China permitted more coal power plants last year than any time in the last seven years, according to a new report released this week. It's the equivalent of about two new coal power plants per week. The report by energy data organizations Global Energy Monitor and the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air finds the country quadrupled the amount of new coal power approvals in 2022 compared to 2021. //

China is the world's biggest emitter of fossil fuels and has pledged for its emissions to peak by 2030. But there are questions over how high that peak will get and how soon that peak will come, says Champenois.

For the first time ever, a commercial plane flew across the Atlantic Ocean without using fossil fuels.

Virgin Atlantic said the test flight Tuesday from London to New York was powered only by sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, a broad category of jet fuel that creates fewer carbon emissions than standard kerosene blends. The fuel on this flight was made from waste fats and plant sugars and emits 70% less carbon than petroleum-based jet fuel, according to a press release. //

Sustainable aviation fuels are a broad category that includes biofuels made from raw materials such as corn, animal fat, algae, municipal trash and sewage. By definition, they must emit at least 50% less carbon than petroleum-based jet fuel, according to federal guidelines.

But all of these fuels still produce some emissions. SAF, on its own, will not get the airline industry to zero carbon emissions.

To do that, the industry will have to develop new technologies that will allow planes to run on electric batteries, liquid hydrogen or some other as-yet-unproven fuel source. ///

Novel, but not very sustainable -- imagine how much "stuff" (sugar and fat) that takes to manufacture, compared to the equivalent volume of petroleum/crude oil...

Just because you can doesn't mean you should! I don't think it will scale well. Another case of diverting food for fuel. Humans can't eat petroleum, even though engines can be made to consume both.

Any time Gavin Newsom says, “Here are the facts,” brace yourself — you will not be getting the facts.

The reasons for the recent spike in California gas prices was expertly laid out by Valero executive Scott Folwarkow in reply to a September 30 letter California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild sent to California refinery executives regarding the issue. Hochschild’s letter was filed at the Commission at 1:26 p.m. that Friday afternoon, and he demanded a reply to his questions by Monday, October 3 — giving them just one business day to answer. //

We believe the Commission experts understand that California cannot mandate a unique fuel that is not readily unavailable outside of the West Coast and then burden or eliminate California refining capacity and expect to have robust fuel supplies. Adding further costs, in the form of new taxes or regulatory constraints, will only further strain the fuel market and adversely impact refiners and ultimately those costs will pass to California consumers. //

For Valero, California is the most expensive operating environment in the country and a very hostile regulatory environment for refining. California policy makers have knowingly adopted policies with the expressed intent of eliminating the refinery sector. California requires refiners to pay very high carbon cap and trade fees and burdened gasoline with cost of the low carbon fuel standards. With the backdrop of these policies, not surprisingly, California has seen refineries completely close or shut down major units. When you shut down refinery operations, you limit the resilience of the supply chain. //

the number of operating refineries in the state has decreased dramatically over the years. In 2000 there were 23 operating refineries, compared to just 13 in 2022. In 1983, when the state’s population was 25 million, there were 40 operating refineries. In 2020 there were 40 million people in California and just 14 operating refineries.

According to IAEA calculations, it is necessary to double the number of nuclear reactors in the world - currently at about 400 units - to achieve the objectives of the Paris climate agreement, Grossi said at the World Nuclear Exhibition in Paris. //

"We already have 10 countries which have entered the decision phase (to build nuclear power plants) and 17 others which are in the evaluation process," he said.

"There will be a dozen or 13 (new) nuclear countries within a few years," he added.

Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Nigeria, Namibia, the Philippines, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were cited by Grossi as potential new nuclear countries.

As the green energy dominoes continue to fall, one of the major climate cult propaganda machines falls with them. //

As we enter the year’s final phase, I am becoming more hopeful that 2023 may be remembered as an essential point in human civilization as the threat to critical and efficient energy supplies begins to recede.

Sweden’s government has ditched plans to go all-in on “green energy,” green-lighting the construction of new nuclear power plants. Fossil fuel giant Shell announced it was scaling back its energy transition plans to focus on . . . gas and oil! Specific wind farm projects began to topple due to strong economic headwinds because the cost of generating electricity was deemed too high.

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced his decision to open the North Sea to more oil and gas drilling. French President Emmanuel Macron is surrendering to reality and asked for a “regulatory pause.”. More recently, the US and the United Kingdom have committed to expanding nuclear energy, and offshore windfarm projects are going kaput.

Now comes intriguing confirmation that there may be an end to the mindless and unscientific promotion of green energy sooner rather than later. One of the climate crisis propaganda machines is closing its climate desk. //

Neo | November 24, 2023 at 7:57 pm
The dam on Climate Change hysteria seem to break after ExxonMobil broke ranks saying that to reach NetZero 2050 would require sacrifices that society would not accept. //

broomhandle | November 24, 2023 at 8:14 pm
How much advanced nuclear technology could have been developed with all the resources wasted on green energy follies? Maybe that was the point all along.

Gordian Knot News just turned two. The number of posts is over 100. Way too many. Our new subscribers need to understand that most of these posts are redundant detail. If they are truly interested in solving the Gordian Knot, they should focus on the A List.

The core argument is simple. Humanity needs cheap nuclear power. Cheap nuclear power is the only way the species can prosper. If and only if we have cheap nuclear power, can we lift billions of humans out of poverty. If and only if we have cheap nuclear power, can we stop polluting out planet's atmosphere and conserve its land.

It is a simple argument based on dispatchability, energy density, natural resources required, and the amount of CO2 and other pollutants generated. The numbers are so overwhelmingly obvious, they beg the question: why is nuclear not our totally dominant source of electricity? Why has nuclear power been such a tragic flop?

You do not need 100 posts to answer this question. I need twelve. Everything else is redundant detail.

Mostly because they don't know

When I give talks I am frequently asked a variation of the following question: how do we stop consumption and development to protect the planet?

My answer always draws blank faces. Stopping growth is not the solution to addressing climate change, I tell concerned environmentalists and anxious climate activists. We do need to decarbonise and move to cleaner technologies, but fighting development won’t save the planet, and nor has it been shown to reduce emissions. //

We have also repeatedly been told that we are the problem, and therefore the solution is for there to be fewer of us. But all of this is wrong.

It may seem unbelievable that continuing on our current trajectory will solve anything, but the evidence shows that environmental progress is being made in many areas and that growth is the only thing that is working in terms of lowering emissions and improving air quality.

If we want to save the planet, we need to understand what works.

We know how to reduce resource consumption without reducing growth

It’s true that for the past 200 years, economic activity has led to an increase in carbon emissions. More recently, however, since the 1980s and largely thanks to the use of nuclear energy, many countries have been able to reduce emissions while continuing to increase GDP. Investment in renewables has also driven this growth further. In 2016, 70 countries experienced a growth in GDP while also experiencing a run of at least five years in which emissions decreased.

Using historical data, researchers have calculated that nuclear energy has prevented an average of 1.84 million air pollution-related deaths and 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. They find that:

“On the basis of global projection data that take into account the effects of the Fukushima accident, we find that nuclear power could additionally prevent an average of 420,000–7.04 million deaths and 80–240 GtCO2-eq emissions due to fossil fuels by midcentury, depending on which fuel it replaces. By contrast, we assess that large-scale expansion of unconstrained natural gas use would not mitigate the climate problem and would cause far more deaths than expansion of nuclear power.” //

As countries become richer, they become more environmentally friendly. Air quality improves, water use becomes more efficient, and fewer natural resources are required. This is true across developed countries, where the population has increased but resource consumption has fallen, including timber, water, metal, minerals, and energy. //

Although cars still carry an environmental cost, not having them would also have had a significant impact on the planet. The Horse Association of America calculated that 54 million acres of US farmland was spared by the automobile in the 1930s, as the land was not needed for meadows for grazing horses. The US population has nearly tripled since then, yet hundreds of millions of acres of forests were saved from being cut down to make room to feed horses and to store waste horse manure.

Cars are not an isolated example – consider your Smartphone. Again, the innovation of phone designs has significantly reduced material use. In the recent past, a single person would have owned a GPS device, a calculator, a camera, a landline telephone, an alarm clock, and so on. Now, you only need one device instead of all of these items. Yes, phones still require resources, but the amount required is significantly less than when multiple items are no longer needed to do the same job. Resource use often becomes significantly reduced as the technology becomes more efficient. //

Building more clean energy is also key to cleaner air, tackling emissions, and reducing resource consumption. When it is built in Britain, the nuclear power plant Sizewell C will produce 3.2 GWh of electricity. Compare this with the 2.6 GWh produced by the Drax power station by burning 27 million trees every year. The alternative to building Sizewell C would be burning 33 million trees a year. That’s more than one tree per second.

Drax, which is classed as ‘renewable’ but shouldn’t be, is the UK’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. Burning wood creates 18% more CO2 than burning coal. Instead of relying on polluting fuels that may be classified as green, we need to build nuclear power plants, which allow us all to breathe a little easier.

As a result of Germany’s nuclear power phase-out, they are now burning coal again, and a study found that the air pollution resulting from the nuclear phase-out is now killing an extra 1,100 people a year. ​Japan also shut down their nuclear power plants (although they recently reversed this decision), and a study found that if both countries had reduced fossil fuel power output instead of nuclear energy, they could have prevented 28,000 air pollution-induced deaths and 2400 MtCO2 emissions between 2011 and 2017. //

Traditional environmentalism was founded based on the myth of overpopulation. In 1798, the English economist Thomas Malthus predicted that (so-called) ‘overpopulation’ would lead to famine as there would be too many mouths to feed.

He was wrong. There was no population ‘bomb’, no famine due to increased numbers of people. Instead, life improved for many millions of people, thanks to the innovation and development that they initiated. This largely relates to agriculture and the productivity of land, where labour and capital have increased more than proportionately to the increased number of humans. Thanks to agricultural improvements and technological advances, which required the input of many people and the use of many hands, we have experienced an outcome of more food rather than less. Thanks to the mechanisation of The Green Revolution, we have seen greatly increased crop yields and agricultural production, improved food supplies, and increased economic development in underdeveloped nations. Sadly, many environmentalists are still in denial about this and see such food security as a bad thing. //

There is an argument to be made that increased population has led to more environmental progress, through greater human capital. In November 2022, the world’s population hit 8 billion. Across history, exceptional people have led us to technological and cultural masterpieces. The past 200 years have shown exponential growth in technical development and innovation. In 1823 there were just over 1 billion people in the world. We now have 8 billion people from whom pioneering new science, art, medicine, and other technologies are emerging daily. A bigger pool of human capital is therefore not inherently a bad thing, but may yield immense benefits – so long as many of these people are also freed from the chains of poverty so that they can live fulfilling lives and contribute to global progress.

I cannot make this argument more clearly than the late statistician Hans Rosling, who gave a talk on the reduction of extreme poverty, where he also goes into the difference that owning a washing machine made for his (financially poor) family:

“My mother explained the magic with this machine the very very first day. She said, ‘now Hans, we have loaded the laundry, the machine will make the work. And now we can go to the library. Because this is the magic. You load the laundry, and what do you get out of the machine? You get books out of the machines. Children’s books.’ And mother got time to read for me. She loved this. I got the ABCs, this is why I started my career as Professor, when mother had time to read for me. And she also got books for herself, she managed to study English and learn that as a foreign language… We really loved this machine. And what we said, my mother and me, ‘thank you industrialisation. Thank you steel mill. Thank you power station, and thank you chemical processing industry that gave us time to read books’!”

Imagine a world with fewer people like Hans Rosling in it. It would be a much poorer world without such invaluable contributions to human knowledge and progress. We would all be impacted by this loss. //

Let’s give people a break. For too long we have been sold the myth that we should be concerned about so-called ‘overpopulation’, but this has been proven to be nonsensical fearmongering. Instead, population decline is occurring in almost every country in the world, and it is already having negative impacts on ageing populations and the future generations who have to support them. Not only do ageing populations impose costs on society as we struggle to pay for healthcare and pensions, but in some countries like Japan there simply aren’t enough younger people to physically support older generations, which poses serious problems for the country. //

But it’s telling that underpopulation has not led to a moral panic the way that false ideas of population growth have done so for many years. Arguably, underpopulation will have a far greater and more negative impact than the old worry of having more mouths to feed. For example, China, whose economy has long benefited from the sheer number of people in its workforce, is forecast to lose almost half of this population by 2100, plunging from more than 1.4 billion to 771 million inhabitants. Many of our goods come from China – including solar panels. The Chinese One Child Policy, which was so concerned with ‘overpopulation’, has proven to be short-sighted and damaging in ways that Chinese leaders did not foresee. Unfortunately, Germany, South Korea and Russia are not far behind on the underpopulation trajectory, and Europe's population as a whole will begin to decline as early as this decade.

Population growth was never really the problem. Lack of foresight, and forming policy based on myths over data, have been the real problems for the planet. //

Evidence shows that we are capable of solving the world’s problems. The fool’s trick is to make out that predicting an apocalyptic future is somehow smarter than pointing out optimistic scenarios; when in reality, being pessimistic is simply the easier and lazier option thanks to human negativity bias. Yet many factors, some of which I have covered here, show that in many areas we are on a positive trajectory.

We are capable of decoupling growth from emissions. We are capable of improving air quality, which makes us healthier and makes our children taller, less violent, and smarter. We are capable of tackling climate change as well as eradicating poverty. We are capable of hitting net zero targets – as I wrote in a recent article, we may even be on track to keep under 1.5°C of warming. No one is going to shout any of this from the rooftops; it is not headline-grabbing news. But humans are capable of solving immense problems, including problems we have created, and we have been doing so for many years now. To place all our bets on failure does humankind a disservice; but also, no one has ever fixed a problem by fixating only on the problem. Let’s fight to implement evidence-based solutions instead so that we can build the cleaner, healthier world that we are all so keen to live in.

cupera1 pinkunicorns
3 hours ago
For those that want to return to a world that runs totally on green, like it was centuries ago, be careful about what you wish for. Wood was used for heating and cooking; charcoal for smelting and blacksmithing; wind or waterpower for pumps, mills, and sail ships for transport; and whale oil for lamps. People and soldiers walked or rode horses and the manure that dropped on the streets dried and blew into people’s lungs and was a lot more harmful than asbestoses ever was. The smoke from open fires choked and blackened cities. This smoke from wood and dried manure would make the smog of LA look like a clear day after a rain. The forests were stripped of trees; most of the crops went to feed draft animals.

For 99.999% of the people, life was nasty, brutish and short. You would be old and worn out at 40 and dead by 50. People would be laboring 18 hours a day from before the snow starts to melt to well after snow starts to build up in the fields, then you hope you have wood to make it through the winter and enough food to last until the next harvest.

Both wind and solar power are voracious land hogs. Wind or solar can need 90 to 100 times more acreage than a natural gas plant to generate the same amount of electricity. And let’s not forget the large swaths of land that will have to be appropriated, and in heavily forested areas clear cut, to build transmission lines that connect solar and wind farms to distribution lines. //

You can't get around the energy density problem; you just can't. Physics is a harsh mistress. And the amount of land - habitat, if you want to put a point on it - required is considerable. //

Eco-activists fuss and scold over the cutting of trees to clear land for housing, commercial development, and raw materials, but apparently it’s just fine to remove trees if they’re replaced by solar panels. //

What we need more of isn't windmills, solar panels, or batteries. We need more nuclear power plants. We need more small modular reactors. We need a decentralized grid powered by splitting atoms. Do you want clean energy? This is clean energy. //

Throughout our history, every major technological advance in power – from animal to machine, from wood to coal to oil to gas – has had one key characteristic in common, and that is increased energy density. Nuclear power represents just such an increase over generating electricity with coal or gas. Solar and wind power run in just the opposite direction, which is why they don’t scale up, and were we to try, as we see here, the cost in land would be massive.

STATUS OF U.S. NUCLEAR OUTAGES

Every morning, each nuclear electricity generator in the United States reports its operating status to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). The NRC compiles this information in its Power Reactor Status Report, and we present that information in interactive visualizations on our Status of Nuclear Outages page. Our analysis tool combines the NRC daily status with data gathered from our Annual Electric Generator Report and Monthly Update to the Annual Electric Generator Report. The page includes two maps showing the capacity and outage status of U.S. nuclear plants.

STATUS OF U.S. NUCLEAR OUTAGES

To some observers, the plan’s collapse also raises questions about the feasibility of other planned advanced reactors, meant to provide clean energy with fewer drawbacks than existing reactors. NuScale’s was the most conventional of the designs, and the closest to construction. “There’s plenty of reasons to think [the other projects] are going to be even more difficult and expensive,” says Edwin Lyman, a physicist and director of nuclear power safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists. //

Jacopo Buongiorno, a nuclear engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says the NuScale design has an Achilles’ heel. Each reactor’s core resides within a double-walled steel cylinder, with a vacuum between the walls to keep heat from leaking out. The reactor modules sit in a big pool of water, which in an emergency can flood into the vacuum space around a reactor to prevent it overheating. Compared with a conventional reactor’s building, the pool requires more reinforced concrete, the price of which has soared, Buongiorno says. “In terms of tons of reinforced concrete per megawatt of power, NuScale’s design is off the chart.” //

Buongiorno says he wouldn’t read NuScale’s failure as a verdict on all advanced reactor designs. “I would steer clear of broad-stroke comments in terms of cost,” he says. Baker says he has no doubt that the country needs new nuclear plants to supplement the fluctuating supply of power from wind and solar. “To achieve the nation’s decarbonization goals, it’s got to happen.”

Uranium mining in the United States hasn’t been profitable since the Russians flooded the global market with predatorily priced ore and processed fuel a decade ago.

Long before, the nation’s uranium enrichment industry, episodically idled by market paralyses and perpetually frozen in costly regulatory entanglements, had fallen into obsolescence.

In 1980, the United States produced and processed 90 percent of the uranium used by 251 nuclear power plants that generated 11 percent of the country’s electricity.

In 2021, only 5 percent of the uranium used by the 55 nuclear power plants operating in the United States—which now generate 20 percent of the nation’s electricity—was produced domestically.

After years of Russian market manipulation stymied profitable domestic production, Congress has responded since 2020 with a series of bills that could, if approved, collectively spend up to $5 billion by 2035 in an attempt to bring a domestic commercial uranium market back to life. //

But unfortunately, there’s nowhere in the United States for Wyoming mines to send ore for enrichment. Nationwide, only one plant in New Mexico has the capacity to enrich uranium for use in commercial nuclear reactors.

“Even if we were mining it now, we’re shipping it somewhere else [overseas] to get it enriched and refined,” Deti said. “When it comes to conversion and enrichment, we have no capacity to do that [in the United States]."

Operations Displays

View new displays below: Solar DART, Regional Directional Transfer, Generation Outages

Never forget that Ebenezer Scrooge was inspired by Thomas Malthus //

In other words, the underlying reason for the electricity emergency is the lack of natural gas, nuclear, and coal, which can provide reliable electricity in all weather conditions, unlike solar panels and wind turbines.

It’s true that solar panels and wind turbines can still operate in cold weather. There is often still sunlight and wind when it is cold. Snow can be brushed off of solar panels, and it is possible to de-ice frozen wind turbines.

But the sun often doesn’t shine during the hours people most need electricity and wind is not reliable enough to provide electricity during the winter. Right now, PJM is generating very little electricity from wind and has had to resort to burning oil, which is dirtier and less efficient than coal, and far worse than natural gas or nuclear.

An exciting advancement over prior AR Summits was the major role that customers played in presentations and hallway conversations. Though nuclear utility operating companies like Duke Energy, TVA, Southern Company and Ontario Power Generation (OPG) made important and encouraging presentations, the strong demand signals provided by Nucor – the largest steelmaker in the US, Dow – one of the largest chemical companies in the world, and Microsoft – one of the world’s largest data center operators – made an even bigger impact on most attendees.

Presentations from Nucore, Microsoft and Dow validated many of the concepts that have long motivated advanced nuclear developers. They showed that credible customers were willing to pay for process heat, always-on carbon free power, and behind the meter installations.

Each of the three said they were willing to assist entities that would own and operate the facilities in obtaining affordable financing by inking long-term, economically viable power purchase agreements (PPAs). Projects with PPAs from established, well-capitalized companies are almost as bankable as a captive base of ratepayers. None of them want to own or operate nuclear power plants.

This post is a sampling of information gleaned during the event. There may be additional posts based on presentations and conversations at the Summit. Several important players in the advanced nuclear community did not attend the conference. //

NuScale has attracted several strategic investors/partners that will help build its plants and/or buy power from those facilities. A notable recent addition to the NuScale team is Nucor, the largest steel maker in the United States.

Nucor is so excited about the capabilities that SMRs offer to meet some of its most challenging requirement that it sent Leon Topalian, its Chairman, President and CEO, to the summit to meet members of NIC and to provide a keynote address. (Attendees also appreciated Nucor’s hospitality as the sponsor of a rooftop welcoming reception.)

Aside: Topalian proudly reminded the audience that Nucor’s initial name was Nuclear Corporation of America. It long ago pivoted to focus on steel making but is now returning to its roots. End Aside.

Nucor operates 50 electric arc furnaces in the US. Its total electricity demand is about 50 GWe that has little variation during the 8760 hours of each per. Assuming Nucor facilities have capacity factors that are close to 90%, its electricity demand is almost 50% of the power produced by the current US nuclear fleet.

A coalition of more than 1,600 scientists critical of their peers’ hyperbolic claims about climate change drew a prominent recruit to sign their 2019 declaration that the climate “emergency” is a myth.

John Clauser, who won last year’s Nobel Prize in physics, became the second Nobel laureate last month to sign the document with 1,607 other scientists rebuking the idea of a climate crisis.

“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific,” the declaration organized by the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL) reads. “Scientists should openly address uncertainties and exaggerations in their predictions of global warming, while politicians should dispassionately count the real costs as well as the imagined benefits of their policy measures.”

Last year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) debuted a roadmap to net-zero emissions that became the model for corporate bishops of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) standards. A June report from the Energy Policy Research Foundation criticized the initiatives outlined as a “green mirage.” The IEA roadmap, researchers wrote, “will dramatically increase energy costs, devastate Western economies, and increase human suffering.”

“The aim of global policy should be ‘prosperity for all’ by providing reliable and affordable energy at all times,” reads CLINTEL’s World Climate Declaration. “There is no climate emergency. Therefore, there is no cause for panic and alarm.”

Norwegian-American engineer Ivan Giaever, who won the Nobel Prize in physics in 1973, is also a signatory to the declaration. //

The World Climate Declaration also notes that carbon dioxide is plant food, “not a pollutant.”

“It is essential to all life on Earth,” the document reads.

In fact, reforestation is on the rise, promoted by a global “greening” effect proliferating plant growth.

Prescription for the Planet

by Tom Blees

"This is the most important book that has ever been written on sustainable development... You MUST read it! It is not A revolution, it is THE revolution, THE way to go."

• Bruno Comby Ph.D, Founder and President of Environmentalists for Nuclear Energy

Click here to download the entire book as a PDF courtesy of the author and SCGI.

The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) is a fourth-generation fast nuclear reactor design that offers more efficiency and safety, while generating 1,000 times less waste than current light-water reactors, the predominant designs used in the US. It uses existing nuclear waste for fuel. The energy needs of the US can be supplied for over 1,000 years just using the existing nuclear waste now in storage.

1. Proven to be reliable and safe over almost 50 years of operational experience

• Ran for 30 years in the USA without any mishaps
• Chernobyl and TMI scenarios were tested on the IFR: the IFR reactor shut itself down w/o human intervention or active safety systems.
• Russians have been running commercially for 30 years without problem (BN-600)
• Passively safe (guaranteed by the physics). Does not require electricity, operator intervention, or active safety systems to shut down if it overheats.

2. The waste has 1,000 times less long-term radioactivity per unit of power than LWR (waste meaning what is no longer usable in the reactor).

3. Uses existing nuclear waste (DU, decommissioned bombs) for fuel. A variety of fuels can be used (any actinide), not just uranium. //

4. Using fast reactors, there is more energy in the trace uranium in the coal than we get from burning the coal. Extracting uranium from coal ash is on the verge of being economically competitive.

In just two decades Sweden went from burning oil for generating electricity to fissioning uranium. And if the world as a whole were to follow that example, all fossil fuel–fired power plants could be replaced with nuclear facilities in a little over 30 years. That's the conclusion of a new nuclear grand plan published May 13 in PLoS One. Such a switch would drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, nearly achieving much-ballyhooed global goals to combat climate change. Even swelling electricity demands, concentrated in developing nations, could be met. All that's missing is the wealth, will and wherewithal to build hundreds of fission-based reactors, largely due to concerns about safety and cost. //

Based on numbers pulled by the research team from the experience of Sweden and France and scaled up to the globe, a best-case scenario for conversion to 100 percent nuclear power could enable the world to stop burning fossil fuels and start fissioning uranium for electricity within 34 years. Requirements for this shift of course would include expanded uranium mining and processing, a build-out of the electric grid as well as a commitment to develop and build fast reactors—nuclear technology that operates with faster neutrons and therefore can handle radioactive waste, such as plutonium, for fuel as well as create its own future fuel. "No other carbon-neutral electricity source has been expanded anywhere near as fast as nuclear," Qvist says.