On a road trip to the heart of an ailing planet with a message of hope
This documentary about nuclear energy may change the way you see
the greening of the planet.
The Problem
Our world has been built on fossil fuels.
Indeed, energy is needed every day, everywhere, and the need is growing. But, energy from fossil fuels is like a giant bank account; and for Planet Earth, those funds are dangerously close to being overdrawn.
“It is distressing to realize that our primary fuels will begin an inexorable decline this century. The result is that we will have difficulty even maintaining our current energy expenditure rate — let alone continuing our historical 3% annual energy growth rate. A major adjustment is in the offing.“
What can we do?
Solar, Wind & Biomass technologies are scurrying to be claimed the solution for our global energy crisis; but none of them can hope to provide a fraction of our needs. And the longer we wait for a magic solution, the more of our precious fossil fuels, so essential for transport, are being used up. Peak oil is soon upon us.
Planet earth is in a tenuous position.
Yet, there is another source of power, a solution that can, in fact, meet our needs: Nuclear Power.
Nuclear Power, though, has a bad reputation.
Chernobyl. . . Fukushima. . .
In just one word, a dark cloud looms in the collective memory.
Why? We need to examine whether those fears about nuclear energy, are rooted in fact or fiction.
The Film
Retired Engineer Douglas Lightfoot is not ready to retire. A mechanical engineer during his 37 year professional career, Mr. Lightfoot, an environmentalist and humanitarian, has turned his retirement into a mission, of sorts. Elder statesman, Douglas Lightfoot sees the solution to the world’s energy crisis very clearly. Nuclear energy. For him, it’s a practical solution, with a hopeful message, and one that he has come to over many years of research, with many peer reviewed, published papers, to his credit. He is not alone in this conclusion, yet, the truth about nuclear energy is overshadowed by an emotional hue and cry in some corners.
REFERENCES CITED IN THE FILM
“The average rail car of coal weigh 100 tons. The United States burns 1 to 2 cars like this every second.”
LFTR Now: power to change the world
“80% of the world’s energy comes from fossil fuels”
US Energy Information Administration, International Energy Outlook 2017
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=2-IEO2017
“An incredible 1 in 6 deaths globally is linked to pollution.”
Landrigan P., Fuller R., The Lancet
Commission on pollution and health; The Lancet, Vol.
391, No. 10119
“Consider that the average supermarket items travels 2500km before it reaches your kitchen.”
Metz B, Davidson O, Swart R. Pan J, Climate Change
2001: Mitigation.
Contribution of Working Group III to the
Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge UK, 2001. 3.6.1
https://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/tar/wg3/index.php?idp=115#361
The World
Population Prospects: The 2017 Revision,
published by the UN Department of Economic and
Social Affairs.
“Making that TV takes the energy equivalent of 7 gallons of diesel fuel.”
A Tool to Estimate Materials and
Manufacturing Energy for a Product by N. Duque Ciceri,
T. G. Gutowski, M. Garetti. Published in 2010.
http://web.mit.edu/ebm/www/Publications/9_Paper.pdf
From Figure 2, an LCD monitor
requires 773 to 985 MJ in its manufacture.
Energy consumption at 985 MJ = 985 x
1000000 = 985,000,000 Joules
One US gallon of diesel fuel
contains: 146,520,000
Joules
“That’s enough energy to run the average American home for almost 10 days – or drive the average car almost 400 km.”
The energy content of 7 US gallons of
diesel fuel is 145,020,000 Joules, which is equivalent
to 282 kWh.
(1) 7 US gallons of diesel fuel has
the energy equivalent to light a 100 Watt light bulb for
16.8 days.
(2) For a car with fuel consumption
of 7 litres per 100 km, it can power the car for 378
kilometres, almost 400 km.
(3) It is the equivalent of supplying
electricity to the average US home in 2016 for 9.6 days.
Sub-references:
https://www.convertunits.com/from/kWh/to/gallon+[U.S.]+of+diesel+oil
“And the internet really is power hungry data servers - which US researchers predict could used 3% - with some estimates as high as 20% - of all the world's electricity by the year 2025.”
‘Tsunami of data’ could consume one
fifth of global electricity by 2025
Andrae, Anders S.G., Total Consumer
Power Consumption Forecast, Huawei Technologies, October
2017
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320225452_Total_Consumer_Power_Consumption_Forecast
Up to 3%
of all U.S. electricity powers data centers.
“By 2020 information and communications could consume more energy than aviation and shipping combined!”
‘Tsunami of data’ could consume one
fifth of global electricity by 2025
“create a back up system to store enough electricity to run your house for a week would require a battery array weighting 2300 pounds -”
Gates B., It Is Surprisingly Hard to
Store Energy, gatesnotes: the blog of Bill Gates, 22
February 2016
“The equivalent energy in one gallon of gasoline would require a battery weighing 430 pounds.”
Qnovo, Making Sense of 100 KWH,
August 2016
https://qnovo.com/101-making-sense-100-kwh/
“Then you get into your car and drive 3 miles to the big box store to buy that TV, using gasoline, in a car that has 7 gallons of oil in each tire. . .”
Tim Appenzeller, “The End of Cheap Oil”; National Geographic, June 2004
“In 2017, the world needed the energy equivalent of that contained in the fuel tanks of 310 billion cars.”
Energy Information Administration,
Annual Energy Review 2005, Report No.
DOE/EIA-0384(2005), Table 11.1.
“In 80 years, it’s predicted the world will need the energy equivalent to that contained in the fuel tanks of 900 billion cars.”
“But a recent study suggests this movement towards energy conservation falls short when we don’t curtail other conveniences of modern life.”
Good
Intents, but Low Impacts: Diverging Importance of
Motivational and Socioeconomic Determinants Explaining
Pro-Environmental Behavior, Energy Use, and Carbon
Footprint, Stephanie Moser, Silke
Kleinhückelkotten, June 9, 2017, Environment and
Behavior
Also:
On Black Friday, Face the Music:
‘Environmentally Conscious Consumers’ Use More Energy
and Carbon Than Those Who Are Less Aware
By George Monbiot / The Guardian
“According to Oxfam, the richest 1% produces about 175 times as much carbon as the lowest 10% of the world’s population.”
Extreme
Carbon Inequality: Why the Paris climate deal must put
the poorest , lowest emitting and most vulnerable
people first
“The UK wants to ban all petrol and diesel cars by 2040.”
UK
plans to ban sale of new petrol and diesel cars by
2040; Jim Pickard and Peter Campbell; July 26,
2017
“World energy usage has more than doubled in the past 35 years.”
International
Energy Outlook 2003, Energy Information Administration
“Incredibly, 1.2 billion people around the world do not have access to electricity.”
Access to electricity (% of
population), World Bank
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS
Also:
1.3 Billion are Living in the Dark;
By Todd Lindeman; Washington Post
“To reach energy parity with the rest of the modern world, China and India will require four times the current usage of today by the year 2100.”
General statistics about India:
“With the world’s sixth largest economy, and fourth largest proven coal reserves, the use of fossil fuels to power India’s progress is already acutely felt in major cities such as Mumbai and Delhi.”
India's coal reserves may exhaust by
2040; Press Trust Of India; New Delhi; January 29, 2013
“In a country known for having the worst air quality in the world, by 2040, OPEC predicts a 150% increase in demand for oil.”
OPEC sees India’s oil demand rising
over 150% by 2040; The Hindu BusinessLine; October 10th,
2017;
“In 1973, oil-producing Arab countries implemented an embargo to protest U.S.-Israeli policies. The price of oil quadruples – but despite the problems it caused for the United States, energy policy did not change.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
“In France, a country that used oil for most of its energy, the reaction was markedly different – they embraced other forms of electrical generation to break their reliance on fossil fuels.”
Nuclear power in France
“In 1940, it took the energy of one barrel of oil to find 100 barrels.”
Manning, R., The Oil We Eat, Harper's
Magazine, February 2004
“In the Oilsands – because of the recovery process – it’s about 1 to 5.”
Hughes J D, Driil.
Baby, Drill, Post Carbon Institute, 2013.
http://www.postcarbon.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Drill-Baby-Drill.pdf. Page
118
Oil
Sands Mining Uses Up Almost as Much Energy as It
Produces; Rachel Nuwer; InsideClimate News
Global energy consumption animation.
Energy
Consumption,
Global
The history of firewood
Roberts, P., The End of Oil, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York, 2004
“We know that wind power and solar power is intermittent.”
E.ON Netz, Wind Power 2005, Report: ENE_Windreport2005_e_eng.pdf.
http://www.windaction.org/posts/309-e-on-netz-wind-report-2005#.WorumXxG2po
“To power the US with solar
energy, requires up to half a million square
kilometres of land suitable for solar panels.
Solar: http://rameznaam.com/2015/04/08/how-much-land-would-it-take-to-power-the-us-via-solar/
US Energy
Information Administration
“Unprecedented flooding from the storm shot down one fifth of the United State’s gasoline production.”
Hurricane Harvey makes case for
nuclear power; James Conca; Forbes, September 1st,
2017
Polar Vortex 2017
Polar Vortex: nuclear saves the day;
James Conca; Forbes; January 12th, 2017
“And uranium is so incredible energy dense, only one kg of the stuff could light a 100 watt lightbulb continuously for 25 000 years.”
What is nuclear energy?
https://whatisnuclear.com/nuclear-energy.html
Nuclear Fission Fuel is Inexhaustible, Engineering Institute of Canada, Climate Change Technology Conference: Engineering Challenges and Solutions in the 21st Century, Ottawa, Canada, May 10-12, 2006, Lightfoot, H D, Manheimer W, Meneley D A, Pendergast D, Stanford G. doi: 10.1109/EICCCC.2006.277268
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/guesthome.jsp
“Uranium the size of a pool ball contains the energy of 2300000 liters of gasoline.”
1 pound U235 = 37,000,000,000,000
Joules
1 pound gasoline =
20,634,921
Joules
Ratio: 1,793,077:1
1 kg U = 81,585,000,000,000
J
1 USG gas = 130,000,000 J
1 kg U = 2,372,241 litres
gasoline
EIA International Energy Outlook
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=2-IEO2017
www.columbia.edu/~mhs119/EnergyConsump/
“But in some countries, such as France, as much as 75% of that country’s electricity is produced by nuclear energy.”
Nuclear Power in France; WorldNuclear.org
http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-a-f/france.aspx
Linear No-Threshold debate
The Linear No-Threshold Relationship Is Inconsistent with Radiation Biologic and Experimental Data,
Maurice Tubiana, MD, Ludwig E. Feinendegen, MD, Chichuan Yang, MD, and Joseph M. Kaminiski, MD,
Radiology. 2009 Apr; 251(1): 13-22., doi: 10.1148/radiol.2511080671, PMCID: PMC2663584
“If you were to take 1000 Tylenol tablets all at once, it would most certainly kill you. But LNT also assumes you would perish after taking 1000 Tylenol tablets, one a day, for a thousand days. As well, if on a particular day, 1000 people each took one Tylenol table, then one of those 1000 would perish.”
World-Wide Risk From Radiation Very
Small, James Conca
“A normal dose is 6.2 milliseiverts (mSv) a year for the average person.”
US Nuclear Regulatory Commission,
Doses in Our Daily Lives
https://www.nrc.gov/about-nrc/radiation/around-us/doses-daily-lives.html
“People living in Wyoming and New Mexico – due to the altitude – have twice the annual dose as those in Los Angeles, but in fact have lower cancer rates.”
U.S. States
With The Lowest Cancer Risk
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/u-s-states-with-the-lowest-cancer-rates.html
United Nations Scientific
Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
(UNSCEAR), Sources and Effects of Ionizing
Radiation, 2000.
http://www.unscear.org/docs/publications/2000/UNSCEAR_2000_Annex-B.pdf
Ghiassi-nejad M, Mortazavi
SM, Cameron JR, Niroomand-rad A, Karam PA.,
Very high background radiation areas of
Ramsar, Iran: preliminary biological studies,
Health Phys. 2002 Jan;82(1):87-93.
"In 2005, almost 20 years after the accident the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report that stated that the mortality rates of those affected are quite low, affecting mostly the first responders immediately following the accident, contrary to some prediction that place the health problems to occur in the hundreds of thousands."
United Nations Scientific Committee
on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
The
Chernobyl accident: UNSCEAR’s assessments of the
radiation effects
“A follow up report in 2012 from United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation – 26 years after the accident – went further to dispel the radiation hype.”
United Nations Scientific Committee
on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
The
Chernobyl accident: UNSCEAR’s assessments of the
radiation effects
“Some countries, including Canada, Germany, and the UK, have conducted studies into the effects of living in close proximity to nuclear reactors. Incidents of cancer for those living next to, or in close proximity, to nuclear stations is statistically insignificant.”
Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission
Independent Environmental Monitoring Program: Point Lepreau Nuclear Generating Station
“The accident at Three Mile Island, as oddly as it sounds, was a technical success. The reactor shut down exactly as it was designed to. A nuclear meltdown does not result in a release of radiation. Just like your car engine overheating doesn’t spill gasoline. The Three Mile Island incident released less radiation than people would have been exposed to living in Manhattan or Denver.”
G. R. Corey, A Brief Review of the
Accident at Three Mile Island, International Atomic
Energy Agency, IAEA Bulletin, Vol. 21, No. 5
Chernobyl statistics
United Nations Scientific Committee
on the Effects of Atomic Radiation
The
Chernobyl accident: UNSCEAR’s assessments of the
radiation effects
http://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/chernobyl.html
What was the death toll from Chernobyl and Fukushima?
July 24, 2017 by Hannah Ritchie; Our World in Data
“The Tsunami wall was 6.5 metres high, but the tsunami that washed in was 14 metres high. A similar plan 110 km north shutdown itself down safely in 10 hours. It was a higher elevation that at Fukushima and the emergency generators here not affected.”
Nuclear Power
Plants and Earthquakes
World Nuclear
Association
“But one statistic which is verifiable, is the human cost of mining coal – and in the United States alone, since the turn of the 20th century, an estimated 100 000 coal miners have perished.”
Coal Fatalities for 1900 Through
2017; United States Department of Labor
“. . . unlike the radioactivity in coal which is burned and set up through smoke stacks into the environment.”
Coal
Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste; By
Mara Hvistendahl on December 13, 2007; Scientific
American;
“And as of today, an additional 1400 coal electrical plants are being planned or built worldwide.”
Paying
some piddling carbon tax will do nothing to defend
us from what lies ahead;
By Neil Macdonald, May 22nd, 2019; Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation
https://www.cbc.ca/news/opinion/carbon-tax-debate-1.5143916
Intact
Centre
on Climate Adaptation; University of Waterloo
“In the US, 20% of power comes from nuclear, producing only 2000 tons of waste per year that would not even fill 3000 sq foot house. Coal, on the other hand, generates over 2000 tons of hazardous waste every five minutes, 400 million tons of waste each year, and 25000 tons of radioactive waste because of the uranium and thorium in the coal. After 5 decades of nuclear power in the US, all the waste would fit into a single landfill.”
Getting
Real
About Energy: a balanced portfolio for America’s
future; by James Conca and Judith Wright; Procress
Policy Institute; February 2011; pp. 11
“In 1975, about 30 dams failed in short order in central China due to severe flooding, and the people that died in the aftermath were estimated in the hundreds of thousands.”
Banqiao Dam
“. . .nuclear power prevented an average of over 1.8 million net deaths worldwide between 1971-2009.”
Coal and Gas are Far More Harmful
than Nuclear Power; by Pushker Kharecha and James
Hansen, April 2013; National Aeronautics and Space
Administration – Goddard Institute for Space Studies
“Wind and solar only make up less and 5% of world energy production.”
US
Energy Information Administration
International
Energy Outlook 2017
Wind:
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/data/browser/#/?id=37-IEO2017®ion=0-0&cases=Reference&f=A
Solar:
“Geothermal: Great idea – using the planet’s heat to spin turbines to create energy. But it’s only a great idea if you live in Iceland – and maybe a few other places where the earth’s heat vents to earth’s surface.”
H.D. Lightfoot’s Nobody’s Fuel DVD;
2006
“. . . by the time you’ve harvested the corn and processed it into ethanol, you’ve used up almost as much fuel as it gives you.”
Shapouri, H., Duffield, J., Wang, M., The 2001 Net Energy Balance of Corn-Ethanol (Preliminary). A report published by The U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of Energy, 2004.
“Lighting accounts for only 4% of household electricity.”
US Energy Information Administration
Frequently Asked Questions
How
much electricity is used for lighting in the United
States?
“In China, a recent study suggests that air pollution may cause genetic harm in children.”
Molecular and Neurodevelopmental
Benefits to Children of Closure of a Coal Burning Power
Plant in China; Deliang Tang, Joan Lee, Loren Muirhead,
Ting Yu Li, Lirong Qu, Jie Yu, Frederica Perera; 19 Mar
2014 PLOS ONE
“In India, and other developing nations such as Kenya and Nepal, 2.4 Billion people still rely on traditional energy sources for cooking and fuel.”
US Energy Information Administration,
International Energy Outlook 2017
“A recent US study suggests that for the last 25 years, air pollution from Asia has migrate over the Pacific, increasing smog levels in the Western United States despite a 50% reduction in U.S. emissions of smog-forming pollutants.”
US surface ozone trends and extremes
from 1980 to 2014: quantifying the roles of rising Asian
emissions, domestic controls, wildfires, and climate;
Meiyun Lin, Larry W. Horowitz, Richard Payton, Arlene M.
Fiore, and Gail Tonnesen, Published: 01 Mar 2017
“But their thermal design is very inefficient, leaving 99.3% of the energy left in the uranium fuel.”
Natural uranium as
found in the Earth's crust is a mixture largely of two
isotopes: uranium-238 (U-238), accounting for 99.3%
and uranium-235 (U-235) about 0.7%
“There is already enough Uranium mined to power the world for 2-3 centuries.”
Nuclear Fission
Fuel is Inexhaustible, Engineering Institute of
Canada, Climate Change Technology Conference:
Engineering Challenges and Solutions in the 21st
Century, Ottawa, Canada, May 10-12, 2006, Lightfoot, H
D, Manheimer W, Meneley D A, Pendergast D, Stanford G.
doi: 10.1109/EICCCC.2006.277268
“Approximately 270 million of India’s 1.2 Billion people do not have access to electricity.”
The World Bank; Access to electricity
“In 2012, India was plunged into darkness, with a total nation-wide blackout – the worst outage in global history.”
The reason for India's massive blackout problems; Mamta Badkar, Business Insider; July 31, 2019
https://www.pri.org/stories/2012-07-31/reason-indias-massive-blackout-problems
“They are 100 times more fuel efficient, the radioactive waste produced by fast breeders has a shelf life of 500 years or less rather than thousands of years which is the case with thermal reactors.”
Nuclear Waste and Breeder Reactors -
Myth and Promise
“It can take as many as 20 years to plan and build a functioning plant.”
Build New
Reactors; Nuclear Energy Institute
“Pro-nuclear advocates have saved plants from closing in Illinois, New York, Switzerland and Sweden.”
Sweden decides it’s not so easy to
give up nuclear power
https://www.vox.com/2016/6/17/11950440/sweden-nuclear-power
Sweden Could Build 10 New Reactors
After Major Change To Policy On Nuclear
Switzerland votes against strict
timetable for nuclear power phaseout
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-38120559
Illinois Sees The Light -- Retains
Nuclear Power
Nuclear power gets a boost in New
York
“There are FBRs in Russia, France, and elsewhere.”
Fast Neutron
Reactors; World Nuclear Association
“Each year, the United States consumes more energy for air conditioning then does the entire African continent.”
How America became addicted to air
conditioning