So Fresh and so clean!

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Case number one: I burn fuel in a combustion-motor and get 1 kJ of kinetic energy in my pistons.

Case number two: I burn fuel in a combustion-motor, get 1 kJ of kinetic energy in my pistons, use the pistons to create a rotating movement, transform that rotating movement via a dynamo into electric energy with certain efficiency, and we get electric energy, minus some losses.
This electric energy is then sent to a large-scale battery, with a certain efficiency, which again causes some losses.
From the large-scale battery, the electric energy is sent to the battery of the electric car, minus some losses.
And in the car an electric motor transforms the electric energy into kinetic energy, minus some losses.

Are you seriously trying to tell me that transforming kinetic energy into electric energy magically makes the greenhouse-gases disappear that were created in the very beginning by burning the fuel?????????



Yes, an electric car produces less greenhouse-gases because it doesn't burn fuel.

But what about the nuclear waste electric cars produce by running on electricity that comes from nuclear reactors??????????

An electric motor is closer to 90% efficient. Most of the energy in an IC engine goes out the tailpipe.

Plus you don't get to start the calculation at the car. You would have to start at the energy to recover crude oil, transport it to a refinery, refine it, transport it to a gas pump. Combined cycle gas plants are over 50% efficient.

What about if the EV owner has PV panels and a Powerwall?

First we need sand, which must be molten, cleaned and refined until we get silicon-wafers for building microchips. That energy has to come from somewhere.

Then we need all sorts of rare metals for the electronics. These can be found in the naturally-occuring ore Coltan, whose mining has its own human-rights and environmental problems.

Then we need a car that's light, so we build it from Aluminium. Getting Aluminium from Bauxit-ore takes a hell of a lot of energy and that energy has to come from somewhere.
Or steel. The only way to produce steel is to burn iron-ore pebbles with finely ground coal in a blast furnace. That not only produces greenhouse-gases but also a clinker that's full of unhealthy stuff like sulphur and antimon.



Calculating the true environmental costs is not something that can be done quick and easy.

I wish for one fucking minute, that people who complain about so called "nuclear waste," would step outside of their stupid little fantasies to consider that dangerous fossil fuel waste , combined with dangerous biomass combustion waste, kills 7 million people per year.

Global, regional, and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavioural, environmental and occupational, and metabolic risks or clusters of risks, 1990–2015: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2015 (Lancet 2016; 388: 1659–724)

I wish for one fucking minute, that people who complain about so called "nuclear waste" would care to demonstrate when, in the last half a century the storage of used nuclear fuel in this country has led to as many people who will die in that minute, which is, 13 people. Every fucking minute 13 people die from air pollution, almost all of which derives from the combustion of dangerous fossil fuels and biomass.

The reason that 13 people die every fucking minute from dangerous fossil fuel waste is because there's a lot of people who can't think, who can't understand clear and unambiguous mathematics and who can't compare clearly available numbers, and thus oppose nuclear energy, strictly out of fear and ignorance.

Nuclear energy saves lives:

Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power (Pushker A. Kharecha* and James E. Hansen Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 4889–4895)

Other than that, electric cars are not clean, not sustainable, and not safe, but the reason has very little to do with nuclear energy and everything to do with the nature of so called "distributed energy," the automobile being the most egregious example of the same.

The danger of nuclear waste is not here and now. The danger is that we have no way of safely storing it and that the radiation will eventually come out many generations down the road.

If we had a way to safely depose of nuclear waste, then Yes, then nuclear would be far superior to fossil fuel. But as both have their unique problems, I don't think it's feasible to compare nuclear and fossil fuels in this way.




In school we had a really, really old textbook with an ad from the 1950s or 60s or 70s that told us how great nuclear power is, because it's so much better for the environment than burning coal.

...matrix by which someone can appeal to putative "long term" deaths from so called "nuclear waste," that almost certainly won't happen over the real and observed deaths of 70 million people over the last ten years from dangerous fossil fuel and biomass combustion waste, air pollution. Deaths from air pollution in the last ten years represent more people than died in the Second World War. It is the equivalent of killing every man, woman and child in the UK.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of highly sophisticated papers in the scientific literature, written by highly educated scientists all over the planet on the handling of used nuclear fuels, a valuable resource for future generations when and if ignorance is overcome.

I know the value of used nuclear fuel because I've read, in the last 30 year many, many thousands of them.

People who refuse to be educated and giggle at what they learned in schools are not really capable of entering into a discussion of energy and the environment.

It's very clear that these kinds of people are opposed to opening a science book, never mind a serious scientific paper and in a very Trumpian fashion, shoot their mouths off on sujbects they know nothing about.

Yesterday, I attended a lecture by New Jersey's State Climatologist, David Robinson at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab's Science on Saturday Series. I made a point of staying after the presentation to thank him for his positive remarks on nuclear energy in the face of so much knee jerk Pavlovian public interest that prattles on about so called "nuclear waste," while dangerous fossil fuel waste is killing 13 people every damned minute.

We are, as of this morning, at Mauna Loa, the carbon dioxide concentration on this planet is 411.02 ppm, whereas one year ago this week it was 407.25. That represents the destruction of the entire planetary atmosphere by energy wastes.

As a person who has devoted long hours of my personal time to the study of energy and the environment, I am appalled by the ignorance of people responsible, which I find to largely consisting of mindless, rote anti-nukes.

Over the years here, I've built this wonderful ignore list for people who clearly lack a shred of moral, intellectual, or scientific sophistication, because after long experience with them, it becomes clear that they are as fond of their ignorance as Donald Trump, and that there's little point in spending a minute more with them.

I clearly need to expand that list now.

I wish you a wonderful life.