Countering Nuclear Power Propaganda

Rebecca Solnit has an excellent article in Orion on why nuclear power is most definitely not the solution to global warming, despite the positive spin you've probably been hearing.  She begins:

Chances are good, gentle reader, that you are going to have to sit next to someone in the coming year who will assert that nuclear power is the solution to climate change. What will you tell them? There’s so much to say. You could be sitting next to someone who hasn’t really considered the evidence yet. Or you could be sitting next to scientist and Gaia theorist James Lovelock, a supporter of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy™, which quotes him saying, “We have no time to experiment with visionary energy sources; civilisation is in imminent danger and has to use nuclear—the one safe, available, energy source—now or suffer the pain soon to be inflicted by our outraged planet.”

If you sit next to Lovelock, you might start by mentioning that half the farms in this country had windmills before Marie Curie figured out anything about radiation or Lise Meitner surmised that atoms could be split. Wind power is not visionary in the sense of experimental. Neither is solar, which is already widely used. Nor are nukes safe, and they take far too long to build to be considered readily available. Yet Stewart Brand, of Whole Earth Catalog fame, has jumped on the nuclear bandwagon, and so has Greenpeace founding member turned PR flack Patrick Moore. So you must be prepared.

Read the rest: Reasons Not To Glow.

Comments

[RobCra]

Rebecca Solnit's confusion comes from uncritically accepting recycled anti-nuclear misinformation. Notice, if you will, that she doesn't even give references for the propaganda blurbs she includes in her article. And, as usually is the case, she never compares nuclear energy with any of the possible alternatives.

Consider what nuclear gets us:

(1) An electricity source that doesn’t depend on wind or sunlight or the limited amount of energy storage available, and emits virtually no greenhouse gases. It could reduce CO2 emissions by 40%.

(2) An energy-efficient way to produce hydrogen, which could be used directly in automobiles and trucks or added to biofuels to make their production higher by a factor of three. Presently, transportation accounts for about 33% of CO2 emissions; all of that could be eliminated through conservation, electrification, and alternate fuels.

(3) A huge reduction in air pollution, lowered trade deficits, and freedom from Middle-East involvements.

Any clear-headed analysis will show that, if nuclear isn’t given maximum opportunity to grow, we won’t solve this problem.

[Kevin]

RobCra,

Solnit addresses your first point. Saying nuclear emits "virtually no greenhouse gases" is disingenuous because you're ignoring the whole process of construction, mining, etc., no?

I can't answer to (2) because I don't know enough, and (3) seems rather banal/meaningless without specifics to back it up.

Re: whether Solnit is uncritically accepting misinformation, I'll give her the benefit of the doubt until I hear good counter-arguments. My impression is that she's done her research (and I doubt Orion gives space for references nor is it necessary for short pieces like this) as have Helen Caldicott and others.

[Dezakin]

Saying nuclear emits "virtually no greenhouse gases" is no more disingenuous than saying an apartment building emits virtually no greenhouse gases. A complete lifecycle cost analysis of nuclear power shows far less CO2 emissions than any other large scale power source, including hydropower. The mining requires 200 tons per year of natural uranium, much of which can be mined with electric machinery or in situ leeching processes; To compare nuclear power to coal and its 10000 tons per day is disingenous.

[Kevin]

Dezakin,

Re: "A complete lifecycle cost analysis of nuclear power shows far less CO2 emissions than any other large scale power source, including hydropower."

Do you have a reference for that? It's different from what I've read, but I'm willing to learn...

[RobCra]

Kevin, here's a reference for the CO2 data:
http://www.merllc.com/ab4.htm. It's the abstract for a study done, and the there's a link for the full text on that page.

I don't think Ms. Solnit did any research. She just regurgitated anti-nuclear misinformation without checking to see if any of it was true. As a minimum, she'd address the counter-arguments if she'd even taken the effort to find out what they were.

For more information about hydrogen generation, check http://www.energy.gov/news/1545.htm.

So you think "A huge reduction in air pollution, lowered trade deficits, and freedom from Middle-East involvements" is banal and meaningless? Are you really unaware that the air pollution from coal-generated electricity kills thousands of Americans every month? (www.cleartheair.org/fact/mortality/mortalityabt.pdf). Do you think importing oil and gas doesn't aggravate a crushing trade deficit? Do you think military alliances with Arab monarchs don't generate hatred from radicals in those countries? I don't mean this to be sarcastic. I wish you'd outline for me how any of this can be banal and meaningless.

[Kevin]

Rob -- thanks for the pointer. "Banal" was a poor word choice on my part. I just meant the statement was pretty generic without more information.

[Eric McErlain]

For a listing of studies concerning nuclear energy and lifecycle emissions, click the following link:

http://www.nei.org/index.asp?catnum=2&catid=260

For a better perspective on just how much emissions are avoided by the operation of America's 104 nuclear reactors, see the following view graph:

http://bp1.blogger.com/_2bSu8n8ZbFI/Ro5JN9kq87I/AAAAAAAAACc/ke4cwZjIXdg/s1600-h/Slide1.JPG

[cjimenez]

A more or less ton of CO2 is not the problem with nuclear power. The main question is the nuclear waste:

"...every stage of the nuclear fuel cycle is murderously filthy, imparting long-lasting contamination on an epic scale; that a certain degree of radioactive pollution is standard at each of these stages, but the accidents are now so many in number that they have to be factored in as part of the environmental cost; that the plants themselves generate lots of radioactive waste, which we still don’t know what to do with—because the stuff is deadly... anywhere... and almost forever."

How much energy will it cost to manage them... just for a few thousand years? We can't know how much... we can't even know how to do it. When we solve this `minor' problem, perhaps we can think on more nuclear power.