World cannot afford nuclear climate solution-report
The world must start building nuclear power plants at the unprecedented rate of four a month from now on if nuclear energy is to play a serious part in fighting global warming, a leading think-tank said on Wednesday.
Not only is this impossible for logistical reasons, but it has major implications for world security because of nuclear weapons proliferation, the Oxford Research Group said in its report “Too Hot To Handle - The future of civil nuclear power”.
The report fired a series of broadsides against the growing momentum for more nuclear-generated electricity to help cut climate-warming carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels.
July 1st, 2007 at 12:47 am
If you read the full article one of the key references is to “fast breeder” reactors, which is a pretty stale technology.
It fails to take into account the better efficiency of “slow breeder” reactors and newer “pebble bed” reactors. Pebble bed reactors are demonstrably safer, more efficient, and produce an order of magnitude less radioactivewaste/kilowatt hour than fast breeder reactors.
Slow breeder reactors have been around for decades and have a strong record of safety, and moderately better efficiency that fast breeder reactors.
The common thread in the vast majority of these articles is that they always use fast breeder reactors as a benchmark, which is highly misleading. Fast breeders are the odlest, most dangerous style of reactor. Notably, not a single new fast breeder has come online in 30 years. Slow breeder reactors have continued to come online ever since, and have become more refined over time. They are inherantly more safe, and the waste they produce is useless for refining into weapons grade material.
Fast breeders are currently the most common type of reactor on the planet for a simple reason. Their real design purpose was to generate weapons grade plutonium, and so they were constructed at a fast clip by the nuclear superpowers up until the late 70s. Electricity generation, for these reactors, was merely a byproduct that helped politicians sell them to the public.
Slow breeder reactors (The Candu reactors are an example), were designed from the begining as energy producers, and are much more efficient. They are also much safer. Worldwide, there has never been a single, not one, safety “incident” associated with a slow breeder reactor, and this is by design. The way these reactors are set up, the physics prevents a runaway reaction, even with a catastrophic failure of the coolant medium (ie: all the heavy water leaks out all at once) - with these reactors, if the coolant leaks out, the reaction stops, because the coolent also acts as a medium for the reaction.
The Green Movement fails its audience by casting FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt), and a healthy dose of outright bullshit when it talks about the hazards of nuclear energy. Without fail, they concetrate all of their nuclear scare propaganda using the fast breeder reactor model. They ignore decades worth of research that has gone on in the field, and the vast improvement in efficiencies and safety.
If you want to get a real idea of the potential of nuclear energy, you have to ignore two sources. Ignore any information that comes out of the US Government or the US Nuclear Energy industry - their reasons for pushing nuclear energy has little to do with energy, and much mroe to do with weaponization.
You also have to ignore any information coming out of “Green” based media and research. Protesting Nuclear Energy was at the heart of the early Green Movement, and was, in fact, the primary reason for the founding of Greenpeace and several other “Godfather” movements. As such, the stance against nuclear energy has become a core value of the greens. Sacrosanct and inviolable, and trapped in time.
If you really want to understand what is possible with nuclear energy, research the slow breeder reactors, such as the Candus, and the research going into pebble bed reactors (as far as I know, there is not yet a commercial deployment of a pebble bed, though there are some research reactors).
As a point of interest: The two most recent Candu Reactors were built in China. This was done with the tacit approval of the US government, because they know full well that these reactors are incapable of producing weapons grade material. The most recent one was completed last year, ahead of schedule and under budget.
Nuclear energy is far to key an issue for anyone out there to accept the information coming out of the government, or the activist movement. Reasearch it. REALLY research it. Come to your own conclusions.
July 4th, 2007 at 8:16 am
Excellent points, all around. Could not have said it better.
I will only add that with the present rate of building coal-based power plants in China and with the oilpatch still going strong and the consumers all over the Western world (and increasingly Asia, too) wanting to drive cars…let’s capture some of that industrial momentum and divert it into building more of the pebble-bed nuclear reactors and other safe(er) nuclear alternatives to the Co2 producing fossil fuels. The world clearly needs alternatives, as opposed to somehow submitting to a limit posed by the radical end of the green movement.
BTW, I have just returned from a trip to Portugal and south of Spain. Wind power development is very significant in both countries, with huge wind farms in evidence, particularly in the Tarifa/Algeciras region of Spain…and yet, wind power only produces a fraction of their electricity needs (below 10%). So, betting on emerging (and very expensive) technologies to supplant fossil fuels will take some time, and will no doubt have limits of its own. Nuclear is a good option to throw into the diversified energy mix that all nations desperately need.
And then, let’s start living in smaller houses and drive very small cars. Like in Europe.
July 7th, 2007 at 11:14 am
Whether studies use fast or slow breeder reactors, the bottom line is that we don’t need nuclear energy. It is a bad choice, and when all things are considered and we study the facts, nuclear is neither needed nor possible as a sustainable long term solution.
I’ve blogged repeatedly on nuclear energy, and have had a number of productive discussions in my blog post comment section.
Please see:
http://greencameron.blogspot.com/2007/06/energy-efficiency-better-than-expected.html
http://greencameron.blogspot.com/2007/07/fossil-fuel-free-in-20-years.html
http://greencameron.blogspot.com/2007/06/green-party-speaks-out-agains-nucelar.html
http://greencameron.blogspot.com/2007/06/nuclear-energy-very-problematic.html
http://greencameron.blogspot.com/2007/05/nuclear-energy-many-links-great-info.html
http://greencameron.blogspot.com/2007/01/nuclear-is-not-option.html