nuclear-news

‘We have emotions too’: Climate scientists respond to attacks on objectivity

Climate scientists who were mocked and gaslighted after speaking up about
their fears for the future have said acknowledging strong emotions is vital
to their work. The researchers said these feelings should not be suppressed
in an attempt to reach supposed objectivity. Seeing climate experts’
fears and opinions about the climate crisis as irrelevant suggests science
is separate from society and ultimately weakens it, they said. The
researchers said they had been subject to ridicule by some scientists after
taking part in a large Guardian survey of experts in May, during which they
and many others expressed their feelings of extreme fear about future
temperature rises and the world’s failure to take sufficient action. They
said they had been told they were not qualified to take part in this broad
discussion of the climate crisis, were spreading doom and were not
impartial.

 Guardian 25th Oct 2024,
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/25/we-have-emotions-too-climate-scientists-respond-to-attacks-on-objectivity

October 28, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

‘Climate crunch time’: UN warns world risks over 3C warming without urgent action this decade.

 Capping global warming at 1.5C remains technically
possible, but only with unprecedented action from governments around the
world to slash global greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 7.5 per
cent every single year over the next decade, the United Nations has warned.

Published today, the UN Environment Programme’s (UNEP) annual assessment
calculates the ’emissions gap’ between what scientists say must happen to
limit global warming to the 1.5C goal established by the Paris Agreement,
and the emissions reductions targeted and delivered by governments
worldwide.

As ever, the report underscores the rapidly closing window of
time to deliver the deep emissions reductions required this decade if the
goals of the Paris Agreements are to be met, warning that based on current
policies the world risks careering towards catastrophic temperature
increases of between 2.6C and 3.1C over the course of this century.

 Business Green 24th Oct 2024

https://www.businessgreen.com/news/4372794/climate-crunch-warns-world-risks-3c-warming-urgent-action-decade

October 27, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Nuclear lobby on track to sabotage COP29.

By Noel Wauchope | 24 October 2024,  https://independentaustralia.net/environment/environment-display/nuclear-lobby-on-track-to-sabotage-cop29,19101

The nuclear lobby is on track to sabotage the COP29 UN Climate Change Conference next month in Azerbaijan — lobbying governments for support and investors for money, writes Noel Wauchope. 

IT’S NOT SO LONG AGO that the global nuclear energy lobby used to deny the threat of climate change. Even as recently as 2020, a leading nuclear propagandist, Michael Shellenger, was downplaying climate change, while trashing renewable energy.

But that’s changed.

In the face of public anxieties about nuclear health and safety dangers – and above all, of nuclear costs – the propagandists desperately needed a new shtick.

The answer was — nuclear power to beat climate change!

COP28 UN Climate Change Conference in December 2023 — the global nuclear lobby trumpeted its “success”

But, in reality, only a tiny minority at COP28 agreed that nuclear power was needed to address global warming.

198 Parties (197 countries plus the European Union) attended this climate summit in Dubai in 2023. Only 22 agreed to the pro-nuclear declaration proposed by France’s President Emmanuel Macron — the Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy Capacity by 2050, Recognizing the Key Role of Nuclear Energy in Reaching Net Zero.   

And, 31 countries that do have nuclear power — why didn’t Russia and China sign up? 

Thirteen other countries that have key nuclear programs were also missing from the declaration — five in Europe (Armenia, Belarus, Belgium, Switzerland and Spain), two in South Asia (India and Pakistan) three in the  Americas (Argentina, Brazil and Mexico), South Africa (the only nuclear energy producer in Africa), and Iran.

COP29 United Nations Climate Change Conference November 2024, Baku, Azerbaijan

The global nuclear lobby is much better organised now — and will try again.

It’s well to keep in mind that the United Nations is beholden to the nuclear industry. 

On 28th May 1959, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – not yet two years old! – and The World Health Organisation (WHO) signed an agreement referred to as WHA 12-40. Though, it might, on paper, appear balanced and reciprocal, in practice the WHA 12-40 puts WHO in a subordinate position to the IAEA.

So, the United Nations (UN) is tethered to the nuclear industry. The IAEA is part of the UN system — and its brief is to promote the “peaceful” nuclear industry.

COP29 is all about the money

So, the global nuclear push is well prepared with the recent release of an IAEA report on Climate Change and Nuclear Power focussing on the need for investment.

‘The 2024 edition of the IAEA’s Climate Change and Nuclear Power report has been released, highlighting the need for a significant increase in investment to achieve goals for expanding nuclear power.’

According to the report, global investment in nuclear energy must increase to USD$125 billion annually – up from the around USD$50 billion invested each year from 2017-2023 – to meet the IAEA’s high case projection for nuclear capacity in 2050.

The more aspirational goal of tripling capacity – which more than 20 countries pledged to work towards at COP28 last year – would require upwards of USD$150 billion in annual investment.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said:

“Across its near century-long lifetime, a nuclear power plant is affordable and cost-competitive. Financing the upfront costs can be a challenge however, especially in market-driven economies and developing countries, ….the private sector will increasingly need to contribute to financing, but so too will other institutions. The IAEA is engaging multilateral development banks to highlight their potential role in making sure that developing countries have more and better financing options when it comes to investing in nuclear energy.” 

The new report also examines ways to unlock private-sector finance — a topic that is gaining increasing attention worldwide.

Last month, 14 major financial institutions including some of the world’s largest banks came together during a New York Climate Week event to signal a willingness to help finance nuclear newbuild projects.

On the sidelines of Climate Week in New York City, major banks, government representatives and industry executives met at the Financing the Tripling of Nuclear Energy Leadership Event.

Note that this event was sponsored by the IAEA and the Clean Energy Ministerial’s (CEM) Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy Future (NICE) initiative. The CEM’s role is to run forums for propagandising the nuclear industry.

The IAEA report continues:  

‘Nuclear power’s inclusion in sustainable financing frameworks, including the European Union (EU) taxonomy for sustainable activities, is having a tangible impact. In the EU, the first green bonds have been issued for nuclear power in Finland and France in 2023. Electricité de France (EDF) was one of the first recipients, with the award of €4 billion in green bonds and around €7 billion in green loans between 2022 and 2024.’

The report makes the case for policy reform and international partnerships to help bridge the financing gap and accelerate nuclear power expansion into emerging markets and developing economies — including for small modular reactors.

What does this mean for COP29?

Well, despite the IAEA hype, the nuclear push at COP28 was a bit of a flop.

Forcefully led by France, which is stuck with its unfortunate situation of nuclear monopoly on its energy system. The pro-nuclear declaration was not a global success. 

The aim then was to get governments to promote the industry. And, that’s still the aim, despite the pleas for private investment.

But the two go together – lobbying governments to weaken safety regulations, assume the financial risk and provide tax breaks and incentives – while simultaneously encouraging investors about government support.

Ideally, like France, governments could nationalise the nuclear industry. After all, the taxpayer is the most reliable customer.

Sustainability campaigner and author, Jonathon Porritt, predicts COP 29 will be: 

‘Baku will be worse than Dubai – as the capital of an even more corrupt, even more misogynistic, and more autocratic petrostate than the UEA.’

The polluting industries will be there in force to counter any real action — as they did in 2023. 

In a happy partnership with them will be Rafael Grossi and his nuclear crew. 

The much-touted nuclear resurgence – if it happens at all – will be so long coming that it will be irrelevant to the galloping global heating.

Meanwhile, the nuclear push will enable coal, oil and gas to rocket on — while investment in renewable energy will be stymied.

Climate is the big argument. That is for now.

If they win world acceptance that financing nuclear power is essential for climate action, the nuclear lobby can then go on to erase other lingering concerns — on health, safety, wastes, weapons proliferation, indigenous rights.

The world media has dutifully regurgitated the promotion of those mythical beasts — the small nuclear reactors (SMRs). 

The digital age – so far – has enabled such myths to be widely promoted and widely accepted.

Ever-increasing AI is becoming accepted as essential — along with its ever-increasing lust for electricity.  

I see the global belief in “nuclear for climate” as the first of many global successes in perpetrating lies.

October 25, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Cop29 host Azerbaijan set for major fossil gas expansion, report says

Exclusive: Those with ‘interest in keeping world hooked on fossil fuels’ should not oversee climate talks, say report authors

Guardian, Damian Carrington Environment editor, 23 Oct 24

Azerbaijan, the host of the Cop29 global climate summit, will see a large expansion of fossil gas production in the next decade, a new report has revealed. The authors said that the crucial negotiations should not be overseen by “those with a vested interest in keeping the world hooked on fossil fuels”.

Azerbaijan’s state-owned oil and gas company, Socar, and its partners are set to raise the country’s annual gas production from 37bn cubic metres (bcm) today to 49bcm by 2033. Socar also recently agreed to increase gas exports to the European Union by 17% by 2026.

The Cop29 summit, starting on 11 November, comes as scientists say that continued record carbon dioxide emissions means “the future of humanity hangs in the balance”. The International Energy Agency said in 2021 that no new fossil fuel exploitation should take place if CO₂ emissions were to fall to zero by 2050.

But in 2023 Socar pushed 97% of its capital expenditure into oil and gas projects, the report found. The company launched a “green energy division” a few weeks after Azerbaijan was appointed as Cop29 host, promising investments in wind, solar and carbon capture technologies. But according to the report, Socar’s renewable operations remain insignificant.

Azerbaijan’s climate action plan was rated “critically insufficient” by Climate Action Tracker (CAT) in September. “Azerbaijan is among a tiny group of countries that has weakened its climate target [and] the country is doubling down on fossil fuel extraction,” said the CAT analysts.

Azerbaijan and Socar had also been accused of human rights violations, the report said. The authors said defeating the climate crisis required civil society to have freedom of speech and protected human rights.

“Given Socar’s pivotal role in Azerbaijan’s economy and its close ties to the country’s political elite, its influence will surely be felt throughout the climate negotiations in Baku,” said Regine Richter at the German NGO Urgewald, lead author of the report. “As we prepare for Cop29, we cannot but ask ourselves: did we put the fox in charge of the henhouse?”

Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, told a climate conference in April: “Having oil and gas deposits is not our fault. It’s a gift from God.” Aliyez appoints Socar’s management board and was vice-president of Socar until he succeeded his father as the country’s president in 2003. Azerbaijan’s ecology and natural resources minister, Mukhtar Babayev, will run Cop29. He previously worked for Socar for 26 years until 2018. Rovshan Najaf, the president of Socar, is part of the Cop29 organising committee.

………………………………………………………………………….. Socar works with some of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies, including BP, TotalEnergies, the Russian oil giant Tatneft and the United Arab Emirates’ state oil company Adnoc. The CEO of Adnoc, Sultan Al Jaber, was president of Cop28 in Dubai, where nations failed to agree to “phase out” fossil fuels, as many wanted, instead choosing the weaker ambition of “transitioning away from fossil fuels”.

Socar also receives substantial financial backing from major international institutions, totalling $6.8bn in loans and underwriting between 2021 and 2023, according to research by the Banking on Climate Chaos coalition. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/23/cop29-host-azerbaijan-set-for-major-fossil-gas-expansion-report-says

October 24, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

The world’s top lying nuclear salesman is after your climate action money.

Do these highly paid leaders really believe what they’re saying? I guess their number 1 motive is to hang on to their lucrative jobs. And number 2 motive – to not look silly by telling the truth.

They all know damn well that the nuclear fuel chain increases greenhouse emissions, along with its radioactive emissions.

They all know that covering the planet with 1000s of small nuclear reactors could never be done in time, even if nuclear did work against climate change.

They all know that the real rationale for nuclear is not climate action – it’s nuclear weapons.

New IAEA Report on Climate Change and Nuclear Power Focuses on Financing.

International Atomic Energy Agency, Matt Fisher, IAEA Department of Nuclear Energy, 18 Oct 24

The 2024 edition of the IAEA’s Climate Change and Nuclear Power report has been released, highlighting the need for a significant increase in investment to achieve goals for expanding nuclear power. The new report was launched last week on the margins of the Clean Energy Ministerial (CEM) in Brazil. 

……….global investment in nuclear energy must increase to 125 billion USD annually, up from the around 50 billion USD invested each year from 2017-2023………

“Across its near century-long lifetime, a nuclear power plant is [?] affordable and [?]cost competitive. Financing the upfront costs can be a challenge however, especially in market driven economies and developing countries,” said IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi “The private sector will increasingly need to contribute to financing, but so too will other institutions. The IAEA is engaging multilateral development banks to highlight their potential role in making sure that developing countries have more and better financing options when it comes to investing in nuclear energy.” 

The new report also examines ways to unlock private sector finance, a topic that is gaining increasing attention worldwide. Last month, 14 major financial institutions including some of the world’s largest banks came together during a New York Climate Week event to signal a willingness to help finance nuclear newbuild projects. 

The report was presented at a side event jointly organized by the Agency and the CEM’s Nuclear Innovation: Clean Energy Future (NICE) initiative on the margins of the 15th CEM in Brazil.

……………………………………………………………………………………………………. Nuclear power’s [!!!] inclusion in sustainable financing frameworks, including the European Union (EU) taxonomy for sustainable activities, is having a tangible impact. In the EU, the first green bonds have been issued for nuclear power in Finland and France in 2023. Electricité de France (EDF) was one of the first recipients, with the award of €4 billion in green bonds and around €7 billion in green loans between 2022 and 2024. ……………………………………………..  https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/new-iaea-report-on-climate-change-and-nuclear-power-focuses-on-financing

October 21, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

How carbon capture and storage and nuclear are adding little to decarbonisation compared to solar and wind

CCS, like nuclear is going not very far in terms of future increases in decarbonisation capacity, but it will be at very great cost to taxpayers.

David Toke, Oct 16, 2024

We’ve heard a lot in the news recently about how carbon capture and storage of carbon dioxide (CO2) is a major solution to decarbonisation. But the global figures suggest otherwise. The results so far are that this is having an almost insignificant effect on global decarbonisation. Rather it is looking like CCS funding from Governments is a good way of funneling money into the fossil fuel and chemicals industry with very little to show for combatting climate change. Indeed this CCS sector is eerily technologically redundant in many of the same ways as nuclear power.

You can see this in the chart below [on original]. This shows the respective global contributions to carbon dioxide abatement from three sources a) solar plus wind power, b) nuclear power and c) carbon capture and storage (CCS).

I have taken global capacity figures for CCS from the Global CCS Institute (HERE). They have data available for the period since 2010 showing how the global capacity for CO2 removal has changed. I have used data on carbon intensity of global electricity production drawn from Ember (See HERE) to determine how much CO2 is saved by each unit of nuclear, solar and wind generation. Then I combine this with data on nuclear, solar and wind electricity generation from the Energy Institute (See HERE).

The result is a calculation of the annual carbon dioxide saved by global solar plus wind generation, nuclear generation and CCS (since 2010). There is a notable caveat with regard to the CCS figures. Whilst I have confidence in the reported production figures from solar, wind and nuclear power, I have no information that the ‘capacity’ of CCS reported is actually being completely filled each year. Therefore the CCS annual capacity figures must each be regarded as a ‘maximum’.

It is apparent that whilst solar and wind are increasing rapidly, and nuclear production has stagnated, CCS contributes a very small amount to world carbon removal capacity by comparison. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Meanwhile, technologies, which do stand a chance of being optimised and do not involve fossil fuels or nuclear power are ignored. Recent UK Government announcements talk of around £20 billion being made available for CCS activities over the coming years. Yet there is no direct budget to develop deep underground or closed loop geothermal energy, new technologies, which have seen considerable technical interest in recent years (see HERE and HERE)………………………………………………This trend of low output compared to public money spent seems likely to continue for many years to come!

CCS – eerily like nuclear?

What is striking about CCS processes is that they are seriously dogged by environmental problems…………………………………….The technology starts off as an inferior commercial proposition to conventional fossil fuel commercial activities, and the pressures for improvements are going to increase costs, not reduce them. Have we heard this before? Well, yes.

This is actually much the same general problem that nuclear power has faced. Nuclear power is a mature technology relying on a low-productivity construction industry. On top of this its costs have increased since its inception because of the need to build-in safety requirements. New designs have tended to be made with safety in mind (eg ‘passive’ safety designs) rather than improvements in economic productivity. This, in general, is the same sort of problem that fossil fuel CCS faces. See my earlier blog post on nuclear’s productivity problems HERE. Like nuclear CCS is forced to pursue non-market objectives rather than improve productivity to reduce costs of production.

The contrast with solar and wind is staggering. These technologies can devote their efforts into reducing costs and improving productivity. Solar panels today are made with a small fraction of the polysilicon used in the past. The production lines are much longer and efficiently organised and the machines to make the panels are much better and cheaper etc etc. In the case of wind power the wind capture rates have been improved through computer-aided design of the turbine blades, making the machines of lighter material and also making them a great deal bigger etc etc.

CCS, like nuclear is going not very far in terms of future increases in decarbonisation capacity, but it will be at very great cost to taxpayers. No commercial operation is going to contract for the CCS ‘product’. There is a very limited market for CO2 itself and no commercial market for storing carbon dioxide outside of direct Government support. For how long can this drain on our public spending resources carry on?
https://davidtoke.substack.com/p/how-carbon-capture-and-storage-and

October 19, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment

Jane Fonda: Nuclear power at Three Mile Island is no climate solution

Nuclear power is slow, expensive — and wildly dangerous, the actor and activist writes. Why would anyone tempt fate by reactivating a facility that suffered the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history?

by Jane Fonda, For The Inquirer,  Oct. 2, 2024,

The recent news about restarting the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant 75 miles west of Philadelphia hit me hard.

My heart sank as I thought back to The China Syndrome, a nuclear disaster movie I starred in with Jack Lemmon and Michael Douglas in 1979. Why, I wondered, would anyone tempt fate by reactivating a facility that suffered the worst nuclear accident in U.S. history?

The China Syndrome was about a nuclear power reactor potentially melting down and unleashing a cloud of deadly radioactivity across the surrounding region. Two weeks after the movie hit theaters, real life imitated art with a vengeance.

One of the two reactors at Three Mile Island suffered what investigators termed “a partial meltdown.” As industry officials and federal regulators tried to determine the extent of the damage and whether to evacuate people, a terrifying drama played out on TV screens across Pennsylvania and around the world.

I realize that today, some people regard nuclear power as a necessary tool in the fight against climate change. As someone who is devoting my life to that fight, I understand the temptation to embrace nuclear power. We absolutely need to phase out oil, gas, and coal — the fossil fuels overheating our planet — and fast. Any means of achieving that goal deserves consideration.

The latest sign of our climate peril came last week as Hurricane Helene, amped by super-hot sea water, battered Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. Helene’s destructiveness, however, is also a reminder that climate change can endanger nuclear power facilities.

As the Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania has noted, “As temperatures rise and climate hazards, such as drought, sea level rise, and extreme precipitation intensify, nuclear infrastructure is put at risk.”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Ironically enough, the main reason nuclear power is so expensive is also the main reason it isn’t much help against climate change. It’s simply too slow — no nuclear reactor of any kind has been built in less than 10 to 20 years. What’s more, that extra-long construction time translates into massive borrowing costs for the capital needed to finance the plants, boosting their eventual cost.

And yes, that’s true even of the new generation of smaller, modular reactors Bill Gates, Microsoft’s founder, is so fond of. Every time I speak in public about the climate crisis, someone asks if the modular reactors can’t be a solution. So I’ve spent time researching the issue because I think when celebrities presume to speak about public issues, we have an obligation to know the facts.

With climate change, we don’t have the kind of time needed to get a nuclear plant licensed, built, and supplying power to the grid. Scientists are clear: Humanity has to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (about 2 degrees Fahrenheit) above the preindustrial level if we’re to avoid catastrophic destruction and human suffering.

That means, scientists say, emissions of heat-trapping pollution must fall by half over the next five years. So simply as a matter of timing, nuclear is not a good climate solution.

By contrast, solar plants take about four years to get up and running. Wind turbines about the same. And boosting energy efficiency — designing our buildings and vehicles so they use much less energy but deliver the same comfort and performance — is the fastest, most powerful tool of all for displacing fossil fuels.

None of these renewable energy sources risk a nuclear meltdown. None guzzle billions of gallons of fresh water like nuclear plants do — water whose supply will become ever more uncertain as climate change unleashes deeper droughts in the years ahead. None burden our descendants with vast amounts of waste that remains dangerously radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years, with a $400 million annual bill for disposal that the public must pay.

That radioactivity, by the way, is one reason why it’s simply inaccurate to call nuclear power “clean energy.” It may be non-carbon energy, but anything that stays fatally poisonous for millennia is not clean.

If people want to support genuine solutions to climate change, I invite them to help the Jane Fonda Climate PAC elect climate champions to local, state, and national offices in November.

In Philadelphia, my political action committee has endorsed Nikil Saval in Pennsylvania Senate District 1 and Andre Carroll in Pennsylvania House District 201. You’ll find a complete list of our candidates, in Pennsylvania and across the U.S., here: janepac.com/?home#endorsements.

All of our candidates shun campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry. They work to accelerate the deployment of solar, wind, and other genuinely clean energy sources. And they oppose nuclear.

Like two people trying to get through a narrow doorway at the same time, there isn’t room for both nuclear and renewables in our energy future. It’s an obvious choice, no?

Jane Fonda is a veteran political activist, two-time Academy Award-winning actor, and the principal of the Jane Fonda Climate PAC. https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/three-mile-island-restart-nuclear-energy-microsoft-jane-fonda-20241002.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawFsioJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHbLqJVZNISHHrY1j7l9JH_V4zF1kKMk155YvjJxBjwMmDYUFQ7FylW0fIQ_aem_oGsEOADg7faINQnGbVTQ4w

October 6, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change | Leave a comment