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Nuclear & Climate Change

By josh donlan on June 20, 2008.

John McCain announced his new goal of pushing through 45 nuclear reactors by 2030. Whether you are pro- or anti-nuclear (or somewhere in between), 45 by 2030 will be too late for mitigating climate change. This is an important point that is often overlooked. Calls for carbon reductions from the IPCC and others require major actions pre-2030. The bureaucratic hurdles associated with building nuclear reactors in the US takes them off the table in terms of being a tool in the quiver to abate on-coming climate change in the next two decades. Is including nuclear in our long-term energy strategic? A worthy debate. But, it is not a useful tool for avoiding the consequences of on-coming climate change.

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Timelines are critical, for sure. That is true both for those who see nuclear as a distasteful but potential important climate change mitigation technology, as well as those who see it primarily as a means of dealing with ever-more-expensive hydrocarbons.

I'm bullish on renewables, but I don't think they can grow fast enough to meet rising energy needs over the next 40 years or so. If it boils down to choice between nuclear and coal to fill the gap, I'll take nukes.

There is no one technology on the books today that will make everything 'okay.' I think we need to put nuclear energy back on the table as an option.

Are we thinking in terms of the old US/USSR style of more efficient and higher pressure and more dangerous approach to power generation or are we talking about a new generation of fission power genertors using a more passive, less serious accident prone affair similar to what I understand the French and others, and soon the Italians, use?
I think framing the argument as if nothing has changed in the last 30 years regarding design is not going to lead to productive approaches and will merely bring up old fear and the rhetoric of failed positions on all fronts.
I for one, hold suspect the uranium mining and refining practices more than the power-generation aspects, and hope that fission as it's being utilized all over the world will be merely a short duration phase in our scientific civilizations path towards Deuterium-Boron.11 fusion on a wide scale which will revolutionize society's access to energy in much the same way as the industrial and computer revolutions altered society's productivity through the use of machines and our intelligence through the ubiquitous application of micro circuitry and memory.

Ron and Doug, you miss Josh's point I think - that even if we start building nuke plants tomorrow it will be so long before they're online that the climate will be essentially fried at that point. So let's put our effort into developing renewables while figuring ways to use what we already have online more efficiently. Nuclear power may take our descendants out of the solar system or to other equally unadvisable destinations, but it's not likely to get us out of this climate bottleneck in the meanwhile.

Erik,
Orion Grassroots Network

Erik:

It's not that I missed the point about nuclear as a solution for CO2 coming too late to be useful. Rather, I'm not convinced that's true. And even if it is, we still face a coming (global) energy crunch due to rising living standards in the rest of the world. Rising oil and coal costs, a CO2 reduction goal, and increasing energy demands make me think that all options are on the table. And if the *primary* reason it takes 15-20 years to bring a nuclear plant online is due to red-tape, then I think the problem lies with the regulations not the tech - a problem that government can solve.

To take nukes off the table because it takes too long to bring it too market due to regulation in order to favor technologies that may have constraints in scale or aren't even invented yet seems irrational.

Ron, I hear you, but I don't think red tape is the main problem for the long wait. But I think it's moot anyhow. I don't think we can even afford to build these plants - it'd take a huge amount of public money and incentives, and private investors are very wary of nukes. Renewables could be done more cheaply with less carbon.

Erik

I understand the French and others, and soon the Italians, use? I think framing the argument as if nothing has changed in the last 30 years regarding design is not going to lead to productive approaches and will merely bring up old fear and the rhetoric of failed positions on all fronts.