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Saturday, March 05, 2011

HOW MUCH HAS THE ANTI-NUCLEAR MOVEMENT COST HUMANITY?



   Looking at this graph a lot. Up till 1988 nuclear power production was a steep and rising curve. I have previously described how such a rising acceleration of a curve associates with being near the start of a typical S-curve rise which would thus normally be expected to continue rising at at the same or steeper rate for a long time when some other limit is reached.

   It is also worth noting that the theoretical minimum building time for a reactor is 3 years which I suspect means that the practical one, between the decision to allow building of a reactor and completion is about 10. Thus the halt at 1988 reflects decisions made in 1978. This in turn means that the decisions took place before Chernobyl or Three Mile Island (the only catastrophic disaster in the history of the world where nobody was killed or even injured) and they were not a cause of anti-nuclear propaganda but simply used by it.

    The way this graph stops almost flat rather than curving to a stop shows the interruption in the natural rate of growth, caused by anti-nuclear Luddism. The fact that there has been a rise in power production without a rise in the number of generators shows that improved computerised control systems and perhaps other technical improvement is still working and that nuclear costs are naturally still falling which in turn suggests the rate of increase of the curve should, if allowed to, still be increasing.

   The last 3 years of fast growth (1985-88) shows an increase from 200 to 300 GW, which is 66GW a year. Extrapolating that for the next 23 year shows we humanity should be using 1818 GW [300 + 23X66] or 4 times what we actually do.

   The previous period of 1975 to 1985 showed growth of 60 to 200, an average of  14 GW a year. The point about that is that it shows how fast the increase in the curve was. That suggests that for the following decade if that acceleration of growth had increased the following decade would have been likely to show a growth of 118GW annually from 1989 to 1998.

    And 170 GW annually from 1999 to well today.

    That would mean we would now have been producing  3690 GW instead of 400.
    Even at the assumed 1989 rate of growth we would now have 3014 GW.
    Taking the most conservative assumption of no natural increase in growth rate, which is not really compatible with the observed increase in production due to efficiency we still now get 1818 GW. Of the three that most mathematically probable is the first.

     Back then nuclear produced about 20% of the world's power. It is now marginally lower than that.  So a roughly 8 fold increase in nuclear power would have meant at least 160% of what we actually produce would now be nuclear or that we would be producing 240% in total.

     The close correlation between wealth and electricity production has been established. So even assuming it were not an absolute correlation, humanity would all average at least twice as well off as we actually do without these anti-nuclear Luddite parasites.

  It is a rising curve we could get back on at any time. One which Asia, not being run by fascist parasites or complete idiots according to choice, is currently on.


  This is the figure for Britain and is similar. We used to produce 10% of the world's nuclear power, Doing it now with nuclear being most of the world's power would be even more effective.

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Comments:
I would no more invest in a new nuclear plant than I would leap from an airplane.

Some recent geologic/economic assessments concluded that simply continuing to operate today’s number of reactors around the world will result in a peak in uranium production this century — possibly within a few decades

Keep peddling EDF's propaganda all you want as it is just nonsense in the real world.
 
Actually, as Professor Cohen has calculated, there is enough uranium dissolved in seawater alone to keep the current nuclear industry running for 4.5 billion years. Even expanded it is difficult to see it not lasting for hundreds of millions, which ia quite a long time.

A few days ago I asked if any "green" could produce any factual and rational atgument against nuclear power. I assume you decided you, like the rest of them, couldn't.
 
A few days ago I asked if any "green" could produce any factual and rational atgument against nuclear power. I assume you decided you, like the rest of them, couldn't.

When you peddle nonsense about recovering uranium from seawater is it any wonder. EROEI for this fantasy would take far more energy in recovering and converting into a usable fuel than it would ever return.
 
Perhaps you know more physics than Professor Cohen or indeed anybody else, since nobody else has disputed his figures as you have?
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/cohen.html

You have no idea whatsoever of how much energy is in the atom or, presumably anything else on the subject. This clearly is no handicap in supporting the eco party line.
 
Your second link is predicated on the theory that uranium will not also be reused in fast breeder reactors which is the same argument as saying that aircraft will never fly because steam engines are to heavy.

Your first acknowledges that uranium resources, as opposed to reserves (ie what we know is in the ground rather than what we have in mines currently being mined) are orders of magnitude larger than we will need. This should be obvious since uranium in seawater had to come from somewhere.
 
You are totally talking cr*p look at Japan today in total meltdown.
 
???
Are you saying building nuclear plants causes earthquiakes?

Presumably, as a paid up Luddite, you also share the puritan ministry's concern about Mr Franklin's invention of the lightning rod too.
http://neoamericanist.org/paper/shaky-ground-hochman
 
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