Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Nuclear Power, Energy Justice, and Ending Poverty

Nuclear energy advocates including both Political Liberals and Conservatives appear to agree on certain long term goals.  These goals involve the development and spread of low cost, safe and highly scalable nuclear power that can replace carbon emitting electrical generation facilities in developed nations, and provide low cost energy to the poor of less developed nations as well as preventing energy poverty in Industrialized and post industrialized countries.

David Jonrs (aka NNadir) is a pro-nuclear blogger, much admired by nuclear advocates  who blogs somewhat obscurly on Daily Kos.  Last year he wrote a post on Uranium sustainability that appeared on Barry Brook's blog, BraveNewClimate.  The post made clear that Jones (aka NNadir) holds the values that are common to nuclear advocates that I pointed too above.  In his 2014 post, Jones argued for the sustainability of Uranium as a source of the energy basis for a just human society.

Unfortunately for humanity, Lovins’ “Road Less Traveled” is now the “Road Most Traveled” even though, as the graphic at the opening of this piece shows, neither conservation or so called “renewable energy” has not, cannot, and will not accommodate the energy traffic required for a decent lifestyle for the overwhelming majority of human beings. Lovins’ road represents the daydream of the unconscionable and indifferent elite with scant attention paid to the relatively impoverished and absolutely impoverished bulk of humanity. There was a reason that reliance on diffuse forms of energy, so called “renewable energy,” for all of humanity’s needs was abandoned around the beginning of the 19th century and all the reactionary rhetoric in the world cannot change that fact. That reason, even more so than today, was that the overwhelming majority of human beings lived short miserable lives of dire poverty. Nuclear energy, and only nuclear energy, has the energy to mass density to be sustainable indefinitely at levels of energy production that involve a balance of human decency coupled to environmental justice. Fermi – who despite his vast intellect is said to have been no elitist – understood, way back in the 1940’s, that we would require depleted uranium to be made into energy, and well more than half a century later, as we are in crisis whether we see it or not, it is very clear that he was, in recognizing this, handing us a key by which we might save what can still be yet saved at this point. - David Jones David

Jones has more recently begun to write a series of post on the real climate change hoax. A hoax that will robe mankind of trillions of dollars and leave the wolds sever billion person cohert of poor, destitute, while not resolving the CO2 emission Climaate change conumdrum that will rob every one of trillions of Dollars and leave the energy no better off. No Republicans,that grand fraud is not Anthropogenic Climate Change of which we have increasing evidence, every time a Western Forrest burns. That hoax is the Renewables energy hoax. A hoax which Jones has begun in BraveNewClimate.

Jones' (NNadir) series "Sustaining the Wind" argues that wind power is no scalable enough to meet human energy needs, and nor sustainable. This is the case because wind turbines rely on the use of exotic materials, which have limited global supply. These problems such as peek Indium a highly useful material for which deman sill shortly outrun an ever diminishing supply. Jones also points out that despite an over trillion dollar investment in so called renewables, our carbon dioxide emissions are rising, not falling. Our present course is driving the earth, like the SS Titanic toward disaster at full steam ahead.

Hillary Clinton who has recently embraced the renewables hoax is a world class idoit. So for that matter is Senator Sanders. But lest you think the Republicans are better, where do you find a Republican candidate who even is willing to admit that anthropogenic Global Warming is not a hoax, that we face real and serious problems and against them we are spending huge sums of money on useless tools. Republicans prove that they can easily match Clinton for idiocy by their failure to denoince the windmill hoax, and their unwillingness to acknowledge that nuclear power means empowering market economies in the face of climate change.
We need nothing less than a massive and quick buildout of nuclear power to solve our energy issues. Of the nuclear options Molten Salt Reactors makes the best use of abundant resources, and molten salt thorium and uranium breeder reactors make the best use of common sustainable resources.

4 comments:

Alan2102 said...



http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/2015/08/20/loveless-jim-rogers-duke-energy/32057613/
Ex-Duke CEO: Here's how to power the world
Bill Loveless, for USA TODAY 7:32 a.m. EDT August 23, 2015
Jim Rogers spent 25 years as the chief executive of electric and natural gas utilities in the U.S., the last seven as head of Duke Energy, the biggest electric power company in the country.
Now, in his retirement from the energy business, Rogers has taken on a new mission: Bringing electricity to the 1.2 billion people in the world who live without it.
In a new book, Lighting the World, Rogers calls for new steps by governments, financial institutions and entrepreneurs to bring light to remote areas in Africa and other regions where flickering candles and dangerous kerosene lamps are often the only options at night.
The book, which publisher St. Martin's Press plans to release Tuesday, lays out a vision that eschews the traditional approach to spreading electricity of constructing large coal, gas and nuclear power plants, and promotes instead a reliance on local production, small-scale connections and alternative forms of energy, such as solar panels, whose costs are coming down.
snip

Charles Barton said...

Alan, I am aware of Mr. Loveless's book. Mr. Loveless thinks about nuclear in terms of the very large nuclear power plants his company built. My focus, since 2007 has been biiding smaller, far less costly nuclear power plants, that can be built in factories and trucked to rural villages. Unlike solar energy sources, thes small, but efficient nuclear plants produce electricity 24 hours a day, and unlike wind generated electricity the lights wqill always come on when customers throw tthe light switch.

Alan2102 said...

Charles: yes, I am aware of the baseload problem -- the way in which some generation technologies (e.g. nuclear) produce power when power is not needed. Fortunately, these technologies, which tend to be dirty and dangerous, will be fazed-out over time, as more and more clean safe cheap and super-high-EROEI renewables come online.

http://reneweconomy.com.au/2015/why-solar-pv-is-unstoppable-and-renewable-targets-will-cost-little-17050
Why solar PV is unstoppable – and renewable targets will cost little
4 September 2015

Charles Barton said...

It never ceases to Amaze me how little renewables advocates appear unable to make use of information that I have made avaliable. I have during the last 8 years, repeatedly discussed the ability of Molten Salt Reactors to load follow. That is the greater the demands that are placed on yje e;lectrical system, the more electricity mMRs produce, up to 100% of their name tage capacity. Furthermore, given open cycle air turbines MSRs can ramp as fast as natural gas turbines, making them the only carbon free load balancing technology for a renewable grid. Wind and solar are inherantly dirty, because with out nuclear load balancing and backup, renewables require a huge amount of fossil fuel burning.

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