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Dismay over Nuclear 'Solution' to Climate Problem
UNITED NATIONS - The UN's experts on climate change are facing the wrath of many environmental groups this week for embracing the notion that additional use of nuclear power could be helpful in the fight against global warming.
Last weekend, at the end of an international meeting held in Bangkok, Thailand, the UN scientists called for governments to renew their energy policies in order to address climate change and its disastrous impact on the world's human, plant, and animal life.
The proposed new policies, according to the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), increasingly demand a significant shift from fossil-fuel-based energy sources to clean and alternative ones.
But in emphasizing this, the IPCC also suggested the world's policy makers forge ahead with more exploitation of nuclear technologies to meet the growing needs for energy consumption.
Though pleased with most of the panel's recommendations, many environmentalists seem inclined to question the international body of eminent scientists' inclusion of nuclear energy among their recommendations on clean sources of energy.
"Nuclear power threatens humans and the environment. It is not necessary to combat climate change," said Brent Blackwelder, president of Friends of the Earth, a network of environmental organizations active in more than 70 countries.
Blackwelder, whose group is at the forefront of global efforts to address various environmental concerns, including global warming and its impact on biodiversity, appears skeptical of the panel's position on nuclear energy use.
"[They] got a number of things right," he said about the IPCC's recommendations on the use of clean energy, such as wind and solar power. But, at the same time, in his view, their proposals are almost devoid of real substance.
"Their report looks like a compromise rather than a serious plan," Blackwelder added in a statement. "It offers something for everyone."
Like Blackwelder, many environmentalists contend that the use of nuclear energy is not only costly, but also has the potential to cause catastrophic accidents, such as the one that occurred in the Ukrainian region of Chernobyl in April 1986.
Last year in April, a study released by the environmental group Greenpeace International pointed out that over 250,000 cancers and nearly 100,000 life-threatening cancers were caused by the nuclear accident that took place 20 years ago.
Prior to the Greenpeace study, a report released by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency had put the figures of possible deaths due to Chernobyl disaster-related cancers at 4,000 to 9,000.
Convinced of the accuracy of its report, which used data from the Belarus national cancer database and drew on the work of 52 scientists from around the world, Greenpeace accused the UN of trying to "whitewash" the impacts of the Chernobyl accident, considered to be the most devastating of its kind in human history.
"Denying the real implications is not only insulting to the thousands of victims, but it also leads to dangerous recommendations," said Greenpeace's Ivan Blokov about the consequences of underestimating the impact of the Chernobyl tragedy.
Many scientists and policy experts who share such concerns have also tried to draw the world's attention to the dual nature of the use of nuclear power -- meaning it can be used to produce electricity and weapons at the same time.
Mindful that the use of nuclear technology has become a source of hostility and conflict among nations, last year in April, a group of leading European politicians called for the UN to stop promoting nuclear technology as a tool to meet the world's growing energy needs.
"Nuclear power is no longer necessary," they wrote in a letter to the former UN chief Kofi Annan. "We have now numerous renewable technologies available to guarantee the right to safe, clean, and cheap energy."
However, such calls have fallen on deaf ears, as most of the world's powerful and rich countries have not demonstrated an eagerness to address climate change from a human rights perspective. If the mood at the diplomatic negotiations at the Bangkok meeting is any sign, it is clear that most of the rich nations still view global warming as an issue of cost versus benefit.
The United States, for example, which meets 20 percent of its energy needs with nuclear technology and consumes 35 percent of the world's fossil fuel, has not signed the Kyoto Protocol or the Convention on Biodiversity, yet its diplomats have repeatedly flexed their muscles at international conferences on related issues to ensure results that they believe to be in their nation's best interests.
But the United States is not alone in supporting continued dependence on nuclear and fossil fuels. In fact, those who sit at the high table at the G8 group of industrialized countries hold similar views on what they call "global energy security."
The G8 includes the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany, Japan, and Russia.
Last year in April, the G8 countries not only agreed to embrace an energy plan that favored continued reliance on oil and other fossil fuels, but also released a joint statement pledging to spend billions of dollars to explore more oil reserves.
Despite strong objections from environmentalists, at the summit, the leaders also made it clear that they held consensus on the increased use of nuclear power and declared it as one of the ways to address global climate change.
That was, perhaps, an earlier indication as to how the powerful industrial nations were going to influence the UN climate change debate and the panel's recommendations to the world community.
In the words of Friends of the Earth's Blackwelder, "that's a wrong direction."
But looking at the meetings of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, which are taking place in New York this week, wrong or right, that is the direction the world community has chosen for itself.
The debate is mostly focused on the issue of energy, but no dramatic change seems imminent. As one Asian diplomat told OneWorld, "the traditional North-South divide remains evident. While developing countries are asking for new and additional financial resources and transfer of technology, the European Union and the United States continue to avoid any commitments."
Copyright © 2007 OneWorld.net
29 Comments so far
Show AllNuclear power produces ~80% of the electricity in France which has the cleanest air in Europe.
France dumps nuclear waste in the Pacific Ocean where it is entering the food chain. There is no free lunch.
The US also has too many "heck of a job" federal agency managers. What if Bush or his successors were to substantially politicize the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, etc. and purge competent engineers with ideological hacks instead? Pardon my language, but the US has too many a$$holes in charge.
There is no such thing as "nuclear power" as there is no direct connection between the energy source and the electricity produced.
"Nuclear power" is a primitive (and inefficient) technology on the same level as coal and oil power plants where heat is generated to create steam which in turn turns turbines which produce the electricty
In the case of "wind" and "water" power the kinetic energy of wind and falling water is directly transferred to the turbines which actually produce the electricity. Therefore we speak of "wind" power and "water" power. But who speaks of "coal" power or "oil" power in this sense? No one. Why then should we then speak of "nuclear" power?
The answer is that talk of "nuclear power" it is a marketing trick for a technology which enables the development of nuclear WEAPONS.
Whether we admit it or not, the world is on the plutonium standard and that is the source of America's power. This is why Iran will not be allowed to develop "nuclear" power.
Deja vu all over again- the French nukes are not happy little clean energy makers. All 58 of them malfunctioned during the record breaking heat waves of 2003 and 2005- 100's of deaths linked to heat related causes. The end product is weapons grade plutonium- the disposal and storage of fuel rods is an enormous problem-construction costs are astronomical no insurance consortium will insure them because of their safety records- and they are sitting ducks for a terrorist attack. Check out the latest from Friends of the Earth: www.foeeurope.org/Nuclear.htm - repeating the clean nuke mantra just doesn't change the reality of it's dangerous limitations. What a joke it's being brought back as a panacea for global warming.
A very good book by an Australian author:
"Nuclear Power is Not the Answer"
by Helen Caldicott
Nuclear is a dead end, but it's being pushed as a solution because it allows for massive goverment funding of grossly bloated private construction projects, which will be guaranteed by the public, via add-ons to electricity bills. That's the only reason it's being put forward as a solution.
Note as the poster above said, France's nuclear reactors all suffer malfunction during heatwaves because the intake cooling water is too warm. Building new nuclear reactors is an idiotic idea - though it does make sense to maintain the ones that do exist until they can be replaced by truly efficient and renewable energy systems.
What's really needed is massive investment in solar cell manufacturing and wind turbine manufacturing, plus development of efficient energy storage technology for these intermittent sources. However, the global finacial system is dead set against this because it will cut into their profit margins - that's why the World Bank will finance a 4 billion dollar oil pipeline in Chad and Cameroon, but would never dream of financing a 4 billion dollar photovoltaic project for Africa (which is perfect for solar, being right on the equator).
These proposals will have to coupled to a reduction in energy demand via efficiency and conservation if they're to have any hope of succeeding.
We still haven't seen a reduction in the use of coal, or even any plans to move in this direction, despite the fact that coal is the number one climate culprit - business as usual continues as usual. What will it take to shut down the coal fired power plants? That's the question that needs to be answered.
..not to mention the unsolvable problem of the nuclear waste. New Mexico doesn't want it. Whoever wants to continue to produce nuclear power/nuclear weapons, should agree to store the waste in their own town, or, better yet, in their own backyard.
I am in favor of nuclear energy - providing it is generated 93,000,000 miles away.
Google Drake's Landing Solar Community. Something like it in places where it is feasible might well prove a major source of energy for winter heating (and summer cooling, pehaps).
Sandia are working on what appears to be an efficient and relatively simple way to generate electricity from the sun. Their proposed 600Mw solar farm in southern California should be interesting.
http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2004/renew-energy-batt/Stirling.html
Both these schemes are clean, use well-proven equipment and can be brought on stream very quickly. The generators in the Sandia scheme can start producing energy as each small group is completed.
Nuclear energy kills. Literally.
The Price Anderson Act, created by Congress in 1957, limits the liablity of Nuclear Power companies if and when an accident might occur. This fact and and absolutely no sensible solution to radioactive waste disposal are plenty reason to oppose this lunacy.
Nuclear has it's problems which are well documented; however, before we discard it as an option we need to consider the likelihood that we can meet our prodigious and growing needs for energy with solar, wind, water and geothermal. All of these technologies are in early stages of development and we don't know that they will be economically viable or in some cases even technically feasible. Until we know more about the alternatives, it isn't prudent to discard even a poor option.
Our dilemma is that the global economic system must grow to survive. As much as we all like to push conservation as a solution, myself included, it has a serious downside. A major conservation initiative on a global scale will crash the global economy and trigger political and social upheavals. Considering the proliferation of weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction at our disposal, we may not want to be too cavalier about going down this road.
Until these new technologies mature and prove their worth, in the short term, we may have no choice but to include nuclear. As one writer noted "nuclear kills people"; however, so does coal, and up to this point coal has killed and damaged the health of far more people than nuclear. In deed, there is no free lunch. A fine mess we've gotten ourselves into.
It is but nonsense that alternate technologies are in "early stages" --
Hardly!!
In fact, a few years ago at the time of the "Enron" electricity crisis in California, WIND went up in about 4 months and put something like just under 200,000 families/homes into service.
Solar was ready to go in the 1970's when Jimmy Carter installed panels in the White House. Imagine the capability today.
Also -- go see: WHO KILLED THE ELECTRIC CAR
---------------------------------------------------
We can have electric cars on our roads in two weeks time --and probably replace every gasoline driven automobile in America in five years time.
The problems with wind, solar, and electric cars have nothing to do with REALITY . . . they have to do with an artificial economic standard called "capitalism" and corporate-fascism.
I agree with 'conscience'... clean energy is not a business issue, it's a politics issue.
Wind farms make money, they don't lose money. What's needed is capital and land to manufacture and install wind farms, and then over the course of the 20-year life-time of a wind turbine, a substantial amount of money would be made. This was 6 years ago and we would break even making wind-farms:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/293/5534/1438
Nowadays, we would make some serious money at current electricity rates. Yet corporations don't want to make serious money, they want to make excessively insane profit-margins only true monopolies can make... and they can only do that if they don't have a constant energy source for the next 20 years like wind or solar, which if you promote now will further reduce their costs and put them in a situation where everybody knows they are generating X Kilowatts constantly, so how are they going to fake an energy shortage like Enron did in 2001? Well they can't, they can only do that if they have refineries and a supply chain, and energy trading markets.... constant renewable power doesn't work well for monopolies.
Yeah, it is just like the bush administration's talk of "waiting for more research" on global warming; the results are in, and solar/wind technology is advanced and implementable right now. Just do it and shut up.
I have been to the nuclear burial site in New Mexico.
I have heard Dr. Caldicott speak about nuclear power.
I have read about the Australian nuclear blasts, and about 'national sacrifice zones' in the US.
You'd think we'd have learned the fundamental lessons: don't foul your nest. And don't be such a fool that you think that things that are wildly improbable won't happen.
And: when the consequence of an 'accident' is the potential extinction of life on the planet, don't even think about it.
George Monbiot shares an excellent analysis of the status of nuclear power amongst our energy alternatives in "Heat." Culturally, opposition to nuclear power lies very deep in the origins on the environmental movement. But the seriousness of the global-warming dilemma, as the Earth continues to send us shocking updates regarding her sensitivity to greenhouse gases, has grown to the extent that even serious environmentalists should not reject nuclear power automatically: new information keeps developing. Monbiot's more useful approach is to weigh all the usual concerns with nuclear power against the potential for global warming to destroy us and most other species on earth; then to rank nuclear power amongst other unpleasant or abhorrent energy alternatives.
Nuclear Power IS the way to go, although NOT fission. That is so yesterday's technology...
Solar has/will have a place but the core technology of future power generation is Nuclear reactors... But not as we know them at the moment.. Neither is it the promising Thorium Pebble bed types technologies..
FUSION is the way and it is almost (3-5 years away) here. It has been tested and it works.. and it is cheap and an incredibly elegant concept.
I have only just become aware of this work myself but it is the most exciting thing I have come across in YEARS..
Google for "Google fusion Bussard"
Dr Robert Bussard (designer of the Bussard Ram Scoop) and his team have been working with Navy funding, under an information embargo, for some 10+ years.
Dr Bussard recently presented their findings as the Navy ceased funding and obviously lifted the embargo!!
They have since regained their funding for another year.
Bussard IEC holds the promise of limitless clean, pollution free energy. Not only that, it opens up prospect of really efficient, cost effective space travel, not to mention the ability to use that cheap and clean energy to clean up our planet and liberate the poor people and countries it in the world through various knock on effects and technologies..
Read it for yourself.
The fuel?? Abundant, Hydrogen and Boron. Just amazing..
And these reactors could burn up our present nuclear waste... No more DU (what will the military do now,, Although they will find a way to pervert the technology, no fear..)
Just can't wait to see what the Oil, Coal, Nuclear cartels and their minions make of this.. Oh, what do you think the US will do when they don't need oil from the MIDDLE EAST?? Think it might effect their "ally" in that region?? Better make peace soon Moshe..
Very Interesting times ahead.
Fusion is not without its drawbacks. Most experts believe we are still decades from a commercial plant. Cost of building plants is high, maintenance cost is high and there are still radiation issues. I think it is a good idea to continue research and development on nuclear fusion but for the immediate present, conservation (the economy will just have to adjust) and renewable sources such as wind, solar and geothermal is the best rout.
jonm.. Jeez... Did you read the references you should have found, before submitting your ill informed comment?? "Many experts???" And what exactly have the "many experts" published, let alone built??
Your posting is curiously dismissive..
Do you work for Coal, Oil or Gas??
READ the references that you will find with the above google search and then post.. As I said, a full scale, clean, pollution free, cheap electricity producing plant is approx 3-5 years away.. Much sooner if a fraction of the money/resources spent on destruction went into research and development.. Cost is significantly lower than building a fission plant (minimal shielding because there is MINIMAL radiation in THIS design...) There is no pollution in fact they can EAT our current fission byproducts and reduce the effective half concerns from thousands to 40 or 50 (YES) years.. That in itself is staggering when you consider the costs of storage and disposal alone..
Dr Bussard has been working on this novel approach with his team for years.. they are not "fly-by-nights"or shonks, not snake oil merchants.. This is a "Kitty Hawk" moment..
This technology could well be the corner stone of a new "clean and golden age"of energy technology which could well take the human race who know where..
therzal,
No I am not employed by the coal, oil or gas. If I were why would I be promoting renewable sources? I was not aware of Dr Bussards work, I did a search and I stand corrected. I'm not a physicist but it looks very encouraging, I can see why the media is ignoring it. I still am a promoter of conservation and renewable sources of energy, but we sure could use a source such as Dr Bussards fusion reactor.
Fusion, so they say,
is always 20 years away.
You know people few even consider the long term problems you get just with the Uranium mining. You have Tailings there most of the time left to migrate because of the weather into streams.
Then you have the refining uranium into Yellowcake which the popular way seem to be using chemicals and acids. Again who cleans up this mess? oh by the way has anyone pricced Yellowcake lately? It is way way over a hundred dollars a pound where not long ago it was somewhere around 10 dollars.
So then after building a Nuclear power plant which won't last more then 100 years tops (and thaat is a dream) you get this clean nuclear power ,but even while this clean Electricity is flowing there is mucho contamination like tools clothes etc. which hasto be looked after for decades.
Then those spent fuel rods need to be looked after for a couple hundred thousand years.
And I am still waiting to see a Keep Out sign that even last 100 years.
Oh by the way It is us The Government that underwrites Nuclear power. The question is why then can't the same government run these power stations?
Free Enterprize? No Way !
Free Enterprize only responsibility is to send electriic bills to their customers.
But Of Course They will still start building new nukes. I guess the Protesters are too old to hit the streets anymore.
Time for free enterprise - let all these free traders invest in nukes and stand for all the liability for waste and accidents.
Only the insane or stupid would invest in nuclear power unless the government offers up the taxpayer as collateral.
therzal:
You wrote that the fuels for the fusion reaction are hydrogen and boron. Hydrogen is abundant as part of a water molecule, but it requires a great deal of energy to break the bonds and obtain free hydrogen. The Bush administration loves to talk about hydrogen cars because we are years away from any practical application. Bush gets to pretend like he's doing something, without threatening the oil companies in any way.
As you suggested, I read a few articles on Dr. Bussard. Using interstellar magnets to pull hydrogen from space is intriguing, but is this technology really just 3-5 years away? Sure, keep researching, but I wouldn't count on anything.
It's the AUTOMOBILE, Stupid!
http://www.freepublictransit.org
jstevens.. I will email/write his company to ask how they intend to source their hydrogen.
I don't think he means to use interstellar Hydrogen...
The idea of the Bussard Scoop is a self fuelling interstellar vessel "scooping" up its fuel as it goes. That would be years away even if there were sufficient H2 density to support it. No, thye intend to usee a closer source I imagine..
Don't forget, we are talking FUSION, not combustion. The difference in energy yield is what, enormous. More than enough to hydrolysis some water and make the entire process "self sustaining". Did you not understand or are you trying to undermine the idea??
Did you read the work on the IEF device??
The idea and the basic technological principle is now out there in the public domain. Do you think any government could stop other countries from taking this further??
Big Oil, Gas, Coal and Uranium have reason to be concerned..
So too are regimes that rely upon the need for oil for their continued existence, in one way or another.
The benefits of the clean, pollution free energy IEF can generate are just too enormous to ignore.
The fear of finite fuel resources and the evil they lead to (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran etc..) could become a thing of the past...
We could clean up our planet.
No poverty.
No DU...
Think about THAT, as you contemplate the latest figures from Iraq and all other places of "special interest" to the West (and AIPAC and PNAC and similar )..
"Using interstellar magnets to pull hydrogen from space"
YO! Wake up! you can kill sprawl with 1940's technology!
http://www.freepublictransit.org
You guys are so "educated" you can't see the obvious. Think! Have some courage!
therzal:
Thank you for your comments. I was merely curious about the "abundant hydrogen" part. I understand very little about fusion. I actually agree entirely with bill May. It is not a lack of technology that has brought us to the brink of environmental collapse. The idea of abundant, pollution-less energy is interesting, but if we actually had such capabilities, we would just have more cars, more highways, bigger houses and more people. Conservation must be an integral part of any meaningful solution. Our current economic prosperity comes from squandering all of the Earth's resources. Food is cheap because of low wages for workers and chemical, genetic and pharmaceutical augmentation for crops and livestock. Our resources are priced at a level that encourages gluttony, not conservation. We're living in the Big Garage Sale.