This post is co-authored by Geoff Russell

In their determination to attack nuclear power and those who support it, anti-nuclear activism has walked away from the scientific process. As a result, nearly the entire community of environmental organisations in Australia is currently standing behind figures that are completely mathematically incorrect. Will they correct these blatant errors and open their publications to expert external review? Or is correct maths and good science optional when you wear the colour green? Continue reading →

I began my nuclear advocacy in November 2010. I spoke to 4 people in a free community venue. I knew them all by name. One of them was my father. My wife baked cakes.

As you might imagine, I left with mixed feelings. I had just delivered my now somewhat-seminal presentation Nuclear Power: From Opponent to Proponent for the first time. I thought I  had something, but it was an inglorious start to be sure, and I did not know if the issue really  had legs.

If, on that day, I could have seen the flyer for this future conference, I would have been blown away. Some may still like to behave as if nuclear is an intractable issue, but this is simply not true. In the last two-and-a-half years Australia has come a long way. Now, thanks to the courage of ATSE, we are gearing up for our first major, committed conversation on the topic. For two full days, local and international experts will canvass a full range of issues. A special edition journal of papers will be released. We are now on the road. Follow this link to register

Please share this conference information widely. ATSE have done a wonderful job of keeping costs low. Those with any professional interest in Australia’s energy future must attend. There are also a small number of exceptionally discounted student places.

I look forward to seeing the turnout for this important conversation!!!

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Having only just updated my Who Gets It? page I am amazed to bring another high-profile gentlemen with a clear message about nuclear power.

Brian Eno

Brian Eno

I have long known Brian Eno as a producer for Talking Heads and U2 (a mere fraction of his contribution to music). What I have just learned is that this remarkable man is also a board member of the nuclear disarmament group BASIC  and the environmental NGO ClientEarth.

On nuclear power, Eno has made some of the most eloquent statements I have yet read. Here is an extract (complete statement is here):

As a result of over-excited media reporting (‘great story!’ I heard one journalist say) that single word (Fukushima) has probably condemned nuclear power for another generation, when in fact the accident produced no radiation-related deaths (and it’s doubtful that it will produce a discernable statistical blip in cancers in the future). In a conspiracy which seems almost dishonest, most Green groups failed to acknowledge this – it was too good as propaganda for them to let the facts get in the way – and of course the press never returned to the subject with any correctional follow-up. It became one of those little nuggets of received, and totally incorrect, wisdom: Nuclear=Fukushima=Catastrophe.

.…the real catastrophe of Fukushima is in the future, waiting for us in the form of vastly increased atmospheric CO2. An emotional over-reaction to a media storm has produced a thoroughly bad decision with long term global consequences.

Fantastic words from an amazing guy.

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MEDIA RELEASE

A former anti-nuclear environmentalist has become one of the first people in the world to co-author an independent report pitting the advantages of nuclear energy against renewable energy for electricity generation.

Addressing the Paydirt 2013 Uranium Conference in Adelaide today, ThinkClimate Consulting Director, Mr Ben Heard, unveiled Zero Carbon Options – Seeking an Economic Mix for an Environmental Outcome – a comprehensive, self-funded report analysing 13 specific benchmarks to identify the most efficient energy source to replace two small coal-fired power stations at Port Augusta in South Australia.

“If as a country, we continue to say ‘no’ to nuclear energy as a way of addressing climate change, we better damn well be sure we know why we are saying ‘no’,” Mr Heard said.

 “To my knowledge, nothing like this has ever been done before anywhere in the world,” he said.

 “One of the advantages of this report is the fact it is based on an actual case study – powering the Port Augusta electricity stations – so can easily be used as a blueprint for similar plants utilised anywhere in the world.

 “This report applied a multi-criteria analysis of the performance of different technology solutions against the specific task of reliability replacing the electricity provided by two small coal-fired power stations.

 “If Australians are genuinely serious about addressing climate change including reducing greenhouse gas emissions – nuclear is by far the best way to go.

 “Across the board, the results stand for themselves – less start-up costs, lower cost electricity, much smaller land use, no use of fresh water, more reliable generation capacity….the list goes on.”

The multi-criteria analysis used to compare nuclear energy against a hybrid renewable option (combining solar and wind) included capital cost, operational waste, land use, water consumption, job creation, lifespan of plant, reliability and existing global and national generating capacity.

 Mr Heard said the challenge of maintaining and building Australia’s economy while engaging in rapid decarbonisation was a daunting one.

“But to take the challenge without impartially exploring every available zero-carbon generation technology is unwise – and arguably, irresponsible,” Mr Heard said.

 “And as any environmentalist knows, to reduce our carbon footprint coal must be eliminated from the global energy debate post haste,” he said.

 “And ALL options need to be considered for that footprint reduction to occur.

 “Our hope that this report will foster a more open and accountable decision of all the zero-carbon options that are currently available to us”.

 A copy of the report can be obtained at http://www.zerocarbonoptions.com/

For some time now, a number of people have urged me to read The Great Disruption: How the Climate Crisis Will Transform the Global Economy, by Paul Gilding (2011). I grabbed a copy a little while ago.

I was prompted to examine it more closely after reading this article by Gilding. I appreciate optimism. But this piece leaves optimism behind in preference to incredible confirmation bias.

All evidence is pulled together to support Gilding’s premise of imminent renewable revolution as part of global mobilisation against climate change, while any and all countervailing evidence is blinkered out. He references the headline from Bloomberg regarding new renewables in Australia now being cheaper than coal. This headline finding and the work underpinning it was demolished in critique by both me and Tristan Edis of Climate Spectator, both of us (but the latter in particular) being supporters of renewables having a role in the changes to come. But Gilding took it at face value, along with everything else. His article managed to talk about winning the climate crisis seemingly on the back of wind and solar. There was no mention of biomass, energy storage or, you guessed it, nuclear power. So I picked up the book with trepidation to check the treatment of nuclear power in Chapter 12. It began promisingly: Continue reading →

Recently retired NASA scientist James Hansen (along with lead author Pushker Kharecha) published an article in Environmental Science and Technology that made a powerful assertion: nuclear power is good for us.

What the authors did in this study was put methodology and numbers around something many of us have understood for a long time: even without considering climate change, combustion of fossil fuels is bad for our health to a level that nuclear fission just can’t match. Here is the abstract with the key findings and figures. Lest you submit to Abstract thinking, the full article is here: Prevented mortality and greenhouse gas emissions.

In the aftermath of the March 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, the future contribution of nuclear power to the global energy supply has become somewhat uncertain. Because nuclear power is an abundant, low-carbon source of base-load power, on balance it could make a large contribution to mitigation of global climate change and air pollution. Using historical production data, we calculate that global nuclear power has prevented about 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes (Gt) CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that would have resulted from fossil fuel burning. Based on global projection data that take into account the effects of Fukushima, we find that by midcentury, nuclear power could prevent an additional 420,000 to 7.04 million eaths and 80 to 240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.

Here’s one of the key figures from the article

Just how can this be? To put it simply, fission is not combustion, and waste is not pollution. Have a look at this shot of two reactors in China. You may notice something. Rather, you may notice the absence of something.

Two CANDU 6 reactors (690 MWe each)

A chimney. A stack. An exhaust pipe as it were. There isn’t one. Unlike fossil combustion, nuclear fission does not expel harmful waste products all day long. The same goes for biomass. I found the open fire cosy and romantic for a night of roughing it in a hut over the Easter weekend, but smoke is really, really bad for your health over time.

Nuclear fuel enters a reactor as a ceramic and leaves again as a ceramic. There’s no smoke, no exhaust. There is waste. But not pollution because the waste is contained as standard operating procedure. Even that waste is just another type of fuel. You just need the right reactor.

As the recently published paper makes clear, the cumulative impact of the nuclear power in use is nearly 2 million deaths prevented, and in future it will be millions more, even taking highly conservative assumptions about the health impacts from the nuclear sector (as the paper has done).

To bring this all back to something real, lets visit Australia’s National Pollutant Inventory, and look up a few well known air pollutants: PM 10 (larger particulates), PM 2.5 (smaller particulates), oxides of nitrogen and sulphur dioxide. Let’s see check the contribution, and ranking, from two sources: electricity generation and coal mining.

Those are the big ones.  To review every pollutant reported for Australia’s fossil dependent electricity generation sector in the NPI, click here. To review every pollutant recorded for coal mining in Australia, click here.

When I said to an audience that we could have a future without air pollution, this is what I was getting at. So much of what harms us that we either accept, or remain completely ignorant of, can be completely eliminated by rebooting our energy system with a judicious combination of nuclear power and renewables. We need to eliminate coal, head off a major reinvestment in gas, then develop substitutes for our liquid fossil fuels using the clean energy.

If we incur pollution for other benefits, where simple substitutes don’t exist, well, ok… at the very least we need to have a discussion of trade-offs. Here, there is no trade off. It’s all upside. Dramatically less mining (and transport) for the prodigious volumes of fuel. The elimination of huge amounts of air pollution. Vastly safer.

The transition to nuclear is a valuable evolution of our civilisation without the urgency of climate change. We need to ditch our dependence on 18^th century fuel, and embrace the technology of the 20^th and 21^st Century. It’s better for us.

Update: Click here for a just released (April 2013) review of global impacts of coal combustion on human health from the Chicago Institute of Public Health

Coal_Literature_Review_2

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