Nuclear century outlook – crystal ball gazing by the WNA

Posted on 1 April 2010 by Barry Brook

I’ve talked recently on BNC about various recent energy plans. which seek to replace fossil fuels with low-carbon alternatives. On the whole, I’ve been left dissatisfied. For instance, there was the Scientific American article ‘A path to sustainable energy by 2030‘ (technology = renewables only, critiqued by me here) and the UK Royal Academy of Engineering study Generating the future: UK energy systems fit for 2050 (technology = renewables + nuclear, critiqued here). Neither pass muster, even when evaluated on general principles.

In this post, I’ll describe a third study. It provides a contrast to the other two, because it doesn’t start with the (preordained) premise that renewables and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage WILL together do the heavy lifting. Instead, it focuses on nuclear power deployment as the primary ‘decarbonisation silver bullet’ (although other techs do play a role — perhaps an overly generous one at that). This energy map was developed by the World Nuclear Association and is called the ‘Nuclear Century Outlook‘ (NCO).

The NCO projects out 90 years, to the year 2100 — I use the term ‘project’ loosely, as really, any forecast that stretches beyond about two decades will axiomatically fall into the ‘crystal ball gazing’ category. But that’s not meant to dismiss the value in such an exercise (or others that attempt to take the long-term view). I just want to make it clear that any such long-term projection represent a ‘storyline’ (sensu IPCC SRES) rather than a ‘prediction’.

The aim of the NCO is to conceptualize nuclear power’s potential worldwide growth in the 21st Century, based on country-by-country low/high build-out assessments. Nationally aggregated data are given in tabular form here, for 2030, 2060 and 2100. The figures in this table are updated as new information comes to hand (for instance China recently upgraded their 2030 forecast from 150 to 200 GWe, and India’s 2060 goal from 350 to 500 GWe). The low/high projections are considered boundaries of a possible domain, with “low reflecting the minimum nuclear capacity expected and the high assuming a full policy commitment to nuclear power“. The forecast includes nations that currently use nuclear power, those which have expressed intention to entering the market (e.g. UAE, Egypt, Poland, Turkey) and potential future entrants (including Australia and Italy). Here is the overall projection: Read more »

Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Scenario Analysis | 460 Comments »

Globally warned – review of Hamilton and Hansen

Posted on 28 March 2010 by Barry Brook

Tony Kevin, author of Crunch Time (refer to this BNC guest post), recently published a review of two climate-change-related books in The Age newspaper (Melbourne’s daily broadsheet). Unfortunately, the review only made the print edition — there is no permanent online record. As such, Tony asked me if I would reproduce them here on BNC, which I’m happy to do so…

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Globally warned, Books, The Age, Saturday 13 March 2010, Section A2, page 22 – Tony Kevin

‘Storms of My Grandchildren: The Truth About the Coming Climate Catastrophe and Our Last Chance To Save Humanity’, by James Hansen, Bloomsbury, $35

‘Requiem for a Species: Why we Resist the Truth about Climate Change’, by Clive Hamilton, Allen and Unwin, $24.99

After 8000 years of quite stable, human-friendly climates, is Earth now re-entering a period of climate disequilibrium, with disruptive effects on human populations and our civilisation itself? Are man-made greenhouse gas emissions since 1750 the main trigger? Can this global warming be checked in time to prevent its worst consequences for our children and grandchildren? How? Is human society up to the challenge?

These large questions engage two new books: one by a leading American climate scientist and the other by a respected Australian ethicist. James Hansen and Clive Hamilton are equally committed to radical climate action, though they have followed very different roads to this conclusion. Both are passionately at odds not only with climate-change denialists and fossil-fuel lobbies, but also with self-serving politicians and environmental organisations that have, in Hamilton’s scathing verdict, been ‘sucked into the political game of influence-peddling and media management, with their leaders resigned to incrementalism’.

Such works of advocacy must be judged by their effectiveness in public education and persuasion. Their literary merit or reading enjoyment are means to this end.

Hansen, a Midwestern scientist who disarmingly admits to lacking tact and guile, and who would rather be doing scientific research, felt forced to take an activist political stand. He writes a folksy but compelling account of the evolution of climate science and its policy impact in the US over the past decade. His unswerving adherence to scientific method and truth gives Storms of My Grandchildren great credibility. His story of his colleagues’ efforts to alert American politicians and society to climate change risk has excitement and pace.

Read more »

Filed under: Climate change Q&A | 25 Comments »

The gentle art of interrogation

Posted on 25 March 2010 by Barry Brook

How do you dig down to the core of a person’s beliefs? Can you really hope to influence ‘the unpersuadables’ (a term recently coined by George Monbiot)? Is it worth arguing science and empirical evidence with ‘non-greenhouse theorists’ (you know, the really way-out-there kooks, who won’t even acknowledge that CO2 traps and re-emits infrared radiation)? Should we bother talking up nuclear engineering triumphs like ‘passive safety’ and ‘total actinide burning’ with anti-nuke zealots (you know, the ones who just know that atomic energy is bad)?

I’ve argued elsewhere that, in the greater (global) scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter that such ideologically straight-jacketed people exist. They always will. Rather, Hansen (and others on this blog) have argued that powerful vested interests — principally those with a major stake in fossil fuels forever — are far more dangerous. I’d have to agree, especially in the way they are so easily able to use the climate change/nuclear ‘antis’ as their pawns — usually, but not always, inadvertent – to slow the transition to real alternatives to coal, gas and oil (I rank them in that order of danger). But overcoming the influence of these powerful interests will need a lot of political currency, and that can only come by influencing enough sensible but weakly informed sections of society to advocate for the sort of pragmatic action that is in their own best, long-term interest.

Okay, so is there a way to get through to these people — or, perhaps more pertinently, to get others to see through them? Yes, I know of at least one method — I’ve tried it many times, and it works. I call it ‘the gentle art of interrogation’ (although I’m hardly the first to use this term).

Read more »

Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Non-greenhouse theorists (‘sceptics’) | 71 Comments »

The problem with ‘Generating the Future: UK energy systems fit for 2050′

Posted on 22 March 2010 by Barry Brook

The previous BNC post, a guest contribution by Douglas Wise, provided an excellent and thorough review of the political and technical issues facing the UK energy scene. Douglas’ post was also timely, because, last week, the esteemed Royal Academy of Engineering released a new 27-page report on this topic. Although useful as a crystal-ball-gazing exercise, the report has some problems that relate strongly to Wise’s points. Here I discuss the major issues I have with the RAE report.

To introduce the report, I’ll first reproduce the World Nuclear News report on it, as it provides an excellent summary of its contents:

UK needs massive energy program, says academy

The UK needs to exploit its renewable energy resources to the maximum to meet future energy demand and reduce carbon emissions – and will still need to build at least 20, and even up to 80, new nuclear or other low-carbon baseload power stations.

According to the Royal Academy of Engineering, an independent body comprising the UK’s most eminent engineers, the country will need to mobilise the biggest peacetime program of investment and social change it has ever seen if it is to meet its energy demands to 2050 while delivering the 80% cut in greenhouse gas emissions required under the 2008 Climate Change Act.

A newly released report by the Academy, Generating the future: UK energy systems fit for 2050 (PDF download), considers four possible scenarios that could achieve the 2050 targets. While emphasising that the scenarios are not meant to be predictions, the Academy warns that there is no single ‘silver bullet’ solution that could deliver the necessary emissions cuts while keeping the country’s lights on.

Each of the four scenarios include reducing energy demand through both increased efficiencies and behavioural change, with much more energy demand than at present being met through the electricity system. All four generally see fossil fuel prioritised for transport use in the future. They also all incorporate the highest levels of renewable energy supplies (other than biomass) that the academy considers could realistically be delivered by 2050. (The amount of biomass use varies in the different scenarios.) Nonetheless, the report still foresees the need for a massive building program for what it calls low-carbon sources – either nuclear power or fossil-fuelled plants with carbon capture and storage (CCS). “The scale of the engineering challenge is massive,” the academy warns.

Read more »

Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 36 Comments »

Britain’s energy future – political and technical considerations

Posted on 19 March 2010 by Barry Brook

Although the BraveNewClimate science blog has an unashamedly Australian flavour and focus, the climate and energy issues covered herein are very much international problems. As such, I’m strongly convinced that the solutions I canvass will be required for most nations this century. In this spirit, I’d like to present a detailed guest post which provides a well-argued perspective on the energy future of another developed nation — Great Britain.

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Britain’s Energy Future

A huge advantage of the proposed solution is that it is the most affordable and sustainable one for addressing peak oil and energy security. The near elimination of fossil fuel emissions is a bonus. Therefore, it should appeal in equal measure to those who are convinced of anthropogenic global warming and those who remain sceptical.

Guest Post by Dr. Douglas Wise. Douglas is a retired Lecturer in Animal Husbandry at the Department of Clinical Veterinary Medicine at Cambridge University. He is a regular and valued commenter on BNC.

Political Considerations

1) Economic growth is dependent upon a readily available supply of affordable energy.

2) Thanks in large part to the actions of its present government, the UK is the most indebted of all developed nations. It is also amongst those with the greatest population density.

3) Repayment of debt is possible only with economic growth and/or a substantial drop in living standards.

4) For the past decade, the UK has failed to make necessary investments in energy infrastructure. Many of our power stations will shortly have to be retired and it may not be possible to replace them in time to prevent economic disruption due to power losses.

5) There is widespread acceptance that oil production has peaked or is about to peak. Simultaneously, its ERoEI (energy return on energy invested) is continually dropping while world demand, particularly from developing countries, is rising.

6) The UK is a net energy importer and its energy security under threat.

7) There is a large and growing consensus among those with expertise in the field that the planet is warming, that the warming is anthropogenic and largely caused by combustion of fossil fuels and that, without drastic reductions in CO2 emissions, a tipping point will be reached this century with an unstoppable and catastrophic acceleration of warming.

8) It follows that the UK must not only replace its retiring power stations, but substantially increase (probably quadruple) electrical power production in order to phase out use of fossil fuels and cope with its increasing population, even having allowed for increasing efficiency in energy use.

9) Britain only emits 2% of global CO2 emissions. In order for the extent and effects of global warming to be mitigated, there has to be a planet-wide approach to the problem.

10) Economic development and human population growth (inevitable till 2050 without accelerated death rates on an unprecedented scale) indicate that, without affordable alternatives, coal use will expand and, with it, increased CO2 emissions. High priced alternatives to fossil fuels will not provide a solution to global warming because they won’t be affordable by developing nations in a timely manner, if at all. One thus needs an emissions-free energy source that can compete with and replace coal as a source of baseload power.

Read more »

Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 58 Comments »

How to get rid of existing coal?

Posted on 15 March 2010 by Barry Brook

If you ask Jim Hansen to name the single most important thing required to avert catastrophic climate change, he’ll say this: don’t burn all the coal (nor unconventional fossil fuels, such as tar sands and oil shales). Ideally, we would also prefer to leave some of the oil, and much of the natural gas, in the ground — or at least use it for other purpose that didn’t require combusting it, such as for chemical feedstocks and lubricants. But the latter is, alas, unlikely.

As described in Storms of Our Grandchildren (and elsewhere), if we accept that all the proven reserves of oil/gas will be burned (i.e., consumed up to the dashed line in the figure above), and yet also required that all coal combustion be phased out by the year 2030, then the level of atmospheric CO2 would likely peak at about 425 ppm. At that point, improved forestry, soil carbon sequestration and potentially geoengineering, could be used to gradually draw CO2 back down to levels of around 350 ppm — a value necessary to restore the Earth’s present energy imbalance of ~0.75 W/m2. In short, we’d have overshoot, but have a decent chance of recovering the climate system to a near-Holocene state before amplifying feedbacks really take hold.

Now, a line of argument that has been developing here on BNC — and one that I have found quite persuasive, and readily espoused in my blogs and talks — is this: If we, as a global society, can develop and deploy electricity generating technologies that are cheaper than coal, yet emit no CO2 when operating, then we can realistically fix the carbon problem in time without the need to impose a carbon price. After all, even if you were unconcerned about carbon pollution, why would you choose to build a coal-fired power station -which has to be fed huge amounts of mined fuel and which produces large amounts of unhealthy fly ash, heavy metals, sulphate and black carbon aerosols etc. — if there was a cheaper alternative? (be it nuclear power, solar thermal, whatever)

Read more »

Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Emissions reduction | 93 Comments »

Hansen: Climate and Energy Leadership

Posted on 11 March 2010 by Barry Brook

As reported earlier on BNC, Dr James Hansen is currently in Australia (I had the pleasure of taking him out to dinner yesterday evening). Tonight he’ll be speaking on climate change and energy solutions at a public event at the Adelaide Convention Centre. There is still time to reserve a ticket and come along — please go here to book.

It’s also good to see a couple of news stories appearing in today’s media, which are worth reading (James Hansen keen on next-generation nuclear power and ‘Father of global warming’ to speak in Adelaide), as well as an opinion editorial published in The Australian, which Jim wrote whilst here in Adelaide (I reproduce it below). This Op Ed has direct bearing on what he’ll be talking about tonight at the event “After Copenhagen: Looking for real solutions“, and relates to material published earlier on BNC on the fee-and-dividend alternative to a cap-and-trade. Its message also ties strongly to a general thrust of this climate-energy blog, i.e., ensuring that nuclear power is available and able to compete fairly with other non-fossil-fuel technologies, on a ‘level playing field’, so as to maximise our chances of achieving effective emissions reductions whilst minimising the cost and time it takes to do this. All the cards on the table, folks.

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Only a carbon tax and nuclear power can save us

AUSTRALIA will suffer if fossil fuel use continues unabated. Climate extremes will increase. Poleward expansion of the subtropics will make Australia often hotter and drier, with stronger droughts and hotter fires, as the jet stream retreats southward.

But when ocean temperature patterns bring rain, the warmer air will dump much more water, causing damaging floods. Storms will become more devastating as the ice sheets on Antarctica and Greenland begin to disintegrate and cool the neighbouring ocean, as I describe in [my book] Storms of My Grandchildren. Ice discharge from Antarctica has already doubled in the past five years.

Science has shown that preservation of stable climate and the remarkable life that our planet harbours require a rapid slowdown of fossil fuel emissions. Atmospheric carbon dioxide, now almost 390 parts per million, must be brought back to 350ppm or less. That is possible, with actions that make sense for other reasons.

But the actions require a change to business-as-usual. Change is opposed by those profiting from our fossil-fuel addiction. Change will happen only with courageous political leadership.

Read more »

Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 89 Comments »

TCASE 8: Estimating EROEI from LCA

Posted on 8 March 2010 by Barry Brook

The concept of energy return on investment (EROI), often called energy returned on energy invested (EROEI), is a simple and familiar one. Here is the short definition, from the Encyclopedia of Earth. To cite:

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Energy return on investment (EROI) is the ratio of the energy delivered by a process to the energy used directly and indirectly in that process.

For example given a process with an EROI of 5, expending 1 unit of energy yields a net energy gain of 4 units. The break-even point happens with an EROI of 1 or a net energy gain of 0.

A common related concept is the energy payback period. Every energy system has initial investments of energy in the construction of facilities. The facility then produced an energy out for a number of years until it reaches the end of its effective lifetime. Along the way, additional energy costs are incurred in the operation and maintenance of the facility, including any self use of energy. The energy payback period is the time it takes a facility “pay back” or produce an amount of energy equivalent to that invested in its start-up.

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Wiki also has a decent article about it, and it’s a source of much discussion on websites like The Oil Drum. In short, a simple concept, but fraught with debate. It is not my intention here to wade into the arguments on EROEI of individual energy sources — that would require many TCASE posts, and even after that, I’d be unlikely to get consensus. But feel free to hammer away on the ins and outs of EROEI in the comments.

What I want to do here is propose a simple method for estimating EREOI based on a life-cycle assessment of greenhouse gas emissions. This requires some assumptions, but is useful, I think, because LCA studies are readily available and widely cited, whereas explicit EREOIs via net energy analysis are harder to find and compare in a consistent way.

There have been many well-researched peer-reviewed studies looking at the life-cycle emissions of different energy technologies, expressed in terms of kilograms of CO2-e/MWh (commonly). For non-fossil fuel energy technologies, this is a useful benchmark for calculating EROEI, because their inputs mostly come from fossil fuels, yet they produce no CO2 when generating. So, let’s consider ‘clean energy’ EROEIs on this basis.

Read more »

Filed under: Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet, TCASE Series | 20 Comments »

Open Thread 3

Posted on 5 March 2010 by Barry Brook

The last Open Thread has just slipped off the BNC front page, so time to launch a new one. 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 up on your soap box!

The standard commenting rules of courtesy apply, and at the very least your chat should relate to the broad theme of the blog (climate change, sustainability, energy, etc.). You can also find this thread by clicking on the Open Thread category on the left sidebar.

Although I don’t want to direct commentary along any particular pathway, here are a few items I’ve read recently that you might find worth discussing:

1. The Bureau of Meteorology has released a Special Climate Statement on the recent exceptional rain and flooding events in central Australia and Queensland. 28 February was the wettest day on record for the Northern Territory while 2 March set a new record for Queensland. Over the 10-day period ending 3 March 2010 an estimated 403 cubic kilometres (403,000 gigalitres) of rainfall fell across the NT and QLD!

Read more »

Filed under: Open Thread | 526 Comments »

Climate debate missing the point

Posted on 3 March 2010 by Barry Brook

The following essay was published today on ABC The Drum’s Unleashed website. It’s a repackaging and honing of some of the key lines of argument that have been developed on BNC by me, my guest posters, and the blog’s many regular commenters. I hope you find it a useful pointer to the way forward — or at least a sounding board off which further ideas can resonate.

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Climate debate missing the point

I’m increasingly of the view that the government, and indeed much of the classic ‘environmental movement’, are badly missing the point on climate change and energy security.

There’s a lot of recent debate about whether an emissions trading system is the right model for putting a price on carbon – or whether a simple tax, or a fee-and-dividend model, would be better. We argue about whether climate change is happening, or if it’s important, or whatever. Blah di blah.

There are also endless back-and-forth arguments about how much we need to cut our emissions by a given date, with no resolution. How many times have you heard an environmentalist cry “We must cut our carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2030 to avoid catastrophic climate change”, only to have a politician or industry spokesperson say “Australia is taking an economically responsible course of action by aiming for a 5 per cent cut below 2000 levels by 2020″. Who’s right? How do you parse this?

The truth is that we can never be sure until after the fact. We can’t be sure how hard we (and the rest of the world) must cut back on carbon emissions, and we don’t know how fast we need to do it.

Current science says that humanity would be unwise to emit more than 1 trillion tonnes of carbon over the entire period of industrial civilisation, yet we’ve already used up about half of that long-term ‘budget’. So, the sooner we start to cut, and the deeper we cut, the more likely humanity is to avoid really serious climate disruption and its many unpleasant consequences.

Further, we really don’t know how fast or hard we CAN cut back, or how much this will cost. Sure, we can look at ways to increase the efficiency of our energy use, and we can consider the current economics of ‘clean’ (low-carbon) sources such as nuclear, wind and solar energy. But are these options scalable? Can we build them fast enough to replace fossil fuels and yet maintain a reliable electricity supply? Will the rest of the world follow our lead, even if we do succeed?

Read more »

Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 68 Comments »

Cheap, green nuclear power?

Posted on 1 March 2010 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Dr John Rolls. John is an adjunct Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Systems & Technology, University of South Australia. He an environmental scientist interested in global food systems and clean energy and is treasurer of the Australian Solar Energy Society (South Australian Branch).

John attended both of Tom Blees’ recent events in Adelaide, and offers this balanced commentary on the issue of how environmental groups should evaluate the role of nuclear power in a clean energy future.

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Tom Blees, author of “Prescription for the Planet”, believes that the way to a low carbon energy future is through a new form of nuclear power – that uses nuclear waste as its fuel.

Tom presented his ideas to the Royal Institute Australia (RiAus) in Adelaide on 3rd February (podcast here) and at a debate on nuclear energy hosted by Zero Carbon Network (ZCN), Sustainable Population Australia (SPA), and Australian Solar Energy Society (AuSES) on 5th February (podcast here, BNC write-up here). Both events were well publicised and delivered to packed houses.

At the RiAus presentation, Blees was interviewed by Professor Mike Young from Adelaide University’s Environment Institute, co-sponsors of the event, where he had more opportunity to describe the background to his ideas.

Blees is not a scientist, but has had a long term interest in energy. He is also concerned about social justice: he was affronted by the idea that the West has developed its wealth using fossil fuels – with the associated environmental consequences – but that people in developing nations would be denied access to cheap energy on account of concerns about greenhouse emissions. While visiting Russia several years ago he learned of US research on Integral Fast Reactors (IFRs), a power source with essentially zero GHG emissions apart from those incurred in constructing the power plant. This started him on a quest to find out everything he could about IFRs. He learned most of what he knows about nuclear power from scientists who had worked on developing IFRs.

The IFR was developed by the US Argonne National Laboratory, commencing in 1964 with construction of the EBR-II, a research breeder reactor with on-site fuel reprocessing. Work on the project was terminated by the Clinton administration in 1994, apparently for political reasons, when the next phase would have been construction of a full-scale demonstration plant.

One important feature of IFRs Tom notes is that they would be fuelled with depleted uranium, plutonium from old nuclear arms and the global accumulation of waste from existing nuclear power plants. A second is that they increase energy recovery from 0.6% of the energy contained in the fuel – typical of existing nuclear energy installations – to 100%. The IFR turns the problem of nuclear waste management into a free source of energy. He estimates that IFRs could meet likely global energy demands for several centuries without the need to mine or process any new uranium.

Read more »

Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy, Renewable planet | 66 Comments »

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.

Read more »

Filed under: Climate change Q&A, Nuclear Energy | 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.

Read more »

Filed under: Hot news in climate science | 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: Non-greenhouse theorists (‘sceptics’), Nuclear Energy | 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.

Read more »

Filed under: IFR Facts and Discussion, Nuclear Energy | 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 Facts and Discussion, Nuclear Energy | 64 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: Climate change Q&A, Future shock | 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: Non-greenhouse theorists (‘sceptics’), Nuclear Energy | 90 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: Climate change Q&A, Ecological impacts, Emissions reduction | 26 Comments »

Alternative to the CPRS (cap-and-trade)

Posted on 31 January 2010 by Barry Brook

Guest Post by Peter Lang. Peter is a retired geologist and engineer with 40 years experience on a wide range of energy projects throughout the world, including managing energy R&D and providing policy advice for government and opposition. His experience includes: coal, oil, gas, hydro, geothermal, nuclear power plants, nuclear waste disposal, and a wide range of energy end use management projects.

Below are suggestions for an alternative policy to the CPRS (the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme – an emission cap-and-trade system proposed by the Australian Labor government). This is not a complete energy policy, but simply some fragments for possible inclusion in a complete policy.

Aim:

1.To reduce Australia’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions consistent with international efforts;

2.To increase, not decrease, Australia’s international competitiveness; this will result in:

a.more jobs and better remuneration for workers

b.more wealth and better standard of living for all; and

c.more revenue to support all the things we want; such as: better Health, Education, infrastructure and fixing our most pressing environmental problems such as the Murray Darling Basin.

Increasing the cost of energy has serious negative consequences for humanity, especially the poorest peoples on the planet. A policy such as the CPRS that sets out to increase electricity costs for little or no overall reduction in world GHG emissions is negligent.

The proposed alternative would help the world by supplying products and services with less embodied emissions than now. For example, the policy proposed here would maintain Australia’s aluminium industry and its jobs and provide the aluminium with less embodied emissions than other countries can. This is just one example to illustrate the benefits of this policy, but an important one.

We do not rule out an ETS or some alternative instrument in the future, but we will not impose an ETS on Australia before the USA and we will not impose an ETS that does not protect Australia’s industry and jobs to a similar extent as the USA’s legislation. (It is not clear that the USA will implement an ETS. There are signs the USA may not take this approach to cutting its GHG emissions).

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Filed under: Emissions reduction, Nuclear Energy | 196 Comments »

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