Presented as part of World Environment Day 2012, Environment Institute members Professors Barry Brook and Corey Bradshaw (along with Ben Heard of DecarboniseSA.com and Geoff Russell [regular BNC commenter]) are taking part in an event on nuclear power and environmentalism, held by the Town of Walkerville on Saturday 9th June 2012. We’ll come complete with some entertaining show pieces, including a geiger [...]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Hot News, Nuclear | 5 Comments »
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. ― Lao Tzu The Brave New Climate (BNC) blog has seen many changes in its almost 4 years of existence. I’d like to think of this [...]
Filed under: Future, Hot News | 29 Comments »
Well, I’m just about to hop on a plane to Russia to visit for a week — destination Moscow. This is part of my duties as a member of the International Awards Committee for the Global Energy Prize (see here for details). Whilst in the heart of the former Soviet Union, I’ll hook up with [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear, Uncategorized | 18 Comments »
Guest Post by Ben Heard. Ben is Director of Adelaide-based advisory firm ThinkClimate Consulting, a Masters graduate of Monash University in Corporate Environmental Sustainability, and a member of the TIA Environmental and Sustainability Action Committee. After several years with major consulting firms, Ben founded ThinkClimate and has since assisted a range of government, private and not-for profit organisations to measure, manage [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear, Policy | 54 Comments »
I think The Breakthrough Institute guys, led by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, are doing great working in environmental policy and thought leadership, which is why I was delighted to become a 2012 Senior Fellow. Below I reproduce an important article published today in Slate.com, on Fukushima and its ensuing hyperventilation. Much of the post-accident [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear | 71 Comments »
I have published a new paper in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Policy with the title “Could nuclear fission energy,etc., solve the greenhouse problem? The affirmative case” (currently online first, DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2011.11.041 — it will appear in the print version, with volume/page details, later this year). If you would like a PDF copy of the article, email me [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear, Policy | 55 Comments »
Yesterday the hard copy of the book “Plentiful Energy — The story of the Integral Fast Reactor” (CreateSpace, Dec 2011, 404 pages) arrived in the post. It is wonderful to see it in print, and now available for all to enjoy and absorb. I was honoured to play a small part in its realisation. The [...]
Filed under: Hot News, IFR FaD, Nuclear | 57 Comments »
The Christmas to New Year period is traditionally ‘hibernation mode’ for blogs, when page views and comment counts plummet (my hits have dropped about 70% compared to early December!). I suppose this is a time when people find better things to do than sit in front of a computer screen (family time, good food, beach/snow [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear, Policy, Renewables | 34 Comments »
China is looking seriously at a range of nuclear options. From the commercial side of things, the country is building over 25 light water reactors, including four of the new US-designed AP1000. The Chinese are also pursuing a range of advanced reactor programmes, including gas-cooled pebble-bed modular reactors (the 210 MWe HTR-PM), a thorium-focused research [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear | 56 Comments »
I have a new paper out in the peer-reviewed journal Biological Conservation that will be of interest to BNC readers. It is called “Strange bedfellows? Techno-fixes to solve the big conservation issues in southern Asia“, by Barry W. Brook & Corey J.A. Bradshaw. Here are some details: Abstract The conservation challenges facing mega-biodiverse South and Southeast [...]
Filed under: Future, Hot News, Impacts, Policy | 9 Comments »
I saw two particularly depressing trend lines this week. Both were confronting enough to make me stop, sit back and just contemplate. It was not as though these came as a great surprise — I’d been following these data for years. But for some reason, the seriousness of them really struck home like never before. [...]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Emissions, Future, Hot News, Nuclear | 121 Comments »
In one of the entries on my series of posts on the Integral Fast Reactor, I pointed out that a next-generation nuclear-power-plus-full-fuel-recycling plant would require only 1 tonne of natural uranium fuel (or thorium, or nuclear waste, or depleted uranium) per year, for a 1,000 MWe plant. However, I recently got asked this related question: [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear | 47 Comments »
In early September 2011, I attended the Brisbane Writer’s Festival and participated in a number of events. One was an excellent discussion with Ian Lowe, my co-author on the book “Why vs Why: Nuclear Power“, which unfortunately wasn’t recorded, but was a terrific exchange. The other was a joint session I did with Prof Bryan [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Policy | 8 Comments »
Here are some figures to illustrate the latest global data on global warming. Data are from NCDC and GISS. First, a 12-month running mean of global surface temperature anomalies since 1980 (i.e. for each month, an average is taken of the previous 12-month period – ‘calendar year’ is irrelevant): The IPCC AR4 model results track [...]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Hot News | 51 Comments »
The Open Thread is a general discussion forum, where you can talk about whatever you like — there is nothing ‘off topic’ here — within reason. So get up on your soap box! The standard commenting rules of courtesy apply, and at the very least your chat should relate to the general content of this blog. The sort of things [...]
Filed under: Clim Ch Q&A, Future, Hot News | 593 Comments »
Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy. His previous post on BNC was: Chernobyl and Fukushima – measuring our monsters in the midday sun. The biggest problem for people who support nuclear power as a vital part of avoiding dangerous [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear | 120 Comments »
Hot in the news is that the Fukushima Nuclear crisis has been upgraded from INES 5 to INES 7. Note that this is not due to some sudden escalation of events today (aftershocks etc.), but rather it is based on an assessment of the cumulative magnitude of the events that have occurred at the site over the [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear | 158 Comments »
The nuclear crisis at Fukushima Daiichi has, alas, now evolved into more of a saga. The last seven days of events has been acted out in slow motion compared to the first dramatic week (dating back to almost a month ago), but there continues to be plenty of headaches for TEPCO — and no clear [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear | 164 Comments »
Guest Post by Geoff Russell. Geoff is a mathematician and computer programmer and is a member of Animal Liberation SA. His recently published book is CSIRO Perfidy. For another terrific article by Geoff, related to Fukushima and radiation risk read: Cancer deaths in Japan will be from alcohol and ciggies. ——————————- Measuring our monsters in the midday sun [...]
Filed under: Hot News, Nuclear | 159 Comments »
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis has moved off the front page of most newspapers, but a lot continues to happen, and the situation remains unresolved. Below I offer some personal perspectives on some of the things that have been widely reported over the last few days, and then I conclude with some official updates. Disclaimer: [...]
Filed under: Future, Hot News, Nuclear | 222 Comments »
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