Greenpeace Silliness

News that France has been selected as the site of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) has been all over the airwaves recently, and you'd think the likes of Greenpeace would be delighted that this project is finally underway, right? Well, you'd think wrong.

Greenpeace, for one, stated that “at a time when it is universally recognized that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Greenpeace considers it ridiculous to use resources and billions of euros on this project.”

This is just so stupid I'm not even going to dignify it with a refutation; it's clear as day that what these idiots have a problem with isn't pollution but the very idea of human progress itself. If the devotion of subtantial resources to research into fusion energy can't make them happy, nothing can, short of a return to the stone age; those who are concerned with an environmentalism which isn't simply misanthropy in disguise are much better off supporting the likes of Patrick Moore's Greenspirit.

PS: A look at my archives reveals that Greenpeace opposition to fusion research is not a new thing. They managed to get Canada to pull out of ITER, but thankfully, the other participants were made of sterner stuff.

Comments

[Andrew Reeves]

There are times when I think that large portions of the environmentalist movement are an elaborate front set up by the coal industry. After all, in Sweden and Germany, the Greens' efforts to end nuclear power have resulted in an increase in coal plants, and their continued opposition to any form of new energy production that isn't obviously unfeasible (e.g. wind) can only have the same results.

[Abiola Lapite]

You know, the odd thing about Greenpeace's strange enthusiasm for wind energy is that the affluent sorts who tend to be the biggest supporters of the organization are the very same ones who are usually most vehement in their opposition to the presence of wind farms in their vicinity. It was hilarious to watch long-time environmentalist Edward Kennedy turn on a dime at the prospect of a wind farm spoiling his Martha's Vineyard view ...

http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=36597

So it would seem that wind energy suddenly isn't quite so wonderful after all - at least not as long as the process of providing it actually impinges in any meaningful way on the daily lives of its biggest boosters.

[Andrew]

Actually, Greenpeace does support wind power:

http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/no-to-new-nukes-go-wind

As does the German Green Party: http://www.climateark.org/articles/reader.asp?linkid=25949

I have to agree that their opposition to nuclear fusion is absurd. It's like this knee-jerk reaction to the word "nuclear" without bothering to note that nuclear fusion would be safer than nuclear fission if we ever figure out how to make it work. Though on the last point, it seems that part of Greenpeace's argument is that with the money spent on this fusion reactor we could build lots of wind farms and reduce CO2 emissions now rather than in 2050.

[Andrew]

whoops, Abiola posted his comment while I was writing mine - sorry for the redundant link about Greenpeace supporting wind power.

[Abiola Lapite]

"part of Greenpeace's argument is that with the money spent on this fusion reactor we could build lots of wind farms and reduce CO2 emissions now rather than in 2050."

It's a damned stupid argument, as stupid as saying "we could feed the world's hungry with all that money being spent on biomedical research!"

[dsquared]

Greenpeace certainly appear to have stunk out the place on this one. God it would amuse me though if the French did get a viable fusion plant working, patented it under US-sponsored intellectual property conventions and proceeded to become the economic superpower of the 2050s while working 17-hour weeks.

On a technical note Andrew, I'm not sure that we can say with certainty that fusion reactors would be safer than fission ones since we don't really know what a working fusion reactor would look like. At base, a fusion reactor would still be the same "bloody great heat source boiling a kettle" mechanism that has been the mainstay of human power generation since James Watt and I would guess it would still be entirely possible for a self-sustaining fusion reactor to get out of control.

There would be more or less no waste disposal problem though, which ought to count in its favour for Greenpeace.

[Abiola Lapite]

"I would guess it would still be entirely possible for a self-sustaining fusion reactor to get out of control."

Not at all. The amount of fuel in the chamber at any time is extremely small (it has to be, as an uncontrolled increase in tritium or deuterium will increase plasma density, shutting the reaction down), while any sort of leakage whatsoever from the tokamak and the reaction will simply fizzle out. In fact, this is one of the prime sources of difficulty in getting the damn things working.

[Andrew]

"On a technical note Andrew, I'm not sure that we can say with certainty that fusion reactors would be safer than fission ones since we don't really know what a working fusion reactor would look like."

Yes, you're right that we're still talking hypothetically here.

"It's a damned stupid argument, as stupid as saying "we could feed the world's hungry with all that money being spent on biomedical research!""

I agree.

" God it would amuse me though if the French did get a viable fusion plant working, patented it under US-sponsored intellectual property conventions"

but if this project is funded by 5 countries and the EU, wouldn't they all have a right to the intellectual property?

[Phil Hunt]

Andrew's hit the nail on the head: it's kneee-jerk reaction to the word nuclear. Nuclear war is bad, see, therefore so is everything elese with the word in. That's why the changed the name "nuclear megnetic resonance" to "magnetic resonance imaging".

[Andy]

Greenpeace is right but 10,000 years too late.

http://www.agron.iastate.edu/courses/agron342/diamondmistake.html

dsquared, the ancient hunter-gatherers had those 17-hour work weeks when the only nuclear fusion that mattered happened in the sun. They were taller and healthier than the average person today. Our agricultural progress only benefits the elite living in developed countries. The average person today does not live in a developed country. Think rather of someone living in India or China who would have been better off as far as health 50,000 years ago.

Yeah Greenpeace! You're only 10,000 years too late, and there's no going back, so shut up.

[Paul Drye]

'Course those hunter-gatherers had an average lifespan of about thirty years. I'll take my chances with eight decades and us still needing a better way to avoid global warming, thanks.

I'll second Abiola's point about the likely safety of fusion reactors. While anything is possible with as-yet-undiscovered technology, we do have rather a good idea of what a fusion reactor would be like -- we merely can't build what we need right now; in short, it's the difference between basic research and engineering research. Chances are good that a fusion reactor will be a safe and non-polluting source of power.

[Andy]

Paul,

Infant mortality rates were very high, but don't confuse average life expectancy with the distribution of when people die. People in recorded hunter gatherer groups live to old age (60-80 years), and many of the elderly are in better shape than people of comparable age in modern society.

http://www.anthro.utah.edu/PDFs/Papers/NBJ2002.pdf

Realize also that we in developed nations are a priviledged elite. Billions living in places like India and China are in much worse shape than the average hunter gatherer.

[Paul Drye]

Still, to turn an average age of 30 into 60-80 for adults, you need an under-5 mortality rate in the vicinity of 50%. I'll trade their lives and the lack of emotional trauma to their parents for climactic problems we at least have a chance to correct.

For India and China, their troubles are relatively short in the long scheme of things. Even the poor in India and China are relatively better off than they have been, and it's going to take "only" 50 to 100 years to lift them up out of the slough if we can find enough energy or energy-savings to support them.

Which leads us back to our point (which is not what you were arguing against, I realize). Fusion power remains one of the most promising avenues to solving the problem. It's difficult to see how we can distribute the world's current power output in a way that gets everyone to the same level without taking bad hits on basic medical care, education, and food intake. And there's not enough windmills in the world to hoist it high enough either.

I'd love to see who's going to try and tell those billions of Chinese and Indians (and Indonesians, and Nigerians, and Zaireans, and Pakistanis, and Filipinos, and Vietnamese, and...) that they can't use enough energy to join the club. Think they hate "the West" *now*?

[Andy]

Does anyone know of a reference that identifies some of the most common cranks in the field of fusion for energy? Why is there such a tendency to associate cold fusion with crankery?

I'll agree that a reliable, safe source of energy like fusion would be one of the greatest developments in history. I'm not qualified to discuss the probability of its development, however.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Why is there such a tendency to associate cold fusion with crankery?"

Wikipedia is your friend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion

Frankly, even that Wikipedia article is far too kind, no doubt out of some misguided attempt at a "neutral" point of view. My own admittedly non-expert understanding of the physics of atomic particles tells me that getting "cold fusion" to pay off is about as feasible as building a perpetual motion machine; certainly, the "deuterium + deuterium -> helium" reaction originally posited by Pons and Fleischmann can be ruled right out of the question.

[Jürgen Hubert]

While I'm still in agreement with most of what the German Green party's party program says (I recently joined them), their opposition to fusion power strikes me as rather dumb. Not enough to consider me quitting the party, certainly - after all, if I wanted a party with which I could agree on everything, I would have to found one myself - but it is certainly a sore point.

[dsquared]

Andy (and Abiola I suppose) The current project is an international research exercise, but the fact that it's taking place in France means that it's likely to attract French scientists into the field and thus by the time the theoretical problems have been ironed out and it comes time to start making the patentable inventions that turn the thing into a viable industrial process, the French have a decent chance of being in the vanguard.