Mo’ Nukes
Bryan over at Hot Air caught this one. Wired News has an interview with Gwyneth Cravens, a novelist, journalist and former nuke protester who is now arguing – strongly – for nuclear power. She's pitching it as salvation from global warming, which I still think the rational jury is out on, but she also notes the simple economics of it – and echoes what I have written about as to why the so-called "green alternatives" are unworkable.
Her conclusion? Every day spent burning coal for power translates into damaged lungs and ecosystem destruction. If the world wants to keep plugging in big-screen TVs and iPods, it needs a steady source of power. Wind and solar can't produce the "base-load" (or everyday) steady supply needed, and the only realistic — and safe — alternative is nuclear.
Wired News talked with Cravens on the phone from her home in New York.
Wired News: You don't argue that nuclear power is entirely safe, but that it's vastly better than coal and fossil fuels. Do we have to choose between them?
Gwyneth Cravens: I used to think we surely could do better. We could have more wind farms and solar. But I then learned about base-load energy, and that there are three forms of it: fossil fuels, hydro and nuclear. In the United States, we're maxed out on hydro. That leaves fossil fuels and nuclear power, and most of the fossil fuel burned is coal.
In the U.S., 24,000 people a year die from coal pollution. Hundreds of thousands more people suffer from lung and heart disease directly attributable to coal pollution.
WN: That's opposed to a minuscule number of people who have been directly harmed by nuclear power?
Cravens: It's zero in the United States. Of course there is the occasional industrial accident amongst the workers. But over the lifetime cycle of nuclear power, if you go cradle-to-grave with uranium, the total carbon emissions are about those of wind power.
WN: You have an interesting statistic comparing the waste levels produced by individuals over a lifetime.
Cravens: A family in four in France, where they reprocess nuclear fuel, would produce only enough waste to fit in a coffee cup over a whole lifetime. A lifetime of getting all your electricity from coal-fired plants would make a single person's share of solid waste (in the United States) 68 tons, which would require six 12-ton railroad cars to haul away. Your share of CO2 would be 77 tons.
It's encouraging that someone who was anti-nuke can figure out why she was wrong. There is one factual error (which may be of omission or intentional) in her interview, regarding plutonium 239, but otherwise, she is spot on. Here, yet again is what I wrote about why wind power (and other intermittent sources of electricity like solar) will not work. And no, you can't wish it away and you cannot base policy on "and then a miracle happens" wishful thinking. There have always been rational arguments that burning petroleum is not a great idea, but the "solutions" that are being pimped by special interests are simply not going to work. Period. Nukes will.
Energy, Environment | Gaius December 7, 2007
By bill-tb, December 7, 2007 @ 8:32 pm
I tend to agree, the jury is out on the effects nuclear power plants would have on CO2 derived global warming, if it even exists. But it is undeniable that nuclear energy is safe and will help alleviate the problem of imported fules — We are now importing large quantities of natural gas. This happened ever since Clinton made a monument of the low sulphur coal in the western states. Why we would do this, I assume Clinton knows.
The USA should become the technological leader in nuclear power. The newer PBMR reactors hold the promise of better designed reactors, immune from meltdown, and cannot produce plutonium as an output. A nuclear fuel market in the bargin, since the advances come with a complex fuel pellet.
Will it solve the complete problem, no not likely, but it may solve part of the USA energy problem. Why should we derive 90% of our electricty from nuclear, France does. Drill for the rest. It’s worth noting that China has 100 nuclear plants on the drawing boards … Why don’t we?
By James Aach, December 7, 2007 @ 11:56 pm
As noted here before, your readers might find a look at the insider world of nuclear power from a worker bee’s perspective to be of interest. See “Rad Decision: A Novel of Nuclear Power” available at no cost to readers at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com and also in paperback. I’ve been an engineer in the US nuclear industry over twenty years. Its a lot different than most imagine, both good and bad.
By DavidL, December 8, 2007 @ 6:55 am
If not A, then what? We need energy and nuclear remains the best option. After all, it not like the enviromental wacko are going to trade in their Suburbans for bicycles and turn off their computers.
By Quilly Mammoth, December 8, 2007 @ 11:15 am
I’m a little amazed that there hasn’t been much made of the Smithsonian Magazine’s devastating article on Biofuel “Who’s fueling who?”
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/presence-biofuel-200711.html
Virtually every paragraph in the article shows how stupid the Biofool movement is.
By Gaius, December 8, 2007 @ 11:41 am
I have no idea how I missed that. Thanks for pointing it out, QM.