Nuclear expansion is a pipe dream
Jim Torson
Nuclear expansion is a pipe dream, says report
· Hope for new era of cheap, clean power is a 'myth'
· Building more stations would increase terror risk
John Vidal, environment editor
Wednesday July 4, 2007
<http://www.guardian.co.uk>The Guardian
A worldwide expansion of nuclear power has little
chance of significantly reducing carbon emissions
but will add dangerously to the proliferation of
nuclear weapons-grade materials and the potential
for nuclear terrorism, says a leading research
group that has analysed the possible uptake of
civil atomic power over the next 65 years.
The Oxford Research Group paper, funded by the
Joseph Rowntree charitable trust, says that the
worldwide nuclear "renaissance" planned by the
industry to provide cheap, clean power is a myth.
Although global electricity demand is expected to
rise by 50% in the next 25 years, only 25 new
nuclear reactors are currently being built, with
76 more planned and a further 162 proposed, many
of which are unlikely to be built. This compares
with 429 reactors in operation today, many of
which are already near the end of their useful lives and need replacing soon.
For nuclear power to make any significant
contribution to a reduction in global carbon
emissions in the next two generations, the paper
says, the industry would have to construct nearly
3,000 new reactors - or about one a week for 60 years.
<snip - see link for complete article>
Don Libby
From: "Jim Torson" <jto...@commspeed.net>
Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change
To: <global...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 04, 2007 10:52 AM
Subject: [Global Change: 1853] Nuclear expansion is a pipe dream
*quote*
For nuclear power to make any significant
contribution to a reduction in global carbon
emissions in the next two generations, the paper
says, the industry would have to construct nearly
3,000 new reactors - or about one a week for 60 years.
*end quote*
That is correct, according to the IPCC stabilization scenarios published to
date.
At the historical peak of construction, new plants were added at a rate of
about one per two weeks for 10 years. It is not too far fetched to believe
that rate could be doubled, especially knowing that new coal plants are
being built even more quickly than that right now, today.
Are we supposed to believe that an equivalent rate of construction could be
achieved for new photovoltaic plants or new wind plants? I encourage you to
do that calculation to convince yourself that nuclear is necessary now.
-dl
Michael Tobis
Arguments that something is or isn't likely to happen barring major
change do not indicate whether or not we should try to make the
relevant change.
I see this confusion on both sides. John McCarthy used to argue that
the world would do next to nothing about anthropogenic climate change
until major costs are incurred (with which I sadly agreed), but then
somehow concluded that we should table the discussion until that time
(with which I vehemently disagreed). I don't follow the reasoning when
McCarthy makes it and I don't follow it when Jim (sort of) makes it
either.
Happy 4th, y'all!
mt
Zeke Hausfather
for a dramatic increase in nuclear power generation does not mean it
will not happen. Sure, nuclear cannot hope to compete with coal at
$0.04 per kWh, but slap a carbon price of, say, $30 a ton and the
economics begin to change.
Frankly, the government shouldn't have much of a role in picking
winners outside of basic research and development. The market should
be shaped to take the costs of climate change (and, for that matter,
nuclear safety and waste disposal) into account, and should decide
which technologies to invest in based on which are most efficient.
That may be large-scale distributed renewables coupled with hydrogen
production as a load-curve flattener, it may be nuclear power, it may
be IGCC coupled with sequestration, it may be more natural gas. More
likely than not, it will be a combination of all of these, as well as
new technologies that will emerge when people have an incentive to
spend money researching them (as an aside, it might be an interesting
exercise to plot private R&D expenditures in electricity generation
against average electricity price in the U.S...)