It’s Not All About Emissions
The first argument that is usually brought up in favour of nuclear power generation is that it is essentially emission-free. At the time of generation, that is clearly true, and the technology has reached the point where containment of anything radioactive is pretty sound too. Bear in mind what it took to damage the facility in Japan, and the age of that technology. The engineering of these plants is undeniably impressive.

While reducing the emissions from power generation is certainly a positive thing for the environment, the fact remains that these nuclear reactors still generate waste, and extremely hazardous waste at that. Some of it can be reprocessed, but eventually there are sealed canisters of nuclear waste that will remain highly radioactive for many years, and needs to be stored somewhere.

Continuing to ignore the nuclear waste issue is essentially trading the immediate emissions problem for what could potentially be a much more serious radioactive waste issue in the future. Our children and grandchildren will need to clean up our mess.

Safety and Security
Inevitably, a disaster like the one in Japan will call into question the safety of nuclear power plants. But the issue is much broader than natural disasters. Even when the risk of earthquakes and/or tsunami is lower, there is often the potential for other kinds of extreme conditions like tornadoes. While good engineering can reduce the risks, the one-in-a-thousand event, like the massive tsunami in Japan, is always a possibility.

In addition to natural disasters, nuclear plants can also fail because of human error (Chernobyl) or be subject to attack by terrorists or during times of war. An attack on a conventional power station disrupts life for those depending on the electricity, and, depending on the fuel, might have short term impact on the air quality, but the longer term effects to the environment are not that serious. The same cannot be said for nuclear power stations. The area around the Chernobyl reactor is still contaminated today, 25 years after the accident.

Alternatives
It is easy to talk about not using nuclear energy, but the fact is that it is a very efficient source of electricity in terms of power per square foot of land. Greener alternatives, such as solar, wind or wave energy need much more space devoted to them today to get anything like the same power. The output from a nuclear power station is also more controllable. It can be increased or decreased to match demand, and it can operate 24/7, and in most weather conditions.

Perhaps the answer to alternative energy sources is to think outside the box a little. Move away from the conventional producer-consumer model where we have a small number of generating facilities feeding a grid that a large number of consumers pull from. We have large areas that we can turn into dual use facilities.

In addition to the environmental benefits, having the power generation distributed so widely also adds protection against disruption from natural disasters, accidents or attacks.

Solar Parking Lots

Image: EnvisionSolar

Buildings
Large warehouses, office complexes and even shopping malls could easily house solar arrays on their roofs. High rise towers could incorporate solar panels into their outer glass coverings. New buildings, whether commercial or domestic, should be required to include solar panels where there is sufficient sunlight for this to make sense.

Wind & Wave
Much harder to distribute are wind and wave generation systems. While small wind turbines for use in urban environments have been created, there is still much work to do here before it is practical to have one on every house, or even on every commercial building. Perhaps a chimney mounted wind turbine could become a new use for the chimney on homes in places like California where having a fire is increasingly restricted to protect air quality.

Wave power could be utilized on docks and piers to try to harvest some of the energy from the sea. Obviously, the number of locations for this is much more limited than even those for wind power.

Power Stations
Distributing the generation does not mean we cannot also build larger power generation facilities, like the large solar facilities being built in desert spaces of California and northern Africa. Or wind farms on the hilltops, sharing the land with cattle or crops.

There are some forms of green energy that make more sense in a centralized location than distributed too. Hydro-electric and geo-thermal being two examples that need to be located near the natural resource they depend on.

Conclusions
While nuclear power looks like a quick fix to the emissions problem that coal, oil and even to some extent, gas power stations suffer from, the long term impact of spent fuel and the building materials themselves when the reactor needs to be decommissioned, make any claims for it being a planet-friendly solution hard to believe.

Contrary to what pro-nuclear power generating companies would have people believe, the alternative energy sources are viable. They just need to be integrated into our society in a different, distributed way.

This morning I was sent a link to an amazing collection of art by Chris Jordan called Running The Numbers. The thumbnail of the detail view to the right really doesn’t do it justice either – you have to see the full size image to understand exactly what this image is. What it represents is 28,000 42-gallon oil drum: the amount of oil consumed in the US every 2 minutes.

And then keep looking at the other images in the collection. Others that stood out for me were:

• One hundred million toothpicks, representing the number of trees cut down to support the junk mail business (what a total waste);
• One million plastic cups: the number used on US airlines every 6 hours;
• Two million plastic bottles: the number used in the US every 5 minutes (that’s an amazing 576 million bottles a day!);
• 426,000 cell phones being “retired” every day in the US (most probably still working perfectly);
• 1.14 million brown paper bags: the number used every hour in the US;
• And finally, 60,000 plastic bags: the number used every 5 seconds in the US (that is over 1 billion every day).

In addition to the environmental issues represented by these numbers I’ve highlighted, there are also other social issues in the collection, including an image representing smoking, healthcare and even the issue of prisoners, both in the US and in US run detention facilities outside the US.

Light Bulbs

One image though I have a slight disagreement with: the image of 320,000 light bulbs floating in space. Said to be equal to the number of kilowatt hours of electricity wasted in the United States every minute from inefficient residential electricity usage (inefficient wiring, computers in sleep mode, etc.). The issue I have with this statement is that it is missing the real solution to this problem. The solution is not for consumers to unplug everything. The solution requires two parts:

1. More equipment designed to really use a lot less power when in sleep mode;
2. More electricity being generated from clean and renewable sources.

The second of those is perhaps the most important. Once we can produce enough electricity from clean renewable resources, why shouldn’t we use it to make our quality of life better? Sure, cutting consumption helps keep the bills low, and in the short term, while the world still depends heavily on dirty coal, and other non-renewable resources for our electricity, will help reduce emissions. But the logical extrapolation of that argument is to say that we should just stop using electricity completely. That’s a stupid argument. Much better to talk about how we can use technology to bring our clean generation levels in line with our consumption needs. Sure, don’t waste electricity unnecessarily, but the Vertography position is one of moderation. Sleep mode, done correctly, is a useful compromise, and better than just leaving the kit on all the time!

When booking the trans-Atlantic flight, on United Airlines, we were offered the choice to pay for upgrades and given links to partners for booking cars and hotels, but nothing more. When we booked the Venice flights with EasyJet, a UK based low cost carrier, right there on the booking page, in addition to other offers, we were offered the option to buy carbon offsets for our flight.

Carbon Offsets?
What are carbon offsets? How much are they? Do they do any good? And, if they do, why don’t US airlines like United offer customers a chance to buy them too?

Essentially, a carbon offset scheme is a financial mechanism allowing you to buy credits in a project designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to offset the emissions associated with an action you take. In the case of our flight from London to Venice, easyJet calculates that we contributed 102kg each way, per person. And the cost to offset that via easyJet’s UN certified emission reduction projects is just £1.33 (about $2.45) each way, per person.

Obviously, given that every airline we looked at booking the flights within Europe with offered them, there is a widely held belief that they work in some way. Some would argue they just allow people (or companies) to continue generating greenhouse gas emissions, but erase any guilt they have about it. Some are concerned that the amount of emissions the projects receiving the money can reduce is hard to quantify, so does the money really cover the emissions from the flight?

More pragmatic people seem to believe that if people at least feel guilty enough to contribute to a carbon reduction project voluntarily at the checkout, that in itself is progress!

Why did United not offer them for the trans-Atlantic segment of our trip? Well, it looks like they’re getting there, but just haven’t finalised the plans. Other US airlines do have plans, or are working on getting them set up as well, so expect to see the option to buy carbon offsets when booking a flight in the US soon too.

Should You Buy Them?
I look at this somewhat pragmatically. You can choose to not fly somewhere, but realistically there are few other ways to travel long distances. Buying carbon offsets for your flight seems like the next best thing to me (and, yes, we did buy them for the Venice trip).

Independent Carbon Offsets
Since the trip, I’ve also discovered that you can buy carbon offsets for your flight from a third party like the Carbon Neutral Company. I just used their calculator to work out an estimate of the emissions for our San Francisco to London flight: around 4000kg for two people on round trips. That would cost between £30 ($55) and £60 ($110) depending on the type of project being contributed to – the Carbon Neutral Company lets you choose.

The top two states in terms of absolute carbon output are Texas (670 million tons) and California (389 million tons), but the per-capita numbers are very different with Texans producing almost 3 times as much CO2 as Californians.

Top 5 & Bottom 5 States
This section of the chart shows the best 5 states in terms of per capita carbon output:

And this one shows the five worst performing states in terms of per capita carbon output:

The Telegraph article claims the researchers at the Argentine National Institute of Agricultural Technology estimate that every cow produces 800-1000 litres of emissions every day. With 55 million heads of cattle grazing in Argentina, these emissions could amount to as much as 30% of the countries greenhouse gas emissions (and methane is 23 times worse than CO2 when it comes to trapping heat).