Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...
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I have a blog which has a post on this issue here: http://depletedcranium.com/?p=291
Also another here:
http://depletedcranium.com/?p=282
I don't mean to be self-promoting but I've locked horns with this...lady before. She's rather nutty and very self-serving. She has called herself a civil rights crusader. She was disbarred after some very messy incidents when she filed some very very dubious lawsuits including one for sexual harassment by a dog. Yes, I kid you not. It was even in "News of the Weird"
She was disbarred, censured and has had several decisions against her by the judicial grevence boards of the state.
Honestly, if you look into the background it's amazing how much attention this woman has gotten considering what a complete looney she is.