Short Quiz – Is “A Bright Future” A Cruel Hoax To Falsely Disqualify Nuclear Energy For Cost Reasons?

[johnkarls]

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1. During our many meetings on thorium fission over the last 10.5 years, have we always asked for a show of hands by anyone who favors invading China militarily to force it to stop bringing on line a new monster-size coal-fired electric-generation plant every week or so?

2. Are the world’s greatest (by far) carbon polluters China and India, and are they NOT required to do anything to limit their carbon emissions by the Paris Climate Accord of 2016 until the distant future? Did this exemption mirror a similar provision in the Accord’s predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol of 1997?

3. During our many meetings on thorium fission over the last decade, has anyone raised her/his hand in favor of invading China militarily to force it to stop bringing on line a new monster-size coal-fired electric-generation plant every week or so?

4. Is the climate-change conundrum that (1) wind and solar are much more expensive than fossil fuels (oil, natural gas, coal) and require massive subsidies, (2) hydroelectric power is severely limited by the world’s relative (to need) paucity of dammable rivers, and (3) nuclear power has, since WW-II, been the target of scare campaigns?

5. Is conventional uranium fission cheaper than fossil fuels?

6. Is thorium fission cheaper than fossil fuels?

7. Did the Huffington Post on 1/9/2012 publish an article by world-renowned particle-physicist Prof. Victor Stenger which catalogued the reasons why thorium fission would be cheaper than fossil fuels in general, and coal (the cheapest) in particular?

8. Was one of Prof. Victor Stenger’s many reasons why thorium fission would be cheaper than fossil fuels that LFTR’s (small-module Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactors) can be mass-produced in factories and assembled near electrical demand so that the huge energy losses during electricity transmission are virtually eliminated?

9. Did “A Bright Future” even inkle that wind and solar are much more expensive than fossil fuels and that thorium fission is much cheaper?

10. Indeed, during the brief discussion of thorium fission in “A Bright Future” (pp. 163-165), does it virtually ignore cost except for the cryptic comment that one thorium-fission developer “plans to produce CO2-free electricity for 3-5 cents/kWh”?

11. Whether this quotation comprises the words of the thorium-fission developer or the words of our authors, is it inexcusably opaque because it fails to specify whether the “3-5 cents/kWh” is an electric-generation-site cost rather than use-site cost?

12. In failing to specify whether the “3-5 cents/kWh” is an electric-generation-site cost rather than use-site cost, does the “3-5 cents/kWh” also fail to “carpe the diem” by explaining that, per Prof. Victor Stenger in Question 8 above, the “3-5 cents/kWh" can be BOTH THE ELECTRIC-GENERATION-SITE COST AND THE USE-SITE COST because “LFTR’s (small-module Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactors) can be mass-produced in factories and assembled near electrical demand so that the huge energy losses during electricity transmission are virtually eliminated”?

13. BTW, regardless of whether the quotation “plans to produce CO2-free electricity for 3-5 cents/kWh” comprises the words of the thorium-fission developer or the words of our authors, were our authors careless in including the term “CO2-free” since much, if not most, carbon EMISSIONS are carbon-MONOXIDE, versus carbon-dioxide – leaving the reader of “A Bright Future” to wonder whether thorium-fission will generate massive CO, though not CO2?

14. But back on the second part of Q-9 whether “A Bright Future” even inkled that thorium fission is much cheaper than fossil fuels, does “A Bright Future” have an entire chapter (pp. 191-206) on “Pricing Carbon Pollution” which strongly suggests that massive subsidies in the form of a “carbon tax” are necessary to subsidize nuclear energy – just like wind and solar require massive subsidies?

15. And indeed, did the Harvard Gazette article about the preview at Harvard of Oliver Stone’s “Nuclear Now” followed by a panel discussion that included MIT Assistant Provost Richard Lester and the Director of Harvard’s Center for the Environment, Daniel Schrag, focus on the ALLEGED BUT FALSE “fact” that nuclear energy is more expensive than fossil fuels?

16. According to the Harvard Gazette article, did Oliver Stone and his “Nuclear Now” co-author, Joshua Goldstein (who also co-authored “A Bright Future”) – both of whom served on the Harvard panel with Professors Lester and Schrag – have any answer to the ALLEGED BUT FALSE “fact” that nuclear energy is more expensive than fossil fuels?

17. Weren’t engineers such as MIT PhD Joshua Goldstein and MIT Prof. Richard Lester taught in Engineering 101 that cost is the bed-rock basis on which EVERY engineering project is evaluated???

18. So what excuse do either of them have for wallowing so badly in their apparent ignorance of the cost of nuclear energy???

19. Could it be that “A Bright Future” is “A Cruel Hoax To Falsely Disqualify Nuclear Energy For Cost Reasons”???