We had all better hope these scientists are wrong about the planet’s future

[OKIsItJustMe]

44. Pick your scientist

I think most of us would agree that James Hansen has been right on top of things when it comes to climate change.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/03/nuclear-power-paves-the-only-viable-path-forward-on-climate-change

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change[/font]

[font size=4]To solve the climate problem, policy must be based on facts and not prejudice. Alongside renewables, Nuclear will make the difference between the world missing crucial climate targets or achieving them[/font]

James Hansen, Kerry Emanuel, Ken Caldeira and Tom Wigley
Thursday 3 December 2015 13.00 GMT

[font size=3]All four of us have dedicated our scientific careers to understand the processes and impacts of climate change, variously studying ocean systems, tropical cyclones, ice sheets and ecosystems as well as impacts on human societies. We have used both climate models and geological records of past climates to better understand lessons from warmer periods in the Earth’s history and investigate future scenarios.

We have become so concerned about humanity’s slow response to this challenge that we have decided we must clearly set out what we see as the only viable path forward. As scientists we do not take advocacy positions lightly, but we believe the magnitude of climate change now presents an unprecedented moral challenge that compels us to speak out.

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Nuclear power, particularly next-generation nuclear power with a closed fuel cycle (where spent fuel is reprocessed), is uniquely scalable, and environmentally advantageous. Over the past 50 years, nuclear power stations – by offsetting fossil fuel combustion – have avoided the emission of an estimated 60bn tonnes of carbon dioxide. Nuclear energy can power whole civilisations, and produce waste streams that are trivial compared to the waste produced by fossil fuel combustion. There are technical means to dispose of this small amount of waste safely. However, nuclear does pose unique safety and proliferation concerns that must be addressed with strong and binding international standards and safeguards. Most importantly for climate, nuclear produces no CO2 during power generation.

To solve the climate problem, policy must be based on facts and not on prejudice. The climate system cares about greenhouse gas emissions – not about whether energy comes from renewable power or abundant nuclear power. Some have argued that it is feasible to meet all of our energy needs with renewables. The 100% renewable scenarios downplay or ignore the intermittency issue by making unrealistic technical assumptions, and can contain high levels of biomass and hydroelectric power at the expense of true sustainability. Large amounts of nuclear power would make it much easier for solar and wind to close the energy gap.

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Joe Romm disagrees:
https://thinkprogress.org/climate/2016/01/07/3736243/nuclear-power-climate-change/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Why James Hansen Is Wrong About Nuclear Power[/font]

by Joe Romm Jan 7, 2016 8:00 am

[font size=3]Climatologist James Hansen argued last month, “Nuclear power paves the only viable path forward on climate change.” He is wrong.

As the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and International Energy Agency (IEA) explained in a major report last year, in the best-case scenario, nuclear power can play a modest, but important, role in avoiding catastrophic global warming if it can solve its various nagging problems — particularly high construction cost — without sacrificing safety.

Hansen and a handful of other climate scientists I also greatly respect — Ken Caldeira, Tom Wigley, and Kerry Emanuel — present a mostly handwaving argument in which new nuclear power achieves and sustains an unprecedented growth rate for decades. The one quantitative “illustrative scenario” they propose — “a total requirement of 115 reactors per year to 2050 to entirely decarbonise the global electricity system” — is far beyond what the world ever sustained during the nuclear heyday of the 1970s, and far beyond what the overwhelming majority of energy experts, including those sympathetic to the industry, think is plausible.

They ignore the core issues: The nuclear power industry has essentially priced itself out of the market for new power plants because of its 1) negative learning curve and 2) inability to avoid massive delays and cost overruns in market economies. This is doubly problematic because the competition — renewable power, electricity storage, and energy efficiency — have seen steady, stunning price drops for a long time.

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Romm does not advocate shutting down current plants.


http://bos.sagepub.com/content/71/6/52.full

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Joe Romm: Why nuclear power will not be the whole solution to climate change[/font]

[font size=4]Abstract[/font]

[font size=3]In this interview, physicist and climate change blogger Joe Romm speaks with the Bulletin’s Dawn Stover about whether nuclear energy will be a major player in efforts to mitigate global warming. Romm points to economics as a limiting factor for nuclear power, at least until the world grows more desperate to reduce carbon pollution. He explains the reasons why nuclear energy is expensive in the United States and Europe but expanding in China. Although pessimistic about nuclear, Romm is optimistic that the world has reached a turning point for the adoption of renewable energy generation and storage technologies, energy efficiency, and carbon abatement policies.

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BAS: What role do you see for nuclear power in the response to climate change? How big of a player should it be?

Romm: If one is going to avoid catastrophic warming and keep things below 2 degrees Celsius, which is certainly a great challenge, then you can’t rule out any carbon-free source. New nuclear plants are very expensive, which is why there has been exceedingly little construction in any market economy. Beyond China and India, you just don’t see a lot of sales, so I think the challenge for nuclear will be to maintain its market share. In the most optimistic projections, it can expand a little bit in the coming decades, but that will require a fair amount of sales because as plants get older in theory they have to be decommissioned. At some point, the world is going to get considerably more desperate to reduce carbon pollution than it is now. When we hit that phase, whatever is plausible and affordable and scalable is going to see massive deployment. To the extent that all these countries are already making serious commitments, then certainly people will take a second look at nuclear. If it could get its act together and come up with a modular design that was standardized and not too expensive, it might be able to see some growth.

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BAS: What sort of portfolio will be needed to meet the Paris targets? According to the wedge theory—which says that a combination of strategies can together stabilize the climate—we’d need to triple the world’s current nuclear capacity just to cut emissions by one wedge, out of eight needed.

Romm: The International Energy Agency teamed up with the Nuclear Energy Agency to release a report earlier this year on their optimistic scenario, in which nuclear power sees modest growth in its share. Nuclear is not going to be the big contributor to the solution, if by big one means more than 10 percent; 80 to 90 percent of what we do is going to be other stuff. I am not in favor of shutting down nuclear plants, by the way. I don’t think that makes sense unless a plant isn’t safe.

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