Dear President Obama,
According to a report released by Environment America in November, the long process to build nuclear plants along with the carbon intensity of production will set us back in the fight against global warming. The next 5-10 years are CRITICAL for the future of my generation and the planet that your daughters will inherit. Bring the boldness of your campaign to Capitol Hill in Washington and tell the truth.
Tell the Senators in Congress and the American people that nuclear power is the wrong way to go. Lets invest the $54 billion dollars in your budget in energy efficiency - which will save American families money and save energy at the same time.
I hope, that if you didn’t get the report when it was released in November, that you take a look at it now. It makes a clear argument as to why Nuclear is the wrong choice for America and the world.
Sincerely,
Gabriel Elsner
Ex-Director, Students for Barack Obama, UC Berkeley
P.S. We sent over 300 Berkeley students who believed in your message for a CLEAN energy economy to swing states to “get out the vote”- and those young leaders need the leadership you showed during the campaign more than ever.
Good jab about sending students out to organize. The White House needs to know that we have teeth, and that doesn’t mean agreeing with them on everything.
The report continues to talk about significant changes to the eletric system in the next ten years. With no economic energy storage devices available currently, there is no way you can swap out 80% of the electric generating capacity (percentage generated by fossil fuels) with solar and wind in ten years. Just getting new transmission lines built in the US is a multi-year effort alone.
China, India, the UAE, and South Korea are all expanding their nuclear energy infrastructure to provide the baseload while expanding renewables for peaking power. South Korea builds nuclear plants in 4 – 5 years. There is no physical or engineering reason the US couldn’t do the same.
President Obama is simply acknowledging physical and political reality (i.e., renewables cannot do the job alone).
I took a look at the report. I note that, of the ten-year delay quoted for building reactors, four years are attributed to bureaucratic delays at the NRC. That could easily be cut, surely?
They also point at a single project in Finland, citing its delay. That’s just cherry-picking. In the past 25 years, Japan built 11 reactors, the longest of which took 5.2 years to build, the average was less than 4. Many other countries have also delivered several nuclear power stations in well under the 10 years quoted in the report. Any reason America couldn’t match them?
There is also the claim that nuclear reactors are big, complex, and difficult to manufacture in high volumes. There are many people out there addressing exactly this concern, with designs for factory-built reactors of all sizes (down as low as 25 MW). These could be shipped by rail to a destination and deployed rapidly and cheaply. I’m sure America could get these things built quickly, if it really wanted them.
I see the small reactor link is to Rod Adams website. He would be quite an interesting speaker for Powerfest.
Oops, I meant Powershift. My apologies.
Tony – we could deploy hundreds of thousands of workers with 54 billion dollars – energy efficiency could get us the savings we need to reduce our emissions in the short term. We can’t swap out 80% of our capacity in 10 years, but we can prioritize investment in new technologies and start by pouring resources into the efficiency market. That’s what our president should be doing.
Congratulations on getting your question on YouTube. But look at the reply! This is at least the second time that President Obama has claimed that the French and Japanese nuclear programs are without incident or accident. This is utter rubbish. The Japanese have experienced accidents at their nuclear facilities that have included the deaths of workers exposed to high doses of radiation and the French had a whole cascade of accidents in the summer on 2008 and report hundreds of incidents every year. He cannot be allowed to get away with what amounts to either (a) incredible ignorance or (b)lying. We must ALL help inform him as loudly and persistently as possible.
Thank you to marg for the link to my Atomic Insights post titled “Small is Beautiful, Even for Nuclear Fission Reactors”. There are so many things about nuclear energy that I would love to share with young people, so if anyone did decide to invite me to speak at Powershift, I would gladly accept.
There are at least a few myths that need to be cleared up with regard to the $54 billion in loan guarantees. I hope that at least some of you can read a budget and recognize that on page 179 of the President’s Budget for 2010 there are negative numbers for the guaranteed loan programs – which means that the government will actually get paid to provide those guarantees. They are NOT expenditures.
The reason that the nuclear industry and its financial backers have worked so hard to obtain government guarantees is not because the projects are not financially viable. The real reason is that they want the government to have some “skin in the game” because bad government decisions played a very large role in making projects during the last Nuclear Age take so long to complete that they were sometimes abandoned. That decision was necessary to stop the monetary bleeding while waiting for the government to make a decision or to stop changing the rules in the middle of project construction.
Ms. Gunter has been fighting against nuclear energy for decades and often confuses the words “accident” with “incident” and has no real understanding of the scale of the inevitable problems that are associated with all forms of energy production. Here is an example – you can find a lot of stories about tritium “leaks” associated with the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant in the news over the past few weeks. What those stories often fail to help readers understand is that the amount of material in question is amazingly small. The words the press uses are “29,000 picocuries/liter”, but they do not tell you that a picocurie is 10^-12 curies, or that a curie of tritium has a mass of 0.1 milligrams.
29,000 picocuries can also be written as 0.000000029 curies or 0.0000000000029 grams. Tritium is less harmful than many other natural substances; it is a weak beta emitter. Someone drinking water at 29,000 picocuries per liter as their only source of water for an entire year would accumulate a dose of about 5 millrem compared to a normal background radiation dose of 250-5,000 millirem depending on the location where you live.
I have a great deal of respect and admiration for young people. I have two 20 something daughters and have enjoyed several assignments where I had daily contact with college students as a teacher and as a mentor.
I encourage you all to take the time to find good sources of information about nuclear energy, to recognize that the alternative to nuclear fission is more coal, natural gas and oil, and to think about the vast sums of money that the fossil fuel industry will lose when nuclear fission gains additional market share in the energy markets.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
Just a quick word about jobs. Merely generating the largest number of jobs is not adequate if the pay is low. There was an NPR segment where the wind industry is not paying what the original auto industry was:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96890387
We need a balance of both high wage energy jobs as well as the entry level positions. Not to sound like a nuclear recruiter, but it certainly pays well and many of the positions do not require a college degree.
Linda, I was surprised by your claims about France, since I live there, and had heard nothing about it before. I found out about Tricastin after some googling, but that really wasn’t that big on the scale of industrial accidents. It certainly didn’t lead to any panic in France at the time.
I googled the Japanese accident too. According to wikipedia, there was one accident that caused two fatalities, but that was ten years ago, in 1999. I couldn’t find anything else in Japan since then.
That hardly sounds like an industry that’s killing people in droves. In fact it sounds like it’s safer than most industries.
Consider, for instance, the small wind farm in Cainthness, in Scotland. It has an installed capacity of about 80 MW, yet since 1999 when those two Japanese workers died, Caithness has experienced no less than 37 fatal accidents. That’s over 10 times as many deaths for less than one tenth of a nuclear reactor.
If Obama has seen numbers like these, then he is neither lying nor ignorant.
Gabriel, it appears to me that you have several misconceptions about nuclear power, what a loan guarantee is, and electrical production in general.
Myth 1) Nuclear Power takes longer to deploy than renewables. False, the time it takes per kW to deploy nuclear power is actually less than anything else except natural gas. The thing you have to remember is that 1 nuclear power plant is the equivalent of several thousand windmills. It may take a while to build one, but when they come online they make a big dent in power production. Also as someone else stated it is indeed possible to build them much more quickly as the construction infrastructure for them improves. Another thing that must be accounted for is the lifespan of a nuclear power plant, which tends to be about 60 years at the current time, and will likely grow to about 80 years.
Myth 2) Nuclear plant construction and fuel production produce large amounts of CO2. False, actually life-cycle CO2 emissions from nuclear power are lower than that of solar. The life-cycle emissions include emissions incurred from both construction and operation.
Myth 3) Obama is spending $54 billion on nuclear. No, the $54 billion is money set aside for an amount of time to aide the construction of new facilities. Once the facilities are online the plant will pay back the loan and in reality the government will probably make money from the power plants. This money is a loan, not a handout.
The nuclear field is very complicated and hard for a lot of people to understand. However, in an age of google and wikipedia, ignorance is no excuse to argue on the basis of myths.
Do the math. At current prices, a nuclear plant costs 6 to 10 billion dollars. $54 billion will buy 6 to 9 nuclear reactors. 100 reactors supply 20% of our electric power. 6 to 9 reactors will supply 1.2% to 1.8% of what we need. Surely we can spend money on something more efficient.
Here in Vermont, we are trying to end the reign of Vermont Yankee. Currently VY is selling power at 4.1 cents per kWh. They want to raise the rate to 6.1 cents per kWh on a portion of the amount we use and won’t tell us what the rest will cost when they get relicenced. One of our smaller utilities built a plant generating electricity from methane at a landfill, and that power is costing us 4 cents per kWh. Go figure.
“We need a balance of both high wage energy jobs… Not to sound like a nuclear recruiter, but it certainly pays well and many of the positions do not require a college degree.”
-Yeah, just be sure to wear your “Yellow boots”. Anyone remember SNL’s skit with Jimmy Carter going into the reactor? Your plea to make impractical gains in efficiency also harks back to Carter’s plea for amercia to turn down its thermostat (circa ~’78). Many say that cost him the re-election. Obama has already made similar mistakes charting the mission for “government motors” electric cars. In Massachusetts, we already saw what that resulted in. In as much as you, or I, or any environmentally minded person might believe in imposing steps upon our fellow citizens for the sake of the environment, we will ultimately deny the environment the achievement of those objectives if we think we can tell any “American” how to live.
Nuclear energy is a practical, and politically jobs-palitable, solution to reducing carbon. It isn’t ficticious “clean” coal and it doesn’t require the vast acreage, or siting requirements, of wind energy. Milford Wind just contracted to give Los Angeles ~49MW of renewable energy from a 1,560 acrea farm in Utah. Not only did NIMBY’ism keep the farm out of California, but at 31 acres per mega-watt verses roughly 2 for nuclear, you can begin to see where wind infrastructure will be challenged. One reactor produces ~1100 MWs, where for Milford, 97 windmills produce less than 50. Further, nuclear technology already exists and, at the very least, should be relied upon along with nat gas as a bridge to better forms of carbon mitigation in 10-20 years.
Politic is politics. If the democrats run left over the tritium leaks, the republicans will be sure to keep it in park for the rest of us.
Joshua –
You have ignored a few key facts about climate change, and I really don’t appreciate the personal attacks. I studied energy policy at a great university.
To respond to your “myths”:
Myth 1) where are you getting this information? the time for construction of nuclear power plants is long. “New nuclear power investments would actually worsen climate change because the money spent on nuclear reactors would not be available for solutions that fight it faster and at lower cost,” said Peter Bradford, a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commissioner. “Counting on new nuclear reactors as a climate change solution is no more sensible than counting on an un-built dam to create a lake to fight a nearby forest fire.”
Myth 2) I don’t care about the life cycle. In 60 years, it won’t really matter if we reach the tipping points in the race against catastrophic climate change To avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global warming, America must cut power plant emissions roughly in half over the next 10 years. No new reactors are now under construction in the United States, and building a single reactor could take a decade or longer. As a result, it is quite possible that nuclear power could deliver no progress in the critical next decade, despite “spending billions” on reactor construction.
Myth 3) Again, the long term pay backs don’t matter. Sure, we could “spend $54 billion” (guarantee loans) or we could maximize our investment in short term energy solutions (like efficiency to cut emissions). We need to mobilize around solutions that will cut our emissions TODAY. Efficiency begins working right away, and the short term cuts matter more right now than the long term.
At $10 billion per GW, it just doesn’t make sense. We could deploy renewables for far less.
Gabriel – while I did not study energy policy at a “great university” I did learn “a bit” about energy in a well respected “trade school” called the Navy Nuclear Power program and during my several assignments as an engineering officer on board US nuclear powered submarines – which happen to include not only nuclear reactors, but diesel generators, large storage batteries and even a couple of hydrogen generators (though we were more interested in the O2 part of the H2O that we split). Later in life, I had the opportunity to spend a couple of semesters studying energy under the mentoring of Dr. Chih Wu, one of the foremost researchers in alternative energy during the 1970s through the 1990s. He actually “wrote the book” on ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion
Your believe system has failed you with regard to your statement about the construction times. It is indeed possible for nuclear power plants to take a long time, but that is true for any construction project. How long has the developer been working on Cape Wind, for example? It is possible to build nuclear facilities much more quickly. In several Asian countries including Japan and South Korea, the actual construction time for a very large nuclear power plant is about 4.5 years. Here in the US, we built the Shippingport reactor in less than 4 years from the time that ground was broken. We regularly build aircraft carrier power plants in the United States in about 4-5 years.
Your focus on the short term is rather scary. I expect that humans will be inhabiting the earth for a very long time; we need to build durable systems that produce little or no pollution when we can. Please do not take just my word for the importance of nuclear fission power plants – ask any of the following well respected ecologists or climate scientists – James Lovelock, Stewart Brand, Patrick Moore, or James Hansen. All of them agree that nuclear energy is a valuable tool in the battle against global climate change. Why should I listen to a man who completely failed in his responsibilities to inform and protect the public during the only real crisis faced by the Nuclear Regulatory COmmission – Peter Bradford was one of the commissioners who confused the public with his advice to evacuate and then not evacuate during the Three Mile Island accident.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Host and producer, The Atomic Show Podcast
Thanks for your comments Rod. I really recommend that you check out the IPCC reports on the need for short-term reductions in CO2 concentrations to avoid catastrophic results. From the facts I’ve seen, nuclear power in America takes far too long to help us cut our emissions in time to meet the scientific short term targets. That’s why I believe President Obama’s recent embrace of clean energy is out of touch with the millennial generation that helped to elect him into office.
We are the ones that will deal with the effects of our choices today. In 2050, I will be 62 years old. I want my grandchildren to have a planet free from resource wars, extreme water scarcity, and failed states. That’s why the short term targets matter and that’s why I don’t support investment in nuclear power at this time.
Gabriel,
Joshua made no personal attacks btw.
Oh, and additionally, some food to think about. Nuclear power generates about 20% of electricity in the U.S., or 70% of carbon emission free energy in the U.S. The opposition to nuclear in the “environmental” community isn’t going to help any attempt to actually reduce carbon emissions. Also, just because $54 billion is being loaned to the loan guarantee programs, does not mean money isn’t being spent on “renewable” projects.
Any manner you choose to dramatically reduce CO2 will require a regulatory revamp, as NONE of the options can significantly replace coal with the current state and federal regulations and approval processes. Natural gas may be the quickest in the current framework, but gas would quickly become scarce and significant electricity price increases would follow.
Nuclear plants can be built safely in 4-5 years and they are a direct substitute for coal-fired baseload. Uranium and thorium are more plentiful on a per unit energy basis than fossil fuels. I am NOT saying that nuclear is the whole answer, but Pres. Obama’s support for nuclear makes sense.
Hi, I want to throw in two arguments that weren’t mentioned before why I think nuclear is in no way an option to help reducing carbon emissions.
a) We don’t need more baseload plants, we need flexible plants.
Many people state that renewables can’t replace baseload. That’s partly true. But at the same time, they also can’t replace peaking power, as they’re not controllable. So to grow the number of wind farms and solar panels, you need flexible plants to comply with them. Neither nuclear nor coal (with or without ccs) is able to do that, as it’s not possible to controll them on short-time scales. To make it short: baseload and renewables don’t match.
For a modern energy system, one needs flexible energy to comply with renewables. That can be for a transition time gas. For the long-term, it should be a mix of storage technologies (pumped hydro storage, compressed air reservoir) and flexible renewables (like biomass, but that has it’s own problems and maybe yet-to-be-developed technologies).
b) Nuclear waste. That is really the big issue. I know in the US, they just dumped the plan for a final waste storage in yucca mountain. But the truth is: There is no better solution, all solutions on that are wrong.
The most interesting story about that is probably the situation in germany: There was a nuclear waste storage for low active waste (so the one that’s supposed to be handled easier) at a place called Asse. It’s a salt dome. For years, leading scientists say that salt domes are the way to go with nuclear waste. After just 20-30 years, radioactive water came out of it. It was supposed to last for thousands of years. Now they’re taking the waste out of the Asse, which will cost around 4 billion EUR, but seriously, nobody knows what to do with it afterwards. And that all is only about low active waste.
They deny to state what the result of that is: salt domes aren’t the solution either. But if they dump salt domes, they also need to dump their only project for a final storage for high active waste, which is Gorleben.
Germany (as well as France) has already exported a large part of it’s nuclear waste to Tomsk in russia. It’s standing around there and the barrels start to oxidize. No need to say that russia has no concept for nuclear waste storage either.
The story about Asse really should be known everywhere where they talk about building new nuclear power plants.
As a longtime reader of this blog, I find it interesting that every time nuclear energy is mentioned numerous comments are a guarantee. No doubt, expanding readership and increasing dialogue is important. However, it seems unfortunate that folks who seem so interested in nuclear within the context of “practical, and politically jobs-palitable, solution to reducing carbon” and also “have a great deal of respect and admiration for young people”, are only interested in discussing pro-nuclear topics. Please, if you are so interested in reducing carbon and the power of young people, contribute to the greater community of this blog. Otherwise, it appears to me that you are only interested in promoting a pro-nuclear agenda veiled in other concerns.
We can also go back on forth all day about the merits or dangers of nuclear energy in financial, environmental and logistical terms. Personally, I believe that nuclear is financially, environmental and logistically unwise.
Environmentally, it is NOT carbon free. Surely it less carbon intensive than coal power but that doesn’t imply that it even approaches the carbon footprint of renewable energy technologies or energy efficiency. (see – http://www.nirs.org/climate/background/sovacool_nuclear_ghg.pdf). Further, uranium mining is not very nice either. Yes, I know, solar isn’t without its environmental footprint but nuclear poses both extraction and storage issues. Further, there is the potential to greatly reduce the toxic materials in solar cells but nuclear power will always require nuclear materials.
Logistically, no one wants nuclear in their backyard. Nuclear power plants are generally located in very remote areas and are enshrouded in intensive security layers. Personally, I believe that nuclear powerplants require the type of institutions that are undemocratic. Greatly expanded nuclear production could pose a threat to civil liberties. (Amory Lovins has written extensively about this). More pragmatically, these logistical hurdles makes nuclear expensive. Yes, I know, other countries have been constructing nuclear plants in shorter and shorter periods of time. Still, nuclear is really expensive. In fact, Japan has one of the highest generating prices of nuclear energy in the world (http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html).
As a result, financially, anyone truly concerned about their money, i.e. Wall Street, has no desire to finance nuclear. Only our government will front the money for nuclear powerplants and INSURE them. Such financial commitments from our government distracts and displaces resources that could be used on a variety of more worthy projects.
I’m sure that my comments will elicit another round of comments but please, to any commentators, please think about the reasons that you are responding. Are you merely defending nuclear technologies or do you believe that you are truly contributing to a discussion that will develop just, realistic solutions to global warming and empower the youth climate movement? If your comments come from the latter belief, I welcome your comments.
Respectfully,
Matt
Matt –
Rather than respond to the specifics, let me take a step back on the philosophical. The reason that nuclear elicits so many comments (pro and anti) is that it is one of the primary touchstones of the environmental debate. For those want a society in which social hierarchy is minimized and concentrations of government and economic power are limited, nuclear is perceived as beyond the pale.
For those whose first priority is to maximize public health and economic opportunity as quickly as possible while avoiding the worst parts of climate change, nuclear is an integral necessity. Not that social and economic justice are not a concern, but that expanded economic activity is considered the “least worst” way to ameliorate it.
It is the frames of these different schools of thought that contextualize the debate.
Hanno, smaller nuclear power plants are indeed able to vary in power, or they wouldn’t be much use in a nuclear submarine, for example. But you have the argument upside-down. Baseload will be more essential in a non-fossil-fuel world, because of all those electric cars that need charging, for a start. Our electricity demands will increase, not decrease, if we electrify our transport.
As for the nuclear waste, you need to know that fourth-generation designs consume that waste as fuel. The waste they produce is radioactive for only 300 years, so does not require geological storage. If the ancient egyptians could build pyramids that last 3000 years, we ought now to be able to store low-level waste for 300.
Matt, the Sovacool paper analyses 102 publications, but is based on only 19 of them. He even rejects papers by the IAEA! You can get some idea of how trustworth Sovacool is from a post on the Energy from Thorium blog.
The link you give, to http://www.world-nuclear.org, is interesting, thank you. I see it has charts showing nuclear energy cost as flat, and tables that show nuclear energy has much less cost variability than wind. Widespread deployment of wind power would mean using less favourable locations than the prime spots chosen today, with lower yield and higher costs to connect to the grid, so I do not expect that it would tend to the lower end in future. Yet the record shows nuclear power has flat, stable costs.
Why wouldn’t Wall Street want to finance reactors? Well, who today would want to risk investing money in something that lasts for 60 years? Far better to invest in the short-term, take the money, and run. Nuclear power suffers from its sheer longevity, who now would bet that a government in 5 years, 10, 20 years, would not simply pull the rug out from under their feet, wasting their investment. That is why governments must provide guarantees! Wind doesn’t have that problem, nobody expects a wind-turbine to last more than a few years.
To answer your question, I am not ‘merely’ defending anything. I care that the world adopts the right solutions to a sustainable future. That is why I am pro-nuclear, and why I am luke-warm about so-called renewables. It surprised me when I came to that conclusion after all the reading I have done, but I accept the evidence before me.
@Matt – It might be more convincing to me if you provided links to an information source that had a rational approach to its investigations of nuclear energy instead of a group like NIRS that has developed a well compensated cottage industry out of its professional opposition to the technology. They sometimes claim to be an unbiased source of information about the technology, but I recommend you check out their Twitter icon for a clearer image of their real goals. (It is a cartoon with a large hand squeezing shut the iconic cooling towers often associated with nuclear power plants. It is hard to give much credence to the claim of unbiased information.)
I will freely admit that I have a strong motive for sharing information about nuclear energy, but no one pays me to do this. Like NIRS, I have a position, but unlike NIRS, my position is based on training and direct personal experience of spending months at a time within 200 feet of a nuclear reactor and being responsible, along with a team of about 30 other people, for its safe and reliable operation. That reactor plant was an excellent shipmate; it kept us comfortable and safe even while hundreds of feet underwater. The fuel for that plant produced reliable energy for about 15 years, even though its mass was only a bit more than what I weigh and it could have fit under my office desk. (That was also the total volume of the long term “waste” that had to be stored until it could be recycled into a new core.)
Nothing that anyone says about nuclear energy technology can remove that experience from me. I recognize that the industry has its problems, but the existence of a reliable, concentrated power source that is clean enough to operate inside a seal submarine is a story that needs to be told and retold in a world that has enormous stresses related to energy supplies and pollution from energy production.
Gabriel mentioned the need for immediate action. I am in the middle of James Hansen’s recent book titled “Storms of My Grandchildren” and am gaining a clearer understanding of the sense of urgency. I get it. However, I also know that there was a time when the US decided to build a small nuclear power plant to supply heat and electricity to a remote base under the ice sheet in Greenland. From the time that the project was funded until it was operating in that remote location was just 18 MONTHS. In that time, the plant was designed, fabricated in the US, tested, disassembled, transported to Greenland, and then reassembled by a small team of technicians at the remote site.
In other words, there is no technical reason why we cannot build a large number of moderately sized nuclear reactors quickly. We can also build dozens of large reactors at a time – it might take ten years to license and build one, but it also takes ten years to license and build 20 or 40 or 100 in parallel in different locations around the world.
Also, if the effort has such urgency, where were people like Al Gore when I left the nuclear navy to form Adams Atomic Engines, Inc. in 1993 because I recognized that something had to be done to reduce our dependence on burning stuff and dumping the deadly pollutants into the atmosphere. For years before I formed that company, I studied all of the alternative energy systems and found them woefully inadequate tools for an important and very challenging task. I will never forget the solar design project I did. Once I had run all of the numbers for a system designed to keep a pool in California at reasonably comfortable temperatures, I realized that I needed a collector that was as big as the pool AND I needed to keep the pool covered about 13 hours per day to prevent the evaporative losses from taking away more heat than the solar collectors were adding. That was an eye opener for both me and my mentor, who ended up writing a couple of papers with me about closed cycle nuclear gas turbines.
Rod Adams
Publisher, Atomic Insights
Founder, Adams Atomic Engines, Inc.
Tony, when you’re referring to “fourth generation reactors”, you probably mean transmutation reactors. That’s a purely theoretic concept and no such reactor has been built anywhere. Also, none of the currently planned reactors will be such a “fourth generation reactor”. It’s a technology very far away from any realization. And if you look back, there were a couple of nuclear projects (like breeding reactors) that were meant to solve a lot of problems and never found their way to reality.
So let’s talk about the facts: All nuclear reactors today produce nuclear waste. Same goes for all nuclear reactors possibly built within the next decades. Reactors reducing nuclear waste only exist in theory and it’s doubtful if they will ever be built.
Hanno – I suppose that you have never heard of the EBT-II, the Monju, or the BN-600? None of these are theoretical.
There is a well thought out plan to build a Next Generation Nuclear Power reactor in Idaho by 2021. That project recently a major milestone in fuel testing that demonstrated more than twice as high a burn-up as any light water reactor. There are also people who are planning to build Pebble Bed Modular Reactors (PBMR) for process heat applications in South Africa while China has two HTR-PM pebble bed reactors under construction with expected operation by 2014.
Why are you so adamantly opposed to the idea that nuclear technology is still in its infancy – the basic physical process was only discovered after my Dad was an adult. We have made pretty amazing progress, especially in comparison to what we have achieved in the realm of capturing wind and solar energy. Humans have known about those sources for tens of millennia and they still represent a tiny portion of our generated electricity or useful energy supplies.
There is a good reason both of them are weak and about as reliable as the weather.
Can you name me a single person who has ever been hurt by exposure to used nuclear fuel or even tell me about a single incident? I can sure point to a lot reports of people being killed by exposure to the uncontrolled waste products that fossil fuel plants dump into the atmosphere every day.
Well Tony I hardly said “droves.” But I imagine the families of those who have died around La Hague, (leukemia clusters especially among the young) and those in Japan, don’t love your dismissal of their deaths as unimportant. And if you live in France then of course you are duly shielded from the truth by the wall of silence in the media there (some of which is state owned and some by Bouygues, friend of Sarkozy.) You should check out CRIIRAD.org and learn a bit more about the reality there. And Sortirdunucleaire.org. The bottom line is that to describe the nuclear programs of Japan and France as “without incident or accident” is untrue.
The groups mentioned are outside the scientific mainstream (i.e., refuted by the majority of health physicists and nuclear medicine specialists). There is no consistent pattern of leukemia clusters around nuclear facilities. In fact, places such as Kerala India have large amounts of radiation from the native rocks (over 3000 millirem per year compared to the US average of 300 millirem per year) and NO excess cancers. In addition, the offshore oil facilities emit more radioactivity per year into the environment from La Hague (deep drilling brings up a good amount of naturally radioactive rock) and I have not heard much from the environmental community on this.
In short, perhaps the low-level radiation scare is as scientific as James Inhofe’s claims on climate change?
Linda, all I want to do is to offer a perspective on the numbers of deaths from the nuclear industry vs. other industries. Any death is tragic, but more deaths affect more lives, so it’s reasonable to look at the actual numbers.
Since you raised the subject of these two deaths over a decade ago as a means of illustrating how dangerous you perceive nuclear power to be, it would be negligent to not ask the same question of alternative forms of power generation. Otherwise, why raise the point in the first place?
The coal industry. This is the industry that has caused more deaths and illness than anyother industry. Yet, there are some who are still living in the last century here in the USA. My question is this – If nuclear power generation is so unsafe, why do most other countries have active nuclear programs to develop and build nuclear generation plants. I don’t have to name them all. I think many of you have been missed led, especially students. If you care about other peoples lives and quality of life, then you would be all over cigarette manufacturers, the source of 400,000 deaths a year. I would think that everyone would be in favor of eliminating deaths from coal powered electrical generation.
Ditch all your high minded science. You start talking in overly logical circles. Sometime when a=b, a doesn’t always equal c. Its called intuitive logic. Take it from the peasants with a whole lot of common sense. The reality is, we need to create electricity by means that do not create toxic by products. It really isn’t that difficult of a concept to grasp or agree upon. Don’t sit there and argue about the “relative” number of deaths that coal or nuclear create. We all know both methods result in cancer deaths, mercury toxicity, and God even knows what pending epidemiological studies will demonstrate links between specific illnesses and our out-dated modes of energy production. Just drive out and visit a Uranium mining community, talk to the people who have walked that walk and tell me how nuclear power is going save us, then report back to me. Besides, this isn’t really the point.
Moving on, The bottom line is a double bottom line. Number one, STOP pulling up nasty toxic rocks from the bowels of the earth and burning them. You don’t use what is in your bowels to create much, do you? No. So what is in the bowels of the earth shall remain in the bowels of the earth, especially things like coal and uranium because we know they are B A D. There is plenty of proof, don’t talk yourself into overly logical circles of denial and get stuck in ruts of the past. That is something we all must agree upon in order to move forward. If you can agree with this, then you may agree with the other bottom line.
Ever been to Kennedy Space Center? Know how much human energy, focus, determination, dedication, trial and error and money it took to get humans on the moon? Check it out. Of course it was fueled by fear of the Russians and the need to compete with them. Anyho, If you give a damn about the planet Earth, you will leave that place saying to yourself, If only we would shift our focus onto our planet in the same grandiose capacity that the NASA program has rendered, we could clean this place up and make a future for our children that works (and not run away to the moon as NASA has on its current wish list). This new vision is possible. People just need to agree on a vision, first. Decide what that vision is. I have. It is creating energy that do not create toxic by products. The technology is there at our finger tips. You need not be deterred from the real vision (by “clean coal” and new nukes), the vision is rebuilding the grid and harnessing every natural mode of spinning a turbine that we have, wind, tidal, water and of course the giver of all life, The Sun, and harnessing its potential. Of course, I am no technician, I am sure there are so many more planet-friendly developments out there. Truly, our future is in the hands of the technicians that share this vision. If you want to make a difference, have everyone you know check their portfolios and move their money behind financing the ventures of the techies and mechanics who sahre a clean vision. That will make a difference, as the old saying goes, PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR MOUTH IS. And of course, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Gov’t created a venture like NASA to save our planet. It needs to be more than a bill. This vision requires the hearts minds and soul of Nations. I suppose that would start with making TV shows that feature the new vision, because we all know THE hearts minds and souls of Americans are most certainly swayed by the TUBE. I could go on and on.
Joanie – With all due respect, all of the energy technologies require digging up and processing toxic rocks. Solar cells use cadmium and/or arsenic, windmills require the smelting of iron, even solar thermal uses oil-based coolants that are petrochemicals. There are real physical limits on the various energy technologies that often do not appear until they are scaled up. Solar and wind simply do not work for baseload. Even the most powerful electrochemical reactions in the laboratory pale in comparison with regards to fossil (and especially nuclear) energy densities. If the source or storage medium is too diffuse, you will not be able to scale it up for practical use.
Even us peasants can’t break the laws of physics.
I certainly see nothing wrong with the U.S.A. and the rest of the world having a diversified energy portfolio.In fact,I’ve always been a big fan of energy efficient solar heating architecture in residential homes and commercial buildings.It’s a shame the construction industry keeps building millions of wasteful homes in a business as usual fashion without incorporating any efficient passive solar design features.I can also see how nuclear energy is needed for energy intensive activities.
However,I can also plainly see that nuclear and geothermal are about the only two energy sources that can do all the “heavy lifting”.They are the only two carbon neutral sources that can be applied on the scale we need(and possibly renewable biomass like industrial hemp grown on an enormous scale,also).You have to have energy intensive sources for industrial manufacturing.You also need high temperatures for things like metals,glass,ceramics,etc.Getting back to nature and living off the land with just a windmill and solar collectors is all fine and dandy for those who want to do that,but how and what is going to supply the energy density and high temps to build the windmills and solar collectors? Good luck trying to build windmills with the energy output of windmills.If you’re a big fan of solar,wind and nuclear like I am,why not let nuclear energy assist in making photovoltaics? Or having the extra ooomph! of nuclear energy thermal process renewable hemp into renewable gasoline?
And talk about energy density! A fissioning uranium atom liberates about 10,000 times more energy than a chemical reaction between carbon and oxygen when burning the best quality anthracite coal.
When it comes to politics(I hate it!),I am sort of what you would call a moderate.I am neither right-wing conservative or left-wing liberal.This knowlegeable and informed view of the bigger picture also carries over into my views on energy policy.Old-fashioned solar heating is NOT exotic.In fact,solar is about the oldest and most conventional energy source on the planet.Been in use for thousands of years.And Yucca Mountain is NOT going to kill everybody in Nevada(I believe Santa Claus and his workshop full of elves at the North Pole are going to swoop down on Nevada and wipe-out everybody myself).Get real,folks.It will not add one extra millirem of exposure to the residents of Nevada than all the cold war atom bomb testing that has already been done there.It’s purely an emotional issue(rather than rational)because some people feel like other states waste is being dumped-off on them.
BOTTOM LINE:We are already running not years,but decades behind on global warming and cheap fossil fuel depletion.We could have done already have been using more of BOTH solar AND nuclear decades ago,with absolutely NO new technological advances necessary.The only problem has been politics,ignorance and a lack of willpower.
As for nuclear waste,this is by far the most overrated boogeyman of all time.And if ignorant people were more scientifically informed about facts instead of hysteria,they would know it is.For one thing,these anti-nuclear so-called environmentalists(who obstruct all real environmental solutions to everything)make to big a fuss about the longevity of the isotopes.They make it sound like this is an intractible problem,which it isn’t.Instead,obstructionists like themselves have caused most problems,ordinary lay people pretending to be scientists.
Truth is,most of the waste is short-lived.The most highly radioactive gamma emitters decay most rapidly.So that when stored in a cooling pond,the level of radioactivity decays away quite rapidly.The only long-lived isotopes are the transuranics which make-up only a small percentage of overall waste.New generation reactors currently under development will burn-up and destroy these long-lived transuranic elements,producing more electric power in the process.What is left after that is mostly cesium-137 and strontium-90,most of which will be gone in 300 years.This is vitrified in borosilicate glass.It is so insoluble in water until only 1/10 of a one percent will dissolve in 10,000 years.In other words,the glass which immobilizes the waste will outlast the waste itself.This is already done in France on a large commercial scale.All the waste at La Hague will fit into one room below the building.
And of course,the irrational opposition to breeders and reprocessing only produces an endless stream of waste that could be recycled to produce more energy from the same quantity of fuel.No rag-tag terrorist organization has the technology or resources to enrich reactor grade into bomb grade.Only states have the resources to do that.
And our past experience has shown that if some country like Iran wants a bomb enough,they will eventually get one.U.S.opposition only postpones the inevitable anyway.Atomic fission is already out of Pandora’s Box.Irrational non-thinking and ignorance is the real enemy,not nuclear energy.