h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Maybe someone can enlighten me: what is the Green case against nuclear power? Sure, there's a waste problem, but nuclear power is zero-carbon, so if it can avert an environmental catastrophe from carbon emissions isn't it worth it as a lesser of two evils?

Not totally zero carbon the carbon cost is quite high in making the plant.

Yeah but presumably over the lifetime of the plant that's pretty much nothing in comparison?

It's what I would call capitalist green. The idea that we can use increasing levels of polluting technology to solve environmental problems created by the capitalist economy, instead of reducing consumption and taking a sustainable approach to life on the planet.

The case against it is as sigsfried says, nuclear plants aren't carbon neutral (and once you factor in peak oil they're probably no longer viable on any level except the short term). Also, the issue of risk is significant, not because accidents are particularly likely but because if *there is an accident the results are very bad for life on the planet and impossible for humans to remedy. So from a 'green' or sustainability perspective, the risk is not justifiable.

Of course there are people who say that coal powered electricity kills more people than nuclear power plants. But that is another capitalist red herring - true environmental concern knows that neither are acceptable and both are solvable.

Basically this thread is about how can we keep our unsustainable lifestyles. We can't.

The waste issue is also a no brainer. We live in a finite world. You want that stuff in your backyard? Why should it go in mine then?

Another aspect is that capitalist green thinking focusses on single issues, and seems relatively unable or unwilling to look at the environment in terms of complex systems (which is how the environment works). So we can have a debate about carbon neutrality (itself a capitalist green invention which in the real world is a nonsense) and nuclear power but that doesn't place those things in the context of the natural world. That's why the waste issue is a no brainer, but still used in arguments for nuclear power. Some people seem to think it's ethical to create waste that lasts millennia and is highly dangerous, but this ignores what happens in the physical world should something go wrong.


Do I get a prize for using the word capitalist the most times in a post?

*waits for Zagreb or someone to come and tell me off*

May I suggest you read http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/loveprefaceen.htm
It's the preface by James Lovelock's to the book "Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy" by Bruno Comby. As the person who first proposed the "Gaia" hypothesis James Lovelock has some very credible green credentials.

HappyDude's link: James Lovelock's view rings bells here at least, with one caveat - the Nuclear ash bit.

What actually *is* his nuclear ash? Does it include contaminated waste such as clothing & cleaning materials that have been stored carefully in containers that have been said to be deteriorating and in, eg, deep locations that may not be as stable as originally envisaged?
He asks if people would clear forests where it's stored - probably yes if the workers need income

Assuming there are satisfactory answers/comments on that score, I'm for Nuclear energy partly because I'm against the alternatives for the following reasons (that currently come to mind).

1) Wind: Expensive in terms of manufacture & erection, also in aesthetic terms.
The wind doesn't blow all the time at many places.

2) Tidal power (in estuaries): Manufacture & erection, aesthetics. Silting-up will affect calculated volume (the sluice effect isn't likely to clear great areas).
Useful twice a day - for how long?.

3) Tidal/wave power at sea: Manufacture & erection, maintenance, (safety?).
Perhaps the best (so far), superfically, but what ares will need to be used for a really useful output?

4) Solar: Manufacture & erection. Less in the way of aeshtetics if sited well. Overall the most preferable, but at what cost in terms of land area as well as the usual?

5) Do we really think that governments will pull together on green power? China & India are unlikely to, until they've 'caught up'. If I was influential in either of them I'd be reluctant to give up my aspirations - would all of you?

No doubt someone will come up with something that's more difficult to gainsay!

Overall, my objections to the nuclear are centred on waste rather than safety, as the safety lessons have been learned (hopefully everywhere?). Shoot the waste into the sun?

I don't pin my hopes on Fusion, though I look forward to it. If & when it comes it'll have its own hazards.

Morning all,

To me it is a non-issue. We have to go nuclear or ultimately the lights may go out.

Whilst we generate at least some of our power this way at present, we buy electricity from the French (who do 70%+ by nuclear), we buy gas and oil from increasingly unstable sources of supply, leaving us at the mercy of political actions in the supplying countries.

I understand Kea's wish that we all adopt a different life style and use less energy, but perhaps she should compare where she lives with how 65 million Britons live on our tiny island, - adopting a 'back to old ways' system wouldn't work here.

I hope that our own population will think, and use less energy all round, but I cannot accept the 'exposed' position the UK is in regarding energy, and I see no alternative to going nuclear.

Novo

The lights may go out....

I wish they bloody well would!

I went to Turkey last week, didnt need to go just like some sort of sheep got caught up in the whole sun worshipping (actaully skin punishing) British jet away culture. While I was there I walked past endless duplications of shops and bars on three or our themes, Irsish, kareoke, dance club, traditional Turkish food cafe bars. Mostof them were practically empty yet the lights were all on and the music was blasting out into the night...

The most beutiful thing I saw (even including when I was in the gym with the young women who worked in the sauna) was the stars at night when I were heading back to the airport.


I dont think Kea is advocating going back to living in caves but thereis a lot of what we do that is superfluous and costs a lot in terms of resources and pollution. Walking to school is not saying we should not have cars and flying less does not mean not flying at all.


I can see the benefits of nuclear energy and think that we do not NEED nuclear energy we NEED to rationalise what we do. Perhaps we ought to start by switching of the internet or just maybe we ought to think about what costs us a lot and gives little back.

I think nuclear falls into this category.

You will hear a lot of good things rom politicians about nuclear energy and a ot of good things from comapnies who will profit from the nuclear industry and who it just so happens will without a shadow of doubt offer fat directorships to those same politicians when they have had enough of politics. Nuclear energy will be as *good* for this country as the privitisation of the railways has been.

The question in my mind about nuclear is this: Even with nuclear re-processing fissile materials are still minerals that have to be mined.

It is in essence no different then in terms of availability to being dependent on oil rich nations: we will instead be dependent on the fissile rich nations and on an ultimately finite resource.

This comes with the caveat that nuclear is definitively *not* like fossil fuels where you currently have how many millions of barrels a day coming out of the ground? Nuclear releases vast exponential amounts of energy so these problems are essentially forestalled, what I am suggesting is that it doesn't change the dynamic.

And this comes with a further caveat which is as raised above, waste.

Nuclear power has it's own product which is not carbon and other gases in the atmosphere: it is radioactive waste, for which their is no good solution yet proposed. We would be supplanting one problem with the other

Not that I am arguing for the status quo mind you, I don't see how it's going to happen but I do think unless genuine sustainable resources lie in our future, we will only encounter this problems again and again and each time the cost will be greater because there will be less resources to exploit and always a greater cost.

I have been puzzled (thought not really) by the almost deafening silence I've heard over the news of sky high oil prices and etc.
I'd loved to of heard some politician say: you think this is bad - just wait till it starts running out!' If that's not an incentive to change our behaviour I'm not sure what will. But I doubt that nuclear is the answer it is touted to be.

My

I just read James Lovelock's article.

Ash to me reads as a metaphor. Much I said Waste is a product so ash is the product of burning wood, so the metaphor is extended to the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) not all of which produce ash but in the context of the manner in which he was deploying the metaphor, have products which have environmental consequences.

I thought the idea of radioactively protected forests was an interesting one. Might be actually a good idea (but I urge caution it's only been 20 years just since Chernobyl exploded. Granted things in that region appear better than may have been expected but that doesn't mean it's all good has isn't have some negative impact somehow.
I thought his distinction between bad for life and bad for civilisation is a good one. I, as it happens, don't think we should save the planet. The Planet will get on just fine without us. We need to be concerned with how our actions affect the climate because the adverse effects may hurts our ability to survive. Land/sea level is one example; agriculture is another.

I am confused however by his retelling of the 'we are stardust' routine. It is as true to say 'we are nuclear waste' - it amounts to the same thing. Supernova are required to squash helium and hydrogen into heavier elements and to scatter them far and wide. So far, so Fred Hoyle. This is what makes my point about uranium being a finite resource. It requires stellar explosions for its production and there is a finite amount of it in the earth as a nuclear resource.
True it gives more energy than other fuels do in traditional combustion but it is ultimately also finite.

I'm guess that what he is actually trying to do is detoxify nuclear by saying it is a natural part of the universe (indeed the consequence of two of the fundamental forces in physics) but this is not an argument for why we should build our energy resources upon it. It's an argument for saying it may not be that bad.

However, what I think he has succeeded in stating is the problem not the solution.

I'm with Novo. Herewith my take:

Reduction is the ideal, but it's not happening. We've known about global warming for some time but usage is still increasing. Some reductions may be possible, but insulating houses, driving hybrid cars and changing light bulbs is just pissing in the ocean. Either we go back to living in caves or we address the issue, and as there's not enough caves to go around it's a non-issue.

If we succeed in putting more people on public transport and converting vehicles to to hydrogen or electric, then the power demands on the grid will naturally go up even further to compensate.

Renewables have their place in overall carbon reductions, but they all have their problems, they tend to take up a lot of land (or sea) area and most importantly they cannot supply the base load. For the base load it's a straight choice between nuclear and fossil fuels.

Ignore the carbon-used-in-construction argument; that applies to every form of power generation. By comparison, nuclear is probably better than fossil anyway as the cost of mining and transporting the fuel is lower.

On the safety side, and with due respect to those that have suffered, the consequences of a major incident are not nearly as bad as people think. Consider the few square miles of land made uninhabitable for a few years and tens of deaths from a nuclear accident, and compare it with the potential for billions of deaths and entire countries made unviable for thousands of years from global warming.

Ignoring climate change, the number of estimated premature deaths from the UK's only nuclear accident is 33 in total. The estimated premature deaths from power station emissions is 20,000 per year. The world could probably tolerate a Chernobyl once a year and it wouldn't even come close to the damage caused by burning fossil fuels.

Ignoring the human cost and concentrating on the environment alone, Chernobyl has become a wildlife sanctuary since people moved out. Go figure.

I accept that nuclear waste is a serious issue, but by comparison to other methods the amount of waste is tiny, a lot of can be recycled, and at least we're comitted to burying the leftovers, instead of simply spewing into the air. If it's buried properly, where's the environmental impact?

Is there any good, non-ideological, scientific information on this issue? I've heard nuclear power touted as an environmentally-friendlier alternative to fossil fuels but I've always felt they fall-down on the waste aspect although I'm going with my own basic knowledge of the process (ie radioactive waste is produced and then has to be buried) rather than any hard evidence or scientific knowledge.

I recall hearing that Iceland's natural thermal energy could power the entire European continent? Is this true? Even if it were it wouldn't be a good idea from a political/strategic perspective since it would make Europe completely reliant on Iceland and a huge strategic weak spot for even a united Continent.

"If it's buried properly, where's the environmental impact?"

I think the problem is that there's only so much space to bury the waste. It used to be the same argument with general waste - we bury it and it's out of sight and out of mind and beside there's *loads* of space! Now it's generally accepted that this isn't really sustainable and produces further problems (not least the greenhouse gas methane). I think nuclear power has similar problems. It's probably viable in the *short-term* but I think we'd have real trouble hundreds of years hence.

"Reduction is the ideal, but it's not happening. We've known about global warming for some time but usage is still increasing. Some reductions may be possible, but insulating houses, driving hybrid cars and changing light bulbs is just pissing in the ocean. Either we go back to living in caves or we address the issue, and as there's not enough caves to go around it's a non-issue."

I agree. We have to find a green alternative that will mean our civilisation can continue as before. There are various things we can do to reduce energy usage without impacting on lifestyle (reducing overall power wastage, for example, via things like low-energy bulbs and energy efficiency) but the idea that we have to fundamentally change our lifestyle isn't really acceptable in a democracy where things have to be done by consent and besides, from what I can gather, many experts reject the idea that we have to fundamentally change anyway: it's more a case of us changing how we do things rather than stopping doing things completely.

>but insulating houses, driving hybrid cars and changing light bulbs is just pissing in the ocean

If one person does it, it is. If one hundred people do it, it is. But if millions of people do it then it reduces overall energy needs which in turn means less energy needs to be produced which *does* impact on human CO2 output. Given that energy efficiency is simple common sense and saves money there isn't really that much need for legislation to enact these changes (except amongst the stupid and/or stubborn).

kea,

"It's what I would call capitalist green."

It's a fair point, but doesn't the seriousness of the danger affecting us (irreversible climate change) mean we should accept solutions which are far from optimal but might actually happen?

"Also, the issue of risk is significant"

Again, I don't disagree (although I'm told that the safety of nuclear power plants is far higher than it ever has been before), but with risk you're always balancing one thing against another. Which is the worse risk: a small chance of having a nuclear accident, or a large chance of having irreversible climate change?

"if *there is an accident the results are very bad for life on the planet and impossible for humans to remedy"

Is it so bad though? I mean, Chernobyl wasn't a great thing obviously, but how bad is it compared to rising sea levels and billions of people displaced?

DaveBlackeye's post pretty much nails the issue as far as I see it. I'd also add that going nuclear doesn't have to be a permanent solution, but that it's one that can be done in the short term (which is I believe necessary for addressing the carbon issue), and doesn't require huge behavioural changes which while they may be necessary will probably take a lot longer to happen.

I'd be interested if anyone could say why the reasoning in his post is wrong.

Zagreb,

"Is there any good, non-ideological, scientific information on this issue?"

I think it's one of those issues where it's very hard to come by.

To answer one of kea's original questions: make sure everyone's backyard is 50-100 miles from the repository nuclear waste repository, and it's done in a responsible way, sure.

I'm not convinced about how dangerous nuclear power is. The main problem there is the waste, which can still be deadly toxic for 1000s of years, and could have serious impacts down the line.

I don't think there's ever been a nuclear power station built without a subsidy. There are two reasons for this, the first being the totally immense fixed costs actually building the thing. This can be tens of billions of pounds, and it's quite understandable that the private sector isn't generally able to fork out this kind of money without some govt support/guarantee. These costs tend to overrun substantially (as huge projects often do), and generally it's the govt who pick up the bill for the overruns.

Also, there are price guarantees, that the electricity produced gets guarantees that it will be sold at a fixed price to the grid, or at any rate one which allows a profit to be made. Again, not too surprising given the upfront costs involved.

Overall, though, nuclear comes at an additional price to us, compared to unsubsidised power, of tens of billions of pounds. If we build 25 nuclear plants, it's not unreasonable to expect it cost £50-100bn more than letting the private sector get on with it. But that doesn't take into account a likely rise in the price of oil over the next 20 years or so, so it might not be that bad. And it's a relatively small sum when UK GDP now is approx £1 trillion, in that as a society we can afford it quite easily.

Also, I haven't heard *anyone* say that nuclear is going to replace fossil fuels completely. Rather, it will account for about 1/4 - 1/2 of the UK's energy needs, so we'll still be spewing out *plenty* of CO2. And this is in line with trend rise in energy use, about 1-2% a year (maybe more cos the population's uncertain), so total energy use
will be 1/3 to 1/2 *more* than it is now.


But... If this money was spent on research on renewables, then their prices would fall dramatically, and probably/maybe be in the same ball-park as nuclear or fossil fuels. Like nuclear, they wouldn't replace fossils (initially anyway), but they don't have the same problems of waste storage and possible limitations on supply.

If we're going to pay above the odds, then we can ignore the perils of getting energy from johnny foreigner etc. by getting it from wind and solar. In the (much) longer term this is probably safer and cheaper than nuclear.

It is also 'nicer', in that it's a decentralised system, so gives people more say over how they generate their power, won't require much in the way of security etc compared to nuclear power stations, and doesn't give 10,000 year problems to our descendants.

But basically, the argument boils down to 'it's not really worth the cost'.

Also...

Energy efficiency is pointless if the aim is to reduce energy use. If industry become more energy-efficient (henceforth ee to save my fingers), then what effectively happens is that energy, as a factor of production of any good or service, becomes cheaper. As a result, its use increases relative to other factors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khazzoom-Brookes_postulate

explains it in a bit more depth.

Another point is that nuclear plants are being built to cope with the hugely increased expected demand for energy.

"Some reductions may be possible, but insulating houses, driving hybrid cars and changing light bulbs is just pissing in the ocean".

I disagree with this. Like Zagreb said, if millions do it it isn't. After the Stern report came out I read stuff about houses which could be designed to emit little or no CO2. If all houses built from 2013 *had* to be these kind of houses, that would make a substantial reduction with little cost (ignoring the fact that ee means we'd use more in some other way without a defined total ceiling on use).

I was in my sister's house last night. As well as having her heating on (which wasn't needed), she had cable TV box, DVD player and the TV on standy, and her wi-fi connection was on too. All when she wasn't home. I dunno how much that is a % of her total use, but what a total waste. If our society stopped that kind of waste total use would probably drop a few percent at zero cost. This saving would grow exponentially larger as time goes on, too.

It strikes me as funny that nobody is saying 'how much energy do we need for a good life'? The projections the govt have used assume we'll be using much more electricity than we do now, but we certainly won't *need* to use much more than we do to have a decent life. Maybe a Cabinet member could point that out to someone?

If a Cabinet member said that now then I can't help but wonder how the polls would report negative percentages of popularity for Labour. Telling the public that they are wasting energy will not go down well.