August 7 Louisa, VA Activists from the Southeast Convergence for Climate Action occupied the welcome center for Dominion’s North Anna nuclear power plant today. The action was taken to protest Dominion’s plans to build two new nuclear reactors and to call out nuclear power for the false solution that it is to the climate crisis. “We are here to serve notice on the so-called ‘nuclear renaissance’ that the anti-nuclear movement is alive and well,” said Glenn Carroll, coordinator of Nuclear Watch South.
In all 25 people occupied the visitors center for 2 hours until police came in to remove them. The protesters wore shirts that read “Nukes not Welcome” and chanted and sang. “We chose to take non-violent direct action because Dominion and the federal government have completely failed to address the climate crisis,” said Paxus Calta who lives twenty miles from the plant. The protesters also gave their own version of a tour for visitors revealing the true nature of the nuclear industry. In all 6 people were arrested for refusing to leave the building and were escorted out in handcuffs to the cheers of their friends.
The nuclear power industry is attempting to pose itself as our savior for the climate crisis. This is simply not possible. The only thing that the nuclear industry can promise us is a life of radioactive waste, poisoned
water, and cancer. Nuclear energy has no place in our transition away from fossil fuels. Since the action, police have set up check points around the convergence, following cars leaving the area, and pulling people over and running ID’s.
We will continue to fight for climate justice in the southeast. More action to come! The convergence runs through August 11th so come on out! Todays action was planned by Nuclear Watch South, Blue Ridge Earth First!, and Rising Tide North America. www.climateconvergence.org/southeast
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I guess I am confused on what is a “false” versus a “true” solution to carbon. Nuclear waste is very low volume and nuclear reactors put out power 24/7. Cancer claims about low-level radiation have long been proven false by scientific bodies such as National Cancer Institute and the World Health Organization. Prestigious technical organizations such as the ICPP and the Paul Scherrer Institute accept nuclear as a safe option on climate change. Maybe I am too old and too bourgoisie, but what are the critieria used to decide “false” and “true”?
Hello, I have a question about your website. Please contact me at your earliest convenience. Thank you! -Dave
For false think: a nuke plant takes, what, 10 or 15 years to build and there are currently TWO manufacturers of a certain large crucial components so we’ve looking at 2018 IF THEY STARTED BUILDING THEM NOW (maybe). Also false could mean the massive carbon footprint of the construction – any idea how much concrete these suckers take? I don’t know the average but JUST LOOK AT IT! Oh, then false could be the mining of the fuel or should we continue to write off the poor Indians as national sacrifices for the good of progress? No! Let’s make them heros for taking the high level nuke waste into their mountains! (Yucca Mt)
True is I am a sarcastic bastard who is sick of dirty energy.
Oops! I meant IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change). My apologies for the typo.
well for one nuclear is no solution to climate change because the fuel cycle of uranium is carbon intensive. when you factor in the fossil-fuel used for the mining, shipping and processing of the uranium needed to operate a nuclear power plant, you come up with greenhouse gas emissions that are comparable to those of burning natural gas for power production.
but even if it weren’t dirty, it wouldn’t work. It takes about ten years for a new nuclear reactor to come online and by the estimates of James Hansen and other top climate scientists, ten years is about how long we have to get our act together and avoid utter destabilization of the climate.
one last thing about nuclear, if it’s such a good idea why will the private sector just plain not invest in it or insure it? it’s entirely socialized. our taxes pay for it with federal subsidies.
so the criteria for a true solution to climate change would have to be infrastructural shifts that greatly reduce our energy usage such as localizing our food production; or energy sources that don’t rely on the consistent supply of a carbon-intensive fuel; and they have to work.
i’m excited that civil disobedience has again entered the field of tactics used to resist nuclear energy. and i very much appreciate those who went to jail for the cause on Thursday.
willie
Blue Ridge Earth First!
I live in Knoxville, down the road from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the beating heart of the NATO nuclear weapons complex. They do a lot of good research at Oak Ridge, including solutions to the climate crisis, but I can show you declassified reports about all the radioactive waste they’ve dumped into our rivers over the years.
Policy recommendations from major international bodies like the WHO and IPCC don’t have the luxurious political space to criticize the nuclear industry. That’s one of the advantages of an uncompromised movement like Earth First!, they don’t have to keep mum about the system’s dirty little radioactive secrets. Turning a blind eye to the environmental and public health impacts of uranium exploitation is one of the rules public statements from global institutions have to follow at that level. That’s the kind of power the nuclear industry has at the international level of the climate debate. It should be obvious when you consider that all of those massive NGOs are primarily funded by nuclear states whose governments have a fixed security interest in continued uranium processing. This is what Al Gore meant in his “Energy Revolution” address about creating the political space for such a radical discussion at such a high policy level.
A radical critique of the nuclear system bridges the controversies surrounding Dominion and Iran, to more fully illustrate where the brainless tentacles begin and end. Stopping the nuclear relapse is as much about nonproliferation as it is about climate change and public health.
Uranium is less carbon intensive than natural gas:
http://www.externe.info/
[scroll down to external costs chart] Nuclear is a little more carbon intensive than wind, but less (at least half) than natural gas. As for schedules, nuclear plants are built in 4-5 years in South Korea or Japan. The US could do the same with a standard design.
The only thing that civil disobedience and endless litigation is sure to accomplish is to make it more expsensive to build a nuclear power plant. Even so, once these plants are online, they are among the lowest cost producers of baseload electricity in existence.
One needs to look no further than Germany whose efforts to phase out nuclear power, even with the support of the politicians and the public, have wrecked havoc on their electrical grid. Wind power has simply not been able to step up to the demand in a reliable way.
Thankfully for Germany, there are two things that will save them from their antinuclear errors: 1) France has been picking up the slack on Germany’s failed experiment because they export about $15 B worth of electricity from their nuclear power stations annually; and 2) The German government is finally beginning to realize that CO2 reduction and a phase-out of nuclear energy are conflicting goals.
England, Sweden, France, and thankfully, China, realize this fact, as well. Heck, even the co-founder of Greenpeace has acknowledged that nuclear is a vital part of our future energy needs.
Nuclear is water intensive. Reactors must be near rivers because water is needed to cool the reactors. Some of that water becomes steam and some goes back in to the river. This changes the temperature of the river and can make it intolerable for fish. In drought stricken areas like Georgia makes little sense because when the river runs dry the plant has to stop operating.
>> “Heck, even the co-founder of Greenpeace has acknowledged that nuclear is a vital part of our future energy needs.”
Assuming you are refering to Partick Moore, he has made a lucrative career being “the co-founder of greenpeace in favor of [INSERT ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL ANYTHING HERE]” for hire. This has included some of the most outrageous clearcut logging in North America, genetically modified foods, privitization of water, clean coal, nukes, etc.
He also was one of the main interviewees in “the great global warming swindle”, a prominent UK climate change denial documentary made a year or 2 back.
While Moore was clearly involved in early Greenpeace action, his “co-foundership” has long been dismissed by other founders including Dorothy Stowe, Bob Hunter, Ben Metcalf, Dorothy Metcalf, and Jim and Marie Bolen, and is at odds with his original Greenpeace membership application.
Regardless, it’s clearly disingenous to cite him as an authority due to his relationship with Greenpeace: he has been (many times) formally disowned by the organization as a charlatan trying to make money off of his involvement with the group, which ended DECADES ago.
Greenpeace doesn’t advocate nuclear power, period.
more on Patrick Moore: http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Patrick_Moore
All thermal power plants (even solar thermal) must reject a portion of their heat. This can be done either to a river or ocean, or through cooling towers. The amount of water available and the local environment factor in to which way it goes, but all thermal plants need a heat sink.
So lets put aside the fact that uranium mining has poisoned communities around the world. Lets put aside the fact that where there is a nuclear plant there is a cancer cluster. Lets put aside the fact that several nuke plants have had to temporarily shut down because their cooling water sources have gotten too hot at times (which will obviously be an increasing problem as the earth warms).
Answer me this. How can you rationally advocate using a technology that has been around for 50 years and still does not have a safe permanent storage site for its toxic waste? Why on earth would you advocate building new nukes when we can’t even figure out what to do with the existing, highly dangerous radioactive waste? This stuff remains deadly to humans for thousands upon thousands of years and there is simply no safe way to store it.
We already screwed up once with the first wave of nukes. Lets not screw up again saying they are the answer to climate change
Just because the organization doesn’t endorse nuclear power, doesn’t mean the individuals cannot. Nuclear power in Virginia is supported by several prominent members of the Sierra Club, even though the Sierra Club organization itself is antinuclear.
You can resort to personal attacks and discredit individuals all you like, but facts are pretty stubborn, which is probably why it’s easier to attack Patrick Moore instead of the main point of my post. That being: Germany’s current energy situation and eminent signs of reversal on the planned phase-out of nuclear energy.
The National Cancer Institute found NO cancer clusters around US plants. The reason nobody has disposed of the spent fuel is that the question of whether to recycle it remains. We know from the Oklo phenomenon that nuclear waste can be sequestered for 1.8 billion years. As for the water issue, that affects ALL thermal plants. A CSP plant would also be shut down if its cooling water level was too low.
As for mining, you need to process cadmium and other toxic metals for solar cells. No energy technology is non-toxic. All have by-products that require careful management. New mining techniques combined with dry cask storage make nuclear a relatively safe way to generate large amounts of 24/7 electricity.
I realize that nuclear is controversial and has issues such as capital costs. However, the decision on energy sources should merely be based on which energy sources have better PR. If carbon is really a problem and we still need the energy, then we need to think anew about our energy sources based on fact and not fear.
Robert, you seem to be stating facts.
Unfortunately, you didn’t provide any names of individuals to attack and discredit. Except for maybe the National Cancer Institute. What do you mean that there are NO cancer clusters around nuclear power plants!? How can that be? Isn’t it a known fact that nuclear power causes cancer?
NCI, shmiNCI. What know about cancer anyway?
Correction: What do THEY know about cancer anyway?
R Margolis – I looked up the link with the table that says nukes are less carbon intensive than natural gas and i couldn’t figure it out. there wasn’t a table right there and the only tables i could find on the website i didn’t really understand what i was looking at. i’d like to understand your argument though. could you explain it to me? preferably off this blog because i’m not trying to argue against it in this case (though i do disagree with you). right now i’m just trying to understand it.
Honestly this goes for a lot of yours and michael stuart’s arguments. the thing about germany’s trying to phase out nukes – can someone refer me to somewhere to read up on that. cuz i don’t know nothing about germany. you say that and all i can do is either assume what you’re saying makes sense even though i don’t understand it or assume you’re lying and neither one of those options is really very reasonable. generally not a good idea to assume.
so here’s an email address (appalachian-always(at)riseup.net) where either of y’all can contact me to explain this stuff. or if you want to explain it on the blog, that’s fine too.
w
Sorry the links I posted were too confusing. That was NOT my intent. I will send these other links to you Matt as well:
http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf100.html
http://world-nuclear.org/info/inf11.html
While the weblinks are from a nuclear website, you will see that they do point to non-nuclear entities for their information. The second link is probably better, as it presents different ranges for both the estimates on nuclear fuel cycle inputs and (at the bottom of the second weblink) a g/kwh comparison. Also in the second weblink, please note that they also provide, in the notes for Table 1, energy input information for ore grades as low as 0.01%.
If you have further questions on the data, please let me know. The point I am trying to make is that nuclear energy is so concentrated that it provides low carbon power even at low ore grades. The big challenges for nuclear are lack of experienced personnel for a large expansion and capital costs. However, the personnel and capital issues also impact solar and wind since you need many of the same kinds of skilled craft workers for these devices too (i.e., electricians, welders, mechanics, etc.) and these devices along with their required grid upgrades are also quite expensive. If it were that cheap and easy the utilities would have already built them (just as they went on the big building spree for natural gas turbines in the ’90s when gas from Canada was $2 per million BTU).
In case anyone else is interested in similar info:
The link below is an annual report from E.On (one of Germany’s preeminent robust wind power utilities) regarding the difficulties of harnessing high capacities of wind generation.
Their qualifications to teach: “At the end of [2004], there was an installed capacity of 7,000 MW in the E.On Netz grid area. This accounted for over 40% of German wind power capacities and more than the entire wind power capacity of the United States.”
“In Germany, the ongoing expansion of wind power is making the public increasingly aware of the technical challenges of its integration into the existing system.” -? Since when should the *public* need or want to be aware of the technical challeges their utility is battling?
You can study the entire report, with a focus on variability of wind during the day or week (max output and min output within 24 or 48 hours of each other – conventional power stations must make up the deficit), the variation between the forecast and actual supply, and the expense of grid investment and reinforcement. If you have wind power available when you don’t really need it, then the grid must shunt that excess power away to other areas that can use it. The grid must be robust to do that, and/or you may find a utility nearly ‘giving away’ excess capacity that it has no customers for.
http://www.viewsofscotland.org/library/docs/EON_Netz.report_2005_e_eng.pdf
Hope that helps!
Kelly
Oh, sincere apologies Willie et al,
You were asking about Germany and their nuclear phaseout history, not the trouble they’re having modulating their renewables on the grid. I do apologize, truly. Let me find something more appropriate to your question, and please forgive me.
Here is a current news item that may bear some explanation. I’m no expert on European politics, so anyone who would like to correct my explanations are invited to do so. As I understand it (which is poorly) the German Social Democrats and German Christian Democrats equal roughly to liberals and conservatives. Since Germany has many other political parties, usually one or other other of these two parties leads a governing coalition of several smaller parties. In the last election, neither of these two could get a majority without the other, so the unthinkable happened – they formed a coalition with each other. The Social Democrats are committed to phasing out nuclear early in Germany, and the Christian Democrats would like to see nuclear increased. See if that helps with some context for this (current) news article:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601100&sid=aEeSfgPAenzk
Oh, now here is an excellent primer of how Germany got here. It appears to written circa 2006, and so gives the history of Germany’s nuclear power production and the politics thereof, up until that time:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf43.html
NOW I hope that’s helpful. Sorry for the misdirected answer in the last post. Please understand it was unintentional.
Kelly
For those of us confused by the reference R Margolis provided, try this one instead:
http://www.externe.info/externpr.pdf
At the bottom of page 14 of 28 there is a general cartoon reflecting the results of the research of different fuel sources’ effects on air pollution (per kwh of electricity produced), and specifically greenhouse gases. The data table is on the following page.
Thanks Kelly for the extra web pointer.
Robert
I simply cannot understand how people can honestly believe the false claim that nuclear fission is a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. My personal lens on this issue was focused by my experience as a nuclear submarine engineer officer.
I have spent about 22 months underwater sealed up with a nuclear power plant that provided all of the power needed to drive a 9000 ton ship around the ocean. At the same time, that power plant provided electricity for cooking, air conditioning, lighting, computers, atmosphere control, and even enough to produce fresh oxygen out of water.
If it is clean enough to seal up inside a ship, it is clean enough for me.
With regard to the time to complete a significant number of plants, let’s take a look back in history. At a time when engineers still depended on slide rules and rooms full of draftsmen to produce drawings, and when there was no such thing as CNC milling machines, the US managed to complete about 120 large nuclear plants in about 20 years. We could have completed twice as many if there had not been a situation in the market that led to a perceived “overcapacity” and a desire to slow down the growth.
At the same time that we built those commercial reactors, we produced 12 surface ships, more than 100 submarines and several large aircraft carriers that all ran on uranium fission. We could have done more, but the fossil fuel industry pulled out the lobbying stops and convinced the Navy to shift back to oil power for most surface ships.
Shifting topics completely – if you want to figure out why Germany once decided to shut down its reactors, look no further than the very selfish economic motives of its leader at the time – a man named Gerhard Schroeder. He worked very hard to put the agreement together and was rewarded immediately after leaving office with a very nice and high compensated position working for Gazprom, the Russian natural gas monopoly that was seeking security of demand for the gas from its proposed pipeline directly from Russian to Germany through the Baltic Sea. (See, for example http://www.mindfully.org/Energy/2005/Gerhard-Schroeder-Gazprom13dec2005.htm )
One more thing – the source of much of the false idea that nuclear is a bad idea from a climate perspective appears to be that famous energy “guru” Amory Lovins. Here is a recent quote from that man during a recent interview on Democracy Now:
“You know, I’ve worked for major oil companies for about thirty-five years, and they understand how expensive it is to drill for oil.”
In other words, the man has a bias towards continued burning of fossil fuels, but he would like to keep the growth in demand low enough so that major oil companies can fill the demand using as much oil as possible from already existing wells. That is the most profitable way for them to operate – but it sure hurts all of the rest of us.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Robert — Hi — how are you? You do not give a cite for your National Cancer Institute invocation… if it is the large survey that was done in the wake of the MA Dept of Public Health study that most certainly DID find a direct correlation between living near the Pilgrim nuke and about a 400% increased rate of leukemia, and I think at least one cancer– that study was real on the ground epi work (you know, real interviews, double blinds, a good control group) — the only one of its kind — and was because of a known elevation in the emissions of that reactor due to faulty fuel clad…. ah ha you pro nuker’s will say — a special condition — unfortunately the NRC knows full well that Pilgrim was / is not the only reactor to use fuel with faulty clad… and there are other conditions that can also lead to elevated emissions… so enter Ted Kennedy — was he sincere? Who knows, but he called for “further study.” Enter National Cancer Institute — where they sincere? Who knows — but they did NOT fund more real, on-the-ground epi work… they did a survey looking ONLY at the county the reactor is located in. However, if you really look, a lot of reactors, due to being located on water are also on the border of the county they are in (often the water is the county boundary). NCI did nothing to look at who lives down wind, or down water from the site… so there is no comparison between it and the Pilgrim work. Interesting that the single largest employer of radiation-exposed workers (the US Dept of Energy) controls ALL federal money that flows on radiation research — via MOUs etc — see PSR’s report Deadly Deceit from the mid 1990’s for documentation of all this.
By the way, the cite for carbon emissions from the nuclear fuel cycle being comparable to emissions from burning natural gas is from Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen — who shows that over the period of operation, fueling new reactors will involve having to process less-than-prime uranium — and the emissions will go steadily up — to where it will be more cost effective to burn the fossil fuels to make electricity than to bother processing the uranium. See Nuclear Power the Energy Balance — updated at: http://www.stormsmith.nl/
Finally, the only reason that nuclear power LOOKS like it can compete is that a whole bunch of school teachers in the 1980’s and 1990’s lost their retirement funds — lost them. There was a wholesale roll-over of the nuclear capital investment from the first generation — and where it was not LOST, it was socialized — some via electric bills that include a so-called “line fee” as in California. The fact that these nukes today have relatively low overhead is due to the collusion of the federal regulators who now allow many forms of testing and maintenance to be done while the fission process is going on, and the reduction of technically trained staff on reactor sites. We are living on borrowed time. I can only hope that your confidence in these systems that are aging and have radically reduced resources is rewarded rather than my fear made manifest.
Finally — the part about thermal systems is 100% part of the problem — 2/3 of the CO2 was generated dealing with the latent heat of phase transition and never directly generated any electricity! Same with high-level nuclear waste production — 2/3 of was generated without resulting in any electric power… thermal systems just plain have to go.
Hello Mary, I am fine.
Here is one of the links on the NCI cancer survey:
http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/nuclear-facilities
As they said in their statement, you can never prove a negative, but the lack of a strong correlation (would expect to see rising cancers with rising radiation doses everywhere not just in Massachusetts) would imply a low risk from radiation from nuclear plants. Also attached is a link to the Technical Brief for the Health Effects of Low Radiation Position Statement of the American Nuclear Society (this contains many references to studies showing no correlation between low level radiation and cancer):
http://ans.org/pi/ps/docs/ps41-tb.pdf (specifically pg 2 of 10 regarding geographic distribution of radiation doses)
Solar cells require toxic elements such as cadmium and arsenic. Someone’s neighborhood will be affected by having the processing plants in their backyard. Radiation is not the sole carcinogen in our society. I am not saying solar cells cannot be made safely, only that there is not a zero-toxic, zero-danger way to make electricity.
I cited the ExternE study and the other links as they have greater professional acceptance than van Leeuwen which used estimated energy inputs for the uranium mines versus actual data. My previous links posted showed only a small energy increase even for ore grades as low as 0.01%. Uranium ore is milled near the mine and only the U3O8 is transported for enrichment, minimizing the amount of material being moved (versus coal which requires greater energy input per kwh due to transportation).
I previously stated that a weakness of nuclear energy is the high capital cost and need for additional trained personnel. Many vendors and utilities are working to fix this problem. By the way, this same problem affects wind and solar as they need the same skilled craft to build and maintain their plants. As for on-line maintenance, it has been done in Europe for decades and increases the overall safety and reliability of the plants (i.e., not letting a problem fester).
Now to your comment on thermal conversion: solar thermal plants also have to reject heat to either water or air, so even the renewable industry is affected. We are stuck with thermal conversion for a little while yet…
Beth – Take a moment to check out the largest nuclear power plant in the United States. It’s located in the middle of the desert outside Phoenix, AZ. No rivers or large bodies of water there; just “gray water” from the city of Phoenix, used to cool the plant. Oh, and in case you’re not aware, nuclear plants can be used to purify the water for recycling.
400+ nuclear power plants around the world saving the release of Billions of tons of CO2 and dirty pollutants which would have to be emitted from coal. It’s time to move forward people. Nuclear is the BEST and CLEANEST renewable energy available.