone be convenced there is a problem, and when they are convenced, how willing will they be to give up their SUV's?

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

The SUV syndrome is mob mentality at its utter finest. "If no-body else is going to stop driving SUV's, why should I stop" is really one of the biggest problems with this issue, a typical Consumerican viewpoint, derived directly from the callous mob mentality currently perpetuated by "consumerist" ideals .

SUV owners are subject to supply and demand just like anyone else. As gas prices go up demand for SUV's will drop. I think I read somewhere that it is already happening. Do we need nuclear energy? Well... define "need". In my opinion "The Great Transition" [away from oil as a primary energy source] might be painful but the predictions of disaster are greatly overblown. Between belt tightening and alternative sources I think we can make it. As for global warming, again, the "new" environment will be different, it will suck in some ways and be better in others. Lastly, in all of this, the simplest and most powerful solution for making a transition is almost never mentioned. Tax oil (BEFORE refining). Try this thought experiment. Tax oil. Consumption goes down (supply/demand etc.). Competing suppliers respond with lower prices barrel prices in an attempt to keep market share. We (as a nation) effectively pay *less* for our oil AND our consumption rate decreases AND new markets are created for energy effiency AND alternative sources of energy become more attractive AND greenhouse gas emmisions decrease.

Re:Nope. Gas prices will have no effect on SUV sal

there have never been more SUVs on the road as there are now.

In US the truck and SUV segment make up almost 30% of the market. The SUV distribution in UK is much lower (10%?).

And "high" gas prices have already caused a fall in SUV sales.
From this [go.com] article:

Last month, sales of the largest and least fuel-efficient SUVs dropped, according to auto sales tracker Autodata. The largest SUVs, including the Ford Expedition, were off 33.6 percent and Chevrolet Suburban sales were down 20.7 percent. It was the first time that gasoline prices have hurt SUV sales. Automakers are now rushing to build more fuel-efficient SUVs -- hybrid, gas-electric vehicles.

But even more interesting;

According to the EPA the average miles per gallon is now just over 20, down from a high of 22.1 in the late 1980s.

So much for the "fuel efficient" cars...

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

Try this thought experiment. Tax oil. Consumption goes down (supply/demand etc.). Competing suppliers respond with lower prices barrel prices in an attempt to keep market share. We (as a nation) effectively pay *less* for our oil AND our consumption rate decreases AND new markets are created for energy effiency AND alternative sources of energy become more attractive AND greenhouse gas emmisions decrease.


Tax oil. Keep taxing it for several months, maybe years. Lose elections. Stop taxing oil.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

Supply and demand only works for elastic demand.

If the demand is inelastic, it doesn't work.

Example: if your choice is take this pill every day, without fail, or die, you're going to take the pill, because if you don't take the pill, you die. If there are only so many people who need the pill, and only so many suppliers, it won't pay anyone any more to make more pills, so the existing suppliers just cruise along. When there are more people who need the pill than there are pills, you can get interesting economic effects.

Change "pill" to "food" in the above paragraph, and you get "wars" where it says "interesting economic effects".

If there are only the existing suppliers, and the existing customers are getting older, the suppliers have to find new customers or start losing money. Think "tobacco" and "RJ Reynolds".

When demand is elastic, so some people can go without the pills, but there are still more willing buyers than there are sellers, you get auctions, and the buyers with more quatloos bid the price up. In a free market, when the bid price gets high enough, other people notice that there is unsatisfied demand, and money to be made, and they start making more pills, and prices drop.

THIS IS FRESHMAN MACROECONOMICS, PEOPLE. GET A FSCKING CLUE!!!

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

As with anything, oversimplification causes problems. The standard examples for pills and oil are subject to those problems.

It is difficult to compare US and European transportation requirements, in part because of the other differences.

SUVs became popular in the United States when it became unlawful to sell passenger automobiles that do not meet the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. The customer requirement was for a mommy machine, capable of hauling the kids to soccer practice, the groceries home from the market, and the whole family to Aunt Suzie's place. You can't do that with a European-style economicrobox, and, at the time those rules went into effect, it was not technically feasible to build a full-size station wagon, at that time the standard mommy machine of choice, that could meet the standards. SUVs, being legally trucks, were and are not subject to the CAFE standards, and so, as the full-size station wagons died out, the SUVs took over their ecological niche. The problem with this is that the SUVs had to remain sufficiently truck-like that they do not fall under CAFE, which basically means BIG and HEAVY, and that's where your gas mileage problems come from.

Homework: Design a complete ambulance rig, including space for gurney, passenger, all necessary equipment, and oxygen, including communications, to fit inside a Nissan Altima.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

The "consumption goes down" step corresponds to the "then a miracle occurs" in the famous S. Harris cartoon. You'll see a little blip. Consumption will go down by an insignificant amount for an insignificant length of time and then return to pretty much the former trend. And then the tax disadvantage will be eaten away with a dozen abatements.

People can't afford to junk working vehicles just because fuel prices are spiking. They won't do it. Not for long, anyway. They hold onto older cars *longer* because the money they'd spend on new ones is being swallowed by the gas pump. Once they find a way to bring fuel prices down, the people who were *forced* to accept something smaller than they wanted will go back to bigger models and the manufacturers will be happy to supply their demand for premium merchandise. The only ones left driving small efficient cars will be those of us who prefer small efficient cars.

That's the way things work outside of repressive dictatorships -- people are free to make their own choices according to their own values. You won't make lasting changes in behavior without making lasting changes in values.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

You pay a fraction of what everyone else pays for fuel. Here in the UK we're now paying 0.82/L which is roughly $5.2 a US gallon. Now if that were the price of gas in the US THEN you would start to see a reduction in SUV usage.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

I agree, but I don't think that, even then, you will see a dramatic reduction. People are paying a lot more for SUVs than they would be paying for a fuel efficient economy car. Over the course of a year, they may be paying hundreds of dollars more for gasoline, but they generally have already payed thousands more for the upfront cost of buying an SUV over an economy car.

Moreover, there are other significant costs to owning an SUV (and other luxery cars) that aren't always obvious at first; tires for example. Often enough a single tire for a large SUV can cost four or more times than a single small tire for an economy car, and only last half as long. Higher insurance, maintenance on the larger engines (more cylinders, more spark plugs, more oil). Often enough it even costs more just to get it washed.

So money is not the object here, for all but a small portion of those who buy SUVs. Personally, I'm not the anti-SUV zealot I may once have been. I still think it's a stupid buy, but if someone wants to waste their money then, well, it's their money. There's a lot of other big luxery cars that are just as bad on gas mileage yet, for some reason, we don't complain about those.

Frankly, my next car will not be an economy car. I'm getting old, I spend a lot of time in my car, and I want it to be more comfortable.

Anyway, to stay on topic, I've always supported nuclear ("Nuculer... it's pronounced new-cue-ler...") power, and was hoping 15 years ago that fussion would have been more advanced now than it is.

While there is a definate possibility of disaster with fission, the truth is that instead of releasing pollutants in the air, it's right there - ultimately in barrels. So there's your choice... you have pollution using fission or fossil fuels, but with one of these two methods the pollution is immediately released in the air, and with the other it's right there, in that barrel.

Yes, we need to deal with the barrel, but it's a better dilema than trying to deal with pollution that's already been released into the atmosphere.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

Well, the problem is NIMBY. Nevada would have been a good place, I used to live there, I visited the site, and it seemed like it was a good choice for long term storage. I worked at the NSCEE (National Supercomputing Center for Energy and the Environment), and I've seen the simulations of what would happen with a leaky barrel and so forth, and none of it scared me at all... I'd have felt perfectly safe.

The only dangerous part, IMO, would have only been getting the barrels to the facility - but I've also seen the tests they did on the transportation containers - getting hit by a train at full speed and not breaking. IOW, IMO, the most dangerous part is not particularly dangerous.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

Three Mile Island proved that you can have a safe nuclear reactor. Chernobyl was not only a different type of reactor, it simply did not have the safeguards that most countries require.

As long as week keep up on the redundant safety of our reactors, I am not worried.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

Style? I couldn't care less about style. Try fitting two tall, beefy teenagers in the back seat of a typical econobox.

A year ago I took my eldest son with me to the auto show and we tried on a lot of vehicles. The Grand Cherokee was cramped. The &%&^%& *Hummer H2* was cramped! The Dodge Ram Crew Cab half as big as our house was cramped!!! The smaller models caused him to emit sounds of pain as he tried to get in and out. He didn't even attempt the VW New Beetle.

The only two vehicles we tried that had enough room in back were the Ford Windstar van and [applause!] the tiny Toyota Echo. I'll be buying the Echo, but if you don't like Toyota and have big kids then you're kinda out of luck unless you are willing to accept something huge.

(Interestingly enough, Toyota had a *far* larger, SUV-type model there too, and it was *too small*! Much less roomy than the Echo. Dunno what the Echo engineering team did, but I hope they do a lot more of it. "Stood up to the stylists and insisted on a practical design" gets my vote.)

You don't have to give up SUV's

Please don't replicate the "every SUV must have bad fuel economy" meme. It's just not true. I drive a SUV and it's fuel economy [fueleconomy.gov] is better than that of many ordinary 2WD vehicles (22-27 mpg). This meme is dangerous, because many Americans believe that and therefore American companies see no reason to improve the fuel efficency of their horribly heavy, clunky and obsolete 4x4 behemoths. Japanese car companies do not have this luxury and it shows - Subaru Forester, Mitsubishi Outlander, Honda CR-V or Nissan X-Trail are great family machines and they are as environment-friendly as regular (non-SUV) vehicles. So you don't have to give up anything, if it's really that important for you to have American company badge on your car, buy a Subaru rebadged [geocities.com] as Chevrolet.

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

Even 22-27mpg is bad to a European. I get 40mpg in my fairly sporty car, the everyday version of it gets about 60mpg.

I'm not aware of any "normal" 2WD vehicle on sale in the UK which would get 22mpg, even given the 1US gallon = 0.8 UK gallons conversion.

Ewan

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

Thanks for chiming in! Many Americans seem to forget just how crappy our gas mileage is here when compared to the cars other countries drive.

I drive a sports car with a 350ci engine and get 26 m/g on the highway. In the city, I get anywhere from 18-22, depending on how I drive. Fact is, I live fairly far out, so most of my miles are highway miles. Toss in the fact that most SUV drivers are alone most of the time and generally are NOT getting 22-27 mpg (more like 12-22, and that's on the highway), and I think that's down right shameful. I can at least claim that I often have two or three people in the car with me and I have aerodynamics, by far, in my favor. Anytime you have a brick which you want to push through the air, you're going to require a bigger engine. Bigger engines mean worse mileage. Add in the fact that most Americans typically drive 5-25 over the posted speed limits, especially on the highways, and mileage typically drops through the floor.

People who drive SUV's, IMO, greatly suffer from the heard mentality anyways. So, any logical argument is more than likely going to be completely lost. IMO, owning a SUV is about status and keeping up with the neighbors. None of this will change until car markers stop pushing, "you are what you drive." Sadly, most people see a SUV as a "cool and trendy owner, ready to go anywhere, anytime." The sad thing is, SUV really translates into "PIG".

My favorite excuse that SUV owners give is, "I have to transport the kids". Which translates into, two kids and two adults. Seems like most cars can do that fine. Worse, both parents are driving SUVs. How many times do they need to haul two SUV full of kids around. Typically, not many or simply never. People that give that excuse are either stupid or think that the people they are telling it to are even more stupid than them. I guess that may be the case if people are really buying into that load of crap.

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

The everyday version gets 60mpg does it? What car might this be? Some sort of miracle car? or is it an insight? You know on Mars we get 100mpg daily. Then again the gravity is only a fourth of what it is on earth so we just pick up our cars and throw them.

Top ten mpg cars:
http://www.edmunds.com/reviews/list/top10/47000/ar ticle.html [edmunds.com]

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

That list is a parrot of the U.S. EPA tests There are many vehicles that are not sold in the U.S. that presumably do not receive EPA testing.

That being said, I don't know if these vehicles receive the significantly higher mileage numbers being touted about. I suspect we're losing something here in metric->imperial conversion...

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

Of course, diesel engines also help mileage, though those are also hard to find around here in cars.

Rudolph Diesel ran his prototype engine on vegetable oil. Similarly Frank Whittle used vegetable oil in his prototype gas turbine. The only reason we have ended up with most of the world's vehicles using petroleum derived fuels is that a century ago these were waste products of the oil industry. Nothing in the technology of internal combustion engines requires the fuel to come from oil... Even with spark-ignition engines, which tend to be more fussy about their fuel than either compression-ignition or gas turbines.

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

I haven't read this entire thread, but since it seems to touch the subject of fuel-grade vegetable-oil...

A few years ago I talked to a farmer here in sweden who produced just that.
Apparently, it takes 2 liters of diesel to produce 1 liter of vegetable-fuel.
Much of the equipment used in the process is driven by diesel-fuel, but the price of vegetable-fuel makes it profitable nontheless.
But this was a few years ago. Maybe the situation has become more sane today. =/

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

Yeah, that's because your tiny cars are half the size of your average car sold in the US. Heck, we can't even buy cars as small as what you have over there.

No, there is no punishment for inefficient engines in the US. Europe has vehicle taxes based on engine size, in addition to extremely strict emissions regulations, so manufacturers are encouraged to provide hi-tech engines with smaller volumes but higher performance. A one liter engine can drive a regular car just fine, a 2 liter engine can drive an suv. The US tax system however encourages heavier cars and bigger engines, as a result US cars are woefully inefficient.

That doesn't even get into the whole point that the US tax system actually encourages manufacturers to make their cars bigger and heavier.

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

Europe has vehicle taxes based on engine size, in addition to extremely strict emissions regulations, so manufacturers are encouraged to provide hi-tech engines with smaller volumes but higher performance.

You're right about the first part, but entirely wrong about the second. European emissions regulations are VERY week. In fact many cars that are allowed everywhere in europe are illegal anywhere in the U.S. The difference is that European regulations emphasize fuel economy and U.S. regulations emphasize human health. Its a trade off. Europe went for efficient pollutionmobiles (especially in terms of smog forming emissions and particulates) and the U.S. went for fairly clean cars that burn alot of gas, but are good about everything except CO2.

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

You appear to be rebutting the "SUVs get bad mileage" meme by redefining 22-27mpg as good mileage.

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

Actually, digging a little further revealed that you could also get a Toyota Prius (Hybrid) that does 60 mpg in the city or a Honda Insight that does 60-66, that's three times the milage of your SUV.

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

Whistles and points to recent slashdot article [slashdot.org] where Prius gets only 35 mpg & Honda gets 31.4 mpg average.

Tall stories about gas mileage

A retired professor friend whose research was in auto engines told me "more lies are told about gas mileage" when I tried to tell him I could easily beat EPA numbers. Yes, there is a selection effect of only "remembering" particularly good mileage values, where you had a tail wind on a road trip and you only filled the tank to the "first click."

I drive two cars: a 3L 24V 96 Taurus with 130,000 miles and a head gasket oil leak in its "Duratec" engine, which I drive in winter, a 2.2 L 16V 97 Camry with 100,000 miles and a power steering leak which I drive in summer because I bought it in Florida and was not exposed to direct road salt, only salt ocean air. Last year I ran 7800 miles on the Taurus at an average MPG of 25 and 7500 miles on the Camry at an average of 31. Just as they put low miles on the Concorde fleet to keep them in service, my theory is that I can keep this "fleet" going until more high gas mileage cars are available to chose from. There are no "beater" Prius cars on the road to give experience on how their battery ages.

The EPA on the Taurus is 20/29 -- the 96 Taurus had rather tall gearing, and later model Tauri have lower EPA numbers, in part from being regeared. At one time I thought I got around 22 in summer driving in town, 32 on the highway, but I don't have records to back that up. The Camry EPA is 23/30. Last year (I have records) in town was 25 and on the road was 35.

There are raw EPA numbers, and then there are consumer EPA numbers. In the 70s and early 80s, the sticker gave raw EPA numbers, and no one ever got those. I had a 2.5L 8V Chevy Celebrity with EPA highway of 38, and the best I did was around 35. You can look up all this info at www.epa.gov and as it turns out, the raw EPA highway on the Camry is 38. EPA highway also represents driving in moderate traffic on an LA freeway (EPA city is on LA "surface streets", more representative of suburban driving than downtown Manhattan), and there is a lot of 50 MPH running in it -- I imagine if I drove highway at a strict 55 and had people stacked up behind me trying to pass I could do 38 in the Camry.

Now there was a recent Slashdot article about how no one seems to get 60 MPG out of a Prius. I drive to get good gas mileage (steady speeds, no faster than 65 on the highway, anticipate traffic as best I can to coast to slow down), but the consensus seems to be that hybrids are even more sensitive to driving technique and EPA numbers on those things is an elusive goal. If the EPA numbers on the Prius are that high, the raw EPA numbers must be proportionately higher, which means there is some driving condition where you could probably get 70 MPG in a Prius, but good luck achieving that.

Re:You don't have to give up SUV's

Whistles and points to the same article, where if you look past the sensationalist headline, you will discover that the EPA ratings for ALL cars are waaaay too high. They test fuel economy by measuring *emissions*. That's like measuring how tall someone is by weighing them-- of COURSE it's always wrong.

Re:Tall stories about gas mileage

you could probably get 70 MPG in a Prius, but good luck achieving that.

It depends on how small of a time slice you look at. I have averaged over 100 MPG (the highest the Prius meter goes) for ten minutes on occasion, and 10MPG on other occasions. My lifetime average (15K miles over 7 months) is 45MPG. The EPA highway test is, I believe, 10 minutes at 48 MPH on a dynomometer. Yeah -- that's going to be accurate.

I drive my Prius normally most all the time (meaning I accelerate faster than I really need to). When I drive to save, I can usually push my one tank average to 48MPG. The lowest tank average I've had was 42MPG.

Anyways, the EPA tests are lousy for all cars. If you're trying to get an idea of how useful hybrid engines are, don't compare real-world hybrid numbers to EPA gas numbers -- something a lot of people feel comfortable doing. And don't compare a comfy mid-size sedan like the 2004 Prius to some tiny econo box. If you compare the Prius to the Camry, similar interior space and comfort, the real world numbers show the Prius with a little more than double the milage.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

current situation:

we use oil for energy. Problem, oil is a finite resource, it WILL [peakoil.net] run out. Alternatives are needed. Okay, we agree so far.

What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energy..The Sun?

No viable alternatives exist [hubbertpeak.com] yet. To quote verbatim:

Direct conversion of sunlight to electricity by solar cells is a promising technology, and already locally useful, but the amount of electricity which can be generated by that method is not great compared with demand. Because it is a low grade energy, with a low conversion efficiency (about 15%) capturing solar energy in quantity requires huge installations--many square miles. About 8 percent of the cells must be replaced each year. But the big problem is how to store significant amounts of electricity when the Sun is not available to produce it (Trainer, 1995), for example, at night. The problem remains unsolved. Because of this, solar energy cannot be used as a dependable base load. And, the immediate end product is electricity, a very limited replacement for oil. Also, adding in all the energy costs of the production and maintenance of PV (photovoltaic) installations, the net energy recovery is low (Trainer, 1995).

If you can think of a way to store this energy, fantastic, please share. Otherwise, back to the drawing board.

Storing solar energy has been solved.

For quite a while now. Solar II in California generates electricity at night be storing the energy as heat during the day. It heats salt up to 500+C and stores it as a molten liquid in big tanks. It then generates power from the stored heat as required.

There are compressed air power stations which store energy in underground caverns, natural and man made. They can use the solar and wind power to compress the air for later generation on demand.

Both of these mechanisms are in use *now*.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

The sun? We've been harnesting the sun for thousands of years for our energy, why not keep going?

Lovelock's answer to this is that there isn't time. Yes, the long term solution is solar power, directly or indirecly. But he says that Global Warming is so large and so imminent a problem that we mhave to reactivate nuclear as a stop-gap until we can ramp up solar.

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

I'm sorry to tell you, but sometimes numbers _do_ matter. It's true, we can get energy from sun, wind, biomass or tides, but it's the order of magnitude that kills you.

I didn't do the math, but try to think: what can you get from sun energy? 5% growing crops? 60% fotocells? Even at 100% it's just not enough. Covering square miles with cheap reliable high-efficiency solar panels would (maybe) get us close, but we don't even have that. From 1 square meter you can maybe boil a glass of water, but you can't heat your house in winter, nor make cars or computers.

There's more energy in the wind and in the tides, but 1. it's still not enough and 2. how much energy goes into melting 1 ton of steel? not to mention processing of ore etc. It takes years for such technology to break even (wind turbines have a lot of steel in them).

The real answer (not counting truly non-conventional approaches) is fusion, but nobody pretends it's closer then 50 years.
What we have left is classic nuclear power, or fission. It has its problems, mainly radioactive waste, but has a big hidden advantage: currently all nuclear power plants use old technologies, sometimes even ancient. Why? because the political climate is against innovation in this field, and sometimes greed: it's expensive to update a power plant that still works.
New plants can be cheaper, more efficient and a lot cleaner then what we have now, _if_ we give them a chance.

And another aspect: we, as a species, will never reduce our energy consumption in the forseeable future. SUVs or not, a lot more power goes into industry then cars and air conditioning. _And_ there's two thirds of the planet that still has to reach the level of cars and air conditioning, and they're not going to care about ecology until they do (nor should they, truth be told).

Re:What about using the most obvious Nuclear Energ

Um, you realize if we can't get enouch energy from the Sun to support our lifestyle, we're doomed. It's the ONLY source of new (not stored) energy for trillions of miles. Then again, if a 360 trillion terawatt fusion plant in the sky isn't enough for us, maybe we all deserve to die.

Re:Great

They are there now! They just need a little more focus from the various governments. Half of my country's (Denmark) power in 2012 is supposed to be coming from winds, and we are close to getting there. Check out www.vestas.com, the world's biggest supplier og windmills. Let's harness the nature's powers instead of raping it's resources.

Re:Great

That's right, only the communists could mess up something as important as nuclear safety [bbc.co.uk].

Solar power is ready now: Just ask us aussies.

I'm a west australian, and I'll tell you this. Solar is ready to go NOW.

Up in the north of WA, we have a fair amount of mining, and reeeeeeealy remote towns (like towns with 500k spacings between each one and just desert in between) , and many many aboriginal communities with perhaps 20 members and the like.

Through necesity, alot of these places are using solar energy, simply because it isnt feasible to stick all that copper around the place. This includes mining btw which is verry energy intensive.

There are folks up there also using 'bio diesel', which is basically canola oil + ethanol + an agent to 'crack' the oil (dont ask me what that means, cos I dont know either!) since its cheaper to make diesel then to drive it there.

You can get a handfull of large solar panels , chuck it on the roof, stick it thru a 240w inverter and blammo. You dont have to pay power bills again (factor in 10 batteries every 5 years tho).

It can be done, we just need to get off our ass and do it. In some parts of the north west of australia, solar is the rule, not the exception.

Re:Solar power is ready now: Just ask us aussies.

In much of Australia, the sun shines a lot and much of the electricity demand is for cooling. With very low population densities solar can make sense.

Solar is not so competitive in cold clouded places. In Finland or the north of Scotland, hydro power is cheap, in Iceland geothermal enegy makes sense. Wind can be less expensive in some places. In big cities, waste combustion is economic. Each to their own.

Re:Solar power is ready now: Just ask us aussies.

'crack' the oil (dont ask me what that means, cos I dont know either!)

Cracking is the (usually catalytic) process by which long-chain hydrocarbons, which are difficult to burn efficiently, are broken down into short-chain hydrocarbons, which are volatile and easy to burn. Long-chain hydrocarbons have the advantage of a higher energy density but the engines that can use them are huge and complex (think, power station or large ship). Short chains are harder to handle (for example, they can explode) but they burn much more cleanly, much less free carbon in the exhaust, it's locked up in C02 (which of course has its own set of problems).

You can get a handfull of large solar panels , chuck it on the roof, stick it thru a 240w inverter and blammo

There are much better techniques for mass conversion of solar energy than photovoltaic cells. I'm not talking about enough energy to run a house but enough to make serious industry viable. My preferred technique would be the "black obelisk". It requires a large, open space, which you fill with mirrors on motorized bearings, and in the middle you build a huge black obelisk, filled with pipes. The mirrors rotate througout the day focussing the sun's energy on the obelisk, superheating water that is pumped into it, the steam coming out the other end is used to run the kind of turbine that exists in an ordinary coal or oil fired station. It's very efficient, and reuses existing technology, existing power stations in suitable climates could simply be converted in-place. In fact, a power station could use this technique by day and coal by night to ease the transition (it's all the same to the turbine), eventually it would store power generated by day for use at night.

what's wrong with....

..... putting millions back to work in the manufacturing industries inside the US? Two and a half million manufacturing jobs lost in the past few years, how about just start building and deploying the technology that we have now, that works? Ask any of them guys currently out of work "hey, you want your old job back, same pay, but now you'll be making a model A wind charger instead?" What do you think they'd say to that?

When we decided to mass produce "stuff",instead of custom build it one at a time method, it took off, all of a sudden joe average not only got the benefit of having modern tech, he had a job that let him afford that tech! Why is it that anytime we see any sort of big government solution to a problem it revolves around a handful of giant international corporations making even more profits?

Smaller scale, distributed energy production means more jobs for more people,practical jobs, too, less points of energy failure or political machinations, more national security, not less. What's wrong with all that? There are millions of roofs inside the US just sitting baking in the sun every day, accomplishing not much other than wearing out the shingles. A million hilltops all over, the breeze just blowing on by, untapped. Hundreds of thousands of farms still not collecting and using the methane that could be garnered. How about as simple an idea as mandating tougher INSULATION standards on new buildings? 2x4 crappy built butt joint r-18 insulated walls are like ancient technology, but are still being made brand new, banks still pop for 20 year mortgages for that sort of non-quality construction, and it "passes code". Why, it's ill thought out and ridiculously energy wasteful. Modern building techniques at the medium and lower scales are teh suxs, really, they are pure crap. I'm amazed people even buy them, they certainly aren't going to last and people are buying guaranteed energy hog homes, or leasing energy hog commercial space. Dollar for dollar, just better construction efforts and more insulation results in a better energy savings and over all savings to the economy than any scheme, nuclear or anything else. I'm a solar and wind advocate, but I'm the first to admit that just better designed and more insulated buildings are the best deal out there to drop energy demand. If you don't NEED the massive constant energy input in the first place, isn't that a better idea? Here's another, how about mandating more recycling, force these international profiteers to take back their old worn out stuff for recycling, instead of just dumping it? And for more R&D and deployment of the renewables, how about bringing back 100% tax credits, not a deduction, a pure credit? When we had that, adoption of renewables was just proceeding great,interest was up, people were getting them, the small companies out there doing the new work required were making some decent inroads on improving the various technology, but then it ceased and it slowed down, just when things were looking good. Perhaps a few giant monopolies got scared, they saw their generations long dominance being disrupted. I don't know but that is what it looked like to me back then.

Nukes have some place in the scheme of things, but really, incredibly complex and dangerous and expensive tech to basically produce a heat source. That's all they do, make "hot" that not only is hot now, the resultant stuff stays hot and has to be literally guarded with military forces for the next several--whatever thousands of years it takes. That's critical mass societal arrogance to think we can do that. Ye gads, we got millions and millions of acres of "heat source" hanging around doing basically nothing in the south west. And all over any place else that gets even a modicum of normal rainfall we got several million more acres of land that could be put to use with such cross-useage practical crops as industrial hemp, a HUGE untapped resource that has energy and manufacturing useages. And the frozen methane hydrates locked into place all over the planet, sur

Some ranting.

Not a great deal more energy than mining fossil fuels.

I tend to agree that nuclear fission is a pretty good interrim solution, particularly when coupled with aggressive conservation measures.

The problem is, it's got a lot of problems that we are simply deferring. Two big ones: risk of disaster, and what to do with the dead fuel rods. The first is controllable, the second is a pain in the ass. Both are suffer from the 'not in my backyard' mentality.

But nuclear power is NOT a long-term solution. There probably isn't even a long-term magic bullet. Some of the things that can save us: high-temperature superconductors (for zero-loss transmission lines), nuclear fusion, alternative energy sources, and reduction of power use.

The latter needs to be taken seriously with the others. If it's too hot to live where you are in the summer, the right answer might be 'don't live there' rather than 'turn up the A/C'. This is easy to manage: simply let the price of power rise to match how much it actually costs to make.. INCLUDING the environmental cleanup costs of the technology you use.

---N

Re:Some ranting.

Synroc [uic.com.au] solves the second "Pain in The Arse" problem.

But you're right about the "not in my backyard" syndrome. I've studied Synroc and it really is the perfect solution (btw I work upstairs from where it was developed) but who in the world will listen to reason about it?

Re:Great

You forget, you Americans (by that, I do of course mean the Government, and not the quite palatable denizens) use hardly any of the energy available in that Uranium. 98% of the mass put in comes out as waste. Look at Sellafield in the UK, only 2% comes out as waste, as a hell of a lot of reprocessing goes on, I in fact believe that they are the most efficient in the world! If everyone reprocessed their waste a lot, then Yucca mountain would not be necessary to store all the waste, you could in fact use a place at least 20 times smaller, and somewhere a little safer too I might add!

Re:Great

You forget, you Americans (by that, I do of course mean the Government, and not the quite palatable denizens) use hardly any of the energy available in that Uranium. 98% of the mass put in comes out as waste. Look at Sellafield in the UK, only 2% comes out as waste, as a hell of a lot of reprocessing goes on, I in fact believe that they are the most efficient in the world! If everyone reprocessed their waste a lot, then Yucca mountain would not be necessary to store all the waste, you could in fact use a place at least 20 times smaller, and somewhere a little safer too I might add!

The economics of reprocessing don't make sense. Sellafield could not exist without the British government imposing a levy on all energy sales AND bailing BNFL out on a regular basis.

Furthermore, reprocessing produces enormous amounts of high-level liquid waste which must be treated and stored as well as biblical quantities of low-level waste. Even if you don't have to fill up Yucca Mountain, you still need huge nuclear dumps. Reprocessing *increases* the volume of nuclear waste compared to spent fuel elements.

It is significant that Britain has yet to find a long-term solution for the reprocessing waste generated at Sellafield - which is much more dangerous than spent fuel. We are now told that we might have one in 50 years, in the meantime, the high-level waste is being kept liquid, above ground in 30 year-old tanks. I'm glad I don't live in Cumbria.

All the time, Sellafield has been pouring actinides down the pipe into the Irish Sea - which are now detectable across large areas of the Irish, Scottish and Norwegian coasts.

Sellafield's last big hope was Mixed Oxide Fuel, so far its only customer, the Japanese, have refused to accept MOX after it was found that BNFL was faking safety data. The MOX plant at Sellafield is still not working reliably, MOX is far more expensive than new fuel *and* there are concerns that MOX may shorten the lifespan of Pressurised Water Reactors.

Sellafield is a bad joke and should be closed down.

Its sole reason for existance after the development of the British Bomb was to provide plutonium for Britain's Fast Breeder Reactor programme. Well that was abandoned long ago, FBRs are an engineering boondoggle and have never worked reliably. So we sit on 40 tonnes of plutonium with no end use.

Uranium is cheaper now than in 1970, there is no sign of reserves running out, so there is no need to worry about supplies in the foreseeable future.

Using fuel once then putting it into dry store above ground is better economically and environmentally than reprocessing.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:A Question about Nuclear Waste Disposal

We're digging all this nuclear fuel up from somewhere in the ground already. It's already radioactive there, right?

Why don't we take the still-radioactive waste products of using that fuel, throw them back where the fuel came from and bury them again?

If it was only so simple, nuclear waste is a grab-bag of stuff, ranging from used protective clothing through to spent fuel. It is usually graded into low, medium and high level waste depending on its radioactivity. So pretty much anything that comes into contact with radioactive materials has to be classified as nuclear waste.

Low-level waste is usually buried in lined trenches and does not present much of a problem. Fortunately it constitutes about 90% of all waste.

Medium and high level waste is actually more radioactive than materials found in nature. It is stuff like spent fuel, reprocessing waste and contaminated coolant. In the UK this is mainly liquid waste which is currently kept in cooled tanks at Sellafield. It can't be disposed of directly as it will either seep into the environment, or contaminate groundwater. The aim is to eventually combine it with glass at high temperatures - so called vitrifaction to produce an inert ceramic which can be buried.

However, the UK has singularly failed to find a site for the long-term storage of waste. Generally speaking, you are looking for dry, stable rocks that present a relatively low risk of releasing any contamination. The UK actually has plenty of space for a dump - the central part of the country is underlain by thick deposits of salt, gypsum and anhydrite. This stuff has been dry for hundreds of millions of years, there are no earthquakes worthy of the name and we are volcano free.

Indeed such sites were put forward in the 1980s for burying some waste - they just happened to all be under Conservative-held constituencies - the plan but not the waste was buried.

The Conservative government then proposed burying the waste near Sellafield in Cumbria. They were within months of starting drilling a test laboratory, when common-sense kicked in, and they concluded that the rocks in the area were saturated with water and shot through with faults.

At the present, there are absolutely no plans for the long-term storage of waste in this country. It is becoming increasingly likely that reprocessing will come to an end when the economics finally catch up, which would mean that spent fuel will be stored at the power stations where it can be monitored for deterioration.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Great

Yes, I am sure he knows how much energy goes into mining uranium. Here's a free clue: it's a very small fraction of the energy yielded when that uranium is fissioned (even in a once-through fuel cycle without reprocessing.)

Wow

If a guy like him advocates nuclear power as a way to avoid global warming, the risks must be enormous indeed.

Even if global warming is not as bad as predicted, the about face is certainly interesting.

Re:Wow

Lovelock has been advocating nuclear energy for a while now.

From a September 2000 article in the Guardian:

"And then they say: what shall we do with nuclear waste?" Lovelock has an answer for that, too. Stick it in some precious wilderness, he says. If you wanted to preserve the biodiversity of rainforest, drop pockets of nuclear waste into it to keep the developers out. The lifespans of the wild things might be shortened a bit, but the animals wouldn't know, or care. Natural selection would take care of the mutations. Life would go on."

Guardian article here [guardian.co.uk]

Nuclear power isn't all that bad

FOr the most part nuclear engery is not a bad solution to the ever growing problem of increased fossil fuel prices and declining stocks of oil reserves. Burning coal -- no way. Sure, nuclear power got a bad deal when 3 Mile Island and Chernoybal had their problems, but then those designs were old to begin with. There are reactor designs that are safer and more efficient. I think it's time to start bringing back nuclear power plants again. You need energy to power your computers ... what's the problem.

Reactor safety

I don't know very much about three mile island, but as I recall, the Soviet reactor designs were all quite unreliable. At the time, I guess what the Soviet Government really cared about was the electricity plutonium that the reactor produced. I think Chernobyl melted down around 82? In the 80s I think. I'm only 14, so I don't remember the Soviets, but being towards the end of the Cold War, the Soviet economic situation would have been quite poor, and they could not have afforded maintenence, etc. as well as we can now.
Since technology has improved, I would have thought that today's reactors would be safer and more efficient than designs from 20 years ago. I'm from Australia where we don't have nuclear rectors (except for Lucas Heights, near Sydney, but that is used for research, producing isotopes for radio-medicine, and producing more pure silicon (neutron bombardment doping, i think) by using neutrons to turn 1 in a billon silicon atoms into phosphorus, producing N-Type silicon. Lucas Heights has 15% of the world market, and I would like to see how well a processor made of this would overclock).
Nuclear power will be the way of the future, but Australia will take time to adopt it, with a supply of coal to last hundreds of years.

Re:Reactor safety

I don't know very much about three mile island, but as I recall, the Soviet reactor designs were all quite unreliable. At the time, I guess what the Soviet Government really cared about was the electricity plutonium that the reactor produced.

The RMBK reactor was designed to generate power and plutonium. It was unusual in that it allowed on-line refuelling. Bomb-grade plutonium is almost pure Pu239 which is made by U238 capturing a neutron. If Pu239 is left in the core for longer, it can capture another neutron or two to make Pu240 or Pu241 which dramatically affect reliability of the weapon.

The RMBK used a robot crane to extract fuel elements after a short period of time, consequently the lid of the reactor was pieced by hundreds of fuel channels through which fuel was added and removed. This is unlike the Pressurised Water Reactor in which the lid is sealed for months at a time.

When the reactor failed, the fuel channels proved a fatal weakness, so the lid was blown off and allowed radiation into the environment. The RMBK design was fairly elderly at this time and no more were planned by the Soviet Union. However, Chernobyl was a new reactor with relatively good safety equipment and excellent reliability. It was just misused.

It would have been better had Chernobyl had a true containment facility like PWRs, but none of the RMBKs were so fitted.

The Soviet Union was in the process of changing over to its own PWRs - called VVRs which did have proper containment. There had been a number of technical issues with their development.

The UK looked at a Chernobylesque design in the 1960s, but concluded that it presented an unacceptable risk in the event of a minor problem.

And finally, Three Mile Island turned out to be an economic disaster for the operators, but its environmental impact was essentially zero. The PWR is a good reactor design, it showed its relience at TMI, and it has been improved since.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Reactor safety

It would have been better had Chernobyl had a true containment facility like PWRs, but none of the RMBKs were so fitted.

It would have been even better if the reactors had been designed so as to make prompt criticality unatainable. Prevention is better than the cure.

Re:Reactor safety

It would have been even better if the reactors had been designed so as to make prompt criticality unatainable. Prevention is better than the cure.

Yep, it was just that problem which stopped the British developing their own graphite moderated, water-cooled reactor in the 1960s - they even told the Soviets of their concern.

The Soviet Union was aware of the problem and had committed to PWRs, however, it had never managed to perfect the technology of creating the very large pressure vessels required in a power plant PWR. The VVR was still very new technology at the time, but energy demand in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc required new nuclear capacity.

So Chernobyl had 'stretched' RBMKs - believe it or not, they were considerably more safe than their predecessors!

Best wishes,
Mike.

Re:Reactor safety

Bomb-grade plutonium is almost pure Pu239 which is made by U238 capturing a neutron.

Essentially correct; you didn't mention the double beta decay, but that's essentially a given, considering the instability of Uranium 239 and Neptunium 239.

However, Chernobyl was a new reactor with relatively good safety equipment and excellent reliability. It was just misused.

Enh...not so much. Yes, Chernobyl was a new facility; that said, it didn't have a good safety record. RMBK 1000 reactors all over the Soviet Union had problems, but the KGB clamped down on that information; it is only recently that such information has come to light. In fact, Chernobyl 1 had problems to the now-famous Chernobyl 4, but not so severe; the KGB moved in and hushed things up so quickly and efficiently that even the other Chernobyl reactor operators didn't know about the problem. With such a closed, secretive attitude toward reactor safety, it was inevitable that mistakes would be repeated, and, indeed, they were. The only reason Chernobyl 4 became well-known is that the radiation cloud moved into western Europe, where people started raising questions. In any case, the safety issues with the RMBK-1000 reactors were serious, and known (if only to some) even at Chernobyl.

Re:Reactor safety

Which actually makes stuff, instead of producing expensive steam - and couldn't blow up unless someone packs it full of explosives.

Don't think of it as producing expensive steam, think of it as not producing tons of toxic chemicals which are randomly spewed out into the atmosphere. And the power from it does things, you know?

And what is the fascination with nuclear plants blowing up? You do know that nuclear plants only have as much reactivity as they need (so a nuclear blast is out of the question), and they generally employ a bunch of redundant active and passive safety systems, making a meltdown unlikely except in the possible result of extreme mismanagement and poor design?

Re:Reactor safety

I think Chernobyl melted down around 82? In the 80s I think. I'm only 14, so I don't remember the Soviets, but being towards the end of the Cold War, the Soviet economic situation would have been quite poor, and they could not have afforded maintenence, etc. as well as we can now.

Chernobyl is interesting. The design was inherently less safe than it could have been, but one must remember when it was built. At that time, the design looked quite good. However, that wasn't actually the problem.

Chernobyl melted down as a result of a test by the Soviet version of the NRC. Someone wanted to find out how much power could be extracted from a reactor that was melting down. This information would allow them to better plan for dealing with a reactor meltdown. So....

The Soviet NRC guys came out, disabled all the safety interlocks in place, and tried to "simulate" a reactor meltdown. Worked like a charm! The "simulation" was so realistic they couldn't hardly believe it (that last was sarcasm, if it wasn't obvious).

With the exception of possible undocumented losses of nuclear submarines by the Soviets, there have been four or five nuclear problems serious enough to ruin a reactor (not all of them were serious enough to escape into the environment). That's not a terribly bad safety record, especially since none of them have been technical issues - in all cases, the problems were induced by human stupidity. Of which, I admit, we have an abundant supply.

Re:Nuclear power isn't all that bad

I am a full supporter of nuclear power. To start off with there is no doubt that it's the best thing we have--when nothing goes wrong. When things *do* go wrong, we need to be ready. Meltdowns can be made physically impossible at nearer plants and miniaturization allows us to have quadruple redundancy (or more) on all vital control systems.

To me there are only two real threats caused by nuclear power. The first is gradual degradation of components at a plant may not be properly noticed. There is a very good chance of this happening but as long as we activity examine all potential radioactivity releasers we won't have a problem. The second is waste disposal. Our current technique is to truck across the country. The public belief is when you do this often enough, eventually something has to go wrong. I would wonder if it's possible to build the disposal system into the plant. The actual size of the waste increases by at least one order of magnitude when we prepare it for cross-country freight.

What happens if we find out fusion cannot make a sustainable energy source? Oil won't last a hundred years and coal might be extremely destructive to our planet. Our technology isn't good in solar power yet but there is hope there. As far as I can tell, the only real world solution is nuclear power.

Nuclear power is NOW, fusion is tomorrow

We have the technology to make safe, efficient, and clean nuclear plants in the United States. We haven't had an accident. Even Three Mile Island, oft-quoted as a disaster, completely contained the malfunction and it is safe to tour the site today as it was right after the incident.

The only problem with Nuclear power is that the plants take years to build. There is no hope that after investing hundreds of millions of dollars to build a plant that politics will shut it down once it starts up. In effect, no investor will approach it.

The United States needs to start a campaign to educate its citizenry about the benefits and real drawbacks to the nuclear power industry. We need to teach in our schools the facts of nuclear power from where we obtain the raw materials, how they are processed, how much waste is produced, and how efficient it is. If we laid out the facts, including how long the isotopes will last and where we will store them, then maybe we can get some serious private investment and some serious growth in the industry. Perhaps we can totally replace our coal and natural gas burning plants with nuclear ones. Maybe we can retrofit our commercial ships with the safe reactors that our submarines and battleships have.

The bottom line is that there is so much misunderstanding about radiation, nuclear isotopes, and the like. The restrictions placed on background radiation on the Yucca Mountain was more severe than the restrictions placed on granite statues in the capitol building. A smart researcher brought his geiger counter with him and demonstrated that some of the statues we adore are actually more radioactive than the Yucca Mountain would be allowed to be!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,21015,00.htm l

I for one am still hoping our 1950's utopian dream about nuclear power will be realized.

Re:Nuclear power isn't all that bad

I agree that Nuclear power is a good answer that has been overlooked for too long. It never reached it's potential due mostly to PR problems that caused people's deep fear of the technology. Now that we've been living with Nuclear for a long time and it has proven itself much safer than people feared, it might be a good time to take another look at it.

Environmentalists, real environmentalists, should love nuclear power. The problem is most people who call themselves environmentalists aren't. They care more about themselves, their health, their safety and controlling what goes on around them then they do about preserving nature and the environment. They would be more appropriately called "my environment-ists". This guy is right, radiation from nuclear waste poses basically no threat to nature, it's only really a threat to us. Leaving it around on the surface of the earth is a really bad idea, we should dispose of it deep underground, but it illustrates an important point. Nuclear waste is a danger to us, not nature, and it's a danger that we know how to deal with. To continue poisoning the environment the way we are so that we don't have to worry about radioactive waste is irresponsible and selfish.

Secure transport to a disposal site is very important and, in my opinion, the biggest issue with the current system of nuclear power generation. We should be expanding our nuclear power production capabilities but not in the way we built them before. Put them together in large clusters near the disposal site so that you can control access to all aspects of the operation of the pants and disposal of the waste. That way, you don't have to truck radioactive material through every city and town in the country.

I think the US government should build two huge clusters of nuclear power plants. The first cluster should be near enough to Yucca Mountain to facilitate secure transport of the waste without traveling near populated areas. The second one should be in Alaska with it's own waste disposal site if possible. The only way on and off of both should be an air strip. The clusters would be huge sites with restricted airspace and lots of security around dozens of small, well protected reactors. They should be designed so a failure of one would not prevent the operation and maintenance of the others. They should be housed in separate buildings separated by relatively large distances to make it hard for a terrorist attack or nuclear strike to do damage to more than one. Each cluster should be capable of powering the entire US by itself (for security reasons) and each should be able to expand to twice it's initial size to accommodate the inevitable rise in power consumption.

This may seem wildly expensive but if done correctly it could dramatically help the economy of the US. First, we could we cut the huge flow of money out of the country from purchasing oil and also reduce the demand for oil further reducing prices. But also, secondly, if we overbuilt production capability we could sell power to other countries creating a flow of money into the country instead of out. Clusters could be run much more economically than current facilities by sharing resources for engineering, inspection, security, maintenance.

If done correctly, this setup could be much safer than our current system of power generation. People who work at the sites should spend several months working at a time, not commute on and off the base every day to reduce the flow of people in and out and allow for much stricter security as people arrive and leave. The only way in and out should be by plane. There should be an airforce base at each of the two sites to help defend it like they do with other sensitive locations. You could even keep one reactor offline at every time to provide a reference model if anything goes wrong.

An alternative that I've heard about that seems horribly irresponsible is selling and building inexpensive small nuclear reactors all over the world. I heard about a company that

Re:Nuclear power isn't all that bad

Power is never generated on a large scale where it is needed, we transmit it over power lines. Granted, there are losses in doing this and those losses would be higher if the power was transmitted over such vast distances but that's OK. Just generate more.

The power loss in the current system is estimated at 9%. From what I understand, more than half of that is in local transmission. Even if you tripple the loss from long distance transmission you are only adding about 10% overhead to the system. It seems to me that this system would be many times cheaper than the one it is replacing so it would be well worth it.

On-site nuclear waste packaging

The actual size of the waste increases by at least one order of magnitude when we prepare it for cross-country freight.

Are you sure about this? It was my impression that the shipping casks were just that, shipping casks.

I would wonder if it's possible to build the disposal system into the plant.

The US taxpayer paid for the development of a system to create disposal-ready packages of radwaste at reactor sites (mostly the fission products, not the uranium). It is called pyroprocessing, and it was to be part of the Integral Fast Reactor. The process involved electrolytically dissolving the spent fuel in a molten salt bath (no water), plating out the useful elements and leaving the rest dissolved in the salt. The spent salt would be adsorbed into the pores of a zeolite (making it insoluble), putting the cold salt powder into stainless steel cans, hydraulically pressing the cans to solidify the powder and then encasing the cans in ceramic.

The purpose was to build a proliferation-proof breeder reactor, with the fuel so highly radioactive at all stages that it would be impossible to remove it from the "hot cell" areas around the reactor proper. The only thing that would ever leave the reactor would have been the processed radwaste. However, this scheme can be used in a somewhat modified form to process and separate UO2-based PWR fuel as well. The advantage is that there are no organic solvents or water-based chemistry involved, so the problems evident at Hanford become impossible.

The US taxpayer paid for this, but nobody will be benefitting from it; the anti-nukes have succeeded in killing any consideration with a well-orchestrated scare campaign.

Re:Oil supply is not diminishing!

US domestic petroleum consumption ~= 20.0 Million Barrels/Day in 2003 rising from 19.8 MMBD in 2002. 2003 domestic production ~= 7.9 MMBD. The average estimate for ANWR production = 1.0 to 1.35 MMBD. All numbers from the hippies in Bush's Energy Department [doe.gov]. By the way, the same study shows a steady decline in domestic proven reserves, even taking in to account unexploited oil fields.

Do the math. Even if there are a few other unexploited areas in the US that are as rich as the ANWR, domestic demand far outstrips any realistic estimation of domestic production. Even if we put a marginal well in everyone's backyard, we can't keep up with current consumption trends. More drilling might be part of a short term answer, but if our goal is to eliminate our dependency on foreign petroleum then we must find ways to reduce our overall consumption without wrecking the economy at the same time. That's hard.

Damn Straight

I really like it when people involved in saving the planet and all that are still able to think rationally use see things like nuclear power as useful. And it is useful, even if only for a few generations nuclear power is one of the best options available. That said I want an array of satellites collecting solar energy and sending it down to earth via microwave as soon as is feasible. And then after that I want feasible fusion damnit.

Re:Damn Straight

I followed those experiments somewhat, but what has actually been teleported is the information on the quantum state of the particle, not its energy. In other words, you take the original electron/photon/particle, measure its quantum state (destroying it in the process) and apply it to another remote particle which indeed becomes the original since it now possesses the same quantum state.

No transfer of energy here, move along. But IANAQP

The 'Day After Tommorrow'

The recent movie The Day After Tommorrow [afriguru.com] makes global warning seem like a more imminent threat than it probably is. Could it be that those more concerned about the risks have taken its release as a good opportunity for sounding their views (since people will be more receptive?)

Re:The 'Day After Tommorrow'

Could very well be.

Its not like all the missile and space-radar scientists weren't getting all white-paper'y about meteorite attacks when that WhatsItsName Bruce Willis movie was in the theatres ... ... or the SMART initiative guys getting all festery when the "Day After" movies were made (about nuclear war) ... or all the DNA-priests getting all aglow after "GATTACA" ...

Hollywood. Its propaganda, done right.

Re:The 'Day After Tommorrow'

Could it be that those more concerned about the risks have taken its release as a good opportunity for sounding their views (since people will be more receptive?)

YES: This is the movie's website, with the banner "The day after tomorrow, where will you be?": www.thedayaftertomorrow.com [thedayaftertomorrow.com], while this site is setup by Greenpeace, and highlights current issues and politics, under the banner "The day is today, what will you do?": www.thedayaftertomorrow.org [thedayaftertomorrow.org].

Smart marketing.

oblig simpsons quote:

overheard in springfield, ??:

excellent!

What about solar towers?

What about solar towers, like this one [nsw.gov.au]. What keeps us from plastering earth's deserts with these things?

Re:What about solar towers?

This tower doesn't heat air; it causes hot air at ground level to rise through the tower, driving turbines inside the tower.

Now, there may be unforeseen climatic consequences of heating the air 1km up (but the energy "stolen" by driving the turbines should result in the air being fairly cool when it exits the tower), but it's not pumping hot air "out into the atmosphere" - where do you think the hot air came from in the first place?

Re:What about solar towers?

"Call me naive but I hardly think plastering a desert with towers that, by design, pump hot air out into the atmosphere will reduce global warming."

what else was that solar energy going to do if it wasn't intercepted??? it was going to heat the sand up anyway and eventually the air as well... those solar towers are going to cool the desert, not heat it up...

Re:What about solar towers?

"And how exactly are you going to transport all this energy? "

split water to make hydrogen and oxygen... duh...

Well..

While the analogy of threat of global warming to threat of Hitler can be argued, if nothing else, non-conventional means of energy shall soon be required since there aren't that many natural resources available anymore.

Maybe it is urban legend, but we all keep hearing about the number of years after which gasoline would be unavailable. No matter how inaccurate that claim is, the current gas prices do seem an indicator of that :-

Nuclear energy has always been safe and a lot less polluting than the conventional means. Coupled with the almost limitless harvestation of it and the relative safefy with which it can be produced, I think it is time the world woke up to it.

There's one.

While the analogy of threat of global warming to threat of Hitler can be argued, if nothing else, non-conventional means of energy shall soon be required since there aren't that many natural resources available anymore.

There is one prominent natural resource that we still have plenty of....

Unfortunately that resource is coal. And burning coal is some of the nastiest shit we've ever done.

That is a whole 'nother worry about the oil situation: at some point, oil prices will start to go up, and won't ever stop. Maybe that's happening now. We'll have a choice - do we supplant our flagging energy sources with clean, risky, expensive nuclear... or clean, inadequate, expensive wind/solar... or dirty, plentiful, cheap coal?

We as a species have made decisions like this before and it doesn't look promising. Frankly, the problem of dealing with spent rods is a lot more palatable than a resurgence in coal burning....

(Aside: let's not forget, nuclear critics... 'threat of terrorism' is not a good reason to stop doing anything worthwhile)

This just for saving humans...

These green people are ultimatly interested in saving the human race...not the planet.

Do we really think that we, with a few fossil fuels and other environmental crap we throw into the air and water over the past 150 year, can really change the Earth?

The Earth will shuck us off like a bad case of fleas. 1 million years from now...which is but an eyeblink to the Earth...we'll be long gone. A footnote as it were. The Earth will heal itself.

So please, stop with the "Save the planet" high-horse. The planet isn't going anywhere...WE ARE! So say what you really mean...save the humans.

(paraphrased quite a bit from George Carlin btw)

Renewables are better in the long term

While it's true that nuclear power is one of the best int the short term but I think in the long term renewables are preferable.

With renewables:

- You don't have to mine

- You don't have to pay except initial investment and maintainance

- You don't have to take care of waste.

- It's distributable. Everybody can have it in their houses.

- Recent breaktrhoughts in solar cells will make them efficient and cheap.

Re:Renewables are better in the long term

With renewables you do have to mine. What do you think the equipment is made of, fairy dust?

Not having to pay for initial investment and maintenance is damning with faint praise. For most renewable technologies, the investment cost makes them noncompetitive for most applications.

Waste: some forms of renewable energy have a great deal of waste. Geothermal, OTEC, biomass. And all the equipment eventually has to be disposed of as it wears out.

'Recent breakthroughs' usually don't pan out ('Popular Science Syndrome'), and even if they do they take much longer than we'd like to be reduced to workable products.

But is it a real problem ?

Ok, we all know that the sea levels will rise, the weather will be come (even more) unpredictable, etc,etc. But every documentary I have seen on this subject, seems to use 2 different sources for its data. At first, they use data gained from antarctic ice cores that show that this has happened ("global warming") time and again over a considerable amount of time. Then suddenly, the doomsday scenario is based on the fact that the changes in the global climate have happened in the 400 or so years since records began.

How can you accept both points of view ? It is misleading to suggest that humans are the cause of global warming. I fully agree that we as a race should seek some non-polluting energy source over one that has shown to be bad for us, let alone the planet, but to use misleading information to achieve social indignation is wrong.

Global warming is a catch-phrase, being used to describe potential doom. Even if we all stopped using electricity and cars etc, then the planet would still go through immense environmental changes, as it has done since the beginning. News flash, the sahara used to be green and pleasant, and before that it was under water. Are we as humans responsible for that too ?

Godwin's law

Wow, the OP compared global warming to nazis, thus invoking Godwin's law [catb.org] before the discussion even started.
I have no choice but to declare this thread officially closed...

It's About Time

I'm glad that he's come out and said this (and it's amazing that it wasn't treated in a more negative way by the Independent - a notoriously hysterically anti-nuclear newspaper).

The Environmental Movement needs to be kicked into reality, and this sort of announcement might get things moving.

Unfortunately for us in the UK, the "environmentalists" coupled with weak-willed and short-sighted politicians have squandered away our nuclear exeprtise and brought about the decline of the civillian nuclear industry, much to my personal dismay and that of former colleagues and friends.

As with many things, the UK once lead the world in nuclear power technology. Now we mearly run our stations into the ground, defuel them, and tidy up. We're burning gas hell for leather, and peppering the countryside with ugly, intusive and pretty feeble wind turbines.

I made the decision to leave the nuclear industry 5 years ago, and I'm glad I did. They were talking of building new capacity maybe in 50 years' time. What good is that?

Re:British Nuclear "Expertise"

Bull-effing-shit

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I present you with exhibit A: Windscale, a powerplant so disastrous and badly designed that they spared no expense in making it safe -- they changed its name to Sellafield.50 or so years ago, they were in a hurry to build something that could produce plutonium from natural uranium for the Britsh nuclear weapons programme. The Cold War was on. People were very scared, so they build the two windscale piles - a very poor and primitive design - in a hurry. Hindisght is always perfect. Windscale wasn't. Luckily they fitted iodine filters to the exhaust stacks which saved Western Europe when they set the core alight annealing out Wigner energy from the core (a practice illegal since then).

The whole dodgyness of the Windscale design is an article in itself. You can read about it. Open gas circuit (i.e. natural air exhaused to atmosphere for core cooling) and aluminium fuel cans...A lack of sufficient core instrumentation. Poor operating procedure (annealing Wigner energy).

The next two sites, Calder Hall and Chapel Cross, had carbon dioxide cooling in clode gas circuits, better core instrumentaion, automatic safety circuits and NO ANNEALING OF WIGNER ENERGY allowed.

Still leaking radiation, still poisoning the Irish Sea, but now we needn't associate it with the near-fatal meltdown or the hole linking the nuclear-waste chute with the chimney!

Absolute nonsense. Rubbish. Not even half true. The Windscale site is still there, on the Sellafield site. It's not "leaking radiation" and it's not poisoning the Irish Sea. Most of the poisoning was on land anyway, 50 years ago. The residual radioactivity of the Windscale chimneys was low enough several years ago that men were able to work on them, to begin dismantling. You can read about this on the BNFL web site.

Sellafield does a lot of reprocessing. If you ignorant fools weren't so stupid, we'd be using spent Magnox and AGR fuel again in AGRs in the form of MOX. Sellafield does discharge some effluent into the Irish sea, It's realtively small and harmless. You can check out the facts with HM NII if you like, and the NRPB. You wouldn't want to drink it, but then I wouldn't want to drink sea water...

If you ignorant, self-styled experts would stop scaremongering and telling lies, those of us with a clue could get on and deal with things properly.

The activities at Dounreay were somewhat ammateurish.

Expertise? I think not. The prosecution rests, your honour.

So, you're going to damn the entire industry on two unrelated incidents from many years ago? Have you heard of progress? What rock have you been living under? Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth?

Bogeyman

[Lovelock] compares the threat of global warming with the threat of the Nazis in 1938...

Don't get me wrong -- the Nazis were bad, bad men. But raising the "Nazi bogeyman" at every turn is really the sign of intellectual laziness.

Been there, done that.

Come on, we're already up to 75% of our electricity from nukes.

Oh, you're not in France.

Get with the act you luddites.

This message submitted with the help of the friendly atom.

Global Warming - Dead Reefs

For those who doubt the effects of global warming, I recommend taking up SCUBA. Not only is it a great sport, you'll get to see first-hand the effects of global warming, and it WILL scare you.

The Seychelles reefs [disasterrelief.org] are just about gone. What was once arguably the best reef to dive in the world outside the Great Barrier is now a graveyard.

And this knowledge isn't from reading an alarmist's evaluation of the situation, it is from seeing it with my own eyes on dives I did last year on Mahe, Praslin and La Digue. A conservative estimate would be that 90% of the reefs are dead. Probably closer to 95%, but as I didn't dive every square inch, I can't say there aren't some pristine patches somewhere. There very well may be, I just didn't see them.

As for the Florida and Great Barrier reefs, I can also attest to their ailing health. I live just above the Keys and dive them regularly, and I dove the GB Reef about 10 weeks ago. The destruction is real.

Don't take anyone's word for it. Go strap on a set of tanks and see it for yourself. It's a wake-up call.

Tal

Re:Global Warming - Dead Reefs

There is no question that global warming is happening. There is a question of whether humans have anything to do with it and whether humans can do anything to stop it.

Re:Global Warming - Dead Reefs

Well, it isn't all bad [nature.com]. Some reefs are going to die, while others expand. And perhaps a few of the reefs will even evolve to live in warmer waters. If worst comes to worst we could always genetically engineer them to do that ;)

Stop caricaturizing people please

Who is "the left"?

I have been very impressed with the diverse range of opinions many people have.

The only place where I haven't seen this is in people who buy their ideas wholesale in a package deal from talk radio dj/cranks like the author of this thread has.

Who is "the left"?

If you eat tofu are you "the left", and are you against atomic energy?

Now that this person supports atomic energy does that mean he is a republican?

Oy!

Steve

Re:Nazis?

I really fail to see why Nazis are considered to be right-wing.

Mainly because they butchered the real Socialists (SPD), the Trade Unionists and Communists (KPD), failed to nationalize companies (instead permitting Corporatism - that which Mussoline regarded as "Fascism"), failed to institute profit-sharing, etc.

Socialism tends to be regarded - by most Socialists - as an Internationalist creed. Fascism - and Nazism - pretty much rejects Internationalism except maybe as a source of short-term alliances.

The Nazis also enjoyed the support of the more conservative sections of Weimar society - the Junkers class, for example, and many industrialists.

What about the new breaders with passive safety?

Neophyte here. Why does nobody talk about those new reactors that automatically shutdown by design (following the laws of physic) if anything goes wrong? Like this one [anl.gov]?

Anybody here working/studying in the nuclear field can comment on the state of these reactors and why we do not hear much from them? If the nuclear industry wants to come back, its not by proposing the old designs it will succeed.

nuclear power...

What's really frustrating about nuclear power is that the Greens are so vehemently opposed to it, and they're exactly the people who should love it and embrace it. They fear it because they think it's bad 'for nature', when in fact it's only bad FOR HUMANS. Humans are uniquely vulnerable to radioactivity. Most(all?) other species are not.

Consider Bikini Atoll. It was the site for many, many bomb tests, including the first hydrogen bomb. You probably think of it as a blasted desert, but in actual fact, it's a tropical paradise. It is in BETTER shape now, ecologically, then it was when humans lived there! It's even safe to visit, but you wouldn't want to eat the bananas. :-)

In other words, nuclear power is WONDERFUL for the environment; the more radioactivity, the better (within reason at least), because it chases nasty humans out of the area and lets normal plants and animals live in (relative) peace.

The primary beneficiaries of nuclear power are also the ones who are hurt most by it, which seems eminently fair. We need to be very careful with nuclear waste for OUR OWN sake, but as far as Nature is concerned, it just doesn't matter all that much. This is exactly backwards to our existing power generation, in which we get all the benefit but pay virtually none of the cost.

Additionally, although many people simply will refuse to hear this, we have made many improvements in nuclear power since we last built plants. We had a tendency to grandiose engineering in the 70s, and we paid for that. There are much cleaner and simpler designs now. Materials science has improved enormously as well. Couple that with our much improved ability to monitor remotely, and we should be able to build plants that are nearly failproof. And if they DO fail, well, it's only humanity that will suffer.

I just don't understand why the Greens aren't all over this.... if they don't embrace this idea, it seems likely to me that their true motivation is less about "loving Nature" and more about "hating humans".

Re:nuclear power...

You didn't think about it enough.

Humans live a very long time, and it takes many many years for us to reach reproductive age. Radiation is fairly constant over time, so a short-lived mammal will suffer less damage from a given amount of background radiation. In an area where humans would die out, mice and wolves might be perfectly fine.

Additionally, most other species have better damage-repair mechanisms than we do. I don't remember the specifics, but all you have to do is look at Bikini Atoll, which was the site of over twenty nuclear tests, including the first hydrogen bomb. It is, as I pointed out in my original post, a tropical paradise, lush and green, with amazing biodiversity. It would be dangerous for humans to spend significant time there, but the ecosystem is just fine.

So what part was ludicrous again?

BP statistical world energy review

You can find it on the BP [bp.com] website and specifically look here: BP reports [bp.com]

While there is a LOT of energy falling on planet earth and alternate energy forms can yeild a significant source, it is unlikly that these sources combined with reduced wastage can make the kind of difference we need.

The BP reports show 2002 oil ouput in ALL middle eastern countries has been in decline since 2000 and that Norway and North Sea have been in a rather serious decline since 1999.

The 2004 report showing 2003 production is expected shortly. What I hope this report shows is an increase in production in certain countries like Saudi Arabia. I suspect it will not show this. This will put us more than 3 years past the peak.

If within the next couple years we do not see an increase in world oil ouput then I supect we can conclude that looking through the rear veiw mirror we have seen the Peak of World Oil Production. THere is a lot of information to be found at the Hubbert Peak Website [hubbertpeak.com]

If one assumes a 5% reduction per year and this might be generous, then consider how much the world consumption is cut back within say 10 years or 20...

I am sure slashdotters can do this math and can add the number of years to their age. The bottom line is they may be growing old in world without oil.

However you slice it, do not expect Alberta to be able to pick up much slack with Tar Sands, even though we have about 1.8 trillion barrels in resources. The trouble is our tar sands reserves are only about 300 billion barrels and our TOTAL natural gas supplies (which are needed to supply hydrogen so the bitumin can be chemically lightened) are not even sufficient for 10% and North America is already in a Natural Gas crisis.

WE NEED nuclear plants (CANDU, not enriched, because CANDU burns natural uranium unlike the stoopid USA enriched reactors which I think were designed that way to justify enrichment facilities so bombs could be made)

Not only this, we needed to start building them 10 years ago. We are going to have some major power problems over the next few years.

Taking advantage of bitumen

(I'd love to know who modded the parent "overrated", because the moderator is an idiot. This was one of the most informative posts among the +5's when I started browsing this thread, and since I only have time to look at the +5's I would have missed it otherwise.)

The trouble is our tar sands reserves are only about 300 billion barrels and our TOTAL natural gas supplies (which are needed to supply hydrogen so the bitumin can be chemically lightened) are not even sufficient for 10% and North America is already in a Natural Gas crisis.

You can make up for anything with sufficient equipment. The Texaco gasifier is quite able to turn powdered coal or petroleum coke into a syngas of hydrogen and carbon monoxide; the syngas can be shifted to hydrogen and CO2 if you need hydrogen. Since you'd be doing this with methane anyway, the only thing you'd need to add to use bitumen instead of methane for the hydrogen feedstock is to install the gasifier and its air separation plant. The bitumen could probably be sprayed in as a liquid, making the process that much easier than coal handling.

While there is a LOT of energy falling on planet earth and alternate energy forms can yeild a significant source, it is unlikly that these sources combined with reduced wastage can make the kind of difference we need.

I believe that you are correct in the short term, but very wrong in the long term. Natural energy flows on Earth are truly staggering.

Pebble Reactor

Lets not forget about the pebble reactor's [fact-index.com] when talking about nuclear technology. They are supposed to be a lot safer and a lot more efficent than most of the reactors used today.

It's possible

Here in France around 80% of the electricity is nuclear (15% hydroelectric ...), it's not cheap but it's possible. EDF [www.edf.fr], the french monopoly, is actually the world leader (45 € billions, 22 % of the electricity of the European Union), so it can even become profitable (despite the huge investments). There's however a problem with nuclear waste, which is vehemently debated here. All nuclear plants are using the same technology (pressured water) and the MOX fuel, so on a large scale, they reduce costs and increase security.

Stop wasting so much energy!

How can somebody argue about global warming in an US magazine and not criticize the enormous waste of energy by Americans? My Ford Galaxy, a 7-seater, uses less than 7 liters per 100 km (that should be about 40 miles/gallon) at a cruising speed of 150 km/h (that is 94 mph) when using the air condition. Where are such cars offered/bought in the US? One important factor in the fuel efficiency of the mentioned car is, of course, the engine: a VW 1.9 liter TDI diesel engine (115 hourse power). My house needs probably a tenth of the oil/gas for heating that a typical american house would need in the same climate.

Today, the US waste energy like there is no tomorrow. In contrast to developing countries, they have no good excuse for not employing more energy efficient technology/insulation. And the last thing the world needs is blaming environmentalists for the lack of options against the green house effect (that is still denied by the present US government AFAIK).

Nuclear waste and other issues.

We are often told that nuclear waste is unavoidable, massively dangerous and has a very long half life. This is not strictly true.

We are quite lucky with fission products, because they all have half lives under 35 years. This site [doe.gov]gives an overview of the common ones. Sr-90 and Cs-137 have the longest half lives, at around 30 years. The relatively small amount of genuine waste only needs containing (or recycling into nuclear batteries) for a few hundred years, instead of the tens of thousands usually quoted.

The other products should be recycled back into fuel; without reprocessing, nuclear waste does become a major problem. Breeding of fuel - which reduces the amount of uranium mining and the amount of depleted uranium you end up with - should also be used; this extends the fuel supply to over a hundred years (assuming you use it for everything and grow by 5% per year).

Nuclear plants are easiest and most economic to run on a 24/7 basis. This could be achieved by providing an alternate load, in the form of a methanol plant (or choose your favorite liquid fuel); instead of the hard task of regulating the electric grid by switching electric plants on and off, you just vary the rate of liquid fuel production. The fuel than keeps your SUV on the road. With such a set up, even more variable sources such as wind, solar and hydro could easily be plugged in to make more fuel.

Fast breeder reactors

Can be built now. Done corrrectly, they produce very little waste, and what residue remains has a half life measured in decades. We could start decoupling our power grid from Mideast oil tomorrow, but there's too many people who got all their knowledge of nuclear power from The Simpsons.

And there's many new design concepts on drawing boards around the world. All it takes, as Col. Kurtz said, is the will to do it.

Re:Fast breeder reactors

Breeder reactors have not caught on because uranium remains fairly cheap, especially compared with the high cost of reformed breeded fuel. Uranium is cheap because there have been few nuclear reactors built since 1970.

If enough non-breeding nuclear reactors are built, the price of uranium will probably increase, which will make breeders become economically feasible.

Re:nuclear power isn't renewable either...

If we were to shift over to nuclear, we'd run out of *it* in less than 50 years.

Absolute 100% malarkey. Using efficient reactors we could power the world for *thousands* of years using only known supplies. Plenty of time to develop, say, some sort of hyperefficient photovoltaics or whatever the alternative energy wonks dream about.

Any good risk analysis between Oil and Nuclear?

This is probably too late to the discussion, but has anyone seen any good analysis in terms of environmental risk and damage between Oil (or even coal) and nuclear?

My problem with the whole debate between fossil fuels and nuclear is that people are scared to death of what nuclear power could do them, but the are perfectly okay with the effects of burning fossil fuels.

My point is, is nuclear any more dangerous than burning gasoline every day to go to work?

Sometimes I wonder if it's just people over-reacting to a new technology because its related to the a-bomb or big green-glowing pieces of metal which help kill you in a gruesome way.

Slowly killing all life over the next 150 years doesn't scare us enough, it seems.

Fundamental Misconceptions

The uber-parent has two fundamental misconceptions as written, and as such serves to mislead those who may not have had the time nor exposure to differences of opinion.

Firstly, it is highly questionable if the "Left" failed to stop Nazism, or even logically could have, as Nazism was an outgrowth of socialism combined with nationalism. The economist F.A. Hayek, in "The Road to Serfdom," noted that socialism would almost inevitably grow into a nationalist ideology. It is worth noting that the full name of the Nazi party was the "National Socialist German Worker's Party." Only those who deny the reality that socialism has a strong tendency to evolve into a totalitarian government, especially as the private means of production allows one to direct their own life as they see fit, and the state appropiation of this would lead to total control over the populace, if the program of socialization was utter and total.

As for global warming, the consensus among the scientific community is by no means solid. Perhaps 10% at most are convinced that global warming exists, that it's effects would be harmful to humanity, and that this could not be checked by human innovation. The vast majority of the scientific community, on the other hand, is either not convinced of its existence, or believe that the effects of global warming would be far less catostrophic that the Cassandras would have us believe. Indeed, it has been theorized that slight global warming would lead to longer growing seasons and greater crop production. As for the claim that such diseases as malaria would extend its reach beyond its current reach, we must remember that malaria was once widespread among the United States, and that it was public health initiatives, not a more temperate climate, that eliminated this scourge from the nation. Others point out that we are still coming out of an ice age, and that tropical conditions once existed far north and south of the Equator as at present, and they believe global warming is only a result of the natural cycle of the Earth's climate.

Let me make clear that I am in no way stating that those who believe otherwise are flawed or otherwise of poor character. The vast majority who hold views contrary to my own no doubt hold good intentions, but are in my opinion, due to the lack of diversity of thought throughout much of the common media, misinformed, or at the very least not confronted with alternative viewpoints that may challange their preconcieved notions of the world. However, let it be made clear that while one can disagree whether Nazism was on the "Left" or the "Right," it was an outgrowth of socialist thought of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Likewise, regardless of where one stands on the theory of global warming, the fact of the matter is that the scientific community as a whole is divided on this issue, with the current consensus of the vast majority that it either does not exist, is occuring naturally, or is occuring naturally and/or is man made, but will overall be beneficial to humankind.

Re:Fundamental Misconceptions

Firstly, it is highly questionable if the "Left" failed to stop Nazism, or even logically could have, as Nazism was an outgrowth of socialism combined with nationalism.

Then why was the left of the day going off to fight in Spain against the Fascists, who were supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy? Both of these were more corpratist/nationalist than socialist - indeed, the socalist elements in the Nazi party discovered just how sincere their leadership was about socalism on the night of the long knives. The Nazi party was funded by the largest german cooporations with the express intention of repressing the german communist party. I strongly suggest that you read your history books without ideological filters on next time.

As far as global warming goes.. you are completely wrong to say that we are 'just coming out of an ice age'. Temperatures peaked around 6000 years ago and had been slowly declining since then. Man made global warming is accepted by the vast majority of scientists, whatever you wish to assert; it is the magnitude that is up for debate.

The best analysis I've seen so far

Frequently asked questions about nuclear energy [stanford.edu]

(John McCarthy is known for being the man responsible for Lisp, and some AI research, among other things. I'm surprised that the pages I'm pointing to haven't been mentioned yet in this article.)

Also, you may be interested in his take on progress and sustainability [stanford.edu].

Coal power plants are more radioactive

Most people don't seem to be aware of the fact that coal power plants are more radioactive [ornl.gov] than nuclear power plants.

It is also now possible to design nuclear power plants so that they fail safe [popularmechanics.com], unlike the poorly designed plant at Chernobyl.

Safety-driven memes [surrey.ac.uk] are difficult to counter, but once we run out of options [dieoff.org] perhaps we'll do what we must.

China and India Anyone?

You know that oil consumption in China since 1990 has more than doubled Source [doe.gov]. India's is growing rapidly too Source [doe.gov]. I think it's time we realized that the rapid economic development of 2 countries containing a mere 2 billion+ people has something to do with rising oil prices in the U.S and the increase in Greenhouse gas emmissions. Guess what! The Indian government doesn't care to much about what the European/U.S centric green movement says and the Chinese care even less. That's why they demanded to be exempt from the provisions of the Kyoto treaty.

Finally a voice of sanity

It's about time that 'environmentalists' started to understand that Nuclear Power is not as evil as the pictures that seem to have been painted for it over the past few decades. I will agree that it is not a perfect solution and that it has it's own set of hazards. If one looks at all of the facts though, it is extremely difficult, (if not impossible), to argue that Nuclear Power is the lesser of two evils. I have no intention of rehashing all of those arguements here, whereas they have all been publicized in many forums, over and over throughout our nuclear history. As a former engineer in the nuclear field, I do understand the facts and am hopeful that others can take a new look at this option under a fresh light. We don't have the time to wait for a new technology to become industrially sound enough to refit our power demands with it. In my humble opinion, the decades that would take will prove to be our end if we travel that road. We should never stop striving to that end, but we should also grasp the opportunities afforded us in the present, to provide our children with a cleaner, better, livable future.

Low cost, or hidden corporate welfare?

Environmental issues aside, what are the real costs of nuclear power? In the early days it was sold as the cheapest energy source available -- "practically free." The question is, how cheap is it, really? How much of the cost is actually being carried by the taxpayer?

From research and development to mining and processing uranium to disposing of waste, everything is subsidized by government programs. Since many of these are high security defense programs, we'll never know the true cost. Furthermore, government contractors like Bechtel who do this work also do other government work, obscuring the true cost of the nuclear work. A similar example would be Boeing -- its cost of producing airliners is subsidized by cushy defense contracts, but we'll never really know by how much.

I'm not arguing that government subsidies are wrong. But we must know the true costs if we're going to make fair comparisons, and the true costs of nuclear power are very well hidden.

Several missing points

As much as I appreciate Mr. Lovelock, I think he's wrong on power sources. For one, I'd like to ask him, or anyone here, if they'd care to host a nuclear waste facility in their county...and if they believe that they could convince a majority of their fellow citizens to do so.

I think biodiesel is a good interim solution for fuel shortages, but even that has to be superceded, and soon.

He is right, though, on global warming. Other than the reactionary right in power in the US, and the few paid scientists they keep, and the "Christian" scientists (not to be confused with Christian Science, the sect), *NO* *ONE* doubts that global warming is real, and a very serious threat.

*sigh*

And we should have started building solar power satellites 20 years ago, but noooooo, all those US oilmen, and their agents, like Bush Sr.....

mark "should have built the first real
space station by expanding Skylab, too"

Power Networking(!) is a part of the answer

I'm astonished that none of the hi-modded posters have mentioned the import of increasing power networking - increasing the amount and distance of power shared between generation facilities over the grid.

What frustrates pro-Nuke types (and yes, I'm one, but that's not my topic here) about renewable rants is that renewables are not useful for generating the "base load", the minimum level of power needed 7x24. Your wind and solar plants can't provide it when the sun isn't shining or the wind not blowing.

Buckminster Fuller pointed out nearly 50 years ago that the cost (in both $ and "lost energy" terms) of sharing power across great distances was rapidly dropping because it's a function of the voltage you can push the power up to. If you can transform it up to a million volts, you can share power across, say, 10,000km (all North America) with only a percent or so lost in transmission. This much is now becoming common today. BC and Alberta made out like bandits selling power to California during it's artificial "crisis" the other year.

Fuller proposed another order of magnitude: *global* sharing, and elaborated on it at a lecture at the U. of Calgary I was privileged to attend in 1980 (one of his last). He talked about running lines clear across the Bering Strait so that US power plants not needed when that side of the Earth was in sunlight could run the streetlights in China, Japan & Russia - and vice-versa. He told us that Russian engineers looked at the costs of the transformers and the big power lines in the 70's, ran the numbers on payback, and came back with "practicable and afforable - it's just a political problem". It still is.

Would a global grid cost trillions? Oh, yes; but big power towers and cables last a long time and the global banking system would be happy to hand you a 35-year mortgage on it.

It applies both to making renewables and nuclear more practicable.

For on thing, with long transmission distances, you can put the nuke plants where the uranium is and have NO transportation - just put the waste back in the mined-out drifts of the original uranium mine.

(Here's a wild thought: get a globe. Run a rough line from the major US power consumption area in the northeast, the Boston-Washington corridor, up to the Bering Straight, on the way to Asia. Notice it runs right through northern Saskatchewan? Where about 10% of the uranium on earth, most of the north American supply, just happens to sit. Good place for a cluster of plants, no? And if there's an accident, it's one of the emptiest places in the world.)

For another thing, the sun may not always shine, nor the wind always blow - in one place. But SOME solar/wind farms would always be generating.

With global thinking, you can put your solar where the reliability rate is high - across the great "world desert" that covers most of North Africa, through through Saudi, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan and parts of China. Then there's much of central Australia (60 degrees away); and another 90 degrees along, the western US and northern Mexico. If you can draw on all three of those places, you can get reliable solar 7x24.

Wind is chancier and more localized but the principle's the same - enough windfarms in enough places add up to a baseload.

If people really hated Nukes enough to pay triple the cost for renewable plants, then double AGAIN because they aren't always working and you have to build 2X as many all over the place to keep the global "grid" full - well, then we could get by with renewables ALONE.

With a big enough grid.

(Me, I'd just build about a quarter that costly a grid, do the base load with nukes and about 30% of the load with hydro and renewables for diversity. Then spend the ~~$300B/year difference on doing good works for both humans and the environment, but if you want to be a renewables fanatic, there's how you can make it work.)

Re:wow

not much else to say than that. seems like a pretty bleak future is ahead if we cant figure this out.... maybe even if we can

This is Slashdot, where all futures are bleak. Kill yourself now (but give me your boxes first)