Stewart Brand: Nuclear Power Could Save The World

Inhabitat:

Stewart Brand is an author, environmentalist, and above all, best known for his work as the founder of the Whole Earth Catalog. [...] Recently, our very own Editor-in-Chief Jill Fehrenbacher had the chance to pick Brand's brain, finding a thought-provoking discussion where Brand confers his belief that nuclear power might just be our green energy savior.

Read the whole story: Inhabitat

Comments

[CynWaveRider]

11:41 PM on 03/18/2011

Mr Brand has lost his deductive reasoning, sad

[Yo Yo Hood]

04:28 PM on 03/15/2011

Hmm Japan
Nuclear meltdown
Can we please just use cleane energy like solar, wind, water

[mamacat]

06:46 PM on 03/13/2011

It seems to me that our current reliance on fossil fuels for power is poisoning our environment. It may very well be that expanding our use of nuclear power is better in the long run than burning coal and petroleum, even if a few million people die every so often from radiation poisoning.

One complication; the media in Europe has been reporting for years that unscrupulous handlers of nuclear waste are buying up very old ships, loading them with spent nuclear waste, and then scuttling the ships in the Mediterranean or off the Atlantic or Indian Ocean coasts of Africa, thus bypassing the costs of storing the spent nuclear fuel for hundreds of thousands of years.

[Michael Mann]

11:16 AM on 02/22/2011

Nuclear power's life cycle including mining has less impact on the environment than current wind or solar power per megawatt produced. Mining rare earth metals for the manufacture of windmills and solar panels is much more destructive than uranium mining. There is no free ride, so why not use the best available technology- which happens to be nuclear power.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704124504576117511251161274.html

[esquilax]

05:42 AM on 02/24/2011

Wind power manufacturers are turning (pun intended) to doubly fed induction generators which do not have any rare-earth components.

[myth buster]

11:08 PM on 03/01/2011

Good. I hope it works, but we should be pursuing an all-of-the-above strategy.

[oldgeek1]

04:50 PM on 02/21/2011

Disband the EPA, take the regulations off of drilling and nuclear power plants, sure sounds like a path to a better place to live. Let's put the first new power plant in the Tea Party districts.

[maslin]

07:19 PM on 02/21/2011

Hi. I'm a largely liberal progressive independent who happens to have a good amateur grounding in risk assessment (which I highly recommend - it provides a basis for assessing energy risks among other things).

I volunteer to have a a new Light Water Reactor operating under current US nuke industry best practice built in my backyard. The reactor operator is also free to store the spent fuel in dry casks and pools as applicable for as long as they like.

[Genders]

08:22 PM on 02/21/2011

Right, TOO much regulation caused our problems. Oh wait, we have the lowest levels of regulation and enforcement we have had in 50 -80 years. I guess you are wrong.

Rooftop pv solar, offshore wind and waste bio char are the cheapest energy and fuels for million of Americans and billions of people worldwide.

Nukes: proliferation, terrorism, accidents and waste.

[alvdh1]

04:31 PM on 02/21/2011

The below links detail the radioactive legacy being left by uranium mining and nuclear waste reprocessing. You will never hear or read about these statistics, spills and discharges, worker and public exposure and the massive cleanup costs associated with uranium mining and reprocessing. The French La Hague and British Sellafield facilites are the worst offenders. Wait for the nuclear apologists to attack the messenger in full force post haste.



http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/rr05.pdf U.K. cleanup costs at all U.K. reprocessing facilities $146 Billion estimate by U.K. National Audit Office

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=health-legacy-of-uranium-mining-lingers-30-years-later

http://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/meetings/PDFplus/2009/cn175/URAM2009/Session%205/05_78_Carvalho_Portugal.pdf

http://arizona.sierraclub.org/conservation/forest_managment/uraniummining-waste.asphttp://www.wise-uranium.org/uwis.html

http://www.wise-uranium.org/uwis.html

http://nuclear-news.net/2011/01/12/france-leaves-radioactive-legacy-in-uranium-mine-tailings/

http://www.hcn.org/hcn/greenjustice/blog/toxic-legacy-for-tribes

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/umtra/grandjunction_title1.html

http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/may2005/2005-05-11-02.html

http://www.bellona.org/english_import_area/energy/nuclear/sellafield/37975

http://www.jeremyleggett.net/nuclear-vampirism/archive-of-selected-extracts-from-my-triple-crunch-log/

http://www.edwardgoldsmith.org/page81.html

http://beyondnuclear.squarespace.com/storage/France_Fact_Sheet_09.pdf

http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/rr05.pdf

[Rich Phitzwell]

06:04 PM on 02/21/2011

Most of the issues that you linked to originate during the cold war when standards were not yet made and or enforced. During that period of time it was a rush to develop and build as many nuclear weapons as possible. The process for nuclear weapons vs modern day nuclear fuels is a bit different and is highly regulated. Some of the articles are misleading stating 70% of france energy comes from fossil fuels. This is true, but when you consider energy you must look at transportation and other industrial needs. 80% of their electricity is from Nuke, and they export large quantities daily.

Yes a design based on 1970's technology is a bit dated and newer designs are far more efficient and have the potential to produce large volumes of algae and hydrogen which would offset the 70% needs for fossil. The new designs all incorporate triple cooling loops vs the old two, combine that with the potential to create hydrogen and then algae on a large scale would significantly cool the water that needs to be released back into the source.

Breeder reactors are not commercial reactors. They are simply test reactors on a small scale. The meltdown in Simi was due to a sodium reactor and the breakdown of seals and the lack of regulations for breeders at the time. They simply did not know what we know now.

Im all for solar, wind, bio. but we need a broader plan and nuke is viable.

[alvdh1]

07:03 PM on 02/21/2011

I beg to differ. Nothing has changed around the globe when it comes to uranium mining whether it is for civilian or weapons programs. I dare say that you did not dig deeply into any of the links I posted. Pawning this crap off onto the old weapons programs means that the current mining operations are one corporate bankruptcy away of becoming a taxpayer cleanup operation also known as corporate socialism. So by your logic, the direct discharge s into the air and water around the La Hague and Sellafield Reprocessing facilities is a viable option for nuclear. La Hague is dumping 110,000,000 gallons of radioactive waste into the English Channel and venting Krypton 85 into the atmosphere. They built and operate 2 hospitals in Niger exclusively for uranium miners and their families. France's radioactive uranium mining operation date back to weapons programs and commercial reactors continue to this very day in Niger.

The U.S. has over 1,000 abandoned uranium mines some of which provided uranium for weapons programs and some of which provided uranium for commercial reactors. It doesn't matter, because some of the fuel used for weapons is being harvested for commercial reactors. Everywhere it has been mined or reprocessed is a mess. When you can guarantee that industry and government are going to priortize safety and the environment at these sepcific areas of the fuel cycle and at the back end, then I might consider nuclear power without insurance and government subsidies.

[maslin]

07:22 PM on 02/21/2011

Great post. It's a pleasure to see someone weighing options dispassionately like that, and taking the steps to inform themselves.

[willr]

11:29 PM on 02/21/2011

And now it isn't just WWII nuclear weapons complex that's leaving a long lasting legacy.

Mining for rare earths for use in windmills and solar panels is leaving a last legacy in China. So in the more recent events department, we are contributing to their environmental disaster every time we buy a windmill generator or a solar panel from China:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1350811/In-China-true-cost-Britains-clean-green-wind-power-experiment-Pollution-disastrous-scale.html

Just another nuclear apologist pointing that there isn't a perfect solution but the nuclear solution is better then others.

[esquilax]

05:44 AM on 02/24/2011

You'll soon have to drop your "rare earth" scare as wind turbine manufacturers change to doubly fed induction generators (no permanent magnet).

[maslin]

05:14 PM on 02/19/2011

'Recently, our very own Editor-in-Chief Jill Fehrenbacher had the chance to pick Brand's brain, finding a thought-provoking discussion where Brand confers his belief that nuclear power might just be our green energy savior.'

Brand's recent book is worth a read for any green interested in energy (which, I'd argue, all 'greens' should be). It is a decent analysis of the problems facing us.

He quotes NASA's Hansen in the beginning of his chapter entitled 'New Nukes':

'One of the greatest dangers the world faces is the possibility that a vocal minority of antinuclear activists could prevent phase-out of coal emissions.'

[guinganbresil]

11:00 AM on 02/19/2011

Movement from solar -> biomass -> fossil fuels -> fission -> fusion is the progression intended (for lack of a better term...) by our world.

Each was provided by the world - for our use and stewardship.

When we were infants, we could not even cook our food - we basked in the warmth of the sun.
When we were toddlers, we learned to chase away night with fire.
When we were children, we drove our industry with coal, oil and natural gas.

We are teenagers - rebeling against our parents, leaving our dirty laundry laying around.

We could go off to college, stepping into the nuclear age and learning about our world.
We could become adults, and understand fusion and reach for the stars...

Or we could stay in our parents' basement until they kick us out.

[MAJK]

09:41 AM on 02/19/2011

Yes, nuclear power could save the world but a couple Chernobyl's could destroy it.

[Michael Mann]

10:49 AM on 02/19/2011

Then it's a good thing no-one builds Chernobyl style reactors anymore. As bad as Chernobyl was it would take more than a few Chernobyls to destroy the world, while burning fossil fuels is well on it's way, I feel like the frog in the pot as someone slowly heats the water. Chernobyl had many factors including; poor design, overiding safety features, poor training, poor safety culture and failure to follow procedures. There are barriers in place to prevent a repeat of that "accident"

[Roy Robson]

01:55 PM on 02/19/2011

Not to mention the triple redundency built into everything.. Most reactor trips are due to a built in safety device with very close tolerance. 26 years Nuclear Security experence and have talked to I&C techs who were 1 second to late reconnecting a wire and tripped the plant.

[alvdh1]

05:17 PM on 02/21/2011

Uranium Mining Waste is not in Mr. Mann's vocabulary. This is his inconvenient truth because he has yet to acknowledge how government and industry cut corners on the safety and health of miners and the public to allow over 1,000 abandoned uranium mines in the U..S. alone. The picture in Europe, East Europe, Australia, Canada and Australia is no different. Everywhere it has been mined paints a picture of callous indifference on the part of government and industry to the environment and health of people. The reprocessing industry has followed the same path of indifference. When you ignore the history of mining, reprocessing and a credible permanent nuclear waste repository things might seem rosie on the surface. Acting like nuclear power plants are the only aspect of the nuclear fuel cycle creates a false image which you are so gifted at doing on this site.


http://arizona.sierraclub.org/conservation/forest_managment/uraniummining-waste.asp

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=health-legacy-of-uranium-mining-lingers-30-years-later

http://nuclear-news.net/2011/01/12/france-leaves-radioactive-legacy-in-uranium-mine-tailings/

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/nuclear/page/umtra/grandjunction_title1.html


http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/rr05.pdf See Chapters 5-9 for the low down dirty business of British reprocessing plants. The French La Hague facility is just as dirty.

http://beyondnuclear.squarespace.com/storage/France_Fact_Sheet_09.pdf

[Genders]

01:10 AM on 02/20/2011

Oh, don't worry, big BP type multinational nuclear power companies promise they won't cut corners....FF

[Michael Mann]

10:15 AM on 02/20/2011

Correct, nuclear professionals like me won't allow corners to be cut. There are no huge nuclear corporations like BP the largest nuclear companies are 1/100 the size of BP or Chevron. Although demonizing large corporations is an interesting tactic, it has no basis on the morality and integrity of those of use who actually do the work.

[Michael Mann]

05:53 AM on 02/19/2011

Nuclear power has shown to be the safest, most reliable, economical with the least impact on the environment for the most energy, of course we should build more nuclear power plants. Finally an environmentalist with the guts to say it!

[Rich Phitzwell]

06:14 PM on 02/21/2011

The fear that was breed from two accidents that shouldnt have happened and cold war era weapons manufacturing along with the general misinformation regarding commercial power has blinded too many people. If only the same people would educate themselves to the damage coal does and the radiation levels coal fires release they may understand that nuke isnt as bad as its been made to be. Sure its not perfect but everything has its own set of issues.

I can easily see us building out 70% of our electric needs using two or three common reactor designs. I can easily see rooftop solar and wind as well as some other alternatives to create the other 30%. I would love further advancement on hydrogen production from the waste steam of nukes on a grand scale to migrate from our hydrocarbon based energy economy to hydrogen based and using the waste steam past the hydrogen production for algae production on a large scale for our oil and plastic needs.

When we look at the entire picture nuke is the only one that has the potential to not only produce a vast majority of our electricity needs, but cut drastically into our energy needs.

[maslin]

07:24 PM on 02/21/2011

I think you overestimate the potential contribution from solar and wind, but otherwise I think you're spot on.

Coal kills. The sooner we stop using it completely the better.

[CynWaveRider]

11:47 PM on 03/18/2011

Yike, what planet are you visting us from?

[Michael Mann]

05:30 AM on 03/19/2011

In the real world people die every day from fossil fueled energy production, while well publicized the risks from nuclear power are minicule in comparison.

[Michael Mann]

05:37 AM on 03/19/2011

Even in Japan, with this 9.0 earthquake and huge tsunami, there have been no deaths due to radiation and the expected impact on the health and safety of the general public is tiny. While the media focus has been on the nuclear power plants thousands have died in the natural disaster and there is much more credible danger from lack of services and blood borne pathegens.

[barrada nicto]

04:40 AM on 02/19/2011

Brand worries about the real estate taken up by solar. But every house needs a roof. And photovoltaic shingles are affordable and becoming more so all the time.

Of course the big energy companies hate the idea of decentralizing like that.

[Genders]

01:46 AM on 02/20/2011

Yup. FF. More than enough roof area on the average house to supply the average electrical use. 300 square feet for cheap panels for the average house. 14%. 100 sq ft with the new 40% cells.

[barrada nicto]

04:27 AM on 02/19/2011

Nuclear power is the most dangerous technology available. Information about accidents, deaths and injuries are all suppressed under the rubric of National Security.

You can't win a lawsuit against nuclear power because your experts will never be allowed access to information. Nuclear power's experts will always trump yours.

[Michael Mann]

06:06 AM on 02/19/2011

There are no secret boogiemen, I have worked with nuclear power for over 30 years, nuclear power plants share their experiences because they know an accident at any plant will affect all plants.This person has been watching too many conspiracy movies. It's safer to work at a nuclear power plant than a bank, check OSHA records. The fact that anyone who actually knows how nuclear power works is in on the "great conspiracy" really offends me, we work very hard to maintain a fantastic safety record and provide clean, reliable energy to our communities.

[willr]

12:56 PM on 02/19/2011

You are not talking about nuclear power when you refer to lawsuits. There is no reason to sue nuclear power plants or their owners since the US nuclear industry has never had a fatality due to power generation operations.

You are talking abou the nuclear weapons industry.

Vastly different and definitely not the same players.

But that is the great lie that has been told over and over again: Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are the same thing.

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are NOT the same. They have totally different goals and require different technical expertise. Nuclear power does not automatically mean nuclear weapons. And if recycling of spent fuel were allowed in this country nuclear power industry would even be more proliferation proof then it is already.

The nuclear, mechanical, civil and electrical engineers I have worked with in nuclear power including myself have never worked in the nuclear weapons complex despite the constant lies put forth by groups such as Greenpeace.

[Demitasse]

10:23 PM on 02/18/2011

According to Bill McKibben, from his book "Eaarth":

Building enough conventional nuclear reactors to eliminate a tenth of the threat of global warming would cost $8 trillion, not to mention running electricity prices through the roof. You'd need to open a new reactor every two weeks for the next forty years and, as the analyst Joe Romm points out, you'd have to open ten new Yucca Mountains to store the waste. Meanwhile, uranium prices have gone up by a factor of six this decade, because we're -- you've guessed it -- running out of the easy-to-find stuff and miners are having to dig deeper. pg 58

[Michael Mann]

06:16 AM on 02/19/2011

Existing nuclear power plants are among the lowest cost producers of electricity. The energy contained in one fuel pellet the size of your pinky's fingernail is about the same as burning 1 ton of coal or 17,000 cubic feet of explosive natural gas. Urainium is about as abundant as tin (huge amount) and there is even more thorium and reprocessing the once used fuel we already have would produce enough energy for centuries without producing atmospheric pollution.

[alvdh1]

04:49 PM on 02/21/2011

http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/rr05.pdf

[willr]

02:13 PM on 02/19/2011

There is no perfect or magic solution.

Nuclear power rates will not go through the roof. The EIA has determined nuclear power and hydro are the lowest cost generation methods for the next several decades even when a carbon financial penalty is included.

Consider the fact that decades and trillions are needed to convert our current grid system to handle more intermittent wind and solar.

Then there is the fact that thousands of square MILES would have to be covered with windmills, solar panels and transmission lines to have any significant effect in reducing GHG emissions.

Add in all the fracked natural gas required to provide dependable 24/7/365 power if no more nuclear power is built since large scale, industrial sized storage systems have been studied, researched and tested for decades without commercial success. People whose business it is to implement next generation storage systems admit that current power prices are far too low to support industrial scaled storage systems needed to address the intermittency issues with wind and solar.

We are not running about of uranium and won't for several hundreds of years to come since we have only begun to scratch the surface literally.

But what we do know is that the mining for heavy metals and rare earths in China for solar panels and windmill generators is leading to an ecological disaster. And we do know that there are only about 100-150 years of natural gas left without taking into account increased consumption patterns.

[Genders]

01:49 AM on 02/20/2011

China and much of the world area already mining their ewaste for the materials needed for solar panels, so it's a one time thing. Not the forever thing with nuke fuels and waste.

[maslin]

05:20 PM on 02/20/2011

'Then there is the fact that thousands of square MILES would have to be covered with windmills, solar panels and transmissi­on lines to have any significan­t effect in reducing GHG emissions.'

I did a little back of the envelope calculation on this.

Here's the land use necessary to replace coal in the US, right now, with each of the following three technologies:

Nuclear: less than one-tenth of one Rhode Island.
Solar: approximat­ely 12.5 Rhode Islands, or 1.5 Hawaiis.
Wind: approximat­ely 50 Rhode Islands, or the entire original flight area of Southwest Airlines, comprising all of Texas' major metropolit­an areas.

More detail here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/social/maslin/the-case-for-and-against-_n_781567_67623563.html

To add to that, wind turbines typically do not have economic lives beyond about 15 years without being replaced; nuclear plants are now seeking NRC approval for 80 year operation.

[CanisLatrans]

03:57 PM on 02/18/2011

Really, nuclear power will be one very big piece in solving the puzzle of future energy needs. I am also a big fan of wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal, but for large-scale industrial processes we'll need something like nuclear.

There is no "one-size-fits-all" solution; nuclear will have to be augmented by all the others, and all the others will also have to work complimentary with one another.

[maslin]

05:30 PM on 02/19/2011

This was well said.

I'd like to research, and then deploy some of pretty much everything. Some places are suited for nuclear, some for wind, some for solar, some for hydro, some for geothermal.

One of my favorite systems personally is the one in place at Oconee: a nuclear plant running nearly all the time, with various backup systems including pumped-storage hydro.

[alvdh1]

05:36 PM on 02/21/2011

Is this one of your favorites too?

http://beyondnuclear.squarespace.com/storage/France_Fact_Sheet_09.pdf

Or, How about this one?

http://www.fissilematerials.org/ipfm/site_down/rr05.pdf See Chapters 5-9

This could be a good vacation place for you.

http://arizona.sierraclub.org/conservation/forest_managment/uraniummining-waste.asp


If you would prefer overseas travel, I hear this spot is really hot.

http://www.wise-uranium.org/uwis.html

Prefer the grand tour, why not go to Africa, Australia and the U.S.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/02/28-0

[Fissionary]

02:55 PM on 02/18/2011

I am very pleased to see HuffPo covering the other side of this debate finally. With all of the Wasserman bash pieces, I was wondering if we would hear from the other side and now we have. Thanks!