Kirk Sorensen: Thorium, an alternative nuclear fuel

The nuclear option: Should the U.S. invest more, not less, in nuclear energy?

Watch The nuclear option on PBS. See more from Need To Know.

Nuclear Climate Change

In 5 parts.

Know Nukes

Peter Schwartz and Ralph Cavanagh on Nuclear Power

Nuclear power: Nobel Prize-winner Burt Richter speaks to Near Zero

The man said it better than anyone else I've heard!

Unanticipated consequences

Marijn Dekkers said Bayer could 'consider relocating its production' in the wake of Germany's move away from nuclear. Photograph: Oliver Berg/EPA


Germany's decision to phase out nuclear power after the Fukushima catastrophe in Japan could lead to some of the country's major companies relocating elsewhere in search of cheaper energy.

Marijn Dekkers, head of Bayer, the pharmaceuticals group, said: "It is important that we remain competitive compared with other countries. Otherwise, a global company like Bayer will have to consider relocating its production to countries with lower energy costs."

Bayer threatens to quit Germany over nuclear shutdown

Whodathunk?

So here is a huge incentive for developing nations to keep building coal power plants to attract business and therefore jobs! And this horrible unanticipated consequence has been brought to you by people who call themselves Environmentalists, whose knee jerk reaction to nuclear power was burned in in the '70s and has not been revisited since, which results in some hasty and ill conceived decision making.

FYI

Bad headline?

Here is the headline:

Fukushima: Radioactive cesium-137 found in Tokyo’s tap water

Here is what the story reports:

Cesium-137 registered at 0.14 becquerel per kilogram in Shinjuku ward on July 2 and none was discovered yesterday, compared with 0.21 becquerel on April 22, according to the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Public Health. No cesium-134 or iodine-131 was detected, the agency said on its website.
"This is unlikely to be the result of new radioactive materials being introduced" into the water supply, Hironobu Unesaki, a nuclear engineering professor a Kyoto Univeristy, said today by telephone. That's "because no other elements were detected, especially the more sensitive iodine," he said.

Read the article

You be the judge. There will be many anti-nuclear zealots who panic over the headline and never read the story.

I don't want to minimize the risks to the Japanese due to radiation  coming from the horrific failure of safety systems at Fukushima, but let's be honest about it, let's put it in perspective. The death toll for the earthquake and tsunami stands at ~ 25K.

The economic costs are crushing. $200 billion and counting.

For Fukushima the death toll appears to stand at 2 workers, although that most certainly will rise.

'No Japan without nuclear energy'

The doubts are due to ignorance, the information is watered down due to ignorance...we need some nuclear scientists (not Michio Kaku, whom I love, but I think he's way out of his element here) to educate us so we can understand the facts.

If you believe there is no safe dose of radiation, be sure you never go out in the sun, or fly in a plane, or get Xrays or an MRI.

Europe and Central Asia 2011 - The New Energy Architecture

Mark Lynas etc.

There is perhaps a certain discomfort about the fact that one of the best options for tackling global warming just so happens to be a technology that greens had spent decades opposing before climate change even hit the agenda. I have lost count of the number of times I have heard green groups insisting that climate change is the "greatest challenge ever to face humanity". Yet their refusal to reassess their inherited positions against nuclear power suggest that none of them actually believe what they are saying – or that most environmentalists are prepared to take refuge in ideologically motivated wishful thinking even when the future of the planet is at stake.

What Italy's nuclear referendum means for climate change

Six Steps to Hell

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(Reuters) - A halving of a global nuclear power expansion after Japan's Fukushima disaster would increase global growth in carbon dioxide emissions by 30 percent through 2035, the IEA said on Wednesday.

The International Energy Agency warned last month that a political goal to limit climate change to safer levels was barely achievable after global emissions rose by near 6 percent in 2010.

Nuclear retreat to add 30 percent to CO2 growth: IEA

Prescription for Survival

"Prescription for Survival": A Debate on the Future of Nuclear Energy Between Anti-Coal Advocate George Monbiot and Anti-Nuclear Activist Dr. Helen Caldicott

What is needed is the truth

What is needed is perspective. Nuclear energy is not entirely safe, as Fukushima clearly shows, even if the current radiation-related death toll is zero and will likely remain so. But coal and other fossil fuels are far, far worse. And insisting only on renewables risks worsening global warming as an unintended consequence. We need a portfolio of clean energy technologies, deployed in the most environmentally responsible way. Above all, let us base our energy policy on a scientifically valid appreciation of real-world risk, and not on scare stories from the past.

Mark Lynas is the author of "Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet" and "High Tide: The Truth About Our Climate Crisis." He lives in Oxford, England. He blogs at http://www.marklynas.org.

Why nuclear power is still a good choice


There are those who insist nuclear will supplant  renewable sources of energy, but I think, like the author above, that it is not a choice between nuclear and renewables, it's a choice between nuclear an coal. The reason? We have to build on the grid we have, and let it evolve to the grid we need for 100% renewables. We need a path to renewables, and nuclear is on that path.

I read one comment over at Grist claiming no amount of radiation is safe. This person likely has a very low opinion of the denier crowd (Climate zombies like WUWT). This same person is ignorant of the fact that we are constantly bombarded with radiation from natural sources.

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In a front-page story at today's Washington Post, David Brown spotlights research on the comparative risks of nuclear and coal power. As Brown reviews, nuclear power is far less of a risk to public health than coal generation, and this difference is magnified when factoring in the health impacts of climate change. Yet despite the comparative advantages of nuclear power, both to human health and in tackling climate change, many liberal groups remain in strong opposition. In a guest post, risk communication expert and author David Ropeik reflects on the the role of ideology in shaping views of nuclear power and climate change. Both liberals and conservatives tend to deal with science-related information on the two topics in similar ways, argues Ropeik. Each tend to reject information that is contrary to their existing viewpoints-- Matthew C. Nisbet.

...
But the point here is not about nuclear power. The observation here is that our perception of risk is never a neutral unbiased view of the evidence. The psychology of how we perceive and respond to risk is an affective mix of facts and how those facts feel. And once we’ve made up our mind about a risk, Confirmation Bias takes over and we choose to believe the evidence that agrees with what we already believe. True liberals, non-wobbly liberals, are supposed to oppose nuclear power. Period. True conservatives, for some reason, are supposed to deny climate change. Period. Find the facts that fit. Toss out the inconvenient truths. Personally denigrate anyone who disagrees, because other views are not just a different way of looking at things. They’re a threat. These are litmus test issues for who gets to belong to the tribe, and who doesn’t.
...

Nuclear Fear, Science, and Ideology

Evidence of Chain reaction in reactor 1

Newly released TEPCO data provides evidence of periodic chain reaction at Fukushima Unit 1 from Fairewinds Associates on Vimeo.

there's more

HT The Oil Drum

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Interactive Chart: Deaths per TWh by Energy Source

HT DSMOGBLOG.COM

Timely for her to post this, since I've been thinking a lot about this subject.
People are deathly afraid of radiation, and perceive nuclear as being much more dangerous than it actually is in relation to coal. I think they tend to compare nuclear with solar and wind, rather than coal. Odd.

A point I'd like to make is that nuclear power never has and likely never will cause the extinction of a species.

Imagining The U.S. Without Nuclear Power

It's uncomfortable for me to see we know so little.

Squirrel!

If you rely on the main stream media to identify issues you need to pay attention to, you are being misdirected. Japan's epic catastrophe and the looming problems at the Fukushima reactors should still have our attention.  MSM is like a young dog whose discipline is broken by a passing squirrel. Only in this case the squirrel is anything that resembles war.


However, let us not be lead astray, let's keep our attention where it should be:

Fukushima is like a cancer eating away at the habitat of the East coast of Japan. Whilst the situation appears to be stable, a number of slow burning processes must inevitably be eating away at the heart of these reactors. The solution to a number of these problems is to restore fresh water circulation to each of the cores and the spent fuel ponds. Whether or not the pumping systems work remains to be seen. Disposing of the salty radioactive sludge from inside the reactor vessels presents another major challenge.

It seems possible that the current meta stable condition may persist for many more weeks, and all the while the release and accumulation of radioactive isotopes in the environment will continue. And there is still risk of a catastrophic failure due to heat or corrosion that would result in the status degrading rapidly. It is too early to call this crisis over.

Fukushima Dai-ichi status and slow burning issues

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High hopes for low carbon: an interview with Professor Jim Skea of the Committee on Climate Change

The anti nuke sentiment is as strong as ever

These people are all for letting the science speak for itself when it comes to climate change... but not so much for nuclear power. I can't stand to read another blog post full of knee jerk emotional response to the events in Japan.

Lesson number one from Japan: Do not put backup generators in the basement if you are in an area vulnerable to tsunamis.

Know Nukes

The nuclear disaster unfolding in Japan is bad enough; the nuclear disaster unfolding in China could be even worse. “What disaster?”, you ask. The decision today by the Chinese government to suspend approval of new atomic power plants. If this suspension were to become permanent, the power those plants would have produced is likely to be replaced by burning coal. While nuclear causes calamities when it goes wrong, coal causes calamities when it goes right, and coal goes right a lot more often than nuclear goes wrong. The only safe coal-fired plant is one which has broken down past the point of repair.

Atomised
He gets it. The risk of continued use of coal is greater than the risk of nuclear power.
HT veritone Instead of putting the brakes on nuclear plants, should we be building safer ones?

It has haunted me this last week that we arrested our development of nuclear power because of fear. We failed to learn as much as we could have these past 30 years. If we had used the Maddow approach: 'Know Nukes' instead of the one we chose, 'No Nukes' we would have safer plants right now.

But after watching the special on Three Mile Island last night, I think what we really need is more perfect people. That accident,like all nuclear accidents, was made worse by the operators trying to fix things.




And this: