Addendum ad space weather events – see this recent article:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124125001&ft=1&f=1007

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’.

Re some kind of bandaid – I only see one option that doesn’t create as many or more problems than it solves. I hope you’ll take time to read this post, as I think it really points to a very tangible solution that not only addresses root causes, but that is also entirely doable:

http://permaculture.org.au/2009/12/14/the-biology-of-global-warming/

As I see it, it’s either get serious about the content of that post, learning how to work with biological synergies to restore Gaia’s equilibrium, or we’ll see other band-aids applied so that business as usual can continue. The other band-aids are called geo-engineering – attempts to adjust systems within the biosphere since we refuse to adjust ourselves, our lifestyles.

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:

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

http://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:

http://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

http://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”?

And Craig, the additional links are much appreaciated.

With the amount of information now available, there is a growing number of folk out there knowing or sensing the urgency of our current situation, however the lag between thoughts and actions may well be where our troubles sit. Still think we need a ‘big fat bandage’ to see us through the next decade or two, whatever that may be. More food for thought. Cheers

glenn

@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.

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

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

http://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.

ad magnetosphere, I’d say it’s pretty much the other way round. If we built a massive grid infrastructure, we would have to pay very close attention to secure this against space weather events.

If a Carrington event (the solar super flare of 1859) occurred today, it would perhaps finish off civilization within a few minutes. If a massive plasma storm distorts the earth’s magnetic fields, this induces massive DC currents in our electric grid (extremely large area “coils”). The transformers don’t take such DC current well: it drives them into saturation, where they suddenly dissipate a lot of heat – transformer meltdown in a few minutes only. Well, okay, perhaps only a fraction of them will die that way, cutting off sufficiently large parts of the grid that some other transformers would survive. I don’t know.

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