Here are all of the messages from Tom's old xanga.com site:
Sunday, September 28, 2008 -
New article in London's Sunday Times The Sunday Times just ran an article on the backlash that the renowned Green Party environmentalist Mark Lynas is experiencing since he came out in favor of Integral Fast Reactors. Mark broke the nuclear barrier after being introduced to IFRs in Prescription for the Planet. Like Dr. James Hansen, Mark has looked at the facts and realized that IFRs can be the key to providing all the clean energy we can't produce with other renewables. My hat goes off to both these gentlemen for publicly taking a stand for rationality over ideology. If you'd like to read the London Times article, you can find it here.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008 - Controversy on BBC
Mark Lynas was interviewed on BBC's Today program following the controversy generated by his article in The New Statesman. His opposite number was the Caroline Lucas, leader of the Green Party. Unfortunately, as is too often the case in our sound-bite culture, there was no time to get facts out in just six minutes, so what the listener is left with is another case of he said-she said. Caroline raised the same old objections to nuclear power that are made obsolete by IFR technology, but Mark had no opportunity to rebut them in that short time frame. If you'd care to listen to it, you can find it here.
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It is a pity that Mark Lynas has let go a nice opportunity on BBC to rebut the Green party views. Things not to do in the debate (1) Mention anything that has to do with 2nd generation nuclear power
(2) Contrasting France and Germany etc..
(3) Going to the offensive on the inadequacy of either energy efficiency or renewable power Things to do (1) Start the debate saying that 4th generation nuclear is fundamentally different from 2nd generation
(2) That it addresses the problem of waste, the problem of safety and the problem of proliferation
(3) That it has been demonstrated and that the technology is completely ready
(4) And if there is still time, say that 2nd or 3rd generation nuclear should be welcomed as well, since we already have a problem for handling waste. I found the narrative on Steve Kirsch's website to be quite good. Any debate / presentation should go on these lines. By the way, amazing good work Tom. Get going, I am cheerleading your book wherever I can. -
Many thanks for the cheerleading, vakibs, on all fronts. You are quite a busy guy sometimes, and your elucidation of the new generation nuclear technology is spot on. I can't wait for you to read the book! Mark is pretty new to the Gen IV game, but has put his reputation as an environmentalist on the line for something he's recognized as a solution despite the vilification he's getting for it. I commend him, and I trust that as he steeps himself in it he'll be a very effective environmentalist on a whole other level. TB
Thursday, September 18, 2008New Statesman article on nuclear power Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees and High Tide, has a new article on New Statesman that deals with the necessity of using nuclear power to provide baseload power if we want to solve the global warming problem. Since he mentions my work at some length, I've taken the liberty of addressing his commenters there, but I'll be happy to continue the conversation here in greater detail if anyone would like to discuss it. TB
Wednesday, September 17, 2008 Breaking News!This summer I was enlisted as a consultant by the city of Sacramento in their deliberations over whether to build a plasma converter, one of the three key technologies described and promoted in Prescription for the Planet. I'm happy to report that the city council has voted to go ahead with the project. Up to now they've been hauling their garbage clear across the Sierras and dumping it in Nevada! Yes, I know it sounds ludicrous, but it's true. Once it's built, the new plasma converter will transform all of Sacramento's garbage into electricity and building materials, eliminating altogether the need for landfills. The emissions from the plant will be no worse than the best natural gas-fired power plants, and if the plant's capacity will allow it to convert agricultural waste from the surrounding area it will be even closer to carbon-neutral. Once plasma converters become ubiquitous (as they surely will) and we start producing our plastics from garbage and ag waste instead of oil, these plants will actually be carbon neutral. The only reason they're not yet that way is because of the 10% of the waste stream that's derived from fossil fuels. Read about it today, watch it happen tomorrow.
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 -
Watch Dr. James Hansen on Charlie RoseDr. James Hansen's interview with Charlie Rose is now online here. He spoke about one of the three technologies in Prescription for the Planet, the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) nuclear power system that he refers to by its technology category of Generation Four reactors. The rather compelling fact that we've already got enough free fuel available to power our nation for hundreds of years seemed to have blown right by Charlie, however. One would have thought that would have gotten him to really sit up and take notice. Nevertheless, word is finally leaking out about what's been kept quite well hidden for over a decade. Thanks to Dr. Hansen for once again blazing a trail despite the chance of being roundly criticized for it.
Dr. Hansen offered a lengthy review of Prescription for the Planet as part of his Trip Report newsletter, which you can read here. - Comments (3)
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Hi Tom:
I'm just about finished reading your book. I'm also reading Brice Smith's anti nuclear book and I would like you to comment on the pricing disparities for nukes in the respective books.
I'm sure I'll have more questions when I finish.
Before reading your book, I was pretty convinced by the red-green unsustainability of capitalism arguments made by minqi Li in a recent issue of Monthly Review and from a more procapitalist standpoint in James Speth's book, THe Bridge at the Edge of the World.
Now, I'm much less sure but do wonder about ecological sustainability issues beyond the huge one of global warming, which your book threatens to solve--at least technically if not socially and politically.
won't exponentially augmenting energy thruput take its toll in other ways?
more later and thanks for the great and provocative book. it's had a big impact on me already.
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Hi GD, Assertions of costs for nuclear power plants vary wildly, as you know. One reason is because private utility companies are encouraged to gouge their customers, because they're allowed to begin charging their customers for the cost of new nuclear plant construction immediately for plants they intend to build. And the amount they can start charging today is based on their estimates of what the new plants will cost them, even before they have a contract with the power plant builder and, in some cases, even before the design they intend to use has been certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission! So every incentive is there for the power companies to declare wildly inflated estimates. Then anti-nuclear activists often tack on even more for good measure. Arguably the best way to get a realistic assessment of what new plants should cost is to look at the way the Generation III plants are designed and built, which also pertain to Gen IV plants like those I promote in my book. The new type of nuclear power plant is built in modules, fabricated in factories and then assembled on site, as opposed to the old way of building them from scratch on site. The cost savings opportunities are obvious, as are the quality control advantages. The first Gen III reactors to be built have been the ABWR reactors, with the first ones having been built in Japan and more now being built both there and in Taiwan. These were built in a speedy three years, even the first one! GE says that based on those current real-world experiences they can build these power plants for about $1.2 billion/gigawatt. This is about 1/8 what most people claim nuclear power will cost in the USA (and about 1/13 what T. Boone Pickens says his new wind farm will cost, if you compare gigawatts to gigawatts). The problem is not that nuclear plant construction is necessarily expensive. The problem is that government and corporations in the USA collude—either wittingly or unwittingly—to wildly inflate the cost of nuclear power plants. It is NOT a fault of nuclear power technology. As you know from reading my book, I argue from a number of different angles that private utility companies should be banned from ownership and operation of nuclear plants. This is but one of the reasons. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by exponentially augmenting energy throughput taking its toll in other ways. I demonstrate in the book how we can provide all the energy humanity will require using just renewables and nuclear (or even just nuclear, if we decided to do so). That would have precious little environmental impact since it would require no mining of fuel for hundreds of years, and the power plants themselves use considerably less concrete and steel than former designs (about a tenth as much as wind farms of comparable capacity). When you couple the other two technologies in my book with the IFRs, you end up with a world where virtually everything his being recycled, we're all driving around in zero-emission cars, and we have as much clean cheap energy as we want. I fail to see what the downside will be compared to any other scenario anyone has yet painted of the future. If you're referring to the social aspect of people being spoiled by excess, that would seem to be a problem I'd much rather deal with than resource wars, air pollution, etc. I don't pretend to be able to usher in a utopia (which would mean different things to different people anyway), only to bring us to the threshhold of a post-scarcity society.
I'm delighted you are enjoying the book. I hope you'll consider writing a reader review on Amazon. Please keep an eye on this site from time to time. I'll be putting up notices as things develop, including several radio interviews I have coming up.TB
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Congratulations. I have just finished reading your book and I am stunned by it.
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