Clean power is a fucking joke

[K. A. Pital]

"Clean power" is only clean at the point of installation:


It is not clean at the point of production, but this is located outside of the developed world:


Sometimes I feel a burning urge: to deport European and US 'clean power' advocates putting those nice sun and wind stickers on their oil-burning 90's cars (some moron I saw had the gall to put 'No to atomic power' sticker with a smiling sun on a Hummer!) to the toxic wastelands where their beloved photovoltaics and rare earth magnets are produced for life. I want them to understand that for each 'cleanly powered country' they are making some poorer country polluted by toxic waste that is very hard to remove or reclaim territories, and it may take ages.

I don't understand just how the hell green global-capitalist luddites managed to become such a powerful political force in the recent years. Because there should be no mistake: a system where a poor nation is polluted to make a rich nation clean is only possible with globalized capitalism and unequal contracts between parties. All those cleanish-looking deindustrialized towns in Europe and the US are bought with the suffering of people in Asia.

[Thanas]

That the production facilities are not environmental friendly has more to do with lacking environmental regulation and pollution standards. Germany produced a lot in very good conditions but was pretty much forced out of the market due to Chinese lack of those standards which make products expensive, most importantly safety and pollution standards.

[K. A. Pital]

Please. Some companies just had better designs (didn't use neodymium). That's how Enercon managed to keep their production clean. But neodymium production, which for example is needed for Siemens, is dirty - and Lynas is supplying part of the deal. But it doesn't matter - either way an Asian country is polluted, either China or, in case of Lynas, Malaysia.

An expansion of wind power with such speed and scale required cheap solutions (that's why all wind power companies got butthurt when China introduced export bans on rare earths). It wouldn't have been possible without literally ravaging East Asia to get and process those metals.

[mr friendly guy]

As someone who used to hold shares in Lynas... hang on a minute.

Lynas isn't digging up RE from Malaysia. Its digging it up in Australia. It is however planning to process RE in Malaysia because they had an existing plant. Rare earths while were not exactly a waste product when the Malaysian plant was set up, wasn't what the original mining company was digging for. I can't remember off hand what they were originally mining for, but the sample was mixed with RE in low amounts, thus a processing plant was built there. Now its been abandoned since what they have exhausted the mine for whatever they originally planned to mine. The environmental impact in China from RE involves their mining methods. Even if Lynas used environmentally devastating mining in Australia, its won't be exporting it to a developing nation.

[K. A. Pital]

They aren't mining in Malaysia, but processing RE leaves toxic residue (not to mention the exhaust). Impact in China is due to both mining and processing RE, not just one component only. Localization of production doesn't solve the issue - one has to either opt for RE-free technologies or stop using RE-intensive types of power generation in favor of other types of power generation.

Some more on topic:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... h-malaysia

You can't blame them for their concerns: Malaysia has hosted a rare-earth refinery before, with some painful results. From 1979-92, the Japanese company Mitsubishi ran a plant called Asia Rare Earth, where it processed the materials it needed to sell electronics to markets all over the world. In the years since, nearby villagers have seen birth defects and eight cases of childhood leukemia. Mitsubishi is still dealing with the mess; the New York Times called it "the largest radiation cleanup yet in the rare earth industry."

Not everyone is convinced that the company will be able to make its waste completely free of radiation, or that it will be able to protect its workers from exposure during the refinery process. "I don't think this is realistic," said Chee Hong Lee, a Kuala-Lumpur-based chemical engineer who has been studying Lynas' plans.

[Alyrium Denryle]

And your solution is what precisely? An attainable one, mind you. Abandon wind and solar power in favor of continued burning of fossil fuels? Need I remind you what oil extraction does by pointing to the Nigerian coast? You know, the coast that will be inundated with salt water in a few decades creating flat out refugees out of a large portion of Nigeria's population.

Oh, wait, I know. We can somehow overcome luddite and NIMBY objections to nuclear power in the next decade (good luck after Fukushima. The yakuza picked a really convenient reactor for their racketeering operations let me tell you) and embark on a rapid program of nuclear reactor construction, with Uranium coming from... Kazakhstan, Namibia, Niger. Well at least SOME of it will be coming out of Canada and Australia so I guess there are bonuses to that one. And I wish it were viable in the timescales we are operating on.

Or we can dismantle global capitalism. Because, as we all know, communism has a much better track record on envionmental and human rights issues. And, as we all know, doing so is something that is likely to happen after the end of the cold war.

Wind and Solar power IS a joke. But unfortunately it is the joke we have. Better to pollute asia with rare earth metal extraction than see the Himalayan glaciers melt and sea levels rise, turning billions of people into refugees and the land they occupy into parched desert.

[K. A. Pital]

And your solution is what precisely? An attainable one, mind you. Abandon wind and solar power in favor of continued burning of fossil fuels?

No. However, 'clean power' advocates do not argue against fossil fuels - the collapse of nuclear energy in Germany just means more coal plants and more money for Russia, or shall I say Putinstan.

Need I remind you what oil extraction does by pointing to the Nigerian coast? You know, the coast that will be inundated with salt water in a few decades creating flat out refugees out of a large portion of Nigeria's population.

You don't need to do this. I know about this. I also know that whatever path is chosen, the poorer countries will suffer while the rich ones will reap all the benefits.

Wind and Solar power IS a joke. But unfortunately it is the joke we have. Better to pollute asia with rare earth metal extraction than see the Himalayan glaciers melt and sea levels rise, turning billions of people into refugees and the land they occupy into parched desert.

Well how about repolluting the First World? What if Malaysia and others just ban putting waste in their backyard and leave the West and Japan with no choice but to take its own waste and destroy its own environment? That's very much feasible, just takes a little more spine from the poorer nations. I know Australia disallows to bring waste from rare earth processing on its territory. So why other countries shouldn't do something like this?

[AniThyng]

Well I'd love to give the west the finger on principle, and keep Malaysia "Clean and Green", but on the other hand, I also like the middle class lifestyle Malaysia's economic growth allows me, and Malaysia is nowhere near rich enough (in human capital or financial capital) to do what Japan and Germany do to keep themselves clean. Hmmmm.......

RE: Nuclear power - yeah, sure, but isn't Germany's own nuclear storage scandals evidence enough that sooner or later something's going to happen and we'll be back up "pollution for generations" creek?

[Thanas]

RE: Nuclear power - yeah, sure, but isn't Germany's own nuclear storage scandals evidence enough that sooner or later something's going to happen and we'll be back up "pollution for generations" creek?

They already topped that - newest scandal is that they built a nuclear reactor on a faultline and the emergency generators actually failed every test for the last ten years. All hushed up by our energy commission, of course.

[K. A. Pital]

RE: Nuclear power - yeah, sure, but isn't Germany's own nuclear storage scandals evidence enough that sooner or later something's going to happen and we'll be back up "pollution for generations" creek?

They already topped that - newest scandal is that they built a nuclear reactor on a faultline and the emergency generators actually failed every test for the last ten years. All hushed up by our energy commission, of course.

The solution is not better standards or oversight but more coal?

[Thanas]

They tried better standards for several decades after they hilariously (or not, if you are a taxpayer) build a nuclear reacter that never went online due to construction plans being faulty. They failed and after several decades of failure no matter the organization, administration or political party in charge people might not be inclined to give them their 30th chance. Do you think they deserve another one? Because this time it will be different?

As for coal and gas I am not a fan of it but unless our huge wind farms get online they will serve as stopgap measure. 23% of our energy and 25% of our power is already produced by renewables (and that is without the huge wind farms). This is already more than nuclear power (17%). Coal was by far always bigger than nuclear energy in Germany too, so even in hte nuclear friendly times nuclear power was not our primary way of producing energy.

[K. A. Pital]

Do you think they deserve another one? Because this time it will be different?

Um... maybe because there are nations that do it right? And one is right nearby? No?

[Thanas]

Do you think they deserve another one? Because this time it will be different?

Um... maybe because there are nations that do it right? And one is right nearby? No?

And yet, for whatever reasons, it failed in Germany. Not once, but repeatedly. And some methods of the french (like storing nuclear waste in halls) is simply unacceptable to the German public. So what realistic scenario do you see where German nuclear power magically gets more competent and the public suddenly likes it?

[K. A. Pital]

Do you think they deserve another one? Because this time it will be different?

Um... maybe because there are nations that do it right? And one is right nearby? No?

And yet, for whatever reasons, it failed in Germany. Not once, but repeatedly. And some methods of the french (like storing nuclear waste in halls) is simply unacceptable to the German public. So what realistic scenario do you see where German nuclear power magically gets more competent and the public suddenly likes it?

Did I say I await something from people morons who stick a "Atomkraft? Nein, danke!" on their SUV? No. I'm not even sure they can be expected to comprehend how the industrial civilization functions at the very basic level. I'm just lamenting this, that's all.

[Thanas]

One can be against nuclear energy and still be an asshole. One can be for nuclear energy and be an ashhole or grade A moron, like the "hurr durr who cares about waste" crowd. However, blaming green energy for some of its supporters being idiots is a bit extreme.

[K. A. Pital]

I'm not blaming 'green energy' for that - I'm blaming that energy for not being de-facto clean (and deliberately hiding the environmental cost to poor people on the other side of the world) and I blame the supporters for eating the crap they sell to them.

[Thanas]

Nobody is hiding the environmental impact. What is happening here is the same thing that is happening in all other industries. Production gets outsourced. It is not as if Germany was not trying to get it produced in Germany, that just proved to be impossible due to market forces. In fact, when producers were shut down one of the things you read in newspapers was that this would lead to outsourcing in the third world.

But what would you prefer:
a) A climbing production of coal energy or
b) outsourcing clean energy production to the third world, thereby reducing both the dependencies on coal and gass while also making Europe more self-sufficient

To me there is not even a question which one is better.

[K. A. Pital]

Nobody is hiding the environmental impact.

The WTO lobbies against rare earth mining/export/processing/waste restrictions on behalf of the people who do exactly this. Does SIEMENS show the neodymium mines and processing plants in its ads? No. It shows cleanish cities in Europe. That's simply a lie.

To me there is not even a question which one is better.

Well of course, as expected. To me that's not so clear cut. So if Europe was faced to deal with the consequences of its industrial demands, would that not be more fair than commiting other people to deal with that waste and damage? What about the US, our favorite largest polluter per capita?

It may sound better to dump all the bad stuff on others and reduce coal mining, saving some lives in the First World. But it is more fair to do the opposite.

And if you think now is bad, think carefully just about WHAT you suggested:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es203518d

[Thanas]

Let us not pretend the Chinese decided to stop rare earths due to environmental impact. They did so because they wrongly thought they could control the market and give their industries an advantage. Let us also not pretend that the west forces itself on the third world when it comes to them making products for sale. So far the only Malaysian posting in this thread does seem to be in favor of it.

As to coal mining, I refer you to Alyrium's first post in this thread.

[mr friendly guy]

They aren't mining in Malaysia, but processing RE leaves toxic residue (not to mention the exhaust). Impact in China is due to both mining and processing RE, not just one component only. Localization of production doesn't solve the issue - one has to either opt for RE-free technologies or stop using RE-intensive types of power generation in favor of other types of power generation.

Some more on topic:
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/ ... h-malaysia

You can't blame them for their concerns: Malaysia has hosted a rare-earth refinery before, with some painful results. From 1979-92, the Japanese company Mitsubishi ran a plant called Asia Rare Earth, where it processed the materials it needed to sell electronics to markets all over the world. In the years since, nearby villagers have seen birth defects and eight cases of childhood leukemia. Mitsubishi is still dealing with the mess; the New York Times called it "the largest radiation cleanup yet in the rare earth industry."

Not everyone is convinced that the company will be able to make its waste completely free of radiation, or that it will be able to protect its workers from exposure during the refinery process. "I don't think this is realistic," said Chee Hong Lee, a Kuala-Lumpur-based chemical engineer who has been studying Lynas' plans.

Stas if you read the anti lynas propaganda it smacks of the same hysteria in anti nuclear power plant propaganda.

1. You know as well as I do that radiation is everywhere and to be "completely free of radiation" is the rhetorical bullshit on the highest order. Back in the day some Malaysian professor actually pointed out that Lynas waste has less radiation than a bunch of bananas. A quick google search nets the same argument.

http://www.nkkhoo.com/2012/03/04/banana ... y-product/

2. Pointing our childhood leukaemia without the incidence rate is deceptive, and I suspect they won't do it. Going on, the most common form of childhood leukaemis is ALL.
http://www.leukaemia.org.au/blood-cance ... kaemia-all

So we (Australia) get around 300 cases each year of which 60% are in kids. Lets round Australia's population down to 22 million. That means 0.00136% of the population for new cases per year. However given that Malaysian villages they had 8 childhood leukaemias, and 60% of ALL is in children, we would expect around 13-14 people affected (kids + adults). That means about 1 person affected per year in the whole 13 years that Japanese mine ran. So if the village had a population of 56, they would have the same rate of new cases of ALL (just one type of leukaemia) as Australia. In other words to be higher than average, they must have a population of less than 56. The population listed of Bukit Merah is much higher at 11,000.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bukit_Merah,_Perak

So unless the population dramatically increased from less than 56 to 11000 from 1979 to the modern day (a growth of rate of 16% per year), I think claims of the radiation causing my cancer is drawing a very long bow.

There is no increase incidence of childhood leukaemia there. Sorry, the numbers just do not support it, and its a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

[K. A. Pital]

NYT said this about the Mitsubishi plant:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/09/busin ... nvironment

The company and Malaysian regulators said that it was statistically possible that the leukemia cases were a coincidence because tin mining towns tend to have above-average levels of background radiation. But an academic study of another tin mining town suggested that communities of Bukit Merah’s size should only have one leukemia case every 30 years.

I am also not sure the studies correctly identify the affected population, since if they did, the numbers would not support any need for cleanups or closures. Or anything at all.

Let us not pretend the Chinese decided to stop rare earths due to environmental impact. They did so because they wrongly thought they could control the market and give their industries an advantage. Let us also not pretend that the west forces itself on the third world when it comes to them making products for sale. So far the only Malaysian posting in this thread does seem to be in favor of it.

Sometimes a word is just a word, Thanas. There was an environmental study in the 2010s in China before the legislation was used. Also I am not sure how this gives their industries 'an advantage' - it prevents other nations from reaping all the benefits along while leaving China to handle all environmental costs of the deal - I think that's only fair. Think of it as of an eco-tax - want to extract something polluting in a nation, be prepared to improve this nation's living standards by indirectly subsidizing it through localization of production chains. Otherwise it is simply a colonial model where the colony is sucked out dry while all the high-tech clean production and final product is in the metropole. I am sure that's not fair in any book.

Besides, paying people to pollute their country instead of yours may be an agreement many in poverty would take, but that doesn't make it moral. Not any more moral than me paying to an African so that he would cut off his limb for my amusement.

As to coal mining, I refer you to Alyrium's first post in this thread.

I am not sure Alyrium is perfectly fine with a manifold increase in rare earth mining just to make sure coal mining doesn't kill more entitled people from our industrial civilization. Coal also kills. The so-called 'clean energy' kills too.

[Magis]

And yet, for whatever reasons, it failed in Germany. Not once, but repeatedly.

That is an absurd over exaggeration. There has been one radiological incident of any real significance in Germany, and that occurred in 1986 from an experimental reactor. I wouldn't necessary argue against your premise that Germany has, for whatever reason, had the least success in terms of Western commercial nuclear power production. But to essentially categorize it as an abject failure is completely extreme.

[mr friendly guy]

They tried better standards for several decades after they hilariously (or not, if you are a taxpayer) build a nuclear reacter that never went online due to construction plans being faulty. They failed and after several decades of failure no matter the organization, administration or political party in charge people might not be inclined to give them their 30th chance. Do you think they deserve another one? Because this time it will be different?

As for coal and gas I am not a fan of it but unless our huge wind farms get online they will serve as stopgap measure. 23% of our energy and 25% of our power is already produced by renewables (and that is without the huge wind farms). This is already more than nuclear power (17%). Coal was by far always bigger than nuclear energy in Germany too, so even in hte nuclear friendly times nuclear power was not our primary way of producing energy.

The problem is, nuclear can generate much more energy per mass, and can outlast coal. Well Germany's aversion to nuclear power is someone else's gain, more specifically China's. Since they gave German scientists respect they deserved, purchased the rights to the technolgoy (pebble bed) and made improvements on it.

Let us not pretend the Chinese decided to stop rare earths due to environmental impact. They did so because they wrongly thought they could control the market and give their industries an advantage.

Oh? Their industries are already have the advantage of being close to where most the RE are mined. This prompted further investment by big multinationals who dealt with electronic goods which required RE. Secondly, a lot of illegal mines in China don't follow environmental regulations and are more damaging than legal ones. China restricting (not stopping) REs are one way to combat it.

Let us also not pretend that the west forces itself on the third world when it comes to them making products for sale. So far the only Malaysian posting in this thread does seem to be in favor of it.

I take a longer term view of this, and note that as countries industrialise, they eventually become better at cleaning up their mess. So if a poorer nation wants to tolerate a certain level of pollution to improve their standard of living in the short term, more power to them. Just as the West starting cleaning up as it got richer, countries like China are less tolerant of environmental damage and are moving to act on it.

[Thanas]

Sometimes a word is just a word, Thanas. There was an environmental study in the 2010s in China before the legislation was used. Also I am not sure how this gives their industries 'an advantage' - it prevents other nations from reaping all the benefits along while leaving China to handle all environmental costs of the deal - I think that's only fair. Think of it as of an eco-tax - want to extract something polluting in a nation, be prepared to improve this nation's living standards by indirectly subsidizing it through localization of production chains. Otherwise it is simply a colonial model where the colony is sucked out dry while all the high-tech clean production and final product is in the metropole. I am sure that's not fair in any book.

This is a good job of propaganda but propaganda nonetheless. You might have a point if other nations would stop selling minerals to people who are their direct competitors in the field but they do not. You might also have had a point if the increased profits had gone directly to the workers who suffer but they did not. And you might also have had a point if Chinese industry was faced with similar shortages but it was not. It was a subsidy for China's high tech industry and China wanting to feel strong, nothing more.

Besides, paying people to pollute their country instead of yours may be an agreement many in poverty would take, but that doesn't make it moral. Not any more moral than me paying to an African so that he would cut off his limb for my amusement.

Because the situations are the same. And it is not as if producers were not trying to establish it in industrialized countries before, but failed. This is not colonialism. Nobody is forcing anybody to take the business, nor was it the stated goal of the west to outsource. They were forced to.

I am not sure Alyrium is perfectly fine with a manifold increase in rare earth mining just to make sure coal mining doesn't kill more entitled people from our industrial civilization. Coal also kills. The so-called 'clean energy' kills too.

I am pretty sure he is less okay with coal mining, oil and not doing anything to stop global warming as he pretty much stated in his post.

And yet, for whatever reasons, it failed in Germany. Not once, but repeatedly.

That is an absurd over exaggeration. There has been one radiological incident of any real significance in Germany, and that occurred in 1986 from an experimental reactor. I wouldn't necessary argue against your premise that Germany has, for whatever reason, had the least success in terms of Western commercial nuclear power production. But to essentially categorize it as an abject failure is completely extreme.

The whole industry is going to be dismantled in a few decades. How can that be anything else than a failure, especially given the good conditions at the start of nuclear energy? They failed in the PR war, they failed in keeping their plants secure, they even in one case failed to build a secure reactor which is why it never went online, they failed in solving the storage problem. You might say that at least some of that is due to the public but still, if I get fourty+ years of political support from all major parties and the end result is being dismantled then that is one hot failure.

[K. A. Pital]

Undeniably localizing processing gives the locals more money. That cannot be denied. So I fail to see how this is nothing but a benigh environmental tax. It also keeps more of the production chain inside China, giving it access to higher technologies and thereby making all of the country richer and more advanced.