Impossible Conundrum: Nuclear Waste Storage

There are a multitude of reasons why nuclear fission reactors make no sense as a part of our energy future (without even thinking about it too much, you've got dwindling supplies of uranium ore; the impossibility of building enough reactors fast enough to cope with climate change challenges; the difficulty finding suitable sources of cooling water for new reactors; the demonstrated problems during heat waves, such as in 2003 when France was forced to shut down reactors when cooling water temperatures became too high; the element of human error that frequently complicates safety issues, as demonstrated mightily during the ongoing Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster; and on and on).

Significantly, however, nuclear proponents have consistently dodged the issue that presents a glaring indictment of the entire technology: devising a long-term solution for the end of the fuel cycle, finding a way to contain and store the byproducts of 70 years of nuclear fission, much of it still residing in spent fuel pools—a storage solution that has always been deemed temporary, but with the lack of industry initiatives to move cooler fuel to dry casks and the absence of any progress toward a permanent repository, some 72,000 tons of nuclear waste exist with no plan for long-term storage.

Writing for Truth-Out.org, Gregg Levine analyzes the situation, tracing the initial enthusiasm of the nuclear industry to the present-day confusion.

As he points out in the article:

The crisis at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi facility was so dangerous, and remains dangerous to this day, in part because of the large amounts of spent fuel stored in pools next to the reactors but outside of containment - a design identical to 35 US nuclear reactors. A number of these GE Mark 1 Boiling Water Reactors - such as Oyster Creek and Vermont Yankee - have more spent fuel packed into their individual pools than all the waste in Fukushima Daiichi Units 1, 2, 3, and 4 combined.

In retrospect, it's completely insane that we've proceeded with nuclear power generation and proponents continue to present the technology as the solution to global warming when the most fundamental concerns—long-term isolation of the radioactive byproducts—have never been suitably addressed.

The Greatest Crisis Faced by Humans

As society frets over relatively trivial problems—such as the debt crisis and unemployment—the breakdown of natural systems presents a scenario that could literally bring an end to civilization, says Paul Ehrlich in an article published by the Stanford News Service. But, instead of reacting to the dangers, nations around the world are essentially carrying on as usual. Ehrlich points to the need for a coupling of the human (socio-political-economic) system to the natural world—a relationship that has garnered a great deal of attention in the environmental science community in recent years. 

As Ehrlich describes the situation:

"In the absence of dramatic changes in human behavior relative to Earth's natural systems, gradual population shrinkage, an end to overconsumption by the rich and a redistribution of wealth and opportunity, it is likely the natural system will react in ways that will reduce the scale of the human system in a very unpleasant manner. Debt and employment problems can be solved entirely by negotiation; one cannot negotiate with nature."

Among the groups mentioned in his talk that are attempting to move along a more sustainable path:  Occupy Wall Street, Global Movement to Solve the Climate Crisis, GrowthBusters and MAHB: Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere.

Protecting Life on the Blue Marble

Sometimes we need a little perspective to get our priorities straight. As Bill McKibben points out in "The Great Carbon Bubble: Why the Fossil Fuel Industry Fights So Hard," we experienced the greatest weather extremes in recorded history in 2011, 14 weather disasters in the U.S. alone. And yet we have an entire political party in denial that there are any large-scale dynamics at work in the global weather system that potentially threaten our survival.

Why is the fossil fuel working so hard to spread denial about climate change? As in many things in life, follow the money.

Part of it’s simple enough: the giant energy companies are making so much money right now that they can’t stop gorging themselves. ExxonMobil, year after year, pulls in more money than any company in history. Chevron’s not far behind. Everyone in the business is swimming in money.

Still, they could theoretically invest all that cash in new clean technology or research and development for the same. As it happens, though, they’ve got a deeper problem, one that’s become clear only in the last few years. Put briefly: their value is largely based on fossil-fuel reserves that won’t be burned if we ever take global warming seriously.

The billions of dollars in profits earned by Chevron and ExxonMobil will build a lot of mansions for their highly paid executives. But, what's the point of a mansion if you don't have a habitable planet to build it on?

Almost as smart as termites

We know that ground-nesting termites can build mounds where the temperature and humidity remain moderate year round (a concept that has drawn the attention of architects in recent years). But, for whatever reason, humans don't typically pay much attention to natural heating and cooling in their building design and construction—a fact that leads to an enormous amount of energy consumption so that building inhabitants don't suffer from the heat or cold.

You can find exceptions to this tendency to ignore trees, shade, hillsides, and sun exposure when constructing buildings, even back in the 19th century. One good example, highlighted in Julia Whitty's Blue Marble blog (the post is a couple of years old, but as relevant today as when it was written), is Lincoln's cottage, where the President escaped the suffocating climate of Washington D.C. in the summer.

Among the passive techniques that characterize the cottage:

The builders relied on smarts not watts. Some of their techniques included:

Orienting the building so a powerful crossbreeze blows when the front door and rear windows are opened

Installing tall windows with two sections, a top half to expel warm air and a bottom half to introduce it

Attaching shutters to block the sun or let light in when necessary
Decorating with lace curtains to minimize bugs not breezes

Some of the simplest techniques available could make an enormous difference in energy consumption in our homes and cities. It's not too late to learn from the termites and the builders of the 19th century.

Climate change deniers take over the House

Hopenhagen
Originally uploaded by Bjørn Giesenbauer

Elizabeth Kolbert's Field Notes from a Catastrophe tackled the challenge of global warming as a first-person observer, traveling around the world to witness the changes in places where they are most severe. Now, writing for The New Yorker in Uncomfortable Climate, she takes a hard look at the current crop of deniers entering the US House of Representatives, many of whom consider their primary role as disrupting any hope of political progress on this critically important global problem.

Though four presidents in succession have paid lip service to preventing dangerous climate change, these commitments haven't lead to any significant action given the magnitude of the challenge.

Elizabeth sums up the current situation neatly:

Meanwhile, as John Boehner chortles about the dangers of CO2, the world keeps heating up. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the first half of 2010 was the warmest January to July on record. And this is just the beginning. Owing to the inertia of the climate system, the warming that we’re experiencing is only a fraction of the temperature increase that’s already guaranteed.

The United States is no longer the world’s largest carbon emitter; that honor belongs to China. But we’re still the largest source of warming in terms of cumulative emissions, and on a per-capita basis Americans produce more CO2 than just about anyone except the Qataris. Without the active support of the United States, there’s no way to make progress on emissions globally. This month, negotiators will meet in Cancún for another round of international climate talks, and it’s a safe bet that, apart from the usual expressions of despair, nothing will come of them. It may seem that we’ll just keep going around and around on climate change forever. Unfortunately, that’s not the case: one day, perhaps not very long from now, the situation will spin out of our control.

The window left for action is closing quickly. If the new members of the House have their way, it will be slammed shut permanently, in blithe ignorance of the consequences.

Nicaragua adopts aggressive renewable energy targets

La Vieja Managua (Nicaragua)
Originally uploaded by denetsnuff

Nicaragua is setting aggressive targets to replace fossil fuel use with renewable fuels, as discussed in this Renewable Energy Magazine article. Under a plan announced by Emilio Rappaccioli, the Nicaraguan Minister of Energy and Mines, on October 29th, the goal is to increase the use of renewables to 94 percent by 2017 and to be at the 100 percent renewable mark by 2025. Currently, 66 percent of Nicaragua's thermal energy is petroleum based.

If we could get the US to make a similar commitment, we'd be able to make some serious progress toward reversing climate disruption.

Attack of the Deniers

A few snowstorms bring out the climate change deniers in force, proudly displaying their ignorance in mistaking meterological events with long-term climate trends. The winter of 2009/2010 has given them an unexpected windfall of events to use as ammunition in their misinformation campaigns, which appear to be working: more and more Americans no longer believe climate change is a matter of importance.

A TomDispatch article by Bill McKibben, one of the first writers to sound the global warming alarm as scientific studies came to light, examines the phenomenon of the denier movement and considers their tactics and motivation.

The fact that the media gives the skeptics high-profile coverage is one reason behind the diminishing belief in climate change, despite overwhelming and growing body of scientific evidence.

The climate deniers come with a few built-in advantages. Thanks to Exxon Mobil and others with a vested interest in debunking climate-change research, their “think tanks” have plenty of money, none of which gets wasted doing actual research to disprove climate change. It’s also useful for a movement to have its own TV network, Fox, though even more crucial to the denial movement are a few rightwing British tabloids which validate each new “scandal” and put it into media play.

That these guys are geniuses at working the media was proved this February when even the New York Times ran a front page story, “Skeptics Find Fault With U.N. Climate Panel,” which recycled most of the accusations of the past few months. What made it such a glorious testament to their success was the chief source cited by the Times: one Christopher Monckton, or Lord Monckton as he prefers to be called since he is some kind of British viscount. He is also identified as a “former advisor to Margaret Thatcher,” and he did write a piece for the American Spectator during her term as prime minister offering his prescriptions for “the only way to stop AIDS”:

"...screen the entire population regularly and… quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month... all those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently.”

He speaks with equal gusto and good sense on matters climatic -- and now from above the fold in the paper of record.

While the fossil-fuel companies fight furiously to dispute climate science, McKibben notes that the Chinese are already taking advantage of American inaction.

Right now, China is gearing up to dominate the green energy market. They’re making the investments that mean future windmills and solar panels, even ones installed in this country, will be likely to arrive from factories in Chenzhou, not Chicago.

McKibben's upcoming book is Eaarth: Making a Life on as Tough New Planet.

Jellyfish Populations and Global Warming

false twins -jellyfishes
Originally uploaded by marfis75

"They just make these things up," climate modeler Mojib Latif observed after seeing an article in the London Daily Mail that identified Latif as projecting a 30-year span of global cooling. This Truthout article, written by Michael Winship, offers other examples of climate change deniers misinterpreting and misrepresenting scientific studies, often attributing statements to researchers that are essentially bald lies.

In fact, as Latif told the British newspaper the Guardian, "I believe in manmade global warming... There is no doubt within the scientific community that we are affecting the climate, that the climate is changing and responding to our emissions of greenhouse gases."

Winship than points to one of the bizarre and harrowing consequences of global warming: massive increases in jellyfish populations that are causing havoc with the fishing industry and jamming desalination plants.

This has led to all manner of consequences, some you would expect, others not. A 2008 National Science Foundation study found populations growing along the East Coast -- in the Chesapeake Bay area, people are stung about half a million times a year. In the Middle East and Africa, swarms have jammed hydroelectric and desalination plants, forcing them to shut down. In Japan, the fishing industry is losing up to $332 million a year because jellyfish swarms fill the nets, crowding out mackerel, sea bass and other fish.

The AP reports that in October, off the eastern coast of Japan, "Jelly-filled nets capsized a 10-ton trawler as its crew tried to pull them up. The three fishermen were rescued."

This is the stuff of science fiction, but in this case it's entirely real.

Accelerating Wind Power in the UK

While the US effectively twiddles its collective thumbs on the issue of offshore wind power (with installations such as Cape Wind Project in Nantucket Sound endlessly delayed), the UK is forging ahead with a massive investment in offshore wind farms. The British government has approved the building of wind farms in nine development zones capable of generating more than 32 gigawatts of power, as detailed in this article from the Environment News Service.

Justin Wilkes, policy director of the European Wind Energy Association, said the projects announced today, once built, "will multiply by 10 Europe's offshore wind energy capacity."

"These are European companies building a European industry and generating some 45,000 European jobs. It takes Europe closer to exploiting the power of our seas and developing a brand new European offshore wind industry," said Wilkes. "Offshore wind is Europe's largest untapped energy source. There is enough wind across Europe's seas to power Europe seven times over."

The power that will be generated by the developments announced today is part of the more than 100 GW of offshore wind power currently being planned by European utilities, developers, and governments, mostly in the North Sea.

Proposed projects in the US, as shown by this map created by OffshoreWind.net, show potential, but we lag significantly behind the European countries that have installed wind turbines offshore.

Derailing Wind Energy Progress

The basis of our American experiment in democracy has always been predicated on following the will of the majority while respecting the positions of the minority. As a recent Mother Jones article (Cape Wind Delay a Big Win for Dirty Energy Interests) points out, the democractic process has been turned on its ear by an unlikely alliance of oil and gas interests with a group of Native Americans who are looking to define an entire body of water as a national historic site, blocking the construction of the Cape Wind Project on Nanucket Sound.

Journalist Kate Sheppard notes:

The tribes surely have perfectly sound reasons of their own for opposing the project. "We are hoping...that we can protect the sound and our religious right to worship the rising sun and be able to pass that tradition on to our grandchildren," Green said. "The government has not honored many of the things it has promised to the Native American people...All we have is the process, and all we've asked for is due process."

That's clearly a consideration for the Department of Interior, which oversees NPS. To that end, the Interior Department recently issued a new tribal consultation policy, a long overdue effort to improve the agency's relationship with tribes.

But in the case of this particular decision on Cape Wind, granting this level of preservation to an entire body of water could be a bad omen for all future offshore wind development. Barring development here, Cape Wind president Jim Gordon told Mother Jones recently, "would have a chilling effect on what could possibly be one of the most promising sources for energy independence and creating a new green economy."

The forces aligned against renewable energy use every tactic imagineable to derail progress on the alternative energy front. In this case, the majority of the residents of Massachusetts, the state legislature, the state's congressional delegation, and the Governor, Deval Patrick, are solidly behind the Cape Wind project. The opposition is small, well-funded, and determined--undettered by what their opposition means to the future of energy development or the absolute necessity to reverse global warming. In this particular scenario, democracy isn't working very well at all.

Stopping Major Climate Distruption

In his new book, Storms of My Grandchildren, climate scientist James Hansen offers a pragmatic solution, perhaps our last chance, for reversing the build-up of CO2 in the atmosphere and restoring equilibrium to global weather patterns. In an excerpt published in The Nation, Hansen spells out the essential tenets of his plan:

Let's define what a workable backbone and framework should look like. The essential backbone is a rising price on carbon applied at the source (the mine, wellhead, or port of entry), such that it would affect all activities that use fossil fuels, directly or indirectly.

Our goal is a global phaseout of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions. We have shown, quantitatively, that the only practical way to achieve an acceptable carbon dioxide level is to disallow the use of coal and unconventional fossil fuels (such as tar sands and oil shale) unless the resulting carbon is captured and stored. We realize that remaining, readily available pools of oil and gas will be used during the transition to a post-fossil-fuel world. But a rising carbon price surely will make it economically senseless to go after every last drop of oil and gas--even though use of those fuels with carbon capture and storage may be technically feasible and permissible.

Global phaseout of fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions is a stringent requirement. Proposed government policies, consisting of an improved Kyoto Protocol approach with more ambitious targets, do not have a prayer of achieving that result. Our governments are deceiving us, and perhaps conveniently deceiving themselves, when they say that it is possible to reduce emissions 80 percent by 2050 with such an approach.

Hansen then goes into a discussion about why cap-and-trade solutions are doomed to failure and what our best bets are for preserving the planet for our grandchildren. As arguably the foremost authority on the issue of global warming, Hansen's words carry a strong degree of credibility.

Climate distruption hits Peru

Call it global warming or climate disruption or whatever you want: it's hitting Peru big time.

Beyond the Stimulus: A Global Green Deal

With indications that global warming is accelerating faster than many earlier computer models predicted, you would think that this information would spur a concerted global effort to reverse the trend. But so far the response of most governments around the world has been fairly tepid and the levels of greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise in those countries most responsible for the problem.

In a recent article for The Nation, A Global Green Deal, Mark Hertsgaard makes a case for a massive program of green investment to lift people out of poverty, stimulate the worldwide economy, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Hertsgaard believes the Obama's stimulus package is a good start, but more most be done to contend with the problem.

The stimulus package is a good start. It contains $71 billion in direct green spending and $20 billion in green tax incentives, according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress. The World Resources Institute has calculated that every $1 billion in green spending generates approximately 30,000 jobs, so the green portions of the stimulus package should create about 2 million jobs, many in the construction sector, which has been hit especially hard. Retrofitting buildings, installing solar panels and constructing wind farms require skilled and semiskilled labor and create decent-paying jobs that cannot be outsourced. Investing in climate-friendly development in poor countries, where money buys more, should yield even more jobs and economic uplift--no small consideration, given the recent warning from the US director of national intelligence, retired Adm. Dennis Blair, that the economic downturn could become the gravest threat to international stability if it triggers a return to the "violent extremism" of the 1930s.

But even more will have to be done, at home and abroad, if we are to slash emissions quickly enough to preserve a livable planet. President Obama has promised to reduce US emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 and to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. This sounds impressive compared with the Bush/Cheney years, but precisely because of Bush-era foot-dragging, the United States and the rest of the world need to achieve larger and faster emissions reductions than previously assumed. We have "a very short window of time," Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said in January at a Worldwatch Institute conference. If we want to avoid such scenarios as twenty feet of sea-level rise, which would put most of the world's big cities under water, the rise in global temperatures must be limited to 2.0 to 2.4 Celsius above preindustrial levels. That means global emissions must peak by 2015 and then fall rapidly for decades, said Pachauri. In this context, he added, Obama's goal "falls short of the response needed by world leaders" in preparation for the negotiations in Copenhagen in December to produce a successor to the Kyoto treaty. Instead, Pachauri urged Obama to embrace the European Union's target: reducing emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020, which the EU says it will achieve by increasing energy efficiency and renewable energy by 20 percent.

The article then charts a course for a more effective approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, including techniques through which energy efficiency alone can produce substantial reductions in emissions while producing strong economic development.

The data and the incentives make it clear that there is no time left for dawdling. Fortunately, the actions that have the best chance to mitigate climate disruption are actions that also have the potential to revive a stagnant worldwide economy.

The Distributed Generation Approach

We've grown up in a country where when you flipped the switch on the wall to light a lamp, the electricity came from a power source dozens or maybe hundreds of miles away. This centralized model of power distribution is beginning to give way to a smarter approach: distributed generation. Small wind farms, solar installations for a building or apartment complex, co-generation systems that heat a neighborhood, geothermal deployments that heat in the winter and cool in the summer.

In this article in The Nation, Think Solar, Think Small, Craig Rosen builds a case for abandoning the grand notions of a national backbone grid in favor of small-scale, community-oriented power generation. He writes:

To be sure, the romance of a renewable national grid is classic American thinking: a big problem requires a big solution. But the distributed generation approach (DG in energy lingo) is emerging from advances in solar technology and detailed studies of alternatives to big power-line projects. Consider what happened when Minnesota regulators looked carefully last year at the CapX 2020 project, a proposed cluster of new power lines costing up to $1.7 billion. A key purpose of the lines was to link Minnesota with proposed wind farms in the Dakotas. This is just the type of project favored by Pickens and other supporters of big electric transmission. But after examination the regulators found that Minnesota could develop many small 10-40 megawatt wind farms within the state totaling 600 megawatts--equivalent to a modern power plant--without any new transmission.

"We call it the '600 megawatts for nothing' study," said Mike Michaud, an engineer and consultant who formerly worked with the state regulatory staff. "There was no denying there were twenty spots on the existing grid [where] you could put generation for no cost at all." Michaud added that there is no guarantee the $1.7 billion transmission project would be restricted to clean power--it might in some cases be used to transport power from coal-burning plants.

He mentions a study by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance that determined half the states in the U.S. could be energy self-sufficient by harnessing renewables within their borders, satisfying a considerable fraction of their own energy needs.

Powerful food for thought...

Renewable Energy in the 21st Century

One of the refreshing parts of the following independent short, Unlimited: Renewable Energy in the 21st Century, is the perspective of the young people interviewed. If there is hope for the human population of this harried planet, it's in the upcoming generation's unvarnished, unblinkered viewpoints.

Energy Tips for President Obama

A few energy tips offered by some high-profile folks to the incoming President Obama (produced by the Sierra Club)...

Global Perspective on Green Stimulus Packages

The U.S. isn't the only country determined--under Barack Obama's leadership--to get its economy rolling through stimulus packages to produce alternative energy. This piece, from LinkTV, offers a concise view of what some other countries are doing in this area.

John Holdren as Science Advisor

In an encouraging move that speaks to the need for aggressively confronting worldwide climate disruption, President-elect Barack Obama has chosen John P. Holdren as his science advisor. Holdren is a specialist in global climate change, energy policy, and nuclear arms control, and serves as professor of environmental policy at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In the following video and accompanying McLatchy Newspaper article, Holdren talks about sensible climate policy, the problem with the term "global warming", and the need for firm emission-reduction guidelines.