The human conundrum

This is the start of an ideological war.

Scientists like James Hansen are fully aware of the dangers of climate change and have children and grandchildren and worry about their futures.

Their embracing of nuclear power is deluded and represents a grasping at straws in a vain attempt to avoid climate disaster – it also betokens an attachment to human, industrial civilisation.

As much as anything for me this represents the human predicament – stuck between a rock and a hard place with nowhere to go.

I cannot find it in my own heart to condemn James Hansen as a 'sellout' (Mike Ruppert I presume, does not have any grandchildren). He is wrong, but he is also doing the best he knows how.

'He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone'

John 8:7

We are going to see more of this sort of disagreement in the future.

If this is the beginning of the end, do we want to spend our remaining time fighting each other?

Despite Fukushima Nuclear Power Really Is The Only Way To Beat Climate Change

Chicago Tribune,

4 November, 2013

In fact, we might want to change that headline slightly: because of Fukushima nuclear power really is the only way to beat climate change.

James Hansen and other reputable climate scientists have just released an open letter on the subject of nuclear power and climate change. Their basic point is that the only way we can generate enough power to have an advanced civilisation and also beat off the climate change likely from the use of fossil fuels is to expand the nuclear generation program.

To those influencing environmental policy but opposed to nuclear power:

As climate and energy scientists concerned with global climate change, we are writing to urge you to advocate the development and deployment of safer nuclear energy systems. We appreciate your organization's concern about global warming, and your advocacy of renewable energy. But continued opposition to nuclear power threatens humanity's ability to avoid dangerous climate change.

We call on your organization to support the development and deployment of safer nuclear power systems as a practical means of addressing the climate change problem. Global demand for energy is growing rapidly and must continue to grow to provide the needs of developing economies. At the same time, the need to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions is becoming ever clearer. We can only increase energy supply while simultaneously reducing greenhouse gas emissions if new power plants turn away from using the atmosphere as a waste dump.

Renewables like wind and solar and biomass will certainly play roles in a future energy economy, but those energy sources cannot scale up fast enough to deliver cheap and reliable power at the scale the global economy requires. While it may be theoretically possible to stabilize the climate without nuclear power, in the real world there is no credible path to climate stabilization that does not include a substantial role for nuclear power

To those of us who have been paying attention this isn't new or news at all of course. We have a need for energy to keep our civilisation going. And sadly, no conceivable roll out of renewables is going to provide us with enough energy to keep that civilisation going. Thus we really do need to have nuclear as part of the mix: and the more we're going to eliminate coal and natural gas then the more nuclear we're going to have to use.

Just as an example, about 20 miles away from where I am now is Germany, the country that has spent the most and had the largest build up of renewables in the world. As a result of the Fukushima disaster they have decided to close down all of their nuclear power plants: but they are not replacing them with yet more wind or solar renewables. Far from it: they're opening new brown coal (or lignite) plants. The most CO2 producing forms of energy generation known. In terms of the climate it would be vastly better if they kept the nuclear program going, even increased it.

There's a good discussion of the points that Hansen et al are making here at Forbes. Try this one first, then this follow up response to commenters.

But of course there's also this issue about Fukushima itself: how can anyone be promoting nuclear power when we've got that plant leaking radiation all over the place? Well, as I've pointed out not entirely seriously here the radiation leakage from Fukushima is of the order of the amount of radiation that humans get from eating bananas. We don't get very excited about the risks of eating bananas so we probably shouldn't get all that excited about the risks from Fukushima. Absolutely certainly there's no risk to anyone at all outside the plant itself: all these stories of the Pacific Ocean turning into a radioactive wasteland that will kill us all are just that, stories. And remarkably ill informed ones as well.

In fact, there are a number of us who would take what happened at Fukushima as showing the essential safety of nuclear power. Certainly, George Monbiot the environmental campaigner has changed his views as a result of that disaster. For recall what happened: a massive earthquake and then a tsunami that killed upwards of 20,000 people. Yes indeed those nuclear reators were wrecked at the same time: but that wrecking of the reactors has killed absolutely no one so far and it's most unlikely that it ever will kill anyone. As my sometime editor at El Reg puts it:

By contrast with renewables, nuclear power is scalable, controllable and potentially well able to keep the lights on for centuries or millennia. It is also safe compared to all other methods of power generation (in its three "disasters" so far - Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima - the scientifically verified death tolls from all causes have been and will be zero, 56 and zero: a record which other power industries including renewables can only envy).

And he refers to this piece in Nature:

Experts agree that there is unlikely to be a detectable rise in thyroid cancer or leukaemia, the two cancers most likely to result from the accident. "There may be some increase in cancer risk that may not be detectable statistically," says Kiyohiko Mabuchi, who heads Chernobyl studies at the National Cancer Institute in Rockville, Maryland. In Chernobyl, where clean-up workers were exposed to much higher doses, 0.1% of the 110,000 workers surveyed have so far developed leukaemia, although not all of those cases resulted from the accident.

The point being that Fukushima went through absolutely the worst natural disaster that the world could throw at a nuclear plant: and yes, that plant was wrecked but wrecking the plant hasn't killed anyone and won't do. The amazing thing about nuclear power is not how dangerous it is but how safe it is. And given that we do indeed need to have some power if we're to keep this civilisation thing on the road, given that renewables simply cannot scale up in time, we're going to have to replace some of our fossil fuel fired generating capacity with more nuclear. Which is exactly what Hansen et al are pointing out.

Hey Pro-Nuke Climate Scientists---Note the Global Terror at Fukushima 4

Four climate scientists have made a public statement claiming nuclear power is an answer to global warming.

nuke-free,

3 November 2013

Before they proceed, they should visit Fukushima, where the Tokyo Electric Power Company has moved definitively toward bringing down the some 1300 hot fuel rods from a pool at Unit Four.

Which makes this a time of global terror.

In response more than 150,000 petition signatures from www.nukefree.org and others will be delivered at the United Nations this Thursday, November 7, asking for a global response to this disaster.

Since March 11, 2011, fuel assemblies weighing some 400 tons, containing more than 1500 extremely radioactive fuel rods, have been suspended 100 feet in the air above Fukushima Daiichi's Unit Four. "If you calculate the amount of cesium 137 in the pool, the amount is equivalent to 14,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs," says Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute. Former US Department of Energy official Robert Alvarez, an expert on fuel pool fires, calculates potential fallout from Unit Four at ten times greater than what came from Chernobyl.

Tokyo Electric Power says it may start moving these fuel rods as early as November 8. Using computerized controls, such an operation might take take about 100 days. But because of the damage done to the assemblies, the fuel pool and the supporting building, the job must be coordinated manually. Tepco says it could take a year, but that requires an optimism the company's track record doesn't warrant.

The assemblies were pulled from Unit Four's core for routine maintenance just prior to the disaster. When the quake and tsunami hit, the pool lost coolant.

Reactor fuel pellets are encased in long tubes made of zirconium alloy, which is extremely flammable when exposed to air.

The United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that at least some of the rods caught fire. There's no hardened containment over the Fukushima fuel pools, so substantial quantities of radiation were spewed directly into the atmosphere.

Fully aware of its corrosive effects, Tepco had little choice but to pour in seawater. The fuel rods are almost certainly embrittled and crumbling. Random debris has been seen in the pool.

Unit Four's structure is buckling from the quake and from an explosion possibly linked to hydrogen. The building is tipping and sinking into the sea of mud created by massive quantities of water which has been flowing down from the mountains and carrying contamination into the ocean. A typhoon has just dumped ten more inches of rain onto the site. Yet another is apparently on its way.

The site has been thankfully spared another massive quake since the big one thirty-two months ago. But should the Unit Four pool crash to the ground, or an assembly be dropped, or a fuel rod crumble or break in transit, the ensuing releases could cripple critical electronic equipment and require evacuation of all workers. Humankind could be left standing helpless, as almost happened when Tepco contemplated abandoning the site altogether as the disaster began.

There are some 11,000 fuel rods now scattered around the Fukushima site. More than 6,000 sit in a pool just 50 meters from the base of Unit Four.

The exact location and status of the melted cores from Units One, Two and Three remain uncertain. Millions of tons of water have been poured into their proximate location to keep them cool. Much of that contaminated water is being stored in more than a thousand leaky tanks that could not withstand a strong earthquake.

Japan's Prime Minister Abe has finally asked for global help in dealing with Fukushima's water problems. US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz has offered America's help.

But nothing short of a full-on global presence will do. The bring-down of the fuel rods from Unit Four is a terrifying unknown. There's no precedent for an operation of this scope, precision or potential fallout.

At very least it demands fullest possible attention from all the world's best scientists and engineers. The global media must power through the Abe Administration's crack-down on the flow of information. And we must all direct our full awareness to what is about to happen at Fukushima.

Unfortunately, it's no exaggeration to say that our survival may depend on it.

It's also clear that before anyone advocates MORE nuclear power, they should take a good long look at what's going at Fukushima. And if they are claiming atomic expertise, maybe they should jump in to help.