I wrote an article yesterday about the ways in which environmentalism is based upon an American tradition of simplicity, cleanliness and efficiency. Solar power and zero emissions energy aren’t new at all. They’re as ancient as things like clotheslines.
In response to the article, a member of a group called Project Laundry List dropped over and left a nice comment. That led me to look at the Project Laundry List web site, and I appreciated much of what I found there. The group advocates energy conservation, and energy infrastructure reform. Their mission statement reads, “Project Laundry List uses words, images, and advocacy to educate people about how simple lifestyle modifications, including air-drying one’s clothes, reduce our dependence on environmentally and culturally costly energy sources.”
The thing about Project Laundry List that leaves me feeling somewhat uncertain is the group’s opposition to nuclear power. It seems that Project Laundry List was born out of opposition to nuclear power: “Project Laundry List began in 1995 when Dr. [Helen] Caldicott gave a speech at Middlebury College peace symposium and said, “If we all did things like hang out our clothes, we could shut down the nuclear industry.”
I’m not sure what I think about this statement from the Project Laundry List. Should the nuclear industry be shut down?
If the nuclear power industry is shut down, it would make it more difficult than ever to control carbon emissions and other pollutants that come from fossil fuel power plants. Of course, Dr. Caldicott, proposed shutting the nuclear energy industry down through conservation, but that’s just another way of restating the problem. If the energy savings from conservation all go toward taking nuclear power plants offline, then that’s conservation that is taken away from shutting down sources of fossil fuel pollution.
As it is, conservation is not taking place at anything close to the rate required to shut down either the nuclear power industry or the fossil fuel power industry. That’s a problem, and Project Laundry List is right to identify it, but shouldn’t we approach the problem one step at a time, by working to cut back on our energy use in order to disable the power industry that is the source of the more present and grave danger?
Nuclear power contains some threats, but how many? Project Laundry List claims, “The generation of nuclear power is an inefficient energy source producing an abundance of hazardous waste of which we cannot safely dispose.” I wonder how well this claim holds up to scrutiny.
Yes, the generation nuclear power is inefficient, but then again, so is every other form of power generation we have available. Solar power technology, wind power technology, and fossil fuel power technology are all inefficient. It does not seem fair to critique nuclear power’s inefficiency in particular.
Nuclear power does create hazardous waste, and that waste is difficult to dispose of, but it seems unreasonable to say that the waste cannot be safely disposed of. If the hazardous waste truly cannot be safely disposed of, then why isn’t there an abundance of incidents in which people and other living things are directly endangered by nuclear waste?
Whereas the threat from nuclear waste is theoretical and in the future, the threat from pollution created by fossil fuel power plants is concrete and taking place in the present. Huge numbers of people have died and continue to be threatened as a result of the effects of this pollution. Shouldn’t we address this actual threat before tackling the abstract possibility of a threat from nuclear waste?
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, it made more sense to oppose nuclear power. Nuclear power plants had less of a track record of safety than they do now. Years later, however, it is clear that the accident at Chernobyl was a particular aberration, not part of a global problem with nuclear power.
I am deeply uneasy with the relationship between nuclear power plants and the nuclear weapons that the United States continues to stockpile. Without nuclear power plants, it would be much more difficult for the United States to maintain its nuclear weapons arsenal in perpetuity. However, enough nuclear materials have already been generated for the United States to manufacture massive numbers of nuclear weapons for a very long time to come. Shutting down the nuclear power industry won’t solve the problem. Separate controls on the production of nuclear weapons are what’s really required to deal with that problem.
Considering the current climate crisis, it seems clear to me that now is not a good time for shutting down the nuclear power industry. It seems to me that effort needs to be focused on reducing the role of fossil fuels and other carbon emitting sources of energy.
That said, I’m willing to listen to the arguments of those who think that the nuclear power industry should be shut down now. If you’re someone who opposes the continuing use of nuclear power, and you think I’ve got it wrong, please let me know why. What am I overlooking? What don’t I understand? Where are the flaws in my thinking?
I work in the nuclear industry, but am ambivalent about all energy sources – because they all have problems. Nature’s checkbook is hard to balance. I always say that conservation should be the first goal of any energy plan, similar to what you’ve said above.
One thing that concerns me about energy discussions, and nuclear in particular, is that pundits and experts don’t seem to have a clear picture of the real world of atomic power. It’s much different than you might imagine – both good and bad. So I’ve written an layman’s guide. It’s full of perspective and information you won’t normally see, and it’s also a thriller novel to boot. “Rad Decision” is available online at no cost to readers at http://RadDecision.blogspot.com – and they seem to like it based on their homepage comments. Also now in paperback at online retailers. (I get no royalties.)
I hope people will find this a useful addition to energy discussions.
“I’d like to see Rad Decision widely read.” – Stewart Brand, noted futurist and founder of “The Whole Earth Catalog”.
The waste isn’t exactly biodegradable, is it. How long are the half-lives of the waste products? And where can you put the waste that it will be stable until the material loses enough radioactivity to be safe for several millions of years? Mountains erode, oceans rise. I suspect the real danger is not in “incidents” but in increased health problems like the rare cancers that have been found near the New Mexico atom bomb test sites that are not recognized until years later.
An incinator for low level medical radioactive waste was built near my old neighborhood–but the dangers from airborne heavy metal byproducts was downplayed, although the local hospital finally did publicly admit the hazard. Of course it’s an excruciatingly poor black neighborhood, so no one with real infuence was affected…
Right after 9/11 I went to a popular recreation area a couple hours from my city and found the public campground shut down by homeland security. It’s a stone’s throw from a nuclear reactor. So add intentional sabatage by persons unfriendly to the United States to your list of dangers. Wasn’t there an episode of 24 that used that theme?
But here’s the real test–the not-in-my-neighborhood test. Would you yourself be willing to live downwind from one?
Wait a minute – THIS is the real test of whether a technology is dangerous, that the right wing fictional TV show 24 says so?
No. The real test is whether you would be willing to live with one yourself.
How realistic is sabotage of nuclear plants?–that’s one bit of information I hope no one publishes. The only way to prove a nuclear reactor can be damaged or used as a weapon against a civilian population is if someone actually does it. The nuclear reactor plotline from 24 was pretty elaborate and I thought not too realistic–the baddies used one computer to blow up multiple reactors in several states–but I still love the show for its pace and technical skill–as I also loved its predecessor Le Femme Nikita, even though she always killed a bunch of people with a machine gun as the high point of every show….
Seeing public areas near our local reactor closed does bring home the possiblity and also the apparent official concern over access to reactors. Green Man makes the point that nuclear plants have a better track record for safety than in the 80′s and 90′s. But safety only works if people are TRYING to be safe. What if people are TRYING to damage the reactor and cause civilian casualties? On 9/11 everyone thought planes were safe from hijackers because they assumed passengers on airplanes would not WANT to die. Now all of that is changed.
So what about it, do you want to pitch your tent in the middle of a forest and see the lights from the reactor rising above the treetops? Or have spent fuel rods buried on a piece of your land?
Well, wait a minute then. What if terrorist grab control solar power plants in the Southwest, and re-engineer them to send a giant bolt of electricity to San Francisco?
What if terrorist attacks are extremely unlikely. When has there ever been an attack on a nuclear power plant? Just because it hasn’t happened yet, should I presume that it will? That seems to be your logic.
By the way, no one is suggesting burying spent fuel rods in residential neighborhoods, any more than they suggest putting solar panels to shade out your garden or a windmill on top of your house, or in the middle of a bird sanctuary.
Hey, where’s Harrold and his Republican party line on energy and the environment? What, no name calling and debasement from Mr. Know-it-all? Geez, how disappointing.
But we can always count on your for nam calling and debasement can’t we tommy, you cowardly piece of shit!
Almost all problems can be solved. Does wind power damage bird life and disrupt other animal life around them? Possibly, but perhaps those by-products can be mitigated somewhat to acceptable levels. Do they look bad on the horizon? Most people would say absolutely so, and groups fight over that constantly. But yet they have benefits, such as low pollution in the big picture.
However, they don’t solve all problems today. Nuclear power plants have some troubles too, but they do solve an important problem perceived today. They don’t emit large quantities of so-called greenhouse gases. Do they have other negative byproducts such as wastes? Yup, but we need to work on solving those problems, at least in the short term until we all go back to living in caves and drying our skins on tree branches, or we come up with viable sources of power that please everyone and meet all our needs.
Wake up, folks. Solar PV cells don’t make it today, not for all climates and all energy needs. The aforementioned wind has some issues. Nuclear is a great stopgap alternative to burning more coal, and if you don’t support that, you’re a technophobe in my opinion.
Wouldn’t I mind a reactor or a spent fuel dump over my back fence? No, I absolutely wouldn’t mind that.
It’s important to understand that the supposed public fear of nuclear is actually oil money’s fear of nuclear. Much of the profit on oil goes to government, so charades like the Homeland Security one are understandable as civil servants’ protection of their oil interest.
Similarly, talk of having to guard spent nuclear fuel for large numbers of centuries is petrodollar-driven government deception.
Keeping it for a few decades and then burying it a few hundred metres deep is as safe as dumping out a hamster cage in a cow pasture, for a similar reason: there is a lot more radioactivity in nature, buried a few hundred metres deep or less, than in decades-aged spent fuel.
Folks, your “waste” is another’s fuel. If you talk to engineers, operators, “geeks” in the nuclear field, you will find almsot unanimous concensus: Not to Yucca Mountain! What you might ask? Yes, the current “bury it” crowd tends to be the non-engeering PR and CEO types in the industry. They don’t want to fight for a really responsible waste-to-fuel reprocessing program like they have in France and other industrialized countries with advanced nuclear programs. Almost ALL this ‘waste’, which, BTW, can sit where it is for hundreds of years in pools of water, it’s all the shielding it’ll ever need, can be reprcossed into fuel many, many times over.
The US doesn’t do it because the Ford, then Carter administrations killed off reprocessing. Waste is manageable and not a problem.
David Walters
leftatomics.blogspot.com
I’m non-engineering and not in the industry, but my impression of what those who are in the industry want doesn’t quite agree with Walters.
Certainly my industry geeks and his industry geeks can agree that they sleep well living near fuel ponds; in that they are like the Greenpeace contractors who calmly but quietly get on nuclear icebreakers. The at first rapid, later slow loss of radioactivity in spent fuel means there is a lot more radioactivity in a ship’s reactor than there ever will be in Yucca Mountain, even if they fill it up.
Nuclear plants make exceedingly poor terrorist targets, as the chances of success are extremely low, and even the maximum possible consequences have been greatly overstated. There are enormous numbers of vastly superior targets in the US, where not only are the chances of a successfu attack infinitely greater, but the maximum consequences of a successful attack are actually much larger.
The study linked below shows how an attack on a nuclear plant with a large aircraft would have no significant chance of causing a large release of radioactive material.
http://www.nei.org/documents/eprinuclearplantstructuralstudy200212.pdf
After ~30,000 years, nuclear waste is no more radioactive than the original uranium ore that was dug up to make it. On top of that, it is (still) much more isolated from human contact (in the repository) than the original ore ever was, resulting in an actual reduction in health/environmental risk, from that point forward, due to the use of nuclear power.
Nuclear waste is generated in tiny volumes (almost a million times smaller than fossil plant wastes). It is in the form of a non-dispersible, leach-resistant ceramic solid, and it steadily decays away. The wastes from fossil plants, as well as most other industries, have a much larger volume, are in a much more leachable/dispersible form, and many of the toxins never decay away. Over nuclear’s entire ~40-year hisotry, nuclear waste (and Western nuclear power) have never killed a member of the public or had any measurable impact on public health. Fossil fuel plants/wastes cause ~25,000 premature deaths in the US alone; and hundreds of thousands worldwide. On top of that there is global warming, with fossil power plants being the largest single source of emissions, and nuclear power having a negligible impact.
Jim,
I understand where you’re coming from, but I think that the weak part of your argument is where you say “After ~30,000 years”, as if that’s an insignificant amount of time. See how you might lose people there?
SOLAR, NOT NUCLEAR
there is absolutely no need for nuclear power in the US because there is a simple mature technology available that can deliver huge amounts of clean energy without any of the headaches of nuclear power.
‘Concentrating solar power’ (CSP), employs the technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat, and then using the heat to raise steam and drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station. It is possible to store solar heat in melted salts so that electricity generation may continue through the night or on cloudy days. This technology has been generating electricity successfully in California since 1985 and currently provides power for about 100,000 Californian homes. CSP plants are now being planned or built in many parts of the world.
CSP works best in hot deserts and it is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity over very long distances using highly-efficient ‘HVDC’ transmission lines. With transmission losses at about 3% per 1000 km, solar electricity may be transmitted to anywhere in the US. A recent report from the American Solar Energy Society says that CSP plants in the south western states of the US “could provide nearly 7,000 GW of capacity, or about seven times the current total US electric capacity”.
In the ‘TRANS-CSP’ report commissioned by the German government, it is estimated that CSP electricity, imported from North Africa and the Middle East, could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, including the cost of transmission. A large-scale HVDC transmission grid has also been proposed by Airtricity as a means of optimising the use of wind power throughout Europe.
Further information about CSP may be found at http://www.trec-uk.org.uk and http://www.trecers.net . Copies of the TRANS-CSP report may be downloaded from http://www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm . The many problems associated with nuclear power are summarised at http://www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm .
30,000 years is a long time. However, if we stick to fossil fuels, we may not last 100 years. In 100 years, would you rather humanity be worrying about where to put radioactive waste, or dead?
30,000 years is an irrelevant time. Hopf is an engineer; he thinks maybe those who express “concern” about nuclear waste just are missing a few facts, rather than a conscience.
100 years hence there will be millions of tonnes of nuclear waste buried here and there, and it will be uncontroversial. No-one will fear it because it will be as harmless-in-practice then as now, and no-one will pretend to fear it because the fossil-fuel money that funds such pretense will be long forgotten.
Right now, nuclear waste production is preventing carbon monoxide production. Right now, carbon monoxide is killing, and nuclear waste is not.
My comments on nuclear waste were more to simply provide information and answer questions, than to specifically make a case for nuclear. I was specifically trying to answer the question/point posed by Irquois Honky:
“How long are the half-lives of the waste products? And where can you put the waste that it will be stable until the material loses enough radioactivity to be safe for several millions of years?”
30,000 years does indeed seem like a long time, but it is a heck of a lot easier for scientific analyses to demonstrate/prove acceptable repository performance over this time period than for the one million years that DOE has just been asked to address. Analyses have already conclusively shown that leakage will be negligible for ~10,000-30,000 years (w/ no local residents getting more than ~1% of natural background). Doing this for a million years is more of a struggle. One of my reasons for presenting the information above was to point out how silly it is to have to analyze repository performance long after the waste has decayed to the radioactivity level of the original uranium ore.
I agree w/ Mr. Cowan that 30,000 years is not the real meaningful figure. For me, the real point is that it is easy to guarantee complete containment of wastes for at least ~1000 years, and it is completely implausible to suggest that we will not have the means to completely process/eliminate the waste by then. All indications are that we will have such technology in ~100 years, let alone 1000. With nuclear waste, we have all the time in the world to solve the problem. We KNOW we can contain it until we can completely solve the problem. Therefore we KNOW that nuclear waste will never have a significant impact on public health or the environment (i.e., that it won’t kill anyone, ever). Meanwhile, fossil fuels are continually causing immediate, irreperable harm; ~25,000 deaths every single year and possibly radically alterning the earth’s climate.
We are accepting real and worsening problems just to avoid nuclear waste, even though we know it will never be a problem. All this, to supposedly avoid placing a “burden on future generations”. This is silly, given that the simple existence of a repository is not a real burden. As for the future processing/elimination of spent fuel, heck, we could even pay for it though a trust fund, which would only require a tiny (~0.1 cent/kW-hr) fee on nuclear electricity. The power of long-term compounding interest is profound. If we did this, the only “burden” we would be placing on future generations is gainful employment for a large number of people, fully paid for in advance.
I am not only willing to live next to a reactor, but I have lived within 200 feet of a reactor for months at a time. As a former nuclear submarine engineer officer, I know how clean and safe the technology can be if handled with appropriate care. It does not need tender, loving care, just some basic attention to detail, good maintenance and operating procedures and a well trained and motivated work force.
Of course, the labor costs associate with nuclear power plants are much higher than those associated with many other power systems, but the good news is that fuel cost savings far outweigh the labor cost disadvantage. On average, nuclear plants in the US have total operating costs that are less than 1/4th the cost of a natural gas fired plant on a per kilowatt hour basis. They are even 30% cheaper than the average coal fired power plant based on 2006 operating data.
Like David Walters, I do not understand the term “nuclear waste” since most of the material that comes out of a reactor can be recycled as fuel and many of the other products have potentially valuable uses. I definitely think that Yucca Mountain is a HUGE waste of money that should be halted as soon as possible.
I am trained as an engineer, but mainly I am a humanist who recognizes that a life with energy is far better than one without it. I also recognize that we should tread lightly on this earth and leave it in better condition that we found it in. As a submariner, I lived under a similar motto “Remain undetected”. We always figured if we made as little disturbance in the environment as possible that it would be nearly impossible to find us.
Atomic energy is cheap, clean, abundant and reliable. That is why is scares the socks off of fossil fuel interests and why they continue to fund professional anti-nuclear activists.
Everyone seems to be considering the example of a reactor in a place where technology can be handled with proper care. What about in a politically volatile country where people believe in studying religious revelation before studying science? Where they cure illnesses by chanting the Koran over the sick person? Iran thinks it has an Allah-given right to nuclear technology, now Jordan’s king has said publicly he wants nuclear energy too. And the big Jordanian rumor is that Israel has been sending truckloads of nuclear waste over the border to be stored by bedouin chiefs who just love the money but don’t understand radiation.
And what about storing waste in countries like this–never mind that we probably don’t know what land use in our own country was 300 years ago, much less 3000 or 30,000. Will our own political and economic structures survive longer than the nuclear waste? Will the generations to come be building playgrounds for children over sites where unscrupulous and financially challenged companies have secretly disposed of nuclear waste?
“Will the generations to come be building playgrounds for children over sites where unscrupulous and financially challenged companies have secretly disposed of nuclear waste?”
That’s not really a question, it is an assertion that nuclear energy isn’t perfectly forgiving of human fallibility. True; but it’s a lot closer to that perfect forgivingness than fossil fuels, which are tens of times more costly than nuclear fuel, before taxes, and are heavily taxed. The lives nuclear energy is saving today are coming at the cost of civil service careers.
The cubic centimetre of uranium dioxide that today gives us 200 watts of water-heating power for a year or two will indeed still be making a few milliwatts a century hence, even if it’s under a playground. Our year-2107 descendants will inherit lands in which, buried a kilometre deep or less, are 250 *billion* watts of radioactivity, 250 trillion milliwatts — and this may include, halfway down or a little further, our radioactive legacy to them, now approaching 0.3 billion year-2107 watts.
The rest will of course be natural; that is why it will, not may, be there. As previously said, the nuclear waste problem is akin to dumping out a hamster cage in a thousand-acre cow pasture. When government says they just don’t know how to do it, or they just can’t get past your uncertainties about the process, understand that they’re wringing their hands all the way to the bank.
“Everyone seems to be considering the example of a reactor in a place where technology can be handled with proper care. What about in a politically volatile country…..”
The decision to use more nuclear here at home and the decision to export nuclear technology to developing, potentially unstable nations are two completely distinct, separate issues. What’s being discussed here is whether or not more nuclear in the US (and the developed world) is a good idea. The above (quoted) argument has nothing to do with this.
Many have tried to deliberately confuse and intermingle these issues, using the potential problems associated with spreading nuclear throughout the developing world as a reason to oppose more nuclear here at home. They try to argue that since building a reactor in Darfur might be a proliferation risk, then we should build reactors in the US because “after all, nuclear power is a proliferation risk”.
As for the nuclear waste, it will all be buried in one place, deep below the Neveda desert, in the middle of the Neveda Test site where large numbers of nuclear bombs have been exploded in the air and underground. There will not be multiple sites of buried waste scattered all around. Nobody would ever be able to secretly bury any high-level (long-lived) nuclear waste. Even if we forgot about the presence of Yucca Mtn. far into the future, the effects on society and the local population will be…..nothing, as it is buried very deep and exposures outside the range of natural background are not expected even under the maximum conceivable leakage scenario. One thing is clear; any effects from Yucca Mtn. to distant generations will be much smaller than the effects (if any) that would occur from the radioactivity deposited by the underground weapons tests. It is also clear that under no circumstances could such long-term effects of nuclear waste ever approach the long-term effects from the buried toxins that result from fossil fuel use.
I wasn’t really thinking about proliferation, although using a reactor to make nuclear weapons is certainly an issue. It doesn’t matter whether or not we are the ones who export to them, if they want the technology, they will get it from somewhere.
I named Jordan specifically because their king last week says he wants to pursue nuclear power options. Jordan is currently our ally, is hardly a third world country, but may not have the type of science infrastructure that may be necessary to handle this technology safely. This is how the argument is being put in Iran–that they have the RIGHT to nuclear energy! not that it makes sense for them or can be managed safely, etc. The reality is that too many countries only see that the U.S. is a great big grown-up country and they want to be just like Mommy. But what are the prerequisites for handling this technology? A democratic political structure? A large number of people educated in the sciences? Watchdog structures in the government?
Article IV of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty states that all nations have the right to persue peacefull nuclear technology, as long as they agree to not develop weapons and agree to inspections to verify this. Generally, when nations refer to their “right” to nuclear power, they are making specific reference to this section of the treaty.
There may indeed be legitimate questions as to whether certain countries are ready, or responsible enough to handle nuclear technology. To limit their access to the technology, however, we only have two options. One would be to amend the treaty to make it illegal for “developing” nations to get nuclear power/technology (not really possible, as the developing world would never accept it). The second, less formal option is to convince all the developed countries that have nuclear technology to not sell any such technologies to nations that are not deemed ready. The problem here is that this would require cooperation from many nations, such as Russia and China, that have historically not shown any restraint in terms of these (money making) exports.
To some extent I share your concerns, but I have no idea what we can really do about it. How can we stop Russia and China (and others) from doing this? Especially given that it is legal under the NPT? There is very little chance that we can convince them not to sell reactors. This isn’t so bad since reactors are not really the problem (it is as hard or harder to process spent fuel into weapons material than it is to simply enrich raw uranium ore). There is a chance that we will be able to get world agreement to not allow/sell any fuel cycle (i.e., enrichment or reprocessing) plants/technology to nations that don’t already have it. This is good news, as these facilities are the real problem. (Note that Iran has set of a uranium enrichment center to get its weapons material; its power reactor is not the problem).
The “Monkey See Monkey Do” argument (about nations wanting to emulate the US) is often made, in order to suggest that building more nukes in the developed world will lead to more nukes in the developing world, and thus create some proliferation risk. I essentially reject this argument. In fact, the opposite effect is more likely. Energy policy decisions, in the developing world as well as the developed world, are made rational self-interest, based on cold, hard facts (e.g., economics), as opposed to a desire to emulate some other country, or just for the sake of getting on a bandwagon.
The reason why these developing countries are looking into nuclear is due to the huge, recent escalation in world oil and gas prices, and the fact that these sources are starting to run out. Note that Jordan has little if any gas and oil, and imports almost all its energy. Even if you are currently an exporter (before your reserves run out), the high oil/gas price is still an incentive to go nuclear, as the amount of money you get from exporting (as opposed to using) your gas and oil just got way higher.
The fact that the US and Europe turned away from nuclear power and largely turned to natural gas as an alternative is one of the main reasons why world natural gas supply is short of demand, and why the price of gas is so high. This is also acting to speed up the depletion of this resource, and hasten the day when it runs out. Conversely, if we used more nuclear in the US and Europe, the strain on world gas/oil supplies would be reduced, the price would fall, and world reserves would last significantly longer. All of these things will act to reduce the incentive to build nuclear plants in the developing world (including the Middle East). A reduction in world tensions (over energy supplies) would also reduce the desire to obtain nuclear weapons for many of these nations.
In summary, if the developed world (nations which already have nuclear plants) used more nuclear power, the effect will be to reduce the number of nuclear plants in the developing world, which, if anything, will reduce the overall risk of weapons proliferation. My take has always been that the developed countries that can use nuclear power responsibly should do so to a greater extent, thus saving the “easy” energy sources (like natural gas) for the developing world to use.
What are the true costs of nuclear power? It doen’t produce greenhouse gases, but nuclear power produces tremendous amounts of waste heat. Does that heat represent global warming events? Is it feasible to shut down all the coal, oil, and gas plants, and went to a 100% nuclear energy based economy? Is there enough radioactive material for fuel? What then would be the risk of terrorism?
And what would it cost? The government provides tremendous subsidies for nuclear power. Nuclear power plants don’t carry liability insurance. They are insured by the government.
We could power the country with roof top solar and wind turbines. Solar costs $7 to $8 per watt without any government subsidies. Wind costs $1 to $3 depending on where the turbines are sited. Of course there’s no sunlight during the day – that’s why we need wind.
No radioactive wastes, no greenhouse gases, no mercury or other toxic wastes.
And if a terrorist knocks out 1 roof top solar system – or even a 3.5 MW wind turbine like the kind GE built offshore of Ireland – it’s not a big deal. That’s an insurable risk.
Lies about the effectiveness of solar power and windpower are major tools of the fossil fuel interests. There can be such a thing as a calm fortnight in January or December.
Another oil-money lie is the insurance one that is uncritically repeated above. Nukes are privately insured. Since submarine-powerplant-derived nukes have never harmed any of their neighbours, setting the rates had to be somewhat arbitrary, and that is where government stepped in, requiring rates that, in practice, have amounted to a subsidy from the nuclear industry to the insurance one. More at http://uic.com.au/nip70.htm
I dont know about Apposing Nuclear Power! I came across three interesting articles regarding Nuclear Power:
1.) Electricity companies in the US are asking the Government to change the rules of the loan guarantees being offered so that 100% of the loan is covered, instead of 90%, as currently proposed. The electricity companies are being advised by finance experts that the 90% loan scheme won’t work well, as it would create “two tier” risk in any finance package to fund the construction of a new nuclear power plant.
The load guarantees are meant to protect companies from the possibility that they start to build a new nuclear power plant and then have a new government policy on nuclear power emerge that might jeopardise the success of that new build project.
click here for the full story
2.)Areva get enrichment contract from South Korean
AREVA, the French nuclear giant, have signed a contract worth more than one billion euros to enrich uranium for KHNP (Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co Ltd).
The enriched uranium will be supplied from Areva’s new centrifuge enrichment plant, which is still under contruction in France. The centrifuge enrichment process is much more energy efficient than the gaseous diffusion process currently used in France. AREVA’s enrichment competitiors, URENCO, have used the centrifuge enrichment process for many years.
KHNP is a South Korean company that operates 20 reactors and has another 8 in the pipeline, this makes it the fourth largest nuclear power plant operator.
For a full range of topics click on the link below:
click here
3.)Old Argentinian uranium mine gets new lease of life
The Don Otto uranium mine in Argentina is to start up again after being closed for over 25 years. Uranium was mined at the Don Otto mine on and off between 1963 to 1981. Over the last two years uranium prices have climbed dramatically, meaning companies are reexamining whether old mines can be operated profitably.
Argentina will need more uranium from 2012 when its third nuclear power station is due to come on line. Currently Argentina imports the 3500 tonnes per annum it needs for its two nuclear power stations, the third power station will take this demand up to 7500 tonnes per annum.
click here for the full story