By 98 to 1, the senate voted in favor of an amendment to a bill that declares that climate change is real (the one exception was Roger Wicker of Mississippi). Finally, you say, we can get something done. Wrong, I say. You should know better. The Republicans found a way to twist out of the implications.
In a surprise this afternoon, Inhofe rose before the vote to ask to become a co-sponsor of the Whitehouse amendment. Scattered applause greeted his remarks.
Climate is changing,he said,and climate has always changed.The hoax that he has talked about, he suggested, is that there are people who think they are soarrogantandpowerfulthatthey can change climate.
So the Inhofe amendment to the amendment that climate change is real is that it might be real, but it’s not our fault, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Nothing has changed. The ignoramus is still an ignoramus.
Inhofe has now reached step 2 in the climate denialist defense in depth:
1. There’s no climate change.
2. There is climate change, but it isn’t human-caused.
3. There is climate change, and it is human-caused, but it’s good for us.
I don’t know what step 4 would be, but 3 steps are probably good enough to delay any action during our lifetimes.
“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick
is “ignoramus” an alternate spelling of “asshole”? Or are there subtle differences?
I was being polite. What I didn’t say makes “asshole” look kind.
I think Inhofe is part of that particular subset of ignoramuses known as the smugnoramus.
“ignoranus” is the word we’re after here.
Step 4: Profit!
With the GOP, it’s *always* about the profit.
Inhofe thinks that God is changing the climate.
I don’t know what step 4 would be
“There’s climate change, and humans did it, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.”
and Jesus will be back soon
I wonder how history will remember goons like Inhofe. I fear he’ll be too quickly forgotten rather than immortalized as a warning to future generations.
Climate change is:
Not real.
If real, not our fault.
If our fault, there is nothing we can do about it.
If there is something we can do about it, it’s too expensive.
If it is not too expensive, it would still be oppressive for government to require it of private enterprise.
If it is not oppressive, then private enterprise will do it anyway through the magic of the free market.
See, I solved the problem already!
And if I’m wrong about the last part, then obviously it’s God’s will.
I always loved the way that nature is weak and piddly when anyone suggests that solar and wind could be tapped to provide enough energy for a growing economy, but suddenly when anyone suggests that human activity could be affecting nature, it is suddenly mighty and immovable. I never understood how that was supposed to work.
This reminds me of a few years back when some southern state wanted to legislate a value for pi.
‘Arrogant’ is to look out at the universe and be convinced that God made all that just for us. No side projects, no mistakes. That one billionth galaxy over there in that general direction. God made that with us in mind. That is goddamn arrogant. Thinking that changing the composition of our atmosphere will influence its ability to hold heat is only some of the simplest science to understand. To not believe that you must be profoundly stupid or purchase. For the republicans its clearly both.
He’s just using the standard Four Stage Strategy.
PaulBC: nature is also weak and insignificant when engineers talk about just adapting to the seas rising and the oceans acidifying and drought and flood and etc.
“It is the height of arrogance, for me, as a politician, to believe that scientists are right about science. I dismiss and deny out of complete and utter humility!”.
Any bets on whether Obama’s remarks re: climate change spurred people towards Inhofe’s disingenuous stance, instead of the typical full throttle, unhinged, denialistic NOPE that more than a handful of the right-wing idiots love to skew towards? Have we really gotten all the denalists to accept that climate IS actually changing? Because I have seen them still debate and handwring over the point. There are still plenty who argue that the data is misleading, or wrong, or actually shows no warming, or shows a cooling trend, or that winters prove that warmth is a lie, or other such nonsense.
For the uninitiated, here’s all you need to know about Inhofe. You will likely be laughing and pissed off at the same time:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-lanham/james-inhofe-climate-change_b_6142170.html
See also here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/19/mike-huckabee-climate-change_n_3782300.html
Where Inhofe is proven to be a liar. He doesn’t think climate is changing, because one of his crackpot psuedoscience ideas is: “”We go through these 30-year cycles. ….We went into a leveling-out period about eight years ago.”
And more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/27/AR2009102702845.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
Either Inhofe’s own stance is changing before our very eyes, or, more likely, he is lying and toning down his stance because he is a dishonest, opportunistic scumbag.
“I am not a mechanic, but my car just broke and there’s nothing I can do about it. I ain’t listening to some arrogant, know-it-all who thinks he can do something about that.”
The standard line I see is:
1. Climate isn’t changing.
2. Climate has always been changing, we’re powerless to stop that.
3. Climate change isn’t our fault, and the IPCC has backed off that ridiculous claim.
4. Climate change will have no effect anyway.
5. The changes will all be beneficial.
6. We can adapt to all the changes, so long as we don’t wreck the economy. We must not do anything right now about climate because [goto 1]
So no, the denialists haven’t stopped denying. They’re just adapting to global warming.
@1:
4. There is climate change, and it is human-caused, and it’s bad for us, but there’s nothing we can do about it.
“Oh shit! Why didn’t anyone warn us?
“It’s Obama’s fault!”
“He offered to furnish a list of scientists who once believed in climate change but “who are solidly on the other side right now.”
Funny thing is, Senator Joseph McCarthy once offered to provide a list of communists who had thoroughly infiltrated the US government to undermine it. I suspect that Inhofe has just as many scientists on his list as McCarthy had communists on his. Zero.
The Senate just voted climate change into existence!
So from now on, we can blame Mitch McConnell for all meteorological problems and catastrophes?
Works for me…
The good news is that legal positivists have no more excuse for denying climate change because a law has made the phenomena real….:-)
@13:
Or when they argue that things like hurricane response or the dreaded “volcano monitoring” are unnecessary.
If history is any guide, step 4 is the War On Climate Change. It would probably involve something among the lines of a “Liberty” act absolving major corporations from their excessive tax and legislative burdens. This would free up capital which they could re-invest into climate protection. No obligation, of course, because small govenrment, free country and free market magic.
Ironically, yet also unsurprisingly, this would not put an end to the War on Climate that has been raging on in the background for some time now.
[sarcasm] Of course the politicians are right not to blame humans* for climate change or allocate funds for mitigation and prevention. All we need is a sustainable fusion reaction to power our civilisation and all our energy problems vanish over night since we now have unlimited CO2 neutral power. And fusion is a trivial problem because if it wasn’t, people would be all over it trying to solve it. It’s probably so easy to solve that everyone is just too polite to actually do it. “No, no, you publish, I already have a Nobel prize and couldn’t possibly take another. No, I insist! Fine, but I won’t publish either.”
So no need to fund obvious dead ends like renewables, carbon capture an all that rubbish. Advanced Cheap Tech will come around any day now even without trying and save us all.[/sarcasm]
*Possible Plan B: War On Nature. Kill it before it kills us with non-anthropogenic climate change.
Numerobis @ 22
Our revered prime minister, Tony Abbot (AKA The Mad Monk) is still at stage 1 and is busily dismantling every measure, minimal as they were, that the previous government put in place. Believe it or not, he is proud of the fact he has abolished the carbon tax.
What will climate change do to Oklahoma and Mississippi in the next few decades? Inhofe and Wicker don’t care because they will be dead by the time things get worse enough to be real to most Americans. (These senators are eighty and sixty-three, respectively.) Meanwhile, their power already insulates them from the current effects of global overheating. And their grandchildren will be wealthy and connected enough to move somewhere better, so they also don’t have to worry about consequences.
The short-sighted and self-centered Oklahomans and Mississippians who voted for these tools are not so protected. But they will also not be able to connect their bad decisions with their bad fortunes. And the kicker is that their children and grandchildren will be in such dire straits that they will keep alive the mercenary and authoritarian politics that kept them down in the first place. They might even wonder what mid-twenty-first-century outgroup they can blame for the harm to their states….
The biggest problem with Inhofe’s assholier-than-thou approach is he’s emotionally backed himself into a corner he can never escape. He’ll be a denier to his dying day, even if the newly risen ocean is lapping at his front porch.
@3, Cuttlefish: I think you’ve insulted assholes, which are a useful, even essential organ. When I was hospitalized and mine wasn’t working was among the worst experiences of my life. Inhoffe, on the other hand, is not only utterly useless but actually harmful. He’s a blockage in the bowel of America, a steaming lump of impacted fecal matter.
A random thought about fusion power.
Right now nearly all of the energy that the earth receives comes from the sun, which was originally produced by fusion there. If humans went full-bore with fusion power, that would be adding fusion-produced energy to the earth-system that did NOT originate from the sun. So the net effect would be equivalent to an increase in solar insolation/luminosity to the earth. And that’s the OTHER end of the equation that results in increasing a planet’s temperature (greenhouse atmospheric gases such as CO2 being the other).
At some point, if given exponential human population growth and energy demand, even a 100% fusion energy economy will inevitably produce climate change.
I imagine it will take a lot to get to that point, but it is bound to happen, unless exponential growth in energy demand is curbed.
(I can say the same for sustainable energy sources like solar energy. If, given exponential growth in energy usage and demand, even if we switch to 100% renewables, at some point we will end up using so much of the earth’s energy budget that we will start competing with the rest of the biosphere which also needs that energy. And if you go off planet to get the energy, such as with orbital solar arrays and the like, all the way up to Dyson Spheres or their equivalents, then any of that energy you send back to and use on earth amounts to an effective increase in solar insolation on earth.)
You cannot escape the trap unless you curb your own exponential growth in demand….
PaulBC @12
Were you wearing Bicycle Shorts when you typed that?
When is the vote on the shape of the earth?
So if he is ruling out geo-engineering , he must be advocating drastic reductions in carbon emissions.
Well, no one is disputing that we’ve changed the oceans, and we’ve created the 6th mass extinction event, so why is it considered arrogant that we could change the climate?
What scienceavenger said (#33).
I fear there are only two ways Inhofe’s obstruction will be removed: natural death and de-election. And the latter is well-nigh impossible.
I went to a lecture last week, on the geological evidence for climate change. Coincidental with Milankovitch cycles, the Earth’s temperature has varied by about 7C from ice age to intervening periods. The CO2 varied up to a peak of 280 ppm at the top of each cycle. The lecturer explained that we know the CO2 levels from way, way back. The result We should now be in a mini ice age (think Frost Fairs on the river Thames, that were common 300 years ago). But we’re not. The current CO2 level of 400 ppm *has* occurred before – in the Devonian period, 400 million years ago.
@ (#34 – Trebuchet) Be it noted that manual evacuation is improbable if not impossible!
Indiana, which I suppose is southern if you live in Michigan.
@PaulBC
No idea. I’m one of those who hold that solar and wind is weak and piddly for our needs, and human activity is causing climate change, and we should be concerned, and we should do something about it (nuclear).
@komarov
But we do have a clean sustainable power source which has already been worked out. It’s called nuclear (fission), especially the IFR and LFTR.
@Amphiox
It’s non-obvious that you’re making Malthus’s argument. Regardless, thankfully, Malthus is wrong. The evidence is pretty clear that as you make people more materially safe and wealthy, they have less kids. Most western countries are not producing enough kids to even keep a steady population. The solution to overpopulation is to raise people out of poverty, which is going to require a lot of energy.
that’s simply because you have tuned out the numerous times (that even I have seen on this blog alone) people have posted direct evidence counter to your assertions.
that’s on you. it’s most certainly NOT the reality.
but, as usual, you forget the footprint that comes along with the style of living the average American enjoys.
1 american is like 5 average people from even Europe, let alone someplace like China.
it’s not as simple as you think.
EnlightenmentLiberal:
What’s your rationale for this? I note that you don’t provide any sources to back up why you “hold” this opinion.
The fun thing about those is that you can put them on almost literally every roof.
No, two (19 liters of carbon dioxide per year, vs. 10 in Germany). Comes from all the driving and the even worse insulation of the average house… not to mention living in separate houses much more often than in apartments compared to the higher population densities of Europe.
BTW, Berlin will have 2500 construction sites on its streets this year. Possessing a car is really not worth it. :-)
marilove
The most common one is basically “It’s all a bunch of tree-hugging hippie crap”. This, in turn, is a mask for an incapacity to understand the benefits of distributed power generation schemes, and overwhelming desire for a simple, single, ‘silver bullet’ solution that allows everything to keep on just like it is now, and an unwillingness to accept that considerable lifestyle and economic changes* are, in fact, needed.
Then you are at least several generations of these technologies behind the curve.
Solar can be an excellent power supplement for most buildings. Wind can also be a good source for individuals in certain areas.
Large scale wind does fine in most developed nations as does large scale solar. If you are simply saying that solar and wind at their current level of development are insufficient to provide ALL of our current electrical needs, then that is a pretty banal statement. Of course there is no one magic bullet. Any alternative energy strategy will utilize more than two energy streams. Solar and wind will be two components of a strategy that will include geothermal, otec, and several more, perhaps including tightly regulated nuclear.
@ragutis #11:
I think he should be immortalised by means of a 12′ tall statue of his noble self, firmly planted on the Florida coast at the current high-tide line. Future generations will see him up to his balls in the ocean.
@Grewgills
I’m glad you agree with me. If we’re serious about maintaining our current standard of living, including power during the night, winter, and cloudy weeks, without destroying the environment and with averting man-made climate change with currently proven technology, then nuclear fission will be providing the bulk of our power.
And why not? I hear this, but it’s just a mantra with no basis in reality. You get a lot of next-gen nuclear plants going, and then some solution for transportation, and it’s almost all solved. The solution for transportation I admit is not as fully fleshed out, but I’ve read some papers that abiological processes for creating gasoline from atmospheric CO2 or CO2 disolved in seawater have come a long way. In this scenario, the only energy source in use is the thorium and/or uranium that exists in plenty and sustainable quantities.
@marilove
Because I was lazy.
Here’s one for starters.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/green-energy-bust-in-germany
Quote from above:
That’s right – the new coal and gas generation planned in Germany in just 8 years is going to dwarf the combined wind and solar generation that is expected to exist in Germany in 8 years – new and old.
We don’t have an affordable way to store energy, and solar and wind are still pretty expensive even when you ignore the need for backing generation and/or energy storage for nights, winter, clouds and calm air, etc. For an example of how hard it is to store energy:
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
Also on the same site, “pump up storage”.
PS: Yes, I’m aware that the guy of the above link disagrees with my conclusions. I’m citing him only to show that energy storage is really hard and is not a solved problem. Further, I think he is incompetent when he made the conclusion that next gen nuclear cannot work. For example, he is so ignorant of LFTR that he wrote that it uses liquid sodium!
@EL 52
Nuclear fission comes with some serious drawbacks, pretending that it alone is the green alternative is short sighted and stupid. Wind and solar are already in place and can be easily installed on most homes and other buildings. Even old tech solar can pretty much completely handle all of your hot water needs, which in turn can take care of much of your home heating. Reducing grid demand is a good thing. Geothermal and otec don’t have any of the peak/trough problems of wind and solar. Wind and nuclear both face strong nimby problems, but nuclear puts wind to shame on that front. NOBODY wants to live next to the nuclear plant.
Clouds are not the problem you think they are for this gen solar.
Sorry for that last being a bit disjointed. A one year old is demanding attention.
Wrong arrogant one. I would rather live next to a Nuke Plant than a refinery or sewage treatment plant. And most of the base power for Com Ed (our local distributor) is supplied by Exelon Nuke Plants.
@Grewgills
I thought we just agreed that solar and wind cannot provide baseload power. Why are you continuing to talk about solar and wind?
Compared to the alternatives, they’re the least evil.
With several of the next gen breeder reactor designs, fuel is no longer a concern. Everyday rock, literal granite rock, is the most common kind of rock of the (continental) crust of this planet. With well known and demonstrated processes, you can extract the few ppm of uranium and thorium. When ‘burned’ in a breeder reactor, the energy content of the uranium and thorium in average granite on a volume for volume basis is greater than coal. Times 50. Saying “we’ll run out of nuclear fuel one day” is like saying “solar power will eventually run out when the sun stops shining in billions of years”.
With many next gen breeder reactor designs, the radioactive waste is a 100 times less in volume, and it will only take a few hundreds to get back down to radiation rates comparable to raw uranium ore.
The history of nuclear safety in the west for nuclear power reactors is fantastic. For example, more people have died choking on sliced bread than have died from radiation release from western nuclear power plants (including Fukushima, and it may even be true if you include Chernobyl). The safety of several next gen breeder reactors, specifically IFR and LFTR, is even better.
I don’t see a better alternative which does not involve a massive increase in our reliance on nuclear fission. Saying “wind and solar” is just sticking your head in the ground and refusing to recognize reality.
I live in California. A few years ago, a gas pipeline exploded in San Bruno, which is pretty close to where I live.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_San_Bruno_pipeline_explosion
That’s 8 people dead. That alone probably represents more deaths from radiation from nuclear power plants to nearby residents for the whole history of nuclear power in the US. I would much rather live next to a nuke plant than other kinds of power generation, including solar (glare), although wind may be acceptable. Hydro dams can break (it’s rare), but when it does hundreds or thousands can die. Don’t even get me start on the millions that die every year from coal air pollution.
I would much rather live next to a nuke plant than most manufacturing plants. The air quality would be much worse for most manufacturing plants.
It’s simply a cultural fiction that nuke plants are dangerous, and that is the only problem standing in our way. I think that fixing a cultural misconception is easier than changing physics or inventing breakthrough new technology.
PS: Keep the research going in all areas though. Just start planning on fixing the problems we have with the technology that we have now.
@Nerd 55
Fine, most people don’t want to live next to a nuclear plant and when they are built there are generally long and expensive NIMBY fights.
@EL 56
I agreed that wind and solar are not the totality of the answer to replacing fossil fuels, not that they aren’t a part of the solution. Solar, wind, geothermal, otec, nuclear, and limited hydro and tidal power can all be part of the solution to the replacement of fossil fuels. Putting all of our eggs in one basket doesn’t make much sense for everywhere.
What’s that?
~googles~
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion
Learn something new everyday.
“Reducing costs remains an unsolved challenge, however.”
Wind and solar are not a meaningful part of any solution. You can have at best 20 to 30% penetration before the shit really starts to hit the fan. Germany now is experiencing problems with their grid at about 10% penetration, and they can continue only because the other nearby countries are connected to the grid and help stabilize it.
Hydro is great and all, except when you destroy whole ecosystems when building dams, displacing thousands of people, and the rare failures which have killed thousands of people – the actual is far more than radiation release from nuclear power plants. (Part of the preceding was tongue in cheek.) Of course, all of the good hydro spots are already taken, and so hydro cannot be a significant player in baseload generation.
Let’s talk biofuels, corn, sugar cane, etc. Calculate how much land you need to do even 5 or 10% of electricity generation for many western countries. You’ll quickly become horrified of the thought of actually putting that into practice.
IIRC, tidal is great in every way, except too expensive by about 10x.
Surprised you haven’t mentioned the pipedream which is space-solar.
Still not seeing an argument for this position – just a bald assertion.
One of my favorite people once said “arguments by analogy are fraud”. (He later comments that using analogies in explanations is totally honest and often very useful.)
The phrase “putting all of our eggs in one basket” often refers to a particular problem which is known as common mode failure in engineering.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_mode_failure#Common_mode_failure_in_engineering
The analogy works like this: The eggs are valuable. If you put them all in one basket, then there are several failure pathways that can lead to all of the eggs being broken. It would be more prudent to split the eggs across many baskets to prevent a single failure from breaking all of the eggs.
There are several levels that this can apply.
The first is at the technology level. For example, relying solely on oil and fossil fuels has proven to be a mistake, not because of accidents at any one plant, but because of problems common to all of them, such as global warming, regular pollution, and limited fuel supplies. Nuclear doesn’t contribute to global warming. Nuclear doesn’t have a limited fuel problem. Nuclear has a far milder problem of regular pollution (radioactive waste) with next gen breeder reactors. Perhaps you are trying to argue that in the future, we will discover some problem which is endemic to nuclear power which makes it unusable? I did already state that I think research should continue into all promising areas of power production. However, to use the analogy, if you only have one basket to transport the eggs and can only make one trip, then you put all of your eggs in that basket.
Speaking of common mode failure, this best describes the problems of wind and solar. The up-time of any coal plant or nuclear plant is around 90% average up-time. The down-time includes maintenance, emergency repairs, refueling, etc. Solar has about 20% daily average up-time in terms of nameplate capacity, depending on latitude, weather, and time of year. It can get a lot worse. For example, in German winters, solar photovoltaic gets about 1% daily average up-times for whole months.
Now, in engineering, when there is a chance of failure, but we want 100% up-time, the standard response is to build redundant components, so that even when one fails, the others keep working and the system stays up. We can do this with coal, nuclear, etc. The common reasons for down-time of one nuclear plant are independent of the down-time of the next nuclear plant. Whereas, the common reasons for down-time of solar and wind are not independent. They are common mode failures. The common mode failures include: day-night cycles, seasonal variations of incoming solar radiation, weather. These common mode failures can affect entire continents for a week at a time.
“Don’t put all of your eggs in one basket” is a perfect description of why wind and solar don’t work, and cannot be part of the baseload electricity generation of any major country.
PS:
Again, those sound like problems which are much easier to fix and handle than changing physics, or trying to invent gamechanging unknown power generation technology. In fact, I’m working on that problem right now, with you, and anyone else reading this now. One person at a time.
Oh, I missed a few things. I’d just like to point out again that my initial reference to fusion was part of a sarcastic comment. Not that I would mind functional economic fusion power…
Regarding your standard issue renewables, wind, solar, hydro, tidal: of course those can’t provide the necessary power on their own. Noone working on these power sources expects them to. It’s still an important part of the solution, however.
First of all, the renewable grid isn’t just solar or wind or tidal or whatever else you are using. To generate power you take generation capacity from each, stick them together and call it a power plant. When it’s sunny the solar provides power, when it’s rainy, wind, and otherwise tidal. This is just an example. The overall capacity is lower than the sum of the individual systems but it is guaranteed capacity which you can sell on the energy market. Your combined renewables will always output at least that much power, thus offsetting at least a certain amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Well, unless the atmosphere bleeds off and the oceans evaporate.
Second, biomass is a big thing despite the controversy over turning food crops into fuel crops, not least because that is not the only way. Turning starchy crops into methanol and the likes is more for the benefit of small-scale and mobile applications, i.e. fuel for cars. They can be used for power generations but there are oh so many alternatives under the sun.
For example plants are being built in India that burn rice husks. If they didn’t use them the husks would probably just rot. This way they take advantage of an abundant fuel source which is constantly replanted and generate power in remote regions that are difficult to supply. Win-win. In the UK even regular coal and gas stations are being fired in part with fuel derived from sources like wood. Particularly older stations can’t cope with a high percentage of renewable fuels and still depend largely on coal but it is a reduction nonetheless.
Noone says you have to turn your breadbasket into a fuel pump. There are so many waste products everywhere that can be used as feedstocks for fuel. You can manage a forest to provide lumber, cellulose and stick the leftovers in a burner. Harvest your crops and ferment the unusable rubbish. Heck, Bristol (UK) now has a pilot project running buses on gas from human waste, so mobile applications are covered, too.
And of course biomass also has the major advantage over the other renewables that it can run just like your regular power plant. You have a boiler and some turbines and can adjust the output according to demand to smooth out any peaks and valleys in the power output from your wind/solar/hydro plants.
Another approach is combined heat and power (CHP) which, in its own way, adresses the energy storage problem we have. Pilot plants in the UK (small, local scale) essentially treat power as a useful by-product. They produce and pump heat into homes directly and then, on top of that, extract some power from said heat. It’s another way of making the most of the fuel, which can be renewable as well.
There really is nothing piddly or weak about renewables. You are, in essence, tapping the combined solar irradiance reaching the planet. It’s even conveniently – or inconveniently – converted into various forms that make it easier (or less so) to tap. Solar is just the direct route. Plants can do the work for you or you extract the energy from the wind and waves. The energy is there and we are now in the process of figuring out how to get to it. Efficiency is still rising while cost goes down. It’s no different than any other technology in that regard so it would be foolish to dismiss it as ‘unreliable’ or a ‘niche application’. That power grids themselves may have to adapt as well is to be expected. Modernisation is all part and parcel of the future and, renewables or not, has to happen either way.
The reason coal stations are still being built has more to do with the uptake of renewables being rather slow. This is new technology and investors are often reluctant to be the first in. And of course this is also done because coal is cheap, to meet increasing demands and last but not least, simply to replace ageing stations with newer plants that are more efficient. In the end you’re still burning coal but you burn less of it and get more from it. It certainly doesn’t mean renewables are on the way out.
Regarding nuclear power, thanks for pointing me to those reactor designs. They are interesting, but as others have pointed out there is a significant NIMBY-factor involved with nuclear power. I’m not arguing against nuclear power because it is inherently unsafe – it’s not, at least not in terms of likelihood – but I don’t think this would be a reasonable mainstay for our global power supply. I do think the reputation of nuclear power is a lot worse than it should be but that doesn’t mean I’d favour sticking nuclear power plants everywhere.
For one thing, even with a reactor that can consume fuel and all the radioactive by-products from that fuel you will be stuck with a lot contaminated materials, such as equipment being used to handle radioactive materials. A small radiochemistry lab alone can produce bags of general waste (gloves, pipettes, ..) that have to be treated as radioactive.
Even if the overall volumes are small, radioactive waste is still something we don’t know what to do with.
For another, I’ve already mentioned likelihood but not severity of an accident. If the dame from before breaks thousands of people may die. But at least there is no protracted aftermath. If a reactor melts down you can end up with thousands of people exposed and you will be dealing with fallout for a very long time. Both examples rate as low likelihood and high severity but the latter is still a lot worse.
By the way, I don’t consider an “excellent track record” particularly relevant to these considerations. As an extreme example someone might also claim that they have been driving drunk for years without any problems, so people everyhwere should start doing it. When dealing with extreme risks you mitigate it by making it as unlikely as posslble. A programme to set up lots of nuclear power stations to replace other generator types runs exactly counter to that. The only way to mitigate the severity of these issues would be for us to get a lot better cleaning up radioactive fallout and waste. And then we risk touching on the realm of changing physics again, I fear.
And lastly, nuclear stations can’t regulate it’s output either, at least not in the way we would like. Yes, a nuclear power station can produce less power in times of low demand but the fuel keeps burning. That’s one of the reasons why nuclear power is relatively cheap: they need to sell power or they end up making a loss because the fuel is gone either way. Even in a nuclear world you’d still need coal and gas or something else that is flexible enough to quickly respond to changes in demand.
In the strictest sense I guess this means nuclear power is just as bad at energy storage as the renewables. And power storage really is a separate problem. Some fuels come with an integrated solution which is why fossil fuels have been so attractive. For other sources from across the board we need to figure out something else.
@komarov
Sticking together a bunch of woefully inadequate solutions does not make an adequate solution.
It’s a great way to ensure that people starve. The land area required to make a significant dent is unconscionable.
Not enough to move it from the “woefully inadequate” category to the “merely inadequate category”.
Yes, but this works for any kind of heat engine power source, nuclear, gas, coal, etc. (not wind, and not photovoltaic). We’re not going to get to 0 fossil fuel usage by adding up a bunch of small efficiency improvements, and we’re not going to get to 0 fossil fuel usage by putting together a bunch of woefully inadequate solutions.
First intelligent thing you’ve said, though I suspect it was accidental. You are right – nuclear is not piddly nor weak, and nuclear is renewable. That is what I’m suggesting we do.
The problem is the diffuse nature of that energy. One of the two fundamental problems is the relatively high cost per extracted bit of energy because of the diffuse nature. The other fundamental problem with wind and solar specifically is the unreliable nature of the production, plus the extreme difficulty of energy storage.
No. It is foolish to advocate “hamsters in wheels” as a practical source of energy to power our culture. For very similar reasons, it is foolish to advocate for various so-called green technologies with current tech. Again, I’m all for continuing research, but I’d rather like to solve global warming now – plus a bunch of other benefits, including: national security, ability to become more isolationist and avoid wars for oil, raising people around the world out of poverty which also decreases wars, extra cheap energy means we can do desalination of sea water which will also decrease wars, etc.
No, it has to do with the fact that so-called green sources are too expensive, and too unreliable, to power our economy, with currently available tech.
Why?
And we know what to do with coal ash? Per unit of energy produced, coal plants produce more radioactive waste than nuke plants.
For breeder reactors, the waste is only dangerous for about 300 years and then it’s back to natural uranium ore levels, and then we can just stick it in the ground somewhere, because it’s not more radioactive than when we dug it up.
This is a problem, but it’s the least of the available problems. Our other options are runaway global warming, or the collapse of our modern economy.
“Arguments by analogy are fraud”. We have lots of other evidence that drunk people do cause accidents. The sample size of an individual drunk driver is rather small, and so we shouldn’t put much stock into it. We’ve had several worst-case scenario accidents, such as Fukushima, and it’s not that bad compared to the alternatives. If we had to deal with a Fukushima every decade or so, that’s still probably better than the alternatives.
However, we don’t have to face that option. With IFR and LFTR, accidents of the severity of Fukushima are simply impossible short of something like a meteor impact.
For LFTR, even if you set off a bomb inside the reactor, all you would get is a highly contaminated site with a bunch of radioactive solid fluoride salt everywhere. All of the fission products want to remain in solution in the salt. There is no water or hydrogen, no high pressure – there is no driver to move the fission products into the air and into the environment.
In the case of IFR, the fission products are not in solution, and so I expect that you might get more area-wide contamination here in the case someone set off a bomb in the reactor – I don’t know. I’m more familiar with LFTR. However, there is no water nor high pressure in the reactor, and so those drivers are not present to move the fission products into the air and into the environment. Further, even in a complete loss of coolant accident or a complete loss of coolant flow accident, the IFR will automatically shut down, no human intervention needed, and no mechanical intervention needed. With loss of coolant, the fuel rods will expand and shut down the reaction. These tests were done in Argonne National Lab on a real IFR core.
Ignorant person, meet France. France, meet ignorant person. France has 80% of its electricity from nuclear. Conventional nuclear power plants can totally load-follow. It is a pernicious myth that they cannot. Of course, most modern nuclear plants are not designed to load-follow because it’s cheaper for other plants to load-follow; a nuclear power plant designed to load-follow is less efficient, but it can totally be done within reasonable price ranges.
Further, it may be realistic that the cheapest option is to just run a bunch of nuclear plants full out, and dump the excess electricity into a sink, like a bank of resistors. Grid level energy storage is hard, and currently is only practical on the period of hours, and at most a day. Alternatively, depending on the economics, excess electricity in night could be diverted to the synthetic fuel production plants, whether it’s hydrogen (IMHO unlikely), synthetic ammonia, synthetic gasoline, etc.
This is asinine. You have no idea what you are talking about. Shut up and listen.
Imagine a world powered entirely by solar and wind with no energy storage. For high latitude countries in winter, such as Germany based on real data, your solar daily average is about 1% of nameplate capacity. Aka it’s doing basically nothing. There are plenty of weeks on record in European winters where there is basically zero wind over the entire continent. There’s also nights to handle, and weather e.g. clouds. No matter how much you overbuild wind and solar in this scenario, you are not going to be able to deliver power to consumers in these winter, cloudy, windless weeks.
Whereas, imagine a world powered entirely by nuclear, but with the fictitious restriction that they cannot load follow. Ok, overbuild to cover the daytime peak load, and dump the excess electricity at night to resistor banks. Problem solved. Only have to overbuild by about x2 to cover the difference between peak and low electricity consumption.
Again, the difference is the common mode failure of wind and solar. Nuclear does not have that common mode failure. That’s why nuclear can work on its own, and wind and solar cannot. What you said is ludicrously ignorant and wrong.
Yawn, tl;dr. To bad EL can’t take three paragraphs to say something substantial. More words does not equal a stronger argument. That is shown by links to third party evidence. The difference between philosophy and science.
@Nerd
komarov’s post length in chars (I think): 7468.
My post length in chars (I think): 8133. And a lot of that was just quotes.
Neither of us had any links or citations.
Your double standard is noted.
EL
Biofuels aren’t necessarily using food crops. For instance here when sugar cane was still produced we used the bagasse as biofuel. No food production was lost. The waste from food production was used as fuel rather than being left to rot. The same can be done for sorghum and any other fibrous plant that is juiced for foodstuffs.
Solar is an excellent alternative for individual dwellings. Even old school solar (not new gen) can take care of all hot water needs except on the most overcast days. New gen can take care of all of the needs of a single family dwelling with some extra capacity to give or sell back to the grid. Dismissing that as not part of the solution is nonsensical.
@Grewgills
I am focusing on the big picture. I am focusing on the 90%+. I am dismissing those who talk about the 10% solution as though it’s somehow an alternative to the 90%+ solution. You’re welcome to continue to talk about your niche products – solar, wind, crop waste biofuel, etc., but don’t pretend as though nuclear fission is not the answer.
Yes, sorry about the length of my previous post. I’ll try to include more links and fewer characters from now on.
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First off all there is distributed generation. Rather than having a giant power plant you combine a bunch of small-scale generators to meet your needs on a local scale. This includes classic generation methods as well as modern renewables, which are practically made for the job because they fit nearly everywhere.
Stick a PV-panel on every roof and window, a few wind turbines on some of the surrounding fields and maybe build a weir across the river and already you’ll have met part of the local energy demand. It shouldn’t be a huge imaginative leap to realise that combining multiple renewables (a bit dated) with varied output will give you the necessary reliability and a significant capactiy. (Certainly more than the odd percentage point)
Regarding biomass, I’m not a fan of using food crops as feedstocks but this is not something we will be able to get away from quickly. Biomass feedstocks also supply the chemical industry to make a plethora of other products (PDF) that would otherwise probably come from fossil fuels. Nevertheless people are working on alternative feedstocks such as algae, which might actually prove to be a better feedstock in the long run, and the aforementioned waste products. The latter may be a small-scale application but also fits in well with distributed generation.
Profile of an Indian rice husk power plant profile
UK power station moving towards biomass (wood) to reduce CO2 footprint
Sorry but we will always depend on a power mix to keep us going. And funnily enough independence from oil is a frequent arguments made for non-nuclear renewables as well. Given the many option we have we’d be stupid not to use a mix. We already know how to harvest all sorts of energy sources and in many cases doing so is easier, cheaper, safer and perhaps even cleaner than putting up another nuclear reactor.
To be absolutely clear: I am not advocating power generated only from renewables (especially not just one type), nor am I saying we should scrap our nuclear generating capacity. And despite our best efforts it will probably be a long time before we get away from fossil fuels for power generations as well, no matter how dire the climate situation may be. We can reduce it, we can make it more efficient and cleaner, but we certainly can’t quit any time soon.
I’m abridging my response to the purely nuclear part because it’s getting too long again:
– Thanks for correcting me on the load-following capability of nuclear power (nuclear is outside my regular interests as you noted)
– The analogy was intentional hyperbole, probably not as obvious as I had hoped. Effectively an unintentional derail, my mistake again.
– The waste from modern reactors may ‘only’ last 300 years but the problem remains that no one knows for sure how to safely store radioactive waste over such timescales (And I’m no fan of coal ash either)
But in general all modern or updated generation techniques – nuclear, fossil, (other) renewables – face the same problem: large chunks of the world can’t afford them. So thinking globally, most of them are a no go anyway. But some technologies stand much better chances of becoming affordable than others, especially for small-scale local generation making up the grid. And in this light things like clean(er) coal, biomass or wind power look a lot better as ways to reducing our CO2 output.
An addendum for the ‘big picture’ stuff and some more related links:
UK energy mix with predictions: They expect nuclear to remain constant while renewables – still small for now – and later generation fossil stations do more of the work
German energy mix (past data): Huge increase in renewables, presumably motivated by government incentives. The capacity is certainly not to be sneezed at.
French energy mix: Sadly current graphs are harder to find. France uses a lot of nuclear energy but even they intend to reduce it in favour of other sources.
@komarov
Don’t know how many different ways I can say this: No it doesn’t. Let’s take the poster child of greens for the purpose of demolitioning it, again. Germany gets 1% of nameplate capacity, daily average, from solar, in winter months. There are stretches of a week or two where all of Europe gets no wind. The combination of the remaining cost-effective sources – hydro, biomass, geothermal, etc. – cannot cover the necessary power for those windless weeks in winter. Except for fossil fuels and nuclear. What you are propagating is simply a fiction. It’s what greens want the world to be, not what the world is. It’s wishful thinking and delusion by a bunch of people who need to take some basic engineering classes.
More assertions without evidence, and what can be asserted without evidence and be dismissed without evidence.
I think I already asked. I’ll ask again. Why?
I don’t know what numbers you’re looking at.
Wikipedia for a first approximation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source
And the sources that beat nuclear are – drum roll please – coal, gas, geothermal, wind (no storage included), hydro.
In terms of deaths per watt-hour, nuclear is the safest by far, even when compared to solar and wind.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/
Cleaner? Do you know what kind of toxic chemicals are used to make photovoltaic? What are you going to do with all of those used cells when they “stop working” in a few decades? What about all of the trip mining you’ll need to do for the materials to make all of those things?
If you meant it was a poor attempt at humor which completely and utterly missed the point when taken literally, yes I agree.
What are you talking about? 300 years is easy. We know how to handle that. The 10,000+ years of conventional light water reactor waste is harder, but 10,000+ != 300.
IIRC, there was this paper which showed that if you take all of the coal ash waste and dump it in the ocean, determine deaths, and do the same for a hypothetical nuclear powered society by dumping nuclear waste straight into the ocean – the coal ash kills more.
Switching to nuclear gets us “about 0 deaths per year”, which is a marked improvement on top of coal which kills millions every year just from airborne pollution alone.
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/
Indeed, that’s why the goal of many nuclear proponents is “Cheaper Than Coal”. Some of the next gen plants can get there, or close enough.
“Cheaper Than Coal”, the book:
http://www.amazon.com/THORIUM-energy-cheaper-than-coal/dp/1478161299
Their loss, and their idiocy.
PS: Let’s see if my excessive links causes any filter to catch me.
I meant a real and credible source, EnlightenmentLiberal. Try again.
Europe is not everywhere. The wind turbines near Palm Springs and on parts of this island are going almost nonstop. I can count the number of days in a given year on my hand that SoCal, the leeward sides of many Pacific islands and quite a few other places on earth don’t get enough radiance for new gen solar to provide for the home they are installed on. This is part of the big picture. The more homes and businesses that are able to take care of all or most of their own electrical needs the less strain there is on the system.
Looking around a bit the closest thing to ‘no wind’ was an article in the Telegraph about the UK. The other extreme are a complete set of high-res wind maps of Germany (by region) which aren’t quite what I’d need either. I am well aware that some renewables depend on regional and seasonal factors, which is why data collection for a wind farm takes at least a year. Perhaps you could provide some links for the above claims?
Source please.
I am aware that certain types of PV panels include rare earths (import issue) and toxic materials (safety and disposal issue). But how is nuclear better?
– In terms of environmental impact it matters little what you are mining. Mineral extraction is destructive regardless of the mineral you are extracting.
– Uranium is exported and imported just like everything else. Any extraction process from low concentration sources (as you suggested earlier) would probably involve high effort for low yield making it very expensive (and probably not very green either).
– Photovoltaics are similar to the rest of our electric/electronic waste and can be recycled. (PDF). In both cases the processes need work but are improving.
– Big bonus: toxic though it may be, the waste is not radioactive. This makes it a lot easier to handle and (re-)process compared to nuclear waste.
– There are lots of ways to make a photovoltaic cell. Depending on the technology used risk factors, toxicity and recyclability can vary considerably.
Yes, and? I don’t like coal ash no better than I like radioactive waste. Dumping waste in the sea is certainly not my idea of a sustainable future. “X is worse than Y” is not a good reason to endorse Y.
[sarcasm]So folks like the previously mentioned villagers should probably just scrap their rice husk plant and start saving up for a little nuclear reactor of their own. Maybe their kids can even mine some nearby rock or just extract uranium from the dirt. Sure, low concentrations make it difficult but hey, with their brand new reactor they have plenty of energy to keep these processes running, right? Or they can sit in the dark until someone gets around to connecting them to a major power grid.[/sarcasm]
Or people could just use power sources that are conveniently located right next to the consumer and then mix it all together when the grid finally does get there. Like, say, rice husks in rural India …
This is part of the reason why, when you look at different countries, the cost for a given power source can vary considerably (as shown in the wiki article you linked to). Different regions or countries have different resources and expertise on hand that can be exploited and develop their power grids accordingly.
This is exactly how the UK grid was constructed, or rather cobbled together. Coal is an abundant resource so up goes the coal power plant to provide local power. This works with any source, renewable or not. And since those early days we have figured out a lot more ways to generate useful amounts of electricity while cleaning up older technologies as well.
So there is no need to limit ourselves to nuclear even if we ever perfect a safe and affordable miniature scale reactor. Right now the first world is working hard to develop a lot of different technologies. This is a good thing. Nuclear is part of that, as well it should be. But some technologies are more suited to a given location than others, so we need technological diversity to ensure everyone has the opportunity to generate clean electricity. The alternative is that large parts of the world stick to dirty sources because it’s all they’ve got.
[sarcasm]The entirety of Europe must look like a giant loony bin to you. Even the engineers are looking at sources other than fission, fools that they are.[/sarcasm]
don’t know why I’m bothering, since you never actually listen to anyone but yoruself, but go figure, that applies back where I used to live as well.
you know what they did?
why, they used the excess energy from the wind turbines to simply pump water up a mountain and store it in a resevoir.
you know what potential energy is, right?
when the winds die down (very rarely for the areas the turbines are in), they simply release water from the resevoir and use it to power a hydroelectric generator.
PRAISE FUCK! NO NUCLEAR REACTORS NEEDED!
last time I ever bother responding to your crap.
Enligtenment Liberal,
I am a physicist. I work with radiation. I have radioactive minerals I my rock collection. I can hardy be painted as an anti-nuke fanatic. However, nuclear power is not renewable. It is a finite resource that we will eventually have to replace with truly renewable energy resources. Given the resistance we’ve had from vested fossil fuel interests phasing out fossil fuel, why, I ask, would we want to replace one vested interest we will have to surmount with another we’ll have to surmount in a century or so?
@Grewgills
And what then happens when the occasional storm or weather pattern hits, and makes it cloudy over all of socal? And cloudy over large portions of the United States?
And what do they do during winter? IIRC, even socal gets 50% less solar radiation daily average in winter months. Overbuild by 2x? I want you to include that in your price calculations, land-use calculation, toxic waste calculations, etc.
And what do they do during night?
What do they do? Pump up water storage?
> Pump Up the Storage
> Do The Math
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/11/pump-up-the-storage/
Even getting to 1% of the needed capacity with this approach would be impressive, one of the biggest engineering accomplishments of our generation. You would need 25 damns the size of Three Gorges or Grand Coulee just to get to 1% of the needed capacity. Where would all of that water come from anyway, and where would we store it? At one extreme, we could drain 7 meters from the upper 4 Great Lakes of Michigan to reach the needed capacity. Being a native Michiganer, I like my Great Lakes right where they are. I’m sure every town along the St. Lawrence River would not be too happy about being wiped out in massive floods either. The article talks about all of these problems in detail.
Chemical batteries?
> A Nation-Sized Battery
> Do The Math
http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-battery/
There is not enough lead, lithium, or nickel in known worldwide reserves for even 5% of the needed battery for the grid for the US alone. The costs at today’s market rates are ridiculous, and you can be sure with this much demand we would not be looking at today’s market rates.
…
@komarov
Not really. The problem is that environmental regulations prevent mining rare earth metals in the US and elsewhere. The “problem” is that rare earth metals are almost always found in conjunction with some amount of raw thorium, which current US regulations require treating as radioactive waste. I heard of a guy who is trying to work with one state legislature (or was it federal?) to get the rules changes so he could just put the thorium in concrete casks on the surface or something and open his rare earth metal mine. From that one mine alone, in a year, just as a byproduct of rare earth metal mining, he would produce enough thorium to power the world for that year (when used in a LFTR).
Volume. Most of what you say is true, but nuclear requires less materials. Ok, if and when in a thousand years time we start mining average granite, then maybe this point is no longer true.
Sources for easy disposal of nuclear waste for 300 years? I suggest google.
This is a bogeyman. There is no objective reason to say that radioactive waste is necessarily worse than other kinds of toxic waste.
> Your village sarcasm example
I’m sorry. This is not a problem that can be solved on the local level. This needs the action of governments to solve.
Yep. They’re just people, like you, who are being driven by fear, hysteria, ignorance of the facts, and a desire to fit into the “good” social movement of environmental progressives. Combined together, and you get people who don’t take a somber, serious, honest look at the facts.
…
@Ichthyic
Please read the above link on “pump up the storage” to see how ludicrous this idea actually is in practice.
…
@a_ray_in_dilbert_space
The numbers you’ve heard for our supplies of uranium and thorium are based on several faulty assumptions. AFAIK, supplies of most minerals are not in short demand, and the discovered deposits represent only a small fraction of actual supplies. Further, the numbers for uranium and thorium supplies are quoted in the context of the fuel efficiency of light water reactors. For nuclear to count as a sustainable, renewable resource, one needs to talk about next gen breeder reactors like IFR and LFTR, which are around 100x more fuel efficient. (This is also the reason why the leftover waste has so much less volume and radioactive lifetime.)
Further, with this higher fuel efficiency, new sources of uranium and thorium become practical to extract. I’ve heard a lot said for sea water extraction, but I haven’t found sufficient compelling argument and evidence either way. (Not enough discussion of the flow rates of the oceans and how long new uranium from undersea volcanic vents takes to go to saturation.)
As soon as you go to slightly lower grade ores, the supplies become ridiculous. For example, ORNL found a single site in New Hampshire (300 square miles or less), called Conway granite. It’s around 50 ppm thorium. According to my back of napkin calculation, that site alone contains enough thorium to power the entire world’s energy needs for thousands of years.
http://web.ornl.gov/info/reports/1963/3445600230925.pdf
Please also see above for the (not-cited) example of how a single rare earth metals mine can produce enough thorium as a mere byproduct to power the entire planet’s energy needs (when used in a LFTR).
Then there’s also the thorium content and uranium content of everyday granite rock, a few ppm. I mentioned this already, but I’ll repeat myself. Granite is the most common kind of rock on the (continental) crust of this planet. There are known processes which can extract a large amount of that thorium and uranium. When burned in a breeder reactor, your average piece of granite has more usable energy than the same volume of coal, times 50. We are never going to run out of rock in the same sense that we are never going to run out of sun. It will be a long time before we ever need to resort to 3 ppm granite reserves, but it can be done.
@EL
Call your local solar provider, they have the answers to all of those questions for you. My friends that have installed solar don’t seem to be having the difficulties that you seem to think will plague everyone that puts solar panels on their homes. Hell, 20 years ago my father managed to have all of his hot water provided by a self installed solar system on his roof. That alone cut a significant chunk out of his monthly power bill. I don’t know why you are so invested in denying that this can remove load from the power grid and so should be ignored entirely.
Protip: Water heating is not the whole of residential power usage.
Protip: Residential power usage is itself a small fraction of the overall power usage of a modern economy.
I do no such thing. My clear position has been that it is a red herring w.r.t. the claim that we need nuclear, and lots of it, ex: 80%+ of the grid, to prevent global warming, and to maintain our current western standard of living.
Ah, you are ignoring the two pieces necessary for modern electrical production. The base power plants, for which nukes are very good. But they do not respond well to changes, especially fast changes, in the need for power. These require peaking plants, presently coal, natural gas, and alternative renewable sources, to provide the power for breakfast spike, and for the dinner/TV/turn on the AC in the evening.
Power generation Germany by the hour.
Pacific power charges by the hour.
@Nerd in 77 and 78.
I’m going to just quote myself now, because you’re too lazy and too disrespectful to read what I have wrote, which already responded to this point.
Me in 61:
To be fair, humans are terrible at making batteries despite lots of work being done. But direct storage of electricity on a “national grid” scale is not likely to happen very soon.
But actually pumped hydro is a great example of why a power mix and the flexibility it brings is something you would want. Like I said previously, different technologies will suit different locations. The La Rance tidal plant has already paid for itself, doubles as a bridge and (not mentioned in the article) can use pump storage. They do this by buying power from a nearby nuclear plant when it’s cheapest because of the daily price variation. So it’s got everything, even for a nuclear enthusiast. ;) And – this is new to me as well – it even appears to be a bit of a tourist attraction although I might be misreading that.
In short, La Rance is renewable (predictable with storage capacity), cost-effective (paid for itself), functional (bridge), takes advantage of the local geography and industry (i.e. power) and maybe boosts local tourism.
—
Regarding rare earths, pollution and waste:
I don’t know that much about rare earth mining in particular other than China having an effective monopoly. A quick search for US rare earths did bring me to a wiki article about a Mountain Pass mine. Apparently they did find thorium and other radionuclides there, had a series of accidents spilling contaminated waste and have been shut down ever since. I couldn’t guess how much potential nuclear fuel there might have been but given those problems it’s no surprise the mine was closed. Before you bring it up, I know the same things happen at ‘regular’ mines, too, and they should be treated no differently. If you can’t do it safely, don’t do it at all.
Sorry, but no. I’d need to see a very convincing source to accept this. My radiochemistry may be a bit foggy but the extra precautions taken with radioactive materials are not the result of some unfounded concerns.
For one I could stick pretty much any toxic element I like in a zip lock bag to protect myself and keep it in my pocket. (Not that I’d recommend it.) If I did the same with something radioactive I’d still be exposed. Apart from the radiation there is also the decay heat to contend with*, another non-problem with garden-variety toxic materials.
As for volume, there is a lot nuclear waste beside the spent fuel. As previously mentioned you’ll also have to deal with used equipment, from personal protective gear to industrial piping and the likes, which makes up the bulk of the waste. (Slow PDF) It’s not as radioactive as spent fuel but it’s enough to present a risk and needs to be disposed of accordingly.
If we stick to the PV recycling example for comparison, you end up with some boring scrap metal, broken glass and waste plastics. The cells and connecting circuitry is tricky but no more so than an old office computer. We certainly don’t have to worry about irradiating anyone with them and there is always ongoing research into eliminating harmful elements and compounds from these types of products (e.g. with lead-free solder) to further reduce the risks.
Take out just one toxic element and you’ll have a slightly safer product. Take out just one radionuclide and you’ll still have something radioactive.
I won’t say much on the fuel issue other than that fuel reserves for nuclear are currently thought to be very much ‘limited’. I dimly recall figures of 50 years or so being bandied about in some articles but so far any statement among the lines of “We will run out of X in Y years” has yet to stick as more X turns up somewhere after all.
For economic reasons we are still mining deposits of minerals rather than extracting everything from everything. Even with unlimited green power from a fleet of nuclear reactors you’d have to churn up a lot of low concentration rock to get all the fuel you need. The power might be green but the extraction wouldn’t be. We’d probably end up poisoning land and sea to keep the atmosphere from overheating.
*Phenomenal business idea: winter gloves lined with radionuclides and lead. Cumbersome yet comfy. Any backers? :)
@komarov
Again, regarding nuclear fuel, it’s a pernicious myth that nuclear fuel ore reserves will last only 50 years or so. It’s true when you consider only known reserves, and only light water reactors. It’s false if you consider unknown reserves, uranium from sea water, lesser grade uranium and thorium ores, thorium as a byproduct of rare earths metal mining, the few ppm of everyday rock, and especially in the context of breeder reactors. I want to emphasize how completely and demonstrably false this myth about fuel shortage of nuclear reactors is when I’m talking about breeders, compared to many of the other points of contention between us.
Again, just that one site of Conway granite (links above) can power a hypothetical fleet of nuclear reactors for all energy use of the entire world for thousands of years. it’s 300 sq mi of strip mining for thousands of earth’s of the world’s total energy needs. Yes, the strip mining is not going to be pretty, but it’s comparable or better than the other alternatives we have.
I don’t know what you mean when you say that it would poison the land and sea to keep the atmosphere from overheating. I presume “keep the atmosphere from overheating” refers to global warming. Yes nuclear power would “poison the land and sea”, but definitely less bad than fossil fuels, and arguably comparable or even better than even solar and wind.
Finally, regarding the dangerousness of radioactive waste. Sure. I’m not going to argue that it doesn’t require special provisions. You are right that there is more waste than just the fuel itself. One of the biggest sources of non-fuel waste is the graphite for any moderated reactor. There are some possible ways we can recycle it, or perhaps we’ll just have to suffer that as a waste stream too. My point was that X amount of nuclear waste is not obviously worse than Y amount of non-nuclear toxic waste. Nuclear’s not perfect, but I still think it’s the best option by far.