" ... publication of a new paper by Harrison Fell, Alex Gilbert, Jesse Jenkins, and Matteo Mildenberger reanalyzing data from a study published last fall in Nature Energy by Benjamin Sovacool and colleagues at the University of Sussex Energy Group.
Sovacool and his coauthors claimed to demonstrate that deployment of nuclear energy around the world did not reduce carbon emissions.
The reanalysis by Fell, et. al. is devastating, showing Sovacool’s data actually shows the opposite.
From the abstract: “employing the same data sources and time periods, we find that nuclear power and renewable energy are both associated with lower per capita CO2 emissions with effects of similar magnitude and statistical significance.”
Of course, you don’t really need a complicated regression analysis to figure this out.
France and Sweden boast the lowest per capita emissions among major advanced developed economies globally and get 80% and 50% of their electricity, respectively, from nuclear energy.
When nations build nuclear plants, emissions reliably fall and when they shut them down, as we’ve witnessed over the last decade in Japan and California, they reliably rise.
But for decades, Sovacool and other prominent anti-nuclear academics have published a slew of dubious studies in peer-reviewed publications purporting to find that closing nuclear plants reduces emissions, that nuclear energy is fossil fuel intensive, uniquely dangerous, and inherently expensive, and that renewable energy alone can meet 100% of the world’s energy needs.
... ideological academics like Sovacool are actually liars.
... he history of anti-nuclear scholarship pretty strongly suggests that peer-review is no defense in the face of tenured academics with strong ideological commitments.
... nuclear energy, which environmentalists have long viewed as worse than fossil fuels, is actually one of the better options we have for cutting carbon emissions and addressing climate change, researchers like Sovacool are entirely capable of conjuring scholarly falsehoods via the magic of models, regression analyses, and highly selective data.
... Sure, peer-review is time-consuming and uncompensated.
But that can’t remotely explain how Sovacool was able to take a study that he was forced to retract just three years ago, slap a fresh coat of paint on it, and republish it in a more prestigious journal.
Or why Mark Jacobson’s now-debunked 100% renewable study was not only published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science but received an award as one of the best studies of the year, before its obvious flaws were exposed.
Or ... why decades of coverage of nuclear energy in the mainstream media has so reliably diverged from the overwhelming evidence about nuclear’s remarkable record of safe operations and low emissions.
The actual technological pathways to deeply decarbonizing the entire global economy are few and far between.
Nuclear is without question one of them.
... Nuclear energy’s original sin was that it was plug and play with industrial modernity, promising limitless energy to support economic prosperity and a growing population.
... The environmental movement and philanthropy have even been far more open to bolting costly carbon capture technology onto coal and gas plants than reconsidering nuclear energy ...
Nuclear energy is no panacea either.
And perhaps we will figure out how to entirely eliminate emissions with carbon capture or clean hydrogen or something else.
... As impressive as the falling costs of wind and solar energy have been, we aren’t going to power the entire global economy with variable sources of renewable energy alone.
We have no experience or proven capability to operate an electrical grid entirely with wind and solar energy, much less the other 80% of the global energy economy that doesn’t run on electricity.
... Successful climate action in the actual world won’t look anything like the heroic fantasias that so easily captivate the chattering classes."
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Saturday, February 27, 2021
"On Anti-Nuclear Bullshit"
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