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Protests Greet Nuclear Power Resurgence in US South
WAYNESBORO, Georgia - Residents and environmental activists are in a bitter dispute with large U.S. energy corporations and the federal government over the safety of nuclear power, as more than a dozen corporations plan to, or have filed, paperwork to open new nuclear power plants, primarily in the U.S. South.
Energy giants like Southern Company, Entergy, and Florida Power and Light are attracted by billions in governmental incentives offered under the George W. Bush Administration.
"There's a whole suite of incentives being pumped out by the federal government to try and cajole the utilities back into the game," Glenn Carroll of Nuclear Watch South told IPS.
The U.S. Congress last month passed 38.5 billion dollars in loan guarantees to the nuclear industry. "If they can't pay back the loan, or don't want to pay back the loan, the government will guarantee the banks up to 80 percent," Carroll said.
Five sites have already applied for the first combined licensing applications in 32 years, Roger Hannah, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told IPS. They are located in south Texas, Bellefonte in Alabama, Calvert Cliffs in Maryland, North Anna in Virginia, and Lee Site in South Carolina.
Four companies have applied for Early Site Permits for sites in Grand Gulf, Mississippi; Clinton, Illinois; North Hanna, Virginia; and Plant Vogtle in Burke County, Georgia.
"We've had indications of interest from 12 to 15 other companies," Hannah said.
The NRC held a public hearing in Waynesboro, Georgia, one of the closest affected cities to Plant Vogtle, on Oct. 4, 2007, to address the NRC's Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). The NRC must produce the EIS, as per the 1970 National Environmental Policy Act.
The NRC insists the risks posed by nuclear power are small and within federal guidelines. However, activists argue the draft EIS ignores many issues and contend that nuclear power is unsafe.
At a time Georgia is in a historic drought, when residents are being told the state is running out of drinking water, the NRC and other agencies allow over a billion gallons of water per year from the Savannah River to be consumed by the existing Plant Vogtle Units 1 and 2.
"Vogtle will demand its water supply at the expense of everybody else," William Mareska of Augusta said at the hearing.
"There's only one water system. It's all the same water," Janet Marsh, executive director of Blue Ridge Environmental Defence League, told IPS in a phone interview.
IPS reviewed the draft EIS, about 600 pages, to learn more about how the government reached these controversial conclusions.
The proposed Plant Vogtle Units 3 and 4 would consume 1.76 cubic metres per second, on average, amounting to between 0.7 and 1.7 percent of the total river per year, the document says. This would be over 55 million cubic metres per year, according to IPS's calculations, confirmed by the NRC.
"This is more than all the residents of Atlanta, Savannah, and Augusta [Georgia's most populous cities] combined," Sara Barczak of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy said in her remarks.
Although rain will replenish the river, the NRC estimates "the resulting decrease in river stage... would be... 5 cm. at Drought Level 3 conditions and... 2.5 cm. under average discharge conditions," each year.
In addition, the plants would also consume 623 gallons per minute on average, from two aquifers, according to the draft EIS.
One aquifer has already lost 4.6 metres of water since Vogtle Units 1 and 2 began operation in 1987. "Drawdown" as a result of Units 3 and 4 would be 2.1 metres after 30 years of normal operation, the draft EIS reports.
"These incremental drawdown levels are small in comparison to the 120 metres" in the aquifer, the Draft EIS concludes.
One local farmer, Doug Rhodes, told the NRC he lives "next door" to Vogtle Units 1 and 2. "There's half a dozen shallow wells. If we do have a problem with the wells, what will happen to them? Southern Company said they would handle the infrastructure. Why hasn't that been done?"
"In recent weeks we've had reports there are farmers who are concerned they've had to dig deeper wells for their irrigation. Homeowners have had to do additional well-drilling. People are blaming Vogtle. The idea of two new nuclear plants is of real concern," Marsh said.
The NRC has not interviewed Rhodes or other farmers, but has been told by local agencies that the water consumption would not pose a risk to wells, Hannah told IPS.
It is unclear how the drawdown of the river and aquifers would be a small impact, even per the NRC's own regulations. The legal definition of a small impact is when "environmental effects are not detectable or are so minor they would neither destabilise nor noticeably alter any important attribute of the resource." Is seven feet of drawdown in 30 years neither detectable nor noticeable?
However, the NRC argued it is not detectable. In order to be detectable, "a farmer living next to a plant... using well water to irrigate... would have to notice some change in the water resource. We don't mean a scientist using equipment couldn't notice some difference. The difference would not be detectable by a user of the resource," Hannah explained.
Plant Vogtle's new units, just like any other nuclear power reactor, will release what the NRC considers to be small amounts of radioactive pollution through liquid and gas effluents. In the draft EIS, the NRC states that the amounts of radioactivity projected are lower than the federally allowed "doses" to the public.
"Currently there are no data that unequivocally establish the occurrence of cancer following exposure of low doses below about 100 mSv [millisieverts] and at low doses," the draft EIS also states.
However, according to study by Joseph Mangano, MPH, "the cancer death rate for children and adolescents in the 11 counties closest to Vogtle rose 58.5 percent, compared to a 14.1 percent decline nationally," since Units 1 and 2 opened. The study is based on data from Southern Company and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
"During the same periods, the death rate in Burke County... rose sharply for all cancers, especially for Blacks and for children and young/middle age adults, while U.S. rates declined," the study continues.
The Draft EIS does not explain the increase in cancer rates, although it does note that current rate of cancer in Burke County, 221 per 100,000 people, is higher than the rate for Georgia statewide, 196. Major respiratory diseases are higher, 141 to 90. Major cardiovascular diseases are higher, 448 to 326.
Mangano told IPS that his study also shows that Burke County originally had lower cancer rates than statewide. "In a rural town with no industry, the cancer rate would be lower," he said. "To not take evidence of rising radioactivity and cancer in Burke County seriously is acting irresponsibly and dangerously."
The NRC has reviewed Mangano's study, Hannah said. "This particular gentleman, for a number of years, has been a very active nuclear activist. He did not correct for population increases."
However, population increases should not matter because the study looks not at total cases, but rates of cancer per 100,000 people.
"I'm not here to say whether or not the American Cancer Society supports the two new reactors at Plant Vogtle. I am here to tell you Plant Vogtle has supported the American Cancer Society," Theresa Carter, spokeswoman, said at the hearing.
Local officials also lauded Plant Vogtle at the hearing and expressed support for the new reactors. "We have a lot of people here who depend on Plant Vogtle. They are very friendly to this community," said County Commissioner Alphonso Andrews.
© 2008 Inter Press Service
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49 Comments so far
Show AllNuclear plants produce three things.
1. A limited amount of very heavily subsidised electrical power.
2. Radioactive toxic waste.
3. Depleted Uranium (DU) for use in artillery warheads, as used in Iraq.
They also have the potential to produce one other thing.
Three Mile Islands and Chernobyls.
4. obscene amounts of front-end profit for the contractors.
5. obscene amounts of ongoing profit for the operator.
And nuclear plants CONSUME three things:
1. billions of our taxpayer dollars to subsidize them.
2. billions of our taxpayer dollars to store the radioactive waste, if they can ever find a safe place to put it for the next 50,000 years.
3. billions of gallons of water.
They want to build another in GEORGIA? In the midst of the worst drought in memory?
If USAns or Canadians don't want nuclear, the need to stop their opposition to wind power. I've been following wind development, and wherever it is proposed on a scale that would make a significant contribution - Cape Cod, Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, Kansas, the Pennsylvania/Maryland/West Virginia Plateau, it gets shot down by activists in local commnuities.
What do they want???
But the southeast US is, unfortunately, a rather wind-poor area, has already dammed up all it's formerly scenic rivers for hydropower and IC-engine based "recreation". It's coal fields are being strip-mined to oblivion to feed incredibly dirty power plants, like TVA's notorious Paradise, Ky plant, which emits far more radionucleides than any nuclear plant does, along with a ton of mercury and tens of millions of tons of CO2 per year.
Once again, what do they want?
Not to mention the areas of the western U.S. that will be defaced by uranium mining, transportation and processing...and the fossil fuel needed to accomplish all of that.
PJD: Most of the opposition is based on aesthetic grounds, and in that window, they are right.
What the real drawback to wind power is the amount of hydrocarbon derived energy it takes to make the wind machines, and then the problems with long term storage and spot peak demand supply, both of which have yet to be over come on the scale we need to continue to operate the consumer society we presently have.
The other option that no-one seems willing to discuss is radically gutting the consumer lifestyle.
Ureka! As above, finally we have people are thinking about this major problem to change anything in the USA system of extravagant living. Yes, it is all about economics, if anybody thinks there will be a change to globalization and the democrtaic capitalistic system based now on the consumer life style fly south for a holiday and produce carbon on your plane ride there and stop thinking about it.
Climate change will change that but much too late to save humanity!
Changing "Economic Growth" to "Sustainable Growth" would be a start. Fully funding planned parenthood would be a step forward. Fully funding Renewable Energy would be a big step forward. Following Ralph Nader's suggestions in an article here today would be a giant step forward.
Ezflyer: 'Sustainable Growth' is just another corporate PR buzzword for business as usual. And cancer.
A documentary to show your anti-choice pro-nuke friends and family:
http://www.chernobylheart.com/
http://www.chernobylheart.com/
http://www.chernobylheart.com/
I won't repeat my usual anti-nuke laundry list here (promise). But as others indicated, an insurance scam is probably another product of nuclear power.
They're insured against (real) potential catastrophic disaster, but we all know that insurance companies -- even for relatively smaller disasters such as hurricanes -- often can't pay out. So consider the insurance to run nuke plants "free money" to whoever provides that illusory service.
The US south doesn't need nuclear energy. The south produces enough waste from the softwood lumber industry to cover much of its electricity needs. The waste is increasingly being used in engineered lumber but that is energy/chemical intensive, and unsustainable. So the better use of the waste is to generate electricity and process heat. Lumber and paper processes makes use of the waste heat from the electric production so it does not create heat pollution like the fossil/nuclear electric plants - now a very serious problem everywhere. Sweden and Finland have lumber waste plants up and running. Biofuels are carbon neutral and also lack the sulfur of fossil fuels. They do produce particulates and nitrogen oxides so the process has to be closed - this is a foreign concept that has to be learned. The biowaste approach is complementary to the other two key renewable electric producers - solar-thermal and wind, with the biofuel subsystem picking up the sun/wind slack. Fossil/nuclear are simply not necessary. Energy gluttony is not necessary. Those porkers in Washington are pushing gluttonly. They should be herded into the Potomac and drowned.
The arguments that it takes energy to produce wind driven generators leaves me feeling dumb. What do you think of that one Galen? I agree with you about nuclear is horrible and it takes energy to build a nuclear power plant too. It seems to me, being a undereducated layman, that once the wind generators are built and put up, they don't ever consume any more fossil fuel and are a very long term benefit in that respect. The energy and copper etc, required to make the generators, would be the same as for any electrical power plant. There are two tons of copper used, just in the radiator and wiring of a dump truck, of the type used at an open pit uranium or coal mine.
Like Paul Bramscher my position against nuclear has been stated so many times I'm tired of posting all of it again & again & again & again. Anyone with a computer & half a brain can Google lots of info. I would suggest you view many government reports as suspect & biased. Look at the links carefully, and particularly funding & motives. "Follow the money" is even more important today than when Wodward & Bernstein were credited with the motto of good journalism.
I will add one little bit of information my research led me to. Italy, France, Germany, Great Britian, and the US have had studies come out fairly recently establishing links between proximity to nuclear power plants, and increases in different cancers & even premature deaths. The 'killing zone', for lack of a better term is within 30K of a plant. How close do you live to one? Think about it, do your research, and speak out.
Is it perhaps a bit disingenuous to imply that the water shortages in this area are caused by nuclear power plants? Yes, nuclear power plants use a lot of water. So do coal plants, farmers, homeowners, hospitals, computer chip makers, car washes etc.
The biggest culprit is much more likely to be all of the extra carbon in the atmosphere that is destabilizing the climate right before our anti-nuke eyes. I would say that the anti-nuke movement has played a part in destabilizing climate, and in causing the farmers to have to dig deeper for irrigation. Because nuclear power is seen as the world's greatest evil, no new plants have been built in decades. The nation did not turn to wind energy when nuclear power was squashed, but to the dirtiest possible energy--coal.
It is also simply wrong for the author to imply that the nuclear power plants are linked to an increase in respiratory disease. Nuclear power plants simply do not spew toxins in the air. Coal plants do.
Please write an objective article. If higher cancer rates really are directly attributable to nuclear power plant proximity, then I would like to know that. However in the midst of the very transparent fear mongering, exaggeration, and misrepresentation why believe anything the anti-nuclear people put out.
Overall, it sounds here as if wind wins. Of course we have to have all of the renuable energy sourses funded and deployed, and do so quickly if we have a prayer of doing anything productive to reduce the pollution of our atmosphere and oceans.
We need geo-thermal, tidal, solar, hydro and wind combined due to the differences in climate conditions in various parts of our country and the world. Only a world wide, massive effort will help. We are running out of time, if we humans don't act very soon, we are not going to be around to discuss the issue in a few short years.
Hi JSTEVENS, I will never disagree with you about the coal issue. The medical problems caused from living in close proximity to nuclear power plants and atomic waste areas are well documented and it is very difficult to argue with those facts. Far too many doctors and scientists who have no axe to grind have established it is so.
Thank you, Kem.
I don't share the optimism of some of you re: carbon sequestration. Injecting the billions of tons of CO-2 produced yearly into the Earth's crust is unproven and seems improbable. I am very suspicious of the propaganda on this technology. Currently CO-2 is injected into dying oil wells to force out the oil. Coal companies of course see the writing on the wall, and even though they are very reluctant to build the much more expensive gasification type plants, surely see this as preferable to a complete phasing out of their industry. It is likely that the oil companies are delighted at the prospect of carbon sequestration funding their oil well exploits. Also, I have read, that IGCC uses much more water than conventional plants.
You can imagine what a filthy process it is to turn the coal into gas and remove the impurities. Some of the gasification plants are now Superfund sites (Mason City, Iowa, I believe). I think I would rather live by the nuclear plant.
Jackie
I'm an avid bird watcher, I'm worried about windmills in the back of my mind. There should be some safeguards.
I believe that geothermal and hydrogen are underrated. The heat not too many miles below most of us is basically unlimited. It's just an engineering problem to solve, in order to tap it effectively. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and burns clean.
If I were president, I'd toss a lot of money that way. Probably create a national contest between universities, private industry, and independent inventors. Grant out some seed money, give some guidelines, and a fat reward to whoever delivers the best science.
Hi Paul, it's too bad that we don't have the precious time to do that. We already know Geo-therml is viable. Isn't it Denmark or Norway that is already using it for a good percentage of their power? We need to start using it now, the technology to start is already well proven.
I'm a bird watcher also Paul, except last year there weren't very many to watch. Before then we had a bird watchers heaven in our back yard and garden. I seriously doubt the wind towers kill off near as many birds as atomic power and coal fired plant do. The coal fired jobs are killing everything on the planet. There probalbly is a way to let the birds know the blades are there, lite em up at night and try different color schemes and or, attach reflective flags on the rotating blades for the daylight hours of operation.
I have drawn up plans for a wind generator plant which would not kill any birds and be at least twice as effective as the types now used. It uses the combined natural forces of trapped wind, the high rise building phenominem, divergent ducting and flywheels, to produce high energy with even low wind speeds. The generators would be located at ground level and would be far easier for maintenace. The wind towers would also be used for solar tube attachment and the power grid is right there to connect the solar power to. I just don't know who to approach with the idea.
For all practical purposes, hydrogen doesn't exist in a free form. To have an appreciable amount requires that you break the hydrogen bonds in water (which are quite strong). The process takes lots of energy. For use in vehicles there are also enormous obstacles, transport is difficult, for one thing. It is quite explosive is another. (I know gasoline is also explosive.)
Why is hydrogen being pushed and promoted even though the technology is years away and better technologies exist now? Because the technology is years away. Therefore, the fossil fuel people can hold on to a few more years of the lifestyle they know and love. It is a trick. I read an article in USA Today saying that with hydrogen cars there is NO pollution. What they should have said is there is no pollution at the point of use. There is enormous pollution at the coal plant where they generate the energy to break those bonds.
Another trick is coal gasification. I don't know what chemical process turns coal into gas, but it can't be good. Then you have to extract all of the toxins, and dispose of them somehow. How is that better than a nuclear power plant? At this point, we have no idea if we can feasibly store all of that carbon underground.
For some reason, the current administration loves hydrogen and coal gasification. (They call it clean coal.) If they love it, that alone, is evidence against it.
Compressed air vehicles have been in the news lately. They are basically ready to go, and far superior to what Mr. Bush is pushing for the distant future.
Ezflyer's comments on a different thread led me to check out helical savonius-type wind generators. They're bird-friendly, aesthetically pleasing, easy to install, and don't require a large concrete anchor/foundation.
http://crispyneurons.com/wiki/HelixWind
As to rtdrury's recommendation to put greater emphasis on biowaste for electrical generation, there's the excellent example from Vaxjo, Sweden
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/06/23/2050/
where wood waste is burned. The water used for cooling is circulated to the town where the heat is extracted and the water is recirculated back to the power plant.
Vaudree: Ten gets you life that the Chalk River Reactor was brought back online to line the Conservative's partys freinds pocket with a wee bit more profit, hoping (that's the actual word used by Gary Lunn, the minister responsible) that a reactor incident would not happen.
That's what the safety of the Canadian population has been reduced to.
Hope. The benign wishing that the disaster won't happen. All in the name of obscene corporate profit.
KEM and other rightfully outraged Yankees on this list: You have Bush. We have Harper. We're all screwed.
The ethos of profit before people, of unrestrained capitalism, of corporate consumer culture, seems to have won the battle at this time. It will be interesting to watch how the Corporations try to spin the coming resouce depletion of oil, uranium, helium(!), fresh potable water and arable cropland.
And how the people will react. HOw many will sit passive and resigned, waiting for help that will likely never arrive? How many will be herded into the Haliburton built detention camps for 'public dissent', which as I understand has recently been outlawed in the US? ANd how many will silently filter out of the cities, fading into the countryside to live quiet lives close to the ground off the grid?
Remember Chalk River? The is a Commission hearing as we speak about the firing of the person who insisted that the neuclear reactor was not safe to operate:
Ottawa fires nuclear safety commission head
The federal government has fired the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, days after she publicly accused Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn of interfering with the independence of the arm's-length watchdog.
Lunn's office announced Linda Keen's immediate firing as commission president in a statement issued early Wednesday. While she will remain a member of the commission, assistant deputy industry minister Michael Binder has been named as interim president.
"The president was aware of the importance of maintaining Canada's and the world's supply of medical isotopes," said the statement from Lunn's office. ...
In a Dec. 27 letter to Keen leaked to the Ottawa Citizen, Lunn questioned her judgment for recommending the reactor be shut down and informed her he was considering having her removed from the post.
Keen responded with an eight-page letter accusing Lunn of improper interference and threatening to fight in court any attempt to remove her from her job. She also said she had asked the privacy commissioner and the RCMP to investigate how Lunn's letter was leaked to the media.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/01/16/keen-firing.html
It is important to put things into perspective. The Chernobyl plant in Russia was antiquated, based on World War II designs. The Russians applied their unique brand of safety regulations. The plant did not have a containment dome which would have halted the damage. If you read about the conditions at the time of the accident, the plant was forced to run beyond its design limits during a routine test, and as part of the test, many of the safety features were shut off. A terrible tragedy occurred at Chernobyl but it wasn't Armageddon.
Coal is Armageddon. It is the slower, more insidious version of Armageddon that doesn't attract much attention.
i would love to see every newly proposed coal plant receive the same attention and outrage that the nuclear plants receive.
A better strategy, IMHO, fight for conservation, fight for wind and solar, shut down the coal plants, THEN worry about the nuclear plants. Divert some of the time spent researching nuclear plants, to reading about coal. Read about coal in China. Read about blasting the tops of mountains to get the coal. Coal is killing and injuring thousands of people every day. That is not even taking into account the biggest impending danger from carbon and climate change.
There is only so much "activist energy" to go around and nuclear plants are getting the lion's share.
"Science and engineering is about problem-solving, pushing the status quo..."
What do these two things have to do with each other???
Does this explain why some engineers and planners are seeking solutions to the problem of global warming by creating urban and public transportaton designs that eliminate the need for a personal car, hydrogen or otherwise, at all?
As far as geothermal power generation, is is only feasable in the vicinity of active volcanism like Iceland or in the US, yellowstone Park, and active parts of the Cascades volcanic belt.
In all but volcanic areas, ground temperatures decrease downward over a 100 meters or so to the average annual temperature, or in many northern temperate areas lower (a relic of ice age permafrost) and stays there down to a several hundred meters. Temperatures then increase at about 20C per km of depth. To poduce the high pressure steam needed to produce power, plus to get an adequate thermal gradient to keep the hot fluid generating zone hot enough, we need to penetrate rock much higher than just the 1 atm boiling point of water; we need at least 300C, or roughly 15 km, or at least 9 deep, the world record borehole depth is only about 12 km deep and encountered temperatures of about 180C.
but this is only the beginning of the engineering challenges. fracturing the steam generrting rock, and keeping the faractures open are one. The other is preventing cooling of the hot fluid as it is circulated up 15 km of casing.
Sorry, geothermal electric generation just isn't practical outside of a scattering of volcanic areas. Norway and Denmark don't produce any geothermal power. The writer of this must have meant Iceland, which in a geologically unque, volcanic hot spot atop the mid-atantic ridge.
RE: - Ten gets you life that the Chalk River Reactor was brought back online to line the Conservative's partys freinds pocket with a wee bit more profit, hoping (that's the actual word used by Gary Lunn, the minister responsible) that a reactor incident would not happen.
I think that the argument did come up - though I can't remember whether it was the Bloc, the NDP or both that made it. Oh yeah, on straightgoods. MDS Nordion is the company that is making out of it.
Gary Lunn testified towards the Commons Committe today - I want your (not just Galen's) opinion as to how truthful he seems to you (video in three parts):
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080116/keen_fired_080116/20080116/
Links to Lunn's letter to Keen and Keen's letter to Lunn:
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/294580
RE: - KEM and other rightfully outraged Yankees on this list: You have Bush. We have Harper. We're all screwed.
Which brings up two questions - Jack or Stephan? And who do you prefer of the Dems - Clinton, Obama or Edwards? Elizabeth May is Canada's version of Ron Paul.
RE: - The Chernobyl plant in Russia was antiquated, based on World War II designs.
And how old is the nuclear reactor in Chalk river? The only reasons that the Chalk river reactor has not been retired is that the two reactors built to replace it using more modern design are to dangerously flawed to use and probably will always be not matter what we do to try to fix the design flaws.
These are dangerous machines when one is being as safe as possible. Corporations have a long history of taking short-cuts concerning safety.
RE: - A better strategy, IMHO, fight for conservation, fight for wind and solar, shut down the coal plants, THEN worry about the nuclear plants.
Whether you talk about coal or nuclear, the first step is not building any more of them. The next step is figuring out how to phase them out.
RE: - Sorry, geothermal electric generation just isn't practical outside of a scattering of volcanic areas. Norway and Denmark don't produce any geothermal power. The writer of this must have meant Iceland, which in a geologically unque, volcanic hot spot atop the mid-atantic ridge.
Actually, they are experimenting with this in some houses in Winnipeg, though in modified form. Remember the old days when homes used to have cellars to keep things from spoiling in the summer and freezing in the winter?
The rest of the world, other than Germany, seems to be going nuclear. Its the highest density energy source going. 600 - 1000 acres for a twin reactor 2400 MWe station equals untold thousands of solar panels or windmills on untold thousands of acres of land.
China is doing it because they can't mine and transport their coal any faster. India and France for "energy independence". Canada because they have lots of uranium for sale.
Its a lesser evil than coal and hopefully each generation of nuke will get safer.
People are going to screw it up, though. I rememeber people worrying about the 747 when it first came out. They were predicting a certain number of 300+ passenger air disasters from mechanical failures, but there have only been one or two in all these years. The rest have been bombs, runway collisions and some Russian asshole in a Mig. Perfect mechanically, but screwed up by people.
RE: - The reason the NRU reactor was brought back on line is very simple: to save lives.
It is a shitty situation when one has to decide between two bad choices. Why did we have to come to this? To put it another way - who screwed up!
" My overall assessment of the situation is that it is a terrible shame that we have to come to a point where we have to choose between the health and safety of people and the possibility of putting at risk the workers working in a nuclear facility." - Judy Wasylycia-Leis
RE: - Should the head of the Nuclear Safety Commission have been sacked? IMHO No
I second that. Linda Keen should not have been sacked - Gary Lunn should have.
Note that the term "sacked" is being used loosely here. As an MP, this would mean that Lunn would go from being a Minister to being a backbencher. And Keen is still a sitting member of the commission, she just doesn't head it any more.
MP=Congressperson
I should add that I don't claim to have the answer to releasing vast sources of hydrogen energy cleanly and cheaply (if I did, I'd be retired by now). But I do claim that the jury is still out on whether hydrogen is promising or no. Anyone limiting its processing to a small handful of options is undoubtedly funded by the oil, natural gas or nuclear industries.
That's is what I love about you Billy, the way your mind works. That was an impressive answer, very appropriate. If hydrogen fuel was viable, we'd be using it, regardless of the oil companies.
I also like the major difference of you and Bush. As a young boy, you made hydrogen to fill ballons, perhaps not realizing the explosive dangers. Bush stuffed fire crackers up frogs asses and blew them up, perhaps not realizing he was a very sick person.
Paul:
Hydrogen is produced commercially from natural gas, and the byproduct is our friend, CO2. In a carbon free world, hydrogen would be produced from water.
Either way, you need energy to break the hydrogen atoms off from the methane or water molecule, and making and using energy always loses some waste heat. Heat that doesn't end up in chemical, mechanical or electric energy - it just makes the surroundings warmer. That's why a car needs a radiator and an electric plant needs cold water or even a cooling tower (and, if you are really stupid, you can jump a fence and go swimming in Lake Michigan in the winter).
In a carbon free economy, we would need an energy source such as solar, wind... or nuclear to produce hydrogen, and hydrogen would be used where it works best compared to other sources. Cooking: hydrogen or solar or grid electric? Transportation: Batteries or hydrogen fuel cells or hydrogen combustion? Heating: Solar or grid electric or hydrogen? On and on.
Many choices, but hydrogen would be a way of storing and transporting energy from a source to a use with some energy losses in the process.
Safety notes: Hydrogen can explode like natural gas, but with much more concussion (Hindenberg disaster), and some people believe it is an ozone depleter. So it will have to be very carefully controlled.
Interesting to note that all the nuclear industry's shills here only address reactor safety, saying trust them, it will get better. Little or none is said about the worst aspects of nuclear power. Engineers above all, should understand that there is no free lunch.
Jstevens:
I'm not sure. In a closed space hydrogen would really pop while gasoline would have to evaporate. In a car accident that ruptures the tank or fittings, a lot might well dissipate before hitting an ignition source, while gasoline soaks everything and burns as well as explodes. Can't imagine a worse death than burning. An electric fuel cell might not be an ignition source. You need to talk to a Chem E or fire expert.
For sources in cars it would depend on what works best for the money and distance. Battery charges don't last real long, but you might be able to store enough hydrogen to power a fuel cell for (I dunno for sure) hundreds of miles. But if you're making the stuff from natural gas, might as well drive a gasoline hybrid.
"But if you're making the stuff from natural gas, might as well drive a gasoline hybrid."
Exactly!
Thanks for the explanation.
Jackie