Science

...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.