stardust, deathwatch
I’ve found myself swayed at times by arguments that nuclear power is a reasonable if not necessary stop-gap solution for the world’s energy and climate problems. In particular, James Lovelock’s arguments carry weight with me, as he’s the guy who originated the Gaia hypothesis. (His books are a good read, too.)
I recall him writing to defuse the mid-century vilification of radioactivity. Nuclear waste and radiation in general is a problem for humans, but the lower levels of our current ecosystem (bacteria, plants, insects, fish, etc) can cope with it pretty well. Radiation, after all, is not some sterilizing alien power; it’s quite natural. It “flooded the very womb of life” on this planet, back in the day …
He sees nuclear power as the only currently available and feasible alternative to fossil fuel, saying “there is no chance that the renewables, wind, tide and water power can provide enough energy and in time…. By all means, let us use the small input from renewables sensibly, but only one immediately available source does not cause global warming and that is nuclear energy.”
Exactly the opposite is claimed by this list of strikes against nuclear power from Co-Op America. They say that we would have to scale up from our current 400 worldwide operating nuclear plants to around 17,000 plants to “begin making a dent in climate change.” And there isn’t time for that: “It simply isn’t possible to build 17,000 – or 2,500 or 17 for that matter – in ten years.”
Ten years sounds like an optimistic time frame for any solution at the rate we’re going. But 17,000 is a pretty big number. Co-Op America doesn’t offer a source for it. So I don’t know. Who’s right?
I still am kind of partial to the idea of buying time by injecting ash into the air, simulating a big volcanic eruption.
January 29th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
First thought coming to mind is the question: what did atmospheric thermonuclear testing do to the greenhouse effect? Put one in a volcano and watch it blow. Cheap, quick, readily available starter apparatus, and trained technicians itching to go.
January 30th, 2008 at 12:43 am
wait…so if building a bunch of nuclear power plants isn’t going to help, doesn’t that mean it’s going to take an even more impossible number of solar/wind/tidal/etc power plants to solve the problem?
January 30th, 2008 at 10:38 am
The US Navy is testing a 32MJ Railgun (electro-magnetic propulsion weapon).. They will most likely turn to nuclear energy. So they will need a nice portable reactor. Scary? Hmmm =/
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/28/173255
January 30th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Enjelani is right! The coversion to non-fossil fuels is probably virtually impossible in spite of the hopeful discussions the politicians are beginning. Without a practical source of fusion power, industrial civilization is doomed. Is that a bad thing or a good thing, taking the long view? Hydrogen is elementary, my dear Watson.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
To check the reasonableness of the 17000 power plants figure, this wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_resources_and_consumption may serve as starting point. Nuclear energy supplies 6% of world’s needs, and fossil fuels 86%. Of the total energy use, 20% is transportation, which (let us assume) will continue to run on fossil fuels. This leaves 86%-20%=66%. To occupy this space, nuclear production must ramp up by a factor (66%/6%+1)=12. If there are currently 400 plants, there will be 12*400=4800. A large number.