COP28 was the world’s latest climate change conference. The fooferaw about a phase-out of decidedly ‘ungreen’ fossil fuel energy somewhat obscured some other developments at the conference, including consideration of nuclear fission power as a possible solution for the world’s appetite for energy.
How does ‘Nuclear Rehab,’ as mentioned in the headline above, relate to affordable housing? Social Housing — a form of affordable housing — cannot escape the energy costs needed to replace decidedly ‘ungreen’ fossil fuel for home climate control.
Today’s ‘darling’ replacements are touted to be heat pumps. They extract energy from the ground and from the air, but it’s not a free ride. The extraction process itself requires energy. Currently, electricity is the readily available option to power heat pumps.
But here’s the catch: if heat pumps need to ‘burn’ the same amount of energy (measured by it’s cost) as is needed to mine heat from ground or air, then there is absolutely no point to a wondrous flash in the pan — the heat pump.
Heat pumps, therefore, are not a miracle cure. Electricity could help them fill that bill, but only if it is available cheaply.
Oh Yeah? Like, from where?
Well, there are options. Canada, for example, has abundant hydroelectric resources. Most other countries are not nearly as fortunate. But such gravity-powered ‘green’ energy resources may well only deliver a fraction of what will be needed to power widespread heat pumps as well as a world of vehicles powered by electricity.
One obvious solution is to turn our attention back to a proven source of ‘green’ electrical energy that can be converted from nuclear power. Nuclear reactors ‘burn’ uranium, which is not a renewable resource. But nonetheless the world’s abundance of uranium can be an enormous source of energy, which can be converted to forms that can replace fossil fuels.
That brings us back to recent events at COP28. One outcome of the conference was an agreement by 20 countries to triple their nuclear power production by 2050. The top 10 producers, including America at #1 and Canada at #8 were in this group.
This is an extraordinary endorsement of an energy resource, which has become a non starter in many countries due to its highly publicized mismanagement and spent fuel storage dangers.
Search the internet for the term ‘nuclear’ and expect to find, not so much this new international nuclear commitment, but a library of articles evaluating the possibilities for permanent safe storage of highly radioactive spent nuclear fuel. The fact that Canada has the wide open spaces to store an entire world’s worth of spent nuclear fuel cannot hide the fact that the issue continues to stoke the fears of its citizens, with roughly half the population unhappy with nuclear power.
Here’s an article about one country’s commitment to tripling nuclear power production, as well as thorny issues such as reactor size and safety. Read more in JDSUPRA: Canada Endorses Nuclear Industry’s Powerful Statement On Net Zero
World-wide, there promises to be a great deal of scrambling for countries to produce sufficient nuclear power within the pledged time limit. UK publications are currently reporting that UK Nuclear output has collapsed to a 42 year low1.
