I did, which is why I used the most unrealistic unreliables EROI, despite the conservative Weissbach figures. Unreliables scaled up to match nuclear would need orders of magnitude more land.
I really think it's a mistake to pit one against the other. Run the windmills when you can, reduce (costed, expensive) nuclear waste. It's a shame that running nuclear generation less, does not necessarily give confidence regarding extending their service life (fatigue is a hard thing to model). Maybe a large fleet of small reactors would give more options regarding 'flying hours' and lifespan. We would have to get used to building expensive things and hoping not to run them, which implies public ownership to me.
@Alan Cresswell , somewhere else on the forum someone mentioned Thorium reactors, and I did some reading. Have you any comments on them from an industry perspective?
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
Alan is one of the most trusted people here especially on science and technology. In this field of nuclear technology I think he counts as an expert. Who are we to believe, Alan or Martin who makes claims but can't back them up?
That is an unsubstantiated claim.
Why do you think that an ignorant old fool like me is poking a giant with a stick?
@Alan Cresswell , somewhere else on the forum someone mentioned Thorium reactors, and I did some reading. Have you any comments on them from an industry perspective?
From an industry perspective, the first thing to note is that although there was some early research and test bed experimental designs thorium reactors are an unproven technology. We can build uranium based reactors using off-the-shelf designs with minor modifications for local conditions. We'd need a decade+ intensive work to develop a commercial reactor design based around thorium. It's my opinion that we need to develop solutions to our problems using what we have already, the things we know work (that's as true of energy as it is of test and trace not needing new technology 'phone apps) - development of thorium reactors or fusion are both probably good ideas worth working on, but neither should be part of our plans instead they are a bonus that make things easier if they come off.
In principle thorium-breeder reactor technology has several potential advantages. There are potential designs using liquid fuel that have some inherent safety features against overheating (solid fuel can deform and cladding break when overheated ... obviously liquid fuel won't do that) although overheating can still damage other parts of a reactor, and the reactor will also need a relatively small amount of uranium or plutonium solid fuel. The thorium fuel won't generate a large amount of actinides, which are the part of spent uranium fuel that poses long-term (>500y) storage issues, but you still get radioactive fission products and uranium needed to maintain the thorium reaction will still produce actinides. Thorium is more abundant than uranium, and mining thorium ores poses a much smaller radiological risk than uranium (uranium mines fill with radioactive radon gas and pollute water with radium, both of which will be a significantly smaller problem in a thorium mine). Thorium fuel production doesn't require enrichment processes, but would require reprocessing of spent fuel (another piece of technology that would need to be developed in parallel with a reactor design). The proposed advantage of not producing weapons grade material is bogus, 233U is produced and can be used in bombs (indeed a few 233U bombs were tested) although separation from 232U is more challenging than 235U/238U separation. It's partially relevant because one of the reasons we have uranium reactors (or U-Pu for breeders) is that a lot of the initial development of the technology was funded by the need for weapons production and thorium breeders won't have that dubious advantage.
No, not between feasibility - the small demonstration thorium breeders worked in the 50s and 60s (not to point of scaled up to commercial power generation) whereas we're only just getting experimental fusion systems to break-even for short periods. But, both are technologies that we don't currently have, and we don't have the luxury of planning our generation capacity assuming that we will have either, we need to plan with what we have and what we know works. Wave and tidal power are in the same boat - we've had small scale demonstrations, we know it should work, but we've not yet built a commercial power station based on this technology. Maybe add small modular nuclear reactors to the mix of "it would be great if we had them, but we don't at the moment".
I did, which is why I used the most unrealistic unreliables EROI, despite the conservative Weissbach figures. Unreliables scaled up to match nuclear would need orders of magnitude more land.
I really think it's a mistake to pit one against the other. Run the windmills when you can, reduce (costed, expensive) nuclear waste. It's a shame that running nuclear generation less, does not necessarily give confidence regarding extending their service life (fatigue is a hard thing to model). Maybe a large fleet of small reactors would give more options regarding 'flying hours' and lifespan. We would have to get used to building expensive things and hoping not to run them, which implies public ownership to me.
@Alan Cresswell , somewhere else on the forum someone mentioned Thorium reactors, and I did some reading. Have you any comments on them from an industry perspective?
No mistake Mark.
There is no cost benefit to unreliables over most reasonably safe nuclear waste with the smallest footprint of any waste, processed and stored in situ.
Nuclear plants are being licensed for 80 years. There have been less than 30 (28) major nuclear plant accidents in 60 (63) years with 20 deaths apart from the thousands from 4; 2 in the Soviet Union statistically killing over 4000 by cancer, Windscale in '57 killing 200 by cancer in the desperate race for an H-bomb and Fukushima - 2000 killed by unnecessary evacuation. One death a year (factoring in 'lesser' incidents with single fatalities) in a whole responsibly run industry supplying 10% of the world's energy is remarkably low.
So confidence is a non-issue.
Nigeria, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, S. Korea (N. Korea!) et al will be running theirs flat out for their billions. Why wouldn't they?
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
I'll leave your second paragraph for Orfeo, but neither he nor I lives in NZ - and it's pretty clear in his post that he was talking of Aust. I'm not aware of any active volcanoes here.
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
Dear Martin,
I am in Australia, and said so. Why the blazes are you discussing New Zealand?
And I ask about the Industrial Revolution because you talk about 200 years and throw nuclear power into the mix. Nuclear power has not been a substantial part of the power mix in lots of parts of the world (again, you seem determined to believe the whole planet is like your little part of it), and it wasn't any part of the power mix anywhere for the majority of the 200 year period you referred to.
But let's suppose nuclear is indeed part of that 200 year history. So what? If your argument is that we have to keep using the same power sources we've been using for the past 200 years, then you're wrong. People keep inventing new power sources. Nuclear was one of those new inventions.
Do you have a reference for that? I know Hinckley C is supposed to have a 60y operational life, which is a good 20y more than earlier generations of nuclear plant. If the license issued a couple of years ago covers that operational life and a bit for de-fuelling then it probably would be about 80 years.
There have been less than 30 (28) major nuclear plant accidents in 60 (63) years
That's going to depend on how you define "major". About 200 where the reactor was damaged to the point where it's out of operation for a significant period (or closed entirely) which would have a major impact on economic viability of the reactor. About 50 where radioactive materials have been released into the environment beyond the site.
Fukushima - 2000 killed by unnecessary evacuation.
Again, citation needed. There were about 16,000 killed in March 2011 (the official death toll is 15,899 but with over 2000 missing), but that was one of the worlds biggest recorded earthquakes and a massive tsunami, and far more people were evacuated from areas devastated by these than the areas affected by the reactor meltdown (some areas in the fallout zone would have been evacuated anyway - for example villages downstream of some damaged dams).
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
Dear Martin,
I am in Australia, and said so. Why the blazes are you discussing New Zealand?
And I ask about the Industrial Revolution because you talk about 200 years and throw nuclear power into the mix. Nuclear power has not been a substantial part of the power mix in lots of parts of the world (again, you seem determined to believe the whole planet is like your little part of it), and it wasn't any part of the power mix anywhere for the majority of the 200 year period you referred to.
But let's suppose nuclear is indeed part of that 200 year history. So what? If your argument is that we have to keep using the same power sources we've been using for the past 200 years, then you're wrong. People keep inventing new power sources. Nuclear was one of those new inventions.
My apologies. I always assumed NZ from way back. Nuclear is 60 years old and is now contributing 10% to the wellbeing of humanity. So it is 30% part of our 200 year high energy density history. When Oz - 0.5%, and sorry NZ, you're 0.1% not 0.01% - needs nuclear, it will build. That need with one of the lowest population densities, if not the lowest for a significant economy, is a way off.
Which new power sources? Photovoltaics go back over 100 years, unlike fission. Production is as nearly old as me and the same age as nuclear. Anything else 'new'. Anything coming up oooooh in the next and forever 25 years?
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
I'll leave your second paragraph for Orfeo, but neither he nor I lives in NZ - and it's pretty clear in his post that he was talking of Aust. I'm not aware of any active volcanoes here.
I didn't say there were. As I know that. I correctly said that there are in NZ. Whence I have always egregiously assumed Orfeo.
I seem to recall a conversation years ago when my daughter lived in Christchurch, about fellowship there. And no, you have typical Strine directness, although not as vernacular as Barrington Bradman Bing McKenzie. The Oz sense of humour is not bettered.
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
I'll leave your second paragraph for Orfeo, but neither he nor I lives in NZ - and it's pretty clear in his post that he was talking of Aust. I'm not aware of any active volcanoes here.
I didn't say there were. As I know that. I correctly said that there are in NZ. Whence I have always egregiously assumed Orfeo.
Your post does not mention New Zealand. It does refer to a North Island, a term sometimes used by Tasmanians for mainland Australia.
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
I'll leave your second paragraph for Orfeo, but neither he nor I lives in NZ - and it's pretty clear in his post that he was talking of Aust. I'm not aware of any active volcanoes here.
I didn't say there were. As I know that. I correctly said that there are in NZ. Whence I have always egregiously assumed Orfeo.
Your post does not mention New Zealand. It does refer to a North Island, a term sometimes used by Tasmanians for mainland Australia.
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
I'll leave your second paragraph for Orfeo, but neither he nor I lives in NZ - and it's pretty clear in his post that he was talking of Aust. I'm not aware of any active volcanoes here.
I didn't say there were. As I know that. I correctly said that there are in NZ. Whence I have always egregiously assumed Orfeo.
Your post does not mention New Zealand. It does refer to a North Island, a term sometimes used by Tasmanians for mainland Australia.
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
I'll leave your second paragraph for Orfeo, but neither he nor I lives in NZ - and it's pretty clear in his post that he was talking of Aust. I'm not aware of any active volcanoes here.
I didn't say there were. As I know that. I correctly said that there are in NZ. Whence I have always egregiously assumed Orfeo.
Your post does not mention New Zealand. It does refer to a North Island, a term sometimes used by Tasmanians for mainland Australia.
Nice. One for the novel.
What qualifies you to make that comment?
As a consumer of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. Clive James. Peter Carey. Mad Max. Fosters I'm ashamed to say. Crocodile Dundee. Me Uncle Tim and Auntie Beverly and cousins Dex and Samantha. My mate Bruce. My mate Louis. The Code, the second series was even better. Mystery Road. WW2. Spy Force. Walkabout (Jenny Agutter!!!!!). Cate Blanchett. Need I say more?
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
I'll leave your second paragraph for Orfeo, but neither he nor I lives in NZ - and it's pretty clear in his post that he was talking of Aust. I'm not aware of any active volcanoes here.
I didn't say there were. As I know that. I correctly said that there are in NZ. Whence I have always egregiously assumed Orfeo.
Your post does not mention New Zealand. It does refer to a North Island, a term sometimes used by Tasmanians for mainland Australia.
Nice. One for the novel.
What qualifies you to make that comment?
As a consumer of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. Clive James. Peter Carey. Mad Max. Fosters I'm ashamed to say. Crocodile Dundee. Me Uncle Tim and Auntie Beverly and cousins Dex and Samantha. My mate Bruce. My mate Louis. The Code, the second series was even better. Mystery Road. WW2. Spy Force. Walkabout (Jenny Agutter!!!!!). Cate Blanchett. Need I say more?
You have a population smaller than London, less than a thousandth of humanity, and three active volcanoes in the North Island with associated geothermal activity. You're 20 Icelands=Coventrys. Why do you, <0.01%, need nuclear power? Unlike the 98%?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
I'll leave your second paragraph for Orfeo, but neither he nor I lives in NZ - and it's pretty clear in his post that he was talking of Aust. I'm not aware of any active volcanoes here.
I didn't say there were. As I know that. I correctly said that there are in NZ. Whence I have always egregiously assumed Orfeo.
Your post does not mention New Zealand. It does refer to a North Island, a term sometimes used by Tasmanians for mainland Australia.
Nice. One for the novel.
What qualifies you to make that comment?
As a consumer of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. Clive James. Peter Carey. Mad Max. Fosters I'm ashamed to say. Crocodile Dundee. Me Uncle Tim and Auntie Beverly and cousins Dex and Samantha. My mate Bruce. My mate Louis. The Code, the second series was even better. Mystery Road. WW2. Spy Force. Walkabout (Jenny Agutter!!!!!). Cate Blanchett. Need I say more?
As far as I know, none of those is Tasmanian.
Ohhhhhhh. Had a mate who went walkabout there. What about Peter Weir, Baz Luhrmann? Rodney Marsh? Richie Benaud? Bradman... OOOH! 525 first-class cricketers! Including those who played in the first ever first-class match in Australia.
Staying on topic, where would cricket be without the industrial revolution eh? And Oz? You'll need nuclear power to get a nuke (everybody needs a nuke) and create desalinated lakes and inland seas, further dam the Murray and the Yarrah first eh?
Randomly throwing around every Australian reference you can think of is not endearing. Nor is it on topic.
It endears Oz to me. Nothing random about it. And the latter was acknowledged before your comment. With topicality. Unlike yours. All the Oz lager adverts are cool, but I wouldn't a fire out with any of it. You do have some interesting looking IPA.
Aye. Even after factoring in Chernobyl (your starter for ten, no conferring, which apocalyptically means?), Fukushima and uranium mining, lower than any other industry rate, bar hydro possibly for workers. Using the full extraction-consumption (including all pollution) process, in which hydro becomes much worse (dam fails), nothing is as safe as nuclear. Even wind at three times safer than solar.
Do you have a reference for that? I know Hinckley C is supposed to have a 60y operational life, which is a good 20y more than earlier generations of nuclear plant. If the license issued a couple of years ago covers that operational life and a bit for de-fuelling then it probably would be about 80 years.
There have been less than 30 (28) major nuclear plant accidents in 60 (63) years
That's going to depend on how you define "major". About 200 where the reactor was damaged to the point where it's out of operation for a significant period (or closed entirely) which would have a major impact on economic viability of the reactor. About 50 where radioactive materials have been released into the environment beyond the site.
Fukushima - 2000 killed by unnecessary evacuation.
Again, citation needed. There were about 16,000 killed in March 2011 (the official death toll is 15,899 but with over 2000 missing), but that was one of the worlds biggest recorded earthquakes and a massive tsunami, and far more people were evacuated from areas devastated by these than the areas affected by the reactor meltdown (some areas in the fallout zone would have been evacuated anyway - for example villages downstream of some damaged dams).
1. 'the Turkey Point plant in the USA was the first to be licensed to operate for 80 years'. As prophesied in Scientific American 11 years ago.
2. I use their definition for my use of major. Happy to use yours, which do not affect mortality and morbidity. Even the single Fukushima case was not caused by the event.
3. "In response to Fukushima, the Japanese government shut down its nuclear plants and replaced them with fossil fuels. As a result, the cost of electricity went up, resulting in the deaths of a minimum of 1,280 people from the cold between 2011 and 2014 (a). In addition scientists estimate that there were about 1,600 (unnecessary) evacuation deaths [3,000 and counting] and more than four thousand (avoidable) pollution deaths per year [15,000 total for those three years] (b).
The problem started with the over-evacuation of Kukushima prefecture. About 150,000 were evacuated but more than 20,000 have yet to be allowed to return home [early 2020]. While some amount of temporary evacuation might have been justified, there was simply never any reason for such a large and long term evacuation. More than one thousand people died from the evacuation, while others who were displaced suffered from alcoholism, depression, post traumatic stress and anxiety (c).
"With hindsight, we can say the evacuation was a mistake," said Philip Thomas (no relation to Gerry Thomas [another researcher]) a professor of risk management at the University of Bristol, who in 2018 led a major research project on nuclear accidents. "We would have recommended that nobody be evacuated." (d)"
Colorado is more radioactive now as ever than Fukushima was then at its rapidly diminishing peak (e). Areas of the world naturally more and constantly radioactive yet show no signs of increased cancer. None of 8,000 Fukushima residents in the first 3 years, with the highest levels of soil contamination, show any affect (f).
…None of the non-nuclear power sources can begin to address climate injustice except the biggest possible hydroelectric schemes, especially Inga, which the all but terrorist XR-type Malthusian alarmists have stopped the World Bank financing.
@Martin54 , who are these 'all but terrorist' alarmists?
I am not happy with the implication that Extinction Rebellion is a terrorist-type organisation.
' ..best and greenest option is re-assessing our lifestyles and improved efficiency of our gadgets such that our energy requirements are cut significantly'.
And I would add that 'significantly' should mean enough to make a real difference to the ecological and climate emergency we are facing.
"Terrorists" refers to the methods used by a group, and not to how justifiable their goals are. I don't think I'd call XR terrorists, though. I don't think any of their actions have been more than "normal" civil disobedience and protest.
I used the expression 'all but terrorist XR-type Malthusian alarmists', because terrorism's the next step, although the bourgeoisie don't usually get to do that in the West, separatism and Soviet communism aren't as romantic as they used to be. XR is the public face of non-evidence based extremist, alarmist, apocalyptic, unhumanitarian environmentalism; the new fanatic religion of the West.
I already addressed Alan's surprisingly insubstantial and naive point. Nobody is going to re-assess their lifestyle, no nation, developed or developing, only the most privileged classes, who may force their ignorant bourgeois agenda on the masses as XR and the Sierra Club for another do.
The only technology that can slow climate change significantly is fission. None of the others can begin to contribute bar hydro, but not in the same league by an order of magnitude and more. And the unreliables make it worse. The Orkneys are not a model for Nigeria. Or the UK. Unreliables need unsustainable amounts of otherwise arable land and fossil (gas) backup. Not Elon Musk and other fantasy 'storage'. Better to throw the money away on fusion research, it's less toxic.
OK what 'ecological and climate emergency' are we facing?
to begin to answer your question, @Martin54 , I refer you to the 'Earth Overshoot Day' thread ,the Climate Change' thread (sadly petered out in June) and see ceebill.uk
And I challenge you to find any Shipmates who agree that 'terrorism's the next step'.
And you haven't answered my question: Who are the all but terrorist alarmists who have stopped the World Bank financing the Inga hydro project?
I know the thread, it answers my question how? How does it answer for you? What is your answer?
I'm certain no one will agree with me, and?
The the all but terrorist alarmists who have stopped the World Bank financing the (Grand) Inga (Dam) hydro project includes the little known, but influential, environmental NGO International Rivers, in Berkeley. In 35 years it has helped stop 217 dams mostly in poor nations - denied them power. They declare that if forests are the planet's lungs then rivers are its arteries (a).
In 2003, half way through their covert reign of romantic Western Imperialism, causing far more death and destruction than mere terrorists, the Washington Post's Sebastian Mallaby discovered how they severely misrepresented the situation in Uganda where they were trying to stop a dam. Mallaby was told by one of them that locals were opposed to the dam. When he asked to fact check by interviewing at source, she became evasive and said he'd get in trouble with the government. So he went ahead with a local sociologist as translator.
"For the next three hours, we interviewed villager after villager, and found the same story. The dam people had come and offered generous financial terms, and the villagers were happy to accept them and relocate... The only people who objected to the dam were the ones living just outside its perimeter. They were angry because the project was not going to affect them. They had been offered no generous payout, and were jealous of their neighbours." (b) pp 7-8
Michael Shellenberger, Time Magazine Hero of the Environment 2008, found the same thing interviewing Congolese 'enthusiastic about Virunga Park [where the long shadow of Western romanticism falls lethally hard] dam' and Rwandans 'ecstatic at the prospects of getting electricity', Apocalypse Never p345
Talking of Western romantics, "The Batoka scheme will flood the gorge and drown the massive rapids that have made Victoria Falls a prime white water rafting location", for the people of Zambia and Zimbabwe obviously, lament the gospel fulfilling humanitarians of International Rivers. World Rivers Review 10/06/13
They and other NGOs work with sympathetic academics - their mates at Berkeley - conducting 'studies' that show why unreliables would be cheaper than hydroelectric dams (c), for one of three inordinately long links.
Why aren't these eco-warriors trying to remove dams in Switzerland or California? Only preventing others even aspiring to those levels of prosperity?
Martin, you're placing a huge amount of trust in a polemic book that relies on cherry-picking and hugely optimistic claims about the effects of climate change and exaggerations of the costs of cutting emissions.
Large-scale hydro dams are not without their problems. Even ignoring the "romantics" Martin cites, and say that keeping white water rafting locations isn't a problem.
Large dams create a large reservoir flooding a lot of land, by definition the verges of rivers which is fertile agricultural land, putting that land out of use permanently - if one objects to the small amount of land that a wind turbine tower occupies then the same applies to hydro reservoirs. In most locations, that flooded land would be vegetated, the loss of those trees adds to the carbon footprint of the construction. Also, in many poorer nations upriver would have experienced deforestation leading to soil loss, that sediment in the reservoir will rapidly reduce the useful life of the scheme - and, even if not deforested in a lot of cases the littoral fringes of the reservoir will need to be irrigated to replace lot farmland, with associated soil erosion leading to the same issues of loss of utility of the dam.
That's not to say that all big dams are a problem. But, any big dam construction needs to account for several additional factors beyond the area that will be flooded. Pre-construction there should be a massive tree planting programme upstream to stabilise the soils, and possibly felling of trees in the area that's going to be flooded so that carbon can be utilised rather than just letting them rot and produce methane. Those who lose their homes an farms not only need cash compensation, but help to create new farms and homes, with a rising population we can't afford for those nations to lose farmland.
Martin, you're placing a huge amount of trust in a polemic book that relies on cherry-picking and hugely optimistic claims about the effects of climate change and exaggerations of the costs of cutting emissions.
I do not underestimate climate change in the slightest @Arethosemyfeet. I don't trust anybody. But Shellenberger is a poacher turned gamekeeper. You haven't read the book. The sources are impeccable. XR and the like's aren't. I trust evidence. Science. Not hippies.
Martin, you're placing a huge amount of trust in a polemic book that relies on cherry-picking and hugely optimistic claims about the effects of climate change and exaggerations of the costs of cutting emissions.
I do not underestimate climate change in the slightest @Arethosemyfeet. I don't trust anybody. But Shellenberger is a poacher turned gamekeeper. You haven't read the book. The sources are impeccable. XR and the like's aren't. I trust evidence. Science. Not hippies.
Given the behaviour of gamekeepers and their role in habitat destruction and the slaughter of endangered birds that comparison is more apt than you realise.
And their farming will get much more productive with electricity for hydrogen fuelled tractors, cement, roadbuilding, fertilizer production, logging, irrigation, drainage, trains, cars, fridges, TVs, hedge trimmers, e-schooters, vacuum cleaners, model railways, drones, induction phone chargers. PCs.
Martin, you're placing a huge amount of trust in a polemic book that relies on cherry-picking and hugely optimistic claims about the effects of climate change and exaggerations of the costs of cutting emissions.
I do not underestimate climate change in the slightest @Arethosemyfeet. I don't trust anybody. But Shellenberger is a poacher turned gamekeeper. You haven't read the book. The sources are impeccable. XR and the like's aren't. I trust evidence. Science. Not hippies.
Given the behaviour of gamekeepers and their role in habitat destruction and the slaughter of endangered birds that comparison is more apt than you realise.
What habitat destruction? The killing of raptors must be much more vigorously prosecuted and hunting banned on any estate where it occurs. So what don't I realise? That Shellenberger is a raptor killing habitat destroyer on a par with wind farming and other unreliables? No I don't. That's counter to the science. Have you got any?
And their farming will get much more productive with electricity for hydrogen fuelled tractors
Well, electric tractors. The idea is to end our reliance on fossil fuels.
What are you on Alan?! Hydrogen ain't fossil, unless water is. Electric tractors my ass. They gots to be big powerful robot sunsabitches ' can run allll day long.
In 2003, half way through their [part in - they ain't alone -] the covert reign of romantic Western Imperialism, causing far more death and destruction than mere terrorists, ...
Hydrogen fuel is produced from methane, with carbon dioxide as a side product. It gains over burning methane by concentrating the CO2 in one place where it can be more readily sidelined into other industrial processes. You still need the gas wells, and probably fracking and all the other associated technology, to provide that methane which makes it a fossil fuel.
There are already battery powered tractors available. Not the big tractors used on western commercial monoculture farms, but smaller organic mixed-produce farms don't need tractors of that size.
Hydrogen fuel is produced from methane, with carbon dioxide as a side product. It gains over burning methane by concentrating the CO2 in one place where it can be more readily sidelined into other industrial processes. You still need the gas wells, and probably fracking and all the other associated technology, to provide that methane which makes it a fossil fuel.
There are already battery powered tractors available. Not the big tractors used on western commercial monoculture farms, but smaller organic mixed-produce farms don't need tractors of that size.
In fairness you could get hydrogen from electrolysis of water, but if you manage to make that energy efficient and cost effective you've solved the storage problem and wind and solar can provide all our energy needs.
Hydrogen fuel is produced from methane, with carbon dioxide as a side product. It gains over burning methane by concentrating the CO2 in one place where it can be more readily sidelined into other industrial processes. You still need the gas wells, and probably fracking and all the other associated technology, to provide that methane which makes it a fossil fuel.
My ignorance runneth over, my apologies Alan, but there again, this is what we pay you for: steam reforming. Electrolysis provides 2%. Better get on with cheap, abundant, reliable electricity from fission then. Well, if we want carbon free hydrogen, it's the only way. Even bioscience can't do that, not without sequestration.
There are already battery powered tractors available. Not the big tractors used on western commercial monoculture farms, but smaller organic mixed-produce farms don't need tractors of that size.
Africa will need the big buggers just like we do for real agriculture, not for Marie Antoinette Petit Hameaux.
Fission isn't cheap. If you're using it for electrolysis wind is a far cheaper option. Ultimately though it's going to be an open question as to whether battery, hydrogen, air-to-fuel or some other method comes out on top for high density energy storage for vehicles.
I know the thread, it answers my question how? How does it answer for you? What is your answer?
I'm certain no one will agree with me, and?
The the all but terrorist alarmists who have stopped the World Bank financing the (Grand) Inga (Dam) hydro project includes the little known, but influential, environmental NGO International Rivers, in Berkeley. In 35 years it has helped stop 217 dams mostly in poor nations - denied them power. They declare that if forests are the planet's lungs then rivers are its arteries (a).
In 2003, half way through their covert reign of romantic Western Imperialism, causing far more death and destruction than mere terrorists, the Washington Post's Sebastian Mallaby discovered how they severely misrepresented the situation in Uganda where they were trying to stop a dam. Mallaby was told by one of them that locals were opposed to the dam. When he asked to fact check by interviewing at source, she became evasive and said he'd get in trouble with the government. So he went ahead with a local sociologist as translator.
"For the next three hours, we interviewed villager after villager, and found the same story. The dam people had come and offered generous financial terms, and the villagers were happy to accept them and relocate... The only people who objected to the dam were the ones living just outside its perimeter. They were angry because the project was not going to affect them. They had been offered no generous payout, and were jealous of their neighbours." (b) pp 7-8
Michael Shellenberger, Time Magazine Hero of the Environment 2008, found the same thing interviewing Congolese 'enthusiastic about Virunga Park [where the long shadow of Western romanticism falls lethally hard] dam' and Rwandans 'ecstatic at the prospects of getting electricity', Apocalypse Never p345
Talking of Western romantics, "The Batoka scheme will flood the gorge and drown the massive rapids that have made Victoria Falls a prime white water rafting location", for the people of Zambia and Zimbabwe obviously, lament the gospel fulfilling humanitarians of International Rivers. World Rivers Review 10/06/13
They and other NGOs work with sympathetic academics - their mates at Berkeley - conducting 'studies' that show why unreliables would be cheaper than hydroelectric dams (c), for one of three inordinately long links.
Why aren't these eco-warriors trying to remove dams in Switzerland or California? Only preventing others even aspiring to those levels of prosperity?
Doesn't it make you puke? Or 'yeah but'?
You are of course right: it matters not one iota whether or not anyone agrees with your opinion and I therefore regret my comment.
I thank you for the very interesting information and citations above, especially as I have lived and worked in Rwanda and south Uganda and visited the Virunga mountains.
But (if I have understood you right) I can't let you get away with 'terrorism's the next step' (up-thread) in connection with organisations like Extinction Rebellion and internationalrivers.org. 'Eco-warriors' they may be but it is terrible to suggest that they are deliberately or inevitably on a trajectory that ends with acts of terrorism.
Hydrogen fuel is produced from methane, with carbon dioxide as a side product. It gains over burning methane by concentrating the CO2 in one place where it can be more readily sidelined into other industrial processes. You still need the gas wells, and probably fracking and all the other associated technology, to provide that methane which makes it a fossil fuel.
There are already battery powered tractors available. Not the big tractors used on western commercial monoculture farms, but smaller organic mixed-produce farms don't need tractors of that size.
In fairness you could get hydrogen from electrolysis of water, but if you manage to make that energy efficient and cost effective you've solved the storage problem and wind and solar can provide all our energy needs.
Well quite - it's really just a way of storing energy - the energy from burning hydrogen is the energy you put in to electrolyse it in the first place.
Hydrogen fuel is produced from methane, with carbon dioxide as a side product. It gains over burning methane by concentrating the CO2 in one place where it can be more readily sidelined into other industrial processes. You still need the gas wells, and probably fracking and all the other associated technology, to provide that methane which makes it a fossil fuel.
There are already battery powered tractors available. Not the big tractors used on western commercial monoculture farms, but smaller organic mixed-produce farms don't need tractors of that size.
In fairness you could get hydrogen from electrolysis of water, but if you manage to make that energy efficient and cost effective you've solved the storage problem and wind and solar can provide all our energy needs.
Well quite - it's really just a way of storing energy - the energy from burning hydrogen is the energy you put in to electrolyse it in the first place.
You'd normally use a fuel cell to convert back to electricity, I think, rather than burning hydrogen.
Comments
I really think it's a mistake to pit one against the other. Run the windmills when you can, reduce (costed, expensive) nuclear waste. It's a shame that running nuclear generation less, does not necessarily give confidence regarding extending their service life (fatigue is a hard thing to model). Maybe a large fleet of small reactors would give more options regarding 'flying hours' and lifespan. We would have to get used to building expensive things and hoping not to run them, which implies public ownership to me.
@Alan Cresswell , somewhere else on the forum someone mentioned Thorium reactors, and I did some reading. Have you any comments on them from an industry perspective?
Why do you ask 'what part of the Industrial Revolution do you think relied on nuclear energy'?
That is an unsubstantiated claim.
Why do you think that an ignorant old fool like me is poking a giant with a stick?
In principle thorium-breeder reactor technology has several potential advantages. There are potential designs using liquid fuel that have some inherent safety features against overheating (solid fuel can deform and cladding break when overheated ... obviously liquid fuel won't do that) although overheating can still damage other parts of a reactor, and the reactor will also need a relatively small amount of uranium or plutonium solid fuel. The thorium fuel won't generate a large amount of actinides, which are the part of spent uranium fuel that poses long-term (>500y) storage issues, but you still get radioactive fission products and uranium needed to maintain the thorium reaction will still produce actinides. Thorium is more abundant than uranium, and mining thorium ores poses a much smaller radiological risk than uranium (uranium mines fill with radioactive radon gas and pollute water with radium, both of which will be a significantly smaller problem in a thorium mine). Thorium fuel production doesn't require enrichment processes, but would require reprocessing of spent fuel (another piece of technology that would need to be developed in parallel with a reactor design). The proposed advantage of not producing weapons grade material is bogus, 233U is produced and can be used in bombs (indeed a few 233U bombs were tested) although separation from 232U is more challenging than 235U/238U separation. It's partially relevant because one of the reasons we have uranium reactors (or U-Pu for breeders) is that a lot of the initial development of the technology was funded by the need for weapons production and thorium breeders won't have that dubious advantage.
No mistake Mark.
There is no cost benefit to unreliables over most reasonably safe nuclear waste with the smallest footprint of any waste, processed and stored in situ.
Nuclear plants are being licensed for 80 years. There have been less than 30 (28) major nuclear plant accidents in 60 (63) years with 20 deaths apart from the thousands from 4; 2 in the Soviet Union statistically killing over 4000 by cancer, Windscale in '57 killing 200 by cancer in the desperate race for an H-bomb and Fukushima - 2000 killed by unnecessary evacuation. One death a year (factoring in 'lesser' incidents with single fatalities) in a whole responsibly run industry supplying 10% of the world's energy is remarkably low.
So confidence is a non-issue.
Nigeria, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, S. Korea (N. Korea!) et al will be running theirs flat out for their billions. Why wouldn't they?
I'll leave your second paragraph for Orfeo, but neither he nor I lives in NZ - and it's pretty clear in his post that he was talking of Aust. I'm not aware of any active volcanoes here.
Dear Martin,
I am in Australia, and said so. Why the blazes are you discussing New Zealand?
And I ask about the Industrial Revolution because you talk about 200 years and throw nuclear power into the mix. Nuclear power has not been a substantial part of the power mix in lots of parts of the world (again, you seem determined to believe the whole planet is like your little part of it), and it wasn't any part of the power mix anywhere for the majority of the 200 year period you referred to.
But let's suppose nuclear is indeed part of that 200 year history. So what? If your argument is that we have to keep using the same power sources we've been using for the past 200 years, then you're wrong. People keep inventing new power sources. Nuclear was one of those new inventions.
That's going to depend on how you define "major". About 200 where the reactor was damaged to the point where it's out of operation for a significant period (or closed entirely) which would have a major impact on economic viability of the reactor. About 50 where radioactive materials have been released into the environment beyond the site.
Again, citation needed. There were about 16,000 killed in March 2011 (the official death toll is 15,899 but with over 2000 missing), but that was one of the worlds biggest recorded earthquakes and a massive tsunami, and far more people were evacuated from areas devastated by these than the areas affected by the reactor meltdown (some areas in the fallout zone would have been evacuated anyway - for example villages downstream of some damaged dams).
My apologies. I always assumed NZ from way back. Nuclear is 60 years old and is now contributing 10% to the wellbeing of humanity. So it is 30% part of our 200 year high energy density history. When Oz - 0.5%, and sorry NZ, you're 0.1% not 0.01% - needs nuclear, it will build. That need with one of the lowest population densities, if not the lowest for a significant economy, is a way off.
Which new power sources? Photovoltaics go back over 100 years, unlike fission. Production is as nearly old as me and the same age as nuclear. Anything else 'new'. Anything coming up oooooh in the next and forever 25 years?
I didn't say there were. As I know that. I correctly said that there are in NZ. Whence I have always egregiously assumed Orfeo.
Your post does not mention New Zealand. It does refer to a North Island, a term sometimes used by Tasmanians for mainland Australia.
Nice. One for the novel.
What qualifies you to make that comment?
As a consumer of The Adventures of Barry McKenzie. Clive James. Peter Carey. Mad Max. Fosters I'm ashamed to say. Crocodile Dundee. Me Uncle Tim and Auntie Beverly and cousins Dex and Samantha. My mate Bruce. My mate Louis. The Code, the second series was even better. Mystery Road. WW2. Spy Force. Walkabout (Jenny Agutter!!!!!). Cate Blanchett. Need I say more?
As far as I know, none of those is Tasmanian.
Ohhhhhhh. Had a mate who went walkabout there. What about Peter Weir, Baz Luhrmann? Rodney Marsh? Richie Benaud? Bradman... OOOH! 525 first-class cricketers! Including those who played in the first ever first-class match in Australia.
It endears Oz to me. Nothing random about it. And the latter was acknowledged before your comment. With topicality. Unlike yours. All the Oz lager adverts are cool, but I wouldn't a fire out with any of it. You do have some interesting looking IPA.
Risk of a thread being diverted down a totally irrelevant tangent ... not so low.
(Quantifiable, no perception required)
Aye. Even after factoring in Chernobyl (your starter for ten, no conferring, which apocalyptically means?), Fukushima and uranium mining, lower than any other industry rate, bar hydro possibly for workers. Using the full extraction-consumption (including all pollution) process, in which hydro becomes much worse (dam fails), nothing is as safe as nuclear. Even wind at three times safer than solar.
(PUT out a fire, sheesh)
1. 'the Turkey Point plant in the USA was the first to be licensed to operate for 80 years'. As prophesied in Scientific American 11 years ago.
2. I use their definition for my use of major. Happy to use yours, which do not affect mortality and morbidity. Even the single Fukushima case was not caused by the event.
3. "In response to Fukushima, the Japanese government shut down its nuclear plants and replaced them with fossil fuels. As a result, the cost of electricity went up, resulting in the deaths of a minimum of 1,280 people from the cold between 2011 and 2014 (a). In addition scientists estimate that there were about 1,600 (unnecessary) evacuation deaths [3,000 and counting] and more than four thousand (avoidable) pollution deaths per year [15,000 total for those three years] (b).
The problem started with the over-evacuation of Kukushima prefecture. About 150,000 were evacuated but more than 20,000 have yet to be allowed to return home [early 2020]. While some amount of temporary evacuation might have been justified, there was simply never any reason for such a large and long term evacuation. More than one thousand people died from the evacuation, while others who were displaced suffered from alcoholism, depression, post traumatic stress and anxiety (c).
"With hindsight, we can say the evacuation was a mistake," said Philip Thomas (no relation to Gerry Thomas [another researcher]) a professor of risk management at the University of Bristol, who in 2018 led a major research project on nuclear accidents. "We would have recommended that nobody be evacuated." (d)"
Colorado is more radioactive now as ever than Fukushima was then at its rapidly diminishing peak (e). Areas of the world naturally more and constantly radioactive yet show no signs of increased cancer. None of 8,000 Fukushima residents in the first 3 years, with the highest levels of soil contamination, show any affect (f).
(a) Working Paper 26395 (NBER) Cambridge, MA, Oct. 2019 - https://doi.org/10.3386/w26395
(b) The Mainichi, 09/11/13 - https://web.archive.org/web/20130913092840 +
(c) Forbes 31/10/19, Guardian 10/04/19, WHO 2013
(d) FT 10/03/18
(e) Berkeley RadWatch 2014
(f) BMJ Open 6, no. 6 29/06/16
Apocalypse Never pp 168-9
@Martin54 , who are these 'all but terrorist' alarmists?
I am not happy with the implication that Extinction Rebellion is a terrorist-type organisation.
I refer you to this quote, up-thread, of @Alan Cresswell -
' ..best and greenest option is re-assessing our lifestyles and improved efficiency of our gadgets such that our energy requirements are cut significantly'.
And I would add that 'significantly' should mean enough to make a real difference to the ecological and climate emergency we are facing.
This IMHO is what XR are campaigning for.
Fixed broken quoting code. BroJames, Purgatory Host
"Terrorists" refers to the methods used by a group, and not to how justifiable their goals are. I don't think I'd call XR terrorists, though. I don't think any of their actions have been more than "normal" civil disobedience and protest.
I used the expression 'all but terrorist XR-type Malthusian alarmists', because terrorism's the next step, although the bourgeoisie don't usually get to do that in the West, separatism and Soviet communism aren't as romantic as they used to be. XR is the public face of non-evidence based extremist, alarmist, apocalyptic, unhumanitarian environmentalism; the new fanatic religion of the West.
I already addressed Alan's surprisingly insubstantial and naive point. Nobody is going to re-assess their lifestyle, no nation, developed or developing, only the most privileged classes, who may force their ignorant bourgeois agenda on the masses as XR and the Sierra Club for another do.
The only technology that can slow climate change significantly is fission. None of the others can begin to contribute bar hydro, but not in the same league by an order of magnitude and more. And the unreliables make it worse. The Orkneys are not a model for Nigeria. Or the UK. Unreliables need unsustainable amounts of otherwise arable land and fossil (gas) backup. Not Elon Musk and other fantasy 'storage'. Better to throw the money away on fusion research, it's less toxic.
OK what 'ecological and climate emergency' are we facing?
And I challenge you to find any Shipmates who agree that 'terrorism's the next step'.
And you haven't answered my question: Who are the all but terrorist alarmists who have stopped the World Bank financing the Inga hydro project?
I'm certain no one will agree with me, and?
The the all but terrorist alarmists who have stopped the World Bank financing the (Grand) Inga (Dam) hydro project includes the little known, but influential, environmental NGO International Rivers, in Berkeley. In 35 years it has helped stop 217 dams mostly in poor nations - denied them power. They declare that if forests are the planet's lungs then rivers are its arteries (a).
In 2003, half way through their covert reign of romantic Western Imperialism, causing far more death and destruction than mere terrorists, the Washington Post's Sebastian Mallaby discovered how they severely misrepresented the situation in Uganda where they were trying to stop a dam. Mallaby was told by one of them that locals were opposed to the dam. When he asked to fact check by interviewing at source, she became evasive and said he'd get in trouble with the government. So he went ahead with a local sociologist as translator.
"For the next three hours, we interviewed villager after villager, and found the same story. The dam people had come and offered generous financial terms, and the villagers were happy to accept them and relocate... The only people who objected to the dam were the ones living just outside its perimeter. They were angry because the project was not going to affect them. They had been offered no generous payout, and were jealous of their neighbours." (b) pp 7-8
Michael Shellenberger, Time Magazine Hero of the Environment 2008, found the same thing interviewing Congolese 'enthusiastic about Virunga Park [where the long shadow of Western romanticism falls lethally hard] dam' and Rwandans 'ecstatic at the prospects of getting electricity', Apocalypse Never p345
Talking of Western romantics, "The Batoka scheme will flood the gorge and drown the massive rapids that have made Victoria Falls a prime white water rafting location", for the people of Zambia and Zimbabwe obviously, lament the gospel fulfilling humanitarians of International Rivers. World Rivers Review 10/06/13
They and other NGOs work with sympathetic academics - their mates at Berkeley - conducting 'studies' that show why unreliables would be cheaper than hydroelectric dams (c), for one of three inordinately long links.
Why aren't these eco-warriors trying to remove dams in Switzerland or California? Only preventing others even aspiring to those levels of prosperity?
Doesn't it make you puke? Or 'yeah but'?
Large dams create a large reservoir flooding a lot of land, by definition the verges of rivers which is fertile agricultural land, putting that land out of use permanently - if one objects to the small amount of land that a wind turbine tower occupies then the same applies to hydro reservoirs. In most locations, that flooded land would be vegetated, the loss of those trees adds to the carbon footprint of the construction. Also, in many poorer nations upriver would have experienced deforestation leading to soil loss, that sediment in the reservoir will rapidly reduce the useful life of the scheme - and, even if not deforested in a lot of cases the littoral fringes of the reservoir will need to be irrigated to replace lot farmland, with associated soil erosion leading to the same issues of loss of utility of the dam.
That's not to say that all big dams are a problem. But, any big dam construction needs to account for several additional factors beyond the area that will be flooded. Pre-construction there should be a massive tree planting programme upstream to stabilise the soils, and possibly felling of trees in the area that's going to be flooded so that carbon can be utilised rather than just letting them rot and produce methane. Those who lose their homes an farms not only need cash compensation, but help to create new farms and homes, with a rising population we can't afford for those nations to lose farmland.
I do not underestimate climate change in the slightest @Arethosemyfeet. I don't trust anybody. But Shellenberger is a poacher turned gamekeeper. You haven't read the book. The sources are impeccable. XR and the like's aren't. I trust evidence. Science. Not hippies.
Given the behaviour of gamekeepers and their role in habitat destruction and the slaughter of endangered birds that comparison is more apt than you realise.
It must not stop us though must it?
And their farming will get much more productive with electricity for hydrogen fuelled tractors, cement, roadbuilding, fertilizer production, logging, irrigation, drainage, trains, cars, fridges, TVs, hedge trimmers, e-schooters, vacuum cleaners, model railways, drones, induction phone chargers. PCs.
What habitat destruction? The killing of raptors must be much more vigorously prosecuted and hunting banned on any estate where it occurs. So what don't I realise? That Shellenberger is a raptor killing habitat destroyer on a par with wind farming and other unreliables? No I don't. That's counter to the science. Have you got any?
What are you on Alan?! Hydrogen ain't fossil, unless water is. Electric tractors my ass. They gots to be big powerful robot sunsabitches ' can run allll day long.
a fine band, but
There are already battery powered tractors available. Not the big tractors used on western commercial monoculture farms, but smaller organic mixed-produce farms don't need tractors of that size.
In fairness you could get hydrogen from electrolysis of water, but if you manage to make that energy efficient and cost effective you've solved the storage problem and wind and solar can provide all our energy needs.
Africa will need the big buggers just like we do for real agriculture, not for Marie Antoinette Petit Hameaux.
You are of course right: it matters not one iota whether or not anyone agrees with your opinion and I therefore regret my comment.
I thank you for the very interesting information and citations above, especially as I have lived and worked in Rwanda and south Uganda and visited the Virunga mountains.
But (if I have understood you right) I can't let you get away with 'terrorism's the next step' (up-thread) in connection with organisations like Extinction Rebellion and internationalrivers.org. 'Eco-warriors' they may be but it is terrible to suggest that they are deliberately or inevitably on a trajectory that ends with acts of terrorism.
Well quite - it's really just a way of storing energy - the energy from burning hydrogen is the energy you put in to electrolyse it in the first place.
You'd normally use a fuel cell to convert back to electricity, I think, rather than burning hydrogen.