Chernobyl Reminds Us that Nukes are NOT Green
Twenty-one years ago this week, lethal radiation poured into the breezes over Europe and into the jet stream above, carrying death and disease around the planet.
It could be happening again as you read this: either by error, as at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, or by terror, as could have happened on September 11, 2001.
Those who now advocate a “rebirth” of this failed technology forget what happened during these “impossible” catastrophes, or refuse to face their apocalyptic reality, both ecological and financial.
Radiation monitors in Sweden, hundreds of miles away, first detected the fallout from the blast at Chernobyl Unit 4. The reactor complex had just been extolled in the Soviet press as the ultimate triumph of a “new generation” in atomic technology.
The Gorbachev government hushed up the accident, then reaped a whirlwind of public fury that helped bring down the Soviet Union. The initial silence in fact killed people who might otherwise have taken protective measures. In downtown Kiev, just 80 kilometers away, a parade of uninformed citizens—many of them very young—celebrated May Day amidst a hard rain of lethal fallout. It should never have happened.
Ten days after the explosion, radiation monitors at Point Reyes Station, on the California coast, detected that fallout. A sixty percent drop in bird births soon followed. (The researcher who made that public was fired).
Before they happened, reactor pushers said accidents like those at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were “impossible.” But….
To this day, no one knows how much radiation escaped from TMI, where it went or who it harmed. But 2400 central Pennsylvanians who have sued to find out have been denied their day in court for nearly thirty years. The epithet “no one died at Three Mile Island” is baseless wishful thinking.
To this day also, no one knows how much radiation escaped from Chernobyl, where it went and who was harmed. Dr. Alexey Yablokov, former environmental advisor to the late President Boris Yeltsin, and president of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, estimates the death toll at 300,000. The infant death and childhood cancer rates in the downwind areas have been horrific. Visual images of the innumerable deformed offspring make the most ghastly science fiction movies seem tame.
Industry apologists have stretched the limits of common decency to explain away these disasters. Patrick Moore, who falsely claims to be a founder of Greenpeace, has called TMI a “success story.” An industry doctor long ago argued that Chernobyl would somehow “lower the cancer rate.”
In human terms, such claims are beneath contempt. As one of the few reporters to venture into central Pennsylvania to study the health impacts of TMI, I can recall no worse experience in my lifetime than interviewing the scores of casualties.
The farmers made clear, with appalling documentation, that the animal death toll alone was horrendous. But the common human symptoms, ranging from a metallic taste the day of the accident to immediate hair loss, bleeding sores, asthma and so much more, came straight out of easily available literature from Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
There is no mystery about what happened downwind from TMI, only a conscious, well-funded corporate, media and judicial blackout.
At Chernobyl, the experience was repeated a thousand-fold. More than 800,000 (that’s NOT a typo) Soviet draftees were run through the radioactive ruins as “jumpers,” being exposed for 90 seconds or so to do menial clean-up work before hustling out. The ensuing cancer rate has been catastrophic (this huge cohort of very angry young men subsequently played a key role in bringing down the Soviet Union).
In both cases, “official” literature negating (at TMI) or minimizing (at Chernobyl) the death toll are utter nonsense. The multiple killing powers of radiation remain as much a medical mystery as how much fallout escaped in each case and where it went.
The economic impacts are not so murky. Moore’s assertion that TMI was a success story is literally insane. A $900 million asset became a $2 billion clean-up job in a matter of minutes. At Chernobyl, the cost of the accident in lost power, damaged earth, abandoned communities and medical nightmares has been conservatively estimated at a half-trillion dollars, and still climbing.
The price of a melt-down or terror attack at an American nuke is beyond calculation. In most cases, reactors built in areas once far from population centers have now been surrounded by development, some of it bumping right up to the plant perimeters. Had the jets that hit the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 instead hit Indian Point Units Two and Three, 45 miles north, the human and financial costs would have been unimaginable. Imagine the entire metropolitan New York area being made permanently uninhabitable, and then calculate out what happens to the US economy.
There remains no way to protect any of the roughly 450 commercial reactors on this planet from either terror attack or an error on the part of plant operators.
Those advocating more nukes ignore the myriad good reasons why no private insurance company has stepped forward to insure them against catastrophe. Those who say future accidents are impossible forget that exactly the same was said of TMI and Chernobyl.
The commercial fuel cycle DOES emit global warming in the uranium enrichment process. Uranium mining kills miners. Milling leaves billions of tons of tailings that emit immeasurable quantities of radioactive radon. Regular reactor operations spew direct heat in to the air and water. They also pump fallout into the increasingly populated surroundings, with impacts on the infant death rate that have already been measured and proven. And, of course, there is no solution for the management of high-level waste, a problem the industry promised would be solved a half-century ago.
Economically, early forays into a “new generation” of reactors have already been plagued by huge cost overruns and construction delays. At best they would take ten to fifteen years to build, by which time renewable sources and efficiency—which are already cheaper than new nukes—will have totally outstripped this failed technology. Small wonder Wall Street wants no part of this radioactive hype, which is essentially just another corporate campaign for taxpayer handouts.
This past Earth Day an orgy of corporate greenwashing, aided by the always-compliant major media, tried to portray nukes as “green” energy. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We will never get to Solartopia, a sustainable economy based on renewables and efficiency, as long as atomic power sucks up our resources and threatens us with extinction.
Twenty-one years ago this week, Chernobyl became something far worse than a mere warning beacon. The radiation it spewed still travels our jet stream, still lodges in our bodies, still harms our children.
Only by burying this failed, murderous beast can we get to a truly green future.
Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. He is senior advisor to Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service, and writes regularly for www.freepress.org, where this article first appeared.
The simple expedient of repealing the Price-Anderson Act, which insures nuclear plants (for a tiny fraction of the damage of a major accident), would put the final nail in the coffin of nuclear power. Nuclear power has never been sufficiently safe to be commercially underwritten, and never has been commercially viable without massive government subsidies such as the National Energy Policy Act of 2005 to which, compliments of Senator Domenici, we owe this latest attempt at a revival.
Peter Neils
Los Alamos Study Group
France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear power stations and has the cleanest air in Europe. Obviously their design of nuclear power stations are safe.
from above comment “France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear power stations and has the cleanest air in Europe. Obviously their design of nuclear power stations are safe”
What has France done with its nuclear waste all these years?
France reprocesses some nuclear waste and stores the rest, last time I checked. Troublesome, but not about to cause environmental collapse.
It is important to remember that the design of the Chernobyl reactor was quite different from current ones.
The choice of whether to use “the nuclear option” is something we now need to face. We can talk all we like about reducing consumption, but its not going to happen for decades, and there are ecosystems undergoing permanent change right this minute. If nuclear power is the only practical way we currently have to slow global warming, it is imperative that we use it, in spite of its faults.
Yeah France derives 80% of it’s power from nuclear but it is heavily subsidized by the government which is the only reason it’s in place. There seems to be a blackout on information in the english language press on the problems with this. The end product of the refinement process is a weapons grade ploutonium just a minor drawback in these Bushie times. The waste disposal is catastrophic- rural areas in France are refusing to become dumps for one of the most toxic substances on the planet and are in revolt. Trains carring nuclear waste to be dumped in Germany have been blocked by protestors. Now the interesting part- Socialist presidental candidate Segolene Royal is campaigning on moritorium on nukes and a development of alternative energy. There is a blackout of good info on this in the US. How’s your French?
Who has said that nuclear power is “the only practical option”? A cursory search to answer my own question about waste disposal of nuclear material shows that it is far from being resolved in France. I read today that “liquid waste discharges from reprocessing are polluting the English Channel and spreading radioactivity in the seas of Western Europe.” See ‘Nuclear Power and Global Warming’ with Dr. Arjun Makhijani, an on online video. The waste problem hasn’t been solved since the early 70’s when nuclear power was started.
There are safer ways to produce energy.
I agree fully that there are safer ways to produce energy, and I expect them to take over eventually. Yes, nuclear waste is bad. Unlike CO2, however, it can be contained with relatively modest environmental harm (carbon sequestering is a possible alternative to this, of course, but my impression is that it is more speculative.) The issue is a temporal one: we need to lower CO2 emissions as soon as possible, and wind and solar aren’t cheap enough to do that right now, even with massive subsidies. Perhaps they will be in ten years. I don’t know.
Nuclear power is not cost effective or emissions free. It is subsidized by billions in tax money. Without these subsidies the electricity produced would be the most expensive on the planet. It produces tons of highly toxic waste that last for thousands of years. For those who say it can be safely disposed of I have a simple question, do you mind if we store it in your back yard?
The simple truth is that we already have a working, safe, stable nuclear reactor, the sun. We can harness its power with solar, wind, and tidal generators (ok, tidal forces are mainly from the moon). This power is cheaper than nuclear reactors and of course far safer with no emissions and no toxic residue. Putting solar power cells on just one third of the roof space of the US would generate all the electricity we get from coal, oil, gas, and nuclear plants (source is National Geographic).
If we subsidized solar and wind the way we have nuclear the US would be producing all its power cheaply and cleanly.
Nuclear waste is bad!!! Nuclear waste cannot be contained. By far of greatest importance is the isotope 239Pu, which has a half-life of more than 20000 years. One kilogram is equivalent to about 22 million kilowatt hours of heat energy. We have yet to manufacture a container that will not leak within 50 years. Steel jacketed cans encased in reinforced concrete and dropped into the ocean, placed underground at Yucca Mountain or Barnwell, S.C. cannot contain gamma radiation. The radiation is colorless, odorless, invisible–easy to hide from the gullible public. But it fractures chromosomes, alters genomes, debases DNA and goes on killing for the thousands of years it takes to stabilize. Watch _Karen Silkwood_ again. Read up on the Clam Shell Alliance. Look at the history of the first commercial reactor in Pittsburgh near Alcoa. Don’t allow the masters of deceit in Washington to sell you on the viability of nuclear energy. Why Plutonium is named after the God of the Underworld is not a riddle.
John
Naples Stone Crab Alliance
Here’s some links on nuclear power from that gutter sniping rabble rousing mega site common dreams.org The first thing Chaney did was formulate his famous energy policy.’nuff said. “Pelosi,Clinton, Obama Favor More Nuclear Plants” common dreams.org/archive/2007/04/09/339 - “Energy Security” Plan Pannel over Climate. Nuclear Concerns common dreams.org/headlines06/0719-08 “Nukes Aren’t Green common dreams.org/views/05/0812-31 “Heat Threatens Safty of Nuclear Reactors as France Grids for Electricy Rationing commondreams.org/03/0811-03- in which hundreds of french died tragicaly in a terrible heat wave- “Thousands of Protestors Try to Block Nuclear Waste Shipment Headed for German Dump common dreams.org/headlines03/1111-03. Google on the Common Dreams search site for your favorite Cheny energy program. I suggest “france nuclear power” or “germany nuclear proststs”
The nuclear industry will tell you that on most days, if you are standing next to the fence of a nuclear plant, you are both breathing cleaner air and getting less radiation than you would if you were standing at the fence of a coal plant. And they are correct … on most days. Its on the days that this isn’t true that you want to be about a thousand freakin miles away from this thing that’s become a horror blasting deadly radiation into everything around it.
For that matter, the day the truck leaves carrying the nuclear waste is another day I don’t want to be in the same state with the danged thing.
BTW, burying something underground does contain the gamma radiation. So does a thick enough pile of lead. Actually, shield the radiation is the right word. The tricky thing about nuclear waste is that those shields only work while they are there. So, over 10,000 years dirt erodes, and the radiation is no longer shielded and is screwing up any living thing that gets close.
Or, here’s a good one. How do you design a “Keep Out” sign that people can know and understand 10,000 years from now? The Egyptians build the Pyramids, what some 5000 years ago? Is there anything they could have put on the outside that would have both survived 5000 years and been clearly meaningful to us as saying “stay the freak out you moron, this place is full of deadly radioactive waste!”. Anything that would have slowed down a bunch of treasure hunting Europeans for very long? Heck, the thread of a deadly curse didn’t slow them down. But if it had been radioactive waste in the pyramids, that legend would have been true. So, how do you design a sign that would have put the fear of radiation into these people … and they probably won’t understand English. Heck, we can barely read today the original English of the Founding Fathers of this country. I’ll believe they have the nuclear waste problem solved when I see a prototype for that sign!
Again, my point is not to say that nuclear energy is good. It is very bad, and it needs to go away. However, my chain of logic is this:
1. CO2 emissions are an immediate danger which we must work to reduce as soon as possible.
2. Solar and wind power are wonderful alternatives, but there is no chance of them replacing coal for decades, for a number of reasons.
3. Nuclear can replace all coal while solar and wind technologies are developed. This would allow us to cut CO2 dramatically and permanently within 10 years.
Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore seems to agree.
Actually, I wouldn’t mind storing nuclear waste in my backyard, provided it was in suitable containers (which I would be happy keep well maintained). It would be a good conversation-starter, anyway.
I cover what I think are about 3 top reasons against nuclear power on my blog. The most important is that, even if nuclear power works perfectly, waste is no concern, offloading responsibility to future generations, etc. is meaningless — that nuclear power is a top-down thing in the US. It’s not a local, grassroots, self-determined, community-run type of energy. It’s beyond any doubt the most statist/fascist energy source yet devised. Solar, geothermal, wind, etc. can be community-owned and destiny-controlled, if not actually privately owned. Nuclear is a thing for autocrats, beyond any shred of doubt.
Now if you’ve got reason to trust central government, have no worries about catastrophe, and don’t calculate containment costs for centuries in the TCO analysis, then perhaps nuclear is fine. But the first worry there (i.e. bad vibes from D.C.) is reason enough, IMHO, to avoid this energy like the plague. Image if Bush (or successor) populated the nuclear regulatory commission with “You’re doing a heck of a job” Brownian political hacks — as the core sinks into the crust? Or an engineer “went postal”? The stakes are just too high, trust is too low. We can’t get matters of war and peace correct, and have neglected virtually all domestic issues from public debate in the past 6 years. Not a good time to be championing something like nuclear…
http://paulbramscher.blogspot.com/2007/04/american-public-media-and-pro-nuke.html
I see where you’re coming from, no doubt about it… this is ultimately a very complex cost-benefit analysis with a number of uncertain factors. I guess the one that tips my opinion toward the nuclear option is the sad poltical reality- there’s almost no chance at all of obtaining the massive subsidies that would be required to rapidly implement wind and solar energy. As such, I feel that we should push (for now) for the lesser of two evils: nuclear instead of coal.
Of course, it’s still possible that there will be a price breakthrough in solar technology within the next couple of years, which would do away with the issue.
Hey post-postmodern I hate to gang up on you you are not factoring in disposal costs or the costs of a nuclear accident. Even if you ignore those costs wind power is already cheaper than nuclear and it’s been estimated that we have enough wind power potential to easily power the entire nation- this does not even take into view solar biomass etc. There is no corporate insurer that will insure nuclear power because of their own figures on the rates of accidents. If you saw a recent Nova on PBS on solar energy which also did end up poopooing the viability of solar- it mentioned the subsibies by the German government and massivly more sophisticated manufacturing capicity by industry that is sucessfully converting the entire country to 20% solar by 2020. It would take 15 years to build out nukes to the point that would be needed to put a dent in US carbon emissions even if it began tomorrow. We have the ability and the technology to convert to wind energy in one year. I’d like to know what cost per btu you are refering to. May the sun take a shining on ya.
I’m not referring to any cost-per-btu numbers at all. Wind and solar are better in every respect. I’m referring to ugly political reality, which is that there is a real chance of passing legislation (in the U.S.) that would cause a bunch of nuclear reactors to be built, but almost no chance of passing legislation that would cause conversion to wind/solar energy on even the German scale, let alone the much larger one that is really needed. And I agree- if solar tech advances the way it looks like it will in the next couple of years, we can scrap the nuke plans. If Nanosolar, for instance, starts selling photovoltaics with anything close to the cost per watt they advertise, it will signal a fundamental change in the issue.
My real point, I suppose, is that this is not the time to be idealistic- climate change is too pressing a matter.
It seems we have the best opportunity right now to decommission capitalist control over society, given recent spectacular failures on the military, industrial and social fronts of capital’s war on people.
Progressives should address the corporate greenwashing by dropping support for corporate free speech. Free speech is not for the powerful.
Progressives should revoke their effective support for corporate welfare that forces the public to pay for wasteful, destructive enterprises. Welfare is not for the powerful.
eharveyr, we don’t know much about France’s nuke energy. Big Brother doesn’t want us to know much about anything.
The PBS article “Why The French Like Nuclear Energy” is informative. Social factors seem to lessen the risk of nuclear accidents in France. The French have contained the cost of nuclear energy somewhat by using a single design across all plants.
But France hasn’t figured out a way to contain the waste (making future generations pay), its impact on uranium source nations is significant (enriching despots and oppressors), and the heat pollution strains ecosystems in France (violating its own environmental regulations). Not to mention the teror & blackmail risks, and the escalating costs of uranium mining and processing post peak.
Who knows what the French are paying to subsidize nuclear energy?
Then we have the opportunity costs of central plants. Dispersed small cogeneration plants eliminate many power lines, greatly cut industrial process energy costs and heat pollution, and provide economic opportunity and political self-determination to local communities. For example, if France’s uranium sources are threatened by geopolitical instabilities, the French citizen must pay for a fix in military tax.
What are the French paying now for stability in Ghana and Niger?
We should support only those energy technologies that can be exported to developing nations, e.g. wind and solar thermal. Solar thermal plants can supply all current US energy consumption in under five percent of our land area, or one percent if we get really efficient which we should.
Wasserman, once again, is right on.
PBS may have run a program on why the French love nukes but PBS is dependant on corporate funding and does seem to have an establishment pro nuke stance as witnessed by a recent Nova program on solar. If you research commondreams you might conclude the the french no longer love t nukes in fact there was a systemic system failure during the heat waves of 2003 and 2005 resulting in loss of life. The french are grapeling with the expensive proposition of waste storage and in fact moving towards alternative energy. This will not be reported in the straight corperate controled media because GE Westinghouse et. al. now control big media cartels and stand to recover the billions they lost when the US wisely decided to dump the nuke and not build any more after so many accidents and cost overruns. Solar has been twarted by big energy giants that buy up promising patents and companies and simply shelve them. The only rational program would be to elect a totaly new government that would intervene with the corpratocracy and stimulate alternative energy with subsidies and tax credits as germany has accomplished and france has to it’s folly with nukes- otherwise what you have is an oil/coal/nuke mafia controling everything under the sun.
Why do people keep dismissing wind, solar, and tidal as impractical? Answer: They are not easily monopolizable. Oil, coal, and nuclear fission energy are controlled by a tiny cabal for its own benefit. Whatever happened to nuclear fusion energy where the fuel is sea water and the “waste” is fresh water? Nobody even talks about it anymore and that’s the way the energy cabal likes it.
So, why aren’t conservatives upon the “wisdom of the free market” to solve the problem of nuclear energy? Why are they calling for massive governmental assistance and subsidies? Have they lost faith in American capitalism?
Not that my opinion means much, but I agree with the opinions about nuclear being an obvious choice of corporate interests and centralized control. All the other forms of alternatibve energy can be local, out of central control; therefore future monthly fees are gone.
Search the Frontline PBS nuclear mentioned and find out that the French are not so in love with ‘nukes’ as mentioned before.
The long run costs of ‘nukes’ are horrendous - money and people’s health.
We’re talking about boiling water or heating water here folks for steam or hot water for turbines.
Donate to a political party, a candidate - we must get facts to the ones who will make the decision about our energy policy.
Despite massive subsidy, extraordinary lobbying, etc. nuclear accounts for only about 20% of US energy. Probably we could simply conserve more sensibly, shut down all the reactors, and not radically adjust our lifestyle at all.
Nuclear, like other vestigial cold war era contract/vendor/monopolies, has a justification that’s long since departed with reality — taking on a life of its own. The simple matter that security, regulation, waste transportation, waste containment (and therefore real estate) for centuries is always left out of the picture when calculating TCO/efficiency is enough to make anyone with a basic background in math or accounting take out his calculator.
Some of these players, like Fluor Corporation, have meddled on both sides of the Atlantic. Others have/had large interests in corporate media. It’s not just a top-down form energy domestically, it’s an imperial sort as well. Think of Big Energy as the equivalent of Big Agriculture (which needed the start of the demise of the family farm to really gain traction). Big Energy is predicated on people/communities not being in control of their own energy destiny.
There’s some interesting research being done on hydrogen power. My personal dream would be that anyone could get a furnace-sized hydrogen plant fed by water or something else widely available — for his basement or cabin, and cut the himself off the energy grid almost entirely.
I too would love to elect a new government that will fight corporate power and convert to alternative energy… but it’s just not going to happen right now.
Comarc: Love the reference to “the warning sign that lasts.” I often think about the Las Geaux cave paintings or how the Egyptians left their Sarcophagi with elaborate notations, that these things have stood some of the tests of times. Imagine our computer disks and CDS… with their “comparative life expectancy” if solar waves or some force we don’t recognize takes down the grid. Reminds me of the Sting song: How Fragile we are. In any case, EXCELLENT point about our “short attention span profit-oriented” corporate culture. And Paul B: Thank you for all the insight into the nuclear power debate. This is the best of commondreams, that informed readers can add important perspective and data to the debate. I loved the comment about “doing a heckuva job, Brownie.” That ought to be a bumper sticker as a quite apt reason for not going nuclear!
Here’s the elephant in the living room that solar and wind proponents don’t address.
Solar generation only works when the sun is shining, and wind generation only works when the wind is blowing. So even on the driest spot on earth, solar only generates 50% of the time. Over a continent sized area, the wind is always blowing somewhere, but assuming transmission technologies require the user to be within a few hundred miles of the source, there are going to be days when little or no power is generated.
These shortcomings can be corrected some by pumped-storage hydro or household battery banks. But, people would have to learn to get by with power rationing, occasional blackouts and also large cuts in consumption - particularly air-conditioning. I’m willing to do this myself, but most people I meet here in western Pennsylvania (average July daytime high 83F) consider air conditioning to be a vital necessity for life itself. (as compared to, say, the 1950’s when life was a nasty, brutish, and short in un-air conditioned hell) So, on the low power output days, unless laws are passed to prohibit it, everyone is going to be running big gasoline or diesel powered generators, putting us right back to square one.
Of course, in a post-carbon era, we are going to have to heat with electricity too. And unlike A/C heat IS most definitely a necessity in my area.
PJD April 29th, 2007 11:21 am
I’m glad you remembered the rechargeable battery. The sun doesn’t shine any more in Mexico than it does here but many houses in the Yucatan are powered by small windmills and a storage unit. What you’re really saying is that we’re going to have to give up our hogs-feeding-at-the-trough lifestyle, which can only be for the better.
Purvis ames
I agree. A near 100 percent reliance on renewables require a change to a simpler lifestyle.
I suspect the sun shines a _whole_ lot more in Yucatan than it does in Pittsburgh, where overcast days outnumber sunny days. The wind isn’t locally very reliable either, the nearest reliable wind area being Allegheny plateau about 60 miles east of here, or Lake Erie 100 miles north. So, unless one can live with only a few rudimentary appliances and a picnic cooler-size refrigerator, off the grid living is simply not possible in most of the eastern US. Large scale wind farms are needed, and people are just going to have to live with the impacts on the scenery.
I agree with post-postmodern. Nuclear energy is the lesser of two evils, with coal the front-runner by far. A great deal of the Chernobyl tragedy rests with the style of crisis management that is uniquely Russian. Also, the Chernobyl reactor was based on outdated World War II technolgy, and did not even have a containment dome. I would only argue against nuclear energy when every coal plant was shut down.
In China, a new coal plant is being built every week. The rest of the world still seems to pursue the same energy technology As the U.S. If we start to back away from coal, hopefully the rest of the world will follow.
Unfortunately we don’t have the luxury of looking at other environmental issues right now. We have to prioritize global warming and that means embracing nuclear.
Walt Disney was used by the government to send out propaganda about the “Friendly Atom” or some such name. If only the waste of nuclear energy weren’t impossible to deal with, nuclear energy could be a great source of energy. But the technology still doesn’t exist, and will most likely never exist, with what to do with nuclear waste.
I am impressed with the success France has had in its use of nuclear power. What I don’t know for sure if they are hiding things from the public. Nuclear Fusion, however, would be a much better approach to using the “friendly atom”, but the technology still does not exist to implement on a grand scale.
What do exist are Solar Energy, Tidal forces to produce energy, and wind. If only we would dedicate a small proportion of our budget to improving the efficiencies of these readily accessed forms of energy, we would be on the road to finding a solution for each area that can use these accessible energy sources. I also forgot to mention thermal energy.
Iceland has been using thermal energy for quite some time now, with obvious success. The Japanese have also developed a method of using thermal energy in a closed looped system which is ideal for the geographical features of the islands there.
Obviously, there isn’t one answer to our growing energy needs, but there is the possibility of implementing the best form of clean energy for a particular area.
And once again, the capacity of the human mind to solve problems is inexhaustible. John Dewey defined our daily life as a succession of problem solving events. We are constantly presented with problems to solve, and as we grow older, many of these daily problems to be solved have already been experienced and the answers come quickly. This is not the present case with how to supply a planet with ever growing energy needs. And population control is not the answer; it is only a part of the problem. As we become further removed or distanced from nature, energy is the key reason why. We can now control so much more today with advances in technology than only a century ago, that we are forgetting about nature. It’s in many ways similar to Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of pure Reason.” In his critique, he wasn’t criticizing reason, he was only pointing out the practical limits of reason. We must also begin to discuss the practical limits of our use of available yet limited recourses here on Earth.
While I usually shy away from posting to blogs with words not my own I feel this article adds input from people more knowledgable than myself. Since it is a press release there should be no problems with copyright infringement. Keep in mind the date it was sent out. With the concerted push for green energy sources we should be even further along by now. Imagine if we were spending the money wasted on subsidies to fossil fuel & nuclear power generation on truly ‘green’ methods. How much farther along would we be now?
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For additional information, contact:
Cameron Burns, Anne Jakle
970 927-3851
media@rmi.org
www.rmi.org
Nuclear Power’s Scorned Small-Scale Competitors Are Walloping It in the Marketplace, Rocky Mountain Institute Research Shows
Snowmass, Colo., 22 June 2005—
Rocky Mountain Institute researchers today doused the hype about “nuclear revival” in an icy bath of real-world data.
They documented that worldwide, the decentralized, low- or no-carbon sources of electricity—cogeneration and renewables, all claimed by nuclear advocates to be too small and too slow to help much with climate change—are already bigger than nuclear power and are quickly leaving it in the dust.
“Nuclear advocates are desperately trying to create an illusion that their failed option is being revived,” said RMI CEO and cofounder Amory Lovins, the lead author of the analysis, “so all its remaining costs and risks, which private investors have rejected, can be loaded onto taxpayers. This bailout, now being debated in Washington, is claimed to be vital because nuclear power is the only power source big and fast enough to combat climate change.
But industry and official data reveal that claim to be false.
While nuclear power dies of an incurable attack of market forces, its derided smaller-scale competitors are already a bigger global power source and are growing very rapidly, while nuclear power continues to fade away.”
****************************************
The article goes on to give statistics and other info, and can be seen at:
www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid1154.php
One statistic (speaking of renewables) is worthy of further mention:
“Official and industry forecasts indicate that in 2010, they’ll add 177 times as much capacity as dwindling nuclear power will—the ultimate test of energy technology in the free market.”
Philosophical points about alternate energy (e.g. solar, geothermal, wind, hydrogen) need to be highlighted from an engineer’s perspective. As a technologist I don’t approach problems as necessarily insurmountable, but rather as opportunities. American engineering is undoubtedly on the decline in the modern globalized age (Toyota is now out-selling GM, IBM is massively offshoring to India). Nonetheless, in science, engineering and technology — whoever innovates gets the prize. There are bona fide physical limits in nature, but engineering has never been about the status quo. Engineers are innately unsettled people, never going into “apologetic” mode, resting on laurels. They’re always looking to build a better mousetrap. So the anti-alternative energy commentary extant out there typically appears to have a non-scientific origin, undoubtedly smoke coming from the nuclear/big oil lobbies.
There are all kinds of things we could do to build more efficient homes. Here in Minnesota for instance, one of the most energy-intensive hogs that runs 24/7 in my household is the refrigerator/freezer — and ironically we have several months each year below freezing outdoors. We might take advantage of that with some simple architectural changes in future kitchens. The list is quite extensive, and has been given a great amount of thought by experts. Check out the Union of Concerned Scientist’s web site: http://www.ucsusa.org/, under the “energy” section.
The larger, more looming, question is why there exists such a widening gulf between what modern science & engineering is telling us on the one hand, policies coming out of D.C. on the other, and habits of Big Energy CEO’s. I find it to be broadly similar to the challenge that was mounted in pre-Renaissance Europe (the Church oppressed an awful lot of scholarship). Have we slid backwards to pre-Enlightenment times, but with players under different names?
“A great deal of the Chernobyl tragedy rests with the style of crisis management that is uniquely Russian.”
Tell that to the residents of NOLA.
Tell it to the scientists at NASA and NOAA.
Tell it to the downwinders at TMI.
Hell, tell it to the Plames.
Or the Tillman family.
Currently about 130 new coal fired electric plants are in various stages of development across the country. I attended Public Service Commission hearings for those in proximity to me. I couldn’t understand the obstinance of the utility executives. It seemed so obvious that with even the mildest carbon penalty looming, new coal plants were a financial disaster. A shrewd company, I told them, would snap up the prime wind land before it became increasingly expensive. You don’t have to pay for the wind and the sun.
Later I realized that they have their corrupt networks in place. They know how to profit from the myriad of events that occur in the production of energy from coal. The dirtiest energy is still the most profitable and the market place will never save the planet.
Pollution from coal plants kills an estimated 30,000 people each year. They die in an insidious fashion without a big explosion that gets every one’s attention. When coal is burned all the nasty impurities it contains are burned too including uranium and thorium. The waste is spewed into the air uncontained, unmonitored and rarely discussed. Americans liveing near a coal plant are exposed to more radioactive material than those living near a nuclear plant.
I would prefer that we have neither coal nor nuclear energy. I would prefer that we wouldn’t use up all the Earth’s resources in a few centuries at going out of business prices. I just don’t see any signs of real reform.
jstevens April 30th, 2007 9:08 pm
Good post. We are beset by dinisaurs living on products generated in the time of dinosaurs. Unfortunately, unless these fossil-fuel barons evolve away from their products the devolution of the rest of humanity will probably result.
In that same view I’m surprised you only mentioned radioactive materials spewing from coal fired plants. Part of our devolution is the increase in autism, linked now to mercury pollution. Main source, you got it, coal fired power plants.
Keep the faith, though, because the necessary mutations are coming in the form of renewables.
PaulMagillSmith:
Thanks for the comments and for the optimistic outlook. You are correct, there is a long list of toxins that spew from coal plants–arsenic, sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, soot, carbon, etc. The incidence of autism is soaring and so is asthma.