LTE Guardian UK - Nuclear Threat

Letters * The Guardian, Monday 15 November 2010

Nuclear threats

Am I alone in noting that UK civil nuclear infrastructures are uniquely implicated in all four "tier one" threats identified in the recent defence white paper (Report, 19 October)? Objectively, this point is as obvious to nuclear proponents as sceptics. First, few "terrorism targets" are more iconic, vulnerable or potentially damaging than domestic nuclear facilities. Second, few targets for "cyber attack" present greater potential for harm than nuclear control systems. Third, few other "industrial accidents" present greater potential for catastrophic damage than a Chernobyl-style nuclear reactor core melt with containment breach. Fourth, the foremost emerging instance of a new global "military crisis" lies in the widely mooted response to Iranian development of nuclear power. It is curious that the white paper makes no mention of this. The conclusions are not automatic. But, since other low-carbon energy options exist that are also arguably preferable on other grounds, we might expect some pretty good reasons to outweigh these concerns. To simply ignore these issues would be truly indefensible.

Professor Andy Stirling

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/nov/15/nuclear-threats-terrorism-civil-infrastructure

Stirling's bio

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/people/peoplelists/person/7513

http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman11152010.html

It is hard to winnow this one down even though it is rather brief, so here is just a teaser.

""In 2003, my colleagues and I reported that the drainage of a spent fuel pool by a jet crash could lead to a catastrophic spent fuel radiation fire that could render a 27,000 sq mile area uninhabitable. This is larger than the combined states of Maryland, Massachusetts and New Jersey," says reactor expert Robert Alvarez, Senior Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and former Senior Policy Advisor to the US Secretary of Energy, 1993-7."

What?

Global warming is affecting us now.

Nuclear threat may or may not affect us in the future.

What? The. Fuck?

You hear similar statements from global warming deniers: it's not affecting us now, it might affect us in the future, it might be a good thing, co2 is plant food, etc.

LAST YEAR?

If you seriously think climate change is a threat, then you should be in favor of fighting it by any means necessary.

If you think you have a plan for getting us off fossil fuels last year, you're deluding yourself, because last year is gone.

I've said a number of times that the most reality-based solution was by Joe Romm and I've kept it linked in my sigline.

As Al Gore has pointed out, we have the resources to solve several climate crises, nuclear is not needed at all.

As Kristopher has pointed out, nuclear is one of the most least-effective options, and it may even make the problem worse by diverting resources from more effective options.

As the scientists who maintain the famous Doomsday Clock point out, nuclear weapons are still a greater threat than global warming. The nuclear option could literally throw us out of the frying pan into the fire.

I think that solar and wind are distracting us from real solutions, and they are creating problems that will sink us deeper into the mire. :(

Conveniently forgetting the countries that have the highest carbon output already have nuclear weapons or nuclear power.

to claim we have to do everything necessary while objecting to desert solar.

Where she wrote "Large solar facilities out in the desert destroy habitat."
She ignored the fact that global warming will destroy those habitats anyway.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x265721

When someone else says that nuclear isn't affecting us now, they're telling the truth.

See how that works? I know distinguishing between truth and lies is difficult for some, but there you go.

"...since other low-carbon energy options exist that are also arguably preferable on other grounds, we might expect some pretty good reasons to outweigh these concerns. To simply ignore these issues would be truly indefensible."

Your position is "indefensible". It makes absolutely no sense to claim we have to accept a whole host of serious external costs associated with nuclear when "other low-carbon energy options exist that are also arguably preferable on other grounds".

Of course, you probably reject what Stirling has to say because he has more than 2 years of college...

http://www.sussex.ac.uk/spru/people/peoplelists/person/7513

CO2 is a problem we are facing now. Get it?

I of course do not advocate any of the sort of nuclear power we are currently using commercially (since it poses a higher proliferation risk than better Gen IV options), so that's another thing for you to consider.

You sneer and malign everything except nuclear. You very recent protests that you are not a nuclear supporter are somehow very, very hollow.

...which are currently under construction NOW.

Why would there be any reason for them to be?

I'm sure I can count on someone here to come up with a creative reason.

Do you even know what one is? "cyber" refers to computers, networked computers.

I don't even see any reason for them to take any data out of the control systems or be on a network. do you? That means no way to put data in. I doubt they even use any operating system, and if they do, it's definitely not windows. The best way is to hard wire everything. No computer virus is going to be able to attack that.

http://www.nucleartourist.com/systems/control_rooms.htm

Looks like a bunch of hardwired gauges and switches there. No way for anyone to attack, unless they come in.

You're just a freshman struggling with the basics.
A network is not required for a cyber attack, and the internet is not the only kind of network.
http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/_/dict.aspx?word=cyberattack

Hitting a chubby little round thing on the ground with an airliner, not so easy. Hint: The big towers aren't the reactor.

I have no idea what went wrong, or why, or how, at Chernobyl, but I will proceed to compare every nuclear reactor to Chernobyl.

Actually, I toned this down, but after thinking about the "cyber attack" comment, I probably shouldn't have....

...evocation of "nuclear threats" in the absense of "nuclear events" coupled with a complete disregard for the dangerous fossil fuel ongoing and continuous disaster is the hallmark of the anti-science anti-nuke dogma.

It's a grand scale case of under delivering and over "promising," since anti-nukes lie around all day hoping for a nuclear disaster while ignoring the real disaster.

The reason for this is clear enough: Money.

http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Amory+B.+Lovins">Famous Anti-nuke Amory Lovins describes his revenue sources:



I just came back from New Orleans where I was eating my food, um, nervously.

We can all thank BP funded Lovins for that, I suppose, since he, being a typically mindless anti-nuke, doesn't give a flying fuck about observed disasters, like the one affecting the health of the entire Gulf ecosystem, but he sure has a fiecely stupid media driven obsessive concern with threats.

What the BP funded fraud or his equally stupid denizens have never understood, no matter how oft it is repeated, is that nuclear energy need not address their stupid fantasies to be better than everything else. It only needs to be better than everything else, which it is.

I challenge you to produce support by mainstream environmental organizations for the expansion of nuclear power.

None of them do, you know. They don't endorse coal or petroleum either.

They do endorse the move to a distributed grid, the use of renewable energy, and a focus on energy efficiency as the solution, however.

The probability is high that your assessment leading you to support nuclear is as wrong as your assessment of those opposing nuclear.


Oh, and about Amory Lovins. His world renowned work in energy efficiency has resulted significant CO2 reductions and his writings on energy and culture are a guiding light for the environmental community. The ONLY people who have a problem with him are the supporters of nuclear energy.

I guess they need someone (anyone) to blame for their failures if they are going to continue to be true believers.



Amory B. Lovins
Cofounder and CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute

Lovins Amory Lovins, a MacArthur and Ashoka Fellow and consultant physicist, is among the world's leading innovators in energy and its links with resources, security, development, and environment. He has advised the energy and other industries for more than three decades as well as the U.S. Departments of Energy and Defense. His work in 50+ countries has been recognized by the "Alternative Nobel," Blue Planet, Volvo, Onassis, Nissan, Shingo, Goff Smith, and Mitchell Prizes, the Benjamin Franklin and Happold Medals, 11 honorary doctorates, honorary membership of the American Institute of Architects, Foreign Membership of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, honorary Senior Fellowship of the Design Futures Council, and the Heinz, Lindbergh, Jean Meyer, Time Hero for the Planet, Time International Hero of the Environment, Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Leadership, National Design (Design Mind), and World Technology Awards. A Harvard and Oxford dropout and former Oxford don, he has briefed 20 heads of state and advises major firms and governments worldwide, recently including the leadership of Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank, Ford, Holcim, Interface, and Wal-Mart. In 2009, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world, and Foreign Policy, one of the 100 top global thinkers.

Mr. Lovins cofounded and is Chairman and Chief Scientist of Rocky Mountain Institute (www.rmi.org), an independent, market-oriented, entrepreneurial, nonprofit, nonpartisan think-and-do tank that creates abundance by design. Much of its pathfinding work on advanced resource productivity (typically with expanding returns to investment) and innovative business strategies is synthesized in Natural Capitalism (1999, with Paul Hawken and L.H. Lovins, www.natcap.org). This intellectual capital provides most of RMI's revenue through private-sector consultancy that has served or been invited by more than 80 Fortune 500 firms, lately redesigning more than $30 billion worth of facilities in 29 sectors. In 1992, RMI spun off E SOURCE (www.esource.com), and in 1999, Fiberforge Corporation (www.fiberforge.com), a composites technology firm that Mr. Lovins chaired until 2007; its technology, when matured and scaled, will permit cost- effective manufacturing of the ultralight-hybrid Hypercar® vehicles he invented in 1991.

The latest of his 29 books are Small Is Profitable: The Hidden Economic Benefits of Making Electrical Resources the Right Size (2002, www.smallisprofitable.org), an Economist book of the year blending financial economics with electrical engineering, and the Pentagon-cosponsored Winning the Oil Endgame (2004, www.oilendgame.com), a roadmap for eliminating U.S. oil use by the 2040s, led by business for profit. His most recent visiting academic chair was in spring 2007 as MAP/Ming Professor in Stanford's School of Engineering, offering the University's first course on advanced energy efficiency (www.rmi.org/stanford).

http://www.oilendgame.com/TheAuthors.html

I didn't think so.

It is easy to make a well reasoned, truthful case as to why nuclear is a *poor* choice for responding to AGW.

It is not possible to make a truthful, well reasoned case that nuclear is a *good* choice for responding to AGW.

That would suggest that you should reconsider your conclusions.

of how things are likely to turn pear-shaped over the next 50 or 100 hundred years -some idiosyncratic combination of a brittle economy, overstressed sectors, and an abundance of pissed-off have-nots and used-to-haves who are not going to take kindly to their newfound status. Given the right-wing’s unreconstructed love of neo-slavery, lone wolves, and predatory corporations, the future to me looks more like Haiti than it does an episode of the Jetsons,

I assume that most here would recoil at the profound foolishness of building yet another suburban subdivision, another highway, or another remote and inefficient office park –and for good reason, because any infrastructure built today will likely still be around in 100 years. And yet some of those same people would not hesitate to drop a nuclear honeypot into every county without regard to what the political and social landscape might look like then.

Any enemy may wish to breach a containment, but it wouldn’t be necessary for that to happen for the security state and a panicky people to overreact. 1-800-blackwater would be ringing off the hook. Good-bye civil liberties. Even a slightly successful attack would have economy destroying consequences. To a lesser (and less radioactively leveraged) extent, the same could be said about the inevitable concentration of refinery capacity. If I have a critique of the LTE and the The National Security Strategy report, it does not take enough into account how brittle complex systems can flip in nonlinear ways given the slightest nudge.

And all for what? Because we hold “market solutions” to be sacred? Or because we can’t be bothered to unplug the dryer and hang the clothes to dry? Or are too cowardly or beholden to tell BP, Peabody, GE, and Bechtel that the game is up? Are streetcars really so bad that they’re worth all that?