Al Gore: "I doubt nuclear power will play a much larger role"

[bananas]

I agree with Al Gore: "I doubt nuclear power will play a much larger role than it does now."

Grist: Let's turn briefly to some proposed solutions. Nuclear power is making a big resurgence now, rebranded as a solution to climate change. What do you think?

Gore: I doubt nuclear power will play a much larger role than it does now.

Grist: Won't, or shouldn't?

Gore: Won't. There are serious problems that have to be solved, and they are not limited to the long-term waste-storage issue and the vulnerability-to-terrorist-attack issue. Let's assume for the sake of argument that both of those problems can be solved.

We still have other issues. For eight years in the White House, every weapons-proliferation problem we dealt with was connected to a civilian reactor program. And if we ever got to the point where we wanted to use nuclear reactors to back out a lot of coal -- which is the real issue: coal -- then we'd have to put them in so many places we'd run that proliferation risk right off the reasonability scale. And we'd run short of uranium, unless they went to a breeder cycle or something like it, which would increase the risk of weapons-grade material being available.

When energy prices go up, the difficulty of projecting demand also goes up -- uncertainty goes up. So utility executives naturally want to place their bets for future generating capacity on smaller increments that are available more quickly, to give themselves flexibility. Nuclear reactors are the biggest increments, that cost the most money, and take the most time to build.

In any case, if they can design a new generation that's manifestly safer, more flexible, etc., it may play some role, but I don't think it will play a big role.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12743273
http://grist.org/news/maindish/2006/05/09/roberts/index.html

[Dead_Parrot]

1. He never has been a fan...

Everytime one of us points out that that the IFR's can burn up transuranic waste, there is a little voice saying "you remember which administration canceled that project, don't you?"

Hey, what the hell. Gore is working a minor miracle in getting aware of the problem, and I hope to hell he does decide to run in '08 since he's probably the only potential candidate to meet the problem head on. Quite how he would turn around our CO₂ in the next 10 years without hiking up nuclear power is something of a mystery to me, but we'll see. He has also said he's not "reflexively opposed" to nuclear power: I just hope he's not doing the "look at the US nuclear industry" thing...

[bananas]

7. He says "the real issue: coal"

but maybe that's his own personal bias,
since he's from Tennessee, a coal state. ;)

[oscar111]

2. nuclear power = nuclear wars... time to wake up to the reality

many third world reactors will soon enough result in many third world nuclear wars. The drifting clouds are one way that will harm you. The cost of such war must be added into the cost of "peaceful electricity" from the atom. That makes such electricity horrendously costly.

nuclear reactors have always been, imho, an excuse for nations to get "the bomb".

every six months some new nation siphons off uranium and is rumored to be building a bomb.

enough.

man is not wise enough to handle uranium. Einstein regretted "letting the genie out of the bottle".

"all uranium back into the ground" is a fine idea.

except for tiny amounts for physics research, medical uses.

[oscar111]

3. uranium miners.. ninety percent lung cancer

i recall reading that years ago.. anyone confirm that?

that is in the USA... navaho miners i think.

now imagine the rate with third world mines.. as in pakistan, iran, south africa, congo.

consider the working conditions there, and the processing factories there for refining the ore.

and the dust from those factories... the river effluents.. right here, i recall the tennessee river was secretly contaminated by some nuke weapon related factory . If our government, one of the richest in the world, lets such contamination happen, imagine what is going on in uranium facilities of every sort under the impoverished and oft brutal governments of the third world.

where cancer treatment is out of reach of the citizens.

none of this happens with wind and solar.

enough wind , by itself, in the dakotas and texas to run our whole nation.

[XemaSab]

5. According to a colleague of mine

who designs solar plants (as in, HUGH solar plants), wind is really hard on the grid.

[NNadir]

6. None of this happens with wind and solar?

Does god deliver the steel for wind plants from on high?

I'm not even going to touch the solar case, since it is so out to lunch. The environmental impact of solar PV energy is not seen because basically the solar option is tiny. It has yet to produce an exajoule of energy anywhere on the planet.

If solar ever became a mainstream form of energy - and that is a huge if - the environmental impact would be well known.

Nuclear energy is safer than solar PV power, and comparable to wind power. www.externe.info

[oscar111]

9. please detail the hazards of PV solar?

sincerely curious on that.

also, how about solar boilers over mirrors, which must by now have delivered a joule or two, in place online Barstow, CA.

What about the new solar idea, "solar cube" that uses much less PV material per KW produced, via fresnel area concentration on a tiny cell.? It diffuses the heat in the back. So, if PV matter is a hazard, be aware that this way will need less of it.

an australian is newly putting this on houses. Has a website, not handy right now on my cpr.

you might want to buy one of his gizmos, if only to debunk it LOL.

stay cool
oscar

[NNadir]

4. If Gore is serious about global warming - and he is - he is well

acquainted with the options. He is also a politician, and a politician who said, in a Democratic Party context, "nuclear energy" would face an immediate reaction from the subset of people, unfortunately more prominent in our party than in opposing parties and independents who embrace nuclear ignorance.

In his position he must speak out of both sides of his mouth. I watched the Charlie Rose interview with interest, where he specifically made a big deal out of his conversations with James Lovelock. Do you think for a minute that this private conversation didn't didn't discuss the nuclear power Lovelock so prominently supports.

In fact, Gore referred to all sorts of opinions and conversations he has had that are "off the record." Why are the conversations "off the record?" Does Gore himself say things "off the record?"

If he is talking with scientists about the subject of global climate change, the subject of nuclear energy must be constant. Can Al Gore run on a platform of expanded nuclear energy? I think he would do better than he might think, but it might hurt him in some primaries, so it's probably best unstated, better to talk about cellulosic ethanol and other popular illusions. Certainly a pro-nuclear stance would alienate a subset of DUers, DUer's who appeal to some imaginary solution to the problem.

Gore visited the Chernobyl plant, and then made a speech, there saying that the accident did not mean nuclear power should be rejected.

Here is what he said:

The lesson of Chornobyl is not an indictment of nuclear power as such. Nuclear power, designed well, regulated properly, cared for meticulously, has a place in the world's energy supply. And certainly the lesson of Chornobyl is not that we should retreat from new technology. Technology used for human reasons, in humane hands, holds the promise of improving the quality of our lives. Today, for example, Liubov Kovalevska's prophetic warning about Chornobyl would have been instantly spread on the Internet throughout Ukraine and the rest of the world. Wisely used for compassionate purposes, technology is part of the answer, and not itself the problem.

The heroes of Chornobyl did not die so that we would remain in ignorance. Their deaths must be turned into lessons of great beauty and hope. We must learn, as a world, the true lessons Chornobyl and its martyrs teach us about the possibilities of human kindness.

In fact, the real lesson of Chornobyl is the need for redemption. Certainly the need to learn from our mistakes is apparent in the place itself. There is not yet any sign of forgiveness there.

http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1998/319818.shtml

Now let us consider whether the "new" Al Gore has changed since 1998.

Can Al Gore or anyone else stop global climate change without nuclear power? No. If he tries to do so, given his own declared 10 year window, he will fail.

I think Gore speaks out of both sides of his mouth on nuclear energy. He was very involved in nuclear issues with the Ukraine, where the solution to shutting Chernobyl was a western commitment to build more reactors. Clinton-Gore specifically advocated the placement of surplus weapons plutonium and HEU into commercial nuclear reactors.

I don't object necessarily to him being cagey about nuclear power as he speaks now. He is a politician, not a scientist.

If Gore runs a political campaign based on global climate change, I will support him. I want him to run. I will pay almost zero attention to any statement he makes about nuclear power during the campaign, but should he become President, I will expect him to do the right thing. There really is only one option here to seriously address global climate change, the risk minimized solution: Nuclear power.

[oscar111]

8. Nuclear electricity = nuclear wars.. thus, horrendous cost per Kwatt

the cost of many third world nuke wars will be titanic. First one may be Israel and Iran. Then, comes Pakistan/India. Then, South Africa uses one to take over Congo's cobalt mines, and Angola
s oil fields. Then, England uses one to defend that island from Argentina again... her battleship that sank last time, had nukes in its hold.

Realize, we have already had a nuclear war. WW2.

upping the total cost of peaceful.. so called.. nuke plants.

the cancer treatment of uranium miners/ or nontreatment's lost years of productivity/man, .. must also add that in . I have never seen that added in.

Solar power need not be PV. Barstow has had a boiler with mirrors for many years now. THe steel for wind ... far less environmentally destructive than uranium mines, i would bet. When one factors in the nuke wars in the third or even our first world. Say we drop one on Iran , then N. Korea, to end their bombs in each case. The environs in each case would not look pretty. Folks are STILL dying in Hiroshima from bomb radiation leftovers.

BTW, thank you for the good reply. A good romp thru logic. A gentelmanly reply, too, unlike some others i might name but will refrain from.

[dcfirefighter]

10. As far as I'm concerned, the nuclear cat is out of the bag.

And has been at least at least 1949, when the authoritarian USSR tested "JOE 1". Since then new countries have been added to the nuclear weapons club at the rate of at least one a decade. This is a fact we'll have to deal with irrespective of whether or not we use nuclear power generation.

I would suggest that the solution to this problem is not in outlawing the peaceful use of nuclear power, but rather in learning to 'play nice' with each other: trading freely, allowing open (but secure) borders, and, of course, not preemptively attacking each other.

There are simply no options other than nuclear and fossil fuels, not for reliable, on demand, baseline power. Of the two, nuclear is clearly the lowest cost option for power generation, when externalities are considered.

Conservation, Wind generation, and Solar power have their places. When costs from all sources are internalized, and passed to the consumer, the balance of sources (and conservation) will be appropriate for each location and application. IMO, there is no better way to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels than by increasing their cost to their consumer - their cost to the rest of us is already high. The external costs of nuclear, wind, solar, energy storage, etc. should also be passed on to the consumer, those these costs represent a much smaller proportion of their current, internal cost.