A bimonthly open thread on climate solutions. Perhaps unsurprisingly this is always the most contentious comment thread on the site, but please try and be constructive and avoid going off on wild tangents.
“Two Magnox reactors (50 MWe and 200 MWe), under construction at Yongbyon and Taechon (North Korea). If completed, 200 MWe reactor would be capable of producing 220 kg of plutonium annually, enough for approximately 40 weapons. ”
Apparently there was only one test of Magnox-bred Pu in a weapon. The weapon fizzled (due to excessive spontaneous fission in the Pu) and there was never another test. The breeding of weapons-grade Pu in the UK was all done at Windscale, not in MAGNOX reactors.
your friend, the Nuclear Poet – is NOT thoughtful???” The guy who addresses others with: “Gentlemen and ruinables fags” would favour the “ruinables” providing 80% of power???
Allow me the right to be sarcastic sometimes. And just for fun:
There are approximately 6.02*10^23 guacas in a guacamole.
This is Avocado’s number.
Piotrsays
Piotr(408) “So if you can make 10 kg of nails, then as easily you could make 1 kg of microchips?”
Nuclear-Poet(422) Wrong. A Liberty ship is built out of steel, like a NuScale. Making nano-scale features on silicon chips is completely different.
Thank you, Captain Obvious – that was the point COMPLEXITY and PRICE are completely different. As jgnfld put it:
“You are specifically equating building what was essentially a welded barge with an obsolescent triple expansion steam engine to a modular nuclear reactor? ”
Until you show that you CAN churn up 10 reactors at the rate and for the price of building 1 Liberty ship – all your prancing around: “Not too shabby a decarbonization program, don’t you think?” will be premature.
Piotr: “So why we don’t have 100s of Idaho power plants ALREADY built?”
Nuclear Poet: “Because the opposition hasn’t let us build even ONE yet.”
You mean in the country, where the coal plants and mountaintop removal mining have no problem with getting their permits, where Trump was cutting environmental protection left and right – they would not let you built even ONE 10-reactor plant in the time and for the price of building ONE “essentially a welded barge with an obsolescent triple expansion steam engine”???
“Piotr is a self-defined bully, intentionally and constantly rude whether or not provoked ”
“bully and rude” – for pointing that Killian plans … do not add up? It was Killian’s OTHER Great Plan, Promoted for 10 years Already
“I have said for ten years: 90% reduction in consumption for the highest-consuming classes, and, globally, that roughly also equates to the highest-consuming nations Killian
I bullied Killian with rude calculations that the cut it is not likely to achieve his 80-90% reduction of CO2 emissions:
“For a mid-point: 85% – you would have to cut not only 90% of consump. of Europe N. America and Oceania, BUT ALSO 82.5% (sic!) cut in consumption in Africa, Latin America and Asia (details of the calculations in (Jan. 2021, FR: 297))”
And wasn’t this the thread after which our Killian began to …. “studiously avoiding” me???
Killian: “and has nothing of use to say wrt mitigation”
It’s a matter of the opinion – I posted various ideas and arguments on renewable energy, on matching different temporal nature of different renewables, on virtual storage by modifying the use of hydro and by matching the flexible demand to the current supply, on solar being at well suited to matching the peak demand (in the US the demand is the highest in summer and during day precisely like solar and opposite to thermal – which is the most effective in winter), discussed with Mike the idea of floating solar on the artificial reservoirs.
I’ll take _this_, over your ego driven (I have been telling you for 10 years but you fools didn’t listen) generalities without any realistic plan how to get there, and to make things tougher – shortening the transition time, by refusing to build new renewables – which means that the drop of 90% of CO2 emission that is supposed to happen over the next few decades would be achieved SOLELY by a massive reduction of the energy demand by the global population.
This reminds me the doctrinaires from Maoist China, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and Soviet Russia – those who envisioned the Great Jump Forward, the Cultural Revolutions, collectivization, ruralization of the population – they knew how it should work in theory, but had no idea how to get there. And the same unwillingness to compromise; the same: my way or the highway. And their results were opposite to what they hoped for.
But toutes proportions gardées – unlike them, you have no bayonets to force your great ideas onto others.
nigeljsays
Engineer Poet @422
“So if you can make 10 kg of nails, then as easily you could make 1 kg of microchips ?”
“Wrong. A Liberty ship is built out of steel, like a NuScale.”
A nuclear reactor is a great deal more complex than a liberty ship. And yes I’ve looked at a schematic of the nuscale design. You might stamp out the component pars of nuscale as quickly as a liberty ship, but assembly would probably be slower, and you would need time consuming quality control for something like a reactor.
That said, nuscale could be useful. We would be stupid to put all our electricity generation eggs in one basket at this stage of things, or fantasy dreams about massive levels of ‘degrowth’ beloved of the hard leftist dreamers. I’m also strongly on the side of the people that see different power sources complimenting each other.
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Scott E Strough @430
I do believe you are almost getting it regarding the overall structure of society. While power should probably be a bit more localised, you can’t properly organise a planet with a population of 7.8 billion people and counting without some form of national or regional power centres, meaning a centralised hierarchy of some sort. I’m not saying centralised power is wonderful necessarily, but you have to deal with the realities you find yourself with.
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Richard @434
“Lots scares me about the folks who run China. Military expansion is less of a worry for me than the surveillance state and the ongoing erasure of entire cultures.”
Same with me. I dont really think China is like the Borg (?) in Star Trek determined to assimilate the whole world by force or even coercion as such. They do however have their eyes on dominating certain other countries resources.
China doesn’t do internal diversity and tolerance very well. To that extent they are Borg like. It might due to their history, being an attempt to unify an originally very culturally diverse country starting with the early dynastic empires. It was quite a brutal unification at times. And its obviously left them suspicious of minorities, and they have never developed liberal institutions like western countries.
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Killian @436
Sure we have had many interactions but that doesn’t mean you answered all or most of my questions. I’m just trying to get across to you that a lot of questions by various people get left unanswered. Maybe you dont read many of them.
Piotr is not a bully. He just holds people to account and makes them face up to the fact they are wrong or evading issues. Admittedly he is very tenacious, but why shouldn’t people be made to face those things? He’s done it to me once or twice. This doesn’t mean hes necessarily always right, but imho he mostly is and where he isnt its very complicated and I dont have the time to respond, or hes just misinterpreted someone.
You ask why you should answer the questions of those people you listed who you find frustrating? Because those are the people you need to convince. There are many like them. Of course you can’t answer ALL questions but at least post a link.
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Killian @437
“Seriously, KEEP chem ag bc natural, regenerative ag is somehow dangerous?”
I note you said people can keep using chemicals if its decided locally as “necessary”.
Killiansays
431 nigelj says:
18 Jun 2021 at 3:48 PM
Michael Mann is critical of several elements of the “de-growth” and “simplicity” solutions to the climate problem in his book The New Climate War. He is particularly critical of those environmentalists who oppose building a substantial new energy grid, and who oppose things like carbon taxes and subsidies for renewable energy, and who promote climate doomerism which leads to loss of hope. Book review:
Mann is a legend when doing climate science, and rightly so. He has virtually no understanding of regenerative systems, etc., and thus is very, very wrong on solutions and, frankly, does us all a disservice in continuing to make far too much noise on the issue. Basically, on the solutions side he has risen to his level of incompetence.
As I have said to him before, since he shows a near-total lack of understanding WRT to mitigation, I leave doing climate science to him and he needs to leave mitigation to me, et al.
nigeljsays
Regarding the degrowth approach to climate change mitigation. Degrowth being aiming for zero economic growth and broadly speaking big cuts in levels of consumption etc,etc). Refer:
Article states : “In advanced economies, degrowth would involve a slowdown in manufacturing, accompanied by a significant switch to green technologies and far greater focus on environmental and ecological protection and repair.”
It will be very difficult to slow down manufacturing while ALSO switching to green technologies. I mean the green technologies would be a huge part of what we consume. So short term at least manufacturing might actually INCREASE.
“Not unexpectedly, the authors of the paper observe that the biggest obstacle to initiating a programme of global degrowth is political will.”
He’s right about that. And if we were to be extreme about degrowth, and put all our faith in promoting degrowth rather than renewables, etc and it doesnt work we are in hot water.
“And then there is, of course, the need to ensure the most vulnerable are cushioned from the economic effects.”
Yes absolutely right. All to be somehow sorted out in the next decade with our governmnets that move at light speed with such harmony.
“Numerous studies have shown that a high quality of life and improved well-being can be sustained at lower levels of energy use and GDP. Nonetheless, getting the global community to transition rapidly from hell-for-leather growth to a sustainable steady state remains a colossal ask.”
That’s what I’ve always said. Apparently it makes me an idiot with some people, but when another writer says it then its ok. Although whether you can maintain a high quality of life does depend on HOW MUCH LOWER use of energy and gdp, which isn’t quantified and investigated. It would also depend on how rapid the adjustment period is.
Joseph Tainter has it broadly correct. Simplifying is very hard. Its probaly going to be a long slow process so we will need to be also fighting climate change with some conventional tools like a new energy grid and transport system, even if they add SHORT TERM complexity.
E-P 422: WHY, in the face of our climate-change disaster, have we not KILLED THOSE RULES and the fucking evil scumbags who imposed and still insist upon them?
BPL: Because in a democracy, the citizens have rights? I know your ideal system has one leader whose pronouncements have the status of absolute law, and that the end justifies the means, and secret police exist that can arrest, torture, and execute people at will, but here in a democracy our hands are tied by ideas like jury trials, habeas corpus, etc.
419 “And like KM says @393 we have been given some so called general principles but not much on real world practical implementation”
“Principles ARE general rules, fool. But I have also laid out the design process, laid out the most important steps for any community to take, laid out my model elements.
That doesn’t answer my question.
Yes, it does.
What I’m obviously asking Killian, and I’m 90% sure Kevin is asking the same thing, is for some EXAMPLES of how these principles or rules or whatever have been applied in the real world, or at least a hypothetical example. How hard can that be to understand?
In the above, you both move the goalposts (from details of “Killian’s plan” to mere “examples” of the principles at work), i.e. lie, again, and are too damned obtuse to realize your question was answered multiple times in multiple posts – and that’s just on this FR!
How many goddamned times have I spoken of the principles in context to illustrate why something works or does not? Here’s just one example:
134
Killian says:
14 Mar 2021 at 6:17 AM
116 Nemesis says:
11 Mar 2021 at 4:24 PM
“Objectivity”, as in modern science, is not of much importance to them, they see the world from within, not through microscopes and telescopes. When they say, the trees, the animals, the universe and everything else talks to them, then it’s meant from an inner perspective, via the universal, intuitive interconnectedness of all beings.
Your first sentence is incorrect. While there is a mythology and belief system within which their knowledge is bound, the knowledge itself is extremely objective. All that emphasis on sitting and thinking is an example of the first principle of Permaculture: Observe. Long, thoughtful observation over quick, thoughtless action is preferable. This is similar in its essence to well begun is half done. Taking the time to tart correctly, carefully avoids having to redo what you have done.
The Kogi observe very carefully and think on what they observe almost obsessively. They don’t impose what they they think, they let the truth of the things emerge – which is another Permaculture principle: Don’t impose design, let it emerge from the site and the context.
I have posted numerous videos, etc., showing permaculture in action. Why lie?
“I have TOLD you, read, take a course. You WILL NOT fully understand these things so long as you keep yourself intentionally ignorant – all while running your mouth minimizing and denigration the only pathway to managing the climate crisis.”
The problem is these permaculture principles were mostly designed for GARDENING.
100% incorrect. There is no better example of your ignorance. Only permaculture trolls or outright liars trot out this bull.
To wit:
The aim is to create systems that are ecologically-sound and economically viable, which provide for their own needs, do not exploit or pollute, and are therefore sustainable in the long term.
Permaculture uses the inherent qualities of plants and animals combined with the natural characteristics of landscapes and structures to produce a life-supporting system for city and country, using the smallest practical area.
– Mollison and Holmgren, Permaculture One
“Rather than just reinventing “Oh we’ll just do what the grandparents did or the ancestors did,” can we use modern design thinking, ecological concepts, to maybe bring in some of those old ways, but tweak it to make it both more sustainable, lower impact on nature, but also more durable for the future.” ~ David Holmgren
“Permaculture is really a design system for both sustainable land use and sustainable living, and so it’s addressing both the production side of the conundrum and the consumption side and saying, why not bring those things back together?” ~ David Holmgren
“Small-scale systems actually make more sense than large-scale ones. You need a diversity rather than a monoculture. The systems need to be integrated rather than all segregated the way we [currently] do with town planning. You live over here, work over there, and you’ve got recreation over here, that at all scales, there were quite different design principles from what was usually in society.” ~ David Holmgren
“Permaculture is different everywhere, it’s only really the ethics of care of the earth, dare of people, and fair share and the design principles which are the universal parts of permaculture.” ~ David Holmgren
As I have long said, sustainability is ultimately local. I cannot tell you what *your* sustainability looks like, and *my* sustainability has nothing to do with yours. I have repeatedly used the analogy of sinking an old warship – utterly unsustainable – to build/rebuild a reef. Permaculture is a toolbox into which any and all tools go. The principles, guided by the ethics, are how you decide what to use from the toolbox.
BTW, I’m sure you completely missed the application of the principles of Zero Waste and Appropriate Technology (Use What You’ve Got) in that example though you’ve been given examples over and over.
Oh, and there’s an ENTIRE CHAPTER on “Invisible Structures” in the Designers Manual. An example of a treatment of the topic (something a non-troll would have researched before lying all over the internet): https://www.freepermaculture.com/invisible-structures/
As to the climate crisis, thats just an opinion.
Wrong. You do opinion, I do analysis.
There are other ways. I will come back to this elsewhere.
Don’t. Stop wasting people’s time. You lie. You deny. You speak from ignorance, not a base of knowledge.
You have zero value on this forum.
I spew thee out of my mouth for the last time, nigelKIA.
jgnfldsays
Re. “If you cannot appreciate Sappho, Lewis Carroll or Ogden Nash, there is no hope for you.”
FYI: That provides precisely zero evidence whatsoever as to whether you are, or are not, a ‘poet’.
“Two Magnox reactors (50 MWe and 200 MWe), under construction at Yongbyon and Taechon (North Korea). If completed, 200 MWe reactor would be capable of producing 220 kg of plutonium annually, enough for approximately 40 weapons. ”
Apparently there was only one test of Magnox-bred Pu in a weapon. The weapon fizzled (due to excessive spontaneous fission in the Pu) and there was never another test. The breeding of weapons-grade Pu in the UK was all done at Windscale, not in MAGNOX reactors.
your friend, the Nuclear Poet – is NOT thoughtful???” The guy who addresses others with: “Gentlemen and ruinables fags” would favour the “ruinables” providing 80% of power???
Allow me the right to be sarcastic sometimes. And just for fun:
There are approximately 6.02*10^23 guacas in a guacamole.
This is Avocado’s number.
Killiansays
430 Scott E Strough says:
18 Jun 2021 at 11:05 AM
@ 386 Killian,
“Climate activism and efforts are heavily skewed toward CO2, but excess atmospheric GHGs are not a cause, they are an effect of the actual cause, abuse of Earth’s resources/ecosystem services.”
Excellent point. Preaching to the choir here.
I think we’d get leaps and bounds further along the solutions pathway if this were widely understood.
“Mitigation and adaptation are focused on drawing down CO2, which *is* necessary, but without ecosystem restoration, drawing down CO2 will not save us from ecosystem collapse, thus societal collapse.”
Another excellent point! 2 for 2 so far.
My rather dormant blog was named A Perfect Storm Cometh (13 years ago) because of the multifaceted nature of the emergency.
“A comprehensive approach that draws down C, actively restores the ecosystem and avoids consuming finite/unsustainable resources and/or uses sustainable resources too quickly. And it must be done quickly. Biota are already at collapse levels, tipping points have been and soon will be passed, so solutions must be rapid.”
Brilliant! 3 for 3 I have been saying exactly the same for many years.
It only requires the willpower to see what is rather than imposing one’s wants and fears on reality, eh? Well, there is a special mix of knowledge bits that brings it all into strikingly clear focus, as I have outlined in a recent post here. Still, the outlines of the issues should be clear to any willing to see.
“Only regenerative simplicity meets all these criteria”
Ermmmmm Not so fast. Entire lines of logic skipped here.
Never make the mistake with me of thinking absence = absence of evidence. The key thing here is I do not spend much time talking of the transition because 1. it’s largely localized responses and 2. since so few understand the endpoint – what a regenerative system is – it will be virtually impossible to create that system, so the most important thing to do is make clear what that regenerative future must look like and then backcast from there to create the roadmap(s) for the transition. And, 3. I do lay out how we Opt Out of the current paradigm by Opting In to the new one. Design the new, it ends the old passively.
The premises in the beginning of your post do not necessarily support this conclusion.
1) Regenerative simplicity is poorly defined.
No, it isn’t, I’m was not writing a book.
2) Your link to the reference material while valid, does not really support the conclusion, but rather supports the premises.
The article was merely a trigger for making a point which I then expanded from.
It’s a great article, and very important, well written, etc… But is is in no way a comprehensive guide to achieving the results.
Certainly. But I didn’t say it was.
It certainly does not support “regenerative simplicity” as the “ONLY” solution. In fact it really doesn’t support regenerative simplicity as one of many solutions.
Again, it wasn’t said to be doing either. Those two things flow from my analysis.
Regenerative? Yes I can follow you there. Simplicity in this complex world? Maybe, maybe not. There is a case to be made that while it certainly is helpful in individual cases and small groups, the organizational requirements for a worldwide move to that exclusively by the entire worldwide population of 8 Billion would ultimately need a far more complex nuanced solution.
1. You need to understand the Regenerative Governance model to have this discussion at that depth. 2. Is there a choice? I refer again to the people on the beach after a massive earthquake and the sea having run away: It doesn’t matter if you *want* to run or not. There is exactly one option: Move.
Any time someone starts talking about what is economically, politically or socially “feasible,” I know they do not yet have a full grasp of the historical moment. Those are things to consider within a hierarchy, but at the top of that hierarchy is must run vs there are options. Everything else follows from that first condition. When you don’t know for certain, then as the climate scientists say, uncertainty is *not* your friend, and as any competent risk analyst will tell you, if the threat is existential, you must use that long-tail risk as your criteria.
Climate policy is so far following the most likely case. This is a suicidal approach. We’ll see whether the suicide is successful or not, or if maybe we choose a sane risk profile to work from.
Potentially a single powerful bad actor could collapse the whole thing like a house of cards.
This is a given that I need not specify in a short blog post, and even more so, it applies to any and all pathways, so is moot as an issue specific to my analyses.
We certainly need be vigilant about this happening as history has shown time and time again.
And Regenerative Governance is the single best insurance against that: True equality.
An example of what I mean. Regenerative Agriculture. That I can and do support 100%. We can indeed support 8 billion and even many more with regenerative agriculture and at the same time restore ecosystem function over vast areas.
Local regenerative economic networks I also support strongly, but not exclusively.
1. Regenerative Governance is fractal: Decisions are scale-based, a set of nested Commons ranging from neighborhood/small town to city/area/region to bio-regions to inter-bio-regional. This is simply not an issue. What is true is that you cannot do true regenerative systems at massive scales because of the resource management and local knowledge issues. What you *can* do is what permaculture is all about: Small, slow solutions. 1,000 small, walkable communities over a bio-region region vs large cities with far fewer small communities (the #s are just examples) is exactly how you do a regenerative system – and any good permaculture design process. Each small village will be sustainable because it will actually have higher biological diversity, fewer outside inputs, better use of resources, etc. E.g., all the wheat for a community would not be grown on one farm, the barley on another, the kitchen veggies on another. Rather, these – and everything else, would be grown at many different homesteads/farms, each growing a fraction of the total so that the community is resistant to localized disasters infestations, weather, etc. Planning would be coordinated within the community – and with any networked communities at appropriate scales, and even bio-regionally, if appropriate. E.g., let’s say there’s a neighboring bio-region that simply cannot grow grains, but has lots of hills and valleys great for significant animal management. These two bio-regions are certainly free to trade those two commodity groups, and likely would be very motivated to do so, and would plan to avoid over-production overall while growing in excess of their own needs to help the other bio-region meet their needs.
I strongly agree we have tipped the scale away from local far to heavily, and it will certainly result in economic and societal collapse in a sort of “boom bust cycle”.
Technically, collapse is going to happen as the definition is really quite simple. I posit we have already essentially collapsed, but just haven’t landed yet. You know, falling off a 100-story building, the falling man, asked how it’s going as he passes the 50th floor, says he’s doing fine so far.
But it’s a choice. Those who see chaos as inevitable do not, imo, understand the power of simplicity and the speed with which it can be achieved. I think a key to their pessimism is not correctly thinking on the key to all regenerative systems, and thus also to permaculture: Needs-based decision-making.
If you take it to the logical extreme as a thought experiment, what do we absolutely, unequivocally NEED? Three things: Water, food and (relatively) stable body temperature. (If you, Dear Readers, haven’t watched Naked and Afraid, do so. N&A XL, a 40-day and/or 60-day survival experience is more apt than the standard show of 21 days.) If one can go tabula rasa and let their brain ponder deep, need-based simplicity, then rebuild their Needs Analysis from that perspective, they should be able to understand just how drastically we can reduce consumption and how incredibly quickly.
Of course, the ngielKIA’s of the world will start to scream about cavemen and other stupidities, but I think you understand the thought experiment: We can strip society way down, and quickly, if we go with need-based thinking. The problem is not the what, it’s the how to get people to that mindset.
History also shows this happening over and over
History certainly can teach, but in this case is moot: Neither humanity nor the planet, et al., has ever been here before. There are no exemplars. We’ve never had all of humanity on the same beach watching the ocean disappear in the distance. We’ve never had to all run at the same instant. We’ve never all faced extinction together.
This time is different. Get that point across, things can change very, very quickly.
But local social and economic networks are also subject to local boom and bust cycles!
You’re still thinking in terms of economics. There are no economics in a true Commons. There are no jobs, there are no businesses, there is no pay, no bosses, etc. Yes, that is end point, but that is what we must first understand. The transition is where economics will be considered, but,frankly, a global Jubilee takes care of that in an instant. See: Steve Keen https://braveneweurope.com/steve-keen-reducing-debt-via-a-modern-debt-jubilee
(I first came across the jubilee concept as a regular user of The Oil Drum and quickly realized jubilee would be a necessary condition of a rapid simplification process.)
Rather than exclusively, we need a balance of both! When the local is stressed, the regional, national, or even international can help relieve the strain, preventing catastrophic domino effect as local networks fail and overload neighboring areas…
1. As stated, all scales are in the RegenGov model. Decisions are made based on the scale of the problem, not a power hierarchy or special interests, and any solutions must align up and down the scale, home to bio-region.
2. The kinds of networks that fail are fragile, hyper-efficient, chains of flows rather than anti-fragile, resilient, small, multiple-connection networks. This is exactly why permaculture designs are modular, implemented in chunks to confirm functionality, have multiple connections to and from any element of the design. A network of small communities is far more resilient than one city and huge farms of monocultures. The bio-region is a network, more like a spider web while the types of structures you are talking about, that we use now are extremely fragile, more like the current electricity grid where millions of homes lose power at the same time. A grid made up of micro-energy, as I proposed in 2008, would be extremely resilient, yet could be made to be able to plug in and out as needed. Let’s say a tornado takes out OhCrap County, then Don’tWorry, Be Happy and Smile! Counties could all plug in and provide the needed emergency energy. E.g.
Change is needed, but I think exclusively local regenerative simplicity would eventually fail almost as badly. Again, this is where balance is key.
Nope! :-)
Keep up the good work though.
Same to you.
Don’t get discouraged by the trolls.
Never am – just disgusted with them.
The direction you advocate moving is certainly needed
As more and more clearly see.
even if we might have minor disagreements on the extent.
Don’t worry, you’ll get there.
;-)
Good to have a sane conversation on these points. Thank you very much.
Even when making a fair point, E-P tends to ‘over-egg his beer.’ Case in point:
A NuScale unit weighs about 700 tons and generates perhaps 77 MW. A wind turbine tower weighs about 71 tons, and the wind turbine generates FAR less than 1/10 the output of a NuScale.
Well, hold up there a moment. “FAR” less? A bit vague, no–especially compared with the specificity of 77 MW & 71 tons? Offshore turbines are running up to 12 MW these days, which is ~1/6 the power of a Nuscale–but sticking to onshore, 2-3 MW turbines seem to be the norm. For instance, Adani in India:
So, a bit less than 1/30th the ouput. Is that “FAR less?” You judge. But it at least lets us make a more precise comparison between the Nuscale power module (~700 tons) and a single (unspecified) wind turbine (71 ton tower + 56 ton nacelle + 36 ton blades = 163 tons). Where did those numbers come from, you ask? E-P, here–
And let’s not mention the hundreds of tons of concrete in the tower base, or the nacelle at 56 tons and blades at 36 tons.
As you see, I would prefer to mention all of above. The tower base is particularly interesting to me, as if we *do* mention its “hundreds of tons” of concrete, we should also mention the foundation for the Nuscale–the 700 ton figure is good for the power module “as shipped from the fabricator,” and so excludes the foundation. I looked in vain for an estimate on the concrete needed for that purpose, but did find a design spec, which shows it to be, er, a non-trivial matter–PDF downloadable from here:
So, Blue Creek used about 2x the concrete as Vogtle 3, and since its nameplate capacity is a tad over 1/4 that of Vogtle 3, the latter is about 8x more efficient in the (somewhat contrived) metric of tons of concrete per MW–and that’s before you account for capacity factor. So I’m bound to say again that E-P’s point is fair–in terms of brute mass of material involved. (I’m not so sure about the *complexity* of the materials–considering the exigencies of manufacturing fuel rod bundles, heat exchangers and so on, but let that slide.)
But let’s go back to BPL’s original comment. He gave the edge to wind turbines in “materials, labor, and time to put up…” E-P ignores those terms.
I’m not aware of hard numbers on “labor”, but I think “time to put up” is to some extent a proxy for it anyway. So, another quick comparison:
Vogtle build time from early planning: 2006-2022 (latest estimated), or 16 years
Nuscale Idaho project, from site use permit: 2016-2030 (estimated), or 14 years
Blue Creek Wind Farm, from certification of public need: 2010-2012, plus a guesstimated 2 years of pre-planning–perhaps 4 years total.
The build times:
Vogtle: 13 years (2009 site prep-2022, projected)
Nuscale: 5 years (projected–2025-2030)
BCWF: 2 years (2010-2012)
For climate, I’d say that time is far more to the point than concrete–carbon-intensive though the latter currently is.
“Economic growth is closely linked to increases in production, consumption and resource use and has detrimental effects on the natural environment and human health. It is unlikely that a long-lasting, absolute decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures and impacts can be achieved at the global scale; therefore, societies need to rethink what is meant by growth and progress and their meaning for global sustainability.”
Yes, but deliberately forcing rates of economic growth down could be problematic and overshoot end up causing a recession and it seems unlikely that governments and populations will be that enthusiastic about the idea of deliberate degrowth.
However its important to realise that rates of economic growth have been trending down fairly steadily in Europe and America ever since the 1970’s. If the trend continues they might hit zero in a few decades of their own accord without major dislocations. The system might adjust naturally. You can check individual countries on webites like tradingeconomics.co. Imho society should let rates of economic growth continue to slow naturally and not try to impede this process by printing large amounts of money etc, etc.
“Countless internet communities are devoted to simple living to increase quality of life, reduce personal stress and reduce environmental pressures.”
Anyone else see the amazing irony of these people talking away about simplicity on one of the most complex structures ever devised, the internet and is computers?
“Plan B (degrowth) is extremely challenging. Economic growth is highly correlated with health and well being indicators, such as life expectancy and education. Thanks to economic growth, the portion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty, as defined by the poverty line of USD 1.90 a day, fell from 36% in 1990 to 10% in 2015 (World Bank, 2020b). ”
Exactly. Phasing down economic growth is going to be a complex exercise that might have to be different in different places, if it happens.
“In terms of doughnut economics, it is possible that the doughnut between basic human needs and planetary boundaries is very thin (O’Neill et al., 2018).”
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
“However, economic growth has not contributed to decreasing inequality, either between or within countries (Piketty, 2013). ”
Economic growth is not intended to reduce inequality any more than computers are capable of fying an egg. Economic growth is just an increase in aggregate wealth. To decrease inequality you always need policies of wealth redistribution. This is true in any community, including industrial society and simple living communities. Doh!
Response: Howls of outrage from the usual suspects.
Richard Caldwellsays
Nigel: Thinking of your response to Kevin, it doesn’t need to be where WE Live. It just has to be come actual examples from somewhere, perhaps where YOU live. It doesn’t really matter as long as its a western country because that is where most change would need to happen
RtW: You touch on the real issue. Yep, Killian’s principles are reasonable. So are mine. But just how relevant are they?
Remember MacGyver? Put him in a deadly trap with six random items and he’ll escape.
Similarly, put him in a degraded environment without significant external help and he’ll have great fun figuring out how to survive.
That’s why Killian talks of principles instead of the concrete. MacGyvers don’t know what they are walking into. “Bring a lateral mind (principles) and notice all the diverse stuff lying around”.
But few have the lateralization of the mind required to succeed in such situations. Most folks use a single index, maybe three. And since that most unreal metric, money, is often enthroned as the primary index, reality has difficulty getting beyond “current record” levels of data/ analysis.
But everything is related to everything else. And many records are needed for relations to be enlightening. Without myriad indexes how do you folks figure anything out?
So, Killian, I agree that your stuff works and is incredibly simple to understand.
But not by Them. Whatcha gonna do about Them?
Which brings up my “mass death” question. Gonna dive deep or splutter for breath and bile at the surface?
Richard Caldwellsays
Nigel,
No, I don’t assume much of anything. Instead, I’ll take a guess while inserting a big “incomplete” flag, such as I just did with Killian. Hypothses are perhaps the most important part of the scientific method. Bad ones can consume a career (Iris effect?). Good ones can slice through decades of thought in a week or ten.
And yes, I like to use the declarative form for questions since it elicits a reaction that gives additional information. So yep, I will ‘pretend claim’. You caught me. ;-)
Richard the Weaversays
Killian: Seriously, KEEP chem ag bc natural, regenerative ag is somehow dangerous?
Unbelievable what
RtW: finding a tick attached to one’s body will drive one to do.
I nuked my land this spring. Do you think an initial purge is contraindicated?
Richard the Weaversays
Piotr,
Yes, so many posters bring conclusions and search for confirmation. Perhaps the grain of truth in DBB’s claim about non-proliferability was the natural poisoning that occurs during a thorium cycle. EP shot that down, giving a terrorist’s work around.
But why bother with radiation? Way too easy to detect. Way regulated.
Terrorist, dude! Grind up some old lead acid batteries and then let your twisted mind run wild.
(Smart and well-organized terrorists might make a profit by using a waste disposal company paired with a yard care company as a front for a scheme to use Dioxin or other industrial waste to negate the value of a city’s wealthy neighborhoods.
As a flourish, drop the water tower.
Easy. Nobody dies. The rich are wayyyyy inconvenienced while fighting with their insurance company about their policy’s “acts of war” exclusion…
Wise terrorists go after the wealthy’s lifestyle while protecting life. Did Ireland beat Britain by calling in pub bombings so as to give enough time to evacuate but no more?
So no. Terrorism is not a problem that can be solved by restricting one substance. Lots of stuff is more dangerous than nuclear waste and yet we keep churning all those other (unnamed) poisons out.
Yeah, terrorists tend to be enraged, which means that they tend towards violence and generally fail in their goal to help improve the world. If only they’d follow the Irish model…
Killian,
The best thing I have seen you say so far:
“Design the new, it ends the old passively.”
Not sure if passively will get it done fast enough, maybe, but that comment was certainly pithy, and in fact was the main point of my earlier post which RealClimate apparently never approved. :( So no one ever saw. :(
Just like the quote from a silly movie, “If you build it, they will come.”
This is what I explained about my plan for local modular autarky, by building that transitional bridge. Maybe another time when RealClimate is more accepting, I will try posting again what that would look like in practical terms. The best part about modular autarky is that it is far more robust and resilient a structure than current unsustainable systems we typically use now. It can be defeated, but in order for the centralized industrial systems we have now to defeat it, they would need to do what it does better than it would do! So a plan using modular autarky to mitigate AGW would either take over, or if defeated, force other actors to beat it at its own game….. AGW mitigation. So even if we lose, we win. ;)
It’s not unlike how Tesla gained enough support that all the major auto manufacturers were forced to also start making electric cars, or else fade away as Tesla and other new electric vehicle manufacturers “built the new, causing the old to end passively”. (paraphrasing your quote) Now it doesn’t matter if Tesla wins or GM or Ford, or anyone else. We will transition to electric. Tesla forced this because the dominant manufacturers failed to meet consumer demand, and instead tried to manipulate demand. Without Tesla, does anyone really believe Ford would be coming out with a fully electric pick-up truck next year?
The merchants of doubt are exactly the same regarding AGW mitigation with regenerative agriculture. Rather than meeting demand for AGW mitigation and local sustainable agricultural systems, they try to use propaganda to manipulate demand. But if we can successfully build a network meeting that demand using Modular Autarky, they will come, and the system will change. The only unknown is whether they decide to beat us by doing what we do better than us, or if they stick to their own centralized “one size fits all” models and fade away. So far it seems they are opting for the “greenwashing” of the status quo. Modular Autarky can force the issue.
nigeljsays
Killian @460, please post a couple of the videos on permaculture in action again. I can’t recall seeing any relevant to what we are discussing, because I don’t read ALL your stuff, and I often skim the details of these permaculture issues. It needs to be relevant to modern western societies and issues they face, especially balancing sustainable living with the use of modern technology.
nigeljsays
Richard Caldwell @468, I’m not as entirely convinced as you that these permaculture principles are ‘reasonable’. Im really asking K for some examples of the application of these principles, specifically modern western society, so I can decide ‘if’ the principles are valid. Proof if you like. Permaculture principles look simple and elegant and I get where most of them are coming from. But then so does socialism / communism and we know that doesn’t always end well (refer Piotrs examples back a few comments).
Yes the success of the application of permaculture principles depends on individual ability. This is why I’m sceptical…as in my previous comment they look very complex to actually apply. In our modern societies conventional decision making places the complex decisions in the hands of a very small number of experts, while the simplified world consists of rather small groups of people trying to figure things out ‘locally’. Maybe it would work at scale. We don’t know.
nigeljsays
Richard Caldwell @468 says “Remember MacGyver?” Yes I watched the first version. Great show, makes your point well.
You mean in the country, where the coal plants and mountaintop removal mining have no problem with getting their permits
There are states whose senators are essentially elected by coal interests. There are no such powerful interests on the side of nuclear power. I note as an aside that this has NOT stopped the rapid displacement of coal by natural gas.
where Trump was cutting environmental protection left and right
Apparently a lot of nuclear red tape was also stripped away, because otherwise the Oklo reactor would still be tied up in approvals. But this came too late for NuScale.
they would not let you built even ONE 10-reactor plant in the time and for the price of building ONE “essentially a welded barge with an obsolescent triple expansion steam engine”???
A NuScale NSS section is smaller than some steel culvert pipes. The steam generator is a single helical tube. Stuff is fabricated on this scale all the time. For that matter, the reactor modules are movable by crane and thus replaceable; if you have a bad one, you just swap it out and scrap it.
There’s probably more but I’m not going to spend time digging it up right now.
Piotrsays
David B. Benson (453): “ The last magnox reactor closed 6 years ago ”
Irrelevant to your claim, since your PATERNALISTIC lecturing of others:
“ For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium ”
WAS UNIVERSAL – ergo to falsify “CANNOT” it is enough to show 1 past, present, or future POSSIBILITY of use “a power reactor” to “make weapons plutonium”.
Magnox was just first hit on Google, but if you insist:
Reuters: APRIL 21, 2021: “UPDATE 1-China reactors will yield weapons-grade plutonium -U.S. commander”
“A new generation of nuclear power facilities that China is developing could produce large amounts of plutonium that could be used to make nuclear weapons, Navy Admiral Charles Richard, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command warned lawmakers this week.”
But hey, what that Chief of the US Strategic Command guy could possible know, when the world-known expert on nuclear power, the one and only David B. Benson, LEFT NO ROOM FOR A DOUBT:
“ For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium ”
David B. Benson, nuclear handle: “Actinide”
Benson locutum, causa finita.
Piotrsays
Richard the Weaver (471): “DBB’s claim about non-proliferability was the natural poisoning that occurs during a thorium cycle. EP shot that down, giving a terrorist’s work around.”
;-) Don’t you love when they shot each other in the foot? ;-). Perhaps it’s the EP’s payback for DBB calling him not “thoughtful” (because EP does not see 80% of future energy coming from renewables).
RtW: “Terrorist, dude! Grind up some old lead acid batteries and then let your twisted mind run wild”
Long term effects – say carcinogen – effect of the chemical toxicity + ionizing radiation IARC: “Group 1: Carcinogenic to humans”
lead much less – “Group 2B carcinogen by the IARC” (probably a carcinogen)
RtW: But why bother with radiation? Way regulated
With 100,000 DBB nukes built primarily in developing countries, of ten politically unstable and prone to civil war and insurgences?
RtW: “If only they’d follow the Irish model…”
Yeah, if only the suicide bombers wanted to be more reasonable …
Piotrsays
Nuclear-Poet (451): “Apparently there was only one test of Magnox-bred Pu in a weapon.”
This was first found example falsifying DBBenson UNIVERSAL, during his magnanimous
“helping relieve your current state of ignorance”:
“For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium” David B. Benson
Paternalistic tone in conjunction with universality of the above claim suggests to the reader that such thing is not even theoretically possible (“CANNOT be used”). Whether it was practical or not – is irrelevant to such a bold claim. And if you don’t like that ancient example, how about a recent one:
WASHINGTON, April 21 2021 (Reuters) “A new generation of nuclear power facilities that China is developing could produce large amounts of plutonium that could be used to make nuclear weapons, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command warned lawmakers this week.”
“DBB: For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium“, eh?
Nuclear-Poet (451): “Allow me the right to be sarcastic sometimes.”
The form of your language was discussed elsewhere, e.g. my: (447). Here I quoted your “ruinables fags” for a completely different reason: an illustration of your feelings toward the renewables that make you highly unlikely to advocate that 80% of energy needs to be renewable, which is a DBB’s criterion for belonging to: “the most thoughtful commenters on the future of the grid“.
But given your recent putting yourself, even if unwittingly, at the level of “Sappho, Lewis Carroll or Ogden Nash”, your:”Gentlemen and ruinables fags” certainly admits you as their peer. For indeed, the pun is the highest form of an argument!
And calling your opponents:”fags” – SUBLIME sarcasm!
Killiansays
470 Richard the Weaver says:
22 Jun 2021 at 2:21 PM
Killian: Seriously, KEEP chem ag bc natural, regenerative ag is somehow dangerous?
Unbelievable what
RtW: finding a tick attached to one’s body will drive one to do.
I nuked my land this spring. Do you think an initial purge is contraindicated?
Example: Farmer calls says he’s got a grasshopper problem. Designer checks it out and advises against various responses, such as chemicals, and observes, you don’t have an overabundance of grasshoppers, you’ve got a deficit of birds. Then they work out bringing turkeys in from another farm.
So, like everyone else here, you seem to think a design solution is cookie cutter. They are not. Let’s say, for example, you need a BIG crop ASAP to avoid starvation this summer. Do you use chemicals since your soil is already saturated and you need a little longer game plan for a transition to regenerative? Probably, if you can’t get food from any other source.
There are no absolutes, no rules, there are principles to use in design decisions, just as all forms of engineering have (we should change the name of permaculture to TEK/Ecological Engineering), ethics to guide them, and a design process.
But you are completely missing the point nigelKIA repeatedly makes: He claims we need to keep poisoning the land and destroying our soils and waterways to… save the world because actually saving the world with regenerative practices is… dangerous or untrustworthy or some stupid shit. I paraphrase, but only in word choice.
E-P 446: Generating several GW(e) from a few tens of acres of power plant and leaving a multi-hundred acre buffer zone is far more “regenerative” than meeting human needs from solar PV or biomass. Why can’t you grasp this?
BPL: Maybe because it’s not true?
Richard the Weaversays
BPL: By including the phrase “beyond their declared boundaries” you tacitly assume their declared boundaries are legitimate.
RtW: No, it was separating border disputes from invasions. They stem from different motivations and represent different risks.
Invaders are presumed to be “wrong”. Both sides in a border dispute are presumed to have ‘standing’. Of course, in either case details tell the tale.
___________
Piotr: If it were such a great idea why it hasn’t been widely applied
RtW: That question is lame in a literal sense. It begs for help: “is it a teensy bit more expensive or massively more expensive?”
And more importantly, “Was it too much of a bother back when climate wasn’t an issue? Going outside one’s wheelhouse is risky”
EP has provided an example of a district heat nuke. I like the idea of neighborhood nukes. Pretty much as small as is practical. Zero on-site maintenance. Heats the neighborhood pool, the greenhouse, the buildings, and hot water.
Talk to someone from Iceland about living with essentially unlimited access to hot water. That hot tub you feel guilty about? With a neighborhood nuke around lose those carbon-spewing blues the American way (by getting a bigger one).
I’ve also read about household nukes, which use nuclear waste’s decay to supply heat and electricity.
Richard the Weaversays
BPL: By including the phrase “beyond their declared boundaries” you tacitly assume their declared boundaries are legitimate.
RtW: No, it was separating border disputes from invasions. They stem from different motivations and represent different risks.
Invaders are presumed to be “wrong”. Both sides in a border dispute are presumed to have ‘standing’. Of course, in either case details tell the tale.
___________
Piotr: If it were such a great idea why it hasn’t been widely applied
RtW: That question is lame in a literal sense. It begs for help: “is it a teensy bit more expensive or massively more expensive?”
And more importantly, “Was it too much of a bother back when climate wasn’t an issue? Going outside one’s wheelhouse is risky”
EP has provided an example of a district heat nuke. I like the idea of neighborhood nukes. Pretty much as small as is practical. Zero on-site maintenance. Heats the neighborhood pool, the greenhouse, the buildings, and hot water.
Talk to someone from Iceland about living with essentially unlimited access to hot water. That hot tub you feel guilty about? With a neighborhood nuke around you can lose those carbon-spewing blues the American way (by getting a bigger hot tub).
I’ve also read about household nukes, which use nuclear waste’s decay to supply heat and electricity.
So no citations, not even even white papers, to support your claims that power reactors cannot be used to manufacture weapons plutonium. I note that Piotr provided a reference from the World Nuclear Association that says power reactors can be used. What do the World Nuclear Association and the Union of Concerned Scientists know about nuclear power anyway?
Also no references or citations to support your ignorant claim that most observers claim that 20% nuclear power can be used in a future energy system. I provided three peer-reviewed references that use zero nuclear power. I could provide 20 additional references. None use any significant nuclear power.
I guess we will have to weigh your unsupported opinion against the peer reviewed literature.
quoting from comments in Two graphs show the path to 1.5 degrees
Just to ignore the historical and physical facts before our eyes is no solution, it’s not science, it’s just ignoring reality, it’s just silliness. As the last thirty years have overwhelmingly demonstrated: continuing this silliness will achieve exactly the opposite as intended. As George Monbiot has written: *the so-called optimism is exactly what has resulted in nothing at all happening until now, except business as extremely usual*. Remember Chamberlain and the optimism that resulted in WW II… https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/04/two-graphs-show-the-path-to-1-5-degrees/#comment-790541
Maybe Stefan could learn something from the majority of replies he got, who all seem to be on the same track “…. it’s not possible, please STOP pretending it is or even a theoretical possibility.” I wish Stefan and others were compelled to read all these comments.
The day climate scientists are running for public office all over the world and are organizing protests or mass riots by Scientists at the upcoming Glasgow COP then maybe I might *believe* them again and take what they say in public and publish more seriously.
There’s more than enough scientific evidence already to clearly know what the issues are … what’s needed is rational appropriate action from here on in.
which is Staunch action to encourage and drive change people’s thinking. To effect how they vote and what they will protest about. Starting with the climate scientists could not hurt.
PS the funniest LOL impossible item in the article to me was that emissions need to be cut by 50% by 2030 in order to make 1.5C “possible”… that’s too funny, and sad.
– This requires roughly a halving of global CO2 emissions by 2030
Oh boy! That’s a classic fantasy belief if ever there was one.
Many thanks to the majority of commenters on this short article about 1.5C. Good to see even if it’s too late, at least they are well founded and real and true.
Killiansays
Caldwell: You will get a response to a question that is germane, not to intentionally provocative, yet obtuse, nonsense.
The Chinese reactor in question is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFR-600
which is a larger version of the EBR-II. One can read about the later in “Plentiful Energy” which throughly describes the reprocessing of once-through nuclear fuel. There is no possible way to make a bomb out of that. I suppose it could be used for a so-called dirty bomb, just providing the additional mess.
The basic fact is that weapons Plutonium is mostly Pu239 and these fast reactors produce to much Pu240 for an implosion device.
Maybe Engineer-Poet would care to provide more detail.
nigeljsays
Killian @482 says “But you are completely missing the point nigelKIA repeatedly makes: He claims we need to keep poisoning the land and destroying our soils and waterways to… save the world because actually saving the world with regenerative practices is… dangerous or untrustworthy or some stupid shit. I paraphrase, but only in word choice.”
Very colourful terms and very misleading. What I’ve ACTUALLY said is that regenerative agriculture looks useful in a general environmental sense, but I doubt it can equal or better the yields of industrial agriculture. I can’t find any hard peer reviewed scientific evidence in a scientific journal or similar that regenerative agriculture can equal or better the yields of industrial agriculture, and nobody has posted any on this website.
The methods proposed certainly SUGGEST a reduction in yields / productivity given you are generally removing the use of chemicals designed to boost output and changing other high yield practices. At the very least regenerative agriculture all looks very labour intensive which could also ultimately impact on yields and productivity. As a consequence, I’ve said we may have to continue to use some industrial pesticides and fertilisers for a period of time time, even if at reduced levels, until other solutions are found or everything gradually adjusts to the new farming system.
You responded to KM and said the decision to use industrial chemicals is ultimately local, And you state in your latest post that in certain situations you may need to use chemicals. So you don’t seem to object to at least SOME limited use of these chemicals….. poisoning waterways and soils. Oh the delicious irony there for all to see.
Richard the Weaver (486):
Piotr: “If it were such a great idea why it hasn’t been widely applied”
RtW(486): “ That question is lame in a literal sense. It begs for help: “is it a teensy bit more expensive or massively more expensive? ”
Do you know the meaning of “literal“? It is NOT: “a word often used to make one’s claim appear more impressive”. To be “literal” my question would have to limp around with a cane or a crutch and be able to ask the passers-by for change.
My question may be good, but is not _that_ good.
RtW(486): “is it a teensy bit more expensive or massively more expensive?”
You Nuclear Guru didn’t discuss whether that the nukes are “teensy bit” or “massively MORE expensive” – he implied that they massive LESS expensive – in effect compared the complexity and therefore cost of a 10-reactor power plant with making … one Liberty ship.
Hence “my literally lame question”, with a tip of the hat to that lame Fermi guy: “ If it were such a great idea, why it hasn’t been widely applied”
But since you missed it – here is an actual back-of-the envelope estimate:
(10/12)*(4.2 to 6.1)*10^3/37 => the cost of a 10 unit nuke rose from 95 to 138 Liberty ships.
So your Nuclear Guru, claiming to be a good Engineer, got the cost of the nukes wrong by … TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. Would that be “a teensy bit” or “massive”?
RtW:”EP has provided an example of a district heat nuke. I like the idea of neighborhood nukes. Pretty much as small as is practical.”
and since you have already liked that idea in your (406) – I have answered it in my (432), by listing several falsifiable arguments, why its applicability would be limited. You … ignored my answer to your post and … now repeat to me how you like that idea? That …. really makes for a productive discussion.
RtW:” That hot tub you feel guilty about? With a neighborhood nuke around you can lose those carbon-spewing blues the American way (by getting a bigger hot tub)”
Sure, until they see the price for their share of all pipeline infrastructure that has to be put into the ground for them to bring the hot water. That’s why in the post you ignored I argued that district heating would not likely be economic UNLESS you supply both hot water AND a lot of home heating for many weeks in a year. Not that many places like that in the developing world, where most of the nukes will have to be built.
And you may be overestimating the appeal of the hot bathtub in Sahara, Middle East, Bangladesh, or Brazil.
And why pay $$ for the pipelines, when leaving your tub uncovered for the day would do?
One of the later posts at The Oil Drum was an analysis of how long our forests would last if we tried to replace natural gas with wood. I can’t find it, sadly. The answer was typically a year-count you can do on one hand.
I’ve also read about household nukes, which use nuclear waste’s decay to supply heat and electricity.
Sadly, that’s just not something that can scale. The heat generation of even high-level “waste” is fairly small once you get down to levels where you can store it in dry casks (the figure I find is about 1 kW/fuel assembly and ~20 kW per cask). There just wouldn’t be enough to go around.
@418:
Apparently there was only one test of Magnox-bred Pu in a weapon. The weapon fizzled (due to excessive spontaneous fission in the Pu) and there was never another test. The breeding of weapons-grade Pu in the UK was all done at Windscale, not in MAGNOX reactors.
Allow me the right to be sarcastic sometimes. And just for fun:
There are approximately 6.02*10^23 guacas in a guacamole.
This is Avocado’s number.
Piotr(408) “So if you can make 10 kg of nails, then as easily you could make 1 kg of microchips?”
Nuclear-Poet(422) Wrong. A Liberty ship is built out of steel, like a NuScale. Making nano-scale features on silicon chips is completely different.
Thank you, Captain Obvious – that was the point COMPLEXITY and PRICE are completely different. As jgnfld put it:
“You are specifically equating building what was essentially a welded barge with an obsolescent triple expansion steam engine to a modular nuclear reactor? ”
Until you show that you CAN churn up 10 reactors at the rate and for the price of building 1 Liberty ship – all your prancing around: “Not too shabby a decarbonization program, don’t you think?” will be premature.
Piotr: “So why we don’t have 100s of Idaho power plants ALREADY built?”
Nuclear Poet: “Because the opposition hasn’t let us build even ONE yet.”
You mean in the country, where the coal plants and mountaintop removal mining have no problem with getting their permits, where Trump was cutting environmental protection left and right – they would not let you built even ONE 10-reactor plant in the time and for the price of building ONE “essentially a welded barge with an obsolescent triple expansion steam engine”???
The last magnox reactor closed 6 years ago:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnox
“Piotr is a self-defined bully, intentionally and constantly rude whether or not provoked ”
“bully and rude” – for pointing that Killian plans … do not add up? It was Killian’s OTHER Great Plan, Promoted for 10 years Already
“I have said for ten years: 90% reduction in consumption for the highest-consuming classes, and, globally, that roughly also equates to the highest-consuming nations Killian
I bullied Killian with rude calculations that the cut it is not likely to achieve his 80-90% reduction of CO2 emissions:
“For a mid-point: 85% – you would have to cut not only 90% of consump. of Europe N. America and Oceania, BUT ALSO 82.5% (sic!) cut in consumption in Africa, Latin America and Asia (details of the calculations in (Jan. 2021, FR: 297))”
And wasn’t this the thread after which our Killian began to …. “studiously avoiding” me???
Killian: “and has nothing of use to say wrt mitigation”
It’s a matter of the opinion – I posted various ideas and arguments on renewable energy, on matching different temporal nature of different renewables, on virtual storage by modifying the use of hydro and by matching the flexible demand to the current supply, on solar being at well suited to matching the peak demand (in the US the demand is the highest in summer and during day precisely like solar and opposite to thermal – which is the most effective in winter), discussed with Mike the idea of floating solar on the artificial reservoirs.
I’ll take _this_, over your ego driven (I have been telling you for 10 years but you fools didn’t listen) generalities without any realistic plan how to get there, and to make things tougher – shortening the transition time, by refusing to build new renewables – which means that the drop of 90% of CO2 emission that is supposed to happen over the next few decades would be achieved SOLELY by a massive reduction of the energy demand by the global population.
This reminds me the doctrinaires from Maoist China, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and Soviet Russia – those who envisioned the Great Jump Forward, the Cultural Revolutions, collectivization, ruralization of the population – they knew how it should work in theory, but had no idea how to get there. And the same unwillingness to compromise; the same: my way or the highway. And their results were opposite to what they hoped for.
But toutes proportions gardées – unlike them, you have no bayonets to force your great ideas onto others.
Engineer Poet @422
“So if you can make 10 kg of nails, then as easily you could make 1 kg of microchips ?”
“Wrong. A Liberty ship is built out of steel, like a NuScale.”
A nuclear reactor is a great deal more complex than a liberty ship. And yes I’ve looked at a schematic of the nuscale design. You might stamp out the component pars of nuscale as quickly as a liberty ship, but assembly would probably be slower, and you would need time consuming quality control for something like a reactor.
That said, nuscale could be useful. We would be stupid to put all our electricity generation eggs in one basket at this stage of things, or fantasy dreams about massive levels of ‘degrowth’ beloved of the hard leftist dreamers. I’m also strongly on the side of the people that see different power sources complimenting each other.
——————————————————–
Scott E Strough @430
I do believe you are almost getting it regarding the overall structure of society. While power should probably be a bit more localised, you can’t properly organise a planet with a population of 7.8 billion people and counting without some form of national or regional power centres, meaning a centralised hierarchy of some sort. I’m not saying centralised power is wonderful necessarily, but you have to deal with the realities you find yourself with.
————————————————
Richard @434
“Lots scares me about the folks who run China. Military expansion is less of a worry for me than the surveillance state and the ongoing erasure of entire cultures.”
Same with me. I dont really think China is like the Borg (?) in Star Trek determined to assimilate the whole world by force or even coercion as such. They do however have their eyes on dominating certain other countries resources.
China doesn’t do internal diversity and tolerance very well. To that extent they are Borg like. It might due to their history, being an attempt to unify an originally very culturally diverse country starting with the early dynastic empires. It was quite a brutal unification at times. And its obviously left them suspicious of minorities, and they have never developed liberal institutions like western countries.
—————————-
Killian @436
Sure we have had many interactions but that doesn’t mean you answered all or most of my questions. I’m just trying to get across to you that a lot of questions by various people get left unanswered. Maybe you dont read many of them.
Piotr is not a bully. He just holds people to account and makes them face up to the fact they are wrong or evading issues. Admittedly he is very tenacious, but why shouldn’t people be made to face those things? He’s done it to me once or twice. This doesn’t mean hes necessarily always right, but imho he mostly is and where he isnt its very complicated and I dont have the time to respond, or hes just misinterpreted someone.
You ask why you should answer the questions of those people you listed who you find frustrating? Because those are the people you need to convince. There are many like them. Of course you can’t answer ALL questions but at least post a link.
————————–
Killian @437
“Seriously, KEEP chem ag bc natural, regenerative ag is somehow dangerous?”
I note you said people can keep using chemicals if its decided locally as “necessary”.
431 nigelj says:
18 Jun 2021 at 3:48 PM
Michael Mann is critical of several elements of the “de-growth” and “simplicity” solutions to the climate problem in his book The New Climate War. He is particularly critical of those environmentalists who oppose building a substantial new energy grid, and who oppose things like carbon taxes and subsidies for renewable energy, and who promote climate doomerism which leads to loss of hope. Book review:
Mann is a legend when doing climate science, and rightly so. He has virtually no understanding of regenerative systems, etc., and thus is very, very wrong on solutions and, frankly, does us all a disservice in continuing to make far too much noise on the issue. Basically, on the solutions side he has risen to his level of incompetence.
As I have said to him before, since he shows a near-total lack of understanding WRT to mitigation, I leave doing climate science to him and he needs to leave mitigation to me, et al.
Regarding the degrowth approach to climate change mitigation. Degrowth being aiming for zero economic growth and broadly speaking big cuts in levels of consumption etc,etc). Refer:
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/science-and-technology/climate-change-degrowth-global-warming-bill-gates-geoengineering
Article states : “In advanced economies, degrowth would involve a slowdown in manufacturing, accompanied by a significant switch to green technologies and far greater focus on environmental and ecological protection and repair.”
It will be very difficult to slow down manufacturing while ALSO switching to green technologies. I mean the green technologies would be a huge part of what we consume. So short term at least manufacturing might actually INCREASE.
“Not unexpectedly, the authors of the paper observe that the biggest obstacle to initiating a programme of global degrowth is political will.”
He’s right about that. And if we were to be extreme about degrowth, and put all our faith in promoting degrowth rather than renewables, etc and it doesnt work we are in hot water.
“And then there is, of course, the need to ensure the most vulnerable are cushioned from the economic effects.”
Yes absolutely right. All to be somehow sorted out in the next decade with our governmnets that move at light speed with such harmony.
“Numerous studies have shown that a high quality of life and improved well-being can be sustained at lower levels of energy use and GDP. Nonetheless, getting the global community to transition rapidly from hell-for-leather growth to a sustainable steady state remains a colossal ask.”
That’s what I’ve always said. Apparently it makes me an idiot with some people, but when another writer says it then its ok. Although whether you can maintain a high quality of life does depend on HOW MUCH LOWER use of energy and gdp, which isn’t quantified and investigated. It would also depend on how rapid the adjustment period is.
Joseph Tainter has it broadly correct. Simplifying is very hard. Its probaly going to be a long slow process so we will need to be also fighting climate change with some conventional tools like a new energy grid and transport system, even if they add SHORT TERM complexity.
E-P 422: WHY, in the face of our climate-change disaster, have we not KILLED THOSE RULES and the fucking evil scumbags who imposed and still insist upon them?
BPL: Because in a democracy, the citizens have rights? I know your ideal system has one leader whose pronouncements have the status of absolute law, and that the end justifies the means, and secret police exist that can arrest, torture, and execute people at will, but here in a democracy our hands are tied by ideas like jury trials, habeas corpus, etc.
n 438: What do people think of this Natrium project?
BPL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant#:~:text=Detailed%20history-,1995%20sodium%20leak%20and%20fire,the%20floor%20below%20the%20pipe.
419
“And like KM says @393 we have been given some so called general principles but not much on real world practical implementation”
“Principles ARE general rules, fool. But I have also laid out the design process, laid out the most important steps for any community to take, laid out my model elements.
That doesn’t answer my question.
Yes, it does.
What I’m obviously asking Killian, and I’m 90% sure Kevin is asking the same thing, is for some EXAMPLES of how these principles or rules or whatever have been applied in the real world, or at least a hypothetical example. How hard can that be to understand?
In the above, you both move the goalposts (from details of “Killian’s plan” to mere “examples” of the principles at work), i.e. lie, again, and are too damned obtuse to realize your question was answered multiple times in multiple posts – and that’s just on this FR!
How many goddamned times have I spoken of the principles in context to illustrate why something works or does not? Here’s just one example:
I have posted numerous videos, etc., showing permaculture in action. Why lie?
“I have TOLD you, read, take a course. You WILL NOT fully understand these things so long as you keep yourself intentionally ignorant – all while running your mouth minimizing and denigration the only pathway to managing the climate crisis.”
The problem is these permaculture principles were mostly designed for GARDENING.
100% incorrect. There is no better example of your ignorance. Only permaculture trolls or outright liars trot out this bull.
To wit:
– Mollison and Holmgren, Permaculture One
As I have long said, sustainability is ultimately local. I cannot tell you what *your* sustainability looks like, and *my* sustainability has nothing to do with yours. I have repeatedly used the analogy of sinking an old warship – utterly unsustainable – to build/rebuild a reef. Permaculture is a toolbox into which any and all tools go. The principles, guided by the ethics, are how you decide what to use from the toolbox.
BTW, I’m sure you completely missed the application of the principles of Zero Waste and Appropriate Technology (Use What You’ve Got) in that example though you’ve been given examples over and over.
Oh, and there’s an ENTIRE CHAPTER on “Invisible Structures” in the Designers Manual. An example of a treatment of the topic (something a non-troll would have researched before lying all over the internet): https://www.freepermaculture.com/invisible-structures/
As to the climate crisis, thats just an opinion.
Wrong. You do opinion, I do analysis.
There are other ways. I will come back to this elsewhere.
Don’t. Stop wasting people’s time. You lie. You deny. You speak from ignorance, not a base of knowledge.
You have zero value on this forum.
I spew thee out of my mouth for the last time, nigelKIA.
Re. “If you cannot appreciate Sappho, Lewis Carroll or Ogden Nash, there is no hope for you.”
FYI: That provides precisely zero evidence whatsoever as to whether you are, or are not, a ‘poet’.
@418:
Apparently there was only one test of Magnox-bred Pu in a weapon. The weapon fizzled (due to excessive spontaneous fission in the Pu) and there was never another test. The breeding of weapons-grade Pu in the UK was all done at Windscale, not in MAGNOX reactors.
Allow me the right to be sarcastic sometimes. And just for fun:
There are approximately 6.02*10^23 guacas in a guacamole.
This is Avocado’s number.
430 Scott E Strough says:
18 Jun 2021 at 11:05 AM
@ 386 Killian,
“Climate activism and efforts are heavily skewed toward CO2, but excess atmospheric GHGs are not a cause, they are an effect of the actual cause, abuse of Earth’s resources/ecosystem services.”
Excellent point. Preaching to the choir here.
I think we’d get leaps and bounds further along the solutions pathway if this were widely understood.
“Mitigation and adaptation are focused on drawing down CO2, which *is* necessary, but without ecosystem restoration, drawing down CO2 will not save us from ecosystem collapse, thus societal collapse.”
Another excellent point! 2 for 2 so far.
My rather dormant blog was named A Perfect Storm Cometh (13 years ago) because of the multifaceted nature of the emergency.
“A comprehensive approach that draws down C, actively restores the ecosystem and avoids consuming finite/unsustainable resources and/or uses sustainable resources too quickly. And it must be done quickly. Biota are already at collapse levels, tipping points have been and soon will be passed, so solutions must be rapid.”
Brilliant! 3 for 3 I have been saying exactly the same for many years.
It only requires the willpower to see what is rather than imposing one’s wants and fears on reality, eh? Well, there is a special mix of knowledge bits that brings it all into strikingly clear focus, as I have outlined in a recent post here. Still, the outlines of the issues should be clear to any willing to see.
“Only regenerative simplicity meets all these criteria”
Ermmmmm Not so fast. Entire lines of logic skipped here.
Never make the mistake with me of thinking absence = absence of evidence. The key thing here is I do not spend much time talking of the transition because 1. it’s largely localized responses and 2. since so few understand the endpoint – what a regenerative system is – it will be virtually impossible to create that system, so the most important thing to do is make clear what that regenerative future must look like and then backcast from there to create the roadmap(s) for the transition. And, 3. I do lay out how we Opt Out of the current paradigm by Opting In to the new one. Design the new, it ends the old passively.
The premises in the beginning of your post do not necessarily support this conclusion.
1) Regenerative simplicity is poorly defined.
No, it isn’t, I’m was not writing a book.
2) Your link to the reference material while valid, does not really support the conclusion, but rather supports the premises.
The article was merely a trigger for making a point which I then expanded from.
It’s a great article, and very important, well written, etc… But is is in no way a comprehensive guide to achieving the results.
Certainly. But I didn’t say it was.
It certainly does not support “regenerative simplicity” as the “ONLY” solution. In fact it really doesn’t support regenerative simplicity as one of many solutions.
Again, it wasn’t said to be doing either. Those two things flow from my analysis.
Regenerative? Yes I can follow you there. Simplicity in this complex world? Maybe, maybe not. There is a case to be made that while it certainly is helpful in individual cases and small groups, the organizational requirements for a worldwide move to that exclusively by the entire worldwide population of 8 Billion would ultimately need a far more complex nuanced solution.
1. You need to understand the Regenerative Governance model to have this discussion at that depth. 2. Is there a choice? I refer again to the people on the beach after a massive earthquake and the sea having run away: It doesn’t matter if you *want* to run or not. There is exactly one option: Move.
Any time someone starts talking about what is economically, politically or socially “feasible,” I know they do not yet have a full grasp of the historical moment. Those are things to consider within a hierarchy, but at the top of that hierarchy is must run vs there are options. Everything else follows from that first condition. When you don’t know for certain, then as the climate scientists say, uncertainty is *not* your friend, and as any competent risk analyst will tell you, if the threat is existential, you must use that long-tail risk as your criteria.
Climate policy is so far following the most likely case. This is a suicidal approach. We’ll see whether the suicide is successful or not, or if maybe we choose a sane risk profile to work from.
Potentially a single powerful bad actor could collapse the whole thing like a house of cards.
This is a given that I need not specify in a short blog post, and even more so, it applies to any and all pathways, so is moot as an issue specific to my analyses.
We certainly need be vigilant about this happening as history has shown time and time again.
And Regenerative Governance is the single best insurance against that: True equality.
An example of what I mean. Regenerative Agriculture. That I can and do support 100%. We can indeed support 8 billion and even many more with regenerative agriculture and at the same time restore ecosystem function over vast areas.
Local regenerative economic networks I also support strongly, but not exclusively.
1. Regenerative Governance is fractal: Decisions are scale-based, a set of nested Commons ranging from neighborhood/small town to city/area/region to bio-regions to inter-bio-regional. This is simply not an issue. What is true is that you cannot do true regenerative systems at massive scales because of the resource management and local knowledge issues. What you *can* do is what permaculture is all about: Small, slow solutions. 1,000 small, walkable communities over a bio-region region vs large cities with far fewer small communities (the #s are just examples) is exactly how you do a regenerative system – and any good permaculture design process. Each small village will be sustainable because it will actually have higher biological diversity, fewer outside inputs, better use of resources, etc. E.g., all the wheat for a community would not be grown on one farm, the barley on another, the kitchen veggies on another. Rather, these – and everything else, would be grown at many different homesteads/farms, each growing a fraction of the total so that the community is resistant to localized disasters infestations, weather, etc. Planning would be coordinated within the community – and with any networked communities at appropriate scales, and even bio-regionally, if appropriate. E.g., let’s say there’s a neighboring bio-region that simply cannot grow grains, but has lots of hills and valleys great for significant animal management. These two bio-regions are certainly free to trade those two commodity groups, and likely would be very motivated to do so, and would plan to avoid over-production overall while growing in excess of their own needs to help the other bio-region meet their needs.
I strongly agree we have tipped the scale away from local far to heavily, and it will certainly result in economic and societal collapse in a sort of “boom bust cycle”.
Technically, collapse is going to happen as the definition is really quite simple. I posit we have already essentially collapsed, but just haven’t landed yet. You know, falling off a 100-story building, the falling man, asked how it’s going as he passes the 50th floor, says he’s doing fine so far.
But it’s a choice. Those who see chaos as inevitable do not, imo, understand the power of simplicity and the speed with which it can be achieved. I think a key to their pessimism is not correctly thinking on the key to all regenerative systems, and thus also to permaculture: Needs-based decision-making.
If you take it to the logical extreme as a thought experiment, what do we absolutely, unequivocally NEED? Three things: Water, food and (relatively) stable body temperature. (If you, Dear Readers, haven’t watched Naked and Afraid, do so. N&A XL, a 40-day and/or 60-day survival experience is more apt than the standard show of 21 days.) If one can go tabula rasa and let their brain ponder deep, need-based simplicity, then rebuild their Needs Analysis from that perspective, they should be able to understand just how drastically we can reduce consumption and how incredibly quickly.
Of course, the ngielKIA’s of the world will start to scream about cavemen and other stupidities, but I think you understand the thought experiment: We can strip society way down, and quickly, if we go with need-based thinking. The problem is not the what, it’s the how to get people to that mindset.
History also shows this happening over and over
History certainly can teach, but in this case is moot: Neither humanity nor the planet, et al., has ever been here before. There are no exemplars. We’ve never had all of humanity on the same beach watching the ocean disappear in the distance. We’ve never had to all run at the same instant. We’ve never all faced extinction together.
This time is different. Get that point across, things can change very, very quickly.
But local social and economic networks are also subject to local boom and bust cycles!
You’re still thinking in terms of economics. There are no economics in a true Commons. There are no jobs, there are no businesses, there is no pay, no bosses, etc. Yes, that is end point, but that is what we must first understand. The transition is where economics will be considered, but,frankly, a global Jubilee takes care of that in an instant. See: Steve Keen https://braveneweurope.com/steve-keen-reducing-debt-via-a-modern-debt-jubilee
(I first came across the jubilee concept as a regular user of The Oil Drum and quickly realized jubilee would be a necessary condition of a rapid simplification process.)
Rather than exclusively, we need a balance of both! When the local is stressed, the regional, national, or even international can help relieve the strain, preventing catastrophic domino effect as local networks fail and overload neighboring areas…
1. As stated, all scales are in the RegenGov model. Decisions are made based on the scale of the problem, not a power hierarchy or special interests, and any solutions must align up and down the scale, home to bio-region.
2. The kinds of networks that fail are fragile, hyper-efficient, chains of flows rather than anti-fragile, resilient, small, multiple-connection networks. This is exactly why permaculture designs are modular, implemented in chunks to confirm functionality, have multiple connections to and from any element of the design. A network of small communities is far more resilient than one city and huge farms of monocultures. The bio-region is a network, more like a spider web while the types of structures you are talking about, that we use now are extremely fragile, more like the current electricity grid where millions of homes lose power at the same time. A grid made up of micro-energy, as I proposed in 2008, would be extremely resilient, yet could be made to be able to plug in and out as needed. Let’s say a tornado takes out OhCrap County, then Don’tWorry, Be Happy and Smile! Counties could all plug in and provide the needed emergency energy. E.g.
Change is needed, but I think exclusively local regenerative simplicity would eventually fail almost as badly. Again, this is where balance is key.
Nope! :-)
Keep up the good work though.
Same to you.
Don’t get discouraged by the trolls.
Never am – just disgusted with them.
The direction you advocate moving is certainly needed
As more and more clearly see.
even if we might have minor disagreements on the extent.
Don’t worry, you’ll get there.
;-)
Good to have a sane conversation on these points. Thank you very much.
#417, E-P–
Even when making a fair point, E-P tends to ‘over-egg his beer.’ Case in point:
Well, hold up there a moment. “FAR” less? A bit vague, no–especially compared with the specificity of 77 MW & 71 tons? Offshore turbines are running up to 12 MW these days, which is ~1/6 the power of a Nuscale–but sticking to onshore, 2-3 MW turbines seem to be the norm. For instance, Adani in India:
https://www.thewindpower.net/windfarm_en_25332_kutch.php
So, a bit less than 1/30th the ouput. Is that “FAR less?” You judge. But it at least lets us make a more precise comparison between the Nuscale power module (~700 tons) and a single (unspecified) wind turbine (71 ton tower + 56 ton nacelle + 36 ton blades = 163 tons). Where did those numbers come from, you ask? E-P, here–
As you see, I would prefer to mention all of above. The tower base is particularly interesting to me, as if we *do* mention its “hundreds of tons” of concrete, we should also mention the foundation for the Nuscale–the 700 ton figure is good for the power module “as shipped from the fabricator,” and so excludes the foundation. I looked in vain for an estimate on the concrete needed for that purpose, but did find a design spec, which shows it to be, er, a non-trivial matter–PDF downloadable from here:
https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1535/ML15355A451.pdf
Quick comparisons on concrete–
A high-rise condo project in Miami:
5,000+ tons
My approximation of Nuscale reactor building foundation, extrapolating from 12 15′ diameter containment modules:
~1,226 tons
The Vogtle reactor 3 base pour:
~14,000 tons
The Blue Creek Wind farm in Ohio:
~30,000 tons
So, Blue Creek used about 2x the concrete as Vogtle 3, and since its nameplate capacity is a tad over 1/4 that of Vogtle 3, the latter is about 8x more efficient in the (somewhat contrived) metric of tons of concrete per MW–and that’s before you account for capacity factor. So I’m bound to say again that E-P’s point is fair–in terms of brute mass of material involved. (I’m not so sure about the *complexity* of the materials–considering the exigencies of manufacturing fuel rod bundles, heat exchangers and so on, but let that slide.)
But let’s go back to BPL’s original comment. He gave the edge to wind turbines in “materials, labor, and time to put up…” E-P ignores those terms.
I’m not aware of hard numbers on “labor”, but I think “time to put up” is to some extent a proxy for it anyway. So, another quick comparison:
Vogtle build time from early planning: 2006-2022 (latest estimated), or 16 years
Nuscale Idaho project, from site use permit: 2016-2030 (estimated), or 14 years
Blue Creek Wind Farm, from certification of public need: 2010-2012, plus a guesstimated 2 years of pre-planning–perhaps 4 years total.
The build times:
Vogtle: 13 years (2009 site prep-2022, projected)
Nuscale: 5 years (projected–2025-2030)
BCWF: 2 years (2010-2012)
For climate, I’d say that time is far more to the point than concrete–carbon-intensive though the latter currently is.
Nuclear power is part of the solution:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/21/fight-climate-crisis-clean-energy-nuclear-power
Killian: Let me see… Richard…
RtW: …really appreciates that you chose him to bat cleanup.It is a great honor to be roasted last.
Regarding the degrowth article.
https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/growth-without-economic-growth
“Economic growth is closely linked to increases in production, consumption and resource use and has detrimental effects on the natural environment and human health. It is unlikely that a long-lasting, absolute decoupling of economic growth from environmental pressures and impacts can be achieved at the global scale; therefore, societies need to rethink what is meant by growth and progress and their meaning for global sustainability.”
Yes, but deliberately forcing rates of economic growth down could be problematic and overshoot end up causing a recession and it seems unlikely that governments and populations will be that enthusiastic about the idea of deliberate degrowth.
However its important to realise that rates of economic growth have been trending down fairly steadily in Europe and America ever since the 1970’s. If the trend continues they might hit zero in a few decades of their own accord without major dislocations. The system might adjust naturally. You can check individual countries on webites like tradingeconomics.co. Imho society should let rates of economic growth continue to slow naturally and not try to impede this process by printing large amounts of money etc, etc.
“Countless internet communities are devoted to simple living to increase quality of life, reduce personal stress and reduce environmental pressures.”
Anyone else see the amazing irony of these people talking away about simplicity on one of the most complex structures ever devised, the internet and is computers?
“Plan B (degrowth) is extremely challenging. Economic growth is highly correlated with health and well being indicators, such as life expectancy and education. Thanks to economic growth, the portion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty, as defined by the poverty line of USD 1.90 a day, fell from 36% in 1990 to 10% in 2015 (World Bank, 2020b). ”
Exactly. Phasing down economic growth is going to be a complex exercise that might have to be different in different places, if it happens.
“In terms of doughnut economics, it is possible that the doughnut between basic human needs and planetary boundaries is very thin (O’Neill et al., 2018).”
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
“However, economic growth has not contributed to decreasing inequality, either between or within countries (Piketty, 2013). ”
Economic growth is not intended to reduce inequality any more than computers are capable of fying an egg. Economic growth is just an increase in aggregate wealth. To decrease inequality you always need policies of wealth redistribution. This is true in any community, including industrial society and simple living communities. Doh!
Response: Howls of outrage from the usual suspects.
Nigel: Thinking of your response to Kevin, it doesn’t need to be where WE Live. It just has to be come actual examples from somewhere, perhaps where YOU live. It doesn’t really matter as long as its a western country because that is where most change would need to happen
RtW: You touch on the real issue. Yep, Killian’s principles are reasonable. So are mine. But just how relevant are they?
Remember MacGyver? Put him in a deadly trap with six random items and he’ll escape.
Similarly, put him in a degraded environment without significant external help and he’ll have great fun figuring out how to survive.
That’s why Killian talks of principles instead of the concrete. MacGyvers don’t know what they are walking into. “Bring a lateral mind (principles) and notice all the diverse stuff lying around”.
But few have the lateralization of the mind required to succeed in such situations. Most folks use a single index, maybe three. And since that most unreal metric, money, is often enthroned as the primary index, reality has difficulty getting beyond “current record” levels of data/ analysis.
But everything is related to everything else. And many records are needed for relations to be enlightening. Without myriad indexes how do you folks figure anything out?
So, Killian, I agree that your stuff works and is incredibly simple to understand.
But not by Them. Whatcha gonna do about Them?
Which brings up my “mass death” question. Gonna dive deep or splutter for breath and bile at the surface?
Nigel,
No, I don’t assume much of anything. Instead, I’ll take a guess while inserting a big “incomplete” flag, such as I just did with Killian. Hypothses are perhaps the most important part of the scientific method. Bad ones can consume a career (Iris effect?). Good ones can slice through decades of thought in a week or ten.
And yes, I like to use the declarative form for questions since it elicits a reaction that gives additional information. So yep, I will ‘pretend claim’. You caught me. ;-)
Killian: Seriously, KEEP chem ag bc natural, regenerative ag is somehow dangerous?
Unbelievable what
RtW: finding a tick attached to one’s body will drive one to do.
I nuked my land this spring. Do you think an initial purge is contraindicated?
Piotr,
Yes, so many posters bring conclusions and search for confirmation. Perhaps the grain of truth in DBB’s claim about non-proliferability was the natural poisoning that occurs during a thorium cycle. EP shot that down, giving a terrorist’s work around.
But why bother with radiation? Way too easy to detect. Way regulated.
Terrorist, dude! Grind up some old lead acid batteries and then let your twisted mind run wild.
(Smart and well-organized terrorists might make a profit by using a waste disposal company paired with a yard care company as a front for a scheme to use Dioxin or other industrial waste to negate the value of a city’s wealthy neighborhoods.
As a flourish, drop the water tower.
Easy. Nobody dies. The rich are wayyyyy inconvenienced while fighting with their insurance company about their policy’s “acts of war” exclusion…
Wise terrorists go after the wealthy’s lifestyle while protecting life. Did Ireland beat Britain by calling in pub bombings so as to give enough time to evacuate but no more?
So no. Terrorism is not a problem that can be solved by restricting one substance. Lots of stuff is more dangerous than nuclear waste and yet we keep churning all those other (unnamed) poisons out.
Yeah, terrorists tend to be enraged, which means that they tend towards violence and generally fail in their goal to help improve the world. If only they’d follow the Irish model…
Killian,
The best thing I have seen you say so far:
“Design the new, it ends the old passively.”
Not sure if passively will get it done fast enough, maybe, but that comment was certainly pithy, and in fact was the main point of my earlier post which RealClimate apparently never approved. :( So no one ever saw. :(
Just like the quote from a silly movie, “If you build it, they will come.”
This is what I explained about my plan for local modular autarky, by building that transitional bridge. Maybe another time when RealClimate is more accepting, I will try posting again what that would look like in practical terms. The best part about modular autarky is that it is far more robust and resilient a structure than current unsustainable systems we typically use now. It can be defeated, but in order for the centralized industrial systems we have now to defeat it, they would need to do what it does better than it would do! So a plan using modular autarky to mitigate AGW would either take over, or if defeated, force other actors to beat it at its own game….. AGW mitigation. So even if we lose, we win. ;)
It’s not unlike how Tesla gained enough support that all the major auto manufacturers were forced to also start making electric cars, or else fade away as Tesla and other new electric vehicle manufacturers “built the new, causing the old to end passively”. (paraphrasing your quote) Now it doesn’t matter if Tesla wins or GM or Ford, or anyone else. We will transition to electric. Tesla forced this because the dominant manufacturers failed to meet consumer demand, and instead tried to manipulate demand. Without Tesla, does anyone really believe Ford would be coming out with a fully electric pick-up truck next year?
The merchants of doubt are exactly the same regarding AGW mitigation with regenerative agriculture. Rather than meeting demand for AGW mitigation and local sustainable agricultural systems, they try to use propaganda to manipulate demand. But if we can successfully build a network meeting that demand using Modular Autarky, they will come, and the system will change. The only unknown is whether they decide to beat us by doing what we do better than us, or if they stick to their own centralized “one size fits all” models and fade away. So far it seems they are opting for the “greenwashing” of the status quo. Modular Autarky can force the issue.
Killian @460, please post a couple of the videos on permaculture in action again. I can’t recall seeing any relevant to what we are discussing, because I don’t read ALL your stuff, and I often skim the details of these permaculture issues. It needs to be relevant to modern western societies and issues they face, especially balancing sustainable living with the use of modern technology.
Richard Caldwell @468, I’m not as entirely convinced as you that these permaculture principles are ‘reasonable’. Im really asking K for some examples of the application of these principles, specifically modern western society, so I can decide ‘if’ the principles are valid. Proof if you like. Permaculture principles look simple and elegant and I get where most of them are coming from. But then so does socialism / communism and we know that doesn’t always end well (refer Piotrs examples back a few comments).
Yes the success of the application of permaculture principles depends on individual ability. This is why I’m sceptical…as in my previous comment they look very complex to actually apply. In our modern societies conventional decision making places the complex decisions in the hands of a very small number of experts, while the simplified world consists of rather small groups of people trying to figure things out ‘locally’. Maybe it would work at scale. We don’t know.
Richard Caldwell @468 says “Remember MacGyver?” Yes I watched the first version. Great show, makes your point well.
@443:
Not so. At 4% burnup, the composition of LWR plutonium is 1.7% Pu-238, 58.0% Pu-239, 22.3% Pu-240, 12.3% Pu-241 and 5.7% Pu-242. This is still majority Pu-239 but completely unfit for weapons due to the massive spontaneous fission rate of Pu-240… and you can’t separate it chemically. The heat generated by Pu-238 is a problem too.
@452:
There are states whose senators are essentially elected by coal interests. There are no such powerful interests on the side of nuclear power. I note as an aside that this has NOT stopped the rapid displacement of coal by natural gas.
Apparently a lot of nuclear red tape was also stripped away, because otherwise the Oklo reactor would still be tied up in approvals. But this came too late for NuScale.
A NuScale NSS section is smaller than some steel culvert pipes. The steam generator is a single helical tube. Stuff is fabricated on this scale all the time. For that matter, the reactor modules are movable by crane and thus replaceable; if you have a bad one, you just swap it out and scrap it.
@461:
For actual song lyrics: http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2004/11/entropy-blues.html
For doggerel: http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2005/09/my-home-page.html
http://ergosphere.blogspot.com/2005/09/verse-everyman.html
There’s probably more but I’m not going to spend time digging it up right now.
David B. Benson (453): “ The last magnox reactor closed 6 years ago ”
Irrelevant to your claim, since your PATERNALISTIC lecturing of others:
“ For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium ”
WAS UNIVERSAL – ergo to falsify “CANNOT” it is enough to show 1 past, present, or future POSSIBILITY of use “a power reactor” to “make weapons plutonium”.
Magnox was just first hit on Google, but if you insist:
Reuters: APRIL 21, 2021: “UPDATE 1-China reactors will yield weapons-grade plutonium -U.S. commander”
“A new generation of nuclear power facilities that China is developing could produce large amounts of plutonium that could be used to make nuclear weapons, Navy Admiral Charles Richard, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command warned lawmakers this week.”
But hey, what that Chief of the US Strategic Command guy could possible know, when the world-known expert on nuclear power, the one and only David B. Benson, LEFT NO ROOM FOR A DOUBT:
“ For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium ”
David B. Benson, nuclear handle: “Actinide”
Benson locutum, causa finita.
Richard the Weaver (471): “DBB’s claim about non-proliferability was the natural poisoning that occurs during a thorium cycle. EP shot that down, giving a terrorist’s work around.”
;-) Don’t you love when they shot each other in the foot? ;-). Perhaps it’s the EP’s payback for DBB calling him not “thoughtful” (because EP does not see 80% of future energy coming from renewables).
RtW: “Terrorist, dude! Grind up some old lead acid batteries and then let your twisted mind run wild”
LD50(plutonium) = 0.3mg/kg, LD50(lead) = 5000 mg/kg
that’s acute lethality.
Long term effects – say carcinogen – effect of the chemical toxicity + ionizing radiation IARC: “Group 1: Carcinogenic to humans”
lead much less – “Group 2B carcinogen by the IARC” (probably a carcinogen)
RtW: But why bother with radiation? Way regulated
With 100,000 DBB nukes built primarily in developing countries, of ten politically unstable and prone to civil war and insurgences?
RtW: “If only they’d follow the Irish model…”
Yeah, if only the suicide bombers wanted to be more reasonable …
Nuclear-Poet (451): “Apparently there was only one test of Magnox-bred Pu in a weapon.”
This was first found example falsifying DBBenson UNIVERSAL, during his magnanimous
“helping relieve your current state of ignorance”:
“For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium” David B. Benson
Paternalistic tone in conjunction with universality of the above claim suggests to the reader that such thing is not even theoretically possible (“CANNOT be used”). Whether it was practical or not – is irrelevant to such a bold claim. And if you don’t like that ancient example, how about a recent one:
WASHINGTON, April 21 2021 (Reuters) “A new generation of nuclear power facilities that China is developing could produce large amounts of plutonium that could be used to make nuclear weapons, the head of the U.S. Strategic Command warned lawmakers this week.”
“DBB: For all readers, a power reactor cannot be used to make weapons plutonium“, eh?
Nuclear-Poet (451): “Allow me the right to be sarcastic sometimes.”
The form of your language was discussed elsewhere, e.g. my: (447). Here I quoted your “ruinables fags” for a completely different reason: an illustration of your feelings toward the renewables that make you highly unlikely to advocate that 80% of energy needs to be renewable, which is a DBB’s criterion for belonging to: “the most thoughtful commenters on the future of the grid“.
But given your recent putting yourself, even if unwittingly, at the level of “Sappho, Lewis Carroll or Ogden Nash”, your:”Gentlemen and ruinables fags” certainly admits you as their peer. For indeed, the pun is the highest form of an argument!
And calling your opponents:”fags” – SUBLIME sarcasm!
470 Richard the Weaver says:
22 Jun 2021 at 2:21 PM
Killian: Seriously, KEEP chem ag bc natural, regenerative ag is somehow dangerous?
Unbelievable what
RtW: finding a tick attached to one’s body will drive one to do.
I nuked my land this spring. Do you think an initial purge is contraindicated?
Example: Farmer calls says he’s got a grasshopper problem. Designer checks it out and advises against various responses, such as chemicals, and observes, you don’t have an overabundance of grasshoppers, you’ve got a deficit of birds. Then they work out bringing turkeys in from another farm.
So, like everyone else here, you seem to think a design solution is cookie cutter. They are not. Let’s say, for example, you need a BIG crop ASAP to avoid starvation this summer. Do you use chemicals since your soil is already saturated and you need a little longer game plan for a transition to regenerative? Probably, if you can’t get food from any other source.
There are no absolutes, no rules, there are principles to use in design decisions, just as all forms of engineering have (we should change the name of permaculture to TEK/Ecological Engineering), ethics to guide them, and a design process.
But you are completely missing the point nigelKIA repeatedly makes: He claims we need to keep poisoning the land and destroying our soils and waterways to… save the world because actually saving the world with regenerative practices is… dangerous or untrustworthy or some stupid shit. I paraphrase, but only in word choice.
Original Poster: According to the Union of Concerned Scientists reprocessed fuel from power reactors can be used for proliferation.
E-P 444: They’re lying.
BPL: Note the clever refutation there, point by point.
E-P 446: Generating several GW(e) from a few tens of acres of power plant and leaving a multi-hundred acre buffer zone is far more “regenerative” than meeting human needs from solar PV or biomass. Why can’t you grasp this?
BPL: Maybe because it’s not true?
BPL: By including the phrase “beyond their declared boundaries” you tacitly assume their declared boundaries are legitimate.
RtW: No, it was separating border disputes from invasions. They stem from different motivations and represent different risks.
Invaders are presumed to be “wrong”. Both sides in a border dispute are presumed to have ‘standing’. Of course, in either case details tell the tale.
___________
Piotr: If it were such a great idea why it hasn’t been widely applied
RtW: That question is lame in a literal sense. It begs for help: “is it a teensy bit more expensive or massively more expensive?”
And more importantly, “Was it too much of a bother back when climate wasn’t an issue? Going outside one’s wheelhouse is risky”
EP has provided an example of a district heat nuke. I like the idea of neighborhood nukes. Pretty much as small as is practical. Zero on-site maintenance. Heats the neighborhood pool, the greenhouse, the buildings, and hot water.
Talk to someone from Iceland about living with essentially unlimited access to hot water. That hot tub you feel guilty about? With a neighborhood nuke around lose those carbon-spewing blues the American way (by getting a bigger one).
I’ve also read about household nukes, which use nuclear waste’s decay to supply heat and electricity.
BPL: By including the phrase “beyond their declared boundaries” you tacitly assume their declared boundaries are legitimate.
RtW: No, it was separating border disputes from invasions. They stem from different motivations and represent different risks.
Invaders are presumed to be “wrong”. Both sides in a border dispute are presumed to have ‘standing’. Of course, in either case details tell the tale.
___________
Piotr: If it were such a great idea why it hasn’t been widely applied
RtW: That question is lame in a literal sense. It begs for help: “is it a teensy bit more expensive or massively more expensive?”
And more importantly, “Was it too much of a bother back when climate wasn’t an issue? Going outside one’s wheelhouse is risky”
EP has provided an example of a district heat nuke. I like the idea of neighborhood nukes. Pretty much as small as is practical. Zero on-site maintenance. Heats the neighborhood pool, the greenhouse, the buildings, and hot water.
Talk to someone from Iceland about living with essentially unlimited access to hot water. That hot tub you feel guilty about? With a neighborhood nuke around you can lose those carbon-spewing blues the American way (by getting a bigger hot tub).
I’ve also read about household nukes, which use nuclear waste’s decay to supply heat and electricity.
Nuclear power future perspective:
https://www.powermag.com/ge-hitachi-nuclear-costs-innovation-must-be-a-pivotal-focus-for-carbon-free-future/
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/06/23/solar-powered-seawater-desalination-unit-incorporating-pv-module-cooling/
This is clever. Intended for off-grid locations.
DBBenson and Engineer poet:
So no citations, not even even white papers, to support your claims that power reactors cannot be used to manufacture weapons plutonium. I note that Piotr provided a reference from the World Nuclear Association that says power reactors can be used. What do the World Nuclear Association and the Union of Concerned Scientists know about nuclear power anyway?
Also no references or citations to support your ignorant claim that most observers claim that 20% nuclear power can be used in a future energy system. I provided three peer-reviewed references that use zero nuclear power. I could provide 20 additional references. None use any significant nuclear power.
I guess we will have to weigh your unsupported opinion against the peer reviewed literature.
https://www.pv-magazine-australia.com/2021/06/23/solar-tax-founded-on-false-premise-according-to-policy-centre/
In Australia, maybe just Victoria state, the same proportion of homeowners have installed solar panels, irrespective of income level. This has policy implications.
quoting from comments in Two graphs show the path to 1.5 degrees
Just to ignore the historical and physical facts before our eyes is no solution, it’s not science, it’s just ignoring reality, it’s just silliness. As the last thirty years have overwhelmingly demonstrated: continuing this silliness will achieve exactly the opposite as intended. As George Monbiot has written: *the so-called optimism is exactly what has resulted in nothing at all happening until now, except business as extremely usual*. Remember Chamberlain and the optimism that resulted in WW II…
https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2021/04/two-graphs-show-the-path-to-1-5-degrees/#comment-790541
Maybe Stefan could learn something from the majority of replies he got, who all seem to be on the same track “…. it’s not possible, please STOP pretending it is or even a theoretical possibility.” I wish Stefan and others were compelled to read all these comments.
The day climate scientists are running for public office all over the world and are organizing protests or mass riots by Scientists at the upcoming Glasgow COP then maybe I might *believe* them again and take what they say in public and publish more seriously.
There’s more than enough scientific evidence already to clearly know what the issues are … what’s needed is rational appropriate action from here on in.
which is Staunch action to encourage and drive change people’s thinking. To effect how they vote and what they will protest about. Starting with the climate scientists could not hurt.
PS the funniest LOL impossible item in the article to me was that emissions need to be cut by 50% by 2030 in order to make 1.5C “possible”… that’s too funny, and sad.
– This requires roughly a halving of global CO2 emissions by 2030
Oh boy! That’s a classic fantasy belief if ever there was one.
Many thanks to the majority of commenters on this short article about 1.5C. Good to see even if it’s too late, at least they are well founded and real and true.
Caldwell: You will get a response to a question that is germane, not to intentionally provocative, yet obtuse, nonsense.
On principles: Yes.
provocative…. provoke… sheesh…
One of the most innovative ideas for generating power:
https://www.powermag.com/a-game-changing-vision-for-geothermal-energy/
Question whether it works.
The Chinese reactor in question is
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFR-600
which is a larger version of the EBR-II. One can read about the later in “Plentiful Energy” which throughly describes the reprocessing of once-through nuclear fuel. There is no possible way to make a bomb out of that. I suppose it could be used for a so-called dirty bomb, just providing the additional mess.
The basic fact is that weapons Plutonium is mostly Pu239 and these fast reactors produce to much Pu240 for an implosion device.
Maybe Engineer-Poet would care to provide more detail.
Killian @482 says “But you are completely missing the point nigelKIA repeatedly makes: He claims we need to keep poisoning the land and destroying our soils and waterways to… save the world because actually saving the world with regenerative practices is… dangerous or untrustworthy or some stupid shit. I paraphrase, but only in word choice.”
Very colourful terms and very misleading. What I’ve ACTUALLY said is that regenerative agriculture looks useful in a general environmental sense, but I doubt it can equal or better the yields of industrial agriculture. I can’t find any hard peer reviewed scientific evidence in a scientific journal or similar that regenerative agriculture can equal or better the yields of industrial agriculture, and nobody has posted any on this website.
The methods proposed certainly SUGGEST a reduction in yields / productivity given you are generally removing the use of chemicals designed to boost output and changing other high yield practices. At the very least regenerative agriculture all looks very labour intensive which could also ultimately impact on yields and productivity. As a consequence, I’ve said we may have to continue to use some industrial pesticides and fertilisers for a period of time time, even if at reduced levels, until other solutions are found or everything gradually adjusts to the new farming system.
You responded to KM and said the decision to use industrial chemicals is ultimately local, And you state in your latest post that in certain situations you may need to use chemicals. So you don’t seem to object to at least SOME limited use of these chemicals….. poisoning waterways and soils. Oh the delicious irony there for all to see.
Xcel Energy, an operating company, states that they require nuclear power plants:
https://www.nei.org/news/2021/nuclear-energy-can-make-it-all-work
Richard the Weaver (486):
Piotr: “If it were such a great idea why it hasn’t been widely applied”
RtW(486): “ That question is lame in a literal sense. It begs for help: “is it a teensy bit more expensive or massively more expensive? ”
Do you know the meaning of “literal“? It is NOT: “a word often used to make one’s claim appear more impressive”. To be “literal” my question would have to limp around with a cane or a crutch and be able to ask the passers-by for change.
My question may be good, but is not _that_ good.
RtW(486): “is it a teensy bit more expensive or massively more expensive?”
You Nuclear Guru didn’t discuss whether that the nukes are “teensy bit” or “massively MORE expensive” – he implied that they massive LESS expensive – in effect compared the complexity and therefore cost of a 10-reactor power plant with making … one Liberty ship.
Hence “my literally lame question”, with a tip of the hat to that lame Fermi guy: “ If it were such a great idea, why it hasn’t been widely applied”
But since you missed it – here is an actual back-of-the envelope estimate:
– 1 Liberty Ship = $37 million in 2021.
– a 12 NuScale reactor power plant in Utah – to be completed in 2030 – the price to increase from $4.2 billion to $6.1 billion:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/11/several-us-utilities-back-out-deal-build-novel-nuclear-power-plant
(10/12)*(4.2 to 6.1)*10^3/37 => the cost of a 10 unit nuke rose from 95 to 138 Liberty ships.
So your Nuclear Guru, claiming to be a good Engineer, got the cost of the nukes wrong by … TWO ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. Would that be “a teensy bit” or “massive”?
RtW:”EP has provided an example of a district heat nuke. I like the idea of neighborhood nukes. Pretty much as small as is practical.”
and since you have already liked that idea in your (406) – I have answered it in my (432), by listing several falsifiable arguments, why its applicability would be limited. You … ignored my answer to your post and … now repeat to me how you like that idea? That …. really makes for a productive discussion.
RtW:” That hot tub you feel guilty about? With a neighborhood nuke around you can lose those carbon-spewing blues the American way (by getting a bigger hot tub)”
Sure, until they see the price for their share of all pipeline infrastructure that has to be put into the ground for them to bring the hot water. That’s why in the post you ignored I argued that district heating would not likely be economic UNLESS you supply both hot water AND a lot of home heating for many weeks in a year. Not that many places like that in the developing world, where most of the nukes will have to be built.
And you may be overestimating the appeal of the hot bathtub in Sahara, Middle East, Bangladesh, or Brazil.
And why pay $$ for the pipelines, when leaving your tub uncovered for the day would do?
@484:
I’m from Missouri. SHOW ME it’s not true.
One of the later posts at The Oil Drum was an analysis of how long our forests would last if we tried to replace natural gas with wood. I can’t find it, sadly. The answer was typically a year-count you can do on one hand.
I did find a piece I’d forgotten I’d written.
http://theoildrum.com/node/5796
This is probably of interest re: regenerative agriculture and specifically food forests:
http://theoildrum.com/node/9358
@485:
Sadly, that’s just not something that can scale. The heat generation of even high-level “waste” is fairly small once you get down to levels where you can store it in dry casks (the figure I find is about 1 kW/fuel assembly and ~20 kW per cask). There just wouldn’t be enough to go around.