Bruce Sterling On Lovelock's Pro-Nuclear Stance 693
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timothy
from the whistles-gunsmoke-and-tumbleweed dept.
from the whistles-gunsmoke-and-tumbleweed dept.
Robert Berger writes "Bruce Sterling, author, journalist, editor, critic, blogger is also the creator of the Viridian Notes series of emails that comment on articles and websites about global warming. The current Viridian Note 00415: Doom is Nigh (scroll down past the inital links) has inserted his Sterling's pithy comments into Jame Lovelock's assertion that 'Nuclear power is the only green solution.'" (See also this earlier Slashdot post about Lovelock's nuclear apologia.)
it's green alright... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:it's green alright... (Score:3, Funny)
s/Cherkenov/Cherenkov/ ...and... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bruce Sterling needs to learn a lot more about nuclear power than he evidently knows. He seems to be stuck in a Chernobyl culture.
My own answer would be to go off-planet in search of energy, but we can't break that down into small enough pieces to sell to anyone with enough resources to actually do it.
In the absence of that sensible but grandiose solution, I'll quite happily swap the local coal-fired power station (Muja) that burns 12 tonnes of Uranium every year for one that reacts maybe half a tonne of the stuff every year, less than a tenth as much radioactive material involved and the results carefully captured and rationally stored for reprocessing instead of being spewed into the atmosphere.
This says nothing about the Radon and other radioactives released in the mining and processing of the coal, nor about the miners killed and injured in extracting it, nor about the huge amounts of diesel burned in mining and transporting it, nor about the enormous tracts of bush turned over so the miners can whip the coal out from underneath it.
Criticism without Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortuately, coal and oil suck too. Natural gas is better, but also somewhat finite. And the other alternatives suck, too -- solar and wind might be eco-friendly, but they sure ain't cheap. Think the recession in 2000 was bad? Wait until you see what doubling the cost of electricity would do.
Bruce can make all the "pithy comments" he wants, but unless he has some terrific solution stashed up his sleeve they're ultimately not very helpful or insightful. So, unless you're looking to opt out of using electricity and other sources of power (I was camping this weekend -- it's fun, but it's no way to live), it's a necessary evil.
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
The navy has been using it pretty much constantly for years, with no noticeable mishaps at least in the last 30 years(last one I could find was a release of contaminatd water in 1978).
There is a town not too far from here that has an oil refinery that about every six months has an accident that causes alerts to be broadcast over all news sources. These alerts tell people to stay indoors, keep their wondows closed etc etc. Because of the toxic fumes in the air. This is safe?
The bigger problem with nuclear power is getting rid of the waste products. If someone could figure out a good way to launch those into the sun cheaply nuclear power would probably be the best solution.
As other sources dwindle, nuclear power is going to have to be looked at more and more, regardless of the people's inherent fear of it. We as a society are demanding more and more electricity as time passes.
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
The waste problem is completely political. If it wasn't for cold war/war on terrorism fears (no reprocessing of waste or use of breeder reactors) and irrational fears of storage (not in my backyard syndrome), waste could be safely reprocessed and the minimal high level waste could be safely stowed away.
I hope you didn't underestimate the difficulty on getting anything to the sun. The Earth's orbital speed is about 30 km/s. Kinetic energy is one-half the mass times the velocity squared. In order to get to the sun you have to cancel out the 30 km/s orbital speed (where 0 km/s is the Sun's 'orbit') and that will require enourmous amounts of energy. Doesn't really make sense.
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
What I think this is emblematic of: the people who run our nuclear plants are near-morons who don't think about the fact that eventually the plant will shut down and there'll be a lot of deadly stuff left over that there's no good way to dispose of. (And that's ignoring potential leaks or bigger problems when the plant is operating).
While we're on the subject, check out this article [cbsnews.com] about fuel rods which some geniuses lost some time between 1978 and now (yes, it's pretty bad not to even know when you lost that sort of thing).
A few of my favorite highlights:
"would be fatal to anyone who came into contact with it"
"In 2002 a Connecticut nuclear plant was fined $288,000 after a similar loss. That fuel was never accounted for."
Advocates of nuclear power always say, "Well it'd be perfect if it was done right." Really though, we're pretty lucky the shortsighted and careless way in which the nuclear industry in this country operates hasn't resulted in more Three Mile Islands.
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm an advocate of nuclear power, and I don't say that. What I say is this: "Even as done today, it's better than every method of generating power that burns stuff, and more practical than every other method that doesn't." That is good enough for me.
Re:What about IFRs? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:5, Informative)
Why?
How are they different from all the other highly poisonous things we dispose of?
Arsenic and mercury never decay into something else. They remain toxic in most chemical combinations.
As a society, we've chosen to allow coal-fired power plants to dispose of mercury in people's lungs. All proposed methods of nuclear waste containment are safer than that.
600 years, by the way, is how long it would take the waste to be *less* radioactive than the ore it was mined from IF we recycled the usable fuel. Reprocessing has been a non-starter due to environmentalist opposition, expense, additional waste generation, and worries about having purified plutonium around.
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:3, Interesting)
IIRC, that data point was from a paper by Pigford and Chen - and the timespan has been increased somewhat since the paper was published (a few thousnad years) - and please note that the course I took on fuel cycles was taught by Pigford.
Your point is valid - by isolating nuclear waste on a timescale that falls within human experience (think "King Tut's" tomb la
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm no fan of big nuclear reactors, but I am a huge fan of using fossil fuels for materials science instead of energy. It's a limited resource, and it looks to my untrained eye like we're much more able to replace it as an energy source than we are to replace it as a plastics source.
At this point... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
I love nuclear energy, and I think Sterling is full of shit. To be perfectly honest, I love my first-world, technologically sophisticated existence, and my research depends on having shitloads of electricity available. But I'm also from the Left Coast, and since we still have some natural resources left unpillaged I'd like them to stay that way. So I'm a pro-capitalism,
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately, I do not see many of the "Greens" volunteering to be in the first wave of losses to begin this process. If this is truely the way to a sustainable level of development, I see it coming about only as a couple of Green-inspired governments starting the process. Let's see, if Canada and Norway got together and declared war on Germany, France (nukes! bad!) and the US, could they win? Could they start a world war that would decrease the population by the necessary amount? I doubt it, but it would be a start in what could be considered "the right direction".
Are we interested in this as a solution?
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
point 2: just because we didn't come up with another solution doesn't mean nuclear is the only way to go. we have time, and we should damn well use that time to come up with a better plan than nuclear.
point 3: in order to have more time (like, say, 50 years) we can right now start to make everything more energy efficient. put LED lighting everywhere - it looks as good as light bulbs/halogen, yet uses only 10% the electricity. e
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:5, Informative)
France derives almost 80% [doe.gov] of its electricity from nuclear power. The rest of its generation doesn't depend on the burning of coal, oil, or gas, so evidently their government feels that nuclear power is a suitable green solution.
The U.S. [doe.gov] on the other hand generates about 20% of its electricity from nuclear plants and about 40% from coal-fired plants. The damage caused by sulfurous compounds released into the atmosphere from burning coal is well known, and most environmental activists are convinced that the process of burning coal contributes to greenhouse effect. On the other hand, the pollution generated by nuclear plants is entirely containable, and when contained, does not affect the environment at all. Great efforts have gone into ensuring that nuclear waste does not escape the containment and transportation vessels it is placed in, regardless of the situation. The extra generation provided by nuclear power will be necessary if we are ever to switch to fuel cell powered automobiles - building extra coal/gas/oil generation defeats the purpose of fuel cells.
Also, nuclear plants don't take up the *enormous* amount of space that wind or solar generation would require (a factor conveniently ignored by anti-nuclear activists).
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:4, Informative)
Again, this is universal. There's no energy production system that's immune to it. Further, the amount of the increase is related to the amount of power produced, NOT the type of energy source.
-Billy
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:3, Informative)
This is a side effect of thermodynamics. We extract energy from the temperature gradient between the nuclear pile and the surrounding environment. The efficiency of this operation is dependent on the temperature difference.
Bu
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Recession = cost doubling? (Score:5, Insightful)
This won't cause any hit in the profits of corporations because they'll simply pass on the cost of electricity to the consumer.
Um, duh? (Score:5, Insightful)
You might even notice other goods and services increase in cost. It's silly to think that the cost of electricity is only reflected in your electricity bill.
Re:Recession = cost doubling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wind power just doesn't cut it: reason being for one that it can't provide power all the time, and can't provide power when the wind is too slow or too hard. There's a number of nifty calculations you can make, but all you have to do is look at Finland, I believe it was: they invested heavily in wind power and are now regretting it heftily. Not only is power not being produced when it's needed, but it's being overproduced when it's not needed, and
And to boot, it's way more expensive than any other from of energy except solar.
Nice segue into that, eh? Solar energy is prohibitively expensive too. And appart from that, it's not very efficient. And (again), it can't provide power when needed. Which is not just important for cost reasons [so you don't have to buy from other countries] but more importantly it's important for getting the current to stay at a stable voltage so your equipment doesn't explode.
Not only that, but solar cells are notoriously poluting in their manufacture.
Then there is tidal energy, which sounds nice...but there has been little to no research about it's environmental impacts (you know, the lack of which got us here in the first place?) like reducing tides, or maybe removing so much energy from the ocean tides that certain ocean streams will stop/reverse/whatever. BTW, none of this research has been done for solar and wind either: whilst there is research that says that localised heating up of the atmosphere might be enough to change tornado's from their path, we have no idea how we will affect the trade winds/whatever with these forms of energy. Oh, and again, to top it off, tidal energy is expensive.
I'll skip fossil fuels. Go look up the research yourself.
Now the two drawback to nuclear power in the form of fission (fussion won't happen for 50 to a hundred years, at least in a viable, mass-enough form) are the waste and risk of meltdown. Nuclear weapons are not a problem, unless we start enriching the radioactives just for powergenerating...and there's no reason to do that. As for terrorists? They don't have the resources to do that in secret. Hell, not only am I studying applied physics, but I used to study mechanical engineering: you need mayor funding and little bells will be going off in all the security agencies in the world when you start to try amasing the materials neccessary (which is one reason I started laughing when Powell went before the UN with his story about "tubes of such high tollerance" story...the tollerances he was talking about where a)used in many, many appliacations and b) in all probability not sufficient for cyclotrons. Anyway...).
Back to the watse and meltdown. Let's have a look at the latter: meltdown will be pretty much a thing of the past when the new generation (IV) of reactors come online. These are (amongst others) those pebblebed reactors you might've heard of. Not only that, but if something does go wrong (and with the new designs, it's not very likely, but we must assume a worst case scenario) it will be contained. We are a long way away from the not-up-to-standards, bad-maintenance reactor of Chernobyl; current standards mean that if something does go catastrophically wrong, only a square mile or so of the earth is rendered uninhabitable. Which is much preferable to rendering the whole earth uninhabitable as we are with the current fossil fuels.
And then there is t
Re:Recession = cost doubling? (Score:4, Insightful)
Them's fightin' words. I design wind farms.
> it can't provide power all the time
Neither can any other power source, but there's nearly always somewhere windy in a country. Wind can contribute to baseload, and does in several countries.
I could be mean and point to Ontario's CANDU reactors, some of which provide a 30% capacity factor. That's about the same as wind, which of course can't provide power all the time.
> can't provide power when the wind is too slow or too hard.
The low windspeed bit is true. As regards high windspeeds, even in extreme sites the wind very seldom goes too high -- a matter of a couple of hours per year.
> all you have to do is look at Finland, I believe it was: they invested heavily in wind power
Finland has only ever modestly invested in wind energy. They did do some sterling work on wind energy in cold climates.
> the actual electricity can't be transfered worldwide).
So why did a powerline failure in the US affect Canada? Many countries are interconnected.
> And to boot, it's way more expensive than any other from of energy except solar.
Wrong. We're cheaper than any new generation except gas. Of course, when you get obvious fudging of nuclear costs like we did with the Manley Committee [cleanair.web.ca] (who grossly overstated the cost of all other forms of generation to make a nuclear restart look viable), we're not dealing with fair opposition.
Re:Recession = cost doubling? (Score:5, Interesting)
One storage method that will work in many places is water, on a hill. About 10 cubic meters of water 1000 ft up stores about 1 MWh of energy. This energy is easily stored and released with high efficiency, (pumps and turbines) This can be used easily anywhere there is a mountain 1000 ft high or more, and here in Utah at least, those are in abundance.
I read in another /. post that this is being done in West Virginia, and he had links.
Re:Recession = cost doubling? (Score:5, Informative)
Now what about wind... Allow me to direct you to The Earth Policy Institute, an organization with a decidedly alternative/renewable energy bias. (Not a bad thing, just making it clear that it has no reason to artificially lower their numbers to make wind look bad.) Their examination of wind power [earth-policy.org] is quite optimistic. Pay special attention to their expectations: gathering hydrogen for fuel in cars, halting coal usage, etc. Now let's look at the data [earth-policy.org] they used for that. They cite a total U.S. potential (not current, but potential) of 1,221,191 megawatts. With that comes, I assume, the expectation that every possible free tract of land had a windmill farm stuck on it.
~1kW per square meter is what you have to work with in solar energy. When you have 8-12% efficient solar panels, that means you can get up to 80-120W per square meter...for six hours per day in the desert without trackers...on a cloudless day... In areas with more cloud cover, shorter days in winter, etc. the numbers drop off dramatically. Then we calculate that consumer solar cells degrade by 2-5% every year of use and have a life span of ~30 years. Then keep in mind that you have to keep all of those cells clean -- more energy used for something besides keeping the lights on. Don't forget that you have to actually manufacture those solar cells which of course means clean rooms (the real reason behind the costs) and the aquisition and refinement of requisite building materials. And to top it all off, when you cover large tracts of land with solar cells, that land gets less sunlight. So yeah, we can all put solar panels on our homes, get by on what we get, and then deal with the health problems after a year with more than average rainfall causes refridgerators to cease functioning and food to rot.
Repeat after me: large-scale power cannot be a "good enough" proposition where a 5% shortfall is acceptable.
So I want to get a pencil and paper and work out the total amount of land area needed to sustain 3,848,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours [doe.gov] (Yes! That's 3.848 trillion!) of electricity -- of which 53% of that currently comes from coal. Now if you come up with a calculation that if you completely covered the sunny state of Arizona with solar cells, it would still not be enough to replace just coal, you're on the right track. To top it all off, it costs about $30,000 on average to fit solar panels sufficient to power a typical house. How much would it cost to cover Arizona will solar cells?
Repeat after me: It doesn't matter how much you are willing to pay. Solar and wind alone cannot do the job.
Solar and wind are excellent candidates for supplementary energy sources. They are great for providing primary electricity to many residences (provided that folks can afford the $30K price tag). However, most folks will still need the grid as a backup and supplement. Hell, I'd be bullish on solar if for no other reason than the effective elimination of large-scale blackouts. But it still remains a supplementary energy source. There is far more to electricity demand than making sure the microwaves and personal computers have power.
So what can produce that much power? Coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear. In the US, we have hundreds of years' worth of coal. Oil and natural gas reserves are far more finite and are needed for materials (plastics, vehicles, etc.). And that leaves us with nuclear. Existing models will blow through our uranium reserves in less than a century. However, models that aren't just a one-pass design can not only use existing nuclear waste, but also nuclear weapons material. AND they extend the pote
Wrong, Wrong, Wrong (Score:5, Insightful)
8-12% is a little low. Current product cell efficiency are around 14-18%, and Concentrators w/ multijunctions get 30%. But who cares? Your car gets 15% efficiency in average use, nobody complains about that even thought you pay for the gas. Sun is free. The question is does 15% efficiency do the job? Yes. Even if it gets no better, it wouldn't matter.
Wrong. The average insolation in the US is 6 hours of peak sun per day, no desert required (ie 6000 Wh/sq. meter per day). For a flat panel, the deviation from the best southern nevada site to the worst northern washington state site is only 2-to-1! The rest of the country is suprisingly small devation within this. See rredc.nrel.gov/solar/ [nrel.gov]
Wrong again. Silicon solar cells degrade less than 10% over 25 years, and are garanteed by the manufacturer to not exceed this over a 20-30 year guarantee [bpsolar.com] - compare that to any other product guarantee! Though, they are guaranteed for 20-30 years, their life isn't limited by it. (see Solarbuzz.com [216.239.53.104])
Wrong. If you clean them verses do nothing you get a whopping 4% increase. Few people clean PV panels.
My roof doesn't seem to mind. What land? The average roof has 4-6 times the generating capacity of the average house. 1600 sq ft house = 148 sq meters. 148 m x 150 watts x 6 hours = 133 kWh/day. Average house power consuption 24kWh/day. Beat that with some other form of energy.
Wrong. When is the last time you noticed the sun failed to come up (yes you still get power in overcast conditions). Further, home PV systems are designed using statistic based on the past 30 years of weather data (see rredc.nrel.gov/solar/ [nrel.gov]). Ask somebody with PV, their power is WAY more reliable than the grid. In fact, most of the comminucation repeaters throughout the western US use PV for this reason.
Wrong. Solar is a reasonably dense form of energy wirelessly transmitted through a light "grid" in a usable form almost everywhere on the earth. If you wanted to compare space needed to produce all the electricity consumed in the US it would be a small 100 mile square (see picture for scale www.energycooperation.org/solarh2.htm [energycooperation.org]). In fact studies have shown coal uses as much space due to the space required for strip mining. Try strip mining on top of your roof!
Wrong. What would it cost to pay for solar electricity? Try the cost of the Irag war. Seriously, do the math (including new military spending) and that would be enough over the next 3-5 years to t
Re:Recession = cost doubling? (Score:4, Informative)
Hmm. I don't think this is true. Go to bizstats [bizstats.com] and check out the costs of running a grocery store. Utilities consume just 2% of revenue. Most of the money a grocery spends is on obtaining the products to sell, about 75%.
It may be true that much of that 75% goes to pay for producers' energy to make those goods sold, though. Farming takes a lot of energy and so does making producing AL from bauxite like you mentioned. So I suppose you're correct in spirit.
Re:Recession = cost doubling? (Score:3, Interesting)
Nessecity: Win a war quickly.
Invention: Tanks
Nessicity: Trenches from world war I were a bitch
Invention: Surgery
Nessecity: War time causualties.
Invention: Rockets
Nessecity: The british, they shoot down planes too efficeintly.
Invention: Rockets/ space moduels.
Nessicity: IF we don't the damn ruskies will do it first...
People work better under pressure. A lot of thigns come from serindipity and imagination but desperation makes it come faster. For instance, most scientist do their
Re:Recession = cost doubling? (Score:3, Informative)
Far and away, the "mother" (reason it was invented then, and not earlier) to all those inventions was simply whatever precursor technology was needed as the prior building block.
Invention: Atom bomb
Can you tell me who "invented" the atom bomb? You can't, because it's irrelevant. Multiple phsyisists worldwide had already worked through what was (to them) obviou
No.... (Score:5, Insightful)
He's right. Unless there's a fantastic amount of oil and coal someplace that we can get at reasonably soon, or unless all the cars in the world start getting 90 MPG Real Soon Now, the price of gas is going to go to a place where it's not usable anymore.
Try to understand: We're not just talking about those evil SUV drivers paying $80 to $100 at the pump. The depletion of the world's fossil fuel supplies will mean a breakdown on a global scale if it isn't planned for *well* in advance. We're talking about a collapse of the global economy and a return to a way of living that can't support the global population. Famine, disease, abject poverty, devistating wars, genocide. A return to a feudal economy, a breakdown of our civilization and another dark age for my children and grandchildren to live in.
While some of the more frustrated environmentalists might suggest that this is what we have coming to us, I'd rather see it avoided. You can't wait for it to happen and then start responding -- humanity has got to get on this one now, and pie-in-the-sky "what if we could increase the yield of solar cell" shit isn't going to cut it.
Once you devise a method of generating power that can compete on an economic level with nuclear, of *course* the world will switch. It only makes sense that we'd switch -- it's basic economics. But we can't count on the tech genie popping up at the last second to save our bacon.
Re:No.... (Score:3, Insightful)
No. He's saying that global warming will pose a significant threat to humanity and the only way to minimize its effect is to minimize greenhouse gas creation. Nuclear power doesn't make greenhouse gasses, therefore it is
Re:No.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No.... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure if he's saying that or not, but it's not quite true. The fact of the matter is that while supplies of cheap oil are indeed limited and will likely run out in something like 50 years, there is ample coal available to sustain us for at least 1000 years. Now, the consequences of burning all that coal will be staggering. Think multiplying current CO2 levels by factors of 5; no reasonable scientist would argue that such extreme levels won't lead to serious warming and climate change. At that point you're talking shutdown of the Gulf Stream, 20 to 50-meter sea level change and the release of methane clathrates, among other things. Real fun stuff.
Mr. Lovelock is correct in that nuclear power will be needed in the near future if we are to avoid damaging our climate system. However, it won't be required because we run out of fossil fuel (coal). The Saudis on the other hand are screwed - or at least their children are. Not that I'm all that sympatheitc to their plight, mind you. I'm sure they'll survive off of investments...
Your numbers a little off... (Score:4, Insightful)
On the other hand, newer nuclear plants can extend the life of existing uranium reserves to a length of time longer than the entire history of humanity up until this point. And the use of IFR/AFR and other modern designs can do so without mining another once of uranium for some time by processing existing weapons and waste.
Re:Your numbers a little off... (Score:4, Interesting)
In the course of nuclear power in the US, raw fuel has only used approximately 2% of the fissible energy potential. Much of this material can be taken out of the current storage pools and put to good use in newer reactors and without the previous longstanding concerns of weapons proliferation.
Since IFRs take so long to burn through the fuel, it will take quite some time to go through the waste and weapons material (which can also be used as a fuel source). By the time you get back to actually mining uranium for power again, let alone going to the oceans, a great deal will have passed.
Re:No.... (Score:5, Interesting)
But wait; the nuclear industry doesn't emit CO2!
I know this sounds stupid, crazy, unreal, but it's absolutely true. The only major source of electricity in the UK which doesn't contribute to climate change has to pay a climate change tax. This is to the tune of 600 million UK pounds for British Energy. That amount is the difference between a 300 million loss and a 300 million profit for that company.
Re:No.... (Score:4, Interesting)
So your point seems to be that old nuclear plants were expensive but newer ones are potentially profitable.
(Remember two things: 1. BE has the full cost of decommissioning set aside and 2. BE was profitable for several years before the climate change levy and NETA came along)
Re:No.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Speaking of which.....
I haven't heard much about it yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were big projects in the pentagon to consider hydrogen powered tanks and planes and warships wherever possible. If you had a nuclear flagship (aircraft carrier) it could use its reactors to generate all the hydrogen it needs. Then it doesn't have t
Re:No.... (Score:5, Informative)
Agreed, much the same as other sources of thermal energy such as coal, oil etc. However to date the evidence suggests that deaths, injury and illness associated with the use of other thermal sources is greater per kwh generated than for nuclear energy.
Even production of hydro enegy has caused more deaths, due to dam creation and failure, flooding etc. than nuclear.
Re:No.... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's probably true, but there is potential for far greater catastrophes from nuclear plants.
No source of energy is without risk/cost. Most people (outside the US?) now realise that the cost of fossil fuels is too high and would support governmental action to reduce CO2 emissions (as long as they don't have to do anything personally). I think that most people also deem nuclear energy to be
Re:No.... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, you can come up with doomsday scenarios for nuclear plants, but how likely are they? All US reactors that are not small-scale experimentals are built so that a Chernobyl style meltdown isn't possible. The meltdown process physically triggers events that shut the reaction down, stopping the meltdown.
If you want to talk about what ifs, how about blade breakages hitting cars/buildings for wind, mirror mis-alignment hitting an aircraft for solar, coal mine collapes/accidents/fires (already happen), and explosions for natural gas.
If I had my way, I'd replace every coal plant with a nuclear one. Preferably a breeder.
Re:No.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:No.... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No.... (Score:3, Informative)
And for the record, not all of us yanks have forgotten about fuel efficiency. I snicker every time I pull up to the gas station in my lil' Ford Focus. Made in America. Well, the drive train was made in Mexico, and the rest of the major components i
Are you kidding? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, in the end, this means that we (taxpayers) are paying more money to fund wind and solar producers (*not* wind and solar research, BTW, but to pay off people to have these plants).
If wind and solar were really reliable and less expensive, what in God's name makes you think we'd be relying on fossil fuels? The oil lobby is powerful, sure, but the rest of the economy would crush them like a bug if a cheaper source of energy came along. That's capitalism for you.
Re:Are you kidding? (Score:3, Insightful)
A good point, but equally as important to consider is that coal, oil and gas producers pay nothing for their obvious externalities. In fact, unproductive fossil fuel plants are kept running through massive government subsidy. The best solution -- and as a certified ranting leftist loon I find some amusement in my belief of a pure market based system -- is a carbon tax. Carbon ou
Government Subsidies (Score:3, Insightful)
That may well be true, but what you're not addressing is that the government does also heavily subsidize the oil industry, with direct subsidies designed to lower the price of gas so we will all buy more. Perhaps we would not switch to other forms of energy without these subsidies, but we would definitely use less oil because we simply couldn't afford to drive as much. This would drive more alternative e
Re:Are you implying that Nuclear *is* cheap? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:3, Insightful)
Not exactly. The trouble is that the US consumed 3.8 trillion kilowatts of electricity in 2003. Wind can't even approach that number. Run the numbers for a windm
Re:Criticism without Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
Ultimately I think biodiesel and the waste-to-oil process are the only solutions that look workable. Expecting the world to suddenly stop using oil is hopelessly naive IMHO.
well... (Score:3, Funny)
What the hell is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Somebody writes a piece in support of nuclear power. Some blogger fisks it, with as poor or lesser quality than the original article was written. No hard science, lots of hyperbole, and random conjectures.
Juvenile activity all around.
What the hell was timothy thinking?
If he's trying to advance his political views- and I'm not so sure this is the proper forum for him to do so- this is the least subtle and least effective way to do so.
Re:What the hell is this? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media. These fears are unjustified, and nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. We must stop fretting over the minute statistical risks of cancer from chemicals or radiation. Nearly one third of us will die of cancer anyway, mainly because we breathe air laden with that all pervasive carcinogen, oxygen."
Sterling, without a shred of evidence, dismisses this all. Nuclear power really is very safe and controlled - the only reason Chernobyl happened at all was that some idiot had the bright idea to turn off the control system, and then turn off the back-up control system. Other than that and 3 Mile Island (which was a remarkably similar, easily avoidable situation), I do not know of any problems with nuclear power (feel free to give me more examples; I'd like to learn. Also, if I have any facts wrong, please correct me). Sterling seems to think that power plants and bombs are the same thing, despite the difference in grades of feul, elements used, etc. This just goes to show that people can be really illogical when the word "nuclear" is used. :-P
Here's a good example of that: When MRI scans were invented, they were called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging scans, because that's what they are: they look at the magnetic moments of the nucleii that you are made of. But since it had the word "nuclear" in the name, no one wanted to try it out. Since then, they dropped the "nuclear" bit and called it MRI (same process, just a different name). Suddenly, everyone realizes that this is a fantastic process, and deserves Nobel prises (IIRC, 2 different ones were handed out for different aspects of the process).
The bottom line is, know the facts before you reject something. Nuclear power plants are not going to blow up the world 3 times over. The worst they could do is give you cancer, which happens far more often from smoking (or, as Lovelock points out, breathing). If Sterling actually sat down and learned about the issue, I'm pretty sure he'd change his tune. I'm disappointed that this counts as "news"
Re:What the hell is this? (Score:5, Informative)
Chernobyl happened for the following reasons:
1. The Soviet government wanted to perform a test on the reactor's turbines.
2. The Soviet testers took control of the reactor (not directly--they just gave orders to the operators). The operators, whose job was reactor safety and who knew the reactor the best were no longer in charge or reactor safety. Now the test scientists who knew their test very well but not the reactor plant were in charge of the reactor.
3. The safeguards on the reactor were *intentionally* shut down in order to operate the reactor *intentionally* in an unsafe way (at low power).
4. The testers rushed the test because of schedule concerns.
5. The reactor was operated for full power during the day contrary to the testing schedule. Additionally the test was performed late at night when most of the reactor plant managers and supervisors (who would normally watch the tests like a hawk) were gone.
6. And the least significant factor, but the one that allowed the reactor to blow up: reactor design (power increases as water boils and a shutdown in the unsafe condition that the testers put it in would cause a brief power spike--coupled together it blew up the core).
Three Mile island was significantly different. In brief, it was caused by improper maintenance, improper value lineups on reactor safety systems, material failures, an incredibly overcomplicated reactor control and indication system, operators not believing their indications, and improper operator training and operation.
I'm not against nuclear power at all (I work as a reactor operator), but both of these accidents were mostly due to political reasons. In Chernobyl, the Soviet government did not have adequate respect for reactor safety and rushed a test. In TMI, the NRC (which IMHO had previously downplayed reactor incidents) did not regulate enough the maintenance and operation aspects of the reactor (and in particular the operator training). I think both of these problems have been fixed, but careful attention must be directed at all nuclear plants to not repeat these accidents.
Chernobyl, TMI and human factors (Score:4, Informative)
>Additionally the test was performed late at night when most of the reactor plant managers and supervisors (who would normally watch the tests like a hawk) were gone.
Take a look at major accidents like Bhopal, Chernobyl and TMI. They seem to happen in the middle of the night. Coincidence?
>5. The reactor was operated for full power during the day
For anyone curious, this matters because some fission products absorb neutrons, especially one xenon isotope. Full-power operation means full-rate production of fresh fission products. A short while after you turn off a reactor from full power, it's hard to restart because other precursors decay into absorptive xenon and you have to wait for the xenon to decay. In normal operation, the chain reaction is producing enough neutrons to burn off the xenon as it forms.
The Chernobyl operators didn't know about xenon poisoning, according to accounts I've read. They noticed the reactor was hard to start and kept pulling out the control rods. Eventually they had them all the way out. (Kinda like pouring more and more gasoline on your barbeque). Meanwhile the reactor was engaged in positive feedback: the more fission happened, the more xenon burned off and the more the reactivity increased.
>brief power spike
Up to an estimated 100 times the rated output, in about a second. It takes 30 seconds on that reactor type to do a scram (emergency insertion of control rods). The power spike seems to have been a "prompt criticality" event, driven by the immediate neutrons from fission. Normally reactors keep their chain reactions going only by delayed neutrons that sputter out of fission products seconds to hours after the fission. That's why power reactors are controllable. Prompt criticality is how bombs work.
>the NRC (which IMHO had previously downplayed reactor incidents)
They should have handled things more like the FAA and NTSB, with a culture of sharing safety-related information. If the operators at TMI had known about the Davis-Besse incident they might have recognized the situation and let the plant take care of itself.
Davis-Besse incident (Score:3, Informative)
Which Davis-Besse incident are you referring to? The stuck valve [ohio.com] incident? The corrosion [antenna.nl] incident? Or the Slammer [securityfocus.com] incident? Is there a lemon law for nuclear reactors? How about for energy companies [cnn.com]?
Chernobyl vs TMI (Score:4, Informative)
Contrast this with TMI. At the time, my high school Chemistry and Physics teacher lived less than 2 miles downwind of the plant, so naturally he was quite worried. He placed radiation detection badges around his neighborhood. (He was a civil defense neighborhood captain, or something. This was still during the Cold War
Technically speaking, there was some release of radiation. The reactor did not "blow" and there was no direct release of radiation. However, the fuel vessel did crack and release radioactive water into the reactor chamber, some of which evaporated into the atmosphere. However, as mentioned before, the amount of radiation was statistically insignificant.
The reason that Chernobyl blew up and TMI did not is a matter of reactor design. Briefly, all nuclear reactors need something called a "mederator" to allow nuclear reactions to happen. They also need a coolant to prevent overheating and meltdown.
The Soviet reactor used graphite (like in a pencil) for the moderator and water for the coolant. When the water circulation system malfunctioned, the reactor continued running full blast until it overheated and blew. America, on the other hand, uses a kind of reactor that used water for both moderator and coolant. Thus, when the water circulation system malfuctioned, the reactor overheated, but there was not enough water to allow it to keep running full blast, and hence it only cracked the vessel rather than blowing it up.
Also, the Soviet reactor was housed in only a cheap warehouse building, whereas American reactors are stored in 7-12 meter thick reinforced concrete domes. Chances are good that such a dome would have held the blast of even a Chernobyl reactor.
So there are definitely major differences between Chernobyl and TMI.
Wow, just like slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
Bruce never even touches Lovlock's central thesis: that at current rates of usage and current estimation of reserves, oil will stop meeting our energy needs within just a few decades, and atomic fission is the only replacement we know can take it's place.
If Sterling's comments are taken at face value, then he wants to see a return to 1700s-style labor-intensive agriculture.
You'll seriously get a higher quality of discussion just re-reading last week's Slashdot, rather than looking for any insight in that blob^Hg.
Re:Wow, just like slashdot. (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe so. I certainly couldn't detect a point in there- he just likes to bash on nuclear power, and the article was a fine target.
and that Lovelock offers no practical solution to actually make any of this happen
Wha? Sterling is the one who has no inkling of a concrete solution. Lovelock at least gives a partial solution- Bruce does nothing but attempt to knock it down with invalid objections.
Sterling: Do you have the clout to give us one of those
Of course no one human has the "clout" to accomplish anything like realigning the international economic/industrial system. Lovelock isn't Superman. All any individual can do is share his views and try to convince others of the same.
Lovelock believes that nuclear power is the only energy source that can come close to replacing petrofuel, and he's honestly saying so. But Sterling comes along and yells "No! Nukes bad Nukes BAD! [campchaos.com]"- how does that help anything?
And then, at the end of the piece:
So what he essentially says is "We need somebody to solve this problem". Uh, duh... can you say "Content-free platitude"? Of course we need a solution, and somebody will have to figure it out. That doesn't mean that anyone who isn't the president of an industrialized state is forbidden to talk about it.
The only way we'll get a "genuine international agreement" is if the people of earth start to care about solving it- and while Lovelock has tried to advance the debate, Sterling is the one knocking him down with a pessimistic attitude: "You can't do everything, so why do anything?"
Bruce Sterling is a fool (Score:4, Insightful)
Before several volcanoes spewed greenhouse gasses into the air (several centuries before the industrial revolution), farmers in what is now New Foundland and England grew wine grapes. They will be able to again in another 50 to 100 years...
Hey kiddies, it's life. The world get hot, the world gets cold. Live with it or die, because the Greens won't allow us to build the technology to leave.
Just me $0.02 worth.
Some differences (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The last time the weather was this warm, we weren't dumping billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere. True, natural events can dump even larger amounts of greenhouse gas into the air, but it doesn't necessarily mean we should be helping them along, especially in light of:
2. The last time, we didn't have such a sophisticated world economy on which we depend. Life, of course, will adapt, including our own species. But in many ways our technological culture may prove less adaptable: hundreds of millions of people living on coastlines, trillions of dollars in immobile physical infrastructure designed for particular climates, and a concentration of agriculture that supports a far larger human population.
In other words, I can't dismiss the present global warming trend as "live with it or die". I presume your goal was to oppose Sterlings article, and support nuclear power, which would (hopefully) end one source of global warming, so you and I appear to be on the same page there, if for different reasons (I'm much more interested in ending the flow of petrochemical dollars to totalitarian countries). But I do hope that we don't have to move New York three miles inland. That would be really expensive.
Pithy comments? (Score:5, Insightful)
What an Asshat (Score:5, Insightful)
nuclear energy from its start in 1952 has proved to be the safest of all energy sources. (((If you don't count the nuclear energy released over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that is.)))
Yeah, those 300,00 dead in the nuclear attacks on Japan certainly look horrible compared to the millions of air pollution deaths. He continually treats nuclear power and nuclear weapons as one and the same, and generally comes off making no sense.
I stopped reading halfway through, I couldn't stand it anymore, but he basically says, "What are you thinking? Nukes are bad. I don't care what evidence you have. I don't care what the alternatives are. Bad! Bad! Bad!" It's like a satire or caricature on the wacko ultra-environmental movement. Maybe that's what it really is. If not, then my only response is to say, what a jerk.
In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, really, that's it. "There are risks, so we shouldn't do it". That sums up the entire argument. He equates all nuclear energy with nuclear weapons. I also find it rather amusing that he assumes that the only use for oil is in fuel; this is not true. It would take a lot more than "green energy" to allow us to "leave the oil and coal in the ground"; we would have to completely break our current dependence on polymers as we know them.
There's plenty of propaganda on the other side, too, don't get me wrong. But I find it amusing to find people who consider nuclear energy "too dangerous" yet push for plenty of other equally-dangerous technologies. Let's have some rationality here, please.
This guy is a crackpot (Score:5, Interesting)
Everything that guy has to say is about nuclear weapons. Well, guess what. WE ALREADY HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS. There, accept it. Get over it. There is no danger of additional reactors turning the US, or China, or India, or Western Europe into nuclear armed powers. NONE, because they already are.
It's easy to tear down someone else's proposal when you don't have on of your own and need rely on nothing but juvenile comebacks. Get some actual evidence. And you know what, even if you count the victims of Hiroshima and Nagisaki against nuclear power (but don't count the victims of conventional warfare against fossil fuels) and you throw in Cherenoble, and maybe round everything up by a few hundred thousand just to be sure, Nuclear killed far fewer people per kWh of energy. It is almost impossible to imagine a scenario in which it might be otherwise. Fossil fuels kill tens (hundreds, depending on how you count) of thousands of people each year.
A nuclear disaster would have to kill tens of millions (at least) in order to even the score. Nobody can even conceive of how that could happen with civilian reactors built to even the most incompetent of standards, like Cherenobl. About the only real possibility is if WW-III breaks out and people start tossing around nuclear weapons (which they already have, and don't need civilian reactors for), and that is far MORE likely if we start fighting over oil.
Just once I'd like to hear a well reasoned out anti-nuclear position. Include some numbers (you know, dollars and cents, lives lost, that sort of thing) and keep them accurate. Include an honest asessment of nuclear waste dangers (assuming various means of disposal) and honest asessments of nuclear proliferation. I have never seen any evidence that civilian nuclear power leads to proliferation, but it seems to be a given for the anti-nuke types. Japan and South Korea both have reactors, and neither has nuclear weapons.
The only scenario the anti-nuke types ever argue against is such a complete straw man. They assume we dump all the nuclear waste into the nation's beer supply, give away spent fuel to everyone with a driver's license, and somehow (though nobody can really imagine exactly how this happens) have lots of melt downs in highly populated areas. Seriously. Assume an even marginally competent nuclear program (needn't be perfect) and then try a comparison with our fossil fuel system. See how that treats you.
It's like comparing against an oil economy where it's assumed that 99% of the oil is dumped raw into the ocean, the rest is burned in the foulest, dirtiest machines imaginable, and that somehow access to oil allows every fool who can rub two sticks together to build a jet fighter with which to kill people. Be serious.
The Thing is though (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Sterling's comments would have been decidedly better had they actually proposed something else, instead of attacking an idea that is a feasable solution to significantly lowering the emission of greenhouse gasses. I have to wonder if he would have been among the people objecting to wind power because it ruined the view [go.com], if he lived in Martha's Vineyard.
Re:The Thing is though (Score:5, Interesting)
Toshiba is working a design which requires no crew even. You build a housing, put the reactor in the ground, and in 30 years replace its core fuel element. Several of these put together can power entire towns.
http://www.nuclear.com/n-plants/index-Small_modul
Sad (Score:5, Insightful)
This guy can't even tell the difference between fusion bombs and modern reactor designs that are pretty darned failsafe.
If you are really concerned about global warming, dependence on foreign oil, etc, you have to at least have a rational discussion about fission power. Which is why the ultra greens are having none of that and attacking with such ferocity, to them it ia a matter of religion, not science. Gaia told them in a dream or something that "Thou Shalt not Fission the Atoms that I have given unto thee." That's religion for you though, Galieo wasn't the first to be persecuted by religious intolerance and apparently isn't anywhere near the last.
Who is this freak? (Score:3)
I don't care if this Bruce Sterling person is Albert Einstein, Gandhi or Jesus. Nobody in the entire world can critique anything like that and sound intelligent.
Not only is he just sitting there with the debating sophistication of five-year-olds saying "I'm rubber and you're glue and what bounces off me sticks to you", he is confusing the issue of nuclear energy generation with nuclear weapons. Nuclear energy can be safe, if treated properly. Nobody will argue that nuclear weapons are anything but dangerous. "Painted with the same brush" is the phrase that pays, here.
Having said that: he has the right to say what he wants. We have the right to laugh and point.
HBHWhat gets me is ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear Hate-Conditioning... (Score:5, Insightful)
These people have grew up their whole lives with the word "nuclear" being associated with the word "Armageddon". Nuclear energy is permanently associated in their brain with "biblical disaster". They have been sold fear of nuclear annihilation from childhood (duck-and-cover propaganda), to adolescence (China Syndrome), to adulthood (The Day After), and are even now being sold fear about nuclear energy (Iraq weapons of mass destruction, anyone?). Baby Boomer response to nuclear energy is like a Catholic priest response to Satanism. They are never going to be psychological capable of viewing the situation rationally. Nuclear power has been their "Satan" figure for their entire lives, and they will never change.
Once the Boomers start dying off, people will realize the benefits of nuclear power once again. Hopefully global warming won't mess things up too bad before that happens.
Re:Nuclear Hate-Conditioning... (Score:3, Insightful)
What a simplistic over-generalization. Are we to assume by corollary that the brave new generation are automatically pro-nuclear? I think not.
What this post, and many like it, prefer to ignore are things like:
Re:Nuclear Hate-Conditioning... (Score:3, Interesting)
Huh? Chernobyl was caused by idiots deactivating safety systems on a reactor that should have been decommissioned decades earlier. TMI was a partial meltdown, but it was fully contained.
And if they lied to John Wayne, they'll lie to you.
WTF is that supposed to mean?
Plutonium goes missing more often than they'll tell you.
If they don't tell us, how do YOU know about it? Lack of evidence is the surest sign that the conspiracy is WORKING, ri
Eight tiny reindeer (Score:4, Funny)
Dang, hope Santa has a contingency plan.
Sarcasm isn't a Solution (Score:4, Insightful)
For God's sake, this is Sterling's blog? I would expect a paragraph AT LEAST at the end to mark Bruce's idea or assertion, but instead his page/article left me more confused and with the impression Sterling just hates Lovelock instead of having a good counter-point.
"So what" all around (Score:3, Interesting)
We could go to electric vehicles but not with today's generation of batteries. The battery pack in my Prius weighs about a hundred pounds and stores only as much energy as a few ounces of gasoline.
Things get interesting if we could build small reactors economically and operate them safely with off-the-shelf personnel. Then you could have nuclear cogeneration systems where a factory has its own reactor to generate electricity and generate heat for factory processes. Pebble-bed reactors promise to fill this role, if they work as expected.
Nuclear power is bad, because... (Score:3, Insightful)
Gasoline (oil) is therefore also bad, due to the existance of napalm.
Electricity must be horrendous, because of the electric chair.
Coal is bad because gunpowder exists.
Jesus, Bruce...any energy source can be compacted and used as a weapon.
Riiight... (Score:3, Insightful)
Bwahahahahahahahahahaaaa....
Anyway.
I think addressing why this guys vision for the future is totally freaking insane is an exercise in futility, akin to debunking the moon landing hoax or creationist websites. It's just not worth the effort, because no matter how well reasoned or cited (to be honest, the article he was ripping was neither) you're dealing with a true believer.
But regardless, the fact he fails to even suggest a realistic alternative is telling. And while risks of global warming and nuclear power are real, most people seem to be happy enough with the current system i.e. we use fossil fuels until it becomes more efficient to use something else. As the price of gas rises, we increase our usage of alternative energy sources. Until then _very few people actually give a damn_, at least in the sense of "I'll give up my SUV", much less "I'm willing to give up the internal combustion engine."
No doubt global warming may cause us problems in the future, at which point we will have to deal with them. I don't think it's clear that a massive investment of time and money to completely overhaul our energy policies (and therefore, our economic and social policies) is really any better than dealing with the problem 50 years from now. Who know what will happen between now and then?
I could be convinced, but present some evidence at least. Even a shred or two would be nice after that boatload ill written and scientifically inept crap.
show of spectacular ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)
Q:"Is nuclear power useful?"
A:"No, you idiot, nukes are bad!"
Q:"Is waste from nuclear power managable?"
A:"Would you hippies rather be breathing coal dust?"
Never answer the question
How about some discussion regarding breeder vs. non-breeder reactors. Or half-life of waste. Or decommissioning of reactors. Or standardized independent safety inspection and rules
Well (Score:3, Informative)
There are credible statistical studies that show less than 50 people total died from the Chernobyl accident. There were approximately 600 additional cases of thyroid cancer (3 deaths) and little elevation in other forms of cancer, and 38 people who died from direct exposure as well as several hundred who survived acute radiation poisoning.
While not cheap, it is a relatively paltry human cost, comparable to a major accident with conventional forms of power and industry.
Bruce Sterling has little of value to add to this debate. He equates nuclear energy plants using different elements and isotopes to nuclear warheads. Conversion is possible, it is true...but Lovelock is not proposing building nuclear plants in countries that do not already have the warheads. The biggest energy user in the world, the united states, already has so many warheads and so much plutonium it has no need to make more using any power reactors built, and China has a considerable amount as well.
With all this said, solar may ultimately be a better idea. The relatively limited research into creating more efficient solar panels has yield extremely promising results. A panel that is perhaps 50% efficient and wafer thin, mass produced and used to cover vast tracts of unused land might ultimately be cheaper than burning coal.
It seems clear that were the 200 billion already burned in Iraq used to develop this technology further and built the vast plants to make solar panels of this quality on a large scale one would get better results.
I've known Bruce Sterling for about 15 years. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm unimpressed.... (Score:5, Insightful)
(pause for reader to quake in fear)
Nuclear power is, like any other energy source, a tool. Like all tools, it can be misused. You can make amazingly destructive bombs with nuclear power, so powerful, in fact, that they've never been used since the first two. But you can also make very, very effective explosives with oil... a fuel-air bomb is vastly destructive. And those, as far as I know, HAVE BEEN used. So which is really worse?
Mr. Sterling, whether he intends to or not, is playing on the confusion between nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Think how silly his argument would look with a different energy source.... "with FIRE!"
Humans don't survive radiation very well, we are quite susceptible to it. That does not, however, imply that all of Nature is. In fact, it appears that very few species suffer from radiation as much as we do. The Earth has not always been as cozy and comfortable as it is now, and humans are a relatively recent evolutionary offshoot. We die from even small amounts of the stuff, but most species don't.
(we argued back and forth about why this is, in another thread... no conclusions drawn. Regardless, Bikini Atoll, the site of 20+ bomb tests, including the first hydrogen bomb, is a lush tropical paradise. It's not safe for people to live there, but Nature is doing JUST FINE.)
Since humans are the ones getting the primary benefit from nuclear power, it is just that we're the ones who suffer if we blow it. From an environmental standpoint, nuclear power is nearly perfect. If we screw up completely and have some horrid catastrophe that renders the Earth too radioactive for human habitation, it'll be the best possible outcome for most other species, since their most aggressive competitor would be wiped out.
Now, I did think his comment about how we'll just add nuclear power and keep using oil to be pretty accurate... we'd need a concerted effort to switch power sources, not just supplement them. And of course we'd have to take care of the waste, but that's far from an insurmountable problem. However much it costs, it'll probably take only one prevented major hurricane on the East Coast to pay for it. (which, of course, we wouldn't see directly... but if the weather stopped getting worse, it'd MORE than pay for itself.)
I do think we'd end up with 'nuclear slums', low-rent districts around most plants. Poor people would be the ones to suffer first, but that's ALWAYS true of EVERY technology. And in this case, it would at least be a deliberate choice.
I am cheerfully willing to trade nuclear slums for cleaner air, cleaner water, and more natural weather patterns. I'd probably even live in one.... since I'm such a strong proponent, I really oughta be putting myself in the line of fire, so to speak.
Small leakage a health tonic? (Score:4, Interesting)
This wise-crack got me confused. People sometimes say that there is no safe level of radio-activity, not realising that this is a methodological assumption, rather than an empirical fact. When scientists have tried to investigate this, using the natural variation in background radiation and existing epidemilogical data, they have found that radiation is a health tonic!
Some scientists have speculated that this might even be a real effect, not a statistical artifact. Their idea is that damage from free radicals is a much bigger deal than damage by background radition. Cells have repair mechanisms that get turned on in response to increased metabolism and the consequent rise in free radicals. Lags in the regulation of repair are responsible for much of the damage caused by free radicals, and if radiation upregulated the repair mechanism that could more than compensate for the actual damage done by the radiation.
My guess, from having done research on speech recognition, is that most scientists just don't get how hard it is to do statistics right, and the "tonic" effect of radiation will turn out to be an artifact, probably due to incorrect compensation for regional variations in cigarette smoking.
Meanwhile Bruce Sterling's attempt at sarcasm is a bit of a disaster, revealing that the controversy over the dangers (or otherwise) of low levels of radiation has passed him by.
Solve the fuel stream problems, and we're there. (Score:3, Insightful)
- Nuclear waste.
- Plutonium falling into the wrong hands => nuclear weapons on a large scale.
- Radioactive leaks during operation.
- Containing the radioactive waste from the mining operations.
Radioactive leaks? Not a problem. The only two leaks of any significance were Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Both of those came down to poor plant design combined with operator error (Chernobyl in particular). That leaves waste and plutonium.Waste falls into two categories: "low level" and "high level". Low level waste is your clothing, reactor parts, etc. Store them for fifty or so years, and they're no longer a significant problem. High level waste, on the other hand, is the nasty stuff, and it's what causes all the problems.
HLW includes things like plutonium and other trans-uranic elements (elements heavier than uranium), as well as fission by-products. Those fission by-products are mostly short lived; the long lived products are strontium-90 and caesium-137 for the most part. So the waste problem basically reduces to dealing with the heavy, trans-uranic elements; dealing with the uranium that hasn't fissioned; and dealing with the strontium and caesium. Everything else decays away quickly enough that storage for a year (at most) is adequate.
Trans-uranics and uranium can be dealt with by reprocessing and turning them into additional fuel for the reactor. The problem then becomes keeping this material out of the hands of those that wish to make nuclear weapons. No, I don't have an answer for that problem; I wish I did. The strontium and caesium... again, I don't know. Solve those two problems, and nuclear power is definitely a viable option. They're big ones, though...
Decide for yourself (Score:4, Interesting)
The list is either alarmingly long or extremely short depending upon how you look at it.
Some of the accidents are incredibly trivial. Others are pretty darn frightening. It's all a matter of a chain reaction (no pun intended) of bad events happening in succession. Take this one for example:
"September 19, 1980 - An Air Force repairman doing routine maintenance in a Titan II ICBM silo in Arkansas drops a wrench socket which rolls off a work platform and falls to the bottom of the silo. The socket strikes the missile, causing a leak from a pressurized fuel tank. The missile complex and surrounding area is evacuated and eight and a half hours later, vapors within the silo ignite and explode with enough force to blow off the two 740-ton silo doors and hurl the nine megaton warhead 600 feet (180 m). The explosion fatally injures an Air Force specialist and twenty-one other USAF personnel are injured."
Re:Decide for yourself (Score:5, Informative)
Bruce, is that you? Seriously, what does this have to do with nuclear power generation ... absolutely nothing. Most of these accidents relate to military and medical use of nuclear radation, which have nothing in common with nuclear power, besides that scary "n" word.
Re:Decide for yourself (Score:3, Interesting)
I bet the list of horrific accidents involving those two items (natural gas of course, generates much of the US' electricity) is quite a bit longer than nuclear fission's accident list.
And considering that a new nuclear power plant hasnt been built in the US in *20 years*, reactor designs have advanced considerably in the time.
Re:Decide for yourself (Score:5, Interesting)
"September 19, 1980 - An Air Force repairman doing routine maintenance in a Titan II ICBM silo in Arkansas drops a wrench socket which rolls off a work platform and falls to the bottom of the silo. The socket strikes the missile, causing a leak from a pressurized fuel tank. The missile complex and surrounding area is evacuated and eight and a half hours later, vapors within the silo ignite and explode with enough force to blow off the two 740-ton silo doors and hurl the nine megaton warhead 600 feet (180 m). The explosion fatally injures an Air Force specialist and twenty-one other USAF personnel are injured."
It's a good example, actually.
The explosion and subsequent death/injuries are because of the CHEMICAL explosion and, despite the massive blast, there was never any danger of the warheads either going off or being dispersed in dirty-bomb style.
I'd say that's a testament to the safety of the darn things.
Sterling's Response to the E-Mail I Just Sent Him (Score:5, Interesting)
to my own email list if I feel like it. I didn't post that thing on Slashdot,
and not everything that flies off my keyboard into cyberspace
is gonna be solemn, Asperger-style argumentation intended
intended to convince a bunch of Linux freaks.
* If you can't take a joke, take a hike! And if you can
take a joke, then read the friggin' list and get a clue
as to what's been going on there for the past six years,
before you send email to novelists and get
all teary-eyed about your disillusionment.
http://www.viridiandesign.org
bruces
On May 31, 2004, at 9:35 PM, Jakob Eriksson wrote:
Hi Bruce,
I stumbled upon your comments on Lovelock's nuclear power article today. I'd previously read your book "Distraction", and enjoyed it. In particular, I liked your portrayal of the nomads and the political power struggles.
Because I enjoyed your writing, and thus respected you as an author. I was hoping to read a creative and possibly convincing argument against the use of nuclear power. Instead, to my dismay, I was confronted with a series of immature comments, often with very little basis in fact, far from either creative or convincing.
Due to my respect for you as an SF author, I was prepared to take your advice to heart, and to give up the hope of nuclear power, had you shown good arguments for your case. Instead, I'm afraid you've spent all your whuffie (see Cory Doctorow's "Down and Out") on this childish flamebait. Given the comments on
You just lost a faithful reader.
Re:Sterling's Response to the E-Mail I Just Sent H (Score:3, Insightful)
What a dork. If he wishes to reserve the right to look like a fool, so be it.
* If you can't take a joke, take a hike! And if you can take a joke, then read the friggin' list and get a clue as to what's been going
Re:Sterling's Response to the E-Mail I Just Sent (Score:3, Insightful)
Nuclear Energy in Australia (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fission is stupid. Wish we had fusion ready to (Score:3, Informative)
Also, the way fusion reactors are designed, I assume that a critical reaction would be almost impossible given the grade of material used.
Re:Fission is stupid. Wish we had fusion ready to (Score:3, Informative)
I've been awake for 40+ hours and haven't touched on A/V since first semester calculus.
At any rate, k/x is still a hyperbola with the x axis as an asymptope and quickly reaches a point where even an obnoxiously large increase in x still only nets a negligible decrease in k/x. It's a losing man's game beyond once x > k and you're better off manipulating k (i. e. play with the shape, which is what I said before).
"You can make it as save as possible but ju