Sacrificing A National Treasure For Atomic Fuel?
posted 17th November 2009 in Environment, Legislation by The Green Man
Yesterday, Senator Lamar Alexander introduced bill S.2776, legislation intended “to create the right business environment for doubling production of clean nuclear energy”. Clean nuclear energy? Is there such a thing?
When people like Senator Alexander describe nuclear power as a “clean energy” source, we need to consider all portions of nuclear energy production, which includes, at the beginning, mining. Uranium doesn’t just fall from the sky, like solar power, or blow in over the hills, like wind power. It needs to be ripped out of deep places in the Earth, in a mining process that can use a great deal of energy and create dangerous pollution.
The Denison Mines Corporation is attempting to create an operational uranium mine in an area just to the north of Grand Canyon National Park. The trouble is that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, in approving the uranium mine, has failed to take into account the National Environmental Policy Act. That law requires the BLM to consider new information about factors that may cause pollution from the mine to leak into the National Park. Furthermore, a legally required review of the potential impact on six different endangered and threatened species was not conducted before the mine was approved.
These details aren’t just red tape. They’re in the law as important checks on our civilization’s powerful drive to grab energy wherever it can, however it can, whatever the consequences. These reviews make sure that our appetites of the moment do not destroy more subtle resources that can never be replaced. The law requires scientific review of up-to-date information so that national treasures like the Grand Canyon are not transformed into sterile, radioactive wastes.
Alas, a lawsuit has had to be filed in order to force the Obama Administration to comply with these legal requirements. Before we pursue Senator Alexander’s policy of doubling the size of our nation’s nuclear energy industry, we had better ensure that the legal system designed to prevent a nuclear disaster is in prime working condition.
Tags: endangered species, energy, grand canyon, lamar alexander, mining, nuclear power, pollution, uranium
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This kind of business makes me really quite sad. Nuclear power could be a very clean source of energy. Unfortunately, under an economic system that legislates for maximal profit and minimum responsibility, nuclear can only be run as an industry that extracts ore with no concern (or money) set aside for preserving the areas where it extracted or processed, and leaves spent reactors as a problem for governments to clean up. The British government is currently engaged in (and has budgeted for) a 200 year (yes , TWO CENTURIES) cleanup of the Dounreay reactor complex in Scotland. As long as every industry is run under corporate ‘fiduciary duties’ laws, this manner of business is inevitable.
Yes, I do also know that nuclear will never be that clean (even fusion won’t be particularly clean) but if it was run as a social project as opposed to a profit generating industry it would hands down beat any other energy source, especially for the short term fix desperately needed to replace fossil fuels. Check the front page of http://www.independent.co.uk today, its a bit late for me to check the sources (3.45 am here in the UK) but 6degC is now being suggested as the likely average global temperature increase.
The only nuclear plant i’ve seen that “could” work is this type (that is on the drawing board here but has had problems in Japan, i believe, and isn’t devoid of risk):
http://digg.com/general_sciences/Can_a_Sodium_Fast_Reactor_Cleanly_Burn_Nuclear_Waste?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+digg%2Fpopular+(Popular+Stories)
see also: http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2008/03/liquid-sodium-reactors.html
I don’t entirely disagree with you there Tom, but it might be going a little to far to say that this reactor is the only one that could work ( I assume you mean as a relatively clean source of energy that can practically built in the short time frame we have.) Most nuclear reactors have the potential to recycle their waste, either by reprocessing on site, with the ‘transuranics’ mentioned being either fissioned in a nearby fast neutron reactor (like the sodium cooled reactors cited in your sources), or broken down by intense neutron beams which can be piped out of the main reactor. Small particle accellerators have also been suggested as a way of breaking down spent nuclear fuel.
MadMike,
Some of your statements seem confused – a system that you say “legislates for maximal profit and minimum responsibility” is the exact opposite of the nuclear energy industry. In fact, nuclear is the most tightly regulated industry on Earth, and consequently an exceptional safety culture and safety record has evolved. By any objective measure it’s the safest way to produce large-scale energy (vs coal, natural gas, and even hydro), and the only way to produce adequate amounts of baseload carbon-free energy (most of the carbon free electricity in the US is from nuclear). All this with an exceptional safety record. If you’re talking not about nuclear energy as a whole but about mining in particular, then why is it Uranium mining that’s drawing your ire? We’d have to use many times (~100 times) more iron ore (for steel), concrete, and land area to build equivalent electrical capacity with wind turbines. Metals, minerals, and many materials come from mining, of which uranium is a tiny fraction.
There are a suite of reactor options being looked at. Look up Generation IV Forum (GIF). The fast reactor systems for actinide (or transuranic) transmutation are potentially fantastic. Fast reactors for research have been built and demonstrated already here in the US and all over the world – although they’re all now shut down because of budget cuts in the 90s. Your (or whoever gave to you’s) idea of piping neutrons from the main reactor is just plain silly and would accomplish nothing. Fast reactor deployement is at least a few decades away. In the mean time, our current light-water reactors are doing fantastic. The French use them for 80% of their electricity and have the lowest per capita carbon emissions of any industrialized nation because of it.
Regarding the article, uranium exists naturally all over the Earth. All soil, all seawater, even in your bodies. It is not a radiation risk, and thus does not have the power to create sterile, radioactive wastes. It, like all heavy metals (mercury, lead, etc.) is a chemical hazard that should be appropriately handled. In some cases in the past it hasn’t been. It’s not that is can’t be, but that people didn’t understand (or particularly care as much) about risk to the environment. But, as will all industries, safety is a focal point for future operations. Just think about how dangerous the first cars were. Or airplanes. Or practically any industry. This author seems horribly misinformed, or deliberately dishonest. An anti-nuclear position doesn’t justify dishonesty.