I've said it before and I will say it again. The *real* reason why the green lobby is so anti-nuke is because they know it can work!

The entire green long term philosophy is about de-industrialisation. reducing human populations and living in an altogether simpler manner (the *dark* greens would be happy to eliminate the human population altogether!)

Global warming conferences give them a platform to promote these views by claiming that the *only* way of cutting pollution and slowing climate change is by adopting their philosophy.

Nuclear energy cannot be tolerated in any climate change debate specifically because it gives us the ability to cut atmospheric polution without having to adopt the greens master plan!

They are terrified that, sooner or later, people will see this.

Dusty

Hi all,

    Hmmm, hate to agree a little with you, but, yes, I believe in an open forum of "legitimate" ideas, and you all should be included in the global warming debate.

   But I bet those in power already KNOW all the info, and KNOW this nuclear savior act is just a green painted disaster waiting to happen.

   Since the pro-nuke lobby has SO MUCH money it buys full page ads etc exploiting the concern on global warming, I think you all should be in the public forums, to publically PROVE what misinformation the nuclear disaster industry promotes...

    Wind power, and conversion to hydrogen power can provide more than we presently consume. Add in all the other green clean ideas like conservation, updating efficiency of appliances, converting sewage treatment plants to use the methane etc, +++ so much more.

   So Mr. Googlenaut, I think you have misunderstood what the true alternative is , when you believe, "However, I don't buy the Green's philosphy of population reduction, deindustrialization, etc. We are already beginning to see the affects of 'deindustrialization' in the United States--industries moving offshore, increasing joblessness, rising costs."

    There is no "deindustrialization" in me. I guess you did peg me on "population reduction" however. I confess that zero growth, or even a reduction, yah, would not hurt the world, but would help it. Call me crazy, but seems each human I know consumes and consumes and consumes and pollutes and pollutes and pollutes. If we all have 5 kids, and become great-great grandparents before we die, well, that adds up sorta quick. Like a life boat, you can only take so many survivors onboard before you all sink and drown. Reality is a harsh Mistress...

Censorship of pro-nuclearism by so-called 'environmentalist' interests reminds me of how Robert Heinlein described this situation (which I have quoted on Know_Nukes before and with which I am certain most readers will be quite familiar):

There are hidden contradictions in the minds of people who "love Nature" while deploring the "artificialities" with which "Man has spoiled 'Nature.' " The obvious contradiction lies in their choice of words, which imply that Man and his artifacts are not part of "Nature"-but beavers and their dams are. But the contradictions go deeper than this prima-facie absurdity. In declaring his love for a beaver dam (erected by beavers for beavers' purposes) and his hatred for dams erected by men (for the purposes of men) the "Naturist" reveals his hatred for his own race--i.e., his own self-hatred.

In the case of "Naturists" such self-hatred is understandable; they are such a sorry lot. But hatred is too strong an emotion to feel toward them; pity and contempt are the most they rate. As for me, willy-nilly I am a man, not a beaver, and H. sapiens is the only race I have or can have. Fortunately for me, I like being part of a race made up of men and women--it strikes me as a fine arrangement and perfectly "natural."

Believe it or not, there were "Naturists" who opposed the first flight to old Earth's Moon as being "unnatural" and a ''despoiling of Nature.''

Ayn Rand wrote something similar back during the Cold War (so while the reference to the Soviet Union is dated, her point is still relevant):

“Ecology as a social principle…condemns cities, culture, industry, technology, the intellect, and advocates men’s return to ‘nature’, to the state of grunting subanimals digging the soil with their bare hands.”

“An Asian peasant who labors through all of his waking hours, with tools created in Bibical times – a South American aborigine who is devoured by piranha in a jungle stream – an African who is bitten by the tsetse fly – an Arab whose teeth are green with decay in his mouth – these do live with their ‘natural’ environment’, but are scarcely able to appreciate its beauty. Try to tell a Chinese mother whose child is dying of cholera: ‘Should one do everything one can? Of course not.’ Try to tell a Russian housewife who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather on order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations [in the former Soviet Union], that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.”

“In Western Europe, in preindustrial Middle Ages, man’s life expectancy was 30 years. In the nineteenth century, Europe’s population grew by 300 percent – which is the best proof of the fact that for the first time in human history, industry gave the great masses of people a chance to survive.”

“If it were true that a heavy concentration of industry is destructive to human life, one would find life expectancy declining in the more advanced countries. But it has been rising steadily. Here are the figures on life expectancy in the United States (from the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company):”

1900 – 47.3 years

1920 – 53 years

1940 – 60 years

1968 – 70.2 years…

“Anyone over 30 years of age today, give a silent ‘Thank you’ to the nearest, grimiest, sootiest smokestacks you can find [or alternatively, the Indian Point Energy Center].”

“Now observe that in all the propaganda of the ecologists – amidst all their appeals to nature and pleas for ‘harmony with nature’ – there is no discussion of man’s needs and the requirements for his survival. Man is treated as if he were an unnatural phenomenon. Man cannot survive in the kind of state of nature that the ecologists envision – i.e., on the level of the sea urchin or polar bears….”

“In order to survive, man has to discover and produce everything he needs, which means that he has to alter his background and adapt it to his needs. Nature has not equipped him for adapting himself to his background in the manner of animals. From the most primitive cultures to the most advanced civilizations, man has had to manufacture things; his well-being depends on his success at production. The lowest human tribe cannot survive without that alleged source of pollution: fire. It is not merely symbolic that fire was the property of the gods which Prometheus brought to man. The ecologists are the new vultures swarming to extinguish that fire.”

“Without machines and technology, the task of mere survival is a terrible, mind-and-body-wrecking ordeal. In ‘nature’, the struggle for food, clothing and shelter consumes all of a man’s energy and spirit; it is a losing struggle – the winner is any flood, earthquake or swarm of locusts. (Consider the 500,000 bodies left in the wake of a single flood in Pakistan [or the current 130,000 plus lives lost in the tsunami of 2004]; they had been men who lived without technology.) To work only for bare necessities is a luxury that mankind cannot afford.”

“It has been reported in the press many times that the issue of pollution is to be the next big crusade of the New Left activists, after the war in Vietnam peters out. And just as peace was not their goal or motive in that crusade, so clean air is not their goal or motive in this one.”

“The immediate goal is obvious: the destruction of the remnants of capitalism in today’s mixed economy, and the establishment of a global dictatorship. This goal does not have to be inferred – many speeches and books on the subject state explicitly that the ecological crusade is a means to that end.”

“If after the failure of accusations as ‘Capitalism leads you to the poorhouse’ and ‘Capitalism leads you to war,’ the New Left is left with nothing better than: ‘Capitalism defiles the beauty of your countryside,’ one may justifiably conclude that, as an intellectual power, the collectivist movement is through.”

“City smog and filthy rivers are not good for men (though they are not the kind of danger that the ecological panic-mongers proclaim them to be.) This is a scientific, technological problem – not a political one – and it can be solved only by technology. Even if smog were a risk to human life, we must remember that life in nature, without technology, is wholesale death."

-----

Nuclear energy can save two million human lives annually. A brief excerpt serves to illustrate this point. Sadly, neither CNS nor ANS nor NEI will be permitted by the liberal socialist enviro-left to demonstrate this.

http://environment.harvard.edu/activities/symposia/2003/Yehposter.pdf#search='un%20statistics%20death%20biomass'

“…An estimated 2.5 to 3 billion people worldwide and up to 90% of rural households in developing countries rely on traditional biomass fuels—wood, charcoal, animal dung, or crop wastes—to meet their household energy needs. Burning biomass fuels in simple stoves, these households typically generate high levels of indoor air pollution that adversely affect health, especially of women and young children. In fact, conservative estimates of global mortality from exposure to indoor air pollution are approximately 2 million deaths annually, with approximately one million due to acute lower respiratory illness (ALRI) in children under 5 years. Chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), tuberculosis, low birth weight, cataract, and asthma have also been associated with biomass smoke in epidemiological studies. At the aggregate level, the use of biomass fuels tends to elevate rates of mortality (and subsequently fertility), delaying the demographic transition and potentially impeding economic growth and development…”

“…Taken as a whole, the results from the macro and micro data support the conclusion that dependence on traditional biomass fuels leads to higher risks of child mortality. On a global level, the health effects associated with traditional biomass fuels are substantial and potentially rival those of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Successful interventions and policies to address this public health risk thus have important implications for the quality of life for billions around the world.”

You decide. (BTW, my one year old son has asthma. Obviously we don't know the cause, but coal plant refuse dumped into the atmosphere certainly doesn't help - so GO NUCLEAR and save human lives!)

The interested reader may wish to study the Cato Institute’s Policy Analysis on Renewable Energy at:

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa422.pdf

Another far more detailed study is given in a different Policy Analysis from the same Cato Institute:

Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not ‘Green’

http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-280.html

But perhaps Rod Adams at Atomic Insights summarizes all this far more succinctly at:

Economics of Electrical Energy

http://www.atomicinsights.com/aug95/letter_Aug95.html

But I really like the following essay from web page:

http://www.envirotruth.org/myth9.cfm.

THE ENVIROTRUTH: Environmentalists tell us that we can break the fossil fuel habit by massively expanding our use of "clean" wind and solar power to provide much of Canada's power needs. Unfortunately, this is hopelessly impractical. Both of these energy sources are far too diffuse and intermittent to ever provide more than a small fraction of the energy needs of any major industrialized nation, let alone vast, northern countries like Canada and United States. The problems of diffuseness and intermittency are ones that can never be completely overcome, no matter how much research and development is done in the field.

Regarding wind power, Dr. H.I.H. Saravanamuttoo, Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) Professor Emeritus of mechanical engineering, shows that to provide the electrical power needs of even a small city such as Ottawa, would require hundreds of windmills, each as high as the Peace Tower, located in a windy area. The environmental cost of building these monstrosities would be enormous and they would cause significant visual and noise pollution, not to mention the death of thousands of birds that would collide with the moving blades.

Dr. Howard C. Hayden, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Connecticut laughs at the notion that wind power can ever make a significant contribution to our energy needs, "After all, since wind energy schemes have a thousand-year head start on fossil fuels, there must be some reason why wind makes so little contribution to our energy picture!" Indeed there is - Dr. Hayden explains, "To produce an average of 1000 MW, the power produced by any large conventional (coal, oil, nuclear, gas) power plant, would require about 833 square kilometers of wind turbines. That's the area of a mile-wide swath of land extending from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Multiply that by about 30 and you have California's electricity."

After decades of embracing, supporting and subsidizing windmills, California now has 3,200 wind turbines. However, this made no difference at all to the state's recent energy crisis, as the net contribution of all of these wind turbines was still only about 1.1% of California's electricity. But what about if California had 100 times as many windmills? Could they get 100% of their power from windmills?

"Not a chance," says Dr. Hayden. "Most of the time, the windmills would produce very little power, and, of course, when there's no wind, there's no power at all. At those times, other power sources have to be ready to produce 100% of the power requirements so windmills do not allow any other power plants to be taken out of service. In the several times per year that the winds were strong enough that the windmills could produce their full capacity, the 320,000 hypothetical windmills would produce about five times as much power as California needed at the moment. Under those circumstances, about 80% of them would simply have to be turned off, because at all times the power put into the grid must equal the power consumed."

Dr. Hayden concludes, "In recent years, Denmark has gained a certain amount of fame with its wind turbines. No, they don't get much electricity from them. They sell them to suckers."

The story is similar with solar power. Dr. J. Terry Rogers, Carleton University Professor Emeritus of mechanical engineering, has shown that an efficient solar plant would have to occupy over 600 square kilometres, about the same as that of Metro Toronto, to match the energy provided on a regular basis by the Pickering nuclear station. The construction of such massive solar plants would require millions of tons of concrete, steel and glass, the production of which would produce air pollution equivalent to several years of fossil fuel plant operation. These behemoths would also ruin the local natural environment for wildlife and could even upset local weather patterns due to ground reflectivity changes caused by the mirrors. Not surprisingly, Dr. Rogers maintains, "Solar energy can never be a significant contributor to large-scale energy needs in a major industrial country like Canada."

But what about installing photovoltaic cells on the roofs of residential houses to collect the home's energy needs. Dr. Rogers shows that this too is vastly insufficient. "Assuming that the roof is oriented at the optimum angle for solar energy collection (most would not be), the average electrical energy produced in a day in December for a typical single-family dwelling in the Ottawa area would be about 10 kilowatt-hours, compared to a typical demand for an average December day of about 50 to 60 kilowatt-hours, ignoring space-heating needs," calculates Dr. Rogers. "If space-heating needs are included, the average daily demand in December would be more than 200 kilowatt-hours. Of course, the energy from the solar cells would not be available at night or on cloudy days."

Dr. Rogers concludes, "We should certainly use solar energy in applications where it makes practical and economic sense, such as designing houses to make better use of passive solar energy." But a major transition to solar energy is simply impossible, no matter how much wishful thinking environmentalists engage in.

The same is generally true of all renewables. Consider that in 2001 there was a total global installed capacity of eight gigawatts (GW) of geothermal power, 25 GW of wind power and negligible photovoltaic solar power. Even assuming the wind blows all the time, geothermal, wind and photovoltaic add up to only one quarter of one per cent of worldwide primary energy production. To replace fossil fuels, you would need to increase all these renewables by a staggering 33,000 per cent! Clearly, unless we have a major collapse of civilization, renewables will continue to be a very small player on the global energy scene. Only nuclear power has the potential to replace large quantities of fossil fuel in the foreseeable future and, considering the regulatory hurdles that must be overcome to get nuclear plants into operation, there is no chance that such a solution could be employed before the Kyoto target dates starting in 2008.

Thank God for NEI - at least now WE are winning the battle for environmentally clean electrical energy and the anti-nukes are on the run. Finally at long last! I'll give them more money!

Now for why wind mills won't work for large generation of ANY energy, either stored in hydrogen or distributed as electricity (from http://www.energyadvocate.com/big_trbn.htm):

"...Wind farms in the US produce power at the average rate of about 1.2 watts per square meter (about 5000 watts per acre).  In order to produce an average of 1000 MW --- the power produced by any large conventional (coal, oil nuclear, gas) power plant --- would require about 833 square kilometers (300 square miles) of wind turbines.  That's the area of a mile-wide swath of land extending from San Francisco to Los Angeles.  Multiply that by about 30 and you have California's electricity... "

As to Chernobyl (since Stungun mentioned it), let's look at a few numbers: according to http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/for-the-record/2005/09-14-05-letter-to-editor.pdf:

"...of the more than 100,000 plant workers and personnel involved in responding to the accident, about 50 died as a result of radiation exposure. Among the 4,000 children who developed thyroid cancer as a result of ingesting radioactive iodine from the accident, nine died. The report also estimated that, among the more than 500,000 people who received above-normal radiation doses associated with the accident, about 4,000 people could ultimately die of cancer caused by Chernobyl exposure."

Biomass burning in third world countries KILLS (NOT 'could kill', but 'KILLS') 2 million people EVERY SINGLE YEAR. These are mostly women and children. That's 5749 people every day, or 228 people every hour, or more than 3 people every minute. Every 2 of those 3 is a woman or child. Compare that to the slightly more than 4000 people who supposedly died or will die from the effects of Chernobyl. Using nuclear energy can PREVENT 2 million deaths annually. NOT solar. NOT wind. NOT tidal. NUCLEAR.

Lastly, there is no comparison between a graphite moderated, light water cooled, weapons breeder reactor with no containment and the US's light water cooled reactors or Canada's heavy water reactors. Read what Rod Adams explains as Atomic Energy Insights:

http://www.atomicinsights.com/apr96/Chernobyl.html

http://www.atomicinsights.com/apr96/effects.html

I like best Rod Adams' essay entitled, "Chernobyl Politics and market Share: Possible Motives Behind Emphasis" (which I have reprinted below):

http://www.atomicinsights.com/apr96/Politics.html

It is impossible to separate the reaction to Chernobyl from the long-standing rivalry between the Communist and the Capitalist economic systems. The Chernobyl nuclear station was never viewed as just an electricity generator, it was billed as a technological triumph of Communism. The station was bigger, more rapidly built and supposedly better managed than anything that the west could produce.

When Unit 4 blew up, it became a huge opportunity for those who wanted to point out the weaknesses of the Soviet system. It is endlessly repeated that a Chernobyl style reactor could never be licensed in the west and that the operators of western reactors would never violate written procedures in such a cavalier manner as the Soviet operators did.

According to a 1987 essay by Isaac Asimov the American news media had the full support of the Reagan Administration in their efforts to publicize the effects of the accident. The effort helped to satisfy the short term goal of weakening the strength of what Reagan referred to as "the evil empire."

Western governments were not the only ones to make political use of the accident. Nationalist movements in reluctant member countries of the Soviet Union discovered that the accident provided an effective way of gaining international support for their efforts to gain independence from Moscow. The word "Chernobyl" became a symbol of all that was bad about the centrally controlled economy that imposed its technology on client states like the Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania.

Interestingly enough, the tactic worked. International and internal reaction to the Chernobyl accident is widely credited with contributing to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Another motive for emphasizing the accident has received little attention. With all the talk about national energy policies, renewable energy goals, efficiency and conservation, people often forget that selling fuel is a huge and profitable business.

When nuclear reactors are shut down or when planned reactors are converted to fossil fuel power plants, one predictable result is increased revenues for the company or country that sells replacement fuel. Replacing the output of a single Chernobyl sized unit can require the consumption of several hundred million dollars worth of fossil fuel per year.

Since the price of fossil fuels is determined by supply and demand balances that are maintained by production quotas enforced with varying degrees of success by international cartels and government bodies, increased sales from replacing nuclear output can improve the profitability of all who are involved in the business.

There is little doubt that fossil fuel marketers and their political friends understand this supply and demand relationship. There is also little doubt that there are highly trained public affairs specialists employed by the companies and their industrial associations who know the value of press attention to the perceived weaknesses of the nuclear industry.

It is interesting to note that continued international efforts to shut down the remaining operational reactors at Chernobyl are led by interests that want to sell replacement fuel and by organizations that want to sell power generating equipment. The Ukraine desperately needs the power supplied by the reactors; it does not need to spend money that could be used for other industrial development on replacement power systems and fuel.