Kirk Sorensen is a social media god

Kirk Sorensen is becoming well enough know to be beginning to acquire enemies. Not because he goes around hurting people, or because he is mean to puppies or is doing other wicked things. Kirk has things to say about energy and LFTR technology, and he is drawing more and more attention. The latest expression of anti-Kirk excess comes from JO ABBESS of Energy Change for Climate Control.

Kirk Sorensen is apparently a one-man propaganda machine. His personal energy must be immense. He keeps turning up everywhere.
Never since the days of Tesla versus Edison has there been such an energy-related public communications coup.

He is a social media god. He has to be . . . .

GW and AGW skepticism is crumbling by Republicans do not care

During much of the last decade, LLNL researcher and University of California Physics professor Richard Muller has been something of a darling too the right-wing GW deniers. In December 2003 Muller published a column in the MIT's Technology Review, announcing support for the contentions of notorious climate change skeptics Steve McIntyre and Ross McKitrick. In a follow up column, dated October 2004, Muller stated,

Canadian scientists Stephen McIntyre and Ross McKitrick have uncovered a fundamental mathematical flaw in the computer program that was used to produce the hockey stick. In his original publications of the stick, Mann purported to use a standard method known as principal component analysis, or PCA, to find the dominant features in a set of more than 70 different climate records.

But it wasnt so. McIntyre and McKitrick obtained part of the program that Mann used, and they found serious problems. Not only does the program not do conventional PCA, but it handles data normalization in a way that can only be described as mistaken.

Now comes the real shocker. This improper normalization procedure tends to emphasize any data that do have the hockey stick shape, and to suppress all data that do not. To demonstrate this effect, McIntyre and McKitrick created some meaningless test data that had, on average, no trends. This method of generating random data is called Monte Carlo analysis, after the famous casino, and it is widely used in statistical analysis to test procedures. When McIntyre and McKitrick fed these random data into the Mann procedure, out popped a hockey stick shape!

This statement made Muller a hero to the critics of GW. This brought Muller to the attention to the infamous right wing anti-AGW oil billionaires, the Koch Brothers. Muller had supported the argument of Weather forecaster Anthony Watts, that surface temperature data for the United States was an artifact of the location of temperature measuring platforms. Most official weather measuring were located in inappropriate locations where man made structures - buildings, parking lots, etc. - interfered with temperature readings. Watts had under taken a project document the problem by having his fellow GW skeptics document the weather station location problem by photographing the weather stations. These photographs showed that not only some, but most of the weather stations poorly placed, thus seemingly confirming Watts theory. However. in a paper published by the Journal of Geophysical Research, Matthew J. Menne, Claude N. Williams Jr., and Michael A. Palecki amassed evidence that the Watt hypothesis required further testing. They wrote,

Given the now extensive documentation by surfacestations.org [Watts, 2009] that the exposure charac- teristics of many USHCN stations are far from ideal, it is reasonable to question the role that poor exposure may have played in biasing CONUS temperature trends. However, our analysis and the earlier study by Peterson [2006] illustrate the need for data analysis in establishing the role of station exposure characteristics on temperature trends no matter how compelling the circumstantial evidence of bias may be. In other words, photos and site surveys do not preclude the need for data analysis, and concerns over exposure must be eval- uated in light of other changes in observation practice such as new instrumentation.

Thus definitive confirmation would have to come by comparing the data from well chosen location weather stations with data from poorly chosen location data. This project was large and complex, and Muller helped organize it with the help of Koch brother money. The Muller "Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project" was to be a major test of GW theory. If it could demonstrate that the the temperature trends observed in weather station date was an artifact of weather station locations, then a serious blow would be struct against the the GW hypothesis.

Muller's findings did not turn out to be the triumph for the anti-GW crowd that they had expected. Muller told Congress last winter:

We have done an initial study of the station selection issue. Rather than pick stations with long records (as done by the prior groups) we picked stations randomly from the complete set. This approach eliminates station selection bias. Our results are shown in the Figure; we see a global warming trend that is very similar to that previously reported by the other groups

We have also studied station quality. Many US stations have low quality rankings according to a study led by Anthony Watts. However, we find that the warming seen in the "poor" stations is virtually indistinguishable from that seen in the "good" stations.

We are developing statistical methods to address the other potential biases.

By the end of this summer the statistical study was completed, and the findings were such that GWs skeptics were wishing that Richard Muller had never joined theur cause. The problem was, as Muller explained to Congress,

poor station quality

although

poor station quality might affect absolute temperature, it does not appear to affect trends, and for global warming estimates, the trend is what is important

Our key caveat is that our results are preliminary and have not yet been published in a peer reviewed journal. We have begun that process of submitting a paper to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, and we are preparing several additional papers for publication elsewhere.

In his congressional testimony, Muller paid tribute to many of the leaders of the anti-AGW movement, even though he rejected their contention:

Without the efforts of Anthony Watts and his team, we would have only a series of anecdotal images of poor temperature stations, and we would not be able to evaluate the integrity of the data

This is a case in which scientists receiving no government funding did work crucial to understanding climate change. Similarly for the work done by Steve McIntyre. Their "amateur" science is not amateur in quality; it is true science, conducted with integrity and high standards.

What ever hopes the anti-GW crowd took from Muller's remarks, they were dashed when he recently published the study's conclusions in the Wall Street Journal.

Over the last two years, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project has looked deeply at all the issues raised above. I chaired our group, which just submitted four detailed papers on our results to peer-reviewed journals. We have now posted these papers online at www.BerkeleyEarth.org to solicit even more scrutiny.

Our work covers only land temperature—not the oceans—but that's where warming appears to be the greatest. Robert Rohde, our chief scientist, obtained more than 1.6 billion measurements from more than 39,000 temperature stations around the world. Many of the records were short in duration, and to use them Mr. Rohde and a team of esteemed scientists and statisticians developed a new analytical approach that let us incorporate fragments of records. By using data from virtually all the available stations, we avoided data-selection bias. Rather than try to correct for the discontinuities in the records, we simply sliced the records where the data cut off, thereby creating two records from one.

We discovered that about one-third of the world's temperature stations have recorded cooling temperatures, and about two-thirds have recorded warming. The two-to-one ratio reflects global warming. The changes at the locations that showed warming were typically between 1-2ºC, much greater than the IPCC's average of 0.64ºC.

To study urban-heating bias in temperature records, we used satellite determinations that subdivided the world into urban and rural areas. We then conducted a temperature analysis based solely on "very rural" locations, distant from urban ones. The result showed a temperature increase similar to that found by other groups. Only 0.5% of the globe is urbanized, so it makes sense that even a 2ºC rise in urban regions would contribute negligibly to the global average.

What about poor station quality? Again, our statistical methods allowed us to analyze the U.S. temperature record separately for stations with good or acceptable rankings, and those with poor rankings (the U.S. is the only place in the world that ranks its temperature stations). Remarkably, the poorly ranked stations showed no greater temperature increases than the better ones. The mostly likely explanation is that while low-quality stations may give incorrect absolute temperatures, they still accurately track temperature changes.

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

Over the last two years, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project has looked deeply at all the issues raised above. I chaired our group, which just submitted four detailed papers on our results to peer-reviewed journals. We have now posted these papers online at www.BerkeleyEarth.org to solicit even more scrutiny.

Our work covers only land temperature—not the oceans—but that's where warming appears to be the greatest. Robert Rohde, our chief scientist, obtained more than 1.6 billion measurements from more than 39,000 temperature stations around the world. Many of the records were short in duration, and to use them Mr. Rohde and a team of esteemed scientists and statisticians developed a new analytical approach that let us incorporate fragments of records. By using data from virtually all the available stations, we avoided data-selection bias. Rather than try to correct for the discontinuities in the records, we simply sliced the records where the data cut off, thereby creating two records from one.

We discovered that about one-third of the world's temperature stations have recorded cooling temperatures, and about two-thirds have recorded warming. The two-to-one ratio reflects global warming. The changes at the locations that showed warming were typically between 1-2ºC, much greater than the IPCC's average of 0.64ºC.

To study urban-heating bias in temperature records, we used satellite determinations that subdivided the world into urban and rural areas. We then conducted a temperature analysis based solely on "very rural" locations, distant from urban ones. The result showed a temperature increase similar to that found by other groups. Only 0.5% of the globe is urbanized, so it makes sense that even a 2ºC rise in urban regions would contribute negligibly to the global average.

What about poor station quality? Again, our statistical methods allowed us to analyze the U.S. temperature record separately for stations with good or acceptable rankings, and those with poor rankings (the U.S. is the only place in the world that ranks its temperature stations). Remarkably, the poorly ranked stations showed no greater temperature increases than the better ones. The mostly likely explanation is that while low-quality stations may give incorrect absolute temperatures, they still accurately track temperature changes.

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

Global warming is real.

So much for GW evidence being a scientific hoax. So much GW science being careless.

The war over global warming is over, although the war over AGW is not over. Many of the more sophisticated AGW skeptics have acknowledged that global warming is real, but continue to argue that human CO2 emissions are not its cause. The case for such views is crumbling, however. The sophisticated critics point to the work of two climate scientists, Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen to support their beliefs. But these two researchers are not without their own critics, and indeed their conclusions have received troubling questions. Recently as I pointed out:

The work of Climate Change denier Roy Spencer has recently been demonstrated to contain large scientific errors. (see here, here, here, here, and here, here, and here), while a recent paper by Texas A&'M professor Andrew Dessler offers a devastating critique to the skeptical claims of both Spencer and MIT Professor Richard Lindzen. Needless to say the Climate change skeptics are not folding their tents yet, but their days are numbers.

The argument that AGW is a Liberal hoax is in shambles, while the case is growing that AGW skepticism is growing steadily weaker. What has not yet surfaced, although it is obvious, is the argument that GW and AGW skepticism has been a Libertarian/Conservative hoax all along. Almost without exception AGW and GW skeptics identify themselves with Conservative and Libertarian political causes. Right wing Talk Radio figures have fanatically backed the Global Warming hoax line, while Fox News, notorious for its lies about about all sorts of issues, has repeatedly parroted the anti-GW, anti-AGW lines. AGW skeptics have been virtually lionized by Fox News. While right-wing Republican Presidential candidates Rick Perry, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Rick Santorium, all reject GW or AGW out of hand.

Michele Bachmann demonstrated her profound understanding of science,

Carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas; it is a harmless gas ... And yet we're being told that we have to reduce this natural substance and reduce the American standard of living to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in the Earth.

Herman Cain believes that he is qualified to determin what real science is and what its conclusions are,

I don't believe ... global warming is real. Do we have climate change? Yes. Is it a crisis? No. ... Because the science, the real science, doesn't say that we have any major crisis or threat when it comes to climate change.

While Rick perry believes that scientists are manipulating data,

I think there are a substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data so that they will have dollars rolling in to their projects. I think we're seeing it almost weekly or even daily, scientists who are coming forward and questioning the original idea that man-made global warming is what is causing the climate to change.

If you want' to believe Perry's statement about scientists, don't ask him about his undergraduate science grades. Clearly many Republicans Presidential candidates support the right-wing anti-science hoax.

Is the nuclear renaissance over?

Critics of nuclear power often back their arguments with rhetorical flourishes, but frequently seem to misunderstand or misrepresent the facts they assert. A well known energy expert put in a guest appearance on Rod Adams' Atomic Insights blog this week. The expert, a long time critic of nuclear energy, offered a blog post long analysis of the market problems of the reactor industry. The basis argument is not new, and indeed it is full of ambiguities.

Nuclear power continues to die of an incurable attack of market forces. A huge and capable propaganda campaign by the industry and its political allies is spinning an illusion of a renaissance that deceives credulous journalists but not hard-nosed investors.

The World Nuclear Association has kept track of new reactor construction, planning and development since January 2007. This information is backed by country by country WNA reports on the development of local nuclear industries. If our nuclear critic is correct, we should find evidence of market declines over the last 5 years in WNA reports.

In fact, globally in the post Fukushima era, planning for and construction of power reactors continues. According to the World Nuclear Association there are currently 432 operational power generating reactors in the world. This number reflects a decline of 11 in the number of currently operational reactors world wide since the Fukushima accident in March 2011. However the number of reactors under construction or on order or planned has not declined since the Fukushima accidents in March of this year. In addition the number of reactors under consideration has actually risen from 324 in March, 2011 to 357 in the October 20, 2011 report.

Most of the global decline in reactor numbers occurred in a few countries. Germany had 17 operational reactors in March of 2011 while Japan reportedly had something like 55 operational reactors. This month Germany is credited by the WNA with 9 operational reactors while Japan is credited with 51. In neither country was the reactor shutdown due to market forces. In Germany the cause of the reactor shutdown was political, while in Japan the cause of the shutdown was a natural disaster. The rise in the number of new reactors in the early phases of consideration since March, suggests that the market is still very interested in nuclear power.

Thus the stort term picture of the nuclear market does not support our expert's picture of a dying nuclear industry, but what of the longer term?

In addition there are 63 reactors under construction, and another 153 reactors in the planning stage. Construction of another 357 reactors is under consideration. These are facts. The number of reactors under currentlconstruction equals a little under 15% of the existing global reactor fleet , while the number of reactors in the planning stage is 35% of the global reactor fleet. These facts would point to exactly the opposite of what the nuclear power critic claims.

A five year perspective offers even stronger evidence that the nuclear market is flourishing. In its January 2007 report the WNA stated that 28 reactors were under construction and 64 reactors were being planned. Thus the number of reactors being built world wide increased by 225% over the last 5 years, while the number of reactors being planned increased from 64 to 153 an increase of 239%. The number of new reactors under consideration increased from the January 2007 figure of 158 with a capacity of 124 GWe to the October 2011 figure of 357 plants with a total capacity of 408 GWe. This represents an increase of capacity under consideration of 329%.

Are these figures spinn by the nuclear industry, intended to fool credulous journalists as our expert suggests? First I should note that I did not find these figures in a press release designed to prop up sagging investor confidence in a nuclear renaissance, they are intended to reflect the future markets of the Uranium mining industry, by offering a basis for estimating future uranium demand. Uranium mining companies make money by selling uranium, in order to make more money, they need to build more uranium mines. In order to make decisions about building new uranium mines, uranium mining companies need accurat information about future uranium demand. The WNA calls its reactor building estimates the World Nuclear Power Reactors & Uranium Requirements. The introductory paragraph to the nuclear power estimates states:

This table includes only those future reactors envisaged in specific plans and proposals and expected to be operating by 2030. Longer-range estimates based on national strategies, capabilities and needs may be found in the WNA Nuclear Century Outlook. The WNA country papers linked to this table cover both areas: near-term developments and the prospective long-term role for nuclear power in national energy policies.

Thus we have the WNA building country by country pictures of anticipated world wide nuclear industry developments over the next 20 years. These research papers appear to be written by and for nuclear industry professionals. They are almost never read by journalists and certainly not read by anti-nuclear experts who are notorious for picking out only papers that are favorable to their cause to read.

The WNA is far more than being a propaganda organization as our critic of nuclear power claims. I would not deny that the WNA engages in propaganda exercises for the nuclear industry, but its propaganda is mainly intended to counter disinformation and misinformation from the foes of nuclear power. The WNA's primary propaganda method appears to be the accurate reporting of facts. In addition to its propaganda function, the WNA collects information that is primarily of interest to its members.

Confirmation of the validity of the WNA reports comes from the International Atomic Energy Agency. The latest IAEA report, published on October 15, 2011 states

Current status of the nuclear industry:

* 433 nuclear power reactors in operation with a total net installed capacity of 366.555 GW(e)
* 5 nuclear power reactors in long term shutdown
* 65 nuclear power reactors under construction

The claim that

Nuclear power continues to die of an incurable attack of market forces

appears to be at best very inaccurate, and at worst downright dishonest. The evidence points to the opposite. The number of nuclear power plants under construction has more than doubled during the last 5 years. The number of nuclear power plants on order or being planned has more than doubled, while the generation capacity of new nuclear plants under consideration has more than tripled. These numbers suggest that far from dying, the global nuclear industry is flourishing, and those who suggest otherwise are either poorly informed, deluded, or deliberately lying.

Anti-science disinformation and politics

The conclusions of good scientists who properly use the scientific method are often challenged for religious or ideological reasons. Although religion is often depicted as the major enemy of science, the Soviet Union proved that politically motivated wars against science are both possible and can lead to ideologically motivated wars on truth. The same of Trofim Lysenko is infamous in science for the purges of scientists his weird ideas lead to. Trofim Lysenko was a Soviet agronomist who believed that characteristics which organisms acquire can be inherited, contrary to all 20th century genetic research. Lysenko argued that if crops were

Stalin bought into Lysenko wacky ideas, and made Lysenkoism a part of the Soviet ideology. During the Stalinist purges of the 193o's, mainstream Soviet geneticist were purged for not adhering to Lysenko ideology. Geneticist were fired from academic positions, arrested and even killed for their refusal to bow to the official Soviet scientific ideology. Later the purged geneticist were posthumously rehabilitated, but this did not undo the damage that was done to Soviet science and to Soviet agriculture.

Unfortunately Lysenkoism was not the last anti-scientific idea that was to become popular. Last week the Houston Chronicle revealed that the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality had censored a scientific paper on environmental issues in Galveston Bay written by John Anderson of Rice University. Portions of a chapter in The State of the Bay a periodical report published by the the Galveston Bay Estuary Program of the state of Texas. References to sea level rise, man caused environmental changes and global warming were censored out of the report by the The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality a body appointed by the fanatic anti-science Governor of Texas, Rick Perry. Anderson has withdrawn his chapter from the report, and several other scientists who were involved in the project have asked that their name be withdrawn from mention by the report out of fear that any association with such an anti-science travesty would harm their reputations as scientists.

Rick Perry is not the only American Governor to take anti-scientific stances. The current governors of New York believe that they are far better informed than research scientists about the safety of reactors. Not long ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, asked for a meeting with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to discuss earthquake dangers at New York's Indian Point Nuclear Plant. Earth Quake Dangers at a New York nuclear power plant?

You have got to be kidding. John Wheeler of This Week in Nuclear tells the story. Cuomo found the story in an article by Bill Dedman of MSNBC. Dedman claimed that

The reactor with the highest risk rating is 24 miles north of New York City, in the village of Buchanan, N.Y., at the Indian Point Energy Center. There, on the east bank of the Hudson, Indian Point nuclear reactor No. 3 has the highest risk of earthquake damage in the country, according to new NRC risk estimates provided to msnbc.com.

Dedman's report was allegedly based on an NRC document, IMPLICATIONS OF UPDATED PROBABILISTIC SEISMIC HAZARD ESTIMATES IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN UNITED STATES ON EXISTING PLANTS. DaileyTECH noted numerous flaws in the Dedman story.
Dedman claimed,

It turns out that the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission has calculated the odds of an earthquake causing catastrophic failure to a nuclear plant here. Each year, at the typical nuclear reactor in the U.S., there's a 1 in 74,176 chance that the core could be damaged by an earthquake, exposing the public to radiation. No tsunami required. That's 10 times more likely than you winning $10,000 by buying a ticket in the Powerball multistate lottery, where the chance is 1 in 723,145.

DailyTECH commented,

the report says that the risk is of "the core being damaged by an earthquake, exposing the public to radiation". But as we mentioned earlier, that's not what the report says. The report references the risk of core damage, which does not estimate the actual probability of a "large early release" of radiation at all. As the report says, in the case of core damage, such a release would be a "possibility", but given additional containment measures, would likely be a far lower probability than the cored damage frequency (CDF) estimate.

In other words, the report does not predict the risk of the public being exposed to radiation directly at all.

DailyTECH adds,

the most "at risk" plant -- New York's Indian Point 3 plant -- has a 1 in 10,000 annual risk of core damage if an ultra-powerful 10 hz earthquake were to strike (thus this is dubbed the "maximum risk" or "weakest link" model). The actual risk is far lower. The report gives what is likely the most accurate estimate in the form of a weighted average. For example for Indian Point 3, the risk is 1 in 670,000 per year.

Clearly then Dedman has misrepresented the NRC report. Why would he do that? As DailyTECH states,

The net result is that the U.S. public is becoming mistrusting and fearful of nuclear power. . . .

This could have a tremendous deleterious effect on the energy future and security of the U.S. Nuclear power in the U.S. is arguably the cheapest and most tested form of alternative energy. The U.S. contains many rich deposits of uranium and other fissile isotopes -- enough to drastically reduce the reliance of the U.S. on fossil fuels from volatile foreign sources.

So Dedman is engaged in anti-nuclear propaganda, with the apparent intention of increasing public mistrust of nuclear power.

Daily Tech contacted Dedman in order to request an correction of his errors. For example, the communication to Dedman noted,

the report does not talk about the risk of public exposure to radiation,

Dedman responded,

the article is about core damage, which the NRC says would release radiation. You've decided that I must have been talking about something else, which I wasn't, and now you're saying, why aren't about that something else...

DailyTECH commented,

That is a clear mistake -- intentional, or unintentional.

The DailyTECH editorial when after Dedman with the Journalistic equivalent of an Iron club,

Engaging in the due diligence that Mr. Dedman neglected to we discussed Mr. Dedman's comments and our analysis with government authorities at the U.S. regulatory commission. They told me they never told him that. . . .

That was only the first of several falsehoods and factual errors in Mr. Dedman's correspondence and work that we were able to definitively verify.

States a separate NRC team member, "There were numerous inaccuracies in that story."

Mr. Dedman writes us stating:

You're cherry picking. You've decided that the weighted average is the right column to use. Based on what? The NRC staff prefers the column that we've used, the "weakest link." That's the number it sent us, when it sent us one number for each plant. And as the report explains, the NRC has no basis on which to weight the averages, so it says a weighted average wouldn't be meaningful.

There are three separate falsehoods in this statement. As you will see, the NRC told Mr. Dedman nothing of the sort and he's clear mislead me, as he's done to his readers.

We write him:

Do you have a contact at the NRC who can substantiate your claims? How can you weight data without having a factor to do so? If you get me this information I can [edit my article].

Virtually always weighted data is what you would use in a case like this, as the data is typically weighted by the frequency of occurrence of the event (e.g. a probability of the probability). It's possible your correct, that would just be a bit unusual.

Mr. Dedman refused to provide us the identity of his phantom "contact" at the NRC, so we contacted them ourselves.

We asked them if they told Mr. Dedman to use this figure or told him that the weighted average was non-meaningful.

We inquire:

Did an NRC spokesperson tell MSNBC's Bill Dedman that the weighted risk was invalid and to use the weakest link model?

They respond:

No.

And they add:

The weighted average is not invalid (see Answer 5 below). All of the values in Appendix D were developed by NRC staff. Table D-1 in Appendix D uses the (2008) US Geological Survey (USGS) seismic source model, but the Seismic Core Damage Frequency results were developed by US NRC staff. The USGS seismic source model is the same one used to develop the USGS National Seismic Hazard Maps.

Tables D-1 through D-3 in Appendix D of the US NRC study show the “simple” average of the four spectral frequencies (1, Hz, 5 Hz, 10 Hz, peak ground acceleration (PGA)), the “IPEEE weighted” average and the “weakest link” model. These different averaging approaches are explained in Appendix A.3 (simple average and IPEEE weighted average) and Appendix A.4 (weakest link model). The weighted average uses a combination of the three spectral frequencies (1, 5, and 10 Hz) at which most important structures, systems, and components of nuclear power plants will resonate. The weakest link is the largest SCDF value from among the four spectral frequencies noted above.

Most nuclear power plant structures, systems, and components resonate at frequencies between 1 and 10 Hz, so there are different approaches to averaging the Seismic Core Damage Frequency (SCDF) values. By using multiple approaches, the NRC staff gains a better understanding of the uncertainties involved in the assessments.

In other words, each model is important to gaining a full understanding of various possible scenarios and Mr. Dedman erroneously selected the most sensational model and then falsely claimed the NRC told him to.

The NRC adds:

The weakest link model is a method for evaluating the importance of different frequencies of ground vibration to the overall plant performance. The model and its details are not integral to understanding the fundamental conclusions of the study.

That conclusion? The nation is quite safe (as we write in our piece).

[MSNBC and its employee Mr. Dedman have not corrected this error in their story, despite knowing about it, at the time of this article's publication]

It is quite clear then that as far as his reputation is concerned Mr. Dedman, a Pulitzer Prize winning Journalist has gotten himself into deep shit. How is that possible?

Googling Mr. Dedman's name produces this astonishing hit:

Investigative reporter Bill Dedman of msnbc.com is always looking for good story ideas and documents. He has written for msnbc.com about uninspected bridges, problems with firefighter safety equipment, a reclusive heiress and her money men, the Obama administration's visitor logs, treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, strategies for discouraging school shootings, and journalists making campaign contributions.

Write my story for me, Mr. Dedman seems to be saying. We have to ask then, who might have supplied Bill Dedman with he idea for this story? Who would place a story which DailyTECH describes as containing numerous inaccuracies, with Bill Dedman? Who is interested in creating what DailyTECH describes as contributing to public mistrust of nuclear power? Who is capable of such deception? Well I suspect my readers have some ideas. If the question shifts to who benefits, quite obviously almost anyone in the fossil fuel industry does, but not anyone in the fossil fuel industry is capable of such deception. But we know what people and what organizations in the fossil fuel industry have a track record for financing lies and disinformation about climate change, and the same people and organizations quite obviously would have an interest in spreading lies and disinformation about nuclear power.

Last week I spent two hours with a distinguished reactor scientist, Dr. Sherrell Green who recently retired after a 33 year career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dr. Greene has spent much time during his career researching reactor safety. In addition he was an inheritor of the ORNL nuclear safety tradition that goes back to the Manhattan Project days. As my readers are aware ORNL's commitment to nuclear safety was such that Alvin Weinberg refused to back down over it, when pressured by a Democratic Congressman. Weinberg was fired for bucking the Democratic party line over nuclear safety during the early 1970's., When it comes to knowledge of nuclear safety issues, I would trust Sherrell Greene. Sherrell was till recently ORNL's Director for Nuclear Technology Programs. I would trust what Dr. Greene says about Nuclear safety. I would not trust Dedman any further than I can throw him, because he is not a scientists, and because nothing in his experience suggests that he knows anything about nuclear safety. If Dedman knew anything about science writing, he would find sources like Dr. Greene, and report their opinions vervatum.

One of the greatest dangers of science journalists is misrepresenting what scientists say. My own investigation of scientific controversies suggests that even scientists cannot always be trusted to accurately describe what other scientists say, It is even more likely that a Journalist who knows nothing about the scientific issues he writes about, will make mistakes when he paraphrases scientists. Credibility depends on the use of credible sources. Mr Dedman does not seem to be aware of the fundamental realities of credible science writing.

So we have a Journalist who writes a poorly documented report which the NRC and science writers says say is inaccurate, and a state governor who reads the report and uses it to serve as a basis for policy. After reading Mr. Dedman's MSNBC article, Governor Cuomo lept into action. Claiming the authority of an NRC report, Cuomo cvalled on the NRC to shutdown of the Indian Point #3 reactor. In fact Cuomo was relying on Dedman's report which the NRC had already branded as inaccurate. Did Cuomo care about the NRC's actual views? Certainly not. He was only looking for excuses that supported his campaign against nuclear science. Cuomo like Rick Perry and Joseph Stalin knows that one way to gain political support is to attack or ignore the findings of science.

More on Underground Reactor Advantages

My recent post on underground reactor housing (also posted by the Energy Collective) has brought me communications from Carl W. Myers of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Myers called my attention to a paper that he and James M. Mahar of James M. Mahar of Idaho State University presented last month to a Small Modular Reactors Symposium (SMR2011) in Washington D.C. The Title of the Myers-Mahar paper is UNDERGROUND SITING OF SMALL MODULAR REACTORS IN BEDROCK: RATIONALE, CONCEPTS, AND APPLICATIONS. This paper will be published as part the Conference Proceedings, but unfortunately that will not be on the Internet.

The Myers-Mahar paper offers important insights into the future of nuclear power station siting, nuclear cost reduction and nuclear safety. The "Underground Siting" abstract reads,

Small modular reactors (SMRs) sited 100 to 300 meters deep in underground chambers constructed in bedrock having favorable geotechnical properties could be both cost effective and provide superior levels of safety and physical security. The bedrock adjacent to and enclosing the reactor chamber would become the functional equivalent of a conventional containment structure, but one with increased margins of safety for design- basis accidents, reduced risks for beyond-design-basis accidents, and a high level of inherent physical protection against external threats. In addition, seismic safety could be enhanced at lower cost because seismic waves are generally attenuated with depth in bedrock. Nominal steel and concrete around the reactor would be required as would sealing of tunnels and other penetrations into the reactor chamber. Nonetheless, the net result in capital cost savings could potentially more than offset the cost of underground excavation. For a hypothetical granitic bedrock site with SMRs at a nominal depth of 100 meters, preliminary excavation cost estimates for single- and four-unit installations constructed by drill-and-blast range from around $90 million to $45 million per reactor, respectively, and for a twelve-unit installation constructed by tunnel boring machine from $25 to $15 million per reactor. Specialized applications for bedrock-sited SMRs include collocation at underground hydropower stations, test and demonstration facility for prototype SMR designs, and deployments in regions at risk of terrorist or military attack.

One of the long term objections to underground reactor siting has been that it would increases reactor siting and housing costs, but advances in excavation technology and Alvin Weinberg's idea of building large numbers of multi reactor parks could potentially lower nuclear costs, while dramatically increasing nuclear safety. The Myers-Mahar paper makes clear exactly how dramatic the cost savings of underground reactor housing might turn out to be. They argue,

1) Reduce per-reactor capital cost of underground construction by siting multiple reactors in a single location, thereby allowing the cost of the common access shafts and tunnels to be shared among more than one reactor.

2) Reduce capital cost by restricting siting to those locations in bedrock of such high quality that excavated openings would be largely self-supporting and the rock overlying and enclosing the reactor chamber would act as a low-cost, passive, natural containment structure---and in addition would attenuate seismic motion and protect against aircraft impact, bombs and related threats.

3) Reduce capital cost and shorten the schedule for underground construction by taking advantage of advances in equipment, technology, and techniques for underground construction that have occurred since the 1970s such as underground excavation using hard-rock tunnel boring machines.

4) Reduce life-cycle cost by using in-place decommissioning.

In addition,

5) Collocate waste management and other fuel cycle facilities underground in proximity to the reactors as a means to both reduce waste management cost and provide a new concept for nuclear waste management.

Myers and Mahar reference a paper. "Cost Advantages of Large Underground Nuclear Parks," by K.M. Giraud, J.F. Junze, and J.M. Mahar, to argue that a 10% reduction of electrical generation costs from large single unit reactors is possible through underground siting with an even larger savings possible through multi-unit nuclear parks.

Public concerns about nuclear safety may have their irrational components, but nuclear power will not be acceptable until the public is sure that nuclear power plants do not pose a threat to their safety and well being. Once the public feels confident about nuclear safety, the case against nuclear power will weaken significantly. It is not enough to build safer reactors, an accomplishment which reactor manufactures have already accomplished, the public must be assured by the designed in safety improvements. Underground reactor siting hold the potential of boosting public confidence in reactor safety, to the point where opposition to nuclear power is no longer acceptable. If underground housing of power reactors increases confidence in nuclear safety, while lowering nuclear housing costs, then we will improve the likelihood of a nuclear powered future.

Petitions to the White House

I noted a few days ago Brian Wang's petition to the White House in support of nuclear education. That petition still needs 4505 signatures. In addition to Brian's petition I want to call your attention to the White House petition calling for "Provide Funding for Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) Research and Development for Energy Independence." This Petition requires 25,000 signatures and states,

Thorium is nearly a Perfect Fuel. Fund it's development.

It has been presented to Google and TED.com. Videos below.

Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) has been proven by previous US research and operated for nearly 5 years (1965-1969).

LFTR is PASSIVELY safe. During a loss of power or overheating, nuclear fuel is separated (passively) into non-critical holding tanks. It runs at low pressure compared to existing reactors.

LFTR is CHEAP, proliferation adverse, and domestic.

Thorium has proven reserves of well over 1000 years of current world usage.

Thorium could produce power for the entire world at levels far beyond current production.

Imagine a world with nearly infinite power.

www.energyfromthorium.com/

http://flibe-energy.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWUeBSoEnRk

"Help us take this Message Forward": Kirk Sorensen Invades the United Kingdom

About five and a half years ago, a young NASA engineer, Kirk Sorensen began a new blog, Energy from Thorium. It was not obvious at the time, but Kirk was not just an aero-space engineer, but a revolutionary who advocated am almost unknown approach to the way society could produce energy in the future. A Wired Magazine story told how kirk made his discovery.

(I)n 2000, Sorensen was just 25, engaged to be married and thrilled to be employed at his first serious job as a real aerospace engineer . . .

His job was with NASA and he had been assigned the task of researching the application of nuclear power to space based applications. A

thick hardbound volume was sitting on a shelf in a colleague’s office when Kirk Sorensen spotted it. . . . the book’s title — Fluid Fuel Reactors, (Addison-Wesley, 1958.) — jumped out at him. He picked it up and thumbed through it. Hours later, he was still reading, enchanted by the ideas but struggling with the arcane writing. “

The book was an account of a nuclear reactor research projects that were underway at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) during the 1950's. Kirk was fascinated by the book, and wanted to learn more. He discovered that ORNL maintained an archive of hundreds of documents that had been produced from the 1950's to the 1970's to document ORNL research on the Molten Salt Reactor. These ORNL documents are unusual in their thoroughness, lucidity and approachability.

Scientists tell me that what is most unusual about these working papers in that they document the ORNL MSR research and its background in detail and with an accurateness that many researchers fail of achieve. The Addison-Wesley book was produced by the same ORNL scientists who were documenting their research with such unusual thoroughness. Anyone who is scientifically Literate can read the ORNL MSR documents and appreciate what the ORNL scientists accomplished, and why they came to the conclusions they did. This is unfortunately not the case with the work of Argonne National Laboratory scientists, who Australian Environmental Scientist Barry Brook acknowledged left the grounds for many of their informal conclusions out of their reports. Brook stated.

Well-meaning folks like Charles Barton and co., with whom I agree on most issues, will and does like to try and dispute these figures and complain about lack of public open-source documentation on these details, and of course he’s quite within his right to object on this or any other matter regarding fast reactors, if he chooses. But it doesn’t change what is known by those engineers and scientists who worked on this technology for many decades, and understand the systems — their strengths, benefits, problems and outstanding issues — nor what data has been accumulated, tested and archived that is not public. As I have said before, it is these experts, not bloggers, who will ultimately need to convince decision makers and financiers as to the viability of a given system like the IFR.

Unlike the Argonne scientists I was trained to a reporting standard which can be stated as,

if it is not documented it did not happen.

Thus the failure of ANL scientist and engineers to accurately document their research and how they reached their findings is a significant weakness for their case.

If a literature search is the foundation for high quality science, Kirk Sorensen's approach was first rate. During the next few years Kirk, with the aid of the ORNL Library collected and digitized hundreds of ORNL documents related too ORNL's MSR research.

Kirk is not alone in recognizing the value of ORNL's well documented Molten Salt Reactor research. Scientist in other countries including Russia, Japan and France continue to do Molten Salt nuclear technology research, drawing on ORNL produced data. One recent Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory documentt noted,

Oak Ridge National Laboratory took the lead in researching the MSR through the 1960s, and much of their work culminated with the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE). The MSRE
was a 7.4 MWth test reactor simulating the neutronics “kernel” of an inherently safe epithermal thorium-breeder reactor. . . .

Kirk not only created a web site in which these ORNL documents can be located and linked too, he also created a web page in which those documents can be discussed. The Energy from Thorium Discussion Forum. This page is open to all comers and its only requirement is that participants be willing to participate in give and take written discussions. The give and take requirement would seem simple, but every now and then participants appear unwilling to take. A participant will make a point, but refuse to acknowledge that a second participant has made factually accurate and well reasoned response to his or her point. This is especially distressing to other discussion participants when the response by the original participant is not factually accurate or is supported by recourse to logically fallacious arguments.

Thus Kirk's discussion form adheres to Open Science standards. In addition Kirk created a standard blog in which he states his own opinions.

In addition to the standard blogging, documentation tools, Kirk has created a Facebook Energy from Thorium site, and has used Twitter and YouTube To increase his communications outreach.

During the summer of 2009 Kirk traveled to the United Kingdom in order to offer a presentation on the Thorium Breeding Molten Salt Reactor (the LFTR), to an event that was staged as part of the 2009 Manchester Festival. The event, sponsored by a British Newspaper with a long time association with Manchester, "The Guardian." The Guardian sponsored event offered a chance for new technologies intended to mittigate Global Warming to get a hearing, not just from attendees at a pannel of judges and other atendes at the Festival but from the readers of the Guardian, and from participants in the UN Conference on Climate Change, that was to take place in December of 2009. Presenters who were to offer accounts to the Manchester Report Pannel were ask to describe innovative technologies for mitigating Anthropogenic Global Warming. Kirk had submitted a paper to the pannel, and had been accepted to offer a presentation.

Kirk's presentation was considered one of the top 10 presentatrons by the Manchester Report pannel, and the LFTR was included in the Manchester Report as well as as mentioned on a story on the report by The Guardian. The Guardian coverage opended the door to subsequent British coverage of the LFTR by the main stream media of the United Kingdom.

Among the Pannelists who wrote the Manchester Report was a recently appointed member of the House of Lords, Baroness Bryony Worthington, who is an Independently environmental activist. Not only did Baroness Worthington, support the LFTR in the Manchester Report, she discussed it on the pages of the Guardian, and in the House of Lords. She also helped to organize a lobbying and advocacy endeavor called the Weinberg Foundation. The Launch of the Weinberg Foundation gave Kirk a chance to go back to the United Kingdom. Kirk gave a speech in the Palace of Westminister:



Kirk also briefed Charles Hendry, The UK Minister of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change. On September 9, Kirk gave a presentation to top DECC top officials and staff.

Clearly then Kirk has come a long way quickly, and no where has the advance been greayer than In the UK, where

Brian Wang's Nuclear Education Petition to the White House

Brian Wang of the blog Next Big Future has started a petition to the White House calling for THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO: Educate the Public Regarding Nuclear Power.

This petition is a response to the "End taxpayer subsidies for new nuclear reactors" petition.

Due to the manufactured controversy that is the nuclear reactor meltdown in Fukushima, Japan, perpetuated by a scientifically illiterate news media, the public is unnecessarily hostile to nuclear power as an energy source.

To date nobody has died from the accident and Fukushima, and nuclear power has the lowest per Terra-watt hour death toll of any energy source known to man:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html

The Obama administration should take better strides to educate the public regarding this important energy source.

I encourage my readers to sign this petition. In addition Mr. Obama needs to better educate himself on the nuclear option, and the serious flaws in renewable energy.

Graphite Free Core?

The Generation IV international forum describes itself as

a cooperative international endeavor organized to carry out the research and development (R&D) needed to establish the feasibility and performance capabilities of the next generation nuclear energy systems.

The Generation IV International Forum has thirteen Members which are signatories of its founding document, the GIF Charter. Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the Republic of South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States signed the GIF Charter in July 2001. Subsequently, it was signed by Switzerland in 2002, Euratom in 2003, and the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, both in 2006.

The goals adopted by GIF provided the basis for identifying and selecting six nuclear energy systems for further development. The six selected systems employ a variety of reactor, energy conversion and fuel cycle technologies. Their designs feature thermal and fast neutron spectra, closed and open fuel cycles and a wide range of reactor sizes from very small to very large. Depending on their respective degrees of technical maturity, the Generation IV systems are expected to become available for commercial introduction in the period between 2015 and 2030 or beyond.

Molten Salt Nuclear technology is included in the Generation IV project and recently quite litterally the picture of the MSR in the web site has changed. What is going on here?

A recent brief EfT duscussion focuses on what is behind the crossing out of the graphite free core, but not why this is not a good idea. Lars notes

the French approach definitely avoids graphite and its waste flow. Leaves you with the challenge for startup though. Apparently the concerns about proliferation are much lower in France.

Concerns about the proliferation risks posed by LFTRs another thorium cycle MSRs are absurd, as another recent EfT discussion has demonstrated. In this discussion Lars notes,

LFTR is one of a very few technologies that have a serious chance to provide power to 9 billion people without serious damage to the environment. Along the way it can also chew up the existing transuranic waste. There are some big engineering challenges to solve. But so far as I can tell they are all solvable. The really big unknowns are: 1) can we get the cost below coal and 2) can we survive the politics.

The LFTR is not going to supply energy to nine billion people without a graphite core. Indeed a Graphite free core will require ten times as much fissionable material in its start up charge, and will leak neutrons like a sive. Leaking neutrons mean no thorium breeding. As Cyril R points out in the graphite free core discussion,

Graphite free core, what nonsense. Lots of graphite reflector in the French designs, and lots of graphite in the core and pebbles of the AHTR. Even Jaro's HW-MSR uses graphite tubes. Only no-graphite design we've seen is David's tube in tube, and that's fringe culture for the Gen IV VIPs.

It would appear that the conversation about MSR technology on EfT goes on at a much higher level of information than the conversation at the Generation IV forum. Thorium is not going to provide energy for 9 billion people without graphite cores.

Harry's Place and the Origin of Nuclear Green

We live in an age in which people are allowed to voice opinion on a subject they know nothing about. Not only may they voice views concerning matters concerning which they are extremely ignorant, but they expect to have their views respected. In 2007, I posted a guest post on a fairly popular English blog Harry's Place. My Harry's Place post has been unfortunately lost, but here is what I argued in it:

Global warming skeptics argue that fixing global warming will cost us so much that it would be ruinous to society to even attempt a solution. This is nonsense. We can take a few steps over the next 40 years to bring at least half of global greenhouse gas (CO2) emissions under control. 50% to 60% of CO2 emissions can be eliminated by bring two sources of CO2 emissions under control. There are great secondary benefits for controlling theses sources. Indeed the secondary benefits may save so much money, that they will pay for the changes on their own.

The two sources that produce over 60% of the CO2 emissions in the United States are electrical generation, and the use of internal combustion engines in ground transportation. Existing technology can eliminate all of the CO2 emissions from electrical generation within the next 40 years. Using existing technology we can eliminate at least half of the CO2 emissions from the ground transportation sector. Expected technological breakthroughs can eliminate the other half.

The changes are simple but radical. By 2050 all base load electrical generation should come from hydroelectric sources and nuclear power plants. All coal fired electrical generating plants should be phased out. Since most world wide hydro electrical resources are already utilized, the replacement of fossil fuel power plants will be primarily through conversion to nuclear reactors. Reactors can be mass-produced and either constructed modularly with local assembly, or by constructed on barges at reactor factories, and then towed to permeate locations at costal or riverine settings. Smaller pre-assembled reactors can be shipped by rail.

Many old and inefficient American and European fossil fueled fired plants, having come to the end of their useful life, will scrapped during the next 40 years. Since they will be replaced anyway, there will be replacement costs. Increasing demand for electrical energy will lead to massive new power plant construction as a matter of course. Already in the United States electrical utilities are focusing on building new nuclear power plants to replace old coal fired plants, and to bring new generating capacity on line.

While it might seem impossible to accomplish the goal of replacing fossil fuel generation with nuclear power, the commitment of societies including national governments, and international cooperation can accomplish it. For example, if the United States makes a national commitment to convert all fossil fuel generation electricity to nuclear, this can be accomplished using existing technology and resources.

The problems of transportation can be solved through the replacement of fossil fuel energy with electrical energy. Existing technology already makes plug in hybrids practical. Even with no new technology, it is feasible to build plug in hybrids with 40 to 50 miles (60 to 75 kilometers) range with no fossil fuel input. This range would cover almost all urban use. Thus it would be possible to perform everyday activities like drive to work, shop and do errands and go out for the evening, without starting the backup fossil fuel engine. Urban trucks and buses could also run on portable stored electricity. Finally American rail roads can be electrified thus eliminating the use of diesel power to haul rail freight.

I promised secondary benefits, they are these. First we will see a significant decline in national health care expenses. A few years ago a group of Canadian doctors began to look at the health related costs of producing electricity from coal. They found that atmospheric pollutants from coal fired electrical generating plants were a significant source of health problems in the province of Ontario. There research found that air pollution from all sources kills more than 5,900 people each year in Ontario. An Ontario government follow up study found that coal-fired power plants in Ontario were responsible for up to 668 deaths. In addition, atmospheric pollutants from coal-fired generators were responsible for 928 hospital admissions and 1,100 emergency room visits every year. The health related cost to the people in Ontario associated with generating electricity by burning coal was found to be $4.4 billion.

A more recent Canadian study found that Ontario hospitals received in one year 12,518 asthma related visits (7,825 children and 4,693 adults). There is little doubt that emissions from fossil fuel engine are a major cause of a worldwide asthma epidemic. In the United States alone, the number of people with asthma grew from 6.7 million people in 1980 to 17.3 million in 1998, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Elimination of coal fired power plants and most autos and truck exhaust would save many billions of dollars in health care costs, and would prevent an enormous amount of human suffering. Thus a secondary benefit from switching electrical generation and ground transportation, from CO2 emitting sources to CO2 free sources, would be decreased a hospital admissions due to repertory illness, and a significant health care savings which in time would by itself more than pay for the conversion.

A further secondary benefit for switching from the use of oil-based fuels in transportation to stored electricity has to do with the oil-based economy. It would be present far cheaper in the United States to power autos with locally produced electricity from nuclear reactors than to power them using energy derived from imported oil. Even without global warming, two factors are driving the price of crude oil ever higher. They are, the growing demand for oil in India and China, and the peaking of world oil production. So just as the oil supply has reached its maximum, tens and even hundreds of millions of new oil consumers are entering the market. Switching from fossil fuel based transportation to a transportation based on stored electricity would save consumers in North America and Europe hundreds of billions of dollars and euros.

The costs of fixing global warming will not be exorbitant, and indeed the secondary benefits of fixing it will by themselves, more that pay the cost of the fix.

I explained my approach:

"I must say that I consider my views revolutionary. I recently came to these conclusions after reading about the medical costs of coal fired plants in Ontario. I decided to extend the analysis to other secondary benefits that might occur if we switched from fossil fuel to nuclear power generation and battery powered cars. The result is not simply savings in health care costs, but potentially huge savings in transportation costs, as battery stored electricity replaces increasingly expensive oil transportation fuels. The economic benefits seem obvious. The discussion has included people I know to be global warming skeptics agreeing with my analysis. In this regard, my argument has accomplished what I wanted it to, which is to move the debate away from the global warming issue toward changes that most people will like. Changes that will incidentally help make the CO2 problem go away. "

I noted:

"Many old and inefficient American and European fossil fueled fired power plants, having come to the end of their useful life, will be scrapped in the next 40 years. Since they will be replaced anyway, the replacement costs will have to be paid. Increasing demand for electrical energy will lead to massive new power plant construction as well. Already in the United States electrical utilities are focusing on building new nuclear power plants to replace old coal fired plants, and to bring new generating capacity on line."

I argued:

"While it might seem impossible to accomplish the goal of replacing fossil fuel generation with nuclear power, the commitment of societies including national governments, and international cooperation can accomplish it. For example, if the United States makes a national commitment to convert all fossil fuel generation electricity to nuclear, this can be accomplished using existing technology and resources."

There were, I went on, considerable economic and health care benefits to doing this. (Brian Wong has also repeatedly made the same point.):

"A more recent Canadian study found that Ontario hospitals received in one year 12,518 asthma related visits (7,825 children and 4,693 adults). There is little doubt that emissions from fossil fuel engine emissions are a major cause of a worldwide asthma epidemic. In the United States alone, the number of people with asthma grew from 6.7 million people in 1980 to 17.3 million in 1998, according to the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Elimination of coal fired power plants and most autos and truck exhaust would save many billions of dollars in health care costs, and would prevent an enormous amount of human suffering. Thus a secondary benefit from switching electrical generation and ground transportation, from CO2 emitting sources to CO2 free sources, would be decreased hospital admissions due to repertory illness, and a significant health care savings which in time would by itself pay for the conversion."

Shortly after this post hit the Internet, critics of nuclear power emerged from the wood work.

"Field" was especially adamant in opposition to nuclear power:

I'm not prepared to look at nuclear sympathetically. We have an abundance of energy from the sun and we have tidal. We should be concentrating all our efforts on solar energy, wind energy, Thin photovoltaic film is just coming on to the market and will revolutionise the solar power scene. Wind turbines are fantastic sources of energy and can be sited offshore to minimise damage to countryside views. We can now tap into tidal energy without ruining the ecology of estuaries.

At one point I responded to comments by "shlemazl:"

1. "Shlemaz":

At present only a tiny fraction of electricity generation is nuclear.

My response:

In Ontario 50% of electrical generation comes from nuks. Two more old nuks are being refurbished.

2. shlemaz:

Your "2050" forecast is utopian as it ignores practicalities.

My response:

With mass production it is practical. You accomplish what you really want too.

3. shlemaz:

There is not enough uranium to replace oil.

My response:

With breeder reactors, especially breading thorium they is enough nuclear fuel to last for several thousand years. It is, by the way possible to modify the CANDU design to do breeding.

4. shlemaz:

Fuel reprocessing ("recycling" to you) is an economic disaster. It's not so hot environmentally either. Only makes sense with fast reactors, which are also an economic disaster.

My Response:

A fluoride reprocessing system was developed by ORNL in the 1960's, in connection with the molten salt reactor. The chemists all liked and believed in the system, but could not sell it to the bureaucrats. The molten salt reactor appears to be the best long range option for safe, and reliable nuclear power. It is a excellent breeder, and thorium is an ideal breeding material.

Having proposed the use of thorium, I got this response from "MFB,"

Nice try, Mr. Barton, but not convincing.

I come from a country with loads of uranium (although producing less and less as our gold mines are closed down) and a fairly active nuclear industry developing, for reasons which escape me, the Pebble-Bed Modular Reactor which is supposedly inherently safe. (Unlikely to be so in practice, and appallingly expensive, but never mind.)

The first Big Issue with nuclear power other than the questions of safety and waste disposal, is the shortage of uranium. We really don't have enough unless we can find some way of properly breeding plutonium from U-238. So far, all fast-breeder designs have failed. The problem with slow breeding is that uranium apparently gets turned into other isotopes, such as U-234 and U-236, which have rather bizarre properties such as neutron absorbtion which make the fuel less efficient.

The other problem is that you need a plutonium reprocessing plant. This is a huge chemical plant for dissolving fuel elements in nitric acid or some equivalent and then precipitating out the plutonium. Note that some of the plutonium is Pu-240, which is not fissionable; the more Pu-239 becoming Pu-240, the less efficient the process. Meanwhile you are left with a caustic solution of horribly radioactive stuff which is dangerous to store and expensive to get rid of. No doubt you could precipitate out some of the radionuclides and make use of them, but that, too, would be expensive. It's nasty and dangerous (most of the world's worst nuclear accidents have been at reprocessing plants).

Thorium is not fissionable by itself, although it can be bred into fissionable material. Then it needs to be reprocessed in much the same way, and with much the same problems, as with plutonium. However, this is blue-sky stuff; nobody yet has a workable commercial thorium breeder reactor and nobody knows whether one will work. The record of new nuclear reactors is not brilliant (virtually all the working designs were developed in the 1940s) and not likely to attract much investment.

So, to sum up, you want to spend vast amounts of money developing a technology which may not work, and developing another technology which almost certainly does not work and wastes vast amounts of energy (uranium enrichment is very problematic). It seems to me that this is an unwise policy.

A much more sensible policy, cheaper and known to work, is to enlarge the current solar and tidal systems (including, of course, hydro power). A vast array of improvements can be made with very little investment and virtually no risk, and with the advantage that solar/tidal power is not going to run out in the next few decades (or centuries in your rather over-optimistic perspective).

In the longer term solar power stations in space will be able to beam down energy to earth.

I pointed to the many unsolved problems associated with renewable energy and argued that it would not offer an economically viable replacement for fossil fuel energy sources. I argued that the nuclear option was the only viable option, if we are to replace fossil fuels. Few of my Harry's Place readers bought into my suggestion.

What is interesting to me about my Harry's place post is that I first developed the Message I continue to elaborate on Nuclear Green,

1. Nuclear reactors provide the only reliable CO2 free source of electrical energy, among currently proposed energy options.
2. Reactors can be mass produced, just like cars and computers.
3. The mass production of reactors will bring the cost of individual reactors down very significantly. Mass produced reactors will be cheaper to build than the coal fired power plants they will replace.
4. There is enough nuclear raw material in the world, to last a nuclear power industry for a long time.
5. Electrical energy, supplied by nuclear power plants can be substituted for fossil fuels in many present uses.
6. These include both personal and commercial transportation.
7. Plug in hybrid automobiles with a 40 to 50 mile trip range are possible using current technology.
8. The substitution of reactor generators for coal, and the use of plug in hybrids in place of fossil fuel technology will bring us very important secondary economic benefits that will save society and individuals more money that the conversions will costs.
9. The secondary benefits include billions of dollars in health care savings. The use of fossil fuels - coal and crud oil - is responsible for the respiratory illness and other health problems effecting millions of people in the United States. The treatment of these illnesses and other economic costs associated with them cost the United States economy hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Switching away from fossil fuels would save most of this money.
10. The international supply of crud oil has peaked, while millions of new consumers in China and India have entered the market for crude oil products. This has lead to a condition of rapidly expanding crud oil prices. The price of crud oil was $12 a barrel in 1998. Today (early October, 2007) it is over $80. Next year it is expected to reach as high as $140. (It reached $138 on 6/6/08). The substitution of electrical energy for crud oil products like gasoline, will save American and European consumers hundreds of billion dollars on imported oil and oil products.
11. Most autos now in use, and most coal fired power plants will come to the end of their useful life and will need to be replaced during the next 40 years. It will cost little or nothing to replace coal fired power plants with reactors, and to replace conventional cars and trucks, with long range plug in hybrids. Thus the total economic consequences of the conversions I suggest will be an enormous savings, not an added cost. Thus conversion to CO2 free energy far from entailing an enormous cost, will cost society nothing.
12. The nuclear waste problem is much less serious than is often believed. Most of what is called waste is potential reactor fuel. Each reactor produces only a few hundred pounds pounds of true waste a year. Some of the byproducts of nuclear fission, are useful material. The by products of nuclear fission grow less and less dangerous in time. As they grow inert many of he byproducts of nuclear fission can be diverted to industrial use.
13. Materials that are radioactive over long periods of time are not very dangerous, and can be stored in places like abandoned uranium mines, where elevated levels of radiation occur naturally.

In the Harry's Place post the nuclear option is the only viable option, if we are going to successfully respond to the threat posed by Anthropogenic Global Warming we much shift to the use of advanced nuclear technology. My disappointment with the reception it received lead me to my decision to create Nuclear Green, as an educational tool.

Many Texans Take Reffuage in Hell as the Summer of 2011 Proves to be too hot

On Friday Dallas experienced its 71dt 100 day of 2011 breaking the 69 100 degree day record set in 1980. But the Dallas record is nothing compaired to Wichita Falls which experienced 100 too degree days this year, shattering its old record of 79 fays set during the imfamous 1980 heat wave.

Number of 100-degree days for select Texas cities (as of Sept. 29, 2011)
--Wichita Falls: 100 days
--San Angelo: 97 days (San Angelo's previous 100 degree days record was 60 days in 1969)
--Waco: 85 days (Waco's previous record was 63 100 degree days in 1980)
--Del Rio: 82 days
--Austin (Mabry): 83 days (Austin Mabry was 69 days in 1925)
--Abilene: 79 days (Abilene shattered its previous record of 46 days in 1934)
--Dallas: 71 days (Dallas had 69 100 degree day in 1980)

People in Texas who say that Anthropogenic Global Warming is all a big hoax have been shown to be suffering from Anthropogenic heat stroke. You hear that Governor Rick Perry.

- Hat tip to Accu-weather.