How Can You Tell if Global Warming Alarmists Are Serious?
Answer: If they support nuclear energy. Nuclear is the only viable, non-carbon source for power generation that does not also involve the creation of vast man-made lakes.
NASA's Jim Hansen is one of the crazies - he thinks we're soon headed for a tipping point where there will be so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it will lead to a positive feed-back loop beyond our ability to mitigate and end in devastation. Does he support the use of nuclear energy? Indeed he does.
NASA's Jim Hansen is one of the crazies - he thinks we're soon headed for a tipping point where there will be so much CO2 in the atmosphere that it will lead to a positive feed-back loop beyond our ability to mitigate and end in devastation. Does he support the use of nuclear energy? Indeed he does.
posted by ziel | 3/26/2010 07:03:00 AM
7 Comments:
Yes nuclear energy was the answer all along. And no green loonies didnt kill it - the oil and coal did. loonies are just a mass propaganda tool. But ultimately they hold no power. Multi trillion energy sector (oil/coal/gas) does.
And its too late now. To make an infrastructure shift from coal based power to nuclear it will take 30-50 years of work .Work which should have started in 60-70s.
Right now there is not even policy consensus about nuclear energy policy. So it will be too late by the time people realize its urgency.
@Max - France built it's nuclear industry in around 15 years, which provides 75% of the country's electricity. It did so with few disruptions.
There are 104 reactors in the US, providing roughly 20% of our electricity. We could build four reactors a year and have four hundred additional reactors inside of ten years. This would be several hundred billion dollars, but over the same ten years we'll also spend roughly 50 billion a year on soft drinks.
Sorry, FORTY reactors a year, not FOUR.
Please, guys, we have better things to spend our money on, like high-dollar, shovel-leaning, paper-generating stimuli and health care for illegal aliens!
With the system we now use - with once-through fuel use - we will run out of uranium in about 100 years (assuming 100% of our electricity is generated with nuclear). We don't just need reactors, we need breeder reactors.
And even then, use of reactors in inland locations is limited by the number of rivers. You can only site so many reactors on a river before you reject too much waste heat into it. We still need to improve the efficiency both of transmission and of consumption of electricity.
Martin - I thought the point was that this 4th generation of reactor solves much of these problems. At any rate, if we can't come up with new, viable sources of energy besides fossil and nuclear in 100 years, then our society has obviously reached its limit on innovation, so we're doomed anyway.
"ziel said...
Martin - I thought the point was that this 4th generation of reactor solves much of these problems. At any rate, if we can't come up with new, viable sources of energy besides fossil and nuclear in 100 years, then our society has obviously reached its limit on innovation, so we're doomed anyway."
I'm not sure what your talking about with "4th generation" of reactors. But breeding fuel (either making Pu out of U238, or making U233 out of Thorium) is the only way to extend our supplies of fissionable materials from centuries to millenia. And the waste-heat problem is due to the limitations imposed by thermodynamics, which aren't going to change for anything.
Fission is the best source of power we have. I wouldn't count on anything better coming along in the next hundred years. Fusion? Hah! Don't hold your breath.
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