‘What Could Have Been – If Nuclear Power Deployment Had Not Been Disrupted’

“If not for disruption by the anti-nuclear power protest movement the world could have had cheap, reliable, secure, sustainable comparatively safe electricity supply by now (Lang, 2017).

The benefits for the global economy and human wellbeing could have been substantial: clean, safe, reliable power supply, 4.2 to 9.5 million lives and 69 to 174 Gt CO2 emissions avoided, and nuclear providing up to 66% of the world’s power at around 10% of its current cost.

From 1954 to 1967 the cost of nuclear power plants was decreasing by around 25% per doubling of global nuclear power capacity. Then progress was disrupted. Thereafter, costs increased rapidly, by 22 to 94% per capacity doubling (except in South Korea).”

Continue reading and see charts here: https://www.thegwpf.com/what-could-have-been-if-nuclear-power-deployment-had-not-been-disrupted/

Excerpt from opinion piece at: https://www.thegwpf.com/what-could-have-been-if-nuclear-power-deployment-had-not-been-disrupted/ :

It’s time for the developed countries to lead the world to get serious about nuclear power. Some of nuclear power’s advantages are, it:

1. is the safest way to generate electricity and always has been since the first power reactor began supplying power to the grid in 1954 (Appendix B, Note VIII)
2. is sustainable – nuclear fuel is effectively unlimited
3. provides reliable, dispatchable electricity
4. provides countries with a high level of energy security – many years of fuel supply can be stored in a small space at low cost so countries are not vulnerable to disruption of fuel supply during periods of trade or military conflicts
5. is highly flexible in small modular reactors – consider the flexibility of nuclear powered submarines and ships, as has been demonstrated over the past 60 years; also see Irwin (2017) submission to the Australian Energy Security Board on SMR technologies.
6. almost unlimited potential for cost reductions over time, if the impediments to progress are removed.

Other economic benefits and policy implications are presented in Sections 3.5 and 3.6.

The likely-root cause of the disruption, and the cost escalations and stalled deployment rate since about 1967 was, and still is, the activities of the anti-nuclear power protest movement (Appendix B, Note IX ).

To achieve the substantial benefits available by transitioning to nuclear power requires a recognition of the disruption and its consequences, identification of its causes, and amelioration of the impediments that are slowing progress.

NOTE: the link to the paper posted in first comment is wrong. The correct link is: https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/10/12/2169/htm

Well argued, evidence and science-based article! Solar panel production is accompanied by a mountain of toxic waste and considerable release of the most efficacious greenhouse gas!

Were coal and gas-fired power plants be subjected to the same rogue emissions regulations as nuclear power? Most would have to close tomorrow!

Among a host of highly toxic smokestack emissions, coal-fired power stations also have been known to have spewed uranium. And fracked gas when burned gives off radon gas.

But allowed to continue emitting and their radioactive emissions simply labelled, background emission only!

The current production here of nuclear medicine isotopes is limited to beta particles and scrubbed radon gas. We don't produce alpha particle, bismuth 213, A tried and tested miracle cancer cure. Because we don't have an accelerator? or MSR thorium.

The two methods of producing alpha particle, bismuth 213, include bombarding radium with particles in an accelerator and hugely expensive and therefore promoted by big pharma and its devotees, most of the medical fraternity?

The other method ll but free and as a byproduct of MSR thorium. And given we mad it here would all but destroy the cancer industry! Millionaire medicine and billions shaved off of big pharma's profit curve.

I mean we the taxpayer pay for much of the annual billions expended on often ineffective chemotherapy and even more on the palliative care dished out to patients who have had all the highly toxic and essentially ineffective chemo and are then sent home to die and in the case of brain or ovarian cancers, in numbers annually individually than the annual road toll.

Many of who would experience remission in minutes, without the hair loss, or the nausea, with bismuth 213.

All that prevents is manufacture here and the world's cheapest electricity are the usual recalcitrants in both political parties, who'd die in a ditch before lifting THEIR prohibition on safe, clean, cheap nuclear power

And decimate the self-serving cancer industry, which exists only to collect (millions) charity for cancer research!

This scandal needs exposing, as do the parasites, who wax fae on it?
Alan B.

i dont get it, so many sources say that renewables is now the cheapest source of energy.

Are they lying?

Are they excluding energy costs of production?

i have my doubts about nuclear. if it is so good, why aren't the corrupt chinese all over it given the communist party runs the economy as it wishes.

once the battery issue is solved in terms of capacity and cost, the non-renewable argument will look much weaker.
https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/8/9/20767886/renewable-energy-storage-cost-electricity

Chris: Who knows what Hollywood thinks or believes? Particularly if that belief is the product of mountainous misinformation and huge humbug?

Sir Richard Bramston tells us about a meeting with a highly placed official from the flat earth society. And where he invited said official for a ride in one of his, low orbit rocket flights. Anyhow he accepted and they flew, the official glued to the porthole watching a round earth unfold under him.

Upon landing, Sir Richard enquired, and what do you think now? Whereupon the official replied, and I paraphrase, the graphics were extremely lifelike and the special effects most realistic! And walked away beliefs intact and unchanged?

When brainwashed for birth belief is inculcated into folk they will never be convinced by proof to the contrary, just take climate change and climate science as glaring examples.

What we need is leadership and future vision as opposed to the cronyism and corruption that seems the self-evident playschool that currently substitutes for political leadership and informed debate in this country, to be kind!

I've explained till I'm black in the face and can do no more than ask all those who want to be informed and via credible expert sources

See Kirk Sorensen on google tech talks and this former NASA scientist and nuclear technologists informative explanation of Thorium and why it has to be our preferred CARBON FREE future fuel and all of the reasons why this is so!

Or on the same format, Engineer Jam Petersen and his talk on MSR technology as a nuclear waste burning technology

Or read, prize-winning investigative journalist and science write Richard Martin's book, Thorium, Super fuel, subtitled green energy.

Or Professor (ret) Robert Hargrave's book, Thorium, cheaper than coal! TBC
Alan B.