Environmentalists and Nuclear Energy

[LukeW]

The problem is that a nuclear accident would kill a lot of people immediately with no warning.

To try and justify that statement with evidence, try and make a list of all the people in the world ever killed as a result of nuclear power.

The peak, measured in GW, is not a fundamentally important factor since renewables output is fairly predictable in the short term (hours). Certainly the UK's hydro is sufficient in that respect.

Be careful switching around hydro and "renewables" interchangeably.

Hydroelectricity is reliable, dispatchable and predictable, much more so than the other technologies that get lumped together under "renewable".
Along with nuclear power, hydro accounts for most of the dispatchable, predictable, scalable clean energy in the world.
It's generally worth considering it as its own category when looking at clean energy, rather than lumping it together under "renewable".

Anyway, "renewable" is a pointless marketing buzzword, a brand name for an ideology.

Does it mean anything, does it have a consistent definition, technically? No.
The energy content of a closed system is never "renewable" - that's the second law of thermodynamics.
It's just a brand name for an activist ideology of excluding nuclear power as well as excluding fossil fuels, it's a brand for their ideologically "acceptable" technologies.

[mtdoc]

Anyway, "renewable" is a pointless marketing buzzword, a brand name for an ideology.

Does it mean anything, does it have a consistent definition, technically? No.
The energy content of a closed system is never "renewable" - that's the second law of thermodynamics.
It's just a brand name for an activist ideology of excluding nuclear power as well as excluding fossil fuels, it's a brand for their ideologically "acceptable" technologies.

Um no.

It actually does mean something. One definition per Wikepedia:

Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.

The exact words one might choose to define it may vary but anyone with even a modicum of technical literacy can delineate the difference between energy sources such as fossil fuel and nuclear which depend on extraction of clearly (human time scale) finite resources versus those which utilize energy from the sun (solar PV, wind, hydro, waves), tides, or geothermal.

Now renewable is a bit of a misnomer, I'll grant you that - since the materials needed to harvest the solar, tidal, or geothermal energy are also finite and not infinitely renewable. However, the difference is that those materials can be recycled, re-used, and are present in much more abundance than fossil fuels or the fissionable material needed for current nuclear power stations.

Whether one favors pursuing renewable energy over fossil fuel or nuclear energy or visa versa is something that falls in the category of "ideology" and whether one chooses to think long term versus short term, but pretending that the term Renewable Energy has no meaning is just demonstrating your particular ideology and is not based on fact.

[CatalinaWOW]

Anyway, "renewable" is a pointless marketing buzzword, a brand name for an ideology.

Does it mean anything, does it have a consistent definition, technically? No.
The energy content of a closed system is never "renewable" - that's the second law of thermodynamics.
It's just a brand name for an activist ideology of excluding nuclear power as well as excluding fossil fuels, it's a brand for their ideologically "acceptable" technologies.

Um no.

It actually does mean something. One definition per Wikepedia:

Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.

The exact words one might choose to define it may vary but anyone with even a modicum of technical literacy can delineate the difference between energy sources such as fossil fuel and nuclear which depend on extraction of clearly (human time scale) finite resources versus those which utilize energy from the sun (solar PV, wind, hydro, waves), tides, or geothermal.

Now renewable is a bit of a misnomer, I'll grant you that - since the materials needed to harvest the solar, tidal, or geothermal energy are also finite and not infinitely renewable. However, the difference is that those materials can be recycled, re-used, and are present in much more abundance than fossil fuels or the fissionable material needed for current nuclear power stations.

Whether one favors pursuing renewable energy over fossil fuel or nuclear energy or visa versa is something that falls in the category of "ideology" and whether one chooses to think long term versus short term, but pretending that the term Renewable Energy has no meaning is just demonstrating your particular ideology and is not based on fact.

While I agree with the general direction you are going, you are being awfully loose in definitions.  More reflection of an ideology than fact.  Tidal does renew - daily, but is not vastly more abundant than either fossil or nuclear.  Geothermal (at least with current technology) is also a relatively rare resource, and also gets "used up" in many senses on a human time scale.  And nuclear is abundant relative to our needs in the broad sense.  Again, the technologies selected (and the ideologies that result in those selections) make it somewhat limited in scope, though likely to last long enough to make technology changes that make todays arguments irrelevant.

[tautech]

Geothermal (at least with current technology) is also a relatively rare resource, and also gets "used up" in many senses on a human time scale. 

Um No.
We've got a fair bit of geothermal generation here (in certain areas) and have had for many decades over which time processes have changed to ensure the longevity of such resources (read: learnt buy historical mistakes).
They include "in hole" heat exchangers and condensate recycling where the comparatively small percentages of liquids in geothermal extraction are returned close to source by high pressure pumps.

That others are not using this technology would indeed exclude geothermal from being seen as "renewable" or an inexhaustible resource.

[mtdoc]

Tidal does renew - daily, but is not vastly more abundant than either fossil or nuclear.

  Sure. I don't disagree. However abundance is not part of what makes something renewable or not. Some renewable sources are abundant. Others are relatively less so - at least in the sense that they are not easily harvested with current technology.

Geothermal (at least with current technology) is also a relatively rare resource, and also gets "used up" in many senses on a human time scale.

Hmm. Is that true?. I know little about geothermal energy but I didn't think that the heat from the earth's core was in danger of being used up anytime soon.  On a geological time scale perhaps, but then that is true for energy from the sun as well.

And nuclear is abundant relative to our needs in the broad sense.

Well perhaps. But again abundance is not really the issue and in any case it's my understanding that the fissionable materials available to fuel current reactors has a very finite supply - on the order of a couple of hundred years at current rates of consumption - much faster if it was used at a rate needed to meaningfully replace fossil fuels.

To make my position clear - I do not think renewables are a panacea.  They can never fully replace fossil fuels - nothing can.  In fact, harvesting of renewable energy at any meaningful scale, requires some fossil fuels (primarily in the form of liquid fuels).  But the claim that the term renewable energy does not have real world meaning and clearly delineates some forms or energy from others is not a fact based argument.

[tggzzz]

The problem is that a nuclear accident would kill a lot of people immediately with no warning.

To try and justify that statement with evidence, try and make a list of all the people in the world ever killed as a result of nuclear power.

That's the wrong point.

The better point is to try to make two lists:

• those killed directly or indirectly by nuclear power
• those killed directly or indirectly by non-nuclear power

The former is possible. The latter is impossible, since there have been - and continue to be - so many.

As someone a little older than Simon, I remember that in our home country the top news story for a few days every year was whether or not they would rescue trapped coal miners.
People of retirement age, will remember that coal directly killed >4000 people in London in 1952, and London was infamous for "pea soupers"
Anyone looking at current news, should wonder how many people are being killed by coal in China - see pictures of modern "pea soupers" such as http://www.nbcnews.com/slideshow/heavy-smog-hits-north-china-n697861

"Is X dangerous" is rarely a useful question. "Is X more or less dangerous than the alternatives" is a useful question.

[Someone]

Geothermal (at least with current technology) is also a relatively rare resource, and also gets "used up" in many senses on a human time scale.

Hmm. Is that true?. I know little about geothermal energy but I didn't think that the heat from the earth's core was in danger of being used up anytime soon.  On a geological time scale perhaps, but then that is true for energy from the sun as well.

It can be "used up" very quickly if not managed carefully:
https://nzgeothermal.org.nz/geo_benefits/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power_in_New_Zealand
Many of the NZ geothermal fields move their wells around periodically to leave the unproductive areas to recover, they say its sustainable but its hard to find solid reviews of the data. The available heat flux that could be extracted continuously around the world is actually tiny:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth's_internal_heat_budget
So if we were to utilise just the natural flux then the worldwide available resource would be 47TW, yet there is 10GW of installed capacity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_gradient
So how sustainable can that be when we dont have 0.1% of the world covered in geothermal power stations? Or more likely geothermal power is drawing on unnatural flows of heat, its not a free lunch at that point.

[tautech]

So how sustainable can that be when we dont have 0.1% of the world covered in geothermal power stations?

Geothermal energy has to be accessible to be economical, that's the primary reason why it's in only a few locations. The areas where it's prevalent in NZ are sites of naturally occurring steam vents not far from historic volcanic eruption sites.
As the decades go by the deep drilling used by the petroleum industry may well be applied to geothermal prospecting when the return on investment calculations make sense to do so.

[DenzilPenberthy]

That's the wrong point.

The better point is to try to make two lists:

• those killed directly or indirectly by nuclear power
• those killed directly or indirectly by non-nuclear power

... ...
"Is X dangerous" is rarely a useful question. "Is X more or less dangerous than the alternatives" is a useful question.

Some scientists from NASA made those two lists and wrote a paper on it.  Conclusion: 1.84 million lives saved by nuclear power to date. (Well even more by now because the paper is a few years old)

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197?source=cen&

[tggzzz]

That's the wrong point.

The better point is to try to make two lists:

• those killed directly or indirectly by nuclear power
• those killed directly or indirectly by non-nuclear power

... ...
"Is X dangerous" is rarely a useful question. "Is X more or less dangerous than the alternatives" is a useful question.

Some scientists from NASA made those two lists and wrote a paper on it.  Conclusion: 1.84 million lives saved by nuclear power to date. (Well even more by now because the paper is a few years old)

http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es3051197?source=cen&

Is that all? I'd have expected it to be higher!

[DenzilPenberthy]

I suppose it reflects the relatively small market share of nuclear for power generation vs fossil & hydro over the whole world. Nuclear is around 20% of the UK energy mix but it must be far lower than that on a global basis...

[CatalinaWOW]

And nuclear is abundant relative to our needs in the broad sense.

Well perhaps. But again abundance is not really the issue and in any case it's my understanding that the fissionable materials available to fuel current reactors has a very finite supply - on the order of a couple of hundred years at current rates of consumption - much faster if it was used at a rate needed to meaningfully replace fossil fuels.

Your number of a couple hundred years is consistent with my understanding.  My point is that dismissing something because it will only last a couple hundred years is akin to the technically literate of the late 1700s or early 1800s pontificating on the power sources and consumption in the year 2200, only worse. 

If you believe in the exponential growth of technology the answers in that time frame will be so far beyond anything we currently dream of that discussion is pointless.  Maybe the primary fuel will be anti-matter generated in solar plants in the same solar orbit as Mercury.

If you believe in a Malthusian collapse of society the discussion is pointless for other reasons.  The pockets of humanity will be warming their hands around the spent fuel cooling pools of the nuclear plants, unconcerned that they will only live to 29 instead of their normal 32 year life span.

There is plenty of nuclear fuel to last until the discussion changes entirely.

[mtdoc]

Your number of a couple hundred years is consistent with my understanding.  My point is that dismissing something because it will only last a couple hundred years is akin to the technically literate of the late 1700s or early 1800s pontificating on the power sources and consumption in the year 2200, only worse. 

I was not "dismissing" nuclear energy at all in my post. I was only pointing out that there is a clear fact based delineation between energy sources that are considered "renewable" and those that are not. Nuclear energy is not.

Electricity can clearly be generated in large amounts by nuclear energy. If there was a full build out of nuclear power perhaps there is enough fuel to last 50-100 years.

IMO it won't happen for a number of reasons - the two main ones being:  1)  Society cannot afford the large capital (and energy) investment required to build hundreds (thousands?) of nuclear power plants and 2) Public concern about safety and waste storage/disposal will continue to present political roadblocks.

Whether one believes the concerns about safety are justified or not is a separate issue.

[CatalinaWOW]

Your number of a couple hundred years is consistent with my understanding.  My point is that dismissing something because it will only last a couple hundred years is akin to the technically literate of the late 1700s or early 1800s pontificating on the power sources and consumption in the year 2200, only worse. 

I was not "dismissing" nuclear energy at all in my post. I was only pointing out that there is a clear fact based delineation between energy sources that are considered "renewable" and those that are not. Nuclear energy is not.

Electricity can clearly be generated in large amounts by nuclear energy. If there was a full build out of nuclear power perhaps there is enough fuel to last 50-100 years.

IMO it won't happen for a number of reasons - the two main ones being:  1)  Society cannot afford the large capital (and energy) investment required to build hundreds (thousands?) of nuclear power plants and 2) Public concern about safety and waste storage/disposal will continue to present political roadblocks.

Whether one believes the concerns about safety are justified or not is a separate issue.

Again, the devil is in the details. 

Nuclear energy is not renewable?  Agree for the current fuel cycle.  But breeders make that distinction blurry.    Breeders would extend the fuel limits virtually indefinitely, but have serious political problems in addition to some solvable technical issues.  Which gets to the second blurriness.

I don't disagree with your observation about building out nuclear.  But the large capital costs are heavily related to the political issues.  Years of capital tied up with no return because the permitting process keeps recycling, and tied up for more years after production stops because a perfect disposal solution is demanded, which hasn't been required of any other energy source of similar magnitude. Whether those other large scale power sources should be subjected to the same level of safety requirements is a separate issue.  The trend has been to regret the lassaiz faire attitude which surrounded the development of fossil and hydro power systems, but even now they create public hazards larger than nuclear.  The same may also be true of solar and wind, though by not so large a factor.  We tend to learn about the small negative affects after large scale deployment.

So renewable has a definition, but it isn't purely technical.  It is affected by the political climate. 

[mash107]

If carbon emissions is indeed the issue of our generation

but If carbon emissions is Not an issue. as many scientific theories come and go,
 substantially or stagnation is more like BS. remember it was global cooling in 1970s.
problem is only political.  when obama leaves office problem it is solved.
remember their are other scientific theories not just the CO2 theorie.
eugenics or human population control is a also a bad move. it was tryed back in 1940 Europe but it failed.
trying to control the future.

can you justify this assertion with studies, data, etc? it seems contrary to popular opinion at the moment.

you can't possibly contend burning coal, as is done in China to the nth degree, is possibly good for breathing. If China were to adopt nuclear energy, as Japan had, they wouldn't see a smog / air pollution problem. That is fact.

[Kleinstein]

If China had used nuclear power like in Japan - Japan or Korea might have a problem with the radioactive fall out drifting to the east. It was the wind blowing from the west that made a relatively moderate damage from the Fukushima accident.

Burning coal has more problems to it than just climate change: to much CO2 makes the oceans acidic and this way cause massive disturbance for marine life. Also pollution with sulfur and mercury can be a problem.

[CCitizenTO]

Best way to go about things is not to put all your eggs in one basket. Each type of power has it's own benefits and drawbacks.

Solar

Pros: Free after initial setup. Generates power primarily when there is a high demand for power (daytime).
Cons: 50% of the time or less it's doing nothing unless you have fancy utility-scale setup where you use something like batteries or use the sun's energy to turn salt from a solid to a liquid (801 C melting point) it doesn't generate any energy at night or negligible amounts (I think someone tested how much power a solar panel did with moonlight and it was like less than 1% output).

Wind
Pros: Work during the day and the night.
Cons: Needs wind to make the turbine spin. Likely requires more in terms of maintenance as there are moving parts involved.

Nuclear

Pros: Generates lots of power all day and night.
Cons: Nuclear waste. Expensive to set up. Subject to single point of failure. Lots of NIMBY not wanting a plant anywhere near them.

A mixture of all of the above might solve the energy crisis. I mean I seen videos of some dudes using fresnel lenses and large parabolic mirrors melting steel with just sunlight. If those sorts of things could be incorporated into manufacturing processes it might reduce the amount of electricity we need because I believe the bulk of power needs come from commercial and industrial sectors not people at home with a TV or some lights.

[Kleinstein]

I agree very much, that a mix of sources is a good idea.

Solar power from moon light is somewhere in the ppm level, so usually not enough to start up the DCAC converter.

Wind power like solar has considerably more power during the day than during night - at least on average.

Nuclear power can run 24/7, which is a pro but also a con, as it is difficult / expensive to turn them off at night. There are also limitations on how fast / far they can increase and decrease the power. With many similar plants there is also a chance that with a common weakness, there is a need to shut down all plant of one type for safety upgrade. So there might be need for an backup too.

It depends on the country, but in many countries industrial and private use can be approximately same order of magnitude.

[james_s]

I'm a cautious proponent of nuclear energy. Yes it can be environmentally damaging, but so is every other form of energy production known to man. Ironically the anti-nuke movement has indirectly kept a lot of very old, relatively unsafe and inefficient nuke plants operating well beyond their design life by preventing the construction of newer, safer, much more efficient ones.

[retrolefty]

I'm a cautious proponent of nuclear energy. Yes it can be environmentally damaging, but so is every other form of energy production known to man. Ironically the anti-nuke movement has indirectly kept a lot of very old, relatively unsafe and inefficient nuke plants operating well beyond their design life by preventing the construction of newer, safer, much more efficient ones.

 Oh they deal with the older plants by tying up renewal permits. It's just SWJ gone bonkers. They don't want to solve problems, just add to existing problems.

[coppice]

Wind power like solar has considerably more power during the day than during night - at least on average.

That depends on where you live. In many places days are calm and nights windy for much of the year. In Texas, for example, there appears to be a lot of wind energy available each night in West Texas, but not much during the day. People have talked of this as a good match for the needs of electric cars, should they achieve a mainstream position.

[helius]

Nuclear power using LWRs is incredibly wasteful of a scarce resource (²³⁵U) and can only meet our energy needs for 100 years at best.

[james_s]

100 years is quite a long time, and what else are we going to use U235 for?

[coppice]

Nuclear power using LWRs is incredibly wasteful of a scarce resource (²³⁵U) and can only meet our energy needs for 100 years at best.

A fuel supply only needs to outlast the equipment designed to use it for it to be valuable. No power station lasts 100 years.

The real problems with U235 are cleaning up the leftovers, and the complacency it could bring. Complacency could defund development of a suitable replacement for the end of the 100 years. We see this happening every time oil prices drop.

[helius]

In current practice, "cleaning up the leftovers" means entombing them in ways that make future PUREX reprocessing infeasible. This is wasteful and ignorant.