You’ll Never See Another Nuclear Power Plant Commissioned in the US
Frequent commenter/author Frank Eggers writes on my piece on subsidies for nuclear:
Nuclear power has been demonstrated to be far safer than fossil fuel power. Coal plants cause health problems that, while severe, are difficult to pinpoint because generally they simply greatly increase the health problems which would exist anyway whereas nuclear accidents, though infrequent, have a more concentrated and obvious effect.
Frank: I’m not one of the hysterical anti-nuke people who grossly over-estimates the danger. Having said that:
1) The lessons of Chernobyl and Fukushima tell us more than how and where not to build nukes; they tell us that there are many lessons to learn, some of them unseen as of this date.
2) We still don’t know what to do with nuclear waste. It seems irresponsible to build something without knowing how to deal with the products of its operation.
3) The cost of building a new nuclear plant at this point is astronomical. In the time required to design, permit, build, and deploy a nuclear facility (at least eight years), the cost of renewables and energy storage will have continued to plummet. This makes the whole concept of nuclear nonsensical.
Yes, I know Obama talks up nuclear. He’d talk up daisies too if the flower industry had a fraction of the money, the lobbyists, and the power wielded by the nuclear boys. There are no words or campaign promises that change the three points above. You will not see another nuclear power plant commissioned in the U.S.
Craig,
1) Yes, there are lessons to learn about nuclear power in addition to the ones learned at Chernobyl, Fukushima, and Three Mile Island. But we will not learn these lessons if we turn our backs on nuclear power. If the world turns its back on nuclear power (unlikely), then, as China, India, and other countries increase their use of power, which they must do to lift their billions of people out of poverty, the use of fossil fuels will increase astronomically which would be a disaster for all of us. Already China emits more green house gasses than we do here in the U.S.; eventually India will follow. The scarcity of potable water in some areas is already increasing the use of water desalination plants which require huge amounts of power. This is a disaster in the making which renewable sources of energy cannot prevent.
2) We DO know what to do with nuclear waste. The problem is that we are not doing it. The “waste”, which is actually unused fuel, is the result of using an extremely inefficient nuclear technology. The pressurized water thermal reactors we are now using require that natural uranium, which is 0.7% U235 and 99.3% U238, be enriched to from 2% to 5% U235 by discarding as waste most of the U238, a wasteful process which can also be used to enrich uranium to > 90% U235 for use in nuclear warheads. Then, when the enriched uranium is used in our reactors, only about 0.5% is actually converted to energy; the rest is discarded as waste even though it could be used as fuel in other reactor types. With a better nuclear technology and more appropriate fuel cycles, we’d generate less than 1% as much waste as we currently generate thereby solving the nuclear waste problem.
3) The cost of building new reactors need not be astronomical. The cost has been unnecessarily inflated by 1) not having a standardized nuclear plant design, and more important, 2) by bureaucratic procedures that delay completion and licensing, resulting in avoidable interest charges which greatly increase the cost. The cost of nuclearly generated electricity would be comparable to the cost of generating electricity by fossil fuels (not counting the externalities of using fossil fuels) if the avoidable delays were eliminated so that nuclear plants could be built on schedule thereby eliminating avoidable interest costs.
We should also be doing much more R & D work to prepare better nuclear reactor designs for implementation. Both China and India are doing such R & D work. Specifically, China is doing R & D work to develop the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) which would use thorium instead of uranium. There are many ways to design nuclear reactors. The LFTR looks promising; it could even use existing waste as fuel. However, it is not certain what reactor type would be the best to use. It could take some time to determine that; we will never determine that without more R & D work. And, some reactor designs, by operating at higher temperatures and using the Brayton cycle instead of the Rankine cycle, would eliminate the need for water cooling.
Unnecessary delays in implementing nuclear power can be expected to have two effects when power outages and excessive costs increase pressure for a quick fix:
1) It will increase usage of fossil fuels, and
2) It may result in, after considerable delay, rushing less than optimal nuclear systems into use, thereby increasing costs and reducing safety.
Wind and solar power are useful where modest amounts of power are required in places where connecting to the grid would be impractical, including in some small island nations and in remote places in the U.S. and other countries, where it could be cheaper than the Diesel power now being used. Therefore, even though renewables cannot become a major source of power for prosperous nations, R & D should continue on it to make it more practical where other sources of power are uneconomic.
I think the first problem that needs to be tackled before we continue down the nuclear path is how to shut one down that has gone into an out of control state like 3 of the Fukushima reactors are currntly in.
At the end of March they sent a small team into the #2 reactor facility to investigate. They expected to find 33 feet of water covering the fuel rods and found 2 feet. The rods are not covered and the water they are pumping in is leaking out somewhere faster than they thought it was or boiling off faster than they can pump it in. I can’t remember the amount of radiation they expected to find but what they did find was a level of 73 sieverts. This is enough to kill a man in less than 10 minutes. I think they actually quoted 4 minutes. This level of radiation will not allow electronics to work so they can’t use robots to try to work on it.
The bottom line is Japanese scientists said they will have to develop new technology that is currently unknown to work on these reactors. Until then there is no way to shutdown these reactors so they will continue to be in this state. They chose to enter reactor #2 because it was in the best shape of the 3 failed reactors.
I live within 50 miles of 3 reactor facilities. Less than 25 miles from two of them. One of them is at the end of a fault line that runs very close to one of the other reactors and ends at another reactor quite a distance from me. The third reactor is three mile island. I would like to feel more comfortable that they can shut them down in case of emergency.
“Until then there is no way to shutdown these reactors so they will continue to be in this state.”
They will not continue to be in that state.
When a reactor is shut down, the decay of highly radioactive elements causes the heat output to be about 9% of what it is during normal fission operation. As the highly radioactive elements continue to decay, the heat output is gradually reduced. Eventually (and I don’t know exactly how long) the heat emission drops to the point that no artificial cooling is necessary.
The two newest Westinghouse reactors are designed so that after shutdown, passive emergency cooling eliminates the need to have pumps operating to prevent a melt down. Of course the Japanese reactors are of a rather old design and the Westinghouse reactors with passive emergency cooling are quite new. But if the Westinghouse reactors experienced the same situation, there would be no melt down.
Older reactors can be retrofitted to eliminate the need for outside emergency power when they are shut down; the 9% decay heat after shut down is sufficient to operate emergency pumps.
Nuclear technology has not been frozen since the Japanese reactors were designed.
It is true that solid state electronics will fail when exposed to radiation. However, vacuum tube electronics are much more tolerant of radiation. So, it would be possible to build vacuum tube operated robotics to deal with the problem; the technology exists. It may be an obsolete technology, but it does work.
The longer we wait to expand nuclear power generation, the hotter the earth will become. That risk is far greater than the risk of nuclear power. Also, a better nuclear technology and better fuel cycle will have to be implemented than what we are using now because the present nuclear technology is so wasteful that the amount of uranium available would not last long. About 80% of the natural uranium is discarded as (low level) waste during the enrichment process, with about 20% left to use as reactor fuel. Then, the reactor uses only about 0.05% of the fuel left, which means that only about 0.01% of the original mined uranium is used with the rest discarded as waste. If that sounds stupid, it’s because it is. A better nuclear technology would use about 99% of the original uranium.
‘We still don’t know what to do with nuclear waste.’
This is one of those so obviously true statements, that it needs no defense. Except it is completely wrong. Digging a hole in the ground (or under the sea floor as was suggested long ago) is not high-tech. Yes, it really is that simple. Or, we could just keep it around until we burn it in LFTRs and IFRs … etc. It’s safe in dry-cask storage (check out some videos of trains being run at full speed into a cask).
‘Waste’ is a political, not a technical problem. It is caused by ignorance and irrational fear of radiation.
Frank Eggers writes,
” the present nuclear technology is so wasteful that the amount of uranium available would not last long. About 80% of the natural uranium is discarded as (low level) waste during the enrichment process, with about 20% left to use as reactor fuel. Then, the reactor uses only about 0.05% of the fuel left …”
Fortunately this is incorrect in a couple of ways. First, the enrichment process is not always necessary. This library computer is, according to the display at the top left corner of http://canadianenergyissues.com/ , 52 percent powered by unenriched uranium burning in CANDU reactors as I write.
Second, the correct percentage of the fuel that is fed into American power reactors is 5, not 0.05. Thus, like CANDUs, they burn about 1 percent, not 0.01 percent, of the U that is mined.
This 1 percent is enough to make uranium now-a-days 100 times cheaper than oil, ten times cheaper than gas, and even at this low price, new discoveries and upwards revisions of estimates of known deposits have been increasing about ten times faster than the world’s present fleet of reactors can burn, 1-percent-burn, the stuff.
So burning 99 percent will be nice, but ordinary reactors like the ones we already have can bring the benefits of high energy use to the whole world and sustain them for many millennia.
G. R. L.,
I did get a couple figures wrong. I meant to write that our PWRs use about 0.5% of the enriched fuel, which is a figure that I read somewhere. Also, I was writing only about PWRs. You’re right about the CANDU, though; it can operate on natural uranium, which PWRs cannot do. So far as I know, there are no CANDUs operating in the U.S., perhaps only because they were not invented here, which is not a good reason. Additional advantages of the CANDU are that it can be refuled while operating and also, while operating, the fuel can be reshuffled to improve utilization efficiency. From the fuel utilization efficiency standpoint, it is better than the PWR. My impression is that the Canadians invented it because it does not require a huge pressure vessel.
I do hope that we’ll migrate to a better technology, though. The LFTR seems very promising, but I think that other possibilities should also be considered.
It’s unfortunate that so many people are unaware that there are many many ways to design nuclear reactors and that they are not all the same.
Graig,
“There are no words or campaign promises that change the three points above. You will not see another nuclear power plant commissioned”.
Never, say never!
Frank is quite right. It’s unfortunate that the first product of nuclear technology introduced to the public was the nuclear bombs not on Japan in 1945.
Since then the reaction to all things nuclear has been hysterical. Even small medical reactors are targeted by the misinformed anti-nuclear lobby.
Once all the emotional hysteria has been removed, nuclear power emerges as the safest, least harmful method of producing energy. The ‘technology’ has never failed!
Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were created by human operating error and neglect. The clear lesson is that Nuclear power plants should be subject to UN supervised inspection and continual technical upgrades.
Newer nuclear technologies are being developed, (including liquid thorium) eliminating most of the old disadvantages. Technical developments such high heat materials like Graphene make nuclear technology cheaper and safer. LFTR reactors and similar technology even eliminate the ability to produce weapons.
Waste disposal is easily dealt with, by reprocessing,and disposal under the great salt beds of central Australia(where in time this waste could become a valuable resource).
As fossil fuels are rapidly depleted,the nuclear power industry is the only reliable technology able to produce energy on a industrial scale.
Hysterical disinformation, and opposition to nuclear power will prove as effective as the Luddites were in preventing mass production of textiles !
Every year 130-200,000 people die from the pollution caused by No.6 Marine grade Fuel Oil (Bunker Oil), another 2-3 million will become ill, most fatally. (these figures are just for the Northern Hemisphere).
This is every year, and increasing ! In comparison,the health problems created by Nuclear Power, pales into insignificance!
The opposition is not hysterical, it is commercial.
Every year the astroturfers can keep a reactor from being built in the USA, or keep it shut down if it has been built, means approximately another $29 million — even at today’s low gas prices — in natural gas royalty income for the government.
“They will not continue to be in that state. When a reactor is shut down,….”
The reactors have not been shutdown. They have melted down. The fuel is no longer organized in rods between which control rods can be lowered to stop the reaction. This fuel is in a liquid mass which they believe has burned through the reactor containment vessel which is made of steel almost a year ago and is still burning away and possibly already through the cement under the containment vessel. Shutdown is not even a possibility for these 3 reactors. Uncontrolled runnaway nuclear reaction is the reality here.
Vacuum tubes will last longer than semiconductors when exposed to a nuclear blast at a distance mostly due to their resistance to EMP. I have worked with both in my career. I still don’t think vacuum tubes will survive in the environment inside a runnaway reactor for very long. The heat alone will degrade them quickly. The device will be huge to handle all of those tubes. Even the melting point of copper wire will be lower than the tempurature of the molten fuel. Radio control will be impossible in that environment so a control cable will have to be used. This cable will have to be jacketed with a hose filled with circulating cooling liquid.
I am sorry but I am still extremely skeptical and I am not convinced that humans are or will ever be qualified to handle this stuff especially as long as the corporations doing it must make a profit.
Brian,
Much of what you wrote is speculation. It will be some time before we know what the facts are. However, if fission were still occurring, we can assume that the heat being generated would probably be far greater than what is actually being generated.
The reactors were shut down immediately with the control rods when the earthquake occurred. It seems unlikely that criticality could have occurred after shut down even though melt down has almost certainly occurred. But again, this is, to some extent guesswork and we will not have all the facts for some time.
If we permit this to cause us to eschew nuclear power, we will be in real trouble. The world does not end at the U.S. borders. There are very poor countries which a far higher population density than ours. Even if the problem of energy storage had been solved, and it hasn’t been solved, their land area and population density would make it impossible for anything other than nuclear power to lift themselves out of poverty. But I do believe that we should be doing the necessary R & D work to develop safer and more economical nuclear technologies which can then be implemented, perhaps with our assistance, in other countries. If we don’t, they will burn more fossil fuels and our efforts to reduce fossil fuel usage here in the U.S. will be of little use.
It is not guesswork that fission was successfully shut down. Sulphur-35 levels were measured across the Pacific and were too low for any recriticality to have occurred.
IMHO the main thing is that we have a choice of nuclear + renewables or fossil fuels + renewables. I’d rather leave a cleaner world with nuclear + renewables for posterity.
2 key points of the Japanese experience are that nuclear technologies have changed in 40 years and quality of build has changed. Does anybody remember the reputation Japanese quality had in the 60’s when those plants were built? About what China had 5 years ago. Think about what a difference we’d see with new tech and new build quality.
Regarding fuels: there are a number of technologies, some with 30 years operating experience, which can utilize the other 99% of the energy in the current ‘spent’ fuel. That’s a lot of energy. UK estimates enough energy in their current spent fuel & plutonium from nuclear disarmament to power their entire economy for 500 years with no new mining. We need to deal with the current nuclear waste – let’s use it to power our economy.
Regarding storing spent fuels: the technologies referenced above result in fuels which need to be stored for 200 years not 200,000 years. That’s less storage time than many of the toxic wastes from petroleum
Rising nations: we can choose to be key players in global energy by using made-in-USA technologies (MSR, LFTR, IFR…) or S. Korea, China and India will do it for us. They’re all designing modular nuclear plants for mass-production. Costs and built-time will come down dramatically in the next 5 years. This technology is coming. we can choose to drive the bus, get on the bus or miss the bus. Ironically it is our bus – we designed it but we’re not even on it anymore.
Regarding costs: look at the costs of ‘standardized build’ nuclear plants being built now, not the one-of-a-kind planst built with enormous regulatory delays in the 70’s. Why do the Chinese have so many under construction? Because it is clean, inexpensive power.
Hardassi,
As you point out, there are solutions for nuclear “waste”, i.e. use it as fuel or use nuclear technologies that don’t generate so much waste in the first place. There has been sufficient publicity about that that everyone should be aware of it. However, even though these solutions for eliminating waste have been publicized over and over ad nauseam, people continue to assert that the waste problem has not been solved. These people either have selective perception, in that they somehow are unable to read or hear the solutions, or they have selective memories, in that after reading and hearing the solutions, they do not remember them.
As I see it, unless we do the necessary R & D work to implement better nuclear technologies, we will end up buying the technologies from the Chinese or others. And, with nuclear plants that do not depend on powered emergency cooling systems, public resistance should decrease.
For additional views on energy systems, you can visit this web site:
http://bravenewclimate.com/
And here is a thread on that web site that covers certain nuclear issues:
http://bravenewclimate.com/2012/04/15/off-to-russia/
At this point, since nobody can stick their head inside the reactor and take a look it is all speculation. What I stated I got from articles in the Japan times and other places which was quoting TEPKO experts except the temperature part. I was under the impression that the fuel was molten but it is appearently not. It did melt into a mass at the bottom of the reactor which is thought to be 20-40cm deep and the water level is about 60cm which is at about 50 degrees and I am assuming C here since it is Japan. Currently they are guessing it is a solid mass and not molten. Some fission must still be occuring or they would not need to continiously cool it. Who know what will happen if cooling stops. They are talking it will take 40 years to decommision and since they can’t seem to get the water level up to the 10M mark they would like they are assuming it is either boiling off or leaking out. Either way is not so good. If shutting down still results in this outcome then shutting down is still not good enough.
All the stuff about the radiation still applies since they measured that and know the limitations of their equipment. That is the major problem.
Whether or not we should continue using this stuff could be debated all day long. Personally I don’t think humans are qualified to handle this stuff. Greed and huberis will always lead to shortcuts and disaster. No company will want to spend the money to insure that a reactor can survive an event that has only a small chance of happening like the fukushima disaster but we know from experience that these disasters do occur and will not stop. All the theory of probability and statistics do not stop them. Countries that you speak of that need power have the opportunity to use and evolve cleaner powers that are available and use ingenuity to make them work to do what is needed and never get cought up in the nuclear or carbon fuel cycle. I think the problem is continuing to think that these are the only options that will work. Managing on less energy is the very first step. Coming up with the energy required after that is the remaining challange. If a city cannot come up with it’s own energy using rooftop solar and wind then it will have to buy it’s energy from power generated on the roofs and windturbines of the surrounding suburbs. Perhaps this will be the option for those population dense countries you speak of. They will have to buy power from their neighbors which will generate opportunity for their neighbors.
I just don’t think we can safely handle the stuff anymore than we can safely handle oil. I am also not in favor of giving my tax dollars to these businesses for cleaning up their messes whether from disaster or waste. If they can manage on their own then so be it. I personally prefer to persue other options.
Brian,
I understand your desire to whisk away nuclear and fossil fuels to be replaced with efficiency and solar&wind. But I have worked in the business of selling efficiency both in generation of electricity and it’s use, and I can tell you it is the most difficult task there is because it requires EVERYONE to make the same right choices about energy useand that just isn’t human nature! I have seen people choose a less efficient technology just to save a few percent up front not caring about the long term cost. I saw one turn down a 50% ROI on a 2MM investment, simply because he wasnt familiar enough with power generation. It will take Generations to make the fundamental improvements we need to make. We need the new passively safe Nuclear plants to at least run until we have proven that Renewables can effectivelty work for 90% of our power needs. At less than 10%, we will end up burning too much fossil fuel while we wait.
You mention choices about energy efficiency. Out of curiosity, I looked up information on hot tubs. Energy efficiency is rarely mentioned in the advertisements for them and most use ELECTRIC heaters which, when considering the efficiency of the power plant, are very inefficient and would also be exceedingly expensive to operate.
As a practical matter, this may not be especially important since probably only a tiny percentage of our energy system is used for heating hot tubs, but it does indicate a serious lack of consideration for energy efficiency.
Brian, you say, “Some fission must still be occuring or they would not need to continiously cool it..”
Not true!!
When a reactor is shut town, the decay of highly radioactive elements causes it, at first, to generate approximately 9% as much heat as it would generate at full power before being shut down. Through time, that 9% heat decreases, rapidly at first, then more gradually. That is why cooling is necessary even after a reactor is shut down. The need for cooling after being shut down is a major safety issue. And, the latest Westinghouse designs have passive emergency cooling so as not to depend on fallible power sources to keep the emergency cooling system operating.
Even before the Japanese nuclear systems were built, there were warnings that a tsunami of considerably less power than had already occurred in the past would disable the emergency Diesel power systems unless the plans were changed. The warnings were ignored.
The world cannot get by on less energy than it is using now without keeping many people locked in permanent poverty. The U.S. could get by on less energy by using energy more efficiently and doing things differently; that would not necessarily reduce our standard of living. For Europe, it would be more difficult because Europe is already more energy efficient than the U.S. However, India, China, and other poor countries must be considered. They cannot lift their millions of poor people out of poverty without plentiful energy and the population density of those countries is so much higher than the population density of the U.S. that renewable sources of energy would fall far short of requirements.
Energy reliability must also be considered and currently, the technology does not exist to make wind and solar power reliable; they are intermittent and currently there is no storage technology that is adequate to deal with their intermittent nature. At high cost, modest amounts of energy can be stored, but that is not adequate.
Consider also fresh water shortages. One of the contentious issues in the Near East is water rights. Although Israel and its neighbors are using water as efficiently as possible, there are still severe water shortages. Already considerable energy, derived from fossil fuels, is being used in that area to desalinate sea water, some of which is being used for agriculture, and there are still shortages. To eliminate those water shortages, still more energy will have to be used.
It is probably true that private industry cannot be depended upon to operate nuclear reactors with adequate safety. Private industry in general has demonstrated inadequate concern for safety and pollution unless it is carefully overseen by government agencies. That is especially clear in countries where governments lack either the will or the power to enforce safety and environmental regulations. Profits come first, often at the expense of safety, and that cannot be permitted. Although I really don’t like government regulation, often it is the lesser of evils.
We can oppose nuclear power all we want here in the U.S., but other countries will clearly see that implementing nuclear power is in their best interests. If we decide to replace fossil fuels with renewables instead of nuclear power, the results (high cost and lack of reliability) will cause irresistible political pressure to implement nuclear power, possibly so quickly that adequate safeguards will not occur. It would also prolong our dependence on fossil fuels.
I have spent many hours searching in vain for studies that prove that renewables will do the job. Adequate proof may require having sensors in most places where renewable power systems could reasonably be installed, with the data being analyzed in a central location, to determine whether at any time the power required would ever fall short of requirements. So far as I can see, no such study has ever been done. Instead, we are being asked to spend hundreds of billions of dollars in an energy system without first proving its practicality.
Right …
The figure I have received is 7 percent. At FD1 it’s now down to 0.05 percent, so while it still is true that cooling is needed, a garden hose would be sufficient. You’ll recall that when the heat was still twenty times that, helicopters were used, and much of their water missed, but enough didn’t. Also they used a crane that had been designed to squirt concrete high up, instead squirting water, and this prevented any serious overheating in the spent fuel pools.
A nice graphical presentation of the reduction can be seen at http://www.energyfromthorium.com/javaws/SpentFuelExplorer.jnlp .
G.R.L.,
I am unable to view the document for which you have provided the link. If I cannot view it, probably there are also others who cannot.
It’s a Java program. Just now I clicked the link and got a message saying, “This type of file can harm your computer. Do you want to keep SpentFuelExplorer.jnlp anyway?”, with options to keep or discard.
I trust Kirk Sorensen, so I clicked Keep, and this caused the file SpentFuelExplorer.jnlp to be in the download folder, and I could right-click on it and choose Launch … but I suppose some computers may reject all Java and not let you choose. Sorry about that. Well, I shouldn’t really be sorry; the people who make untrustworthy Java programs should be.
A recurring theme is that reducing our energy use (efficiency) can resolve our need for additional power. That is correct for the wealthier countries – we in the top 10% waste a lot. That does not address the global issue that billions of people in the world are striving for more energy. The impact of that increase is orders of magnitude greater than the minor savings by the top 10%. The attached video provides what could be considered a reasonable balance, and the implications.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-and-the-magic-washing-machine/
The washing machine link was excellent!
I lived in Fiji from 1994 to 2004 and saw what washing machines can do in countries with many poor people. In the villages, women would take their washing to a stream; without piped water and electricity, there was no choice. In places where there was electricity and piped water, everyone who could afford to bought a washing machine. The time and effort saved were immense.
Interfaith Power and Light is urging Americans to reduce their energy usage. Of course, in general, that is a good thing; surely few people will object. However, on a global level, their efforts will make very little difference considering that the world, to improve the quality of life for the billions of poor people, will have to INCREASE energy production by many times.
Water reservoirs take 10 years to permit here in TX but there is no money to build them. Same with Nukes. Money is the main problem at the moment. With low gas prices from the recent boom we probably will opt for gas over nukes. this will not change until carbon caps come in to play to level the playing field. We will probably feel the lack of water pain first as there are few alternatives.
Good discussion, but I cannot imagine how nuclear power could end human life, but a runaway greenhouse effect could, albeit that the consensus is that it’s unlikely. If you include mining deaths, spread of radio-nuclides from coal burning, and trace elements and micro-pollutants emissions, nuclear still looks good to me. It is too expensive, but it is something we need to have as a functioning and developing technology. We as a species have governance issues, TOC came under massive criticisms for breaking rules, something that just should not be possible, and ultimately, if you look at the death toll from the Tsunami compared with the nuclear plant I think you ought to come to the conclusion that such disasters do not rule out the nuclear option as part of the mix. The money issue comes down to political choices, trillions for wars, and defense but not billions for new energy technology.
I doubt that either a nuclear disaster nor global warming could end human life, but global warming could possible end civilization as we know it. People could be forced to migrate from areas that become uninhabitable, but might not be welcome in the only areas that remained habitable. That could easily result in warfare. The ability of the world to sustain its existing population could be impaired, so mass famine would be likely.
Actually, we don’t really know what would happen. It’s possible that areas that are now too cold for life would become habitable and food crops might grow there. In any case, there would be certain to be major disruptions.