Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

[MaskedOne]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

Sorry. Was groggy when I got home...

Bedtime for Bonzo.

Today has been my day for dumb mistakes

Shrug, not a prob. It wasn't a major part of that post and I've been scattering my own errors through the month. They happen.

[Tiger Phoenix]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

The caveat to this is that I don't think it should be in the hands of private companies--problems arise when its about profits first rather than safety. Also, oversight should be both internal and external--internal oversight should be handled by an independent review branch of the responsible organization and external oversight should be by a completely different organization.

I agree. Yes it is necessary. We will soon be 9.5 billion humans on Earth. Fossil fuels and carbon can't do it alone. It is a limited energy source that took millions if not billions of years to be created. Profit is one of our worst enemies. Reduce cost (cutting corners) and performance (doing the job with less people) seems to be the new theme of the 21st century. Your source of inspiration (God/all that is...) help us all.

Yes the consequences can be great as in what happened in Japan. But it reassures me that it was out of our control. A tsunami created the disaster. Who can argue with that?

[Hawkfeathers]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

I agree. Yes it is necessary. We will soon be 9.5 billion humans on Earth. Fossil fuels and carbon can't do it alone. It is a limited energy source that took millions if not billions of years to be created. Profit is one of our worst enemies. Reduce cost (cutting corners) and performance (doing the job with less people) seems to be the new theme of the 21st century. Your source of inspiration (God/all that is...) help us all.

Yes the consequences can be great as in what happened in Japan. But it reassures me that it was out of our control. A tsunami created the disaster. Who can argue with that?

They put these things where they shouldn't be, and fail to safeguard/maintain them. And the absurd number of humans is the heart of the entire problem.

[anunitu]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

One issue is a LOT of money is invested in OLD energy systems,and this fact keeps the science of the new from becoming the majority of use. The money fights progress because the OIL,Nuclear and coal people will not go softly into that dark night. I mean we still have coal for crickets sake.(Thinks of dickens London)

[B. de Corbin]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

I'm in the yay-ish category.

We need to go beyond the technology of "let's burn stuff" because we've discovered that burning mass quantities of stuff at the level all us humans want is becoming destructive.

People are not going to stop, or significantly reduce, their need for energy... Instead, it will increase, if, for no other reason than that more and more countries are developing, bringing all kinds of benefits to citizens.

Ideally, we need to develop robust "green" sources of energy. Very significant progress is being made, but we aren't there yet.

In the meantime, nuclear energy, much cleaner than burning stuff (although it still uses the technology of "let's make stuff really hot") is the best candidate. But it is dangerous. We need safety first, if we're playing with atoms. But, as MaskedOne said, it can be done - with the proper safeguards, double redundancies, and double redundancies on the redundancies.

Maybe it needs to be in the hands of the government, or maybe not. The government is as subject to corruption and greed as is any other organization, but the government must definitely be in on oversight and regulation. The more people with competing interests involved in looking, the less likely something is to be overlooked.

[thalassa]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

Nobody concerned about toxic waste?

Yes and no. The problem of toxic waste can be addressed (yay technology) today better than it could in the past. And, I think in the future, solar disposal might be an option (though not without its own risks, obviously).

I should see if I can get the hubby on here to talk about this...since he actually does nuc work.



Otherwise, I totally agree that nuclear power should be a temporary solution, not a permanant one.

[Munin-Hugin]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

I recall something from a few years ago about how they have been attempting to create "mini-stars" as a way to supply energy. I'm rusty on it and all, but in a way it was similar to what was being done in that Spiderman movie with Doc. Octopus, using plasma physics to form tiny suns that could then be used to provide mass amounts of energy.

[Tiger Phoenix]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

They put these things where they shouldn't be, and fail to safeguard/maintain them. And the absurd number of humans is the heart of the entire problem.

They put these things where they can be accessible to major cities. Because we need energy. It is true that we are too many people on Mother Earth but let me appease your restless mind. We have reached peak children. The population will hit 9.5 billion and grow down. In the mean time we need to ensure everyone is happy. How do you feel when electricity goes out for a whole day? I feel the same way.

[Torgrim]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

I am YAY for nuclear energy, mostly because although I believe the current technology isn't quite super-safe we need to continue to use it and research it to ensure we can reach better and safer levels (which are within a 30-50 year grasp of researchers quite possibly). Along with increased safety, newer forms of nuclear power also incredibly shrink the amount of waste materials left over and greatly reduce chances of catastrophic meltdowns.

It isn't a perfect situation now, but we need to break the fossil fuel stranglehold we have right now so that other areas of energy research can be expanded before it is too late and our energy consumption needs reach a level that we can't keep up with anymore (thus leading to a probable world war III scenario with war over fuel resources to continue to feed dying countries economies).

[thalassa]

Re: Nuclear power. Yay or nay?

Earth's carrying capacity is unknown (9-10 billion is a popular number...my fave biologist, EO Wilson supports it...but estimates range from 2 billion to over 1000 billion). The estimated carrying capacity depends entirely on the parameters used to determine it. And those metrics are made up by us. The only real way to know the carrying capacity of Earth (IMO) is to continue as we are and let it happen...to wait for the crash. Under current resource use, it will come sooner rather than later. IF we change our ways, it may come later...or we may lessen our population and not have to worry about it.

By the estimate of the Stockholm Resiliency Alliance, we've passed three of our "boundaries"--climate change, biodiversity loss, and effing up the nitrogen cycle.

The Planetary Boundaries framework seeks to define safelimits for human impact on key Earth System processesthat will keep us from crossing the thresholds of tippingpoints and to help us maintain the overall resilienceof the Earth System. The roughly 50 scientists of theStockholm Resilience Centre come from 19 organizationsaround the world and have published their work to, “laythe groundwork for shifting our approach to governanceand management . . . toward the estimation of the safespace for human development.

Planetary boundariesdefine, as it were, the boundaries of the ‘planetaryplaying field’ for humanity if we want to be sure ofavoiding major human-induced environmental change ona global scale” (23). They propose that boundaries be setat the lower limit of the zone of uncertainty for key EarthSystem processes. Going beyond this line would take usinto the zone of uncertainty where surprises in the stateof one of the key Earth System processes could push usover a threshold to an abrupt change in the wholeEarth system.

Staying within these limits, on the other hand,should ensure continued stability of Holocene-likeconditions for thousands of years (22). Unfortunately, scientists at the StockholmResilience Centre believe that three of these safeboundaries have already been passed: climate change,rate of biodiversity loss, and changes to the globalnitrogen cycle (22). The climate change boundaryestablished by the group is 350 ppm atmosphericCO2. Current atmosphericCO2 concentration has recently reached 400 ppm (26) andis rising nearly 20 ppm per decade (27).

A second boundary already passed is loss ofbiodiversity. While it is clear that biodiversity is animportant component of ecosystem resilience, theauthors suggest that more research is needed to definea more certain boundary. As a provisional boundary theypropose 10 times the natural rate of extinction. However,they are confident that the current rate of extinction isunsustainable at between 100 to 1 000 times thenatural rate.

The third boundary that is estimated to havealready been exceeded is for the nitrogen cycle and moregenerally for the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles. Theseare important nutrients with central roles in both naturaland agricultural productivity. The authors estimate thathuman activities currently convert around 120 milliontonnes of nitrogen from the atmosphere each year intoreactive forms (for fertilizer and from cultivation ofleguminous crops) exceeding the conversion by all landbased natural processes. An estimated 20 million tonnesof phosphorus is mined for agricultural and industrialuse. Much of this agricultural pollution ends up in theenvironment. Nitrogen pollutes “waterways and thecoastal zone, accumulating in land systems and addinga number of gases to the atmosphere [and] . . . slowlyerodes the resilience of important Earth subsystems” (22).As much as 45 per cent of the mined phosphorus endsup in our oceans (22).

The Stockholm Alliance acknowledges that theirproposed framework is in many ways an extension ofpast work such as the Limits to Growth systems modeling(28), the Precautionary Principle (29), and the TolerableWindows Approach (30), to name a few (22). However,they point out several ways in which the PlanetaryBoundaries Framework advances from these earlierworks (23). In contrast and perhaps to some degree inresponse to the criticism of non-specificity of the Limitsto Growth, the Planetary Boundaries framework hasidentified the specific processes which they believemust be kept within defined safe limits for humanityto operate safely on planet Earth (23). Also in contrastwith the Limits to Growth, the Planetary Boundariesframework recognizes the threat posed by non-linearchanges that could result from crossing thresholds (23).Limits to Growth did not foresee this type of abruptchange or non-linear system response (23).

from an interesting paper on the carrying capacity of the Earth

What we really need to be concerned with isn't carrying capacity--there is some strong evidence that developing countries have slowing birth rates, and developed countries have super slowed birth rates, and we should hopefully be leveling off population size. The problem though, is the ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT of the population. Developed countries have a huge ecological footprint. The US takes a bunch of shit on this, as they should, since they (and yeah, I say "they"--we buy most stuff used, we buy almost nothing that is meant to be disposable, we buy as little that is plastic that we can, and we keep stuff (and try to repair it) until it is finally kaput, and then we recycle it) use more shit than anyone one else*....1 American=32 Kenyans.

*there is a caveat to this---while the US uses more resources than anyone else, per capita, we aren't the worst country at overusing our biocapacity---the US has a lot of people that use a lot of stuff, but we have a lot of resources too (and compared to some countries we manage them fairly well...compared to others, there is plenty of room for improvement)

...and, tbh, compared to the 2007 map, the US has improved...thought, I wonder how much that was because of the recession


The problem is that our economies (developed economies, not just the US) are based on population growth and export to new markets. They need growth to work (this is why the stock market is just plain stupid). We need sustainably modeled economies where the goal isn't to get rich, its to live within modest means and break even.

In the past, people have also argued that concerns overworld population will dissipate as countries undergo thedemographic transition. Peak global population growthrates of 2.1 per cent occurred in the 1960s followed bya peak in the absolute number of people being addedeach year at 87 million 25 years later (2). This slowing inglobal average population growth was the outcome ofa dramatic drop in birth rates among the world’s mostdeveloped countries; many dropping to replacementlevel or even below (39).

It is very widely accepted thatthis phenomenon, part of something demographers callthe demographic transition, reliably occurs in countriesas they become developed (Figure 8) (40,41). Thisassumption is incorporated into estimates that projectworld population leveling off just above nine billion bythe middle of this century (39,40). In general, projectionsof future population also assume that the economic andsocial development which is an important dimension ofdemographic transition, can and will occur in many ofthe world’s poorer countries (39,40).

This suggests a crucial dilemma for policy makers.The prevailing assumption about population growthrates is that as the developing countries achieve greaterdevelopment their population growth rate will slow(the demographic transition described in Figure 8).This would mean an easing in the number of peopleputting pressure on the Earth System. So far, so good.However, developed countries also have larger ecologicalfootprints and elevated levels of consumption. Thuswhile population growth will decline during demographictransition, the reduced number of consumers may havean equally large impact on the Earth System. A furtherproblem is that the steady progress of global GDP, whichis taken as evidence that development will eventuallyreach the entire world, has so far been built on cheapenergy—primarily oil.


(from the paper I quoted above)

In the end, it will come down to this:

1) “a bigger pie”
This is the technological solutions approach, which findsalternative sources of energy and materials and greater 11efficiencies to provide for a larger number peopleon Earth.

2) “fewer forks”
This approach is based on the demographic transition,the slowing or stopping of population growth to havefewer people dividing the metaphorical pie.

3) “better manners”
This approach is to rationalize and improve theconnection between the decisions and actions taken bypeople and the consequences of those actions, so weremain within key planetary boundaries. This approachincludes such things as defining property rights to openaccessresources, elimination of economic irrationalities,improving governance and perhaps even imposing someof the “externalized” costs of having children on thepeople making the decision to have more children, tocreate a downward bias on the decision

(I really do recommend reading thepaper, its quit good!)

...or it will all just come down...