Going Nuclear-A Green Makes the Case

[darrels joy]

Going Nuclear
A Green Makes the Case
By Patrick Moore
Sunday, April 16, 2006; Page B01

In the early 1970s when I helped found Greenpeace, I believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots. That's the conviction that inspired Greenpeace's first voyage up the spectacular rocky northwest coast to protest the testing of U.S. hydrogen bombs in Alaska's Aleutian Islands. Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest of the environmental movement needs to update its views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the energy source that can save our planet from another possible disaster: catastrophic climate change.

Look at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S. emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions -- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for climate change. Nuclear energy is the only large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a growing demand for power. And these days it can do so safely.

I say that guardedly, of course, just days after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that his country had enriched uranium. "The nuclear technology is only for the purpose of peace and nothing else," he said. But there is widespread speculation that, even though the process is ostensibly dedicated to producing electricity, it is in fact a cover for building nuclear weapons.

And although I don't want to underestimate the very real dangers of nuclear technology in the hands of rogue states, we cannot simply ban every technology that is dangerous. That was the all-or-nothing mentality at the height of the Cold War, when anything nuclear seemed to spell doom for humanity and the environment. In 1979, Jane Fonda and Jack Lemmon produced a frisson of fear with their starring roles in "The China Syndrome," a fictional evocation of nuclear disaster in which a reactor meltdown threatens a city's survival. Less than two weeks after the blockbuster film opened, a reactor core meltdown at Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear power plant sent shivers of very real anguish throughout the country.

What nobody noticed at the time, though, was that Three Mile Island was in fact a success story: The concrete containment structure did just what it was designed to do -- prevent radiation from escaping into the environment. And although the reactor itself was crippled, there was no injury or death among nuclear workers or nearby residents. Three Mile Island was the only serious accident in the history of nuclear energy generation in the United States, but it was enough to scare us away from further developing the technology: There hasn't been a nuclear plant ordered up since then.

Today, there are 103 nuclear reactors quietly delivering just 20 percent of America's electricity. Eighty percent of the people living within 10 miles of these plants approve of them (that's not including the nuclear workers). Although I don't live near a nuclear plant, I am now squarely in their camp.

And I am not alone among seasoned environmental activists in changing my mind on this subject. British atmospheric scientist James Lovelock, father of the Gaia theory, believes that nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Stewart Brand, founder of the "Whole Earth Catalog," says the environmental movement must embrace nuclear energy to wean ourselves from fossil fuels. On occasion, such opinions have been met with excommunication from the anti-nuclear priesthood: The late British Bishop Hugh Montefiore, founder and director of Friends of the Earth, was forced to resign from the group's board after he wrote a pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter.

There are signs of a new willingness to listen, though, even among the staunchest anti-nuclear campaigners. When I attended the Kyoto climate meeting in Montreal last December, I spoke to a packed house on the question of a sustainable energy future. I argued that the only way to reduce fossil fuel emissions from electrical production is through an aggressive program of renewable energy sources (hydroelectric, geothermal heat pumps, wind, etc.) plus nuclear. The Greenpeace spokesperson was first at the mike for the question period, and I expected a tongue-lashing. Instead, he began by saying he agreed with much of what I said -- not the nuclear bit, of course, but there was a clear feeling that all options must be explored.

Here's why: Wind and solar power have their place, but because they are intermittent and unpredictable they simply can't replace big baseload plants such as coal, nuclear and hydroelectric.

Natural gas, a fossil fuel, is too expensive already, and its price is too volatile to risk building big baseload plants. Given that hydroelectric resources are built pretty much to capacity, nuclear is, by elimination, the only viable substitute for coal. It's that simple.

That's not to say that there aren't real problems -- as well as various myths -- associated with nuclear energy. Each concern deserves careful consideration:

? Nuclear energy is expensive. It is in fact one of the least expensive energy sources. In 2004, the average cost of producing nuclear energy in the United States was less than two cents per kilowatt-hour, comparable with coal and hydroelectric. Advances in technology will bring the cost down further in the future.

? Nuclear plants are not safe. Although Three Mile Island was a success story, the accident at Chernobyl, 20 years ago this month, was not. But Chernobyl was an accident waiting to happen. This early model of Soviet reactor had no containment vessel, was an inherently bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The multi-agency U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported last year that 56 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident, most of those from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the fire. Tragic as those deaths were, they pale in comparison to the more than 5,000 coal-mining deaths that occur worldwide every year. No one has died of a radiation-related accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear reactor program. (And although hundreds of uranium mine workers did die from radiation exposure underground in the early years of that industry, that problem was long ago corrected.)

? Nuclear waste will be dangerous for thousands of years. Within 40 years, used fuel has less than one-thousandth of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from the reactor. And it is incorrect to call it waste, because 95 percent of the potential energy is still contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now that the United States has removed the ban on recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that needs treatment and disposal. Last month, Japan joined France, Britain and Russia in the nuclear-fuel-recycling business. The United States will not be far behind.

? Nuclear reactors are vulnerable to terrorist attack. The six-feet-thick reinforced concrete containment vessel protects the contents from the outside as well as the inside. And even if a jumbo jet did crash into a reactor and breach the containment, the reactor would not explode. There are many types of facilities that are far more vulnerable, including liquid natural gas plants, chemical plants and numerous political targets.

? Nuclear fuel can be diverted to make nuclear weapons. This is the most serious issue associated with nuclear energy and the most difficult to address, as the example of Iran shows. But just because nuclear technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use.

Over the past 20 years, one of the simplest tools -- the machete -- has been used to kill more than a million people in Africa, far more than were killed in the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombings combined. What are car bombs made of? Diesel oil, fertilizer and cars. If we banned everything that can be used to kill people, we would never have harnessed fire.

The only practical approach to the issue of nuclear weapons proliferation is to put it higher on the international agenda and to use diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists from using nuclear materials for destructive ends. And new technologies such as the reprocessing system recently introduced in Japan (in which the plutonium is never separated from the uranium) can make it much more difficult for terrorists or rogue states to use civilian materials to manufacture weapons.
The 600-plus coal-fired plants emit nearly 2 billion tons of CO2annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from about 300 million automobiles. In addition, the Clean Air Council reports that coal plants are responsible for 64 percent of sulfur dioxide emissions, 26 percent of nitrous oxides and 33 percent of mercury emissions. These pollutants are eroding the health of our environment, producing acid rain, smog, respiratory illness and mercury contamination.

Meanwhile, the 103 nuclear plants operating in the United States effectively avoid the release of 700 million tons of CO2emissions annually -- the equivalent of the exhaust from more than 100 million automobiles. Imagine if the ratio of coal to nuclear were reversed so that only 20 percent of our electricity was generated from coal and 60 percent from nuclear. This would go a long way toward cleaning the air and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every responsible environmentalist should support a move in that direction.
pmoore@greenspirit.com

[1CAVCCO15MED]

My son works at Nuclear Fuel Industries locally. They make all the fuel for the nuclear navy. One of the nuclear waste experts is a friend of mine. One thing you will never see is a nuclear plant on an old coal fired plant's site. The reason is the ash from the coal has radiation that exceeds that allowed at a nuclear site. Under normal opperation a coal fired plant puts out much more radiation into the atmosphere than a nuclear one. I think Chernobyl teaches a couple of lessons: Communists ignore safety and there has to be a containment building over the reactor.

[darrels joy]

I have a friend who's been there. They did more than ignore.

An arrogant scientist had ALL the safety systems shut down so he could run a test. He was one of the first to die.

More than just containment. For any US built reactor to meltdown the law of gravity would have to be repealed. :re: A safety system drops dampening rods. No intervention required.

I toured an aluminum plant in eastern Washington with a group of women engineers (many who worked in the nuclear field). They had a storage room with coal running out the doors. We joked about how much (regulatory paperwork especially) it would take to clean it up if a truck load of coal ended up on a road inside the nuclear reservation. :ek:


If I was a foreign government, I would worry that all the innovation and new technology in the nuclear field in the US has been done by our military especially our nuclear Navy.

[Seascamp]

The most popular nuke power plant design is the PWR or Pressurized Water Reactor and this design has everything inside containment except for the heat exchanger steam output going to the turbine. It?s a safe design and there are about 120 of this type plant in Europe. I believe the PWR reactor coolant pumps and /or spare parts are still made in Cheswick, PA. But on other fronts, I believe the US has gone out of the business long ago.

The huge base load 1000 MW turbines for nuke plants were once made in Schenectady, NY, but last through there, I saw that the base load turbine manufacturing facilities have been torn down and it?s the same story in Lester, PA. TVA started to build a nuke plant near Rogersville, TN, but got no further than the foundation and these days just stacks of rusting re bar, and a foundation, kind of a sad field of frustration to look at.
Even if we wanted to build a nuke plant, we would, of necessity, have to import all the major components and begin again with nuke power plant engineering curriculum in our Universities. I don?t know of anyone that is putting any serious R & D funding into nuke power plant designs or equipment so we are well the other side of grass roots and have a not so trusting or willing power generation industry, to boot. Too many got burned badly with all the vacillation, impossible licensing procedures and mountains of specification requirements to be met.

But the endless arguing and obstructionism makes consideration of a resurgent nuke power plant industry a mute point, I?m not sure we can get there from here. Jeezz, even getting a license for a fossil fired plant takes longer that it takes to construct the plant so I can?t even imagine what it would take to license a new construction nuke power plant, maybe forever.

Scamp

The only thing I know about Nuclear Power is realted to Nuclear Weapons. So I sure can't say anything about the subject on Nuclear Energy.

[darrels joy]

Last year the congress passed a bill authorizing funding of 2 new nuclear reactors with loans available for 3 more.

On the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State is WNP-1, a leftover from WPPSS, that is 95% complete and they just traded some desert land for the right to NOT tear it down. Maybe now they can finish it.

We lost our newest test reactor (FFTF) to government stupidity (Move this to political if you want but Al Gore wanted a new one build in Oak Ridge. There was no question of whether or not this country has a need for this reactor. My last question at a meeting on the destruction of this reactor was "Who has the political clout to build replacement reactor for 1 billion dollars?") They drilled holes in the core a year ago.

FFTF named national historic landmark

This story was published Wednesday, April 12th, 2006

By the Herald staff


The American Nuclear Society has named Hanford's Fast Flux Test Facility a National Nuclear Historic Landmark.

The 400-megawatt reactor will be commemorated at 3:30 p.m. Monday during a program at the Battelle Auditorium, off Battelle Boulevard in Richland.

The reactor was conceived in the late 1960s by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory nuclear engineers and physicists as a research facility for irradiation testing of reactor fuels and materials. It operated for about a decade, starting in the early 1980s.

Changes in national policy, driven in part by the Three Mile Island accident and nuclear nonproliferation concerns, limited its use. But throughout its life it won several significant awards and greatly contributed to knowledge of nuclear materials science and technology, according to the American Nuclear Society.

Energy: Coal is estimated to last the longest for energy sources, about 300 years. Nuclear energy is estimated to last for thousands of years. We can get uranium from seawater. :ek:

France is the worlds builder of nuclear reactors at this time.

Remember: I'm naturally radioactive and so are you.
Joy