The Pro-Nukes Environmental Movement

[FBaggins]

James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist, is one of the most impassioned and trusted voices on global warming. People listen closely to what he says about how drastically the climate is changing. But when Hansen suggests what to do about it, many of those same people tune him out. Some even roll their eyes. What message is he peddling that few seemingly want to hear? It’s twofold: No. 1, solar and wind power cannot meet the world’s voracious demand for energy, especially given the projected needs of emerging economies like India and China, and No. 2, nuclear power is our best hope to get off of fossil fuels, which are primarily responsible for the heat-trapping gases cooking the planet.

Many in the environmental community say that renewable energy is a viable solution to the climate problem. So do numerous energy wonks, including two researchers who penned a 2009 cover story in Scientific American asserting that “wind, water, and solar technologies can provide 100 percent of the world’s energy” by 2030. Hansen calls claims like this the equivalent of “believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”

He’s not the only environmental luminary who is bullish on nuclear power. Last year, Columbia University’s Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute, echoed Hansen’s argument. A number of other champions of nuclear power have stepped forward in recent years, from Australian climate scientist Barry Brook to American writer Gwyneth Cravens, author of Power to Save the World: The Truth about Nuclear Energy. A breakaway group in the traditionally no-nukes environmental movement has also begun advocating passionately for nuclear power. That story is the subject of a new documentary that is premiering this month at the Sundance Festival.

These are not corporate stooges of the nuclear industry; to a person, their embrace of nuclear power is motivated by a deep concern about climate change and the conviction that no other carbon-free source of energy is sufficient (and safe) enough to replace coal and gas. They see themselves as realists who want to solve the full equation of global warming and energy, not a fantasy version of the problem.


http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/nuclear_power/2013/01/nuclear_energy_and_climate_change_environmentalists_debate_how_to_stop_global.html

[leveymg]

1. Rebranding. Still a bum steer.

[FBaggins]

2. But still better than the tooth fairy or easter bunny. n/t

[leveymg]

4. We all have our fantasies. At least the tooth fairy & easter bunny aren't poisonous.

Not sure about New Coke.

[wtmusic]

6. But the Tooth Fairy brings her bastard cousin, the Coal Fairy, to the party.

Fucker ruins everything.

[leveymg]

7. Only to Naughty little Girls and Boys.

The Coal Fairy must be this guy: Sooty Santa

[NNadir]

8. Actually they are. Fear, ignorance and superstition are the cause of many disasters,

including of course, the disaster caused by the fear, ignorance, and superstition of the anti-nuke community.

Right now, the fear, ignorance and superstition of anti-nukes is a very, very, very, very, very, very big cause of the reason that 3.3 million people die each year from air pollution, about 9000 per day, 377 per hour, 6 to 7 every minute, and one about every 9 to 10 seconds.

Imagine if the sixty year history of commercial nuclear energy had caused as many deaths as will take place in the next 5 hours of air pollution. The ignorant, fearful and superstitious anti-nuke/fossil fuel apologists would be having a rather large ignorance fest, burning millions of metric tons of fossil fuels to power computers to tell us what a disaster nuclear energy is.

How do I know?

Because it's what they're all doing right this damn minute, and have been doing every damn minute of the last five or six decades while they wait for their horseshit bourgeois fantasy about solar and wind powered electric cars to come along with the second coming of Jesus.

All of humanity is suffering, big time, from the fear, ignorance and superstition of that subset of poorly educated people who believe in the Easter bunny, the tooth fairy, and the silly mathematically illiterate bull-crap dribbling out of Amory Lovins' mouth.

But have a nice day tomorrow. Congratulations on 2012 coming in as the second worst year for dangerous fossil fuel waste increases in the planetary atmosphere ever recorded. Heckuva job. You must be very, very, very, very, very, very, very proud anti-nuke.

[leveymg]

9. Stay warm in the security of your fantasy that nuclear is a major part of the future US energy mix.

Maybe on Mars.

If all the money that's been wasted on nuclear were to have gone into simply installing rooftop solar and wind energy in this country, we'd be far further along the way toward lowering our hydrocarbon footprint. But, the problem isn't so much here anymore - it's China and the other rapidly developing industrial countries. Those are a much more difficult fix from a policy and resource shift perspective.

It's largely out of our hands at this point. Go encourage them to build more nuclear plants.

[PamW]

10. WRONG!!!! WRONG!!! WRONG!!!

leveymg,

In terms of energy per unit cost; nuclear power beats solar and wind HANDS DOWN and by a large factor.

The only way anti-nukes can make the argument that nuclear power is too costly is by including the amount of money the USA spends on nuclear weapons as part of the "cost of nuclear power", which is their normal motis operandi.

However, including the costs of nuclear weapons as a "subsidy" to nuclear power makes as much sense as including all the billions that the Pentagon spends on B-2 Spirit Stealth bombers as some sort of "subsidy" to the airline industry.

Money spent on nuclear weapons is for weapons; and is NOT a subsidy to commercial nuclear power.

Money spent on bombers is for defense, and is NOT a subsidy to the commercial airlines.

No less than the National Academy of Science and Engineering say in their 2009 Energy Report as in previous reports that nuclear power MUST be the major supplier of electrical energy, and that renewables like solar and wind, due to our lack of control of these, can be no more than about 20% of the electrical supply.

PamW

[leveymg]

11. That's modus operandi, unless you mean Moti's Grill Rockville Maryland Kosher Resturant

I wouldn't bother pointing that out, but you were just so EMPHATIC !!!! EMPHATIC !!! EMPHATIC !!!

Nuclear power is subsidized in many ways, particularly insurance, R&D, taxes, financing, so that your comparison with the cost per unit of solar and wind, much of which is residential and noncommercial, must be adjusted to capture the broader life cycle costs of designing, constructing, operating and decommissioning nuclear plants. When you take all that into consideration, the costs of alternatives are going way down while nuclear only continues to rise.

Sorry. You're wrong. [lower case]

[PamW]

12. WRONG!!!! WRONG!!! WRONG!!!

leveymg,

You are the one that is 100% WRONG.

You've been gullible in falling for the anti-nuke propaganda with respect to insurance.

It is NOT subsidized. The reactor owner must obtain insurance from commercial insurers like
American Nuclear Insurers:

http://www.amnucins.com/

If damages exceed the insurance protection, the Price Anderson Act provides a 2nd tier
distributed by the Government; but funded by the reactor owners:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price%E2%80%93Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act

Power reactor licensees are required by the act to obtain the maximum amount of insurance against nuclear related incidents which is available in the insurance market (as of 2011, $375 million per plant). Any monetary claims that fall within this maximum amount are paid by the insurer(s). The Price-Anderson fund, which is financed by the reactor companies themselves, is then used to make up the difference. Each reactor company is obliged to contribute up to $111.9 million per reactor in the event of an accident with claims that exceed the $375 million insurance limit.

This is the BIG LIE that the anti-nukes tell. They say that the Price-Anderson Fund is taxpayer money, when it is NOT!!

You fell for the BIG LIE, "hook, line, and sinker". Poor form for someone that wants to debate nuclear power.

PamW

[leveymg]

13. What is it about you and the exclamation points?

$375 million won't buy a ham sandwich these days. There are what, 65 commercial reactors - let's see 65 X $111M - That's about $7 billion. A Category 2 hurricane did more $50 billion in damage the Federal Gov't had to cover recently.

No, Pam. The nuclear industry is massively subsidized - if the operators insurance had to fully cover the true scope of potential liability, the cost of insurance would indeed be prohibitive. That's just one form of public cost and subsidy among many. I don't want to continue subsidizing your industry's toxic business model.

[FBaggins]

14. I've always found that interesting as well...

...but since I vastly prefer accuracy and a solid scientific foundation to posting style guides - I've never complained. My suspicion is that years of correcting the same errors over and over (often with the same posters) eventually gets under one's skin.

So let's get to some of that accuracy, shall we?

$375 million won't buy a ham sandwich these days. There are what, 65 commercial reactors - let's see 65 X $111M - That's about $7 billion.

There are over one hundred licensed reactors. The total pool is just a hair under $12 Billion. You can joke about ham sandwiches, but Three Mile Island cost in the neighborhood of a billion dollars.

A Category 2 hurricane did more $50 billion in damage the Federal Gov't had to cover recently.

So? Does that mean that each home that could be hit by a hurricane needs $50Billion in insurance? Or that because you can imagine a loss it must be insured against?

No, Pam. The nuclear industry is massively subsidized - if the operators insurance had to fully cover the true scope of potential liability, the cost of insurance would indeed be prohibitive.

And that statement would be true of virtually every person and business in the nation (and is thus meaningless). You do not receive a "subsidy" from the government just because you are required to carry a tiny amount of auto insurance (compared to your potential liability).

To your earlier point. Cost estimates for nuclear power already include the "broader life-cycle costs" you mentioned.

It may be true that the price of some renewables is declining (though there's no reason to believe that this is a permanent condition) while nuclear costs have increased (with the same caveat)... but there's still a long way to go before the cost of providing reliable power to a large population with a substantial penetration of renewables is competitive with that of doing so with nuclear power.

[phantom power]

3. Many people have a visceral, immediate fear of radiation

and fairly few people have a visceral fear of climate change.

Unless and until that changes, nuclear is going to have a hard time getting traction, even while our climate goes off the rails.

[pscot]

5. The problems associated with nukes

are essentially local and can be solved. The problems caused by rising temperatures are global, insoluble and ultimately fatal to the biosphere. Our "choices" suck, and the suckage will increse as we get deeper into the crisis.