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.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
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.
