Skip to main content

The Long Crooked Road to Nuclear Energy

By

ET112009_Ted_and_Michael Ted Nordhaus, Michael Shellenberger and Jesse Jenkins of the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank with an energy focus, weighs in on Japan over at the Atlantic.

Acceptance of, and even vocal support for, nuclear power under such circumstances [Fukushima Daiichi] would have been unthinkable even a decade ago. But as many leading greens have come to terms with the potentially catastrophic risks of climate change, they have begun to reconsider the far more modest risks associated with nuclear power. There is no credible path to global emissions stabilization absent enormous quantities of new nuclear power. It is, quite simply, the only low carbon energy technology available today capable of producing large quantities of low carbon baseload power on the scale that the rapidly growing global economy demands.

And the “greens” they are referring to?

… [I]nfluential greens and liberals, from the UK Guardian's George Monbiot to The Atlantic's Josh Green have used the occasion to pronounce their support for nuclear power. Even leading green groups like NRDC and EDF have mostly kept their powder dry in the days since the accident.

The Breakthrough Institute triad are not altogether convinced nuclear energy has a strong future in the developed world, though it has a very strong one in the developing world. I beg to differ, but that’s not the point, really. The point is that logic lead them to nuclear energy.

---

I was interested to see a change of heart on the part of George Monbiat:

Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless alternatives.

Uh, what? Oh, here we go:

But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy technologies. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.

Pretty good, I guess, for someone who considers the industry a pack of lying hyenas, but there you are. The logic of nuclear energy and - though the situation in Japan is not yet resolved – its safety, conspire to make arguments in its favor compelling.

It may seem sometimes like a long crooked road, but coming to a last mile marker that distresses you – as it does Monbiat – yet has the qualities you want seems – somehow – liberating.

Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

By
Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...
23 comments
Read more

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

By
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...
7 comments
Read more

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

By
You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...
6 comments
Read more