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Just Stop Oil Protesters

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Little said:
I hear some biofuels made from recycling plants are starting to roll out. I hate waste so that makes sense to me.
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I had the pleasure of visiting a SRF production facility last month. Their supply chain is waste wood, fibres and textiles and un-recyclable plastics (films). The product is a pellet approximately 10mm in diameter and 20mm long which can be burned in coal fired plants as a replacement with minimal alteration to the combustion process.

The energy density of the pellets is high and the production costs low making it an ideal replacement for industries currently reliant on fossil fuels. It has a lower co2 emission than coal and is much cleaner and easier to handle. The product reduces the need to send waste to landfill.

Study from earlier this year on the subject:

 
Techno-utopianism or postulating theories to redefine fossil fuels isn't going to stop the Russian tundra melting to release catastrophic amounts of methane to the global atmosphere. Just one tipping point of many that will impact the planet for millions of years with effects utterly irreversible from any meaningful human perspective. This is what rapacious corporate capitalism does, it's not some benign neutral force for the common good. The myth of infinite growth unshackled from material constraints and conveniently beyond all democratic accountability is the playbook. From Bill McKibbin's Substack this week:

'BP has announced it is reneging on its plan to cut oil output 25% by 2030 and instead will “target several new investments in the Middle East and the Gulf of Mexico to boost its oil and gas output.” For those keeping score, this is an almost exact replay of BP’s announcement in the 1990s that it was henceforth going to be “Beyond Petroleum.” That pledge lasted a few years until the company recanted and decided instead to pollute the Gulf of Mexico.'

Never believe the greenwashing. This is BP, darling of the UK stock exchange, that has bought back $5.7 billion of it's own stock so far in 2024. Those profits could be being invested to fuel the green transition, and this has been going on for years and years:

'The five “super-majors” – BP, Shell, Chevron, ExxonMobil and TotalEnergies – showered shareholders with dividend payments and share buybacks worth $104bn in the 2022 calendar year, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).'

At least those protestors who lobbed cornflower at Stonehenge have a moral compass.
 
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MichaelJ said:
True, synthetic fuel can absolutely be made - its just chemistry after all - and it sequester an equal amount CO2 in the process as it release when burned, so potentially your looking at a net ZERO scenario with synthetic fuel, of course the problem is that it would spike the price at the pump to levels that no consumer will be ready to accept unless it is done at massive scale unleashing the full force of innovation and free market competition. Hydrogen is another source of energy that seems to have taken a backseat due to all the talk about wind, solar and electric... Same thing with Nuclear - that seems to be gaining a possible renaissance in the US with new and better designs - it still hold the promise of being too cheap to meter - we still just haven't cracked the waste management corundum. Climate change is happening, it's irrefutable... the physics and impact - global warming - of increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere is well understood. The keeling curve is really all the evidence we need:

View attachment 223092
And global CO2 emission since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution:

View attachment 223091

We should totally be open to the idea that the phenomenon could in part be compounded by phenomena that are not well understood or natural causes as
Unfortunately there is just too much dogmatism in the climate debate - not so much among scientists - but in the public. In my part of the world - the US (doubt its much different in Europe), it has become a political cause among a large part of the public ... almost like a badge of honor to deny that climate change even exists and belief in all sorts of wicked conspiracy theories and debunked science ...
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A really interesting discussion. My subjective view is that the view in the US and (most of Europe) is radically different. The scientific community in Europe is united on the 'science' behind the objective fact of climate change and the human centred drivers for it (there are a few deniers but these are seen as poor scientists). The public are less unified in their views but far less sceptical. Talking to colleagues in Earth and Environment Departments in Universities the film Don't Look Up does resonate (in terms of the difficulties faced in communicating scientific knowledge) and there is a real fear that psudo science will dominate the debate and experts will be ignored.

My personal fear is of digital mobs on social media whippped up by 'influencers' willfully spreading disinformation not of a few people throwing cornflower and paint at rocks.
 
Hi all,
Aqua sobriquet said:
www.ecowatch.com

Nuclear Power ‘Cannot Rival Renewable Energy’ - EcoWatch

Nuclear power is in terminal decline worldwide and will never make a serious contribution to tackling climate change, a group of energy experts argues.Meeting recently in London at Chatham House, the UK's Royal Institution of International Affairs, they agreed that despite continued enthusiasm...
www.ecowatch.com www.ecowatch.com
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I visited <"Hinkley B"> a couple of times (with trainee Physics teachers).

The first time I went we were told (by an BNFL / BE / EDL nuclear physicist (just one person, but a lot of name changes for the company)) that Pressurised Water Reactors were inherently unsafe...........

cheers Darrel
 
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Aqua sobriquet said:
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your very first source here concludes
Amory Lovins said the UK’s approach appeared to be dominated by “nuclear ideology.” It was driven by settled policy and beliefs, and facts had no connection to reality. “Nuclear is a waste of time and money in the climate fight,” he concluded.
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I bet he did, but hmmmmmm..... I wonder what the background of the gentleman making such unsupported authoritative claims could be .....
Amory Bloch Lovins............served on the US National Petroleum Council, an oil industry lobbying group, from 2011 to 2018.
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:thumbup::clap: literally lol.
A series of newly discovered documents clarify the extent to which the U.S. government, its advisory committees and the fossil fuel industry have understood for decades the impact carbon dioxide emissions would have on the planet.
The documents obtained by Climate Liability News show how much the National Petroleum Council (NPC), an oil and natural gas advisory committee to the Secretary of Energy, knew about climate change as far back as the 1970s. A series of reports illuminate the findings of government-contracted research that outlined the dangers associated with increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
They also shed light on how this advisory group to the federal government understood the fossil fuel industry’s contributions to climate change, and unveil the strategies it used to downplay the industry’s role.
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:thumbup:
The National Petroleum Council (NPC) membership lists include now-former chairmen, presidents and chief executives of at least eight oil companies including Texaco, Marathon Oil, Conoco and Phillips, which have since merged, and Occidental Petroleum Corporation. The documents show that the knowledge was widespread in the industry, and not just limited to individual companies like ExxonMobil and Shell, whose internal files have been uncovered in a series of journalistic investigations that show their longtime understanding of the risks of climate change.
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And finally, this is from when Amory Lovins actually sat on the NPC
The National Petroleum Council includes top executives from Exxon Mobil, Shell and BP America. It has an annual budget of $4.5 million collected from members, and pays its executive director $750,000 in salary and benefits. And it regularly “makes recommendations” to the U.S. Secretary of Energy — as in its recent report “Arctic Potential: Realizing the Promise of U.S. Arctic Oil and Gas Resources,” which advocates changes to regulations that “are limiting Arctic exploration activity.”
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🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I think we're done here.
 
On the bright side, our antics will extend the current interglacial from 50 000 to 100 000 years - a cheery thought next time I fill up at my local BP. Future generations, if there are any by then (outside chance surely) will be well chuffed
 
dw1305 said:
Hi all,

I visited <"Hinkley B"> a couple of times (with trainee Physics teachers).

The first time I went we were told (by an EDF nuclear physicist) that Pressurised Water Reactors were inherently unsafe...........

cheers Darrel
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Here are some pointers worth a read IMO:

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www.energy.gov

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www.mofa.go.jp

AP1000® Pressurized Water Reactor | Westinghouse Nuclear

The Westinghouse AP1000 nuclear power plant is the safest and most reliable plant in the marketplace with distinct advantages over other designs.
westinghousenuclear.com westinghousenuclear.com

Cost of admission (cost/MWh) is always about scale. If we really want to reduce CO2 emission there is currently no net zero technology that will rival nuclear at scale. The 3 accidents that got the general population spooked was mainly caused by human ignorance and negligence are Chernobyl (due to gross ignorance by the staff and the only one causing direct loss of life), and Fukushima Japan - the indirect loss of life due to a spike in cancer cases is still undetermined. The Three Mile Island incident has be thoroughly monitored and researched and has not caused any statistically significant increase in cancer cases in the vicinity of the facility. I always thought the safety concerns and safety argument's against nuclear to be counterintuitive … ok, so for well over 150 years we were fine with or accepted millions upon millions of people dying from respiratory diseases from coal plants, but we find nuclear energy unsafe because of a couple of accidents mainly caused by human error…
The waste management issue is my biggest grief with nuclear energy for sure, but I sort of believe we should be able to figure that out in a 25-50 year timeframe. Btw. France get 80% of their electricity from Nuclear (56 plants) - they only had one level 4 incident back in 1980.

Cheers,
Michael
 
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MichaelJ said:
The waste management issue is my biggest grief with nuclear energy for sure, but I sort of believe we should be able to figure that out in a 25-50 year timeframe. Btw. France get 80% of their electricity from Nuclear (56 plants) - they only had one level 4 incident back in 1980.
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Have you read much about newer designs for Thorium reactors? I believe the technology has a lot of advantages and potential.
‘It’s an efficient machine to destroy nuclear waste’: nuclear future powered by thorium beckons - chemistry world 2024
China to build first-ever thorium molten salt nuclear power station in Gobi Desert - ABC news Australia
 
Not sure whether that was meant to be satirical or not, I had to watch it several times with captions and I still didn't understand it.
But the planet doesn't need saving from us. We need saving from ourselves. We need to get out of our own way.
 
Hi all,
MichaelJ said:
The 3 accidents that got the general population spooked was mainly caused by human ignorance and negligence are Chernobyl (due to gross ignorance by the staff and the only one causing direct loss of life), and Fukushima Japan -
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I think it was more a case of pointing out that <"Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors"> were more easily controllable. We used to go and stand on the concrete capping of the the reactor core, and listen to a Geiger counter, the activity goes down on the cap, because it chops out the background radiation (from buried granite etc).

I was never entirely convinced, partially because all the control gear had bakelite knobs etc.

cheers Darrel
 
Aqua sobriquet said:
www.bbc.com

How to build a nuclear warning for 10,000 years’ time

The nuclear waste buried far beneath the earth will be toxic for thousands of years. How do you build a warning now that can be understood in the far future?
www.bbc.com www.bbc.com


View attachment 223137
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With thorium, the U233 is isolated and the result is far fewer highly radioactive, long-lived byproducts. Thorium nuclear waste only stays radioactive for 500 years, instead of 10,000, and there is 1,000 to 10,000 times less of it to start with
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Thorium reactors possess inherent safety features, given that they cannot maintain a chain reaction
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Also do you realise that WIND power is literally more lethal than Nuclear?
Screenshot 2024-10-11 at 14-56-31 Global deaths per energy source Statista.png
What’s the Death Toll of Nuclear vs Other Energy Sources? A comparison of the mortality statistics for nuclear, fossil fuel, hydroelectric, solar and wind energy. -
Engineering.com
Yet, one must wonder how realistic humanity’s anxiety is towards nuclear energy. Are these preconceptions grounded in reality? Or fiction?
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To put these numbers into perspective, in 70 years and with a total of 667 nuclear power plants that have ever operated, only three major accidents have taken place. Using the official internationally-recognized death statistics for Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima, the combined loss of lives from the three major nuclear accidents is 32 people. In fact, estimates on the number of deaths caused by the nuclear energy sector overall is 90 per 1000TWh—the least of any energy sector!
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Given the considerable disparity in the deaths caused by other forms of energy versus nuclear energy, one would be hard pressed not to conclude that nuclear energy is the safest and most energy-dense resource in the world. At 93.5 percent, nuclear energy has the highest capacity ratio of all energy sources in the world today, and produces negligible waste when compared to its energy output.
Detractors of nuclear energy may argue that despite the low loss of life, the cost of cleanup from nuclear accidents is too large. While that may be true, there are two major counterarguments. Firstly, the environmental cost of fossil fuels is staggering and considerably larger than any damage caused by nuclear accidents. Secondly (and more importantly), nuclear energy stands to save thousands of lives.
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In 2019, solar energy made up a paltry two percent of the global energy produced. Solar energy has the lowest capacity factor of 24.5 in all energy sectors, since solar panels can only operate for half the day—and that too if there’s enough sun. The number of deaths for every 1000TWh of energy generated by rooftop solar panels is 440. Put simply, this means that for every 1000TWh of energy produced via rooftop solar power, 440 people lose their lives. Other estimates place this number to be around 150. These deaths are mostly the result of electrocution and other hazards that occur during rooftop solar panel installation (such as falling).
At 34.8 percent, wind energy has one of the lowest capacity factors of all energy sources. Roughly five percent of global energy comes from wind—but even then, for every 1000TWh of energy generated, 150 people end up losing their lives. The vast majority of these deaths arise as a result of blade malfunction and fires. Deaths also occur during construction of the wind turbines.
Hydroelectric power is the most prevalent form of renewable energy produced in the world, and produces seven percent of global energy. With a capacity factor of 39.1 percent, hydropower employs the downstream flow of water bodies to spin turbines. While generally considered safe, its main drawback is the amount of damage that can ensue if dams or turbines do break. The 1975 Banqiao Dam failure in China alone led to the demise of 26,000 people. Similar accidents in India, Italy, Russia and the U.S. have led to severe loss of human life. As such, for every 1000TWh of energy produced via hydroelectric power, 1500 people are estimated to pay the ultimate price.
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Now I'm actually not seeking to downplay the dangers of radioactive waste but even if you factor in the highest and more questionable estimates of downstream casualties from chernobyl it's still objectively safer than multiple other forms of energy.
 
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