Recently I wrote a diary entry contending that climate change, if we hope to address it at all, requires that we take a realistic look at
the cleanest and safest scalable form of continuous energy available. That would be nuclear energy.
At the end of my last entry, I noted that some countries that have large underclasses, including Nigeria, South Africa, Vietnam, India and China are committing themselves to a future including nuclear power. This I would regard as a good thing.
Often there is a knee jerk reaction to nuclear power that is not commensurate with its vast success at producing energy with a very low external cost (See figures 9 and 10 )
In this link one may see a picture of
the Palo Verde Nuclear Station in Arizona and find some technical details related to the plant's operations. Note that lake in front of the plant is filled with water recovered from the Phoenix sewer system. While the plant sits on 4,000 acres of property, from the picture one immediately recognizes that the vast majority of this property is undeveloped; it is more or less pristine desert.
The plant, in 2003 produced 28.6 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. Using standard conversion factors and allowing for 30% thermal efficiency for the plants, we see that this is the equivalent of 0.343 exajoules of primary energy, including rejected heat typical of all power plants, nuclear and otherwise.
Let us contrast this with the entire African nation of Cameroon, where rapid deforestation is a tremendous problem. The primary energy consumption of Cameroon can be found here . Converting quads to exajoules by multiplying by 1.055, we see that Cameroon used 0.190 exajoules of energy for the entire population. Thus Cameroon used 55% as much energy as was produced in a few acres on the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant site.
Cameroon's forests are disappearing at a rate of 0.9% per year .
About 60% of Cameroon's energy comes from burning wood .
Professor Daniel Gbetnkom at the University of Yaounde II has produced an elegant report on the situation with respect to Cameroon's forests. While legal and illegal logging is a part of the problem, fuel is very much involved.
He writes:
In Cameroon, the supply of fuel wood from forests accounts for over 60% of the energy consumed and has been increasing at a rate of 2.5% per year since 1974-1976 (Cleaver, 1992, P.65). The forestry sector occupies the first place in export tonnage and third place in foreign earnings. It accounts for about 4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and offer about 40,000 jobs (Besong, 1992). Cameroon's forests contain an estimated 300 different tree species and the country can be said to have a forest based-economy (Idem). With her potential, Cameroon is at the second position amongst forestry African countries after the Democratic Republic of Congo...
...Many of the world's tropical forests are however, being decimated as the immediate needs of the developing world overshadow the often uncertain future benefits from these forests. New studies demonstrate a rate of forest loss considerably worse than previously known (UNESCO, 1990; Houghton.R.A,1990; Serageldin. I, 1992; FAO, 2001). These studies indicate an annual tropical forest loss of over 20 million hectares, a staggering 55,000 hectares per day (Serageldin, 1992, P.337). This figure is nearly 80% above the FAO's 1980 estimate of tropical deforestation rates. Thus, within the last decade, despite the growing global concern about forest destruction, the rate of loss has continued to increase without abatement...
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Recently over at Democratic Underground in a post from which this diary entry is derived, I argued that every human being on earth has his or her flesh invested in the dying forests of Cameroon and elsewhere. I noted that the rate of deforestation in Cameroon alone is such that every few days, enough land to build the Palo Verde nuclear station - which will produce energy for many decades - is cleared. I argued that in a rational world, the international community would donate a reactor complex like Palo Verde to the nation of Cameroon.
Well I know that my remarks are controversial is some segments of my party, but I contend that the controversy does not derive from reason. The Democratic Party has acceded to power in part because we reject faith based approaches in favor of scientific approaches.
Nuclear energy is among the safest and cleanest options we have if we are to address climate change. It is the only continuous power option we have. I believe it would be both insane and immoral to not engage in its aggressive expansion.