There's an almost Trumpian aspect to it: Fuck around and find out. It applies to antinukes as much as it applies to Maggots.

Their seminal paper on the subject of energy was published over a decade ago:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

They never stepped back from their advocacy, because, um, they were and are right.

Of course, we've had a lot of people here screaming for the industrialization of wilderness for solar and wind crap that did nothing to address the destruction of the planetary atmosphere that supported that wilderness and everything else on the planet.

These people ran around insipidly screaming like the bourgeois brats they are, bourgeois brats indifferent to the needs of future generations, that nuclear energy was "too expensive," but the destruction of the planetary atmosphere was not "too expensive."

Some of us need to stop whining about the outcome and look in the mirror.

I am pro-renewable.

You express an irrational support for nuclear power to the exclusion of renewables. That is not Hansen’s position.


https://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/Documents/Hansen.2022.Commentary.NuclearPowerNewYork.AlbanyTimesUnion.pdf

I recently cited Hansen’s position to a “climate advocate" who opposed Governor Hochul’s climate plan, simply because it includes “nuclear energy.” For decades, New York State has had nuclear power as a large portion of its electrical generating capacity. I believe it would be foolhardy to eliminate it. (Doing so, in my opinion, would almost certainly lead to expanded use of Natural Gas plants.) I strongly support Hochul’s plan:

https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/governor-hochul-commits-more-1-billion-tackle-climate-crisis-single-largest-climate-investment
(Please note that NYSERDA’s “advanced nuclear energy" includes nuclear fusion as well as nuclear fission.)

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory calls for an expansion of both renewable energy and nuclear energy in pursuit of 100% Clean Electricity by 2035. The International Energy Agency also calls for a mix of Renewable Energy and Nuclear Energy.

We need to eliminate the use of fossil fuels, as part of the larger effort to combat climate change. Both nuclear energy and renewables have roles to play moving forward. Nuclear energy is expensive compared to renewables, but (mostly) constant (reactors do need to be taken “off-line” occasionally.) Renewables can be deployed relatively quickly, while nuclear projects have a long history of running behind schedule and over budget. (Each have their advantages and disadvantages.) — Ironically, both “nuclear energy” and “renewable anergy” face NIMBY opposition.


I, like Hansen, NREL, IEA (and Hochul) support a balanced approach. Excluding either nuclear energy or renewable energy is irrational. Kindly stop mis-representing my position (and Hansen’s.)


❝Tackling the climate crisis requires policies based on facts, not prejudice.❞ — James E. Hansen

Last edited Sat Feb 22, 2025, 12:57 PM - Edit history (1)

...objection to nuclear power, "too expensive," "too slow," too dangerous," "Fukushima," "Chernobyl" "radiation leak at Hanford" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ad nauseum.

Then they carry on about so called "renewable energy," and how wonderful and cheap it is, even though the German economy is collapsing under the weight of its energy policies, even though trillions of dollars invested in wind has done nothing even to slow the collapse of the planetary atmosphere, in fact led to its acceleration, and even though despite these trillions of dollars spent, vast stretches of wilderness rendered into industrial parks, combined the solar and wind industry, in an atmosphere of insipid cheering, has never, not once, in nearly half a century of tiresome delusional bullshit, produced as much primary energy annually as the nuclear industry produces now and has produced since the early 1990's in an atmosphere of the above described vituperation.

In general I refer to this class as "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes. To my mind, and this is just my unshakable opinion, their self descriptions strike me as meaningful as the orange asshole's description of himself as "a very stable genius."

The applicable cliche: It's not what one says, it's what one does.

So called "renewable energy" is not "cheap;" it's not clean; it's not sustainable. It's certainly not reliable; and, and as it is dependent on the use of fossil fuels, it is worse than useless at addressing the collapse of the planetary atmosphere. It's an exercise in tearing the shit out of the planet with mining for rare materials, running bulldozers over virgin land, all of it as reactionary as Eurocentric White Supremacy practiced in the colonial era in which all of the world's energy supplies depended on the vicissitudes of the weather.

In modern times this reactionary dream is being practiced in Dunkelflaute Germany with serious, but predictable consequences:

The rest of Europe is pissed at the cost of keeping the lights on in that German coal dependent hellhole.

The environmental cost of so called "renewable energy" is clear enough, and given the funding of Putin by Germany that led to a war in Ukraine and perhaps even the collapse of the more than 2 century old American Democracy, so is the moral cost.

What is unclear and never acknowledged by "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes is the economic cost, the vast sums of money squandered on this short lived destructive junk called "renewable energy."

The IEA - and please spare me the selective attention and cherry picking that "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes love to engage; I've been studying the data on energy for decades - reports the money squandered. Note that the money squandered includes the money squandered on energy storage that all of our "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes celebrate in their contempt for the laws of physics, notably the 2nd law of thermodynamics, since nuclear energy is reliable and so called "renewable energy" isn't. It also includes the cost of building vast grids to connect all of this land intensive junk.

The numbers are here:

The amount of money spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 is 4.12 trillion dollars as reported as of March 2024, compared to 377 billion dollars spent on nuclear energy, mostly to keep vapid cultists spouting fear and ignorance from destroying the valuable nuclear infrastructure.



IEA overview, Energy Investments. (Accessed 3/24/2024.)

The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy."

For convenience, I have downloaded the *.csv files connected (3/24/2024) to these figures and organized them in an Excel sheet for use in calculations.

It is here:



A graphic is also available, albeit only until 2013:



Power investment, 2019-2023 (Accessed 02/22/25).

Now one of the things that characterizes "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes is the use of the logical fallacy "appeal to authority," as if some Governor, some lawyer for the NRDC, some political figure, even some scientist somewhere says something it is therefore true.

In fact, if one reads IEA blurbs and interpretations, they all wax romantic and enthusiastic for so called "renewable energy."

I don't give a fuck what "authorities" at IEA say, anymore than I give a shit how "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes describe themselves as not being against nuclear power despite dragging out idiot objections, like say, when, having worked themselves for their whole lives to destroy nuclear manufacturing infrastructure in this country, they complain the cost of the Vogtle reactors.

I care what the numbers say.

And you know what numbers really freak me out? The numbers I report frequently in this space year after year, the numbers I most recently reported here:

The Disastrous 2024 CO2 Data Recorded at Mauna Loa Stretches Further into 2025.

As for bullshit about "balanced approaches" appeal to the fucking numbers should make clear how fucking "balanced" this crap is.

Nuclear energy is financed by trivial sums compared to grid, storage and so called "renewable energy," in the table above, 8.432 trillion. Nuclear was financed at 0.524 trillion dollars, and note that the "other clean energy" listed there is devoted, most likely, to fusion, not fission, on the theory that fission is "too dangerous" despite its remarkable safety record when compared to all other energy sources. (It's not risk free, but it doesn't need to be risk free to be vastly superior to everything else, which it is.) In "percent talk" that apologists for the filthy fossil fuel dependent so called "renewable energy" like to hand out, that's 6.2%. That's not "balanced." That's fucking wasteful and destructive, since solar and wind have never, despite the unbalanced money devoted to it, have never, not once, in any year produced the 30 Exajoules of primary energy that nuclear produced in 2023.

Now, academics including James Hansen and Pushkar, are people. It's often considered socially unacceptable to criticize the popular but miserably failed "renewable energy" industry. It takes a certain amount of courage, and independence, to do so. I have read thousands of scientific papers that clearly would be cleaner and safer and cheaper using nuclear heat rather than the stupid "solar thermal" nightmare to which they appeal. I understand. The idea is to get grants, not to necessarily appeal to reason or good sense on the part of those deciding on research funding.

We have people here, at DU, who alert on my posts, claiming that criticizing "renewable energy" represents "right wing talking points," and/or that support for the only clean, expandable, and sustainable form of energy now industrially available to address extreme global heating, nuclear energy" is a "right wing talking point."

I'm not here to embrace popular dogma, religious, quasi-religious, or otherwise. I'm here screaming into the void to try to knock some sense into the inhabitants of a burning world in my own small way.

Now if Jim Hansen and Pushkar Kharecha support nuclear energy, they are in my opinion, serving humanity. I frequently applaud them as such. If, on the other hand, they want to spend even more money on the useless and failed so called "renewable energy" scheme, they are not serving humanity, but rather are evoking the cliche that reads: "Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity." The world was once upon a time powered by the weather. Of course, some people, including academics, need, to avoid pissing off the loud and insipid holders of "renewable energy will save us" dogma, but at the end of the day, the appeal for so called "renewable energy" is reactionary, which is even worse than conservative.

Dependence on the weather for energy to support civilizations was abandoned for a reason. The reason was that most people, even more so than today, lived short miserable lives of suffering and poverty.

The results of half a century of this dogma are in: The planet is burning; people are going insane, possibly from fossil fuel related neurotoxins like cadmium, mercury and lead; the weather is grotesquely destabilized; and the planetary atmosphere is collapsing.

I don't care how people describe themselves, nor do I care about what "appeal to authority" arguments they make. I make up my own mind about who and what people are, and about who is making sense and who is not. I've worked very, very, very, very hard to increase my competence to do so and I stand by my positions and my evocation of the facts as I observe them.

Have a wonderful weekend.

How quickly can you replace all of our fossil fuel usage with nuclear?
How quickly can you replace ½ of our fossil fuel usage with nuclear?



How about this?

1. Start building a nuclear fleet. (It will take you several years.)
2. Deploy renewables today.

Last edited Thu Feb 27, 2025, 11:58 AM - Edit history (2)

…and wind industry to grow as fast as dangerous coal's grown since 2010, or how long it will take the useless solar and wind industry to grow as fast as the dangerous gas industry, or how long it will take the useless solar and wind industry to grow as fast as the dangerous petroleum industry, or how long it will take the useless solar and wind industry to grow as fast as the dangerous natural gas industry, but this of course, would not appeal to any of the "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes. Clearly, they don't give a rat's ass about extreme global heating, nor have they ever in general been interested in attacking fossil fuels.

From my previous post:

"I'm not an antinuke" antinukes drag out every "..objection to nuclear power, "too expensive," "too slow," too dangerous," "Fukushima," "Chernobyl" "radiation leak at Hanford" blah, blah, blah, blah, blah ad nauseum."

Again. QED, current case bolded.

I note that the example given in this thread, is bad thinking that can only be considered as notorious and classic, cherry picking by choosing an arbitrarily small period of time, while ignoring, say, the period in which nuclear power - not a reactionary scam like the useless solar and wind industry - was growing before being arrested by appeals to fear and ignorance.

Now I'm not particularly simple minded person, but if I were, I might characterize a question as :"simple" requiring deep analysis of the type that populates some very serious issues. One such issue would be the address of the fear and ignorance of "honest to god" antinukes as well as "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes and their successful appeal to poor thinking and emotionalism so aptly described in a reference to a scientific paper in a recent post of mine: Radiophobia: Useful concept, or ostracising term?

To be honest, the gentle rhetoric in the cited paper doesn't appeal to me. I regard both classes of antinukes, honest and dishonest, as pernicious fools, since they appeal to the useless solar and wind industry for the only purpose this 8 trillion dollar miserable failure has ever been about, attacking nuclear power while ignoring the fact that planet is in flames as a result of these attacks.

As an advocate for the only sustainable form of infinitely expandable form of energy that can function without fossil fuel access, nuclear energy, I might ask the following question:

How long would it take the useless oodles of trillions of dollar soaking up but useless solar and wind scam to produce as much energy on average, that the nuclear industry has been producing since the early 1990's at a fraction of the cost?

Of course, the question could never be characterized as "simple" unless I wanted to be simple minded. It would involve understanding how much virgin land would need to be bulldozed, how many mines would need to be dug, and whence the trillions of dollars that history would suggest this useless exercise would take might come. It would of course, be a waste of time to even bother, since antinukes lack the intellectual capacity to understand the complexity of these sorts of issues. I doubt the solar and wind industries could ever get to 30 Exajoules per year, since they are approaching Bateman equilibrium, the rate at which they are needing replacement as fast as they can be built.

The numbers, once again, even though it's clear that antinukes have problems with numbers and show no evidence of an ability to understand them:



IEA World Energy Outlook 2024
Table A.1a: World energy supply Page 296.

I've entered the data into an Excel spreadsheet for calculation purposes.

From 2010 to 2023, dangerous natural gas use rose by 30 Exajoules, to a total of 153 Exajoules, not that "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes give a fuck about dangerous natural gas. Clearly they don't.

In the same period, the combined solar and wind industry, at a cost of 8 trillion dollars for wires to connect all the wrecked landscapes, the Don Quixote search for the thermodynamic nightmare of energy storage, wind turbines, and solar cells, grew by 14 Exajoules to a total of 16 exajoules.

Should we take this as evidence that gas is superior to solar and wind, since stupid rhetoric about growth rates is the fools point being raised?

From 2010 to 2023, dangerous petroleum use rose by 19 Exajoules, to a total of 192 Exajoules, not that "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes give a fuck about dangerous petroleum. Clearly they don't.

In the same period, the combined solar and wind industry, at a cost of 8 trillion dollars for wires to connect all the wrecked landscapes, the Don Quixote search for the thermodynamic nightmare of energy storage, wind turbines, and solar cells, grew by 14 Exajoules to a total of 16 exajoules.

Should we take this as evidence that gas is superior to solar and wind, since stupid rhetoric about growth rates is the fools point being raised?

From 2010 to 2023, dangerous coal use rose by 22 Exajoules, to a total of 175 Exajoules, not that "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes give a fuck about dangerous petroleum. Clearly they don't.

Here's a "question" that may or may not be simple. Is the rate of growth of a form of energy, with all the complexities it involves, the social, economic, environmental and intellectual milieu in which they exist the only meaningful measure of its worth? If this were true - and I personally believe that it isn't - then natural gas is the best form of energy, as demonstrated in the period between 2010 and 2023, followed by coal and then by petroleum.

One would need to be simple minded to answer the question in the affirmative.

The issue is obviously not being raised in a void. It's being raised in an environment suffering through half a century of attacks on nuclear energy - successful attacks - that were based on fear mongering driven by idiot emotions with no appeal to numbers.

Two years from now, no one will give a shit that Canada burned last summer, leaving a pale of smoke over the Northeastern United States, or that huge stretches Los Angeles County burned a month ago, but people will still be chanting about Fukushima, while ignoring those killed by seawater even though there is zero evidence over the last 12 years that Fukushima killed as many people as will die in the next hour from the fossil fuel waste "air pollution" about which both classes of antinukes, honest and dishonest, couldn't care less. That death toll, the death toll associated with air pollution, will be about 800 to 900 people.

In this century, China built 52 nuclear reactors in 25 years, not quite matching what the United States did in a 25 year period beginning about 50 years ago, over a period of 25 years, this while providing the cheapest electricity prices in the world. Regrettably, that huge technical, economic and environmental success was stopped again, not because nuclear energy hadn't provided the safest energy system ever developed, but rather because of the kind of dangerous thinking analyzed in this paper, cited in the post I linked above:

John C.H. Lindberg, Denali Archer, Radiophobia: Useful concept, or ostracising term?, Progress in Nuclear Energy, Volume 149, 2022, 104280.

The word actuarial refers to something called numbers." My experience with honest antinukes and less than honest "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes indicates that any hope of getting these sorts of awful, destructive people to grasp numbers is as useless as the reactionary effort to return the world's energy supplies to depend on the weather, as they did centuries ago. The latter hasn't worked, isn't working and won't work.

Achieving a high rate of growth of nuclear energy is technically feasible. Hell, my son's Ph.D. thesis in nuclear engineering will be involved with the processes of 3D printing (additive manufacture) of nuclear reactor cores. However it is not practically feasible in a world where ignorance prevails, as antinuclear sentiment is exactly and precisely equivalent to the type of ignorance that put a venal, amoral, ignorant, vindictive, and self serving idiot in the White House. Ignorance is That's my opinion, and it's not subject to change by any stupid rhetoric either from honest antinukes and less than honest "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes.

So there's that, ignorance. There's a huge myth going on that there's some kind of "energy transition" going on. This is nonsensical garbage equivalent to the big lie that solar and wind energy matter. They don't. The only way they matter is that the achieved the goal that their advocates pushed, destroying nuclear manufacturing infrastructure.

Many American antinukes, including "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes here, are provincials. They cannot grasp that there is a world beyond the United States. However, one can indulge them, by utilizing the effects of their success is employing fear and ignorance by assuming, without justification, by assuming that the United States is the only place that matters. As a result of their disastrous success in destroying nuclear infrastructure in the United States, building the two Vogtle reactors cost roughly $34 billion dollars. The costs were not symmetric between the two. There are a lot of fucking morons who whine about their cost as they continue to trash nuclear energy with selective attention. (Notably they don't give a fuck about the cost of the collapse of the planetary atmosphere.) Since the reactors were built on a single site, and FOAKE costs (first of a kind engineering) were partially ameliorated in the construction of the second, the first reactor cost around 23 billion dollars, the second around 11 billion dollars. They will operate until the dawn of the 21st century, for more than half a century after all existing so called "renewable energy" facilities represented by landfill will be landfill. For 8 trillion dollars, the money squandered on solar and wind in since 2015 for no result, at 11 billion dollars each, the world could have therefore built close to 800 nuclear reactors, more if they were to be built where power lines exist and are connected to dangerous fossil fuel plants today, the coal and gas plants about which antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes couldn't care less.

The world produces 30 Exajoules of primary nuclear energy as of now using 439 nuclear reactors. It follows that for 8 trillion dollars, we could as a crude BOE calculation, suggest that nuclear energy at a cost of 8 trillion dollars at Vogtle 4 costs - which are a function of the triumph of antinuke ignorance - we would be producing around 55 Exajoules of nuclear primary energy. Since the plants are designed to have high capacity utilization, they would displace coal plants, not useless solar and wind garbage.

China built the Fuqing 5 nuclear reactor in about five years. China has a strong and highly functional nuclear construction infrastructure and supply chain. They lead the world.

It stands to reason therefore, if that practice were achieved elsewhere, we could get that additional 25 Exajoules every five years or so by not squandering trillions on useless so called "renewable energy." This would not undo the damage already done by antinukes; it is too late to restore much of what has been destroyed because of the success of their idiot rhetoric. But in theory, I could arrest the growth of coal, about which antinukes couldn't care less.

Thanks for your question. Understanding as I do that antinukes and "I'm not antinukes" can't think very well I've put this response at a very low level. A more detailed discussion would involve a knowledge base, a moral structure, and an educational level most antinukes clearly lack and would therefore be as useless as solar and wind are.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

You’re saying a lot of stuff, most of it irrelevant to anything I have said. You’ve yet again posted the same table from an appendix. (Have you read the report?)


https://www.iea.org/reports/world-energy-outlook-2024

this hits a bit close to home:

All for 200 MW?

Another question I've had - the new Ford class aircraft carriers have a dual core reactor putting out 1400MW that fits on a boat and in some sources say could last 20 years.

Why can't that tech be introduced for the public? I mean, it could power what, some 700,000 homes?

...essentially an aircraft carrier naval reactor, the reactor at Shippenport. Ground was broken (in a ceremony where President Eisenhower handled the shovel) in September 1954 and reached full power in December 1957. It shut down in 1982, as it was not at the scale of later reactors, a subject of some irony considering recent thinking. It is as of this time, the only commercial breeder reactor ever to have operated in the United States as it is the only thermal commercial reactor to have a fuel elements incorporating thorium.

The Wikipedia page for Shippenport has accurate information.

I have long advocated the incorporation of thorium in heavy water reactors to enable them to breed plutonium and neptunium from "once through" uranium recovered from used nuclear fuel. The destruction of long friendly relations with our neighbor to the North by the orange buffoon has added an additional barrier to this idea.

We were, before the disastrous effort of the orange buffoon - ventriloquist's dummy for his Maggotcy King Eloon - to destroy American science, well into an age of nuclear creativity not seen in this country since the 1960's. The former director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the late great Alvin Weinberg wrote a book on the topic of nuclear creativity in the 1950s and 1960s, "The First Nuclear Era."

He would have been thrilled to see the late 2010s and early 2020s, given the enormous creativity observed with advances in materials science and computational power. It represented a third nuclear era. It is probably the case that the modern aircraft carrier powerplants could function as commercial plants but they are still limited by being machines for producing mere electricity. In an era of extreme global heating, we definitely need to do more than that with nuclear heat. There are many outstanding designs with broader applicability nearing commercial use.

As for the destruction of Michigan forest for solar junk which will have an an average continous power load of a large high school's diesel generator, given the poor capacity utilization of solar, and as it will require fossil fueled backup every night and every time it snows heavily in Michigan, well yes, it's disgusting. Regrettably this sort of awful enterprise remains popular, stupid, but popular.

Thanks for your comment.

As a Chem Eng with a minor in Nuclear Eng from Ohio State, I've gone down the rabbit hole for years in your posts - in an enlightening way

Smaller solar farms can be constructed on top of large rooftops, like warehouses, “big box stores,” schools, factories… They have the advantage of pre-existing grid connections, but, do require climbing up on top of roofs.

https://www.nyc.gov/site/dcas/news/23-011/nyc-dcas-doubles-city-s-total-solar-capacity-less-three-years-agreement-nypa

https://www.nyc.gov/assets/dcas/downloads/pdf/energy/NYC_Municipal_Solar_Installations.pdf

I just hate that these schemes to destroy and clear-cut beneficial forests for these solar projects are just so wrong, in so many ways :/

...of valuable resources.

But, I realize, you’re not concerned with the OP.

...paper on energy risk here over one hundred times. It's a classic.

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

It is nowhere near the highest cited paper by Dr. Hansen, but with 424 citations, as of this writing it is the 9th highest cited paper in his overall for Dr. Kharecha, and the third highest of the work in which the two scientists are coauthors.

I believe the OP is about the credibility of Dr. James Hansen since it appeals to him. I feel justified in asserting this.

I certainly appreciate his role as a popular writer on the consequences of extreme global heating. As a scientist who had devoted much of his private life to consideration of addressing extreme global heating going all the way back to the days when it was euphemized as "climate change," I have been fully aware of his defeated sense of urgency. Because of his sense of urgency, he is, like me, a pronuclear activist who was a signatory to the scientists open letter begging the antinukes in Germany not to kill people by switching to coal from nuclear. He, I, and the rest of the world lost. Germany embraced so called "renewable energy" - which has nothing to do with fighting extreme global heating and is only devoted to attacking nuclear energy - and thus switched for its reliable energy from clean nuclear to filthy coal.

Unlike antinukes, "honest to 'god'" antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes*, I certainly embrace and appreciate the work of my fellow, and far more famous and accomplished pronuclear activist. He and I are pronuclear activists for precisely the same reason: We cannot believe that the planetary atmosphere is being destroyed by appeals to fear and ignorance.

Here is an interview conducted by the Canadian Pronuclear activist, Dr. Chris Keefer: The James Hansen Interview.

I note that Dr. Keefer, like me, and I'm sure, Dr. Hansen although I have no explicit evidence to share showing it to be so, is disgusted by the orange mold infecting the American White House. Dr. Keefer, who had no problem with the United States under the magnificent former President Biden, now wants nothing to do with American nuclear technology, noting that Canadian nuclear technology is among the best in the world, a subject about which he is also right.

So I am certainly aware of Dr. Hansen, and have been so for many years. In fact, I am proud to state that I was banned from DailyKos, by its autocratic owner 13 years ago for making a true statement about Dr. Hansen's famous paper cited above. The statement that got me banned by the autocratic antinuke owner of DailyKos was this one, which I'll paraphrase, since I cannot link to it anymore: "If Dr. Hansen's paper is accurate, opposing nuclear energy is murder."

I made this statement, if I recall correctly, in response to one of those tiresome antinuke writers at Daily Kos who used to carry on about how much he admired and agreed with Dr. Hansen until Dr. Hansen showed something the writer didn't like, that nuclear energy saves lives.

Here, 13 years later, I hear prattling about Dr. Hansen's work from an antinuke in the "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke* class that is represented here at DU by many cases, and I merely note that appeal to his work is hypocritical, cherry picking.

I do not believe that anyone who expresses enthusiasm for Dr. Hansen's work who wishes to caterwaul negatively about nuclear energy, and then carry on insipidly about how wonderful so called "renewable energy" is, understands a fucking thing about nuclear technology, or for that matter, the urgency of extreme global heating or simple things about energy technology in general is serious.

Thus I claim I'm on solid ground on pointing out a right to respond as I have in any thread purporting to discuss the work of the famous Dr. James Hansen, whether the point is a weak "appeal to authority" argument or a more serious discussion of his work.

I don't claim to control responses to my posts at DU, and anyone claiming to do so is on shaky ground in my view.

A cherry picked graphic appears in this thread which on inspection shows what a miserable failure so called "renewable energy" is, at least if one has routine familiarity with the scale of energy production and energy units. The graphic, presented as a claim that nuclear energy is "too slow" shows an increase in 2024 of about 3,000 TWh for the multitrillion dollar failed "renewable energy" scam, which translates to about single Exajoule on a planet that as of 2023, was consuming 642 Exajoules. In the period between 2022 and 2023, the use of coal grew by 3 Exajoules, petroleum use by 5 Exajoules, and Natural Gas (constrained by the loss of access to the gas that Putin used to sell to Germany for finance his war machine) by 1 Exajoule. I can do simple addition: 3 + 5 + 1 = 9. Thus so called "renewable energy" grew about 11% as fast as fossil fuels, in "percent talk"

Yet again, not that I expect any understanding of the raw numbers here:



IEA World Energy Outlook 2024
Table A.1a: World energy supply Page 296.

Let me refer to the asterisks above and show how I define as I did earlier in this thread, an "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke.

I have bolded the "I'm not an antinuke" antinuke case represented in this thread.

Nuclear energy cannot - at least in the very short term - grow as fast as the dangerous fossil fuels about which our antinukes couldn't care less in their continued attacks on this important and sustainable form of energy nuclear represents. The destruction of nuclear infrastructure by the success of the appalling rhetoric of antinukes has assured this. However it clearly shortly will be growing, at a fraction of the cost of so called "renewable energy," faster than the rickety, land intensive, mining intensive and fossil fuel dependent so called "renewable energy," advocates of which insipidly crow about a single EJ of growth on a burning planet.

Right now, on this planet, there are 66 nuclear reactors under construction, mostly in countries not dominated by antinuke assholes. The World Nuclear Association, at the link, reports that the capacity of these reactors is 66,845 MWe. Unlike so called "renewable energy," nuclear energy is highly reliable. Nuclear plants routinely operate at better than 90% capacity utilization - some of the better managed plants, particularly in the United States, actually exceed 100% capacity utilization in increasingly rare cold weather, as most are (unfortunately) designed to be Rankine cycle devices. A Rankine device, depending on the temperature of the heat sink, operates at roughly 33% thermal efficiency. Nevertheless, I'd estimate that worldwide capacity utilization is on the order of 85%, making them the most reliable primary energy producing machines in the world. A day has roughly 86,400 seconds in it, a year, roughly 365.24 days. Thus a year, has about 31,557,600 seconds. Let's assume 85% capacity utilization for nuclear plants. Then the following simple calculation holds:



This is hardly enough to arrest extreme global heating, but the reason it isn't higher is the success of the rhetoric of "renewable energy will save us" types, the reason for appeals to so called "renewable energy" having nothing to do with concern about the collapse of the planetary atmosphere, and everything to do with attacking nuclear energy.

The antinukes won; humanity lost. It is too late to undo what has been done. The planet's burning.

Nonetheless if reactors continue to be started at an accelerating rate, and let's say, for the next 30 years there are more than 60 reactors under construction at any given time, continually coming on line, it is clear that nuclear power plants can at least constrain the growth of coal, something so called "renewable energy" has never come close to doing, although there's tons of stupid lies claiming that it does so. Coal use is not falling. It's rising. That's a fact, soothsaying aside.

If, as we may naively hope, humanity comes to its senses in some future time, we might easily see reactors with build starting at a rate exceeding 100 reactors a year, at a completion rate achieved by the United States in the late 20th century, and faster than the 5 year completion rate now observed in China. This of course, would assume an experienced, highly trained, highly educated work force not constrained by the intellectual and moral homunculi represented by antinukes of both classes, "honest to 'god' antinukes and "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes.

Have a nice weekend.

“Reply” #1 was not a reply to the content of my original posting. It was simply an ad hominem attack, because you don’t feel I have a right to post.

Kindly address Reply #6 which expresses my position.

Some people appreciate science. (Some people don’t.)

...consists of breathless regurgitation of university press releases about say, batteries and hydrogen, or working as a scientist or as an engineer both on the level of laboratory research as well as in industrial settings. The latter, being on the front lines of science, requires, broad exposure to the primary scientific literature and hands on experience, the suspension of credulity, critical thinking, and the willingness to evaluate something called data beyond dogma.

The former, regurgitating press releases, requires not much more than credulity and wishful thinking.

I am often amused by people who claim to appreciate science but display a very low level of appreciation of what that enterprise involves. The famous Dunning Kruger conception is very often on display among this former set.

It's come to the fore in these Trumpian times, but regrettably it isn't limited to those on the right wing.

Virtually all of them are pleasant, and open minded.