Reply #69: Your position continues to ignore all known facts regarding energy systems

[kristopher]

I agree with 1-5.

"6. We must use every energy tool at our disposal to cut our CO2 production immediately. This includes every low-carbon possibility. The candidates are solar (thermal and PV), wind, hydro (conventional and run of river), tidal, biomass, geothermal and nuclear."

Really? Have you ever heard of the idea of wasting money and time? If I spend 500 billion dollars on nuclear and get less than 5% of the electricity that I could have saved (actual numbers) by spending the same $500 billion on energy efficiency, how is that going to help the problem. If I send $500 billion dollars on nuclear and only get 1/2 the amount of delivered electricity as I would get with renewables, how is that going to help the problem?

No, your premise is false for 2 reasons: the initial failure can be identified as the assumption that there is some mythically unlimited source of funds the enables us to avoid making choices about what works best. Funds are not unlimited and we DO need to make choices. But even if we DID have unlimited funds that argument still fails because every dollar spent for nuclear could still have greater impact if spent elsewhere.

"7. My decision about where to throw my support is governed by point #2. Because we face an immediate threat, I strongly favour technologies that can have an immediate impact on the energy mix."

Again, nuclear is slower to deploy, not faster. The only way you can arrive at a different conclusion is to totally ignore all historical evidence and accept the unproved promises of the NUCLEAR INDUSTRY. Again, you have to totally ignore all historical evidence and trends in order to believe the claims of the nuclear industry on this point. Nuclear is *far slower* to deploy on a delivered watt by delivered watt basis than renewables/efficiency.

The comments above essentially negate the rest of the "logic" you have presented, but let me address one more:

"14. Nuclear power integrates easily into the existing grid structure, the plant designs are well understood, plants can be built out quickly, and the demonstrated level of risk, compared to atmospheric CO2, is negligible. It's a win, at least until wind is producing 15-20 times its current amount of electricity."

Nuclear plants cannot be built quickly except in the dreams of the nuclear INDUSTRY and wishful thinking doesn't make something a reality.

However, if you really want the most rapid technologies to solve the problem, then support a full buildout of renewable and a massive commitment to energy efficiency efforts; for they ARE the fastest way to achieve carbon reduction.

The risk part of your thinking is intrigues me. You (as all nuclear supporters do) compare it to fossil fuels. But that is a red herring that is designed to avoid the appropriate comparison.

We all know the risk of carbon, so the point of looking at comparative risk in this exercise is to find out which technologies among the available solutions are the most sustainable (another way of saying least risky).

The "demonstrated risk" of nuclear is real and it is vastly larger than what is associated with renewables and energy efficiency.

Jacobson's analysis examines all of your assumptions and concludes that nuclear power is a third rate solution to climate change".

So once more, where are you coming from?

Abstract here: http://www.rsc.org/publishing/journals/EE/article.asp?doi=b809990c

Full article for download here: http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/revsolglobwarmairpol.htm


Energy Environ. Sci., 2009, 2, 148 - 173, DOI: 10.1039/b809990c

Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security

Mark Z. Jacobson

Abstract
This paper reviews and ranks major proposed energy-related solutions to global warming, air pollution mortality, and energy security while considering other impacts of the proposed solutions, such as on water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation, and undernutrition.

Nine electric power sources and two liquid fuel options are considered. The electricity sources include solar-photovoltaics (PV), concentrated solar power (CSP), wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, wave, tidal, nuclear, and coal with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The liquid fuel options include corn-ethanol (E85) and cellulosic-E85. To place the electric and liquid fuel sources on an equal footing, we examine their comparative abilities to address the problems mentioned by powering new-technology vehicles, including battery-electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and flex-fuel vehicles run on E85.

Twelve combinations of energy source-vehicle type are considered. Upon ranking and weighting each combination with respect to each of 11 impact categories, four clear divisions of ranking, or tiers, emerge.

Tier 1 (highest-ranked) includes wind-BEVs and wind-HFCVs.
Tier 2 includes CSP-BEVs, geothermal-BEVs, PV-BEVs, tidal-BEVs, and wave-BEVs.
Tier 3 includes hydro-BEVs, nuclear-BEVs, and CCS-BEVs.
Tier 4 includes corn- and cellulosic-E85.

Wind-BEVs ranked first in seven out of 11 categories, including the two most important, mortality and climate damage reduction. Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations.

Tier 2 options provide significant benefits and are recommended.

Tier 3 options are less desirable. However, hydroelectricity, which was ranked ahead of coal-CCS and nuclear with respect to climate and health, is an excellent load balancer, thus recommended.

The Tier 4 combinations (cellulosic- and corn-E85) were ranked lowest overall and with respect to climate, air pollution, land use, wildlife damage, and chemical waste. Cellulosic-E85 ranked lower than corn-E85 overall, primarily due to its potentially larger land footprint based on new data and its higher upstream air pollution emissions than corn-E85.

Whereas cellulosic-E85 may cause the greatest average human mortality, nuclear-BEVs cause the greatest upper-limit mortality risk due to the expansion of plutonium separation and uranium enrichment in nuclear energy facilities worldwide. Wind-BEVs and CSP-BEVs cause the least mortality.

The footprint area of wind-BEVs is 2–6 orders of magnitude less than that of any other option. Because of their low footprint and pollution, wind-BEVs cause the least wildlife loss.

The largest consumer of water is corn-E85. The smallest are wind-, tidal-, and wave-BEVs.

The US could theoretically replace all 2007 onroad vehicles with BEVs powered by 73000–144000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.

In sum, use of wind, CSP, geothermal, tidal, PV, wave, and hydro to provide electricity for BEVs and HFCVs and, by extension, electricity for the residential, industrial, and commercial sectors, will result in the most benefit among the options considered. The combination of these technologies should be advanced as a solution to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Coal-CCS and nuclear offer less benefit thus represent an opportunity cost loss, and the biofuel options provide no certain benefit and the greatest negative impacts.