Advanced Nuclear Power

17 August 2016

James Hansen

There is a dearth of objective discussion of the role of advanced nuclear power in the future of clean power and the phase-out of fossil fuels.  I will write on this topic as expeditiously as possible, but first we must finish a paper “Young People’s Burden” that is highly relevant to legal cases aimed at getting responsible government action to avert dangerous climate change.

In the meantime, free access to “China-U.S. cooperation to advance nuclear power”, published in the 5 August issue of Science, is available from my web site (www.columbia.edu/~jeh1): you need to click on “Scholarly Publications” on the top line of the web site.

I thank Gary L. Russell for financial support of the workshop, the Chinese Academy of Sciences for funding all local costs, and the Chinese hosts led by Prof. Junji Cao for their wonderful hospitality.  Acknowledgements in the paper are below as is a photo of workshop participants.

Note that the Supplementary Materials to the Science article include alternative versions of the two figures as well as discussion of those figures.

Acknowledgements: Our essay draws upon discussions at the Workshop on Advanced Nuclear Energy to Address Climate Change and Air Pollution, Dec. 17-20, 2015, Wanning, Hainan, China. The Chinese Academy of Sciences funded local workshop costs.  Travel costs of a majority of non-Chinese participants were paid by the U.S. non-profit Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, Inc. with funding from Gary L. Russell.  Per Peterson’s research group receives funding from the U.S. Dept. Energy and the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (via a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement between SINAP and Oak Ridge National Laboratory) to work on advanced molten salt reactor technologies. More

 

Participants: Workshop on Advance Nuclear Energy to Address Climate Change and Air Pollution, held December 17-20, 2015 in Wanning, Hainan, China

Syria's Chemical Weapons Scourge

  The terrible odor of chlorine gas drifts on the wind in the Syrian city of Aleppo. On April 7, four civilians were poisoned by this unpredictable and indiscriminate weapon, reportedly used by Islamist rebels against Kurdish fighters in the neighborhood of Sheikh Maqsoud.   Ever since Bashar al-Assad’s alleged use of chemi- cal weapons in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus killed upwards of 1,700 people in 2013, the terrible, chaotic nature of weaponized gas has be- come representative of the chaos of the conflict itself. When the winds When the winds switch direction, chemical switch direction, chemical weapons kill combatants and civilians alike, and weapons kill combatants and civilians alike.   And in the chlorine-scented fog of war, all sides can—and do—claim that others fired the imprecise weapons. The use of chemical weapons is a war crime that demands investigation, but in the multi-faction Syrian and Iraqi theater of war, reports conflict as to who is using the weapons and from where they being acquired. More (PDF)