Talk:Benjamin K. Sovacool

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Book review resource

Climate Change and Global Energy Security: Technology and Policy Options by Marilyn A. Brown and Benjamin K. Sovacool; Reviewed by By Richard N. Cooper January/February 2012 Foreign Affairs 99.19.44.155 (talk) 17:32, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Nuclear powers total life cycle CO2 emissions

Nuclear power plants produce electricity with about 66 g equivalent lifecycle carbon dioxide emissions per kWh, while renewable power generators produce electricity with 9.5-38 g carbon dioxide per kWh. Renewable electricity technologies are thus "two to seven times more effective than nuclear power plants on a per kWh basis at fighting climate change". However a more recent 2012 study by Yale University revealed Sovacool's high estimate to be off by nearly a factor of three, and the mean value from Nuclear power, depending on which Reactor design was analysed, arrived at a range from 11- 25 g/kW·h for Nuclear Power

I added the inline "Not in citation given" tags (in the image caption) as I searched source but could find no mention of "Sovacool's high estimate" or "factor of three" or "off". I'm concerned there is inaccurate reporting or WP:OR here. I'm also concerned that the image caption is too long and complex. Johnfos (talk) 01:16, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Johnfos you seemingly didn't read the Yale paper- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012.00472.x/full Sovacool's high estimate was 288 g CO2/kWh. Whereas the more rigorous Yale study had a high estimate of 110g CO2/kWh, with a harmonized mean value of 11 g/kWh for BWR and 22g/kWh PWR. The 'nearly a factor of three' edit I made comes from dividing 288/110 = 2.62 Therefore 'nearly a factor of three' is correct. Having presented this to you, could you please remove your unwarranted 'not in citation' tag. Thanks. -- User:Boundarylayer

Sovacool's analysis is certainly quite notable, since it was reviewed in the prestigious journal Nature, see [1]. I still don't see the Yale paper saying Sovacool's analysis is "off", just that it reflects the different methodology used. I think this is the key point which needs to be mentioned. It needs to be mentioned, not in the Sovacool Study image caption, as this just confuses the issue, but in the main text of the article where needed. In this particular article, about Sovacool, I wouldn't even mention the Yale study, as it is off-topic here. Johnfos (talk) 10:59, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I have to say that Yale study actually comes to figures which are different than the present 11-25 gCO2/kWh reported in the image caption. I would argue that 11-25 is more like cherry picking. Here is the original text: "After harmonizing methods to use consistent gross system boundaries and values for several important system parameters, the same statistics were 12, 17, and 110 g CO2 -eq/kWh, respectively." and "Depending on conditions, median life cycle GHG emissions could be 9 to 110 g CO2 -eq/kWh by 2050"Bernard ivo (talk) 20:37, 3 November 2012 (UTC)

References

Errors, corrections, and updates

Hello Wikipedia, seeing that this profile is about Prof Sovacool, somebody I know well, I thought I would correct a few errors and provide some updates. First, someone has asked for a citation for this claim: "He is the author or editor of thirteen books and more than 200 peer reviewed[citation needed] academic articles." Here is the citation: http://www.vermontlaw.edu/our_faculty/faculty_directory/benjamin_k_sovacool.htm

Second, and more seriously, you mention the quotation from the Beerten et al. study criticizing him, but you should read the entirety of their article. While the paragraph quote is indeed accurate, the CONCLUSION of the Beerten et al. study is almost the same as Sovacool, validating his findings. They conclude “The studies under consideration result in indirect emissions of around 8 and 58g CO2/kWhe and more than 110gCO2/ kWh." The mean of the low and high end of this range is 59 grams, very close to Sovacool’s 66 grams. You may also want to mention that while Beerten et al question Sovacool's methodology, more than two dozen other studies have praised it, and used it.

Third, in the side bar showing carbon emissions from nuclear power, Wikipedia notes that "However a 2012 study by Yale University did not arrive at the same conclusions as Sovacool, instead they found: "That life cycle GHG emissions from nuclear power are...comparable to renewable technologies."[5] Again, read this study closely. It also concludes that “Depending on conditions, median life cycle GHG emissions could be 9 to 110 g CO2-eq/kWh by 2050.” The mean of this low and high is 59.5 grams, very close to the 66 grams from Sovacool. This should be stated since it affirms Sovacool's research.

Fourth, in the same side bar, Wikipedia notes that "similarly an analysis by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2011 arrived at a 50th percentile value from nuclear power of 16 g of CO2 per kWh, Wind 12g & Solar 22g." Now, this comparison isn't fair because the IPCC study is using a different methodology that gives very low numbers for nuclear power sources. For instance, it excludes emissions from changes in land use, which means all the emissions with uranium mining and nuclear waste storage are excluded. That's why the numbers are much lower than Sovacools, and also why Sovacool's number is probably more complete, and accurate.

Fifth, there has been new research published in Environmental Science & Technology confirming Sovacool's numbers that should be acknowledged. That study, available here http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es401667h, concludes that "when recent marginal capital and levelized costs are factored in for the United States, wind energy is 96 times more effective at displacing carbon than nuclear power; other renewable sources range from about 20 times to twice as effective." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.109.164.28 (talk) 22:16, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Totally agree. I have removed some errors, WP:Coatrack material, and done some updating; see also Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Benjamin K. Sovacool Johnfos (talk) 04:47, 30 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi all, loath to do this myself (one should rarely if ever edit their own profile) but after leaving my position at Vermont and starting a new one in the UK, I thought some light updating was necessary. I edited only my affiliation and updates from 2015, all with references.Bksovacool (talk) 11:18, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposed merge with Benjamin K. Sovacool bibliography

Most appropriate integrated into the main article on this scholar DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 13:40, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

The Benjamin K. Sovacool article looks too much like a CV when all relevant publications are included. The publications lists unbalance the article. Johnfos (talk) 05:15, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply. In my opinion, with or without the bibliography, the article looks too much like a CV. The problem is that it is not written in an encyclopedic style. Only the most notable accomplishments and publications should be included, i.e. those addressed in reliable, third-party sources. Kind regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 10:45, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I actually agree with User:DASonnenfeld, this does look too much like a CV. Would suggest you remove the bottom Awards and Education part, and also either shorten or remove the list of books and articles.Bksovacool (talk) 19:13, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I've thought about this a bit more, and due to time constraints this will be my last comment here. It is standard practice to include Honours and Awards in a bio, as this helps to establish notability. I think the Bibliography is strong enough to stand alone, in the same way that Discographies of musical artists do. As explained in the Bibliography most of that content has been widely cited or referred to in prestigious third-party journals. In terms of tone, I would suggest getting someone from our copyeditor group to go through the article and make improvements. Hope this helps. Johnfos (talk) 22:24, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

If, and since, we have separate article for bibliography, books and article lists here should be removed here. Redundant. Otherwise, all should be merged to here. GangofOne (talk) 00:21, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

• I'm going to redirect the bibliography here. We don't have such separate bibliography pages for any but the most significant academics (like Einstein). At best, we include somebody's 3-5 most significant papers (as established by independent reliable sources). --Randykitty (talk) 13:54, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Notable criticism in journal responses

First read here ->http://atomicinsights.com/sovacool-vs-lorenzini/ Jim Hansen "eviscerated him" in Environmental Science and Technology recently.

It was "delicious": Hansen pointed out that among other things, Sovacool confused the impact of a nuclear power plant with a nuclear war.

Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (12), pp 6718–6719 http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es402211m — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.167.180.38 (talk) 04:48, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

In the interests of accuracy, I should point out that in no way did we confuse nuclear war with nuclear weapons. This refers to a citation of ours to Mark Jacobson and there he meticulously explains that since nuclear power has a link to nuclear weapons, one must factor in risks associated with proliferation and nuclear war. Hardly a stretch given what is going on at the moment with Iran and North Korea.Bksovacool (talk) 11:20, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

It is a very very big stretch, as Dr. Hansen pointed out, no one agrees with doing that stretch, not the NREL, not the IPCC, no one except, your very curious crew. It is about equivalent to saying that because nuclear power "has a link to" life-saving radiopharmaceuticals which are produced in research reactors and also in the occasional fission-electric power station, such as Clinton generating station's Mo-99 and Co-60 production, then nuclear power equals medicine, and you don't want to be against medicine Ben, do you? Are you? In any case, for arguments sake, even if nuclear electricity somehow, someday, maybe, resulted in a nuclear war, even under this shaky assumption of yours and Jacobson's.

Then it is by no means certain that this hypothetical nuclear war would result in fossil fuel fires(fires with non-biogenic carbon material) and thus go on to increase the CO2 burden in the biosphere. As any assumptions that it definitely would, really is a massive stretch on the already shaky assumption I'm granting you for arguments sake. Another equal stretch, but facing in a direction you probably won't like, is that you just as well could say that the war may in fact be fought solely with tactical nuclear weapons and therefore result in conceivably, vastly less coal derived(TNT) CO2 emissions than a conventional war? You are aware of course that I'm not advocating the replacement of TNT with mini-nukes, but merely trying to show how hypothetical "logical" stretches built on something that is already a stretch, such as this, is in no way different than Jacobson's, and the stealthily introduced "additional" total-life cycle nuclear-electricity CO2 emissions, that your paper promoted. It's merely just facing the other way(a benefit on the CO2 front).

Drilling deeper along your vein of reasoning, one also finds that you could just as easily argue, but this time base it on actual events, that if you take your rather extreme assumption that nuclear power definitely equals nuclear war, then should not nuclear power get CO2 abated war credits for ending WWII and thus ending further fossil-fuel troop mobilizations against Japan? You know, leaving aside the fact that it prematurely ended the Japanese enforced Vietnamese Famine of 1945 and thus saved lives. Also, on the topic of WWII, isn't it funny how there was entirely zero electricity generated from nuclear power the last time nuclear weapons were used on a city in 1945? Kind of goes to show you that if a country is really set on nuclear war, as the US was, then having no nuclear electricity sector, or banning reactors, is never going to be much of a safeguard from a nuclear war, now is it?

Moreover Jacobson's "nuclear war logic" is like saying that because wind turbines use airfoil/wings for lift, and the understanding of wings are an integral part of building planes and bombers, then the proliferation of wind turbines will increase the rate of bombings and therefore the "risks of (fossil fuel)fires assoiciated wih the proliferation of wind turbines" should be taken into account in all of the total-life-cycle emission analyses of wind turbines/wind power. Is this not exactly the "mindset" you are in when you argue that nuclear electricity=potential for war=fossil fuel fires=climate change? What is good for the goose is good for the gander. The factories that manufacture glass-reinforced-plastic composite wind turbine airfoils are after all, pretty much identical to the factories that produce plastic composite bomber-drone airfoils, didn't you know? So how is the following any different: Wind turbines=wings=proliferation of drones & bombers=more wars with TNT & napalm=climate change?

Yet I don't see either of you being consistent and working on this wind turbine/bomber proliferation dimension, which really is strange "given what is going on at the moment with drones/bombers burning the hell out of the war in Syria and the war in Ukraine". I'd expect you would likewise factor this in for wind energy, if you were any way consistent? Yet in direct contrast, there are no war fires and some may argue, nuclear peace, in both the Iran and N.Korea you bring up. Strange that? Or are all these equivalents, just far too much of a stretch for you? I don't know about you, but if someone only allows a certain direction of hypothetical stretches to be entertained in their mind, then it tells you a lot about that person's biases.

Boundarylayer (talk) 00:28, 14 October 2016 (UTC)

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