Posted By: JSHarrisor that to heat and light their homes for around 20 years would result in a bit of waste about the size of an aspirin tablet, they might get a sense of proportion about it.

That's precisely the sort of false comparison that I object to among pro-nuclearati (not sure if that includes you JSH) The size or volume of the stuff has no bearing on its power.

I'll freely admit my negative view of nuclear is partly linked to it's "invisibility" as well as what I'd see as more rational reasons - leaks and lies about it, falling into the hands of terrorists etc. , decommissioning costs and risks.

Posted By: JSHarristhe amount of nuclear waste produced from heating and lighting a home for around 20 years

Posted By: JSHarrisheating and lighting the same house with gas fired electricity for 20 years would produce

Both hideous - how can any comparison help? One ogre is here - so lets welcome in another - can't be worse, might even have nicer table manners (for the first 200yrs). Just because we're too lazy, paralysed by pessimistic 'human nature' perceptions, to make a success of the alternative to both - negawatts. That is precisely what we'll be blamed for by future generations - not bad choice of power technologies, but cowardly, money-conniving failure to change the game.

And gd profits for those who smell the mustard:
"Looking forward, new types of efficiency service providers are needed. Those companies will combine the operational efficiency of Toyota, the sales approach of Avon, the scientific approach of Google, the product design of IDEO, the social engagement within Facebook and the hassle-free transactions of Amazon to drive up demand and drive down costs. Those who figure it out are most likely to capture the largest share of the $1.4 trillion net opportunity."
from http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/02/21/benefits-building-efficiency-go-far-beyond-energy-costs?page=0%2C1
linked from http://blog.rmi.org/Spark2012_6

A masterly summing-up JSH

Posted By: JSHarrisbut will we have done significant harm to the planet in the mean time?

Pity the 'Answers on a Postcard' thread name is already taken!

I don't think that technically the storage issue is that hard, just low density and relatively expensive.

Now, a physics lesson.

½.mass.velocity²

So if a hair shirt weights half a kilo (about a pound), and a person moves about 1 km a day (just general movement and twitching), then that hair shirt has cost the environment an extra 3.35 x 10^-5 J. Negawatts are not going to change that.
May not seem much, but multiply by 7b people, that is 234.4 kJ, or 65 kWh.d^-1. That is enough to run my house for a week in the summer.

There is no way I am turning my lights off for the hairshirt brigade

Only when I get it right, which is not very often

All Arithmetic really

One day I have no doubt, humans will resume using cheap energy in large quantities - it's been a nett upward forever. Nothing wrong with that in itself.

What's gone wrong is that extremely dirty energy sources have been resorted to. Well perhaps they were often dirty in one way or another thro history - but that fact, previously not obvious, is now blindingly clear - but we continue to shit in our bed as if we have no choice. That is simply neurotic, mad, bad, of the human race. Anyone looking in from outside would not believe it.

'Hair shirts' my foot. Whatever it takes to shake sanity into what looks like a species with death-wish, or is it self-harm? We have to learn to 'live within our means' energy-wise and finite-resource-wise. Mrs T and maybe Red Ed wd understand, from different perspectives - Cameron doesn't want to even think about it.

Temporarily, until the new clean energy sources come along, there's a shortage, once fossil burning stops (as if). That's good - it's the education the human race needs, arriving nicely on cue. Let's not avoid the lesson by resorting to a new kind of dirty - nukes. Let's accept the challenge, learn to live within our means for a bit, which is eminently possible - no need even to abandon Growth in money/value/utility terms (but definitely to abandon Growth in resource-use terms).

Once we've proved that we can do it, then Star Trek technology will be ready for us to set off again. But this time we'll know how to do it clean.

Money can be printed, no prob, zillions coming off the presses right now, but instead of being used for either the above educational project, or for Star Trek, or for anything else life-enhancing (that wouldn't be Austerity), it's being given to Bank profits, thence perhaps a little trickling out into 'consumer confidence' spending on biz-as-usual resource-hungry disposable trinkets.

Now we really would be saving the world if we solved the problem that is money. It is intangible and very odd. Douglas Adams describes it best when he talks of all our efforts being made to move little green pieces of paper around w hen the little pieces of green paper are quite happy where they are. I think this is a half demijohn of homebrew cider problem and I am all out until next season!

It's not just more of the same inventive progression - like I said, for the first time, the dirtiness of what we habitually do has become very clear. A break point, when we cd choose to do it different and still have the goodies. But we can't choose it seems - we're victims to our inertia, so on to the next, a new unprecedented kind of dirtiness, just a few hundred tons of waste but potentially lethal (equals near cert, over 1000yrs storage) in ways never imagined before.

Posted By: pmagowanThe solution is .. the only thing that makes sense ... it will happen anyway ... I choose ... green energy ... with less devastation

Daft, when you could choose no devastation.

There is no golden egg. If it is too good to be true then it is not true. All choices have consequences and since we need power we need to choose a form which has a future and which has the least detrimental effects. I really don't understand your problem with 1000 years of storage. This is a massive bonus to nuclear power. The waste is easily contained in a very small area and what is more it is useful i.e. not waste. It will be able to be used by other reactors in the future, it is certainly not a terrible legacy.

If you have a magic pill then let us hear it. I would happily adjust my view if the evidence was different. I don't want either a nuclear power plant or a coal one in my back yard. As is clear from my other threads I am being proactive in my own reduction of demand while providing for myself with regards to food etc. The problem is, that above all, I am a realist. I like fairy stories as much as anyone but at the end of t he day I will invest my energies in something that I think will have a chance of working.

Progression and technological development has proved to be an unstoppable force. We must aim it in the right direction and aid it on its path. If we stand in it's way we will be blamed for holding it back but we will not stop it. A 'religious' fear of nuclear power does the same as any religious view, stops you needing to think! We know we need to clean up, nuclear power is clean in most respects and can be cleaned up in the others given investment and development. We eventually achieve full fusion production which offers only high grade, short half life, 'waste' (about 12 year half life). We can then start building nuclear power plants whose sole job is to capture CO2 and sequester it in all those handy oil wells.

Right, let's knock this money on the head, money is just a token to allow division of labour, one of two economic theories that hold true (with rational, or irrational consumers).

Now let us think about the industrial revolution, it started here about 250 years ago (and I mean here, the birthplace of Matthew Trevithick, who improved the steam engine no end). Initially the take up was slow, then got quicker and quicker, peaked and then declined as better technology took over. It was the technology that drove the use of fossil fuel burning, not the other way around. We found fuels that were more energy dense. We slowly changed from on site to off site power generation and now I should think that most mines are powered by the national grid. There are some industries that required the building of power stations, because of their high energy demands, but these were connected to the countries grid system in most places. Think 3 Mile Island, was build for the steel works at Harrisburg, partly because of the mine fire that is still smouldering at Allentown. Again, necessity is the Mother of invention, they needed cheap reliable power, they built it.

Now let us look at resources, the world, we cannot take the first industrialised nation as the only example, has plenty of natural gas and coal (the price of coal has hardly changed in 20 years, yet the world is burning more and more), probably 2 to 3 hundred years worth left, so about the same amount of time that we have been industrialised, but if you take China and India, which are perceived by some as a huge threat to both our way of life and the environment, though I see them as opportunities (I may have a skill that they need, even if it is only to warn them of lessons from the past, that division of labour again), they are not repeating the mistakes we made and are already investing heavily in the future, and they have only been industrialised for the last 40 to 50 years. They know that old infrastructure, energy and labour intensive industries have to be more efficient, they try not to get bogged down in petty mindedness (think great crested newts delaying infrastructure changes), they think that intellectual property is a bit of a farce (and I am tending towards their viewpoint these days), they do what is needed to supply what they are asked to supply.
So it seems to me that we are trying to cling onto a golden past that never really was, while trying to pass the buck of blame to others because we are too wealthy and idle to change. About time we made a collective decision to change our energy infrastructure based on hard facts rather than emotions. I know what my emotions are going to be saying when I get home one day to find no power at my end of the national grid (though I saw something about our lights staying on).
Interestingly I have dug out all the old energy bills and my day rate, since the beginning of 2006 has averaged out at 14.66p/kWh, the night rate at 4.70p/kWh. They now stand at 15.24p/kWh and 5.77p/kWh, hardly a national crisis financially and must, to some extent reflect where we are on the peak curve (I have not changed supplier either). Supply and Demand is the other economic theory that always holds true. So as energy has been getting cheaper in real terms and seems to be continuing to do so, and we are using more (well I have just about halved my personal household energy use through better management and technology), where is the crisis that I have been hearing about for 40 years.
I like it when people run around like frightened sheep and I have the numbers, gives me a sense of satisfaction knowing that things are not as bad as they think and we will be alright.

None of those resources are consumed and do they do not run out. Technology can be developed to replace many of their uses and thus they are used in more necessary ways. Most of them have very large supplies and so it is not even on the horizon. Water covers 3/4 of the planet. It always confuses me when people are concerned that it will run out. I am not advocating unthinking development. We have brains, we should use them. Certainly, as far as we are aware, the universe seems to have quite a large supply of stuff.

<blockquote><cite>Posted By: gcar90</cite>Resources don't run out as such, they just may become more diffuse and require more effort to get hold of. The mineral wealth of the oceans and seabed rock have barely been tapped.</blockquote>

As an aquaintance of mine is fond of quoting: "The stone age didn't end because they ran out of rocks"..............