Skip to main content

Debunking Anti-Nuclear Talking Points

There are a pair of letters to the editor that appeared in today's edition of the Financial Times that offer good rejoinders to a number of standard anti-nuclear talking points.

The first comes from our friend Ian Hore-Lacy of the World Nuclear Association:
Nuclear energy's carbon output from the full fuel cycle is not a matter for conjecture; audited figures are published, and are very much the same as the best figures for renewables. In particular, they are typically about 2 per cent of what you would get from using coal, and if one goes to very low-grade uranium ores, that figure could rise to 3 per cent. Hardly a big deal, and it certainly shows that greenhouse-friendliness is significant.
For more on total lifecycle emissions, go into our archives for a review of the issue by David Bradish. Be aware that WNA maintains its own blog as well.

The second letter comes from FT reader Terence Price, and deals with the question of the uranium supply:
What is not always realised by those unfamiliar with the mining industry is that the published figures for "reserves" have no automatic relationship to the amount of material in the earth's crust. They simply describe the amount that has been identified from geological exploration, and could be mined commercially given the market price. If the price rises, this automatically increases the accessible "reserves". A senior geologist once told me: "Uranium is where you look for it". There is plenty in countries friendly to the UK - Canada, Australia and half a dozen others.
Our definitive post on this subject was contributed last Summer by Clifton Farrell. Give it another read.

Technorati tags: , , , , ,

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Fluor Invests in NuScale

You know, it’s kind of sad that no one is willing to invest in nuclear energy anymore. Wait, what? NuScale Power celebrated the news of its company-saving $30 million investment from Fluor Corp. Thursday morning with a press conference in Washington, D.C. Fluor is a design, engineering and construction company involved with some 20 plants in the 70s and 80s, but it has not held interest in a nuclear energy company until now. Fluor, which has deep roots in the nuclear industry, is betting big on small-scale nuclear energy with its NuScale investment. "It's become a serious contender in the last decade or so," John Hopkins, [Fluor’s group president in charge of new ventures], said. And that brings us to NuScale, which had run into some dark days – maybe not as dark as, say, Solyndra, but dire enough : Earlier this year, the Securities Exchange Commission filed an action against NuScale's lead investor, The Michael Kenwood Group. The firm "misap

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Wednesday Update

From NEI’s Japan micro-site: NRC, Industry Concur on Many Post-Fukushima Actions Industry/Regulatory/Political Issues • There is a “great deal of alignment” between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the industry on initial steps to take at America’s nuclear energy facilities in response to the nuclear accident in Japan, Charles Pardee, the chief operating officer of Exelon Generation Co., said at an agency briefing today. The briefing gave stakeholders an opportunity to discuss staff recommendations for near-term actions the agency may take at U.S. facilities. PowerPoint slides from the meeting are on the NRC website. • The International Atomic Energy Agency board has approved a plan that calls for inspectors to evaluate reactor safety at nuclear energy facilities every three years. Governments may opt out of having their country’s facilities inspected. Also approved were plans to maintain a rapid response team of experts ready to assist facility operators recoverin