Would 10,000 nuclear power stations cook the planet?

Posted on 26 February 2010 by Barry Brook

The following question (or variants thereof) have come up so many times in the comments on this blog that I think the answer deserves a post in its own right:

If we had thousands of nuclear power stations, the heat they produced would cause significant global warming — as such, nuclear power is not a solution to anthropogenic climate change.

Okay, let’s look at a couple of ways to address this problem.

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Prof. David Mackay of the University of Cambridge (and contributor to SCGI), had the following to say in his great book, Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air:

If we got lots and lots of power from nuclear fission or fusion, wouldn’t this contribute to global warming, because of all the extra energy being released into the environment?

That’s a fun question. And because we’ve carefully expressed everything in this book in a single set of units, it’s quite easy to answer.

First, let’s recap the key numbers about global energy balance from p20: the average solar power absorbed by atmosphere, land, and oceans is 238 watts per square metre (W/m2); doubling the atmospheric CO2 concentration would effectively increase the net heating by 4 W/m2.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Nuclear | 46 Comments »

After Copenhagen – James Hansen in Adelaide

Posted on 22 February 2010 by Barry Brook

Dr. James Hansen, one of worlds leading scientists on climate issues, is giving a talk on the 11th March in Adelaide.

The event will be held at the Adelaide Convention Centre (Hall B), 6:30pm for a 7pm start. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear James Hansen share his lifetime of research in climate change and have the opportunity to engage with him through audience discussion. Tickets are $22 AUD, for bookings please visit Environment Institute website.

Thirty years ago, he created one of the world’s first climate models and is sometimes referred to as “father” or “grandfather of global warming”. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

Best known for his research in the field of climatology, a watershed testimonial to the US congress in 1988 on global warming and his advocacy to limit the impacts of climate change, James will be speaking at a public event in Adelaide about his new book “Storms of My Grandchildren“, covering his views on climate change and obtaining real solutions to these problems.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear James Hansen share his lifetime of research on climate change and have the opportunity to engage with him through audience discussion.

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Filed under: Hot News | 35 Comments »

Do climate sceptics and anti-nukes matter? or: How I learned to stop worrying and love energy economics

Posted on 21 February 2010 by Barry Brook

This is a Discussion Thread, because I really want your feedback. But first, some context.

By late 2008, I was pretty stressed about climate change. Working on the science of climate (and other anthropogenic) impacts on natural systems, as I do, I could foresee potentially insurmountable problems for biodiversity and human civilisation this century. A time of consequences. Things looked grim, unless there was a massive change in attitudes towards energy supply and resource sustainability. This was exemplified by my post on the Olduvai Theory and Paul Gilding’s short essay on “The Great Disruption”. I got really annoyed by ‘climate change sceptics’ because I felt they were undermining our collective will (and political capital) to take effective action, using mostly recycled, pseudo-scientific distractions.

Then, I started to study the energy problem in detail. It was a Damascene conversion, as I came to realise, via the analysis of the real-world numbers rather than hype or spin: (a) the inadequacy of renewable energy as a complete (or even majority) solution to achieving low-carbon future (…and therefore avoiding the worst of climate change impacts), and (b) the comprehensive value of nuclear energy in solving the energy and climate challenges the world now faces, in the race to supplant our dependence on fossil fuels.

At this point, mid- to late-2009, I got really annoyed with anti-nuclear protesters, because I felt that, through their outdated ideology and inexcusable hypocrisy,  they were undermining the collective will (and political capital) needed to pursue a future in sustainable atomic energy. What galled me the most about this was that I felt I was now fighting a war on two simultaneous anti-science fronts — against trenchant ‘fossil fuels forever’ interests (who ironically understood the need for energy security and technological prosperity)  on one side, and hardline ‘nuclearphobes’ (who ironically understood the need for action to avoid serious climate change) on the other.

Now though, I’m much more relaxed about it all. In short, I’ve learned to stop worrying about ‘sceptics’ and ‘antis’ and love energy economics (the real-world outcome, not the academic discipline!). Let me explain briefly, prior to further elaboration in the comments section.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Sceptics | 456 Comments »

IFR FaD context – the need for U.S. implementation of the IFR

Posted on 18 February 2010 by Barry Brook

This is a context statement for the IFR FaD series, written by Dr. George S. Stanford. You can download the printable PDF here.

George is a nuclear reactor physicist, part of the team that developed the Integral Fast Reactor. He is now retired from Argonne National Laboratory after a career of experimental work pertaining to power-reactor safety. He is the co-author of Nuclear Shadowboxing: Contemporary Threats from Cold War Weaponry. He is a founding member of the Science Council for Global Initiatives.

ON THE NEED FOR U.S. IMPLEMENTATION OF THE INTEGRAL FAST REACTOR

The IFR ties into a very big picture — international stability, prevention of war, and avoiding “proliferation” (spread) of nuclear weapons.

– The need for energy is the basis of many wars, including the ones we are engaged in right now (Iraq and Afghanistan). If every nation had enough energy to give its people a decent standard of living, that reason for conflict would disappear.

– The only sustainable energy source that can provide the bulk of the energy needed is nuclear power.

– The current need is for more thermal reactors — the kind we now use.

– But for the longer term, to provide the growing amount of energy that will be needed to maintain civilization, the only proven way available today is with fast-reactor technology.

– The most promising fast-reactor type is the IFR – metal-fueled, sodium-cooled, with pyroprocessing to recycle its fuel.

– Nobody knows yet how much IFR plants would cost to build and operate. Without the commercial-scale demo of the IFR, along with rationalization of the licensing process, any claims about costs are simply hand-waving guesses.

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Filed under: IFR FaD, Nuclear | 35 Comments »

IFR FaD 3 – the LWR versus IFR fuel cycle

Posted on 16 February 2010 by Barry Brook

Yoon Chang and Barry Brook discuss the IFR over a good wine, June 2009

The following post in the Integral Fast Reactor Facts and Discussion series centres around two important diagrams prepared by Dr Yoon I. Chang – Distinguished Fellow at Argonne National Laboratories, a key figure in the development of the IFR between 1984 and 1994, and founding member of the Science Council for Global Initiatives. These allow one to easily — visually — see the difference between the uranium fuel cycle of today’s Gen II and Gen III light water reactors, and the alternative mass flow represented by the IFR.

In the previous IFR FaD post, I discussed the amount of uranium fuel an IFR consumes (i.e., 1 tonne of natural or depleted uranium per gigawatt year, which is roughly 160 times more efficient in its use of uranium than a Generation III light water reactor). For another technical explanation, see here.

First, let’s consider the uranium fuel cycle in today Nuclear Light Water Reactors, with or without aqueous plutonium recycle:

To run a 1 GWe reactor for 1 year, about 170 tons of uranium ore is required. After enrichment of U-235 to 3.5 – 5%, this yields about 20 tonnes of material suitable for manufacture into uranium oxide fuel pellets (at ~50,000 MWd/t burnup). The rest is discarded as ‘depleted uranium’, which still contains about 0.25% U-235. After a year of operation, the following ‘waste’ results: 18.73 t of uranium (mostly U-238), 1 t of fission products (the atomic shards left over after heavy fissile isotopes are split), 0.25 t of plutonium (i.e., 250 kg, which has been bred in the reactor as a result of U-238 absorbing a neutron and then undergoing a couple of beta decays) and 0.02 t of minor actinides (mostly americium and curium).

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Filed under: IFR FaD, Nuclear | 67 Comments »

Human consequences of climate change – is private property the solution or part of the problem?

Posted on 12 February 2010 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Dr Paul Babie. Paul is is Associate Dean of Law (Research), Adelaide Law School. He holds a BA in sociology and politics from the University of Calgary, a BThSt from Flinders University, a LLB from the University of Alberta, a LLM from the University of Melbourne, and a DPhil in law from the University of Oxford. He has also worked as a barrister and solicitor.

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I. What Private Property Is

Climate change is private property problem. That may seem a little esoteric—let me explain what I mean. We begin with liberal theory, from which the dominant contemporary concept of private property emerges. Liberalism concerns itself with the establishment and maintenance of a political and legal order which, among other things, secures individual freedom in choosing a ‘life project’—the values and ends of a preferred way of life. In order for life to have meaning, some control over the use of goods and resources is necessary; private property is liberalism’s means of ensuring that individuals enjoy choice over goods and resources so as to allow them to fulfil their life project.

Within this framework, the liberal conception of private property is, in simple terms, a ‘bundle’ of legal relations (or rights) created, conferred and enforced by the state (law), between people in relation to the control of goods and resources (1). At a minimum, these rights typically include use, exclusivity, and disposition. One can use one’s car (or, with few exceptions, any other tangible or intangible good, resource, or item of social wealth), for example, to the exclusion of all others, and may dispose of it. And the holder may exercise these rights in any way they see fit, to suit personal preferences and desires. Or, we might put this in a way that comports more with the language of liberal theory—rights are the shorthand way of saying that individuals enjoy choice about the control and use of goods and resources in accordance with and to give meaning to a chosen life project.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Future | 54 Comments »

Monckton vs Brook debate – the video

Posted on 8 February 2010 by Barry Brook

I’m in Melbourne today with Tom Blees, and tomorrow we’re heading to Sydney to visit ANSTO. Whilst there, Tom will give a talk; I’m delighted to see that some of the regular commenters on BNC will be there (look forward to meeting you John D. Morgan, Ewen Laver and perhaps some others). Details here.

Whilst in Adelaide, Tom Blees gave two talks. His Q&A session at the Royal Institution of Australia was a great success. Head over here to listen to the audio of his chat with Prof. Mike Young, and the subsequent question time. The 2nd event was the ‘nuclear debate’, when Tom and I went head-to-head with Mark Diesendorf (UNSW) and David Noonan (ACF). We (the Environment Institute) recorded this debate in audio format, and Slow TV videoed it (although disappointingly, they missed most of the Q&A, which was where the sparks flew). I’ll post back here when the Slow TV video is up (UPDATE: It’s here).

The nuclear debate was pretty entertaining, although the format really didn’t allow for many important issues to be thrashed out in convincing detail. As others have noted in comments on BNC, Diesendorf took to personally attacking my credentials, which I thought was unprofessional and totally uncalled for. I said as much on the night, but the crowd seemed to be predominantly anti-nuclear, so I guess they were willing to overlook this most dubious of debating ‘tactics’. Still, my opinion of Diesendorf has now hit rock bottom, and I want nothing more to do with him, professionally or otherwise. At least David Noonan stuck to the topic rather than playing the man, even if he basically ignored what Tom and I were saying on the matter of proliferation, availability of weapons-grade plutonium, etc. with IFRs, and instead hammered out his pre-prepared script. Read here for one independent write-up of the debate. If you find others, post links in the comments below.

Then there was the debate I had with Lord Monckton, in Brisbane on Friday 29 January. This was performed in front of 500 suits-and-ties at the Hilton Hotel; needless to say, I was up against a tough crowd! Ian Plimer was a panel member with Monckton, and Graham Readfearn (formerly of the Courier Mail) was my fellow panellist. I took the position of explaining how science deals with uncertainties, and why climate change was a serious risk management challenge (no, I wasn’t arguing for the precautionary principle, despite what Monckton concluded). Readfearn took the line of attacking the credentials of Monckton/Plimer, which was much the same tactic used by Diesendorf in the nuclear debate, and, quite rightly, it didn’t got down well.

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Filed under: Nuclear, Sceptics | 91 Comments »

Burning the biosphere, boverty blues (Part II)

Posted on 4 February 2010 by Barry Brook

This is the second of a two part post by Geoff Russell. Part I sketched the quantitative features of the global fire regime, biomass flows, while this part looks primarily at Africa.

Boverty was defined in the previous post as the human impact of too many bovines overwhelming the local biosphere’s ability to feed them … the bovines are usually cattle and more than a few African countries have boverty induced poverty. Their livestock is a millstone around their necks and helping to keep them poor.

Western aid organisations, particularly those run by BBQ obsessed Australians, seem dominated by people haven’t woken up to the simple fact that the foods they grew up on when the planet had half its present population haven’t been sustainable globally for a very long time. Even in Australia, with its vast landmass and small human population, the production of these foods has driven and continues to drive water shortages, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. Advocacy of such foods in Africa will benefit few and damage prospects of long term food security.

African reforestation

As outlined in the Part I, many grasslands on the planet are not the product of natural forces, but were cleared by people and kept as grasslands for livestock grazing by annual or occasional conflagrations. This is global burning on a massive scale as shown in the NASA firemaps presented in Part I. The continent with the most deliberate human burning is Africa. Over 200 million hectares and 2 billion tonnes of dry matter are burned annually in deliberately lit fires. Almost all of these fires are set by livestock herders to stop grasslands becoming forests. By comparison, burning by shifting cultivators for crops covered an area about 10 percent of this size. A recent study in Nature gives an idea of what could happen if the burning stopped. The reforestation potential is massive.

Consider the above image from the Nature article. The vertically hatched area has an average rainfall over 780mm and would, according to Sankaran and the large number of other authors, revert to some kind of forest if given half a chance. Its status as savanna is anthropogenic and not a product of natural attributes like soil type and climate.

How long can such regrowth go on adding carbon in the form of forests? Most additional carbon would be added during the first 3 decades but forests can go on adding smaller amounts for centuries. It’s worth noting that fire is probably always a suppressor of biomass production. The frequent claim that fire helps regeneration, making it some kind of friend of biodiversity, can be true but is highly misleading. I intend to do a post on this sometime in the future. But despite some plants benefitting from fire, the general impact is to reduce biomass production. Measurements under 2 rainfall regimes and 4 soil types in Africa always recorded higher biomass production in areas not burned.

One way of measuring a country’s fire intensity is to consider the ratio of biomass burned to biomass appropriated. We saw in Part I that Australia burns about 40 percent of what it appropriates. This ratio is the same as in South East Asia, but much higher than the 1 percent of Western Europe.

Both burn ratios pale beside the staggering 150 percent of sub-Saharan Africa where far more is burned than is otherwise appropriated. This is a stunning number. Corey Bradshaw recently wrote a piece on his blog where he summarised a recent paper on Australia’s mammal extinction crisis. His bottom line summary was that we should “Stop burning the shit out of our forests“. In sub-Saharan Africa, they are burning 12 times more biomass from an area 6 times bigger than the 37 million hectares we burn each year. If we are doing as Corey says, then what are the Africans doing? And for what? They reap far less than they burn.

Climate Change

How will global warming compound or alleviate Africa’s problems? The most critical impacts will be changes in rainfall regimes.

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Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Impacts | 28 Comments »

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