From: The Rocky Mountian Institute
– Amory B. Lovins, Imran Sheikh, and Alex Markevich
“Nuclear power, we’re told, is a vibrant industry that’s dramatically reviving because it’s proven, necessary, competitive, reliable, safe, secure, widely used, increasingly popular, and carbon-free—a perfect replacement for carbon-spewing coal power. New nuclear plants thus sound vital for climate protection, energy security, and powering a growing economy. There’s a catch, though: the private capitalmarket isn’t investing in new nuclear plants, and without financing, capitalist utilities aren’t buying. The few purchases, nearly all in Asia, are all made by central planners with a draw on the public purse. In the United States, even government subsidies approaching or exceeding new nuclear power’s total cost have failed to entice Wall Street.
This non-technical summary article compares the cost, climate protection potential, reliability, financial risk, market success, deployment speed, and energy contribution of new nuclear power with those of its low- or no-carbon competitors. It explains why soaring taxpayer subsidies aren’t attracting investors. Capitalists instead favor climate-protecting competitors with less cost, construction time, and financial risk. The nuclear industry claims it has no serious rivals, let alone those competitors—which, however, already outproduce nuclear power worldwide and are growing enormously faster.
Most remarkably, comparing all options’ ability to protect the earth’s climate and enhance energy security reveals why nuclear power could never deliver these promised benefits even if it could find free-market buyers—while its carbon-free rivals, which won $71 billion of private investment in 2007 alone, do offer highly effective climate and security solutions, sooner, with greater confidence.”
Full Article
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid467.php
Conclusion
So why do otherwise well-informed people still consider nuclear power a key element of a sound climate strategy? Not because that belief can withstand analytic scrutiny. Rather, it seems, because of a superficially attractive story, an immensely powerful and effective lobby, a new generation who forgot or never knew why nuclear power failed previously (almost nothing has changed), sympathetic leaders of nearly all main governments, deeply rooted habits and rules that favor giant power plants over distributed solutions and enlarged supply over efficient use, the market winners’ absence from many official databases (which often count only big plants owned by utilities), and lazy reporting by an unduly credulous press.
Isn’t it time we forgot about nuclear power? Informed capitalists have. Politicians and pundits should too. After more than half a century of devoted effort and a half-trillion dollars of public subsidies, nuclear power still can’t make its way in the market. If we accept that unequivocal verdict, we can at last get on with the best buys first: proven and ample ways to save more carbon per dollar, faster, more surely, more securely, and with wider consensus. As often before, the biggest key to a sound climate and security strategy is to take market economics seriously.
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RMI -The Pursuit of Interconnections
A Solution to One Problem May Lead to Solutions For Others
“A feature that distinguishes RMI from almost every other organization is its unceasing search for interconnections between issues normally viewed as unrelated. The following story illustrates why we believe so strongly in the importance of a “vision across boundaries.”
In the early 1950s, the Dayak people of Borneo suffered from malaria. The World Health Organization (WHO) had a solution: it sprayed large amounts of DDT to kill the mosquitoes that carried the malaria. The mosquitoes died; the malaria declined; so far, so good. But there were side effects. Among the first was that the roofs of people’s houses began to fall down on their heads. It seemed that the DDT was also killing a parasitic wasp that had previously controlled thatch-eating caterpillars. Worse, the DDT-poisoned insects were eaten by geckos, which were eaten by cats. The cats started to die, the rats flourished, and the people were threatened by potential outbreaks of typhus and plague. To cope with these problems, which it had itself created, the World Health Organization was obliged to parachute 14,000 live cats into Borneo (See: “How Not to Parachute More Cats”).
The true story of Operation Cat Drop — now nearly forgotten at WHO — illustrates that if you don’t know how things are interconnected, then often the cause of problems is solutions. On the other hand, if you understand the hidden connections between energy, climate, water, agriculture, transportation, security, commerce, and economic and social development, then you can often devise a solution to one problem (such as energy) that will also create solutions to many other problems at no extra cost. Crafting solutions so that they multiply is RMI’s credo and the basis of its success.”
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Armoy Lovins: We must win the oil endgame…
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Now here is some “OUT SIDE OF THE BOX” thinking by “Bucky”from way back in 1981…
“I have summarized my discovery of the option of humanity to become omnieconomically and sustainably successful on our planet while phasing out forever all use of fossil fuels and atomic energy generation other than the Sun. I have presented my plan for using our increasing technical ability to construct high-voltage, superconductive transmission lines and implement an around-the-world electrical energy grid integrating the daytime and nighttime hemispheres, thus swiftly increasing the operating capacity of the world’s electrical energy system and, concomitantly, living standard in an unprecedented feat of international cooperation.”
“When Buckminster Fuller was asked by a 12 year old boy, “How would you suggest solving international problems without violence?” he answered: “I always try to solve problems by some artifact, some tool or invention that makes what people are doing obsolete, so that it makes this particular kind of problem no longer relevant. My answer would be to develop a world energy grid, an electric grid where everybody is on the same grid.
All of a sudden there would be no problems any more, no international troubles. Our new economic basis wouldn’t be gold or dollars; it would be kilowatt hours.”
Fuller’s Earth, 1983, Richard Brenneman
“Because energy is wealth, the integrating world industrial networks promise ultimate access of all humanity everywhere to the total operative commonwealth of earth.”
Utopia or Oblivion, 1969, Fuller
“This now feasible, intercontinental network would integrate America, Asia and Europe, and integrate the night-and-day, spherically shadow-and-light zones of Planet Earth. And this would occasion the 24-hour use of the now only fifty per cent of the time used world-around standby generator capacity, whose fifty per cent unused capacities heretofore were mandatorily required only for peakload servicing of local non-interconnected energy users. Such intercontinental network integration would overnight double the already-installed and in-use, electric power generating capacity of our Planet.”
Telegram to Senator Edmund Muskie, Earth, Inc., 1973, Fuller.
Two decades
ago, the late R. Buckminster Fuller
proposed interconnecting regional power
systems into a single continuous global electrical
energy grid. • While this vision is still years away, tech-
nological advances have made the linking of international and
inter regional energy networks practicable today. • Transmission
lines allow utilities to level the peaks and valleys of demand. This is
accomplished between East-West time zones, as well as North-South
seasonal variations in demand. • The origin of the energy grid initiative
emerged as the highest priority of the World Game™. Its stated purpose
is “to make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible
time through spontaneous cooperation without ecological damage or the
disadvantage of anyone.” Research reveals that these major benefits will
result from expanding electrical networks. • Increase in everyone’s stan-
dard of living • Reduction of fossil fuel demand and the resultant pollu-
tion • Relief of the population explosion • Reduction of world hunger
• Enhancement of world trade • Promotion of international
cooperation and peace • The purpose of GENI, Global
Energy Network Institute, is to educate all people,
especially world leaders, to the potential
benefits of this global
solution. •
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THE CASE AGAINST NEW NUKES as a CURE FOR CLIMATE CHANGE
Debunking the ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ (Jan.2008)
Michael Mariotte, Executive Director of the Washington, D.C. based Nuclear Information Resource service ( http://www.nirs.org/ ), talks about the many reasons that the claim – made by such pundits as James Lovelock and Stewart Brand – that a crash buildout of a new generation of nuclear power plants is a rational and necessary response to global climate change is a dangerous fallacy. He ticks off the list of counter-arguements – including waste storage, cost overruns, terrorism and nuclear weapons proliferation – and builds the cast for using our dwindling resources to develop renewable energy sources, rather than squander them on a ‘nuclear power renaissance’ which is doomed to fail.
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The reason I started this thread was to forget nuclear and ReThink Solar. Or in other words… support our solar industry and allow the nuclear industry get out of our way.
No matter what the debate is about nuclear the fact is that if congress continues to pour good money after bad into a failed technology such as nuclear they are NOT helping our baby Citizenre walk or eventually to fly.
The real solution is all the renewables and conservation.
I am all for looking at as many solutions to the energy crisis as possible. Nuclear has played out it’s role and it is time for it to fade away. We have new and better technologies that will FAR out shine the toxic, unsafe and mushrooming expense of nuclear energy. (funny analogy huh?)
In it’s current incarnation or anytime soon… I don’t see nuclear as a viable part of our future… it does not make sense or cents.
Below is a five part educational program on “Good Nukes.” Well worth your time if you want to know more about the nuclear energy industry’s propaganda. It an older piece of anti-nuke propaganda that is full of facts still valid today…. in fact even more so.
They are eye openers not only on why more nukes would be a mistake on their own… but most importantly… why we need to focus on renewables NOW!
GO SOLAR…. GO ECOS! … BYE BYE NUKES!
Peace,
Bruce
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Good Nukes– “Almost Good Enough”: Pt. I, Reactor Components
Good Nukes– “Almost Good Enough”: Pt. 2, Routine Nuclear Emissions
Good Nukes– “Almost Good Enough”: Pt. 3, Nuclear Waste