All right Jupiter landing deniers, check out Alex Berezow’s plan at the American Council on Science and Health to reduce carbon emissions:
- Start building Generation IV nuclear power plants right now. Not next year. Not tomorrow. Right now. They are meltdown-proof and the best source of carbon-free energy on the planet. Research suggests that the entire world could be on nuclear power within 25 years.
- In the meantime, phase out coal while embracing natural gas. Natural gas burns cleaner than coal. If you object to this, then do #1 faster.
- Upgrade our energy infrastructure with a smart grid, smart meters, better capacitors, and better transmission lines. All of this is necessary if we want to rely at least in part on solar and wind. (But solar and wind aren’t really necessary; see #1.)
- Invest in solar and fusion power research. Current solar technology is too inefficient. The breakthrough we’ve been seeking in solar hasn’t happened yet, but it could. Similarly, fusion is theoretically the best source of energy (even better than nuclear), but scientists haven’t figured this one out yet. It turns out that recreating the sun on earth is kind of hard.
- As our energy infrastructure improves, electric car technology will improve along with it, making fossil fuels largely obsolete. (Airplanes might always need fossil fuels, though, much to AOC’s chagrin.)
You may notice that bears a much closer resemblance to proposals I’ve made here than it does to the “Green New Deal”. He’s more optimistic about electrical vehicles than I am. There’s little reason to believe that battery production can be scaled to the level that would be required. As proof I would submit the present rate of increase in production which is actually quite slow. I would also add that it takes about 20 years for the entire vehicle fleet to turn over and at the present rate at which EVs are displacing internal combustion engine vehicles we’ll have the same mix of vehicles as we do now forever. In other words to make a dent in the present fleet not only would you need to produce a lot more EVs, you’d need to buy EVs for everybody so that adoption would be hastened.
I’d prefer that the nuclear power generation be done with small, modular reactors which would remove other objections to nuclear but all in all I think that’s a pretty good plan. And it’s possible which is an enormous advantage over the Green New Deal.
Well, there’s no cost for what it would take to replace coal with nuclear and according to wikipedia, Generation IV nuclear reactors will not be ready until 2020-2030.
Otherwise it’s a great plan. It’s ingenious if I understand it correctly.
Small modular nuclear reactors can be deployed much more quickly and at lower cost. The technology is already proven. Present delays and impediments are primarily regulatory.
There is presently about 280 GW of coal-fired power in the U. S. and a 680 MW modular nuclear reactor costs about $3 billion. My back-of-the-envelope calculation says that replacing all coal with nukes would cost about $1.2 trillion.
” it’s a great plan”
Convince AOC and it’s a done deal.
Seriously, I’m a denier and I’ll die a denier. But nuclear is the way to go for power generation if you can get past the fear factor.
With all that juice from nuclear power plants we could make hydrogen for cars and planes. Just think of all that could be done with cheap, abundant energy.
We could do whatever we imagined, even grow all our food underground, live underground, be buried underground, and save the surface for natural parkland for the enjoyment of the elites.
“I’d prefer that the nuclear power generation be done with small, modular reactors which would remove other objections to nuclear”
Where are they using these on a significant scale?
Steve
You can find more information here.
As mentioned previously the constraints in the U. S. are primarily regulatory. They’re produced in factories rather than being built onsite.
Per this article it looks as though no one is using them at all, and certainly no one is using them on a large scale. Yet they are comfortable predicting they are 100% safe and can easily supply all of our power needs. I would think that with any other technology we would at least wait until we have some experience with the tech before making such claims.
Steve
You cannot license in eaches and then require hundreds or dozens to have been deployed before you’ll grant licenses. It’s a non sequitur. Give orders and licenses for dozens and you’ll have dozens. There are presently orders for another half dozen or so and another half dozen will come online within the next year and a half.
Let me see if I can translate into your world. It’s the equivalent of outright prohibiting a procedure until there’s significant experience with it. It’s a contradiction in terms.
It’s no coincidence that new nukes ground to halt when the AEC was abolished. The AEC’s charter was to promote the peaceful use of nuclear energy and that’s what it did by granting licenses. As I’ve been saying the biggest impediment is regulation.
But these folks are talking about initial deployment, I read this quickly so may not have date correct, in 2030. And you have your analogy all wrong. You are saying we should all take the drug wondercillin to cure cancer when haven’t even trialed it yet. We should first make sure it works, then do a large scale trial to make sure we arent missing problems. So how about we trial it in some smaller country first like Japan? Or maybe in a big state that doesn’t care if it accidentally kills a few of its citizens, say Texas? If it works on the trial level, then expand it.
Steve