Their heavy industry is powered by cheap coal.

And we all know how Volkswagen cares about emission controls...

Published on Monday, August 22, 2016
by Common Dreams


New Study Shows How Clinging to Nuclear Power Means Climate Failure
"By suppressing better ways to meet climate goals, evidence suggests entrenched commitments to nuclear power may actually be counterproductive"
byAndrea Germanos, staff writer

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A sign held at an anti-nuclear demonstration in Germany. (Photo: Michaela/flickr/cc)

While it's been touted by some energy experts as a so-called "bridge" to help slash carbon emissions, a new study suggests that a commitment to nuclear power may in fact be a path towards climate failure.

For their study, researchers at the University of Sussex and the Vienna School of International Studies grouped European countries by levels of nuclear energy usage and plans, and compared their progress with part of the European Union's (EU) 2020 Strategy.

That 10-year strategy (pdf), proposed in 2010, calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by least 20 percent compared to 1990 levels and increasing the share of renewable energy in final energy consumption to 20 percent.

The researchers found that "progress in both carbon emissions reduction and in adoption of renewables appears to be inversely related to the strength of continuing nuclear commitments."

For the study, the authors looked at three groupings. First is those with no nuclear energy. Group 1 includes Denmark, Ireland, and Portugal. Group 2, which counts Germany and Sweden among its members, includes those with some continuing nuclear commitments, but also with plans to decommission existing nuclear plants. The third group, meanwhile, includes countries like Hungary and the UK which have plans to maintain current nuclear units or even expand nuclear capacity.

"With reference to reductions in carbon emissions and adoption of renewables, clear relationships emerge between patterns of achievement in these 2020 Strategy goals and the different groupings of nuclear use," they wrote.

For non-nuclear Group 1 countries, the average percentage of reduced emissions was six percent, and they had an average of a 26 percent increase in renewable energy consumption.

Group 2 had the highest average percentage of reduced emissions at 11 percent, and they also boosted renewable energy to 19 percent.

Pro-nuclear Group 3, meanwhile, had their emissions on average go up three percent, and they had the smallest increase in renewable shares—16 percent.

"Looked at on its own, nuclear power is sometimes noisily propounded as an attractive response to climate change," said Andy Stirling, professor of science and technology policy at the University of Sussex, in a media statement. "Yet if alternative options are rigorously compared, questions are raised about cost-effectiveness, timeliness, safety, and security."

"Looking in detail at historic trends and current patterns in Europe, this paper substantiates further doubts," he continued. "By suppressing better ways to meet climate goals, evidence suggests entrenched commitments to nuclear power may actually be counterproductive," he said.

Against the odds

The new study focused on Europe, and Benjamin Sovacool, professor of energy policy and director of the Sussex Energy Group at the University of Sussex, stated, "If nothing else, our paper casts doubt on the likelihood of a nuclear renaissance in the near-term, at least in Europe."

Yet advocates of clean energy over on the other side of the Atlantic said the recent plan to close the last remaining nuclear power plant in California and replace it with renewable energy marked the "end of an atomic era" and said it could serve as "a clear blueprint for fighting climate change."

NRDC president Rhea Suh wrote of the proposal: "It proves we can cut our carbon footprint with energy efficiency and renewable power, even as our aging nuclear fleet nears retirement. And it strikes a blow against the central environmental challenge of our time, the climate change that threatens our very future."

The new study was published in the journal Climate Policy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/08/22/new-study-shows-how-clinging-nuclear-power-means-climate-failure

He is not, by the way, anything remotely like a scientist, unless one makes the generous, but generally unwarranted assumption that a Ph.D in a subject called "Science and Technology" from "College of Humanities and Social Science" at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute of State University of Virginia at Blackburg makes one a scientist.

Since he's reliably full of shit, I'd find that assumption dubious.

Like all the rest of the dumbass anti-nukes from Amory Lovins, to Joe Romm, to Mark Z. Jacobsen, he seems not to have noticed that buying into his pathetic bull, which the world has done a grand, if futile, scale, has resulted in the planetary atmosphere shooting, at an incredibly accelerating rate, over 400 ppm, irreversibly.

These tiresome asses - who can't count - are nothing less than the Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

It's been clear to me, whenever I run into his tiresome bull, that he has never, not once, taken a course in basic engineering.

It's amazing, and a little disconcerting, that these fools get published. It says something disturbing about the reliability of the scientific literature.

Or where the data is inaccurate?

I didn't think so.

Nuclear energy and path dependence in Europe’s ‘Energy union’: coherence or continued divergence?
Andrew Lawrence, Benjamin Sovacool & Andrew Stirling

Page 622-641 | Published online: 01 Jul 2016


Abstract

Since its initial adoption, the EU’s 2020 Strategy – to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20%, increase the share of renewable energy to at least 20% of consumption, and achieve energy savings of 20% or more by 2020 – has witnessed substantial albeit uneven progress.

This article addresses the question of what role nuclear power generation has played, and can or should play in future, towards attaining the EU 2020 Strategy, particularly with reference to decreasing emissions and increasing renewables. It also explores the persistent diversity in energy strategies among member states. To do so, it first surveys the current landscape of nuclear energy use and then presents the interrelated concepts of path dependency, momentum, and lock-in.

The article proceeds to examine five factors that help explain national nuclear divergence: technological capacity and consumption; economic cost; security and materiality; national perceptions; and political, ideological and institutional factors. This divergence reveals a more general weakness in the 2020 Strategy’s underlying assumptions.

Although energy security – defined as energy availability, reliability, affordability, and sustainability – remains a vital concern for all member states, the 2020 Strategy does not explicitly address questions of political participation, control, and power. The inverse relationship identified here – between intensity of nuclear commitments, and emissions mitigation and uptake of renewable sources – underscores the importance of increasing citizens' levels of energy policy awareness and participation in policy design.

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14693062.2016.1179616