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-The aff causes a shift to coal and gas – electricity has to come from somewhere. Baum 15 |
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-Seth Baum Executive Director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute; Ph.D., Geography, Pennsylvania State University; M.S., Electrical Engineering, Northeastern University, "Japan should restart more nuclear power plants," Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, http://thebulletin.org/japan-should-restart-more-nuclear-power-plants8817. Credits: Greenhill SK |
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-Restarting Japan’s nuclear power plants is, however, the right decision, provided they can pass strict new safety checks instituted since Fukushima. The reason is simple: While nuclear power comes with risks, the primary alternative comes with bigger ones. Turning off nuclear power requires either turning on another power source, or using less electricity. Japan has done both. Its total energy consumption is down 10 percent since 2010 due to the nuclear phase-out, but use of natural gas, a source of greenhouse gas emissions, is up 19 percent, and use of coal, which is even more harmful to the environment, is up 2 percent. (The data is available here.) Japan is now building 45 new coal power plants, but if it turned its nuclear power plants back on (except of course for the damaged Fukushima facilities), it could cut coal consumption in half. And coal poses more health and climate change dangers than nuclear power. |
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-Renewables cannot provide baseload power and accommodate population growth. Abernathy 15 |
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-Mark Abernathy speechwriter, ghostwriter, journalist and author. Born in New Zealand, he has lived in Australia for most of his adult life. A former editor at Australian Penthouse magazine, he has also written for the Australian Financial Review 11-30-2015, "Solar, wind, nuclear power on the rise, but coal still has its place," Financial Review, http://www.afr.com/news/special-reports/australia-energy-future/preparing-for-the-electricity-surge-20151129-glapit. Brackets in Original |
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-Australian's vision of a decarbonised power supply is bold but it reveals the conundrum at the heart of energy planning. The problem is not simply taking carbon out of the electricity grid, a task the South Australian government has embraced as it reaches 27 per cent wind-generated power. The future challenge is producing reliable power with low carbon emissions, as the population increases and people and continue to live in electricity-hungry cities. Getting the future energy equation right is a moving target. The International Energy Agency forecasts an 80 per cent increase in world electricity demand to 2040, with an increase in total energy demand (gas, coal, oil, renewables) of 37 per cent by 2040. And even with a massive push for renewables, 75 per cent of the energy used globally will be still be the hydrocarbons of oil, gas and coal, which produce the highest carbon emissions. The Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE) forecasts Australian energy usage to grow 42 per cent to 2050, with electricity generation growing 30 per cent over the same period. But renewables such as solar and wind will not take over the generation task. Coal's share of total electricity generation will remain stable at about 65 per cent to 2050, according to BREE. And wind and solar currently only comprise 20 per cent of Australia's renewables generation: the bulk is from biomass, in particular from the sugar and timber industries. Observing the patterns of demand is the job of Matt Zema, chief executive of the Australian Energy Market Operator. He says total electricity usage in 2009 was about 200,000 gigawatt hours, and it has shrunk to 180,000 gwh. We are not expected to return to 2009 levels until at least 2020, and in 2035 the total won't rise much past 220,000. He says the challenge is to forecast power patterns based on behaviour rather than the old certainties of demand and load. "Since 2005 we've seen a move to decentralised power generation," Zema says. "We're moving away from huge, centralised power stations that were built from the 1960s onward and now we move into a new phase." Solar only just begun Zema says the rise of solar PV panels on roofs has only just begun because the arrival of cheap and effective battery storage will increase the uptake and the amount of power generated and used, from rooftops. "A few years ago, storage was something happening in 10 years, perhaps. Now we can see that affordable storage is three to five years away. Technology will change our future energy usage faster than other factors.' Zema says the current forecasts are that coal will continue to provide most electrical power in Australia in 2040, but that can't account for technology and consumer behaviour. This is because coal is Australia's cheapest and most "dispatchable" power source, but storage technology might make some renewables dispatchable too. By 2035, AEMO forecasts that South Australia's PV rooftop panels will account for 28 per cent of underlying residential and commercial consumption, and in Queensland it will be just over 20 per cent coming from PV. When effective storage is added, Zema says, it is consumer behaviour that drives the energy market, not the old metrics of demand and load. In South Australia, by the end of 2025, PV users could be net generators to the grid, at certain times, Zema says, which means rooftop PV will be sufficient, on some days, to meet the underlying consumption of the residential, commercial and industrial sectors during the middle of the day. Unhitching from coal as a future energy source is directly reliant on plans for base-load power, says Ben Heard, a director at ThinkClimate Consulting. He says if you take out the fluctuations and spikes of power usage and the daily peaks and seasonal ups and downs, you end up with a base of daily and annual power demand that must always be available. "When you build a power supply, you have the base-load at the foundation," says Heard, also a doctoral candidate at University of Adelaide. "You want this to be available 24/7 and so you use the cheapest and most reliable way of doing it. And in Australia, that's coal-fired generation." Nuclear tech under consideration The other reliable base-load technology is nuclear, a technology now being actively considered for South Australia. South Australia is something of a cautionary tale for green warriors running too quickly to a decarbonised future, Heard says. The night before he spoke to The Australian Financial Review there had been a two-hour power outage in the state. "If you place too much reliance on wind and solar, and retire your dirty coal base-load supply, you might get away with it for a few years when demand is flat; but when the population and cities start growing again, you're vulnerable." South Australia has the highest mix of renewables in Australia (while demand is flat), but it also relies on a grid interconnector to bring coal-fired power from Victoria. Australia's energy future will have lower emissions while still keeping its base-load power, the chairman of the Academy of Technological Science and Engineering (ATSE), Dr Bruce Godfrey says. But he says the challenge won't be met by forcing a comparison "between apples and oranges". "We have to be careful of false comparisons," Godfrey says. "We need base-load supply, and that comes from coal, gas and nuclear. Wind, solar, tidal and wave are variable supplies. They have their place, and as they improve they are gaining a bigger place in our grids. But you can't compare them with base-load." |
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-We control empirics. Nordhaus and Rothrock 7-15 |
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-Ted Nordhaus Founder and Chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, an Environmental Policy Think Tank, BA in History from the University of California, initiatives for the Public Interest Research Groups, the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense, and Clean Water Action Ray Rothrock CEO of Red Seal, former president of the National Venture Capital Association, B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from Texas AandM University, an S.M. in Nuclear Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School, 7-15-2016, "Without nuke power, climate change threat grows: Column," USA TODAY, http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/07/15/nuclear-diablo-canyon-plant-closing-energy-power-california-environmentalists-column/87090886/. West KN |
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-That’s consistent with past closures of nuclear power stations. When nuclear plants close, one can reliably count on them being substantially replaced by fossil fuels. This was the case when California closed the San Onofre nuclear power station in 2012, when Japan shuttered its nuclear fleet after Fukushima, and in Germany, which despite spending hundreds of billions of dollars over the last decade to replace its nuclear power fleet with renewable energy, announced last month that it was reneging on its commitment to phase out its large fleet of coal-fired power stations because it can’t keep the lights on without them. |
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-Turkey needs nuclear for their energy portfolio and growth. Namli and Namli 14 |
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-Hanife Topal-Namli PHD Dumlupinar University Kutahya, Turkey Suat Sean Namli, Ph.D. North American University Houston, Texas, December 2014, "Nuclear power in turkey, pros and cons", http://westeastinstitute.com/journals/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/3.Hanife-Topal-Namli-JWEIBE.pdf |
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-Turkey, with an increasing demand and consumption for electricity, is in need of finding a sustainable source for electricity production. The country has a huge current account deficit most of which results from its energy imports. Plans for nuclear power construction are a key aspect of the country's aim for sustainable economic growth. In Turkey building up a nuclear power plant has always been a hot topic for discussion at least for 40 years. Most people in the country are against having a nuclear power plant because of its risks. As a country which had closely witnessed and experienced the consequences of Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986, it seems really difficult to convince people completely on the benefits of having a nuclear plant within the borders. On the other hand, while public discussion continues, Turkish government unfortunately, until the year 2013 had never achieved to finalize nuclear power plant projects due to economic reasons. In this paper we will examine the pros and cons of having nuclear power plants in Turkey mostly in terms of economic aspects considering economic and social costs as well as economic gains. In addition we will look at Turkey’s nuclear energy policies. We will also mention about environmental effects debates of the nuclear power plant in the country. Key Words: Turkey, Nuclear Energy, Cost, Challenges, Benefits Nuclear Power in Turkey: Pros and Cons Nuclear power has always been some part of Turkey’s future plans so far in the history. Current government also has been using future nuclear power projects as a strong card for the elections as well. Nuclear energy in Turkey has been presented by the government as cheap, sustainable, and environmentally friendly and is seen by many as a powerful way to diversify the country’s energy portfolio while at the same time reducing energy dependence. The Energy Ministry emphasizes nuclear power’s relatively low cost and high sustainability as the main reasons for pursuing the project. Former energy Minister Hilmi Guler stressed that nuclear technology would be beneficial to development, would provide a threshold for attaining high-tech products, and would contribute to Turkey’s prestige. (Udum, 2010) For a variety of reasons, including public opposition, high capital cost and financing difficulties, and insufficient governance and management capacity on the part of the state agencies, Turkey has not been able to build its first nuclear plant yet. At the same time, Turkey is closer to its first nuclear facility that the country has been pursuing since the 1970s. The official goal is 5 nuclear by 2020. Given that renewables are still costlier than conventional technologies and intermittent, and have low capacity factors, nuclear offers another option for Turkey to diversify its energy portfolio with an emissions-free technology. Perhaps, the biggest concern is the lack of an independent nuclear regulator and a ‘‘safety culture’’ in state institutions that is commensurate with the risks inherent in nuclear operations. A five-page nuclear law is not sufficient to instill confidence that Turkey is institutionally ready to build and operate a nuclear facility, and manage radioactive waste properly. (Atiyas et al., 2012) |
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-The projected amount of nuclear power reduces climate change by up to 48 percent. Hansen and Kharecha 13 |
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-James Hansen, PhD in Physics from the University of Iowa; Currently works at the Earth Institute as a Professor at Columbia University, Pushker Kharecha, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Researcher at Columbia in Earth Science; PhD’s in Geosciences and Astrobiology, " Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power" Environmental Science and Technology, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2013/2013_Kharecha_kh05000e.pdf, March 13, 2013. ***GT = gigatonnes, MT = megatonnes |
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-We calculate that world nuclear power generation prevented an average of 64 gigatonnes of CO2- equivalent (GtCO2-eq), or 17 GtC-eq, cumulative emissions from 1971 to 2009 (Figure 3a; see full range therein), with an average of 2.6 GtCO2-eq/year prevented annual emissions from 2000 to 2009 (range 2.4−2.8 GtCO2/year). Regional results are also shown in Figure 3a. Our global results are 7−14 lower than previous estimates8,9 that, among other differences, assumed all historical nuclear power would have been replaced only by coal, and 34 higher than in another study10 in which the methodology is not explained clearly enough to infer the basis for the differences. Given that cumulative and annual global fossil fuel CO2 emissions during the above periods were 840 GtCO2 and 27 GtCO2/year, respectively,11 our mean estimate for cumulative prevented emissions may not appear substantial; however, it is instructive to look at other quantitative comparisons. For instance, 64 GtCO2-eq amounts to the cumulative CO2 emissions from coal burning over approximately the past 35 years in the United States, 17 years in China, or 7 years in the top five CO2 emitters.11 Also, since a 500 MW coal-fired power plant typically emits 3 MtCO2/year,26 64 GtCO2-eq is equivalent to the cumulative lifetime emissions from almost 430 such plants, assuming an average plant lifetime of 50 years. It is therefore evident that, without global nuclear power generation in recent decades, near-term mitigation of anthropogenic climate change would pose a much greater challenge. For the projection period 2010−2050, in the all coal case, an average of 150 and 240 GtCO2-eq cumulative global emissions are prevented by nuclear power for the low-end and high-end projections of IAEA,6 respectively. In the all gas case, an average of 80 and 130 GtCO2-eq emissions are prevented (see Figure 3b,c for full ranges). Regional results are also shown in Figure 3b,c. These results also differ substantially from previous studies,9,10 largely due to differences in nuclear power projections (see the Supporting Information). To put our calculated overall mean estimate (80−240 GtCO2-eq) of potentially prevented future emissions in perspective, note that, to achieve a 350 ppm CO2 target near the end of this century, cumulative “allowable” fossil CO2 emissions from 2012 to 2050 are at most ∼500 GtCO2 (ref 3). Thus, projected nuclear power could reduce the climate-change mitigation burden by 16−48 over the next few decades (derived by dividing 80 and 240 by 500). |
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-Without nuclear power, needed climate change reduction becomes impossible. Hansen and Kharecha 2 |
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-James Hansen, PhD in Physics from the University of Iowa; Currently works at the Earth Institute as a Professor at Columbia University, Pushker Kharecha, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies; Researcher at Columbia in Earth Science; PhD’s in Geosciences and Astrobiology, " Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power" Environmental Science and Technology, http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2013/2013_Kharecha_kh05000e.pdf, March 13, 2013 |
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-In conclusion, it is clear that nuclear power has provided a large contribution to the reduction of global mortality and GHG emissions due to fossil fuel use. If the role of nuclear power significantly declines in the next few decades, the International Energy Agency asserts that achieving a target atmospheric GHG level of 450 ppm CO2-eq would require “heroic achievements in the deployment of emerging lowcarbon technologies, which have yet to be proven. Countries that rely heavily on nuclear power would find it particularly challenging and significantly more costly to meet their targeted levels of emissions.” 2 Our analysis herein and a prior one7 strongly support this conclusion. Indeed, on the basis of combined evidence from paleoclimate data, observed ongoing climate impacts, and the measured planetary energy imbalance, it appears increasingly clear that the commonly discussed targets of 450 ppm and 2 °C global temperature rise (above preindustrial levels) are insufficient to avoid devastating climate impacts; we have suggested elsewhere that more appropriate targets are less than 350 ppm and 1 °C (refs 3 and 31−33). Aiming for these targets emphasizes the importance of retaining and expanding the role of nuclear power, as well as energy efficiency improvements and renewables, in the near-term global energy supply |
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-Every country has to pitch in – otherwise countries will choose not to. Action by individual countries empirically results in international action. Steer 16 |
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-(TESTIMONY OF DR. ANDREW STEER PRESIDENT AND CEO, WORLD RESOURCES INSTITUTE HEARING BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY: “The Paris Climate Promise: A Good Deal for America” February 2, 2016, docs.house.gov/meetings/SY/SY00/20160202/104399/HHRG-114-SY00-Wstate-SteerA-20160202.pdf) |
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-A Good Deal for America Third, The United States has much to gain from positioning itself as a climate leader. Swift action on climate change will continue to enable the United States to benefit from economic opportunities, stimulate global action on climate, and build resilience to climate impacts and their associated costs at home. The historical record is clear: environmental protection is compatible with economic growth, and U.S. environmental policies have delivered huge benefits to Americans. The United States can achieve its commitments through the Paris Agreement in concert with economic growth. It is in our economic interest to act.4 Furthermore, no nation is immune to the impacts of climate change and no nation can meet the challenge alone. Every nation needs to work together, take ambitious action, and do its fair share. Now, as all nations take stronger action, all nations gain greater assurance that a concerted, global effort is underway, and gain greater reason to take stronger action themselves. The positive effect of American leadership in concert with other nations was apparent in the lead-up to Paris in such events as the joint announcement of climate commitments by the United States and China in November 2014, which helped drive stronger action internationally. The United States has always provided leadership when the world faces big challenges, and climate change should be no exception. That leadership can ensure a livable planet for future generations and ourselves. Delaying action on climate change will only result in climate-change-related events becoming more frequent and severe, leading to mounting costs and harm to businesses, consumers, and public health. The EPA report, Climate Change in the United States: Benefits of Global Action,5 estimates that billions of dollars of damages could be avoided in the U.S. as a result of global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. These efforts range from reduced damage to agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, to reductions in coastal and inland flooding, to fewer heat-driven increases in electricity bills. If nations fail to combat climate change, the U.S. will suffer billions of dollars of damages to agriculture, forestry, and fisheries, experience coastal and inland flooding and heat-driven increases in electricity bills, just to cite some of the impacts. |
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-Turkey is part of that effort – it’s key to reduce warming. Hurriyet Daily News 14 |
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-Hürriyet Daily News LEADING NEWS SOURCE FOR TURKEY AND THE REGION9-24-14, " Turkey 'prepared' to play role in fighting global warming: Erdoğan" http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkey-prepared-to-play-role-in-fighting-global-warming-erdogan.aspx?pageID=238andamp;nID=72135andamp;NewsCatID=340 |
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-In a speech at the U.N. Climate Change Summit in New York on Sept. 23, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey was “ready to do its part” in the fight against global warming. Erdoğan said concrete steps must be taken to boost domestic and foreign environment-related investments and ensure energy security, otherwise irreversible economic and ecological harm due to climate change will impede both growth and sustainable development. “A new binding agreement should include certain flexibilities for countries, within the scope of ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’ and ‘relative capabilities,’” he said. Erdoğan emphasized that the costliness of measures against climate change should not deter countries from taking action. “Reducing global warming by 2 degrees Celsius requires a fundamental change in production and consumption practices, along with new developmental strategies. This is only possible by activating additional financial resources and using new technologies,” he said. The president also emphasized that the rights of the least-developed countries should be protected while creating new policies, as they are not the cause of climate change, but some of those most affected by its results. “Developed countries should assume more responsibility in the fight against climate change, with regard to reducing carbon emissions and financial and technological support,” Erdoğan added. ‘Comprehensive projects’ The current climate change summit is to shape next year’s conference in Paris, which has been discussed as the most important climate change meeting since Kyoto in 1997. The treaty is expected to include new measures to limit increases in global warming. Mentioning Turkey’s individual contributions to the fight against climate change, Erdoğan said Turkey reduced its carbon emissions by 21 percent between 1990 and 2012. “This figure excludes Turkey’s comprehensive projects on forests,” Erdoğan noted. Erdoğan said Turkey is working within the scope of the 2011-2023 Climate Change Action Plan, aimed at increasing the share of renewable energy in total energy production by 30 percent, and decreasing the size of energy in the economy by 20 percent. The opening of the annual U.N. meeting, which ends Sept. 30, follows the highest-level meeting on climate change to date, with some 120 world leaders responding to the secretary-general’s call for increased political momentum to address the warming planet. “For all the immediate challenges that we gather to address this week – terrorism, instability, inequality, disease – there’s one issue that will define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other, and that is the urgent and growing threat of a changing climate,” U.S. President Barack Obama said. But Obama, along with China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, said he would not propose targets to reduce carbon pollution beyond 2020 until early next year. The summit also exposed longstanding political divisions between rich and poor countries, raising questions about whether a new climate pact will be reached by the end of 2015. These divisions, on a wide range of issues, are certain to be addressed in the week ahead. This year’s VIPs include Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, French President Francois Hollande, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkish President Erdoğan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Two prominent no-shows are Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, due to the Ebola crisis that has hit her country the hardest, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who gave no public reason. While the assembly’s newly renovated chamber will be the scene of constant speech-making, most of the General Assembly’s real “business” will take place in private meetings and dinners. This year’s side events cover a number of crisis countries including Iran, South Sudan, Myanmar, Yemen and Somalia, with a recently organized high-level meeting on Ebola. |
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-Climate change causes civilization collapse – disease, war, and multiple internals to extinction. Sharp and Kennedy 14 |
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-Robert Sharp associate professor on the faculty of the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies (NESA). A former British Army Colonel he retired in 2006 and emigrated to the U.S. Since joining NESA in 2010, he has focused on Yemen and Lebanon, and also supported NESA events into Afghanistan, Turkey, Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Qatar. He is the faculty lead for NESA’s work supporting theUAE National Defense College through an ongoing Foreign Military Sales (FMS) case. He also directs the Network of Defense and Staff Colleges (NDSC) which aims to provide best practice support to regional professional military and security sector education development and reform. Prior to joining NESA, he served for 4 years as an assistant professor at the College of International Security Affairs (CISA) at National Defense University where he wrote and taught a Masters' Degree syllabus for a program concentration in Conflict Management of Stability Operations and also taught strategy, counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, and also created an International Homeland Defense Fellowship program. At CISA he also designed, wrote and taught courses supporting the State Department's Civilian Response Corps utilizing conflict management approaches. Bob served 25 years in the British Army and was personally decorated by Her Majesty the Queen twice. Aftergraduating from the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst in 1981, he served in command and staff roles on operations in Northern Ireland, Kosovo, Gulf War 1, Afghanistan, and Cyprus. He has worked in policy and technical staff appointments in the UK Ministry of Defense and also UK Defense Intelligence plus several multi-national organizations including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). In his later career, he specialized in intelligence. He is a 2004 distinguished graduate of the National War College and holds a masters degree in National Security Strategy from National Defense University, Washington, D.C. and Edward Kennedy is a renewable energy and climate change specialist who has worked for the World Bank and the Spanish Electric Utility ENDESA on carbon policy and markets, 8-22-14, “Climate Change and Implications for National Security” http://www.internationalpolicydigest.org/2014/08/22/climate-change-implications-national-security/ |
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-Our planet is 4.5 billion years old. If that whole time was to be reflected on a single one-year calendar then the dinosaurs died off sometime late in the afternoon of December 27th and modern humans emerged 200,000 years ago, or at around lunchtime on December 28th. Therefore, human life on earth is very recent. Sometime on December 28th humans made the first fires – wood fires – neutral in the carbon balance. Now reflect on those most recent 200,000 years again on a single one-year calendar and you might be surprised to learn that the industrial revolution began only a few hours ago during the middle of the afternoon on December 31st, 250 years ago, coinciding with the discovery of underground carbon fuels. Over the 250 years carbon fuels have enabled tremendous technological advances including a population growth from about 800 million then to 7.5 billion today and the consequent demand to extract even more carbon. This has occurred during a handful of generations, which is hardly noticeable on our imaginary one-year calendar. The release of this carbon – however – is changing our climate at such a rapid rate that it threatens our survival and presence on earth. It defies imagination that so much damage has been done in such a relatively short time. The implications of climate change are the single most significant threat to life on earth and, put simply, we are not doing enough to rectify the damage. This relatively very recent ability to change our climate is an inconvenient truth; the science is sound. We know of the complex set of interrelated national and global security risks that are a result of global warming and the velocity at which climate change is occurring. We worry it may already be too late. Climate change writ large has informed few, interested some, confused many, and polarized politics. It has already led to an increase in natural disasters including but not limited to droughts, storms, floods, fires etc. The year 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record according to an American Meteorological Society (AMS) report. Research suggests that climate change is already affecting human displacement; reportedly 36 million people were displaced in 2008 alone because of sudden natural disasters. Figures for 2010 and 2011 paint a grimmer picture of people displaced because of rising sea levels, heat and storms. Climate change affects all natural systems. It impacts temperature and consequently it affects water and weather patterns. It contributes to desertification, deforestation and acidification of the oceans. Changes in weather patterns may mean droughts in one area and floods in another. Counter-intuitively, perhaps, sea levels rise but perennial river water supplies are reduced because glaciers are retreating. As glaciers and polar ice caps melt, there is an albedo effect, which is a double whammy of less temperature regulation because of less surface area of ice present. This means that less absorption occurs and also there is less reflection of the sun’s light. A potentially critical wild card could be runaway climate change due to the release of methane from melting tundra. Worldwide permafrost soils contain about 1,700 Giga Tons of carbon, which is about four times more than all the carbon released through human activity thus far. The planet has already adapted itself to dramatic climate change including a wide range of distinct geologic periods and multiple extinctions, and at a pace that it can be managed. It is human intervention that has accelerated the pace dramatically: An increased surface temperature, coupled with more severe weather and changes in water distribution will create uneven threats to our agricultural systems and will foster and support the spread of insect borne diseases like Malaria, Dengue and the West Nile virus. Rising sea levels will increasingly threaten our coastal population and infrastructure centers and with more than 3.5 billion people – half the planet – depending on the ocean for their primary source of food, ocean acidification may dangerously undercut critical natural food systems which would result in reduced rations. Climate change also carries significant inertia. Even if emissions were completely halted today, temperature increases would continue for some time. Thus the impact is not only to the environment, water, coastal homes, agriculture and fisheries as mentioned, but also would lead to conflict and thus impact national security. Resource wars are inevitable as countries respond, adapt and compete for the shrinking set of those available resources. These wars have arguably already started and will continue in the future because climate change will force countries to act for national survival; the so-called Climate Wars. As early as 2003 Greenpeace alluded to a report which it claimed was commissioned by the Pentagon titled: An Abrupt Climate Change Scenario and Its Implications for U.S. National Security. It painted a picture of a world in turmoil because global warming had accelerated. The scenario outlined was both abrupt and alarming. The report offered recommendations but backed away from declaring climate change an immediate problem, concluding that it would actually be more incremental and measured; as such it would be an irritant, not a shock for national security systems. In 2006 the Center for Naval Analyses (CNA) – Institute of Public Research – convened a board of 11 senior retired generals and admirals to assess National Security and the Threat to Climate Change. Their initial report was published in April 2007 and made no mention of the potential acceleration of climate change. The team found that climate change was a serious threat to national security and that it was: “most likely to happen in regions of the world that are already fertile ground for extremism.” The team made recommendations from their analysis of regional impacts which suggested the following. Europe would experience some fracturing because of border migration. Africa would need more stability and humanitarian operations provided by the United States. The Middle East would experience a “loss of food and water security (which) will increase pressure to emigrate across borders.” Asia would suffer from “threats to water and the spread of infectious disease.” In 2009 the CIA opened a Center on Climate Change and National Security to coordinate across the intelligence community and to focus policy. In May 2014, CNA again convened a Military Advisory Board but this time to assess National Security and the Accelerating Risk of Climate Change. The report concludes that climate change is no longer a future threat but occurring right now and the authors appeal to the security community, the entire government and the American people to not only build resilience against projected climate change impacts but to form agreements to stabilize climate change and also to integrate climate change across all strategy and planning. The calm of the 2007 report is replaced by a tone of anxiety concerning the future coupled with calls for public discourse and debate because “time and tide wait for no man.” The report notes a key distinction between resilience (mitigating the impact of climate change) and agreements (ways to stabilize climate change) and states that: Actions by the United States and the international community have been insufficient to adapt to the challenges associated with projected climate change. Strengthening resilience to climate impacts already locked into the system is critical, but this will reduce long-term risk only if improvements in resilience are accompanied by actionable agreements on ways to stabilize climate change. The 9/11 Report framed the terrorist attacks as less of a failure of intelligence than a failure of imagination. Greenpeace’s 2003 account of the Pentagon’s alleged report describes a coming climate Armageddon which to readers was unimaginable and hence the report was not really taken seriously. It described: A world thrown into turmoil by drought, floods, typhoons. Whole countries rendered uninhabitable. The capital of the Netherlands submerged. The borders of the U.S. and Australia patrolled by armies firing into waves of starving boat people desperate to find a new home. Fishing boats armed with cannon to drive off competitors. Demands for access to water and farmland backed up with nuclear weapons. The CNA and Greenpeace/Pentagon reports are both mirrored by similar analysis by the World Bank which highlighted not only the physical manifestations of climate change, but also the significant human impacts that threaten to unravel decades of economic development, which will ultimately foster conflict. Climate change is the quintessential “Tragedy of the Commons,” where the cumulative impact of many individual actions (carbon emission in this case) is not seen as linked to the marginal gains available to each individual action and not seen as cause and effect. It is simultaneously huge, yet amorphous and nearly invisible from day to day. It is occurring very fast in geologic time terms, but in human time it is (was) slow and incremental. Among environmental problems, it is uniquely global. With our planet and culture figuratively and literally honeycombed with a reliance on fossil fuels, we face systemic challenges in changing the reliance across multiple layers of consumption, investment patterns, and political decisions; it will be hard to fix! |
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-SMR’s |
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-Counterplan text: Turkey will increase their development, research, and exportation of small modular reactors. |
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-SMR development means a global market will result – there’s also a first mover effect. National Nuclear Laboratory and Waddington 14 |
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-National Nuclear Laboratory UK based nuclear consultant, helps decommission and attract new people to the global nuclear industry, Under Direction of Gordon Waddington Rolls-Royce Workers for 36 Years. Chief Engineer on the EJ200 engine, Project Director on Helicopters, Project Director Trent 900 Engine; Director of Engineering for the Military Division; Director of Research and Technology; President of Marine Systems and Services and Executive Vice President for the External Supply Chain for Gas Turbines, "Small Modular Reactors (SMR) Feasibility Study" National Nuclear Labratory, December 2014, http://www.nnl.co.uk/media/1627/smr-feasibility-study-december-2014.pdf |
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-A key finding of Scenario B is that the global market is likely to be dominated by three current ‘nuclear nations’, each of which has their own SMR development programmes; USA, China, and Russia. It is likely that if UK industry enters into partnership, collaboration or support of one of these other countries, then the SMR market opportunity in the other two may be reduced. This would mean that only 60-70 of the total global market could ever be available to UK industry. It is also highly likely that this will ultimately be an internationally competitive market with a number of different SMRs available. However the advantage of being an early adopter is likely to be significant. This early-adopter effect is driven by the volume production of SMRs compared to the low numbers of large plants seen to date. Once a given SMR technology reaches maturity it may be able to win orders in a large number of nations. Though other SMR technologies may reach maturity before these orders are fulfilled, the opportunity to bid to win the contracts will already have passed and they will be locked out of the market. This effect is not seen with large nuclear plants due to the low number of plant opportunities open for bidding at a given time (though some Generation III plants which have been developed have been unsuccessful in achieving any market penetration such as General Electric’s ESBWR and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ APWR). |
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-Solves safety. Hillard 14 |
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-“A New Day for Nuclear The Impact of Nuclear Energy and Its Effects” H. Grace Hilliard A Senior Thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation in the Honors Program Liberty University Spring 2014 http://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1478andcontext=honors |
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-Safety. The first benefit is that SMR’s are inherently safer than large conventional nuclear reactors. Rosner and Goldberg (2011) and their team at the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago identified three major differences between large scale reactors and SMR’s that made them safer. Firstly, the designs of the SMR’s rely on battery power in order to maintain safety operations; this feature lessens or potentially makes obsolete the need for electrical or back-up generators in case of an emergency. The second safety aspect of SMR’s is that they are better able to withstand earthquakes. This is achieved though “containment and reactor vessels in a pool of water underground” (p. 5) explains Rosner and Goldberg. The third safety feature in SMR’s that minimizes susceptibility or damage that could occur with nuclear energy is the large underground pool storage for spent fuel. The fact that the pools are stored underground greatly reduces the chances that the spent fuel will be uncovered or dangerously leak (Rosner and Goldberg). The International Trade Administration agrees that the underground facility will help minimize any harmful effects. They confirm that “All U.S. SMRs are designed to be deployed in an underground configuration. Industry observers contend that this would limit the risk for above ground sabotage (which is a serious consideration for traditional nuclear power plants) or for radioactive release” (ITA, 2011, p. 3). SMRs are also small which allows them to be placed in remote locations where large reactors could not be located. This aspect of its design is helpful for military operations when temporary bases need energy quickly. Its size also means that there is less fuel within the apparatus so if there was ever a malfunction with the equipment, it would affect less land area than a conventional reactor. Szondy (2012) emphasizes that the smaller size of the SMR “makes it easier to design emergency systems” (para. 15). The cooling systems for SMRs allow it great flexibility. Compared to conventional reactors which must be cooled by water, SMRs can be cooled by water, air, gas, low-melting point metals or salt. This feature makes possible a SMR’s ability to be placed inland and underground (Szondy, 2012). SMRs also provide for a better waste management strategy than conventional reactors. Spencer and Loris (2011) argue that if waste management becomes the responsibility of those producing nuclear waste, it will increase innovation and allow for better waste-management technologies such as SMRs. They consume fuel and produce waste differently than conventional reactors which make their waste management strategy much more economical because they are more waste efficient reactors. |
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-Modeling and literature analysis proves – SMR’s alone can reduce the cost of climate change by up to 27. Iyer et al 14 |
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-Iyer et al 14 – (Gokul Iyer, Nathan Hultman, and Steve Fetter of the School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Son H. Kim of the Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and University of Maryland: 6 July 2014 (“Implications of small modular reactors for climate change mitigation” Elseiver Ltd. Journal of Energy Economics, p. 1, Available Online athttp://www.karnteknik.se/upload/aktiviteter/medlemsaktiviteter/20151009_Staffan20Qvists20Energy20Policy.pdf) |
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-Relative degrees of mitigation effort across scenarios can be seen in terms of the net present value (NPV) of mitigation costs of stabilizing the climate (throughout this paper, we assume a discount rate of 5). The availability of SMRs has significant impacts on the abatement costs of achieving the aggressive climate target — in general, the costs with SMRs are lower than without (Fig. 5). In addition, among the cases with SMRs, mitigation costs are highest for the LowTech-SMR cases and lowest for the HighTech-SMR cases. In other words, mitigation costs are lower in the cases with more advanced SMR technologies. Further, irrespective of the SMR technology scenario, mitigation costs with both SMRs and large reactors competing for market share (green bars) are lesser than or equal to the cases where only SMRs are available (red bars). In other words, when there is substitutability, mitigation costs are lower or remain unchanged. These observations are consistent with the findings of previous studies on the availability of technology and benefits of advanced technologies (Clarke et al., 2008b; McJeon et al., 2011). The difference between abatement costs for the scenarios with and without SMRs can be seen as a measure of the economic “value” associated with SMRs (Fig. 6). While the reduction in mitigation costs associated with SMRs increases with more advanced technology, the reduction is notably greater when large reactors are not available. For instance, when SMRs and large reactors compete freely, the mitigation cost with MediumTech-SMRs is reduced by 1. On the other hand, if large reactors are not available, the reduction in cost is 12. This is because, in the latter scenario, the SMR is the only nuclear technology option available. Therefore, compared to a nuclear moratorium (where both large reactors and SMRs are not available), the availability of a nuclear energy technology option is important, especially on the long term; and if SMRs are the only nuclear technology option available, the reduction in mitigation cost may be as high as 27 (for the HighTech-SMR). |
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-SMRs make renewable energies more viable; they overcome the intermittency barrier. Fares 16 |
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-Robert Fares (Postdoctoral Fellow at the University Texas at Austin, where he studies the economic and environmental implications of emerging energy technologies). “3 Ways Small Modular Reactors Overcome Existing Barriers to Nuclear.” Scientific American. 19 May 2016. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/3-ways-small-modular-reactors-overcomeexisting-barriers-to-nuclear/ |
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-Flexible Enough to Be Friends with Renewables. Another factor that limits conventional nuclear power plants is that they were largely designed to operate as base load, i.e. produce electricity at their full output nearly 24 hours a day for every day of the year. In today’s dynamically priced electricity markets, it turns out this function is not actually very useful. The most valuable power plants can produce electricity at a low cost and quickly turn on an off in order to capture high electricity prices and avoid periods where the real-time price of electricity is low — especially periods where overproduction of renewable energy versus demand causes the price to become negative. A recent technical paper by researchers from NuScale, one of the leading SMR technology companies, titled “Can Nuclear Power and Renewables Be Friends?” shows the potential for NuScale’s SMR to ramp up and down to balance electricity supply with demand — even when renewables make up a significant portion of total generation. Their system can effectively adjust its power output over long, medium, and short timescales. One or more of the system’s modules can be taken offline to reduce power output for days or months at a time. The thermal output of the reactor can be modulated to adjust power output from one hour to the next. And steam can be diverted from the turbine to the condenser to adjust power output on the timescale of minutes. All of these features give NuScale’s system a decisive economic advantage over conventional nuclear — and will help to integrate renewable energy with the grid into the future. |
| 45 |
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-AT: Fish |
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-No impact: Radiation is natural for fish and they lose most of it after migrating. Buesseler 12 |
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-Ken O. Buesseler, Senior Scientist @ Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution w/ PhD in Marine Chemistry from MIT, “Fishing for Answers” https://darchive.mblwhoilibrary.org/bitstream/handle/1912/5816/Buesseler20Perspecitves 20Fukushima20Fish20final20revised.pdf?sequence=1andisAllowed=y Premier |
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- |
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-Fortunately, the MAFF data show that the vast majority of fish remain below even the new, stricter regulatory limit for seafood consumption. In addition, it must be remembered that we are surrounded by a sea of radioactivity, in that many naturally occurring radionuclides appear in fish at similar or higher levels and are not considered a health threat. For example in fish we sampled in June 2011 off Japan, natural levels of potassium-40 were more than 10 times greater than Fukushima derived cesium (2). Moreover, because cesium is rapidly lost from muscle after exposure stops, fish that migrate to less affected waters will gradually lose much of their Fukushima-derived cesium, as seen in a report of tuna caught off San Diego (10). |
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-AT: Terrorists Get Into Plants |
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-No impact to terrorists getting into plants – the fuel is either useless, would kill them instantly, or is gigantic. Neuhauser 3/24 cites Acton. |
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-Alan Neuhauser Reporter for US News and World Report, has reported on: law enforcement and criminal justice for, STEM and Healthcare of Tomorrow, and energy and the environment. Citing: James Acton a director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 3-24-2016, "How Real Is the Dirty Bomb Threat?," US News and World Report, http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-24/how-real-is-the-dirty-bomb-threat |
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-How about from a nuclear power plant? It's not easy at all. "People have a view of there being all this nuclear material just floating around at nuclear power plants and people being able to steal them," Acton, of the Carnegie Endowment, says. That's just not true. Nuclear fuel, before it's used, is not very radioactive – it would need to be enriched to make a nuclear bomb, a highly complex and delicate process, and it also doesn't have enough radioactivity to make an effective dirty bomb. The waste that emerges after nuclear fuel is burned is highly radioactive – so potent, in fact, that it's known as "self-protecting": It would kill anyone trying to steal it. It's also "physically huge," Acton says. "Fuel bundles are enormous. The idea that terrorists are going to get their hands on spent nuclear fuel is very, very unlikely." |
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-AT: They Make a Bomb |
| 55 |
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-No risk of nuclear terror – assumes every warrant |
| 56 |
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-Mueller 10 (John, professor of political science at Ohio State, 2010, Calming Our Nuclear Jitters, Issues in Science and Technology, Winter, http://www.issues.org/26.2/mueller.html) |
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-Politicians of all stripes preach to an anxious, appreciative, and very numerous choir when they, like President Obama, proclaim atomic terrorism to be “the most immediate and extreme threat to global security.” It is the problem that, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, currently keeps every senior leader awake at night. This is hardly a new anxiety. In 1946, atomic bomb maker J. Robert Oppenheimer ominously warned that if three or four men could smuggle in units for an atomic bomb, they could blow up New York. This was an early expression of a pattern of dramatic risk inflation that has persisted throughout the nuclear age. In fact, although expanding fires and fallout might increase the effective destructive radius, the blast of a Hiroshima-size device would “blow up” about 1 of the city’s area—a tragedy, of course, but not the same as one 100 times greater. In the early 1970s, nuclear physicist Theodore Taylor proclaimed the atomic terrorist problem to be “immediate,” explaining at length “how comparatively easy it would be to steal nuclear material and step by step make it into a bomb.” At the time he thought it was already too late to “prevent the making of a few bombs, here and there, now and then,” or “in another ten or fifteen years, it will be too late.” Three decades after Taylor, we continue to wait for terrorists to carry out their “easy” task. In contrast to these predictions, terrorist groups seem to have exhibited only limited desire and even less progress in going atomic. This may be because, after brief exploration of the possible routes, they, unlike generations of alarmists, have discovered that the tremendous effort required is scarcely likely to be successful. The most plausible route for terrorists, according to most experts, would be to manufacture an atomic device themselves from purloined fissile material (plutonium or, more likely, highly enriched uranium). This task, however, remains a daunting one, requiring that a considerable series of difficult hurdles be conquered and in sequence. Outright armed theft of fissile material is exceedingly unlikely not only because of the resistance of guards, but because chase would be immediate. A more promising approach would be to corrupt insiders to smuggle out the required substances. However, this requires the terrorists to pay off a host of greedy confederates, including brokers and money-transmitters, any one of whom could turn on them or, either out of guile or incompetence, furnish them with stuff that is useless. Insiders might also consider the possibility that once the heist was accomplished, the terrorists would, as analyst Brian Jenkins none too delicately puts it, “have every incentive to cover their trail, beginning with eliminating their confederates.” If terrorists were somehow successful at obtaining a sufficient mass of relevant material, they would then probably have to transport it a long distance over unfamiliar terrain and probably while being pursued by security forces. Crossing international borders would be facilitated by following established smuggling routes, but these are not as chaotic as they appear and are often under the watch of suspicious and careful criminal regulators. If border personnel became suspicious of the commodity being smuggled, some of them might find it in their interest to disrupt passage, perhaps to collect the bounteous reward money that would probably be offered by alarmed governments once the uranium theft had been discovered. Once outside the country with their precious booty, terrorists would need to set up a large and well-equipped machine shop to manufacture a bomb and then to populate it with a very select team of highly skilled scientists, technicians, machinists, and administrators. The group would have to be assembled and retained for the monumental task while no consequential suspicions were generated among friends, family, and police about their curious and sudden absence from normal pursuits back home. Members of the bomb-building team would also have to be utterly devoted to the cause, of course, and they would have to be willing to put their lives and certainly their careers at high risk, because after their bomb was discovered or exploded they would probably become the targets of an intense worldwide dragnet operation. Some observers have insisted that it would be easy for terrorists to assemble a crude bomb if they could get enough fissile material. But Christoph Wirz and Emmanuel Egger, two senior physicists in charge of nuclear issues at Switzerland‘s Spiez Laboratory, bluntly conclude that the task “could hardly be accomplished by a subnational group.” They point out that precise blueprints are required, not just sketches and general ideas, and that even with a good blueprint the terrorist group would most certainly be forced to redesign. They also stress that the work is difficult, dangerous, and extremely exacting, and that the technical requirements in several fields verge on the unfeasible. Stephen Younger, former director of nuclear weapons research at Los Alamos Laboratories, has made a similar argument, pointing out that uranium is “exceptionally difficult to machine” whereas “plutonium is one of the most complex metals ever discovered, a material whose basic properties are sensitive to exactly how it is processed.“ Stressing the “daunting problems associated with material purity, machining, and a host of other issues,” Younger concludes, “to think that a terrorist group, working in isolation with an unreliable supply of electricity and little access to tools and supplies” could fabricate a bomb “is farfetched at best.” Under the best circumstances, the process of making a bomb could take months or even a year or more, which would, of course, have to be carried out in utter secrecy. In addition, people in the area, including criminals, may observe with increasing curiosity and puzzlement the constant coming and going of technicians unlikely to be locals. If the effort to build a bomb was successful, the finished product, weighing a ton or more, would then have to be transported to and smuggled into the relevant target country where it would have to be received by collaborators who are at once totally dedicated and technically proficient at handling, maintaining, detonating, and perhaps assembling the weapon after it arrives. The financial costs of this extensive and extended operation could easily become monumental. There would be expensive equipment to buy, smuggle, and set up and people to pay or pay off. Some operatives might work for free out of utter dedication to the cause, but the vast conspiracy also requires the subversion of a considerable array of criminals and opportunists, each of whom has every incentive to push the price for cooperation as high as possible. Any criminals competent and capable enough to be effective allies are also likely to be both smart enough to see boundless opportunities for extortion and psychologically equipped by their profession to be willing to exploit them. Those who warn about the likelihood of a terrorist bomb contend that a terrorist group could, if with great difficulty, overcome each obstacle and that doing so in each case is “not impossible.” But although it may not be impossible to surmount each individual step, the likelihood that a group could surmount a series of them quickly becomes vanishingly small. Table 1 attempts to catalogue the barriers that must be overcome under the scenario considered most likely to be successful. In contemplating the task before them, would-be atomic terrorists would effectively be required to go though an exercise that looks much like this. If and when they do, they will undoubtedly conclude that their prospects are daunting and accordingly uninspiring or even terminally dispiriting. It is possible to calculate the chances for success. Adopting probability estimates that purposely and heavily bias the case in the terrorists’ favor—for example, assuming the terrorists have a 50 chance of overcoming each of the 20 obstacles—the chances that a concerted effort would be successful comes out to be less than one in a million. If one assumes, somewhat more realistically, that their chances at each barrier are one in three, the cumulative odds that they will be able to pull off the deed drop to one in well over three billion. |
| 58 |
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-AT: Biodiversity Collapse |
| 59 |
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-No decline in biodiversity—latest study proves |
| 60 |
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-St. Andrews 14 citing Dr Maria Dornelas and Dr Anne Magurran and Dr Nick Gotelli and Dr Brian McGill, “New research challenges understanding of biodiversity crisis”, University of St. Andrews, April 17 2014, https://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/news/archive/2014/title,241670,en.php AW |
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-A University of St Andrews study has found that, despite fears of a biodiversity crisis, there has in fact not been a consistent drop in numbers of species found locally around the world. Instead, in a study of 100 communities and a total of 35,000 species that span from trees to starfish, scientists found a consistent change in which species are found in any one place. The researchers, who were surprised by the findings, say that the study should not detract from the threat many of the world’s species are under, but that policy-makers should focus on changes in biodiversity composition as well as loss. The findings, published by the leading journal Science this week, are the result of research led by Dr Maria Dornelas and Professor Anne Magurran of the Centre for Biological Diversity and Scottish Oceans Institute at the University of St Andrews. The full text of the paper is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1248484. An international research team studied over 6 million observations in terrestrial, freshwater, and marine habitats from the poles to the equator. Instead of finding a loss in biodiversity, they discovered that the species inhabitance of different locations has been systematically changing over time. Dr Dornelas said, “Contrary to expectations, we did not observe consistent loss of species through time – indeed we found as many surveys with a systematic loss as well as gain in the number of species recorded through time. This is surprising given current concerns of a biodiversity crisis and abnormally high extinction rates.” The team studied everything from trees, birds and mammals, to fish and invertebrates. Professor Magurran commented, “We observed consistent change in species composition of communities. This surprising finding could be due largely to invasive species, which have been rapidly spreading around the globe, and the shifting ranges of species in response to climate change.” |