Summary

• Objects (1 modified, 1 added, 0 removed)
  • Caselist.RoundClass[6]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[6]

Details

Caselist.RoundClass[6]

EntryDate

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1		-2016-09-10 21:26:41.8
	1	+2016-09-10 21:26:41.0

Caselist.CitesClass[6]

Cites

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	1	+Phasing out nuclear power empirically increases use of coal and gas. Other forms of green energy are too expensive. Adler 16
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	3	+Mother Jones; Bernie Sanders Wants to Phase Out Nuclear Power; Ben Adler; April 5, 2016, 6:00 AM; http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/04/grist-bernie-sanders-wants-to-phase-out-nuclear-power-plants
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	5	+Is hastening nuclear power's demise a good idea? Holthaus, citing Nordhaus' frequent collaborator Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, arguesthat if you ramp down nuclear too quickly, it will lead to an increase in the use of coal or gas.¶ "The net effect of nuclear retirements will generally be increasing emissions."¶ That's also the view of Devin Hartman, electricity policy manager for the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank, and a former energy market analyst at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He points out that retired nuclear plants in the Northeast and California have been mostly replaced by increased natural gas usage. And in Japan and Germany, where the governments have been shutting down nuclear reactors since the Fukushima meltdown, coal use has spiked.¶ "Shutting down nuclear plants would create a little more demand for energy efficiency and renewables, but the net effect of nuclear retirements will generally be increasing emissions," Hartman says.¶ That's partly because there is excess coal- and gas-burning capacity in the current energy system. While generating an additional megawatt-hour of electricity from existing solar or wind facilities can be cheaper than burning coal, building a whole new set of wind turbines is more expensive than just feeding more gas into your existing gas-fired plant.¶ Holthaus cites a report from centrist think tank Third Way on US nuclear plant retirements; it projects that shuttered plants would lead to more natural gas usage and increased CO2 emissions.
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	7	+MSRs are easier to make and mass-produce making them a cheaper alternative to burning coal. Williams 16
	8	+Stephen Williams Software engineer and former technical writer. Focuses now in many issues surrounding energy use, such as climate change, ocean acidification, energy poverty, and pollution. July 4, 2016. How Molten Salt Reactors Might Spell a Nuclear Energy Revolution, ZMEScience.com August 23, 2016 SH
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	10	+How do we get all 7 billion people on the planet (perhaps 9 billion by 2050) to agree to drastically cut their CO2 emissions? The answer: make it in their immediate self-interest by providing cheap C02-free energy, energy cheaper than they can get by burning coal.¶ MSRs can be made cheaply because they are simple compared to conventional reactors that have large pressurized containment domes and many engineered (and not inherent) and redundant safety systems. Having far few parts than conventional reactors, MSRs are inherently cheaper. This simplicity also allows MSRs to be small, which in turn makes them ideal for factory-based mass production (unlike conventional reactors). The cost efficiencies associated with mass production further drive down the cost and can make the ramp up of nuclear power much faster.
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	12	+Turns and outweighs the case, nuclear power has saved more people than it’s killed – natural gas causes more death per kilowatt and – our evidence is comparative and takes into account waste. Kharecha and Hansen 13
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	14	+Pushker A. Kharecha and James E. Hansen Pushker Kharecha is an associate research scientist at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University’s Center for Climate Systems Research. James E. Hansen, Goddard’s former director, is an adjunct professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University., Fossil Fuels Do Far More Harm Than Nuclear Power, APRIL 15, 2013, Earth Institute Coloumbia University EE
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	16	+Using historical electricity production data and mortality and emission factors from the peer-reviewed scientific literature, we found that despite the three major nuclear accidents the world has experienced — at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima — nuclear power prevented an average of over 1.8 million net deaths worldwide between 1971-2009. This amounts to at least hundreds and more likely thousands of times more deaths than it caused. An average of 76,000 deaths per year were avoided between 2000-2009. Likewise, we calculate that nuclear power prevented an average of 64 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent net GHG emissions globally between 1971-2009. This is about 15 times more emissions than it caused. It is equivalent to the past 35 years or 17 years of CO2 emissions from coal burning in the US or China, respectively. In effect, nuclear energy production has prevented the building of hundreds of large coal-fired power plants. To compute potential future effects, we started with projected nuclear energy supply for 2010-2050 from an assessment by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency that takes into account the effects of the Fukushima accident. We assumed that all of this projected nuclear energy is canceled and replaced entirely by energy from either coal or natural gas. We calculated that this nuclear phaseout scenario would lead to an average of 420,000 to 7 million deaths and 80–240 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent net GHG emissions globally. This emissions range corresponds to 16-48 of the “allowable” cumulative CO2 emissions between 2012-2050 if the world chooses to aim for a target atmospheric CO2 concentration of 350 parts per million by around the end of this century. In other words, projected nuclear power could reduce the CO2 mitigation burden for meeting this target by as much as 16–48. The largest uncertainties and limitations of our analysis stem from the assumed values for impacts per unit electric energy produced. However, we emphasize that our results for both prevented mortality and prevented GHG emissions could be substantial underestimates, because (among other reasons) our mortality and emission factors are based on analysis of Europe and the US (respectively), and thus neglect the fact that fatal air pollution and GHG emissions from power plants in developing countries are on average substantially higher per unit energy produced than in developed countries. Our findings also have important implications for large-scale “fuel switching” to natural gas from coal or from nuclear. Although natural gas burning emits less fatal pollution and GHGs than coal burning, it is far deadlier than nuclear power, causing about 40 times more deaths per unit electric energy produced. Also, such fuel switching is practically guaranteed to worsen the climate problem for several reasons. First, carbon capture and storage is an immature technology and is therefore unlikely to constrain the resulting GHG emissions in the necessary time frame. Second, electricity infrastructure generally has a long lifetime (e.g., fossil fuel power plants typically operate for up to 50 years). Third, potentially usable natural gas resources (especially unconventional ones like shale gas) are enormous, containing many hundreds to thousands of gigatonnes of carbon (based on a recent comprehensive assessment. For perspective, the atmosphere currently contains about 830 gigatonnes of carbon, of which 200 gigatonnes are from industrial-era fossil fuel burning. We conclude that nuclear energy – despite posing several challenges, as do all energy sources – needs to be retained and significantly expanded in order to avoid or minimize the devastating impacts of unabated climate change and air pollution caused by fossil fuel burning.

EntryDate

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	1	+2016-09-10 21:26:43.372

Judge

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	1	+Caton Lu

Opponent

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	1	+Elite of Irvine NM

ParentRound

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	1	+6

Round

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	1	+3

Team

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	1	+Harvard Westlake Engel Neg

Title

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	1	+SEPT-OCT - DA - Shift

Tournament

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	1	+Loyola