Zero Carbon Australia?

I haven’t had a chance to read the summary yet, however most would agree we need to change how we go about generating energy to power our current way of life. And while going 100% renewable is absolutely essential, I don’t think we will get it up and running quick enough and on the scale needed to avoid runaway climate change. At the same time we are busy exporting dirty coal to anyone who buy it. Go figure! And with our increase population, growing thirst for energy, and ever more CO2 in our environment, I think it’s soon going to be time to reconsider nuclear energy as a means of seeing us though this most difficult time of transition. The clock is ticking, random tipping points are colliding, and soon there may well be suffering beyond imagination. Although hard to come to terms with, James Lovelock’s latest book ‘The Vanishing Face of Gaia – A Final Warning’ seems to be pretty much on the money.

@Thomas: Agree with your points. One truly myopic aspect of our socio-political mechanisms is ignoring – with perilous consequences – our innate human inability to constrain ourselves. Some enviromentalists see the world continuing in its present capitalist state, but merely making a few surface adjustments, like replacing coal fired power stations with solar and wind farms. But when looked at logically, this simply means our economy-must-grow paradigm continues, just with slightly ‘less bad’ aspects patched to it. Following this to its logical conclusion, we would thus continue as we are – growing energy supply to meet unconstrained ‘needs’ until every square metre of arable land is covered in solar panels and every ridgeline and square kilometer of ocean space is covered in wind turbines.

As you say, education is key. This education must be fully holistic in examining what does humankind really need and want out of existence. And, restraint, conservation, investment in future natural capital, harnessing biological synergies and learning how to collaborate internationally between similar climate zones, etc., must all be integral to that education.

I am reminded of a quote from Wendell Berry in regards to our ‘supposed’ energy needs:

One possibility is just to tag along with the fantasists in government and industry who would have us believe that we can pursue our ideals of affluence, comfort, mobility, and leisure indefinitely. This curious faith is predicated on the notion that we will soon develop unlimited new sources of energy…. This is fantastical because the basic cause of the energy crisis is not scarcity; it is moral ignorance and weakness of character. We don’t know how to use energy, or what to use it for. And we cannot restrain ourselves. Our time is characterized as much by the abuse and waste of human energy as it is by the abuse and waste of fossil fuel energy. Nuclear power, if we are to believe its advocates, is presumably going to be well used by the same mentality that has egregiously devalued and misapplied man- and womanpower. If we had an unlimited supply of solar or wind power, we would use that destructively, too, for the same reason.

Perhaps all of those sources of energy are going to be developed. Perhaps all of them can sooner or later be developed without threatening our survival. But not all of them together can guarantee our survival, and they cannot define what is desirable. – Wendell Berry, The Agricultural Crisis, A Crisis of Culture. p. 16, 17

You may find this article of interest if you haven’t already read it:

https://www.permaculturenews.org/2009/05/27/why-increased-energy-efficiency-wont-save-us/

@Glenn: While I am acutely/painfully aware we have our back up against the wall as far as leaving things far too late, and can certainly see why Lovelock and others would, even if reluctantly, push for nuclear, I am personally loathe to endorse it. Your own realisation of the predicament we’re in should make it easy for you to understand my thoughts on this, as given the likelihood we’ll see large scale social collapse in the ensuing years, we must ask ourselves if future generations we would bestow with the burden of managing our nuclear waste will actually have the technology, time, water (cooling), etc. to accomplish that task. Nuclear power stations have been shown to have a maximum lifespan of 40-50 years, only, the investment in building is immense (always a lot more than initially proposed), but the waste lives on to threaten future generations for longer than we can imagine. Morally this is repugnant. Life will be hard enough for them due to the state of the world we’ve left them, then we add to those woes by giving them an additional task they probably won’t have the resources to deal with. Considering one litre of fuel is worth the labour hours of many men for many hours, and considering they won’t have that fuel, then they will be busy enough just trying to survive – let alone taking on such a technically demanding task that requires energy in itself. And the worse aspect is that even if they could take care of it, somehow, they would get nothing in return for this investment of time and labour!!

And, my point is proving itself today, as old nuclear power stations which are being retired now, and whose initial budgets supposedly allowed funds for decommissioning, are now not being cleaned up as they should and apparently the funds are not there. Companies are stealthily dumping wastes in oceans and landfills just hoping the problem will go away. If we do this now, when energy is still relatively abundant and the economy is still partially intact, what do we expect to happen further down the track in regards to future decommissioning projects when we’ll already be well past the crest of peak oil and our economies in ruins? Will we just move as far as possible from the power plant, or will we just try to see if humans can physically adapt to life with radioactivity in our soil, our water, our food and our air?

In regards to nuclear – I think if we’re thinking just for this present generation, how to continue with the lifestyles we’ve grown accustomed to as best we can, then I suppose it’s an option. But, if we take the long view, and a moral one, I can’t see it being an option at all. Yes, that does mean we need to seriously examine the urgent need to simplify our lives greatly. Food, water, shelter and community must become the new ‘must haves’, rather than iPods, plasma screens and fast cars. Again, this is where education comes in. Most of our ‘consumers’, those dearly beloved by big industry, get their education from those same industries. I see a big need to ‘deprogram’ consumers – like is sometimes done for people that have fallen victim to a cult religion. We’ve been living in a dream. We’ve got to wake the hell up.

Waking up requires developing an economic system to replace consumer-oriented capitalism. The size of this challenge is immense, so it is largely ignored in favour of maintaining the status quo of keeping the throttle down as we make a beeline for the cliff. Waking up will require a groundswell of grass roots comprehension of the problems and a collaborative determination to deal with them peacefully. It will require transition – balancing between speed of transition and a humanitarian need to avoid economic and culture shocks that could unravel that transition through revolutions. It will require an avoidance, somehow(!), of social stratification that would see industry-financed governments make war on their own populace as the captains of industry try to retain their hold on land, resources, and power by using private and government police and military to put down dissent.

Is such a peaceful transition even possible? Given how long we’ve been ignoring the warning signs, and little evidence of change of stance from our ‘leaders’, then I would regretfully say possibly not. But I don’t see another way out, so can only propose the only exit route for humanity, this side of eternity, that I can see.

The irony is we regard ourselves as being at top of the intellect scale in relation to all other life forms on the planet. The big difference between ourselves and other species is the ability to objectively reason and to choose: to plan. All other animals live within niches that function through symbiosis with everything around them. We’re the only species that intentionally chooses to live OUT of harmony with everything else, and we do it for wholly selfish reasons – short term gain of ‘things’ that are in themselves without true value and which do not provide happiness. Before we could destroy and then move. Now we have nowhere to move to. It’s either going to be violent conquest to maintain business as usual, or widespread cooperation to transition to a more realistic and rewarding way of life. What will we choose?

@Evan: Yes, I share the concern over the biomass aspect. Too many people call crop residues ‘waste’, not recognising we’re in serious trouble on the soil front specifically because of our inability to understand the need for carbon cycling. Again, reports like these need to be a start point, and worked into something realistic. It’s just such points as this that get raised in examining reports like this that help enlighten politicians about the realities of biological limits, and the realities of biological potential if we can but learn how to harness their synergies.

There is an extremely interesting “other” book by Masanobu Fukuoka, in addition to his famous “The One Straw Revolution”: “The Natural Way of Farming”. What is so interesting about this book is that it allows us to take a peek at the scaffolding which Fukuoka used as he gradually developed both his methods and his philosophy.

This book is out of print, which is at the same time good and bad. It is good, because, according to Australian copyright law, it allows one to borrow an electronic copy from an Australian Library that has it for personal use. Indeed, it can be obtained here:

https://www.soilandhealth.org/01aglibrary/01aglibwelcome.html

But let me quote the opening passage of chapter 1:

===>
Man prides himself on being the only creature on earth with the ability to think. He claims to know himself and the natural world, and believes he can use nature as he pleases. He is convinced, moreover, that intelligence is strength, that anything he desires is within his reach.
As he has forged ahead, making new advances in the natural sciences and dizzily expanding his materialistic culture, man has grown estranged from nature and ended by building a civilization all his own, like a wayward child rebelling against its mother.
But all his vast cities and frenetic activity have brought him are empty, dehumanized pleasures and the destruction of his living environment through the abusive exploitation of nature.
Harsh retribution for straying from nature and plundering its riches has begun to appear in the form of depleted natural resources and food crises, throwing a dark shadow over the future of mankind. Having finally grown aware of the gravity of the situation, man has begun to think seriously about what should be done. But unless he is willing to undertake the most fundamental self-reflection he will be unable to steer away from a path of certain destruction.
Alienated from nature, human existence becomes a void, the wellspring of life and spiritual growth gone utterly dry. Man grows ever more ill and weary in the midst of his curious civilization that is but a struggle over a tiny bit of time and
space.
<===

Craig,

It is now commonly said that we need a cut in greenhouse gases of 50 – 80% ‘now’ if we hope to experience only a moderate increase in temperatures and any chance of adapting to a warmer planet.

Considering our current global addiction to fossil fuels, will renewables come on board quick enough? I don’t think so. As already suggested, an intelligent answer would be to simply cut back on the amount of energy we use. Now ask yourself if the average global citizen is willing to do this? If you make clear the implications of what this really means to each person, the answer is probably no.

So if the above holds any truth at all, we can expect a pronounced increase in global temperatures, consequently a massive culling of life on our planet.

Keep in mind our current government seems rather happy with a 5% cut in greenhouse gases.

Some may say ‘bring it on’ allowing Gaia to restore balance on her own terms. I don’t much like this option.

The environmental movement is largely anti nuclear and the coal-oil-gas industry has been happy to stand at the sideline cheering them/us on every step of the way. If we moved across to ‘responsible’ nuclear energy, we could largely put an end to fossil fuel usage, allowing our planet to adapt and give us one last chance to get it right.

Personally, I have never much liked the idea of nuclear energy. However at the same time I have come around to realize not all of the anti nuclear propaganda is true.

Thomas, I think your ‘insights’ are spot on but you are largely preaching to the converted here. I think we need to consider the ‘current’ mindset of the other 99% of the global population who are not of a permaculture way of being in the world. And we need to do it quickly.

Craig, thanks again for your wonderful posts.

Cheers,
glenn

@Thomas: Love the quote.

@Glenn #2:

The nuclear industry has done a great job of making themselves look ‘green’ and ‘carbon free’, but it’s not the case. Aside from the ‘spent fuel’, a very benign sounding name for an end product that requires significant attention and cold water to contain if it’s not to ignite and pour radiative material into the atmosphere, even the mining of Uranium creates radioactive tailings that nobody has figured how to contain either. This dust ends up blowing all over and contaminating water and soils.

Then there’s the issue of Uranium depletion. A worldwide move towards greater nuclear power capacity will soon see Uranium prices skyrocket.

And, when you look at the full carbon inventory of nuclear, from mining through to decommissioning, it doesn’t look like as great a picture as the industry would paint.

https://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37405

https://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull471/nuclear_reactions.pdf

https://www.stormsmith.nl/

Uranium is now getting like oil as far as availability goes. We’re running out of the easy to get, light, sweet crude and are having to chase oil that is both more expensive to reach and more expensive to process because it’s not as pure. In the same way, not all uranium deposits are equal and we’re now entering an era of more expensive uranium mining.

Even the most optimistic view on GHG emissions from nuclear still make it on a par with wind generation, but wind generation doesn’t involve aspects such as peak uranium, massive initial investment with large time scales for deployment, security issues, nuclear proliferation and ‘gifting’ our descendants with radioactive waste they will likely be unable to maintain.

>>”As already suggested, an intelligent answer would be to simply cut back on the amount of energy we use. Now ask yourself if the average global citizen is willing to do this? If you make clear the implications of what this really means to each person, the answer is probably no.”

I agree with what you’re saying. The only thing is if we resign ourselves to a path with no future just because we can’t see people making intelligent, objective decisions, then we’re giving up on that future.

If I don’t put a stake in the ground on realities based on the fullest picture possible that takes into account ALL the converging issues we face (too many commentators take individual problems in isolation – not seeing their relationships with other problems) then who will?

While quite possibly highly idealistic, I can’t help but try to envision a future where the kind of realities we’re discussing become part of mainstream discussion at all levels of society, from Joe Citizen in the factory, field and office, right up to the those sitting in political office. Such discussion could see a rapid rollout of truly educational materials, via TV, radio, billboards, etc., sharing the issues as objectively as possible and seeking to encourage discussion and participation in the cooperative building of a lifestyle far more in tune with the realities of living on a finite planet with the kind of population we now possess.

Or, we just decide that our lifestyles are non-negotiable, and we consign ourselves to continue watching the rise and rise of industry-led fascism, the oppression of the growing ranks of poor and disenfranchised, and see the easter island microcosm enacted on a global scale.

There are no easy answers. But, and I think this is a key point I want to make, the sooner we make the hard decisions that need to be made, and plan to design compassion and transition into them, the easier it will be in the long run.

We really are running out of time unfortunately. Again, being just a little ‘less bad’ is not an answer. The real answers may never be implemented, but I would hope it won’t be from lack of trying on our part.

Craig,

there are many interesting aspects related to nuclear fission that should be known more widely. Actually, I think that a separate article on nuclear would make great sense.

First observation: We are burning about 80 million barrels of oil per day. That is 8*10^7 barrels/day * 160 liters/barrel * 35*10^6 J/liter * 1/3 thermodynamic efficiency = 1.5*10^17 Joules of work from oil/day, or about 1.7 Terawatt. There’s also coal and gas, so we can roughly double that figure; we are hence talking about roughly 3.5 TW of work-power from fossil fuels. Per person on the planet, that is about 500 Watts (hence, 1500 Watts thermal). My numbers may be slightly off, as this is just a guesstimation. A frequently quoted figure is 2000 Watt/Person. But that’s close enough. This is the right ballpark.

Let us now imagine we wanted to replace just 10% of this 3.5 TW of power with nuclear energy. That’s 350 Gigawatts of electricity. This alone then would roughly correspond to *doubling* the number of reactors around the world. Can we do that sufficiently fast for fission to even just compensate oil depletion? I would say: no way. So, nuclear is not going to prevent our present economic model from collapsing. Do you want a lot of nuclear infrastructure around if you go through massive economic contraction?

This sort of should give you an idea what phenomena I’d expect to occur under such circumstances:

https://englishrussia.com/?p=2198

https://www.bellona.no/bellona.org/english_import_area/international/russia/navy/northern_fleet/incidents/31767

Nice, isn’t that?

So much about this. Now, there are a number of other frequently quoted “facts” about nuclear that deserve greater attention. An interesting one is the “Peak Uranium” issue. Note that nuclear energy densities are perversely high in comparison to chemical ones. About a factor 10^7 higher. This very easily confuses our judgment. Some people claim that, due to this enormous energy density, even obtaining Uranium from water(!) may be sufficiently effective to make limited high-quality Uranium ore a non-problem. Now, if one does the maths to work out how much water we would have to filter in an active system to just keep one 1-GW reactor burning, and sets the amount of water in relation to rainfall (which gives an upper bound on the amount of water in our rivers), or just contemplate filtering an entire major river for Uranium, that idea does not appear promising at all. However, curiously, if you think about passive “ion exchanger” harvesting systems where you just immerse a large synthetic membrane (not overly fancy chemistry; all H-C-N-O) in an oceanic current, and work out effective throughput, the result is quite surprising. Indeed, the Japanese seem to have demonstrated that production of Uranium from sea-water may be commercially quite viable, even with present-day technology.

This is what the Japanese claim to be able to do:

https://www.taka.jaea.go.jp/eimr_div/j637/theme3%20sea_e.html

But… remember I said 10^7 times chemical energy density easily confuses our judgment ability. An influential proponent of the “Let’s go all out nuclear fission” idea in the U.S. is John McCarthy. (Personally, I must say I admire him for the work he did on LISP, because this is such an incredibly powerful, useful tool to me. But I totally disagree with many of his other ideas.) Now, McCarthy being a well known and influential person in science, and also science culture, many technophiles have made his preachings as they can be found on the web page

https://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/

something like their religion. (At least this is what I frequently observe in discussions about environmental issues on slashdot.org.)

The problem is: McCarthy seems to be completely unaware that the /only/ product he has to sell is excuses(!) The “thousands of reactors” he is talking about that would be needed to phase out fossil fuels only exist on paper, and all that his “reasoning” ever has achieved was to fuel a false sense of complacency about energy issues. Basically, his position can be summarized as: (1) The claims by “the environmentalists” that energy is a key issue are completely unfounded, as there is so much fissible Uranium around that energy is over-abundant. (2) If there is any environmental trouble, then we can always resort to some futuristic high-power solution, as we have virtually unlimited energy anyway.

It is quite easy to see how incredibly naive such reasoning is. If all-nuclear were the future, then every nation certainly would like to be part of this. If you take a close look at the numbers in the CIA World Factbook, it would not take you long to realize that a nation such as in particular Iran would have to run about 90 major (1 GW) fission reactors in order to just replace its present oil and gas use. Quite clearly, anyone who dreams about replacing fossil by nuclear on a massive global scale must have some fairly naive ideas about geopolitics. While this is by far not the only reason why such an idea seems quite harebrained to me, there is an interesting further aspect to this. Note that excuses that allow one to self-justify behaviour which otherwise would have to be regarded as totally inacceptable are, and always have been, an immensely valuable currency. Now, what did McCarthy’s activism actually achieve? On the one hand, we have a large number of technophiles who believe his overly naive nonsense, and on the other hand, if things start to get really ugly, they now have the perfect excuse: “It all can be blamed on those crazy environmentalists, for if they had not prevented a massive nuclear program, we would all now swim in cheap fission energy…”

I would almost want to take a bet that we will see quite severe attacks on environmentally minded people soon, based on such ideology. In particular, I expect attacks by people who never received even the slightest amount of training on spotting self-deception and who do not realize that the all-nuclear plan never could have worked simply for geostrategic reasons alone, if not for a number of others.

So, it is very very important to realize that there is a “nuclear industry”, whose product is nuclear energy and radioactive pollution, and a “nuclear excuse industry”, whose product is illusions, cheap excuses, and ways to blame serious problems on someone else.

No matter how you think about nuclear, no matter what you are able to dream of, as it seems we inevitably WILL be going through a phase of serious energy scarcity, nuclear or not. Under such circumstances, the only viable strategies forward will be those that, rather than treating symptoms in a way that causes more problems (and hence need for energy) further down the road, actually tackle problems at their real root and manage to eliminate multiple symptoms-formerly-believed-to-be-individual-problems at the same time.

This WILL be the end of the ideology of: “Whatever problem we face, the silver bullet is growth, for growth makes us rich, and the richer we are, the easier it will be to address all sorts of problems.” This, then, is the real key step that determines the future of mankind. How will this bizarre ideology be abolished? Those who invested their entire lives in such thinking, the high priests, certainly will never be able to see it for what it is. So, change must come from those who have not been absorbed by such thinking, and who are able to (a) demand answers and (b) will not get lulled by the excuses and self-deceptions the ideologists keep on spinning (as they have been programmed to).

Anyone here to offer a course on “effective de-programming of growth ideologists”?

@Thomas: I haven’t done the math in full, but figures I’ve seen in the past on the amount of nuclear needed to replace fossil fuel generated electricity are comparable to yours. Yes, it’s unrealistic to think we can roll out nuclear on such a scale in rapid quick time (most plants take well over a decade to complete, and are regularly rife with problems and delays), and yes, we don’t have time anyway. And, if we did have the time, would we really want to magnify our problems and risks so dramatically, just for a few decades of more power – power that only enables us to destroy the environment in every other quarter (pollution, soil and water depletion and contamination, GHGs, etc.).

On top of that is the financial aspect. I would predict that a massive attempt to roll out nuclear will end up like the Dubai landscape – billions of dollars wasted, just to see it all abandoned before completion due to a peak-oil based collapse of economies. Except, unlike Dubai’s abandoned skyscrapers and other expensive disasters, this kind of landscape could leave us with serious issues of radioactive waste that nobody wants to foot the bill to deal with.

Imagine those billions spent on root-cause repair work instead.

And, of course, while building nuclear for ourselves, we’d also refuse to let others, those we’ve decided are inferior or who we label our enemies, to have it – applying sanctions or worse. Not conducive to the kind of international-cooperation-in-troubled-times scenario I’d far prefer.

And, when considering nuclear, we’ve got to realise that it’s only a patch for one aspect of our energy descent blues. It creates electricity, not liquid fuels. It would take at least a couple of decades of rapid transition to move our current world fleet from running on liquid fuels to running on electricity – and I can’t see this ever happening for some forms of transport, like aircraft. Such an unlikely transition would in itself use phenomenal amounts of energy/fossil fuels, and emit profligate amounts of GHGs in the process. But, again, we won’t be able to afford such a transition.

There really is no patch or silver bullet solution. As mentioned to Glenn in the previous comment, harnessing biology in a holistic fashion seems to be the only true solution, and permaculture is at the centre of that. Where we’re falling short, however, is failing to find ways to alter political and economic mechanisms to favour and incentivise this route. If we don’t take this route now, I think we’re essentially screwed. Without leadership on this, backed by popular consent and demand, this repair work will never happen. It means getting political – despite what some previous commenters in other posts on this site may think.

Nuclear dreams don’t stack up, but risk, as you say, allowing everyone to fall into a false sense of security. “Don’t worry, the scientists will invent us a way out of this”. There really are no solutions without a massive social awakening.

As Bill Mollison said:

“I think it’s pointless asking questions like “Will humanity survive?” It’s purely up to people – if they want to, they can, if they don’t want to, they won’t.”

We need to want to. How to get people to want to save themselves is the challenge. And that challenge is made all the harder whilst our media and advertising systems keep us all chasing a material based ‘happiness’.

The root cause to all our woe’s is exponential population growth.
Without addressing this problem first we are doomed.