Shutting down fossil fuel electric plants

[Anomalocaris]

It was far from just local as contamination has entered the Pacific ecosystem 
causing damage well beyond Japan. And an increase in plant numbers just makes that more likely .

Did it effect the entire planet? Did Chernobyl? Did the hundreds (500+) of bombs?

Let me put it another way, which is the planet (and the human race) more likely to recover from?

To my way of thinking we're going to have to pick. The fear of limited electric power is the greatest fear and a non option. Or maybe global warming isn't the treat I've been lead to believe. 

Read about the passive safety developments where Japan would not happen again. There is also micro reactors to take into consideration.

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We should remember Mother Earth is one tough bitch.   The question isn’t whether the earth will recover,   She will.  But She operate on time scale 4-5 orders of magnitude greater than history of human civilization. Her recovery, however complete and inexorable, will in most cases not save us.

The question is which will bring more pain, misery, and impoverishment to humanity.   That is more difficult to answer.  Humans responds more to acute stress than chronic slow boil stress.   Major nuclear accident in densely populated area could certainly bring about level of pain and impoverishment as reasonable scenarios of global warming.

For example, a plausible trajectory of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident could have made greater Tokyo untenable, displace 30-40 million people leaving them with scarcely at place to go in their own country and wiped perhaps a third off of Japan’s GDP for a period on the order of 10 years.

I  would not be. I do long-term energy market forecast for living.  I work with Los Alamo national laboratory On economic assessment of emergent nuclear technology for utility resource planning purposes.

Then you're just the person to ask, more nuclear reactors replacing fossil fuel reactors (as many as possible understand peak demand issues) or not?

In China and India, nuclear will likely replace a portion of existing fossil generation, subject to contingent events such as whether another major nuclear accident happen somewhere in the world over the next 20-30 years.   In much of the rest of the world, no, at least not to appreciable degree for the foreseeable future,

[Amarok]

It was far from just local as contamination has entered the Pacific ecosystem 
causing damage well beyond Japan. And an increase in plant numbers just makes that more likely .

Did it effect the entire planet? Did Chernobyl? Did the hundreds (500+) of bombs?

Let me put it another way, which is the planet (and the human race) more likely to recover from?

To my way of thinking we're going to have to pick. The fear of limited electric power is the greatest fear and a non option. Or maybe global warming isn't the treat I've been lead to believe. 

Read about the passive safety developments where Japan would not happen again. There is also micro reactors to take into consideration.

---

I  would not be. I do long-term energy market forecast for living.  I work with Los Alamo national laboratory On economic assessment of emergent nuclear technology for utility resource planning purposes.

Then you're just the person to ask, more nuclear reactors replacing fossil fuel reactors (as many as possible understand peak demand issues) or not?

1. It does not need to effect the whole planet to be worrisome 

2. If it occurs over and over who knows 

3. It's not an either / Or both could be a threat 

4.I read the safety developments. So far i'm not impressed. And micro reactors a issues of their own which even their own creators ex knowledge

[Anomalocaris]

The safety of emergent nuclear technology is in many cases bought at the expense of thermal dynamic inefficiency and extreme demand on material science.     If these issues can in theory be overcome they still require a critical scale of deploymemt to achieve anything close to a viable level of economy.

The possibility of assembling a critical scale of deployment depends on public tolerance.   Perception matter more than reality amongst those who needs to be convinced.   Without assembling critical scale of deployment quickly, the theoretical economic performance of emergent technology will evaporate, and the technology will be set up to fail.   Having any track record of economic failure will make progress much more difficult still.

The reality is those who would otherwise be most interested in the role nuclear power can play in carbon emission reduction also by and large are those who are ideologically opposed to nuclear power and irreconcilably distrustful of the nuclear industry.

[brewer]

Can we get all of "those" people together in one place and whack them with carbon sticks?

[Dr H]

At the moment, To completely replace fossil fuel fired power plants while still maintaining power grid stability requires sizeable breakthrough in other energy storage technologies.

Or a significant reduction in demand.

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The problem with nuclear is unless the capital cost is greatly reduced, it is not economic on all-in cost of energy basis.   Particularly in the US.     Right now Solar, wind and fossil are all cheaper than nuclear.    This is discouraging the sort of investment needed to provide good prospect of improvement.    Trump restricting nuclear exports to China is not helping with nuclear power research in the US.

Actually, nuclear is one of the cheaper options, and solar one of the most expensive.

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Panicking about climate? The solution is abundant, scalable, zero-carbon energy, including 4th-gen nuclear. Promising development: Terrestrial Energy’s Integrated Molten Salt Reactor clears a regulatory hurdle in Canada.
https://www.terrestrialenergy.com/2018/1...in-canada/

That's not "the" solution, but it certainly could be part of a viable solution.

Anything approaching a true solution is going to have to be multifaceted and broad based.

[Rahn127]

I think climate change sparked Elon Musk to start thinking about missions to Mars as a potential species survival thing.

How about you take people around the moon, land them back on Earth and see if you can make it work here.

[Dr H]

Tell that to the people who lived in Fukushima Daiichi

Any power generation source could be damaged or taken out by a natural disaster.

What do you imagine the photos would look like if an earthquake took out the Grand Coulee or Hoover dams?  Or if a tornado took out Yingli Solar, releasing tons of sulfur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride into the atmosphere (greenhouse gases tens of thousands of times more potent than CO2)?

Risk/benefit analyses are a good thing.

* Six people died as a direct result of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, with an estimated additional 573 deaths listed as "disaster related."

* The 1975 destruction of the Banqiao hydroelectric dam, by Typhoon Nina, killed at least 171,000 people, just from the initial dam failure.

* An average of 350,000 people die annually per trillion-kilowatthour of electrticity produced by fossil fuel plants; for nuclear the annual average per trillion-kWh is about 90.

You don't get something for nothing, but the costs for some things are lower than for others.

[Amarok]

Tell that to the people who lived in Fukushima Daiichi

Any power generation source could be damaged or taken out by a natural disaster.

What do you imagine the photos would look like if an earthquake took out the Grand Coulee or Hoover dams?  Or if a tornado took out Yingli Solar, releasing tons of sulfur hexafluoride and nitrogen trifluoride into the atmosphere (greenhouse gases tens of thousands of times more potent than CO2)?

Risk/benefit analyses are a good thing.

* Six people died as a direct result of the 2011 Fukushima disaster, with an estimated additional 573 deaths listed as "disaster related."

* The 1975 destruction of the Banqiao hydroelectric dam, by Typhoon Nina, killed at least 171,000 people, just from the initial dam failure.

* An average of 350,000 people die annually per trillion-kilowatthour of electrticity produced by fossil fuel plants; for nuclear the annual average per trillion-kWh is about 90.

You don't get something for nothing, but the costs for some things are lower than for others.

I'm not saying there are no risks to other power sources but the is a risk to nuclear and even thou only 6 people died the damage is more then death and just because this one only killed a few does not mean we will be so lucky in the future .

[CapnAwesome]

I'm envisioning many other countries gathering together and targeting the worst offenders (China, US, European Union, India)

Militarily, Russia would be the only one that could realistically put all of those countries in check, but it would probably mean nuclear war and on that front, we all lose anyway you look at it.

Russia is the 4th largest producer of c02

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/sc...85FAd9ME0M

Doing the blame America game makes no sense. Canada and Australia produce the same C02 per capital. Because they also are large spread out countries with heavy transportation needs, like the US.

[Rahn127]

I'm envisioning many other countries gathering together and targeting the worst offenders (China, US, European Union, India)

Militarily, Russia would be the only one that could realistically put all of those countries in check, but it would probably mean nuclear war and on that front, we all lose anyway you look at it.

Russia is the 4th largest producer of c02

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/sc...85FAd9ME0M

Doing the blame America game makes no sense. Canada and Australia produce the same C02 per capital. Because they also are large spread out countries with heavy transportation needs, like the US.

https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/sc...85Hu59Ok0M

These are 2015 numbers. I couldn't find anything newer and didn't spend a great deal of time looking.

These values are in million metric tons of CO2
China 9000 million metric tons = 9 billion
US about 5000
India 2000
Russia 1500

I think if you add up all the countries in the European Union, you'll get a number higher than Russia.

Canada 550
Australia 380

In a cold hearted world, nuking China & the US, wiping them out completely would decrease CO2 output by 14 billion metric tons.

And the nuclear winter might help cool the planet down a bit.

If I'm thinking it, you know other world leaders are too.