[Oz-envirolink] Dave Pollard's review of "Heat" (George Monbiot -UK) BAYES_00=-2.599, SUBJ_HAS_SPACES=0.87, X_PRIORITY_HIGH=0.433]

[hugh spencer]

Sure Dave - but people do manage to change their minds sometimes - anyway
reading the article you suggest (pasted below) - gives me a rather
different impression of his attitude to that I'd get from your posting!!
Cheers
Hugh


>Monbiot's position on nuclear energy is not how it is related in this review.
>( I haven't read the book. )
>Instead read
>http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-monbiot11jun11,0,5430628.st
>ory?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
>where he proposes using nuclear energy to provide "the energy we need".
>
>Monbiot is trying to find ways of continuing Business As Usual
>including increases in energy consumption to drive increased industrial
>>activity when it is clear to any environmentalist that BAU is killing the
>>planet and will utterly destroy the planet if it is allowed to continue
>much longer.
>BAU is unsustainable, end of story.
>Consequently any attempt to describe BAU solutions in environmental terms
>is >doomed to be trapped into major inconsistencies like this.
>
>Dave



>While I do not support Monbiot's conclusion that nuclear is part of the
solution (in fact, as a mega-expensive way of soaking up capital needed
desperately to be invested in least-cost sustainable options, it clearly
reduces our chances of heading off runaway greenhouse), I cannot see how it
is possible to describe anyone advocating rapid 90% reductions in Greenhouse
gas emissions effectively as a stooge for business-as-usual. It seems to me
as plausible as suggesting that British American Tobacco are the world's
leading warriors for preventative health strategies.

>Dr Bro Sheffield-Brotherton B.Sc.(Hons), Ph.D, Dip.Ed, MEIANZ
Ph: +613 9528 1957, Mob: +614 1230 3 718
Fax: +613 9528 5100
Email: bro at c031.aone.net.au

.....................................

LA Times  June 11, 2006                             Opinion : Op-Ed


A few more nukes!

Environmentalists need to face the fact that nuclear power is less
dangerous than fossil-fired global warming.

By George Monbiot, George Monbiot writes an environmental column for the
Guardian of London (www.monbiot.com). His book "Heat: How to Stop the
Planet Burning" will be published in Britain in October.

June 11, 2006


WHEN I TELL my "green" friends that I am rethinking nuclear power, they
respond with outrage. I am an environmentalist, and, to a large extent, the
green movements in the developed world arose from public concern about
atomic energy.

For about 30 years we have seen nuclear power as dangerous, its radioactive
wastes as unmanageable, the industry as incompetent and untrustworthy. In
the environmental camp, any softening of this opposition is seen as a
betrayal.


But climate change and falling energy reserves demand that we reopen the
question. The nuclear industry now claims that nuclear power is the most
reliable answer to the global warming caused by the overuse of fossil
fuels. It argues that new technologies make it safe and cheap.

I've spent the last year searching for a way to cut carbon emissions by
90%, which is necessary to prevent runaway global warming. One of the
hardest problems is how to generate enough electricity. My sympathies lie
with renewable power. Alongside a massive energy-efficiency program, it
plainly provides part of the answer. But it cannot supply all of our
electricity needs. The rest must come from somewhere, and to dismiss
nuclear power without considering what the alternatives involve would be
irresponsible.

I still detest the nuclear industry and its efforts to hoodwink the public
about its costs, its dangers and its record. But I've reluctantly concluded
that some of its arguments have merit.

It is true, for example, that a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl is
highly unlikely to happen again because no new power station will be built
without a containment vessel, which prevents most radiation from escaping
in an accident. But the mining, processing and use of uranium will continue
to be accompanied - as they always have been - by leaks into the
environment.

It now looks as though radioactive waste can be stored safely. The Finnish
authority responsible for nuclear waste disposal has developed a method
that looks foolproof. The problem is that it is expensive, and the nuclear
industry has a long record of cutting corners. One British company was
caught throwing nuclear waste into open shafts it had dug above crumbling
coastal cliffs. Another admitted that it had been keeping plutonium in
uncovered ponds for more than 30 years. Workers at the U.S. Geological
Survey, which is responsible for testing the Yucca Mountain waste
repository in Nevada, falsified the rates of water percolation, apparently
to make the site seem safer than it is.

After reading reams of conflicting data, I now also believe that global
supplies of uranium are not the limiting factor many feared. On the other
hand, the threat of nuclear terrorism can never be wholly dismissed, and
the more fissile materials that are extracted and refined, the more
opportunities there will be for people to obtain them. But although the
radiation released by accidents or terrorists could kill hundreds or
perhaps thousands of people, climate change caused by burning fossil fuels
threatens hundreds of millions.

Though nuclear power is plainly less dangerous than climate change, I would
still like to avoid building new plants if possible. But the real danger is
this: If we oppose nuclear power without demonstrating that there are
viable alternatives, we become, in effect, lobbyists for the coal industry.
In Eurasia, there are still abundant supplies of natural gas, but in North
America, gas production has already peaked and is in long-term decline.
Already, coal supplies 32% of U.S. electricity, while natural gas supplies
24% and nuclear power 10%. As 90% of remaining U.S. fossil energy reserves
take the form of coal, gas generators are likely to be replaced by coal
plants. The same applies to aging nuclear generators, if they are not
replaced by new ones.

If you believe that burning coal sounds more benign than nuclear power, I
invite you to turn on your computer and search for images of the
"mountaintop removal" being carried out by coal-mining companies in the
Appalachians. It looks as if a nuclear disaster already has happened. The
forests have been flattened, the hilltops blown off, the valleys filled
with sterile rubble. Coal is also the worst of all fuels as far as climate
change is concerned. It contains 40% more carbon per unit of energy than
gas.

But if fossil fuels and nuclear power are bad choices, could 90% of the
electricity in the United States be generated by greener means? There is no
doubt that, if it could be harnessed, the U.S. has enough ambient energy to
provide all the electricity it now uses. Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain
Institute points out that the wind in a few counties in the Dakotas is, in
theory, sufficient to supply the entire nation with electricity. Though no
one is suggesting that all U.S. energy should be drawn from one source, the
development of cheap, high-voltage direct current, or DC, lines of the kind
now used in Brazil, Sweden and Australia would permit even the most remote
sources to be exploited. The problem with transporting power has been that
the electricity load carried by traditional alternating current, or AC,
systems declines as the distance increases. But DC systems don't suffer
such "line losses." In principle, DC lines could open up wind and wave
power across the entire U.S. continental shelf, and solar electricity
throughout its deserts.

What about the cost? Although estimates vary widely, electricity from
large-scale wind farms appears to be cheaper than electricity from either
nuclear power or coal, and its costs are falling fast. Even solar thermal
electricity, a more expensive technology than wind, is now cost-effective
in some places. A report published last year showed that during times of
peak demand in Southern California, the cost of electricity produced by
solar thermal plants is roughly equal to the wholesale price of
conventional power. Peak demand in sunny places, driven by
air-conditioning, coincides with maximum solar output.

The problem with alternative energies is that the coincidence of demand and
supply is by no means guaranteed. Power companies can fire up their standby
coal plant when demand rises, but they can't turn on the wind or ask the
sun to shine. This problem can be partly overcome by using long-distance DC
cables: When there's a flat calm in New York, there could be a gale blowing
in Chicago. The wider the net from which electricity can be drawn, the more
reliable ambient power becomes. But beyond a certain point - perhaps 50% or
so of total supply - power from intermittent sources cannot be guaranteed.
Part of the remainder could be supplied by burning biomass such as straw or
wood. But farm waste is limited, and mass planting of fuel crops has
implications for water tables and the global food supply.

So, with gas growing scarcer, where do Americans find the rest of their
power? It seems to me that the U.S. has only two choices: either to build a
new generation of nuclear plants or to find a genuinely acceptable,
nonpolluting means of mining and burning coal.

Such a means might exist, if underground coal gasification fulfills its
early promise. In principle, you can partly combust underground coal seams,
capture the gas they produce and scrub the pollutants from it, producing
either methane or hydrogen. The methane can be burned in power stations and
the carbon dioxide in their exhausts extracted and buried, reducing
greenhouse gas emissions by about 90%. The hydrogen could be piped to
people's homes and used in mini-generators to provide both electricity and
heat. But unless great care is taken, underground combustion could
contaminate supplies of groundwater.

Picking "clean coal" or nuclear power is not a choice I would like to make.
But if there is one thing I have learned in studying our energy systems, it
is that there are no painless solutions.