This is another one of those questions that straddles the line between GD and Café.
Wife and I watched Inconvenient Truth over the weekend and I found it interesting and thought provoking. Usually I find Gore about as lively as a five week dead haddock but he actually seemed a little more…animated, I guess. Sort of like Lincoln in the Hall of the Presidents. Still not completely convinced about the extent of man’s impact but that is fodder for other threads.
My issue regards Gore’s suggestions for preventing greenhouse gasses. They showed images of solar panels, solar farms, wind turbines and specifically mentioned them in his presentation and during the end credits. But I don’t remember hearing or seeing anything about nuclear energy.
I know the reluctance of the environmental movement to advocate or even talk about nuclear energy had been discussed in other threads but I am concerned that this movie, that purports to bring the Global Warming debate to the masses along with possible means of reversing it, seemed to neglect a major possible solution.
So, now the question: Did Inconvenient Truth skip nuclear energy as a partial solution and, if not, why? Again, if this needs to be moved, please feel free.
But basically the answer to your question is that anti-nuke beliefs are a religion, whose preachers will never listen to scientific evidence which counters their fanaticism.
I am a lifetime member in an environmental group. (Monmouth County Friends of Clearwater) The older members are overall still dead set against nuclear power. They have no trust in industry running these plants and no faith in the safe disposal of the nuclear waste. Green Peace and Sierra Club are still dead set against nuclear power. They have their reasons. I believe the threat of global warming outweighs the threat of nuclear power, so I strongly believe it is time to reinvest in nuclear power as one part of the overall solution. Among Greens, I appear to be in a minority.
Yup, that was the thread I was referring to. I did a search for “inconvenient” and did find a mention of the film but it didn’t go any further.
Where do Al and his crowd stand on nukes? Are they having gore-asms at the thought of using it to stop GW (and, by extent, GWB) or are they so offended by the thought of waste, etc. that they consider it to be just another evil on par with the existing energy producing industry?
If global warming caused by humans is a problem, then I don’t see how we can avoid looking at nuclear energy as a solution. That’s really the only non-CO2-producing technology we have that can come close to meeting our energy needs.
And selfishly (as someone who lives in a city and gets tired of breathing car fumes) I am really looking forward to a hydrogen economy (of which nuclear will be a vital part), when all those cars milling around Atlanta will only be spewing water vapor.
I vaguely remember reading (no cite) that Gore was opposed to nuclear power on economic grounds and weapons proliferation grounds.
As for economic grounds, I’d agree that at the present time, it’s probably not viable. But if we started slapping CO2 taxes on everything in the right amounts it could become viable. Or if oil prices rise high enough. And I don’t see how solar cells could be economically viable w/o nuclear being economically viable.
Concerns about weapons proliferation are, I think, well-founded. AFAIK, any NPT signatory can develop civilian nuclear technology, but I’m not sure we have the resources for thorough monitoring if everyone went nuclear. But that only applies to worldwide nuclear usage and not US nuclear usage.
However, we still have no place to dump the waste, and opposition to waste sites is not solely led by environmentalists.
Gore’s views on nuclear power notwithstanding, what other options do we have? Solar and wind and water just don’t add up to the energy we need in any realistic scenario.
furt’s snide political “gotcha” notwithstanding, he’s has a point. The situation presents inconvenient truths for environmentalists as well as industrialists.
Solar, Wind, Water, cleaner coal, Conservation, Conservation, Conservation, Nuclear are all methods required to solve the CO[sub]2[/sub] problem. Someday hopefully Fusion will be added.
To say just nuclear is as ignorant as to think we can resolved the problem without nuclear. But truthfully the largest component is finding ways to reduce energy and fuel consumption. Think Diode and Fluorescent lighting. Think plug-in hybrids, think low emission gas engines, and think more efficient houses and appliances. Think aggressive restraint of gas guzzling personal vehicle sales.
(1) If we are talking about significantly reducing greenhouse gases, then we are going to need to replace most of our power infrastructure. Sure, if power companies are looking to build now they don’t want Nuclear for the reasons he gives. On the other hand, if they were thinking about replacing most of their power plants with non-greenhouse gas power plants, then Nuclear is the best, and really only option.
(2) I don’t know the exact number, but I’d bet the nuclear powers exhaust the vast majority of green house gases. If the USA, China, India, et al switch to Nuclear power the effect would be enormous, and there would be no risk of proliferation.
My answer to Gore would be: suppose just three major consumers of electricity that already have nuclear weapons - China, India, and the United States - made substantial investments in nuclear power, then nuclear power could furnish a much greater percentage of electricity worldwide than it does now, without adding in the least to the risk of nuclear proliferation.
When you talk about the developing world, China and India are most of it, all by themselves. (Here, I’d make a distinction between ‘developing’ countries, and countries that not only aren’t developed countries, but don’t seem to be about to start developing, either. When considering the carbon problem, this seems a useful distinction. How much of a contribution to greenhouse gases will central Africa make in the next 40 years?)
The other question I’d ask of Gore is, given the current state of world political and power relationships, who’s going to bell the cat - who’s going to keep developing countries from developing nuclear power plants? That’s the one that worries me - the U.S., which was the obvious candidate for the role up until just a few years ago, still is the most obvious candidate. Only it has far less in the way of both power and moral suasion than it did five years ago.
So I think here Gore may be wrong on both counts: we can increase the fraction of power produced by nuclear plants in a big way without its being a proliferation risk, but it’s liable to also grow in a way that is one anyway.
To that list we can also add the “Good Global Citizens”, ie those countries that could readily develop nuclear weapons if they wished but have no interest in doing so. So most of Europe, Japan, Australia, South Africa, Brazil and so forth could also be added to the list of nations that could readily adopt nuclear power with abolsutely no risk of proliferation.
Really when you look at it that way Gore’s argument makes little sense. It really does seem like a way to avoid an inconvenient truth. If Japan or New Zealand converted to nuclear tommorow the increased risk of weapons proliferation would be zero, since such countries could have developed nuclear weapons any time they like anyway, but have chosen not to do so.
I wonder what percentage of global greenhouse emissions are generated by countries that currently lack a nuclear arsenal and desire to produce one? I’m guessing less than 10%.
For developed countries, I agree the proliferation argument makes little sense. But some of these other countries have a poor policing infrastructure in addition to rampant corruption and bribery. Waste products could be diverted easily into poor-man nukes.
All the major developing countries have very strong incentives to police their waste (eg - India has multiple rebel groups who I’m sure would love to set off a poor-man nuke somewhere). But still, it’s a risk that needs to be addressed
CANDU reactors can burn unprocessed ore as fuel, and I believe they can emit waste which does not contain any fissionable material. So a CANDU reactor, and others that have similar fuel cycles, could solve the proliferation problem.
Another way to solve the proliferation problem is to enrich the fuel locally, ship it to various countries, and then take away the resulting waste. This was proposed by the Clinton Administration for North Korea, although in that case it was a bad idea. But it would work for smaller, less heavily defended countries that might agree to having their nuclear reactor guarded by the U.S. military and fuel and waste shipments escorted out in and out of the country.
Another way to solve the proliferation problem is to locate reactors in ‘safe’ countries, create energetic, non-nuclear fuels from power in the reactor, and ship that. For example, creating hydrogen using nuclear power, then piping the hydrogen to other countries. Or using nuclear power to produce the energy required to make biofuels, and then exporting the biofuel. Another example would be putting a nuclear reactor here in Alberta to provide the power to create the steam needed to separate oil from oil sands. Right now, we use natural gas, which more than doubles the total CO2 emission from each barrel of recoverable oil. Using a nuclear power plant would cut in half the CO2 footprint of oil extracted from oil shales and tar sands.
The same omission was apparent in Who Killed the Electric Car? Sure, it’d be cool if the cities were full of silent, peppy, clean electric vehicles. Are you willing to build new reactors to supply this clean electricity, though?
There was also an episode of West Wing in which CJ meets with representatives of solar, wind and tidal power, each with their own snippy persnickety plans for supply America with energy. I’d’ve like to see a quiet guy in the corner who lets the other three yak on and then politely adds “I represent an industry that can supply thousands of megawatts of clean energy and isn’t tied to limited areas of the country where sunlight, wind or tidal power are high enough to be viable. It’s cough[sub]nuclear[/sub]cough”
I was not being snide, but ironic. Gore presents himself as a fearless truth-teller, and yet the environmentalist movement he is a part of refuses to accept an obvious source of clean energy.
Nor was I being political; it’s not like the Republicans are out there taking any real steps toward ending our oil addiction.
I suspect, that there are quite a few people who share my view that Nuclear Fission is dangerous and that humans tend to cut corners and act irresponsibly.
I am also suspicious of the way in which CO2 is being used as an excuse for railroading us into taking decisions that have very long term consequences.
