As I posted last week, conventionally sized nuclear power (?750–1,250 MW) is dramatically uncompetitive with coal- and gas-fired electricity generation in light of the huge increase in construction costs recently estimated by various utilities. A typical new coal-fired plant may cost on the order of $2,000/MW compared to new nuclear estimated to cost as much as four or five times more. The lower operating costs of nuclear compared to fossil-fired plants cannot erase this capital-cost premium.
Micro-nuclear, with capacity in the 5–100 MW range, while exciting as a new technology, is no panacea. Actual installed costs are yet to be published. But operating cost estimates of less than ten cents a kilowatt-hour have drawn attention to the designs. But are the scale economies in construction, operations, maintenance, and the fuel cycle considered in these preliminary estimates?…
Continue ReadingAt the G8 summit held in L’Aquila Italy last week, the G8 nations came up with a climate master plan aimed at keeping the total rise in global temperatures (above pre-industrial conditions) at a value of 2ºC or less. A cursory reading of the plan makes it seem as if the G8 nation’s are reaching out to the rest of world by agreeing to take on the harshest emissions cuts themselves, leaving the world’s developing nations with only a bit of mop-up duty in order to make all the final numbers work out. The opposite is true.
A close look at how the plan must actually work reveals a great semantics play by the G8. They know that they alone do not hold the power to substantially alter the projected course of future global warming through their emissions reductions.…
Continue Reading[Editor note: Pierre Desrochers, who guest posts with us for the first time, is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto.]
Paul Ehrlich’s best-seller The Population Bomb turned 40 last year. The latest issue of the peer-reviewed (and somewhat iconoclastic) Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development is devoted to the book, its impact, and the validity of its main message. It features contributions by both Paul and Anne Ehrlich, who mostly stand by their original analysis, and some of their critics who challenge their basic premise and supportive evidence.
Despite a now widespread popular perception that The Population Bomb was a pioneering work, it originally drew little attention. In fact, it was just the latest in a long line of books, reports, essays and pamphlets on the population issue published in post-World War II America.…
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