[Cid_Yama]

Cid, I'd be interested in hearing what you have to say about George Monbiot going Lovelock recently in embracing nuclear despite the accident. I found it quite shocking, really. Here is a guy who is kind of a mainstream doomer, someone who riffs on the concepts we care about, and has managed to maintain a high profile job, someone who has talked about limits to growth, permaculture, man's relationship with nature, and all that jazz, and here he is kind of plowing the "stack another layer of cards on top of BAU or else" blackmail.

I have to say I understand his point. If there was the opportunity to save the world through carbon reduction, this is the only technology that will get you there. He does pollyanna the dangers though.

Lovelock on the other hand sees it all over, just as I do, and so advocates nuclear power to keep BAU running as long as possible

You are not going to eliminate nuclear plants in the next 10 years. So why not have heat and light up to the end?

I live downwind from Comanche Peak. They are the 2nd and third newest reactors in the US and are Pressurized Water Reactors. So I don't worry too much. Also I am old, so my priorities are different than those of a young person.

How you percieve it is very much tied up in how you see the future and what the circumstances of your life are.

On the Fukushima thread I am calling it as I see it. I am trying to present what I see as being the raw, unadulterated truth, devoid of the political spin.

Since I myself am pro-nuke, I get a chuckle out of the shills trying to portray me as a doommonger trying to destroy the nuclear industry.

I love electricity and want to keep it until I die if I can. Even if that means that after the collapse, the nuke plants will be smoldering islands of invisible death. Since I see the releasing methane on the ESAS as our ultimate death deliverer, what do I care if there are other things left that would kill us if we weren't already dead.

That doesn't mean I don't see the people running the nuclear industry as engaging in acts of pure evil for profit and political ends. But that is true about nearly all big corporations.

If I had grandchildren or great-grandchildren and believed there would be an endless future, I would be anti-nuclear, but I don't on either point.

[Quinny]

Having been anti-nuclear I have re-assessed my position since investigating the potential effects of PO and now see it as a bridging technology to keep the fridges and lights on. I am still skeptical because of the corporate control that exisits in that market, but it's like that with ff anyway. I sort of put my head in the sand re AGW and methates etc and hope there might be some yet unknown feedback/reaction that might mitigate effects.

[Carlhole]

Most of the 4th generation designs will come from China and India. India is hellbent on using their Thorium deposits, for example. It wants to become a world leader in nuke design. Also, the leadership in both countries simply MUST give their huge populations to do; building modern nuclear sounds like a no brainer.

Also, don't forget...Small Modular Nukes. These things are going to be used everywhere.

[mos6507]

Nuclear conflicts with the powerdown narrative. I've always felt that nuclear was the wildcard in all this, the only technology that (on paper) exceeds oil. I know there are a thousand peak oil articles that try to convince you that nuclear is a net energy loser because of the embodied technology involved in the construction of the plant and mining and refining the uranium. I don't really buy it. Although I concede that "I don't buy it" is not a very scientific response to such criticism, I don't think nuclear would be taking place if it were not EROEI positive in a big way.

The reason nuclear sucks is that once you DO have a disaster like this, it spoils the envirionment for a wide radius for many generations. That the total casualty count is low, even if you factor in downstream cancers, isn't the point. An invisible killer that kills slowly, radiation, like chemical carcinogens, is something that really cuts to the bone of human fear and revulsion, and for good reasons.

We all want to live on a healthy planet, not one pockmarked with no-go zones.

I'm concerned that we are exchanging "staying live" with quality of life. As we increase pollution and contamination, we'll have cheap big macs and iPhones in exchange for cancer clusters. We already do, especially now in China, but proving the cause and effect is almost impossible. My mom has already had colon cancer, for instance. Odds are some environmental impact was to blame.

No matter how you slice this, I see this as a tragedy. Whatever promise there was in nuclear is compromised by just a single bad decision during the design or maintenance of a plant. It really requires a 100% success rate and we're clearly not reliable enough to manage those risks. It's a miracle we pulled together to get men to the moon and back, really, but then we lost two Shuttles afterwards due to bad design and bad executive decisions.

This is enough for me to kind of pine for a die-off so that we aren't forced into the tough decision of endorsing technology like this just to support our numbers. It's kind of the energy equivalent of Soylent Green. It's a symptom of the larger issue of environmental overshoot to need so much energy that we have to resort to this.

[nobodypanic]

if we don't go with nuclear, i fear we will go with King Coal. and if we go with that, then instead of the possibility of nuclear islands spewing death, we'll be in an ocean of death with not a haven to shelter in. they'll burn every bit of carbon they can and then they will begin their techno fixes: injecting millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, placing trillions of pieces of reflective chaff into orbit, dumping iron in mass quantities into the seas, atomizing seawater and spraying it into the air, you name it, we'll geoengineer it into existence in an attempt to deal with the consequences so that we can continue to burn carbon - and then if there is any sort of catastrophic global crash and the mitigation stops... well thanks to lag times, i am not sure we don't drift far along the path towards a venusian climate.

[scas]

Everybody on coal needs to get off - I don't care if its nuclear or wind or whatever, but I trust in mans ability to burn every last chunk of coal to power his air-conditioner, hydroponic gardens, and desalinization plants in the near future and 50 years from now in the circum-Arctic regions. The hotter it gets the more coal we will burn to cool ourselves off. And then we'll tap all those unstable gas fields and methane beds too. We won't even have to geoengineer since we'll be injecting so much sulfates into the atmosphere with our remaining heavy oil and low grade coal.

Great Success!!! (Borat voice)

So we have Monbiot now. There's also Lovelock, Hansen, Stewart Brand, Tim Flannery, Mark Lynas, James Kunstler (I don't know why his opinion matters). I'm sure there's more.

You know, it's possible that in ten years we'll be engaged in WW3 in a bid for who gets the polar regions. Or maybe NASA-Boeing-EADS-Mitsubishi will team up on a 50 year contract to cool the arctic. Or maybe some smart guy sets loose a manufactured virus. Or maybe genetic engineering will give us algal food and we'll avoid famine with algal crackers. It's also possible that we'll (the world) will experience a die off due to famine and not go down fighting.

How many people have predicted the extinction of humans and have been wrong? Then again, you only have to be right once. I bet what takes us out will be completely random - a slow evolution back into stupid apes so that homo Sapien becomes homo Paniscus. Or maybe space aliens that didn't have a problem with genetically engineering themselves for superior intelligence and strength. Hawking was right in telling us not to broadcast our position - imagine an alien forced to leave its planet? Why would it do so? Anyway for some people this type of discussion is relegated to bongs and herb.

[mos6507]

if we don't go with nuclear, i fear we will go with King Coal.

I say we go with this, and then it would be easier to power the world with renewables. Let's see, we can have 3-eyed fish, or people can keep it in their pants.

[scas]

I wonder how many people living through blackouts, collapse, famine, species & environmental dersertification, are going to complain about that nuclear power plant and possibly 3 eyed fish. You know, baked fish eyes don't taste half bad. Make lemonade out of that lemon mos. Besides, it's better than Nigerians using Omo to wash oil residues off their fish.

Doomers completely discount future discoveries (Ruppert), but I live with hope (or is the wheelbarrow of drugs?). It's too easy to imagine collapse, but it won't stop it from happening and you probably won't get laid - and time is obviously short. Jared Diamond thinks we only have a couple decades at best so better get at those life goals!

How many people are dedicating their lives to these problems? How many people are standing on the sidelines hoping for collapse and a return to the "good life"?

Perhaps at the end of the century, one lone country will emerge from the slag of destruction, a high tech militarized environmental dictatorship. Why can't we have a dear ruthless leader now? If you're not a peasant, you're a scientist or a soldier.

The people at ITER can teach Japan how to build for seismicity..
Take a look, some incredible pictures.

http://www.iter.org/factsfigures

[mos6507]

SCAS, it's funny reading your rhetoric, but I've noticed a lot of that style of rhetoric of late, which is kind of a mixture of fatalism and satirical wit. We're all kind of narcissistically blogging our way into the apocalypse. Trying to fashion the best rant or punchline seems to be the main distraction of doomers of late. It's why I don't read Kunstler or Orlov. It's like, if the future is really so linear and immutable, then right and wrong have no more meaning, as the outcome is as sure as the unwinding of a clock, and so there's no soap-box left to get onto. On the one hand, we cry out for the optimal path down the backslide of limits to growth, and on the other, we swear up and down that nobody will ever pick that least objectionable path. So we've kind of backed ourselves into a lot of negativity, which seems to have no other outlet other than some really black humor.

[Sixstrings]

Nuclear conflicts with the powerdown narrative.

Before you put me on ignore over my Obama opinions, in another thread you agreed with me on this issue.

When the cheap, easy to get at oil is gone, the complex industrial / consumer supply chain will go with it. The many hundreds of nuclear plants around the world will fall into disrepair due to poor maintenance, and so what happens then.. China Syndrome is just sci-fi, but what happens if nobody can be bothered / is able to clean it up? How long will the fission continue before it dies out on its own, how long will the radioactive pollution continue?

I said it before, I'll say it again.. you cannot be a peak oil doomer and support nuclear. Nuclear power is a luxury of the first world, nations rich in money and imported resources and technology and 5,000 mile supply chains. None of that is possible after peak oil collapse.

Although I concede that "I don't buy it" is not a very scientific response to such criticism, I don't think nuclear would be taking place if it were not EROEI positive in a big way.

Nuclear was never cost effective. It's the most expensive, and potentially devastating, method we have to boil water. We only got started with nuclear power in the first place so we'd have fissile plutonium for nuclear weapons. And that's why North Korea has one too, that's why Iran wants one. It's always been about the weapons. Even if Iran's plant can't produce weapons-grade plutonium, they can still make dirty bombs from it.

Japan and France are exceptions.. they don't have enough coal so not many other options there. Although in France, if memory serves their nuke program had a lot to do with DeGaulle's ego (and France's own extensive nuclear weapons program).

We all want to live on a healthy planet, not one pockmarked with no-go zones.

Yeah, it's really going to suck when all these reactors are abandoned because the engineers can't find any food to buy with their hyperinflated dollars and there isn't enough to eat anyway. Case in point: the screwups going on in Japan.. if they've managed to make so many mistakes while the entire supply chain is still intact, what will it be like post collapse?

I just do not get this, doomers who have a post-collapse vision of permaculture transition town edible food forests sitting next to nuclear reactors. Who's going to handle the fuel rods, the village blacksmith?

No matter how you slice this, I see this as a tragedy.

On a positive note, the Germans have decided to get off nuclear and accelerate alternative energy. My guess is everyone on this forum says it can't be done, but the Germans aren't stupid -- does anyone actually know what the German plan is? They're thorough if nothing else, good engineers and good with numbers.. if they think they can do without nuke I'm inclined to believe them.

And.. at least post collapse windmills and solar panels will be harmless curiosities, whereas abandoned and out of control reactors are deathtraps.

[scas]

Let's hope the generation of youth today come together in one last monumental effort to change the direction of humanity. If not, then at least an environmental dictatorship. I'd accept that.

We can make the Giza Pyramid, the Panama Canal, the Great Wall of China seem like childs play.

But I know what you mean mos. I'm trying to quit/limit PO - we genuinely are short on time and people should be doing what's most meaningful to them. Study a science, join the reserves, become a permaculturist, form a relationship. You know, the usual. Let's go to Libya, Canada!

[JRP3]

LFTR technology seems like the only choice for any future nuclear power. It's fundamentally different than what is now in place and looks to be much cheaper, safer, and without the long term storage issues. Of course since it's so different the existing nuclear industry has no experience building them so they may not be too keen on jumping into a new technology that doesn't build on what they've already done for years.

[Tanada]

Age of Unreason
The governments of Britain, Canada and Australia are trying to stamp out scientific dissent.

It’s as clear and chilling a statement of intent as you’re likely to read. Scientists should be “the voice of reason, rather than dissent, in the public arena.”(1) Vladimir Putin? Kim Jong-un? No, Professor Ian Boyd, chief scientific adviser at the UK’s department for environment.

Boyd’s doctrine is a neat distillation of government policy in Britain, Canada and Australia. These governments have suppressed or misrepresented inconvenient findings on climate change, pollution, pesticides, fisheries and wildlife. They have shut down programmes which produce unwelcome findings and sought to muzzle scientists. This is a modern version of Soviet Lysenkoism: crushing academic dissent on behalf of bad science and corporate power(2).

Writing in an online journal, Boyd argued that if scientists speak freely, they create conflict between themselves and policy-makers, leading to a “chronically deep-seated mistrust of scientists that can undermine the delicate foundation upon which science builds relevance”(3). This, in turn, “could set back the cause of science in government”. So they should avoid “suggesting that policies are either right or wrong”. If they must speak out, they should do so through “embedded advisers (such as myself), and by being the voice of reason, rather than dissent, in the public arena.”

Shut up, speak through me, don’t dissent, or your behaviour will ensure that science becomes irrelevant. Note that the conflicts between science and policy are caused by scientists, rather than by politicians ignoring or abusing the evidence. Or by chief scientific advisers.

In an online question and answer session hosted by his department, Professor Boyd maintained that 50% of tuberculosis infections among cattle herds are caused by badgers(4). He repeated the claim in an official document called “Science to inform TB Policy”(5). But as the analyst Jamie McMillan points out, the figure has been sexed up from inadequate data(6). Like the 45-minute claim in the Iraq debate, it is “spurious, simple to take on board, and crucial in convincing Parliament.”

The badger cull as a whole defies the findings of the £49m study the previous government commissioned. It has been thoroughly dissected by the leading scientists in the field, which might explain why Boyd is so keen to shut them up(7,8). It’s one of many ways in which his department has binned the evidence in setting its policies.

On Sunday, Boyd’s boss, Owen Paterson, told the Conservative party conference not to worry about global warming. “I think we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries.”(9) A few weeks ago on Any Questions, he managed to repeat ten discredited claims about climate change in one short contribution(10).

His department repeatedly misrepresents science to appease industrial lobbyists. It claimed that its field trials of neonicotinoid pesticides on bees showed that “effects on bees do not occur under normal circumstances”(11). Hopelessly contaminated, the study was in fact worthless, which is why it was not submitted to a peer-reviewed journal(12).

Similar distortions surround the department’s refusal to establish meaningful marine reserves(13), its attempt to cull buzzards on behalf of pheasant shoots(14,15) and its determination to allow farmers to start dredging streams again, turning them into featureless gutters(16).

There’s one consolation: Ian Boyd, in his efforts to establish a tinpot dictatorship, has not yet achieved the control enjoyed by his counterparts in Canada. There, scientists with government grants working on any issue that could affect industrial interests – tar sands, climate change, mining, sewage, salmon farms, water trading – are forbidden to speak freely to the public(17,18,19). They are shadowed by government minders and, when they must present their findings, given scripts to memorise and recite(20). Dozens of turbulent research programmes and institutes have either been cut to the bone or closed altogether(21).

In Australia, the new government has chosen not to appoint a science minister(22). Tony Abbott, who once described manmade climate change as “absolute crap”(23), has already shut down the government’s Climate Commission and Climate Change Authority(24). But at least Australians are fighting back: the Climate Commission has been reconvened as an NGO, funded by donations(25). Here, we allowed the government to shut down the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution and the Sustainable Development Commission with scarcely a groan of protest(26).

Cameron’s government claimed that the tiny savings it made were required to reduce the deficit. Yet somehow it manages to fund a lavish range of planet-wrecking programmes. The latest is the “Centre for Doctoral Training in Oil and Gas” just launched by the Natural Environment Research Council(27). Its aim is “to support the oil and gas sector” by providing “focused training” in fracking, in exploiting tar deposits and in searching for oil in polar regions. In other words, it is subsidising fossil fuel companies while promoting climate change. How many people believe this is a good use of public money?

To be reasonable, when a government is manipulating and misrepresenting scientific findings, is to dissent. To be reasonable, when it is helping to destroy human life and the natural world, is to dissent. As Julien Benda argued in La Trahison des Clercs, democracy and civilisation depend on intellectuals resisting conformity and power(28).

A world in which scientists speak only through their minders and in which dissent is considered the antithesis of reason is a world shorn of meaningful democratic choices. You can judge a government by its treatment of inconvenient facts and the people who expose them. This one does not emerge well.

www.monbiot.com