An Inconvenient COPout?

The United Nations Climate Change Conference just concluded in Glasgow, Scotland after two weeks of political rhetoric with backtracking delay tactics rather than achieving substantive changes right now! Reuters provided the play-by-play to complete the diluted agreement.

To have any hope of Peace on Earth, the world needs an immediate drastic change in course, what I call a sea-change transformation and America can and is obligated to lead the way! The Economist shows how bad disasters could be with the current trajectory of carbon emissions causing our Earth to warm by 3 degrees Celsius.

For 26 years, the UN Conference of the Parties (COP) have been meeting annually to attempt to solve the climate crisis. By the way, discussions to phase out chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) preventing further damage to the protective ozone layer only took about a decade according to C2ES.

At COP26, many world leaders and statesmen like Sir Richard Attenborough verbally and visually demonstrated the imminent climate catastrophe. At the beginning of this week, former President Barack Obama gave a passionate speech lasting about 45 minutes to share successes and shortcomings on the fight for clean green energy encouraging young activists to stay angry and keep fighting. What he and most everyone attending the conference left out is a COPout!

The United States of America is the world’s largest cumulative contributor to greenhouse gases adding 20% of the world’s carbon pollution into the atmosphere according to CarbonBrief. So we Americans are the most responsible for fixing the problem and openly discuss all solutions, right?

Some are blaming President Biden for not wanting to raise taxes on people making less than $400,000 which would prevent creating a carbon tax while President Biden rightly blamed his predecessor for moving out of the Paris agreement reached five years ago that proposed to limit future temperature increases to 1.5 deg. C.

In the summer of 2008, when Democratic nominee Obama came campaigning to Las Vegas where I lived and worked for the feds dealing with nuclear waste, we saw him make a deal with Senator Harry Reid. Top on Reid’s list was ending the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository project to be located on the atomic bomb testing grounds at the Nevada Test Site. I discussed the world’s nuclear waste issue and my experiences in this 2019 blog. The key to solving climate change requires conservation and new innovations in all power generation including nuclear fission and fusion. Here are some current breakthroughs by government-industry and MIT.

About 20% of the world’s power currently comes from nuclear energy but only one country, Finland, is building a repository to solve the nuclear waste problem.

The American Nuclear Society expressed concern of being silenced before the COP26 conference and issued a statement at the opening: “we urge the delegates to assume that a significant commercial deployment of new reactor designs and advanced nuclear fuel will occur in the 2030 timeframe and to acknowledge that such a scale-up will require a significant investment in research and development funding for advanced nuclear technologies.”

Time Magazine reports that nuclear is COP26’s quiet controversy with some side agreements being arranged but certainly is not in the mainstream conversation.

The U.S. and other huge carbon emitting countries are reluctant to pay for damages to developing countries. This is contrary to standard laws like Superfund where the polluter pays. Meanwhile, developing countries like India proposed becoming net zero by 2070 which is at least 20 years too late as well as weaken language in the final agreement to “phase down” instead of “phase out” coal. Other coal and hydrocarbon-rich countries including Australia, China, Russia and Saudi Arabia worked hard to weaken agreements. No agreement was reached to stop drilling for more oil.

All the delays in taking action are not just An Inconvenient Truth but an Inconvenient COP-out!

Mitigating Nuclear Hazards - Part 1 Overview

(Originally posted June 3, 2019)

To discuss my experience with mitigating nuclear hazards, I like to say that I am the only person I know of who has worked on almost every aspect of the nuclear fuel cycle. Please let me know if you know anyone else making such a bold claim so perhaps we can gain their perspective? Groups that gave me this experience include the University of Wyoming, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, U.S. Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as well as several consulting assignments.

Ironically, in the U.S. we do not have a complete nuclear fuel cycle so a person would need to work with the French on reprocessing spent fuel to go full circle. The examination of the nuclear fuel cycle for mitigating hazards is relevant to nations and taxpayers under the construct of Conserve & Pro$per on many levels that will be discussed.

As shown on the figure, the nuclear fuel cycle is the process necessary to generate electric power (as well as medical isotopes) in a reactor. The cycle begins with mining, involves several steps to produce and burn fuel rods, store spent fuel, then ultimately burial in a engineered-geological repository. As discussed on my blog post about the Green New Deal, we all use nuclear energy, which accounts for about 20% or one-fifth of our electricity generated in the U.S. So even for the anti-nuclear activists, we all must be aware of the risks and costs involving the nuclear fuel cycle including the fact that we must properly deal with existing nuclear waste.

I will need many blog postings to explain my experience with the nuclear fuel cycle and provide examples of mitigating nuclear hazards. Here is my proposed outline to be provided in upcoming blog posts:

1. Overview

2. Uranium Mining

3. Uranium Mills and Clean Up

4. Yellowcake Conversion, Enrichment, and Fuel

5. Nuclear Reactors - Operations, Relicensing, and Decommissioning

6. Spent Fuel Storage

7. High-level Waste Disposal

8. Accidents

Thanks for your support and interest!

Happy Father's Day

Today to celebrate Father’s Day in the U.S., I thought how can I link this occasion with my series on mitigating nuclear hazards? What came to mind is one of many books I just borrowed from the library titled The Pope of Physics: Enrico Fermi and the Birth of the Atomic Age. I’ve not read it yet but will let you know what I learn. Here are the notes from the Amazon book page (see update below):

“Enrico Fermi is unquestionably among the greats of the world's physicists, the most famous Italian scientist since Galileo. Called the Pope by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions.

This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics. Fleeing Fascism and anti-Semitism, Fermi became a leading figure in America's most secret project: building the atomic bomb. The last physicist who mastered all branches of the discipline, Fermi was a rare mixture of theorist and experimentalist. His rich legacy encompasses key advances in fields as diverse as comic rays, nuclear technology, and early computers.

In their revealing book, The Pope of Physics, Gino Segré and Bettina Hoerlin bring this scientific visionary to life. An examination of the human dramas that touched Fermi’s life as well as a thrilling history of scientific innovation in the twentieth century, this is the comprehensive biography that Fermi deserves.”

Have a Safe and Happy Father’s Day where ever you are!

Updated June 24, 2019:

I read and can recommend the interesting book about events leading to the Italian immigrant Enrico Fermi and many other scientists discovering atomic energy and subsequent Manhattan Project that ended WWII and proceeded to the Cold War. The biggest takeaway to me, beyond the interesting scientific discoveries, are the values of freedom that America and our allies fought against fascism and imperialism. Many scientists of Jewish decent or marriage escaped to America as Hitler rose to power in 1932. How different the world would be had Hitler developed atomic weapons? Fermi conducted the first nuclear self-sustaining chain reaction experiment (called Critical Pile-1) that directly created nuclear power and atomic weapons. However, he and other scientists strongly argued against themonuclear weapons (hydrogen bombs called the “Super”) developed in 1950’s by Edward Teller at Los Alamos. As cited by the Atomic Heritage Foundation, Fermi wrote:

"A decision on the proposal that an all-out effort be undertaken for the development of the "Super" cannot in our opinion be separated from considerations of broad national policy...necessarily such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide..."

More to come in future blogs to share experience about nuclear energy and weapons.