Nuclear vs Nuclear vs Nuclear by George Monbiot

I think this is one of the most important posts on the issues of nuclear waste disposal I've read in a long time.  My favourite scientist James Lovelock has long supported Nuclear Power as the only conceivable way to generate sufficient energy while addressing Co2 emissions.  George here proposes support for one of the three options on the table to do with dealing with nuclear waste in the long term. Integral Fast Reactors were recently mooted by the Government's Chief Scientist as capable of producing all our energy needs for the next 500 years (!!! My italics!)
This needs serious attention.  The other two options of burying it in a big hole and 'Moxing' it have few advantages and many negatives.  At last there's something of a technical fix in actuality rather than on the horizon.  It should be supported and encouraged by all of us...vigorously.
Nuclear vs Nuclear vs Nuclear

From The Guardian's Duncan Clark 2.212  "In the proposal currently under discussion, a pair of Prism reactors would be installed at Sellafield and optimised to consume the plutonium stockpile as quickly as possible. If, however, the government decided to prioritise low-carbon power generation rather than rapid waste disposal, a larger number of Prism reactors could theoretically be combined with a fuel recycling system to extract as much electricity as possible from the plutonium and depleted uranium.

According to figures calculated for the Guardian by the American writer and fast reactor advocate Tom Blees, this alternative approach could – given a large enough number of reactors – produce enough low-carbon electricity from Britain's waste stockpile to supply the UK at current rates of demand for more than 500 years.

MacKay (The Government's Chief Scientist HoB) confirmed this figure. "As an upper bound on what you could get from those resources in fast reactors I think it's a very reasonable estimate. In reality you'd get all kinds of issues so you wouldn't achieve the upper bound but I still think it's a reasonable starting point."

But he added that free or low-cost fuel was not in itself sufficient to make inexpensive nuclear energy. "When you think about the economics of the low-carbon transition, it isn't the nuclear fuel that's the expensive bit – it's the power stations and the other facilities that go with them."

The cost of any Prism installation would depend on unknown quantities, including the details of the licensing requirements. However, Eric Loewen, chief engineer at GE Hitachi nuclear, claims that the technology should be economically competitive due to its small and fixed-size modular design, which allows it to be produced in an off-site factory.

MacKay said, "I think it's credible that it could be cheaper [than Mox] but it's up to GE to tell us the price tag". He added that the alternative option of making Mox would not be easy either. " You have to make a big facility to make the Mox fuel and you need to have a load of reactors that can accept the Mox fuel, and we don't have either of those in place yet."

MacKay also said that he supported "long-term research and development" into new reactor technologies that could be safer and more efficient than current designs.

He argued that such research should not be seen as a threat to renewable technologies such as wind and solar, which were crucial but not sufficient on their own to meet the UK's ambitious carbon targets."

"If you've seriously looked at ways of making plans that add up you come to the conclusion that you need almost everything and you need it very fast – right now. You need all the credible technologies that can develop at scale … I don't think anyone serious would say that we only need nuclear … but similarly I think it's unrealistic to say we could get there solely with renewables."
At last some bright people are starting to talk some sense.  Let's just hope our benighted politicians don't screw it up!

NOT THE WAY TO LOOK WHEN YOU'RE PLAYING THE UKULELE! Picture by my daughter-Lauren. This person is Evil! He uses the Ukulele as a wave bending tool to control the thoughts of all unfortunate enough to hear his tainted tunes!

Kids are not affected by Video games! Errr...well maybe?

The country has a problem. Senator Bernie Sanders says it like it is!

FORCED SIMPLICITY

“The only way out of the trap, as I’ve argued here rather more than once, is to accept a steep cut in your standard of living before it becomes necessary, as a deliberate choice, and to use the resources freed up by that choice to get rid of any debts you have, get settled in a location that has a fair chance of keeping a viable degree of community life going, and get the tools and learn the skills that you will need to manage a decent life in an age of spiraling decline. To those who cling to the idea that they can maintain their present lifestyles, admittedly, it’s hard to think of any advice less welcome, but the universe is in no way obligated to give us the future we want—even if what we want is a sudden blow that will spare us the harder experience of the Long Descent.”

From the blog of John Michael Greer  Archdruid USA. On the continuing post peak oil decline.  It’s good advice!  Please take it!

Readers of this blog will know that I quote often and extensively from the Archdruid’s blog.  That’s because, like George Monbiot, he is a truth teller to power and a rigorous fact checker and referencer-two attributes often missing from the current state of the world debate.

However I do think that both John and George are a tad pessimistic.  It is no doubt true that a slow spiralling decline in the global fossil-fuelled economy will continue for the foreseeable future.  It’s also true that, in the West, food prices will start to rise significantly and the social impact of the decline among the most vulnerable will start to spread to the swollen middle (great phrase!)  I also agree that we will see the much publicised exit of certain countries from the Euro though whether the currency will survive, I think the jury is out.  I for one am not so sure the return of the Deutschmark and the Franc might not be a good thing.  And perhaps we actually might rethink the European Community as more community and less market.

To date the ‘crisis’, if that is what it is, has forced the hands of the banking/military/big pharma/agri business industrial sector to reveal its true power more clearly than ever before.  We have seen entire countries political leaders removed and replaced with accounting technocrats without a vote (Greece), and entire political policies delivered wholesale by the International Monetary Fund. (Spain, Ireland, Greece, Italy.)  Then thrust upon the working people and the most vulnerable while it’s business as usual with the banks and the fat cats.  And all without serious comment and analysis in the mass media.

One inevitable effect of all this sound and noise is going to be the return to a peasant type existence, what I am choosing to call Forced Simplicity.  This will be a return to ‘back to basics’ and for a lot of people lost in the dream of capitalism and endless growth in a finite world, it will come as some kind of disaster-a waking nightmare, a slow drift back to barbarism and ignorance.

However Forced Simplicity can be a major life enhancing process of our lives and I suspect that where capitalism turns us into passive and uncritical consumers, obsessed with trivia, Forced Simplicity will turn us towards deeper meaning, poetry, song, community, slow food, slow travel, wood rather than plastic, the fire rather than the radiator, our own musical instruments rather than a CD, tools rather than tradesmen, community members rather than social workers and policemen, the wisdom of elders rather than career politicians.  It will give us a sense of how utterly precious is this world and all that is in it.  And it will force us by intractable events to re-evaluate our lives and its meaning and our relationship to the Earth and each other.

As we watch the great fossilised western democracies unravel it’s just possible that the post-industrial, post tv, post motorised, localised, slowed down, small community, permacultured, straw-baled, forest gardening and horse driven future, may be the best thing that’s ever happened to us.