Re: <nettime> Energy Dilemma

[mp <mp@aktivix.org>]

On 06/11/2021 14:39, Heiko Recktenwald wrote:
> Why dont you mention the nuclear option? Why is it taboo? Some people
> say that it is too expensiv, but the energy is more or less CO2 free.

I guess there is a somewhat slightly toxic substance involved with a
half-time beyond human scale, for which a carbon-intensive mining
industry - involving displacement of people - is also required, as far
as I know, but then I haven't really done serious investigations of
nuclear power since I was 14 in a school project back in the 1980s, so
please enlighten me!

So for now, for me: You are right, it just feels taboo.

Anyway, here are some figures from a quick search:

What's the carbon footprint of nuclear power?

"....There have been nearly three hundred papers on the carbon footprint
of nuclear power in scientific journals and reports in recent years. Two
peer-reviewed papers have critically assessed the literature in the way
Nugent and Sovacool compared renewable LCAs.

The first was by Benjamin Sovacool himself [1]. He reviewed 103
published LCA studies and filtered them down to 19, which had an
acceptably rigorous scientific approach. The carbon footprints ranged
from 3 to 200 gCO2/kWh. The average carbon footprint was 66 gCO2/kWh,
which is above the CCC limit.

In 2012, four years after Sovacool's paper, Ethan Warner and Garvin
Heath found 274 papers containing nuclear LCAs [2]. They filtered them
down to 27 for further consideration. These yielded 99 estimates of
carbon footprints which the authors describe as "independent".

Their data for carbon emissions ranged from 4 to 220 gCO2/kWh. They did
not report an average but rather a median value: half the estimates were
below 13 gCO2/kWh.

These two reviews of the published literature, often called
meta-analyses, produced conflicting results. One suggests the carbon
footprint is above the CCC limit, the other well below..."

And

"...Using 0.005% concentration uranium ores, a nuclear reactor will have
a carbon footprint larger than a natural gas electricity generator.
Also, it is unlikely to produce any net electricity over its lifecycle..."

>From an obviously biased source:
https://theecologist.org/2015/feb/05/false-solution-nuclear-power-not-low-carbon

And when done, do we pay Musk and Bezos to shoot it out into space?

Not asking rhetorically, I'm admittedly ignorant, since I simply
consider it taboo.
#  distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission
#  <nettime>  is a moderated mailing list for net criticism,
#  collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets
#  more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l
#  archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org
#  @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: