The nuclear industry is of course pushing itself as the panacea to all our energy and environmental problems (just as the automobile was touted as the solution to the very real environmental problem of horse manure piling up in the streets). Some environmentalists, like James Lovelock, agree.

The nuclear issue, as I have tried to show above, is not just about a technological fix. The socio-economic context in which nuclear power is mooted (OK, I'm talking about capitalism here) is of utmost importance. Is nuclear, like oil, just another way of making a few people rich at the expense of the environment and the rest of humanity? Is it something that a socialist society based on collective ownership and control - and planning for human need rather than private profit - could embrace, without destroying the planet?

Start off by reading The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine? by Barbara Rose Johnston.

I can see where our two old line parties would be all for subsidizing a Canadian industrial economy that is increasingly foreign-owned and controlled, and mostly by Americans.

I believe scientists can develop nuclear fuel recycling, "closing the nuclear fuel cycle", but perfecting that technology is several decades away since Dick Cheney and Ford Administration put the kibosh to it in the 1970's for reasons of maintaining technological imperialism and their right to threaten other countries with nuclear force. We don't want bottomless nuclear money pits today. Not with this deregulated financial setup hanging over taxpayers' heads. They'll use nuclear power to enslave us financially while they continue producing mountains of useless crap that nobody needs.

[ 27 October 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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"If you're serious about carbon emissions, you have to be serious about nuclear power," said nuclear industry executive Craig Nesbit. "You can't meet carbon goals without nuclear power. It can't be done. There is no other technology that can do what nuclear does."

There's talk of a latter-day "nuclear renaissance" among nuclear power promoters, and the promoters have gained a strong hand and renewed government subsidies. Their ranks include, among others, the prime minister who touted nuclear power in a speech during his recent European tour as integral to making Canada a "clean energy superpower."

"As the largest producer of uranium, we can contribute to the renaissance of nuclear energy, a no-emissions source that will be expanding around the world," Stephen Harper told the Canada-U.K. Chamber of Commerce in London. - Source

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[ 27 October 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

there is no solution to the waste.

it is so dangerous the public is on the hook for the insurance liablilty.

nuclear has never made money without HUGE public subsidies to public and private companies.

if we were to spend the money currently allocated to nuclear on research of sustainable, renewable forms of electrical generation that are NON-TOXIC in their production, solutions to storage of intermittant generation would be solved nearly overnight.

nuclear is a scam. period. imagine if we were to take just a fraction of the money the provincial Liberals announced last year for new nuclear....some $26 billion, perhaps as high as $40 billion, and spent it directly on home energy retrofits at the homeowner level, not some goofy corporately directed "jobs and innovation strategy". i'm talking insulation for homes, and solar hot water heating as a first step. simple, no brainer stuff. actually take consumption load OFF the grid. if people are using less power, or generating it themselves, there is no need for commercial scale generation.

to think that in 2008 we are even considering this question is frankly bizarre and shocking to me.

we need to stop thinking about building more centralised, commercial sized generation that needs expensive and complicated to approve transmission and distribution networks, and think micro-power scale. for the money being spent on just maintaining the current nuclear system, we could make virtually every house and building in canada energy self sufficient. the technology exists now. if the nuclear folks had to pay full price for everything they buy, from raw materials to insurance, it would be unviable, just like solar, wind and geothermal are now.

if ontario were to spend $26 billion on battery technology research and development to store intermittant power source energy, we could be pioneers able to export that technology globally and recoup the investment faster than the debt of a nuclear plant accumulates!

intead, we are brain-dead nuclear zombies.

[ 27 October 2008: Message edited by: farnival ]

[ 27 October 2008: Message edited by: farnival ]

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if ontario were to spend $26 billion on battery technology research and development to store intermittant power source energy, we could be pioneers able to export that technology globally and recoup the investment faster than the debt of a nuclear plant accumulates!

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Originally posted by M. Spector:
Start off by reading The Clean, Green Nuclear Machine? by Barbara Rose Johnston.

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Another less common source of DU is reprocessed spent nuclear reactor fuel...

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[*]Electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles

[*]Geothermal replaces gas and oil heaters with electric powered heat pumps

[*]Expansion of LRT and subways

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Electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles

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Plug-in time would be during the night mostly... Our electric system can handle expansion at night, it's expansion during peak periods that stress it. Give decentralization a read or from
Farnivals post in the thread:

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we need to stop thinking about building more centralised, commercial sized generation that needs expensive and complicated to approve transmission and distribution networks, and think micro-power scale.

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Assuming the cars are recharged during non-peak and low usage time frames, we've got little to worry in this regard.

Funny enough... An unexpected discussion that the electric car brought up is the ability for that car to recharge it's battery during the night (low demand) and supply power to the house during the day (high demand). If there was the ability to have it... It could be feasible to have batteries on your own house that recharges during the night and sells back to the grid during the peak times, which would ease the stress on the electric grid and could create a passive income source for people willing to invest in electric options for their home like solar panels (or come up with any method to create and store electicity right at their home). Makes the nation a bit more resiliant to power outages too.

Change your opening line to read:

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People say we should spend money on decentralization instead of nuclear power

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[ 30 October 2008: Message edited by: Noise ]

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Nuclear power has a disappointing track record in Ontario: Massive cost overruns that drive up rates, reliability problems that could mean lights out, and toxic nuclear waste we don’t know how to store.

Nuclear plants are expensive, unreliable and risky.

Do we really want more? . . .

The NDP stands up for working families. We have a fresh idea -- a safe, clean, affordable and reliable supply of publicly owned and publicly controlled electricity, focused on an aggressive approach to renewables, energy efficiency and energy conservation.

This approach worked in California where the state built the equivalent of 12 power plants with energy efficiency investments, replacing the need for 12,000 megawatts of generation capacity – or almost 50 per cent of Ontario’s peak demand on a hot summer day. We can make it work in Ontario too.

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[ 30 October 2008: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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This approach worked in California where the state built the equivalent of 12 power plants with energy efficiency investments, replacing the need for 12,000 megawatts of generation capacity – or almost 50 per cent of Ontario’s peak demand on a hot summer day.

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Originally posted by Noise:

I'm having problems telling... Is this saying 12'000 MW in energy savings per day, or a yearly total?

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Electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles
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Plug-in time would be during the night mostly... Our electric system can handle expansion at night, it's expansion during peak periods that stress it. Give decentralization a read or from
Farnivals post in the thread:

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You are completely right with the fossil fuel plants being the reason the night time electricity is abundant though. I'd wonder what the peak periods of production for various sustainable sources are (probably seasonal too). I would think this nature of sustainable electricy forces some manner of power storage upon us, no?

I beleive we can do just fine without nuclear power. Storing electricity in the quantities we seem to need is problematic. And yet we need it in the near future to tide us over those periods when the wind and solar panels due to weather conditions won't work. But we copy nature and make hydrocarbons, biomass. Maybe we can convert our fossil fuel plants to run on biomass during those windless and sunless days. The biomass would be our back-up power storage. Enhanced by hydrogen that could be generated during very windy and/or sunny periods.

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We are told that nuclear power is about to achieve a "green renaissance," "clean coal" is just around the corner, and municipal garbage is a "renewable resource," which, when burned, will yield "sustainable energy." On the other hand, sometimes we are told that solar, geothermal and tidal power are what we really need to "green" our energy system.

How is a person to make sense of all these competing claims?

Luckily, scientists have developed two sets of criteria that we can use to judge the "greenness" of competing technologies. The first is called "The 12 principles of green engineering" and the second is "The 12 principles of green chemistry."

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The 12 Principles of Green Engineering

Principle 1: Designers need to strive to ensure that all material and energy inputs and outputs are as inherently nonhazardous as possible.

Principle 2: It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed.

Principle 3: Separation and purification operations should be designed to minimize energy consumption and materials use.

Principle 4: Products, processes, and systems should be designed to maximize mass, energy, space, and time efficiency.

Principle 5: Products, processes, and systems should be “output pulled” rather than “input pushed” through the use of energy and materials.

Principle 6: Embedded entropy and complexity must be viewed as an investment when making design choices on recycle, reuse, or beneficial disposition.

Principle 7: Targeted durability, not immortality, should be a design goal.

Principle 8: Design for unnecessary capacity or capability (e.g., “one size fits all”) solutions should be considered a design flaw.

Principle 9: Material diversity in multicomponent products should be minimized to promote disassembly and value retention.

Principle 10: Design of products, processes, and systems must include integration and interconnectivity with available energy and materials flows.

Principle 11: Products, processes, and systems should be designed for performance in a commercial “afterlife”.

Principle 12: Material and energy inputs should be renewable rather than depleting.

The 12 Principles of Green Chemistry

1. It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed.

2. Synthetic methods should be designed to maximize the incorporation of all materials used in the process into the final product.

3. Wherever practicable, synthetic methodologies should be designed to use and generate substances that possess little or no toxicity to human health and the environment.

4. Chemical products should be designed to preserve efficacy of function while reducing toxicity.

5. The use of auxiliary substances (e.g., solvents, separation agents, and so forth) should be made unnecessary wherever possible and innocuous when used.

6. Energy requirements should be recognized for their environmental and economic impacts and should be minimized. Synthetic methods should be conducted at ambient temperature and pressure.

7. A raw material or feedstock should be renewable rather than depleting wherever technically and economically practicable.

8. Unnecessary derivatization (blocking group, protection/deprotection, temporary modification of physical/chemical processes) should be avoided whenever possible.

9. Catalytic reagents (as selective as possible) are superior to stoichiometric reagents.

10. Chemical products should be designed so that at the end of their function they do not persist in the environment and break down into innocuous degradation products.

11. Analytical methodologies need to be developed further to allow for real-time in-process monitoring and control before the formation of hazardous substances.

12. Substances and the form of a substance used in a chemical process should be chosen so as to minimize the potential for chemical accidents, including releases, explosions, and fires.

The article concludes:

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On the face of it, applying a "green principles" test to nuclear power would force us to conclude that it fails by any objective standard and that we should be looking elsewhere for green energy.

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On the face of it, applying a "green principles" test to nuclear power would force us to conclude that it fails by any objective standard and that we should be looking elsewhere for green energy.

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Originally posted by It's Me D:
Stripping down a nuclear plant in an urban or sub-urban locale and restoring the site seems much easier than doing the same with a hydro development which has redesigned an ecosystem (landscape and animal populations) over hundreds of Kilometers.

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The article, however, points to two of the engineering principles, 9 and 11, as being applicable to the issue of what you call "facility damage" and the reinstatement of the site after decommissioning:

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Nuclear power also violates green engineering principles #9 (design for easy disassembly) and #11 (design for commercial re-use) because, after a nuclear power plant has lived out its useful life, many of its component parts remain extremely radioactive for centuries or aeons. Large parts of an old nuclear plant have to be carefully disassembled (by people behind radiation shields operating robotic arms and hands), then shipped to a suitable location, and "mothballed" in some way -- usually by burial in the ground. An alternative approach is to weld the plant shut to contain its radioactivity, and walk away, hoping nothing bad happens during the next 100,000 years or so. In any case it's clear that nuclear power violates principles #9 and #11 of green engineering.

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Originally posted by George Victor:

Batteries again farn? How's that Irish application working out? Anything to report yet?

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yes, and i'll keep harping on them. the future of energy production is renewable. it must be that way given the "finite" nature of the fuels we use now (hydro excepted, though if the planet warms, there will be less water and more wind and solar and heat).

in order for that future to actually happen, there has to be a solution found to store intermittant source engergy. i don't care if it's batteries or the hole where Harper should have a heart, but that is the deal.

as for the plugging in the car thing, i think what's posted earlier has it backwards. the idea is that an electric vehicle is a mobile powerplant. during the day when it is used, it can generate it's own power and keep it's batteries topped up through things like built in PV, regenerative braking, turbines on the wheels, wind generation with small turbines behind the grill (these exist, very cool) etc. in this scenario, the batteries are used to start the car, but once it's going it generates it's own power. at night when the car is in the driveway, you plug it in as a power source for your home. most folks use less power at night, and the car could easily power your fridge and any other constant power draws, as well as say, your washer, dryer or dishwasher.

if the province were to change building codes to require that all new construction include PV, solar hot water, and geothermal, and give outright grants to retrofit everyone else, the generation savings would rival the California model.

technically doable right now. we just need to fire everyone in charge of the system right now that doesn't agree.

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Nuclear seems to be the only valid centralized energy production that could replace fossil fuels to the degree we use today.

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solar, wind and water potential, which probably will result in much less power being available at night

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Yes, one could produce power, the ability to do work, from stored solar heat, but is it going to be practical? How do you imagine it would function?

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No imagination required.

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Batteries again farn? How's that Irish application working out? Anything to report yet?

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But Buck Rogers aside, the practical applications, like the Irish project farn?(while on the jack-booted walkabout).

[ 05 November 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

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Thermal solar also qualifies as potentially centralized baseline production, plus it can produce power at night because the energy is stored as heat.

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It is a form of stored energy, but not power producing energy stored overnight as heat.

And somewhere between Peelee Island and the Arctic Circle, it doesn't produce anything in the cold, dark months.

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Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) is the largest solar energy generating facility in the world. It consists of nine solar power plants in California's Mojave Desert, where insolation is among the best available in the United States. FPL Energy operates and partially owns the plants. SEGS III-VII (150 MW) are located at Kramer Junction, SEGS VIII-IX (160 MW) at Harper Lake, and SEGS I-II (44 MW) at Daggett respectively.[1]

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The "insolation" mentioned, is the amount of available sunlight, measured over time. i.e. sunny California is good for solar installations, PV or thermal.

[ 05 November 2008: Message edited by: George Victor ]

Nuclear plants are expensive, unreliable and risky.

Do we really want more?

Dalton McGuinty promised positive change. Instead of progress, we’re seeing the same old approach – Mr. McGuinty wants to repeat the mistakes of the past. He wants more nuclear power. He even broke Ontario’s environmental protection laws to ensure quick approval.

The NDP stands up for working families. We have a fresh idea -- a safe, clean, affordable and reliable supply of publicly owned and publicly controlled electricity, focused on an aggressive approach to renewables, energy efficiency and energy conservation.

This approach worked in California where the state built the equivalent of 12 power plants with energy efficiency investments, replacing the need for 12,000 megawatts of generation capacity – or almost 50 per cent of Ontario’s peak demand on a hot summer day. We can make it work in Ontario too.

Show your support for clean green power and say no to more nuclear power. Sign the online petition
Unquote.

I find the above release a tad confusing.

McGinty as Premier in Ontario promised to close down some horrific old, pollution belching, high sulphur coal consuming power plants.
And as far as I know they are still going strong.
Ontario needs some serious new generating capacity to replace those things.
And fast.

The second last last paragraph above says California saved 12,000 megawatts with energy efficient investments.

Investments in what?
How did the energy efficient investments reduce power consumption exactly?

Given that most reductions in consumption and that increases in energy efficiency are a good thing.
We should keep in mind the population of California is significantly larger than than the entire population of Canada.
A reduction comparable to 50% of Ontario's peak demand is apples to oranges.

A lot more data than this outline provides is required to determine how to get the required capacity.
And every day of delay... those unscrubbed coal fired plants just pour out the carcinogens and acid rain.

Could be titled:
Nuclear - it's pretty old technology, it's a bit dangerous, we really haven't got the disposal or decommissioning thing figured out yet however it's really all we have available at the moment that works.

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But they burn natural gas during the night to keep the turbines going.

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No, they burn natural gas when the power produced by solar energy is insufficient to meet demand. Demand falls at night, as does production, so they might have to burn natural gas at any time. Production and heat storage capacity is a function of the scale and design of the plant.

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It is a form of stored energy, but not power producing energy stored overnight as heat.

And somewhere between Peelee Island and the Arctic Circle, it doesn't produce anything in the cold, dark months.

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Actually its the heat from solar thermal power plants that produces electricity in the same way that coal-fired thermal power plants do; less energy is produced overnight but not none.

No.

Never was green, never will be. Except glow-in-the-dark green.

A lot of energy and resources is needed to extract, transport, protect and process fissionable materials, including forever after they become radioactive waste.

Furthermore, uranium is a non-renewable resource. Could it be replaced by thorium?

Peak Uranium

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Nuclear seems to be the only valid centralized energy production that could replace fossil fuels to the degree we use today.

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But there are several premises here that are not being discussed. For example, that nuclear is an abundant energy source. It isn't, really, and what's more, our current economic system is built upon and wholly dependent upon a continuous supply of cheap energy and for electricity, that is coal.

Another premise is that we need increasing supplies of energy. That premise is again founded on the capitalist requirement for perpetual growth and consumption.