NNadir
NNadir's JournalThe Largest Single Cause of Death Among African American Youth Is Firearms.
Cross posted from the Science forum on request.
This came in on my JAMA newsfeed this morning:
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality Among US Youth
Question What causes of death are associated with the widening disparities in mortality among US youth of different races and ethnicities in recent years?
Findings In this cross-sectional study of mortality in youth aged 1 to 19 years in the US, injuries, especially firearm injuries, were associated with worsening disparities between Black and American Indian or Alaska Native and White youth. Between 2016 and 2020, the homicide rate in Black youth was 12.81 per 100 000 youth (rate ratio with White youth, 10.20), and the suicide rate for American Indian or Alaska Native youth was 11.37 per 100 000 youth (rate ratio with White youth, 2.60).
Meaning In this study, racial and ethnic disparities were observed for almost all leading causes of injury and disease and were associated with recent increases in US mortality rates.
An Excerpt from the text:
Between 2019 and 2021, all-cause pediatric mortality rates in the US increased by 18.3%, the largest such increase in at least half a century.1 The increase was based on homicides, suicides, motor vehicle crashes (MVCs), and drug overdoses, while COVID-19 played a minor role.1 Previously, all-cause mortality had been decreasing among youth of all races and ethnicities due to advances in health care, expanded insurance coverage, and progress in injury prevention,2-4 but that trend reached a nadir in 2014.
Disparities in death rates among American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, and White youth have been increasing in the last several years. Between 2014 and 2020, all-cause mortality rates increased 36.7% in Black youth and 22.3% in American Indian or Alaska Native youth while increasing 4.7% in White youth.5 However, a knowledge gap exists regarding causes of death and the widening inequalities among racial and ethnic groups.
Although previous studies have examined disparities in pediatric all-cause mortality within a region6 or by cause of death,7-9 few have disaggregated national data by race and ethnicity across leading causes of death.10,11 Disaggregating analyses of recent data is important to clarify which causes of death are associated with the widening disparities and current increases in all-cause mortality, identify the populations at greatest risk, and evaluate public health progress aimed at reducing disparities in specific causes of death...
A table from the text:
Overall, the death rate for African American youth is nearly twice as high as it is for white American youth.
There is something drastically wrong with our country.
The Largest Single Cause of Death Among African American Youth Is Firearms.
This came in on my JAMA newsfeed this morning:
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in All-Cause and Cause-Specific Mortality Among US Youth
Question What causes of death are associated with the widening disparities in mortality among US youth of different races and ethnicities in recent years?
Findings In this cross-sectional study of mortality in youth aged 1 to 19 years in the US, injuries, especially firearm injuries, were associated with worsening disparities between Black and American Indian or Alaska Native and White youth. Between 2016 and 2020, the homicide rate in Black youth was 12.81 per 100 000 youth (rate ratio with White youth, 10.20), and the suicide rate for American Indian or Alaska Native youth was 11.37 per 100 000 youth (rate ratio with White youth, 2.60).
Meaning In this study, racial and ethnic disparities were observed for almost all leading causes of injury and disease and were associated with recent increases in US mortality rates.
An Excerpt from the text:
Between 2019 and 2021, all-cause pediatric mortality rates in the US increased by 18.3%, the largest such increase in at least half a century.1 The increase was based on homicides, suicides, motor vehicle crashes (MVCs), and drug overdoses, while COVID-19 played a minor role.1 Previously, all-cause mortality had been decreasing among youth of all races and ethnicities due to advances in health care, expanded insurance coverage, and progress in injury prevention,2-4 but that trend reached a nadir in 2014.
Disparities in death rates among American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, and White youth have been increasing in the last several years. Between 2014 and 2020, all-cause mortality rates increased 36.7% in Black youth and 22.3% in American Indian or Alaska Native youth while increasing 4.7% in White youth.5 However, a knowledge gap exists regarding causes of death and the widening inequalities among racial and ethnic groups.
Although previous studies have examined disparities in pediatric all-cause mortality within a region6 or by cause of death,7-9 few have disaggregated national data by race and ethnicity across leading causes of death.10,11 Disaggregating analyses of recent data is important to clarify which causes of death are associated with the widening disparities and current increases in all-cause mortality, identify the populations at greatest risk, and evaluate public health progress aimed at reducing disparities in specific causes of death...
A table from the text:
Overall, the death rate for African American youth is nearly twice as high as it is for white American youth.
There is something drastically wrong with our country.
There may, finally, be some use for all those accumulating used wind turbine blades.
The paper to which I'll refer in this post is this one: Upcycling of Carbon Fiber Reinforced Polymer for Thermal Management Application Fujie Wang, Peiling Kang, and Shuangqiao Yang Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research 2024 63 (16), 7196-7205
As I have frequently pointed out, the wind industry, besides its reliability problem, has a liability problem, the accumulation of huge amounts of composite polymers associated with the massive vanes.
I calculated, some time back, based on the Master Register of Wind Turbines that was maintained by the Danish Energy Agency up until 2022, that the average life of a wind turbine is substantially less than 20 years:
A Commentary on Failure, Delusion and Faith: Danish Data on Big Wind Turbines and Their Lifetimes.
It appears that the Danes have stopped updating the Master Register, possibly because it was bad for the wind business in that country, Denmark, where another big source of revenue is offshore oil and gas drilling.
Anyway, massive used wind turbine blades, composite materials (which shed plastics in use) are piling up all over the world, and for a long time, it's been very difficult to figure out what to do with them.
From the paper cited at the outset:
...Thermal conductive materials play a pivotal role as functional components extensively deployed in heat exchange, electronic heat dissipation, and other critical domains. (12) The development of high thermal conductive composite materials bears paramount importance. (13,14) Polymers, characterized by their lightweight nature, cost-effectiveness, and facile processability, serve as excellent substrates for heat-conductive composites. (15) However, the inherent amorphous structure and facile phonon scattering in polymers typically result in low thermal conductivity levels (0.1–0.3 W/mK). (16−18) Notably, the incorporation of thermally conductive filler into polymer has garnered substantial attention due to the facile processability of the resultant composite and the good thermal conductivity exhibited by the polymer–filler combination...
Effective means of heat transfer is a key to a sustainable world in my view, a key element of process intensification by which we may use nuclear heat to raise energy efficiency to unprecedented levels not presently seen in thermal devices, thus lowering the cost of energy and allowing for the benefits of access to energy to be extended to the billions of people who lack it.
The process offered by the authors involves mechanical milling of various types, followed by chemical incorporation of boron nitride into the resulting matrix.
There is a fad floating around claiming that the solution to the intractable energy problem that is literally choking and burning the planet as a whole is to "electrify everything." In my view, this is a terrible idea, since electricity by its very nature is thermodynamically degraded. Thermal energy, by contrast, is as close to primary energy as one gets, and the use of heat exchange networks can recovery exergy from thermal energy now treated as waste, and in fact, can reduce the problems associated with thermal management.
The wind fad, which is not sustainable, is going to leave huge piles of waste, and it is nice to think that there is a path to putting these materials to use in a far cleaner nuclear powered world, should the world come to its senses, not a good bet, but a feasible bet.
I guess I'm a dumb guy or disconnected, but I don't get the point of this "may the 4th be with you," joke.
Of course, I was never a fan of Star Wars stuff; I watched two of the movies I think, somewhat under protest, a couple of decades ago.
Interesting: A Scientist for President? (Mexico).
In the current issue of Science:
A SCIENTIST FOR PRESIDENT
Subtitle:
Sheinbaum Pardo, a 61-year-old environmental engineer who has served as Mexico City’s mayor and its environment secretary, has a hefty polling lead over her two opponents ahead of the 2 June elections (see sidebar, below). If she wins, she’ll become the first woman and the first researcher to lead the Latin American country of 128 million people. “I’m very excited,” she recently told Science during a wide-ranging interview.
Many in Mexico’s scientific community, however, are uncertain whether Sheinbaum Pardo, who is backed by a coalition of populist, left-of-center parties, will deliver what it wants. She is a protégée of the current populist president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who has pursued policies deeply unpopular with many scientists here, including cuts to research spending, a controversial restructuring of Mexico’s main science agency, and environmentally destructive development projects. And despite Sheinbaum Pardo’s efforts to reassure researchers that she will consult with them in forging science policy, many of them fear that she will continue her mentor’s legacy in a bid to retain the support of his legions of followers...
Some of her scientific background:
For her 1988 undergraduate thesis, Sheinbaum Pardo spent a year studying wood-burning stoves in the P’urhépecha community of Cheranatzícurin in the state of Michoacán, developing a thermodynamic model of the stoves in an effort to improve their efficiency. “I always had the intention to help people,” she says. She also started to polish her political skills, joining a student group that successfully protested a plan by UNAM, which has traditionally been nearly free, to start charging tuition...
Regrettably I am unaware of the political situation in Mexico, but perhaps I should make an effort to learn more, since my son seems to be falling in love with a woman who is employed by the Mexican government in a diplomatic position.
The United States, I like to claim, was invented by it's first great scientist - an autodidact - Benjamin Franklin, but our political attitudes about science have been a mixed bag. There was an interesting lecture today on CSPAN about how being an "early adopter of new technology," in this case the telegraph, contributed greatly to Lincoln becoming the greatest American President; he was a man greatly interested in science, again, an autodidact.
On the other hand, we've Baron von Shitzhispants, George W. Bush, and the like, men whose contempt for science knew no bounds.
I don't know anything at all Dr. Pardo, but there seems to be some controversy as to whether having a scientist as President will, in fact, be good for Science.
The only other national leader of whom I'm aware with a scientific background was the former Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, who was a physical chemist. I'm personally not impressed with what she did with her scientific background as Chancellor, since she helped engineer, for political reasons, the German decision to phase out nuclear energy and replace it with coal, a decision in contempt of all humanity and dangerous to the health not only of Germans, but all Europeans and in fact, the health of the planet as a whole.
I do not know enough about Dr. Pardo however to offer any opinion of what she might do as President of Mexico. It seems she has an excellent chance of becoming Mexico's first woman President and its first President to be a scientist.
Another Victory for Fear And Ignorance Over the World's Poorest.
There is a world wide collection of antiscience activists that markets itself as being "green" and fostering "peace," thus calling itself, in a classic case of Orwellian Doublespeak, "Greenpeace."
I think of them personally as Soot Warriors. "Peace," to my mind, should include some reference to human decency.
The main sciences they hate in this ignorance society are nuclear science and molecular biology, a branch of which is genomics.
Their ignorance kills people - climate change and air pollution are deadly - and in the case of children, in the case of fostering anti- molecular biology, helps to blind children.
In support of the contention that their fear and ignorance, and obviously poor educations, I note that a collection of very prominent scientists - Nobel Laureates, 110 in all - have called on this organization of idiots to stop hurting poor people:
110 Nobel Laureates to Greenpeace: Change Your Stance on GMOs
This letter was organized by Richard Roberts, himself a Nobel Laureate; I've heard him speak on the topic of this ignorance society.
It is to no avail; as in many places, not the least of which is the United States, ignorance triumphs over reason regularly.
From the news sections of the current issue of Science:
What a Philippine court ruling means for transgenic Golden Rice
3 MAY 2024 By Dennis Normile
But in 2021, the government of the Philippines granted a permit allowing the commercial planting of Malusog Rice, a Golden Rice variety tailored for local conditions and tastes. Farmers began to grow limited amounts of the grain in 2022. Officials hoped to have the variety comprise 10% of the nation’s rice harvest within 8 years, enough to meet the needs of all vitamin A deficient households.
On 17 April, however, a Philippine Court of Appeals revoked the permit, bringing that plan to a halt. Ruling on a lawsuit brought by Greenpeace and other groups, the court concluded that in the absence of a scientific consensus on the safety of Golden Rice it should not be commercially cultivated. The nation’s constitution, the judges found, required the government to follow the so-called precautionary principle of waiting to approve new crops and activities until scientists reach a consensus that they are safe for humans and the environment...
Obviously training in science is not the purview of Philippine judges, anymore than it is the purview of the members of the religious cultish hacks now dominating the US Supreme Court.
“The court decision is a catastrophe for Golden Rice in the Philippines and elsewhere,” says Ingo Potrykus, a plant biotechnologist who co-led the development of the amber colored rice while at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
History will record the membership of "Greenpeace" for what they are, uneducated antiscience thugs.
Let's be clear, there are, and will be children blinded by this antiscience setback.
Gene insertion, for the record, has been a feature of nature for billions of years, but apparently, gene insertion for the benefit of humanity is controversial among cults like Greenpeace for whom no amount of information can change their chanting and dogma.
Have a nice weekend.
Antinukes throw numbers around all the time, but seldom have a reputable reference for them.
They simply make stuff up in my opinion. They're strong on wild eyed claims, but weak on supporting any of the bull they hand out.
(My favorite is one last week from an antinuke airhead who confidently announced that the temperature of nuclear fuels is 5000 "degrees." Since, like most antinukes, this person, now happily on my ignore list, apparently holds science in contempt, the temperature units were not supplied, Kelvin, centigrade or Fahrenheit.)
Now it's, "I have seen." Where? In the circle jerk of antinuke websites or in reputable literature?
The United States built more than 100 commercial nuclear reactors in about 25 years in the 20th century, before anything close to modern computational engineering systems existed while providing some of the lowest cost electricity in the industrialized world.
Many of those reactors proved to be gifts to future generations, my generation included, and still operate, albeit not without catcalls from people whose rhetoric is pointedly myopic.
Now what has already happened is declared impossible?
Now nuclear reactors cost 61 Billion? Really?
My numbers are supported by references. My reference above in the OP. for the money squandered on so called "renewable energy" for no result with respect to climate change, other than its acceleration. If one clicks on the link, one can see graphics that even a poorly educated antinuke could interpret are from the International Energy Agency. Now editorially they claim that this expenditure represents "clean energy" - which is not how I would categorize solar and wind energy - but the numbers are for the class which is popularly called "renewable energy" even though it isn't sustainable because of land and material requirements.
Here is a reference for the number of nuclear reactors built by China in the last 24 years, including the 13 years since the big, big, big big boogeyman at Fukushima:
World Nuclear, China
What's the claim, that China spent 54 X $61B more than three trillion dollars on this effort to fight climate change?
The Chinese GDP didn't reach three trillion dollars until 2007. Everybody in China ate mud to build nuclear reactors?
It's always amusing when bourgeois types writing on computers powered by electricity that is overwhelmingly generated in this country from dangerous fossil fuels say that energy is bad, and we should not be energy pigs, Such people in my view are completely cold hearted since, among other things, there are 2 billion people on this planet who lack improved sanitation systems of any kind.
The ethical myopia is appalling.
Included in the references I often cite, those I often produce here in response to antinuke drivel repeatedly, is the death toll associated with fossil fuel enabling antinukism, is one delineating the death toll associated with air pollution, about which antinukes couldn't care less, anymore than they care about climate change.
It is here: Global burden of 87 risk factors in 204 countries and territories, 1990–2019: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 (Lancet Volume 396, Issue 10258, 17–23 October 2020, Pages 1223-1249). This study is a huge undertaking and the list of authors from around the world is rather long. These studies are always open sourced; and I invite people who want to carry on about Fukushima to open it and search the word "radiation." It appears once. Radon, a side product brought to the surface by fracking while we all wait for the grand so called "renewable energy" nirvana that did not come, is not here and won't come, appears however: Household radon, from the decay of natural uranium, which has been cycling through the environment ever since oxygen appeared in the Earth's atmosphere.
Here is what it says about air pollution deaths in the 2019 Global Burden of Disease Survey, if one is too busy to open it oneself because one is too busy carrying on about Fukushima:
There may be rubes out there who want to be believed when they throw around made up numbers - my favorite is when they throw around arbitrary numbers about how long so called "nuclear waste" will be "deadly" - they vary by orders magnitude, sometimes thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, millions of years, billions of years. I'm sorry to report that I'm not a rube though. If you press these people to show that so called "nuclear waste" is "deadly" by asking them to produce a legitimate reference to the number of people actually killed by the storage of used nuclear fuel over the last 70 years that is greater than the number of people killed in the next 12 hours from air pollution - that would be between 8000 and 9000 people - they either fail to respond, work to change the subject, or make stuff up.
As for how long used nuclear fuel remains more radioactive than the uranium ores from which it is obtained, it is covered by the Bateman Equation, which in differential form is written:
It can be shown, using this equation and modern computers, that in the case of the recovery of all of the actinide components of used nuclear fuel, chiefly uranium, neptunium, plutonium, americium, and ultimately curium, that all radioactive materials reach secular equilibrium asymptotically, at which they are being destroyed (by nuclear decay) as fast as they are formed. Under these conditions, nuclear power will make the planet as a whole less radioactive than it is now.
It is not true for the fossil fuel industry which has been supported and maintained by credulous antinukes that waste reaches secular equilibrium. It can accumulate indefinitely.
The following text comes from a post I wrote to respond to a claim by another antinuke who wanders this space - one the dishonest "I'm not an antinuke" antinukes as it happens - of the type who makes stuff up and provide hyperbole. Note that it includes references:
The caption:
(Hartwig Freiesleben, The European Physical Journal Conferences · June 2013)
Source 17, in German, is this one: Reduzierung der Radiotoxizität abgebrannter Kernbrennstoffe durch Abtrennung und Transmutation von Actiniden: Partitioning. Reducing spent nuclear fuel radiotoxicity by actinide separation and transmutation: partitioning.
828 Underground Nuclear Tests, Plutonium Migration in Nevada, Dunning, Kruger, Strawmen, and Tunnels
It is important to note that simply because a material is radioactive does not imply that it is not useful, perhaps even capable of accomplishing tasks that nothing else can do as well or as sustainably. Given the level of chemical pollution of the air, water and land, in fact, the use of radiation, in particular high energy radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, and ultra UV radiation may prove to be more important than ever, but that's a topic for another time.
I don't buy innuendo. I report from the scientific literature and from respected sources and I produce numbers. People lie, to themselves and each other, but legitimate numbers don't lie.
Here are some numbers brought to us, in my view, but the rote acceptance of the nonsense handed out by the antinuke cults.
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 423.96 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 401.62 ppm
Last updated: April 30, 2024
Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa (Accessed 5/1/2024)
A cult is a collection of people who hold a series of unsupportable beliefs that cannot be changed by any amount of information. In response to information, their normal response is to chant and repeat dogma. When all else fails they either make stuff up or engage in innuendo.
The antinuke cults are not only killing people; they're killing the planet.
Have a nice day tomorrow.
Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 Nuclear Reactors Are Now Providing Commercial Power to Georgia.
All 4 Vogtle Reactors are as of this writing (4/30/24, 6:22 EST US) operating at 100% capacity utilization, providing reliable energy without interruption with the lowest carbon cost of any form of energy. Two of them came on line commercially in the last twelve months, Vogtle 3 and 4.
The Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors (as is standard) are licensed for 40 years, but the expected lifetime is between 60 and 80 years. Both Vogtle 3 and Vogtle 4 are AP1000 reactors, with a thermal capacity of 3415 MW(th) and electrical capacity of 1110 MWe. Thus the thermodynamic efficiency will be typical of all Rankine type power plants, coal, single cycle gas, oil and nuclear, around 33%.
Over a sixty year lifetime, one can estimate that each of the two reactors will produce about 6 exajoules of primary energy, if as expected and common for US nuclear reactors, the capacity utilization exceeds 90% or more. For perspective, as one can see from the following table, each reactor will produce almost as much energy than all of the solar installations on Earth produced in 2022, solar cells installed over a period of more than 50 years of wild cheering about how "we don't need nuclear energy."
2023 World Energy Outlook published by the International Energy Agency (IEA), Table A.1a on Page 264.
I personally feel justified in qualifying that statement about what we "need" to read "We don't need nuclear energy if we don't give a flying fuck about climate change, which clearly we don't."
A New Record Concentration for CO2, 427.98 ppm Has Been Set for the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory's Weekly Average.
Antinukes won, humanity, and all the ecosystems on the planet, lost.
The Vogtle 3 and 4 reactors each cost roughly 10 billion dollars (which is over the original budget) and longer to construct than originally advertised. Bourgeois antinukes here and elsewhere love this, because they don't give a flying fuck for future generations. They are only willing to pay for things that benefit themselves, and do not care that the benefits of the Vogtle reactors will accrue to future generations, as it is very possible that Vogtle 3 and 4 will be operating at or near the dawn of the 22nd century, about 60 years after every solar cell and every wind turbine will be garbage awaiting the miracle of "recycling" for roughly half a century.
I often use the metaphor to describe antinukes as "arsonists complaining about forest fires."
The average electrical bill for people served by the two new Vogtle reactors will be about $6 a month higher than before, although there is good reason to suspect that this extra six dollars will be recouped in health costs. It is estimated, by economists at UC Santa Barbara and Carnegie Mellon Universities that the closure of Germany's last three nuclear reactors is costing the German people about $12 billion dollars per year:
Estimating the cost of Germany’s nuclear phaseout
We estimate that the annual cost of the phase-out to German producers and consumers is $12 billion, 70% of which is from increased mortality risk from stronger air pollution from burning of fossil fuels. This is substantially greater than even the most generous estimates of the costs of nuclear accident risk and waste disposal. The phase-out resulted in more than 1,100 additional deaths per year from increased concentrations of SO2, NOx, and particulate matter, with the increase in production from hard coal plants making up roughly 80% of the increase in mortality impacts.
The full paper is available on line:
THE PRIVATE AND EXTERNAL COSTS OF GERMANY'S NUCLEAR PHASE-OUT
The German so called "Greens" are pushing for fossil fuels and climate change and are willing to lie and kill to do so. It is a disgrace. As the abstract quoted above shows, the authors estimate that about 1100 people die each year in Germany as a result of the decision to displace nuclear energy with coal. In addition, Germany subsidized higher energy costs resulting from the phase out to the tune of $200 billion Euros, an indirect subsidy to the fossil fuel industry. (German purchases of fossil fuels financed Putin's war on Ukraine, a far worse subsidy.)
I will ultimately get around to writing a post with some calculations about the expenditures on what the IEA calls "clean energy." (They have a different definition of "clean" than I do, they include so called "renewable energy".)
For the time being, however, I'll just give a graphic and a link that will appear in that post should I get around to writing it, or living long enough to do so:
IEA overview, Energy Investments.
The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy."
The amount of money spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 is 4.12 trillion dollars, compared to 377 billion dollars spent on nuclear energy. In "percent talk," often used by antinukes to obscure the uselessness (with respect to climate change), we spent about 9% as much money on nuclear as has been spent on so called "renewable energy" even though, again in "percent talk," nuclear energy produced 193% as much energy as solar and wind combined, the former in an atmosphere of vituperation whipped up by fear and ignorance, the latter in an atmosphere of chanted dogmatic worship.
In 2023 alone, 659 Billion dollars were spent on so called renewable energy. This means that if AP1000 reactors really continue to cost 10 billion each - most of the cost was driven by the fact that insane rhetoric in this country vandalized and destroyed US nuclear manufacturing infrastructure meaning that all activities accrued FOAKE (first of a kind engineering) costs - we could have built 65 new Vogtle type reactors, which would have had a lifetime energy production of 420 Exajoules.
This would rival China, which has built and commissioned 53 new nuclear reactors in this century, and has 26 currently under construction. Note that the cost of constructing 25 of these reactors should be at least partially included included in the 377 billion dollar figure spent on nuclear since 2015, since 25 reactors came on line in China since the end of 2015.
Poland is soon to break ground on the first of what is to be six Vogtle 1000 reactors. They probably won't cost 10 billion a pop, but if they did, they'd still be a bargain for Poland and for humanity.
Anyway, the Vogtle reactors are up and running; they will be saving human lives for many years, and contribute to whatever little effective effort is directed against climate change. (Whatever we think we're doing isn't working.)
For me at least, given my focus on climate change, this is a good thing.
The secret Habeck files: How the German government deceived the country about the nuclear phase-out
The secret Habeck files: How the German government deceived the country about the nuclear phase-outThe article is a translation from the original German, which is here: Die geheimen Habeck-Akten: Wie die Bundesregierung das Land über den Atom-Ausstieg täuschte
Excerpts From the English Version:
This action should be covered up. And right in the middle are the ministers Robert Habeck and Steffi Lemke. Everything for the big goal: the final end of nuclear power. The green founding myth should finally come true...
...Staging a gigantic deception
These are the days after Putin's attack on Ukraine, at the end of February 2022. Germany is in shock, concerns are quickly spreading about what the war and dependence on Russian gas could mean for electricity and heat supplies. The three remaining nuclear power plants, which were supposed to be shut down forever on December 31 of the same year, are becoming the focus of the debate.
Essentially, it was about two questions: Is it safe and does it make economic and energy policy sense to operate the power plants for longer?...
The focus was on the question of whether Germany has enough gas to heat in winter and to produce enough electricity in hours and days with little sun and wind. Habeck's experts come to the conclusion: “An extension of the operational life of the nuclear power plants until March 31st. can help defuse this situation...”
...What's more, they rate it as "extremely risky" to rely solely on coal-fired power plants, which Habeck brought back online: Literally it says: "In addition, it is extremely risky to rely solely on additional electricity generation from natural gas next winter “To support reserves and coal-fired power plants that have already been shut down.”
Habeck's experts also clearly answered the question about the price of electricity: “Since nuclear energy is at the lower end of the merit order with very low variable costs, its use pushes more expensive marginal power plants out of the merit order. Since the residual load is particularly high in January and February, it is to be expected that nuclear energy will often displace gas-fired power plants. This could cause electricity prices to fall in many hours...”
Authors at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Carnegie Mellon estimate that the cost of the German Nuclear Phase Out is about 12 Billion Dollars per year, 70% of which results from medical costs and 1100 deaths per year:
Estimating the cost of Germany’s nuclear phaseout
We estimate that the annual cost of the phase-out to German producers and consumers is $12 billion, 70% of which is from increased mortality risk from stronger air pollution from burning of fossil fuels. This is substantially greater than even the most generous estimates of the costs of nuclear accident risk and waste disposal. The phase-out resulted in more than 1,100 additional deaths per year from increased concentrations of SO2, NOx, and particulate matter, with the increase in production from hard coal plants making up roughly 80% of the increase in mortality impacts.
The full paper is available on line:
THE PRIVATE AND EXTERNAL COSTS OF GERMANY'S NUCLEAR PHASE-OUT
The German so called "Greens" are pushing for fossil fuels and climate change and are willing to lie and kill to do so. It is a disgrace.
Geological Work Begins on Poland's First Nuclear Plant.
Geological work begins on Poland’s first nuclear plantExcerpts:
Bechtel will conduct in-depth geological surveys at the Lubiatowo-Kopalino site in the Pomeranian municipality of Choczewo, in northern Poland. This is a key milestone for the country’s entry into nuclear power production, as the surveys will inform the suitability of the planned site...
...Background: Westinghouse Electric Company announced last September its partnership with Bechtel to design and construct Poland’s first nuclear plant, in coordination with Polish utility Polskie Elektrownie Jądrowe. The goal is to deploy six Westinghouse AP1000 units at the site, producing enough energy to power 13 million households...
...Quotable: “We are celebrating a major milestone in the U.S.-Polish special friendship—the inauguration of field activities on the nuclear power plant construction site in Lubiatowo-Kopalino and the opening of Bechtel office in Warsaw,” said Mark Brzezinski, U.S. ambassador to Poland. “It’s another important step forward as Poland and the United States work together to create a civil nuclear industry in Poland, and it shows that the United States is delivering on our shared commitment to Poland’s energy security and supporting Poland’s energy transition. The selection of Westinghouse and Bechtel—two gold standard American companies—to advance Poland’s civil nuclear power program brings energy security to the core of Polish-American cooperation.”
Poland consistently has the worst carbon intensity for electricity in Europe, 794 g CO2/kWh over the last year, even worse than Germany's 400 g CO2/kWh, and very far from France's 53 g CO2/kWh.
Source: Electricity Map, Poland (accessed 4/28/24)
This said, Poland apparently is going to do something about this, planning to become more like France, which historically displaced coal with nuclear and less like Germany which replaced nuclear with coal.
This of course, is good for the health of the Polish people, and good for the world at large. Unlike the Germans, Poland is concerned with climate change.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
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