| 09/23/2012 | Tournament: | Round: | Opponent: | Judge:
Advantage 1 is warming
Newest analysis of temperature data shows warming is real and anthropogenic
Muller 12 (Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, "The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic," 7/28/12, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?_r=3%26pagewanted=all) For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to … can and should be done. Climate change risks catastrophe – we need to reduce the amount of CO2 we emit by replacing coal
Hansen 8 (James Hansen, directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, "Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth," Nov/Dec 2008, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdf-http://www.columbia.edu/jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdf) Embers of election night elation … low- and no-CO2 energy options. Massive climate change risks extinction
Flournoy 11 – (Dec. 2011, citing Feng Hsu, PhD in Engineering
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January, Springer Briefs in Space Development, p. 10-1) In the Online Journal of … to take any chances" (Hsu 2010) . IFR is a cheaper alternative – only way to get the world off of coal in time
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, "Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now," 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/ To prevent a climate disaster, we … from publicly available information in 2004. Inventing something cheaper is key
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, "How Does Obama Expect to Solve the Climate Crisis Without a Plan?" 7/16/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/how-does-obama-expect-to_b_236588.html-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/how-does-obama-expect-to_b_236588.html The ship is sinking slowly … right thing. No force required. IFRs solve massive energy crunches that spark resource wars
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, "Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III)," 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/ The global threat of anthropogenic … the type under discussion here) Integral fast reactors can clearly … uranium from LWR spent fuel. Resource scarcity is the strongest impetus for global war.
Klare 6 – professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College
(Michael, Mar 6 2006, "The coming resource wars" http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13605) It’s official: the era of … of water, food and energy. Advantage 2 is leadership
IFR restores leadership on nuclear issues – key to contain proliferation
Stanford 10 (Dr George S. Stanford, nuclear reactor physicist, retired from Argonne National Laboratory, "IFR FaD context – the need for U.S. implementation of the IFR," 2/18/10) http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/02/18/ifr-fad-context/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/02/18/ifr-fad-context/ ON THE NEED FOR U.S. IMPLEMENTATION … . It’s time to get moving. IFRs create a proliferation resistant fuel cycle
Stanford 10 (Dr George S. Stanford, nuclear reactor physicist, retired from Argonne National Laboratory, "Q%26A on Integral Fast Reactors – safe, abundant, non-polluting power," 9/18/10) http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/09/18/ifr-fad-7/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/09/18/ifr-fad-7/
If you’re going to talk … —a prime candidate for "continued consideration." New proliferants will be especially unstable–ensures nuclear first strikes and accidents
Arbatov, 04 (Alexei, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Director of the Center of International Security, Institute of the World Economy and International Relations, Russian Academy of Sciences, 4/13/2004. "Horizontal Proliferation: New Challenges", Russia in Global Affairs, http://eng.globalaffairs.ru/numbers/7/531.html)
As the situation stands, further … many risk factors will overlap. US leadership makes reactors safer and secures economic benefits
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, "Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now," 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/-http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
The genie is out of … the US. Today, we have nothing. Nuclear market key to competitiveness
Baker 5
Ambassador Howard H. Baker et. Al 5, Jr., Former … Council on Global Nuclear Competitiveness 2005
http://www.nuclearcompetitiveness.org/-http://www.nuclearcompetitiveness.org/ Nuclear energy is a carbon-free … America’s nuclear leadership is restored. Ceding nuclear leadership creates an energy disadvantage vis a vi other countries
Barton 10 (Charles Barton, Nuclear Green "Keeping up with China: The Economic Advantage of Molten Salt Nuclear Technology," 12/1/10) http://theenergycollective.com/charlesbarton/47933/keeping-china-economic-advantage-molten-salt-nuclear-technology-http://theenergycollective.com/charlesbarton/47933/keeping-china-economic-advantage-molten-salt-nuclear-technology American and European nuclear development … as energy costs are concerned. Competitiveness prevents great … power war —- now is key
Sanjaya Baru 9 2009 is a Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School in Singapore Geopolitical Implications of the Current Global Financial Crisis, Strategic Analysis, Volume 33, Issue 2 March 2009 , pages 163 – 168
Hence, economic policies and performance … America remains to be seen. Competitiveness key to heg
Leslie Gelb, Council on Foreign Relations, 2010
~[Fletcher Forum of World Affairsvol.34:2 summer 2010 http://fletcher.tufts.edu/forum/archives/pdfs/34-2pdfs/Gelb.pdf, p5~]
Power is what it always … our economy is in decline.
Heg decline results in global conflict
Brzezinski 12—Professor of Foreign Policy @ Johns Hopkins
Zbigniew, After America, Foreign Policy, Jan/Dec 2012, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/after_america?page=0,0 For if America falters, the … a dangerous slide into global turmoil. Plan
The United States federal government should approve an Integral Fast Reactor demonstration project in the United States. Contention 3 is Solvency IFRs are achievable – they’re ready, safe, cheap, and clean
Kirsh 11 (Steven T. Kirsh, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Why Obama should meet Till," 9/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/
I will tell you the … provide you with additional information. Demonstration of the IFR leads to global adoption in a fast time frame
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, "Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III)," 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
There are many compelling reasons … crises of the 21st century. Building a small demonstration project now jumpstarts IFR investment
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, "Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source," 6/27/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/climate-bill-ignores-our_b_221796.html-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/climate-bill-ignores-our_b_221796.html
In our own country, GE-Hitachi … the original Argonne IFR design.
There is a lot of misinformation about nuclear
There is a tremendous amount of misinformation about nuclear out there. There are books and papers galore that appear to be credible citing all the reasons nuclear is a bad idea. I could probably spend the rest of my life investigating them all. Those reports that have been brought to my attention I’ve looked into and, after a fair amount of effort, found them not to be persuasive.
Did you know that there is more than 100 times more radiation from a typical coal plant than a nuclear plant, yet the nuclear plant is perceived by the public to be a radiation hazard.
Another example of misinformation is in Discover magazine June 2009 entitled "New Tech Could
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late on building one and the sooner we build one, the better.
We should build a %243B demonstration plant now to get started
We should be exploring all … much faster and more cheaply. IFRs are technologically ready – there’s a commercial version waiting to be made, has to be approved
Brook 11 (Barry Brook, Professor of Climate Change University of Adelaide, "Nuclear power and climate change – what now?" 5/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/28/np-cc-what-now/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/28/np-cc-what-now/
But detractors will nevertheless complain … safely embrace them with enthusiasm. Warming is anthropogenic – countless empirical verifications
Nuccitelli 12 (Dana Nuccitelli, environmental scientist at a private environmental consulting firm in the Sacramento, California area. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in astrophysics from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master’s Degree in physics from the University of California at Davis, " The human fingerprint in global warming," 1/17/12) http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-advanced.htm-http://www.skepticalscience.com/its-not-us-advanced.htm
’What do the skeptics believe? … of human-caused climate change. |
| 11/09/2012 | Tournament: GSU | Round: 2 | Opponent: | Judge:
Russian econ resilient---oil not key
ANDRIANOVA 11/3—writer for Russia Beyond … :rbth.ru/articles/2011/11/03/business_unusual_13696.html) Russia is aware of the … as well as the perception.
Another barrier to trade has been the country’s exclusion from the World Trade Organization (WTO), although that may be about to change. Just as the business summit opened in New York, it was announced that Georgia had reached an agreement clearing the way for Russia’s WTO membership, which observers say will jumpstart trade and investment.
“It will be a surprise to everybody when in a few years Russia will move into the world with its young management and its world-class companies. Russian companies will do very well internationally,” said John Conner, a portfolio manager at Richmond-based Third Millennium Russia Fund (TMRFX) who attended the RBIS conference. He added that Russian steel companies are already entering the world market, and that Russian oil companies will be next.
Investment Incentives for the Wary Investor
There is a general consensus that … fights high levels of debt. Plan doesn’t collapse Russian oil – doesn’t get close to the $13 threshold
IHT 4 (1/7, Lexis)
Given its dependence … falls to $23 a barrel this year Economic decline has no effect on Russian foreign policy
Blackwill 2009 – former US ambassador to India and US National Security Council Deputy for Iraq, former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (Robert D., RAND, “The Geopolitical Consequences of the World Economic Recession—A Caution”, http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP275.pdf, WEA)
Now on to Russia. Again, … way by the economic crisis. Russian economic collapse is inevitable
Khrushcheva 2008 (Nina L. Khrushcheva is an associate professor of international affairs at the New School, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9-5) That scenario, however, is unlikely. … and gas will be found. |
| 11/09/2012 | Tournament: GSU | Round: 3 | Opponent: | Judge:
No prior questions—focus on critical theory makes it impossible to describe the world and act, our framework is they can get links off of reps and method but can’t claim the alt does the plan, solves everyone’s offense but preserves aff gorund.
David Owen, Reader of Political Theory at the Univ. of Southampton, Millennium Vol 31 No 3 2002 p. 655-7
Commenting on the ‘philosophical turn’ … so a potentially vicious circle arises. Transition away from consumption is unrealistic – need to find a clean way to provide energy
Brook 11 (Barry Brook, Professor of Climate Change University of Adelaide, “Renewables and efficiency cannot fix the energy and climate crises (part 2),” 5/12/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/12/renewables-are-not-sufficient-p2/
Economic and socio-political realities
Supporters of ’100% renewable energy’ maintain that sunlight, wind, waves and plant life, combined with vast improvements in energy efficiency and energy conservation leading to a flattening or reduction in total energy demand, are the answer. This is a widespread view among environmentalists and would be perfectly acceptable to me if the numbers could be made to work. But I seriously doubt they can.
The high standard of living in the developed world has been based on cheap fossil (and nuclear) energy. While we can clearly cut back on energy wastage, we will still have to replace oil and gas. And that means a surge in demand for electricity, both to replace the energy now drawn from oil and gas and to meet the additional demand for power from that third of the world’s people who currently have no electricity at all.
Critics do not seem to … physical, economic and social constraints.
If I am wrong, and non-hydro and non-combustible renewables can indeed rise to the challenge and ways can be found to overcome the issues I’ve touched on in these two posts, then I will not complain. After all, my principal goal — to replace fossil fuels with sustainable and low-carbon alternative energy sources — would have been met. But let’s not play dice with the biosphere and humanity’s future on this planet, and bet everything on such wishful thinking. It would be a risky gamble indeed. Perm: Do the plan and … policy debate IS a methodological investigation. Ecosecurity discourse key to solvency
Matthew 2, Richard A, associate professor of international relations and environmental political at the University of California at Irvine, Summer (ECSP Report 8:109-124)
In addition, environmental security's language … the entire environmental security field. Economics is the only effective way to sovle the environment – has to be cheaper for other countries
Barton H. THOMPSON Jr., '3 (Vice Dean and … .ucdavis.edu/issues/27/1/thompson.pdf) Even the environmental moralist who … the limited stock of fish.
In another study, researchers examined domestic consumers of high amounts of electricity in Perth, Australia. After administering a survey to determine whether the consumers believed they had a personal and ethical duty to conserve energy, the researchers tried various methods for changing the behavior of those who reported that people have a conservation obligation. Informing these individuals of their high electricity usage and even supplying them with conservation tips did not make a statistically significant difference in their energy use. The only thing that led these individuals to reduce their electricity consumption was a letter reminding them of the earlier survey in which they had espoused a conservation duty and emphasizing the inconsistency of that view with their high electricity usage. In response to this letter, the subjects reduced their energy use. Apparently shame can be a valuable catalyst in converting ethical beliefs into action. But the effect may be short lived. Within two weeks, the Perth subjects' energy use had risen back to its earlier levels.36
Ethical beliefs, in short, frequently … environment is doomed to frustration.
Yes science is socially influenced – but using that to discount its claims makes environmental engagement impossible
David DEMERRITT, '6 (Dept of Geography, … legislation or administrative law rulings. Unfortunately, public representations of science … constructing and interpreting the models. |
| 11/09/2012 | Tournament: | Round: | Opponent: | Judge:
Reps don’t affect reality – material structure are more important
Tuathail 96 (Gearoid, Department of Georgraphy at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, Political Geography, 15(6-7), p. 664, science direct) While theoretical debates at academic … mess that is human history. You can’t solve the root cause of war – deterrence key to empirically reduce its likelihood
Moore 4 – Dir. Center for Security Law @ University of Virginia, 7-time Presidential appointee, and Honorary Editor of the American Journal of International Law, Solving the War Puzzle: Beyond the Democratic Peace, John Norton Moore, pages 41-2.
If major interstate war … … gamble not worth the risk.I5
VI
Testing the Hypothesis
Theory without truth is but costly entertainment.
HYPOTHESES, OR PARADIGMS, are useful … are dramatically increased or decreased? Social science proves—multipolarity supports the natural incentive to seek status by fighting
Wohlforth, 09 – professor of government at Dartmouth (William, “Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War,” World Affairs, January, project muse)
The upshot is a near scholarly … tend to be zero sum.9 Perm: Do the plan and all parts of the alt that don’t reject the plan
merely critiquing security can’t tell us how to act – realist caution is critical to realizing the political proposals mandated by the alternative without reifying security constructions
Lott ‘4 Anthony, Assistant Professor of Political Science @ St. Olaf College. Creating Insecurity. p. 65-7
In this section, I take realism … to render them more coherent. Can’t solve – other actors will fill in
Wendt, 92
(Alexander, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Chicago, “Anarchy is what States Make of it: The Social Construction of Power Politics, International Organization, VOl. 46, no. 2.)
Let us assume that processes … are almost impossible to transform. Economics is the only effective way to sovle the environment – has to be cheaper for other countries
Barton H. THOMPSON Jr., '3 (Vice Dean and … .ucdavis.edu/issues/27/1/thompson.pdf) Even the environmental moralist who … the limited stock of fish.
In another study, researchers examined domestic consumers of high amounts of electricity in Perth, Australia. After administering a survey to determine whether the consumers believed they had a personal and ethical duty to conserve energy, the researchers tried various methods for changing the behavior of those who reported that people have a conservation obligation. Informing these individuals of their high electricity usage and even supplying them with conservation tips did not make a statistically significant difference in their energy use. The only thing that led these individuals to reduce their electricity consumption was a letter reminding them of the earlier survey in which they had espoused a conservation duty and emphasizing the inconsistency of that view with their high electricity usage. In response to this letter, the subjects reduced their energy use. Apparently shame can be a valuable catalyst in converting ethical beliefs into action. But the effect may be short lived. Within two weeks, the Perth subjects' energy use had risen back to its earlier levels.36
Ethical beliefs, in short, frequently … environment is doomed to frustration. |
| 11/10/2012 | Tournament: | Round: | Opponent: | Judge:
Advantage 1 is warming Warming is real and anthropogenic – skeptics are bought off clowns
Prothero 12 (Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College, Lecturer in Geobiology at CalTech, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused," 3/1/12, EBSCO)
How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There
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change when it threatens their survival. Neither can we as a society. Climate change risks catastrophe – slow feedbacks
Hansen 8 (James Hansen, directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, “Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth,” Nov/Dec 2008, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdf)
Embers of election night elation will glow longer than any prior election. Glowing even
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unless China and India have low- and no-CO2 energy options. Extinction
Morgan 9 (Dennis Ray Morgan, Professor of Current Affairs at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, “World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race,” December 2009 Science Direct)
As horrifying as the scenario of human extinction by sudden, fast-burning nuclear
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civilization has been destroyed, and the question concerning human extinction becomes moot. The IFR supplies enough clean energy to solve warming
Blees et al 11 (Charles Archambeau , Randolph Ware, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Tom Blees, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Barry Brook, Yoon Chang, University of Colorado, Jerry Peterson, Argonne National Laboratory, Robert Serafin Joseph Shuster Tom Wigley, “IFR: An optimized approach to meeting global energy needs (Part I)” 2/1/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/01/ifr-optimized-source-for-global-energy-needs-part-i/) Fossil fuels currently supply about 80% of humankind’s primary energy. Given the imperatives
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down of the reactor. This serves as an important passive safety feature. Only the IFR creates an economic incentive to get off coal in time
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now,” 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
To prevent a climate disaster, we must eliminate virtually all coal plant emissions worldwide
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old child was able to determine this from publicly available information in 2004. Inventing something cheaper is key
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “How Does Obama Expect to Solve the Climate Crisis Without a Plan?” 7/16/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/how-does-obama-expect-to_b_236588.html
The ship is sinking slowly and we are quickly running out of time to develop
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, and are cleaner than coal. No legislation or mandate is required.
My plan is credible since it doesn't require Congress to act. Power companies worldwide simply make an economic decision to do the right thing. No force required. IFRs solve massive energy crunches that spark resource wars
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, “Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III),” 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/ The global threat of anthropogenic climate change has become a political hot potato, especially
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Uranium in fast breeder reactors (IFRs being the type under discussion here)
Resource conflicts escalate
Klare 6 – professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College
(Michael, Mar 6 2006, “The coming resource wars” http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13605)
It's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major
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be channeled into contests over valuable sources of water, food and energy. Advantage 2 is leadership US is ceding nuclear leadership now
Barton 11 (Charles Barton, Nuclear Green, “Have the Chinese Been Reading Energy from Thorium or Nuclear Green?” 1/31/11) http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/01/have-chinese-been-reading-energy-from.html
Last week the Chinese Academy of Science announced that it planned to finance the development
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their venture into Molten Salt nuclear technology. The American leadership does not. IFR restores this
Stanford 10 (Dr George S. Stanford, nuclear reactor physicist, retired from Argonne National Laboratory, “IFR FaD context – the need for U.S. implementation of the IFR,” 2/18/10) http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/02/18/ifr-fad-context/
– The United States used to be the reactor-technology leader, but it
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a demo will require federal seed money. It’s time to get moving. US leadership solves safety concerns and secures economic benefits for the US
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now,” 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
The genie is out of the bottle: refusing to play will not make fast
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to have a program in the US. Today, we have nothing. Investments in nuclear energy spill over to broader growth
Ambassador Howard H. Baker et. Al 5, Jr., Former Member, United States Senate, Former Chief of Staff for President Ronald Reagan Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Johnston and Associates, Former Member, United States Senate | Ambassador C. Paul and Robinson, Former Director, Sandia National Laboratories American Council on Global Nuclear Competitiveness 2005
http://www.nuclearcompetitiveness.org/
Nuclear energy is a carbon-free energy resource which can provide energy security for
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support policies and programs that will help ensure America’s nuclear leadership is restored. Ceding nuclear leadership creates an energy disadvantage vis a vi other countries
Barton 10 (Charles Barton, Nuclear Green “Keeping up with China: The Economic Advantage of Molten Salt Nuclear Technology,” 12/1/10) http://theenergycollective.com/charlesbarton/47933/keeping-china-economic-advantage-molten-salt-nuclear-technology
American and European nuclear development can either proceed by following the cost lowering paths being
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European economies competitive, at least as far as energy costs are concerned. Economics are an integral part of overall dominance
Sanjaya Baru 9 2009 is a Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School in Singapore Geopolitical Implications of the Current Global Financial Crisis, Strategic Analysis, Volume 33, Issue 2 March 2009 , pages 163 – 168
Hence, economic policies and performance do have strategic consequences.2 In the modern
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they will do so once again in today's America remains to be seen. Perception of economic weakness matters
Leslie Gelb, Council on Foreign Relations, 2010
Fletcher Forum of World Affairsvol.34:2 summer 2010 http://fletcher.tufts.edu/forum/archives/pdfs/34-2pdfs/Gelb.pdf, p5
Power is what it always has been. It is the ability to get someone
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last few years has been the perception that our economy is in decline.
Heg decline results in global conflict
Brzezinski 12—Professor of Foreign Policy @ Johns Hopkins
Zbigniew, After America, Foreign Policy, Jan/Dec 2012, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/after_america?page=0,0
For if America falters, the world is unlikely to be dominated by a single
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policy -- or start bracing itself for a dangerous slide into global turmoil. Plan The United States federal government should provide initial funding for commercial Integral Fast Reactors in the United States. Contention 3 is Solvency IFRs are a ready for commercial application
Kirsh 11 (Steven T. Kirsh, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Why Obama should meet Till,” 9/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/
I will tell you the story of an amazing clean power technology that can use
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said he wanted? I am happy to provide you with additional information. Matching funds for development solves Gen IV nuclear
Martin 12 May 8th, Richard, A contributing editor for Wired since 2002, he has written about energy, for Time, Fortune, The Atlantic, and the Asian Wall Street Journal, editorial director for Pike Research, the leading cleantech research and analysis firm, former Technology Producer for ABCNews.com, Technology Editor for The Industry Standard (2000-2001), and Editor-at- Large for Information Week (2005-2008), recipient of the “Excellence in Feature Writing" Award from the Society for Professional Journalists and the White Award for Investigative Reporting, Educated at Yale and the University of Hong Kong, , “SuperFuel: Thorium, the Green Energy Source for the Future”, ISBN 978—0»230-116474 WHILE A NEW MANHATTAN PROIECT is not going to happen, some¶ form of
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movement toward a¶ carbon-free society based on thorium power.¶ ----¶\ Demonstrating commercial IFRs leads to global adoption in a fast time frame
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, “Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III),” 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
There are many compelling reasons to pursue the rapid demonstration of a full-scale
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mitigate climate change and other environmental and geopolitical crises of the 21st century. Initial plants jumpstart future investment
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source,” 6/27/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/climate-bill-ignores-our_b_221796.html
In our own country, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy and a consortium of America's
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. The IFR could denature the weapons Pu much faster and more cheaply. IFRs are technologically ready – we just have to decide to build them
Brook 11 (Barry Brook, Professor of Climate Change University of Adelaide, “Nuclear power and climate change – what now?” 5/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/28/np-cc-what-now/
But detractors will nevertheless complain that reactors like the ESBWR still produce long-lived
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. Anyone serious about protecting the environment can safely embrace them with enthusiasm. In particular the rise of China causes transition conflicts
Kagan 2/14 (Robert Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, Financial Times chief foreign affairs commentator, “The Rise or Fall of the American Empire,” 2/14/12) http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/14/the_rise_or_fall_of_the_american_empire?page=full The main point of my book, in fact, is to examine what might
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. That is why some have referred to Taiwan as East Asia's Sarajevo. |
| 11/10/2012 | Tournament: | Round: | Opponent: | Judge: tech ready – ifr Research is done – we just need to build one Kirsch 8 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project: QandA,” 2008) http:~/~/skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/htm There's not really a lot of research to be done on this. We just AND this sound undeveloped, but that we have to build one of them. Q. How much would it cost to build a 1 GW IFR plant? Competitive with dirty pulverized coal plants. But f you factor in the external costs of coal plants there's no contest, even if you don't include global warming! The first one will probably cost around $1 to $2 billion. Sound like a lot? Read on... Fast reactor technology has been proven to work multiple times – their example bad Brook et al 9 (Barry Brook, Professor of Climate Change University of Adelaide, Tom Blees, George Stanford, nuclear reactor physicist, retired from Argonne National Laboratory, and GLR Cowan, “Response to an Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) critique,” 2/21/9) http:~/~/bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/21/response-to-an-integral-fast-reactor-ifr-critique/http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/02/21/response-to-an-integral-fast-reactor-ifr-critique/ 2. They don’t exist. Long history of theoretically attractive reactors / fuel cycles AND . – The Russian BN-600 has been working well for decades. cheap - PRISM PRISM will be cheap to make – cheaper than coal Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry AND reasonable analysis, even before the introduction of a carbon tax xx. export Obama reforms of the NSC solve competitive disadvantages Domenici and Miller 12 (Senator Pete and Dr. Warren, Former US Senator and BPC Fellow, Former Department of Energy Assistant and Secretary for Nuclear Energy, "Maintaining U.S. Leadership in Global Nuclear Energy Markets," Bipartisan Policy Center, September, bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Nuclear%20Report.PDF) In an attempt to ameliorate current competitive ¶ disadvantages, the Obama administration recently created AND S. companies to compete more ¶ effectively in the global nuclear marketplace. |
| 11/10/2012 | Tournament: | Round: | Opponent: | Judge: - Renewables are nowhere close to making a dent in market share
Hansen 11 (James Hansen, directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, Reto Ruedy, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Makiko Sato, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, “Hansen warns not to drink sustainable energy Kool-Aid,” 8/5/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/08/05/hansen-energy-kool-aid/
A facile explanation would focus on the ‘merchants of doubt’ who have managed to
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of his personal fortune to help develop a specific 4th generation nuclear technology.
3. No link - abundance and France prove
Tindale, 11 Stephen Tindale is an associate fellow at the CER, June 2011, Center for European Reform, http://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/pdf/2011/pb_thorium_june11-153.pdf
The money to support research and development of molten salt reactors need not be taken
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power stations burning energy crops and waste wood which would otherwise be wasted. Trades off with fossil fuels
Loudermilk 2011 (Micah J. Loudermilk is a Research Associate for the Energy and Environmental Security Policy program with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University, May 31, 2011, “Small Nuclear Reactors and US Energy Security: Concepts, Capabilities, and Costs,” Journal of Energy Security, http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_contentandview=articleandid=314:small-nuclear-reactors-and-us-energy-security-concepts-capabilities-and-costsandcatid=116:content0411andItemid=375)
Pursuing a carbon-free world Realistically speaking, a world without nuclear power is
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US would benefit from diversification and expansion of the nation’s nuclear energy portfolio. Future energy demand means the requirements are absurd – we can’t build that fast
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Add a Gigawatt a Day to Keep the Climate Crisis at Bay,” 8/18/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/add-a-gigawatt-a-day-to-k_b_261728.html
As far as I know, only one member of the press has asked the
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). But we won't let them. Where is our sense of urgency? 5)INTERMITTANCY – means you fundamentally can’t replace coal
Palmer 11 (Graham Palmer, industrial engineer, “Coal dependence and the renewables paradox,” 9/25/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/25/coal-dependence-and-the-renewables-paradox/
Just about everyone agrees that the most pressing challenge in averting climate change is reducing
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term transition to a low carbon future. Australia should be taking heed. Electricity distinction gets them nowhere – of means from
AHD, ’12 (accessed 8/13/12, http://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=ofandsubmit.x=0andsubmit.y=0)
Derived or coming from; originating at or from: customs of the South |
| 11/10/2012 | Tournament: | Round: | Opponent: | Judge:
CP fails – certainty key
Trembath, 11 2/4/11, Nuclear Power and the Future of Post-Partisan Energy Policy, Alex Trembath is a policy associate in the Energy and Climate Program at Breakthrough. He is the lead or co-author of several Breakthrough publications, including the 2012 report "Beyond Boom and Bust: Putting Clean Tech on a Path to Subsidy Independence" and "Where the Shale Gas Revolution Came From." Alex is a graduate of University of California at Berkeley, http://leadenergy.org/2011/02/the-nuclear-option-in-a-post-partisan-approach-on-energy/
If there is one field of the energy sector for which certainty of political will
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power maybe one sector of our economy to benefit from his political leadership. Only certainty ensures development of new plants
Whitefield, 11 5/4/11, STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ED WHITFIELD CHAIRMAN, SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND POWER, “The Role of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in America’s Energy Future, http://republicans.energycommerce.house.gov/Media/file/Hearings/Energy/050411/Whitfield.pdf
While the NRC may not be the direct cause of this uncertainty – the Obama
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supply will mean for the future health and wealth of the United States. Internal opposition means the counterplan would be killed in progress
Kirsh 11 (Steven T. Kirsh, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Why Obama should meet Till,” 9/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/
Lack of knowledge, misinformation, and the complexity of nuclear technology have hampered efforts
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way for the US to achieve the leadership that Obama said he wanted? WITHOUT fiat NRC takes forever
Kirsch 8 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project: QandA,” 2008) http://skirsch.com/politics/globalwarming/ifrQandA.htm
GE is a large conservative corporation. They already service a fleet of lightwater reactors
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gate, which would make it much easier for the eventual NRC certification. |
| 11/10/2012 | Tournament: | Round: | Opponent: | Judge:
2. Lower prices now – also turns econ
Reuters 12 “U.S. Export Surge Could Add 5 Million Jobs By 2020: Report”, 9/21/12
Rising U.S. factory productivity, spurred by falling natural gas prices,
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will remain 7 percent cheaper than those in the United States, however. 3. Shale gas now
Cekuta 12 “Unconventional Natural Gas: The U.S. Experience and Global Energy Security”, Robert F. Cekuta, ¶ Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Economic, Energy and Business Affairs¶ Address to the 2nd U.S.-Indonesia Energy Investment Roundtable, ¶ Jakarta, Indonesia, ¶ February 6, 2012
Ladies and gentlemen the reality, something that has surprised many Americans, is that
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we continue to examine ways to avoid and mitigate environmental and other concerns. That Non-unques the da
Jaffe and O’Sullivan 12 Amy Myers Jaffe is the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University, and Meghan L. O’Sullivan is the Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University. "The Geopolitics of Natural Gas," July, http://bakerinstitute.org/publications/EF-pub-HKSGeopoliticsOfNaturalGas-073012.pdf
Knowledge of the shale gas resource is not new. Geologists have known about the
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until lower-cost Iraqi gas is able to flow into the line. 2. Europe moving away from Russia now – EU investigation
Peiser 12 (Dr. Benny Peiser, “Gazprom vs. the Commission,” 9/13/12) http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/49499
The bottom line is that the same natural gas revolution in the US, which
AND
at the expense of old,” he added.—Reuters, 12 September 2012 China solves the impact
Levine ‘12
Steve LeVine, EandE reporter, EnergyWire: Thursday, May 31, 2012, With U.S. energy sources on rise, Russia and China renew fuel talks http://eenews.net/public/energywire/2012/05/31/1, jj
Facing the threat of an onslaught of natural gas competition in Europe, Russian President
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market and suffering from a possible plummet in much-needed gas revenue. Economic decline has no effect on Russian foreign policy
Blackwill 2009 – former US ambassador to India and US National Security Council Deputy for Iraq, former dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard (Robert D., RAND, “The Geopolitical Consequences of the World Economic Recession—A Caution”, http://www.rand.org/pubs/occasional_papers/2009/RAND_OP275.pdf, WEA)
Now on to Russia. Again, five years from today. Did the global
AND
are likely to be changed in any serious way by the economic crisis. Russian economic collapse is inevitable
Khrushcheva 2008 (Nina L. Khrushcheva is an associate professor of international affairs at the New School, Chronicle of Higher Education, 9-5) That scenario, however, is unlikely. The unstable conditions that are stoking Russia's
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alternative solutions to the world's dependence on oil and gas will be found. Russian economic decline limits adventurism
Bandow, 08 – Robert A. Taft Fellow at the American Conservative Defense Alliance (Doug, “The Russian Hangover,” http://www.nationalinterest.org/Article.aspx?id=20088)
But we need not wait until 2020 for evidence of Russian weakness. Economic uncertainty
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certainly will be impossible to achieve without abundant Western investment, trade and cooperation |
| 11/10/2012 | Tournament: | Round: | Opponent: | Judge:
No chance of any movement on tax or general fiscal cliff
Vicki Needham, 11/07/12 (“Business groups urge quick extension of tax policies in lame duck”, thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/economy/266701-business-groups-urge-quick-extension-of-tax-policies-in-lame-duck The president talked to congressional leaders on Wednesday about the legislative agenda less than a
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D-Nev.) argued for letting tax rates expire for wealthier earners. Obama’s capital fails on the fiscal cliff
Washington Times, 11/7/12 (EDITORIAL: Obama: A lame-duck presidentwww.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/nov/7/obama-a-lame-duck-president-lack-of-convincing-man/)
Whether Mr. Obama can pull off his tax agenda is an open question.
AND
. Obama a lame duck simply affirms what has been true all along. They’ll kick the can down the road
Times Record News, 11/8/12, "Our Opinion: Obama wins, but he needs to get to work", FACTIVA Groups of lawmakers in both the House and Senate have been meeting privately, hoping
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sure we don't make the same excuses the next time the can lands." Housing and jobs thumps
Aamer Madhani, 11/7/12, USA TODAY, "Obama takes a victory lap, then gets back to work", FACTIVA
Even before the election, Obama was pushing Congress to embrace his proposal to allow
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proposal to hire thousands more teachers and first responders, while modernizing infrastructure. Loan Guarantees for the grid
EERE, 11/7/12 (USDOE, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, News and Events, Weekly Newsletter)
USDA Announces $3 Million in Smart Grid Funding
The U.S. Department of Agriculture on October 19 announced $107.5 million in loan guarantees to modernize and improve rural electric systems, including nearly $3 million in Smart Grid technologies in North Dakota and Wisconsin. Both parties support nuclear power
NEI 12 (Nuclear Energy Institute, “Obama, Romney Support Nuclear Energy, Offer Views on Financing, Regulation,” Summer 2012) http://www.nei.org/resourcesandstats/publicationsandmedia/insight/insightsummer2012/obama-romney-support-nuclear-energy-offer-views-on-financing-regulation/
Summer 2012—Unlike some issues that polarize presidential candidates, the broad energy positions
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licensing decisions based on pre-approved designs are issued within two years. Lots of support for IFRs and no one opposes them
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now,” 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
Support
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu9 White House Science Advisor John Holdren
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reactors are are the “inconvenient truths” for the fast reactor skeptics. Winner’s Win-
MARSHALL AND PRINS 11 (BRYAN W, Miami University and BRANDON C, University of Tennessee and Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy, “Power or Posturing? Policy Availability and Congressional Influence on U.S. Presidential Decisions to Use Force”, Sept, Presidential Studies Quarterly 41, no. 3)
Presidents rely heavily on Congress in converting their political capital into real policy success.
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made with an eye toward managing political capital at home (Fordham 2002). Issues are compartmentalized – political capital has no effect on legislation
Dickinson, 09 – professor of political science at Middlebury College and taught previously at Harvard University where he worked under the supervision of presidential scholar Richard Neustadt (5/26/09, Matthew, Presidential Power: A NonPartisan Analysis of Presidential Politics, “Sotomayor, Obama and Presidential Power,” http://blogs.middlebury.edu/presidentialpower/2009/05/26/sotamayor-obama-and-presidential-power/, JMP) As for Sotomayor, from here the path toward almost certain confirmation goes as follows
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an important aspect of presidential power that cannot be measured through legislative boxscores. Nothing will get done---election didn’t change anything
Anniston Star Editorial Board, 11/6/12 (“Campaign lessons: Four things we learned in the 2012 election”, http://annistonstar.com/bookmark/20737601-Campaign-lessons-Four-things-we-learned-in-the-2012-election) Congressional Republicans have shown enormous discipline in rejecting practically every major Obama-led initiative
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likely remain stuck in a low gear. We wish that wasn’t so. |
| 11/10/2012 | Tournament: | Round: | Opponent: | Judge:
at: econ
Heg solves inevitable economic decline
Mandelbaum 2005 – Professor and Director of the American Foreign Policy Program at Johns Hopkins – 2005
Michael, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts As the World’s Government in the Twenty-First Century, p. 192-195
Although the spread of nuclear weapons, with the corresponding increase in the likelihood that
AND
United States would in this way resemble a fleet of cars without gasoline. Decoupling – US isn’t key to emerging markets
Passell 4/4 (Peter Passell, Economics Editor of Democracy Lab, is a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute, “Decoupling: Ties That No Longer Bind ,” 4/4/12) http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/04/03/ties_that_no_longer_bind?page=full
Everybody knows that the global economy is becoming more tightly integrated -- that factors ranging
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price fluctuations because they are building credible government institutions for managing their economies. No impact—last recession proves econ doesn’t determine conflict or instability
Barnett 2009 – senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC and a contributing editor/online columnist for Esquire magazine, columnist for World Politics Review (8/25, Thomas P.M. “The New Rules: Security Remains Stable Amid Financial Crisis,” World Politics Review, http://www.aprodex.com/the-new-rules~-~-security-remains-stable-amid-financial-crisis-398-bl.aspx, WEA)
When the global financial crisis struck roughly a year ago, the blogosphere was ablaze
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fear-mongering to proceed apace. That's what the Internet is for. We will never have a 1930s style recession again because we aren’t that stupid or weak
Olive 2009 (3/15, David, The Chronicle Herald, “Depression? Not a chance Sure, times are tough, but don’t be scared into believing we’re in for a modern-day version of the Great Depression”, http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/1111419.html) SHOULD WE brace for another Great Depression? No. The notion is ludicrous.
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Today’s widespread fear is instead largely informed by fear. And fear mongers. |
| 01/18/2013 | Tournament: USC | Round: 1 | Opponent: | Judge:
Advantage 1 is warming Warming is real and anthropogenic – skeptics are bought off clowns
Prothero 12 (Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College, Lecturer in Geobiology at CalTech, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused," 3/1/12, EBSCO)
How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There are numerous lines of evidence that converge toward this conclusion. 1. Carbon Dioxide Increase Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased at an unprecedented rate in the past 200 years. Not one data set collected over a long enough span of time shows otherwise. Mann et al. (1999) compiled the past 900 years' worth of temperature data from tree rings, ice cores, corals, and direct measurements in the past few centuries, and the sudden increase of temperature of the past century stands out like a sore thumb. This famous graph is now known as the "hockey stick" because it is long and straight through most of its length, then bends sharply upward at the end like the blade of a hockey stick. Other graphs show that climate was very stable within a narrow range of variation through the past 1000, 2000, or even 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. There were minor warming events during the Climatic Optimum about 7000 years ago, the Medieval Warm Period, and the slight cooling of the Litde Ice Age in the 1700s and 1800s. But the magnitude and rapidity of the warming represented by the last 200 years is simply unmatched in all of human history. More revealing, the timing of this warming coincides with the Industrial Revolution, when humans first began massive deforestation and released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning an unprecedented amount of coal, gas, and oil. 2. Melting Polar Ice Caps The polar icecaps are thinning and breaking up at an alarming rate. In 2000, my former graduate advisor Malcolm McKenna was one of the first humans to fly over the North Pole in summer time and see no ice, just open water. The Arctic ice cap has been frozen solid for at least the past 3 million years (and maybe longer), 4 but now the entire ice sheet is breaking up so fast that by 2030 (and possibly sooner) less than half of the Arctic will be ice covered in the summer. 5 As one can see from watching the news, this is an ecological disaster for everything that lives up there, from the polar bears to the seals and walruses to the animals they feed upon, to the 4 million people whose world is melting beneath their feet. The Antarctic is thawing even faster. In February-March 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf -- over 3000 square km (the size of Rhode Island) and 220 m (700 feet) thick -- broke up in just a few months, a story -typical of nearly all the ice shelves in Antarctica. The Larsen B shelf had survived all the previous ice ages and interglacial warming episodes over the past 3 million years, and even the warmest periods of the last 10,000 years -- yet it and nearly all the other thick ice sheets on the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctic are vanishing at a rate never before seen in geologic history. 3. Melting Glaciers Glaciers are all retreating at the highest rates ever documented. Many of those glaciers, along with snow melt, especially in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, and Sierras, provide most of the freshwater that the populations below the mountains depend upon -- yet this fresh water supply is vanishing. Just think about the percentage of world's population in southern Asia (especially India) that depend on Himalayan snowmelt for their fresh water. The implications are staggering. The permafrost that once remained solidly frozen even in the summer has now thawed, damaging the Inuit villages on the Arctic coast and threatening all our pipelines to the North Slope of Alaska. This is catastrophic not only for life on the permafrost, but as it thaws, the permafrost releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases which are one of the major contributors to global warming. Not only is the ice vanishing, but we have seen record heat waves over and over again, killing thousands of people, as each year joins the list of the hottest years on record. (2010 just topped that list as the hottest year, surpassing the previous record in 2009, and we shall know about 2011 soon enough). Natural animal and plant populations are being devastated all over the globe as their environments change. 6 Many animals respond by moving their ranges to formerly cold climates, so now places that once did not have to worry about disease-bearing mosquitoes are infested as the climate warms and allows them to breed further north. 4. Sea Level Rise All that melted ice eventually ends up in the ocean, causing sea levels to rise, as it has many times in the geologic past. At present, the sea level is rising about 3-4 mm per year, more than ten times the rate of 0.1-0.2 mm/year that has occurred over the past 3000 years. Geological data show that the sea level was virtually unchanged over the past 10,000 years since the present interglacial began. A few mm here or there doesn't impress people, until you consider that the rate is accelerating and that most scientists predict sea levels will rise 80-130 cm in just the next century. A sea level rise of 1.3 m (almost 4 feet) would drown many of the world's low-elevation cities, such as Venice and New Orleans, and low-lying countries such as the Netherlands or Bangladesh. A number of tiny island nations such as Vanuatu and the Maldives, which barely poke out above the ocean now, are already vanishing beneath the waves. Eventually their entire population will have to move someplace else. 7 Even a small sea level rise might not drown all these areas, but they are much more vulnerable to the large waves of a storm surge (as happened with Hurricane Katrina), which could do much more damage than sea level rise alone. If sea level rose by 6 m (20 feet), most of the world's coastal plains and low-lying areas (such as the Louisiana bayous, Florida, and most of the world's river deltas) would be drowned. Most of the world's population lives in low-elevation coastal cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, and Shanghai. All of those cities would be partially or completely under water with such a sea level rise. If all the glacial ice caps melted completely (as they have several times before during past greenhouse episodes in the geologic past), sea level would rise by 65 m (215 feet)! The entire Mississippi Valley would flood, so you could dock an ocean liner in Cairo, Illinois. Such a sea level rise would drown nearly every coastal region under hundreds of feet of water, and inundate New York City, London and Paris. All that would remain would be the tall landmarks such as the Empire State Building, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower. You could tie your boats to these pinnacles, but the rest of these drowned cities would lie deep underwater. Climate Change Critic's Arguments and Scientists' Rebuttals Despite the overwhelming evidence there are many people who remain skeptical. One reason is that they have been fed distortions and misstatements by the global warming denialists who cloud or confuse the issue. Let's examine some of these claims in detail: * "It's just natural climatic variability." No, it is not. As I detailed in my 2009 book, Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs, geologists and paleoclimatologists know a lot about past greenhouse worlds, and the icehouse planet that has existed for the past 33 million years. We have a good understanding of how and why the Antarctic ice sheet first appeared at that time, and how the Arctic froze over about 3.5 million years ago, beginning the 24 glacial and interglacial episodes of the "Ice Ages" that have occurred since then. We know how variations in the earth's orbit (the Milankovitch cycles) controls the amount of solar radiation the earth receives, triggering the shifts between glacial and interglacial periods. Our current warm interglacial has already lasted 10,000 years, the duration of most previous interglacials, so if it were not for global warming, we would be headed into the next glacial in the next 1000 years or so. Instead, our pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere after they were long trapped in the earth's crust has pushed the planet into a "super-interglacial," already warmer than any previous warming period. We can see the "big picture" of climate variability most clearly in ice cores from the EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica), which show the details of the last 650,000 years of glacial-inters glacial cycles (Fig. 2). At no time during any previous interglacial did the carbon dioxide levels exceed 300 ppm, even at their very warmest. Our atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are already close to 400 ppm today. The atmosphere is headed to 600 ppm within a few decades, even if we stopped releasing greenhouse gases immediately. This is decidedly not within the normal range of "climatic variability," but clearly unprecedented in human history. Anyone who says this is "normal variability" has never seen the huge amount of paleoclimatic data that show otherwise. * "It's just another warming episode, like the Medieval Warm Period, or the Holocene Climatic Optimum or the end of the Little Ice Age." Untrue. There were numerous small fluctuations of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years of the Holocene. But in the case of the Medieval Warm Period (about 950-1250 A.D.), the temperatures increased only 1°C, much less than we have seen in the current episode of global warming (Fig. 1). This episode was also only a local warming in the North Atlantic and northern Europe. Global temperatures over this interval did not warm at all, and actually cooled by more than 1°C. Likewise, the warmest period of the last 10,000 years was the Holocene Climatic Optimum ( 5,000-9,000 B.C.E.) when warmer and wetter conditions in Eurasia contributed to the rise of the first great civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China. This was largely a Northern Hemisphere-Eurasian phenomenon, with 2-3°C warming in the Arctic and northern Europe. But there was almost no warming in the tropics, and cooling or no change in the Southern Hemisphere. 8 From a Eurocentric viewpoint, these warming events seemed important, but on a global scale the effect was negligible. In addition, neither of these warming episodes is related to increasing greenhouse gases. The Holocene Climatic Optimum, in fact, is predicted by the Milankovitch cycles, since at that time the axial tilt of the earth was 24°, its steepest value, meaning the Northern Hemisphere got more solar radiation than normal -- but the Southern Hemisphere less, so the two balanced. By contrast, not only is the warming observed in the last 200 years much greater than during these previous episodes, but it is also global and bipolar, so it is not a purely local effect. The warming that ended the Little Ice Age (from the mid-1700s to the late 1800s) was due to increased solar radiation prior to 1940. Since 1940, however, the amount of solar radiation has been dropping, so the only candidate remaining for the post-1940 warming is carbon dioxide. 9 "It's just the sun, or cosmic rays, or volcanic activity or methane." Nope, sorry. The amount of heat that the sun provides has been decreasing since 1940, 10 just the opposite of the critics' claims (Fig. 3). There is no evidence of an increase in cosmic ray particles during the past century. 11 Nor is there any clear evidence that large-scale volcanic events (such as the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, which changed global climate for about a year) have any long-term effects that would explain 200 years of warming and carbon dioxide increase. Volcanoes erupt only 0.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, but humans emit over 29 billion tonnes a year, 12 roughly 100 times as much. Clearly, we have a bigger effect. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas, but there is 200 times more carbon dioxide than methane, so carbon dioxide is still the most important agent. 13 Every other alternative has been looked at and can be ruled out. The only clear-cut relationship is between human-caused carbon dioxide increase and global warming. * "The climate records since 1995 (or 1998) show cooling." That's simply untrue. The only way to support this argument is to cherry-pick the data. 14 Over the short term, there was a slight cooling trend from 1998-2000, but only because 1998 was a record-breaking El Nino year, so the next few years look cooler by comparison (Fig. 4). But since 2002, the overall long-term trend of warming is unequivocal. All of the 16 hottest years ever recorded on a global scale have occurred in the last 20 years. They are (in order of hottest first): 2010, 2009, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2001, 1997, 2008, 1995, 1999, 1990, and 2000. 15 In other words, every year since 2000 has been on the Top Ten hottest years list. The rest of the top 16 include 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Only 1996 failed to make the list (because of the short-term cooling mentioned already). * "We had record snows in the winter of 2009-2010, and also in 2010-2011." So what? This is nothing more than the difference between weather (short-term seasonal changes) and climate (the long-term average of weather over decades and centuries and longer). Our local weather tells us nothing about another continent, or the global average; it is only a local effect, determined by short-term atmospheric and oceano-graphic conditions. 16 In fact, warmer global temperatures mean more moisture in the atmosphere, which increases the intensity of normal winter snowstorms. In this particular case, the climate change critics forget that the early winter of November-December 2009 was actually very mild and warm, and then only later in January and February did it get cold and snow heavily. That warm spell in early winter helped bring more moisture into the system, so that when cold weather occurred, the snows were worse. In addition, the snows were unusually heavy only in North America; the rest of the world had different weather, and the global climate was warmer than average. Also, the summer of 2010 was the hottest on record, breaking the previous record set in 2009. * "Carbon dioxide is good for plants, so the world will be better off." Who do they think they're kidding? The Competitive Enterprise Institute (funded by oil and coal companies and conservative foundations 17) has run a series of shockingly stupid ads concluding with the tag line "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life." Anyone who knows the basic science of earth's atmosphere can spot the gross inaccuracies in this ad. 18 True, plants take in carbon dioxide that animals exhale, as they have for millions of years. But the whole point of the global warming evidence (as shown from ice cores) is that the delicate natural balance of carbon dioxide has been thrown off balance by our production of too much of it, way in excess of what plants or the oceans can handle. As a consequence, the oceans are warming 19, 20 and absorbing excess carbon dioxide making them more acidic. Already we are seeing a shocking decline in coral reefs ("bleaching") and extinctions in many marine ecosystems that can't handle too much of a good thing. Meanwhile, humans are busy cutting down huge areas of temperate and tropical forests, which not only means there are fewer plants to absorb the gas, but the slash and burn practices are releasing more carbon dioxide than plants can keep up with. There is much debate as to whether increased carbon dioxide might help agriculture in some parts of the world, but that has to be measured against the fact that other traditional "breadbasket" regions (such as the American Great Plains) are expected to get too hot to be as productive as they are today. The latest research 21 actually shows that increased carbon dioxide inhibits the absorption of nitrogen into plants, so plants (at least those that we depend upon today) are not going to flourish in a greenhouse world. It is difficult to know if those who tell the public otherwise are ignorant of basic atmospheric science and global geochemistry, or if they are being cynically disingenuous. * "I agree that climate is changing, but I'm skeptical that humans are the main cause, so we shouldn't do anything." This is just fence sitting. A lot of reasonable skeptics deplore the right wing's rejection of the reality of climate change, but still want to be skeptical about the cause. If they want proof, they can examine the huge array of data that points directly to human caused global warming. 22 We can directly measure the amount of carbon dioxide humans are producing, and it tracks exactly with the amount of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Through carbon isotope analysis, we can show that this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming directly from our burning of fossil fuels, not from natural sources. We can also measure the drop in oxygen as it combines with the increased carbon levels to produce carbon dioxide. We have satellites in space that are measuring the heat released from the planet and can actually see the atmosphere getting warmer. The most crucial evidence emerged only within the past few years: climate models of the greenhouse effect predict that there should be cooling in the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere above 10 km or 6 miles in elevation), but warming in the troposphere (the bottom layer below 10 km or 6 miles), and that's exactly what our space probes have measured. Finally, we can rule out any other suspects (see above): solar heat is decreasing since 1940, not increasing, and there are no measurable increases in cosmic rays, methane, volcanic gases, or any other potential cause. Face it -- it's our problem. Why Do People Continue to Question the Reality of Climate Change? Thanks to all the noise and confusion over climate change, the general public has only a vague idea of what the debate is really about, and only about half of Americans think global warming is real or that we are to blame. 23 As in the evolution/creationism debate, the scientific community is virtually unanimous on what the data demonstrate about anthropogenic global warming. This has been true for over a decade. When science historian Naomi Oreskes 24 surveyed all peer-reviewed papers on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 in the world's leading scientific journal, Science, she found that there were 980 supporting the idea of human-induced global warming and none opposing it. In 2009, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman 25 surveyed all the climate scientists who were familiar with the data. They found that 95-99% agreed that global warming is real and human caused. In 2010, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study that showed that 98% of the scientists who actually do research in climate change are in agreement over anthropogenic global warming. 26 Every major scientific organization in the world has endorsed the conclusion of anthropogenic climate change as well. This is a rare degree of agreement within such an independent and cantankerous group as the world's top scientists. This is the same degree of scientific consensus that scientists have achieved over most major ideas, including gravity, evolution, and relativity. These and only a few other topics in science can claim this degree of agreement among nearly all the world's leading scientists, especially among everyone who is close to the scientific data and knows the problem intimately. If it were not such a controversial topic politically, there would be almost no interest in debating it since the evidence is so clear-cut. If the climate science community speaks with one voice (as in the 2007 IPCC report, and every report since then), why is there still any debate at all? The answer has been revealed by a number of investigations by diligent reporters who got past the PR machinery denying global warming, and uncovered the money trail. Originally, there were no real "dissenters" to the idea of global warming by scientists who are actually involved with climate research. Instead, the forces with vested interests in denying global climate change (the energy companies, and the "free-market" advocates) followed the strategy of tobacco companies: create a smokescreen of confusion and prevent the American public from recognizing scientific consensus. As the famous memo 27 from the tobacco lobbyists said "Doubt is our product." The denialists generated an anti-science movement entirely out of thin air and PR. The evidence for this PR conspiracy has been well documented in numerous sources. For example, Oreskes and Conway revealed from memos leaked to the press that in April 1998 the right-wing Marshall Institute, SEPP (Fred Seitz's lobby that aids tobacco companies and polluters), and ExxonMobil, met in secret at the American Petroleum Institute's headquarters in Washington, D.C. There they planned a $20 million campaign to get "respected scientists" to cast doubt on climate change, get major PR efforts going, and lobby Congress that global warming isn't real and is not a threat. The right-wing institutes and the energy lobby beat the bushes to find scientists -- any scientists -- who might disagree with the scientific consensus. As investigative journalists and scientists have documented over and over again, 28 the denialist conspiracy essentially paid for the testimony of anyone who could be useful to them. The day that the 2007 IPCC report was released (Feb. 2, 2007), the British newspaper The Guardian reported that the conservative American Enterprise Institute (funded largely by oil companies and conservative think tanks) had offered $10,000 plus travel expenses to scientists who would write negatively about the IPCC report. 29 In February 2012, leaks of documents from the denialist Heartland Institute revealed that they were trying to influence science education, suppress the work of scientists, and had paid off many prominent climate deniers, such as Anthony Watts, all in an effort to circumvent the scientific consensus by doing an "end run" of PR and political pressure. Other leaks have shown 9 out of 10 major climate deniers are paid by ExxonMobil. 30 We are accustomed to hired-gun "experts" paid by lawyers to muddy up the evidence in the case they are fighting, but this is extraordinary -- buying scientists outright to act as shills for organizations trying to deny scientific reality. With this kind of money, however, you can always find a fringe scientist or crank or someone with no relevant credentials who will do what they're paid to do. Fishing around to find anyone with some science background who will agree with you and dispute a scientific consensus is a tactic employed by the creationists to sound "scientific". The NCSE created a satirical "Project Steve," 31 which demonstrated that there were more scientists who accept evolution named "Steve" than the total number of "scientists who dispute evolution". It may generate lots of PR and a smokescreen to confuse the public, but it doesn't change the fact that scientists who actually do research in climate change are unanimous in their insistence that anthropogenic global warming is a real threat. Most scientists I know and respect work very hard for little pay, yet they still cannot be paid to endorse some scientific idea they know to be false. The climate deniers have a lot of other things in common with creationists and other anti-science movements. They too like to quote someone out of context ("quote mining"), finding a short phrase in the work of legitimate scientists that seems to support their position. But when you read the full quote in context, it is obvious that they have used the quote inappropriately. The original author meant something that does not support their goals. The "Climategate scandal" is a classic case of this. It started with a few stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. If you read the complete text of the actual emails 32 and comprehend the scientific shorthand of climate scientists who are talking casually to each other, it is clear that there was no great "conspiracy" or that they were faking data. All six subsequent investigations have cleared Philip Jones and the other scientists of the University of East Anglia of any wrongdoing or conspiracy. 33 Even if there had been some conspiracy on the part of these few scientists, there is no reason to believe that the entire climate science community is secretly working together to generate false information and mislead the public. If there's one thing that is clear about science, it's about competition and criticism, not conspiracy and collusion. Most labs are competing with each other, not conspiring together. If one lab publishes a result that is not clearly defensible, other labs will quickly correct it. As James Lawrence Powell wrote: Scientists…show no evidence of being more interested in politics or ideology than the average American. Does it make sense to believe that tens of thousands of scientists would be so deeply and secretly committed to bringing down capitalism and the American way of life that they would spend years beyond their undergraduate degrees working to receive master's and Ph.D. degrees, then go to work in a government laboratory or university, plying the deep oceans, forbidding deserts, icy poles, and torrid jungles, all for far less money than they could have made in industry, all the while biding their time like a Russian sleeper agent in an old spy novel? Scientists tend to be independent and resist authority. That is why you are apt to find them in the laboratory or in the field, as far as possible from the prying eyes of a supervisor. Anyone who believes he could organize thousands of scientists into a conspiracy has never attended a single faculty meeting. 34 There are many more traits that the climate deniers share with the creationists and Holocaust deniers and others who distort the truth. They pick on small disagreements between different labs as if scientists can't get their story straight, when in reality there is always a fair amount of give and take between competing labs as they try to get the answer right before the other lab can do so. The key point here is that when all these competing labs around the world have reached a consensus and get the same answer, there is no longer any reason to doubt their common conclusion. The anti-scientists of climate denialism will also point to small errors by individuals in an effort to argue that the entire enterprise cannot be trusted. It is true that scientists are human, and do make mistakes, but the great power of the scientific method is that peer review weeds these out, so that when scientists speak with consensus, there is no doubt that their data are checked carefully Finally, a powerful line of evidence that this is a purely political controversy, rather than a scientific debate, is that the membership lists of the creationists and the climate deniers are highly overlapping. Both anti-scientific dogmas are fed to their overlapping audiences through right-wing media such as Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. Just take a look at the "intelligent-design" cre-ationism website for the Discovery Institute. Most of the daily news items lately have nothing to do with creationism at all, but are focused on climate denial and other right-wing causes. 35 If the data about global climate change are indeed valid and robust, any qualified scientist should be able to look at them and see if the prevailing scientific interpretation holds up. Indeed, such a test took place. Starting in 2010, a group led by U.C. Berkeley physicist Richard Muller re-examined all the temperature data from the NOAA, East Anglia Hadley Climate Research Unit, and the Goddard Institute of Space Science sources. Even though Muller started out as a skeptic of the temperature data, and was funded by the Koch brothers and other oil company sources, he carefully checked and re-checked the research himself. When the GOP leaders called him to testify before the House Science and Technology Committee in spring 2011, they were expecting him to discredit the temperature data. Instead, Muller shocked his GOP sponsors by demonstrating his scientific integrity and telling the truth: the temperature increase is real, and the scientists who have demonstrated that the climate is changing are right (Fig. 5). In the fall of 2011, his study was published, and the conclusions were clear: global warming is real, even to a right-wing skeptical scientist. Unlike the hired-gun scientists who play political games, Muller did what a true scientist should do: if the data go against your biases and preconceptions, then do the right thing and admit it -- even if you've been paid by sponsors who want to discredit global warming. Muller is a shining example of a scientist whose integrity and honesty came first, and did not sell out to the highest bidder. 36 * Science and Anti-Science The conclusion is clear: there's science, and then there's the anti-science of global warming denial. As we have seen, there is a nearly unanimous consensus among climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is real and that we must do something about it. Yet the smokescreen, bluster and lies of the deniers has created enough doubt so that only half of the American public is convinced the problem requires action. Ironically, the U.S. is almost alone in questioning its scientific reality. International polls taken of 33,000 people in 33 nations in 2006 and 2007 show that 90% of their citizens regard climate change as a serious problem 37 and 80% realize that humans are the cause of it. 38 Just as in the case of creationism, the U.S. is out of step with much of the rest of the world in accepting scientific reality. It is not just the liberals and environmentalists who are taking climate change seriously. Historically conservative institutions (big corporations such as General Electric and many others such as insurance companies and the military) are already planning on how to deal with global warming. Many of my friends high in the oil companies tell me of the efforts by those companies to get into other forms of energy, because they know that cheap oil will be running out soon and that the effects of burning oil will make their business less popular. BP officially stands for "British Petroleum," but in one of their ad campaigns about 5 years ago, it stood for "Beyond Petroleum." 39 Although they still spend relatively little of their total budgets on alternative forms of energy, the oil companies still see the handwriting on the wall about the eventual exhaustion of oil -- and they are acting like any company that wants to survive by getting into a new business when the old one is dying. The Pentagon (normally not a left-wing institution) is also making contingency plans for how to fight wars in an era of global climate change, and analyzing what kinds of strategic threats might occur when climate change alters the kinds of enemies we might be fighting, and water becomes a scarce commodity. The New York Times reported 40 that in December 2008, the National Defense University outlined plans for military strategy in a greenhouse world. To the Pentagon, the big issue is global chaos and the potential of even nuclear conflict. The world must "prepare for the inevitable effects of abrupt climate change -- which will likely come the only question is when regardless of human activity." Insurance companies have no political axe to grind. If anything, they tend to be on the conservative side. They are simply in the business of assessing risk in a realistic fashion so they can accurately gauge their future insurance policies and what to charge for them. Yet they are all investing heavily in research on the disasters and risks posed by climatic change. In 2005, a study commissioned by the re-insurer Swiss Re said, "Climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences." 41 Some people may still try to deny scientific reality, but big businesses like oil and insurance and conservative institutions like the military cannot afford to be blinded or deluded by ideology. They must plan for the real world that we will be seeing in the next few decades. They do not want to be caught unprepared and harmed by global climatic change when it threatens their survival. Neither can we as a society. Climate change risks catastrophe – slow feedbacks
Hansen 8 (James Hansen, directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, “Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth,” Nov/Dec 2008, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdf)
Embers of election night elation will glow longer than any prior election. Glowing even in other nations, and for good reason. We are all tied together, more than ever, like it or not. Barack Obama’s measured words on election night, including eloquent recognition of historic progress, from the viewpoint of a 106-year-old lady, still stoke the embers. But he was already focusing on tasks ahead, without celebratory excess. Well he should. The challenge he faces is unprecedented. I refer not to the inherited economic morass, as threatening as it is. The human toll due to past failures and excesses may prove to be great, yet economic recessions, even depressions, come and go. Now our planet itself is in peril. Not simply the Earth, but the fate of all of its species, including humanity. The situation calls not for hand-wringing, but rather informed action. Optimism is fueled by expectation that decisions will be guided by reason and evidence, not ideology. The danger is that special interests will dilute and torque government policies, causing the climate to pass tipping points, with grave consequences for all life on the planet. The President-elect himself needs to be well-informed about the climate problem and its relation to energy needs and economic policies. He cannot rely on political systems to bring him solutions – the political systems provide too many opportunities for special interests. Here is a message I think should be delivered to Barack Obama. Criticisms are welcome. Climate threat. The world’s temperature has increased about 1°F over the past few decades, about 2°F over land areas. Further warming is “in the pipeline” due to gases already in the air (because of climate system inertia) and inevitable additional fossil fuel emissions (because of energy system inertia). Although global warming to date is smaller than day-to-day weather fluctuations, it has brought global temperature back to approximately the highest level of the Holocene, the past 10,000 years, the period during which civilization developed. Effects already evident include: 1. Mountain glaciers are receding worldwide and will be gone within 50 years if CO2 emissions continue to increase. This threatens the fresh water supply for billions of people, as rivers arising in the Himalayas, Andes and Rocky Mountains will begin to run dry in the summer and fall. 2. Coral reefs, home to a quarter of biological species in the ocean, could be destroyed by rising temperature and ocean acidification due to increasing CO2. 3. Dry subtropics are expanding poleward with warming, affecting the southern United States, the Mediterranean region, and Australia, with increasing drought and fires. 4. Arctic sea ice will disappear entirely in the summer, if CO2 continues to increase, with devastating effects on wildlife and indigenous people. 5. Intensity of hydrologic extremes, including heavy rains, storms and floods on the one hand, and droughts and fires on the other, are increasing. Some people say we must learn to live with these effects, because it is an almost godgiven fact that we must burn all fossil fuels. But now we understand, from the history of the Earth, that there would be two monstrous consequences of releasing the CO2 from all of the oil, gas and coal, consequences of an enormity that cannot be accepted. One effect would be extermination of a large fraction of the species on the planet. The other is initiation of ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise, out of humanity’s control, eventually eliminating coastal cities and historical sites, creating havoc, hundreds of millions of refugees, and impoverishing nations.2 Species extermination and ice sheet disintegration are both ‘non-linear’ problems with ‘tipping points’. If the process proceeds too far, amplifying feedbacks push the system dynamics to proceed without further human forcing. For example, species are interdependent – if a sufficient number are eliminated, ecosystems collapse. In the physical climate system, amplifying feedbacks include increased absorption of sunlight as sea and land ice areas are reduced and release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as permafrost melts. The Earth’s history reveals examples of such non-linear collapses. Eventually, over tens and hundreds of thousands of years, new species evolve, and ice sheets return. But we will leave a devastated impoverished planet for all generations of humanity that we can imagine, if we are so foolish as to allow the climate tipping points to be passed. Urgency. Recent evidence reveals a situation more urgent than had been expected, even by those who were most attuned. The evidence is based on improving knowledge of Earth’s history – how the climate responded to past changes of atmospheric composition – and on observations of how the Earth is responding now to human-made atmospheric changes. The conclusion – at first startling, but in retrospect obvious – is that the human-made increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), from the pre-industrial 280 parts per million (ppm) to today’s 385 ppm, has already raised the CO2 amount into the dangerous range. It will be necessary to take actions that return CO2 to a level of at most 350 ppm, but probably less, if we are to avert disastrous pressures on fellow species and large sea level rise. The good news is that such a result is still possible, if actions are prompt. Prompt action will do more than prevent irreversible extinctions and ice sheet disintegration: it can avert or reverse consequences that had begun to seem inevitable, including loss of Arctic ice, ocean acidification, expansion of the subtropics, increased intensity of droughts, floods, and storms. Principal implication. CO2 is not the only human-made gas that contributes to global warming, but it is the dominant gas with a lifetime that dwarfs that of the other major gases. Much of the CO2 increase caused by burning fossil fuels remains in the air more than 1000 years. So CO2 must be the focus of efforts to stop human-caused climate change. It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that solution of global warming is to phase down total fossil fuel emissions by some specified percentage. That approach will not work as a strategy. The reason for that conclusion and an outline of a better strategic approach follow immediately from geophysical boundary constraints. Figure 1a shows oil, gas and coal reserves, with the purple portion being the amount that has already been burned and emitted into the atmosphere. Despite uncertainty in the size of undiscovered resources, their amounts are certainly enough to yield atmospheric CO2 greater than 500 ppm. That amount would be disastrous, assuring unstable ice sheets, rising sea level out of humanity’s control, extermination of a large fraction of the species on Earth, and severe exacerbation of climate impacts discussed above. Oil is used primarily in vehicles, where it is impractical to capture CO2 emerging from tailpipes. The large pools of oil remaining in the ground are spread among many countries. The United States, which once had some of the large pools, has already exploited its largest recoverable reserves. Given this fact, it is unrealistic to think that Russia and Middle East countries will decide to leave their oil in the ground. A carbon cap that slows emissions of CO2 does not help, because of the long lifetime of atmospheric CO2. In fact, the cap exacerbates the problem if it allows coal emissions to continue. The only solution is to target a (large) portion of the fossil fuel reserves to be left in the ground or used in a way such that the CO2 can be captured and safely sequestered.3 Figure 1. (a) Fossil fuel and net land-use CO2 emissions (purple), and potential fossil fuel emissions (light blue). Fossil fuel reserve estimates of EIA, IPCC and WEC differ as shown. (b) Atmospheric CO2 if coal emissions are phased out linearly between 2010 and 2030, calculated using a version of the Bern carbon cycle model. References EIA (Energy Information Administration), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and WEC (World Energy Council) are provided in the published paper. Coal is the obvious target. Figure 1b shows that if there were a prompt moratorium on construction of new coal plants, and if existing ones were phased out linearly over the period 2010-2030, then atmospheric CO2 would peak during the next few decades at an amount somewhere between 400 and 425 ppm. The peak value depends upon whose estimate of undiscovered reserves is more accurate. It also depends upon whether oil in the most extreme environments is exploited or left in the ground, and thus it depends on the carbon tax (see below). This coal-phase-out scenario yields the possibility of stabilizing climate. Overshoot of the safe CO2 level is sufficiently small that improved agricultural and forestry practices, including reforestation of marginal lands, could bring CO2 back below 350 ppm, perhaps by the middle of the century. But if construction of new coal plants continues for even another decade it is difficult to conceive a practical, natural way to return CO2 below 350 ppm. Outline of policy options. The imperative of near-term termination of coal emissions (but not necessarily coal use) requires fundamental advances in energy technologies. Such advances would be needed anyhow, as fossil fuel reserves dwindle, but the climate crisis demands that they be achieved rapidly. Fortunately, actions that solve the climate problem can be designed so as to also improve energy security and restore economic well-being. A workshop held in Washington, DC on 3 November 2008 outlined options (presentations are at http://www.mediafire.com/nov3workshop). The workshop focused on electrical energy, because that is the principal use of coal. Also electricity is more and more the energy carrier of choice, because it is clean, much desired in developing countries, and a likely replacement or partial replacement for oil in transportation. Workshop topics, in priority order, were: (1) energy efficiency, (2) renewable energies, (3) electric grid improvements, (4) nuclear power, (5) carbon capture and sequestration. Energy efficiency improvements have the potential to obviate the need for additional electric power in all parts of the country during the next few decades and allow retirement of some existing coal plants. Achievement of the efficiency potential requires both regulations and a carbon tax. National building codes are needed, and higher standards for appliances, especially electronics, where standby power has become a large unnecessary drain of energy. 4 Economic incentives for utilities must be changed so that profits increase with increased energy conservation, not in proportion to amount of energy sold. Renewable energies are gaining in economic competition with fossil fuels, but in the absence of wise policies there is the danger that declining prices for fossil fuels, and continuation of fossil fuel subsidies, could cause a major setback. The most effective and efficient way to support renewable energy is via a carbon tax (see below). The national electric grid can be made more reliable and “smarter” in a number of ways. Priority will be needed for constructing a low-loss grid from regions with plentiful renewable energy to other parts of the nation, if renewable energies are to be a replacement for coal. Energy efficiency, renewable energies, and an improved grid deserve priority and there is a hope that they could provide all of our electric power requirements. However, the greatest threat to the planet may be the potential gap between that presumption (100% “soft” energy) and reality, with the gap being filled by continued use of coal-fired power. Therefore we should undertake urgent focused RandD programs in both next generation nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration. These programs could be carried out most rapidly and effectively in full cooperation with China and/or India, and other countries. Given appropriate priority and resources, the option of secure, low-waste 4 th generation nuclear power (see below) could be available within about a decade. If, by then, wind, solar, other renewables, and an improved grid prove to be capable of handling all of our electrical energy needs, there would be no imperative to construct nuclear plants in the United States. Many energy experts consider an all-renewable scenario to be implausible in the time-frame when coal emissions must be phased out, but it is not necessary to debate that matter. However, it would be dangerous to proceed under the presumption that we will soon have all-renewable electric power. Also it would be inappropriate to impose a similar presumption on China and India. Both countries project large increases in their energy needs, both countries have highly polluted atmospheres primarily due to excessive coal use, and both countries stand to suffer inordinately if global climate change continues. The entire world stands to gain if China and India have options to reduce their CO2 emissions and air pollution. Mercury emissions from their coal plants, for example, are polluting the global atmosphere and ocean and affecting the safety of foods, especially fish, on a near-global scale. And there is little hope of stabilizing climate unless China and India have low- and no-CO2 energy options. Extinction
Morgan 9 (Dennis Ray Morgan, Professor of Current Affairs at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, “World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race,” December 2009 Science Direct)
As horrifying as the scenario of human extinction by sudden, fast-burning nuclear fire may seem, the one consolation is that this future can be avoided within a relatively short period of time if responsible world leaders change Cold War thinking to move away from aggressive wars over natural resources and towards the eventual dismantlement of most if not all nuclear weapons. On the other hand, another scenario of human extinction by fire is one that may not so easily be reversed within a short period of time because it is not a fast-burning fire; rather, a slow burning fire is gradually heating up the planet as industrial civilization progresses and develops globally. This gradual process and course is long-lasting; thus it cannot easily be changed, even if responsible world leaders change their thinking about “progress” and industrial development based on the burning of fossil fuels. The way that global warming will impact humanity in the future has often been depicted through the analogy of the proverbial frog in a pot of water who does not realize that the temperature of the water is gradually rising. Instead of trying to escape, the frog tries to adjust to the gradual temperature change; finally, the heat of the water sneaks up on it until it is debilitated. Though it finally realizes its predicament and attempts to escape, it is too late; its feeble attempt is to no avail—and the frog dies. Whether this fable can actually be applied to frogs in heated water or not is irrelevant; it still serves as a comparable scenario of how the slow burning fire of global warming may eventually lead to a runaway condition and take humanity by surprise. Unfortunately, by the time the politicians finally all agree with the scientific consensus that global warming is indeed human caused, its development could be too advanced to arrest; the poor frog has become too weak and enfeebled to get himself out of hot water. The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Programme to “assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”16. Since then, it has given assessments and reports every six or seven years. Thus far, it has given four assessments.13 With all prior assessments came attacks from some parts of the scientific community, especially by industry scientists, to attempt to prove that the theory had no basis in planetary history and present-day reality; nevertheless, as more and more research continually provided concrete and empirical evidence to confirm the global warming hypothesis, that it is indeed human-caused, mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels, the scientific consensus grew stronger that human induced global warming is verifiable. As a matter of fact, according to Bill McKibben 17, 12 years of “impressive scientific research” strongly confirms the 1995 report “that humans had grown so large in numbers and especially in appetite for energy that they were now damaging the most basic of the earth's systems—the balance between incoming and outgoing solar energy”; “… their findings have essentially been complementary to the 1995 report -- a constant strengthening of the simple basic truth that humans were burning too much fossil fuel.” 17. Indeed, 12 years later, the 2007 report not only confirms global warming, with a stronger scientific consensus that the slow burn is “very likely” human caused, but it also finds that the “amount of carbon in the atmosphere is now increasing at a faster rate even than before” and the temperature increases would be “considerably higher than they have been so far were it not for the blanket of soot and other pollution that is temporarily helping to cool the planet.” 17. Furthermore, almost “everything frozen on earth is melting. Heavy rainfalls are becoming more common since the air is warmer and therefore holds more water than cold air, and ‘cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent.” 17. Unless drastic action is taken soon, the average global temperature is predicted to rise about 5 degrees this century, but it could rise as much as 8 degrees. As has already been evidenced in recent years, the rise in global temperature is melting the Arctic sheets. This runaway polar melting will inflict great damage upon coastal areas, which could be much greater than what has been previously forecasted. However, what is missing in the IPCC report, as dire as it may seem, is sufficient emphasis on the less likely but still plausible worst case scenarios, which could prove to have the most devastating, catastrophic consequences for the long-term future of human civilization. In other words, the IPCC report places too much emphasis on a linear progression that does not take sufficient account of the dynamics of systems theory, which leads to a fundamentally different premise regarding the relationship between industrial civilization and nature. As a matter of fact, as early as the 1950s, Hannah Arendt 18 observed this radical shift of emphasis in the human-nature relationship, which starkly contrasts with previous times because the very distinction between nature and man as “Homo faber” has become blurred, as man no longer merely takes from nature what is needed for fabrication; instead, he now acts into nature to augment and transform natural processes, which are then directed into the evolution of human civilization itself such that we become a part of the very processes that we make. The more human civilization becomes an integral part of this dynamic system, the more difficult it becomes to extricate ourselves from it. As Arendt pointed out, this dynamism is dangerous because of its unpredictability. Acting into nature to transform natural processes brings about an … endless new change of happenings whose eventual outcome the actor is entirely incapable of knowing or controlling beforehand. The moment we started natural processes of our own - and the splitting of the atom is precisely such a man-made natural process - we not only increased our power over nature, or became more aggressive in our dealings with the given forces of the earth, but for the first time have taken nature into the human world as such and obliterated the defensive boundaries between natural elements and the human artifice by which all previous civilizations were hedged in” 18. So, in as much as we act into nature, we carry our own unpredictability into our world; thus, Nature can no longer be thought of as having absolute or iron-clad laws. We no longer know what the laws of nature are because the unpredictability of Nature increases in proportion to the degree by which industrial civilization injects its own processes into it; through self-created, dynamic, transformative processes, we carry human unpredictability into the future with a precarious recklessness that may indeed end in human catastrophe or extinction, for elemental forces that we have yet to understand may be unleashed upon us by the very environment that we experiment with. Nature may yet have her revenge and the last word, as the Earth and its delicate ecosystems, environment, and atmosphere reach a tipping point, which could turn out to be a point of no return. This is exactly the conclusion reached by the scientist, inventor, and author, James Lovelock. The creator of the well-known yet controversial Gaia Theory, Lovelock has recently written that it may be already too late for humanity to change course since climate centers around the world, … which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics. Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. … Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This ‘global dimming’ is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable. 19 Moreover, Lovelock states that the task of trying to correct our course is hopelessly impossible, for we are not in charge. It is foolish and arrogant to think that we can regulate the atmosphere, oceans and land surface in order to maintain the conditions right for life. It is as impossible as trying to regulate your own temperature and the composition of your blood, for those with “failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys” 19. Lovelock concludes his analysis on the fate of human civilization and Gaia by saying that we will do “our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate” 19. Lovelock's forecast for climate change is based on a systems dynamics analysis of the interaction between human-created processes and natural processes. It is a multidimensional model that appropriately reflects the dynamism of industrial civilization responsible for climate change. For one thing, it takes into account positive feedback loops that lead to “runaway” conditions. This mode of analysis is consistent with recent research on how ecosystems suddenly disappear. A 2001 article in Nature, based on a scientific study by an international consortium, reported that changes in ecosystems are not just gradual but are often sudden and catastrophic 20. Thus, a scientific consensus is emerging (after repeated studies of ecological change) that “stressed ecosystems, given the right nudge, are capable of slipping rapidly from a seemingly steady state to something entirely different,” according to Stephen Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (who is also a co-author of the report). Carpenter continues, “We realize that there is a common pattern we’re seeing in ecosystems around the world, … Gradual changes in vulnerability accumulate and eventually you get a shock to the system - a flood or a drought - and, boom, you’re over into another regime. It becomes a self-sustaining collapse.” 20. If ecosystems are in fact mini-models of the system of the Earth, as Lovelock maintains, then we can expect the same kind of behavior. As Jonathon Foley, a UW-Madison climatologist and another co-author of the Nature report, puts it, “Nature isn’t linear. Sometimes you can push on a system and push on a system and, finally, you have the straw that breaks the camel's back.” Also, once the “flip” occurs, as Foley maintains, then the catastrophic change is “irreversible.” 20. When we expand this analysis of ecosystems to the Earth itself, it's frightening. What could be the final push on a stressed system that could “break the camel's back?” Recently, another factor has been discovered in some areas of the arctic regions, which will surely compound the problem of global “heating” (as Lovelock calls it) in unpredictable and perhaps catastrophic ways. This disturbing development, also reported in Nature, concerns the permafrost that has locked up who knows how many tons of the greenhouse gasses, methane and carbon dioxide. Scientists are particularly worried about permafrost because, as it thaws, it releases these gases into the atmosphere, thus, contributing and accelerating global heating. It is a vicious positive feedback loop that compounds the prognosis of global warming in ways that could very well prove to be the tipping point of no return. Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press describes this disturbing positive feedback loop of permafrost greenhouse gasses, as when warming “. already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on.” 21. The significance and severity of this problem cannot be understated since scientists have discovered that “the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost called “yedoma” is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times my emphasis the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels” 21. Of course, it won’t come out all at once, at least by time as we commonly reckon it, but in terms of geological time, the “several decades” that scientists say it will probably take to come out can just as well be considered “all at once.” Surely, within the next 100 years, much of the world we live in will be quite hot and may be unlivable, as Lovelock has predicted. Professor Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida and co-author of the study that appeared in Science, describes it as a “slow motion time bomb.” 21. Permafrost under lakes will be released as methane while that which is under dry ground will be released as carbon dioxide. Scientists aren’t sure which is worse. Whereas methane is a much more powerful agent to trap heat, it only lasts for about 10 years before it dissipates into carbon dioxide or other chemicals. The less powerful heat-trapping agent, carbon dioxide, lasts for 100 years 21. Both of the greenhouse gasses present in permafrost represent a global dilemma and challenge that compounds the effects of global warming and runaway climate change. The scary thing about it, as one researcher put it, is that there are “lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off” 21.14 In an accompanying AP article, Katey Walters of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks describes the effects as “huge” and, unless we have a “major cooling,” - unstoppable 22. Also, there's so much more that has not even been discovered yet, she writes: “It's coming out a lot and there's a lot more to come out.” 22. 4. Is it the end of human civilization and possible extinction of humankind? What Jonathon Schell wrote concerning death by the fire of nuclear holocaust also applies to the slow burning death of global warming: Once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction, we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species 23.15 When we consider that beyond the horror of nuclear war, another horror is set into motion to interact with the subsequent nuclear winter to produce a poisonous and super heated planet, the chances of human survival seem even smaller. Who knows, even if some small remnant does manage to survive, what the poisonous environmental conditions would have on human evolution in the future. A remnant of mutated, sub-human creatures might survive such harsh conditions, but for all purposes, human civilization has been destroyed, and the question concerning human extinction becomes moot. The IFR supplies enough clean energy to solve warming
Blees et al 11 (Charles Archambeau , Randolph Ware, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Tom Blees, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Barry Brook, Yoon Chang, University of Colorado, Jerry Peterson, Argonne National Laboratory, Robert Serafin Joseph Shuster Tom Wigley, “IFR: An optimized approach to meeting global energy needs (Part I)” 2/1/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/01/ifr-optimized-source-for-global-energy-needs-part-i/) Fossil fuels currently supply about 80% of humankind’s primary energy. Given the imperatives of climate change, pollution, energy security and dwindling supplies, and enormous technical, logistical and economic challenges of scaling up coal or gas power plants with carbon capture and storage to sequester all that carbon, we are faced with the necessity of a nearly complete transformation of the world’s energy systems. Objective analyses of the inherent constraints on wind, solar, and other less-mature renewable energy technologies inevitably demonstrate that they will fall far short of meeting today’s energy demands, let alone the certain increased demands of the future. Nuclear power, however, is capable of providing all the carbon-free energy that mankind requires, although the prospect of such a massive deployment raises questions of uranium shortages, increased energy and environmental impacts from mining and fuel enrichment, and so on. These potential roadblocks can all be dispensed with, however, through the use of fast neutron reactors and fuel recycling. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), developed at U.S. national laboratories in the latter years of the last century, can economically and cleanly supply all the energy the world needs without any further mining or enrichment of uranium. Instead of utilizing a mere 0.6% of the potential energy in uranium, IFRs capture all of it. Capable of utilizing troublesome waste products already at hand, IFRs can solve the thorny spent fuel problem while powering the planet with carbon-free energy for nearly a millennium before any more uranium mining would even have to be considered. Designed from the outset for unparalleled safety and proliferation resistance, with all major features proven out at the engineering scale, this technology is unrivaled in its ability to solve the most difficult energy problems facing humanity in the 21st century. Our objectives in the conference paper and poster are to describe how the new Generation IV nuclear power reactor, the IFR, can provide the required power to rapidly replace coal burning power plants and thereby sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while also replacing all fossil fuel sources within 30 years. Our conclusion is that this can be done with a combination of renewable energy sources, IFR nuclear power and ordinary conservation measures. Here we focus on a discussion of the design and functionality of the primary component of this mix of sources, namely the IFR nuclear system, since its exposure to both the scientific community and the public at large has been so limited. However, we do consider the costs of replacing all fossil fuels while utilizing all renewable and nuclear sources in generating electrical energy, as well as the costs of meeting the increasing national and global requirements for electrical power. The IFR to be described relates to the following basic features of the IFR design: • IFR systems are closed-cycle nuclear reactors that extract 99% of the available energy from the Uranium fuel, whereas the current reactors only extract about 1% of the available energy. • The waste produced by an IFR consists of a relatively small mass of fission products, consisting of short half-life isotopes which produce a relatively brief toxicity period for the waste (less than 300 years) while current nuclear systems produce much larger amounts of waste with very long toxicity periods (300,000 years). • An electrochemical processor (called the “pyroprocessor”) can be integrated with a fast reactor (FR) unit to process Uranium fuel in a closed cycling process in which the “spent” nuclear fuel from the FR unit is separated into “fission product” waste and the new isotope fuel to be cycled back into the FR. This recycling process can be repeated until 99% of the original Uranium isotope energy is converted to electrical power. The pyroprocessing unit can also be used in a stand-alone mode to process large amounts of existing nuclear reactor (LWR) waste to provide fuel for IFR reactors. The amount of IFR fuel available is very large and sufficient to supply all world-wide needs for many hundreds of years without Uranium mining. • The pyroprocessing operations do not separate the mix of isotopes that are produced during the recycling of IFR fuel. Since this mixture is always highly radioactive it is not possible to separate out Uranium or Plutonium isotopes that can be used in weapons development. • The IFR reactor uses metal fuel rather than the oxide fuels that are used now. If overheating of the reactor core occurs for any reason, the metal fuel reacts by expanding, so its density drops, which causes fast neutron “leakage”, leading to termination of the chain reaction and automatic shut-down of the reactor. This serves as an important passive safety feature. Only the IFR creates an economic incentive to get off coal in time
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now,” 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
To prevent a climate disaster, we must eliminate virtually all coal plant emissions worldwide in 25 years. The best way and, for all practical purposes, the only way to get all countries off of coal is not with coercion; it is to make them want to replace their coal burners by giving them a plug-compatible technology that is less expensive. The IFR can do this. It is plug-compatible with the burners in a coal plant (see Nuclear Power: Going Fast). No other technology can upgrade a coal plant so it is greenhouse gas free while reducing operating costs at the same time. In fact, no other technology can achieve either of these goals. The IFR can achieve both. The bottom line is that without the IFR (or a yet-to-be-invented technology with similar ability to replace the coal burner with a cheaper alternative), it is unlikely that we’ll be able to keep CO2 under 450 ppm. Today, the IFR is the only technology with the potential to displace the coal burner. That is why restarting the IFR is so critical and why Jim Hansen has listed it as one of the top five things we must do to avert a climate disaster.4 Without eliminating virtually all coal emissions by 2030, the sum total of all of our other climate mitigation efforts will be inconsequential. Hansen often refers to the near complete phase-out of carbon emissions from coal plants worldwide by 2030 as the sine qua non for climate stabilization (see for example, the top of page 6 in his August 4, 2008 trip report). To stay under 450ppm, we would have to install about 13,000 GWe of new carbon-free power over the next 25 years. That number was calculated by Nathan Lewis of Caltech for the Atlantic, but others such as Saul Griffith have independently derived a very similar number and White House Science Advisor John Holdren used 5,600 GWe to 7,200 GWe in his presentation to the Energy Bar Association Annual Meeting on April 23, 2009. That means that if we want to save the planet, we must install more than 1 GWe per day of clean power every single day for the next 25 years. That is a very, very tough goal. It is equivalent to building one large nuclear reactor per day, or 1,500 huge wind turbines per day, or 80,000 37 foot diameter solar dishes covering 100 square miles every day, or some linear combination of these or other carbon free power generation technologies. Note that the required rate is actually higher than this because Hansen and Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, now both agree that 350ppm is a more realistic “not to exceed” number (and we’ve already exceeded it). Today, we are nowhere close to that installation rate with renewables alone. For example, in 2008, the average power delivered by solar worldwide was only 2 GWe (which is to be distinguished from the peak solar capacity of 13.4GWe). That is why every renewable expert at the 2009 Aspen Institute Environment Forum agreed that nuclear must be part of the solution. Al Gore also acknowledges that nuclear must play an important role. Nuclear has always been the world’s largest source of carbon free power. In the US, for example, even though we haven’t built a new nuclear plant in the US for 30 years, nuclear still supplies 70% of our clean power! Nuclear can be installed very rapidly; much more rapidly than renewables. For example, about two thirds of the currently operating 440 reactors around the world came online during a 10 year period between 1980 and 1990. So our best chance of meeting the required installation of new power goal and saving the planet is with an aggressive nuclear program. Unlike renewables, nuclear generates base load power, reliably, regardless of weather. Nuclear also uses very little land area. It does not require the installation of new power lines since it can be installed where the power is needed. However, even with a very aggressive plan involving nuclear, it will still be extremely difficult to install clean power fast enough. Unfortunately, even in the US, we have no plan to install the clean power we need fast enough to save the planet. Even if every country were to agree tomorrow to completely eliminate their coal plant emissions by 2030, how do we think they are actually going to achieve that? There is no White House plan that explains this. There is no DOE plan. There is no plan or strategy. The deadlines will come and go and most countries will profusely apologize for not meeting their goals, just like we have with most of the signers of the Kyoto Protocol today. Apologies are nice, but they will not restore the environment. We need a strategy that is believable, practical, and affordable for countries to adopt. The IFR offers our best hope of being a centerpiece in such a strategy because it the only technology we know of that can provide an economically compelling reason to change. At a speech at MIT on October 23, 2009, President Obama said “And that’s why the world is now engaged in a peaceful competition to determine the technologies that will power the 21st century. … The nation that wins this competition will be the nation that leads the global economy. I am convinced of that. And I want America to be that nation, it’s that simple.” Nuclear is our best clean power technology and the IFR is our best nuclear technology. The Gen IV International Forum (GIF) did a study in 2001-2002 of 19 different reactor designs on 15 different criteria and 24 metrics. The IFR ranked #1 overall. Over 242 experts from around the world participated in the study. It was the most comprehensive evaluation of competitive nuclear designs ever done. Top DOE nuclear management ignored the study because it didn’t endorse the design the Bush administration wanted. The IFR has been sitting on the shelf for 15 years and the DOE currently has no plans to change that. How does the US expect to be a leader in clean energy by ignoring our best nuclear technology? Nobody I’ve talked to has been able to answer that question. We have the technology (it was running for 30 years before we were ordered to tear it down). And we have the money: The Recovery Act has $80 billion dollars. Why aren’t we building a demo plant? IFRs are better than conventional nuclear in every dimension. Here are a few: Efficiency: IFRs are over 100 times more efficient than conventional nuclear. It extracts nearly 100% of the energy from nuclear material. Today’s nuclear reactors extract less than 1%. So you need only 1 ton of actinides each year to feed an IFR (we can use existing nuclear waste for this), whereas you need 100 tons of freshly mined uranium each year to extract enough material to feed a conventional nuclear plant. Unlimited power forever: IFRs can use virtually any actinide for fuel. Fast reactors with reprocessing are so efficient that even if we restrict ourselves to just our existing uranium resources, we can power the entire planet forever (the Sun will consume the Earth before we run out of material to fuel fast reactors). If we limited ourselves to using just our DU “waste” currently in storage, then using the IFR we can power the US for over 1,500 years without doing any new mining of uranium.5 Exploits our largest energy resource: In the US, there is 10 times as much energy in the depleted uranium (DU) that is just sitting there as there is coal in the ground. This DU waste is our largest natural energy resource…but only if we have fast reactors. Otherwise, it is just waste. With fast reactors, virtually all our nuclear waste (from nuclear power plants, leftover from enrichment, and from decommissioned nuclear weapons)6 becomes an energy asset worth about $30 trillion dollars…that’s not a typo…$30 trillion, not billion.7 An 11 year old child was able to determine this from publicly available information in 2004. Inventing something cheaper is key
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “How Does Obama Expect to Solve the Climate Crisis Without a Plan?” 7/16/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/how-does-obama-expect-to_b_236588.html
The ship is sinking slowly and we are quickly running out of time to develop and implement any such plan if we are to have any hope of saving the planet. What we need is a plan we can all believe in. A plan where our country's smartest people all nod their heads in agreement and say, "Yes, this is a solid, viable plan for keeping CO2 levels from touching 425ppm and averting a global climate catastrophe." At his Senate testimony a few days ago, noted climate scientist James Hansen made it crystal clear once again that the only way to avert an irreversible climate meltdown and save the planet is to phase out virtually all coal plants worldwide over a 20 year period from 2010 to 2030. Indeed, if we don't virtually eliminate the use of coal worldwide, everything else we do will be as effective as re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Plans that won't work Unfortunately, nobody has proposed a realistic and practical plan to eliminate coal use worldwide or anywhere close to that. There is no White House URL with such a plan. No environmental group has a workable plan either. Hoping that everyone will abandon their coal plants and replace them with a renewable power mix isn't a viable strategy -- we've proven that in the U.S. Heck, even if the Waxman-Markey bill passes Congress (a big "if"), it is so weak that it won't do much at all to eliminate coal plants. So even though we have Democrats controlling all three branches of government, it is almost impossible to get even a weak climate bill passed. If we can't pass strong climate legislation in the U.S. with all the stars aligned, how can we expect anyone else to do it? So expecting all countries to pass a 100% renewable portfolio standard (which is far far beyond that contemplated in the current energy bill) just isn't possible. Secondly, even if you could mandate it politically in every country, from a practical standpoint, you'd never be able to implement it in time. And there are lots of experts in this country, including Secretary Chu, who say it's impossible without nuclear (a point which I am strongly in agreement with). Hoping that everyone will spontaneously adopt carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is also a non-starter solution. First of all, CCS doesn't exist at commercial scale. Secondly, even if we could make it work at scale, and even it could be magically retrofitted on every coal plant (which we don't know how to do), it would require all countries to agree to add about 30% in extra cost for no perceivable benefit. At the recent G8 conference, India and China have made it clear yet again that they aren't going to agree to emission goals. Saying that we'll invent some magical new technology that will rescue us at the last minute is a bad solution. That's at best a poor contingency plan. The point is this: It should be apparent to us that we aren't going to be able to solve the climate crisis by either "force" (economic coercion or legislation) or by international agreement. And relying on technologies like CCS that may never work is a really bad idea. The only remaining way to solve the crisis is to make it economically irresistible for countries to "do the right thing." The best way to do that is to give the world a way to generate electric power that is economically more attractive than coal with the same benefits as coal (compact power plants, 24x7 generation, can be sited almost anywhere, etc). Even better is if the new technology can simply replace the existing burner in a coal plant. That way, they'll want to switch. No coercion is required. Since Obama doesn't have a plan and I'm not aware of a viable plan that experts agree can move the entire world off of coal, I thought I'd propose one that is viable. You may not like it, but if there is a better alternative that is practical and viable, please let me know because none of the experts I've consulted with are aware of one. The Kirsch plan for saving the planet The Kirsch plan for saving the planet is very simple and practical. My plan is based on a simple observation: Nuclear is the elephant in the room 70% of the carbon free power in America is still generated by nuclear, even though we haven't built a new nuclear plant in this country in the last 30 years. Hydro is a distant second. Wind and solar are rounding error. Worldwide, it's even more skewed: nuclear is more than 100 times bigger than solar and more than 100 times bigger than wind. If I drew a bar chart of nuclear vs. solar vs. wind use worldwide, you wouldn't even see solar and wind on the chart. So our best bet is to join the parade and get behind supporting the big elephant. We put all the wood behind one arrow: nuclear. We invest in and promote these new, low-cost modular nuclear designs worldwide and get the volumes up so we can drive the price down. These plants are low-cost, can be built in small capacities, can be manufactured quickly, and assembled on-site in a few years. Nuclear can be rolled out very quickly. About two thirds of the currently operating 440 reactors around the world came online during a 10 year period between 1980 and 1990. In southeast Asia, reactors are typically constructed in 4 years or less (about 44 months) Secondly, the nuclear reactor can replace the burner in a coal plant making upgrading an existing coal plant very cost effective. Finally, it is also critically important for big entities (such as the U.S. government in partnership with other governments) to offer low-cost financing to bring down the upfront cash investment in a new nuclear reactor to be less than that required to build a coal plant. Under my plan, we now have a way to economically displace the building of new coal plants that nobody can refuse. People will then want to build modular nuclear plants because since they are cheaper, last longer, and are cleaner than coal. No legislation or mandate is required.
My plan is credible since it doesn't require Congress to act. Power companies worldwide simply make an economic decision to do the right thing. No force required. Acting now is key
Plumer 12 (Brady Plumer, Washington Post, “Is there still time left to avoid 2°C of global warming? Yes, but barely.” 11/30/12) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/30/is-there-still-time-left-to-stop-global-warming-yes-but-only-barely/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein
But let’s say 2°C is the goal. That looks daunting. After all, the world has already warmed about 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels. And the carbon dioxide we’ve put in the air has committed us to another 0.7°C of warming in the decades ahead. Plus, carbon emissions keep rising each year. So have we finally reached the point where it’s too late?
(See further reading here.)
Not necessarily. At least, that’s according to a new report (pdf) from the analysts at the Climate Action Tracker. They say it’s still technically feasible for the world to stay below that 2°C target. But the world would need to start revamping its energy system now. As in, today. Because with each passing year, meeting that 2°C goal becomes significantly more arduous.
Right now, the world is still off-track. When the analysts added up all existing pledges to curb emissions and plugged them into the latest climate models, they found that humans are currently on pace to heat the planet somewhere between 2.7°C and 4.2°C by the end of the century. (There’s a range because there’s still some uncertainty as to exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in atmospheric carbon.)
Yet the Climate Action Tracker analysts aren’t ready to despair just yet. If the world’s nations could somehow trim their emissions 15 percent below present levels by 2020, and then keep cutting, then there are a number of different scenarios in which global warming could stay below 2°C.
Various strategies for how to attain this goal can be found in a big new report from the U.N. Environmental Programme. Big cuts wouldn’t be easy or cheap: Nations would need to invest in everything from improving the energy-efficiency of buildings to limiting deforestation to scaling up renewable energy and nuclear power. These efforts would cost about 1 percent of global GDP, assuming that the investments are spread out evenly over time.
Speed turns out to be critical. If the world starts making big cuts today, the reports conclude, there’s still some margin for error. Even if some clean-energy technologies are simply unworkable — such as, say, carbon capture and sequestration for coal plants — there’s still a chance to meet that 2°C target. (And if engineers could figure out how to suck carbon out of the air through biomass sequestration, 1.5°C might even be attainable.) IFRs solve massive energy crunches that spark resource wars
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, “Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III),” 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
The global threat of anthropogenic climate change has become a political hot potato, especially in the USA. The vast majority of climate scientists, however, are in agreement that the potential consequences of inaction are dire indeed. Yet even those who dismiss concerns about climate change cannot discount an array of global challenges facing humanity that absolutely must be solved if wars, dislocations, and social chaos are to be avoided. Human population growth exacerbates a wide range of problems, and with most demographic projections predicting an increase of about 50% to nine or ten billion by mid-century, we are confronted with a social and logistical dilemma of staggering proportions. The most basic human morality dictates that we attempt to solve these problems without resorting to forcible and draconian methods. At the same time, simple social justice demands that the developed world accept the premise that the billions who live today in poverty deserve a drastic improvement in their standard of living, an improvement that is being increasingly demanded and expected throughout the developing countries. To achieve environmental sustainability whilst supporting human well-being will require a global revolution in energy and materials technology and deployment fully as transformative as the Industrial Revolution, but unlike that gradual process we find ourselves under the gun, especially if one considers climate change, peak oil and other immediate sustainability problems to be bona fide threats. It is beyond the purview of this paper to address the question of materials disposition and recycling i, or the social transformations that will necessarily be involved in confronting the challenges of the next several decades. But the question of energy supply is inextricably bound up with the global solution to our coming crises. It may be argued that energy is the most crucial aspect of any proposed remedy. Our purpose here is to demonstrate that the provision of all the energy that humankind can possibly require to meet the challenges of the coming decades and centuries is a challenge that already has a realistic solution, using technology that is just waiting to be deployed. Energy Realism The purpose of this paper is not to exhaustively examine the many varieties of energy systems currently in use, in development, or in the dreams of their promoters. Nevertheless, because of the apparent passion of both the public and policymakers toward certain energy systems and the political influence of their advocates, a brief discussion of “renewable” energy systems is in order. Our pressing challenges make the prospect of heading down potential energy cul de sacs – especially to the explicit exclusion of nuclear fission alternatives – to be an unconscionable waste of our limited time and resources. There is a vocal contingent of self-styled environmentalists who maintain that wind and solar power—along with other technologies such as wave and tidal power that have yet to be meaningfully developed—can (and should) provide all the energy that humanity demands. The more prominent names are well-known among those who deal with these issues: Amory Lovins, Lester Brown and Arjun Makhijani are three in particular whose organizations wield considerable clout with policymakers. The most recent egregious example to make a public splash, however, was a claim trumpeted with a cover story in Scientific American that all of our energy needs can be met by renewables (predominantly ‘technosolar’ – wind and solar thermal) by 2030. The authors of this piece—Mark Jacobson (Professor, Stanford) and Mark A. Delucchi (researcher, UC Davis)—were roundly critiqued ii online and in print. An excellent treatment of the question of renewables’ alleged capacity to provide sufficient energy is a book by David MacKay iii called Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air. iv MacKay was a professor of physics at Cambridge before being appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change in the UK. His book is a model of scientific and intellectual rigor. Energy ideologies can be every bit as fervent as those of religion, so after suggesting Dr. MacKay’s book as an excellent starting point for a rational discussion of energy systems we’ll leave this necessary digression with a point to ponder. Whatever one believes about the causes of climate change, there is no denying that glaciers around the world are receding at an alarming rate. Billions of people depend on such glaciers for their water supplies. We have already seen cases of civil strife and even warfare caused or exacerbated by competition over water supplies. Yet these are trifling spats when one considers that the approaching demographic avalanche will require us to supply about three billion more people with all the water they need within just four decades. There is no avoiding the fact that the water for all these people—and even more, if the glaciers continue to recede, as expected—will have to come from the ocean. That means a deployment of desalination facilities on an almost unimaginable scale. Not only will it take staggering amounts of energy just to desalinate such a quantity, but moving the water to where it is needed will be an additional energy burden of prodigious proportions. A graphic example can be seen in the case of California, its state water project being the largest single user of energy in California. It consumes an average of 5 billion kWh/yr, more than 25% of the total electricity consumption of the entire state of New Mexico v. Disposing of the salt derived from such gargantuan desalination enterprises will likewise take a vast amount of energy. Even the relatively modest desalination projects along the shores of the Persian Gulf have increased its salinity to the point of serious concern. Such circumscribed bodies of water simply won’t be available as dumping grounds for the mountains of salt that will be generated, and disposing of it elsewhere will require even more energy to move and disperse it. Given the formidable energy requirements for these water demands alone, any illusions about wind turbines and solar panels being able to supply all the energy humanity requires should be put to rest. Energy Density and Reliability Two of the most important qualities of fossil fuels that enabled their rise to prominence in an industrializing world is their energy density and ease of storage. High energy density and a stable and convenient long-term fuel store are qualities that makes it practical and economical to collect, distribute, and then use them on demand for the myriad of uses to which we put them. This energy density, and the dispatchability that comes from having a non-intermittent fuel source, are the very things lacking in wind and solar and other renewable energy systems, yet they are crucial factors in considering how we can provide reliable on-demand power for human society. The supply of fossil fuels is limited, although the actual limits of each different type are a matter of debate and sometimes change substantially with new technological developments, as we’ve seen recently with the adoption of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) methods to extract natural gas from previously untapped subterranean reservoirs. The competition for fossil fuel resources, whatever their limitations, has been one of the primary causes of wars in the past few decades and can be expected to engender further conflicts and other symptoms of international competition as countries like India and China lead the developing nations in seeking a rising standard of living for their citizens. Even disregarding the climatological imperative to abandon fossil fuels, the economic, social, and geopolitical upheavals attendant upon a continuing reliance on such energy sources demands an objective look at the only other energy-dense and proven resource available to us: nuclear power. We will refrain from discussing the much hoped-for chimera of nuclear fusion as the magic solution to all our energy needs, since it is but one of many technologies that have yet to be harnessed. Our concern here is with technologies that we know will work, so when it comes to harnessing the power of the atom we are confined to nuclear fission. The splitting of uranium and transuranic elements in fission-powered nuclear reactors is a potent example of energy density being tapped for human uses. Reactor-grade uranium (i.e. uranium enriched to about 3.5% U-235) is over 100,000 times more energy-dense than anthracite coal, the purest form of coal used in power generation, and nearly a quarter-million times as much as lignite, the dirty coal used in many power plants around the world. Ironically, one of the world’s largest producers and users of lignite is Germany, the same country whose anti-nuclear political pressure under the banner of environmentalism is globally infamous. The vast majority of the world’s 440 commercial nuclear power plants are light-water reactors (LWRs) that use so-called enriched uranium (mentioned above). Natural uranium is comprised primarily of two isotopes: U-235 and U-238. The former comprises only 0.7% of natural uranium, with U-238 accounting for the remaining 99.3%. LWR technology requires a concentration of at least 3.5% U-235 in order to maintain the chain reaction used to extract energy, so a process called uranium enrichment extracts as much of the U-235 as possible from several kilos of natural uranium and adds it to a fuel kilo in order to reach a concentration high enough to enable the fission process. Because current enrichment technology is capable of harvesting only some of the U-235, this results in about 8-10 kilos of “depleted uranium” (DU) for every kilo of power plant fuel (some of which is enriched to 4% or more, depending on plant design). The USA currently has (largely unwanted) stockpiles of DU in excess of half a million tons, while other countries around the world that have been employing nuclear power over the last half-century have their own DU inventories. Technological advances in LWR engineering have resulted in new power plants that are designated within the industry as Generation III or III+ designs, to differentiate them from currently-used LWRs normally referred to as Gen II plants. The European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), currently being built by AREVA in Finland, France and China, is an example of a Gen III design. It utilizes multiple-redundant engineered systems to assure safety and dependability. Two examples of Gen III+ designs are the Westinghouse/Toshiba AP-1000, now being built in China, and GE/Hitachi’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR), expected to be certified for commercial use by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2011. The distinguishing feature of Gen III+ designs is their reliance on the principle of passive safety, which would allow the reactor to automatically shut down in the event of an emergency without operator action or electronic feedback, due to inherent design properties. Relying as they do on the laws of physics rather than active intervention to intercede, they consequently can avoid the necessity for several layers of redundant systems while still maintaining ‘defense in depth’, making it possible to build them both faster and cheaper than Gen III designs—at least in theory. As of this writing we are seeing this playing out in Finland and China. While it is expected that first-of-a-kind difficulties (and their attendant costs) will be worked out so that future plants will be cheaper and faster to build, the experience to date seems to validate the Gen III+ concept. Within a few years both the EPR and the first AP-1000s should be coming online, as well as Korean, Russian and Indian designs, at which point actual experience will begin to tell the tale as subsequent plants are built. The safety and economics of Gen III+ plants seem to be attractive enough to consider this generation of nuclear power to provide reasons for optimism that humanity can manage to provide the energy needed for the future. But naysayers are warning (with highly questionable veracity) about uranium shortages if too many such plants are built. Even if they’re right, the issue can be considered moot, for there is another player waiting in the wings that is so superior to even Gen III+ technology as to render all concerns about nuclear fuel shortages baseless. The Silver Bullet In the endless debate on energy policy and technology that seems to increase by the day, the phrase heard repeatedly is “There is no silver bullet.” (This is sometimes rendered “There is no magic bullet”, presumably by those too young to remember the Lone Ranger TV series.) Yet a fission technology known as the integral fast reactor (IFR), developed at Argonne National Laboratory in the 80s and 90s, gives the lie to that claim. Below is a graph vi representing the number of years that each of several power sources would be able to supply all the world’s expected needs if they were to be relied upon as the sole source of humanity’s energy supply. The categories are described thusly: Conventional oil: ordinary oil drilling and extraction as practiced today Conventional gas: likewise Unconventional oil (excluding low-grade oil shale). More expensive methods of recovering oil from more problematic types of deposits Unconventional gas (excluding clathrates and geopressured gas): As with unconventional oil, this encompasses more costly extraction techniques Coal: extracted with techniques in use today. The worldwide coal estimates, however, are open to question and may, in fact, be considerably less than they are ordinarily presented to be, unless unconventional methods like underground in situ gasification are deployed. vii Methane Clathrates and Geopressured Gas: These are methane resources that are both problematic and expensive to recover, with the extraction technology for clathrates only in the experimental stage. Low-grade oil shale and sands: Very expensive to extract and horrendously destructive of the environment. So energy-intensive that there have been proposals to site nuclear power plants in the oil shale and tar sands areas to provide the energy for extraction! Uranium in fast breeder reactors (IFRs being the type under discussion here)
Integral fast reactors can clearly be seen as the silver bullet that supposedly doesn’t exist. The fact is that IFRs can provide all the energy that humanity requires, and can deliver it cleanly, safely, and economically. This technology is a true game changer. While the IFR was under development, a consortium of prominent American companies led by General Electric collaborated with the IFR team to design a commercial-scale reactor based upon the EBR-II research. This design, currently in the hands of GE, is called the PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module). A somewhat larger version (with a power rating of 380 MWe) is called the S-PRISM. As with all new nuclear reactor designs (and many other potentially hazardous industrial projects), probabilistic risk assessment studies were conducted for the S-PRISM. Among other parameters, the PRA study estimated the frequency with which one could expect a core meltdown. This occurrence was so statistically improbable as to defy imagination. Of course such a number must be divided by the number of reactors in service in order to convey the actual frequency of a hypothetical meltdown. Even so, if one posits that all the energy humanity requires were to be supplies solely by IFRs (an unlikely scenario but one that is entirely possible), the world could expect a core meltdown about once every 435,000 years xii. Even if the risk assessment understated the odds by a factor of a thousand, this would still be a reactor design that even the most paranoid could feel good about. The initial manufacturing and subsequent recycling of the fuel pins themselves is accomplished with a well-understood and widely used electrorefining process, similar to one that is employed every day in aluminum foundries. The simplicity of the system and the small amount of material that would have to be recycled in any power plant—even one containing several reactor modules—is such that factory-built components could be pieced together in a small hot cell at each power plant site. Every 18-24 months, one third of the fuel would be removed from the reactor and replaced by new fuel. The used fuel would be recycled. Approximately 10% of it would be comprised of fission products, which in the recycling process would be entombed in vitrified ceramic and probably stored on-site for the life of the plant. If the reactor core were configured to breed more fissile material than it consumes, then during the recycling process some quantity of plutonium would be removed and fabricated on-site into extra fuel assemblies that could then be used as the primary core load of a new reactor. The long-lived actinides that remain would be incorporated into the new fuel rods, replacing the quantity of fission products removed (and any plutonium that had been extracted for startup fuel for new reactors) with an equal amount of either depleted uranium or reprocessed uranium from LWR spent fuel. Resource conflicts escalate
Klare 6 – professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College
(Michael, Mar 6 2006, “The coming resource wars” http://www.energybulletin.net/node/13605)
It's official: the era of resource wars is upon us. In a major London address, British Defense Secretary John Reid warned that global climate change and dwindling natural resources are combining to increase the likelihood of violent conflict over land, water and energy. Climate change, he indicated, “will make scarce resources, clean water, viable agricultural land even scarcer”—and this will “make the emergence of violent conflict more rather than less likely.” Although not unprecedented, Reid’s prediction of an upsurge in resource conflict is significant both because of his senior rank and the vehemence of his remarks. “The blunt truth is that the lack of water and agricultural land is a significant contributory factor to the tragic conflict we see unfolding in Darfur,” he declared. “We should see this as a warning sign.” Resource conflicts of this type are most likely to arise in the developing world, Reid indicated, but the more advanced and affluent countries are not likely to be spared the damaging and destabilizing effects of global climate change. With sea levels rising, water and energy becoming increasingly scarce and prime agricultural lands turning into deserts, internecine warfare over access to vital resources will become a global phenomenon. Reid’s speech, delivered at the prestigious Chatham House in London (Britain’s equivalent of the Council on Foreign Relations), is but the most recent expression of a growing trend in strategic circles to view environmental and resource effects—rather than political orientation and ideology—as the most potent source of armed conflict in the decades to come. With the world population rising, global consumption rates soaring, energy supplies rapidly disappearing and climate change eradicating valuable farmland, the stage is being set for persistent and worldwide struggles over vital resources. Religious and political strife will not disappear in this scenario, but rather will be channeled into contests over valuable sources of water, food and energy. Advantage 2 is leadership US is ceding nuclear leadership now
Barton 11 (Charles Barton, Nuclear Green, “Have the Chinese Been Reading Energy from Thorium or Nuclear Green?” 1/31/11) http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2011/01/have-chinese-been-reading-energy-from.html
Last week the Chinese Academy of Science announced that it planned to finance the development of a Chinese Thorium Breeding Molten Salt Reactor (TMSR) or as it is called in the United States, the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR). The announcement came in a news report from Weihui.news365.com.cn. The announcement was relayed to Westerners who were interested in Thorium breeding molten salt reactors in a discussion thread comment posted by Chinese Scientist Hua Bai, last Friday. Kirk Sorensen, Brian Wang, and I all posted about Bai's announcement on Sunday, January 30. In addition to these posts, the thread which Hua Bai started contains the revelation that the engineer who heads the Chinese Molten Salt Reactor Project is none other than Jiang Mianheng, a son of Retired Chinese President, Jiang Zemin. In addition to being President of People's China, Jiang was the chairmanship of the powerful Central Military Commission, suggesting the likelihood that Jiang Mianheng has military ties. He is the cofounder of Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, and a former lead researcher in the Chinese Space Program, as well as Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The presence of such a well connected Chinese science leader suggests that the Chinese TMSR project is regarded as important by the Chinese leadership. Thus the Chinese leadership, unlike the American Political andscientific leadership has grasped the potential of molten salt nuclear technology. Yesterday, "horos11" commented on my blog, Nuclear Green, I read this, and I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. After all, this site and others have been sounding the clarion call to action on this, and I should be glad that someone finally heeded it and its getting traction in a place that really matters, but I have a sinking feeling that: a. its going to take far less than their planned 20 years b. they are going to succeed beyond their wildest expectations. Which means that the next, giant sucking sound we may hear is the sound of the 5 trillion dollar energy market heading east, further depressing our economy, weakening the dollar (and the euro) and ultimately making the US economy dependent on rescue from the chinese in the future (when they are done rescuing themselves). Yet, in the large scheme of things, this is a definite good, and may be our savior from anthropomorphic climate change. so again, laugh? or cry. I guess its up to how you view things - I guess I'm tentatively laughing at the moment, but mostly from the overwhelming irony of all this. Jason Ribeiro added, I can't help but have a feeling of sour grapes about this. While I congratulate China for doing the obvious, America has its head buried so far in the sand it can't see straight. With all the internet clamor about LFTR that's been going on the internet in the past 3-4 years, it was the non-English speaking Chinese that finally got the message that this was a great idea worth investing in. Our leadership ought to be ashamed of themselves. The Chinese News story on the Thorium Molten Salt Reactor reflects the clear Chinese thinking about the potential role of LFTRs in the future Chinese energy economy. I will paraphrase, "the future of advanced nuclear fission energy - nuclear energy, thorium-based molten salt reactor system" project was officially launched. . . The scientific goal is to developed a new generation of nuclear energy systems and to achieve commercial use in 20 years or so. We intend to complete the technological research needed for this system and to assert intellectual property rights to this technology. Fossil fuel energy is being depleted, and solar and wind energy are not stable enough, while hydropower development has reached the limit of its potential.. . . Nuclear power seems to offer us a very attractive future energy choice, high energy density, low carbon emissions, and the potential for sustainable development. . . . China has chosen {to make an energy breakthrough in the direction of molten salt reactors. . . . this liquid fuel reactors has a simple structure and can run at atmospheric pressure, it can use any fissionable material as fuel} and has other advantages. "This new stove" can be made very small, will operate with stabile nuclear fuel, and will run for several decades before replacement. After the thorium is completely used in the nuclear process the TMSR will produce nuclear waste will be only be one-thousandth of that produced by existing nuclear technologies. As the world is still in the development of a new generation of nuclear reactors, the thorium-based independent research and development of molten salt reactors, will be possible to obtain all intellectual property rights. This will enable China to firmly grasp the lifeline of energy in their own hands. Let the word "nuclear" no longer mean war. In the past, people always talk about "core" colors. The Hiroshima atomic bomb, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion, these are like a lingering nightmare that is marked in human history. But a new generation of nuclear power will take the color green, the mark of peace taking human beings into a new era. Oh Wow! It sounds as if someone in China has been reading Nuclear Green or Energy from Thorium. And there is more! In addition, the "new stove" operating at atmospheric pressure operation, rather than the traditional reactor operating at high pressure, will be simple and safe. "When the furnace temperature exceeds a predetermined value, in the bottom of the MSR core, a frozen plug of salt will automatically melt, releasing the liquid salt in the reactor core into an emergency storage tanks, and terminating the nuclear reaction," scientist Xu Hongjie told reporters, as the cooling agent is fluoride salts (the same salts that also carrying the nuclear fuel), after the liquid salt cools it turns solid, which prevents the nuclear fuel from leaking out of its containment, and thus will not pollute ground water causing an ecological disasters. The added safety opens up new possibilities for reactors, they can be built underground, completely isolating radioactive materials from the reactor, also the underground location will protect the reactor from an enemy's weapon attack. Reactors can be built in large cities, in the wilderness, or in remote villages. Well Kirk Sorensen and I wanted our ideas to become national priorities. We just did not know in what country it would happen first. Unfortunately the leadership of the United States, continues to be determined to lead this nation into the wilderness of powerlessness, while the leadership of communist China is alert to the possibilities of a new energy age. Possibilities that can be realized by molten salt nuclear technology. Lets hope that someone in the White House or Congress wakes up. The Chinese understand the implications of their venture into Molten Salt nuclear technology. The American leadership does not. IFR restores this
Stanford 10 (Dr George S. Stanford, nuclear reactor physicist, retired from Argonne National Laboratory, “IFR FaD context – the need for U.S. implementation of the IFR,” 2/18/10) http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/02/18/ifr-fad-context/
– The United States used to be the reactor-technology leader, but it abandoned that role in 1994 when it terminated the development of the IFR. – Since then, other nations — China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia, France — have proceeded to work on their own fast-reactor versions, which necessarily will involve instituting a fuel-processing capability. – Thus the United States is being left behind, and is rapidly losing its ability to help assure that the global evolution of the technology of nuclear energy proceeds in a safe and orderly manner. – But maybe it’s not too late yet. After all, the IFR is the fast-reactor technology with the post promise (for a variety of reasons), and is ready for a commercial-scale demonstration to settle some uncertainties about how to scale up the pyroprocess as needed, to establish better limits on the expected cost of production units, and to develop an appropriate, expeditious licensing process. – Such a demo will require federal seed money. It’s time to get moving. US leadership solves safety concerns and secures economic benefits for the US
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now,” 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
The genie is out of the bottle: refusing to play will not make fast reactors go away and will ultimately make us less safe. If we don’t re-start our fast reactor technology, then other countries will take the lead. France, Russia, India, Japan, and China all have fast reactor programs and all are either operating fast reactors now, or soon will be. The US shut down our last remaining fast reactor 15 years ago. Leadership is important for two reasons: 1) if we fail to lead, we will have missed taking advantage of our superior technology and missed a major economic opportunity as the premiere supplier of clean power technology and 2) the nuclear industry is in far safer hands if the US leads the way than if we abdicate. For example, if Chernobyl had been a US reactor design, that accident could never have happened. No advantage to waiting. Fast reactors are the future of nuclear power. These reactors are better in every dimension than today’s nuclear designs. The sooner we transition to them and standardize them, and focus on getting the volumes up and the costs down, the lower our energy costs, the greater our impact on climate change, and the greater our chances of capturing the economic opportunity. There is no advantage to waiting to deploy these reactors. But we cannot deploy them until we build one first. We are way behind other countries. The Russian BN-600 fast breeder reactor – Beloyarsk unit 3 – has been supplying electricity to the grid since 1980 and is said to have the best operating and production record of all Russia’s nuclear power units. China recently ordered two of the Russian BN-800 fast reactors. So while the Russians are the first country to be exporting commercial fast reactors and had no trouble getting $3.5B from the Russian government for their fast reactor program, the US hasn’t spent a dime exploiting the world’s best fast technology that we shelved in 1994 (which the Russians would love to get from us). That is not a winning strategy. It is a dumb strategy. We should either fish or cut bait on fast reactors. If we aren’t going to pursue them, then we should sell the technology to the Russians so we get at least some economic benefit from our research instead of zero. If we are going to pursue fast reactors, we need to get off our butts and build one now like our top Argonne scientists have been telling us for the last 15 years. If our objective is for Russia to lead the world on commercial advanced nuclear reactors, then we should keep doing what we are doing now, i.e., nothing. Building high dollar value nuclear reactors will help re-start our economy. Unlike with convention nuclear plants, the IFR reactors are built in a factory then shipped to the site on rail. We can re-tool idle factories, create jobs, and help reverse our trade deficit. Today, thanks to US government inaction, the Russians are the first to export commercial fast nuclear reactors. This is technology we invented and perfected. France and Japan aren’t going to wait for us. If we want to influence the fast reactor program in other countries, we need to have a program in the US. Today, we have nothing. Investments in nuclear energy spill over to broader growth
Ambassador Howard H. Baker et. Al 5, Jr., Former Member, United States Senate, Former Chief of Staff for President Ronald Reagan Senator J. Bennett Johnston, Johnston and Associates, Former Member, United States Senate | Ambassador C. Paul and Robinson, Former Director, Sandia National Laboratories American Council on Global Nuclear Competitiveness 2005
http://www.nuclearcompetitiveness.org/
Nuclear energy is a carbon-free energy resource which can provide energy security for generations to come. Thus far much of the support for new nuclear build has centered on the substantial environmental benefits offered by nuclear energy. This is important, but it’s not the whole story. What has been missing from the discussion is a recognition of potential economic and national security benefits that can accrue if the U.S. recaptures a large share of the nuclear manufacturing business. The United States greatly benefited from an initial wave of commercial nuclear power plant construction from the 1970s to the early 1990s. At that time, U.S. firms dominated the global market. The renewed interest in the global use of nuclear energy represents a perishable opportunity for U.S. industry to reclaim its nuclear energy leadership. In the ever-expanding global markets, it is essential that a reinvigorated U.S. industry be able to compete and supply nuclear energy systems at home and abroad from a dominant, preferred supplier position. A nuclear energy revival is long overdue. In order for the United States to prosper we can not become complacent and view the growth of the nuclear industry as “business-as-usual.” The Unites States invented nuclear energy, and unless the domestic outlook for nuclear energy design, manufacturing, service and supply improves, our country will have to buy the bulk of its nuclear technology from overseas and forgo multibillion-dollar opportunities. Therefore, the Council is working to promote a revived domestic nuclear design, manufacturing, service and supply industry that will result in: the creation or retention of American jobs and factories; improved American economic competitiveness and shareholder returns; and greater leverage for the U.S. in dealing with global proliferation concerns. Nuclear energy represents not just business opportunities but employment opportunity — more than one million jobs could be created in the United States if American firms capture a significant share of the growing global nuclear energy market. The Council also encourages policymakers to pay close attention to the ability of the U.S. educational system to meet the anticipated demand for reactor designers and operators, as well as the trained construction, manufacturing, and maintenance workers who will be needed to build, operate, and service new nuclear plants in the U.S. The Council encourages greater education on these issues along with a restoration of American leadership in nuclear energy--urging our nation’s political, industry, financial and labor leaders to adapt and support policies and programs that will help ensure America’s nuclear leadership is restored. Ceding nuclear leadership creates an energy disadvantage vis a vi other countries
Barton 10 (Charles Barton, Nuclear Green “Keeping up with China: The Economic Advantage of Molten Salt Nuclear Technology,” 12/1/10) http://theenergycollective.com/charlesbarton/47933/keeping-china-economic-advantage-molten-salt-nuclear-technology
American and European nuclear development can either proceed by following the cost lowering paths being pioneered in Asia, or begin to develop low cost innovative nuclear plans. Since low labor costs, represent the most significant Chinese and Indian cost advantage, it is unlikely that European and American reactor manufacturers will be able to compete with the Asians on labor costs. Labor costs for conventional reactors can be lowered by factory construction of reactor componant moduels, but the Chinese are clearly ahead of the West in that game. Yet the weakness of the Chinese system is the relatively large amount of field labor that the manufacture of large reactors requires. The Chines system is to introduce labor saving devices where ever and when ever possible, but clearly shifting labor from the field to a factory still offers cost advantages. The more labor which can be performed in the factory, the more labor cost savings are possible. Other savings advantages are possible by simplifying reactor design, and lowering materials input. Building a reactor with less materials and fewer parts lowers nuclear costs directly and indirectly. Decreasing core size per unit of power output also can contribute a cost advantage. Direct saving relate to the cost of parts and matetials, but fewer parts and less material also means less labor is required to put things together, since there is less to put together. In addition a small reactor core structure, would, all other things being equal, require a smaller housing. Larger cores mean more structural housing expenses. While the Pebel Bed Modular Reactor has a relatively simple core design, the actual core is quite large, because of the cooling inefficiency of helium. Thus, the simplisity of the PBMR core is ballanced by its size, its total materials input, and the size of its housing. The large core and housing requirements of the PBMR also adds to its labor costs, especially its field labor cost. Thus while the simplisity of the PBMR core design would seem to suggest a low cost, this expectation is unlikely to br born out in practice. Transportation limits ability to shift production from the field to the factory. An analysis preformed by the University of Tennessee's, and the Massachusettes Institute of Technology's Departments of Nuclear Engineering looked at the 335 MW Westinghouse IRIS reactor. The analysis found, A rough estimate of the weight for a 1000 MWt modular reactor and its secondary system, similar to the Westinghouse IRIS plant, is taken as the summation of all of the major components in the analysis. Many of the smaller subcomponents have been neglected. The containment structure contributes 2.81E6 kg (3100 tons). The primary reactor vessel and the turbo-generator contribute 1.45E6 kg (1600 tons) each. The heat exchange equipment and piping contribute 6.78E5 kg (747 tons). Therefore, the total weight of the major plant components is 6.39E6 kg (7047 tons). The weight and width of the IRIS would place constraints of barge transportation of the IRIS on the Tennessee and Ohio Rivers. The report stated, The Westinghouse barge mounted IRIS reactor modules were limited in size based on input from the University of Tennessee. The barge dimension limitations were established to be 30 meters (98’-5”) wide, 100 meters (328’-1”) long, with a 2.74 meter (9’) draft. These dimensions establish the barge maximum displacement at 8,220 metric tons. In addition, the barge(s) are limited to 20 meters (65’-7”) in height above the water surface, so that they fit under crossing bridges and can be floated up the Mississippi, Ohio, and Tennessee Rivers as far as the city of Chattanooga, Tennessee. Further movement above Chattanooga is currently limited by the locks at the Chickamauga Reservoir dam. The above barge displacement limitation will impose severe limits on how much structural support and shield concrete can be placed in the barge modules at the shipyard. For example, the estimated weight of concrete in the IRIS containment and the surrounding cylindrical shield structure alone greatly exceeds the total allowable barge displacement. This however does not mean that barge- mounted pressurized water reactors (PWRs) are not feasible. It does mean that barge-mounted PWRs need to employ steel structures that are then used as the forms for the addition of needed concrete after the barge has been floated into its final location and founded. Thus for the IRIS, barge transportation presented problems, and rail transportation was unthinkable. The core of the 125 MW BandW mPower reactor is rail transportable, but final onsite mPower assembly/construction became a significant undertaking, with a consequent increase in overall cost. The core unit does include a pressure vessel and heat exchange mounted above the actual reactor, but many other mPower component modules must be transported seperately and assembled on site. The IIRIS project demonstrates the unlikelihood of whole small reactors being transported to the field ready for energy production without some field construction. This might be possible, however, for mini reactors that are two small to be viewed as a plausible substitute for the fossil fuel powered electrical plants currently supplying electricity for the grid. This then leaves us with with a gap between the cost savings potential of factory manufacture, and the costly process of onsite assembly. BandW the manufacturers of the small 125 MW MPower reactor still has not clarified what percentage of the manufacturing process would be factory based. It is clear, however that BandW knows where it is comming from and what its problems are, as Rod Adams tells us: I spoke in more detail to Chris Mowry and listened as he explained how his company's research on the history of the nuclear enterprise in the US had revealed that 30% of the material and labor cost of the existing units came from the supplied components while 70% was related to the site construction effort. He described how the preponderance of site work had influenced the cost uncertainty that has helped to discourage new nuclear plant construction for so many years. What Mowey did not tell Adams is what percentage of the materials and labor costs will be shifted to the factory as mPower reactors are produced. There have been hints that a significant percentage of the mPower manufacturing process, perhaps as much as 50% will still take place on site. BandW still is working on the design of their manufacturing process, and thus do not yet know all of the details. Clearly then more work needs to be done on controlling onsite costs. Finally, a shift to advanced technology will can lower manufacturing costs. Compared to Light Water reactors, Liquid metal cooled reactors use less material and perhaps less labor, but pool type liqiod metal reactors are not compact. Compared to Liquid Metal cooled reactors, Molten Salt cooled reactor will have more compact cores. Shifting to closed cycle gas turbines will decrease construction costs. The added safety of Molten Salt cooled reactors will increase reactor simplification, and thus further lower labor and materials related construction costs. The recycling of old power plant locations will also offer some savings. Decreasing manufacturing time will lower interest costs. All in all there are a lot of reasons to expect lower nuclear manufacturing costs with Generation IV nuclear power plants, and at present no one has come up with a good reason for expecting Molten Salt cooled reactors to cost more than traditional NPPs. The argument, however, is not iron clad. Even if no one has pointed out plasuible errors in it, we need to introduce the caviot that expectations frenquently are not meet. It is possible, for example that the NRC might impose unreasonable expectations on molten salt cooled reactors. Demanding, for example, that they include the same safety features as LWRs, even though they do not have many LWR safety problems. But the potential savings on the cost of energy by adopting molten salt nuclear technology is substantial, and should not be ignored. To return to the problem posed by Brian Wang, the problem of lower Asian nuclear construction costs. If Europe and the United States cannot meet the Asican energy cost challenge, their economies will encounter a significant decline. Because of Labor cost advantages, it is unlikely that Generation III nuclear plants will ever cost less to build in the United States or Europe than in Asia. in order to keep the American and European economies competitive, the United States and Europe must adopt a low cost, factory manufactured nuclear technology. Molten Salt nuclear technology represents the lowest cost approach, and is highly consistent with factory manufacture and other cost lowering approaches. Couple to that the outstanding safety of molten salt nuclear technology, the potential for dramatically lowering the creation of nuclear waste, and the obsticles to nuclear proliferation posed by molten salt nuclear rechnology, and we see a real potential for keeping the American and European economies competitive, at least as far as energy costs are concerned. Economics are an integral part of overall dominance
Sanjaya Baru 9 2009 is a Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School in Singapore Geopolitical Implications of the Current Global Financial Crisis, Strategic Analysis, Volume 33, Issue 2 March 2009 , pages 163 – 168
Hence, economic policies and performance do have strategic consequences.2 In the modern era, the idea that strong economicperformance is the foundation of power was argued most persuasively by historian Paul Kennedy. 'Victory (in war)', Kennedy claimed,'has repeatedly gone to the side with more flourishing productive base'.3 Drawing attention to the interrelationships betweeneconomic wealth, technological innovation, and the ability of states to efficiently mobilize economic and technological resources for power projection and national defence, Kennedy argued that nations that were able to better combine military and economic strength scored over others. 'The fact remains', Kennedy argued, 'that all of the major shifts in the world's military-power balance have followed alterations in the productive balances; and further, that the rising and falling of the various empires and states in the international system has been confirmed by the outcomes of the major Great Power wars, where victory has always gone to the side with the greatest material resources'.4 In Kennedy's view, the geopolitical consequences of aneconomic crisis, or even decline, would be transmitted through a nation's inability to find adequate financial resources tosimultaneously sustain economic growth and military power. The classic 'guns versus butter' dilemma. Apart from such fiscal disempowerment of the State, economic under-performance would also reduce a nation's attraction as a market, as a source of capital and technology, and as a 'knowledge power'. As power shifted from Europe to America, so did the knowledge base of the global economy. As China's power rises, so does its profile as a 'knowledge economy'. Impressed by such arguments, the China Academy of Social Sciences developed the concept of Comprehensive National Power (CNP) to get China's political and military leadership to focus more clearly on economic and technological performance than on military power alone in its quest for Great Power status.5While China's impressive economic performance, and the consequent rise in China's global profile, has forced strategicanalysts to acknowledge this link, the recovery of the US economy in the 1990s had reduced the appeal of the Kennedy thesis in Washington, DC. We must expect a revival of interest in Kennedy's arguments in the current context. A historian of power who took Kennedy seriously, Niall Ferguson, has helped keep the focus on the geopolitical implications of economic performance. In his masterly survey of the role of finance in the projection of state power, Ferguson defines the 'square of power' as the tax bureaucracy, the parliament, the national debt, and the central bank. These four institutions of 'fiscal empowerment' of the state enable nations to project power by mobilizing and deploying financial resources to that end.6 Ferguson shows how vital sound economic management is to strategic policy and national power. More recently, Ferguson has been drawing a parallel between the role of debt and financial crises in the decline of the Ottoman and Soviet Empires and that of the United States. In an early comment on the present financial crisis, Ferguson wrote: We are indeed living through a global shift in the balance of power very similar to that which occurred in the 1870s. This is the story of how an over-extended empire sought to cope with an external debt crisis by selling off revenue streams to foreign investors. The empire that suffered these setbacks in the 1870s was the Ottoman empire. Today it is the US. … It remains to be seen how quickly today's financial shift will be followed by a comparable geopolitical shift in favour of the new export and energy empires of the east. Suffice to say that the historical analogy does not bode well for America's quasi-imperial network of bases and allies across the Middle East and Asia. Debtor empires sooner or later have to do more than just sell shares to satisfy their creditors. … as in the 1870s the balance of financial power is shifting. Then, the move was from the ancient oriental empires (not only the Ottoman but also the Persian and Chinese) to western Europe. Today the shift is from the US - and other western financial centres - to the autocracies of the Middle East and East Asia. …7 An economic or financial crisis may not trigger the decline of an empire. It can certainly speed up a process already underway. In the case of the Soviet Union, the financial crunch caused by the Afghan War came on top of years of economic under-performance and the loss of political legitimacy of the Soviet State. In a democratic society like the United States, the political legitimacy of the state is constantly renewed through periodic elections. Thus, the election of Barack Obama may serve to renew the legitimacy of the state and by doing so enable the state to undertake measures that restore health to the economy. This the Soviet State was unable to do under Gorbachev even though he repudiated the Brezhnev legacy and distanced himself from it. Hence, one must not become an economic determinist, and historic parallels need not always be relevant. Politics can intervene and offer solutions. Political economy and politics, in the form of Keynesian economics and the 'New Deal' did intervene to influence the geopolitical implications of the Great Depression. Whether they will do so once again in today's America remains to be seen. Perception of economic weakness matters
Leslie Gelb, Council on Foreign Relations, 2010
Fletcher Forum of World Affairsvol.34:2 summer 2010 http://fletcher.tufts.edu/forum/archives/pdfs/34-2pdfs/Gelb.pdf, p5
Power is what it always has been. It is the ability to get someone to do something they do not want to do by means of your resources and your position. It was always that. There is no such thing in my mind as “soft” power or “hard” power or “smart” power or “dumb” power. It is people who are hard or soft or smart or dumb. Power is power. And people use it wisely or poorly. Now, what has changed is the composition of power in international affairs. For almost all of history, international power was achieved in the form of military power and military force. Now, particularly in the last fifty years or so, it has become more and more economic. So power consists of economic power, military power, and diplomatic power, but the emphasis has shifted from military power (for almost all of history) to now, more economic power. And, as President Obama said in his West Point speech several months ago, our economy is the basis of our international power in general and our military power in particular. That is where it all comes from. Whether other states listen to us and act on what we say depends a good deal on their perception of the strength of the American economy. A big problem for us in the last few years has been the perception that our economy is in decline.
Heg decline results in global conflict
Brzezinski 12—Professor of Foreign Policy @ Johns Hopkins
Zbigniew, After America, Foreign Policy, Jan/Dec 2012, http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/01/03/after_america?page=0,0
For if America falters, the world is unlikely to be dominated by a single preeminent successor -- not even China. International uncertainty, increased tension among global competitors, and even outright chaos would be far more likely outcomes. While a sudden, massive crisis of the American system -- for instance, another financial crisis -- would produce a fast-moving chain reaction leading to global political and economic disorder, a steady drift by America into increasingly pervasive decay or endlessly widening warfare with Islam would be unlikely to produce, even by 2025, an effective global successor. No single power will be ready by then to exercise the role that the world, upon the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, expected the United States to play: the leader of a new, globally cooperative world order. More probable would be a protracted phase of rather inconclusive realignments of both global and regional power, with no grand winners and many more losers, in a setting of international uncertainty and even of potentially fatal risks to global well-being. Rather than a world where dreams of democracy flourish, a Hobbesian world of enhanced national security based on varying fusions of authoritarianism, nationalism, and religion could ensue. The leaders of the world's second-rank powers, among them India, Japan, Russia, and some European countries, are already assessing the potential impact of U.S. decline on their respective national interests. The Japanese, fearful of an assertive China dominating the Asian mainland, may be thinking of closer links with Europe. Leaders in India and Japan may be considering closer political and even military cooperation in case America falters and China rises. Russia, while perhaps engaging in wishful thinking (even schadenfreude) about America's uncertain prospects, will almost certainly have its eye on the independent states of the former Soviet Union. Europe, not yet cohesive, would likely be pulled in several directions: Germany and Italy toward Russia because of commercial interests, France and insecure Central Europe in favor of a politically tighter European Union, and Britain toward manipulating a balance within the EU while preserving its special relationship with a declining United States. Others may move more rapidly to carve out their own regional spheres: Turkey in the area of the old Ottoman Empire, Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere, and so forth. None of these countries, however, will have the requisite combination of economic, financial, technological, and military power even to consider inheriting America's leading role. China, invariably mentioned as America's prospective successor, has an impressive imperial lineage and a strategic tradition of carefully calibrated patience, both of which have been critical to its overwhelmingly successful, several-thousand-year-long history. China thus prudently accepts the existing international system, even if it does not view the prevailing hierarchy as permanent. It recognizes that success depends not on the system's dramatic collapse but on its evolution toward a gradual redistribution of power. Moreover, the basic reality is that China is not yet ready to assume in full America's role in the world. Beijing's leaders themselves have repeatedly emphasized that on every important measure of development, wealth, and power, China will still be a modernizing and developing state several decades from now, significantly behind not only the United States but also Europe and Japan in the major per capita indices of modernity and national power. Accordingly, Chinese leaders have been restrained in laying any overt claims to global leadership. At some stage, however, a more assertive Chinese nationalism could arise and damage China's international interests. A swaggering, nationalistic Beijing would unintentionally mobilize a powerful regional coalition against itself. None of China's key neighbors -- India, Japan, and Russia -- is ready to acknowledge China's entitlement to America's place on the global totem pole. They might even seek support from a waning America to offset an overly assertive China. The resulting regional scramble could become intense, especially given the similar nationalistic tendencies among China's neighbors. A phase of acute international tension in Asia could ensue. Asia of the 21st century could then begin to resemble Europe of the 20th century -- violent and bloodthirsty. At the same time, the security of a number of weaker states located geographically next to major regional powers also depends on the international status quo reinforced by America's global preeminence -- and would be made significantly more vulnerable in proportion to America's decline. The states in that exposed position -- including Georgia, Taiwan, South Korea, Belarus, Ukraine, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, and the greater Middle East -- are today's geopolitical equivalents of nature's most endangered species. Their fates are closely tied to the nature of the international environment left behind by a waning America, be it ordered and restrained or, much more likely, self-serving and expansionist. A faltering United States could also find its strategic partnership with Mexico in jeopardy. America's economic resilience and political stability have so far mitigated many of the challenges posed by such sensitive neighborhood issues as economic dependence, immigration, and the narcotics trade. A decline in American power, however, would likely undermine the health and good judgment of the U.S. economic and political systems. A waning United States would likely be more nationalistic, more defensive about its national identity, more paranoid about its homeland security, and less willing to sacrifice resources for the sake of others' development. The worsening of relations between a declining America and an internally troubled Mexico could even give rise to a particularly ominous phenomenon: the emergence, as a major issue in nationalistically aroused Mexican politics, of territorial claims justified by history and ignited by cross-border incidents. Another consequence of American decline could be a corrosion of the generally cooperative management of the global commons -- shared interests such as sea lanes, space, cyberspace, and the environment, whose protection is imperative to the long-term growth of the global economy and the continuation of basic geopolitical stability. In almost every case, the potential absence of a constructive and influential U.S. role would fatally undermine the essential communality of the global commons because the superiority and ubiquity of American power creates order where there would normally be conflict. None of this will necessarily come to pass. Nor is the concern that America's decline would generate global insecurity, endanger some vulnerable states, and produce a more troubled North American neighborhood an argument for U.S. global supremacy. In fact, the strategic complexities of the world in the 21st century make such supremacy unattainable. But those dreaming today of America's collapse would probably come to regret it. And as the world after America would be increasingly complicated and chaotic, it is imperative that the United States pursue a new, timely strategic vision for its foreign policy -- or start bracing itself for a dangerous slide into global turmoil. Plan The United States federal government should provide initial funding for commercial Integral Fast Reactors in the United States. Contention 3 is Solvency IFRs are a ready for commercial application
Kirsh 11 (Steven T. Kirsh, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Why Obama should meet Till,” 9/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/
I will tell you the story of an amazing clean power technology that can use nuclear waste for fuel and emit no long-lived nuclear waste; that can supply clean power at low cost for our planet, 24×7, for millions of years without running out of fuel. I will tell you why this technology is our best bet to reduce the impact of global warming on our planet. And finally, I will tell you why nobody is doing anything about it and why this needs to be corrected. If you act on this letter, you will save our country billions of dollars and allow us to become leaders in clean energy. If you delegate it downward, nothing will happen. I have no vested interest in this; I am writing because I care about the future of our planet First, since we met only briefly during the Obama campaign, let me provide a little background about myself. I am a high-tech entrepreneur and philanthropist based in Silicon Valley. I have received numerous awards for my philanthropy. For example, in 2003, I was honored to receive a National Caring Award presented by then Senator Clinton. The largest engineering auditorium at MIT is named in my honor. The first community college LEED platinum building in the nation is also named in my honor. I am also active in Democratic politics. In the 2000 election, for example, I was the single largest political donor in the United States, donating over $10 million dollars to help Al Gore get elected. Unfortunately, we lost that one by one vote (on the Supreme Court). I have no vested interest in nuclear power or anything else that is described below. I write only as someone who cares about our nation, the environment, and our planet. I am trying to do everything I can so my kids have a habitable world to live in. Nothing more. Dr. James Hansen first made me aware of fast reactors in his letter to Obama in 2009 As an environmentalist, I have been a fan of Jim Hansen’s work for nearly two decades. Many consider Dr. Hansen to be the world’s leading expert on global warming. For example, Hansen was the first person to make Congress aware of global warming in his Senate testimony in 1988. Hansen is also Al Gore’s science advisor. In 2009, Dr. Hansen wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to do just three things that are critical to stop global warming: 1) phase out coal plants, 2) impose a feebate on carbon emissions with a 100% rebate to consumers and 3) re-start fourth generation nuclear plants, which can use nuclear waste as fuel. Hansen’s letter to Obama is documented here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/02/obama-climate-change-james-hansen Upon reading Hansen’s recommendations, I was fascinated by the last recommendation. The fourth-generation power plants Hansen advocated sounded too good to be true. If what Hansen was saying was true, then why wasn’t our nation jumping on that technology? It made no sense to me. Lack of knowledge, misinformation, and the complexity of nuclear technology have hampered efforts to get a fast reactor built in the US I spent the next two years finding out the answer to that question. The short answer is three-fold: (1) most people know absolutely nothing about the amazing fourth generation nuclear power plant that we safely ran for 30 years in the US and (2) there is a lot of misleading information being spread by seemingly respectable people (some of whom are in the White House) who never worked on a fourth generation reactor that is totally false. It’s not that they are misleading people deliberately; it’s just that they were either listening to the wrong sources or they are jumping to erroneous conclusions. For example, the most popular misconception is that “reprocessing is a proliferation risk.” That statement fails to distinguish between available reprocessing techniques. It is absolutely true for the French method but it is absolutely not true for the technology described in this letter! The third reason is that the technology is complicated. Most people don’t know the difference between oxide fuel and metal fuel. Most people don’t know what a fast reactor is. Most people can’t tell you the difference between PUREX, UREX, and pyroprocessing. So people with an agenda can happily trot out arguments that support their beliefs and it all sounds perfectly credible. They simply leave out the critical details. We don’t need more RandD. We already have a technology in hand to help us solve global warming and safely get rid of our nuclear waste at low cost. But we aren’t doing anything with it. That’s a serious mistake. Today, our nation faces many serious challenges such as: How can we avert global warming? How can we dispose of our existing nuclear waste safely? How can we generate base-load carbon-free power at very low cost? How can we avoid creating any additional long-lived nuclear waste? How can we grow our economy and create jobs? How can we become the world leader in clean energy? How can we do all of the above while at the same time spending billions less than we are now? The good news is that we already have a proven technology that can address all of these problems. It is a technology that has enjoyed over 30 years of bi-partisan Congressional and Presidential support. It is an advanced nuclear technology that was invented in 1951 by the legendary Walter Zinn and then refined and perfected over a 30 year period, from 1964 to 1994 by Dr. Charles Till who led a team of 1,200 people at the Argonne National Laboratory. Till’s reactor was known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) because it both produced power and recycled its own waste back into the reactor. This is the technology that Hansen referenced in his letter to the President. The IFR is a fourth-generation nuclear design that has several unique and valuable characteristics: It can use our existing nuclear waste (from power plants and weapons) as fuel; we have over 1,000 years of power available by just using today’s nuclear waste. Instead of trying to bury that “waste” in Yucca Mountain, we could be using it for fuel in fast reactors. It generates no long-lived nuclear waste. It is safer than today’s light water reactor (LWR) nuclear power plants. Unlike the Fukushima LWR reactors (a second generation nuclear technology invented 50 years ago), the IFR does NOT require electricity to shut down safely. The IFR shuts down passively if a mishap occurs; no operator intervention or active safety systems are required. They ran the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl scenarios on a live reactor and the reactor shut itself down safely, no operator intervention required, just as predicted. In addition, unlike with LWRs, the IFR runs at low pressure which adds to the safety profile. It reduces the risk of nuclear proliferation because: (1) it eliminates the need for enrichment facilities (which can be used for making nuclear bomb material), (2) the nuclear material that is used in the IFR is not suitable for making bombs and (2) because the nuclear material in the reactor and in the reprocessing hot cell is too “hot” to be stolen or used in a weapon. Experts at General Electric (GE) believe that the IFR has the potential to produce power for less than the price of coal. Dr. Loewen can confirm that if you have any doubts. GE already has an IFR design on the table that they would like to build as soon as possible. Dr. Loewen can confirm that as well. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in January 1994, issued a pre-application safety evaluation report in which they found no objections or impediments to licensing the IFR. You can see the NRC report in the 8 minute video. The design is proven. It produced electric power without mishap for 30 years before the project was abruptly cancelled. Dr Charles Till The IFR’s ability to solve the nuclear waste problem should not be underestimated. As respected nuclear experts have pointed out, a practical solution to the nuclear waste problem is required if we are to revive nuclear power in the United States. The Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on America’s Nuclear Future basically concluded this: “continue doing the same thing we are doing today and keep doing RandD.” That was predictable because it was a consensus report; everyone had to agree. So nothing happened. And because there was no consensus from the BRC , there is less money for nuclear because there is no solution to the waste problem. It’s a downward death spiral. Please pardon me for a second and allow me to rant about consensus reports. In my 30 year career as an entrepreneur, I’ve raised tens of millions of millions of dollars in investment capital from venture capitalists all over the world. I always ask them how they make investment decisions. They always tell me, “If we had to get all partners to agree on an investment, we’d never make any investments. If you can get two partners to champion your company, that is sufficient to drive an investment decision.” Therefore, if you want to get nothing done, ask for a consensus report. If you want to actually solve problems, you should listen to what the people most knowledgeable about the problem are saying. Dr Yoon I. Chang Had President Obama asked the Commissioners on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) who have the most knowledge of fast reactors the same question that he tasked the BRC with, he would have gotten a completely different answer. They would have told President Obama that fast reactors and pyroprocessing are the way to go and we better get started immediately with something that we already know works because there is still a ten year time if we were to start the reactor building process today. Their advice leads to a viable solution that we know will work and it will make the US a leader in clean nuclear power. Following the BRC’s consensus advice will lead to decades of inaction. Totally predictable. If we put a national focus on developing and cost reducing the IFR, we’d have a killer product and lead the world in being a clean energy leader It would be great if we had a long-term strategy and vision for how we become energy independent and solve the global warming problem and help our economy at the same time. The IFR can play a key role in that vision. If we put a national focus on developing and commercializing the IFR technology we invented, we can create jobs, help our trade balance, mitigate global warming, become energy independent, show the world a safe way to get rid of nuclear waste, and become the leaders in clean power technology. Nuclear power is the elephant in the room. Even though we haven’t built a new nuclear plant in 30 years, nuclear still supplies 70% of the clean energy in America today. That feat was largely accomplished in a single ten year period. Renewables have had 3 decades to “catch up” and they aren’t anywhere close. Nuclear’s continued dominance shows that nuclear power is indeed the elephant in the room when it comes to being able to install clean energy quickly and affordably. The bad news is that President Clinton decided that this technology, which would have produced unlimited amounts of base-load carbon-free power for a price as low as anything else available today, was not needed and cancelled the project in 1994. Cancelling the IFR was a big mistake. It’s still the world’s best fast nuclear technology according to an independent study by the Gen IV International Forum. Many top scientists all over the world believe that President Clinton’s decision was a huge mistake. The Senate had voted to continue to fund it. The project had been supported by six US Presidents; Republicans and Democrats. In fact, the project’s biggest proponent was Republican President Richard Nixon who said in 1971, “Our best hope today for meeting the Nation’s growing demand for economical clean energy lies with the fast breeder reactor.” Republican Senator Kempthorne said of the IFR cancellation: Unfortunately, this program was canceled just 2 short years before the proof of concept. I assure my colleagues someday our Nation will regret and reverse this shortsighted decision. But complete or not, the concept and the work done to prove it remain genius and a great contribution to the world. While I am not a big fan of Senator Kempthorne, I couldn’t agree more with what he said in this particular case. The IFR remains the single best advanced nuclear power design ever invented. That fact was made clear when in 2002, over 240 leading nuclear scientists from all over the world (in a Gen IV International Forum sponsored study) independently evaluated all fourth-generation nuclear designs and ranked the IFR the #1 best overall advanced nuclear design. The IFR was cancelled in 1994 without so much as a phone call to anyone who worked on the project. They didn’t call then. They haven’t called since. They simply pulled the plug and told people not to talk about the technology. The US government invested over $5 billion dollars in the IFR. Fast reactor RandD is largest single technology investment DOE has ever made. According to a top DOE nuclear official (Ray Hunter, the former NE2 at DOE), the “IFR became the preferred path because of waste management, safety, and economics.” The reactor produced power for 30 years without incident. Despite that track record, before it was cancelled, nobody from the White House ever met with anyone who worked on the project to discuss whether it should be terminated or not. It was simply unilaterally terminated by the White House for political reasons. Technical experts were never consulted. To this day, no one from the White House has met with Dr. Till to understand the benefits of the project. The technical merits simply did not matter. I urge you to recommend to President Obama that he meet personally with Dr. Charles Till so that the President can hear first hand why it is so critical for the health of our nation and our planet that this project, known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), be restarted. Dr. Till headed the project at Argonne National Laboratory until his retirement in 1997. He is, without a doubt, the world’s leading expert on IFR technology. Want to solve global warming? Easy. Just create a 24×7 clean power source that costs the same as coal. Prominent scientists believe that the IFR can achieve this. Dr. Hansen has pointed out many times that it is imperative to eliminate all coal plants worldwide since otherwise, we will never win the battle against global warming. But we know from experience that treaties and agreements do not work. Here’s a quote from an article (“The Most Important Investment that We Aren’t Making to Mitigate the Climate Crisis”) that I wrote in December 2009 published in the Huffington Post: If you want to get emissions reductions, you must make the alternatives for electric power generation cheaper than coal. It’s that simple. If you don’t do that, you lose. The billions we invest in RandD now in building a clean and cheaper alternative to coal power will pay off in spades later. We have a really great option now — the IFR is on the verge of commercial readiness — and potential competitors such as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) are in the wings. But the US government isn’t investing in developing any of these breakthrough new base-load power generation technologies. Not a single one. I found it really amazing that global leaders were promising billions, even hundreds of billions in Copenhagen for “fighting climate change” when they weren’t investing one cent in the nuclear technologies that can stop coal and replace it with something cheaper. Note: 6 days ago, on September 22, 2011, DOE agreed to give $7.5M to MIT to do RandD on a molten-salt reactor. That’s good, but we should be building the technology we already have proven in 30 years of operational experience before we invest in unproven new technologies. Dr. Loewen has personally looked at the costs for the building the IFR in detail and believes the IFR can generate power at a cost comparable to a coal plant. So it’s arguably our best shot at displacing coal plants. This is precisely why Dr. Hansen believes that the IFR should be a top priority if we want to save our planet. It isn’t just nuclear experts that support the IFR US Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA) is also a major IFR supporter. When he was Lt. Governor of California, Congressman Garamendi convened a panel of over a dozen our nation’s top scientists to discuss the IFR technology. As a result of that meeting, Garamendi became convinced that the IFR is critically important and he is currently trying very hard to get a bill passed in the House to restart it. Unfortunately, virtually everyone in Congress seems to have forgotten about this project even though in the 1970’s it was the President’s top energy priority. Nothing has changed since then. No other clean energy technology has been invented that is superior to the IFR for generating low-cost carbon-free base-load electric power. Bill Gates also found exactly the same thing when he looked at how to solve the global warming problem. As he explained in a recent TED talk, renewables will never solve the climate crisis. The only viable technology is fourth-generation nuclear power and the best advanced nuclear technology is the IFR. That is why this is Gate’s only clean energy investment. Gates’ TerraPower Travelling Wave Reactor (TWR) is a variant of the IFR design. When Gates approached DOE to try to build his reactor in the US, he was told to build it outside of the US. Nobel prize winner Hans Bethe (now deceased) was an enthusiastic supporter. Freeman Dyson called Bethe the “supreme problem solver of the 20th century. Chuck Till told me the following story of Bethe’s support for the IFR: A tale from the past: A year or two before the events I’ll describe, Hans Bethe had been contacted by the Argonne Lab Director for his recommendation on who to seek to replace the existing head of Argonne’s reactor program. Bethe told him the best choice was already there in the Lab, so it was in this way that I was put in charge. I had had quite a few sessions with him in the years leading up to it, as we were able to do a lot of calculations on the effects of reactor types on resources that he didn’t have the capability at his disposal to do himself. So when I wanted to initiate the IFR thrust, the first outside person I went to was Bethe at Cornell. After a full day of briefing from all the specialists I had taken with me, he suggested a brief private meeting with me. He was direct. He said “All the pieces fit. I am prepared to write a letter stating this. Who do you want me to address it to? I think the President’s Science Advisor, don’t you?” I said the obvious – that his opinion would be given great weight, and would give instant respectability. He went on, “I know him quite well. Who else?” I said I was sure that Senator McClure (who was chairman of Senate Energy and Resources at the time) would be relieved to hear from him. That the Senator would be inclined to support us, as we were fairly prominent in the economy of the state of Idaho, and for that reason I had easy access to him. But to know that Hans Bethe, a man renowned for his common sense in nuclear and all energy matters, supported such an effort would give him the Senator solid and quotable reason for his own support, not dismissible as parochial politics, that the Senator would want if he was to lead the congressional efforts. “Yes,” he said in that way he had, “I agree.” I’ve always thought that the President’s Science Advisor’s intervention with DOE, to give us a start, was not the result of our meeting him, but rather it was because of the gravitas Hans Bethe provided with a one page letter. How do we lead the world in clean energy if we put our most powerful clean energy technology on the shelf?!? President Obama has stated that he wants the US to be a leader in clean energy. I do not see how we achieve that if we allow our most advanced clean energy technology to sit on the shelf collecting dust and we tell one of America’s most respected businessmen that he should build his clean energy technology in another country. We have an opportunity here to export energy technology to China instead of importing it. But due to Clinton’s decision, we are allowing the Russians to sell similar fast reactor technology to the Chinese. It should have been us. Re-starting the IFR will allow us to cancel a $10 billion stupid expenditure. The IFR only costs $3B to build. We’d get more, pay less. On pure economics alone, it’s a no brainer. Finally, even if you find none of the arguments above to be compelling, there is one more reason to restart the IFR project: it will save billions of dollars. Today, we are contracting with the French to build a MOX reprocessing plant in Savannah River. The cost of that project is $10 billion dollars. We are doing it to meet our treaty obligations with the Russians. Former top DOE nuclear managers agree this is a huge waste of money because we can build an IFR which can reprocess 10 times at much weapons waste per year for a fraction of that cost. The Russians are laughing at our stupidity. They are going to be disposing of their weapons waste in fast reactors, just like we should be. The Russians are also exporting their fast reactors to the Chinese. Had the US not cancelled our fast reactor program, we would be the world leader in this technology because our technology remains better than any other fourth generation technology in the world. If you delegate this to someone else, nothing will happen. Here’s why. Delegating this letter downward from the White House to someone in DOE to evaluate will result in inaction and no follow up. I know this from past attempts that have been made. It just gets lost and there is no follow up. Every time. The guys at DOE want to do it, but they know that they will get completely stopped by OMB and OSTP. Both Carol Browner and Steven Chu asked former DOE nuclear management what to do about nuclear waste. They were told that using fast reactors and reprocessing was the way to go. But nothing happened. So Chu has given up trying. According to knowledgeable sources, the White House has told DOE in no uncertain terms, “do not build anything nuclear in the US.” It’s not clear who is making these decisions, but many people believe it is being driven by Steven Fetter in OSTP. Dr. Till knows all of this. He knows that unless he personally meets with the President to tell the story of this amazing technology, nothing will happen. I’ve discussed the IFR with Steve Fetter and he has his facts wrong. Fetter is basically a Frank von Hippel disciple: they have written at least 14 papers together! It was von Hippel who was largely responsible for killing the IFR under Clinton. So von Hippel’s misguided thought process is driving White House policy today. That’s a big mistake. Professor von Hippel twists the facts to support his point of view and fails to bring up compelling counter arguments that he knows are true but would not support his position. He’s not being intellectually honest. I’ve experienced this myself, firsthand. For example, von Hippel often writes that fast reactors are unreliable. When I pointed out to him that there are several examples of reliable fast reactors, including the EBR-II which ran for decades without incident, he said, that these were the “exceptions that prove the rule.” I was floored by that. That’s crazy. It only proves that it is complicated to build a fast reactor, but that it can easily be done very reliably if you know what you are doing. There is nothing inherent to the technology that makes it “unreliable.” You just have to figure out the secrets. When von Hippel heard that Congressman Garamendi was supporting the IFR, he demanded a meeting with Garamendi to “set him straight.” But what happened was just the opposite: Garamendi pointed out to von Hippel that von Hippel’s “facts” were wrong. Von Hippel left that meeting with Garamendi with his tail between his legs muttering something about that being the first time he’s ever spoken with anyone in Congress who knew anything about fast nuclear reactors. In short, if you watch a debate between von Hippel and Garamendi (who is not a scientist), Garamendi easily wins on the facts. If you put von Hippel up against someone who knows the technology like Till, Till would crush von Hippel on both the facts and the arguments. But the Clinton White House never invited Till to debate the arguments with von Hippel. They simply trusted what von Hippel told them. Big mistake. There are lots of problems with von Hippel’s arguments. For example, von Hippel ignores reality believing that if the USA doesn’t do something then it will not happen. That’s incredibly naieve and he’s been proven wrong. The USA invented a safe way to reprocess nuclear waste that isn’t a proliferation risk called pyroprocessing. The nuclear material is not suitable for making a bomb at any time in the process. But we never commercialized it because von Hippel convinced Clinton to cancel it. The French commercialized their reprocessing process (PUREX) which separates out pure plutonium and makes it trivial to make bomb material. So because countries need to reprocess, they pick the unsafe technology because they have no alternative. Similarly, because von Hippel had our fast reactor program cancelled, the Russians are the leaders in fast reactor technology. They’ve been using fast reactor technology for over 30 years to generate power commercially. But we know the Russians have a terrible nuclear safety record (e.g., Chernobyl). The fact is that the Chinese are buying fast reactors from the Russians because there is no US alternative. The problem with von Hippel’s arguments are that the genie is out of the bottle. We can either lead the world in showing how we can do this safely, or the world will choose the less safe alternatives. Today, von Hippel’s decisions have made the world less safe. I could go on and on about how bad von Hippel’s advice is, but this letter is already way too long. MIT was wrong in their report about “The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle” The only other seemingly credible argument against building fast reactors now comes from MIT. The report’s recommendation that we have plenty of time to do RandD appears largely to be driven by one person, co-chair Ernie Moniz. Four world-famous experts on nuclear power and/or climate change and one Congressman challenged Moniz to a debate on the MIT campus on his report. Moniz declined. The report has several major problems. Here are a few of them. The MIT report is inconsistent. On the one hand it says, “To enable an expansion of nuclear power, it must overcome critical challenges in cost, waste disposal, and proliferation concerns while maintaining its currently excellent safety and reliability record.” We agree with that! But then it inexplicably says, “… there are many more viable fuel cycle options and that the optimum choice among them faces great uncertainty…. Greater clarity should emerge over the next few decades… A key message from our work is that we can and should preserve our options for fuel cycle choices by …continuing doing what we are doing today … and researching technology alternatives appropriate to a range of nuclear energy futures.” So even though we have a solution now that can be deployed so we can enable an expansion of nuclear power as soon as possible, MIT advises that we should spend a few more decades because we might find something better than the IFR. This is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard coming from MIT. If you ask any scientist who knows anything about global warming, they will tell you we are decades late in deploying carbon-free power. Had we aggressively ramped fast nuclear closed-cycle reactors decades ago and promoted them worldwide, we wouldn’t be anywhere close to the disastrous situation we are in today. So we are decades too late in ramping up nuclear power, and Moniz wants us to spend decades doing more RandD to get a solution that might be lower cost than the IFR. That’s insane. The report looks at the market price of uranium, but the market price completely ignores the environmental impacts of uranium mining. Shouldn’t that be taken into account? It’s like the cost of gas is cheap because the market price doesn’t include the hidden costs: the impact on the environment and on our health. Do you really think that people are going to embrace expansion of uranium mining in the US? The MIT report is silent on that. So then we are back to being dependent on other countries for uranium. Wasn’t the whole point to be energy independent? The IFR provides that now. We wouldn’t have to do any uranium mining ever again. After a thousand years, when we’ve used all our existing nuclear waste as fuel, we can extract the additional fuel we need from seawater, making our seas less radioactive. We can do that for millions of years. The MIT report ignores what other countries are doing. Obama wants the US to be a leader in clean energy technology. You do that by building the most advanced nuclear designs and refining them. That’s the way you learn and improve. MIT would have us stuck on old LWR technology for a few decades. Does anyone seriously think that is the way to be the world leader? There is virtually no room for improvement in LWR technology. IFR technology is nearly 100 times more efficient, and it emits no long term nuclear waste. If you are a buyer of nuclear power in China, which nuclear reactor are you going to pick? The one that is 100 times more efficient and generates no waste? Or the one that is 100 times less efficient and generates waste that you better store for a million years? Wow. Now that’s a real tough question, isn’t it. Gotta ponder that one. I’m sure Apple Computer isn’t taking advice from Moniz. If they were, they’d still be building the Apple I. Ernie should get a clue. The reason Apple is a market leader is because they bring the latest technology to market before anyone else, not because they keep producing old stuff and spend decades doing RandD to see if they can come up with something better. Other countries are not hampered by MIT’s report. France and Japan recently entered into an agreement with the US DOE whereby we’re giving them the IFR technology for them to exploit. Even though we are stupid, they aren’t stupid. The Chinese are ordering inferior oxide fueled fast reactors from Russia. If the US were building metal-fueled fast reactors with pyroprocessing, it’s a good bet the Chinese would be buying from us instead of the Russians. But if we take Moniz’s advice to not build the world’s best advanced nuclear technology we already have, then there is no chance of that happening. By the time we get to market with a fast reactor, it will be all over. We’ll arrive to the market decades late. Another great American invention that we blew it on. There will always be new technologies that people will propose. But the IFR is a bird in the hand and we really need a solution now we can depend on. If something comes along later that is better, that’s great. But if it doesn’t, we will have a viable technology. We can’t afford to get this wrong. We have already run out of time. Any new nuclear designs are decades away from deployment. On September 22, 2011, DOE agreed to give MIT $7.5 millions of dollars on starting RandD on a fourth generation molten salt reactor design that have never been proven. While it might work, the very smart scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory spent well over a decade on this and were never able to make it work. So DOE is spending millions on an unproven design while spending nothing on the “sure thing” fourth generation reactor that we already know how to build and that ran flawlessly for 30 years. We are all scratching our heads on that one. It makes no sense. But the reason for this is clear: the mandate from the White House that nothing is to built means that DOE can only initiate research, and then cancel the project right before anything would be built. This is an excellent plan for demoralizing scientists and allowing other countries to lead the world in clean energy. Is that really what we want?? If so, then there are much less expensive ways to accomplish that. At a minimum we should be investing in commercializing our “bird in the hand.” That way, if the new molten salt reactor experiments don’t work out, we’ll still have a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem. If we keep cancelling successful projects right before they are done, hoping for the next big thing, we will forever be in RandD mode and get nothing done. That’s where we are today with fourth generation nuclear. I know this is an unusual request, but I also know that if the President is allowed to evaluate the facts first hand, I am absolutely convinced that he will come to the same conclusion as we all have. I urge you to view an 8 minute video narrated by former CBS Morning News anchor Bill Kurtis that explains all of this in a way that anyone can understand. This video can be found at: The video will amaze you. If you would like an independent assessment of what I wrote above from a neutral , trustworthy, and knowledgeable expert, Bill Magwood would be an excellent choice. Magwood was head of nuclear at DOE under Clinton and Bush, and was the longest serving head of nuclear at DOE in US history. He served under both Clinton and Bush administrations. Magwood is familiar with the IFR, but the IFR was cancelled before he was appointed to head civilian nuclear at DOE. So Magwood has no vested interest in the IFR at all. More recently, Magwood was appointed by President Obama to serve on the NRC and is currently serving in that role. Of the current five NRC Commissioners, Magwood is by far, the person most knowledgeable (PMK) about fast reactors. Thank you for your help in bringing this important matter to the President’s attention. Summary Nuclear power is needed. Renewables alone won’t do it. In order to revive nuclear in the US, you must have a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem. The French reprocess their nuclear waste, but their process is expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and has proliferation problems. The USA developed an inexpensive, environmentally friendly, and proliferation resistant method to reprocess our waste (the IFR), but we cancelled it. That decision was a mistake. We should restart the IFR in the US. It will cost $3B to build, but we can cancel the Areva MOX plant and save $10B to pay for it. So we’ll save money, save the planet from an environmental catastrophe, create jobs, get rid of our nuclear waste, and become the world leader in clean energy technology. President Obama should meet personally with Dr. Charles Till, the world’s leading expert on fast reactor technology. Dr. Till will not waste his time meeting with anyone other than the President because he knows that without personal support of the President, nothing will happen. He’s right. Supporters of this technology include Nobel prize winner Hans Bethe (now deceased), Steven Chu, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Charles Till, Dr. Eric Loewen, Congressman John Garamendi, Bill Gates, and even the President of MIT. Even the board of directors of the historically anti-nuclear Sierra Club has agreed that they will not oppose building an IFR! Opposition is from OSTP and OMB. We don’t know who or why. It’s a mystery to all my sources. Frank von Hippel thinks you cannot make fast reactors cheaply or reliably and maintains that stance even when the facts show that not to be the case. Ernie Moniz at MIT thinks we shouldn’t build anything now, but do more RandD for the next several decades hoping we can find something better. Bill Magwood, an Obama appointee to the NRC, would be a reasonable choice to provide an objective assessment of the IFR. He has no vested interested in the IFR, but having been the longest serving head of DOE civilian nuclear in history, is familiar with the pros and cons of the technology. Should OSTP and OMB be making these key decisions behind closed doors? Is this really reflective of what the President wants? He’s stated publicly he wants the US to be a world leader in clean energy. Is putting our best technology on the shelf, but licensing the French and Japanese to build it (Joint Statement on Trilateral Cooperation in the area of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors signed on October 4, 2010 by DOE), the best way for the US to achieve the leadership that Obama said he wanted? I am happy to provide you with additional information. Demonstrating commercial IFRs leads to global adoption in a fast time frame
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, “Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III),” 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
There are many compelling reasons to pursue the rapid demonstration of a full-scale IFR, as a lead-in to a subsequent global deployment of this technology within a relatively short time frame. Certainly the urgency of climate change can be a potent tool in winning over environmentalists to this idea. Yet political expediency—due to widespread skepticism of anthropogenic causes for climate change—suggests that the arguments for rolling out IFRs can be effectively tailored to their audience. Energy security—especially with favorable economics—is a primary interest of every nation. The impressive safety features of new nuclear power plant designs should encourage a rapid uptick in construction without concern for the spent fuel they will produce, for all of it will quickly be used up once IFRs begin to be deployed. It is certainly manageable until that time. Burying spent fuel in non-retrievable geologic depositories should be avoided, since it represents a valuable clean energy resource that can last for centuries even if used on a grand scale. Many countries are now beginning to pursue fast reactor technology without the cooperation of the United States, laboriously (and expensively) re-learning the lessons of what does and doesn’t work. If this continues, we will see a variety of different fast reactor designs, some of which will be less safe than others. Why are we forcing other nations to reinvent the wheel? Since the USA invested years of effort and billions of dollars to develop what is arguably the world’s safest and most efficient fast reactor system in the IFR, and since several nations have asked us to share this technology with them (Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, India), there is a golden opportunity here to develop a common goal—a standardized design, and a framework for international control of fast reactor technology and the fissile material that fuels them. This opportunity should be a top priority in the coming decade, if we are serious about replacing fossil fuels worldwide with sufficient pace to effectively mitigate climate change and other environmental and geopolitical crises of the 21st century. Initial plants jumpstart future investment
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source,” 6/27/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/climate-bill-ignores-our_b_221796.html
In our own country, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy and a consortium of America's major corporations (including Babcock and Wilcox, Bechtel, Westinghouse, and Raytheon) came to the same conclusion. They have a reactor design, the PRISM, that is ready to be built based on the original Argonne IFR design. There is a lot of misinformation about nuclear There is a tremendous amount of misinformation about nuclear out there. There are books and papers galore that appear to be credible citing all the reasons nuclear is a bad idea. I could probably spend the rest of my life investigating them all. Those reports that have been brought to my attention I've looked into and, after a fair amount of effort, found them not to be persuasive. Did you know that there is more than 100 times more radiation from a typical coal plant than a nuclear plant, yet the nuclear plant is perceived by the public to be a radiation hazard. Another example of misinformation is in Discover magazine June 2009 entitled "New Tech Could Make Nuclear the Best Weapon Against Climate Change" talking about the importance of the IFR to both greenhouse gas emissions and to our future energy needs. But the article implies the scientists want to do more studies and that an improved design will take 10 to 20 years. I keep in close touch with a number of the top scientists who worked on the IFR, including IFR inventor Charles Till, and they are saying the opposite...that we are 20 years late on building one and the sooner we build one, the better. We should build a $3B demonstration plant now to get started We should be exploring all viable options to solve our energy problems and global warming. General Electric working with Argonne and/or Idaho National Laboratory (INL) could build a small prototype fourth generation nuclear reactor (311 megawatts of electricity (MWe)) for about $2 billion and $1 billion for a pilot commercial-scale pyroprocessing plant to recycle the spent fuel. That $3 billion one-time investment would settle once and for all whether this is a good idea or not. Following this demonstration, the deployment of dozens of commercial fast reactors and pyroprocessing facilities needed to handle the light water reactor (LWR) spent fuel could be economically competitive as electricity generators and their construction could be carried out by the industry using standardized, modular, factory built designs to reduce costs without any further government investment. Compare that one-time RandD investment to the estimated $96 billion cost of storing the waste at Yucca Mountain. Isn't it smarter to spend a little money to prove we can recycle our waste and generate power than to spend $100 billion to bury it? Compare this one-time $3 billion investment to the $10 billion that will be spent on the AREVA Mixed Oxide (MOX) plant, which is being built to dispose of only 33 tons of plutonium. The MOX plant is a big waste of money. The IFR could denature the weapons Pu much faster and more cheaply. IFRs are technologically ready – we just have to decide to build them
Brook 11 (Barry Brook, Professor of Climate Change University of Adelaide, “Nuclear power and climate change – what now?” 5/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/28/np-cc-what-now/
But detractors will nevertheless complain that reactors like the ESBWR still produce long-lived radioactive waste products that will have to be safely watched over for what is, for all intents and purposes, forever (from a human standpoint). Another objection frequently raised is the risk of nuclear proliferation, the fear that nuclear material will be misdirected from power plants and made into nuclear weapons. Fuel supply is also an issue when the prospect of a burgeoning nuclear renaissance is considered, with demand for uranium expected to skyrocket. And over all this looms the capital cost of building nuclear power plants, which many consider a deal-breaker even if all the other issues could be resolved. Back in the early Eighties a group of talented nuclear physicists and engineers realized that if there was to be any reasonable expectation of widespread public acceptance of nuclear power, all these problems would have to be solved. So they set out to solve them. Under the leadership of Dr. Charles Till at Argonne National Laboratory’s western branch in the state of Idaho, a virtual army of nuclear professionals designed an energy system that many expect will soon power the planet, if only we can muster the political will to deploy it. Their test reactor operated virtually flawlessly for thirty years as they identified and solved one potential obstacle after another, proceeding methodically until they were ready to demonstrate the commercial-scale viability of their revolutionary fuel recycling system that would complete what had been a spectacularly successful project. What they had accomplished during those years was, without exaggeration, probably the most important energy system ever invented, one that promises virtually unlimited safe, clean energy for the entire planet. Unfortunately, an almost unbelievable shortsightedness on the part of politicians in Washington D.C. pulled the plug on the project just as it reached its final stage in 1994, and the promise of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) languished virtually unnoticed for the next fifteen years. Figure 1: A simplified version of an IFR reactor. Illustration courtesy of Andrew Arthur The Integral Fast Reactor But the IFR is such a grand invention that it couldn’t stay buried any longer, and people around the world are now clamoring for it to be deployed. The looming threat of climate change has prompted many to take a fresh look at nuclear power. Some have considered the problem of so-called “nuclear waste” (not waste at all, as we shall soon see) an acceptable price to pay in order to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. In the wake of the Japan accident, safety will also be prominent in the debate. The IFR, though, is so impressive in its qualifications that even previously hard-core anti-nuclear activists have touted it as the ultimate answer. And the fact that over 300 reactor-years of experience have been accumulated with fast reactors around the world means that such technology is no pipe dream, but a mature technology ripe for commercial deployment. The term Integral Fast Reactor denotes two distinct parts: A sodium-cooled fast neutron fission reactor and a recycling facility to process the spent fuel. A single recycling facility would be co-located with a cluster of reactors. Figure 1 shows a simplified version of such a reactor. It consists of a stainless steel tub of sodium, a metal that liquifies at about the boiling point of water. Sodium is used both as a completely non-corrosive coolant and, in a separate non-radioactive loop, as the heat transfer agent to transport the heat to a steam generator in a separate structure (thus avoiding any possible sodium-water interaction in the reactor structure). The system is unpressurized, and the pumps are electromagnetic pumps with no moving parts. In the event of a loss of flow, natural convection and the large amount of sodium will be sufficient to dissipate the heat from the fission products in the core, unlike the situation in the Japanese reactors at Fukushima, which required constant cooling even though the reactors had been shut off. The commercial-scale iteration of the IFR’s reactor component is called the PRISM (or its slightly larger successor, the S-PRISM, though for the sake of brevity I’ll hereafter call it simply the PRISM, which stands for Power Reactor Innovative Small Module). It was designed by a consortium of American companies in conjunction with Argonne Lab, and is now being further refined by GE/Hitachi Nuclear. From a safety standpoint it is unparalleled. If the risk assessment studies for the ESBWR mentioned above sound impressive, those of the IFR are even better. In my book Prescription for the Planet, I did a thought experiment based on the risk assessment studies for the PRISM that have already gotten a preliminary nod from the NRC. The likelihood of a core meltdown was so improbable that I figured out how often we could expect one if thousands of PRISMs were providing all the energy (not just electricity) that humanity will require a few decades hence (according to most estimates). Remember, the occurrence of one meltdown would require dividing the total number of reactors into the probability for a single reactor. Even so, the probable core meltdown frequency came to once every 435,000 years! Even if that risk assessment was exaggerated by ten thousand times, it would still mean we could expect a meltdown about once every half-century for all the energy humanity needs. Reactors and Natural Disasters The crisis at Fukushima’s power plant has stoked fears that existing nuclear sites may be incapable of withstanding quakes in excess of their design specifications. Whereas many lightwater reactors are designed to withstand G forces of about 0.3, the PRISM is rated at 1.0. This G rating is different than a Richter scale rating because the Richter scale represents the total energy released in an earthquake, which is dependent on many factors (duration, depth, etc.). When designing a structure or piece of equipment to withstand earthquakes, the degree of ground acceleration is what matters. If one were to stand directly on a geological fault line during the most severe earthquake imaginable, the G forces caused by ground acceleration would almost certainly not exceed 1.0. (The maximum ground motion at the Fukushima complex during the earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale was 0.56 G) So the PRISM reactor, designed for that level of motion, could safely be built in any seismically active area. Of course it goes without saying that no power plant should be built at a low elevation in a zone that is vulnerable to tsunamis, or for that matter on a flood plain. But with the PRISM, seismic shocks are not an issue. As for proliferation risk, it should be pointed out that the risk of proliferation from any sort of power reactor has been substantially mischaracterized and generally overblown. The reason is that the isotopic composition of the uranium and plutonium in power reactors is lousy for making weapons. Any country that wishes to pursue a weapons program covertly is far better served by using a small research reactor operated in a specific manner to produce high-grade weapons material, and even then it requires a quite complex reprocessing system to separate it. That being said, the IFR system uses a unique metal fuel that can not only be easily and cheaply recycled on-site and then fabricated into new fuel elements, but at no stage of the fuel cycle is any sort of weapons-grade material isolated. All the isotopes of uranium and plutonium are not only left mixed with their various cousins, but there is always at least a bit of highly radioactive fission product elements, making the fuel impossible to handle except by remote systems. Figure 2: The fission products will only be radioactive beyond the level of natural ore for a few hundred years. The buildup of such fission products in the fuel, though, is what eventually necessitates pulling fuel elements out of the reactor for recycling. In the pyroprocessing system—a type of electrorefining common in the metallurgical industry but unique to the IFR among reactor systems—the majority of the fission products are isolated. The rest of the fuel is reincorporated into new fuel elements. The fission products, representing only a small percentage of the fuel, are entombed in borosilicate glass that can’t leach any of them into the environment for thousands of years. Yet the fission products will only be radioactive beyond the level of natural ore for a few hundred years (see Figure 2). Thus the so-called “million year waste problem” is neatly solved. As for the question of uranium supply, that issue is moot once we begin to build IFRs. First we’ll use up all the spent fuel that’s been generated over the years by LWRs, plus all the weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from decommissioned nuclear weapons. It’s all perfect for fuel in IFRs. But then when that’s all gone we can fuel them with depleted uranium. There is already so much of it out of the ground from years of nuclear power use that even if we were to supply all the energy humanity is likely to need from just IFRs alone, we’ve got enough fuel already at hand for nearly a thousand years. As efficient as LWRs are in squeezing a huge amount of energy out of a small amount of fuel, fast reactors like the PRISM are about 150 times more efficient. In fact, all the energy a profligate American would be likely to use in a lifetime could be extracted from a piece of depleted uranium the size of half a ping-pong ball. Finally we come to the clincher: the cost. For some reason it supposedly is going to cost anywhere from two to five times as much to build a nuclear power plant in the USA than exactly the same design being built in the Far East. This comparison applies not just to countries with low labor costs but to Japan too, where labor costs are high and nearly all the materials are imported. It’s an American societal and political problem, not an inherent flaw of nuclear power. Utility companies fear that a group of protesters with signs and lawyers might shut down construction midway through a multi-billion-dollar project, or prevent a built reactor from operating. So they prudently try to build that uncertainty into their cost estimates (with maybe a little padding to boot). A golf ball of uranium would provide more than enough energy for your entire lifetime, including electricity for homes, vehicles and mobile devices, synthetic fuels for vehicles (including tractors to produce your food and jet fuel for your flights). Your legacy? A soda can of fission product was, that would be less radioactive than natural uranium ore in 300 years. The new reactor designs, both the Gen III+ designs mentioned earlier and the PRISM, are designed to be mass-produced in modules, then assembled at the power plant site. The PRISM has the added advantage of operating at atmospheric pressure, so no pressure vessel or high-pressure pumps are needed. The passive safety principles mean that multiple redundancy is unnecessary, allowing such reactors to have far fewer pumps, valves, controls, and other components than their older Gen II predecessors. Based on both industry estimates and actual experience of building these reactors since the Nineties, there is every reason to believe that the price can be kept well below $2,000/kW, though the Chinese plan to produce them for half that price once their mass production supply lines are in place. There is virtually no doubt that with these new nuclear technologies available, the shift to predominantly nuclear power is virtually inevitable in the long term. Over sixty new plants are under construction around the world with many more to come, even if some nations are temporarily deterred by political and social pressures. If we’re serious about solving the climate change problem before it’s too late, we’ll have to get serious about the only zero-emission baseload power source that can easily supply all the energy the world needs. We shouldn’t consider this a Faustian bargain. These new designs—particularly the IFR—are clean, safe, economical, and able to convert waste products that we desperately want to get rid of into abundant energy for the entire planet. Anyone serious about protecting the environment can safely embrace them with enthusiasm. It’ll be cheap
Archambeau et al 11 (Charles Archambeau, Geophysicist, PhD from Caltech, taught at the University of Colorado and CalTech, Randolph Ware, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Tom Blees, president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives, Barry Brook, Climate Professor at University of Adelaide, Yoon Chang, B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Seoul National University, Korea; an M.E. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas AandM University; and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Science from The University of Michigan. He also holds an M.B.A. from The University of Chicago, Chair of IAEA’s Technical Working Group on Nuclear Fuel Cycle Options and Spent Fuel Management, awarded the U.S. Department of Energy’s prestigious E.O. Lawrence Award, Jerry Peterson, University of Colorado, Robert Serafin, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Joseph Shuster, Evgeny Velikhov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Tom Wigley, National Center for Atmospheric Research, “The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR): An Optimized Source for Global Energy Needs,” 2011)
The new features of the IFR systems with pyroprocessing are such that the cost of electrical energy production is estimated to be quite low, in the range below $.01 per kilowatt-hour for an IFR. (For comparison, natural gas fuel cost was at $.05 per kilowatthour, and coal was at about $.03 per kilowatt-hour, while LWR nuclear power was at $.02 per kilowatt-hour.) The G.E. estimated building cost of the S-Prism reactor (Fletcher, 2006) is $1300/kw, where this cost assumes some cost savings due to mass production and modular construction. For a commercial level gigawatt reactor (using 3 modular S-Prism reactors with 380 MW of power from each) the cost would total $1.3 billion dollars per one gigawatt plant. These nuclear plants are essentially carbon dioxide emissions free, and in general produce no atmospheric pollution. Further, all the Uranium fuel can be provided from processing the stock piles of spent and depleted Uranium fuel. Therefore, no Uranium mining and associated pollution will occur. Likewise, IFR waste material is minimal and short-lived so that no pollution will occur from this source. Consequently, significant reduction in greenhouse gases, and a variety of other dangerous pollutants, can be immediately achieved if these IFR plants are used to replace the furnaces in coal burning power plants which exist in profusion world-wide. Here the infrastructure at existing coal fueled plants, such as electric power lines, water sources and conduits, steam turbines, etc., can all be simply converted and used in the nuclear powered plant. Hence, costs of building complete power plants and their electrical connections to the grid can be minimized while the impact on global warming and pollution related diseases can be maximized by replacing the worst of the polluters. Further, it is urgent that we move quickly to strongly and immediately control CO2 gas emissions to drastically slow global warming. Clearly, the costs are not prohibitive since construction of one large stand-alone pyroprocessing plant, at about 6 billion dollars, and only about 10 of the large IFR powered plants, costing under 20 billion dollars, will go a long way toward strongly dampening the massive production of CO2 emissions from existing electricity power plants in the U.S. |
| 01/18/2013 | Tournament: USC | Round: Octos | Opponent: | Judge:
Advantage 1 is warming Warming is real and anthropogenic
Prothero 12 (Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College, Lecturer in Geobiology at CalTech, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused," 3/1/12, EBSCO)
How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There are numerous lines of evidence that converge toward this conclusion. 1. Carbon Dioxide Increase Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased at an unprecedented rate in the past 200 years. Not one data set collected over a long enough span of time shows otherwise. Mann et al. (1999) compiled the past 900 years' worth of temperature data from tree rings, ice cores, corals, and direct measurements in the past few centuries, and the sudden increase of temperature of the past century stands out like a sore thumb. This famous graph is now known as the "hockey stick" because it is long and straight through most of its length, then bends sharply upward at the end like the blade of a hockey stick. Other graphs show that climate was very stable within a narrow range of variation through the past 1000, 2000, or even 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. There were minor warming events during the Climatic Optimum about 7000 years ago, the Medieval Warm Period, and the slight cooling of the Litde Ice Age in the 1700s and 1800s. But the magnitude and rapidity of the warming represented by the last 200 years is simply unmatched in all of human history. More revealing, the timing of this warming coincides with the Industrial Revolution, when humans first began massive deforestation and released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning an unprecedented amount of coal, gas, and oil. 2. Melting Polar Ice Caps The polar icecaps are thinning and breaking up at an alarming rate. In 2000, my former graduate advisor Malcolm McKenna was one of the first humans to fly over the North Pole in summer time and see no ice, just open water. The Arctic ice cap has been frozen solid for at least the past 3 million years (and maybe longer), 4 but now the entire ice sheet is breaking up so fast that by 2030 (and possibly sooner) less than half of the Arctic will be ice covered in the summer. 5 As one can see from watching the news, this is an ecological disaster for everything that lives up there, from the polar bears to the seals and walruses to the animals they feed upon, to the 4 million people whose world is melting beneath their feet. The Antarctic is thawing even faster. In February-March 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf -- over 3000 square km (the size of Rhode Island) and 220 m (700 feet) thick -- broke up in just a few months, a story -typical of nearly all the ice shelves in Antarctica. The Larsen B shelf had survived all the previous ice ages and interglacial warming episodes over the past 3 million years, and even the warmest periods of the last 10,000 years -- yet it and nearly all the other thick ice sheets on the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctic are vanishing at a rate never before seen in geologic history. 3. Melting Glaciers Glaciers are all retreating at the highest rates ever documented. Many of those glaciers, along with snow melt, especially in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, and Sierras, provide most of the freshwater that the populations below the mountains depend upon -- yet this fresh water supply is vanishing. Just think about the percentage of world's population in southern Asia (especially India) that depend on Himalayan snowmelt for their fresh water. The implications are staggering. The permafrost that once remained solidly frozen even in the summer has now thawed, damaging the Inuit villages on the Arctic coast and threatening all our pipelines to the North Slope of Alaska. This is catastrophic not only for life on the permafrost, but as it thaws, the permafrost releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases which are one of the major contributors to global warming. Not only is the ice vanishing, but we have seen record heat waves over and over again, killing thousands of people, as each year joins the list of the hottest years on record. (2010 just topped that list as the hottest year, surpassing the previous record in 2009, and we shall know about 2011 soon enough). Natural animal and plant populations are being devastated all over the globe as their environments change. 6 Many animals respond by moving their ranges to formerly cold climates, so now places that once did not have to worry about disease-bearing mosquitoes are infested as the climate warms and allows them to breed further north. 4. Sea Level Rise All that melted ice eventually ends up in the ocean, causing sea levels to rise, as it has many times in the geologic past. At present, the sea level is rising about 3-4 mm per year, more than ten times the rate of 0.1-0.2 mm/year that has occurred over the past 3000 years. Geological data show that the sea level was virtually unchanged over the past 10,000 years since the present interglacial began. A few mm here or there doesn't impress people, until you consider that the rate is accelerating and that most scientists predict sea levels will rise 80-130 cm in just the next century. A sea level rise of 1.3 m (almost 4 feet) would drown many of the world's low-elevation cities, such as Venice and New Orleans, and low-lying countries such as the Netherlands or Bangladesh. A number of tiny island nations such as Vanuatu and the Maldives, which barely poke out above the ocean now, are already vanishing beneath the waves. Eventually their entire population will have to move someplace else. 7 Even a small sea level rise might not drown all these areas, but they are much more vulnerable to the large waves of a storm surge (as happened with Hurricane Katrina), which could do much more damage than sea level rise alone. If sea level rose by 6 m (20 feet), most of the world's coastal plains and low-lying areas (such as the Louisiana bayous, Florida, and most of the world's river deltas) would be drowned. Most of the world's population lives in low-elevation coastal cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, and Shanghai. All of those cities would be partially or completely under water with such a sea level rise. If all the glacial ice caps melted completely (as they have several times before during past greenhouse episodes in the geologic past), sea level would rise by 65 m (215 feet)! The entire Mississippi Valley would flood, so you could dock an ocean liner in Cairo, Illinois. Such a sea level rise would drown nearly every coastal region under hundreds of feet of water, and inundate New York City, London and Paris. All that would remain would be the tall landmarks such as the Empire State Building, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower. You could tie your boats to these pinnacles, but the rest of these drowned cities would lie deep underwater. Climate Change Critic's Arguments and Scientists' Rebuttals Despite the overwhelming evidence there are many people who remain skeptical. One reason is that they have been fed distortions and misstatements by the global warming denialists who cloud or confuse the issue. Let's examine some of these claims in detail: * "It's just natural climatic variability." No, it is not. As I detailed in my 2009 book, Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs, geologists and paleoclimatologists know a lot about past greenhouse worlds, and the icehouse planet that has existed for the past 33 million years. We have a good understanding of how and why the Antarctic ice sheet first appeared at that time, and how the Arctic froze over about 3.5 million years ago, beginning the 24 glacial and interglacial episodes of the "Ice Ages" that have occurred since then. We know how variations in the earth's orbit (the Milankovitch cycles) controls the amount of solar radiation the earth receives, triggering the shifts between glacial and interglacial periods. Our current warm interglacial has already lasted 10,000 years, the duration of most previous interglacials, so if it were not for global warming, we would be headed into the next glacial in the next 1000 years or so. Instead, our pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere after they were long trapped in the earth's crust has pushed the planet into a "super-interglacial," already warmer than any previous warming period. We can see the "big picture" of climate variability most clearly in ice cores from the EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica), which show the details of the last 650,000 years of glacial-inters glacial cycles (Fig. 2). At no time during any previous interglacial did the carbon dioxide levels exceed 300 ppm, even at their very warmest. Our atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are already close to 400 ppm today. The atmosphere is headed to 600 ppm within a few decades, even if we stopped releasing greenhouse gases immediately. This is decidedly not within the normal range of "climatic variability," but clearly unprecedented in human history. Anyone who says this is "normal variability" has never seen the huge amount of paleoclimatic data that show otherwise. * "It's just another warming episode, like the Medieval Warm Period, or the Holocene Climatic Optimum or the end of the Little Ice Age." Untrue. There were numerous small fluctuations of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years of the Holocene. But in the case of the Medieval Warm Period (about 950-1250 A.D.), the temperatures increased only 1°C, much less than we have seen in the current episode of global warming (Fig. 1). This episode was also only a local warming in the North Atlantic and northern Europe. Global temperatures over this interval did not warm at all, and actually cooled by more than 1°C. Likewise, the warmest period of the last 10,000 years was the Holocene Climatic Optimum ( 5,000-9,000 B.C.E.) when warmer and wetter conditions in Eurasia contributed to the rise of the first great civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China. This was largely a Northern Hemisphere-Eurasian phenomenon, with 2-3°C warming in the Arctic and northern Europe. But there was almost no warming in the tropics, and cooling or no change in the Southern Hemisphere. 8 From a Eurocentric viewpoint, these warming events seemed important, but on a global scale the effect was negligible. In addition, neither of these warming episodes is related to increasing greenhouse gases. The Holocene Climatic Optimum, in fact, is predicted by the Milankovitch cycles, since at that time the axial tilt of the earth was 24°, its steepest value, meaning the Northern Hemisphere got more solar radiation than normal -- but the Southern Hemisphere less, so the two balanced. By contrast, not only is the warming observed in the last 200 years much greater than during these previous episodes, but it is also global and bipolar, so it is not a purely local effect. The warming that ended the Little Ice Age (from the mid-1700s to the late 1800s) was due to increased solar radiation prior to 1940. Since 1940, however, the amount of solar radiation has been dropping, so the only candidate remaining for the post-1940 warming is carbon dioxide. 9 "It's just the sun, or cosmic rays, or volcanic activity or methane." Nope, sorry. The amount of heat that the sun provides has been decreasing since 1940, 10 just the opposite of the critics' claims (Fig. 3). There is no evidence of an increase in cosmic ray particles during the past century. 11 Nor is there any clear evidence that large-scale volcanic events (such as the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, which changed global climate for about a year) have any long-term effects that would explain 200 years of warming and carbon dioxide increase. Volcanoes erupt only 0.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, but humans emit over 29 billion tonnes a year, 12 roughly 100 times as much. Clearly, we have a bigger effect. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas, but there is 200 times more carbon dioxide than methane, so carbon dioxide is still the most important agent. 13 Every other alternative has been looked at and can be ruled out. The only clear-cut relationship is between human-caused carbon dioxide increase and global warming. * "The climate records since 1995 (or 1998) show cooling." That's simply untrue. The only way to support this argument is to cherry-pick the data. 14 Over the short term, there was a slight cooling trend from 1998-2000, but only because 1998 was a record-breaking El Nino year, so the next few years look cooler by comparison (Fig. 4). But since 2002, the overall long-term trend of warming is unequivocal. All of the 16 hottest years ever recorded on a global scale have occurred in the last 20 years. They are (in order of hottest first): 2010, 2009, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2001, 1997, 2008, 1995, 1999, 1990, and 2000. 15 In other words, every year since 2000 has been on the Top Ten hottest years list. The rest of the top 16 include 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Only 1996 failed to make the list (because of the short-term cooling mentioned already). * "We had record snows in the winter of 2009-2010, and also in 2010-2011." So what? This is nothing more than the difference between weather (short-term seasonal changes) and climate (the long-term average of weather over decades and centuries and longer). Our local weather tells us nothing about another continent, or the global average; it is only a local effect, determined by short-term atmospheric and oceano-graphic conditions. 16 In fact, warmer global temperatures mean more moisture in the atmosphere, which increases the intensity of normal winter snowstorms. In this particular case, the climate change critics forget that the early winter of November-December 2009 was actually very mild and warm, and then only later in January and February did it get cold and snow heavily. That warm spell in early winter helped bring more moisture into the system, so that when cold weather occurred, the snows were worse. In addition, the snows were unusually heavy only in North America; the rest of the world had different weather, and the global climate was warmer than average. Also, the summer of 2010 was the hottest on record, breaking the previous record set in 2009. * "Carbon dioxide is good for plants, so the world will be better off." Who do they think they're kidding? The Competitive Enterprise Institute (funded by oil and coal companies and conservative foundations 17) has run a series of shockingly stupid ads concluding with the tag line "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life." Anyone who knows the basic science of earth's atmosphere can spot the gross inaccuracies in this ad. 18 True, plants take in carbon dioxide that animals exhale, as they have for millions of years. But the whole point of the global warming evidence (as shown from ice cores) is that the delicate natural balance of carbon dioxide has been thrown off balance by our production of too much of it, way in excess of what plants or the oceans can handle. As a consequence, the oceans are warming 19, 20 and absorbing excess carbon dioxide making them more acidic. Already we are seeing a shocking decline in coral reefs ("bleaching") and extinctions in many marine ecosystems that can't handle too much of a good thing. Meanwhile, humans are busy cutting down huge areas of temperate and tropical forests, which not only means there are fewer plants to absorb the gas, but the slash and burn practices are releasing more carbon dioxide than plants can keep up with. There is much debate as to whether increased carbon dioxide might help agriculture in some parts of the world, but that has to be measured against the fact that other traditional "breadbasket" regions (such as the American Great Plains) are expected to get too hot to be as productive as they are today. The latest research 21 actually shows that increased carbon dioxide inhibits the absorption of nitrogen into plants, so plants (at least those that we depend upon today) are not going to flourish in a greenhouse world. It is difficult to know if those who tell the public otherwise are ignorant of basic atmospheric science and global geochemistry, or if they are being cynically disingenuous. * "I agree that climate is changing, but I'm skeptical that humans are the main cause, so we shouldn't do anything." This is just fence sitting. A lot of reasonable skeptics deplore the right wing's rejection of the reality of climate change, but still want to be skeptical about the cause. If they want proof, they can examine the huge array of data that points directly to human caused global warming. 22 We can directly measure the amount of carbon dioxide humans are producing, and it tracks exactly with the amount of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Through carbon isotope analysis, we can show that this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming directly from our burning of fossil fuels, not from natural sources. We can also measure the drop in oxygen as it combines with the increased carbon levels to produce carbon dioxide. We have satellites in space that are measuring the heat released from the planet and can actually see the atmosphere getting warmer. The most crucial evidence emerged only within the past few years: climate models of the greenhouse effect predict that there should be cooling in the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere above 10 km or 6 miles in elevation), but warming in the troposphere (the bottom layer below 10 km or 6 miles), and that's exactly what our space probes have measured. Finally, we can rule out any other suspects (see above): solar heat is decreasing since 1940, not increasing, and there are no measurable increases in cosmic rays, methane, volcanic gases, or any other potential cause. Face it -- it's our problem. Why Do People Continue to Question the Reality of Climate Change? Thanks to all the noise and confusion over climate change, the general public has only a vague idea of what the debate is really about, and only about half of Americans think global warming is real or that we are to blame. 23 As in the evolution/creationism debate, the scientific community is virtually unanimous on what the data demonstrate about anthropogenic global warming. This has been true for over a decade. When science historian Naomi Oreskes 24 surveyed all peer-reviewed papers on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 in the world's leading scientific journal, Science, she found that there were 980 supporting the idea of human-induced global warming and none opposing it. In 2009, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman 25 surveyed all the climate scientists who were familiar with the data. They found that 95-99% agreed that global warming is real and human caused. In 2010, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study that showed that 98% of the scientists who actually do research in climate change are in agreement over anthropogenic global warming. 26 Every major scientific organization in the world has endorsed the conclusion of anthropogenic climate change as well. This is a rare degree of agreement within such an independent and cantankerous group as the world's top scientists. This is the same degree of scientific consensus that scientists have achieved over most major ideas, including gravity, evolution, and relativity. These and only a few other topics in science can claim this degree of agreement among nearly all the world's leading scientists, especially among everyone who is close to the scientific data and knows the problem intimately. If it were not such a controversial topic politically, there would be almost no interest in debating it since the evidence is so clear-cut. If the climate science community speaks with one voice (as in the 2007 IPCC report, and every report since then), why is there still any debate at all? The answer has been revealed by a number of investigations by diligent reporters who got past the PR machinery denying global warming, and uncovered the money trail. Originally, there were no real "dissenters" to the idea of global warming by scientists who are actually involved with climate research. Instead, the forces with vested interests in denying global climate change (the energy companies, and the "free-market" advocates) followed the strategy of tobacco companies: create a smokescreen of confusion and prevent the American public from recognizing scientific consensus. As the famous memo 27 from the tobacco lobbyists said "Doubt is our product." The denialists generated an anti-science movement entirely out of thin air and PR. The evidence for this PR conspiracy has been well documented in numerous sources. For example, Oreskes and Conway revealed from memos leaked to the press that in April 1998 the right-wing Marshall Institute, SEPP (Fred Seitz's lobby that aids tobacco companies and polluters), and ExxonMobil, met in secret at the American Petroleum Institute's headquarters in Washington, D.C. There they planned a $20 million campaign to get "respected scientists" to cast doubt on climate change, get major PR efforts going, and lobby Congress that global warming isn't real and is not a threat. The right-wing institutes and the energy lobby beat the bushes to find scientists -- any scientists -- who might disagree with the scientific consensus. As investigative journalists and scientists have documented over and over again, 28 the denialist conspiracy essentially paid for the testimony of anyone who could be useful to them. The day that the 2007 IPCC report was released (Feb. 2, 2007), the British newspaper The Guardian reported that the conservative American Enterprise Institute (funded largely by oil companies and conservative think tanks) had offered $10,000 plus travel expenses to scientists who would write negatively about the IPCC report. 29 In February 2012, leaks of documents from the denialist Heartland Institute revealed that they were trying to influence science education, suppress the work of scientists, and had paid off many prominent climate deniers, such as Anthony Watts, all in an effort to circumvent the scientific consensus by doing an "end run" of PR and political pressure. Other leaks have shown 9 out of 10 major climate deniers are paid by ExxonMobil. 30 We are accustomed to hired-gun "experts" paid by lawyers to muddy up the evidence in the case they are fighting, but this is extraordinary -- buying scientists outright to act as shills for organizations trying to deny scientific reality. With this kind of money, however, you can always find a fringe scientist or crank or someone with no relevant credentials who will do what they're paid to do. Fishing around to find anyone with some science background who will agree with you and dispute a scientific consensus is a tactic employed by the creationists to sound "scientific". The NCSE created a satirical "Project Steve," 31 which demonstrated that there were more scientists who accept evolution named "Steve" than the total number of "scientists who dispute evolution". It may generate lots of PR and a smokescreen to confuse the public, but it doesn't change the fact that scientists who actually do research in climate change are unanimous in their insistence that anthropogenic global warming is a real threat. Most scientists I know and respect work very hard for little pay, yet they still cannot be paid to endorse some scientific idea they know to be false. The climate deniers have a lot of other things in common with creationists and other anti-science movements. They too like to quote someone out of context ("quote mining"), finding a short phrase in the work of legitimate scientists that seems to support their position. But when you read the full quote in context, it is obvious that they have used the quote inappropriately. The original author meant something that does not support their goals. The "Climategate scandal" is a classic case of this. It started with a few stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. If you read the complete text of the actual emails 32 and comprehend the scientific shorthand of climate scientists who are talking casually to each other, it is clear that there was no great "conspiracy" or that they were faking data. All six subsequent investigations have cleared Philip Jones and the other scientists of the University of East Anglia of any wrongdoing or conspiracy. 33 Even if there had been some conspiracy on the part of these few scientists, there is no reason to believe that the entire climate science community is secretly working together to generate false information and mislead the public. If there's one thing that is clear about science, it's about competition and criticism, not conspiracy and collusion. Most labs are competing with each other, not conspiring together. If one lab publishes a result that is not clearly defensible, other labs will quickly correct it. As James Lawrence Powell wrote: Scientists…show no evidence of being more interested in politics or ideology than the average American. Does it make sense to believe that tens of thousands of scientists would be so deeply and secretly committed to bringing down capitalism and the American way of life that they would spend years beyond their undergraduate degrees working to receive master's and Ph.D. degrees, then go to work in a government laboratory or university, plying the deep oceans, forbidding deserts, icy poles, and torrid jungles, all for far less money than they could have made in industry, all the while biding their time like a Russian sleeper agent in an old spy novel? Scientists tend to be independent and resist authority. That is why you are apt to find them in the laboratory or in the field, as far as possible from the prying eyes of a supervisor. Anyone who believes he could organize thousands of scientists into a conspiracy has never attended a single faculty meeting. 34 There are many more traits that the climate deniers share with the creationists and Holocaust deniers and others who distort the truth. They pick on small disagreements between different labs as if scientists can't get their story straight, when in reality there is always a fair amount of give and take between competing labs as they try to get the answer right before the other lab can do so. The key point here is that when all these competing labs around the world have reached a consensus and get the same answer, there is no longer any reason to doubt their common conclusion. The anti-scientists of climate denialism will also point to small errors by individuals in an effort to argue that the entire enterprise cannot be trusted. It is true that scientists are human, and do make mistakes, but the great power of the scientific method is that peer review weeds these out, so that when scientists speak with consensus, there is no doubt that their data are checked carefully Finally, a powerful line of evidence that this is a purely political controversy, rather than a scientific debate, is that the membership lists of the creationists and the climate deniers are highly overlapping. Both anti-scientific dogmas are fed to their overlapping audiences through right-wing media such as Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. Just take a look at the "intelligent-design" cre-ationism website for the Discovery Institute. Most of the daily news items lately have nothing to do with creationism at all, but are focused on climate denial and other right-wing causes. 35 If the data about global climate change are indeed valid and robust, any qualified scientist should be able to look at them and see if the prevailing scientific interpretation holds up. Indeed, such a test took place. Starting in 2010, a group led by U.C. Berkeley physicist Richard Muller re-examined all the temperature data from the NOAA, East Anglia Hadley Climate Research Unit, and the Goddard Institute of Space Science sources. Even though Muller started out as a skeptic of the temperature data, and was funded by the Koch brothers and other oil company sources, he carefully checked and re-checked the research himself. When the GOP leaders called him to testify before the House Science and Technology Committee in spring 2011, they were expecting him to discredit the temperature data. Instead, Muller shocked his GOP sponsors by demonstrating his scientific integrity and telling the truth: the temperature increase is real, and the scientists who have demonstrated that the climate is changing are right (Fig. 5). In the fall of 2011, his study was published, and the conclusions were clear: global warming is real, even to a right-wing skeptical scientist. Unlike the hired-gun scientists who play political games, Muller did what a true scientist should do: if the data go against your biases and preconceptions, then do the right thing and admit it -- even if you've been paid by sponsors who want to discredit global warming. Muller is a shining example of a scientist whose integrity and honesty came first, and did not sell out to the highest bidder. 36 * Science and Anti-Science The conclusion is clear: there's science, and then there's the anti-science of global warming denial. As we have seen, there is a nearly unanimous consensus among climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is real and that we must do something about it. Yet the smokescreen, bluster and lies of the deniers has created enough doubt so that only half of the American public is convinced the problem requires action. Ironically, the U.S. is almost alone in questioning its scientific reality. International polls taken of 33,000 people in 33 nations in 2006 and 2007 show that 90% of their citizens regard climate change as a serious problem 37 and 80% realize that humans are the cause of it. 38 Just as in the case of creationism, the U.S. is out of step with much of the rest of the world in accepting scientific reality. It is not just the liberals and environmentalists who are taking climate change seriously. Historically conservative institutions (big corporations such as General Electric and many others such as insurance companies and the military) are already planning on how to deal with global warming. Many of my friends high in the oil companies tell me of the efforts by those companies to get into other forms of energy, because they know that cheap oil will be running out soon and that the effects of burning oil will make their business less popular. BP officially stands for "British Petroleum," but in one of their ad campaigns about 5 years ago, it stood for "Beyond Petroleum." 39 Although they still spend relatively little of their total budgets on alternative forms of energy, the oil companies still see the handwriting on the wall about the eventual exhaustion of oil -- and they are acting like any company that wants to survive by getting into a new business when the old one is dying. The Pentagon (normally not a left-wing institution) is also making contingency plans for how to fight wars in an era of global climate change, and analyzing what kinds of strategic threats might occur when climate change alters the kinds of enemies we might be fighting, and water becomes a scarce commodity. The New York Times reported 40 that in December 2008, the National Defense University outlined plans for military strategy in a greenhouse world. To the Pentagon, the big issue is global chaos and the potential of even nuclear conflict. The world must "prepare for the inevitable effects of abrupt climate change -- which will likely come the only question is when regardless of human activity." Insurance companies have no political axe to grind. If anything, they tend to be on the conservative side. They are simply in the business of assessing risk in a realistic fashion so they can accurately gauge their future insurance policies and what to charge for them. Yet they are all investing heavily in research on the disasters and risks posed by climatic change. In 2005, a study commissioned by the re-insurer Swiss Re said, "Climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences." 41 Some people may still try to deny scientific reality, but big businesses like oil and insurance and conservative institutions like the military cannot afford to be blinded or deluded by ideology. They must plan for the real world that we will be seeing in the next few decades. They do not want to be caught unprepared and harmed by global climatic change when it threatens their survival. Neither can we as a society. Climate change risks catastrophe – slow feedbacks
Hansen 8 (James Hansen, directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, “Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth,” Nov/Dec 2008, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdf)
Embers of election night elation will glow longer than any prior election. Glowing even in other nations, and for good reason. We are all tied together, more than ever, like it or not. Barack Obama’s measured words on election night, including eloquent recognition of historic progress, from the viewpoint of a 106-year-old lady, still stoke the embers. But he was already focusing on tasks ahead, without celebratory excess. Well he should. The challenge he faces is unprecedented. I refer not to the inherited economic morass, as threatening as it is. The human toll due to past failures and excesses may prove to be great, yet economic recessions, even depressions, come and go. Now our planet itself is in peril. Not simply the Earth, but the fate of all of its species, including humanity. The situation calls not for hand-wringing, but rather informed action. Optimism is fueled by expectation that decisions will be guided by reason and evidence, not ideology. The danger is that special interests will dilute and torque government policies, causing the climate to pass tipping points, with grave consequences for all life on the planet. The President-elect himself needs to be well-informed about the climate problem and its relation to energy needs and economic policies. He cannot rely on political systems to bring him solutions – the political systems provide too many opportunities for special interests. Here is a message I think should be delivered to Barack Obama. Criticisms are welcome. Climate threat. The world’s temperature has increased about 1°F over the past few decades, about 2°F over land areas. Further warming is “in the pipeline” due to gases already in the air (because of climate system inertia) and inevitable additional fossil fuel emissions (because of energy system inertia). Although global warming to date is smaller than day-to-day weather fluctuations, it has brought global temperature back to approximately the highest level of the Holocene, the past 10,000 years, the period during which civilization developed. Effects already evident include: 1. Mountain glaciers are receding worldwide and will be gone within 50 years if CO2 emissions continue to increase. This threatens the fresh water supply for billions of people, as rivers arising in the Himalayas, Andes and Rocky Mountains will begin to run dry in the summer and fall. 2. Coral reefs, home to a quarter of biological species in the ocean, could be destroyed by rising temperature and ocean acidification due to increasing CO2. 3. Dry subtropics are expanding poleward with warming, affecting the southern United States, the Mediterranean region, and Australia, with increasing drought and fires. 4. Arctic sea ice will disappear entirely in the summer, if CO2 continues to increase, with devastating effects on wildlife and indigenous people. 5. Intensity of hydrologic extremes, including heavy rains, storms and floods on the one hand, and droughts and fires on the other, are increasing. Some people say we must learn to live with these effects, because it is an almost godgiven fact that we must burn all fossil fuels. But now we understand, from the history of the Earth, that there would be two monstrous consequences of releasing the CO2 from all of the oil, gas and coal, consequences of an enormity that cannot be accepted. One effect would be extermination of a large fraction of the species on the planet. The other is initiation of ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise, out of humanity’s control, eventually eliminating coastal cities and historical sites, creating havoc, hundreds of millions of refugees, and impoverishing nations.2 Species extermination and ice sheet disintegration are both ‘non-linear’ problems with ‘tipping points’. If the process proceeds too far, amplifying feedbacks push the system dynamics to proceed without further human forcing. For example, species are interdependent – if a sufficient number are eliminated, ecosystems collapse. In the physical climate system, amplifying feedbacks include increased absorption of sunlight as sea and land ice areas are reduced and release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as permafrost melts. The Earth’s history reveals examples of such non-linear collapses. Eventually, over tens and hundreds of thousands of years, new species evolve, and ice sheets return. But we will leave a devastated impoverished planet for all generations of humanity that we can imagine, if we are so foolish as to allow the climate tipping points to be passed. Urgency. Recent evidence reveals a situation more urgent than had been expected, even by those who were most attuned. The evidence is based on improving knowledge of Earth’s history – how the climate responded to past changes of atmospheric composition – and on observations of how the Earth is responding now to human-made atmospheric changes. The conclusion – at first startling, but in retrospect obvious – is that the human-made increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), from the pre-industrial 280 parts per million (ppm) to today’s 385 ppm, has already raised the CO2 amount into the dangerous range. It will be necessary to take actions that return CO2 to a level of at most 350 ppm, but probably less, if we are to avert disastrous pressures on fellow species and large sea level rise. The good news is that such a result is still possible, if actions are prompt. Prompt action will do more than prevent irreversible extinctions and ice sheet disintegration: it can avert or reverse consequences that had begun to seem inevitable, including loss of Arctic ice, ocean acidification, expansion of the subtropics, increased intensity of droughts, floods, and storms. Principal implication. CO2 is not the only human-made gas that contributes to global warming, but it is the dominant gas with a lifetime that dwarfs that of the other major gases. Much of the CO2 increase caused by burning fossil fuels remains in the air more than 1000 years. So CO2 must be the focus of efforts to stop human-caused climate change. It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that solution of global warming is to phase down total fossil fuel emissions by some specified percentage. That approach will not work as a strategy. The reason for that conclusion and an outline of a better strategic approach follow immediately from geophysical boundary constraints. Figure 1a shows oil, gas and coal reserves, with the purple portion being the amount that has already been burned and emitted into the atmosphere. Despite uncertainty in the size of undiscovered resources, their amounts are certainly enough to yield atmospheric CO2 greater than 500 ppm. That amount would be disastrous, assuring unstable ice sheets, rising sea level out of humanity’s control, extermination of a large fraction of the species on Earth, and severe exacerbation of climate impacts discussed above. Oil is used primarily in vehicles, where it is impractical to capture CO2 emerging from tailpipes. The large pools of oil remaining in the ground are spread among many countries. The United States, which once had some of the large pools, has already exploited its largest recoverable reserves. Given this fact, it is unrealistic to think that Russia and Middle East countries will decide to leave their oil in the ground. A carbon cap that slows emissions of CO2 does not help, because of the long lifetime of atmospheric CO2. In fact, the cap exacerbates the problem if it allows coal emissions to continue. The only solution is to target a (large) portion of the fossil fuel reserves to be left in the ground or used in a way such that the CO2 can be captured and safely sequestered.3 Figure 1. (a) Fossil fuel and net land-use CO2 emissions (purple), and potential fossil fuel emissions (light blue). Fossil fuel reserve estimates of EIA, IPCC and WEC differ as shown. (b) Atmospheric CO2 if coal emissions are phased out linearly between 2010 and 2030, calculated using a version of the Bern carbon cycle model. References EIA (Energy Information Administration), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and WEC (World Energy Council) are provided in the published paper. Coal is the obvious target. Figure 1b shows that if there were a prompt moratorium on construction of new coal plants, and if existing ones were phased out linearly over the period 2010-2030, then atmospheric CO2 would peak during the next few decades at an amount somewhere between 400 and 425 ppm. The peak value depends upon whose estimate of undiscovered reserves is more accurate. It also depends upon whether oil in the most extreme environments is exploited or left in the ground, and thus it depends on the carbon tax (see below). This coal-phase-out scenario yields the possibility of stabilizing climate. Overshoot of the safe CO2 level is sufficiently small that improved agricultural and forestry practices, including reforestation of marginal lands, could bring CO2 back below 350 ppm, perhaps by the middle of the century. But if construction of new coal plants continues for even another decade it is difficult to conceive a practical, natural way to return CO2 below 350 ppm. Outline of policy options. The imperative of near-term termination of coal emissions (but not necessarily coal use) requires fundamental advances in energy technologies. Such advances would be needed anyhow, as fossil fuel reserves dwindle, but the climate crisis demands that they be achieved rapidly. Fortunately, actions that solve the climate problem can be designed so as to also improve energy security and restore economic well-being. A workshop held in Washington, DC on 3 November 2008 outlined options (presentations are at http://www.mediafire.com/nov3workshop). The workshop focused on electrical energy, because that is the principal use of coal. Also electricity is more and more the energy carrier of choice, because it is clean, much desired in developing countries, and a likely replacement or partial replacement for oil in transportation. Workshop topics, in priority order, were: (1) energy efficiency, (2) renewable energies, (3) electric grid improvements, (4) nuclear power, (5) carbon capture and sequestration. Energy efficiency improvements have the potential to obviate the need for additional electric power in all parts of the country during the next few decades and allow retirement of some existing coal plants. Achievement of the efficiency potential requires both regulations and a carbon tax. National building codes are needed, and higher standards for appliances, especially electronics, where standby power has become a large unnecessary drain of energy. 4 Economic incentives for utilities must be changed so that profits increase with increased energy conservation, not in proportion to amount of energy sold. Renewable energies are gaining in economic competition with fossil fuels, but in the absence of wise policies there is the danger that declining prices for fossil fuels, and continuation of fossil fuel subsidies, could cause a major setback. The most effective and efficient way to support renewable energy is via a carbon tax (see below). The national electric grid can be made more reliable and “smarter” in a number of ways. Priority will be needed for constructing a low-loss grid from regions with plentiful renewable energy to other parts of the nation, if renewable energies are to be a replacement for coal. Energy efficiency, renewable energies, and an improved grid deserve priority and there is a hope that they could provide all of our electric power requirements. However, the greatest threat to the planet may be the potential gap between that presumption (100% “soft” energy) and reality, with the gap being filled by continued use of coal-fired power. Therefore we should undertake urgent focused RandD programs in both next generation nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration. These programs could be carried out most rapidly and effectively in full cooperation with China and/or India, and other countries. Given appropriate priority and resources, the option of secure, low-waste 4 th generation nuclear power (see below) could be available within about a decade. If, by then, wind, solar, other renewables, and an improved grid prove to be capable of handling all of our electrical energy needs, there would be no imperative to construct nuclear plants in the United States. Many energy experts consider an all-renewable scenario to be implausible in the time-frame when coal emissions must be phased out, but it is not necessary to debate that matter. However, it would be dangerous to proceed under the presumption that we will soon have all-renewable electric power. Also it would be inappropriate to impose a similar presumption on China and India. Both countries project large increases in their energy needs, both countries have highly polluted atmospheres primarily due to excessive coal use, and both countries stand to suffer inordinately if global climate change continues. The entire world stands to gain if China and India have options to reduce their CO2 emissions and air pollution. Mercury emissions from their coal plants, for example, are polluting the global atmosphere and ocean and affecting the safety of foods, especially fish, on a near-global scale. And there is little hope of stabilizing climate unless China and India have low- and no-CO2 energy options. Devastates the biosphere – extinction
Morgan 9 (Dennis Ray Morgan, Professor of Current Affairs at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, “World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race,” December 2009 Science Direct)
As horrifying as the scenario of human extinction by sudden, fast-burning nuclear fire may seem, the one consolation is that this future can be avoided within a relatively short period of time if responsible world leaders change Cold War thinking to move away from aggressive wars over natural resources and towards the eventual dismantlement of most if not all nuclear weapons. On the other hand, another scenario of human extinction by fire is one that may not so easily be reversed within a short period of time because it is not a fast-burning fire; rather, a slow burning fire is gradually heating up the planet as industrial civilization progresses and develops globally. This gradual process and course is long-lasting; thus it cannot easily be changed, even if responsible world leaders change their thinking about “progress” and industrial development based on the burning of fossil fuels. The way that global warming will impact humanity in the future has often been depicted through the analogy of the proverbial frog in a pot of water who does not realize that the temperature of the water is gradually rising. Instead of trying to escape, the frog tries to adjust to the gradual temperature change; finally, the heat of the water sneaks up on it until it is debilitated. Though it finally realizes its predicament and attempts to escape, it is too late; its feeble attempt is to no avail—and the frog dies. Whether this fable can actually be applied to frogs in heated water or not is irrelevant; it still serves as a comparable scenario of how the slow burning fire of global warming may eventually lead to a runaway condition and take humanity by surprise. Unfortunately, by the time the politicians finally all agree with the scientific consensus that global warming is indeed human caused, its development could be too advanced to arrest; the poor frog has become too weak and enfeebled to get himself out of hot water. The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Programme to “assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”16. Since then, it has given assessments and reports every six or seven years. Thus far, it has given four assessments.13 With all prior assessments came attacks from some parts of the scientific community, especially by industry scientists, to attempt to prove that the theory had no basis in planetary history and present-day reality; nevertheless, as more and more research continually provided concrete and empirical evidence to confirm the global warming hypothesis, that it is indeed human-caused, mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels, the scientific consensus grew stronger that human induced global warming is verifiable. As a matter of fact, according to Bill McKibben 17, 12 years of “impressive scientific research” strongly confirms the 1995 report “that humans had grown so large in numbers and especially in appetite for energy that they were now damaging the most basic of the earth's systems—the balance between incoming and outgoing solar energy”; “… their findings have essentially been complementary to the 1995 report -- a constant strengthening of the simple basic truth that humans were burning too much fossil fuel.” 17. Indeed, 12 years later, the 2007 report not only confirms global warming, with a stronger scientific consensus that the slow burn is “very likely” human caused, but it also finds that the “amount of carbon in the atmosphere is now increasing at a faster rate even than before” and the temperature increases would be “considerably higher than they have been so far were it not for the blanket of soot and other pollution that is temporarily helping to cool the planet.” 17. Furthermore, almost “everything frozen on earth is melting. Heavy rainfalls are becoming more common since the air is warmer and therefore holds more water than cold air, and ‘cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent.” 17. Unless drastic action is taken soon, the average global temperature is predicted to rise about 5 degrees this century, but it could rise as much as 8 degrees. As has already been evidenced in recent years, the rise in global temperature is melting the Arctic sheets. This runaway polar melting will inflict great damage upon coastal areas, which could be much greater than what has been previously forecasted. However, what is missing in the IPCC report, as dire as it may seem, is sufficient emphasis on the less likely but still plausible worst case scenarios, which could prove to have the most devastating, catastrophic consequences for the long-term future of human civilization. In other words, the IPCC report places too much emphasis on a linear progression that does not take sufficient account of the dynamics of systems theory, which leads to a fundamentally different premise regarding the relationship between industrial civilization and nature. As a matter of fact, as early as the 1950s, Hannah Arendt 18 observed this radical shift of emphasis in the human-nature relationship, which starkly contrasts with previous times because the very distinction between nature and man as “Homo faber” has become blurred, as man no longer merely takes from nature what is needed for fabrication; instead, he now acts into nature to augment and transform natural processes, which are then directed into the evolution of human civilization itself such that we become a part of the very processes that we make. The more human civilization becomes an integral part of this dynamic system, the more difficult it becomes to extricate ourselves from it. As Arendt pointed out, this dynamism is dangerous because of its unpredictability. Acting into nature to transform natural processes brings about an … endless new change of happenings whose eventual outcome the actor is entirely incapable of knowing or controlling beforehand. The moment we started natural processes of our own - and the splitting of the atom is precisely such a man-made natural process - we not only increased our power over nature, or became more aggressive in our dealings with the given forces of the earth, but for the first time have taken nature into the human world as such and obliterated the defensive boundaries between natural elements and the human artifice by which all previous civilizations were hedged in” 18. So, in as much as we act into nature, we carry our own unpredictability into our world; thus, Nature can no longer be thought of as having absolute or iron-clad laws. We no longer know what the laws of nature are because the unpredictability of Nature increases in proportion to the degree by which industrial civilization injects its own processes into it; through self-created, dynamic, transformative processes, we carry human unpredictability into the future with a precarious recklessness that may indeed end in human catastrophe or extinction, for elemental forces that we have yet to understand may be unleashed upon us by the very environment that we experiment with. Nature may yet have her revenge and the last word, as the Earth and its delicate ecosystems, environment, and atmosphere reach a tipping point, which could turn out to be a point of no return. This is exactly the conclusion reached by the scientist, inventor, and author, James Lovelock. The creator of the well-known yet controversial Gaia Theory, Lovelock has recently written that it may be already too late for humanity to change course since climate centers around the world, … which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics. Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. … Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This ‘global dimming’ is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable. 19 Moreover, Lovelock states that the task of trying to correct our course is hopelessly impossible, for we are not in charge. It is foolish and arrogant to think that we can regulate the atmosphere, oceans and land surface in order to maintain the conditions right for life. It is as impossible as trying to regulate your own temperature and the composition of your blood, for those with “failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys” 19. Lovelock concludes his analysis on the fate of human civilization and Gaia by saying that we will do “our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate” 19. Lovelock's forecast for climate change is based on a systems dynamics analysis of the interaction between human-created processes and natural processes. It is a multidimensional model that appropriately reflects the dynamism of industrial civilization responsible for climate change. For one thing, it takes into account positive feedback loops that lead to “runaway” conditions. This mode of analysis is consistent with recent research on how ecosystems suddenly disappear. A 2001 article in Nature, based on a scientific study by an international consortium, reported that changes in ecosystems are not just gradual but are often sudden and catastrophic 20. Thus, a scientific consensus is emerging (after repeated studies of ecological change) that “stressed ecosystems, given the right nudge, are capable of slipping rapidly from a seemingly steady state to something entirely different,” according to Stephen Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (who is also a co-author of the report). Carpenter continues, “We realize that there is a common pattern we’re seeing in ecosystems around the world, … Gradual changes in vulnerability accumulate and eventually you get a shock to the system - a flood or a drought - and, boom, you’re over into another regime. It becomes a self-sustaining collapse.” 20. If ecosystems are in fact mini-models of the system of the Earth, as Lovelock maintains, then we can expect the same kind of behavior. As Jonathon Foley, a UW-Madison climatologist and another co-author of the Nature report, puts it, “Nature isn’t linear. Sometimes you can push on a system and push on a system and, finally, you have the straw that breaks the camel's back.” Also, once the “flip” occurs, as Foley maintains, then the catastrophic change is “irreversible.” 20. When we expand this analysis of ecosystems to the Earth itself, it's frightening. What could be the final push on a stressed system that could “break the camel's back?” Recently, another factor has been discovered in some areas of the arctic regions, which will surely compound the problem of global “heating” (as Lovelock calls it) in unpredictable and perhaps catastrophic ways. This disturbing development, also reported in Nature, concerns the permafrost that has locked up who knows how many tons of the greenhouse gasses, methane and carbon dioxide. Scientists are particularly worried about permafrost because, as it thaws, it releases these gases into the atmosphere, thus, contributing and accelerating global heating. It is a vicious positive feedback loop that compounds the prognosis of global warming in ways that could very well prove to be the tipping point of no return. Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press describes this disturbing positive feedback loop of permafrost greenhouse gasses, as when warming “. already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on.” 21. The significance and severity of this problem cannot be understated since scientists have discovered that “the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost called “yedoma” is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times my emphasis the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels” 21. Of course, it won’t come out all at once, at least by time as we commonly reckon it, but in terms of geological time, the “several decades” that scientists say it will probably take to come out can just as well be considered “all at once.” Surely, within the next 100 years, much of the world we live in will be quite hot and may be unlivable, as Lovelock has predicted. Professor Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida and co-author of the study that appeared in Science, describes it as a “slow motion time bomb.” 21. Permafrost under lakes will be released as methane while that which is under dry ground will be released as carbon dioxide. Scientists aren’t sure which is worse. Whereas methane is a much more powerful agent to trap heat, it only lasts for about 10 years before it dissipates into carbon dioxide or other chemicals. The less powerful heat-trapping agent, carbon dioxide, lasts for 100 years 21. Both of the greenhouse gasses present in permafrost represent a global dilemma and challenge that compounds the effects of global warming and runaway climate change. The scary thing about it, as one researcher put it, is that there are “lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off” 21.14 In an accompanying AP article, Katey Walters of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks describes the effects as “huge” and, unless we have a “major cooling,” - unstoppable 22. Also, there's so much more that has not even been discovered yet, she writes: “It's coming out a lot and there's a lot more to come out.” 22. 4. Is it the end of human civilization and possible extinction of humankind? What Jonathon Schell wrote concerning death by the fire of nuclear holocaust also applies to the slow burning death of global warming: Once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction, we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species 23.15 When we consider that beyond the horror of nuclear war, another horror is set into motion to interact with the subsequent nuclear winter to produce a poisonous and super heated planet, the chances of human survival seem even smaller. Who knows, even if some small remnant does manage to survive, what the poisonous environmental conditions would have on human evolution in the future. A remnant of mutated, sub-human creatures might survive such harsh conditions, but for all purposes, human civilization has been destroyed, and the question concerning human extinction becomes moot. Use of catastrophic warming as a justification motivates action
Romm 12 (Joe Romm, Ph.D in Physics from MIT, worked at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, awarded an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellowship, executive director of Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, former researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute, former Special Assistant for International Security at the Rockefeller Foundation, taught at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, interview with Ken Caldeira, atmospheric scientist who works at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology, “Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media And The Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages’ on Climate”, http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/26/432546/apocalypse-not-oscars-media-myth-of-repetition-of-doomsday-messages-on-climate/#more-432546)
The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn’t work and indeed is actually counterproductive! These myths are so deeply ingrained in the environmental and progressive political community that when we finally had a serious shot at a climate bill, the powers that be decided not to focus on the threat posed by climate change in any serious fashion in their $200 million communications effort (see my 6/10 post “Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?“). These myths are so deeply ingrained in the mainstream media that such messaging, when it is tried, is routinely attacked and denounced — and the flimsiest studies are interpreted exactly backwards to drive the erroneous message home (see “Dire straits: Media blows the story of UC Berkeley study on climate messaging“) The only time anything approximating this kind of messaging — not “doomsday” but what I’d call blunt, science-based messaging that also makes clear the problem is solvable — was in 2006 and 2007 with the release of An Inconvenient Truth (and the 4 assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and media coverage like the April 2006 cover of Time). The data suggest that strategy measurably moved the public to become more concerned about the threat posed by global warming (see recent study here). You’d think it would be pretty obvious that the public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one explains why they should be concerned about an issue. And the social science literature, including the vast literature on advertising and marketing, could not be clearer that only repeated messages have any chance of sinking in and moving the needle. Because I doubt any serious movement of public opinion or mobilization of political action could possibly occur until these myths are shattered, I’ll do a multipart series on this subject, featuring public opinion analysis, quotes by leading experts, and the latest social science research. Since this is Oscar night, though, it seems appropriate to start by looking at what messages the public are exposed to in popular culture and the media. It ain’t doomsday. Quite the reverse, climate change has been mostly an invisible issue for several years and the message of conspicuous consumption and business-as-usual reigns supreme. The motivation for this post actually came up because I received an e-mail from a journalist commenting that the “constant repetition of doomsday messages” doesn’t work as a messaging strategy. I had to demur, for the reasons noted above. But it did get me thinking about what messages the public are exposed to, especially as I’ve been rushing to see the movies nominated for Best Picture this year. I am a huge movie buff, but as parents of 5-year-olds know, it isn’t easy to stay up with the latest movies. That said, good luck finding a popular movie in recent years that even touches on climate change, let alone one a popular one that would pass for doomsday messaging. Best Picture nominee The Tree of Life has been billed as an environmental movie — and even shown at environmental film festivals — but while it is certainly depressing, climate-related it ain’t. In fact, if that is truly someone’s idea of environmental movie, count me out. The closest to a genuine popular climate movie was the dreadfully unscientific The Day After Tomorrow, which is from 2004 (and arguably set back the messaging effort by putting the absurd “global cooling” notion in people’s heads! Even Avatar, the most successful movie of all time and “the most epic piece of environmental advocacy ever captured on celluloid,” as one producer put it, omits the climate doomsday message. One of my favorite eco-movies, “Wall-E, is an eco-dystopian gem and an anti-consumption movie,” but it isn’t a climate movie. I will be interested to see The Hunger Games, but I’ve read all 3 of the bestselling post-apocalyptic young adult novels — hey, that’s my job! — and they don’t qualify as climate change doomsday messaging (more on that later). So, no, the movies certainly don’t expose the public to constant doomsday messages on climate. Here are the key points about what repeated messages the American public is exposed to: The broad American public is exposed to virtually no doomsday messages, let alone constant ones, on climate change in popular culture (TV and the movies and even online). There is not one single TV show on any network devoted to this subject, which is, arguably, more consequential than any other preventable issue we face. The same goes for the news media, whose coverage of climate change has collapsed (see “Network News Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011“). When the media do cover climate change in recent years, the overwhelming majority of coverage is devoid of any doomsday messages — and many outlets still feature hard-core deniers. Just imagine what the public’s view of climate would be if it got the same coverage as, say, unemployment, the housing crisis or even the deficit? When was the last time you saw an “employment denier” quoted on TV or in a newspaper? The public is exposed to constant messages promoting business as usual and indeed idolizing conspicuous consumption. See, for instance, “Breaking: The earth is breaking … but how about that Royal Wedding? Our political elite and intelligentsia, including MSM pundits and the supposedly “liberal media” like, say, MSNBC, hardly even talk about climate change and when they do, it isn’t doomsday. Indeed, there isn’t even a single national columnist for a major media outlet who writes primarily on climate. Most “liberal” columnists rarely mention it. At least a quarter of the public chooses media that devote a vast amount of time to the notion that global warming is a hoax and that environmentalists are extremists and that clean energy is a joke. In the MSM, conservative pundits routinely trash climate science and mock clean energy. Just listen to, say, Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe mock clean energy sometime. The major energy companies bombard the airwaves with millions and millions of dollars of repetitious pro-fossil-fuel ads. The environmentalists spend far, far less money. As noted above, the one time they did run a major campaign to push a climate bill, they and their political allies including the president explicitly did NOT talk much about climate change, particularly doomsday messaging Environmentalists when they do appear in popular culture, especially TV, are routinely mocked. There is very little mass communication of doomsday messages online. Check out the most popular websites. General silence on the subject, and again, what coverage there is ain’t doomsday messaging. Go to the front page of the (moderately trafficked) environmental websites. Where is the doomsday? If you want to find anything approximating even modest, blunt, science-based messaging built around the scientific literature, interviews with actual climate scientists and a clear statement that we can solve this problem — well, you’ve all found it, of course, but the only people who see it are those who go looking for it. Of course, this blog is not even aimed at the general public. Probably 99% of Americans haven’t even seen one of my headlines and 99.7% haven’t read one of my climate science posts. And Climate Progress is probably the most widely read, quoted, and reposted climate science blog in the world. Anyone dropping into America from another country or another planet who started following popular culture and the news the way the overwhelming majority of Americans do would get the distinct impression that nobody who matters is terribly worried about climate change. And, of course, they’d be right — see “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2.” It is total BS that somehow the American public has been scared and overwhelmed by repeated doomsday messaging into some sort of climate fatigue. If the public’s concern has dropped — and public opinion analysis suggests it has dropped several percent (though is bouncing back a tad) — that is primarily due to the conservative media’s disinformation campaign impact on Tea Party conservatives and to the treatment of this as a nonissue by most of the rest of the media, intelligentsia and popular culture. The IFR supplies enough clean energy to solve warming
Blees et al 11 (Charles Archambeau , Randolph Ware, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Tom Blees, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Barry Brook, Yoon Chang, University of Colorado, Jerry Peterson, Argonne National Laboratory, Robert Serafin Joseph Shuster Tom Wigley, “IFR: An optimized approach to meeting global energy needs (Part I)” 2/1/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/01/ifr-optimized-source-for-global-energy-needs-part-i/) Fossil fuels currently supply about 80% of humankind’s primary energy. Given the imperatives of climate change, pollution, energy security and dwindling supplies, and enormous technical, logistical and economic challenges of scaling up coal or gas power plants with carbon capture and storage to sequester all that carbon, we are faced with the necessity of a nearly complete transformation of the world’s energy systems. Objective analyses of the inherent constraints on wind, solar, and other less-mature renewable energy technologies inevitably demonstrate that they will fall far short of meeting today’s energy demands, let alone the certain increased demands of the future. Nuclear power, however, is capable of providing all the carbon-free energy that mankind requires, although the prospect of such a massive deployment raises questions of uranium shortages, increased energy and environmental impacts from mining and fuel enrichment, and so on. These potential roadblocks can all be dispensed with, however, through the use of fast neutron reactors and fuel recycling. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), developed at U.S. national laboratories in the latter years of the last century, can economically and cleanly supply all the energy the world needs without any further mining or enrichment of uranium. Instead of utilizing a mere 0.6% of the potential energy in uranium, IFRs capture all of it. Capable of utilizing troublesome waste products already at hand, IFRs can solve the thorny spent fuel problem while powering the planet with carbon-free energy for nearly a millennium before any more uranium mining would even have to be considered. Designed from the outset for unparalleled safety and proliferation resistance, with all major features proven out at the engineering scale, this technology is unrivaled in its ability to solve the most difficult energy problems facing humanity in the 21st century. Our objectives in the conference paper and poster are to describe how the new Generation IV nuclear power reactor, the IFR, can provide the required power to rapidly replace coal burning power plants and thereby sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while also replacing all fossil fuel sources within 30 years. Our conclusion is that this can be done with a combination of renewable energy sources, IFR nuclear power and ordinary conservation measures. Here we focus on a discussion of the design and functionality of the primary component of this mix of sources, namely the IFR nuclear system, since its exposure to both the scientific community and the public at large has been so limited. However, we do consider the costs of replacing all fossil fuels while utilizing all renewable and nuclear sources in generating electrical energy, as well as the costs of meeting the increasing national and global requirements for electrical power. The IFR to be described relates to the following basic features of the IFR design: • IFR systems are closed-cycle nuclear reactors that extract 99% of the available energy from the Uranium fuel, whereas the current reactors only extract about 1% of the available energy. • The waste produced by an IFR consists of a relatively small mass of fission products, consisting of short half-life isotopes which produce a relatively brief toxicity period for the waste (less than 300 years) while current nuclear systems produce much larger amounts of waste with very long toxicity periods (300,000 years). • An electrochemical processor (called the “pyroprocessor”) can be integrated with a fast reactor (FR) unit to process Uranium fuel in a closed cycling process in which the “spent” nuclear fuel from the FR unit is separated into “fission product” waste and the new isotope fuel to be cycled back into the FR. This recycling process can be repeated until 99% of the original Uranium isotope energy is converted to electrical power. The pyroprocessing unit can also be used in a stand-alone mode to process large amounts of existing nuclear reactor (LWR) waste to provide fuel for IFR reactors. The amount of IFR fuel available is very large and sufficient to supply all world-wide needs for many hundreds of years without Uranium mining. • The pyroprocessing operations do not separate the mix of isotopes that are produced during the recycling of IFR fuel. Since this mixture is always highly radioactive it is not possible to separate out Uranium or Plutonium isotopes that can be used in weapons development. • The IFR reactor uses metal fuel rather than the oxide fuels that are used now. If overheating of the reactor core occurs for any reason, the metal fuel reacts by expanding, so its density drops, which causes fast neutron “leakage”, leading to termination of the chain reaction and automatic shut-down of the reactor. This serves as an important passive safety feature. Only the IFR creates an economic incentive to get off coal in time
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now,” 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
To prevent a climate disaster, we must eliminate virtually all coal plant emissions worldwide in 25 years. The best way and, for all practical purposes, the only way to get all countries off of coal is not with coercion; it is to make them want to replace their coal burners by giving them a plug-compatible technology that is less expensive. The IFR can do this. It is plug-compatible with the burners in a coal plant (see Nuclear Power: Going Fast). No other technology can upgrade a coal plant so it is greenhouse gas free while reducing operating costs at the same time. In fact, no other technology can achieve either of these goals. The IFR can achieve both. The bottom line is that without the IFR (or a yet-to-be-invented technology with similar ability to replace the coal burner with a cheaper alternative), it is unlikely that we’ll be able to keep CO2 under 450 ppm. Today, the IFR is the only technology with the potential to displace the coal burner. That is why restarting the IFR is so critical and why Jim Hansen has listed it as one of the top five things we must do to avert a climate disaster.4 Without eliminating virtually all coal emissions by 2030, the sum total of all of our other climate mitigation efforts will be inconsequential. Hansen often refers to the near complete phase-out of carbon emissions from coal plants worldwide by 2030 as the sine qua non for climate stabilization (see for example, the top of page 6 in his August 4, 2008 trip report). To stay under 450ppm, we would have to install about 13,000 GWe of new carbon-free power over the next 25 years. That number was calculated by Nathan Lewis of Caltech for the Atlantic, but others such as Saul Griffith have independently derived a very similar number and White House Science Advisor John Holdren used 5,600 GWe to 7,200 GWe in his presentation to the Energy Bar Association Annual Meeting on April 23, 2009. That means that if we want to save the planet, we must install more than 1 GWe per day of clean power every single day for the next 25 years. That is a very, very tough goal. It is equivalent to building one large nuclear reactor per day, or 1,500 huge wind turbines per day, or 80,000 37 foot diameter solar dishes covering 100 square miles every day, or some linear combination of these or other carbon free power generation technologies. Note that the required rate is actually higher than this because Hansen and Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, now both agree that 350ppm is a more realistic “not to exceed” number (and we’ve already exceeded it). Today, we are nowhere close to that installation rate with renewables alone. For example, in 2008, the average power delivered by solar worldwide was only 2 GWe (which is to be distinguished from the peak solar capacity of 13.4GWe). That is why every renewable expert at the 2009 Aspen Institute Environment Forum agreed that nuclear must be part of the solution. Al Gore also acknowledges that nuclear must play an important role. Nuclear has always been the world’s largest source of carbon free power. In the US, for example, even though we haven’t built a new nuclear plant in the US for 30 years, nuclear still supplies 70% of our clean power! Nuclear can be installed very rapidly; much more rapidly than renewables. For example, about two thirds of the currently operating 440 reactors around the world came online during a 10 year period between 1980 and 1990. So our best chance of meeting the required installation of new power goal and saving the planet is with an aggressive nuclear program. Unlike renewables, nuclear generates base load power, reliably, regardless of weather. Nuclear also uses very little land area. It does not require the installation of new power lines since it can be installed where the power is needed. However, even with a very aggressive plan involving nuclear, it will still be extremely difficult to install clean power fast enough. Unfortunately, even in the US, we have no plan to install the clean power we need fast enough to save the planet. Even if every country were to agree tomorrow to completely eliminate their coal plant emissions by 2030, how do we think they are actually going to achieve that? There is no White House plan that explains this. There is no DOE plan. There is no plan or strategy. The deadlines will come and go and most countries will profusely apologize for not meeting their goals, just like we have with most of the signers of the Kyoto Protocol today. Apologies are nice, but they will not restore the environment. We need a strategy that is believable, practical, and affordable for countries to adopt. The IFR offers our best hope of being a centerpiece in such a strategy because it the only technology we know of that can provide an economically compelling reason to change. At a speech at MIT on October 23, 2009, President Obama said “And that’s why the world is now engaged in a peaceful competition to determine the technologies that will power the 21st century. … The nation that wins this competition will be the nation that leads the global economy. I am convinced of that. And I want America to be that nation, it’s that simple.” Nuclear is our best clean power technology and the IFR is our best nuclear technology. The Gen IV International Forum (GIF) did a study in 2001-2002 of 19 different reactor designs on 15 different criteria and 24 metrics. The IFR ranked #1 overall. Over 242 experts from around the world participated in the study. It was the most comprehensive evaluation of competitive nuclear designs ever done. Top DOE nuclear management ignored the study because it didn’t endorse the design the Bush administration wanted. The IFR has been sitting on the shelf for 15 years and the DOE currently has no plans to change that. How does the US expect to be a leader in clean energy by ignoring our best nuclear technology? Nobody I’ve talked to has been able to answer that question. We have the technology (it was running for 30 years before we were ordered to tear it down). And we have the money: The Recovery Act has $80 billion dollars. Why aren’t we building a demo plant? IFRs are better than conventional nuclear in every dimension. Here are a few: Efficiency: IFRs are over 100 times more efficient than conventional nuclear. It extracts nearly 100% of the energy from nuclear material. Today’s nuclear reactors extract less than 1%. So you need only 1 ton of actinides each year to feed an IFR (we can use existing nuclear waste for this), whereas you need 100 tons of freshly mined uranium each year to extract enough material to feed a conventional nuclear plant. Unlimited power forever: IFRs can use virtually any actinide for fuel. Fast reactors with reprocessing are so efficient that even if we restrict ourselves to just our existing uranium resources, we can power the entire planet forever (the Sun will consume the Earth before we run out of material to fuel fast reactors). If we limited ourselves to using just our DU “waste” currently in storage, then using the IFR we can power the US for over 1,500 years without doing any new mining of uranium.5 Exploits our largest energy resource: In the US, there is 10 times as much energy in the depleted uranium (DU) that is just sitting there as there is coal in the ground. This DU waste is our largest natural energy resource…but only if we have fast reactors. Otherwise, it is just waste. With fast reactors, virtually all our nuclear waste (from nuclear power plants, leftover from enrichment, and from decommissioned nuclear weapons)6 becomes an energy asset worth about $30 trillion dollars…that’s not a typo…$30 trillion, not billion.7 An 11 year old child was able to determine this from publicly available information in 2004. Inventing something cheaper is key
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “How Does Obama Expect to Solve the Climate Crisis Without a Plan?” 7/16/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/how-does-obama-expect-to_b_236588.html
The ship is sinking slowly and we are quickly running out of time to develop and implement any such plan if we are to have any hope of saving the planet. What we need is a plan we can all believe in. A plan where our country's smartest people all nod their heads in agreement and say, "Yes, this is a solid, viable plan for keeping CO2 levels from touching 425ppm and averting a global climate catastrophe." At his Senate testimony a few days ago, noted climate scientist James Hansen made it crystal clear once again that the only way to avert an irreversible climate meltdown and save the planet is to phase out virtually all coal plants worldwide over a 20 year period from 2010 to 2030. Indeed, if we don't virtually eliminate the use of coal worldwide, everything else we do will be as effective as re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Plans that won't work Unfortunately, nobody has proposed a realistic and practical plan to eliminate coal use worldwide or anywhere close to that. There is no White House URL with such a plan. No environmental group has a workable plan either. Hoping that everyone will abandon their coal plants and replace them with a renewable power mix isn't a viable strategy -- we've proven that in the U.S. Heck, even if the Waxman-Markey bill passes Congress (a big "if"), it is so weak that it won't do much at all to eliminate coal plants. So even though we have Democrats controlling all three branches of government, it is almost impossible to get even a weak climate bill passed. If we can't pass strong climate legislation in the U.S. with all the stars aligned, how can we expect anyone else to do it? So expecting all countries to pass a 100% renewable portfolio standard (which is far far beyond that contemplated in the current energy bill) just isn't possible. Secondly, even if you could mandate it politically in every country, from a practical standpoint, you'd never be able to implement it in time. And there are lots of experts in this country, including Secretary Chu, who say it's impossible without nuclear (a point which I am strongly in agreement with). Hoping that everyone will spontaneously adopt carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is also a non-starter solution. First of all, CCS doesn't exist at commercial scale. Secondly, even if we could make it work at scale, and even it could be magically retrofitted on every coal plant (which we don't know how to do), it would require all countries to agree to add about 30% in extra cost for no perceivable benefit. At the recent G8 conference, India and China have made it clear yet again that they aren't going to agree to emission goals. Saying that we'll invent some magical new technology that will rescue us at the last minute is a bad solution. That's at best a poor contingency plan. The point is this: It should be apparent to us that we aren't going to be able to solve the climate crisis by either "force" (economic coercion or legislation) or by international agreement. And relying on technologies like CCS that may never work is a really bad idea. The only remaining way to solve the crisis is to make it economically irresistible for countries to "do the right thing." The best way to do that is to give the world a way to generate electric power that is economically more attractive than coal with the same benefits as coal (compact power plants, 24x7 generation, can be sited almost anywhere, etc). Even better is if the new technology can simply replace the existing burner in a coal plant. That way, they'll want to switch. No coercion is required. Since Obama doesn't have a plan and I'm not aware of a viable plan that experts agree can move the entire world off of coal, I thought I'd propose one that is viable. You may not like it, but if there is a better alternative that is practical and viable, please let me know because none of the experts I've consulted with are aware of one. The Kirsch plan for saving the planet The Kirsch plan for saving the planet is very simple and practical. My plan is based on a simple observation: Nuclear is the elephant in the room 70% of the carbon free power in America is still generated by nuclear, even though we haven't built a new nuclear plant in this country in the last 30 years. Hydro is a distant second. Wind and solar are rounding error. Worldwide, it's even more skewed: nuclear is more than 100 times bigger than solar and more than 100 times bigger than wind. If I drew a bar chart of nuclear vs. solar vs. wind use worldwide, you wouldn't even see solar and wind on the chart. So our best bet is to join the parade and get behind supporting the big elephant. We put all the wood behind one arrow: nuclear. We invest in and promote these new, low-cost modular nuclear designs worldwide and get the volumes up so we can drive the price down. These plants are low-cost, can be built in small capacities, can be manufactured quickly, and assembled on-site in a few years. Nuclear can be rolled out very quickly. About two thirds of the currently operating 440 reactors around the world came online during a 10 year period between 1980 and 1990. In southeast Asia, reactors are typically constructed in 4 years or less (about 44 months) Secondly, the nuclear reactor can replace the burner in a coal plant making upgrading an existing coal plant very cost effective. Finally, it is also critically important for big entities (such as the U.S. government in partnership with other governments) to offer low-cost financing to bring down the upfront cash investment in a new nuclear reactor to be less than that required to build a coal plant. Under my plan, we now have a way to economically displace the building of new coal plants that nobody can refuse. People will then want to build modular nuclear plants because since they are cheaper, last longer, and are cleaner than coal. No legislation or mandate is required.
My plan is credible since it doesn't require Congress to act. Power companies worldwide simply make an economic decision to do the right thing. No force required. This economic lens is a prerequisite for solvency
Barton H. Thompson Jr., '3 (Vice Dean and Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, Stanford LawSchool; Senior Scholar, Center for Environmental Science and Policy, Stanford Institute forInternational Studies, "What Good is Economics?", environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/27/1/thompson.pdf)
Even the environmental moralist who eschews any normative use of economics may find economics valuable for other purposes. Indeed, economics is indispensable in diagnosing why society currently does not achieve the level of environmental protection desired by the moralist. Those who turn their backs on economics and rely instead on ethical intuition to diagnose environmental problems are likely to find themselves doomed to failure.
Economic theory suggests that flaws in economic markets and institutions are often the cause of environmental problems. Three concepts of market failure have proven particularly robust in analyzing environmental problems. The first is the "tragedy of the commons."28 If a resource is open and free for multiple parties to use, the parties will tend to over-utilize the resource, even to the point of its destruction. Economists and others have used the tragedy of the commons to explain such environmental problems as over-fishing, the over-drafting of groundwater aquifers, the early and inept exhaustion of oil fields, and high levels of population growth.29 The second, more general concept (of which the tragedy of the commons actually is a specialized instance) is the "negative externality." 3 0 When parties do not bear the full cost to society of environmental harms that they cause, they tend to underinvest in the elimination or correction of the harm. Externalities help explain why factories pollute, why landowners destroy ecologically valuable wetlands or other forms of habitat, and why current generations consume high levels of exhaustible resources. The final concept is the problem of "collective action." 31 If political or market actions will benefit a large group of individuals and it is impossible to exclude anyone from enjoying the benefits, each individual will have an incentive to "free ride" on the actions of others rather than acting themselves, reducing the possibility that anything will get done. This explains why the private market does not provide us with more wildlife refuges or aesthetic open space.32
Although these economic explanations for environmental problems are not universal truths, accurate in all settings, they do enjoy a robust applicability. Experimenters, for example, have found that subjects in a wide array of countries succumb to the tragedy of the commons.33 Smaller groups sometimes have been able to overcome the tragedy of the commons and govern a resource in collective wisdom. Yet this exception appears to be the result of institutional characteristics peculiar to the group and resource that make it easier to devise a local and informal regulatory system rather than the result of cultural differences that undermine the economic precepts of the tragedy of the commons.4
These economic explanations point to a vastly different approach to solving environmental problems than a focus on environmental ethics alone would suggest. To environmental moralists, the difficulty is that the population does not understand the ethical importance of protecting the environment. Although governmental regulation might be necessary in the short run to force people tQ do what they do not yet appreciate is proper, the long run answers are education and moral change. A principal means of enlightening the citizenry is engaging them in a discussion of environmental goals. Economic analysis, by contrast, suggests that the problem lies in our economic institutions. The solution under economic analysis is to give those who might harm the environment the incentive to avoid the harm through the imposition of taxes or regulatory fines or the awarding of environmentally beneficial subsidies.
The few studies that have tried to test the relative importance of environmental precepts and of economics in predicting environmentally relevant behavior suggest that economics trumps ethics. In one 1992 experiment designed to test whether subjects would yield to the tragedy of the commons in a simulated fisheries common, the researchers looked to see whether the environmental attitudes of individual subjects made any difference in the subjects' behavior. The researchers measured subjects' environmental beliefs through various means. They administered questionnaires designed to elicit environmental beliefs; they asked the subjects how they would behave in various hypothetical scenarios (e.g., if someone asked them to volunteer to pick up litter on the weekend); they even tried to see how the subjects would react to real requests for environmental help (e.g., by asking them to participate in a Saturday recycling campaign). No matter how the researchers tried to measure the environmental attitudes of the subjects, attitude failed to provide a statistically significant explanation for participants' behavior in the fishing commons. Those who appeared to have strong environmental beliefs behaved just as tragically as those who did not • 35 when fighting for the limited stock of fish.
In another study, researchers examined domestic consumers of high amounts of electricity in Perth, Australia. After administering a survey to determine whether the consumers believed they had a personal and ethical duty to conserve energy, the researchers tried various methods for changing the behavior of those who reported that people have a conservation obligation. Informing these individuals of their high electricity usage and even supplying them with conservation tips did not make a statistically significant difference in their energy use. The only thing that led these individuals to reduce their electricity consumption was a letter reminding them of the earlier survey in which they had espoused a conservation duty and emphasizing the inconsistency of that view with their high electricity usage. In response to this letter, the subjects reduced their energy use. Apparently shame can be a valuable catalyst in converting ethical beliefs into action. But the effect may be short lived. Within two weeks, the Perth subjects' energy use had risen back to its earlier levels.36
Ethical beliefs, in short, frequently fall victim to personal convenience or cost considerations. Ethical views sometimes can make a difference in how people behave. Examples include the role that ethics has played in encouraging people to recycle or to eat dolphin-free tuna." But the personal cost, if any, of recycling or of eating dolphin-free tuna is exceptionally small. For most of the environmental dilemmas that face the nation and the world today, the economic cost of changing behavior is far more significant. And where costs are high, economics appears to trump most peoples' environmental views. Even if ethics played a more powerful role, we do not know for certain how to create or strengthen environmental norms.38 In contrast, we do know how to change economic incentives. Although environmental moralists should continue trying to promote environmental ethics, economic analysis currently provides the strongest tool for diagnosing and thus helping to resolve environmental problems. The environmental moralist who ignores this tool in trying to improve the environment is doomed to frustration. Gotta act soon
Plumer 12 (Brady Plumer, Washington Post, “Is there still time left to avoid 2°C of global warming? Yes, but barely.” 11/30/12) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/30/is-there-still-time-left-to-stop-global-warming-yes-but-only-barely/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein
But let’s say 2°C is the goal. That looks daunting. After all, the world has already warmed about 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels. And the carbon dioxide we’ve put in the air has committed us to another 0.7°C of warming in the decades ahead. Plus, carbon emissions keep rising each year. So have we finally reached the point where it’s too late?
(See further reading here.)
Not necessarily. At least, that’s according to a new report (pdf) from the analysts at the Climate Action Tracker. They say it’s still technically feasible for the world to stay below that 2°C target. But the world would need to start revamping its energy system now. As in, today. Because with each passing year, meeting that 2°C goal becomes significantly more arduous.
Right now, the world is still off-track. When the analysts added up all existing pledges to curb emissions and plugged them into the latest climate models, they found that humans are currently on pace to heat the planet somewhere between 2.7°C and 4.2°C by the end of the century. (There’s a range because there’s still some uncertainty as to exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in atmospheric carbon.)
Yet the Climate Action Tracker analysts aren’t ready to despair just yet. If the world’s nations could somehow trim their emissions 15 percent below present levels by 2020, and then keep cutting, then there are a number of different scenarios in which global warming could stay below 2°C.
Various strategies for how to attain this goal can be found in a big new report from the U.N. Environmental Programme. Big cuts wouldn’t be easy or cheap: Nations would need to invest in everything from improving the energy-efficiency of buildings to limiting deforestation to scaling up renewable energy and nuclear power. These efforts would cost about 1 percent of global GDP, assuming that the investments are spread out evenly over time.
Speed turns out to be critical. If the world starts making big cuts today, the reports conclude, there’s still some margin for error. Even if some clean-energy technologies are simply unworkable — such as, say, carbon capture and sequestration for coal plants — there’s still a chance to meet that 2°C target. (And if engineers could figure out how to suck carbon out of the air through biomass sequestration, 1.5°C might even be attainable.) The need for the plan is magnified by future energy demand
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, “Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III),” 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
The global threat of anthropogenic climate change has become a political hot potato, especially in the USA. The vast majority of climate scientists, however, are in agreement that the potential consequences of inaction are dire indeed. Yet even those who dismiss concerns about climate change cannot discount an array of global challenges facing humanity that absolutely must be solved if wars, dislocations, and social chaos are to be avoided. Human population growth exacerbates a wide range of problems, and with most demographic projections predicting an increase of about 50% to nine or ten billion by mid-century, we are confronted with a social and logistical dilemma of staggering proportions. The most basic human morality dictates that we attempt to solve these problems without resorting to forcible and draconian methods. At the same time, simple social justice demands that the developed world accept the premise that the billions who live today in poverty deserve a drastic improvement in their standard of living, an improvement that is being increasingly demanded and expected throughout the developing countries. To achieve environmental sustainability whilst supporting human well-being will require a global revolution in energy and materials technology and deployment fully as transformative as the Industrial Revolution, but unlike that gradual process we find ourselves under the gun, especially if one considers climate change, peak oil and other immediate sustainability problems to be bona fide threats. It is beyond the purview of this paper to address the question of materials disposition and recycling i, or the social transformations that will necessarily be involved in confronting the challenges of the next several decades. But the question of energy supply is inextricably bound up with the global solution to our coming crises. It may be argued that energy is the most crucial aspect of any proposed remedy. Our purpose here is to demonstrate that the provision of all the energy that humankind can possibly require to meet the challenges of the coming decades and centuries is a challenge that already has a realistic solution, using technology that is just waiting to be deployed. Energy Realism The purpose of this paper is not to exhaustively examine the many varieties of energy systems currently in use, in development, or in the dreams of their promoters. Nevertheless, because of the apparent passion of both the public and policymakers toward certain energy systems and the political influence of their advocates, a brief discussion of “renewable” energy systems is in order. Our pressing challenges make the prospect of heading down potential energy cul de sacs – especially to the explicit exclusion of nuclear fission alternatives – to be an unconscionable waste of our limited time and resources. There is a vocal contingent of self-styled environmentalists who maintain that wind and solar power—along with other technologies such as wave and tidal power that have yet to be meaningfully developed—can (and should) provide all the energy that humanity demands. The more prominent names are well-known among those who deal with these issues: Amory Lovins, Lester Brown and Arjun Makhijani are three in particular whose organizations wield considerable clout with policymakers. The most recent egregious example to make a public splash, however, was a claim trumpeted with a cover story in Scientific American that all of our energy needs can be met by renewables (predominantly ‘technosolar’ – wind and solar thermal) by 2030. The authors of this piece—Mark Jacobson (Professor, Stanford) and Mark A. Delucchi (researcher, UC Davis)—were roundly critiqued ii online and in print. An excellent treatment of the question of renewables’ alleged capacity to provide sufficient energy is a book by David MacKay iii called Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air. iv MacKay was a professor of physics at Cambridge before being appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change in the UK. His book is a model of scientific and intellectual rigor. Energy ideologies can be every bit as fervent as those of religion, so after suggesting Dr. MacKay’s book as an excellent starting point for a rational discussion of energy systems we’ll leave this necessary digression with a point to ponder. Whatever one believes about the causes of climate change, there is no denying that glaciers around the world are receding at an alarming rate. Billions of people depend on such glaciers for their water supplies. We have already seen cases of civil strife and even warfare caused or exacerbated by competition over water supplies. Yet these are trifling spats when one considers that the approaching demographic avalanche will require us to supply about three billion more people with all the water they need within just four decades. There is no avoiding the fact that the water for all these people—and even more, if the glaciers continue to recede, as expected—will have to come from the ocean. That means a deployment of desalination facilities on an almost unimaginable scale. Not only will it take staggering amounts of energy just to desalinate such a quantity, but moving the water to where it is needed will be an additional energy burden of prodigious proportions. A graphic example can be seen in the case of California, its state water project being the largest single user of energy in California. It consumes an average of 5 billion kWh/yr, more than 25% of the total electricity consumption of the entire state of New Mexico v. Disposing of the salt derived from such gargantuan desalination enterprises will likewise take a vast amount of energy. Even the relatively modest desalination projects along the shores of the Persian Gulf have increased its salinity to the point of serious concern. Such circumscribed bodies of water simply won’t be available as dumping grounds for the mountains of salt that will be generated, and disposing of it elsewhere will require even more energy to move and disperse it. Given the formidable energy requirements for these water demands alone, any illusions about wind turbines and solar panels being able to supply all the energy humanity requires should be put to rest. Energy Density and Reliability Two of the most important qualities of fossil fuels that enabled their rise to prominence in an industrializing world is their energy density and ease of storage. High energy density and a stable and convenient long-term fuel store are qualities that makes it practical and economical to collect, distribute, and then use them on demand for the myriad of uses to which we put them. This energy density, and the dispatchability that comes from having a non-intermittent fuel source, are the very things lacking in wind and solar and other renewable energy systems, yet they are crucial factors in considering how we can provide reliable on-demand power for human society. The supply of fossil fuels is limited, although the actual limits of each different type are a matter of debate and sometimes change substantially with new technological developments, as we’ve seen recently with the adoption of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) methods to extract natural gas from previously untapped subterranean reservoirs. The competition for fossil fuel resources, whatever their limitations, has been one of the primary causes of wars in the past few decades and can be expected to engender further conflicts and other symptoms of international competition as countries like India and China lead the developing nations in seeking a rising standard of living for their citizens. Even disregarding the climatological imperative to abandon fossil fuels, the economic, social, and geopolitical upheavals attendant upon a continuing reliance on such energy sources demands an objective look at the only other energy-dense and proven resource available to us: nuclear power. We will refrain from discussing the much hoped-for chimera of nuclear fusion as the magic solution to all our energy needs, since it is but one of many technologies that have yet to be harnessed. Our concern here is with technologies that we know will work, so when it comes to harnessing the power of the atom we are confined to nuclear fission. The splitting of uranium and transuranic elements in fission-powered nuclear reactors is a potent example of energy density being tapped for human uses. Reactor-grade uranium (i.e. uranium enriched to about 3.5% U-235) is over 100,000 times more energy-dense than anthracite coal, the purest form of coal used in power generation, and nearly a quarter-million times as much as lignite, the dirty coal used in many power plants around the world. Ironically, one of the world’s largest producers and users of lignite is Germany, the same country whose anti-nuclear political pressure under the banner of environmentalism is globally infamous. The vast majority of the world’s 440 commercial nuclear power plants are light-water reactors (LWRs) that use so-called enriched uranium (mentioned above). Natural uranium is comprised primarily of two isotopes: U-235 and U-238. The former comprises only 0.7% of natural uranium, with U-238 accounting for the remaining 99.3%. LWR technology requires a concentration of at least 3.5% U-235 in order to maintain the chain reaction used to extract energy, so a process called uranium enrichment extracts as much of the U-235 as possible from several kilos of natural uranium and adds it to a fuel kilo in order to reach a concentration high enough to enable the fission process. Because current enrichment technology is capable of harvesting only some of the U-235, this results in about 8-10 kilos of “depleted uranium” (DU) for every kilo of power plant fuel (some of which is enriched to 4% or more, depending on plant design). The USA currently has (largely unwanted) stockpiles of DU in excess of half a million tons, while other countries around the world that have been employing nuclear power over the last half-century have their own DU inventories. Technological advances in LWR engineering have resulted in new power plants that are designated within the industry as Generation III or III+ designs, to differentiate them from currently-used LWRs normally referred to as Gen II plants. The European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), currently being built by AREVA in Finland, France and China, is an example of a Gen III design. It utilizes multiple-redundant engineered systems to assure safety and dependability. Two examples of Gen III+ designs are the Westinghouse/Toshiba AP-1000, now being built in China, and GE/Hitachi’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR), expected to be certified for commercial use by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2011. The distinguishing feature of Gen III+ designs is their reliance on the principle of passive safety, which would allow the reactor to automatically shut down in the event of an emergency without operator action or electronic feedback, due to inherent design properties. Relying as they do on the laws of physics rather than active intervention to intercede, they consequently can avoid the necessity for several layers of redundant systems while still maintaining ‘defense in depth’, making it possible to build them both faster and cheaper than Gen III designs—at least in theory. As of this writing we are seeing this playing out in Finland and China. While it is expected that first-of-a-kind difficulties (and their attendant costs) will be worked out so that future plants will be cheaper and faster to build, the experience to date seems to validate the Gen III+ concept. Within a few years both the EPR and the first AP-1000s should be coming online, as well as Korean, Russian and Indian designs, at which point actual experience will begin to tell the tale as subsequent plants are built. The safety and economics of Gen III+ plants seem to be attractive enough to consider this generation of nuclear power to provide reasons for optimism that humanity can manage to provide the energy needed for the future. But naysayers are warning (with highly questionable veracity) about uranium shortages if too many such plants are built. Even if they’re right, the issue can be considered moot, for there is another player waiting in the wings that is so superior to even Gen III+ technology as to render all concerns about nuclear fuel shortages baseless. The Silver Bullet In the endless debate on energy policy and technology that seems to increase by the day, the phrase heard repeatedly is “There is no silver bullet.” (This is sometimes rendered “There is no magic bullet”, presumably by those too young to remember the Lone Ranger TV series.) Yet a fission technology known as the integral fast reactor (IFR), developed at Argonne National Laboratory in the 80s and 90s, gives the lie to that claim. Below is a graph vi representing the number of years that each of several power sources would be able to supply all the world’s expected needs if they were to be relied upon as the sole source of humanity’s energy supply. The categories are described thusly: Conventional oil: ordinary oil drilling and extraction as practiced today Conventional gas: likewise Unconventional oil (excluding low-grade oil shale). More expensive methods of recovering oil from more problematic types of deposits Unconventional gas (excluding clathrates and geopressured gas): As with unconventional oil, this encompasses more costly extraction techniques Coal: extracted with techniques in use today. The worldwide coal estimates, however, are open to question and may, in fact, be considerably less than they are ordinarily presented to be, unless unconventional methods like underground in situ gasification are deployed. vii Methane Clathrates and Geopressured Gas: These are methane resources that are both problematic and expensive to recover, with the extraction technology for clathrates only in the experimental stage. Low-grade oil shale and sands: Very expensive to extract and horrendously destructive of the environment. So energy-intensive that there have been proposals to site nuclear power plants in the oil shale and tar sands areas to provide the energy for extraction! Uranium in fast breeder reactors (IFRs being the type under discussion here)
Integral fast reactors can clearly be seen as the silver bullet that supposedly doesn’t exist. The fact is that IFRs can provide all the energy that humanity requires, and can deliver it cleanly, safely, and economically. This technology is a true game changer. While the IFR was under development, a consortium of prominent American companies led by General Electric collaborated with the IFR team to design a commercial-scale reactor based upon the EBR-II research. This design, currently in the hands of GE, is called the PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module). A somewhat larger version (with a power rating of 380 MWe) is called the S-PRISM. As with all new nuclear reactor designs (and many other potentially hazardous industrial projects), probabilistic risk assessment studies were conducted for the S-PRISM. Among other parameters, the PRA study estimated the frequency with which one could expect a core meltdown. This occurrence was so statistically improbable as to defy imagination. Of course such a number must be divided by the number of reactors in service in order to convey the actual frequency of a hypothetical meltdown. Even so, if one posits that all the energy humanity requires were to be supplies solely by IFRs (an unlikely scenario but one that is entirely possible), the world could expect a core meltdown about once every 435,000 years xii. Even if the risk assessment understated the odds by a factor of a thousand, this would still be a reactor design that even the most paranoid could feel good about. The initial manufacturing and subsequent recycling of the fuel pins themselves is accomplished with a well-understood and widely used electrorefining process, similar to one that is employed every day in aluminum foundries. The simplicity of the system and the small amount of material that would have to be recycled in any power plant—even one containing several reactor modules—is such that factory-built components could be pieced together in a small hot cell at each power plant site. Every 18-24 months, one third of the fuel would be removed from the reactor and replaced by new fuel. The used fuel would be recycled. Approximately 10% of it would be comprised of fission products, which in the recycling process would be entombed in vitrified ceramic and probably stored on-site for the life of the plant. If the reactor core were configured to breed more fissile material than it consumes, then during the recycling process some quantity of plutonium would be removed and fabricated on-site into extra fuel assemblies that could then be used as the primary core load of a new reactor. The long-lived actinides that remain would be incorporated into the new fuel rods, replacing the quantity of fission products removed (and any plutonium that had been extracted for startup fuel for new reactors) with an equal amount of either depleted uranium or reprocessed uranium from LWR spent fuel. Science is the best method of getting an approximate grasp on warming
Jean Bricmont 1, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, “Defense of a Modest Scientific Realism”, September 23, http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/bielefeld_final.pdf
Given that instrumentalism is not defensible when it is formulated as a rigid doctrine, and since redefining truth leads us from bad to worse, what should one do? A hint of one sensible response is provided by the following comment of Einstein: Science without epistemology is insofar as it is thinkable at all primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving epistemological systematic that far. ... He therefore must appeal to the systematic epistemologist as an unscrupulous opportunist.'1'1 So let us try epistemological opportunism. We are, in some sense, "screened'' from reality (we have no immediate access to it, radical skepticism cannot be refuted, etc.). There are no absolutely secure foundations on which to base our knowledge. Nevertheless, we all assume implicitly that we can obtain some reasonably reliable knowledge of reality, at least in everyday life. Let us try to go farther, putting to work all the resources of our fallible and finite minds: observations, experiments, reasoning. And then let us see how far we can go. In fact, the most surprising thing, shown by the development of modern science, is how far we seem to be able to go. Unless one is a solipsism or a radical skeptic which nobody really is one has to be a realist about something: about objects in everyday life, or about the past, dinosaurs, stars, viruses, whatever. But there is no natural border where one could somehow radically change one's basic attitude and become thoroughly instrumentalist or pragmatist (say. about atoms or quarks or whatever). There are many differences between quarks and chairs, both in the nature of the evidence supporting their existence and in the way we give meaning to those words, but they are basically differences of degree. Instrumentalists are right to point out that the meaning of statements involving unobservable entities (like "quark'') is in part related to the implications of such statements for direct observations. But only in part: though it is difficult to say exactly how we give meaning to scientific expressions, it seems plausible that we do it by combining direct observations with mental pictures and mathematical formulations, and there is no good reason to restrict oneself to only one of these. Likewise, conventionalists like Poincare are right to observe that some scientific "choices", like the preference for inertial over noninertial reference frames, are made for pragmatic rather than objective reasons. In all these senses, we have to be epistemological "opportunists". But a problem worse than the disease arises when any of these ideas are taken as rigid doctrines replacing 'realism". A friend of ours once said: "I am a naive realist. But I admit that knowledge is difficult." This is the root of the problem. Knowing how things really are is the goal of science; this goal is difficult to reach, but not impossible (at least for some parts of reality and to some degrees of approximation). If we change the goal if, for example, we seek instead a consensus, or (less radically) aim only at empirical adequacy then of course things become much easier; but as Bert rand Russell observed in a similar context, this has all the advantages of theft over honest toil. Moreover, the underdetermination thesis, far from undermining scientific objectivity, actually makes the success of science all the more remarkable. Indeed, what is difficult is not to find a story that "fits the data'*, but to find even one non-crazy such story. How does one know that it is non-crazy7 A combination of factors: its predictive power, its explanatory value, its breadth and simplicity, etc. Nothing in the (Quinean) underdetermiiiation thesis tells us how to find inequivalent theories with some or all of these properties. In fact, there are vast domains in physics, chemistry and biology where there is only one"18 known non-crazy theory that accounts for Unknown facts and where many alternative theories have been tried and failed because their predictions contradicted experiments. In those domains, one can reasonably think that our present-day theories are at least approximately true, in some sense or other. An important (and difficult) problem for the philosophy of science is to clarify the meaning of “approximately true'" and its implications for the ontological status of unobservable theoretical entities. We do not claim to have a solution to this problem, but we would like to offer a few ideas that might prove useful. “science” isn’t some special definable category, its just basic induction carried out systematically
Jean Bricmont 1, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, “Defense of a Modest Scientific Realism”, September 23, http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/bielefeld_final.pdf
So, how does one obtain evidence concerning the truth or falsity of scientific assertions? By the same imperfect methods that we use to obtain evidence about empirical assertions generally. Modern science, in our view, is nothing more or less than the deepest (to date) refinement of the rational attitude toward investigating any question about the world, be it atomic spectra, the etiology of smallpox, or the Bielefeld bus routes. Historians, detectives and plumbers indeed, all human beings use the same basic methods of induction, deduction and assessment of evidence as do physicists or biochemists.18 Modern science tries to carry out these operations in a more careful and systematic way, by using controls and statistical tests, insisting on replication, and so forth. Moreover, scientific measurements are often much more precise than everyday observations; they allow us to discover hitherto unknown phenomena; and scientific theories often conflict with "common sense'*. But he con f I id is al the level of conclusions, nol (he basic approach. As Susan Haack lucidly observes: Our standards of what constitutes good, honest, thorough inquiry and what constitutes good, strong, supportive evidence are not internal to science. In judging where science has succeeded and where it has failed, in what areas and at what times it has done better and in what worse, we are appealing to the standards by which we judge the solidity of empirical beliefs, or the rigor and thoroughness of empirical inquiry, generally.1'1 Scientists' spontaneous epistemology the one that animates their work, regardless of what they may say when philosophizing is thus a rough-and-ready realism: the goal of science is to discover (some aspects of) how things really are. More The aim of science is to give a true (or approximately true) description of reality. I'll is goal is realizable, because: 1. Scientific theories are either true or false. Their truth (or falsity) is literal, not metaphorical; it does not depend in any way on us, or on how we test those theories, or on the structure of our minds, or on the society within which we live, and so on. 2. It is possible to have evidence for the truth (or falsity) of a theory. (Tt remains possible, however, that all the evidence supports some theory T, yet T is false.)20 Tin- most powerful objections to the viability of scientific realism consist in various theses showing that theories are underdetermined by data.21 In its most common formulation, the underdetermination thesis says that, for any finite (or even infinite) set of data, there are infinitely many mutually incompatible theories that are "compatible'' with those data. This thesis, if not properly understood22, can easily lead to radical conclusions. The biologist who believes that a disease is caused by a virus presumably does so on the basis of some "evidence" or some "data'*. Saying that a disease is caused by a virus presumably counts as a "theory'' (e.g. it involves, implicitly, many counlerfactual statements). But if there are really infinitely many distinct theories that are compatible with those "data", then we may legitimately wonder on what basis one can rationally choose between those theories. In order to clarify the situation, it is important to understand how the underdetermination thesis is established; then its meaning and its limitations become much clearer. Here are some examples of how underdeterminatiou works; one may claim that: The past did not exist: the universe was created five minutes ago along with all the documents and all our memories referring to the alleged past in their present state. Alternatively, it could have been created 100 or 1000 years ago. The stars do not exist: instead, there are spots on a distant sky that emit exactly the same signals as those we receive. All criminals ever put in jail were innocent. For each alleged criminal, explain away all testimony by a deliberate desire to harm the accused; declare that all evidence was fabricated by the police and that all confessions were obtained bv force.2'1 Of course, all these "theses'1 may have to be elaborated, but the basic idea is clear: given any set of facts, just make up a story, no matter how ad hoc, to "account" for the facts without running into contradictions.2,1 It is important to realize that this is all there is to the general (Quinean) underdetermination thesis. Moreover, this thesis, although it played an important role in the refutation of the most extreme versions of logical positivism, is not very different from the observation that radical skepticism or even solipsism cannot be refuted: all our knowledge about the world is based on some sort of inference from the observed to the unobserved, and no such inference can be justified by deductive logic alone. However, it is clear that, in practice, nobody ever takes seriously such "theories" as those mentioned above, any more than they take seriously solipsism or radical skepticism. Let us call these "crazy theories'*2'1 (of course, it is not easy to say exactly what it means for a theory to be non-crazy). Xote that these theories require no work: they can be formulated entirely a priori. On the other hand, the difficult problem, given some set of data, is to find even one non-crazy theory that accounts for them. Consider, for example, a police enquiry about some crime: it is easy enough to invent a story that "accounts for the facts'" in an ad hoc fashion (sometimes lawyers do just that); what is hard is to discover who really committed the crime and to obtain evidence demonstrating that beyond a reasonable doubt. Reflecting on this elementary example clarifies the meaning of the underdelermination thesis. Despite the existence of innumerable "crazy theories'* concerning any given crime, it sometimes happens in practice that there is a unique theory (i.e. a unique story about who committed the crime and how) that is plausible and compatible with the known facts; in that case, one will say that the criminal has been discovered (with a high degree of confidence, albeit not with certainty). It may also happen that no plausible theory is found, or that we are unable to decide which one among several suspects is really guilty: in these cases, the underdetermination is real.-'' One might next ask whether there exist more subtle forms of underdetermination than the one revealed by a Duhem Quine type of argument. In order to analyze this question, let us consider the example of classical electromagnetism. This is a theory that describes how particles possessing a quantifiable property called "electric charge" produce "electromagnetic fields" that "propagate in vacuum" in a certain precise fashion and then "guide" the motion of charged particles when they encounter them.2' Of course, no one ever "sees" directly an electromagnetic field or an electric charge. So, should one interpret this theory "realistically'', and if so, what should it be taken to mean? Classical electromagnetic theory is immensely well supported by precise experiments and forms the basis for a large part of modern technology. It is "confirmed'' every time one of us switches on his or her computer and finds that it works as designed.'8 Does this overwhelming empirical support imply that there are "really"' electric and magnetic fields propagating in vacuum? In support of the idea that thenare, one could argue that electromagnetic theory postulates the existence of those fields and that there is no known non-crazy theory that accounts equally well for the same data; therefore it is reasonable to believe that electric and magnetic fields really exist. But is it in fact true that there are no alternative non-crazy theories? Here is one possibility: Let us claim that there are no fields propagating "in vacuum", but that, rather, there are only "forces" acting directly between charged particles.29 Of course, in order to preserve the empirical adequacy of the theory, one lias to use exactly the same Maxwell Lorentz system of equations as before (or a mathematically equivalent system). But one may interpret the fields as a mere "calculational device" allowing us to compute more easily the net effect of the "real" forces acting between charged particles.30 Almost every physicist reading these lines will say that this is some kind of metaphysics or maybe even a play on words that this "alternative theory" is really just standard electromagnetic theory in disguise. Xow, although the precise meaning of "metaphysics" is hard to pin down 31, there is a vague sense in which, if we use exactly the same equations (or a mathematically equivalent set of equations) and make exactly the same predictions in the two theories, then they are really the same theory as far as "physics" is concerned, and the distinction between the two if any lies outside of its scope. The same kind of observation can be made about most physical theories: In classical mechanics, are there really forces acting on particles, or are the particles instead following trajectories defined by variational principles? In general relativity, is space-time really curved, or are there, rather, fields that cause particles to move as if space-time were curved?'2 Let us call this kind of underdetermination "genuine'*, as opposed to the "crazy" underdeterminations of the usual Duhem Quine thesis. By "genuine'*, we do not mean that these underdeterminations are necessarily worth losing sleep over, but simply that there is no rational way to choose (at least on empirical grounds alone) between the alternative theories if indeed they should be regarded as different theories. The aff is a bright green transformation – technological optimism creates effective environmentalism
ROBERTSON 2007 (Ross, Senior Editor at EnlightenNext, former NRDC member, “A Brighter Shade of Green,” What is Enlightenment, Oct-Dec, http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j38/bright-green.asp?page=1)
This brings me to Worldchanging, the book that arrived last spring bearing news of an environ-mental paradigm so shamelessly up to the minute, it almost blew out all my green circuits before I could even get it out of its stylish slipcover. Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century. It’s also the name of the group blog, found at Worldchanging.com, where the material in the book originally came from. Run by a future-savvy environmental journalist named Alex Steffen, Worldchanging is one of the central hubs in a fast-growing network of thinkers defining an ultramodern green agenda that closes the gap between nature and society—big time. After a good solid century of well-meaning efforts to restrain, reduce, and otherwise mitigate our presence here on planet Earth, they’re saying it’s time for environmentalism to do a one-eighty. They’re ditching the long-held tenets of classical greenitude and harnessing the engines of capitalism, high technology, and human ingenuity to jump-start the manufacture of a dramatically sustainable future. They call themselves “bright green,” and if you’re at all steeped in the old-school “dark green” worldview (their term), they’re guaranteed to make you squirm. The good news is, they just might free you to think completely differently as well.
Worldchanging takes its inspiration from a series of speeches given by sci-fi author, futurist, and cyberguru Bruce Sterling in the years leading up to the turn of the millennium—and from the so-called Viridian design movement he gave birth to. Known more in those days as one of the fathers of cyberpunk than as the prophet of a new twenty-first-century environmentalism, Ster-ling nevertheless began issuing a self-styled “prophecy” to the design world announcing the launch of a cutting-edge green design program that would embrace consumerism rather than reject it. Its mission: to take on climate change as the planet’s most burning aesthetic challenge. “Why is this an aesthetic issue?” he asked his first audience in 1998 at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts near my old office at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Well, because it’s a severe breach of taste to bake and sweat half to death in your own trash, that’s why. To boil and roast the entire physical world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide.”
Explaining the logic of the bright green platform, Sterling writes:
It’s a question of tactics. Civil society does not respond at all well to moralistic scolding. There are small minority groups here and there who are perfectly aware that it is immoral to harm the lives of coming generations by massive consumption now: deep Greens, Amish, people practicing voluntary simplicity, Gandhian ashrams and so forth. These public-spirited voluntarists are not the problem. But they’re not the solution either, because most human beings won’t volunteer to live like they do. . . . However, contemporary civil society can be led anywhere that looks attractive, glamorous and seductive. The task at hand is therefore basically an act of social engineering. Society must become Green, and it must be a variety of Green that society will eagerly consume. What is required is not a natural Green, or a spiritual Green, or a primitivist Green, or a blood-and-soil romantic Green. These flavors of Green have been tried and have proven to have insufficient appeal. . . . The world needs a new, unnatural, seductive, mediated, glamorous Green. A Viridian Green, if you will.
Sterling elaborates in a speech given to the Industrial Designers Society of America in Chicago in 1999:
This can’t be one of these diffuse, anything-goes, eclectic, postmodern things. Forget about that, that’s over, that’s yesterday. It’s got to be a narrow, doctrinaire, high-velocity movement. Inventive, not eclectic. New, not cut-and-pasted from the debris of past trends. Forward-looking and high-tech, not William Morris medieval arts-and-craftsy. About abundance of clean power and clean goods and clean products, not conservative of dirty power and dirty goods and dirty products. Explosive, not thrifty. Expansive, not niggling. Mainstream, not underground. Creative of a new order, not subversive of an old order. Making a new cultural narrative, not calling the old narrative into question. . . .
Twentieth-century design is over now. Anything can look like anything now. You can put a pixel of any color anywhere you like on a screen, you can put a precise dot of ink anywhere on any paper, you can stuff any amount of functionality into chips. The limits aren’t to be found in the technology anymore. The limits are behind your own eyes, people. They are limits of habit, things you’ve accepted, things you’ve been told, realities you’re ignoring. Stop being afraid. Wake up. It’s yours if you want it. It’s yours if you’re bold enough.
It was a philosophy that completely reversed the fulcrum of environmental thinking, shifting its focus from the flaws inherent in the human soul to the failures inherent in the world we’ve designed—designed, Sterling emphasized. Things are the way they are today, he seemed to be saying, for no greater or lesser reason than that we made them that way—and there’s no good reason for them to stay the same. His suggestion that it’s time to hang up our hats as caretakers of the earth and embrace our role as its masters is profoundly unnerving to the dark green environmentalist in me. But at this point in history, is it any more than a question of semantics? With PCBs in the flesh of Antarctic penguins, there isn’t a square inch of the planet’s surface that is “unmanaged” anymore; there is no more untouched “natural” state. We hold the strings of global destiny in our fingertips, and the easy luxury of cynicism regarding our creative potential to re-solve things is starting to look catastrophically expensive. Our less-than-admirable track record gives us every reason to be cautious and every excuse to be pessimists. But is the risk of being optimistic anyway a risk that, in good conscience, we can really afford not to take?
Sterling’s belief in the fundamental promise of human creativity is reminiscent of earlier de-sign visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller. “I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of the universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless,” Fuller wrote in I Seem to Be a Verb in 1970, the same year we had our first Earth Day. “I seek,” he declared simply, “to reform the environment instead of trying to reform man.” Fuller’s ideas influenced many of the twentieth century’s brightest environmental lights, including Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and the online community The WELL, an early precursor of the internet. Brand took Fuller’s approach and ran with it in the sixties and seventies, helping to spearhead a tech-friendly green counterculture that worked to pull environmentalism out of the wilderness and into the realms of sustainable technology and social justice. “We are as gods, and might as well get good at it,” he wrote in the original 1968 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog, and he’s managed to keep himself on the evolving edge of progressive thought ever since. Brand went on to found the Point Foundation, CoEvolution Quarterly (which became Whole Earth Review), the Hackers Conference, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. As he gets older, he recently told the New York Times, he continues to become “more rational and less romantic. . . . I keep seeing the harm done by religious romanticism, the terrible conservatism of romanticism, the ingrained pessimism of romanticism. It builds in a certain immunity to the scientific frame of mind.”
Bright Green
Many remember the Whole Earth Catalog with a fondness reserved for only the closest of personal guiding lights. “It was sort of like Google in paperback form, thirty-five years before Google came along,” recalls Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. “It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.” For Alex Steffen, it’s the place “where a whole generation of young commune-kid geeks like myself learned to dream weird.” And at Worldchanging, those unorthodox green dreams have grown into a high-speed Whole Earth Catalog for the internet generation, every bit as inventive, idealistic, and brazenly ambitious as its predecessor: “We need, in the next twenty-five years or so, to do something never before done,” Steffen writes in his introduction to Worldchanging. “We need to consciously redesign the entire material basis of our civilization. The model we replace it with must be dramatically more ecologically sustainable, offer large increases in prosperity for everyone on the planet, and not only function in areas of chaos and corruption, but also help transform them. That alone is a task of heroic magnitude, but there’s an additional complication: we only get one shot. Change takes time, and time is what we don’t have. . . . Fail to act boldly enough and we may fail completely.”
Another world is possible,” goes the popular slogan of the World Social Forum, a yearly gathering of antiglobalization activists from around the world. No, counters Worldchanging in a conscious riff on that motto: “Another world is here.” Indeed, bright green environmentalism is less about the problems and limitations we need to overcome than the “tools, models, and ideas” that already exist for overcoming them. It forgoes the bleakness of protest and dissent for the energizing confidence of constructive solutions. As Sterling said in his first Viridian design speech, paying homage to William Gibson: “The future is already here, it’s just not well distributed yet.”
Of course, nobody knows exactly what a bright green future will look like; it’s only going to become visible in the process of building it. Worldchanging: A User’s Guide is six hundred pages long, and no sin-gle recipe in the whole cornucopia takes up more than a few of them. It’s an inspired wealth of information I can’t even begin to do justice to here, but it also presents a surprisingly integrated platform for immediate creative action, a sort of bright green rule set based on the best of today’s knowledge and innovation—and perpetually open to improvement. Plan The United States federal government should provide initial funding for commercial Integral Fast Reactors in the United States. Contention 3 is Solvency IFRs are a ready for commercial application
Kirsh 11 (Steven T. Kirsh, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Why Obama should meet Till,” 9/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/
I will tell you the story of an amazing clean power technology that can use nuclear waste for fuel and emit no long-lived nuclear waste; that can supply clean power at low cost for our planet, 24×7, for millions of years without running out of fuel. I will tell you why this technology is our best bet to reduce the impact of global warming on our planet. And finally, I will tell you why nobody is doing anything about it and why this needs to be corrected. If you act on this letter, you will save our country billions of dollars and allow us to become leaders in clean energy. If you delegate it downward, nothing will happen. I have no vested interest in this; I am writing because I care about the future of our planet First, since we met only briefly during the Obama campaign, let me provide a little background about myself. I am a high-tech entrepreneur and philanthropist based in Silicon Valley. I have received numerous awards for my philanthropy. For example, in 2003, I was honored to receive a National Caring Award presented by then Senator Clinton. The largest engineering auditorium at MIT is named in my honor. The first community college LEED platinum building in the nation is also named in my honor. I am also active in Democratic politics. In the 2000 election, for example, I was the single largest political donor in the United States, donating over $10 million dollars to help Al Gore get elected. Unfortunately, we lost that one by one vote (on the Supreme Court). I have no vested interest in nuclear power or anything else that is described below. I write only as someone who cares about our nation, the environment, and our planet. I am trying to do everything I can so my kids have a habitable world to live in. Nothing more. Dr. James Hansen first made me aware of fast reactors in his letter to Obama in 2009 As an environmentalist, I have been a fan of Jim Hansen’s work for nearly two decades. Many consider Dr. Hansen to be the world’s leading expert on global warming. For example, Hansen was the first person to make Congress aware of global warming in his Senate testimony in 1988. Hansen is also Al Gore’s science advisor. In 2009, Dr. Hansen wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to do just three things that are critical to stop global warming: 1) phase out coal plants, 2) impose a feebate on carbon emissions with a 100% rebate to consumers and 3) re-start fourth generation nuclear plants, which can use nuclear waste as fuel. Hansen’s letter to Obama is documented here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/02/obama-climate-change-james-hansen Upon reading Hansen’s recommendations, I was fascinated by the last recommendation. The fourth-generation power plants Hansen advocated sounded too good to be true. If what Hansen was saying was true, then why wasn’t our nation jumping on that technology? It made no sense to me. Lack of knowledge, misinformation, and the complexity of nuclear technology have hampered efforts to get a fast reactor built in the US I spent the next two years finding out the answer to that question. The short answer is three-fold: (1) most people know absolutely nothing about the amazing fourth generation nuclear power plant that we safely ran for 30 years in the US and (2) there is a lot of misleading information being spread by seemingly respectable people (some of whom are in the White House) who never worked on a fourth generation reactor that is totally false. It’s not that they are misleading people deliberately; it’s just that they were either listening to the wrong sources or they are jumping to erroneous conclusions. For example, the most popular misconception is that “reprocessing is a proliferation risk.” That statement fails to distinguish between available reprocessing techniques. It is absolutely true for the French method but it is absolutely not true for the technology described in this letter! The third reason is that the technology is complicated. Most people don’t know the difference between oxide fuel and metal fuel. Most people don’t know what a fast reactor is. Most people can’t tell you the difference between PUREX, UREX, and pyroprocessing. So people with an agenda can happily trot out arguments that support their beliefs and it all sounds perfectly credible. They simply leave out the critical details. We don’t need more RandD. We already have a technology in hand to help us solve global warming and safely get rid of our nuclear waste at low cost. But we aren’t doing anything with it. That’s a serious mistake. Today, our nation faces many serious challenges such as: How can we avert global warming? How can we dispose of our existing nuclear waste safely? How can we generate base-load carbon-free power at very low cost? How can we avoid creating any additional long-lived nuclear waste? How can we grow our economy and create jobs? How can we become the world leader in clean energy? How can we do all of the above while at the same time spending billions less than we are now? The good news is that we already have a proven technology that can address all of these problems. It is a technology that has enjoyed over 30 years of bi-partisan Congressional and Presidential support. It is an advanced nuclear technology that was invented in 1951 by the legendary Walter Zinn and then refined and perfected over a 30 year period, from 1964 to 1994 by Dr. Charles Till who led a team of 1,200 people at the Argonne National Laboratory. Till’s reactor was known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) because it both produced power and recycled its own waste back into the reactor. This is the technology that Hansen referenced in his letter to the President. The IFR is a fourth-generation nuclear design that has several unique and valuable characteristics: It can use our existing nuclear waste (from power plants and weapons) as fuel; we have over 1,000 years of power available by just using today’s nuclear waste. Instead of trying to bury that “waste” in Yucca Mountain, we could be using it for fuel in fast reactors. It generates no long-lived nuclear waste. It is safer than today’s light water reactor (LWR) nuclear power plants. Unlike the Fukushima LWR reactors (a second generation nuclear technology invented 50 years ago), the IFR does NOT require electricity to shut down safely. The IFR shuts down passively if a mishap occurs; no operator intervention or active safety systems are required. They ran the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl scenarios on a live reactor and the reactor shut itself down safely, no operator intervention required, just as predicted. In addition, unlike with LWRs, the IFR runs at low pressure which adds to the safety profile. It reduces the risk of nuclear proliferation because: (1) it eliminates the need for enrichment facilities (which can be used for making nuclear bomb material), (2) the nuclear material that is used in the IFR is not suitable for making bombs and (2) because the nuclear material in the reactor and in the reprocessing hot cell is too “hot” to be stolen or used in a weapon. Experts at General Electric (GE) believe that the IFR has the potential to produce power for less than the price of coal. Dr. Loewen can confirm that if you have any doubts. GE already has an IFR design on the table that they would like to build as soon as possible. Dr. Loewen can confirm that as well. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in January 1994, issued a pre-application safety evaluation report in which they found no objections or impediments to licensing the IFR. You can see the NRC report in the 8 minute video. The design is proven. It produced electric power without mishap for 30 years before the project was abruptly cancelled. Dr Charles Till The IFR’s ability to solve the nuclear waste problem should not be underestimated. As respected nuclear experts have pointed out, a practical solution to the nuclear waste problem is required if we are to revive nuclear power in the United States. The Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on America’s Nuclear Future basically concluded this: “continue doing the same thing we are doing today and keep doing RandD.” That was predictable because it was a consensus report; everyone had to agree. So nothing happened. And because there was no consensus from the BRC , there is less money for nuclear because there is no solution to the waste problem. It’s a downward death spiral. Please pardon me for a second and allow me to rant about consensus reports. In my 30 year career as an entrepreneur, I’ve raised tens of millions of millions of dollars in investment capital from venture capitalists all over the world. I always ask them how they make investment decisions. They always tell me, “If we had to get all partners to agree on an investment, we’d never make any investments. If you can get two partners to champion your company, that is sufficient to drive an investment decision.” Therefore, if you want to get nothing done, ask for a consensus report. If you want to actually solve problems, you should listen to what the people most knowledgeable about the problem are saying. Dr Yoon I. Chang Had President Obama asked the Commissioners on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) who have the most knowledge of fast reactors the same question that he tasked the BRC with, he would have gotten a completely different answer. They would have told President Obama that fast reactors and pyroprocessing are the way to go and we better get started immediately with something that we already know works because there is still a ten year time if we were to start the reactor building process today. Their advice leads to a viable solution that we know will work and it will make the US a leader in clean nuclear power. Following the BRC’s consensus advice will lead to decades of inaction. Totally predictable. If we put a national focus on developing and cost reducing the IFR, we’d have a killer product and lead the world in being a clean energy leader It would be great if we had a long-term strategy and vision for how we become energy independent and solve the global warming problem and help our economy at the same time. The IFR can play a key role in that vision. If we put a national focus on developing and commercializing the IFR technology we invented, we can create jobs, help our trade balance, mitigate global warming, become energy independent, show the world a safe way to get rid of nuclear waste, and become the leaders in clean power technology. Nuclear power is the elephant in the room. Even though we haven’t built a new nuclear plant in 30 years, nuclear still supplies 70% of the clean energy in America today. That feat was largely accomplished in a single ten year period. Renewables have had 3 decades to “catch up” and they aren’t anywhere close. Nuclear’s continued dominance shows that nuclear power is indeed the elephant in the room when it comes to being able to install clean energy quickly and affordably. The bad news is that President Clinton decided that this technology, which would have produced unlimited amounts of base-load carbon-free power for a price as low as anything else available today, was not needed and cancelled the project in 1994. Cancelling the IFR was a big mistake. It’s still the world’s best fast nuclear technology according to an independent study by the Gen IV International Forum. Many top scientists all over the world believe that President Clinton’s decision was a huge mistake. The Senate had voted to continue to fund it. The project had been supported by six US Presidents; Republicans and Democrats. In fact, the project’s biggest proponent was Republican President Richard Nixon who said in 1971, “Our best hope today for meeting the Nation’s growing demand for economical clean energy lies with the fast breeder reactor.” Republican Senator Kempthorne said of the IFR cancellation: Unfortunately, this program was canceled just 2 short years before the proof of concept. I assure my colleagues someday our Nation will regret and reverse this shortsighted decision. But complete or not, the concept and the work done to prove it remain genius and a great contribution to the world. While I am not a big fan of Senator Kempthorne, I couldn’t agree more with what he said in this particular case. The IFR remains the single best advanced nuclear power design ever invented. That fact was made clear when in 2002, over 240 leading nuclear scientists from all over the world (in a Gen IV International Forum sponsored study) independently evaluated all fourth-generation nuclear designs and ranked the IFR the #1 best overall advanced nuclear design. The IFR was cancelled in 1994 without so much as a phone call to anyone who worked on the project. They didn’t call then. They haven’t called since. They simply pulled the plug and told people not to talk about the technology. The US government invested over $5 billion dollars in the IFR. Fast reactor RandD is largest single technology investment DOE has ever made. According to a top DOE nuclear official (Ray Hunter, the former NE2 at DOE), the “IFR became the preferred path because of waste management, safety, and economics.” The reactor produced power for 30 years without incident. Despite that track record, before it was cancelled, nobody from the White House ever met with anyone who worked on the project to discuss whether it should be terminated or not. It was simply unilaterally terminated by the White House for political reasons. Technical experts were never consulted. To this day, no one from the White House has met with Dr. Till to understand the benefits of the project. The technical merits simply did not matter. I urge you to recommend to President Obama that he meet personally with Dr. Charles Till so that the President can hear first hand why it is so critical for the health of our nation and our planet that this project, known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), be restarted. Dr. Till headed the project at Argonne National Laboratory until his retirement in 1997. He is, without a doubt, the world’s leading expert on IFR technology. Want to solve global warming? Easy. Just create a 24×7 clean power source that costs the same as coal. Prominent scientists believe that the IFR can achieve this. Dr. Hansen has pointed out many times that it is imperative to eliminate all coal plants worldwide since otherwise, we will never win the battle against global warming. But we know from experience that treaties and agreements do not work. Here’s a quote from an article (“The Most Important Investment that We Aren’t Making to Mitigate the Climate Crisis”) that I wrote in December 2009 published in the Huffington Post: If you want to get emissions reductions, you must make the alternatives for electric power generation cheaper than coal. It’s that simple. If you don’t do that, you lose. The billions we invest in RandD now in building a clean and cheaper alternative to coal power will pay off in spades later. We have a really great option now — the IFR is on the verge of commercial readiness — and potential competitors such as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) are in the wings. But the US government isn’t investing in developing any of these breakthrough new base-load power generation technologies. Not a single one. I found it really amazing that global leaders were promising billions, even hundreds of billions in Copenhagen for “fighting climate change” when they weren’t investing one cent in the nuclear technologies that can stop coal and replace it with something cheaper. Note: 6 days ago, on September 22, 2011, DOE agreed to give $7.5M to MIT to do RandD on a molten-salt reactor. That’s good, but we should be building the technology we already have proven in 30 years of operational experience before we invest in unproven new technologies. Dr. Loewen has personally looked at the costs for the building the IFR in detail and believes the IFR can generate power at a cost comparable to a coal plant. So it’s arguably our best shot at displacing coal plants. This is precisely why Dr. Hansen believes that the IFR should be a top priority if we want to save our planet. It isn’t just nuclear experts that support the IFR US Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA) is also a major IFR supporter. When he was Lt. Governor of California, Congressman Garamendi convened a panel of over a dozen our nation’s top scientists to discuss the IFR technology. As a result of that meeting, Garamendi became convinced that the IFR is critically important and he is currently trying very hard to get a bill passed in the House to restart it. Unfortunately, virtually everyone in Congress seems to have forgotten about this project even though in the 1970’s it was the President’s top energy priority. Nothing has changed since then. No other clean energy technology has been invented that is superior to the IFR for generating low-cost carbon-free base-load electric power. Bill Gates also found exactly the same thing when he looked at how to solve the global warming problem. As he explained in a recent TED talk, renewables will never solve the climate crisis. The only viable technology is fourth-generation nuclear power and the best advanced nuclear technology is the IFR. That is why this is Gate’s only clean energy investment. Gates’ TerraPower Travelling Wave Reactor (TWR) is a variant of the IFR design. When Gates approached DOE to try to build his reactor in the US, he was told to build it outside of the US. Nobel prize winner Hans Bethe (now deceased) was an enthusiastic supporter. Freeman Dyson called Bethe the “supreme problem solver of the 20th century. Chuck Till told me the following story of Bethe’s support for the IFR: A tale from the past: A year or two before the events I’ll describe, Hans Bethe had been contacted by the Argonne Lab Director for his recommendation on who to seek to replace the existing head of Argonne’s reactor program. Bethe told him the best choice was already there in the Lab, so it was in this way that I was put in charge. I had had quite a few sessions with him in the years leading up to it, as we were able to do a lot of calculations on the effects of reactor types on resources that he didn’t have the capability at his disposal to do himself. So when I wanted to initiate the IFR thrust, the first outside person I went to was Bethe at Cornell. After a full day of briefing from all the specialists I had taken with me, he suggested a brief private meeting with me. He was direct. He said “All the pieces fit. I am prepared to write a letter stating this. Who do you want me to address it to? I think the President’s Science Advisor, don’t you?” I said the obvious – that his opinion would be given great weight, and would give instant respectability. He went on, “I know him quite well. Who else?” I said I was sure that Senator McClure (who was chairman of Senate Energy and Resources at the time) would be relieved to hear from him. That the Senator would be inclined to support us, as we were fairly prominent in the economy of the state of Idaho, and for that reason I had easy access to him. But to know that Hans Bethe, a man renowned for his common sense in nuclear and all energy matters, supported such an effort would give him the Senator solid and quotable reason for his own support, not dismissible as parochial politics, that the Senator would want if he was to lead the congressional efforts. “Yes,” he said in that way he had, “I agree.” I’ve always thought that the President’s Science Advisor’s intervention with DOE, to give us a start, was not the result of our meeting him, but rather it was because of the gravitas Hans Bethe provided with a one page letter. How do we lead the world in clean energy if we put our most powerful clean energy technology on the shelf?!? President Obama has stated that he wants the US to be a leader in clean energy. I do not see how we achieve that if we allow our most advanced clean energy technology to sit on the shelf collecting dust and we tell one of America’s most respected businessmen that he should build his clean energy technology in another country. We have an opportunity here to export energy technology to China instead of importing it. But due to Clinton’s decision, we are allowing the Russians to sell similar fast reactor technology to the Chinese. It should have been us. Re-starting the IFR will allow us to cancel a $10 billion stupid expenditure. The IFR only costs $3B to build. We’d get more, pay less. On pure economics alone, it’s a no brainer. Finally, even if you find none of the arguments above to be compelling, there is one more reason to restart the IFR project: it will save billions of dollars. Today, we are contracting with the French to build a MOX reprocessing plant in Savannah River. The cost of that project is $10 billion dollars. We are doing it to meet our treaty obligations with the Russians. Former top DOE nuclear managers agree this is a huge waste of money because we can build an IFR which can reprocess 10 times at much weapons waste per year for a fraction of that cost. The Russians are laughing at our stupidity. They are going to be disposing of their weapons waste in fast reactors, just like we should be. The Russians are also exporting their fast reactors to the Chinese. Had the US not cancelled our fast reactor program, we would be the world leader in this technology because our technology remains better than any other fourth generation technology in the world. If you delegate this to someone else, nothing will happen. Here’s why. Delegating this letter downward from the White House to someone in DOE to evaluate will result in inaction and no follow up. I know this from past attempts that have been made. It just gets lost and there is no follow up. Every time. The guys at DOE want to do it, but they know that they will get completely stopped by OMB and OSTP. Both Carol Browner and Steven Chu asked former DOE nuclear management what to do about nuclear waste. They were told that using fast reactors and reprocessing was the way to go. But nothing happened. So Chu has given up trying. According to knowledgeable sources, the White House has told DOE in no uncertain terms, “do not build anything nuclear in the US.” It’s not clear who is making these decisions, but many people believe it is being driven by Steven Fetter in OSTP. Dr. Till knows all of this. He knows that unless he personally meets with the President to tell the story of this amazing technology, nothing will happen. I’ve discussed the IFR with Steve Fetter and he has his facts wrong. Fetter is basically a Frank von Hippel disciple: they have written at least 14 papers together! It was von Hippel who was largely responsible for killing the IFR under Clinton. So von Hippel’s misguided thought process is driving White House policy today. That’s a big mistake. Professor von Hippel twists the facts to support his point of view and fails to bring up compelling counter arguments that he knows are true but would not support his position. He’s not being intellectually honest. I’ve experienced this myself, firsthand. For example, von Hippel often writes that fast reactors are unreliable. When I pointed out to him that there are several examples of reliable fast reactors, including the EBR-II which ran for decades without incident, he said, that these were the “exceptions that prove the rule.” I was floored by that. That’s crazy. It only proves that it is complicated to build a fast reactor, but that it can easily be done very reliably if you know what you are doing. There is nothing inherent to the technology that makes it “unreliable.” You just have to figure out the secrets. When von Hippel heard that Congressman Garamendi was supporting the IFR, he demanded a meeting with Garamendi to “set him straight.” But what happened was just the opposite: Garamendi pointed out to von Hippel that von Hippel’s “facts” were wrong. Von Hippel left that meeting with Garamendi with his tail between his legs muttering something about that being the first time he’s ever spoken with anyone in Congress who knew anything about fast nuclear reactors. In short, if you watch a debate between von Hippel and Garamendi (who is not a scientist), Garamendi easily wins on the facts. If you put von Hippel up against someone who knows the technology like Till, Till would crush von Hippel on both the facts and the arguments. But the Clinton White House never invited Till to debate the arguments with von Hippel. They simply trusted what von Hippel told them. Big mistake. There are lots of problems with von Hippel’s arguments. For example, von Hippel ignores reality believing that if the USA doesn’t do something then it will not happen. That’s incredibly naieve and he’s been proven wrong. The USA invented a safe way to reprocess nuclear waste that isn’t a proliferation risk called pyroprocessing. The nuclear material is not suitable for making a bomb at any time in the process. But we never commercialized it because von Hippel convinced Clinton to cancel it. The French commercialized their reprocessing process (PUREX) which separates out pure plutonium and makes it trivial to make bomb material. So because countries need to reprocess, they pick the unsafe technology because they have no alternative. Similarly, because von Hippel had our fast reactor program cancelled, the Russians are the leaders in fast reactor technology. They’ve been using fast reactor technology for over 30 years to generate power commercially. But we know the Russians have a terrible nuclear safety record (e.g., Chernobyl). The fact is that the Chinese are buying fast reactors from the Russians because there is no US alternative. The problem with von Hippel’s arguments are that the genie is out of the bottle. We can either lead the world in showing how we can do this safely, or the world will choose the less safe alternatives. Today, von Hippel’s decisions have made the world less safe. I could go on and on about how bad von Hippel’s advice is, but this letter is already way too long. MIT was wrong in their report about “The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle” The only other seemingly credible argument against building fast reactors now comes from MIT. The report’s recommendation that we have plenty of time to do RandD appears largely to be driven by one person, co-chair Ernie Moniz. Four world-famous experts on nuclear power and/or climate change and one Congressman challenged Moniz to a debate on the MIT campus on his report. Moniz declined. The report has several major problems. Here are a few of them. The MIT report is inconsistent. On the one hand it says, “To enable an expansion of nuclear power, it must overcome critical challenges in cost, waste disposal, and proliferation concerns while maintaining its currently excellent safety and reliability record.” We agree with that! But then it inexplicably says, “… there are many more viable fuel cycle options and that the optimum choice among them faces great uncertainty…. Greater clarity should emerge over the next few decades… A key message from our work is that we can and should preserve our options for fuel cycle choices by …continuing doing what we are doing today … and researching technology alternatives appropriate to a range of nuclear energy futures.” So even though we have a solution now that can be deployed so we can enable an expansion of nuclear power as soon as possible, MIT advises that we should spend a few more decades because we might find something better than the IFR. This is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard coming from MIT. If you ask any scientist who knows anything about global warming, they will tell you we are decades late in deploying carbon-free power. Had we aggressively ramped fast nuclear closed-cycle reactors decades ago and promoted them worldwide, we wouldn’t be anywhere close to the disastrous situation we are in today. So we are decades too late in ramping up nuclear power, and Moniz wants us to spend decades doing more RandD to get a solution that might be lower cost than the IFR. That’s insane. The report looks at the market price of uranium, but the market price completely ignores the environmental impacts of uranium mining. Shouldn’t that be taken into account? It’s like the cost of gas is cheap because the market price doesn’t include the hidden costs: the impact on the environment and on our health. Do you really think that people are going to embrace expansion of uranium mining in the US? The MIT report is silent on that. So then we are back to being dependent on other countries for uranium. Wasn’t the whole point to be energy independent? The IFR provides that now. We wouldn’t have to do any uranium mining ever again. After a thousand years, when we’ve used all our existing nuclear waste as fuel, we can extract the additional fuel we need from seawater, making our seas less radioactive. We can do that for millions of years. The MIT report ignores what other countries are doing. Obama wants the US to be a leader in clean energy technology. You do that by building the most advanced nuclear designs and refining them. That’s the way you learn and improve. MIT would have us stuck on old LWR technology for a few decades. Does anyone seriously think that is the way to be the world leader? There is virtually no room for improvement in LWR technology. IFR technology is nearly 100 times more efficient, and it emits no long term nuclear waste. If you are a buyer of nuclear power in China, which nuclear reactor are you going to pick? The one that is 100 times more efficient and generates no waste? Or the one that is 100 times less efficient and generates waste that you better store for a million years? Wow. Now that’s a real tough question, isn’t it. Gotta ponder that one. I’m sure Apple Computer isn’t taking advice from Moniz. If they were, they’d still be building the Apple I. Ernie should get a clue. The reason Apple is a market leader is because they bring the latest technology to market before anyone else, not because they keep producing old stuff and spend decades doing RandD to see if they can come up with something better. Other countries are not hampered by MIT’s report. France and Japan recently entered into an agreement with the US DOE whereby we’re giving them the IFR technology for them to exploit. Even though we are stupid, they aren’t stupid. The Chinese are ordering inferior oxide fueled fast reactors from Russia. If the US were building metal-fueled fast reactors with pyroprocessing, it’s a good bet the Chinese would be buying from us instead of the Russians. But if we take Moniz’s advice to not build the world’s best advanced nuclear technology we already have, then there is no chance of that happening. By the time we get to market with a fast reactor, it will be all over. We’ll arrive to the market decades late. Another great American invention that we blew it on. There will always be new technologies that people will propose. But the IFR is a bird in the hand and we really need a solution now we can depend on. If something comes along later that is better, that’s great. But if it doesn’t, we will have a viable technology. We can’t afford to get this wrong. We have already run out of time. Any new nuclear designs are decades away from deployment. On September 22, 2011, DOE agreed to give MIT $7.5 millions of dollars on starting RandD on a fourth generation molten salt reactor design that have never been proven. While it might work, the very smart scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory spent well over a decade on this and were never able to make it work. So DOE is spending millions on an unproven design while spending nothing on the “sure thing” fourth generation reactor that we already know how to build and that ran flawlessly for 30 years. We are all scratching our heads on that one. It makes no sense. But the reason for this is clear: the mandate from the White House that nothing is to built means that DOE can only initiate research, and then cancel the project right before anything would be built. This is an excellent plan for demoralizing scientists and allowing other countries to lead the world in clean energy. Is that really what we want?? If so, then there are much less expensive ways to accomplish that. At a minimum we should be investing in commercializing our “bird in the hand.” That way, if the new molten salt reactor experiments don’t work out, we’ll still have a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem. If we keep cancelling successful projects right before they are done, hoping for the next big thing, we will forever be in RandD mode and get nothing done. That’s where we are today with fourth generation nuclear. I know this is an unusual request, but I also know that if the President is allowed to evaluate the facts first hand, I am absolutely convinced that he will come to the same conclusion as we all have. I urge you to view an 8 minute video narrated by former CBS Morning News anchor Bill Kurtis that explains all of this in a way that anyone can understand. This video can be found at: The video will amaze you. If you would like an independent assessment of what I wrote above from a neutral , trustworthy, and knowledgeable expert, Bill Magwood would be an excellent choice. Magwood was head of nuclear at DOE under Clinton and Bush, and was the longest serving head of nuclear at DOE in US history. He served under both Clinton and Bush administrations. Magwood is familiar with the IFR, but the IFR was cancelled before he was appointed to head civilian nuclear at DOE. So Magwood has no vested interest in the IFR at all. More recently, Magwood was appointed by President Obama to serve on the NRC and is currently serving in that role. Of the current five NRC Commissioners, Magwood is by far, the person most knowledgeable (PMK) about fast reactors. Thank you for your help in bringing this important matter to the President’s attention. Summary Nuclear power is needed. Renewables alone won’t do it. In order to revive nuclear in the US, you must have a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem. The French reprocess their nuclear waste, but their process is expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and has proliferation problems. The USA developed an inexpensive, environmentally friendly, and proliferation resistant method to reprocess our waste (the IFR), but we cancelled it. That decision was a mistake. We should restart the IFR in the US. It will cost $3B to build, but we can cancel the Areva MOX plant and save $10B to pay for it. So we’ll save money, save the planet from an environmental catastrophe, create jobs, get rid of our nuclear waste, and become the world leader in clean energy technology. President Obama should meet personally with Dr. Charles Till, the world’s leading expert on fast reactor technology. Dr. Till will not waste his time meeting with anyone other than the President because he knows that without personal support of the President, nothing will happen. He’s right. Supporters of this technology include Nobel prize winner Hans Bethe (now deceased), Steven Chu, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Charles Till, Dr. Eric Loewen, Congressman John Garamendi, Bill Gates, and even the President of MIT. Even the board of directors of the historically anti-nuclear Sierra Club has agreed that they will not oppose building an IFR! Opposition is from OSTP and OMB. We don’t know who or why. It’s a mystery to all my sources. Frank von Hippel thinks you cannot make fast reactors cheaply or reliably and maintains that stance even when the facts show that not to be the case. Ernie Moniz at MIT thinks we shouldn’t build anything now, but do more RandD for the next several decades hoping we can find something better. Bill Magwood, an Obama appointee to the NRC, would be a reasonable choice to provide an objective assessment of the IFR. He has no vested interested in the IFR, but having been the longest serving head of DOE civilian nuclear in history, is familiar with the pros and cons of the technology. Should OSTP and OMB be making these key decisions behind closed doors? Is this really reflective of what the President wants? He’s stated publicly he wants the US to be a world leader in clean energy. Is putting our best technology on the shelf, but licensing the French and Japanese to build it (Joint Statement on Trilateral Cooperation in the area of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors signed on October 4, 2010 by DOE), the best way for the US to achieve the leadership that Obama said he wanted? I am happy to provide you with additional information. Demonstrating commercial IFRs leads to global adoption
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, “Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III),” 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
There are many compelling reasons to pursue the rapid demonstration of a full-scale IFR, as a lead-in to a subsequent global deployment of this technology within a relatively short time frame. Certainly the urgency of climate change can be a potent tool in winning over environmentalists to this idea. Yet political expediency—due to widespread skepticism of anthropogenic causes for climate change—suggests that the arguments for rolling out IFRs can be effectively tailored to their audience. Energy security—especially with favorable economics—is a primary interest of every nation. The impressive safety features of new nuclear power plant designs should encourage a rapid uptick in construction without concern for the spent fuel they will produce, for all of it will quickly be used up once IFRs begin to be deployed. It is certainly manageable until that time. Burying spent fuel in non-retrievable geologic depositories should be avoided, since it represents a valuable clean energy resource that can last for centuries even if used on a grand scale. Many countries are now beginning to pursue fast reactor technology without the cooperation of the United States, laboriously (and expensively) re-learning the lessons of what does and doesn’t work. If this continues, we will see a variety of different fast reactor designs, some of which will be less safe than others. Why are we forcing other nations to reinvent the wheel? Since the USA invested years of effort and billions of dollars to develop what is arguably the world’s safest and most efficient fast reactor system in the IFR, and since several nations have asked us to share this technology with them (Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, India), there is a golden opportunity here to develop a common goal—a standardized design, and a framework for international control of fast reactor technology and the fissile material that fuels them. This opportunity should be a top priority in the coming decade, if we are serious about replacing fossil fuels worldwide with sufficient pace to effectively mitigate climate change and other environmental and geopolitical crises of the 21st century. Initial plants jumpstart future investment
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source,” 6/27/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/climate-bill-ignores-our_b_221796.html
In our own country, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy and a consortium of America's major corporations (including Babcock and Wilcox, Bechtel, Westinghouse, and Raytheon) came to the same conclusion. They have a reactor design, the PRISM, that is ready to be built based on the original Argonne IFR design. There is a lot of misinformation about nuclear There is a tremendous amount of misinformation about nuclear out there. There are books and papers galore that appear to be credible citing all the reasons nuclear is a bad idea. I could probably spend the rest of my life investigating them all. Those reports that have been brought to my attention I've looked into and, after a fair amount of effort, found them not to be persuasive. Did you know that there is more than 100 times more radiation from a typical coal plant than a nuclear plant, yet the nuclear plant is perceived by the public to be a radiation hazard. Another example of misinformation is in Discover magazine June 2009 entitled "New Tech Could Make Nuclear the Best Weapon Against Climate Change" talking about the importance of the IFR to both greenhouse gas emissions and to our future energy needs. But the article implies the scientists want to do more studies and that an improved design will take 10 to 20 years. I keep in close touch with a number of the top scientists who worked on the IFR, including IFR inventor Charles Till, and they are saying the opposite...that we are 20 years late on building one and the sooner we build one, the better. We should build a $3B demonstration plant now to get started We should be exploring all viable options to solve our energy problems and global warming. General Electric working with Argonne and/or Idaho National Laboratory (INL) could build a small prototype fourth generation nuclear reactor (311 megawatts of electricity (MWe)) for about $2 billion and $1 billion for a pilot commercial-scale pyroprocessing plant to recycle the spent fuel. That $3 billion one-time investment would settle once and for all whether this is a good idea or not. Following this demonstration, the deployment of dozens of commercial fast reactors and pyroprocessing facilities needed to handle the light water reactor (LWR) spent fuel could be economically competitive as electricity generators and their construction could be carried out by the industry using standardized, modular, factory built designs to reduce costs without any further government investment. Compare that one-time RandD investment to the estimated $96 billion cost of storing the waste at Yucca Mountain. Isn't it smarter to spend a little money to prove we can recycle our waste and generate power than to spend $100 billion to bury it? Compare this one-time $3 billion investment to the $10 billion that will be spent on the AREVA Mixed Oxide (MOX) plant, which is being built to dispose of only 33 tons of plutonium. The MOX plant is a big waste of money. The IFR could denature the weapons Pu much faster and more cheaply. It’ll be cheap
Archambeau et al 11 (Charles Archambeau, Geophysicist, PhD from Caltech, taught at the University of Colorado and CalTech, Randolph Ware, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Tom Blees, president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives, Barry Brook, Climate Professor at University of Adelaide, Yoon Chang, B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Seoul National University, Korea; an M.E. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas AandM University; and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Science from The University of Michigan. He also holds an M.B.A. from The University of Chicago, Chair of IAEA’s Technical Working Group on Nuclear Fuel Cycle Options and Spent Fuel Management, awarded the U.S. Department of Energy’s prestigious E.O. Lawrence Award, Jerry Peterson, University of Colorado, Robert Serafin, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Joseph Shuster, Evgeny Velikhov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Tom Wigley, National Center for Atmospheric Research, “The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR): An Optimized Source for Global Energy Needs,” 2011)
The new features of the IFR systems with pyroprocessing are such that the cost of electrical energy production is estimated to be quite low, in the range below $.01 per kilowatt-hour for an IFR. (For comparison, natural gas fuel cost was at $.05 per kilowatthour, and coal was at about $.03 per kilowatt-hour, while LWR nuclear power was at $.02 per kilowatt-hour.) The G.E. estimated building cost of the S-Prism reactor (Fletcher, 2006) is $1300/kw, where this cost assumes some cost savings due to mass production and modular construction. For a commercial level gigawatt reactor (using 3 modular S-Prism reactors with 380 MW of power from each) the cost would total $1.3 billion dollars per one gigawatt plant. These nuclear plants are essentially carbon dioxide emissions free, and in general produce no atmospheric pollution. Further, all the Uranium fuel can be provided from processing the stock piles of spent and depleted Uranium fuel. Therefore, no Uranium mining and associated pollution will occur. Likewise, IFR waste material is minimal and short-lived so that no pollution will occur from this source. Consequently, significant reduction in greenhouse gases, and a variety of other dangerous pollutants, can be immediately achieved if these IFR plants are used to replace the furnaces in coal burning power plants which exist in profusion world-wide. Here the infrastructure at existing coal fueled plants, such as electric power lines, water sources and conduits, steam turbines, etc., can all be simply converted and used in the nuclear powered plant. Hence, costs of building complete power plants and their electrical connections to the grid can be minimized while the impact on global warming and pollution related diseases can be maximized by replacing the worst of the polluters. Further, it is urgent that we move quickly to strongly and immediately control CO2 gas emissions to drastically slow global warming. Clearly, the costs are not prohibitive since construction of one large stand-alone pyroprocessing plant, at about 6 billion dollars, and only about 10 of the large IFR powered plants, costing under 20 billion dollars, will go a long way toward strongly dampening the massive production of CO2 emissions from existing electricity power plants in the U.S. IFRs are technologically ready – we just have to decide to build them
Brook 11 (Barry Brook, Professor of Climate Change University of Adelaide, “Nuclear power and climate change – what now?” 5/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/28/np-cc-what-now/
But detractors will nevertheless complain that reactors like the ESBWR still produce long-lived radioactive waste products that will have to be safely watched over for what is, for all intents and purposes, forever (from a human standpoint). Another objection frequently raised is the risk of nuclear proliferation, the fear that nuclear material will be misdirected from power plants and made into nuclear weapons. Fuel supply is also an issue when the prospect of a burgeoning nuclear renaissance is considered, with demand for uranium expected to skyrocket. And over all this looms the capital cost of building nuclear power plants, which many consider a deal-breaker even if all the other issues could be resolved. Back in the early Eighties a group of talented nuclear physicists and engineers realized that if there was to be any reasonable expectation of widespread public acceptance of nuclear power, all these problems would have to be solved. So they set out to solve them. Under the leadership of Dr. Charles Till at Argonne National Laboratory’s western branch in the state of Idaho, a virtual army of nuclear professionals designed an energy system that many expect will soon power the planet, if only we can muster the political will to deploy it. Their test reactor operated virtually flawlessly for thirty years as they identified and solved one potential obstacle after another, proceeding methodically until they were ready to demonstrate the commercial-scale viability of their revolutionary fuel recycling system that would complete what had been a spectacularly successful project. What they had accomplished during those years was, without exaggeration, probably the most important energy system ever invented, one that promises virtually unlimited safe, clean energy for the entire planet. Unfortunately, an almost unbelievable shortsightedness on the part of politicians in Washington D.C. pulled the plug on the project just as it reached its final stage in 1994, and the promise of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) languished virtually unnoticed for the next fifteen years. Figure 1: A simplified version of an IFR reactor. Illustration courtesy of Andrew Arthur The Integral Fast Reactor But the IFR is such a grand invention that it couldn’t stay buried any longer, and people around the world are now clamoring for it to be deployed. The looming threat of climate change has prompted many to take a fresh look at nuclear power. Some have considered the problem of so-called “nuclear waste” (not waste at all, as we shall soon see) an acceptable price to pay in order to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. In the wake of the Japan accident, safety will also be prominent in the debate. The IFR, though, is so impressive in its qualifications that even previously hard-core anti-nuclear activists have touted it as the ultimate answer. And the fact that over 300 reactor-years of experience have been accumulated with fast reactors around the world means that such technology is no pipe dream, but a mature technology ripe for commercial deployment. The term Integral Fast Reactor denotes two distinct parts: A sodium-cooled fast neutron fission reactor and a recycling facility to process the spent fuel. A single recycling facility would be co-located with a cluster of reactors. Figure 1 shows a simplified version of such a reactor. It consists of a stainless steel tub of sodium, a metal that liquifies at about the boiling point of water. Sodium is used both as a completely non-corrosive coolant and, in a separate non-radioactive loop, as the heat transfer agent to transport the heat to a steam generator in a separate structure (thus avoiding any possible sodium-water interaction in the reactor structure). The system is unpressurized, and the pumps are electromagnetic pumps with no moving parts. In the event of a loss of flow, natural convection and the large amount of sodium will be sufficient to dissipate the heat from the fission products in the core, unlike the situation in the Japanese reactors at Fukushima, which required constant cooling even though the reactors had been shut off. The commercial-scale iteration of the IFR’s reactor component is called the PRISM (or its slightly larger successor, the S-PRISM, though for the sake of brevity I’ll hereafter call it simply the PRISM, which stands for Power Reactor Innovative Small Module). It was designed by a consortium of American companies in conjunction with Argonne Lab, and is now being further refined by GE/Hitachi Nuclear. From a safety standpoint it is unparalleled. If the risk assessment studies for the ESBWR mentioned above sound impressive, those of the IFR are even better. In my book Prescription for the Planet, I did a thought experiment based on the risk assessment studies for the PRISM that have already gotten a preliminary nod from the NRC. The likelihood of a core meltdown was so improbable that I figured out how often we could expect one if thousands of PRISMs were providing all the energy (not just electricity) that humanity will require a few decades hence (according to most estimates). Remember, the occurrence of one meltdown would require dividing the total number of reactors into the probability for a single reactor. Even so, the probable core meltdown frequency came to once every 435,000 years! Even if that risk assessment was exaggerated by ten thousand times, it would still mean we could expect a meltdown about once every half-century for all the energy humanity needs. Reactors and Natural Disasters The crisis at Fukushima’s power plant has stoked fears that existing nuclear sites may be incapable of withstanding quakes in excess of their design specifications. Whereas many lightwater reactors are designed to withstand G forces of about 0.3, the PRISM is rated at 1.0. This G rating is different than a Richter scale rating because the Richter scale represents the total energy released in an earthquake, which is dependent on many factors (duration, depth, etc.). When designing a structure or piece of equipment to withstand earthquakes, the degree of ground acceleration is what matters. If one were to stand directly on a geological fault line during the most severe earthquake imaginable, the G forces caused by ground acceleration would almost certainly not exceed 1.0. (The maximum ground motion at the Fukushima complex during the earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale was 0.56 G) So the PRISM reactor, designed for that level of motion, could safely be built in any seismically active area. Of course it goes without saying that no power plant should be built at a low elevation in a zone that is vulnerable to tsunamis, or for that matter on a flood plain. But with the PRISM, seismic shocks are not an issue. As for proliferation risk, it should be pointed out that the risk of proliferation from any sort of power reactor has been substantially mischaracterized and generally overblown. The reason is that the isotopic composition of the uranium and plutonium in power reactors is lousy for making weapons. Any country that wishes to pursue a weapons program covertly is far better served by using a small research reactor operated in a specific manner to produce high-grade weapons material, and even then it requires a quite complex reprocessing system to separate it. That being said, the IFR system uses a unique metal fuel that can not only be easily and cheaply recycled on-site and then fabricated into new fuel elements, but at no stage of the fuel cycle is any sort of weapons-grade material isolated. All the isotopes of uranium and plutonium are not only left mixed with their various cousins, but there is always at least a bit of highly radioactive fission product elements, making the fuel impossible to handle except by remote systems. Figure 2: The fission products will only be radioactive beyond the level of natural ore for a few hundred years. The buildup of such fission products in the fuel, though, is what eventually necessitates pulling fuel elements out of the reactor for recycling. In the pyroprocessing system—a type of electrorefining common in the metallurgical industry but unique to the IFR among reactor systems—the majority of the fission products are isolated. The rest of the fuel is reincorporated into new fuel elements. The fission products, representing only a small percentage of the fuel, are entombed in borosilicate glass that can’t leach any of them into the environment for thousands of years. Yet the fission products will only be radioactive beyond the level of natural ore for a few hundred years (see Figure 2). Thus the so-called “million year waste problem” is neatly solved. As for the question of uranium supply, that issue is moot once we begin to build IFRs. First we’ll use up all the spent fuel that’s been generated over the years by LWRs, plus all the weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from decommissioned nuclear weapons. It’s all perfect for fuel in IFRs. But then when that’s all gone we can fuel them with depleted uranium. There is already so much of it out of the ground from years of nuclear power use that even if we were to supply all the energy humanity is likely to need from just IFRs alone, we’ve got enough fuel already at hand for nearly a thousand years. As efficient as LWRs are in squeezing a huge amount of energy out of a small amount of fuel, fast reactors like the PRISM are about 150 times more efficient. In fact, all the energy a profligate American would be likely to use in a lifetime could be extracted from a piece of depleted uranium the size of half a ping-pong ball. Finally we come to the clincher: the cost. For some reason it supposedly is going to cost anywhere from two to five times as much to build a nuclear power plant in the USA than exactly the same design being built in the Far East. This comparison applies not just to countries with low labor costs but to Japan too, where labor costs are high and nearly all the materials are imported. It’s an American societal and political problem, not an inherent flaw of nuclear power. Utility companies fear that a group of protesters with signs and lawyers might shut down construction midway through a multi-billion-dollar project, or prevent a built reactor from operating. So they prudently try to build that uncertainty into their cost estimates (with maybe a little padding to boot). A golf ball of uranium would provide more than enough energy for your entire lifetime, including electricity for homes, vehicles and mobile devices, synthetic fuels for vehicles (including tractors to produce your food and jet fuel for your flights). Your legacy? A soda can of fission product was, that would be less radioactive than natural uranium ore in 300 years. The new reactor designs, both the Gen III+ designs mentioned earlier and the PRISM, are designed to be mass-produced in modules, then assembled at the power plant site. The PRISM has the added advantage of operating at atmospheric pressure, so no pressure vessel or high-pressure pumps are needed. The passive safety principles mean that multiple redundancy is unnecessary, allowing such reactors to have far fewer pumps, valves, controls, and other components than their older Gen II predecessors. Based on both industry estimates and actual experience of building these reactors since the Nineties, there is every reason to believe that the price can be kept well below $2,000/kW, though the Chinese plan to produce them for half that price once their mass production supply lines are in place. There is virtually no doubt that with these new nuclear technologies available, the shift to predominantly nuclear power is virtually inevitable in the long term. Over sixty new plants are under construction around the world with many more to come, even if some nations are temporarily deterred by political and social pressures. If we’re serious about solving the climate change problem before it’s too late, we’ll have to get serious about the only zero-emission baseload power source that can easily supply all the energy the world needs. We shouldn’t consider this a Faustian bargain. These new designs—particularly the IFR—are clean, safe, economical, and able to convert waste products that we desperately want to get rid of into abundant energy for the entire planet. Anyone serious about protecting the environment can safely embrace them with enthusiasm. |
| 01/18/2013 | Tournament: USC | Round: Octos | Opponent: | Judge:
Advantage 1 is warming Warming is real and anthropogenic
Prothero 12 (Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College, Lecturer in Geobiology at CalTech, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused," 3/1/12, EBSCO)
How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There are numerous lines of evidence that converge toward this conclusion. 1. Carbon Dioxide Increase Carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has increased at an unprecedented rate in the past 200 years. Not one data set collected over a long enough span of time shows otherwise. Mann et al. (1999) compiled the past 900 years' worth of temperature data from tree rings, ice cores, corals, and direct measurements in the past few centuries, and the sudden increase of temperature of the past century stands out like a sore thumb. This famous graph is now known as the "hockey stick" because it is long and straight through most of its length, then bends sharply upward at the end like the blade of a hockey stick. Other graphs show that climate was very stable within a narrow range of variation through the past 1000, 2000, or even 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. There were minor warming events during the Climatic Optimum about 7000 years ago, the Medieval Warm Period, and the slight cooling of the Litde Ice Age in the 1700s and 1800s. But the magnitude and rapidity of the warming represented by the last 200 years is simply unmatched in all of human history. More revealing, the timing of this warming coincides with the Industrial Revolution, when humans first began massive deforestation and released carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by burning an unprecedented amount of coal, gas, and oil. 2. Melting Polar Ice Caps The polar icecaps are thinning and breaking up at an alarming rate. In 2000, my former graduate advisor Malcolm McKenna was one of the first humans to fly over the North Pole in summer time and see no ice, just open water. The Arctic ice cap has been frozen solid for at least the past 3 million years (and maybe longer), 4 but now the entire ice sheet is breaking up so fast that by 2030 (and possibly sooner) less than half of the Arctic will be ice covered in the summer. 5 As one can see from watching the news, this is an ecological disaster for everything that lives up there, from the polar bears to the seals and walruses to the animals they feed upon, to the 4 million people whose world is melting beneath their feet. The Antarctic is thawing even faster. In February-March 2002, the Larsen B ice shelf -- over 3000 square km (the size of Rhode Island) and 220 m (700 feet) thick -- broke up in just a few months, a story -typical of nearly all the ice shelves in Antarctica. The Larsen B shelf had survived all the previous ice ages and interglacial warming episodes over the past 3 million years, and even the warmest periods of the last 10,000 years -- yet it and nearly all the other thick ice sheets on the Arctic, Greenland, and Antarctic are vanishing at a rate never before seen in geologic history. 3. Melting Glaciers Glaciers are all retreating at the highest rates ever documented. Many of those glaciers, along with snow melt, especially in the Himalayas, Andes, Alps, and Sierras, provide most of the freshwater that the populations below the mountains depend upon -- yet this fresh water supply is vanishing. Just think about the percentage of world's population in southern Asia (especially India) that depend on Himalayan snowmelt for their fresh water. The implications are staggering. The permafrost that once remained solidly frozen even in the summer has now thawed, damaging the Inuit villages on the Arctic coast and threatening all our pipelines to the North Slope of Alaska. This is catastrophic not only for life on the permafrost, but as it thaws, the permafrost releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases which are one of the major contributors to global warming. Not only is the ice vanishing, but we have seen record heat waves over and over again, killing thousands of people, as each year joins the list of the hottest years on record. (2010 just topped that list as the hottest year, surpassing the previous record in 2009, and we shall know about 2011 soon enough). Natural animal and plant populations are being devastated all over the globe as their environments change. 6 Many animals respond by moving their ranges to formerly cold climates, so now places that once did not have to worry about disease-bearing mosquitoes are infested as the climate warms and allows them to breed further north. 4. Sea Level Rise All that melted ice eventually ends up in the ocean, causing sea levels to rise, as it has many times in the geologic past. At present, the sea level is rising about 3-4 mm per year, more than ten times the rate of 0.1-0.2 mm/year that has occurred over the past 3000 years. Geological data show that the sea level was virtually unchanged over the past 10,000 years since the present interglacial began. A few mm here or there doesn't impress people, until you consider that the rate is accelerating and that most scientists predict sea levels will rise 80-130 cm in just the next century. A sea level rise of 1.3 m (almost 4 feet) would drown many of the world's low-elevation cities, such as Venice and New Orleans, and low-lying countries such as the Netherlands or Bangladesh. A number of tiny island nations such as Vanuatu and the Maldives, which barely poke out above the ocean now, are already vanishing beneath the waves. Eventually their entire population will have to move someplace else. 7 Even a small sea level rise might not drown all these areas, but they are much more vulnerable to the large waves of a storm surge (as happened with Hurricane Katrina), which could do much more damage than sea level rise alone. If sea level rose by 6 m (20 feet), most of the world's coastal plains and low-lying areas (such as the Louisiana bayous, Florida, and most of the world's river deltas) would be drowned. Most of the world's population lives in low-elevation coastal cities such as New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Miami, and Shanghai. All of those cities would be partially or completely under water with such a sea level rise. If all the glacial ice caps melted completely (as they have several times before during past greenhouse episodes in the geologic past), sea level would rise by 65 m (215 feet)! The entire Mississippi Valley would flood, so you could dock an ocean liner in Cairo, Illinois. Such a sea level rise would drown nearly every coastal region under hundreds of feet of water, and inundate New York City, London and Paris. All that would remain would be the tall landmarks such as the Empire State Building, Big Ben, and the Eiffel Tower. You could tie your boats to these pinnacles, but the rest of these drowned cities would lie deep underwater. Climate Change Critic's Arguments and Scientists' Rebuttals Despite the overwhelming evidence there are many people who remain skeptical. One reason is that they have been fed distortions and misstatements by the global warming denialists who cloud or confuse the issue. Let's examine some of these claims in detail: * "It's just natural climatic variability." No, it is not. As I detailed in my 2009 book, Greenhouse of the Dinosaurs, geologists and paleoclimatologists know a lot about past greenhouse worlds, and the icehouse planet that has existed for the past 33 million years. We have a good understanding of how and why the Antarctic ice sheet first appeared at that time, and how the Arctic froze over about 3.5 million years ago, beginning the 24 glacial and interglacial episodes of the "Ice Ages" that have occurred since then. We know how variations in the earth's orbit (the Milankovitch cycles) controls the amount of solar radiation the earth receives, triggering the shifts between glacial and interglacial periods. Our current warm interglacial has already lasted 10,000 years, the duration of most previous interglacials, so if it were not for global warming, we would be headed into the next glacial in the next 1000 years or so. Instead, our pumping greenhouse gases into our atmosphere after they were long trapped in the earth's crust has pushed the planet into a "super-interglacial," already warmer than any previous warming period. We can see the "big picture" of climate variability most clearly in ice cores from the EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica), which show the details of the last 650,000 years of glacial-inters glacial cycles (Fig. 2). At no time during any previous interglacial did the carbon dioxide levels exceed 300 ppm, even at their very warmest. Our atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are already close to 400 ppm today. The atmosphere is headed to 600 ppm within a few decades, even if we stopped releasing greenhouse gases immediately. This is decidedly not within the normal range of "climatic variability," but clearly unprecedented in human history. Anyone who says this is "normal variability" has never seen the huge amount of paleoclimatic data that show otherwise. * "It's just another warming episode, like the Medieval Warm Period, or the Holocene Climatic Optimum or the end of the Little Ice Age." Untrue. There were numerous small fluctuations of warming and cooling over the last 10,000 years of the Holocene. But in the case of the Medieval Warm Period (about 950-1250 A.D.), the temperatures increased only 1°C, much less than we have seen in the current episode of global warming (Fig. 1). This episode was also only a local warming in the North Atlantic and northern Europe. Global temperatures over this interval did not warm at all, and actually cooled by more than 1°C. Likewise, the warmest period of the last 10,000 years was the Holocene Climatic Optimum ( 5,000-9,000 B.C.E.) when warmer and wetter conditions in Eurasia contributed to the rise of the first great civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China. This was largely a Northern Hemisphere-Eurasian phenomenon, with 2-3°C warming in the Arctic and northern Europe. But there was almost no warming in the tropics, and cooling or no change in the Southern Hemisphere. 8 From a Eurocentric viewpoint, these warming events seemed important, but on a global scale the effect was negligible. In addition, neither of these warming episodes is related to increasing greenhouse gases. The Holocene Climatic Optimum, in fact, is predicted by the Milankovitch cycles, since at that time the axial tilt of the earth was 24°, its steepest value, meaning the Northern Hemisphere got more solar radiation than normal -- but the Southern Hemisphere less, so the two balanced. By contrast, not only is the warming observed in the last 200 years much greater than during these previous episodes, but it is also global and bipolar, so it is not a purely local effect. The warming that ended the Little Ice Age (from the mid-1700s to the late 1800s) was due to increased solar radiation prior to 1940. Since 1940, however, the amount of solar radiation has been dropping, so the only candidate remaining for the post-1940 warming is carbon dioxide. 9 "It's just the sun, or cosmic rays, or volcanic activity or methane." Nope, sorry. The amount of heat that the sun provides has been decreasing since 1940, 10 just the opposite of the critics' claims (Fig. 3). There is no evidence of an increase in cosmic ray particles during the past century. 11 Nor is there any clear evidence that large-scale volcanic events (such as the 1815 eruption of Tambora in Indonesia, which changed global climate for about a year) have any long-term effects that would explain 200 years of warming and carbon dioxide increase. Volcanoes erupt only 0.3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, but humans emit over 29 billion tonnes a year, 12 roughly 100 times as much. Clearly, we have a bigger effect. Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas, but there is 200 times more carbon dioxide than methane, so carbon dioxide is still the most important agent. 13 Every other alternative has been looked at and can be ruled out. The only clear-cut relationship is between human-caused carbon dioxide increase and global warming. * "The climate records since 1995 (or 1998) show cooling." That's simply untrue. The only way to support this argument is to cherry-pick the data. 14 Over the short term, there was a slight cooling trend from 1998-2000, but only because 1998 was a record-breaking El Nino year, so the next few years look cooler by comparison (Fig. 4). But since 2002, the overall long-term trend of warming is unequivocal. All of the 16 hottest years ever recorded on a global scale have occurred in the last 20 years. They are (in order of hottest first): 2010, 2009, 1998, 2005, 2003, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2001, 1997, 2008, 1995, 1999, 1990, and 2000. 15 In other words, every year since 2000 has been on the Top Ten hottest years list. The rest of the top 16 include 1995, 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000. Only 1996 failed to make the list (because of the short-term cooling mentioned already). * "We had record snows in the winter of 2009-2010, and also in 2010-2011." So what? This is nothing more than the difference between weather (short-term seasonal changes) and climate (the long-term average of weather over decades and centuries and longer). Our local weather tells us nothing about another continent, or the global average; it is only a local effect, determined by short-term atmospheric and oceano-graphic conditions. 16 In fact, warmer global temperatures mean more moisture in the atmosphere, which increases the intensity of normal winter snowstorms. In this particular case, the climate change critics forget that the early winter of November-December 2009 was actually very mild and warm, and then only later in January and February did it get cold and snow heavily. That warm spell in early winter helped bring more moisture into the system, so that when cold weather occurred, the snows were worse. In addition, the snows were unusually heavy only in North America; the rest of the world had different weather, and the global climate was warmer than average. Also, the summer of 2010 was the hottest on record, breaking the previous record set in 2009. * "Carbon dioxide is good for plants, so the world will be better off." Who do they think they're kidding? The Competitive Enterprise Institute (funded by oil and coal companies and conservative foundations 17) has run a series of shockingly stupid ads concluding with the tag line "Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution, we call it life." Anyone who knows the basic science of earth's atmosphere can spot the gross inaccuracies in this ad. 18 True, plants take in carbon dioxide that animals exhale, as they have for millions of years. But the whole point of the global warming evidence (as shown from ice cores) is that the delicate natural balance of carbon dioxide has been thrown off balance by our production of too much of it, way in excess of what plants or the oceans can handle. As a consequence, the oceans are warming 19, 20 and absorbing excess carbon dioxide making them more acidic. Already we are seeing a shocking decline in coral reefs ("bleaching") and extinctions in many marine ecosystems that can't handle too much of a good thing. Meanwhile, humans are busy cutting down huge areas of temperate and tropical forests, which not only means there are fewer plants to absorb the gas, but the slash and burn practices are releasing more carbon dioxide than plants can keep up with. There is much debate as to whether increased carbon dioxide might help agriculture in some parts of the world, but that has to be measured against the fact that other traditional "breadbasket" regions (such as the American Great Plains) are expected to get too hot to be as productive as they are today. The latest research 21 actually shows that increased carbon dioxide inhibits the absorption of nitrogen into plants, so plants (at least those that we depend upon today) are not going to flourish in a greenhouse world. It is difficult to know if those who tell the public otherwise are ignorant of basic atmospheric science and global geochemistry, or if they are being cynically disingenuous. * "I agree that climate is changing, but I'm skeptical that humans are the main cause, so we shouldn't do anything." This is just fence sitting. A lot of reasonable skeptics deplore the right wing's rejection of the reality of climate change, but still want to be skeptical about the cause. If they want proof, they can examine the huge array of data that points directly to human caused global warming. 22 We can directly measure the amount of carbon dioxide humans are producing, and it tracks exactly with the amount of increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Through carbon isotope analysis, we can show that this carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is coming directly from our burning of fossil fuels, not from natural sources. We can also measure the drop in oxygen as it combines with the increased carbon levels to produce carbon dioxide. We have satellites in space that are measuring the heat released from the planet and can actually see the atmosphere getting warmer. The most crucial evidence emerged only within the past few years: climate models of the greenhouse effect predict that there should be cooling in the stratosphere (the upper layer of the atmosphere above 10 km or 6 miles in elevation), but warming in the troposphere (the bottom layer below 10 km or 6 miles), and that's exactly what our space probes have measured. Finally, we can rule out any other suspects (see above): solar heat is decreasing since 1940, not increasing, and there are no measurable increases in cosmic rays, methane, volcanic gases, or any other potential cause. Face it -- it's our problem. Why Do People Continue to Question the Reality of Climate Change? Thanks to all the noise and confusion over climate change, the general public has only a vague idea of what the debate is really about, and only about half of Americans think global warming is real or that we are to blame. 23 As in the evolution/creationism debate, the scientific community is virtually unanimous on what the data demonstrate about anthropogenic global warming. This has been true for over a decade. When science historian Naomi Oreskes 24 surveyed all peer-reviewed papers on climate change published between 1993 and 2003 in the world's leading scientific journal, Science, she found that there were 980 supporting the idea of human-induced global warming and none opposing it. In 2009, Doran and Kendall Zimmerman 25 surveyed all the climate scientists who were familiar with the data. They found that 95-99% agreed that global warming is real and human caused. In 2010, the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published a study that showed that 98% of the scientists who actually do research in climate change are in agreement over anthropogenic global warming. 26 Every major scientific organization in the world has endorsed the conclusion of anthropogenic climate change as well. This is a rare degree of agreement within such an independent and cantankerous group as the world's top scientists. This is the same degree of scientific consensus that scientists have achieved over most major ideas, including gravity, evolution, and relativity. These and only a few other topics in science can claim this degree of agreement among nearly all the world's leading scientists, especially among everyone who is close to the scientific data and knows the problem intimately. If it were not such a controversial topic politically, there would be almost no interest in debating it since the evidence is so clear-cut. If the climate science community speaks with one voice (as in the 2007 IPCC report, and every report since then), why is there still any debate at all? The answer has been revealed by a number of investigations by diligent reporters who got past the PR machinery denying global warming, and uncovered the money trail. Originally, there were no real "dissenters" to the idea of global warming by scientists who are actually involved with climate research. Instead, the forces with vested interests in denying global climate change (the energy companies, and the "free-market" advocates) followed the strategy of tobacco companies: create a smokescreen of confusion and prevent the American public from recognizing scientific consensus. As the famous memo 27 from the tobacco lobbyists said "Doubt is our product." The denialists generated an anti-science movement entirely out of thin air and PR. The evidence for this PR conspiracy has been well documented in numerous sources. For example, Oreskes and Conway revealed from memos leaked to the press that in April 1998 the right-wing Marshall Institute, SEPP (Fred Seitz's lobby that aids tobacco companies and polluters), and ExxonMobil, met in secret at the American Petroleum Institute's headquarters in Washington, D.C. There they planned a $20 million campaign to get "respected scientists" to cast doubt on climate change, get major PR efforts going, and lobby Congress that global warming isn't real and is not a threat. The right-wing institutes and the energy lobby beat the bushes to find scientists -- any scientists -- who might disagree with the scientific consensus. As investigative journalists and scientists have documented over and over again, 28 the denialist conspiracy essentially paid for the testimony of anyone who could be useful to them. The day that the 2007 IPCC report was released (Feb. 2, 2007), the British newspaper The Guardian reported that the conservative American Enterprise Institute (funded largely by oil companies and conservative think tanks) had offered $10,000 plus travel expenses to scientists who would write negatively about the IPCC report. 29 In February 2012, leaks of documents from the denialist Heartland Institute revealed that they were trying to influence science education, suppress the work of scientists, and had paid off many prominent climate deniers, such as Anthony Watts, all in an effort to circumvent the scientific consensus by doing an "end run" of PR and political pressure. Other leaks have shown 9 out of 10 major climate deniers are paid by ExxonMobil. 30 We are accustomed to hired-gun "experts" paid by lawyers to muddy up the evidence in the case they are fighting, but this is extraordinary -- buying scientists outright to act as shills for organizations trying to deny scientific reality. With this kind of money, however, you can always find a fringe scientist or crank or someone with no relevant credentials who will do what they're paid to do. Fishing around to find anyone with some science background who will agree with you and dispute a scientific consensus is a tactic employed by the creationists to sound "scientific". The NCSE created a satirical "Project Steve," 31 which demonstrated that there were more scientists who accept evolution named "Steve" than the total number of "scientists who dispute evolution". It may generate lots of PR and a smokescreen to confuse the public, but it doesn't change the fact that scientists who actually do research in climate change are unanimous in their insistence that anthropogenic global warming is a real threat. Most scientists I know and respect work very hard for little pay, yet they still cannot be paid to endorse some scientific idea they know to be false. The climate deniers have a lot of other things in common with creationists and other anti-science movements. They too like to quote someone out of context ("quote mining"), finding a short phrase in the work of legitimate scientists that seems to support their position. But when you read the full quote in context, it is obvious that they have used the quote inappropriately. The original author meant something that does not support their goals. The "Climategate scandal" is a classic case of this. It started with a few stolen emails from the Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia. If you read the complete text of the actual emails 32 and comprehend the scientific shorthand of climate scientists who are talking casually to each other, it is clear that there was no great "conspiracy" or that they were faking data. All six subsequent investigations have cleared Philip Jones and the other scientists of the University of East Anglia of any wrongdoing or conspiracy. 33 Even if there had been some conspiracy on the part of these few scientists, there is no reason to believe that the entire climate science community is secretly working together to generate false information and mislead the public. If there's one thing that is clear about science, it's about competition and criticism, not conspiracy and collusion. Most labs are competing with each other, not conspiring together. If one lab publishes a result that is not clearly defensible, other labs will quickly correct it. As James Lawrence Powell wrote: Scientists…show no evidence of being more interested in politics or ideology than the average American. Does it make sense to believe that tens of thousands of scientists would be so deeply and secretly committed to bringing down capitalism and the American way of life that they would spend years beyond their undergraduate degrees working to receive master's and Ph.D. degrees, then go to work in a government laboratory or university, plying the deep oceans, forbidding deserts, icy poles, and torrid jungles, all for far less money than they could have made in industry, all the while biding their time like a Russian sleeper agent in an old spy novel? Scientists tend to be independent and resist authority. That is why you are apt to find them in the laboratory or in the field, as far as possible from the prying eyes of a supervisor. Anyone who believes he could organize thousands of scientists into a conspiracy has never attended a single faculty meeting. 34 There are many more traits that the climate deniers share with the creationists and Holocaust deniers and others who distort the truth. They pick on small disagreements between different labs as if scientists can't get their story straight, when in reality there is always a fair amount of give and take between competing labs as they try to get the answer right before the other lab can do so. The key point here is that when all these competing labs around the world have reached a consensus and get the same answer, there is no longer any reason to doubt their common conclusion. The anti-scientists of climate denialism will also point to small errors by individuals in an effort to argue that the entire enterprise cannot be trusted. It is true that scientists are human, and do make mistakes, but the great power of the scientific method is that peer review weeds these out, so that when scientists speak with consensus, there is no doubt that their data are checked carefully Finally, a powerful line of evidence that this is a purely political controversy, rather than a scientific debate, is that the membership lists of the creationists and the climate deniers are highly overlapping. Both anti-scientific dogmas are fed to their overlapping audiences through right-wing media such as Fox News, Glenn Beck, and Rush Limbaugh. Just take a look at the "intelligent-design" cre-ationism website for the Discovery Institute. Most of the daily news items lately have nothing to do with creationism at all, but are focused on climate denial and other right-wing causes. 35 If the data about global climate change are indeed valid and robust, any qualified scientist should be able to look at them and see if the prevailing scientific interpretation holds up. Indeed, such a test took place. Starting in 2010, a group led by U.C. Berkeley physicist Richard Muller re-examined all the temperature data from the NOAA, East Anglia Hadley Climate Research Unit, and the Goddard Institute of Space Science sources. Even though Muller started out as a skeptic of the temperature data, and was funded by the Koch brothers and other oil company sources, he carefully checked and re-checked the research himself. When the GOP leaders called him to testify before the House Science and Technology Committee in spring 2011, they were expecting him to discredit the temperature data. Instead, Muller shocked his GOP sponsors by demonstrating his scientific integrity and telling the truth: the temperature increase is real, and the scientists who have demonstrated that the climate is changing are right (Fig. 5). In the fall of 2011, his study was published, and the conclusions were clear: global warming is real, even to a right-wing skeptical scientist. Unlike the hired-gun scientists who play political games, Muller did what a true scientist should do: if the data go against your biases and preconceptions, then do the right thing and admit it -- even if you've been paid by sponsors who want to discredit global warming. Muller is a shining example of a scientist whose integrity and honesty came first, and did not sell out to the highest bidder. 36 * Science and Anti-Science The conclusion is clear: there's science, and then there's the anti-science of global warming denial. As we have seen, there is a nearly unanimous consensus among climate scientists that anthropogenic global warming is real and that we must do something about it. Yet the smokescreen, bluster and lies of the deniers has created enough doubt so that only half of the American public is convinced the problem requires action. Ironically, the U.S. is almost alone in questioning its scientific reality. International polls taken of 33,000 people in 33 nations in 2006 and 2007 show that 90% of their citizens regard climate change as a serious problem 37 and 80% realize that humans are the cause of it. 38 Just as in the case of creationism, the U.S. is out of step with much of the rest of the world in accepting scientific reality. It is not just the liberals and environmentalists who are taking climate change seriously. Historically conservative institutions (big corporations such as General Electric and many others such as insurance companies and the military) are already planning on how to deal with global warming. Many of my friends high in the oil companies tell me of the efforts by those companies to get into other forms of energy, because they know that cheap oil will be running out soon and that the effects of burning oil will make their business less popular. BP officially stands for "British Petroleum," but in one of their ad campaigns about 5 years ago, it stood for "Beyond Petroleum." 39 Although they still spend relatively little of their total budgets on alternative forms of energy, the oil companies still see the handwriting on the wall about the eventual exhaustion of oil -- and they are acting like any company that wants to survive by getting into a new business when the old one is dying. The Pentagon (normally not a left-wing institution) is also making contingency plans for how to fight wars in an era of global climate change, and analyzing what kinds of strategic threats might occur when climate change alters the kinds of enemies we might be fighting, and water becomes a scarce commodity. The New York Times reported 40 that in December 2008, the National Defense University outlined plans for military strategy in a greenhouse world. To the Pentagon, the big issue is global chaos and the potential of even nuclear conflict. The world must "prepare for the inevitable effects of abrupt climate change -- which will likely come the only question is when regardless of human activity." Insurance companies have no political axe to grind. If anything, they tend to be on the conservative side. They are simply in the business of assessing risk in a realistic fashion so they can accurately gauge their future insurance policies and what to charge for them. Yet they are all investing heavily in research on the disasters and risks posed by climatic change. In 2005, a study commissioned by the re-insurer Swiss Re said, "Climate change will significantly affect the health of humans and ecosystems and these impacts will have economic consequences." 41 Some people may still try to deny scientific reality, but big businesses like oil and insurance and conservative institutions like the military cannot afford to be blinded or deluded by ideology. They must plan for the real world that we will be seeing in the next few decades. They do not want to be caught unprepared and harmed by global climatic change when it threatens their survival. Neither can we as a society. Climate change risks catastrophe – slow feedbacks
Hansen 8 (James Hansen, directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, “Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth,” Nov/Dec 2008, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdf)
Embers of election night elation will glow longer than any prior election. Glowing even in other nations, and for good reason. We are all tied together, more than ever, like it or not. Barack Obama’s measured words on election night, including eloquent recognition of historic progress, from the viewpoint of a 106-year-old lady, still stoke the embers. But he was already focusing on tasks ahead, without celebratory excess. Well he should. The challenge he faces is unprecedented. I refer not to the inherited economic morass, as threatening as it is. The human toll due to past failures and excesses may prove to be great, yet economic recessions, even depressions, come and go. Now our planet itself is in peril. Not simply the Earth, but the fate of all of its species, including humanity. The situation calls not for hand-wringing, but rather informed action. Optimism is fueled by expectation that decisions will be guided by reason and evidence, not ideology. The danger is that special interests will dilute and torque government policies, causing the climate to pass tipping points, with grave consequences for all life on the planet. The President-elect himself needs to be well-informed about the climate problem and its relation to energy needs and economic policies. He cannot rely on political systems to bring him solutions – the political systems provide too many opportunities for special interests. Here is a message I think should be delivered to Barack Obama. Criticisms are welcome. Climate threat. The world’s temperature has increased about 1°F over the past few decades, about 2°F over land areas. Further warming is “in the pipeline” due to gases already in the air (because of climate system inertia) and inevitable additional fossil fuel emissions (because of energy system inertia). Although global warming to date is smaller than day-to-day weather fluctuations, it has brought global temperature back to approximately the highest level of the Holocene, the past 10,000 years, the period during which civilization developed. Effects already evident include: 1. Mountain glaciers are receding worldwide and will be gone within 50 years if CO2 emissions continue to increase. This threatens the fresh water supply for billions of people, as rivers arising in the Himalayas, Andes and Rocky Mountains will begin to run dry in the summer and fall. 2. Coral reefs, home to a quarter of biological species in the ocean, could be destroyed by rising temperature and ocean acidification due to increasing CO2. 3. Dry subtropics are expanding poleward with warming, affecting the southern United States, the Mediterranean region, and Australia, with increasing drought and fires. 4. Arctic sea ice will disappear entirely in the summer, if CO2 continues to increase, with devastating effects on wildlife and indigenous people. 5. Intensity of hydrologic extremes, including heavy rains, storms and floods on the one hand, and droughts and fires on the other, are increasing. Some people say we must learn to live with these effects, because it is an almost godgiven fact that we must burn all fossil fuels. But now we understand, from the history of the Earth, that there would be two monstrous consequences of releasing the CO2 from all of the oil, gas and coal, consequences of an enormity that cannot be accepted. One effect would be extermination of a large fraction of the species on the planet. The other is initiation of ice sheet disintegration and sea level rise, out of humanity’s control, eventually eliminating coastal cities and historical sites, creating havoc, hundreds of millions of refugees, and impoverishing nations.2 Species extermination and ice sheet disintegration are both ‘non-linear’ problems with ‘tipping points’. If the process proceeds too far, amplifying feedbacks push the system dynamics to proceed without further human forcing. For example, species are interdependent – if a sufficient number are eliminated, ecosystems collapse. In the physical climate system, amplifying feedbacks include increased absorption of sunlight as sea and land ice areas are reduced and release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, as permafrost melts. The Earth’s history reveals examples of such non-linear collapses. Eventually, over tens and hundreds of thousands of years, new species evolve, and ice sheets return. But we will leave a devastated impoverished planet for all generations of humanity that we can imagine, if we are so foolish as to allow the climate tipping points to be passed. Urgency. Recent evidence reveals a situation more urgent than had been expected, even by those who were most attuned. The evidence is based on improving knowledge of Earth’s history – how the climate responded to past changes of atmospheric composition – and on observations of how the Earth is responding now to human-made atmospheric changes. The conclusion – at first startling, but in retrospect obvious – is that the human-made increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), from the pre-industrial 280 parts per million (ppm) to today’s 385 ppm, has already raised the CO2 amount into the dangerous range. It will be necessary to take actions that return CO2 to a level of at most 350 ppm, but probably less, if we are to avert disastrous pressures on fellow species and large sea level rise. The good news is that such a result is still possible, if actions are prompt. Prompt action will do more than prevent irreversible extinctions and ice sheet disintegration: it can avert or reverse consequences that had begun to seem inevitable, including loss of Arctic ice, ocean acidification, expansion of the subtropics, increased intensity of droughts, floods, and storms. Principal implication. CO2 is not the only human-made gas that contributes to global warming, but it is the dominant gas with a lifetime that dwarfs that of the other major gases. Much of the CO2 increase caused by burning fossil fuels remains in the air more than 1000 years. So CO2 must be the focus of efforts to stop human-caused climate change. It would be easy to jump to the conclusion that solution of global warming is to phase down total fossil fuel emissions by some specified percentage. That approach will not work as a strategy. The reason for that conclusion and an outline of a better strategic approach follow immediately from geophysical boundary constraints. Figure 1a shows oil, gas and coal reserves, with the purple portion being the amount that has already been burned and emitted into the atmosphere. Despite uncertainty in the size of undiscovered resources, their amounts are certainly enough to yield atmospheric CO2 greater than 500 ppm. That amount would be disastrous, assuring unstable ice sheets, rising sea level out of humanity’s control, extermination of a large fraction of the species on Earth, and severe exacerbation of climate impacts discussed above. Oil is used primarily in vehicles, where it is impractical to capture CO2 emerging from tailpipes. The large pools of oil remaining in the ground are spread among many countries. The United States, which once had some of the large pools, has already exploited its largest recoverable reserves. Given this fact, it is unrealistic to think that Russia and Middle East countries will decide to leave their oil in the ground. A carbon cap that slows emissions of CO2 does not help, because of the long lifetime of atmospheric CO2. In fact, the cap exacerbates the problem if it allows coal emissions to continue. The only solution is to target a (large) portion of the fossil fuel reserves to be left in the ground or used in a way such that the CO2 can be captured and safely sequestered.3 Figure 1. (a) Fossil fuel and net land-use CO2 emissions (purple), and potential fossil fuel emissions (light blue). Fossil fuel reserve estimates of EIA, IPCC and WEC differ as shown. (b) Atmospheric CO2 if coal emissions are phased out linearly between 2010 and 2030, calculated using a version of the Bern carbon cycle model. References EIA (Energy Information Administration), IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), and WEC (World Energy Council) are provided in the published paper. Coal is the obvious target. Figure 1b shows that if there were a prompt moratorium on construction of new coal plants, and if existing ones were phased out linearly over the period 2010-2030, then atmospheric CO2 would peak during the next few decades at an amount somewhere between 400 and 425 ppm. The peak value depends upon whose estimate of undiscovered reserves is more accurate. It also depends upon whether oil in the most extreme environments is exploited or left in the ground, and thus it depends on the carbon tax (see below). This coal-phase-out scenario yields the possibility of stabilizing climate. Overshoot of the safe CO2 level is sufficiently small that improved agricultural and forestry practices, including reforestation of marginal lands, could bring CO2 back below 350 ppm, perhaps by the middle of the century. But if construction of new coal plants continues for even another decade it is difficult to conceive a practical, natural way to return CO2 below 350 ppm. Outline of policy options. The imperative of near-term termination of coal emissions (but not necessarily coal use) requires fundamental advances in energy technologies. Such advances would be needed anyhow, as fossil fuel reserves dwindle, but the climate crisis demands that they be achieved rapidly. Fortunately, actions that solve the climate problem can be designed so as to also improve energy security and restore economic well-being. A workshop held in Washington, DC on 3 November 2008 outlined options (presentations are at http://www.mediafire.com/nov3workshop). The workshop focused on electrical energy, because that is the principal use of coal. Also electricity is more and more the energy carrier of choice, because it is clean, much desired in developing countries, and a likely replacement or partial replacement for oil in transportation. Workshop topics, in priority order, were: (1) energy efficiency, (2) renewable energies, (3) electric grid improvements, (4) nuclear power, (5) carbon capture and sequestration. Energy efficiency improvements have the potential to obviate the need for additional electric power in all parts of the country during the next few decades and allow retirement of some existing coal plants. Achievement of the efficiency potential requires both regulations and a carbon tax. National building codes are needed, and higher standards for appliances, especially electronics, where standby power has become a large unnecessary drain of energy. 4 Economic incentives for utilities must be changed so that profits increase with increased energy conservation, not in proportion to amount of energy sold. Renewable energies are gaining in economic competition with fossil fuels, but in the absence of wise policies there is the danger that declining prices for fossil fuels, and continuation of fossil fuel subsidies, could cause a major setback. The most effective and efficient way to support renewable energy is via a carbon tax (see below). The national electric grid can be made more reliable and “smarter” in a number of ways. Priority will be needed for constructing a low-loss grid from regions with plentiful renewable energy to other parts of the nation, if renewable energies are to be a replacement for coal. Energy efficiency, renewable energies, and an improved grid deserve priority and there is a hope that they could provide all of our electric power requirements. However, the greatest threat to the planet may be the potential gap between that presumption (100% “soft” energy) and reality, with the gap being filled by continued use of coal-fired power. Therefore we should undertake urgent focused RandD programs in both next generation nuclear power and carbon capture and sequestration. These programs could be carried out most rapidly and effectively in full cooperation with China and/or India, and other countries. Given appropriate priority and resources, the option of secure, low-waste 4 th generation nuclear power (see below) could be available within about a decade. If, by then, wind, solar, other renewables, and an improved grid prove to be capable of handling all of our electrical energy needs, there would be no imperative to construct nuclear plants in the United States. Many energy experts consider an all-renewable scenario to be implausible in the time-frame when coal emissions must be phased out, but it is not necessary to debate that matter. However, it would be dangerous to proceed under the presumption that we will soon have all-renewable electric power. Also it would be inappropriate to impose a similar presumption on China and India. Both countries project large increases in their energy needs, both countries have highly polluted atmospheres primarily due to excessive coal use, and both countries stand to suffer inordinately if global climate change continues. The entire world stands to gain if China and India have options to reduce their CO2 emissions and air pollution. Mercury emissions from their coal plants, for example, are polluting the global atmosphere and ocean and affecting the safety of foods, especially fish, on a near-global scale. And there is little hope of stabilizing climate unless China and India have low- and no-CO2 energy options. Devastates the biosphere – extinction
Morgan 9 (Dennis Ray Morgan, Professor of Current Affairs at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, “World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race,” December 2009 Science Direct)
As horrifying as the scenario of human extinction by sudden, fast-burning nuclear fire may seem, the one consolation is that this future can be avoided within a relatively short period of time if responsible world leaders change Cold War thinking to move away from aggressive wars over natural resources and towards the eventual dismantlement of most if not all nuclear weapons. On the other hand, another scenario of human extinction by fire is one that may not so easily be reversed within a short period of time because it is not a fast-burning fire; rather, a slow burning fire is gradually heating up the planet as industrial civilization progresses and develops globally. This gradual process and course is long-lasting; thus it cannot easily be changed, even if responsible world leaders change their thinking about “progress” and industrial development based on the burning of fossil fuels. The way that global warming will impact humanity in the future has often been depicted through the analogy of the proverbial frog in a pot of water who does not realize that the temperature of the water is gradually rising. Instead of trying to escape, the frog tries to adjust to the gradual temperature change; finally, the heat of the water sneaks up on it until it is debilitated. Though it finally realizes its predicament and attempts to escape, it is too late; its feeble attempt is to no avail—and the frog dies. Whether this fable can actually be applied to frogs in heated water or not is irrelevant; it still serves as a comparable scenario of how the slow burning fire of global warming may eventually lead to a runaway condition and take humanity by surprise. Unfortunately, by the time the politicians finally all agree with the scientific consensus that global warming is indeed human caused, its development could be too advanced to arrest; the poor frog has become too weak and enfeebled to get himself out of hot water. The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environmental Programme to “assess on a comprehensive, objective, open and transparent basis the scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.”16. Since then, it has given assessments and reports every six or seven years. Thus far, it has given four assessments.13 With all prior assessments came attacks from some parts of the scientific community, especially by industry scientists, to attempt to prove that the theory had no basis in planetary history and present-day reality; nevertheless, as more and more research continually provided concrete and empirical evidence to confirm the global warming hypothesis, that it is indeed human-caused, mostly due to the burning of fossil fuels, the scientific consensus grew stronger that human induced global warming is verifiable. As a matter of fact, according to Bill McKibben 17, 12 years of “impressive scientific research” strongly confirms the 1995 report “that humans had grown so large in numbers and especially in appetite for energy that they were now damaging the most basic of the earth's systems—the balance between incoming and outgoing solar energy”; “… their findings have essentially been complementary to the 1995 report -- a constant strengthening of the simple basic truth that humans were burning too much fossil fuel.” 17. Indeed, 12 years later, the 2007 report not only confirms global warming, with a stronger scientific consensus that the slow burn is “very likely” human caused, but it also finds that the “amount of carbon in the atmosphere is now increasing at a faster rate even than before” and the temperature increases would be “considerably higher than they have been so far were it not for the blanket of soot and other pollution that is temporarily helping to cool the planet.” 17. Furthermore, almost “everything frozen on earth is melting. Heavy rainfalls are becoming more common since the air is warmer and therefore holds more water than cold air, and ‘cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent.” 17. Unless drastic action is taken soon, the average global temperature is predicted to rise about 5 degrees this century, but it could rise as much as 8 degrees. As has already been evidenced in recent years, the rise in global temperature is melting the Arctic sheets. This runaway polar melting will inflict great damage upon coastal areas, which could be much greater than what has been previously forecasted. However, what is missing in the IPCC report, as dire as it may seem, is sufficient emphasis on the less likely but still plausible worst case scenarios, which could prove to have the most devastating, catastrophic consequences for the long-term future of human civilization. In other words, the IPCC report places too much emphasis on a linear progression that does not take sufficient account of the dynamics of systems theory, which leads to a fundamentally different premise regarding the relationship between industrial civilization and nature. As a matter of fact, as early as the 1950s, Hannah Arendt 18 observed this radical shift of emphasis in the human-nature relationship, which starkly contrasts with previous times because the very distinction between nature and man as “Homo faber” has become blurred, as man no longer merely takes from nature what is needed for fabrication; instead, he now acts into nature to augment and transform natural processes, which are then directed into the evolution of human civilization itself such that we become a part of the very processes that we make. The more human civilization becomes an integral part of this dynamic system, the more difficult it becomes to extricate ourselves from it. As Arendt pointed out, this dynamism is dangerous because of its unpredictability. Acting into nature to transform natural processes brings about an … endless new change of happenings whose eventual outcome the actor is entirely incapable of knowing or controlling beforehand. The moment we started natural processes of our own - and the splitting of the atom is precisely such a man-made natural process - we not only increased our power over nature, or became more aggressive in our dealings with the given forces of the earth, but for the first time have taken nature into the human world as such and obliterated the defensive boundaries between natural elements and the human artifice by which all previous civilizations were hedged in” 18. So, in as much as we act into nature, we carry our own unpredictability into our world; thus, Nature can no longer be thought of as having absolute or iron-clad laws. We no longer know what the laws of nature are because the unpredictability of Nature increases in proportion to the degree by which industrial civilization injects its own processes into it; through self-created, dynamic, transformative processes, we carry human unpredictability into the future with a precarious recklessness that may indeed end in human catastrophe or extinction, for elemental forces that we have yet to understand may be unleashed upon us by the very environment that we experiment with. Nature may yet have her revenge and the last word, as the Earth and its delicate ecosystems, environment, and atmosphere reach a tipping point, which could turn out to be a point of no return. This is exactly the conclusion reached by the scientist, inventor, and author, James Lovelock. The creator of the well-known yet controversial Gaia Theory, Lovelock has recently written that it may be already too late for humanity to change course since climate centers around the world, … which are the equivalent of the pathology lab of a hospital, have reported the Earth's physical condition, and the climate specialists see it as seriously ill, and soon to pass into a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years. I have to tell you, as members of the Earth's family and an intimate part of it, that you and especially civilisation are in grave danger. It was ill luck that we started polluting at a time when the sun is too hot for comfort. We have given Gaia a fever and soon her condition will worsen to a state like a coma. She has been there before and recovered, but it took more than 100,000 years. We are responsible and will suffer the consequences: as the century progresses, the temperature will rise 8 degrees centigrade in temperate regions and 5 degrees in the tropics. Much of the tropical land mass will become scrub and desert, and will no longer serve for regulation; this adds to the 40 per cent of the Earth's surface we have depleted to feed ourselves. … Curiously, aerosol pollution of the northern hemisphere reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This ‘global dimming’ is transient and could disappear in a few days like the smoke that it is, leaving us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool's climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable. 19 Moreover, Lovelock states that the task of trying to correct our course is hopelessly impossible, for we are not in charge. It is foolish and arrogant to think that we can regulate the atmosphere, oceans and land surface in order to maintain the conditions right for life. It is as impossible as trying to regulate your own temperature and the composition of your blood, for those with “failing kidneys know the never-ending daily difficulty of adjusting water, salt and protein intake. The technological fix of dialysis helps, but is no replacement for living healthy kidneys” 19. Lovelock concludes his analysis on the fate of human civilization and Gaia by saying that we will do “our best to survive, but sadly I cannot see the United States or the emerging economies of China and India cutting back in time, and they are the main source of emissions. The worst will happen and survivors will have to adapt to a hell of a climate” 19. Lovelock's forecast for climate change is based on a systems dynamics analysis of the interaction between human-created processes and natural processes. It is a multidimensional model that appropriately reflects the dynamism of industrial civilization responsible for climate change. For one thing, it takes into account positive feedback loops that lead to “runaway” conditions. This mode of analysis is consistent with recent research on how ecosystems suddenly disappear. A 2001 article in Nature, based on a scientific study by an international consortium, reported that changes in ecosystems are not just gradual but are often sudden and catastrophic 20. Thus, a scientific consensus is emerging (after repeated studies of ecological change) that “stressed ecosystems, given the right nudge, are capable of slipping rapidly from a seemingly steady state to something entirely different,” according to Stephen Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (who is also a co-author of the report). Carpenter continues, “We realize that there is a common pattern we’re seeing in ecosystems around the world, … Gradual changes in vulnerability accumulate and eventually you get a shock to the system - a flood or a drought - and, boom, you’re over into another regime. It becomes a self-sustaining collapse.” 20. If ecosystems are in fact mini-models of the system of the Earth, as Lovelock maintains, then we can expect the same kind of behavior. As Jonathon Foley, a UW-Madison climatologist and another co-author of the Nature report, puts it, “Nature isn’t linear. Sometimes you can push on a system and push on a system and, finally, you have the straw that breaks the camel's back.” Also, once the “flip” occurs, as Foley maintains, then the catastrophic change is “irreversible.” 20. When we expand this analysis of ecosystems to the Earth itself, it's frightening. What could be the final push on a stressed system that could “break the camel's back?” Recently, another factor has been discovered in some areas of the arctic regions, which will surely compound the problem of global “heating” (as Lovelock calls it) in unpredictable and perhaps catastrophic ways. This disturbing development, also reported in Nature, concerns the permafrost that has locked up who knows how many tons of the greenhouse gasses, methane and carbon dioxide. Scientists are particularly worried about permafrost because, as it thaws, it releases these gases into the atmosphere, thus, contributing and accelerating global heating. It is a vicious positive feedback loop that compounds the prognosis of global warming in ways that could very well prove to be the tipping point of no return. Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press describes this disturbing positive feedback loop of permafrost greenhouse gasses, as when warming “. already under way thaws permafrost, soil that has been continuously frozen for thousands of years. Thawed permafrost releases methane and carbon dioxide. Those gases reach the atmosphere and help trap heat on Earth in the greenhouse effect. The trapped heat thaws more permafrost and so on.” 21. The significance and severity of this problem cannot be understated since scientists have discovered that “the amount of carbon trapped in this type of permafrost called “yedoma” is much more prevalent than originally thought and may be 100 times my emphasis the amount of carbon released into the air each year by the burning of fossil fuels” 21. Of course, it won’t come out all at once, at least by time as we commonly reckon it, but in terms of geological time, the “several decades” that scientists say it will probably take to come out can just as well be considered “all at once.” Surely, within the next 100 years, much of the world we live in will be quite hot and may be unlivable, as Lovelock has predicted. Professor Ted Schuur, a professor of ecosystem ecology at the University of Florida and co-author of the study that appeared in Science, describes it as a “slow motion time bomb.” 21. Permafrost under lakes will be released as methane while that which is under dry ground will be released as carbon dioxide. Scientists aren’t sure which is worse. Whereas methane is a much more powerful agent to trap heat, it only lasts for about 10 years before it dissipates into carbon dioxide or other chemicals. The less powerful heat-trapping agent, carbon dioxide, lasts for 100 years 21. Both of the greenhouse gasses present in permafrost represent a global dilemma and challenge that compounds the effects of global warming and runaway climate change. The scary thing about it, as one researcher put it, is that there are “lots of mechanisms that tend to be self-perpetuating and relatively few that tend to shut it off” 21.14 In an accompanying AP article, Katey Walters of the University of Alaska at Fairbanks describes the effects as “huge” and, unless we have a “major cooling,” - unstoppable 22. Also, there's so much more that has not even been discovered yet, she writes: “It's coming out a lot and there's a lot more to come out.” 22. 4. Is it the end of human civilization and possible extinction of humankind? What Jonathon Schell wrote concerning death by the fire of nuclear holocaust also applies to the slow burning death of global warming: Once we learn that a holocaust might lead to extinction, we have no right to gamble, because if we lose, the game will be over, and neither we nor anyone else will ever get another chance. Therefore, although, scientifically speaking, there is all the difference in the world between the mere possibility that a holocaust will bring about extinction and the certainty of it, morally they are the same, and we have no choice but to address the issue of nuclear weapons as though we knew for a certainty that their use would put an end to our species 23.15 When we consider that beyond the horror of nuclear war, another horror is set into motion to interact with the subsequent nuclear winter to produce a poisonous and super heated planet, the chances of human survival seem even smaller. Who knows, even if some small remnant does manage to survive, what the poisonous environmental conditions would have on human evolution in the future. A remnant of mutated, sub-human creatures might survive such harsh conditions, but for all purposes, human civilization has been destroyed, and the question concerning human extinction becomes moot. Use of catastrophic warming as a justification motivates action
Romm 12 (Joe Romm, Ph.D in Physics from MIT, worked at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, awarded an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellowship, executive director of Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, former researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute, former Special Assistant for International Security at the Rockefeller Foundation, taught at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, interview with Ken Caldeira, atmospheric scientist who works at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology, “Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media And The Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages’ on Climate”, http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/26/432546/apocalypse-not-oscars-media-myth-of-repetition-of-doomsday-messages-on-climate/#more-432546)
The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday messages has been a major, ongoing strategy and 2) that strategy doesn’t work and indeed is actually counterproductive! These myths are so deeply ingrained in the environmental and progressive political community that when we finally had a serious shot at a climate bill, the powers that be decided not to focus on the threat posed by climate change in any serious fashion in their $200 million communications effort (see my 6/10 post “Can you solve global warming without talking about global warming?“). These myths are so deeply ingrained in the mainstream media that such messaging, when it is tried, is routinely attacked and denounced — and the flimsiest studies are interpreted exactly backwards to drive the erroneous message home (see “Dire straits: Media blows the story of UC Berkeley study on climate messaging“) The only time anything approximating this kind of messaging — not “doomsday” but what I’d call blunt, science-based messaging that also makes clear the problem is solvable — was in 2006 and 2007 with the release of An Inconvenient Truth (and the 4 assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and media coverage like the April 2006 cover of Time). The data suggest that strategy measurably moved the public to become more concerned about the threat posed by global warming (see recent study here). You’d think it would be pretty obvious that the public is not going to be concerned about an issue unless one explains why they should be concerned about an issue. And the social science literature, including the vast literature on advertising and marketing, could not be clearer that only repeated messages have any chance of sinking in and moving the needle. Because I doubt any serious movement of public opinion or mobilization of political action could possibly occur until these myths are shattered, I’ll do a multipart series on this subject, featuring public opinion analysis, quotes by leading experts, and the latest social science research. Since this is Oscar night, though, it seems appropriate to start by looking at what messages the public are exposed to in popular culture and the media. It ain’t doomsday. Quite the reverse, climate change has been mostly an invisible issue for several years and the message of conspicuous consumption and business-as-usual reigns supreme. The motivation for this post actually came up because I received an e-mail from a journalist commenting that the “constant repetition of doomsday messages” doesn’t work as a messaging strategy. I had to demur, for the reasons noted above. But it did get me thinking about what messages the public are exposed to, especially as I’ve been rushing to see the movies nominated for Best Picture this year. I am a huge movie buff, but as parents of 5-year-olds know, it isn’t easy to stay up with the latest movies. That said, good luck finding a popular movie in recent years that even touches on climate change, let alone one a popular one that would pass for doomsday messaging. Best Picture nominee The Tree of Life has been billed as an environmental movie — and even shown at environmental film festivals — but while it is certainly depressing, climate-related it ain’t. In fact, if that is truly someone’s idea of environmental movie, count me out. The closest to a genuine popular climate movie was the dreadfully unscientific The Day After Tomorrow, which is from 2004 (and arguably set back the messaging effort by putting the absurd “global cooling” notion in people’s heads! Even Avatar, the most successful movie of all time and “the most epic piece of environmental advocacy ever captured on celluloid,” as one producer put it, omits the climate doomsday message. One of my favorite eco-movies, “Wall-E, is an eco-dystopian gem and an anti-consumption movie,” but it isn’t a climate movie. I will be interested to see The Hunger Games, but I’ve read all 3 of the bestselling post-apocalyptic young adult novels — hey, that’s my job! — and they don’t qualify as climate change doomsday messaging (more on that later). So, no, the movies certainly don’t expose the public to constant doomsday messages on climate. Here are the key points about what repeated messages the American public is exposed to: The broad American public is exposed to virtually no doomsday messages, let alone constant ones, on climate change in popular culture (TV and the movies and even online). There is not one single TV show on any network devoted to this subject, which is, arguably, more consequential than any other preventable issue we face. The same goes for the news media, whose coverage of climate change has collapsed (see “Network News Coverage of Climate Change Collapsed in 2011“). When the media do cover climate change in recent years, the overwhelming majority of coverage is devoid of any doomsday messages — and many outlets still feature hard-core deniers. Just imagine what the public’s view of climate would be if it got the same coverage as, say, unemployment, the housing crisis or even the deficit? When was the last time you saw an “employment denier” quoted on TV or in a newspaper? The public is exposed to constant messages promoting business as usual and indeed idolizing conspicuous consumption. See, for instance, “Breaking: The earth is breaking … but how about that Royal Wedding? Our political elite and intelligentsia, including MSM pundits and the supposedly “liberal media” like, say, MSNBC, hardly even talk about climate change and when they do, it isn’t doomsday. Indeed, there isn’t even a single national columnist for a major media outlet who writes primarily on climate. Most “liberal” columnists rarely mention it. At least a quarter of the public chooses media that devote a vast amount of time to the notion that global warming is a hoax and that environmentalists are extremists and that clean energy is a joke. In the MSM, conservative pundits routinely trash climate science and mock clean energy. Just listen to, say, Joe Scarborough on MSNBC’s Morning Joe mock clean energy sometime. The major energy companies bombard the airwaves with millions and millions of dollars of repetitious pro-fossil-fuel ads. The environmentalists spend far, far less money. As noted above, the one time they did run a major campaign to push a climate bill, they and their political allies including the president explicitly did NOT talk much about climate change, particularly doomsday messaging Environmentalists when they do appear in popular culture, especially TV, are routinely mocked. There is very little mass communication of doomsday messages online. Check out the most popular websites. General silence on the subject, and again, what coverage there is ain’t doomsday messaging. Go to the front page of the (moderately trafficked) environmental websites. Where is the doomsday? If you want to find anything approximating even modest, blunt, science-based messaging built around the scientific literature, interviews with actual climate scientists and a clear statement that we can solve this problem — well, you’ve all found it, of course, but the only people who see it are those who go looking for it. Of course, this blog is not even aimed at the general public. Probably 99% of Americans haven’t even seen one of my headlines and 99.7% haven’t read one of my climate science posts. And Climate Progress is probably the most widely read, quoted, and reposted climate science blog in the world. Anyone dropping into America from another country or another planet who started following popular culture and the news the way the overwhelming majority of Americans do would get the distinct impression that nobody who matters is terribly worried about climate change. And, of course, they’d be right — see “The failed presidency of Barack Obama, Part 2.” It is total BS that somehow the American public has been scared and overwhelmed by repeated doomsday messaging into some sort of climate fatigue. If the public’s concern has dropped — and public opinion analysis suggests it has dropped several percent (though is bouncing back a tad) — that is primarily due to the conservative media’s disinformation campaign impact on Tea Party conservatives and to the treatment of this as a nonissue by most of the rest of the media, intelligentsia and popular culture. The IFR supplies enough clean energy to solve warming
Blees et al 11 (Charles Archambeau , Randolph Ware, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Tom Blees, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Barry Brook, Yoon Chang, University of Colorado, Jerry Peterson, Argonne National Laboratory, Robert Serafin Joseph Shuster Tom Wigley, “IFR: An optimized approach to meeting global energy needs (Part I)” 2/1/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/01/ifr-optimized-source-for-global-energy-needs-part-i/) Fossil fuels currently supply about 80% of humankind’s primary energy. Given the imperatives of climate change, pollution, energy security and dwindling supplies, and enormous technical, logistical and economic challenges of scaling up coal or gas power plants with carbon capture and storage to sequester all that carbon, we are faced with the necessity of a nearly complete transformation of the world’s energy systems. Objective analyses of the inherent constraints on wind, solar, and other less-mature renewable energy technologies inevitably demonstrate that they will fall far short of meeting today’s energy demands, let alone the certain increased demands of the future. Nuclear power, however, is capable of providing all the carbon-free energy that mankind requires, although the prospect of such a massive deployment raises questions of uranium shortages, increased energy and environmental impacts from mining and fuel enrichment, and so on. These potential roadblocks can all be dispensed with, however, through the use of fast neutron reactors and fuel recycling. The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), developed at U.S. national laboratories in the latter years of the last century, can economically and cleanly supply all the energy the world needs without any further mining or enrichment of uranium. Instead of utilizing a mere 0.6% of the potential energy in uranium, IFRs capture all of it. Capable of utilizing troublesome waste products already at hand, IFRs can solve the thorny spent fuel problem while powering the planet with carbon-free energy for nearly a millennium before any more uranium mining would even have to be considered. Designed from the outset for unparalleled safety and proliferation resistance, with all major features proven out at the engineering scale, this technology is unrivaled in its ability to solve the most difficult energy problems facing humanity in the 21st century. Our objectives in the conference paper and poster are to describe how the new Generation IV nuclear power reactor, the IFR, can provide the required power to rapidly replace coal burning power plants and thereby sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while also replacing all fossil fuel sources within 30 years. Our conclusion is that this can be done with a combination of renewable energy sources, IFR nuclear power and ordinary conservation measures. Here we focus on a discussion of the design and functionality of the primary component of this mix of sources, namely the IFR nuclear system, since its exposure to both the scientific community and the public at large has been so limited. However, we do consider the costs of replacing all fossil fuels while utilizing all renewable and nuclear sources in generating electrical energy, as well as the costs of meeting the increasing national and global requirements for electrical power. The IFR to be described relates to the following basic features of the IFR design: • IFR systems are closed-cycle nuclear reactors that extract 99% of the available energy from the Uranium fuel, whereas the current reactors only extract about 1% of the available energy. • The waste produced by an IFR consists of a relatively small mass of fission products, consisting of short half-life isotopes which produce a relatively brief toxicity period for the waste (less than 300 years) while current nuclear systems produce much larger amounts of waste with very long toxicity periods (300,000 years). • An electrochemical processor (called the “pyroprocessor”) can be integrated with a fast reactor (FR) unit to process Uranium fuel in a closed cycling process in which the “spent” nuclear fuel from the FR unit is separated into “fission product” waste and the new isotope fuel to be cycled back into the FR. This recycling process can be repeated until 99% of the original Uranium isotope energy is converted to electrical power. The pyroprocessing unit can also be used in a stand-alone mode to process large amounts of existing nuclear reactor (LWR) waste to provide fuel for IFR reactors. The amount of IFR fuel available is very large and sufficient to supply all world-wide needs for many hundreds of years without Uranium mining. • The pyroprocessing operations do not separate the mix of isotopes that are produced during the recycling of IFR fuel. Since this mixture is always highly radioactive it is not possible to separate out Uranium or Plutonium isotopes that can be used in weapons development. • The IFR reactor uses metal fuel rather than the oxide fuels that are used now. If overheating of the reactor core occurs for any reason, the metal fuel reacts by expanding, so its density drops, which causes fast neutron “leakage”, leading to termination of the chain reaction and automatic shut-down of the reactor. This serves as an important passive safety feature. Only the IFR creates an economic incentive to get off coal in time
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now,” 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
To prevent a climate disaster, we must eliminate virtually all coal plant emissions worldwide in 25 years. The best way and, for all practical purposes, the only way to get all countries off of coal is not with coercion; it is to make them want to replace their coal burners by giving them a plug-compatible technology that is less expensive. The IFR can do this. It is plug-compatible with the burners in a coal plant (see Nuclear Power: Going Fast). No other technology can upgrade a coal plant so it is greenhouse gas free while reducing operating costs at the same time. In fact, no other technology can achieve either of these goals. The IFR can achieve both. The bottom line is that without the IFR (or a yet-to-be-invented technology with similar ability to replace the coal burner with a cheaper alternative), it is unlikely that we’ll be able to keep CO2 under 450 ppm. Today, the IFR is the only technology with the potential to displace the coal burner. That is why restarting the IFR is so critical and why Jim Hansen has listed it as one of the top five things we must do to avert a climate disaster.4 Without eliminating virtually all coal emissions by 2030, the sum total of all of our other climate mitigation efforts will be inconsequential. Hansen often refers to the near complete phase-out of carbon emissions from coal plants worldwide by 2030 as the sine qua non for climate stabilization (see for example, the top of page 6 in his August 4, 2008 trip report). To stay under 450ppm, we would have to install about 13,000 GWe of new carbon-free power over the next 25 years. That number was calculated by Nathan Lewis of Caltech for the Atlantic, but others such as Saul Griffith have independently derived a very similar number and White House Science Advisor John Holdren used 5,600 GWe to 7,200 GWe in his presentation to the Energy Bar Association Annual Meeting on April 23, 2009. That means that if we want to save the planet, we must install more than 1 GWe per day of clean power every single day for the next 25 years. That is a very, very tough goal. It is equivalent to building one large nuclear reactor per day, or 1,500 huge wind turbines per day, or 80,000 37 foot diameter solar dishes covering 100 square miles every day, or some linear combination of these or other carbon free power generation technologies. Note that the required rate is actually higher than this because Hansen and Rajendra Pachauri, the chair of the IPCC, now both agree that 350ppm is a more realistic “not to exceed” number (and we’ve already exceeded it). Today, we are nowhere close to that installation rate with renewables alone. For example, in 2008, the average power delivered by solar worldwide was only 2 GWe (which is to be distinguished from the peak solar capacity of 13.4GWe). That is why every renewable expert at the 2009 Aspen Institute Environment Forum agreed that nuclear must be part of the solution. Al Gore also acknowledges that nuclear must play an important role. Nuclear has always been the world’s largest source of carbon free power. In the US, for example, even though we haven’t built a new nuclear plant in the US for 30 years, nuclear still supplies 70% of our clean power! Nuclear can be installed very rapidly; much more rapidly than renewables. For example, about two thirds of the currently operating 440 reactors around the world came online during a 10 year period between 1980 and 1990. So our best chance of meeting the required installation of new power goal and saving the planet is with an aggressive nuclear program. Unlike renewables, nuclear generates base load power, reliably, regardless of weather. Nuclear also uses very little land area. It does not require the installation of new power lines since it can be installed where the power is needed. However, even with a very aggressive plan involving nuclear, it will still be extremely difficult to install clean power fast enough. Unfortunately, even in the US, we have no plan to install the clean power we need fast enough to save the planet. Even if every country were to agree tomorrow to completely eliminate their coal plant emissions by 2030, how do we think they are actually going to achieve that? There is no White House plan that explains this. There is no DOE plan. There is no plan or strategy. The deadlines will come and go and most countries will profusely apologize for not meeting their goals, just like we have with most of the signers of the Kyoto Protocol today. Apologies are nice, but they will not restore the environment. We need a strategy that is believable, practical, and affordable for countries to adopt. The IFR offers our best hope of being a centerpiece in such a strategy because it the only technology we know of that can provide an economically compelling reason to change. At a speech at MIT on October 23, 2009, President Obama said “And that’s why the world is now engaged in a peaceful competition to determine the technologies that will power the 21st century. … The nation that wins this competition will be the nation that leads the global economy. I am convinced of that. And I want America to be that nation, it’s that simple.” Nuclear is our best clean power technology and the IFR is our best nuclear technology. The Gen IV International Forum (GIF) did a study in 2001-2002 of 19 different reactor designs on 15 different criteria and 24 metrics. The IFR ranked #1 overall. Over 242 experts from around the world participated in the study. It was the most comprehensive evaluation of competitive nuclear designs ever done. Top DOE nuclear management ignored the study because it didn’t endorse the design the Bush administration wanted. The IFR has been sitting on the shelf for 15 years and the DOE currently has no plans to change that. How does the US expect to be a leader in clean energy by ignoring our best nuclear technology? Nobody I’ve talked to has been able to answer that question. We have the technology (it was running for 30 years before we were ordered to tear it down). And we have the money: The Recovery Act has $80 billion dollars. Why aren’t we building a demo plant? IFRs are better than conventional nuclear in every dimension. Here are a few: Efficiency: IFRs are over 100 times more efficient than conventional nuclear. It extracts nearly 100% of the energy from nuclear material. Today’s nuclear reactors extract less than 1%. So you need only 1 ton of actinides each year to feed an IFR (we can use existing nuclear waste for this), whereas you need 100 tons of freshly mined uranium each year to extract enough material to feed a conventional nuclear plant. Unlimited power forever: IFRs can use virtually any actinide for fuel. Fast reactors with reprocessing are so efficient that even if we restrict ourselves to just our existing uranium resources, we can power the entire planet forever (the Sun will consume the Earth before we run out of material to fuel fast reactors). If we limited ourselves to using just our DU “waste” currently in storage, then using the IFR we can power the US for over 1,500 years without doing any new mining of uranium.5 Exploits our largest energy resource: In the US, there is 10 times as much energy in the depleted uranium (DU) that is just sitting there as there is coal in the ground. This DU waste is our largest natural energy resource…but only if we have fast reactors. Otherwise, it is just waste. With fast reactors, virtually all our nuclear waste (from nuclear power plants, leftover from enrichment, and from decommissioned nuclear weapons)6 becomes an energy asset worth about $30 trillion dollars…that’s not a typo…$30 trillion, not billion.7 An 11 year old child was able to determine this from publicly available information in 2004. Inventing something cheaper is key
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “How Does Obama Expect to Solve the Climate Crisis Without a Plan?” 7/16/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/how-does-obama-expect-to_b_236588.html
The ship is sinking slowly and we are quickly running out of time to develop and implement any such plan if we are to have any hope of saving the planet. What we need is a plan we can all believe in. A plan where our country's smartest people all nod their heads in agreement and say, "Yes, this is a solid, viable plan for keeping CO2 levels from touching 425ppm and averting a global climate catastrophe." At his Senate testimony a few days ago, noted climate scientist James Hansen made it crystal clear once again that the only way to avert an irreversible climate meltdown and save the planet is to phase out virtually all coal plants worldwide over a 20 year period from 2010 to 2030. Indeed, if we don't virtually eliminate the use of coal worldwide, everything else we do will be as effective as re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Plans that won't work Unfortunately, nobody has proposed a realistic and practical plan to eliminate coal use worldwide or anywhere close to that. There is no White House URL with such a plan. No environmental group has a workable plan either. Hoping that everyone will abandon their coal plants and replace them with a renewable power mix isn't a viable strategy -- we've proven that in the U.S. Heck, even if the Waxman-Markey bill passes Congress (a big "if"), it is so weak that it won't do much at all to eliminate coal plants. So even though we have Democrats controlling all three branches of government, it is almost impossible to get even a weak climate bill passed. If we can't pass strong climate legislation in the U.S. with all the stars aligned, how can we expect anyone else to do it? So expecting all countries to pass a 100% renewable portfolio standard (which is far far beyond that contemplated in the current energy bill) just isn't possible. Secondly, even if you could mandate it politically in every country, from a practical standpoint, you'd never be able to implement it in time. And there are lots of experts in this country, including Secretary Chu, who say it's impossible without nuclear (a point which I am strongly in agreement with). Hoping that everyone will spontaneously adopt carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is also a non-starter solution. First of all, CCS doesn't exist at commercial scale. Secondly, even if we could make it work at scale, and even it could be magically retrofitted on every coal plant (which we don't know how to do), it would require all countries to agree to add about 30% in extra cost for no perceivable benefit. At the recent G8 conference, India and China have made it clear yet again that they aren't going to agree to emission goals. Saying that we'll invent some magical new technology that will rescue us at the last minute is a bad solution. That's at best a poor contingency plan. The point is this: It should be apparent to us that we aren't going to be able to solve the climate crisis by either "force" (economic coercion or legislation) or by international agreement. And relying on technologies like CCS that may never work is a really bad idea. The only remaining way to solve the crisis is to make it economically irresistible for countries to "do the right thing." The best way to do that is to give the world a way to generate electric power that is economically more attractive than coal with the same benefits as coal (compact power plants, 24x7 generation, can be sited almost anywhere, etc). Even better is if the new technology can simply replace the existing burner in a coal plant. That way, they'll want to switch. No coercion is required. Since Obama doesn't have a plan and I'm not aware of a viable plan that experts agree can move the entire world off of coal, I thought I'd propose one that is viable. You may not like it, but if there is a better alternative that is practical and viable, please let me know because none of the experts I've consulted with are aware of one. The Kirsch plan for saving the planet The Kirsch plan for saving the planet is very simple and practical. My plan is based on a simple observation: Nuclear is the elephant in the room 70% of the carbon free power in America is still generated by nuclear, even though we haven't built a new nuclear plant in this country in the last 30 years. Hydro is a distant second. Wind and solar are rounding error. Worldwide, it's even more skewed: nuclear is more than 100 times bigger than solar and more than 100 times bigger than wind. If I drew a bar chart of nuclear vs. solar vs. wind use worldwide, you wouldn't even see solar and wind on the chart. So our best bet is to join the parade and get behind supporting the big elephant. We put all the wood behind one arrow: nuclear. We invest in and promote these new, low-cost modular nuclear designs worldwide and get the volumes up so we can drive the price down. These plants are low-cost, can be built in small capacities, can be manufactured quickly, and assembled on-site in a few years. Nuclear can be rolled out very quickly. About two thirds of the currently operating 440 reactors around the world came online during a 10 year period between 1980 and 1990. In southeast Asia, reactors are typically constructed in 4 years or less (about 44 months) Secondly, the nuclear reactor can replace the burner in a coal plant making upgrading an existing coal plant very cost effective. Finally, it is also critically important for big entities (such as the U.S. government in partnership with other governments) to offer low-cost financing to bring down the upfront cash investment in a new nuclear reactor to be less than that required to build a coal plant. Under my plan, we now have a way to economically displace the building of new coal plants that nobody can refuse. People will then want to build modular nuclear plants because since they are cheaper, last longer, and are cleaner than coal. No legislation or mandate is required.
My plan is credible since it doesn't require Congress to act. Power companies worldwide simply make an economic decision to do the right thing. No force required. This economic lens is a prerequisite for solvency
Barton H. Thompson Jr., '3 (Vice Dean and Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, Stanford LawSchool; Senior Scholar, Center for Environmental Science and Policy, Stanford Institute forInternational Studies, "What Good is Economics?", environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/27/1/thompson.pdf)
Even the environmental moralist who eschews any normative use of economics may find economics valuable for other purposes. Indeed, economics is indispensable in diagnosing why society currently does not achieve the level of environmental protection desired by the moralist. Those who turn their backs on economics and rely instead on ethical intuition to diagnose environmental problems are likely to find themselves doomed to failure.
Economic theory suggests that flaws in economic markets and institutions are often the cause of environmental problems. Three concepts of market failure have proven particularly robust in analyzing environmental problems. The first is the "tragedy of the commons."28 If a resource is open and free for multiple parties to use, the parties will tend to over-utilize the resource, even to the point of its destruction. Economists and others have used the tragedy of the commons to explain such environmental problems as over-fishing, the over-drafting of groundwater aquifers, the early and inept exhaustion of oil fields, and high levels of population growth.29 The second, more general concept (of which the tragedy of the commons actually is a specialized instance) is the "negative externality." 3 0 When parties do not bear the full cost to society of environmental harms that they cause, they tend to underinvest in the elimination or correction of the harm. Externalities help explain why factories pollute, why landowners destroy ecologically valuable wetlands or other forms of habitat, and why current generations consume high levels of exhaustible resources. The final concept is the problem of "collective action." 31 If political or market actions will benefit a large group of individuals and it is impossible to exclude anyone from enjoying the benefits, each individual will have an incentive to "free ride" on the actions of others rather than acting themselves, reducing the possibility that anything will get done. This explains why the private market does not provide us with more wildlife refuges or aesthetic open space.32
Although these economic explanations for environmental problems are not universal truths, accurate in all settings, they do enjoy a robust applicability. Experimenters, for example, have found that subjects in a wide array of countries succumb to the tragedy of the commons.33 Smaller groups sometimes have been able to overcome the tragedy of the commons and govern a resource in collective wisdom. Yet this exception appears to be the result of institutional characteristics peculiar to the group and resource that make it easier to devise a local and informal regulatory system rather than the result of cultural differences that undermine the economic precepts of the tragedy of the commons.4
These economic explanations point to a vastly different approach to solving environmental problems than a focus on environmental ethics alone would suggest. To environmental moralists, the difficulty is that the population does not understand the ethical importance of protecting the environment. Although governmental regulation might be necessary in the short run to force people tQ do what they do not yet appreciate is proper, the long run answers are education and moral change. A principal means of enlightening the citizenry is engaging them in a discussion of environmental goals. Economic analysis, by contrast, suggests that the problem lies in our economic institutions. The solution under economic analysis is to give those who might harm the environment the incentive to avoid the harm through the imposition of taxes or regulatory fines or the awarding of environmentally beneficial subsidies.
The few studies that have tried to test the relative importance of environmental precepts and of economics in predicting environmentally relevant behavior suggest that economics trumps ethics. In one 1992 experiment designed to test whether subjects would yield to the tragedy of the commons in a simulated fisheries common, the researchers looked to see whether the environmental attitudes of individual subjects made any difference in the subjects' behavior. The researchers measured subjects' environmental beliefs through various means. They administered questionnaires designed to elicit environmental beliefs; they asked the subjects how they would behave in various hypothetical scenarios (e.g., if someone asked them to volunteer to pick up litter on the weekend); they even tried to see how the subjects would react to real requests for environmental help (e.g., by asking them to participate in a Saturday recycling campaign). No matter how the researchers tried to measure the environmental attitudes of the subjects, attitude failed to provide a statistically significant explanation for participants' behavior in the fishing commons. Those who appeared to have strong environmental beliefs behaved just as tragically as those who did not • 35 when fighting for the limited stock of fish.
In another study, researchers examined domestic consumers of high amounts of electricity in Perth, Australia. After administering a survey to determine whether the consumers believed they had a personal and ethical duty to conserve energy, the researchers tried various methods for changing the behavior of those who reported that people have a conservation obligation. Informing these individuals of their high electricity usage and even supplying them with conservation tips did not make a statistically significant difference in their energy use. The only thing that led these individuals to reduce their electricity consumption was a letter reminding them of the earlier survey in which they had espoused a conservation duty and emphasizing the inconsistency of that view with their high electricity usage. In response to this letter, the subjects reduced their energy use. Apparently shame can be a valuable catalyst in converting ethical beliefs into action. But the effect may be short lived. Within two weeks, the Perth subjects' energy use had risen back to its earlier levels.36
Ethical beliefs, in short, frequently fall victim to personal convenience or cost considerations. Ethical views sometimes can make a difference in how people behave. Examples include the role that ethics has played in encouraging people to recycle or to eat dolphin-free tuna." But the personal cost, if any, of recycling or of eating dolphin-free tuna is exceptionally small. For most of the environmental dilemmas that face the nation and the world today, the economic cost of changing behavior is far more significant. And where costs are high, economics appears to trump most peoples' environmental views. Even if ethics played a more powerful role, we do not know for certain how to create or strengthen environmental norms.38 In contrast, we do know how to change economic incentives. Although environmental moralists should continue trying to promote environmental ethics, economic analysis currently provides the strongest tool for diagnosing and thus helping to resolve environmental problems. The environmental moralist who ignores this tool in trying to improve the environment is doomed to frustration. Gotta act soon
Plumer 12 (Brady Plumer, Washington Post, “Is there still time left to avoid 2°C of global warming? Yes, but barely.” 11/30/12) http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/11/30/is-there-still-time-left-to-stop-global-warming-yes-but-only-barely/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein
But let’s say 2°C is the goal. That looks daunting. After all, the world has already warmed about 0.8°C above pre-industrial levels. And the carbon dioxide we’ve put in the air has committed us to another 0.7°C of warming in the decades ahead. Plus, carbon emissions keep rising each year. So have we finally reached the point where it’s too late?
(See further reading here.)
Not necessarily. At least, that’s according to a new report (pdf) from the analysts at the Climate Action Tracker. They say it’s still technically feasible for the world to stay below that 2°C target. But the world would need to start revamping its energy system now. As in, today. Because with each passing year, meeting that 2°C goal becomes significantly more arduous.
Right now, the world is still off-track. When the analysts added up all existing pledges to curb emissions and plugged them into the latest climate models, they found that humans are currently on pace to heat the planet somewhere between 2.7°C and 4.2°C by the end of the century. (There’s a range because there’s still some uncertainty as to exactly how sensitive the climate is to increases in atmospheric carbon.)
Yet the Climate Action Tracker analysts aren’t ready to despair just yet. If the world’s nations could somehow trim their emissions 15 percent below present levels by 2020, and then keep cutting, then there are a number of different scenarios in which global warming could stay below 2°C.
Various strategies for how to attain this goal can be found in a big new report from the U.N. Environmental Programme. Big cuts wouldn’t be easy or cheap: Nations would need to invest in everything from improving the energy-efficiency of buildings to limiting deforestation to scaling up renewable energy and nuclear power. These efforts would cost about 1 percent of global GDP, assuming that the investments are spread out evenly over time.
Speed turns out to be critical. If the world starts making big cuts today, the reports conclude, there’s still some margin for error. Even if some clean-energy technologies are simply unworkable — such as, say, carbon capture and sequestration for coal plants — there’s still a chance to meet that 2°C target. (And if engineers could figure out how to suck carbon out of the air through biomass sequestration, 1.5°C might even be attainable.) The need for the plan is magnified by future energy demand
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, “Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III),” 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
The global threat of anthropogenic climate change has become a political hot potato, especially in the USA. The vast majority of climate scientists, however, are in agreement that the potential consequences of inaction are dire indeed. Yet even those who dismiss concerns about climate change cannot discount an array of global challenges facing humanity that absolutely must be solved if wars, dislocations, and social chaos are to be avoided. Human population growth exacerbates a wide range of problems, and with most demographic projections predicting an increase of about 50% to nine or ten billion by mid-century, we are confronted with a social and logistical dilemma of staggering proportions. The most basic human morality dictates that we attempt to solve these problems without resorting to forcible and draconian methods. At the same time, simple social justice demands that the developed world accept the premise that the billions who live today in poverty deserve a drastic improvement in their standard of living, an improvement that is being increasingly demanded and expected throughout the developing countries. To achieve environmental sustainability whilst supporting human well-being will require a global revolution in energy and materials technology and deployment fully as transformative as the Industrial Revolution, but unlike that gradual process we find ourselves under the gun, especially if one considers climate change, peak oil and other immediate sustainability problems to be bona fide threats. It is beyond the purview of this paper to address the question of materials disposition and recycling i, or the social transformations that will necessarily be involved in confronting the challenges of the next several decades. But the question of energy supply is inextricably bound up with the global solution to our coming crises. It may be argued that energy is the most crucial aspect of any proposed remedy. Our purpose here is to demonstrate that the provision of all the energy that humankind can possibly require to meet the challenges of the coming decades and centuries is a challenge that already has a realistic solution, using technology that is just waiting to be deployed. Energy Realism The purpose of this paper is not to exhaustively examine the many varieties of energy systems currently in use, in development, or in the dreams of their promoters. Nevertheless, because of the apparent passion of both the public and policymakers toward certain energy systems and the political influence of their advocates, a brief discussion of “renewable” energy systems is in order. Our pressing challenges make the prospect of heading down potential energy cul de sacs – especially to the explicit exclusion of nuclear fission alternatives – to be an unconscionable waste of our limited time and resources. There is a vocal contingent of self-styled environmentalists who maintain that wind and solar power—along with other technologies such as wave and tidal power that have yet to be meaningfully developed—can (and should) provide all the energy that humanity demands. The more prominent names are well-known among those who deal with these issues: Amory Lovins, Lester Brown and Arjun Makhijani are three in particular whose organizations wield considerable clout with policymakers. The most recent egregious example to make a public splash, however, was a claim trumpeted with a cover story in Scientific American that all of our energy needs can be met by renewables (predominantly ‘technosolar’ – wind and solar thermal) by 2030. The authors of this piece—Mark Jacobson (Professor, Stanford) and Mark A. Delucchi (researcher, UC Davis)—were roundly critiqued ii online and in print. An excellent treatment of the question of renewables’ alleged capacity to provide sufficient energy is a book by David MacKay iii called Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air. iv MacKay was a professor of physics at Cambridge before being appointed Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department of Energy and Climate Change in the UK. His book is a model of scientific and intellectual rigor. Energy ideologies can be every bit as fervent as those of religion, so after suggesting Dr. MacKay’s book as an excellent starting point for a rational discussion of energy systems we’ll leave this necessary digression with a point to ponder. Whatever one believes about the causes of climate change, there is no denying that glaciers around the world are receding at an alarming rate. Billions of people depend on such glaciers for their water supplies. We have already seen cases of civil strife and even warfare caused or exacerbated by competition over water supplies. Yet these are trifling spats when one considers that the approaching demographic avalanche will require us to supply about three billion more people with all the water they need within just four decades. There is no avoiding the fact that the water for all these people—and even more, if the glaciers continue to recede, as expected—will have to come from the ocean. That means a deployment of desalination facilities on an almost unimaginable scale. Not only will it take staggering amounts of energy just to desalinate such a quantity, but moving the water to where it is needed will be an additional energy burden of prodigious proportions. A graphic example can be seen in the case of California, its state water project being the largest single user of energy in California. It consumes an average of 5 billion kWh/yr, more than 25% of the total electricity consumption of the entire state of New Mexico v. Disposing of the salt derived from such gargantuan desalination enterprises will likewise take a vast amount of energy. Even the relatively modest desalination projects along the shores of the Persian Gulf have increased its salinity to the point of serious concern. Such circumscribed bodies of water simply won’t be available as dumping grounds for the mountains of salt that will be generated, and disposing of it elsewhere will require even more energy to move and disperse it. Given the formidable energy requirements for these water demands alone, any illusions about wind turbines and solar panels being able to supply all the energy humanity requires should be put to rest. Energy Density and Reliability Two of the most important qualities of fossil fuels that enabled their rise to prominence in an industrializing world is their energy density and ease of storage. High energy density and a stable and convenient long-term fuel store are qualities that makes it practical and economical to collect, distribute, and then use them on demand for the myriad of uses to which we put them. This energy density, and the dispatchability that comes from having a non-intermittent fuel source, are the very things lacking in wind and solar and other renewable energy systems, yet they are crucial factors in considering how we can provide reliable on-demand power for human society. The supply of fossil fuels is limited, although the actual limits of each different type are a matter of debate and sometimes change substantially with new technological developments, as we’ve seen recently with the adoption of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) methods to extract natural gas from previously untapped subterranean reservoirs. The competition for fossil fuel resources, whatever their limitations, has been one of the primary causes of wars in the past few decades and can be expected to engender further conflicts and other symptoms of international competition as countries like India and China lead the developing nations in seeking a rising standard of living for their citizens. Even disregarding the climatological imperative to abandon fossil fuels, the economic, social, and geopolitical upheavals attendant upon a continuing reliance on such energy sources demands an objective look at the only other energy-dense and proven resource available to us: nuclear power. We will refrain from discussing the much hoped-for chimera of nuclear fusion as the magic solution to all our energy needs, since it is but one of many technologies that have yet to be harnessed. Our concern here is with technologies that we know will work, so when it comes to harnessing the power of the atom we are confined to nuclear fission. The splitting of uranium and transuranic elements in fission-powered nuclear reactors is a potent example of energy density being tapped for human uses. Reactor-grade uranium (i.e. uranium enriched to about 3.5% U-235) is over 100,000 times more energy-dense than anthracite coal, the purest form of coal used in power generation, and nearly a quarter-million times as much as lignite, the dirty coal used in many power plants around the world. Ironically, one of the world’s largest producers and users of lignite is Germany, the same country whose anti-nuclear political pressure under the banner of environmentalism is globally infamous. The vast majority of the world’s 440 commercial nuclear power plants are light-water reactors (LWRs) that use so-called enriched uranium (mentioned above). Natural uranium is comprised primarily of two isotopes: U-235 and U-238. The former comprises only 0.7% of natural uranium, with U-238 accounting for the remaining 99.3%. LWR technology requires a concentration of at least 3.5% U-235 in order to maintain the chain reaction used to extract energy, so a process called uranium enrichment extracts as much of the U-235 as possible from several kilos of natural uranium and adds it to a fuel kilo in order to reach a concentration high enough to enable the fission process. Because current enrichment technology is capable of harvesting only some of the U-235, this results in about 8-10 kilos of “depleted uranium” (DU) for every kilo of power plant fuel (some of which is enriched to 4% or more, depending on plant design). The USA currently has (largely unwanted) stockpiles of DU in excess of half a million tons, while other countries around the world that have been employing nuclear power over the last half-century have their own DU inventories. Technological advances in LWR engineering have resulted in new power plants that are designated within the industry as Generation III or III+ designs, to differentiate them from currently-used LWRs normally referred to as Gen II plants. The European Pressurized Reactor (EPR), currently being built by AREVA in Finland, France and China, is an example of a Gen III design. It utilizes multiple-redundant engineered systems to assure safety and dependability. Two examples of Gen III+ designs are the Westinghouse/Toshiba AP-1000, now being built in China, and GE/Hitachi’s Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR), expected to be certified for commercial use by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission by the end of 2011. The distinguishing feature of Gen III+ designs is their reliance on the principle of passive safety, which would allow the reactor to automatically shut down in the event of an emergency without operator action or electronic feedback, due to inherent design properties. Relying as they do on the laws of physics rather than active intervention to intercede, they consequently can avoid the necessity for several layers of redundant systems while still maintaining ‘defense in depth’, making it possible to build them both faster and cheaper than Gen III designs—at least in theory. As of this writing we are seeing this playing out in Finland and China. While it is expected that first-of-a-kind difficulties (and their attendant costs) will be worked out so that future plants will be cheaper and faster to build, the experience to date seems to validate the Gen III+ concept. Within a few years both the EPR and the first AP-1000s should be coming online, as well as Korean, Russian and Indian designs, at which point actual experience will begin to tell the tale as subsequent plants are built. The safety and economics of Gen III+ plants seem to be attractive enough to consider this generation of nuclear power to provide reasons for optimism that humanity can manage to provide the energy needed for the future. But naysayers are warning (with highly questionable veracity) about uranium shortages if too many such plants are built. Even if they’re right, the issue can be considered moot, for there is another player waiting in the wings that is so superior to even Gen III+ technology as to render all concerns about nuclear fuel shortages baseless. The Silver Bullet In the endless debate on energy policy and technology that seems to increase by the day, the phrase heard repeatedly is “There is no silver bullet.” (This is sometimes rendered “There is no magic bullet”, presumably by those too young to remember the Lone Ranger TV series.) Yet a fission technology known as the integral fast reactor (IFR), developed at Argonne National Laboratory in the 80s and 90s, gives the lie to that claim. Below is a graph vi representing the number of years that each of several power sources would be able to supply all the world’s expected needs if they were to be relied upon as the sole source of humanity’s energy supply. The categories are described thusly: Conventional oil: ordinary oil drilling and extraction as practiced today Conventional gas: likewise Unconventional oil (excluding low-grade oil shale). More expensive methods of recovering oil from more problematic types of deposits Unconventional gas (excluding clathrates and geopressured gas): As with unconventional oil, this encompasses more costly extraction techniques Coal: extracted with techniques in use today. The worldwide coal estimates, however, are open to question and may, in fact, be considerably less than they are ordinarily presented to be, unless unconventional methods like underground in situ gasification are deployed. vii Methane Clathrates and Geopressured Gas: These are methane resources that are both problematic and expensive to recover, with the extraction technology for clathrates only in the experimental stage. Low-grade oil shale and sands: Very expensive to extract and horrendously destructive of the environment. So energy-intensive that there have been proposals to site nuclear power plants in the oil shale and tar sands areas to provide the energy for extraction! Uranium in fast breeder reactors (IFRs being the type under discussion here)
Integral fast reactors can clearly be seen as the silver bullet that supposedly doesn’t exist. The fact is that IFRs can provide all the energy that humanity requires, and can deliver it cleanly, safely, and economically. This technology is a true game changer. While the IFR was under development, a consortium of prominent American companies led by General Electric collaborated with the IFR team to design a commercial-scale reactor based upon the EBR-II research. This design, currently in the hands of GE, is called the PRISM (Power Reactor Innovative Small Module). A somewhat larger version (with a power rating of 380 MWe) is called the S-PRISM. As with all new nuclear reactor designs (and many other potentially hazardous industrial projects), probabilistic risk assessment studies were conducted for the S-PRISM. Among other parameters, the PRA study estimated the frequency with which one could expect a core meltdown. This occurrence was so statistically improbable as to defy imagination. Of course such a number must be divided by the number of reactors in service in order to convey the actual frequency of a hypothetical meltdown. Even so, if one posits that all the energy humanity requires were to be supplies solely by IFRs (an unlikely scenario but one that is entirely possible), the world could expect a core meltdown about once every 435,000 years xii. Even if the risk assessment understated the odds by a factor of a thousand, this would still be a reactor design that even the most paranoid could feel good about. The initial manufacturing and subsequent recycling of the fuel pins themselves is accomplished with a well-understood and widely used electrorefining process, similar to one that is employed every day in aluminum foundries. The simplicity of the system and the small amount of material that would have to be recycled in any power plant—even one containing several reactor modules—is such that factory-built components could be pieced together in a small hot cell at each power plant site. Every 18-24 months, one third of the fuel would be removed from the reactor and replaced by new fuel. The used fuel would be recycled. Approximately 10% of it would be comprised of fission products, which in the recycling process would be entombed in vitrified ceramic and probably stored on-site for the life of the plant. If the reactor core were configured to breed more fissile material than it consumes, then during the recycling process some quantity of plutonium would be removed and fabricated on-site into extra fuel assemblies that could then be used as the primary core load of a new reactor. The long-lived actinides that remain would be incorporated into the new fuel rods, replacing the quantity of fission products removed (and any plutonium that had been extracted for startup fuel for new reactors) with an equal amount of either depleted uranium or reprocessed uranium from LWR spent fuel. Science is the best method of getting an approximate grasp on warming
Jean Bricmont 1, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, “Defense of a Modest Scientific Realism”, September 23, http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/bielefeld_final.pdf
Given that instrumentalism is not defensible when it is formulated as a rigid doctrine, and since redefining truth leads us from bad to worse, what should one do? A hint of one sensible response is provided by the following comment of Einstein: Science without epistemology is insofar as it is thinkable at all primitive and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist, who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the thought-content of science in the sense of his system and to reject whatever does not fit into his system. The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his striving epistemological systematic that far. ... He therefore must appeal to the systematic epistemologist as an unscrupulous opportunist.'1'1 So let us try epistemological opportunism. We are, in some sense, "screened'' from reality (we have no immediate access to it, radical skepticism cannot be refuted, etc.). There are no absolutely secure foundations on which to base our knowledge. Nevertheless, we all assume implicitly that we can obtain some reasonably reliable knowledge of reality, at least in everyday life. Let us try to go farther, putting to work all the resources of our fallible and finite minds: observations, experiments, reasoning. And then let us see how far we can go. In fact, the most surprising thing, shown by the development of modern science, is how far we seem to be able to go. Unless one is a solipsism or a radical skeptic which nobody really is one has to be a realist about something: about objects in everyday life, or about the past, dinosaurs, stars, viruses, whatever. But there is no natural border where one could somehow radically change one's basic attitude and become thoroughly instrumentalist or pragmatist (say. about atoms or quarks or whatever). There are many differences between quarks and chairs, both in the nature of the evidence supporting their existence and in the way we give meaning to those words, but they are basically differences of degree. Instrumentalists are right to point out that the meaning of statements involving unobservable entities (like "quark'') is in part related to the implications of such statements for direct observations. But only in part: though it is difficult to say exactly how we give meaning to scientific expressions, it seems plausible that we do it by combining direct observations with mental pictures and mathematical formulations, and there is no good reason to restrict oneself to only one of these. Likewise, conventionalists like Poincare are right to observe that some scientific "choices", like the preference for inertial over noninertial reference frames, are made for pragmatic rather than objective reasons. In all these senses, we have to be epistemological "opportunists". But a problem worse than the disease arises when any of these ideas are taken as rigid doctrines replacing 'realism". A friend of ours once said: "I am a naive realist. But I admit that knowledge is difficult." This is the root of the problem. Knowing how things really are is the goal of science; this goal is difficult to reach, but not impossible (at least for some parts of reality and to some degrees of approximation). If we change the goal if, for example, we seek instead a consensus, or (less radically) aim only at empirical adequacy then of course things become much easier; but as Bert rand Russell observed in a similar context, this has all the advantages of theft over honest toil. Moreover, the underdetermination thesis, far from undermining scientific objectivity, actually makes the success of science all the more remarkable. Indeed, what is difficult is not to find a story that "fits the data'*, but to find even one non-crazy such story. How does one know that it is non-crazy7 A combination of factors: its predictive power, its explanatory value, its breadth and simplicity, etc. Nothing in the (Quinean) underdetermiiiation thesis tells us how to find inequivalent theories with some or all of these properties. In fact, there are vast domains in physics, chemistry and biology where there is only one"18 known non-crazy theory that accounts for Unknown facts and where many alternative theories have been tried and failed because their predictions contradicted experiments. In those domains, one can reasonably think that our present-day theories are at least approximately true, in some sense or other. An important (and difficult) problem for the philosophy of science is to clarify the meaning of “approximately true'" and its implications for the ontological status of unobservable theoretical entities. We do not claim to have a solution to this problem, but we would like to offer a few ideas that might prove useful. “science” isn’t some special definable category, its just basic induction carried out systematically
Jean Bricmont 1, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, “Defense of a Modest Scientific Realism”, September 23, http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/bielefeld_final.pdf
So, how does one obtain evidence concerning the truth or falsity of scientific assertions? By the same imperfect methods that we use to obtain evidence about empirical assertions generally. Modern science, in our view, is nothing more or less than the deepest (to date) refinement of the rational attitude toward investigating any question about the world, be it atomic spectra, the etiology of smallpox, or the Bielefeld bus routes. Historians, detectives and plumbers indeed, all human beings use the same basic methods of induction, deduction and assessment of evidence as do physicists or biochemists.18 Modern science tries to carry out these operations in a more careful and systematic way, by using controls and statistical tests, insisting on replication, and so forth. Moreover, scientific measurements are often much more precise than everyday observations; they allow us to discover hitherto unknown phenomena; and scientific theories often conflict with "common sense'*. But he con f I id is al the level of conclusions, nol (he basic approach. As Susan Haack lucidly observes: Our standards of what constitutes good, honest, thorough inquiry and what constitutes good, strong, supportive evidence are not internal to science. In judging where science has succeeded and where it has failed, in what areas and at what times it has done better and in what worse, we are appealing to the standards by which we judge the solidity of empirical beliefs, or the rigor and thoroughness of empirical inquiry, generally.1'1 Scientists' spontaneous epistemology the one that animates their work, regardless of what they may say when philosophizing is thus a rough-and-ready realism: the goal of science is to discover (some aspects of) how things really are. More The aim of science is to give a true (or approximately true) description of reality. I'll is goal is realizable, because: 1. Scientific theories are either true or false. Their truth (or falsity) is literal, not metaphorical; it does not depend in any way on us, or on how we test those theories, or on the structure of our minds, or on the society within which we live, and so on. 2. It is possible to have evidence for the truth (or falsity) of a theory. (Tt remains possible, however, that all the evidence supports some theory T, yet T is false.)20 Tin- most powerful objections to the viability of scientific realism consist in various theses showing that theories are underdetermined by data.21 In its most common formulation, the underdetermination thesis says that, for any finite (or even infinite) set of data, there are infinitely many mutually incompatible theories that are "compatible'' with those data. This thesis, if not properly understood22, can easily lead to radical conclusions. The biologist who believes that a disease is caused by a virus presumably does so on the basis of some "evidence" or some "data'*. Saying that a disease is caused by a virus presumably counts as a "theory'' (e.g. it involves, implicitly, many counlerfactual statements). But if there are really infinitely many distinct theories that are compatible with those "data", then we may legitimately wonder on what basis one can rationally choose between those theories. In order to clarify the situation, it is important to understand how the underdetermination thesis is established; then its meaning and its limitations become much clearer. Here are some examples of how underdeterminatiou works; one may claim that: The past did not exist: the universe was created five minutes ago along with all the documents and all our memories referring to the alleged past in their present state. Alternatively, it could have been created 100 or 1000 years ago. The stars do not exist: instead, there are spots on a distant sky that emit exactly the same signals as those we receive. All criminals ever put in jail were innocent. For each alleged criminal, explain away all testimony by a deliberate desire to harm the accused; declare that all evidence was fabricated by the police and that all confessions were obtained bv force.2'1 Of course, all these "theses'1 may have to be elaborated, but the basic idea is clear: given any set of facts, just make up a story, no matter how ad hoc, to "account" for the facts without running into contradictions.2,1 It is important to realize that this is all there is to the general (Quinean) underdetermination thesis. Moreover, this thesis, although it played an important role in the refutation of the most extreme versions of logical positivism, is not very different from the observation that radical skepticism or even solipsism cannot be refuted: all our knowledge about the world is based on some sort of inference from the observed to the unobserved, and no such inference can be justified by deductive logic alone. However, it is clear that, in practice, nobody ever takes seriously such "theories" as those mentioned above, any more than they take seriously solipsism or radical skepticism. Let us call these "crazy theories'*2'1 (of course, it is not easy to say exactly what it means for a theory to be non-crazy). Xote that these theories require no work: they can be formulated entirely a priori. On the other hand, the difficult problem, given some set of data, is to find even one non-crazy theory that accounts for them. Consider, for example, a police enquiry about some crime: it is easy enough to invent a story that "accounts for the facts'" in an ad hoc fashion (sometimes lawyers do just that); what is hard is to discover who really committed the crime and to obtain evidence demonstrating that beyond a reasonable doubt. Reflecting on this elementary example clarifies the meaning of the underdelermination thesis. Despite the existence of innumerable "crazy theories'* concerning any given crime, it sometimes happens in practice that there is a unique theory (i.e. a unique story about who committed the crime and how) that is plausible and compatible with the known facts; in that case, one will say that the criminal has been discovered (with a high degree of confidence, albeit not with certainty). It may also happen that no plausible theory is found, or that we are unable to decide which one among several suspects is really guilty: in these cases, the underdetermination is real.-'' One might next ask whether there exist more subtle forms of underdetermination than the one revealed by a Duhem Quine type of argument. In order to analyze this question, let us consider the example of classical electromagnetism. This is a theory that describes how particles possessing a quantifiable property called "electric charge" produce "electromagnetic fields" that "propagate in vacuum" in a certain precise fashion and then "guide" the motion of charged particles when they encounter them.2' Of course, no one ever "sees" directly an electromagnetic field or an electric charge. So, should one interpret this theory "realistically'', and if so, what should it be taken to mean? Classical electromagnetic theory is immensely well supported by precise experiments and forms the basis for a large part of modern technology. It is "confirmed'' every time one of us switches on his or her computer and finds that it works as designed.'8 Does this overwhelming empirical support imply that there are "really"' electric and magnetic fields propagating in vacuum? In support of the idea that thenare, one could argue that electromagnetic theory postulates the existence of those fields and that there is no known non-crazy theory that accounts equally well for the same data; therefore it is reasonable to believe that electric and magnetic fields really exist. But is it in fact true that there are no alternative non-crazy theories? Here is one possibility: Let us claim that there are no fields propagating "in vacuum", but that, rather, there are only "forces" acting directly between charged particles.29 Of course, in order to preserve the empirical adequacy of the theory, one lias to use exactly the same Maxwell Lorentz system of equations as before (or a mathematically equivalent system). But one may interpret the fields as a mere "calculational device" allowing us to compute more easily the net effect of the "real" forces acting between charged particles.30 Almost every physicist reading these lines will say that this is some kind of metaphysics or maybe even a play on words that this "alternative theory" is really just standard electromagnetic theory in disguise. Xow, although the precise meaning of "metaphysics" is hard to pin down 31, there is a vague sense in which, if we use exactly the same equations (or a mathematically equivalent set of equations) and make exactly the same predictions in the two theories, then they are really the same theory as far as "physics" is concerned, and the distinction between the two if any lies outside of its scope. The same kind of observation can be made about most physical theories: In classical mechanics, are there really forces acting on particles, or are the particles instead following trajectories defined by variational principles? In general relativity, is space-time really curved, or are there, rather, fields that cause particles to move as if space-time were curved?'2 Let us call this kind of underdetermination "genuine'*, as opposed to the "crazy" underdeterminations of the usual Duhem Quine thesis. By "genuine'*, we do not mean that these underdeterminations are necessarily worth losing sleep over, but simply that there is no rational way to choose (at least on empirical grounds alone) between the alternative theories if indeed they should be regarded as different theories. The aff is a bright green transformation – technological optimism creates effective environmentalism
ROBERTSON 2007 (Ross, Senior Editor at EnlightenNext, former NRDC member, “A Brighter Shade of Green,” What is Enlightenment, Oct-Dec, http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j38/bright-green.asp?page=1)
This brings me to Worldchanging, the book that arrived last spring bearing news of an environ-mental paradigm so shamelessly up to the minute, it almost blew out all my green circuits before I could even get it out of its stylish slipcover. Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century. It’s also the name of the group blog, found at Worldchanging.com, where the material in the book originally came from. Run by a future-savvy environmental journalist named Alex Steffen, Worldchanging is one of the central hubs in a fast-growing network of thinkers defining an ultramodern green agenda that closes the gap between nature and society—big time. After a good solid century of well-meaning efforts to restrain, reduce, and otherwise mitigate our presence here on planet Earth, they’re saying it’s time for environmentalism to do a one-eighty. They’re ditching the long-held tenets of classical greenitude and harnessing the engines of capitalism, high technology, and human ingenuity to jump-start the manufacture of a dramatically sustainable future. They call themselves “bright green,” and if you’re at all steeped in the old-school “dark green” worldview (their term), they’re guaranteed to make you squirm. The good news is, they just might free you to think completely differently as well.
Worldchanging takes its inspiration from a series of speeches given by sci-fi author, futurist, and cyberguru Bruce Sterling in the years leading up to the turn of the millennium—and from the so-called Viridian design movement he gave birth to. Known more in those days as one of the fathers of cyberpunk than as the prophet of a new twenty-first-century environmentalism, Ster-ling nevertheless began issuing a self-styled “prophecy” to the design world announcing the launch of a cutting-edge green design program that would embrace consumerism rather than reject it. Its mission: to take on climate change as the planet’s most burning aesthetic challenge. “Why is this an aesthetic issue?” he asked his first audience in 1998 at San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts near my old office at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Well, because it’s a severe breach of taste to bake and sweat half to death in your own trash, that’s why. To boil and roast the entire physical world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide.”
Explaining the logic of the bright green platform, Sterling writes:
It’s a question of tactics. Civil society does not respond at all well to moralistic scolding. There are small minority groups here and there who are perfectly aware that it is immoral to harm the lives of coming generations by massive consumption now: deep Greens, Amish, people practicing voluntary simplicity, Gandhian ashrams and so forth. These public-spirited voluntarists are not the problem. But they’re not the solution either, because most human beings won’t volunteer to live like they do. . . . However, contemporary civil society can be led anywhere that looks attractive, glamorous and seductive. The task at hand is therefore basically an act of social engineering. Society must become Green, and it must be a variety of Green that society will eagerly consume. What is required is not a natural Green, or a spiritual Green, or a primitivist Green, or a blood-and-soil romantic Green. These flavors of Green have been tried and have proven to have insufficient appeal. . . . The world needs a new, unnatural, seductive, mediated, glamorous Green. A Viridian Green, if you will.
Sterling elaborates in a speech given to the Industrial Designers Society of America in Chicago in 1999:
This can’t be one of these diffuse, anything-goes, eclectic, postmodern things. Forget about that, that’s over, that’s yesterday. It’s got to be a narrow, doctrinaire, high-velocity movement. Inventive, not eclectic. New, not cut-and-pasted from the debris of past trends. Forward-looking and high-tech, not William Morris medieval arts-and-craftsy. About abundance of clean power and clean goods and clean products, not conservative of dirty power and dirty goods and dirty products. Explosive, not thrifty. Expansive, not niggling. Mainstream, not underground. Creative of a new order, not subversive of an old order. Making a new cultural narrative, not calling the old narrative into question. . . .
Twentieth-century design is over now. Anything can look like anything now. You can put a pixel of any color anywhere you like on a screen, you can put a precise dot of ink anywhere on any paper, you can stuff any amount of functionality into chips. The limits aren’t to be found in the technology anymore. The limits are behind your own eyes, people. They are limits of habit, things you’ve accepted, things you’ve been told, realities you’re ignoring. Stop being afraid. Wake up. It’s yours if you want it. It’s yours if you’re bold enough.
It was a philosophy that completely reversed the fulcrum of environmental thinking, shifting its focus from the flaws inherent in the human soul to the failures inherent in the world we’ve designed—designed, Sterling emphasized. Things are the way they are today, he seemed to be saying, for no greater or lesser reason than that we made them that way—and there’s no good reason for them to stay the same. His suggestion that it’s time to hang up our hats as caretakers of the earth and embrace our role as its masters is profoundly unnerving to the dark green environmentalist in me. But at this point in history, is it any more than a question of semantics? With PCBs in the flesh of Antarctic penguins, there isn’t a square inch of the planet’s surface that is “unmanaged” anymore; there is no more untouched “natural” state. We hold the strings of global destiny in our fingertips, and the easy luxury of cynicism regarding our creative potential to re-solve things is starting to look catastrophically expensive. Our less-than-admirable track record gives us every reason to be cautious and every excuse to be pessimists. But is the risk of being optimistic anyway a risk that, in good conscience, we can really afford not to take?
Sterling’s belief in the fundamental promise of human creativity is reminiscent of earlier de-sign visionaries such as Buckminster Fuller. “I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of the universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless,” Fuller wrote in I Seem to Be a Verb in 1970, the same year we had our first Earth Day. “I seek,” he declared simply, “to reform the environment instead of trying to reform man.” Fuller’s ideas influenced many of the twentieth century’s brightest environmental lights, including Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog and the online community The WELL, an early precursor of the internet. Brand took Fuller’s approach and ran with it in the sixties and seventies, helping to spearhead a tech-friendly green counterculture that worked to pull environmentalism out of the wilderness and into the realms of sustainable technology and social justice. “We are as gods, and might as well get good at it,” he wrote in the original 1968 edition of the Whole Earth Catalog, and he’s managed to keep himself on the evolving edge of progressive thought ever since. Brand went on to found the Point Foundation, CoEvolution Quarterly (which became Whole Earth Review), the Hackers Conference, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. As he gets older, he recently told the New York Times, he continues to become “more rational and less romantic. . . . I keep seeing the harm done by religious romanticism, the terrible conservatism of romanticism, the ingrained pessimism of romanticism. It builds in a certain immunity to the scientific frame of mind.”
Bright Green
Many remember the Whole Earth Catalog with a fondness reserved for only the closest of personal guiding lights. “It was sort of like Google in paperback form, thirty-five years before Google came along,” recalls Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. “It was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.” For Alex Steffen, it’s the place “where a whole generation of young commune-kid geeks like myself learned to dream weird.” And at Worldchanging, those unorthodox green dreams have grown into a high-speed Whole Earth Catalog for the internet generation, every bit as inventive, idealistic, and brazenly ambitious as its predecessor: “We need, in the next twenty-five years or so, to do something never before done,” Steffen writes in his introduction to Worldchanging. “We need to consciously redesign the entire material basis of our civilization. The model we replace it with must be dramatically more ecologically sustainable, offer large increases in prosperity for everyone on the planet, and not only function in areas of chaos and corruption, but also help transform them. That alone is a task of heroic magnitude, but there’s an additional complication: we only get one shot. Change takes time, and time is what we don’t have. . . . Fail to act boldly enough and we may fail completely.”
Another world is possible,” goes the popular slogan of the World Social Forum, a yearly gathering of antiglobalization activists from around the world. No, counters Worldchanging in a conscious riff on that motto: “Another world is here.” Indeed, bright green environmentalism is less about the problems and limitations we need to overcome than the “tools, models, and ideas” that already exist for overcoming them. It forgoes the bleakness of protest and dissent for the energizing confidence of constructive solutions. As Sterling said in his first Viridian design speech, paying homage to William Gibson: “The future is already here, it’s just not well distributed yet.”
Of course, nobody knows exactly what a bright green future will look like; it’s only going to become visible in the process of building it. Worldchanging: A User’s Guide is six hundred pages long, and no sin-gle recipe in the whole cornucopia takes up more than a few of them. It’s an inspired wealth of information I can’t even begin to do justice to here, but it also presents a surprisingly integrated platform for immediate creative action, a sort of bright green rule set based on the best of today’s knowledge and innovation—and perpetually open to improvement. Plan The United States federal government should provide initial funding for commercial Integral Fast Reactors in the United States. Contention 3 is Solvency IFRs are a ready for commercial application
Kirsh 11 (Steven T. Kirsh, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Why Obama should meet Till,” 9/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/
I will tell you the story of an amazing clean power technology that can use nuclear waste for fuel and emit no long-lived nuclear waste; that can supply clean power at low cost for our planet, 24×7, for millions of years without running out of fuel. I will tell you why this technology is our best bet to reduce the impact of global warming on our planet. And finally, I will tell you why nobody is doing anything about it and why this needs to be corrected. If you act on this letter, you will save our country billions of dollars and allow us to become leaders in clean energy. If you delegate it downward, nothing will happen. I have no vested interest in this; I am writing because I care about the future of our planet First, since we met only briefly during the Obama campaign, let me provide a little background about myself. I am a high-tech entrepreneur and philanthropist based in Silicon Valley. I have received numerous awards for my philanthropy. For example, in 2003, I was honored to receive a National Caring Award presented by then Senator Clinton. The largest engineering auditorium at MIT is named in my honor. The first community college LEED platinum building in the nation is also named in my honor. I am also active in Democratic politics. In the 2000 election, for example, I was the single largest political donor in the United States, donating over $10 million dollars to help Al Gore get elected. Unfortunately, we lost that one by one vote (on the Supreme Court). I have no vested interest in nuclear power or anything else that is described below. I write only as someone who cares about our nation, the environment, and our planet. I am trying to do everything I can so my kids have a habitable world to live in. Nothing more. Dr. James Hansen first made me aware of fast reactors in his letter to Obama in 2009 As an environmentalist, I have been a fan of Jim Hansen’s work for nearly two decades. Many consider Dr. Hansen to be the world’s leading expert on global warming. For example, Hansen was the first person to make Congress aware of global warming in his Senate testimony in 1988. Hansen is also Al Gore’s science advisor. In 2009, Dr. Hansen wrote a letter to President Obama urging him to do just three things that are critical to stop global warming: 1) phase out coal plants, 2) impose a feebate on carbon emissions with a 100% rebate to consumers and 3) re-start fourth generation nuclear plants, which can use nuclear waste as fuel. Hansen’s letter to Obama is documented here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/02/obama-climate-change-james-hansen Upon reading Hansen’s recommendations, I was fascinated by the last recommendation. The fourth-generation power plants Hansen advocated sounded too good to be true. If what Hansen was saying was true, then why wasn’t our nation jumping on that technology? It made no sense to me. Lack of knowledge, misinformation, and the complexity of nuclear technology have hampered efforts to get a fast reactor built in the US I spent the next two years finding out the answer to that question. The short answer is three-fold: (1) most people know absolutely nothing about the amazing fourth generation nuclear power plant that we safely ran for 30 years in the US and (2) there is a lot of misleading information being spread by seemingly respectable people (some of whom are in the White House) who never worked on a fourth generation reactor that is totally false. It’s not that they are misleading people deliberately; it’s just that they were either listening to the wrong sources or they are jumping to erroneous conclusions. For example, the most popular misconception is that “reprocessing is a proliferation risk.” That statement fails to distinguish between available reprocessing techniques. It is absolutely true for the French method but it is absolutely not true for the technology described in this letter! The third reason is that the technology is complicated. Most people don’t know the difference between oxide fuel and metal fuel. Most people don’t know what a fast reactor is. Most people can’t tell you the difference between PUREX, UREX, and pyroprocessing. So people with an agenda can happily trot out arguments that support their beliefs and it all sounds perfectly credible. They simply leave out the critical details. We don’t need more RandD. We already have a technology in hand to help us solve global warming and safely get rid of our nuclear waste at low cost. But we aren’t doing anything with it. That’s a serious mistake. Today, our nation faces many serious challenges such as: How can we avert global warming? How can we dispose of our existing nuclear waste safely? How can we generate base-load carbon-free power at very low cost? How can we avoid creating any additional long-lived nuclear waste? How can we grow our economy and create jobs? How can we become the world leader in clean energy? How can we do all of the above while at the same time spending billions less than we are now? The good news is that we already have a proven technology that can address all of these problems. It is a technology that has enjoyed over 30 years of bi-partisan Congressional and Presidential support. It is an advanced nuclear technology that was invented in 1951 by the legendary Walter Zinn and then refined and perfected over a 30 year period, from 1964 to 1994 by Dr. Charles Till who led a team of 1,200 people at the Argonne National Laboratory. Till’s reactor was known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) because it both produced power and recycled its own waste back into the reactor. This is the technology that Hansen referenced in his letter to the President. The IFR is a fourth-generation nuclear design that has several unique and valuable characteristics: It can use our existing nuclear waste (from power plants and weapons) as fuel; we have over 1,000 years of power available by just using today’s nuclear waste. Instead of trying to bury that “waste” in Yucca Mountain, we could be using it for fuel in fast reactors. It generates no long-lived nuclear waste. It is safer than today’s light water reactor (LWR) nuclear power plants. Unlike the Fukushima LWR reactors (a second generation nuclear technology invented 50 years ago), the IFR does NOT require electricity to shut down safely. The IFR shuts down passively if a mishap occurs; no operator intervention or active safety systems are required. They ran the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl scenarios on a live reactor and the reactor shut itself down safely, no operator intervention required, just as predicted. In addition, unlike with LWRs, the IFR runs at low pressure which adds to the safety profile. It reduces the risk of nuclear proliferation because: (1) it eliminates the need for enrichment facilities (which can be used for making nuclear bomb material), (2) the nuclear material that is used in the IFR is not suitable for making bombs and (2) because the nuclear material in the reactor and in the reprocessing hot cell is too “hot” to be stolen or used in a weapon. Experts at General Electric (GE) believe that the IFR has the potential to produce power for less than the price of coal. Dr. Loewen can confirm that if you have any doubts. GE already has an IFR design on the table that they would like to build as soon as possible. Dr. Loewen can confirm that as well. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, in January 1994, issued a pre-application safety evaluation report in which they found no objections or impediments to licensing the IFR. You can see the NRC report in the 8 minute video. The design is proven. It produced electric power without mishap for 30 years before the project was abruptly cancelled. Dr Charles Till The IFR’s ability to solve the nuclear waste problem should not be underestimated. As respected nuclear experts have pointed out, a practical solution to the nuclear waste problem is required if we are to revive nuclear power in the United States. The Blue Ribbon Commission (BRC) on America’s Nuclear Future basically concluded this: “continue doing the same thing we are doing today and keep doing RandD.” That was predictable because it was a consensus report; everyone had to agree. So nothing happened. And because there was no consensus from the BRC , there is less money for nuclear because there is no solution to the waste problem. It’s a downward death spiral. Please pardon me for a second and allow me to rant about consensus reports. In my 30 year career as an entrepreneur, I’ve raised tens of millions of millions of dollars in investment capital from venture capitalists all over the world. I always ask them how they make investment decisions. They always tell me, “If we had to get all partners to agree on an investment, we’d never make any investments. If you can get two partners to champion your company, that is sufficient to drive an investment decision.” Therefore, if you want to get nothing done, ask for a consensus report. If you want to actually solve problems, you should listen to what the people most knowledgeable about the problem are saying. Dr Yoon I. Chang Had President Obama asked the Commissioners on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) who have the most knowledge of fast reactors the same question that he tasked the BRC with, he would have gotten a completely different answer. They would have told President Obama that fast reactors and pyroprocessing are the way to go and we better get started immediately with something that we already know works because there is still a ten year time if we were to start the reactor building process today. Their advice leads to a viable solution that we know will work and it will make the US a leader in clean nuclear power. Following the BRC’s consensus advice will lead to decades of inaction. Totally predictable. If we put a national focus on developing and cost reducing the IFR, we’d have a killer product and lead the world in being a clean energy leader It would be great if we had a long-term strategy and vision for how we become energy independent and solve the global warming problem and help our economy at the same time. The IFR can play a key role in that vision. If we put a national focus on developing and commercializing the IFR technology we invented, we can create jobs, help our trade balance, mitigate global warming, become energy independent, show the world a safe way to get rid of nuclear waste, and become the leaders in clean power technology. Nuclear power is the elephant in the room. Even though we haven’t built a new nuclear plant in 30 years, nuclear still supplies 70% of the clean energy in America today. That feat was largely accomplished in a single ten year period. Renewables have had 3 decades to “catch up” and they aren’t anywhere close. Nuclear’s continued dominance shows that nuclear power is indeed the elephant in the room when it comes to being able to install clean energy quickly and affordably. The bad news is that President Clinton decided that this technology, which would have produced unlimited amounts of base-load carbon-free power for a price as low as anything else available today, was not needed and cancelled the project in 1994. Cancelling the IFR was a big mistake. It’s still the world’s best fast nuclear technology according to an independent study by the Gen IV International Forum. Many top scientists all over the world believe that President Clinton’s decision was a huge mistake. The Senate had voted to continue to fund it. The project had been supported by six US Presidents; Republicans and Democrats. In fact, the project’s biggest proponent was Republican President Richard Nixon who said in 1971, “Our best hope today for meeting the Nation’s growing demand for economical clean energy lies with the fast breeder reactor.” Republican Senator Kempthorne said of the IFR cancellation: Unfortunately, this program was canceled just 2 short years before the proof of concept. I assure my colleagues someday our Nation will regret and reverse this shortsighted decision. But complete or not, the concept and the work done to prove it remain genius and a great contribution to the world. While I am not a big fan of Senator Kempthorne, I couldn’t agree more with what he said in this particular case. The IFR remains the single best advanced nuclear power design ever invented. That fact was made clear when in 2002, over 240 leading nuclear scientists from all over the world (in a Gen IV International Forum sponsored study) independently evaluated all fourth-generation nuclear designs and ranked the IFR the #1 best overall advanced nuclear design. The IFR was cancelled in 1994 without so much as a phone call to anyone who worked on the project. They didn’t call then. They haven’t called since. They simply pulled the plug and told people not to talk about the technology. The US government invested over $5 billion dollars in the IFR. Fast reactor RandD is largest single technology investment DOE has ever made. According to a top DOE nuclear official (Ray Hunter, the former NE2 at DOE), the “IFR became the preferred path because of waste management, safety, and economics.” The reactor produced power for 30 years without incident. Despite that track record, before it was cancelled, nobody from the White House ever met with anyone who worked on the project to discuss whether it should be terminated or not. It was simply unilaterally terminated by the White House for political reasons. Technical experts were never consulted. To this day, no one from the White House has met with Dr. Till to understand the benefits of the project. The technical merits simply did not matter. I urge you to recommend to President Obama that he meet personally with Dr. Charles Till so that the President can hear first hand why it is so critical for the health of our nation and our planet that this project, known as the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), be restarted. Dr. Till headed the project at Argonne National Laboratory until his retirement in 1997. He is, without a doubt, the world’s leading expert on IFR technology. Want to solve global warming? Easy. Just create a 24×7 clean power source that costs the same as coal. Prominent scientists believe that the IFR can achieve this. Dr. Hansen has pointed out many times that it is imperative to eliminate all coal plants worldwide since otherwise, we will never win the battle against global warming. But we know from experience that treaties and agreements do not work. Here’s a quote from an article (“The Most Important Investment that We Aren’t Making to Mitigate the Climate Crisis”) that I wrote in December 2009 published in the Huffington Post: If you want to get emissions reductions, you must make the alternatives for electric power generation cheaper than coal. It’s that simple. If you don’t do that, you lose. The billions we invest in RandD now in building a clean and cheaper alternative to coal power will pay off in spades later. We have a really great option now — the IFR is on the verge of commercial readiness — and potential competitors such as the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) are in the wings. But the US government isn’t investing in developing any of these breakthrough new base-load power generation technologies. Not a single one. I found it really amazing that global leaders were promising billions, even hundreds of billions in Copenhagen for “fighting climate change” when they weren’t investing one cent in the nuclear technologies that can stop coal and replace it with something cheaper. Note: 6 days ago, on September 22, 2011, DOE agreed to give $7.5M to MIT to do RandD on a molten-salt reactor. That’s good, but we should be building the technology we already have proven in 30 years of operational experience before we invest in unproven new technologies. Dr. Loewen has personally looked at the costs for the building the IFR in detail and believes the IFR can generate power at a cost comparable to a coal plant. So it’s arguably our best shot at displacing coal plants. This is precisely why Dr. Hansen believes that the IFR should be a top priority if we want to save our planet. It isn’t just nuclear experts that support the IFR US Congressman John Garamendi (D-CA) is also a major IFR supporter. When he was Lt. Governor of California, Congressman Garamendi convened a panel of over a dozen our nation’s top scientists to discuss the IFR technology. As a result of that meeting, Garamendi became convinced that the IFR is critically important and he is currently trying very hard to get a bill passed in the House to restart it. Unfortunately, virtually everyone in Congress seems to have forgotten about this project even though in the 1970’s it was the President’s top energy priority. Nothing has changed since then. No other clean energy technology has been invented that is superior to the IFR for generating low-cost carbon-free base-load electric power. Bill Gates also found exactly the same thing when he looked at how to solve the global warming problem. As he explained in a recent TED talk, renewables will never solve the climate crisis. The only viable technology is fourth-generation nuclear power and the best advanced nuclear technology is the IFR. That is why this is Gate’s only clean energy investment. Gates’ TerraPower Travelling Wave Reactor (TWR) is a variant of the IFR design. When Gates approached DOE to try to build his reactor in the US, he was told to build it outside of the US. Nobel prize winner Hans Bethe (now deceased) was an enthusiastic supporter. Freeman Dyson called Bethe the “supreme problem solver of the 20th century. Chuck Till told me the following story of Bethe’s support for the IFR: A tale from the past: A year or two before the events I’ll describe, Hans Bethe had been contacted by the Argonne Lab Director for his recommendation on who to seek to replace the existing head of Argonne’s reactor program. Bethe told him the best choice was already there in the Lab, so it was in this way that I was put in charge. I had had quite a few sessions with him in the years leading up to it, as we were able to do a lot of calculations on the effects of reactor types on resources that he didn’t have the capability at his disposal to do himself. So when I wanted to initiate the IFR thrust, the first outside person I went to was Bethe at Cornell. After a full day of briefing from all the specialists I had taken with me, he suggested a brief private meeting with me. He was direct. He said “All the pieces fit. I am prepared to write a letter stating this. Who do you want me to address it to? I think the President’s Science Advisor, don’t you?” I said the obvious – that his opinion would be given great weight, and would give instant respectability. He went on, “I know him quite well. Who else?” I said I was sure that Senator McClure (who was chairman of Senate Energy and Resources at the time) would be relieved to hear from him. That the Senator would be inclined to support us, as we were fairly prominent in the economy of the state of Idaho, and for that reason I had easy access to him. But to know that Hans Bethe, a man renowned for his common sense in nuclear and all energy matters, supported such an effort would give him the Senator solid and quotable reason for his own support, not dismissible as parochial politics, that the Senator would want if he was to lead the congressional efforts. “Yes,” he said in that way he had, “I agree.” I’ve always thought that the President’s Science Advisor’s intervention with DOE, to give us a start, was not the result of our meeting him, but rather it was because of the gravitas Hans Bethe provided with a one page letter. How do we lead the world in clean energy if we put our most powerful clean energy technology on the shelf?!? President Obama has stated that he wants the US to be a leader in clean energy. I do not see how we achieve that if we allow our most advanced clean energy technology to sit on the shelf collecting dust and we tell one of America’s most respected businessmen that he should build his clean energy technology in another country. We have an opportunity here to export energy technology to China instead of importing it. But due to Clinton’s decision, we are allowing the Russians to sell similar fast reactor technology to the Chinese. It should have been us. Re-starting the IFR will allow us to cancel a $10 billion stupid expenditure. The IFR only costs $3B to build. We’d get more, pay less. On pure economics alone, it’s a no brainer. Finally, even if you find none of the arguments above to be compelling, there is one more reason to restart the IFR project: it will save billions of dollars. Today, we are contracting with the French to build a MOX reprocessing plant in Savannah River. The cost of that project is $10 billion dollars. We are doing it to meet our treaty obligations with the Russians. Former top DOE nuclear managers agree this is a huge waste of money because we can build an IFR which can reprocess 10 times at much weapons waste per year for a fraction of that cost. The Russians are laughing at our stupidity. They are going to be disposing of their weapons waste in fast reactors, just like we should be. The Russians are also exporting their fast reactors to the Chinese. Had the US not cancelled our fast reactor program, we would be the world leader in this technology because our technology remains better than any other fourth generation technology in the world. If you delegate this to someone else, nothing will happen. Here’s why. Delegating this letter downward from the White House to someone in DOE to evaluate will result in inaction and no follow up. I know this from past attempts that have been made. It just gets lost and there is no follow up. Every time. The guys at DOE want to do it, but they know that they will get completely stopped by OMB and OSTP. Both Carol Browner and Steven Chu asked former DOE nuclear management what to do about nuclear waste. They were told that using fast reactors and reprocessing was the way to go. But nothing happened. So Chu has given up trying. According to knowledgeable sources, the White House has told DOE in no uncertain terms, “do not build anything nuclear in the US.” It’s not clear who is making these decisions, but many people believe it is being driven by Steven Fetter in OSTP. Dr. Till knows all of this. He knows that unless he personally meets with the President to tell the story of this amazing technology, nothing will happen. I’ve discussed the IFR with Steve Fetter and he has his facts wrong. Fetter is basically a Frank von Hippel disciple: they have written at least 14 papers together! It was von Hippel who was largely responsible for killing the IFR under Clinton. So von Hippel’s misguided thought process is driving White House policy today. That’s a big mistake. Professor von Hippel twists the facts to support his point of view and fails to bring up compelling counter arguments that he knows are true but would not support his position. He’s not being intellectually honest. I’ve experienced this myself, firsthand. For example, von Hippel often writes that fast reactors are unreliable. When I pointed out to him that there are several examples of reliable fast reactors, including the EBR-II which ran for decades without incident, he said, that these were the “exceptions that prove the rule.” I was floored by that. That’s crazy. It only proves that it is complicated to build a fast reactor, but that it can easily be done very reliably if you know what you are doing. There is nothing inherent to the technology that makes it “unreliable.” You just have to figure out the secrets. When von Hippel heard that Congressman Garamendi was supporting the IFR, he demanded a meeting with Garamendi to “set him straight.” But what happened was just the opposite: Garamendi pointed out to von Hippel that von Hippel’s “facts” were wrong. Von Hippel left that meeting with Garamendi with his tail between his legs muttering something about that being the first time he’s ever spoken with anyone in Congress who knew anything about fast nuclear reactors. In short, if you watch a debate between von Hippel and Garamendi (who is not a scientist), Garamendi easily wins on the facts. If you put von Hippel up against someone who knows the technology like Till, Till would crush von Hippel on both the facts and the arguments. But the Clinton White House never invited Till to debate the arguments with von Hippel. They simply trusted what von Hippel told them. Big mistake. There are lots of problems with von Hippel’s arguments. For example, von Hippel ignores reality believing that if the USA doesn’t do something then it will not happen. That’s incredibly naieve and he’s been proven wrong. The USA invented a safe way to reprocess nuclear waste that isn’t a proliferation risk called pyroprocessing. The nuclear material is not suitable for making a bomb at any time in the process. But we never commercialized it because von Hippel convinced Clinton to cancel it. The French commercialized their reprocessing process (PUREX) which separates out pure plutonium and makes it trivial to make bomb material. So because countries need to reprocess, they pick the unsafe technology because they have no alternative. Similarly, because von Hippel had our fast reactor program cancelled, the Russians are the leaders in fast reactor technology. They’ve been using fast reactor technology for over 30 years to generate power commercially. But we know the Russians have a terrible nuclear safety record (e.g., Chernobyl). The fact is that the Chinese are buying fast reactors from the Russians because there is no US alternative. The problem with von Hippel’s arguments are that the genie is out of the bottle. We can either lead the world in showing how we can do this safely, or the world will choose the less safe alternatives. Today, von Hippel’s decisions have made the world less safe. I could go on and on about how bad von Hippel’s advice is, but this letter is already way too long. MIT was wrong in their report about “The Future of the Nuclear Fuel Cycle” The only other seemingly credible argument against building fast reactors now comes from MIT. The report’s recommendation that we have plenty of time to do RandD appears largely to be driven by one person, co-chair Ernie Moniz. Four world-famous experts on nuclear power and/or climate change and one Congressman challenged Moniz to a debate on the MIT campus on his report. Moniz declined. The report has several major problems. Here are a few of them. The MIT report is inconsistent. On the one hand it says, “To enable an expansion of nuclear power, it must overcome critical challenges in cost, waste disposal, and proliferation concerns while maintaining its currently excellent safety and reliability record.” We agree with that! But then it inexplicably says, “… there are many more viable fuel cycle options and that the optimum choice among them faces great uncertainty…. Greater clarity should emerge over the next few decades… A key message from our work is that we can and should preserve our options for fuel cycle choices by …continuing doing what we are doing today … and researching technology alternatives appropriate to a range of nuclear energy futures.” So even though we have a solution now that can be deployed so we can enable an expansion of nuclear power as soon as possible, MIT advises that we should spend a few more decades because we might find something better than the IFR. This is just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard coming from MIT. If you ask any scientist who knows anything about global warming, they will tell you we are decades late in deploying carbon-free power. Had we aggressively ramped fast nuclear closed-cycle reactors decades ago and promoted them worldwide, we wouldn’t be anywhere close to the disastrous situation we are in today. So we are decades too late in ramping up nuclear power, and Moniz wants us to spend decades doing more RandD to get a solution that might be lower cost than the IFR. That’s insane. The report looks at the market price of uranium, but the market price completely ignores the environmental impacts of uranium mining. Shouldn’t that be taken into account? It’s like the cost of gas is cheap because the market price doesn’t include the hidden costs: the impact on the environment and on our health. Do you really think that people are going to embrace expansion of uranium mining in the US? The MIT report is silent on that. So then we are back to being dependent on other countries for uranium. Wasn’t the whole point to be energy independent? The IFR provides that now. We wouldn’t have to do any uranium mining ever again. After a thousand years, when we’ve used all our existing nuclear waste as fuel, we can extract the additional fuel we need from seawater, making our seas less radioactive. We can do that for millions of years. The MIT report ignores what other countries are doing. Obama wants the US to be a leader in clean energy technology. You do that by building the most advanced nuclear designs and refining them. That’s the way you learn and improve. MIT would have us stuck on old LWR technology for a few decades. Does anyone seriously think that is the way to be the world leader? There is virtually no room for improvement in LWR technology. IFR technology is nearly 100 times more efficient, and it emits no long term nuclear waste. If you are a buyer of nuclear power in China, which nuclear reactor are you going to pick? The one that is 100 times more efficient and generates no waste? Or the one that is 100 times less efficient and generates waste that you better store for a million years? Wow. Now that’s a real tough question, isn’t it. Gotta ponder that one. I’m sure Apple Computer isn’t taking advice from Moniz. If they were, they’d still be building the Apple I. Ernie should get a clue. The reason Apple is a market leader is because they bring the latest technology to market before anyone else, not because they keep producing old stuff and spend decades doing RandD to see if they can come up with something better. Other countries are not hampered by MIT’s report. France and Japan recently entered into an agreement with the US DOE whereby we’re giving them the IFR technology for them to exploit. Even though we are stupid, they aren’t stupid. The Chinese are ordering inferior oxide fueled fast reactors from Russia. If the US were building metal-fueled fast reactors with pyroprocessing, it’s a good bet the Chinese would be buying from us instead of the Russians. But if we take Moniz’s advice to not build the world’s best advanced nuclear technology we already have, then there is no chance of that happening. By the time we get to market with a fast reactor, it will be all over. We’ll arrive to the market decades late. Another great American invention that we blew it on. There will always be new technologies that people will propose. But the IFR is a bird in the hand and we really need a solution now we can depend on. If something comes along later that is better, that’s great. But if it doesn’t, we will have a viable technology. We can’t afford to get this wrong. We have already run out of time. Any new nuclear designs are decades away from deployment. On September 22, 2011, DOE agreed to give MIT $7.5 millions of dollars on starting RandD on a fourth generation molten salt reactor design that have never been proven. While it might work, the very smart scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory spent well over a decade on this and were never able to make it work. So DOE is spending millions on an unproven design while spending nothing on the “sure thing” fourth generation reactor that we already know how to build and that ran flawlessly for 30 years. We are all scratching our heads on that one. It makes no sense. But the reason for this is clear: the mandate from the White House that nothing is to built means that DOE can only initiate research, and then cancel the project right before anything would be built. This is an excellent plan for demoralizing scientists and allowing other countries to lead the world in clean energy. Is that really what we want?? If so, then there are much less expensive ways to accomplish that. At a minimum we should be investing in commercializing our “bird in the hand.” That way, if the new molten salt reactor experiments don’t work out, we’ll still have a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem. If we keep cancelling successful projects right before they are done, hoping for the next big thing, we will forever be in RandD mode and get nothing done. That’s where we are today with fourth generation nuclear. I know this is an unusual request, but I also know that if the President is allowed to evaluate the facts first hand, I am absolutely convinced that he will come to the same conclusion as we all have. I urge you to view an 8 minute video narrated by former CBS Morning News anchor Bill Kurtis that explains all of this in a way that anyone can understand. This video can be found at: The video will amaze you. If you would like an independent assessment of what I wrote above from a neutral , trustworthy, and knowledgeable expert, Bill Magwood would be an excellent choice. Magwood was head of nuclear at DOE under Clinton and Bush, and was the longest serving head of nuclear at DOE in US history. He served under both Clinton and Bush administrations. Magwood is familiar with the IFR, but the IFR was cancelled before he was appointed to head civilian nuclear at DOE. So Magwood has no vested interest in the IFR at all. More recently, Magwood was appointed by President Obama to serve on the NRC and is currently serving in that role. Of the current five NRC Commissioners, Magwood is by far, the person most knowledgeable (PMK) about fast reactors. Thank you for your help in bringing this important matter to the President’s attention. Summary Nuclear power is needed. Renewables alone won’t do it. In order to revive nuclear in the US, you must have a viable solution to the nuclear waste problem. The French reprocess their nuclear waste, but their process is expensive, environmentally unfriendly, and has proliferation problems. The USA developed an inexpensive, environmentally friendly, and proliferation resistant method to reprocess our waste (the IFR), but we cancelled it. That decision was a mistake. We should restart the IFR in the US. It will cost $3B to build, but we can cancel the Areva MOX plant and save $10B to pay for it. So we’ll save money, save the planet from an environmental catastrophe, create jobs, get rid of our nuclear waste, and become the world leader in clean energy technology. President Obama should meet personally with Dr. Charles Till, the world’s leading expert on fast reactor technology. Dr. Till will not waste his time meeting with anyone other than the President because he knows that without personal support of the President, nothing will happen. He’s right. Supporters of this technology include Nobel prize winner Hans Bethe (now deceased), Steven Chu, Dr. James Hansen, Dr. Charles Till, Dr. Eric Loewen, Congressman John Garamendi, Bill Gates, and even the President of MIT. Even the board of directors of the historically anti-nuclear Sierra Club has agreed that they will not oppose building an IFR! Opposition is from OSTP and OMB. We don’t know who or why. It’s a mystery to all my sources. Frank von Hippel thinks you cannot make fast reactors cheaply or reliably and maintains that stance even when the facts show that not to be the case. Ernie Moniz at MIT thinks we shouldn’t build anything now, but do more RandD for the next several decades hoping we can find something better. Bill Magwood, an Obama appointee to the NRC, would be a reasonable choice to provide an objective assessment of the IFR. He has no vested interested in the IFR, but having been the longest serving head of DOE civilian nuclear in history, is familiar with the pros and cons of the technology. Should OSTP and OMB be making these key decisions behind closed doors? Is this really reflective of what the President wants? He’s stated publicly he wants the US to be a world leader in clean energy. Is putting our best technology on the shelf, but licensing the French and Japanese to build it (Joint Statement on Trilateral Cooperation in the area of Sodium-cooled Fast Reactors signed on October 4, 2010 by DOE), the best way for the US to achieve the leadership that Obama said he wanted? I am happy to provide you with additional information. Demonstrating commercial IFRs leads to global adoption
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, “Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III),” 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
There are many compelling reasons to pursue the rapid demonstration of a full-scale IFR, as a lead-in to a subsequent global deployment of this technology within a relatively short time frame. Certainly the urgency of climate change can be a potent tool in winning over environmentalists to this idea. Yet political expediency—due to widespread skepticism of anthropogenic causes for climate change—suggests that the arguments for rolling out IFRs can be effectively tailored to their audience. Energy security—especially with favorable economics—is a primary interest of every nation. The impressive safety features of new nuclear power plant designs should encourage a rapid uptick in construction without concern for the spent fuel they will produce, for all of it will quickly be used up once IFRs begin to be deployed. It is certainly manageable until that time. Burying spent fuel in non-retrievable geologic depositories should be avoided, since it represents a valuable clean energy resource that can last for centuries even if used on a grand scale. Many countries are now beginning to pursue fast reactor technology without the cooperation of the United States, laboriously (and expensively) re-learning the lessons of what does and doesn’t work. If this continues, we will see a variety of different fast reactor designs, some of which will be less safe than others. Why are we forcing other nations to reinvent the wheel? Since the USA invested years of effort and billions of dollars to develop what is arguably the world’s safest and most efficient fast reactor system in the IFR, and since several nations have asked us to share this technology with them (Russia, China, South Korea, Japan, India), there is a golden opportunity here to develop a common goal—a standardized design, and a framework for international control of fast reactor technology and the fissile material that fuels them. This opportunity should be a top priority in the coming decade, if we are serious about replacing fossil fuels worldwide with sufficient pace to effectively mitigate climate change and other environmental and geopolitical crises of the 21st century. Initial plants jumpstart future investment
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Climate Bill Ignores Our Biggest Clean Energy Source,” 6/27/9) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-kirsch/climate-bill-ignores-our_b_221796.html
In our own country, GE-Hitachi Nuclear Energy and a consortium of America's major corporations (including Babcock and Wilcox, Bechtel, Westinghouse, and Raytheon) came to the same conclusion. They have a reactor design, the PRISM, that is ready to be built based on the original Argonne IFR design. There is a lot of misinformation about nuclear There is a tremendous amount of misinformation about nuclear out there. There are books and papers galore that appear to be credible citing all the reasons nuclear is a bad idea. I could probably spend the rest of my life investigating them all. Those reports that have been brought to my attention I've looked into and, after a fair amount of effort, found them not to be persuasive. Did you know that there is more than 100 times more radiation from a typical coal plant than a nuclear plant, yet the nuclear plant is perceived by the public to be a radiation hazard. Another example of misinformation is in Discover magazine June 2009 entitled "New Tech Could Make Nuclear the Best Weapon Against Climate Change" talking about the importance of the IFR to both greenhouse gas emissions and to our future energy needs. But the article implies the scientists want to do more studies and that an improved design will take 10 to 20 years. I keep in close touch with a number of the top scientists who worked on the IFR, including IFR inventor Charles Till, and they are saying the opposite...that we are 20 years late on building one and the sooner we build one, the better. We should build a $3B demonstration plant now to get started We should be exploring all viable options to solve our energy problems and global warming. General Electric working with Argonne and/or Idaho National Laboratory (INL) could build a small prototype fourth generation nuclear reactor (311 megawatts of electricity (MWe)) for about $2 billion and $1 billion for a pilot commercial-scale pyroprocessing plant to recycle the spent fuel. That $3 billion one-time investment would settle once and for all whether this is a good idea or not. Following this demonstration, the deployment of dozens of commercial fast reactors and pyroprocessing facilities needed to handle the light water reactor (LWR) spent fuel could be economically competitive as electricity generators and their construction could be carried out by the industry using standardized, modular, factory built designs to reduce costs without any further government investment. Compare that one-time RandD investment to the estimated $96 billion cost of storing the waste at Yucca Mountain. Isn't it smarter to spend a little money to prove we can recycle our waste and generate power than to spend $100 billion to bury it? Compare this one-time $3 billion investment to the $10 billion that will be spent on the AREVA Mixed Oxide (MOX) plant, which is being built to dispose of only 33 tons of plutonium. The MOX plant is a big waste of money. The IFR could denature the weapons Pu much faster and more cheaply. It’ll be cheap
Archambeau et al 11 (Charles Archambeau, Geophysicist, PhD from Caltech, taught at the University of Colorado and CalTech, Randolph Ware, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Tom Blees, president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives, Barry Brook, Climate Professor at University of Adelaide, Yoon Chang, B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Seoul National University, Korea; an M.E. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas AandM University; and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Science from The University of Michigan. He also holds an M.B.A. from The University of Chicago, Chair of IAEA’s Technical Working Group on Nuclear Fuel Cycle Options and Spent Fuel Management, awarded the U.S. Department of Energy’s prestigious E.O. Lawrence Award, Jerry Peterson, University of Colorado, Robert Serafin, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Joseph Shuster, Evgeny Velikhov, Russian Academy of Sciences, Tom Wigley, National Center for Atmospheric Research, “The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR): An Optimized Source for Global Energy Needs,” 2011)
The new features of the IFR systems with pyroprocessing are such that the cost of electrical energy production is estimated to be quite low, in the range below $.01 per kilowatt-hour for an IFR. (For comparison, natural gas fuel cost was at $.05 per kilowatthour, and coal was at about $.03 per kilowatt-hour, while LWR nuclear power was at $.02 per kilowatt-hour.) The G.E. estimated building cost of the S-Prism reactor (Fletcher, 2006) is $1300/kw, where this cost assumes some cost savings due to mass production and modular construction. For a commercial level gigawatt reactor (using 3 modular S-Prism reactors with 380 MW of power from each) the cost would total $1.3 billion dollars per one gigawatt plant. These nuclear plants are essentially carbon dioxide emissions free, and in general produce no atmospheric pollution. Further, all the Uranium fuel can be provided from processing the stock piles of spent and depleted Uranium fuel. Therefore, no Uranium mining and associated pollution will occur. Likewise, IFR waste material is minimal and short-lived so that no pollution will occur from this source. Consequently, significant reduction in greenhouse gases, and a variety of other dangerous pollutants, can be immediately achieved if these IFR plants are used to replace the furnaces in coal burning power plants which exist in profusion world-wide. Here the infrastructure at existing coal fueled plants, such as electric power lines, water sources and conduits, steam turbines, etc., can all be simply converted and used in the nuclear powered plant. Hence, costs of building complete power plants and their electrical connections to the grid can be minimized while the impact on global warming and pollution related diseases can be maximized by replacing the worst of the polluters. Further, it is urgent that we move quickly to strongly and immediately control CO2 gas emissions to drastically slow global warming. Clearly, the costs are not prohibitive since construction of one large stand-alone pyroprocessing plant, at about 6 billion dollars, and only about 10 of the large IFR powered plants, costing under 20 billion dollars, will go a long way toward strongly dampening the massive production of CO2 emissions from existing electricity power plants in the U.S. IFRs are technologically ready – we just have to decide to build them
Brook 11 (Barry Brook, Professor of Climate Change University of Adelaide, “Nuclear power and climate change – what now?” 5/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/05/28/np-cc-what-now/
But detractors will nevertheless complain that reactors like the ESBWR still produce long-lived radioactive waste products that will have to be safely watched over for what is, for all intents and purposes, forever (from a human standpoint). Another objection frequently raised is the risk of nuclear proliferation, the fear that nuclear material will be misdirected from power plants and made into nuclear weapons. Fuel supply is also an issue when the prospect of a burgeoning nuclear renaissance is considered, with demand for uranium expected to skyrocket. And over all this looms the capital cost of building nuclear power plants, which many consider a deal-breaker even if all the other issues could be resolved. Back in the early Eighties a group of talented nuclear physicists and engineers realized that if there was to be any reasonable expectation of widespread public acceptance of nuclear power, all these problems would have to be solved. So they set out to solve them. Under the leadership of Dr. Charles Till at Argonne National Laboratory’s western branch in the state of Idaho, a virtual army of nuclear professionals designed an energy system that many expect will soon power the planet, if only we can muster the political will to deploy it. Their test reactor operated virtually flawlessly for thirty years as they identified and solved one potential obstacle after another, proceeding methodically until they were ready to demonstrate the commercial-scale viability of their revolutionary fuel recycling system that would complete what had been a spectacularly successful project. What they had accomplished during those years was, without exaggeration, probably the most important energy system ever invented, one that promises virtually unlimited safe, clean energy for the entire planet. Unfortunately, an almost unbelievable shortsightedness on the part of politicians in Washington D.C. pulled the plug on the project just as it reached its final stage in 1994, and the promise of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) languished virtually unnoticed for the next fifteen years. Figure 1: A simplified version of an IFR reactor. Illustration courtesy of Andrew Arthur The Integral Fast Reactor But the IFR is such a grand invention that it couldn’t stay buried any longer, and people around the world are now clamoring for it to be deployed. The looming threat of climate change has prompted many to take a fresh look at nuclear power. Some have considered the problem of so-called “nuclear waste” (not waste at all, as we shall soon see) an acceptable price to pay in order to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. In the wake of the Japan accident, safety will also be prominent in the debate. The IFR, though, is so impressive in its qualifications that even previously hard-core anti-nuclear activists have touted it as the ultimate answer. And the fact that over 300 reactor-years of experience have been accumulated with fast reactors around the world means that such technology is no pipe dream, but a mature technology ripe for commercial deployment. The term Integral Fast Reactor denotes two distinct parts: A sodium-cooled fast neutron fission reactor and a recycling facility to process the spent fuel. A single recycling facility would be co-located with a cluster of reactors. Figure 1 shows a simplified version of such a reactor. It consists of a stainless steel tub of sodium, a metal that liquifies at about the boiling point of water. Sodium is used both as a completely non-corrosive coolant and, in a separate non-radioactive loop, as the heat transfer agent to transport the heat to a steam generator in a separate structure (thus avoiding any possible sodium-water interaction in the reactor structure). The system is unpressurized, and the pumps are electromagnetic pumps with no moving parts. In the event of a loss of flow, natural convection and the large amount of sodium will be sufficient to dissipate the heat from the fission products in the core, unlike the situation in the Japanese reactors at Fukushima, which required constant cooling even though the reactors had been shut off. The commercial-scale iteration of the IFR’s reactor component is called the PRISM (or its slightly larger successor, the S-PRISM, though for the sake of brevity I’ll hereafter call it simply the PRISM, which stands for Power Reactor Innovative Small Module). It was designed by a consortium of American companies in conjunction with Argonne Lab, and is now being further refined by GE/Hitachi Nuclear. From a safety standpoint it is unparalleled. If the risk assessment studies for the ESBWR mentioned above sound impressive, those of the IFR are even better. In my book Prescription for the Planet, I did a thought experiment based on the risk assessment studies for the PRISM that have already gotten a preliminary nod from the NRC. The likelihood of a core meltdown was so improbable that I figured out how often we could expect one if thousands of PRISMs were providing all the energy (not just electricity) that humanity will require a few decades hence (according to most estimates). Remember, the occurrence of one meltdown would require dividing the total number of reactors into the probability for a single reactor. Even so, the probable core meltdown frequency came to once every 435,000 years! Even if that risk assessment was exaggerated by ten thousand times, it would still mean we could expect a meltdown about once every half-century for all the energy humanity needs. Reactors and Natural Disasters The crisis at Fukushima’s power plant has stoked fears that existing nuclear sites may be incapable of withstanding quakes in excess of their design specifications. Whereas many lightwater reactors are designed to withstand G forces of about 0.3, the PRISM is rated at 1.0. This G rating is different than a Richter scale rating because the Richter scale represents the total energy released in an earthquake, which is dependent on many factors (duration, depth, etc.). When designing a structure or piece of equipment to withstand earthquakes, the degree of ground acceleration is what matters. If one were to stand directly on a geological fault line during the most severe earthquake imaginable, the G forces caused by ground acceleration would almost certainly not exceed 1.0. (The maximum ground motion at the Fukushima complex during the earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale was 0.56 G) So the PRISM reactor, designed for that level of motion, could safely be built in any seismically active area. Of course it goes without saying that no power plant should be built at a low elevation in a zone that is vulnerable to tsunamis, or for that matter on a flood plain. But with the PRISM, seismic shocks are not an issue. As for proliferation risk, it should be pointed out that the risk of proliferation from any sort of power reactor has been substantially mischaracterized and generally overblown. The reason is that the isotopic composition of the uranium and plutonium in power reactors is lousy for making weapons. Any country that wishes to pursue a weapons program covertly is far better served by using a small research reactor operated in a specific manner to produce high-grade weapons material, and even then it requires a quite complex reprocessing system to separate it. That being said, the IFR system uses a unique metal fuel that can not only be easily and cheaply recycled on-site and then fabricated into new fuel elements, but at no stage of the fuel cycle is any sort of weapons-grade material isolated. All the isotopes of uranium and plutonium are not only left mixed with their various cousins, but there is always at least a bit of highly radioactive fission product elements, making the fuel impossible to handle except by remote systems. Figure 2: The fission products will only be radioactive beyond the level of natural ore for a few hundred years. The buildup of such fission products in the fuel, though, is what eventually necessitates pulling fuel elements out of the reactor for recycling. In the pyroprocessing system—a type of electrorefining common in the metallurgical industry but unique to the IFR among reactor systems—the majority of the fission products are isolated. The rest of the fuel is reincorporated into new fuel elements. The fission products, representing only a small percentage of the fuel, are entombed in borosilicate glass that can’t leach any of them into the environment for thousands of years. Yet the fission products will only be radioactive beyond the level of natural ore for a few hundred years (see Figure 2). Thus the so-called “million year waste problem” is neatly solved. As for the question of uranium supply, that issue is moot once we begin to build IFRs. First we’ll use up all the spent fuel that’s been generated over the years by LWRs, plus all the weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from decommissioned nuclear weapons. It’s all perfect for fuel in IFRs. But then when that’s all gone we can fuel them with depleted uranium. There is already so much of it out of the ground from years of nuclear power use that even if we were to supply all the energy humanity is likely to need from just IFRs alone, we’ve got enough fuel already at hand for nearly a thousand years. As efficient as LWRs are in squeezing a huge amount of energy out of a small amount of fuel, fast reactors like the PRISM are about 150 times more efficient. In fact, all the energy a profligate American would be likely to use in a lifetime could be extracted from a piece of depleted uranium the size of half a ping-pong ball. Finally we come to the clincher: the cost. For some reason it supposedly is going to cost anywhere from two to five times as much to build a nuclear power plant in the USA than exactly the same design being built in the Far East. This comparison applies not just to countries with low labor costs but to Japan too, where labor costs are high and nearly all the materials are imported. It’s an American societal and political problem, not an inherent flaw of nuclear power. Utility companies fear that a group of protesters with signs and lawyers might shut down construction midway through a multi-billion-dollar project, or prevent a built reactor from operating. So they prudently try to build that uncertainty into their cost estimates (with maybe a little padding to boot). A golf ball of uranium would provide more than enough energy for your entire lifetime, including electricity for homes, vehicles and mobile devices, synthetic fuels for vehicles (including tractors to produce your food and jet fuel for your flights). Your legacy? A soda can of fission product was, that would be less radioactive than natural uranium ore in 300 years. The new reactor designs, both the Gen III+ designs mentioned earlier and the PRISM, are designed to be mass-produced in modules, then assembled at the power plant site. The PRISM has the added advantage of operating at atmospheric pressure, so no pressure vessel or high-pressure pumps are needed. The passive safety principles mean that multiple redundancy is unnecessary, allowing such reactors to have far fewer pumps, valves, controls, and other components than their older Gen II predecessors. Based on both industry estimates and actual experience of building these reactors since the Nineties, there is every reason to believe that the price can be kept well below $2,000/kW, though the Chinese plan to produce them for half that price once their mass production supply lines are in place. There is virtually no doubt that with these new nuclear technologies available, the shift to predominantly nuclear power is virtually inevitable in the long term. Over sixty new plants are under construction around the world with many more to come, even if some nations are temporarily deterred by political and social pressures. If we’re serious about solving the climate change problem before it’s too late, we’ll have to get serious about the only zero-emission baseload power source that can easily supply all the energy the world needs. We shouldn’t consider this a Faustian bargain. These new designs—particularly the IFR—are clean, safe, economical, and able to convert waste products that we desperately want to get rid of into abundant energy for the entire planet. Anyone serious about protecting the environment can safely embrace them with enthusiasm. |
| 01/18/2013 | Tournament: Coast | Round: | Opponent: | Judge:
The coal brown cloud destabilizes pakistan
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project: Congress QandA,” 2009) http://skirsch.com/politics/ifr/QAcongressKirsch.htm
Another way to look at this is to ask Congress the question : How much of the North Pole has to melt away forever before we treat the climate crisis with the same urgency as the financial crisis? Or how much of the US has to be covered in soot before Congress treats this with the same urgency as the economic crisis? Do we all have to be wearing gas masks every day like in China before we take some steps to displace coal plants? Or are we simply going to spend the rest of our lives having to wear face masks when we walk outside for the next hundred years or so? I have news for you. That atmospheric brown cloud (ABC) that now engulfs all of India and half of China....it isn't getting any smaller. It is a three km-thick layer of soot and other manmade particles that stretches from the Arabian Peninsula to China and the western Pacific Ocean. Every day, it's growing bigger and bigger. It may be out of sight right now, but I can guarantee you it's heading our way. USA Today says, "The huge plumes have darkened 13 megacities in Asia — including Beijing, Shanghai, Bangkok, Cairo, Mumbai and New Delhi — sharply "dimming" the amount of light by as much as 25% in some places." Among the effects of this phenomenon is a decrease in the monsoon rains over India in recent years, with potentially disastrous effects on the agriculture that sustains over a billion people. They are hastening the melting of the glaciers in northern Pakistan and India, with perhaps deadly implications for the rivers that flow from those headwaters. Pakistan without the "five rivers" and the Indus would be a wasteland.
So at what point do we stop the debate and treat this as a crisis? When it is too late and we are engulfed? Or will we react like the China government and continue to build new coal plants and make the problem even worse? nuclear conflict
Morgan, 10 – former member of the British Labour Party Executive Committee. A political writer, his first book was "The Mind of a Terrorist Fundamentalist" He is a journalist and columnist for http://www.thecheers.org/ magazine (Stephen, “Better Another Taliban Afghanistan, than a Taliban NUCLEAR,” 6/4, http://society.ezinemark.com/better-another-taliban-afghanistan-than-a-taliban-nuclear-pakistan-4d0ce18ba75.html)
Strong centrifugal forces have always bedevilled the stability and unity of Pakistan, and, in the context of the new world situation, the country could be faced with civil wars and popular fundamentalist uprisings, probably including a military-fundamentalist coup d'état.
Fundamentalism is deeply rooted in Pakistan society. The fact that in the year following 9/11, the most popular name given to male children born that year was "Osama" (not a Pakistani name) is a small indication of the mood. Given the weakening base of the traditional, secular opposition parties, conditions would be ripe for a coup d'état by the fundamentalist wing of the Army and ISI, leaning on the radicalised masses to take power. Some form of radical, military Islamic regime, where legal powers would shift to Islamic courts and forms of shira law would be likely. Although, even then, this might not take place outside of a protracted crisis of upheaval and civil war conditions, mixing fundamentalist movements with nationalist uprisings and sectarian violence between the Sunni and minority Shia populations.
The nightmare that is now Iraq would take on gothic proportions across the continent. The prophesy of an arc of civil war over Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq would spread to south Asia, stretching from Pakistan to Palestine, through Afghanistan into Iraq and up to the Mediterranean coast.
Undoubtedly, this would also spill over into India both with regards to the Muslim community and Kashmir. Border clashes, terrorist attacks, sectarian pogroms and insurgency would break out. A new war, and possibly nuclear war, between Pakistan and India could not be ruled out.
Atomic Al Qaeda
Should Pakistan break down completely, a Taliban-style government with strong Al Qaeda influence is a real possibility. Such deep chaos would, of course, open a "Pandora's box" for the region and the world. With the possibility of unstable clerical and military fundamentalist elements being in control of the Pakistan nuclear arsenal, not only their use against India, but Israel becomes a possibility, as well as the acquisition of nuclear and other deadly weapons secrets by Al Qaeda.
Invading Pakistan would not be an option for America. Therefore a nuclear war would now again become a real strategic possibility. This would bring a shift in the tectonic plates of global relations. It could usher in a new Cold War with China and Russia pitted against the US. |
| 03/29/2013 | Tournament: ndt | Round: 1 | Opponent: UNLV BV | Judge: We’re reforming the export process
Domenici and Miller 12 (Senator Pete and Dr. Warren, Former US Senator and BPC Fellow, Former Department of Energy Assistant and Secretary for Nuclear Energy, "Maintaining U.S. Leadership in Global Nuclear Energy Markets," Bipartisan Policy Center, September, bipartisanpolicy.org/sites/default/files/Nuclear%20Report.PDF)
In an attempt to ameliorate current competitive ¶ disadvantages, the Obama administration recently created
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S. companies to compete more ¶ effectively in the global nuclear marketplace. IFR possesses such advantages that people will want to buy it
Kirsh 11 (Steven T. Kirsh, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, "Why Obama should meet Till," 9/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/
The MIT report ignores what other countries are doing. Obama wants the US to be a leader in clean energy technology. You do that
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market decades late. Another great American invention that we blew it on. Social science proves—multipolarity supports the natural incentive to seek status by fighting
Wohlforth, 09 – professor of government at Dartmouth (William, "Unipolarity, Status Competition, and Great Power War," World Affairs, January, project muse)
The upshot is a near scholarly consensus that unpolarity’s consequences for great power conflict are
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ground now than when Harsanyi expressed it a generation ago, as cumulating research
shows that humans appear to be hardwired for sensitivity to status and that relative standing
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inherently scarce, and competitions for status tend to be zero sum.9 No impact uniqueness – world getting better now heg is peaceful
Busby, 12 ~[Get Real Chicago IR guys out in force, Josh, Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and a fellow in the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service as well as a Crook Distinguished Scholar at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2012/01/get-real-chicago-ir-guys-out-in-force.html-http://duckofminerva.blogspot.com/2012/01/get-real-chicago-ir-guys-out-in-force.html~]
Is Unipolarity Peaceful? As evidence, Monteiro provides metrics of the number of years
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that makes other states insecure, even though they can’t balance against it. No one has an incentive for major war
Cohen 11 (CSIS Group Report, Craig S. Cohen, Jon B. Alterman, Ernest Z. Bower, Victor D. Cha, Heather A. Conley, Stephen J. Flanagan, Bonnie S. Glaser, Michael J. Green, Andrew C. Kuchins, Haim Malka, Teresita C. Schaffer, "Capacity and Resolve: Foreign Assessments of US Power,"
http://csis.org/files/publication/110613_Cohen_CapacityResolve_Web.pdf-http://csis.org/files/publication/110613_Cohen_CapacityResolve_Web.pdf
We are now entering the third decade of a new international system—let me
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would conceivably find it advantageous to go to war with the global superpower. No interventions forthcoming – Iraq era over
Heroux 3/19 (Paul Heroux, senior analyst at the Institute for Defense and Disarment Studies, Master’s in International Relations from the London School of Economics and a Master’s from the Harvard School of Government, "The Aftermath of Iraq: A Cautious West in Iran, Syria and Afghanistan," 3/19/12) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-heroux/the-aftermath-of-iraq-a-c_b_1363368.html-http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-heroux/the-aftermath-of-iraq-a-c_b_1363368.html
The aftermath of the war in Iraq has resulted in a more cautious approach to
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it may cripple our ability to get involved when it may be necessary. Debt won’t kill hegemony – privilege of reserve currency
Kelly 12 (Robert Kelly, assistant professor in the Political Science and Diplomacy Department of Pusan National University in Busan, Korea "More on US Allies: America’s ’Exorbitant Privilege’ means it can borrow to Sustain Hegemony Longer than Anyone Ever Expected," 6/8/12) http://asiansecurityblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/more-on-us-allies-americas-exorbitant-privilege-means-it-can-borrow-to-sustain-hegemony-longer-than-anyone-ever-expected/-http://asiansecurityblog.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/more-on-us-allies-americas-exorbitant-privilege-means-it-can-borrow-to-sustain-hegemony-longer-than-anyone-ever-expected/
Two of my posts this week (one, two) on hypothetical retrenchment under
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zero%21%21%21 I just can’t figure that out, or what that means… US is managing its debt now – deleveraging
Drezner 12 (Daniel W. Drezner, professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, " Predictions about the death of American hegemony may have been greatly exaggerated," 1/22/12) http://drezner.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/01/22/predictions_about_the_death_of_american_hegemony_may_have_been_greatly_exaggerated
What about the future? One could point to the last few months of modestly encouraging economic data
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Furthermore, the chances for a virtuous circle have been rising, because we’ve made significant progress on the debt front. Terrorist groups will never get a workable nuclear weapon – insurmountable barriers
Brooks 10 (Barry Brooks, Professor of Climate Change University of Adelaide, guest post by a Canadian chemist and materials scientist, "Analysis of the 2010 Nuclear Summit and the obsession with highly enriched uranium," 5/15/10) http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/04/15/dv82xl/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2010/04/15/dv82xl/
First let’s make one thing very clear: a subnational group (terrorists) cannot
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nuclear weapons has revealed no new evidence that any such group is any nearer to realizing this ambition, Extinction genetically impossible and ahistorical
Posner 2005 (Richard A., Judge U.S. Court of Appeals 7th Circuit, Professor Chicago School of Law, January 1, 2005, Skeptic, Altadena, CA, Catastrophe: Risk and Response, http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-4150331/Catastrophe-the-dozen-most-significant.html~~%23abstract) Yet the fact that Homo sapiens has managed to survive every disease to assail it
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through gene splicing into a far more lethal pathogen than smallpox ever was. - Renewables are nowhere close to making a dent in market share
Hansen 11 (James Hansen, directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, Reto Ruedy, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Makiko Sato, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, "Hansen warns not to drink sustainable energy Kool-Aid," 8/5/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/08/05/hansen-energy-kool-aid/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/08/05/hansen-energy-kool-aid/
A facile explanation would focus on the ’merchants of doubt’ who have managed to confuse the public
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U.S. energy policy that he is investing a piece of his personal fortune to help develop a specific 4th generation nuclear technology.
2) Germany proves they’ll never work
Blees 9 (Tom Blees, president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives and a board member of the UN-affiliated World Energy Forum, "Climbing mount improbable," 4/11/9) http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/11/climbing-mount-improbable/-http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/04/11/climbing-mount-improbable/
Next time someone tell you how renewables are enough, show them this picture from the IEA.
Look at Germany for a case study in the potential of renewables. For over
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I’d say "Wake up and smell the roses" but for the fact that the only thing we’ll smell is coal smoke. 3. No link - abundance and France prove
Tindale, 11 ~[Stephen Tindale is an associate fellow at the CER, June 2011, Center for European Reform, http://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/pdf/2011/pb_thorium_june11-153.pdf-http://www.cer.org.uk/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/pdf/2011/pb_thorium_june11-153.pdf~]
The money to support research and development of molten salt reactors need not be taken
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power stations burning energy crops and waste wood which would otherwise be wasted. Trades off with fossil fuels
Loudermilk 2011 (Micah J. Loudermilk is a Research Associate for the Energy %26 Environmental Security Policy program with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University, May 31, 2011, "Small Nuclear Reactors and US Energy Security: Concepts, Capabilities, and Costs," Journal of Energy Security, http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content%26view=article%26id=314:small-nuclear-reactors-and-us-energy-security-concepts-capabilities-and-costs%26catid=116:content0411%26Itemid=375-http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content%26view=article%26id=314:small-nuclear-reactors-and-us-energy-security-concepts-capabilities-and-costs%26catid=116:content0411%26Itemid=375)
Pursuing a carbon-free world Realistically speaking, a world without nuclear power is
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US would benefit from diversification and expansion of the nation’s nuclear energy portfolio. CI: Financial incentives are the direct monetary incentives incentives
Beattie %26 Menz 5 Kristin M. Beattie Interdisciplinary Engineering and Management, Honors Program Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY Mentor: Dr. Fredric Menz Professor, Department of Economics Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY "Renewable Energy in the United States: Policy Effectiveness and Economic Issues" Summer Research Program, 2005, Google (downloaded as word doc)
There are many different incentive programs that exist in different states to promote
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and policies in place to promote renewable energy in the United States (DSIRE, 2003).
Prefer A)
It’s the federal definition
US Energy Information Administration, 1 (Renewable Energy 2000: Issues and Trends, Report prepared by the US Energy Information Administration, "Incentives, Mandates, and Government Programs for Promoting Renewable Energy", http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ftproot/renewables/06282000.pdf)
Over the years, incentives and mandates for renewable energy have been used to advance
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regulatory mandates generally require no expenditures or loss of revenue by the Government. -Other Agenda Items Thump -Dems overplay their hand -Graham will bail like he always does
-Obama push will polarize it -Dems stall bc the GOP would get blamed
-No payoff for the rank and file House GOP, Hispanics won’t switch by 2014 and the base is still key
Altman 3-20 (Alex,- Washington correspondent for TIME "Four Hurdles That Could Block Immigration Reform")
The next few months offer the best chance in a generation for the two parties
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is high. Each day, 1,400 undocumented immigrants are deported. Ferrechio 3-24 (Susan,- Chief Congressional Correspondant for the Washington Examiner "Congress ’for first time’ is close to crafting immigration plan" http://washingtonexaminer.com/congress-for-first-time-close-to-crafting-immigration-plan/article/2525183)
There are Republicans in both the House and Senate, however, who are far
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to get done this spring or before the August recess," Barbour said. No spillover —- prefer empirics to opinions
Berger 3-4 (Judson,- writer for Fox News "Recurring budget crises could put squeeze on Obama’s second-term priorities")
"The spirit of bipartisan cooperation that is keeping the immigration issue moving forward has
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.C., who both are part of a bipartisan group crafting legislation. Continetti 3-15 (Matthew,- editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon. Prior to joining the Beacon, he was opinion editor of the Weekly Standard, where he remains a contributing editor "The Obama Quagmire")
The president is stuck in a congressional quagmire and no amount of "outside pressure
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back on the first months of 2013 and say: Mistakes were made. Plan’s massively popular in Congress
Press Action 3/12/12 ("US Nuclear Industry Operates as if Fukushima Never Happened") com/news/weblog/full_article/nuclearsubsidies03122012/
Both Democrats and Republicans have had a long love affair with commercial nuclear power,
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that the U.S. political system permits honest and real debate. No spending links – plan net saves money b/c we can cancel the MOX plant, can be PART of a budget deal Lots of support for IFRs and no one opposes them
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, "Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now," 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/-http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
Support
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu~[9~]
White House Science Advisor John Holdren~[10~]
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reactors are are the "inconvenient truths" for the fast reactor skeptics. Obama won’t use political capital effectively on immigration – too disengaged.
Jay Cost 2/11, The Weekly Standard, Lexis While this statement would surely make the republicans of the founding generation turn over in
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office, he still fails to grasp the essence of modern presidential power. Obama won’t push the plan- empirics prove
Pasternak ’10 (Nuclear energy lobby working hard to win support BY JUDY PASTERNAK Sunday, January 24th, 2010 ShareThis This story is being co-published with McClatchy Newspapers . There’s no telling whether the industry’s expensive effort will succeed. Witness the fate of
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in June. He’d be back to ask for more, he added. Political capital doesn’t exist but winners-win and issues determine outcomes
Michael Hirsch, 2-7, 13, "There’s No Such Thing as Political Capital," National Journal, http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207-http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/there-s-no-such-thing-as-political-capital-20130207 (Michael Hirsh is chief correspondent for National Journal. He also contributes to com/contributors/michael-hirsh. Hirsh previously served as the senior editor and national economics correspondent for Newsweek, based in its Washington bureau. He was also Newsweek’s Washington web editor and authored a weekly column for Newsweek.com, "The World from Washington." Earlier on, he was Newsweek’s foreign editor, guiding its award-winning coverage of the September 11 attacks and the war on terror. He has done on-the-ground reporting in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other places around the world, and served as the Tokyo-based Asia Bureau Chief for Institutional Investor from 1992 to 1994.)
On Tuesday, in his State of the Union address, President Obama will do
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kind of fanaticism that is the exact opposite of Obama’s approach to politics. A. India only gets 70 billion a year in remittances
The Economic Times 12 ("India to receive record %2470 billion remittances in 2012: Worl dBank," articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-11-21/news/35256192_1_remittance-flows-private-capital-flows-world-bank)
WASHINGTON: India will receive record %2470 billion remittances in the year 2012, topping the list of developing countries which are expected to receive a total of %24406 billion this year, the World Bank has said. B. That is less than one percent of their GDP
Embassy of India 13 ("India’s Economy,"www.embassyofindiabelgrade.org/index.php?option=com_content%26view=article%26id=43%26Itemid=22)
Indian Economy Overview
GDP 2011-12: US%24 1,859.9 billion
GDP (PPP) 2011 : US%24 4,463.- billion
Per Capita Income 2011-12: US%24 1,549.9
Per Capita Income (PPP) 2011 : US%24 3,700.-
GDP growth rate 6.5 % in 2011-12 Remittances are resilient and too many alt causes
Ratha 9 (Dilip, "India is the top recipient of remittances," Worldbank, blogs.worldbank.org/peoplemove/india-is-the-top-recipient-of-remittances)
The resilience of remittances arises from the fact that while new migration flows have declined, the stock of migrants has been relatively unaffected by the crisis. Sources of risk to this outlook include uncertainty about the depth and duration of the current crisis, unpredictable movements in exchange rates, and the possibility that immigration controls may be tightened further in major destination countries. India economy is rebounding
Pasricha 12-28 (Anjana Pasricha, Voice of America, 12-28-12, "India’s Economy Looks to Rebound in 2013," http://www.voanews.com/content/indias-economy-looks-to-rebound-in-2013/1573681.html-http://www.voanews.com/content/indias-economy-looks-to-rebound-in-2013/1573681.html)
India’s economy has experienced its worst slowdown in nearly a decade this year. But
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he says that a return to eight percent growth is an ambitious goal.
Economy is rebounding – industry is growing and government actions are positive
Gupta 1-1 (Surojit Gupta, Times of India, 1-1-13, "Lower rates could boost economy in 2013," http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Lower-rates-could-boost-economy-in-2013/articleshow/17838422.cms-http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Lower-rates-could-boost-economy-in-2013/articleshow/17838422.cms) After going through a gloomy phase in 2012, the Indian
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the Goods and Services Tax could strengthen sentiment. Concludes the impact is inevitable
Robinson ’10
Dr. David Robinson, History lecturer at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Western Australia and published author that holds a PhD in History, and is mid-way through a Master of International Relations degree. "The Regional and Global Implications of India’s Rise as a Great Power." – June 17th, 2010 – made available at http://lfort.wordpress.com/2010/06/17/indias-rise-as-a-great-power/~~%23_ftn21 India’s rise to great power status is inevitable and will occur quickly over the coming
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developing as they are, that projection is likely to become a reality. |
| 03/29/2013 | Tournament: NDT | Round: 3 | Opponent: Towson HW | Judge:
*1AC*
The United States federal government should provide initial funding for commercial Integral Fast Reactors in the United States. Contention 1 is solvency IFRs are ready for commercial application
Kirsh 11 (Steven T. Kirsh, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Why Obama should meet Till,” 9/28/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/09/28/why-obama-should-meet-till/
I will tell you
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I am happy to provide you with additional information. Demonstrating commercial IFRs leads to global adoption in a fast time frame
Blees et al 11 (Tom Blees1, Yoon Chang2, Robert Serafin3, Jerry Peterson4, Joe Shuster1, Charles Archambeau5, Randolph Ware3, 6, Tom Wigley3,7, Barry W. Brook7, 1Science Council for Global Initiatives, 2Argonne National Laboratory, 3National Center for Atmospheric Research, 4University of Colorado, 5Technology Research Associates, 6Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences, 7(climate professor) University of Adelaide, “Advanced nuclear power systems to mitigate climate change (Part III),” 2/24/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/24/advanced-nuclear-power-systems-to-mitigate-climate-change/
There are many compelling reasons to pursue the rapid demonstration of a full-scale
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mitigate climate change and other environmental and geopolitical crises of the 21st century. Contention 2 is warming Warming is real and anthropogenic
Prothero 12 (Donald Prothero, Professor of Geology at Occidental College, Lecturer in Geobiology at CalTech, "How We Know Global Warming is Real and Human Caused," 3/1/12, EBSCO)
How do we know that global warming is real and primarily human caused? There
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change when it threatens their survival. Neither can we as a society. Climate change risks catastrophe – slow feedbacks
Hansen 8 (James Hansen, directs the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University, “Tell Barack Obama the Truth – The Whole Truth,” Nov/Dec 2008, http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2008/20081121_Obama.pdf)
Embers of election night elation will glow longer than any prior election.
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And there is little hope of stabilizing climate unless China and India have low- and no-CO2 energy options. Extinction
Morgan 9 (Dennis Ray Morgan, Professor of Current Affairs at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, “World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race,” December 2009 Science Direct)
As horrifying as the scenario of human extinction by sudden, fast-burning nuclear
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civilization has been destroyed, and the question concerning human extinction becomes moot. And there are systemic impacts - reliance on coal kills 50k in the US alone
Richardson 9 (John H. Richardson, “Meet the Man Who Could End Global Warming,” 11/17/9) http://www.esquire.com/features/best-and-brightest-2009/nuclear-waste-disposal-1209
Next, you must also consider the magnitude of the problem he's solving: a
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fifty thousand Americans each year through diseases like asthma, bronchitis, and emphysema
Coal fired power plants perpetuate eco-racism– speaking out about the health consequences of coal is key
Arriaga 11 – Greenpeace Volunteer and Local Chicagoan, Faces of Chicago's coal fight, August 5, 2011, This is a guest blog by Luis Arriaga, a Greenpeace volunteer leader in Chicago, http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/faces-of-chicagos-coal-fight/blog/36253/
Growing up next to a state park was a blessing. I got to experience nature first hand, but there is something off about Silver
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a form of eco-racism. The Anti-Coal movement is polycentric and coalitional – it brings together multiples agents of resistance by targeting specific Coal plants like those that poison each breath of air we take in Chicago AND by challenging the larger global system of fossil fuel powered injustice
Russell 9 – Grassroots Action Organizer
Joshua Kahn Russell is the grassroots actions organizer at Rainforest Action Network and was an organizer on the Capitol Climate Action, May 2009, Z Magazine, http://www.zcommunications.org/climate-justice-and-coals-funeral-procession-by-joshua-kahn-russell
The pace of direct actions against coal has sharply increased since 2004. These campaigns
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coal as one strand of a robust frontline-led climate justice movement. Allowing warming to continue perpetuates racist inequalities
Hoerner 8—Former director of Research at the Center for a Sustainable Economy, Director of Tax Policy at the Center for Global Change at the University of Maryland College Park, and editor of Natural Resources Tax Review. He has done research on environmental economics and policy on behalf of the governments of Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United States. Andrew received his B.A. in Economics from Cornell University and a J.D. from Case Western Reserve School of Law—AND—Nia Robins—former inaugural Climate Justice Corps Fellow in 2003, director of Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative (J. Andrew, “A Climate of Change African Americans, Global Warming, and a Just Climate Policy for the U.S.” July 2008, http://www.ejcc.org/climateofchange.pdf)
Everywhere we turn, the issues and impacts of climate change confront us. One
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points and raising the average African American income by 3 to 4 percent. The IFR supplies enough clean energy to solve warming
Blees et al 11 (Charles Archambeau , Randolph Ware, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, Tom Blees, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Barry Brook, Yoon Chang, University of Colorado, Jerry Peterson, Argonne National Laboratory, Robert Serafin Joseph Shuster Tom Wigley, “IFR: An optimized approach to meeting global energy needs (Part I)” 2/1/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/02/01/ifr-optimized-source-for-global-energy-needs-part-i/)
Fossil fuels currently supply about 80% of humankind’s primary energy. Given the imperatives
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down of the reactor. This serves as an important passive safety feature. Only the IFR creates an economic incentive to get off coal in time
Kirsch 9 (Steve Kirsch, Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, American serial entrepreneur who has started six companies: Mouse Systems, Frame Technology, Infoseek, Propel, Abaca, and OneID, “Why We Should Build an Integral Fast Reactor Now,” 11/25/9) http://skirsch.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/ifr/
To prevent a climate disaster, we must eliminate virtually all coal plant emissions worldwide
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old child was able to determine this from publicly available information in 2004. Science is the best method of getting an approximate grasp on warming
Jean Bricmont 1, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, “Defense of a Modest Scientific Realism”, September 23, http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/bielefeld_final.pdf
Given that instrumentalism is not defensible when it is formulated as a rigid doctrine,
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but we would like to offer a few ideas that might prove useful. “science” isn’t some special definable category, its just basic induction carried out systematically
Jean Bricmont 1, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Louvain, “Defense of a Modest Scientific Realism”, September 23, http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/bielefeld_final.pdf
So, how does one obtain evidence concerning the truth or falsity of scientific assertions
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between the alternative theories if indeed they should be regarded as different theories. Yes science is socially influenced – but using that to discount its claims makes environmental engagement impossible
David Demerritt, '6 (Dept of Geography, King's College London, "The Construction of Global warming and the Politics of Science", www.unc.edu/courses/2006spring/geog/203/001/demerritt.pdf)
In this article, 1 reconsider the relationships between the science and the politics of
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value-laden decision making that is separable from and downstream of science.
The permeability of this divide between science and politics is perhaps most clear in the
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outcomes that may result from them downstream in legislation or administrative law rulings.
Unfortunately, public representations of science seldom acknowledge the irreducibly social dimension of scientific knowledge
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practice, as the basis for a more balanced assessment of its knowledge.
A richer appreciation for the social processes of scientific knowledge construction is as important for
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invisible environmental risks is characteristic of what he calls the modern risk society.
Although Beck may exaggerate the inability of nonexperts and lay publics to make sense of
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political stakes of the microsocial relations involved in constructing and interpreting the models. Positive normative visions of the state that engage in specific policies are the only way to produce lasting change
Robyn Eckersley, ‘4 (Professor and Head of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia, “The Green State: Rethinking Democracy and Sovereignty”, 5.4)
Those who attack the feasibility of deliberative democracy tend to mis-understand the role
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“critical vantage point” argument to constitute its unim-peachable core.
Indeed, this same critical vantage point is invoked by critics who seek to impugn
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positively by having the opportunity to shape the norms that govern collective life.
In any event, deliberative democracy seems well capable of absorbing Young’s arguments as well
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which deliberative democracy is able to serve the ambit claim for ecological democracy.
However, it would be politically unsatisfactory to rest the argument here. In the
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power disparities, distortions in communication, and other pressures are ever present.
Moreover, if it is accepted that there is a multiplicity of genres of speech
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e.g., the abortion debate), we can expect intractable disagreement.
However, such observations do not render the regulative ideal inef-fectual, since
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cultural pluralism is also the hallmark of the new school of environmental pragmatism. Engagement with the nuclear technocracy is key
Nordhaus 11, chairman – Breakthrough Instiute, and Shellenberger, president – Breakthrough Insitute, MA cultural anthropology – University of California, Santa Cruz, 2/25/‘11
(Ted and Michael, http://thebreakthrough.org/archive/the_long_death_of_environmenta)
Tenth, we are going to have to get over our suspicion of technology,
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simpler, more bucolic past in which humans lived in harmony with Nature. Idealistic promotion of new technology is vital to reforming environmental politics
ROBERTSON 2007 (Ross, Senior Editor at EnlightenNext, former NRDC member, “A Brighter Shade of Green,” What is Enlightenment, Oct-Dec, http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j38/bright-green.asp?page=1)
This brings me to Worldchanging, the book that arrived last spring bearing news of
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is, they just might free you to think completely differently as well.
Worldchanging takes its inspiration from a series of speeches given by sci-fi author
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world, just so you can pursue your cheap addiction to carbon dioxide.”
Explaining the logic of the bright green platform, Sterling writes:
It’s a question of tactics. Civil society does not respond at all well
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, mediated, glamorous Green. A Viridian Green, if you will.
Sterling elaborates in a speech given to the Industrial Designers Society of America in Chicago in 1999:
This can’t be one of these diffuse, anything-goes, eclectic,
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cultural narrative, not calling the old narrative into question. . . .
Twentieth-century design is over now. Anything can look like anything now
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It’s yours if you want it. It’s yours if you’re bold enough.
It was a philosophy that completely reversed the fulcrum of environmental thinking, shifting its
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that, in good conscience, we can really afford not to take?
Sterling’s belief in the fundamental promise of human creativity is reminiscent of earlier de-
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. It builds in a certain immunity to the scientific frame of mind.”
Bright Green
Many remember the Whole Earth Catalog with a fondness reserved for only the closest of
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. . . Fail to act boldly enough and we may fail completely.”
Another world is possible,” goes the popular slogan of the World Social Forum,
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“The future is already here, it’s just not well distributed yet.”
Of course, nobody knows exactly what a bright green future will look like;
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the best of today’s knowledge and innovation—and perpetually open to improvement. Technical debates about warming inform activism and are necessary to change policy
Hager 92 Carol J, Professor of political science at Bryn Mawr College, “Democratizing Technology: Citizen and State in West German Energy Politics, 1974-1990” Polity, Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 45-70
During this phase, the citizen initiative attempted to overcome its defensive posture and implement
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a space for a delibera-tive politics in modern technological society.61 The rhetoric of extinction is politically useful – causes action
Romm 12 (Joe Romm, Ph.D in Physics from MIT, worked at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, former Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy, awarded an American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellowship, executive director of Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, former researcher at the Rocky Mountain Institute, former Special Assistant for International Security at the Rockefeller Foundation, taught at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, interview with Ken Caldeira, atmospheric scientist who works at the Carnegie Institution for Science's Department of Global Ecology, “Apocalypse Not: The Oscars, The Media And The Myth of ‘Constant Repetition of Doomsday Messages’ on Climate”, http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/26/432546/apocalypse-not-oscars-media-myth-of-repetition-of-doomsday-messages-on-climate/#more-432546)
The two greatest myths about global warming communications are 1) constant repetition of doomsday
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by most of the rest of the media, intelligentsia and popular culture.
Economics is a necessary lens for solving environmental problems
Thompson 3 (Barton H. Thompson Jr., Vice Dean and Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, Stanford LawSchool; Senior Scholar, Center for Environmental Science and Policy, Stanford Institute for International Studies, "What Good is Economics?", environs.law.ucdavis.edu/issues/27/1/thompson.pdf)
Even the environmental moralist who eschews any normative use of economics may find economics valuable
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ignores this tool in trying to improve the environment is doomed to frustration.
Deliberative policymaking offers the ability to come to solutions about climate change – it’s a learning process that allows the sharing of information
Herbeck and Isham 10
http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/775
Jon Isham
Associate Professor of Economics, Middlebury College
In the fall of 1999, Jon joined the department of economics and the
AND - and the effect of local social capital on environmental outcomes in Vermont.
Herbeck, member of the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and the Honors College.
Getting to 350 parts per million CO2 in the atmosphere will require massive investments
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, including those on pressing issues related to climate change and clean energy.
*2AC*
2ac race key Consumption economically inet –r oot cause is irrelevant b/c Russia, china, the us won’t shift away absent an economic reason, but will if there is
The energy problem is insurmountable – IFR is not just sufficient it is NECESSARY, solving some root cause won’t do anything
Brook and Blees 11 (Barry Brook, Professor of Climate Change University of Adelaide, and Tom Blees, president of the Science Council for Global Initiatives and a board member of the UN-affiliated World Energy Forum, “The Guardian questions: thorium, shale gas, off-grid renewables, and much more…” 12/11/11) http://bravenewclimate.com/2011/12/11/guardian-energy-questions/
Q3. Why is there so much emphasis on fixing the supply side? To
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Could it be that reducing demand would go directly against their economic goals?
As a resident of California, I’ve been a beneficiary of the most effective energy
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a man some call the Grandfather of Energy Efficiency, at this website.
But you are right, efficiency is not enough. It isn’t actually an energy
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and to the energy used by industries that contribute to high living standards.
If there is to be any egalitarianism and social justice in the world, those living today in poverty must be afforded the opportunity to raise their standard of living to levels enjoyed today in fully industrialized countries. This will be absolutely impossible without a massive increase in global energy supply, all the more so because the world’s population is expected to increase by another 2-3 billion people by mid-century.
But the raw numbers tell only part of the tale. Consider where the fresh
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the salt to their ultimate destinations) will require staggering amounts of energy.
Hence the focus on fixing the supply side. We must consider the entire planet, not just the fortunate nations in which we might live. While ever-better energy efficiency is certainly something to strive for, the policies and technologies to provide virtually unlimited clean energy for the entire planet must be the focus if we are to leave a better and fairer world to our progeny. Focus on individual consumption leads to socially regressive solutions – re-inscribe inequality
Martens and Spaargaren 5 - * Researcher at the Environmental Policy Group at Wageningen University, Professor of Environmental Policy @ Wageningen
Martens, S. and Spaargaren, G. 2005. The politics of sustainable consumption: the case of the Netherlands. Sustainability: Science, Practice, and Policy 1(1):29-42. Proquest
We begin with a discussion of the possible weaknesses inherent in more consumption-oriented
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institutional actors—socially regressive and environmentally ineffectual outcomes will be the result. Their Wise links are guilt by association – correlation not causation
Daily Kos 10, daily weblog with political analysis on US current events from a liberal perspective, Kossack Lays the Smackdown on Tim Wise, Aug 21, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/8/22/0916/52061
So, in this story, you have a phenomenon which is clearly disadvantaging African
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mass, variegated economic incentives-- or we're no longer the reality-based Mandel identifies need to overturn economics, but overturning economics will fail, corporations willnot stop, people will buy what’s cheap, have to subvert it.
2ac – ling cp Focus on language disables meaningful political dialogue and action.
Churchill 96 (Ward, Professor, Indigenous Studies, University of Colorado Boulder. From A Native Son, p. 460) There can be little doubt that matters of linguistic appropriateness and precision are of serious
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nonsense, and on with the real work of effecting positive social change. Impersonal tone is NOT doesn’t cause their view from nowhere impacts, rather it fights white domination
Roelofs ‘5 (Monique, Assoc. Prof. of Philosophy @ Hampshire College, “Racialization as an Aesthetic Production” White on White/Black on Black pp. 111-112)
My reason for adopting the impersonal voice, as noted above, lies in the
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of experience, and the aesthetic fashioning of individual selves, mine included. We’ll impact turn the view from nowhere
Callicott 11 – (Oct. 2011, J. Baird, University Distinguished Research Professor and a member of the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies and the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of North Texas, “The Temporal and Spatial Scales of Global Climate Change and the Limits of Individualistic and Rationalistic Ethics,” Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement, Volume 69, October 2011, pp 101-116, cambridge journals) The temporal scale of this proposed moral ontology – moral considerability for human civilization per
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lies in scaling up the moral agent as well as the moral patient.
The identity of that moral agent is no mystery: the world's several governments acting
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to identify the effective moral agent for an ethics of global climate change.
Nor do I mean to reject altogether out of hand the efficacy of voluntary individual
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, is considered to be quite wrong and irresponsible as well as illegal.
Unfortunately, there is a limit to this contagious effect. Environmentalism has created a
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dimension of a complex political struggle sometimes characterized as ‘the culture war’.
I now conclude. This essay has not been about practical ethics, but about
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be effective in mitigating global climate change, they must act in concert. Embrace a plurality of English-es rather than an insistence on the innate superiority of one linguistic strategy – the perm is the best option
David E. Kirkland 10, English prof at NYU, “English(es) in Urban Contexts: Politics, Pluralism, and Possibilities”, English Education, V42, N3 By definition, language once uttered begins to break apart. Its many pieces assemble
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contexts, which are themselves complicated by linguistic legacies of survival and oppression. The alternative’s abandonment of all existing lexicons is worse for cross-cultural understanding – endorse pluralist chaos, complete with all its contradictions
David E. Kirkland 10, English prof at NYU, “English(es) in Urban Contexts: Politics, Pluralism, and Possibilities”, English Education, V42, N3 Many lessons can be learned from Derrick, Maya, and Kisha. First,
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environment of social heteroglossia” (Bakhtin, 1981, p. 292). McClean, Ph.D. Philosophy: The New School for Social Research, 2001 David E, “The Cultural Left And The Limits of Social Hope,” Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. 2001 Conference
There is a lot of philosophical prose on the general subject of social justice.
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if we treat policy and reform as more important than Spirit and Utopia.
Like light rain released from pretty clouds too high in the atmosphere, the substance
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, lucky to have taken this decision before it had become too late.
One might argue with me that these other intellectuals are not looking to be taken
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. That is to say, they are not easily explained at all.
Take Habermas, whose writings are admittedly the most relevant of the group. I
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actually still take these thinkers seriously, if they ever did at all.
Or we might take Foucault who, at best, has provided us with what
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of others enamored with the abstractions of various Marxian-Freudian social critiques.
Yet for some reason, at least partially explicated in Richard Rorty's Achieving Our Country, a book that I think is long overdue, leftist critics continue to cite and refer to the eccentric and often a priori ruminations of people like those just mentioned, and a litany of others including Derrida, Deleuze, Lyotard, Jameson, and Lacan, who are to me hugely more irrelevant than Habermas in their narrative attempts to suggest policy prescriptions
(when they actually do suggest them) aimed at curing the ills of
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to consciousness America's own needs and its own implicit principle of successful action."
Those who suffer or have suffered from this disease Rorty refers to as the Cultural
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may also be disastrous for our social hopes, as I will explain.
Leftist American culture critics might put their considerable talents to better use if they bury
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one member in a community of nations under a "law of peoples?"
The new public philosopher might seek to understand labor law and military and trade theory
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critics with their snobish disrespect for the so-called "managerial class." Partiuclarly important in the context of warming
Monbiot 8 George, English Writer and Environmental and Political Activist, 9-4, “Identity Politics in Climate Change Hell,” http://www.celsias.com/article/identity-politics-climate-change-hell/
If you want a glimpse of how the movement against climate change could crumble faster
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this urgent task into the identity politics that have wrecked so many movements. Particularly matters for environmental politics
ECKERSLEY 2004 ROBYN, SENIOR LECTURER IN THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE, THE GREEN STATE, P. 4-5
This inquiry thus swims against a significant tide of green political theory that is mostly
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rebuild the ship while still at sea.” And if states are so implicated If our methodology is faster – that’s better
Hahnel 12 (Robin Hahnel, Professor of Economics at Portland State University, 02 Nov 2012, “Desperately Seeking Left Unity on International Climate Policy”, Capitalism Nature Socialism Volume 23, Issue 4, 2012, DOI:10.1080/10455752.2012.722308)
This author has been an ecosocialist since before the name became popular. I have
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radicals and reformers recognize this, the more successful we all will be. Extinction outweighs – there can be no authentic acceptance of it Kennedy, 2k7 (Greg, PhD U of Ottowa, An Ontology of Trash, pg. 170-1) The phenomenon of extinction is the technological ersatz for death. But our being-
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time, the extermination, that is, the detemporalization of human being. VTL is inevitable – individually determined as long as we survive
Fassin, 10 - James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, as well as directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. (Didier, Fall, “Ethics of Survival: A Democratic Approach to the Politics of Life” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Vol 1 No 1, Project Muse)
Conclusion
Survival, in the sense Jacques Derrida attributed to the concept in his last interview
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state, during the colonial period as well as in the contemporary era.
However, through indiscriminate extension, this powerful instrument has lost some of its analytical
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risk is therefore both scholarly and political. It calls for ethical attention.
In fact, the genealogy of this intellectual lineage reminds us that the main founders
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life into a political instrument or a moral resource or an affective expression.
But let us go one step further: ethnography invites us to reconsider what life
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in its multiple forms but also in its everyday expression of the human. People matter – there are billions who will die if you don’t force an energy shift, there are countries besides the united states
Fassin, 10 - James D. Wolfensohn Professor in the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, as well as directeur d’études at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris. (Didier, Fall, “Ethics of Survival: A Democratic Approach to the Politics of Life” Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism, and Development, Vol 1 No 1, Project Muse)
Conclusion
Survival, in the sense Jacques Derrida attributed to the concept in his last interview
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state, during the colonial period as well as in the contemporary era.
However, through indiscriminate extension, this powerful instrument has lost some of its analytical
AND
risk is therefore both scholarly and political. It calls for ethical attention.
In fact, the genealogy of this intellectual lineage reminds us that the main founders
AND
life into a political instrument or a moral resource or an affective expression.
But let us go one step further: ethnography invites us to reconsider what life
AND
in its multiple forms but also in its everyday expression of the human. -justifications have to be mutable, desert v ocean, you can’t just only look at 1 segment and ALWAYS advocate as if that is your audience, rather advocacy must ADJUST to great a global organizing calculus
Smith 10 Brendan, co-founder of Labor Network for Sustainability, 11-23, “Fighting Doom: The New Politics of Climate Change,” Common Dreams, http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/23-1
I admit I have arrived late to the party. Only recently have I begun
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said to me, "God help us, I hope you're right." *1AR* the aff doesn’t spillover and politicizing the outcome of rounds collapses any change they want to make
Atchison and Panetta 9 – *Director of Debate at Trinity University and Director of Debate at the University of Georgia (Jarrod, and Edward, “Intercollegiate Debate and Speech Communication: Issues for the Future,” The Sage Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, Lunsford, Andrea, ed., 2009, p. 317-334)
The final problem with an individual debate round focus is the role of competition.
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approach to evidence are all critical aspects of being participants in the community.
However, the dismissal of the proposed resolution that the debaters have spent countless hours
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of the debate community to dismiss competition in the name of community change.
The larger problem with locating the “debate as activism” perspective within the competitive
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what is best for promoting solutions to diversity problems in the debate community.
If the debate community is serious about generating community change, then it is more
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and argue that the reaction is evidence that the issue is being discussed.
From our perspective, the discussion that results from these hostile situations is not a
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long community problems requires a tremendous effort by a great number of people. They link to their roleplaying bad offense. Our vision of debate makes debaters familiar with the terms of government, producing net better activism
Coverstone, 05 – masters in communication from Wake Forest and longtime debate coach
(Alan H., “Acting on Activism: Realizing the Vision of Debate with Pro-social Impact,” Paper presented at the National Communication Association Annual Conference, 11/17/05)
However, contest debate teaches students to combine personal experience with the language of political
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found a source of student antipathy to public argument in an interesting place.
I’m up against…their aversion to the role of public spokesperson that formal writing
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school and college curriculum. (Graff, 2003, p. 57)
The power to imagine public advocacy that actually makes a difference is one of the
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, and that language paves the way for genuine and effective political activism.
Debates over the relative efficacy of political strategies for pro-social change must confront
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that is a fundamental cause of voter and participatory abstention in America today. |
