Stewart Brand and James Lovelock have both spoken for nuclear as the energy solution for climate and peak oil. Amory Lovins is opposed. What are the arguments?
Here, overheard from Theoildrum
Interesting thought I had about this today: did the worst-case risk curve for oil just cross that for nuclear?
This disaster has really changed my view of oil’s environmental cost. In the past I saw it as more of a constant thing… you have the manageable level of damage done by drilling, and then you have the emissions from using the stuff as fuel. Nuclear on the other hand could, if used without a high level of respect for its hazards, lead to big game-changing accidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.
The deepwater horizon leak seems to change that equation. I think this disaster already looks worse (at least from an ecosystem damage point of view) than the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, which was the worst nuclear incident in U.S. history. If the worst-case projections are correct and it ends up taking months and months to stop this thing, it could actually approach Chernobyl scales of damage. So it would appear, at least with deepwater drilling, that it’s possible to have a petro-Chernobyl.
Meanwhile, nuclear has gotten safer. Look into current modern designs like CANDU or even modern conventional plants and their safety systems. Then there’s stuff further down the line like LFTR that’s potentially even safer than those.
So did the risk curves just cross?
Douglass Carmichael
MAHB Millennium Assessment of Human Behavior
Stanford Media X , Stanford Stratgey Stdios and Palo Alto StrategyStudios
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