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GETTING REAL ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE

I had an email from Greta Thunberg on Monday 1 November 2021

She told me that ”the planet is screaming for help”. And “We are catastrophically far from the crucial goal of 1.5°C.” Words like screaming and catastrophe are not scientific or measured and do nothing to encourage sensible discussion or practical solutions to the genuine problems that are part of climate change.

A new belief system

This kind of talk is hysteria and unfortunately hysteria is infectious. It has already spread around the world to create a new kind of belief system, a new kind of religion (climate activism), which is not open to discussion or questioning and is only loosely related to facts.

You can be saved

Its approach is designed to generate fear and develop a following through a desire to be saved from a Terrible Fate. It leads to such bizarre behaviour as people gluing their hands to tarmac in order to draw attention to the fear they think we all should be experiencing. They believe they can offer us salvation and seek to convert the world to their beliefs by their show of passion, conviction, certainty that they have the answer.

The reward

If we follow them we can save millions of lives, stop the ice caps and glaciers melting, stop the desertification of farm lands, stop rising sea levels, stop extreme weather events, wildfires, hurricanes and floods.

The media love disaster stories

Unfortunately, the world’s media thrive on stories of shock and horror and talk of imminent disasters and so are only too happy to spread the alarmist rhetoric. Every natural disaster is good news for the media who will not miss an opportunity to highlight it and explain its cause – climate change, of course.

Climate alarmists

Climate alarmists get a disproportionate share of the headlines as compared with people taking a rational approach to dealing with global warming.

Global warming has been happening for centuries

Scientists tell us that global warming has been going on for the last 27,000 years. 27,000 years ago an ice sheet stretched down across Scotland and Northern England as far as the Midlands and took another 16,000 years to melt off the UK. Sea levels have been rising all this time.

Continued global warming

Continued global warming is inevitable and is accelerating in some areas which is certainly a matter of grave concern.

We know where to expect natural disasters.

We can expect more natural disasters and we know pretty well where they will occur. A French atlas I have, published in 2003, shows the areas of France where natural disasters are likely to occur and what they will be. Armed with this knowledge people can make preparations to cope. Similar knowledge exists in countries around the world.

Surviving climate change  –  tested methods that work

The people of the Netherlands are not waiting for sea levels to rise. As far as they are concerned the sea level has already risen. The sea level is already higher than much of their land but by skilful water management and engineering they have saved themselves with flood defences and pumping stations.
Strengthening flood defences is a major task for many countries and may be more effective than trying to halt climate change. Quick and definite results can be guaranteed.
Hurricanes cannot be prevented but buildings can be built to withstand them.
Forest fires may be worse now partly because many occur in forests planted by humans and consisting of very resinous and highly flammable pine trees.  Seriously wide fire-breaks might be incorporated in planting schemes, so, perhaps, re-thought forestry management systems may help.
Some effects of climate change may be impossible to mitigate and so we hope policies designed to “halt climate change” may have some effect.

Nuclear power station releasing huge quantities of water vapour into the atmosphere, a climate negative, but the greatest danger is radioactivity, the risk of accident, and the long-term storage problem that has no known answer and unbelievable and unknowable cost

A climate change solution to avoid

I would like to highlight one proposed solution to the climate crises which is dangerously inappropriate as it carries huge, and very long-term environmental risks to be suffered by future generations. Please see my post on this issue. About the dangers of nuclear power.

There’s more to say about climate change

Obviously there is more to the climate change issue than considered above.
This article doesn’t cover all my thoughts on climate change so I will write another article soon. This will be on climate science and the questions campaigners don’t address.
Please also see my memories of an extreme weather event, the Fenland Floods of 1947. It includes a remarkable video.

YOUR OPINION

Do you believe that if we all drive electric cars, use heat pumps instead of gas boilers, insulate our houses to the maximum, never fly again  –  then floods, rising sea levels, forest fires and all the ills of climate change will end?

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The Fenland floods of 1947 – My memory of a natural disaster – and video

flooded Fen region 1947
flooded Fen region 1947

Do the media mislead young about climate change?  –  My experience of extreme weather

Young people who learn about natural disasters from the media may get an impression that things have never been so bad and are getting worse and worse all the time. It’s natural to be worried. There are always terrible things happening in the world but I think it is wrong to think the situation is worse than it’s ever been. We can blight our lives with fear if we get things out of proportion.

Many countries are experiencing more and worse problems than in previous history, but in some areas things are little changed or even much better. There have always been terrible natural disasters and extreme fluctuations in weather and everywhere is not consistently getting warmer and warmer.

And, most important, many places have learned to cope with the effects of ongoing climate change.

My story

When I was 4 years old, in March 1947, huge areas of the Fens in Eastern England were flooded, hundreds of thousands of acres of prime farmland. The floods extended to within a mile or two of where I was born in Spalding, Lincolnshire, and and to within a few miles of where I lived in the village of Surfleet.
My father did some” disaster tourism” and took the family out in the car one Sunday afternoon in March to have a look at the floods. I remember being driven along the Cowbit Road in Spalding by the side of the river Welland.

River Welland overflowing sandbags along the Cowbit Road in 1947

To my surprise I found a picture on the internet of this scene in 1947 close to the railway bridge across the river. My infant school was further along this road, about a quarter of a mile further north.

I remember the sandbags and not understanding how they could help with the flood. I think that when we were there the river level wasn’t up to the brim. And along the same road. I remember fire engines and long pipes, attached to the fire engines, along the edge of the road. This was also something I couldn’t understand.
The river Welland is to the left of the picture behind the trees and can be seen with the level of the water up to the top of the sandbags. Normally the water level in this river is twenty or so feet lower than it is in this picture.

We drove on past the village of Cowbit and along the bank and looked out on an endless extent of water with a farmhouse standing like an island maybe 200 yards from the bank on which our car had paused. A sort of raised road or causeway extended from the farmhouse to the road on the raised bank.
The flooding was said to be “the worst since 1880”.

Film of 1947 flooding of the Fens in Eastern England

Background: The winter of 1947

The winter of 1947 in the UK is remembered as one of the worst ever, but it didn’t begin this way. In fact, after the first cold week in January the weather was exceptionally warm. “During the night of 15-16 January, the temperature at Leeming in North Yorkshire didn’t fall below 11.7 °C.
The following day, maximum temperatures close to 14 °C were recorded in Norfolk, Herefordshire and Flintshire.” [Metlink article.]
The first night of frost was on 20th January. From then on matters got rapidly worse with snow everyday, blizzards, gales, and unrelenting low temperatures. The whole of the UK was gripped in freezing conditions and deep snow for almost two months. Life became very difficult.
A sudden change in the weather occurred on 8th March with the arrival of torrential rain which fell onto ground frozen solid and with drainage ditches blocked with ice.

There were burst river banks and floods all over the UK, but the low-lying Fens were particularly affected.

More information about the winter of 1947 can be found at
https://www.metlink.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/1947_1963winter.pdf

Coronation Channel and Marsh Road Sluice, Spalding

Preventing a recurrence of the problem

Following the flooding a long canal called the Coronation Channel was dug to direct excessive rising water out to sea. The drainage of the whole area is controlled by a system of channels, pumping stations and sluices (sliding barriers that can be raised or lowered to allow or prevent the flow of water)..

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Cold temperature variations, including Braemar 2021

The Met Office recorded a low of -23C in Braemar in Scotland over the night of 10-11th February 2021, the coldest February night since 1955.

But as the met office graph shows temperatures vary widely over the years.

Braemar holds the record for the lowest ever UK temperature – it has reached – 27.2 °C twice  –  in 1895 and 1982.

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Nuclear power is not an answer to climate change, but Sizewell C nuclear power station is coming soon

Nuclear power station

Nuclear power is not an answer to climate change

hinkley-Point-C-nuclear-power-stn-May-2020.

Compelling reasons (some given by the government itself) make nuclear power completely unacceptable. CO2 production is not negligible if the full story from initial building to dealing with long-term radioactive nuclear waste is considered.

Earlier last month (14 December 2020) the government announced that it has begun talks with French energy company, EDF, about building a new nuclear power station in Suffolk, Sizewell-C. Planning hurdles still have to be overcome and there may be problems working with China as a co-developer of this project. It is possible this project may be halted.

The picture above  shows Hinkley Point nuclear power station currently under construction (2020).

Nuclear power station

Key problems associated with nuclear power production

Vast quantities of CO2 are, in fact, produced by nuclear power stations, especially at the manufacturing and building stages. But there are other highly significant issues – very long-term environmental and health hazards, extreme costs especially of the often unmentioned decommissioning process, creating material for nuclear weapons, and problems of security.

CO2

Whilst it is true that the actual production of nuclear power at the time of generation produces negligible CO2, the actual building of generators and the nuclear power station itself and issues like the mining and milling of uranium ore and transport of nuclear materials and nuclear waste together create enormous quantities of CO2.

Of course the manufacture and installation of wind farms and solar farms also produce a considerable amount of CO2. And experts will disagree about the amounts of CO2 produced by any kind of power generation system.

Take the full series of CO2 production stages into account

However, it seems to me to be very important to check that those producing statistics which suggest a low level of CO2 produced by nuclear power stations have actually taken into account more than simply the building and on-site operation of a nuclear power station. They should not be allowed to overlook the CO2 costs of mining, processing and transporting uranium ore, or the CO2 costs of building deep, underground storage facilities and the transport of uranium waste to its eventual storage facility.
See below for some of the facts.

Radio-active, toxic waste

Nuclear power generation creates vast quantities of cancer-causing radioactive waste which remains highly dangerous and radioactive for many generations to come, in fact for thousands of years. This nuclear waste presents environmental problems and costs which are so great that they cannot be paid for within the lifetimes of people currently alive. The waste from current and recent nuclear power stations has not been successfully stored and no-one has so far suggested a satisfactory way of doing this. See the extracts below from a recent government report on this problem
The decommissioning of nuclear power stations at the end of their useful life is part of this environmental problem.

Financial Costs

Building costs are enormous and have, so far, always gone well over budget. According to December 2017 estimates, Hinkley Point nuclear power station currently under construction was to be built for £20.3bn by 2025, to be paid for over a 35 year period. It is now estimated that it will cost between £21.5bn and £22.5bn (BBC)

The costs of decommissioning (cleaning up the radio-active defunct nuclear power stations and removing radio-active waste to yet-to-be-built safe storage facilities which need to remain safe for thousands of years) are beyond calculation (see the extracts from a UK Government’s Public Accounts Committee report below) – a financial burden which is omitted from cost calculations of nuclear energy. The energy companies will pass the waste disposal problem and costs onto succeeding governments and generations. We (and our children) will pay for this in our energy bills and taxation.

The UK government’s Public Accounts Committee report

The Public Accounts Committee report describes the cost of dismantling spent nuclear reactors and disposing of nuclear waste as “ inherently uncertain”. It has drawn attention to the incompetence with which waste disposal and decommissioning are handled in the UK, and the estimate that today’s waste could take up to 120 years to make safe. If these costs are added into the cost of nuclear “cheap energy” it will be seen as not only highly dangerous but also far more expensive than the day-to-day running costs would suggest.

Risky involvement of China in nuclear power production.

As at the power station, Hinkley Point C, now under construction, the Sizewell C plant would include the participation of a country we have serious concerns about with regard to human rights, China. China General Nuclear Power has a 20% stake in Sizewell C. This company has been accused of espionage by the United States. Chinese access may include access to plutonium, the key radio-active ingredient in nuclear weapons.
Wikipedia notes, “China General Nuclear Power has been blacklisted by the United States Department of Commerce for attempting to acquire advanced U.S. nuclear technology and material for diversion to military use.” There is talk (BBC) that China is thinking of pulling out of the project.
The reactor is of Chinese design. (BBC website 14 December 2020)

Security

Do we want to give our nuclear know-how to China? Do we want to give a foreign power intimate knowledge of a hazardous facility which might, in a war situation, be turned into a nuclear threat.
Nuclear power stations might make us especially vulnerable to terrorists or if we were ever involved in a war involving bombing.

Nuclear power stations are at risk from earthquakes, rising sea levels and accidents.

Making nuclear weapons

Britain’s first “nuclear power station”, Calder Hall in Cumbria, was developed to create plutonium for nuclear bombs. As a by-product of creating plutonium its excess energy was used to generate electricity, so producing plutonium is a key function and the original function of nuclear power stations.
Do we need plutonium? almost all countries in the world don’t rely on nuclear weapons to ensure good relationships with other countries. Surely we do not need to rely on the threat of mass extinction of our enemies in order to bolster our presence in the world.

Can we manage without more nuclear power stations?

If this country had been really active in insulating British homes well in recent decades there is no doubt that the country could have managed with fewer power stations. I don’t know how much scope there is now for saving on energy usage by further improvements in the insulation of British houses.

If we do need more sources of energy to replace defunct nuclear power stations or conventional power stations how are we going to cope with the fact that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Greenpeace suggests that nuclear power stations are unnecessary and that renewable energy coupled with battery storage is the answer. A small number of power stations using non-renewable energy may be necessary.

What should be done about nuclear power in the UK?

We are told that any final decision to build a new nuclear power station at Sizewell in Suffolk will be subject to a full regulatory and planning approval process. However, The planning process in the UK for major projects like nuclear power, HS2, Cross-rail and airports are now outside local planning decision-making. The Government has reclassified such projects as being of such ‘national importance’ that they have removed the rights of councils to make objections that result in delays. The term used by the government to describe this class of project is Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIPs).

Nevertheless, the government’s planning department (National Infrastructure Planning) is open to receive comments from any organisation or individual, but the consultation process with regard to Sizewell C is already at an advanced stage. See https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/Eastern/The-Sizewell-C-Project/
You can sign up for updates on this project on the planning inspectorate’s website.

These changes in planning procedure reduce democracy by taking power away from local areas that may be where there is most impact from a planning decision.

The need for independent pressure groups

This increases the need for pressure groups like Greenpeace to try to safeguard people and the environment.
I suggest we can do without the risks to human life, environmental risks and the high costs of nuclear power stations. What will happen next? What should happen?

David Roberts, 14 January 2021


Further explanations below

  1. EDF’s calculations on CO2
  2. A pressure group’s calculation of CO2 costs of Sizewell C – Together Against Sizewell C
  3. UK Government’s Public Accounts Committee report on radioactivity and the unsolved decommissioning problem.
  4. In simple terms what are radioactive substances and what is radiation?

EDF’s CO2 Calculations

The French energy group estimates that 5.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide will be emitted in the nine to twelve years that it will take to build the Sizewell C plant. (The Times, 20 August 2020.)

Against this initial estimate EDF predicts that Sizewell C will save 9 million tonnes of CO2 emission every year as compared with gas-fired power stations. The company fails to mention other sources of CO2 produced in the running of a nuclear power station and these are explained in the following extract from the website of Together Against Sizewell C, a pressure group opposed to the construction of Sizewell C.

EDF’s figures are highly speculative and difficult even for an expert to challenge. Nevertheless, we should ask for an itemised account so that we can judge whether all aspects of the production of nuclear energy have been accounted for. The comments by the pressure group, Together Against Sizewell C, identify some potentially significant aspects of the production of nuclear energy which have probably not been taken into account.

TASC’s view on EDF’s claim that nuclear power is low carbon

Edited comments from pressure group, Together Against Sizewell C
Important questions not covered by EDF in its publicity for the power station.

TASC would like to correct EDF’s contention that nuclear power is a low carbon source of electricity. We believe that, in the current climate of crisis over the atmospheric carbon, it is vital that the energy policy the UK pursues is not predicated on assumptions which give a false impression of the carbon footprint of the Sizewell C development.
CO2 and Sizewell C Nuclear Power station
As part of their promotion of the Sizewell C project, EDF makes great claims of nuclear’s ‘low carbon footprint’. While we agree that the operating of the plant itself and the process of generating electricity through the fission process will be more carbon efficient than fossil fuel combustion, it is untrue to claim that the nuclear fuel cycle renders the technology truly ‘low carbon’.
Many authoritative studies show that when the “cradle to cradle” assessment of the carbon footprint of a new nuclear power plant is calculated, a far higher figure than that used by EDF is produced. EDF claim lifetime emissions of 12gCO2e/kWh [12 grammes of CO2 are produced per kilowatt hour of electricity] for nuclear reactors generally and 5gCO2e/kWh for EDF Hinkley Point C. However, studies carried out by others show a figure of more than 50gCO2e/kWh in one meta-analysis reported in the Ecologist magazine and a range of 78-178gCO2e/kWh in another carried out by Mark Jacobson.
Given the climate emergency declared by the UK government and the importance of establishing a sustainable low-carbon economy, we believe all large infrastructure projects need to establish their greenhouse gas emissions credentials. TASC believes that Sizewell C will have a huge upfront carbon debt from the uranium fuel and from its construction and are concerned that this debt will occur in the period that the International Panel on Climate Change, in 2018, said that we need to reduce our carbon emissions by at least 45% to keep the global temperature rise down to 1.5%.
For a new nuclear power plant such as Sizewell C, the calculation would need to include the carbon, and other greenhouse gases, produced from activities including:-
The mining, milling, fabrication, enrichment and transportation of the uranium fuel needed so the power station is ready for use.
The construction of the power stations and all of its infrastructure (roads, roundabouts, railways, jetties, sea walls, beach landing facilities, cement batching plant, dry fuel stores etc etc) including the mining, processing and transportation of all the materials and transport of staff and contractors.
The operation of the plant including materials and daily personnel transportation (including flights of international specialists) for planned and unplanned outages, replacement fuel and packaging and processing of spent fuel, maintaining and increasing sea defences to deal with rising sea levels and storm surges.
Radio-active nuclear waste and the decommissioning of nuclear power stations
The decommissioning and total dismantling of the power stations and restitution of the site to its original state.
The storage of the radioactive waste until such time as it becomes no more dangerous than its original state. There appear to be two basic ways of considering this:-
Proposals for a deep Geological Disposal Facility, requiring a programme to accommodate the waste, are still uncertain, making the carbon footprint calculation for the disposal programme difficult if not impossible to assess given the depth, location, volume and configuration of any GDF, should it ever find a willing community to host it, are unknown. In addition, the GDF itself will require a complicated and extensive transport infrastructure. It would be appropriate to calculate the carbon footprint for building one, maybe two nominal repositories which would be the largest ever civil engineering project in the UK with a series of chambers at possible depths between 200m and 1,000m below ground covering several square miles. The thousands of spent fuel assemblies will require thousands of tonnes of copper cladding which will have to be mined and smelted before turning into cylinders and there will of course be processing and transport requirements.
TASC believes we have to accept storage of the waste in specially built surface level or just below surface level stores (viz Sizewell B Dry Fuel Store). The carbon footprint calculation will need to take into account the requirement for the site to be protected, maintained, renewed and probably relocated, due to the impact of rising sea levels and increased storm surges, over the millennia.
Please see their website for more details https://tasizewellc.org.uk/carbon-emissions/

House of Commons Public Accounts Committee
UK Government Report on Radio-activity and the unsolved decommissioning problem

Extracts from the Report on the work of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) Session 2019–21
23 November 2020

[This report is primarily about the clearing up of radio-active materials and equipment from the British Magnox nuclear reactors which have so far been closed down, but it makes clear the worrying uncertainty about the unprecedented timescale to complete the task of decommissioning nuclear power stations and the unknowability of the escalating costs]

The report states:
“The uncertainty affecting the Magnox sites reflects a wider uncertainty about the costs and timetable of decommissioning the whole civil nuclear estate. According to the NDA’s [Nuclear Decommissioning Authority ] most recent estimates it will cost the UK taxpayer £132 billion to decommission the UK’s civil nuclear sites and the NDA estimates that the work will not be completed for another 120 years.”
“The cost of the long-term liability to decommission the UK’s civil nuclear sites now stands at £132 billion, though by its nature this estimate is inherently uncertain. When pushed to provide us with a full and final figure for the cost of decommissioning the Magnox sites, The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s management of the Magnox contract the NDA could not do so and stated that this will not be possible until the work has been completed.”
“Public accountability is hindered by a lack of transparency about the scale and nature of the challenge of decommissioning and the performance of the NDA. Nuclear decommissioning will cost current and future generations of taxpayers’ substantial sums of money.”

In simple terms what are radioactive substances and what is radiation?

Radiation is an invisible energy which can pass through solid objects in a similar way to which magnetism and radio waves can pass through solid objects. Radiation is emitted (or given off) by certain elements including polonium, radon, strontium 90, uranium, and plutonium. In fact there are three grades or kinds of both uranium and plutonium. Substances which give off radiation are said to be radio-active. Some of these substances occur naturally, but some (like plutonium) are man-made in nuclear reactors which are like a special kind of furnace.
The radiation produced by radioactive elements can have beneficial uses for human beings and can also often be extremely dangerous. For example radiation can be used in radiotherapy to kill cancer cells. Other effects of radiation include burns, cell damage, cancer, radiation sickness, DNA damage leading to mutations, and death. Radiation is typically emitted by radioactive elements for many years, often thousands of years which is why this highly toxic material is of such concern for the environment and human health. Radioactive particles can be released into the atmosphere by nuclear bombs and nuclear accidents possibly causing immediate deaths and longer term increases in cancers and genetic mutations over wide areas such as entire countries.
Two radioactive substances are of special importance in connection with nuclear power generation: plutonium and uranium.
Plutonium is created inside nuclear power station reactors. Three kinds are produced – plutonium 239, plutonium 241 and plutonium 242. It is plutonium 239 which is used to make atomic bombs. The inhalation of 30 micrograms of plutonium has been calculated to be enough to kill an adult by causing cancer. The acquisition of plutonium is therefore something that might be very attractive to terrorists or enemy states and requires constant guarding.
Uranium ore is mined. Most of this ore, 99.3% uranium-238, is only very mildly radioactive and of no use for nuclear power generation. To extract the 0.7% of highly radioactive uranium-235 a great deal of effort, energy and cost is required to break up the ore and extract the reactor grade uranium. This process itself produces large quantities of radioactive waste.
How long does radiation last?
The radioactivity of radio-active substances can last for many thousands of years. The strength of the radioactivity of each radioactive element reduces over time and eventually reduces to nothing. As a way of expressing how long it will take for the radioactivity of each element to decline scientists use the term “half-life” which is the time it takes for the strength of the radioactivity to reduce to half of what it is at the beginning of the element’s life. The half-life of plutonium-239 is 24,100 years. The half-life of uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years. In contrast, the half-life of radon is 3.82 days.


Footnotes

  • Statement by Queen Elizabeth on opening Calder Hall plutonium facility in 1956.
  • CO2 and power stations
  • Why CO2 produced by concrete is such an important global concern – Concrete’s role in world CO2 emissions
  • Worth researching – nuclear power station disasters: Chernobyl and Fukushima
  • References
Statement by her gracious Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, on opening the world’s first full-scale nuclear power station

“Calder Hall was built as a requirement for more military plutonium and as an experiment to investigate the possibilities of adapting nuclear energy to the production of electrical power quickly, cheaply and safely.” 17 October 1956

CO2 and power stations

Concrete/Cement is a major component of nuclear power stations. Just the base of the nuclear power station being built at Hinkley Point needed 49,000 tons of concrete, completed May 2020. This produced 61,000 tons of CO2 emissions.
Infrastructure, transport and transport links, mining uranium ore, milling the ore, manufacturing machinery, reactors and other large items of equipment will all have a CO2 costs.
Decommissioning and storing radioactive nuclear waste for generations is the great, untold, uncosted nuclear mystery. The construction of the facilities and the transport of materials have CO2 costs.

Why CO2 produced by concrete is such an important global concern – Concrete’s role in world CO2 emissions
Concrete is responsible for 10% of global CO2 emissions. This compares with the global aviation industry producing around 2% of all human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC 2015 on Concrete. The panel stated that cement production globally rose to 4.2 billion tonnes. According to the IPCC, for every tonne of cement produced there is a one and a quarter tonnes equivalent of CO2 released. 4.2 billion tonnes of cement multiplied by 1.25 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement produced gives an eye watering 5.2 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted from cement production in 2015. In the same year total CO2 emissions from human sources was 36 billion tonnes. This puts carbon emissions from cement just under 10% of all human emissions, and growing.
The reason one tonne of cement produces 1.25 tonnes of CO2 is that the CO2 comes from two sources.
First the limestone which is burned to make cement is more than twice the density of water and has to be heated to 1,450 degrees C, which uses a lot of fossil fuel, about .75 tonnes per tonne of cement.
Second to the energy load to heat the limestone, the stone itself is composed of calcium and carbon. To make cement the extremely stable carbon, the living part of the creatures whose remains make up the limestone, has to be made into CO2. In this way we have made two sources of very stable fossilised carbon into a huge amount of CO2. – Explanation from Rammed Earth Consulting. http://rammedearthconsulting.com

Worth researching – nuclear disasters

Chernobyl: The Chernobyl nuclear meltdown and the radioactive fallout which spread over Western Europe, 26 April 1986.
Fukushima: for information about the disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant when an earthquake struck in March 2011.

References

BBC website, 14 December 2020.
EDF on CO2 https://www.edfenergy.com/energy/nuclear-new-build-projects/hinkley-point-c/news-views/low-carbon-climate-change
Together Against Sizewell C https://tasizewellc.org.uk/carbon-emissions/
On EDF The Times, 20 August 2020

About concrete and CO2 http://rammedearthconsulting.com

UK Government Report on Radio-activity and the unsolved decommissioning problem
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5801/cmselect/cmpubacc/653/65305.htm

The Government planning department’s account of the planning process for Sizewell C and the documents submitted to it in their consultation process. https://infrastructure.planninginspectorate.gov.uk/projects/Eastern/The-Sizewell-C-Project/

The Doomsday Machine – The high price of nuclear energy, the world’s most dangerous fuel. By Martin Cohen and Andrew McKillop, Palgrave Macmillan 2012.

David Roberts, 13 January 2021 ©️ 2021 www.davidrobertsblog.com  Please share.


Petition against Sizewell C

Please consider signing the petition against Sizewell C. Link: –

https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/stop-sizewell-c-huge-new-nuclear-development-in-suffolk-a-o-n-b?share=90dfaaeb-2ff7-491d-bcce-f03191d6222d&source=&utm_source=

Comment box
I’d be interested to hear your insights or view on this important topic.  DR.
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Cold in Spain January 2021

Spain recorded its lowest temperature on Thursday 7 January -35.8°C. The temperature was recorded at the Vega de Liordes weather station, at an altitude of 1,874 metres in the north-western province of Leon. It is not clear how long Spain has operated weather stations at such altitudes. Meanwhile deep snow covered much of Spain causing four deaths and closing air and rail links to Madrid. On Friday 8 January, Madrid experienced its heaviest snowfalls since 1971 with conditions caused by Storm Filomena