For all you New Englanders, the details on the “Second Annual Great Issues in Energy Symposium” are here and below:
Friday, April 9, 2010, 3:00-5:15pm
Spanos Auditorium
Reception immediately following
Free and open to the public
An informed view of societal energy challenges and possible responsive measures requires understanding nuclear energy and related issues. While construction of a new nuclear power plant has not been initiated in the United States in over a quarter century, the situation is far from static in light of technological advances, increasing impetus to address climate change, and developments elsewhere.
Presentations and Interactive Discussion Featuring:
Dr. Ernest Moniz
Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, Director of the Energy Initiative, and Director of the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Professor Moniz‘ research contributions span theoretical nuclear physics and energy technology and policy. He was Associate Director for Science in the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President (1995-1997), Under Secretary of Energy at the United States Department of Energy (1997-2001), and currently serves on President Obama’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology and Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future. A Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Humboldt Foundation, and the American Physical Society and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Professor Moniz received the Seymour Cray HPCC Industry Recognition Award for vision and leadership in advancing scientific simulation and the Grand Cross of the Order of Makarios III for contributions to the development of research, technology, and education in Cyprus.
Dr. Joe Romm
Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress
Climate expert, physicist, author, blogger, and editor of the blog ClimateProgress.org, Dr. Romm focuses on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing energy security through energy efficiency and green energy and transportation technologies. Senior positions he has held at the U.S. Department of Energy include Principal Deputy Assistant and Special Assistant for Policy and Planning. Romm’s acclaimed books and articles include Hell and High Water: Global Warming””the Solution, the Politics, and What We Should Do and The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power. His newest book is Straight Up: America’s Fiercest Climate Blogger Takes on the Status Quo Media, Politicians, and Clean Energy Solutions. He is a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science and was named to Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “100 People Who Are Changing America.” In naming him to its list of 2009 “Heroes of the Environment,” Time magazine called Romm “the web’s most influential climate blogger.”
Dr. Alex Glaser
Assistant Professor, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University
Professor Glaser is actively involved in research on technical aspects of nuclear energy use and related fuel-cycle technologies, and specifically on questions related to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He has been an Advisor to the German Ministry of Environment and Reactor Safety and a member of a joint working group of the American Physical Society and the American Academy for the Advancement of Science on Nuclear Forensics. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Science and Global Security and a member of the Science & Global Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and the research staff of the International Panel on Fissile Materials.
It’s a good panel. I worked with Ernie during the Clinton administration — and I took advanced electromagnetism from him at MIT in the fall of 1981!
For background on nukes, start with “An introduction to nuclear power.”
And if you still want more, try:
- Exclusive analysis, Part 1: The staggering cost of new nuclear power
- Warning to taxpayers, investors “” Part 2: Nukes may become troubled assets, ruin credit ratings
- The Self-Limiting Future of Nuclear Power
- Nuclear Pork “” Enough is Enough
- GOP wants 100 new nukes by 2030 while “Areva has acknowledged that the cost of a new reactor today would be as much as 6 billion euros, or $8 billion, double the price offered to the Finns.”
- Nuclear Bombshell: $26 Billion cost “” $10,800 per kilowatt! “” killed Ontario nuclear bid
- Turkey’s only bidder for first nuclear plant offers a price of 21 cents per kilowatt-hour
- Nuclear meltdown in Finland
- Nuclear power, Part 2: The price is not right
- Nukes, Part 1.5: Nuclear Bomb
- How much of a subsidy is the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industry Indemnity Act?
- Nuclear storage at Yucca jumps 38% “” to $96B
- Nuclear cost study 3: Responding to Heritage’s staggeringly confused ‘rebuttal’
- Power plants costs double since 2000 “” Efficiency anyone?
- What do you get when you buy a nuke? You get a lot of delays and rate increases”¦.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Too bad Barry Brook couldn’t join you.
I’m certainly seeing NPP in a somewhat different light by following the threads and comments on his blog, BraveNewClimate.
I enjoyed rereading the 2009 CP post on the subject, which dealt with cost and transparency. You have to dig to get an idea of what different technologies actually cost, especially since there are so many ways to calculate it, and boosters make all kinds of claims. These should not be “trade secrets”, considering the public’s need to be informed.
We need transparency for all forms of power generation, based on busbar costs with various subsidies detailed separately.
Nuclear of course is never going to be much of a player, due to cost and a while list of other liabilities and infrastructure shortcomings. I’m glad that you are going to be in attendance at Dartmouth to educate the audience.
It is worth remembering that nuclear proponents live in a bit of a fantasy world where they tell each other stories that sound scientific but are really baloney. The stuff about coal being radioactive is one example where they ignore that coal does not contain reactor fission products, the dangerous stuff. Another just-so-story I heard recently up at Johns Hopkins was that tritium is a common natural isotope produced from solar neutrons activating deuterium. Just a bit of thought lets you know this is flawed thinking. In fact, most of the tritium in the environment is of human origin.
It is a very insular and paranoid culture. Be ready to hear all manner of errors.
The Reduced Shakespeare Company will be there as well. Might want to catch the show: http://hop.dartmouth.edu/2009-10/100409-reducedshakespeare.html
Good Luck, Boopsie. Ernie is a formidable status quo proponent, sort of the William F. Buckley, Jr. of Energy. Just remember, power corrupts and nuclear power is about decay.
The information on the radioactive elements in coal ash that people who are interested in relative radiation hazards “tell each other” originates from scientific studies, as does, for instance, information on the risk of adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere that people interested in limiting global warming “tell each other”.
Idaho State University takes a special interest in radiation because it was the state where most early nuclear reactor research was done. Congress also set up the National Council on Radiation Protection (NCRP) which has as its mandate to discover and provide accurate information on radiation in the public interest.
Reactor fission products are not emanating from smokestacks at nuclear plants, whereas the naturally occuring radioactive materials in coal end up being concentrated in the ash as they do not burn as the coal is burned, and the ash is exempt from the very stringent requirements applied to similar materials generated by the use of nuclear power.
As far as the very insular and paranoid culture some say exists in pro nuclear circles, I can attest that as a very new observer of the people who have been promoting nuclear power all these decades, and as an old timer in the climate debate (I was introduced by Canada’s Ambassador to the UN to the Toronto Changing Atmosphere conference of 1988 in recognition of my contribution to the conference), and as a person who has to file comments here under an assumed name because any comments I post signed David Lewis are not posted, I wonder which group is the most insular and paranoid of opinion seemingly opposed to their own.
I wish I could attend the discussion. It could be entertaining. I would especially love hearing more details about how America cannot afford to build new nuclear plants, but we can afford to continue burning up all of our capital resource of methane gas. I would also like to hear about how a leak of perhaps 1/3 of a curie of tritium into the ground under an industrial facility is adequate grounds for denying public good related to a license extension while the competition a few dozen miles away can get away with killing a half a dozen people via a deadly fuel leak.
Nuclear power is THE answer!
(What was the question?)
@SecularAnimist
You asked “What was the question?” for which nuclear power is THE answer.
For me, nuclear energy is the answer to an ancient question – how can humans obtain abundant, clean energy with the lowest possible expenditure of time and material resources. It is the answer because a tiny pellet of fuel contains as much energy as 1 ton of coal using our current primitive technology. If used in a more carefully designed breeder reactor, that pellet might contain as much energy as 20 tons of coal.
Putting that energy to ever improving use is a technical challenge worth a lifetime of effort.
James Hansen appeared recently in Australia and answered the question “Why do I advocate nuclear power? …”
Direct quotes from Hansen are enclosed in quote marks, otherwise I’ve summarized what he was saying. My summaries are enclosed inside square brackets:
“The present nuclear reactors are 2nd generation. And they are the safest major industry we have. In the US we did have one accident, at Three Mile Island, and it is estimated that that might cause one cancer death among the people who were exposed to the radiation around Three Mile Island. That compares with about 5,000 cancer deaths [what happens anyway in a population that size in the US] in the same people. The 3rd generation [reactor design] is safer than the 2nd….”
“…This is a graph Amory Lovins made in the 1970s. I’ve updated it…. And Amory says everything you want to hear. He says we do not need nuclear power. We don’t need coal. We do not need oil. We don’t need gas. And we don’t need large hydroelectric power. And furthermore, he says, we don’t need a tax on carbon. He says that energy efficiency, and ‘soft’ energy, “renewable energies” can do the whole job. Well, Amory was 1/2 right. Because the governments in the early 1970s were projecting energy requirements for the US like this” [points to a graph showing 7% annual increase] “… Instead, our energy use has gone up like this” [points to a second graph still going up, but at a far slower rate]. …
[Points to a chart showing the contribution of all energy sources]
“But the ‘soft’ energy technologies are the pink stuff right here” [points at the graph, to an area that includes hydropower, and all renewable technologies Lovins advocates]
“but this is almost all hydropower. The wind and the sun are invisible on this graph.”
[He then rambles a bit muttering its impossible, you can't go from nothing to take over the role of all this fossil fuel and nuclear power and hydropower, it can't be done....]
“If we continue to pretend that renewables can do this whole job, I think we are not being fair to our children and grandchildren.”
“We will just be continuing on that path we’ve been on for 30 years since Amory said renewables can do everything, and they are still doing practically nothing. And that’s why I’m trying to be objective” [about nuclear power].
the entire podcast, excerpts of audio from Hansen’s talk entitled “After Copenhagen” and powerpoint slides is available as links on this page:
https://www.adelaide.edu.au/environment/event/2010/jameshansen2.html
I think the slide where he talks about the “pink stuff” is slide 46
It was an excellent talk, and the 3 perspectives provided a great deal of information. I think the most important element that isn’t ordinarily discussed was the need to put plants in 60 different countries (including those currently considered “unstable”) if we hope to meet the 14% of the world’s electricity that nuclear would provide under the largest deployment scenario. Add to that the already insane stockpiles of plutonium with no purpose resulting from reprocessing of uranium, and I can’t begin to imagine how it makes any sense to consider nuclear a viable alternative for the future..