I think that’s a gross misrepresentation of the choice you present.
Global climate damage with costs in the trillions and all sorts of other negative effects is basically guaranteed. Nuclear proliferation via U-233 is a long shot.
We can take steps to mitigate the potential for proliferation. Tight controls on materials. This isn’t the former Soviet Union in 1992 where no one knows where anything is. Keeping tight tabs on nuclear material is easy in a first world country.
Even if a weapon is created from missing material, which is unlikely, that is also unlikely to trigger a global nuclear war. A non-state actor detonating a rogue nuke is not an automatic trigger for global nuclear war, for obvious reasons. You could envision a scenario where it could possibly happen, but it’s certainly not likely.
The actual damage a rogue nuke could do is far less than what full blown global warming will do. The scale is very different.
I recall that there are plenty of reactor designs that would generate no usable nuclear material for bombs, but I don’t know what type of reactors those are offhand.
So you’re essentially weighing something that’s guaranteed to happen against something that’s exceedingly unlikely to happen and calling it a wash.
If you happen to have u-235, you don’t need u-233.
If you are talking about a state creating a nuclear reactor for the purpose of breeding thorium to u-233, then that’s a whole lot more work, and nothing that would be prevented by us not working on a different method.
Potentially. But they already have these other weapons.
No, I’m considering it less important because the country that tested it dismissed it by abandoning that line of testing.
Well, that is where we will differ. For one, I think that an MSR technology in general is going to increase the risk of proliferation by a very, very small amount, and, if we are even slightly smart about it, will actually lower that risk. If we are only breeding U-233 in guarded areas in stable states, then we can provide pre-fueled modular reactors to others, whether they be other countries, or just areas in the same country, just with somewhat less security.
These reactors would never have enough fissile inventory in them to build a bomb, and if you tried siphoning off material over time, then it would just stop working prematurely, and before you built a bomb. You’d have to have access to several reactors in order to crack them all open and get enough for just one bomb.
You know what is much more of a proliferation risk than materials? Computers. Computers let you get through quite a bit of design and testing, without ever actually testing anything in the real world. We have nukes that we don’t really “know for sure” that they will go off, as that design was never tested in the real world, but our computer models assure us that they will.
If you consider the development of MSRs to be a proliferation risk, then computer development should be an order of magnitude higher concern for you.
It’s not that nuclear power is no good, its that it isn’t good enough. Natural gas is a damn sight better than coal, but that doesn’t mean it is the end point. It still shares the fundamental weakness of producing energy by way of heat. And the heat don’t go away.
Earthquake at a nuke, you can have a very serious problem. Earthquake at a wind farm, you got a bunch of air scattered around. Cleanup is not much of a problem.
As well, there is the inertia generated by investment, people who invest millions into a nuke plant want a return on their investment. They do not want to hear about the hare-brained genius who just discovered how to make solar power ten times better. It may never happen, it may happen tomorrow. How long does it take for such an investment to pay off? Investment in the status quo impedes progress. Duh.
Remember when solar power was impossible? Only practical use was to power on satellites so we wouldn’t have to go change the batteries. Anybody who said that solar power would have practical and everyday uses was considered a techno-moonbat. That was then, this is now, and tomorrow is on its way.
When we start considering the economic costs and what that means in terms of a multitude of things that affect the health and welfare of billions of people, waste heat probably shouldn’t screen out options. It probably shouldn’t be weighted very heavily when comparing options. IMO it’s small enough I’d ignore it unless we needed a tiebreaker when comparing courses of action.
There is something quite sad about hearing the same (to me) extremely persuasive arguments presented as I remember from back in college in the late 70s, when nuclear power was a popular topic for speech classes and debates! At least at that time, a few plants were still being built (tho the construction inefficiencies and cost overruns were astounding.) Given the current state of the climate, one would think the arguments would be all the MORE persuasive, but I don’t see it.
I think that the arguments have always been persuasive, and it is hard to get more persuasive. all of the benefits have been laid out. All of the concerns about not doing so have been laid out.
If someone isn’t persuaded, it is not because they have not encountered a persuasive argument, it is because they have chosen to not find any arguments persuasive.
Do you have any suggestions for making more persuasive arguments?
Of course the fear that cheap, abundant (to say nothing of environmentally safe) energy creating prosperity and that prosperity bringing overpopulation turned out to be a complete phantasm. Rich, developed countries have much lower population growth than poor, underdeveloped ones.
A national energy policy has many considerations that are more important than the basic operating characteristics we have discussed here.
If a government fails to keep the lights on because the powerstations run out of fuel, they won’t be in office for long. So energy security is a political priority and it is wise to avoid over dependence on a single source by keeping a wary eye on domestic and international politics.
There are many examples of this.
The developed world suffered a huge challenge in the 1970s when the Arab Israeli conflict led to the closure of the Suez canal and a huge increase in Oil prices by the OPEC cartel.
The UK developed the North Sea Oil and Gas resources and France embarked on a nuclear power programme that is still the majority of its electrical power generation.
When Coal was King in the UK the National Miners Union was a powerful political force run by Communists who formented strikes that picketed power stations causing power cuts and a crisis that brought down governments. That eventually led to a series of confrontations with later governments that that ultimately to lead to the dismantling of the Coal industry and a dash for Gas. The UK has an extensive Gas network supplied from the North Sea and from Norway. Coal is all but gone.
More recently the US has liberated huge Gas assets through fracking. This makes it independent of the Gulf states for gas and it may start exporting Gas to Europe to offset the dependence on Russian Gas.
Germany is dependent on Russian Gas, but is building a HVDC grid to move electrical power from wind turbines off shore in the north to the areas of high demand in the south. Germany and other Central European states use a lot of the worst and most polluting high sulfure coal: brown lignite.
The Baltic states and others dependent on Russian Gas are developing LNG terminals to get supplies from supplying countries by sea. Most of central and eastern Europe is dependent on Russia for gas and those pipelines go through Ukraine. It has often cut off the supply in order to apply political pressure. Its invasion of Crimea has caused many European states to seek some alternative.
Nuclear power has to be regarded in this context. It has the benefit that the countries that can supply the fuel are mainly stable and there are several of them, so from an energy security perspective, that is a big plus.
Ideally the EU countries should be connected with a DC supergrid to move electricity around to connect renewable power and a pipeline network that does the same for gas. Few countries, other than France, have a coherent nuclear power strategy. The number of interconnections between national grids is growing, but it is just a few percent of capacity. If Grid storage becomes viable on a large scale, that would be a fundamental change.
I would guess it would be simpler to develop a strategy for the US, with its plentiful Gas and Nuclear and Hydro resources and capacity for renewables. Well, it would be simple, if it were not for the politics.
Agree with your analysis and would like to add three points :
Uranium mining and nuclear waste disposal has environmental impact on water, land and populations that last for 100s of years. Most of the mining is done under secrecy and the environmental impact is not quantified and very little data is made public.
The predicted reserves of Uranium are projected to last about 80 years when used at the current rate. If the use is increased, the life of the reserves decreases proportionately. Also, it is important to note that the remaining reserves are harder to exploit and the transition nvironmental cost of production are higher too.
Nitpick. I think you have confused either the coal rank or the sulfur content. Generally Coal Rank goes like : Wood, Peat, Lignite, Sub-Bituminous, Bituminous, Anthracite (increasing age)
The newer coal (Lignite) usually has very low levels of sulfur compared to Bituminous or Anthracite.
Lignite has the lowest heating value amoung the coals, has very high moisture & high volatiles but low sulfur content. Combustion Power plants running on Lignite typically produce more CO2 than similar plants running on Bituminous coal.
Lignite…sulfur. Mistake on my part. The acidity problems come from the tailings from the open cast mines polluting the water systems. There is lot of other nasty stuff in the air pollution this low grade coal produces. They call the central European region where this forms the basis of heavy industry ‘The Black Triangle’. The pollution is very bad and it is becoming a significant internal political issue. But if the alternative is to allow Mr Putin the freedom to turn the gas taps off to large parts of Europe in winter, that is not a good political position to be in.
Energy policy for many countries is a difficult choice between various poor options and compromises. If we ever get a viable grid battery or a clean, non proliferating nuclear energy technology. Then that landscape will change for the better.
All the expenses are immediate. Once in place all expenses would be recouped over time. Never listen to people who claim start-up costs are too expensive, i.e., high-speed rail, desalinization. These people are shortsighted.
Nuclear power isn’t bad. People’s fallibility is bad. Solve that human error factor. Get nuclear power.
A more nuanced view is that the start up costs shouldn’t be too high, but that there are several mitigating issues that might make that not true. You are assuming that the project actually gets completed. Normally, that’s a fairly good assumption, but with nuclear it certainly isn’t. Then there are the delays and cost over-runs. Again, with a normal project you are going to be close to deploying on time, by and large…but with nuclear, you almost certainly aren’t. And while cost over-runs can be controlled, normally, you simply don’t know what they are going to end up being with nuclear.
Humans are certainly at the root cause of all of the above, but you can’t just wave a magic wand at this stage and solve it. Would that this were the case…
Rather, I am saying considerations such as the ones you so ably list can be overcome with determination and planning. Using this sort of list of considerations to decide whether or not to do something substantial that will run far into the future upgrading the entire infrastructure localizes the discussion to such a degree as to paralyze the considerations. I’m saying disregard these issues and either deal with them at the planning stage or work through them if they are unforeseen. In the long run…decades down the road, not fiscal quarters later, the cost, value and worth will work themselves out as the upgrades work their benefits.
If everything was done on a capitalist’s cost/benefit analysis we’d still be using the steam engine.
I am wondering whether one of the reasons why nuclear power is so costly is that government policy mandated very large scale multi Gigawatt projects rather than leveraging the development of small, efficient, factory made reactors.
Certainly the development of nuclear power in the UK was always a high profile government project that embraced a specialised design based on the Advanced Gas Cooled model. There were hopes that ‘Fast Breeder’ reactors would create their own fuel and transform the economics. It is fair to say that ‘reality fell short of the dream’.
It was an economic disaster.
These designs are coming to the end of their operational life and the decommissioning costs will be huge.
There is a plan for more nuclear power plants based on PWR designs , but that is not in doubt because the Japanese are withdrawing from the market. There is a plan for a huge French built and Chinese financed replacement reactor at Hinkley Point. So some international politics to consider there.
This relies on the government guaranteeing a price for the power generated to the generator for many years to come. However this is increasing looking like a very poor bargain and very costly. Instead of multiple small installations of proven efficiency and reliability, they have, of course, gone for a custom built, large scale installation.
If Grid storage and becomes viable to iron out the peaks and troughs in demand along with smart metering moderating demand at source, this strengthens the case for renewables, especially wind turbines. The UK has made a huge investment in off-shore wind power and these projects straightforward to rollout on a large scale. In this case £23 Billion over 25 years. Not that there is much confidence in official budget projections, they tend to support political decision that are already made. This could become embarrassingly expensive for 3.2GW of base load capacity.
The future seems increasingly likely to favour Gas+Renewables, but there is a huge sunk investment in nuclear.
The UK is getting a nice 9GW of power from wind today, 25% of demand. Nuclear is at 15% and Gas at 38%.
Is nuclear power all that bad? It depends on how you do it. The UK is not a good example of best practice.
The French have a comprehensive nuclear power program and export their surplus power to the UK and neighouring countries grids through high capacity DC interconnects. One of the issues with nuclear is that you can’t just switch it off!
Nor can you put nuclear genies back in their bottles. The news of the US setting up Saudi Arabia with nuclear power plants may have more to do with their rivalry with Iran than any desire for reliable power generation in case the oil and gas fields suddenly run dry. The US is also encouraging Japan to reduce its stockpiles of nuclear fuel because it is a bargaining chip in talks with North Korea.
If nuclear was just regular fossil fuel power source like coal, oil or gas, it would not be so bad.
Well, you know…we ARE still using the steam engine. A nuclear reactor is, after all, a steam engine. Many other power generations methods still use a steam engine at it’s core as well…
Actually, I would do just the opposite and take Fukushima off the list. The amount of hand wringing that went into the Fukushima reactor in relative proportion to the overall damage done the the 2011 Tsunami (15,896 deaths, 6,157 injured, and 2,537 people missing over 200 billion dollars in damage) is rather like having your house burn down and fretting over what toxins were released when your record collection went up in smoke.
I suspect that the Japanese are rather more sensitive to the potential for nuclear accidents than most other countries being the only country to have endured nuclear devastation. That and being in an area particularly prone to devastating earthquakes and tsunamis, it is an understandable concern.
A nuclear reactor is, after all, a steam engine. Many other power generations methods still use a steam engine at it’s core as well…