misleading advice about nuclear solution to global warming

[miriam_e]

Please correct anybody who parrots the stupid statement that politicians and their pet news services keep making about nuclear power being any kind of solution to global warming. It is completely wrong.

A major part of greenhouse emissions come from vehicles. Nuclear power will make the world far more dangerous without helping vehicle emissions one tiny bit.

And as I mentioned in an earlier post: there is absolutely no way to ensure people return radioactive waste to "safe" storage. If they want to keep it to make bombs they will. The only safe solution is to not make it available in the first place. Leave it in the ground.

Comments

[peaseblossom03.livejournal.com]

I agree that nuclear power is dangerous and not a viable option for energy. Also, building a plant takes lots of energy (which uses greenhouse gases) and concrete (which, if I understand correctly, is another large source for greenhouse gases), not to mention time (a minimum of 15 years).

And while it's absolutely true that vehicular emissions are a huge source of greenhouse gas emissions, so is electricity generation. I'm not saying your statement is untrue; but that the argument isn't really relevant. Vehicle emissions and electricity generation are two separate, major parts of the problem which both need to be addressed.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

oops... had to delete and repost.
:) Yep. I was going to mention the trap of electricity generation, but deleted it from my post because, as you mention, it is a separate problem and I wanted my post to be short and to the point. But since you bring it up... (and I understand you aren't advocating nuclear power)...

There are lots of technologies that can be used to generate power. Nuclear is only one of them. By concentrating on what is clearly the most dangerous form we divert money and work from the safer and most promising technologies.

Another problem with nuclear power is that it deludes people into thinking that it is okay to waste energy. We know that global warming is definitely occurring, but we don't yet know how much of that is a result of carbon dioxide, just that it will be a significant part. Have you ever noticed how much hotter cities are than countryside? That can't be because of CO₂. It could be profligate energy use. It could be the concrete and tar re-radiating heat absorbed from the sun. (I heard that something like half of Europe's surface is paved over with roads and buildings.) We need to think carefully about what we do next, not just jumping thoughtlessly into what seems a disaster waiting to happen (nuclear power). If you make a mistake (or somebody does the unthinkable) with nuclear power you can't clean it up. It kills for millions of years.

What scares me is that our sleazy politicians in Australia have so obviously rigged an inquiry into possible energy sources to make the nuclear option appear the best. Couple that with the fact that there is no real discussion about storing the radioactive waste (they wave their hands and say we will store it in somewhere), but they never mention an Australian technology that makes radioactive waste safe by mixing it permanently into a glass from which it is virtually impossible to remove it again. This lack of interest in storage scares me because that can only mean that they don't really want to store it at all. And what use is there for spent nuclear fuel? Weapons.

Wind power is becoming a world leader in renewable energy with wind farms now going up all over the place. Yes, they have their drawbacks, but when we have better ways to generate power in the future at least we can easily disassemble wind turbines without risk of poisoning everything for thousands of miles and for millions of years.

Geothermal power is used in a number of places, but has much wider possibilities than politicians would have anyone believe.

Solar electric cells just keep getting better and better, and with continuing advances in storage, particularly using hydrogen, I'd say solar electricity will end up being the winner eventually. For vehicles, hydrogen power is one of the most promising of all. It offers a way to store energy from the sun in a benign way.

Solar heating and cooling. Most domestic electricity gets consumed heating and cooling the house, heating water, and cooling the refrigerator. These can be done efficiently using heat from the sun. Water heating using solar panels has become commonplace. Even now few people use solar heating to directly heat or cool a house. It amazes me that few people seem to even know it can be done. As for using heat to run a refrigerator, how many of you out there remember the old fridges that ran on a kerosene flame? I believe they used a form of the stirling engine to run the compressor. I think you can still buy such fridges for use in boats and caravans, though in those cases they generally use gas or alcohol for the combustible. (It is dangerous to burn oil on a boat.)

If we had more of a culture interested in conserving energy instead of wasting it then our machines would be much more efficient than they currently are and we'd see that we are surrounded by low-level energy. With really efficient machines we could tap into this ambient energy and not even need mains power for them. I read an amazing piece in Scientific American a while back where a tiny cog in a nanomachine got its energy from brownian motion -- the normal bumping of the molecules in the air around us all. And we are immersed in sound energy that can be easily tapped.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

heheheh :)
Sorry about the long post. Can you tell I feel passionately about this?

Here is a little additional comment I didn't include in the previous bit. (What?!? More?!?)

One of the worst things to about nuclear power is that the armed forces love it, and of course this is why it keeps getting pushed forward as a possibility. Nuclear power is great for blowing people up, and for making armor-piercing shells. And nuclear power stations centralise power in a single place so needs a powerful security force to protect it, which is a really attractive thing for those who would sell such things.

Of course that's bad for the rest of us. We would be much better off with a distributed power system that can't be attacked, and which doesn't need a powerful security force to guard it. But our politicians don't represent us anymore. They represent the military and the corporations... and themselves.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

Not to worry! We'll combine our problems into the Ford Nuclean.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

rotfl :D
Throwing away those reactor cores would bring new meaning to the term "toxic waste dump". And imagine the fun when some disaffected morons decided to use them as weapons, perhaps by blowing them up with conventional weapons to spread radioactivity over an area.

Thank heavens that insanity never eventuated.

[gillen.livejournal.com]

But on the positive side, fewer drivers would slow down to look at an accident.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

heheheheh you nut :)
I just love how your mind works. :)

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

You are right on the vehicle front, but nuclear power stations do emit less greenhouse gases than coal though (Of course, that's not what the politicians are saying). On the other hand, there are one-off greenhouse gases emitted in the construction of the stations.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

Solar power produces less greenhouse gasses than either of them. Wind power produces less greenhouse gasses. Tidal power, hydroelectric, hydrogen, geothermal... they all emit less CO₂ than coal.

Nuclear power produces less CO₂, but a major slip-up and we make the planet a radioactive nightmare for millions of years. Already we have a large area northwest of Chernobyl that will be contributing thousands of cancers a year for millions of years. Heaven knows what will happen when radioactive waste dumped in the ocean and "stored" elsewhere makes its way into the environment.

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

Of course. For power production, we definately need a hybrid approach. Using all the technologies we can in tandem can we eliminate our dependency on coal.

But I don't think nuclear is always dangerous. Problems with nuclear happen when safety protocols are breached. Chernobyl occurred primarily because the operators deliberately switched off fundamental safety mechanisms and Chernobyl was an inherently more unsafe reactors out there. I believe that nuclear can be exploited properly with the right protocols, training, and technology. However, I don't think we've got any of these developed properly to really push as quickly as the Government wants to on this. Haste naturally leads to problems.

[miriam-e.livejournal.com]

While I don't think nuclear power can ever be made truly safe, I think the safety issues of reactors themselves is actually a side-issue. The real problems are:

1. centralising power generation in nuclear power stations attracts two kinds of nasty people: the terrorist morons who would like to strike at it, and (worse) the security forces and restrictive laws that "protect" against that threat.
   
2. nuclear power generates radioactive material that will be used to make truly awful weapons. And I don't just mean nuclear bombs -- a "conventional" bomb that spreads a payload of radioactive material could kill millions of people immediately and for centuries into the future. Nobody can undo radioactive contamination.

[annie-lyne.livejournal.com]

#1 is indeed a problem. A nice way around it would be technological improvements as to render the problem of attacks on power stations moot. I'm not a nuclear scientist, so I can't really speak on the matter :)

I don't know enough about the theory and practical considerations about dirty weaponry, so I can't really say anything on that point.

[sleepyaardvark.livejournal.com]

Amen. I get so sick of hearing this BS and its nice to see someone else speaking out.