Summary

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  • Caselist.CitesClass[9]
  • Caselist.CitesClass[10]

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Caselist.CitesClass[9]

EntryDate

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1		-2016-10-02 17:38:10.438
	1	+2016-10-02 17:38:10.0

Caselist.CitesClass[10]

Cites

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	1	+Empirically, nuclear shutdowns get replaced by natural gas. Plumer 16
	2	+Brad Plumer, Nuclear power and renewables don’t have to be enemies. New York just showed how., August 2, 2016, Vox.com EE
	3	+Nuclear power is the country’s largest source of carbon-free energy, supplying about 19 percent of our electricity, but it’s barely growing. Wind and solar are smaller, at about 8 percent, but they’re growing much more rapidly. Put those together, and you get an intuitive blueprint for reducing US carbon dioxide emissions: Protect the nuclear base, and then scale up wind and solar on top of that, displacing fossil fuels as you go. Seems reasonable, no? Yet, oddly enough, many states have struggled with this simple concept. Even as policymakers have stepped up subsidies for renewable energy, they’ve been letting their nuclear plants shut down prematurely — to be replaced by dirtier natural gas. We’ve already seen this in California, Vermont, Wisconsin. And it’s going to keep happening in the years ahead without serious policy changes. These early nuclear retirements are poised to wipe out many of the impressive gains made by renewables. So it’s significant news that, this week, New York state offered a fresh approach to this problem. On Monday, the state’s public service commission approved an extremely aggressive clean energy standard that will require utilities to get 50 percent of their electricity from wind, solar, hydro, and other renewable sources by 2030. But — importantly — New York will also offer subsidies to keep open three large existing nuclear power plants that are suffering economically in this shifting energy landscape and were in danger of shutting down prematurely. This way, the state isn’t just taking one step forward, two steps back, on climate change.
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	6	+Natural Gas is horrible – laundry list. UCS
	7	+Union of Concerned Scientists, Environmental Impacts of Natural Gas, ucsusa.com, EE
	8	+Cleaner burning than other fossil fuels, the combustion of natural gas produces negligible amounts of sulfur, mercury, and particulates. Burning natural gas does produce nitrogen oxides (NOx), which are precursors to smog, but at lower levels than gasoline and diesel used for motor vehicles. DOE analyses indicate that every 10,000 U.S. homes powered with natural gas instead of coal avoids the annual emissions of 1,900 tons of NOx, 3,900 tons of SO2, and 5,200 tons of particulates 7. Reductions in these emissions translate into public health benefits, as these pollutants have been linked with problems such as asthma, bronchitis, lung cancer, and heart disease for hundreds of thousands of Americans 9. However, despite these benefits, unconventional gas development can affect local and regional air quality. Some areas where drilling occurs have experienced increases in concentrations of hazardous air pollutants and two of the six “criteria pollutants” — particulate matter and ozone plus its precursors — regulated by the EPA because of their harmful effects on health and the environment 9. Exposure to elevated levels of these air pollutants can lead to adverse health outcomes, including respiratory symptoms, cardiovascular disease, and cancer 11. One recent study found that residents living less than half a mile from unconventional gas well sites were at greater risk of health effects from air pollution from natural gas development than those living farther from the well sites 12. The construction and land disturbance required for oil and gas drilling can alter land use and harm local ecosystems by causing erosion and fragmenting wildlife habitats and migration patterns. When oil and gas operators clear a site to build a well pad, pipelines, and access roads, the construction process can cause erosion of dirt, minerals, and other harmful pollutants into nearby streams 13. A study of hydraulic fracturing impacts in Michigan found potential environmental impacts to be “significant” and include increased erosion and sedimentation, increased risk of aquatic contamination from chemical spills or equipment runoff, habitat fragmentation, and reduction of surface waters as a result of the lowering of groundwater levels 14. Water use and pollution Unconventional oil and gas development may pose health risks to nearby communities through contamination of drinking water sources with hazardous chemicals used in drilling the wellbore, hydraulically fracturing the well, processing and refining the oil or gas, or disposing of wastewater 15. Naturally occurring radioactive materials, methane, and other underground gases have sometimes leaked into drinking water supplies from improperly cased wells; methane is not associated with acute health effects but in sufficient volumes may pose flammability concerns 16. The large volumes of water used in unconventional oil and gas development also raise water-availability concerns in some communities. Groundwater There have been documented cases of groundwater near oil and gas wells being contaminated with fracking fluids as well as with gases, including methane and volatile organic compounds. One major cause of gas contamination is improperly constructed or failing wells that allow gas to leak from the well into groundwater. Cases of contamination have been documented in Ohio and Pennsylvania 17. Another potential avenue for groundwater contamination is natural or man-made fractures in the subsurface, which could allow stray gas to move directly between an oil and gas formation and groundwater supplies. In addition to gases, groundwater can become contaminated with hydraulic fracturing fluid 18. In several cases, groundwater was contaminated from surface leaks and spills of fracturing fluid. Fracturing fluid also may migrate along abandoned wells, around improperly sealed and constructed wells, through induced fractures, or through failed wastewater pit liners 19. Surface Water Unconventional oil and gas development also poses contamination risks to surface waters through spills and leaks of chemical additives, spills and leaks of diesel or other fluids from equipment on-site, and leaks of wastewater from facilities for storage, treatment, and disposal. Unlike groundwater contamination risks, surface water contamination risks are mostly related to land management and to on- and off-site chemical and wastewater management. The EPA has identified more than 1,000 chemical additives that are used for hydraulic fracturing, including acids (notably hydrochloric acid), bactericides, scale removers, and friction-reducing agents. Only maybe a dozen chemicals are used for any given well, but the choice of which chemicals is well-specific, depending on the geochemistry and needs of that well 20. Large quantities — tens of thousands of gallons for each well — of the chemical additives are trucked to and stored on a well pad. If not managed properly, the chemicals could leak or spill out of faulty storage containers or during transport. Drilling muds, diesel, and other fluids can also spill at the surface 21. Improper management of flowback or produced wastewater can cause leaks and spills. There is also risk to surface water from deliberate improper disposal of wastewater by bad actors. Water Use The growth of hydraulic fracturing and its use of huge volumes of water per well may strain local ground and surface water supplies, particularly in water-scarce areas. The amount of water used for hydraulically fracturing a well can vary because of differences in formation geology, well construction, and the type of hydraulic fracturing process used 22. The EPA estimates that 70 billion to 140 billion gallons of water were used nationwide in 2011 for fracturing an estimated 35,000 wells 23. Unlike other energy-related water withdrawals, which are commonly returned to rivers and lakes, most of the water used for unconventional oil and gas development is not recoverable. Depending on the type of well along with its depth and location, a single well with horizontal drilling can require 3 million to 12 million gallons of water when it is first fractured — dozens of times more than what is used in conventional vertical wells 24. Similar vast volumes of water are needed each time a well undergoes a “work over,” or additional fracturing later in its life to maintain well pressure and gas production. A typical shale gas well will have about two work overs during its productive life span 25. Earthquakes Hydraulic fracturing itself has been linked to low-magnitude seismic activity—less than 2 moment magnitude (M) the moment magnitude scale now replaces the Richter scale— but such mild events are usually undetectable at the surface 26. The disposal of fracking wastewater by injecting it at high pressure into deep Class II injection wells, however, has been linked to larger earthquakes in the United States 27. At least half of the 4.5 M or larger earthquakes to strike the interior of the United States in the past decade have occurred in regions of potential injection-induced seismicity 28. Although it can be challenging to attribute individual earthquakes to injection, in many cases the association is supported by timing and location of the events 29.
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	10	+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
	11	+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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	13	+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	+2016-10-02 17:38:11.350

Judge

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	1	+Sarah Garris

Opponent

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	1	+Christopher Columbus AT

ParentRound

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	1	+3

Round

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	1	+5

Team

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	1	+Harvard Westlake Paul Neg

Title

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	1	+SeptOct - DA Natural Gas

Tournament

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	1	+Holy Cross