Trog
Apr 7
“The Green New Deal resolution is a bold and necessary path forward to tackle the climate crisis.”
Bold ideas are not always good ideas. But to establish this is a necessary path to tackle the climate crisis, one must show that there is no other path that can work.
"To be successful, it must leave nuclear power behind. "
The wording of the resolution does not exclude nuclear power. If it had specifically excluded nuclear, that would have decreased support for it and decreased its chances of going anywhere.
“To reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by 40 to 60 percent by 2030, and down to zero by 2050, we need cost-effective, proven energy generation technology that can be scaled up to meet these benchmarks.”
This assumes that nuclear technology being developed right now cannot make a contribution by 10 to 20 years from now. I also notice this “proven” requirement is conspicuously confined to generation technology. Why? Because for intermittent renewables to attain high levels of penetration, they will need cheap, bulk, grid-level storage of a sort that we do not have right now. Anti-nukes maintain we will get better, cheaper storage as a result of research, innovation, and repetitive production (in other words, new kinds of batteries which aren’t “proven”), but it is an article of faith that the same factors can never, ever, deliver better, cheaper nuclear.
“Nuclear power does not and will not ever meet these criteria.”
Only because the criteria includes the utterly arbitrary and senseless condition that all future forms of energy generation must already be developed and proven right now.
“After 60 years, despite massive subsidies, the nuclear industry is dying of its own accord. Why? Because it’s too expensive, too dangerous and dirty, and takes too long to deploy.”
At best, this is an argument against current forms of nuclear power. It is not an argument against all possible forms.
“Nuclear power simply cannot compete against safer, cleaner and cheaper renewable energy.”
Old-tech nuclear cannot compete under the current regulatory regime against cheap gas and subsidized and mandated and erratic renewables. That does not mean that all forms of nuclear power would never be able to compete in a fair market.
“For 60 years, nuclear power has posed a serious risk to people and our planet.”
It probably saved nearly two million lives by displacing more dangerous and more polluting alternatives.
“It will be the same for the next 10,000 years.”
Presumably this “risk to people and our planet” would be from spent fuel. So far as I can tell, the death toll from handling and storing many tens of thousands of tons of spent fuel over the history of commercial nuclear power currently stands at zero. That seems like a pretty small risk to people (much smaller death toll than from wind or solar power) and the notion that spent fuel represents a risk to the whole planet is breathless, hyperbolic nonsense.
“Our children and generations of their children will be forced to endure the radioactive pollution and fallout from devastating accidents like 3 Mile Island, Fukashima and Chernobyl”
If the thriving wildlife in the Chernobyl exclusion zone is lucky, it will be a few more decades before humans swarm back in and wipe it out. The fish proliferating off the coast of Fukushima may get as much as another ten years before heavy fishing resumes. From an ecological point of view, the effect of these accidents has been the opposite of devastation.
Globally, our children and theirs will emit far more natural radioactivity from their own bodies than they will take in from Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima combined. And all three of those accidents involved meltdowns. They do not constitute an argument against kinds of reactors which cannot have meltdowns.
“and the permanent waste that no one can safely store.”
Some of the reactors in development could consume it as fuel. It is way premature to claim that it will wind up as permanent waste.
“The risks of nuclear proliferation and the spread of dangerous weapons and technology only adds to this.”
Nuclear power reactors have contributed nothing to proliferation. In fact, under the Megatons to Megawatts program, enough bomb fuel was destroyed in power reactors to make 17,000 ICBM-class warheads. That’s more warheads than exist in all the world’s nuke arsenals combined. And that’s way more bomb fuel than all the nuclear disarmament groups of the world combined ever got rid of. And with molten salt fast reactors, there would be even a stronger economic incentive to consume bomb fuel for starting them up.
“Nuclear power is too slow to scale up to our current challenge.”
All the non-fossil options we have right now combined are too slow to scale up. On our current track, global projections are that we will burn more fossil fuels in 2035 than we will this year. We are going to need better options, and it would be best if we develop all of our strongest options.
“The endless talk of a new nuclear technology that will magically transform this problem is a pipe dream that has a proven record of failure.”
“Man will not fly for 50 years.” Wilbur Wright, 1901
“Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.” – Director, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1902
“Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope.” – Simon Newcomb, 1903
The first flight at Kitty Hawk was in Dec. 1903. All the different kinds of attempts at powered flight before that also had a “proven record of failure”. Pretty much every advanced technology we’ve undertaken started out with failures. But failures don’t “prove” anything. They just show us where we need to try different approaches, and that’s how technology evolves and gets better.
“Hundreds of billions were spent on “breeder” reactors and other esoteric designs and not a single one has yielded a commercial scale reactor.”
I’m sure that “hundreds of billions” can’t be for the U.S., but we did have some notable breeder development programs–all of which were killed before they reached completion. Given the clear signals of a politically hostile climate, it’s hardly surprising that no one attempted a commercial version. And government labs have been good for making discoveries, advancing theory, and doing basic research, but they are a lousy model for trying to develop designs capable of competing in an open market. That is what private development excels at, but there was virtually no private development of nuclear reactors in the last century. It’s a very different story now, with dozens of private teams working on advanced reactor designs of various sorts.
So let’s make it even more daunting by opposing development of what could be some of our strongest clean-energy options.
“We must move from a 20th-century energy system based on dirty, dangerous and expensive fossil fuel and nuclear power to a 21st-century energy system based on renewables.”
Advanced nuclear would
be a 21st-century energy technology, and what matters more than whether the energy source is renewable is whether it is clean and sustainable.
“The solution is a massive commitment to ramping up renewable energy coupled with energy storage while applying modern energy efficiency technologies to decrease demand.”
Many people who have looked at this say we need to do all that, but that progress will be slower, harder, and more expensive if it does not also include nuclear.
“Wind and solar are cheap, clean and proven to work. We must focus all resources on scaling those up.”
We should invest some of our resources into developing our best options for the future.
“Some have suggested that climate change is so dire that all options must be on the table. But that’s an ideology, not a strategy.”
Not all options. Our best options. Some options have very poor prospects (eg. Solar Freaking Roadways!).
“We must choose the technologies that will not produce greenhouse gases and can be scaled up quickly, safely and at lowest cost.”
Even better if it can reliably deliver power on demand. It would also be useful to have sources of high heat for industrial processes. Being able to power heavy cargo ships would also be a bonus.
“That means the path ahead must be based on renewable energy.”
In part, yes. But the notion that it must be based exclusively on that is ideology.
“If we want to stop the worse of the climate crisis and pull humanity back from the apocalypse, this is the only way forward.”
Using nothing but renewables is not the only way. It is not even clear that it is a viable way. It certainly isn’t going to fly in today’s political climate. It would require a revolution before such a plan has a chance of happening. Meanwhile, efforts to support and promote advanced nuclear development have broad and deep bipartisan support, and Congress has already passed several such measures. And if any of the new reactors work out, we won’t need a revolution to get them deployed.
. You ******* dummies........its primary season. None of the fringe shit ever makes it into next spring!!!
