And then I'll toss in the point that its not a genuinely sustainable technology unless its internationally reproducible,
I'm not sure I'd go quite that far.
Different countries have different energy mixes - in Denmark, it makes lots of sense to have lots of wind (Denmark is a windy country, as one finds out when architects from other places design buildings that work as natural wind tunnels...). It makes markedly less sense to have lots of large-scale hydro in Denmark, on account of the fact that Denmark has no mountains. Similarly, hydro makes a lot of sense in Norrbotten, while solar... not so much.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
The institutions to manage the technology will, of course, always have to be adopted from local ones or adapted to fit the local institutional network. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Obviously, if the technology carries a proliferation risk, the construction and maintenance of the supporting infrastructure will carry a proliferation risk, simply because more people will have the necessary know-how. But I don't find it self-evident that this risk is impossible to manage responsibly.
And you use libya as if the proliferation point is only an issue with a few, extreme cases, when there are, for instance, few nations in sub-Saharan Africa where one would feel secure seeing proliferation-risk fuel cycles in use. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Now, the fact that proliferation risks may make the technology inaccessible to large parts of the world is certainly a strike against nuclear. And it remains to be seen whether such a technological imbalance is sustainable.
But there's some way from "not an unproblematic technology" to "only a stopgap measure." Large-scale hydro projects are not unproblematic either and that does not lead us to conclude that they are only a stopgap measure. (Incidentally, in much of Central Africa and the tropical parts of Latin America, you should think not once or twice but three times before building large hydro, on account of the fragility of the local biosphere and the risk of soil disruption caused by damming up a river).
Wealthy countries putting a lifestyle on display that cannot be sustainably emulated by other countries, whether because it relies on technology that cannot be allowed to be used in those countries, or because it relies on the net import of material resources, is not a long term sustainable position. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Read that again. Not only do non-weapon states have the legal right to nuclear power, under the relevant treaties, the weapon states are obligated to help them.
Denying anyone access to nuclear power out of fear of proliferation is clear violation of international law, and very directly weakens the only effective framework we have for limiting the spread of nuclear weapons.
Secundus: Even if we assume that the NPT is a dead letter, which I am not ready to grant, there is also the fact that the countries that already possess nuclear technology and the countries responsible for AGW are sets that overlap very, very greatly. The states that currently possess nuclear weapons are responsible for somewhere in the region of 70% of all CO2 emmisions, and clearly, a weapon state building (more) nuclear power plants is not increasing the risk of proliferation, the horse has left that barn, and burned it down on the way out. Add on the states that have reactors, but no bombs, and we are talking 80% of all emmisions. If those countries, and only those countries turned their electricity production sectors into copies of the french one, that would, indeed, solve global warming. Or at least, halve the size of the problem. It would also be nessesary to transition shipping to nuclear, and automotion to electric, but saying that proliferation makes nuclear an impractical solution to AGW is just wrong.
But in practice, it does not actually mean that all nations gain access to nuclear power technology, does it? Certainly all the nations "that matter" do, but lots of nations fall into the "they can be ignored" category.
Except climate chaos is a global problem, and as we proselytize Western lifestyles with movies and other entertainment, we cannot safely presume a perpetual global underclass that produces less than the average CO2 per person, and consumes less than that as they export to fill in material deficits by the "have" countries of the world.
Neoliberalism (aka Globalization, when people wish to distract from the fact that it is a policy choice) rests on that presumption, but dominance over the medium term is not evidence of sustainability over the longer term - a longstanding lesson we have just had repeated in the context of financial markets.
And the Modern Liberalism which Neoliberalism supplanted was premised on less developed nations accepting their place in return for receiving development assistance to improve the standard of living of people in countries in that place - but that is not tenable if the technological basis for improving the standard of living is not one that can be reproduced. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
that is not tenable if the technological basis for improving the standard of living is not one that can be reproduced.
or god forbid it makes them dependent on maintenance wot ain't there.
great point, Bruce, one that seems obvious, but isn't mentioned enough. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
But stating the tacit assumption reveals the problem: that would be a silly reading of history. All institutional change involves unintended consequences, and the more wide-reaching the change, the greater the potential for some of the unintended consequences to be both strong and malignant.
And even if it were an entirely deliberate choice, there is still the "Dear Liza" conundrum - if it were possible to identify precisely the institutional changes required to make the society functional in that respect, implementing those changes in precisely the way required would itself require a foundation of an institutional capacity for institutional improvement which, by observation, does not exist.
IOW, there's a hole in the bucket, and you need the bucket to fetch the water to wet the whetstone to sharpen the knife to cut the straw to patch the hole in the bucket.
Following the experience of post-WWII reconstruction in Europe and Japan, there were high hopes in the 50's and 60's of lending the bucket to allow new buckets to be made (so to speak - no we are out of the range of the song and use sharpened axes to cut down trees and sharpened saws to cut them into timber) ... but it turns out that reconstructing in a society that was already a functioning industrial society and developing industrial capacities in nations that were not previously functioning industrial societies are quite different challenges.
And as it turned out, the most successful industrial development in the past fifty years occurred in a country that was locked out of the mainstream development program in the 50's and 60's, but which had a massive agrarian revolution in the 50's and 60's following a massive land reform and which was developing in a society which previously had a highly developed commercial economy. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
Colombia has greater insolation than the subarctic. So they can, ceteris paribus, obtain more energy from solar power. Canada has more stable and trustworthy institutional safeguards against nuclear proliferation than Colombia. So they can, ceteris paribus, obtain more energy from nuclear power.
There's no demand for nuclear power - there's a demand for electricity (and, in the colder regions of the world, for heating). The fact that some parts of the world can't use nuclear power won't be a problem if there are other sustainable technologies for them to obtain electricity (respectively heat).
Incidentally, it is not obvious that nuclear is even a desirable technology for countries that are heavy proliferation risks. High-risk countries for proliferation are typically those without a functioning central government and/or with active militias, or whose governmental institutions are chronically incapable of keeping up their end of a deal.
Centralised power generation requires the capability to construct and maintain a centralised power grid (and provides nice, big sabotage targets for the aforementioned militias...). And if the central government is institutionally incapable of sticking to an agreement, there's a case to be made for decentralised power on institutional grounds - namely that it removes leverage from the incompetent/corrupt/bigoted central government.
Then you have countries like Iran which are proliferation risks not because they can't be held to an agreement, but because The West refuses to enter into serious negotiations with them. But that is not a sustainable situation in any case, nuclear power or no nuclear power.
Similarly, given the tendency for the world to follow the 'most advanced countries', would this make the poor countries discount wind/solar as options if the rich discounted them? Typical colonial mindset. Brown and yellow people can think for themselves, they don't need us to tell them what to do. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
As I noted upthread, nobody within shouting distance of sanity will want to go all-wind, all-nuclear or, indeed, all-anything. For the same reason that you won't want to go all-wheat or all-rice or all-potato when it comes to food production. Monoculture is inherently vulnerable to systemic shocks.
And in terms of wind, solar and hydro R&D, a 35/20/30/15 wind/solar/nuclear/hydro mix isn't substantially different from a 44/30/25 wind/solar/hydro mix.
That's an inconvenient fact, but it's something that has to be considered.
Wind has the advantage that the only carbon costs are the building and (relatively) minimal maintenance costs. Once the blades are spinning, there's no carbon being generated. (Apart from the pile of dead birds at the base of every windmill, and the babies that windmills sneak out to eat at night. But anyway.)
I've never seen a complete carbon budget for a nuclear station, including everything from building, mining and fuel management, decommissioning, and spent fuel storage/reprocessing. Considering the amount of effort needed to keep spent fuel out of circulation - has the spent fuel problem been solved at all, for permanent, static and maintenance-free values of solved? - it's difficult to believe that the total carbon cost isn't significant.
Hydro has the problem that dammed areas of still water in warm climates tend to develop large areas of rotting vegetation.
Indeed. In fact, the carbon footprint is arguably the least of the problems with that large pile of rotting vegetation. Soil loss and disruption of river habitats are at least as serious. Quoting myself from upthread:
Incidentally, in much of Central Africa and the tropical parts of Latin America, you should think not once or twice but three times before building large hydro, on account of the fragility of the local biosphere and the risk of soil disruption caused by damming up a river.
The waste issue has been solved. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
So far as I know, the UK is still storing most of its waste in ponds. Says the inevitable Wiki quote:
Radioactive waste - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the United States alone, the Department of Energy states there are "millions of gallons of radioactive waste" as well as "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water."[1] Despite copious quantities of waste, the DOE has stated a goal of cleaning all presently contaminated sites successfully by 2025.[1] The Fernald, Ohio site for example had "31 million pounds of uranium product", "2.5 billion pounds of waste", "2.75 million cubic yards of contaminated soil and debris", and a "223 acre portion of the underlying Great Miami Aquifer had uranium levels above drinking standards."[1] The United States has at least 108 sites designated as areas that are contaminated and unusable, sometimes many thousands of acres.[1][2] DOE wishes to clean or mitigate many or all by 2025, however the task can be difficult and it acknowledges that some may never be completely remediated. In just one of these 108 larger designations, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, there were for example at least "167 known contaminant release sites" in one of the three subdivisions of the 37,000-acre (150 km2) site.[1] Some of the U.S. sites were smaller in nature, however, cleanup issues were simpler to address, and DOE has successfully completed cleanup, or at least closure, of several sites.[1]
Admittedly these are pounds, not tons, but it's still a lot of trash to take out and bury.
As I've said before, the most telling argument against nuclear is political - you simply can't trust governments and market-run economies to build nukes sensibly with a mature safety culture, or to clean up after themselves.
The fact that this may be possible in Sweden doesn't necessarily mean the problem has been solved elsewhere.
The liquid waste on the other hand is often pretty radioactive or chemically toxic, but that generally originates from legacy weapons manufacture, not power generation. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
This would change by orders of magnitude if global nuclear capacity would be significantly expanded, necessitating the exploitation of to lower concentration uranium ore. (Then again, going for lower concentration uranium ore would also face problems similar to those ignored by Peak Oil sceptics arguing with oil shales and sands: the amount of reserves is one thing, running up the rate of production to a level similar to that from present high-grade ores is another.) *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Hm? Even you acknowledged that even the Swedish method has its questions -- not to speak of other countries (like Germany in that diary of mine). *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
and in that case if safety standards are lower in that sector of construction, why should there be any confidence in other parts of construction or operation? Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
*The way this number is calculated is absurd. A population of 9 billion people is assumed, as are cancer survival rates identical to todays. That is not a possible future - If we maintain a technological civilization, cancer is not going to kill anyone in 400 years. If we do not, the population will be rather a heck of a lot lower than nine billion, and the number of cancer cases will be correspondingly lower.
My focus lies not with uranium mining per se, but with the coal industry.
How does that support the argument that a complement of technologies including nuclear power that allows a country to be energy sufficient in support of its standard of living is as reproducible internationally as a complement of technologies other than nuclear power that allows a country to be energy sufficient in support of its standard of living?
It seems as if you are taking physical limitations on the energy that can be obtained from a particular technology in the complement as equivalent to social limitations, when of course natural systems are prior to human societies, and the constraints imposed by Natural System will always be respected by technology - by consequence, when not by design.
Of course, "nuclear" is too broad a category here: for instance, the way that some potential Thorium fuel cycles are described by advocated would permit designs that are not prone to proliferation risks in transport of either new or spent fuel. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
How does that support the argument that a complement of technologies including nuclear power that allows a country to be energy sufficient in support of its standard of living is as reproducible internationally as a complement of technologies other than nuclear power
It doesn't, because it isn't. The more components you add into an energy supply mix, the less reproducible the whole package will be. The point is that the whole package doesn't have to be reproducible, so long as large enough parts of it are.
Or, to put it another way: If a citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo can have light on demand from electricity produced by a dam or a windmill, why should he care that a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany can have light on demand from electricity produced by a nuclear reactor? Light on demand is light on demand - the electrons don't care where the potential gradient comes from, and neither does most of the end users.
It seems as if you are taking physical limitations on the energy that can be obtained from a particular technology in the complement as equivalent to social limitations
In the short term, they are.
In the medium term, social limitations are more amenable to betterment than physical limitations.
In the long term, we're all dead.
That is, a particular concentrated thermal solar power technology is at a cost point that makes it an appealing choice for installing large plants in the US Southwest for peak power demands in Southern California. That same technology is only a niche player in another setting, and is not adopted at all in a third.
But if its feasible in the third, and not implemented because there are technically superior choices in those conditions, that means its reproducible technology for that country, and indeed with further technical development may come into the frame for adoption. Its availability at its Energy Return on Investment in that context provides part of the baseline for all settings where its Net EROI is positive, and where it is not implemented is where a superior Net EROI is available.
The specific point about proliferation-prone nuclear fuel cycles is not about whether its a feasible technique for acquiring power from the Natural System within which the economy exists, but whether we can confidently promote its use everywhere that it is technically feasible. Its an additional constraint, over and above the fact that yields of different techniques in a technological complement will vary in different settings, so the reliance on one technique will be higher in one setting and the reliance on a different technique will be higher in another setting.
And its a different type of constraint, because when a renewable energy harvest technique is pushed aside by another renewable energy harvest technique with better Net EROI, that implies that some other technique with better EROI exists. When some particular nuclear power fuel cycle is ruled out because the society does not have the institutional capacity to transport virgin fuel to or spent fuel from the plant without ongoing substantial proliferation risks, that does not imply that there is some other technique with some better Net EROI.
The present-day core economies, resting on the dependency of the other economies of the world on us for productive equipment, cannot therefore rest satisfied that they have developed an adequate technological complement for energy sufficiency for ourselves until it also includes an adequate technological complement that is internationally reproducible.
Since we cannot, after all, move the core economies en masse to another planet with a more benign climate, and since the channels of technological development will tend to follow the track of those lines that we choose to pursue. I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.
