Making YOU Pay for the Next Chernobyls…in Advance!!
Are you ready to pay for the next Chernobyls — in advance? Are you willing to have nuclear power PREVENT a solution to the climate crisis?
Twenty-two years ago today, an apocalyptic cloud rose up from Unit Four, in the heart of the Ukraine. For the next few hundred generations, you and your progeny will breathe its radioactive fallout, which was thousands of times worse than that released at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Conservative estimates of Chernobyl’s financial costs are in the $500 billion range. In downwind regions festering with cancer and birth-defected children, the ultimate death toll is impossible to estimate.
Another Chernobyl could be happening as you read this. And you are already on line to pay for it.
The so-called “reactor renaissance” is built on high-priced lies and public liability.
Not one of the 104 US reactors now licensed to operate, and not one of the new ones being hyped, can get insurance from private sources against another Chernobyl.
For a half-century — since passage of the 1957 Price-Anderson Act — your tax dollars have protected the reactor owners. Now they want you on the hook for another century or so.
Check out your homeowners’ insurance policy for its specific exclusions against liability for reactor-related radiation.
With an old reactor or new, a Chernobyl here will bankrupt the government…and YOU.
The first 9/11/2001 jet that flew into the World Trade Center passed, a minute prior, directly over the Indian Point nuke site. Had the terrorists targeted those one dormant and two active reactors, plus the three pools full of spent high-level fuel rods, the loss of life and property would have been beyond comprehension.
Billions of dollars in private money now pour into renewable technologies like wind and solar, which are the real solution to the climate crisis. Every dollar invested in increased efficiency saves seven times the energy a dollar invested in nukes can produce.
Last fall a grassroots movement stopped an attempt to grab $50 billion in federal loan guarantees (see nukefree.org).
Now nuke pushers want to load the Lieberman-Warner “Global Warming” Bill with still more taxpayer subsidies.
But from the start of the fuel cycle to plant decommissioning and waste management, reactor technology is a serious greenhouse gas emitter. The final “bootprint” is unclear because there’s no actual solution to the waste problem, and no firm price for final reactor decommissioning.
A French “new generation” project in Finland is already two years and $2 billion over budget. French nukes are gargantuan tax pits, Europe’s most notorious radioactive polluter, and an ecological and public health nightmare.
In Florida, ratepayers may be gouged for up to $24 billion for two new reactors that would destroy the Everglades, and still more billions for two more north of Tampa. The utilities involved don’t know what kind of reactors they want to build, can’t guarantee when they would come on line, or what they’ll ultimately cost.
All that money should be going to renewables, which can solve global warming NOW, rather than at some alleged, inscrutable, incalculable distance in the future. Wind, solar, tidal, wave, geothermal and a host of green “Solartopian” technologies are attracting huge quantities of private capital. Based on the natural bounty of our Mother Earth, they promise tangible, immediate economic and employment opportunity, not radioactive catastrophe.
Chernobyl proved that atomic energy’s most significant ability — by terror or error — is to spread radiation over large chunks of the Earth. While blocking the real solutions to climate chaos, nukes can bankrupt entire nations in a single moment. They can inflict birth defects and cancer on millions of humans with a single cloud.
Twenty-two years after, it’s time to ask the ultimate question about the last reactor catastrophe: In money, body and soul, do you really want to pay for the next ones?
Harvey Wasserman’s SOLARTOPIA! OUR GREEN-POWERED EARTH, is available at www.solartopia.org. He edits the nukefree.org web site
Chernobyl’s disastrous radioactivity release occurred because the plant had no containment dome and was run in a reckless and incompetent manner, as well as being an inherently unstable design. Three Mile Island actually melted down, but thanks to the containment dome there was no significant release of radiation (claims otherwise do not withstand serious investigation). TMI would also not have happened if the reactor had not been under-instrumented and mishandled. With more and better sensors, computer control and operator training, such accidents would not happen in even these same types of reactors, but newer generations of reactors will be inherently safer or completely immune to any possibility of a meltdown or other catastrophic operating accident.
Harvey Wasserman is committed to opposing anything nuclear without regard to global warming, the energy needs of growing economies like China and India, the global oil crisis, and the technical complexities of the issue.
I am not sure I want to say there should be a large increase in nuclear power, as opposed to any other solutions, but it is hard to see how it can be avoided since at present the only alternative that is always available for building a big power plant is coal.
What I am sure of is that there is no particular reason why we can’t continue to use and expand use of nuclear power without there ever being another Chernobyl or even TMI.
We CAN provide electrical power 24/7 with renewable energy, but the nuclear industry has gotten the attention of Bush, so this is what we hear.
With geothermal, solar thermal, wind, PV and pumped hydro, we would never have to build another nuclear plant. Give us IGCC plants with sequestration and we can provide base load anytime.
And the nuclear power industry has two advocates for the fall campaign: Barack Obama and John McCain.
Once again, American voters won’t have much of a choice (except, basically, on the issue of a woman’s right to choose). Because that’s not all McSame and Obama agree on:
the death penalty
illegal economic sanctions against Cuba
support for the criminal government of Colombia
opposition to the democracies in Ecuador and Venezuela
increasing the number of troops
leaving the contractors in Iraq
going more aggressively into Afghanistan
free trade
HMO run health insurance
keeping the world wide U.S. empire of over 700 military bases
increasing defense spending
failing to support homeowners adequately to keep their homes in the mortgage crisis
failure to support the just cause of the oppressed Palestinian people
and on and on…
You watch, in the debates, this fall, folks: McSame will get Obama to agree with him on far more than he agrees with Barack. And that is unacceptable from a progressive point of view or realistic expectations of how a Democrat should campaign or govern.
1) I would imagine, as with so many things, that more liberals in The White House and Congress would help us be thinking more like RFK Jr., Gore, Nader, etc. than like Cheney and his friends on this nuclear (or nucular, as Bush says) reactor debate. This is the year to add some lefties and merely slow down the Republican rush to nukes.
2) We hear a lot about “moral hazard” these days, always applied to INDIVIDUALS who might, for instance, overuse doctor privileges if given universal health care, or who might walk away from adjustable-rate mortages when the interest rates go up arbitrarily, etc.
To me, the greater “moral hazards” we face now are what we allow corporations to do that may overwhelm PEOPLE, and the trend of our government to insure THEM (with your money and your risk), while trotting out the “moral hazard” argument to decline insuring you. Medicare D was an example of this.
So is federal terrorism insurance. Now nuke risk. Enough?
3) Mark Abram makes a possibly good point above about a capability to build and run safer reactors. If so, are they safe enough to gather private insurance from groups of wealthy people such as the Lloyds of London model? If not, why would we consider them? Because of China? What?
4) Wind and solar are under-utilized, although growing.
Let’s elect the politicians that want to grow them more.
Mark, you are so right on. Mr. Wasserman seems to forget how many reactors there are on US Navy ships, and have been running for years and years without a major glitch.
Why do you think Europe is weathering the increase in oil prices? Because a very large percentage of their power comes from nuclear.
Such small thinking on Mr. Wassermans’ part.
Mark Abram said: “Newer generations of reactors will be inherently safer or completely immune to any possibility of a meltdown or other catastrophic operating accident.”
So, accidents DON’T happen? Did you have your fingers crossed when you said that?
The following is from the current issue if Mother Jones:
“In March 2002, during a scheduled refueling outage at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in Ohio, workers discovered that boric acid deposits had gnawed a “pineapple-sized” hole into the six-inch-thick steel cap bolted to the top of the reactor. Had the corrosion gone just a third of an inch deeper, radioactive steam would have flooded the containment dome, and Davis-Besse might have been the next Three Mile Island.”
“As frightening as the near-accident, was the way Davis-Besse owners FirstEnergy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission responded: by soft-pedaling procedural flaws and scapegoating plant workers, in particular Andrew Siemaszko, a systems engineer who they claimed had failed to report the corrosion. The NRC has since barred Siemaszko from working in the nuclear industry, and in 2006 he was indicted on five counts of lying to the government and falsifying records. But documents show that Siemaszko repeatedly told his employers the reactor head needed a thorough cleaning. FirstEnergy didn’t complete that job because it was taking too long (keeping the reactor idle was costing the company $1 million a day)—and the NRC delayed a scheduled inspection of the reactor at FirstEnergy’s request.”
“The Davis-Besse incident puts into sharp relief a history of regulatory neglect that goes back for decades. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has counted 47 incidents since 1979 in which the NRC failed to adequately address issues at nuclear power plants—until the troubles got so bad the plants had to be shut down for repairs. In some cases, “the NRC allowed reactors with known safety problems to continue operating for months, sometimes years, without requiring owners to fix the problems.”
See:
www.motherjones.com
“The Nuclear Option” (see: page 2)
See also: “How We Almost Blew Up Ohio,” at motherjones.com
It is estimated that a major nuclear plant accident could cost upwards of $500 billion, when all the costs are accounted for. The nuclear industry is self insured, but that insurance fund is woefully underfunded, so if something happens the U.S. Government and the tax payers will have to pick up the tab.
mark abram …
so according to you it would be wrong to conflate the lies spouted about the Iraq invasion with the ’straight talk’ about nuclear energy — much as the sources in the political sector are roughly identical?? –
and also, ‘new’ nukes are a horse of a different color from ‘old’ nukes, and we can safely tout them as THE ’solution’, because the science, at this stage, is roughly invincible, impervious to all dispute — having surpassed any intermediate stage where the facts might be reasonably questioned — even though it has been touted as safe by proponents at every stage of development?
the facts are, your logic has holes in it big enough to fly a plane through — not discounting the occasion upon which one might be used to decommission said ’safe’ reactors –
sure, Chernobyl failed due to a lack of technology — without the containment dome, blah, blah, blah –
tell me succinctly, what is the standard blast level tolerance for present day containment domes?
essentially, this is a texas no-limit hold ‘em game where each new reactor represents a winning ‘all-in’ play –
– nukes just win and win and win — until a hand gets called by some indescribably obscure scenario where the oddball deuce hits on the flop and millions die –
currently…we have solar technology advances that could take every new home off the power grid — we have other tech advances that, when combined with conservation design, threaten to put demand levels to bed permanently –
…except for our slavish devotion to a non-ecologic and somewhat dangerous solution like nukes –
I hope whoever pays you, pays you a lot — but that certainly is the case with nuclear power, isn’t it?
there’s plenty to go around
Interesting debate, but perhaps just a little wide of the mark in terms of the most prevalent nuclear dangers to humanity.
Seems to me that the tonnage of “depleted” uranium that is being dispersed deliberately around the globe on a daily basis could turn out to be at least as significant in the long run as the uncertain likelihood of an accidental reactor malfunction.
And does anyone remember the original rationale for the whole nuclear program? Wasn’t it driven primarily by fear that some nasty fascist regime might acquire the technology and use its horrifying potential for world domination.
Who could have known that the facsist regime we needed to fear the most was the one closest to home that actually succeeded and whose “defense strategies” are now centered on “full spectrum dominance” and policies that include first use, even against non-nuclear nations. Iran may seem far away, but air currents travel far and fast and they recognise no borders.
Worry about the possibilites of a second Chernobyl or TMI incident if you must. But spare a moment or two for the actual and ongoing threats that surround you right now with no end in sight.
What Mark Abram is sure of, is nothing. Nuclear waste is killing and hazardous for generations, longer than civilization has existed on this planet, obviously much longer than any particular civilization has lasted. We simply are not at a scientific nor societal level that can handle nuclear energy(or weapons for that matter) He stated: ‘no significant release of radiation (claims otherwise do not withstand serious investigation).’ But its his claim that does not withstand serious investigation as demonstrated right here on the pages of common dreams: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/29/7954/
So, is Mark simply ignorant? Or is he a shill for the nuclear industry? Not sure but either way, not creditable and not worth listening to.
I went to one of the few protest against transferring nuke de-commitioning costs and unrealized investor’s profits (from nuke plants that will never boil a drop of water)to the “rate payers in Gov. Wilsons face in 1996.
Three people were with us. Read your electric bill.
I went to the two public hearings on “Blue Book” deregulation in Southern California in 1995 and 1996. 12 to 15 people showed up, along with dozens of PUC and Power Co. reps.
(The “blue Book” never will allow uncompetitive power production in this state by the homeowner or apartment building owner.)
The product of all these plants is boiling water and weapons grade uranium and plutonium.
Never again will governments need to spend their Treasury dry building TVA and Oakridge.
At the CA. statewide Democratic Convention last year, Nuke proponents controlled the debate with a hundred delegates singing in Accapella to drown out their opposition.
In democracy, you get what you’ve earned.
Mark.
And they still haven’t found a safe place to store the waste after all these years.
The marvels of modern technology.
All those new computers that You say make accidents impossible could crash and a pissed off American could send some rockets into the place and with the computers down what happens to the safety with the engineers blown up…what about a canister missing from a truckload of waste or a hijacked truck for dirty bombs?. What about the cost overruns with the new plants that we can’t afford? And with inflation and the falling dollar nobody knows when these new plants will be running and who will run them.
Oh yeah they got their own insurance like the banks that are failing have insurance too. Insurance companies go broke and get bailed out by the government that is already broke.
Accidents or sabotage will happen in our War economy but not in your new tech world.
And what about some glitch in the “new technology” that always has new bugs. One big accident even in the older worn out plants would leave zero money for Social Security and everything else… I think an accident as bad as it would be is the only thing that would wake you up, Mark.
Florida has got sunshine up the ass and we don’t need no stinking Nukes.
Ad hominem remarks like that add nothing to your argument and do not reflect well on your own character.
There are, without question, many valid safety concerns about nuclear power generation. At the same time, every aspect of life and every kind of technology involves some element of risk, not excluding electrical energy itself regardless of how it is generated. Moreover, even where fundamental facts are not in dispute, reasonable people may see them from differing perspectives without being a “shill” for any particular vested interest.
We are still paying stranded costs for nuclear power built 40 years ago and there is still no safe way to store the waste. Decommissioned plants stand erect because no one wants them, Indian reservations have become the dumping ground because the people are starving and they already have the lowest life expectancy of any industrialized nation. The process to obtain fuel is still contaminating the environment and children play on the mining waste. In Scotland they still have to test the milk for radioactivity from Cherynoble. You never hear the whole story…
Sorry Arvy, but we are talking about our survival here.
So far logic alone has not dented the government stooges and the Nuke power proponents…It is time for some real emotion when it comes to ours and future generations. We are not talking about flower gardens here.
Well, I can get quite passionate about flower gardens, but emotion (its presence or absence in this or any other debate) really wasn’t my point. Surely CDers should appreciate more than most the folly of arguments that are based on attacking the character or motives of an opponent rather than on making the case for or against the pertinent issues on their own merits.
I will admit that, in my own case, whether its roses, daffodils, or atomic energy, I’m much more likely to be persuaded by facts and logical argument than by anyone’s emotional appeals. But, in any case, there’s certainly no lack of arguments to be made on both sides and plenty of them to evoke emotional concerns if one chooses without any need whatever for attributing bad motives to those who may differ with some or all one’s own opinions.
In fact, I generally learn more from those who disagree with my position on any subject than I do from those who merely reinforce it. And, since they’re the ones I’m trying to persuade … Well, enough said.
The French, Fins, Russians, Canadians, Chinese, Japanese (even Iranians?) might just be right. Nuclear power is part of their solution to global warming and energy independence.
If global warming gets really bad, even calamitous, we might have to “go cold turkey” on fossil fuels. Ration it for agriculture and essential services only. Those nations and regions with a high percentage of nuclear power will do much better.
Nuclear or renewable, its getting late in the global warming game. Maybe too late.
Agreed, Jim. The majority of Americans seem to have broken bullshit detectors. If the cited article is ballpark accurate:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/29/7954/
then what exactly is there to argue about, “logically” or otherwise? But no, let’s pretend this is a debate and every side is simply airing heartfelt opinions on a “controversial” and “complicated” issue, and as such each side is entitled to the utmost respect. At the end of the day let’s just trust that those we elect into office to understand such “complicated” issues for us will decide “logically” which solutions best serve the “national interest” after weighing all “fair and balanced” opinions.
WHAT ABOUT THE WASTE???
Now that we control over 80% of the uranium supplies, we will be bringing nuclear power back online since we can control who gets it. We will in effect be the OPEC of Uranium, and by keeping the price high, we will limit who gets it to those who keep their markets open for us to plunder.
Nuclear power is the solution to water shortages (nobody talks about how 50% of the water we get for consumption is from the ground and is being depleted and not being replensihed by rainfall). Nuclear desalination plants is the solution.
A 4th generation pebble reactor is a solution to farming woes, as it can help provide water in drier lands not readily able to be irrigated.
Chernobyl was either bad accident due to faulty Soviet technolgy, or it was sabotage, as was TMI, to discredit nuclear power and keep nations dependent on oil. The fact that it happened in the Ukraine, an area Stalin intentionally starved, killing 7-12 million people in his war on Christians, makes me wonder. Gorbachev had been in power for 1 year and he was our man, whose mission was to break up the Soviet Union. Chernobyl helped to this end.
Nuclear power could lead us to the promised land, if the elite monsters who prefer genocide could be eliminated. Technology and innovation could allow this planet to easily feed 2-3 times the current population. Thats why it is being suppressed, in order to justify population reduction, and those who are going to be reduced, seem to be the most gullible in accepting this myth.
http://www.larouchepub.com/other/2007/3405_nuclear_myths.html
Mr. Wasserman,
Have you taken a single course in nuclear physics or nuclear engineering?
I am getting very tired of your shrill, emotional arguments on nuclear power based on zero expertise. The Chernobyl graphite moderated reactor is about a different from a light water reactor as a oak-log fire is to a keg of gunpowder.
Shouldn’t you be worrying more about the micro-black holes the CERN large hadron collier might produce when it starts up next month? These black holes have the potential to end the world - literally collapse the entire earth to a black hole with an event horizon 0.9 mm in diameter. The foremost physicists - Higgs, Hawking and others assure us that such a scenario is science fiction. But do you trust them?
Mark A; has the answer on what to do with the waste come tell us MA what do you do with stuff that will be unsafe for longer than man has been on the planet so far?
No doubt engineering can make Nukes safe, or safe enough for the sheeple who aren’t paying attention or who have been bought, such as Stewart Brand. The Nuclear Power Scientists just can’t do anything to shorten the half lives of the resulting radionucleides produced. And there is not the political willingness nor the engineering ability to safely exclude these poisons from our environment for the time required, irregardless of how long several administrations have promised a solution is around the corner - sounding just like the promises of Victory in Iraq.
For instance, the half life of Technicium is equivalent to the span of time between Peking Man and the present day. 40,000 years ago we were living in caves and were just beginning to understand the concept of clothing. 10,000 years ago Seattle was covered by two miles of glacier. The time spans required to isolate Plutonium from the environment are much longer than this.
We were promised energy too cheap to meter and instead we have Hanford where the compositions in several waste tanks built un the 40s and 50s and meant to last only 20 years and are now leaking are unknown. One waste plume underneath has required the drilling and emplacement of large refrigeration coils several hundred feet into the ground to turn this inverted cone of crust into permafrost. One tank developed a large hydrogen bubble and they were worried it could blow up chemically, releasing a toxic mess. Another leaking tank and its plume had to be excavated and contained - all by remote control. Look at Hanford with Google Maps and one might understand the geographic scope of the problem.
We had the nuclear power industry try to locate a reactor on Bodega Head north of San Francisco despite the fact that the San Andreas ran right through the site, which they failed to note until Joel Hedgpeth pointed it out to them and then they tried to minimize its significance. We had the Trojan Nuclear Plant in Oregon along a possible fault that pushes the Columbia northward for 60 miles and later analysis revealed it was built on a thrust fault slice. The Sumatran Sized earthquakes we could get here finally shut it down but the spent fuel remains, like at every other commercial reactor on the planet. The utilities tried to downplay the risks.
There is then the issue of where the fuel is coming from. Most of what is being used now is not being mined out of the ground. Instead it is coming from decommissioned Nuclear Weapons. Like oil, gas and most other minerals Uranium has peaked. All the large deposits were mined in the Cold War. We have passed Peak Uranium. Many of the miners died from cancer, after breathing in tailings.
The State of Oregon voted several times to shut down the Trojan Plant yet they were always able to fight it in the courts using loopholes the Feds provided. PGE, the former owner was bought out by Enron. In Washington State we had WPPSS - well known as “Whoops!” and the largest municipal bond default in history. The plumbing in one of their reactors which never got finished was installed backwards. Do we really want these geniuses of finance playing with our future and radionucleides? They are more interested in making stockholders wealthy as soon as possible, which is their mandate - at minimal cost. They are not interested in saving the planet. They are just trying to greenwash their way to riches.
Mr. Wasserman is certainly passionate. It is a shame that his accuracy does not match his passion.
All of the 104 operating reactors in the US have insurance. The owners would not be able to maintain their operating licenses without it. The insurance they have is capped. No insurance company writes a liabilty policy without a cap. (My state, Virginia, requires that my automobile have at least $50,000 liability insurance. I pay an additional premium to raise that to $500,000. My insurance is capped at $500,000 to protect the insurance company.)
In the event of an accident that exceeds the insurance cap, their is a common pool of all the nuclear utilities to provide additional funds. In the event that the common pool is exceeded, only then would the federal government step in accordance with Price-Anderson.
In the funding for the cleanup of the Three Mile Island accident, the utility insurance was exhausted and the common pool provided the balance of the necessary funds. No federal money was used.
Price-Anderson has never paid a claim. Price-Anderson has never cost the taxpayers a dime.
Bill
No doubt engineering can make Nukes safe, or safe enough for the sheeple who aren’t paying attention or who have been bought, such as Stewart Brand. The Nuclear Power Scientists just can’t do anything to shorten the half lives of the resulting radionucleides produced. And there is not the political willingness nor the engineering ability to safely exclude these poisons from our environment for the time required, irregardless of how long several administrations have promised a solution is around the corner. This sounds just like the promises we are being told of Victory in Iraq, just around the corner.
For instance, the half life of Technicium is equivalent to the span of time between Peking Man and the present day. 40,000 years ago we were living in caves and were perhaps just beginning to understand the concept of clothing. 10,000 years ago Seattle was covered by two miles of glacier. The time spans required to isolate Plutonium from the environment are much longer than this.
We were promised energy too cheap to meter and instead we have Hanford where the compositions in several waste tanks built in the 40s and 50s and meant to last only 20 years and are now leaking are unknown. One waste plume underneath has required the drilling and emplacement of large refrigeration coils several hundred feet into the ground to turn this inverted cone of crust into permafrost. One tank developed a large hydrogen bubble and they were worried it could blow up chemically, releasing a toxic mess. Another leaking tank and its plume had to be excavated and contained - all by remote control. Look at Hanford with Google Maps and one might begin to understand the geographic scope of the problem. Sure these were for nuclear weapons production but the half-lives remain the same. And many of the people responsible are the same.
We had the nuclear power industry try to locate a reactor on Bodega Head north of San Francisco despite the fact that the San Andreas ran right through the site, which they failed to note until Dr. Hedgpeth pointed it out to them and then they tried to minimize its significance. We had the Trojan Nuclear Plant in Oregon along a possible fault that pushes the Columbia northward for 60 miles and later analysis revealed it was built on a thrust fault slice. The Sumatran Sized earthquakes we figured out that we could get here finally shut it down but the spent fuel remains, like at every other commercial reactor on the planet. The utilities tried to downplay the risks. Fortunately the Cascade Subduction Zone will keep any nukes from being built near here - we hope.
There is then the issue of where the fuel is coming from. Most of what is being used now is not being mined out of the ground. Instead it is coming from decommissioned Nuclear Weapons. Like oil, gas and most other minerals Uranium has peaked. All the large deposits were mined in the Cold War. We have passed Peak Uranium. Eventually they will run out of this nuclear stockpile. Many of the miners died from cancer, after breathing in tailings.
The State of Oregon voted several times to shut down the Trojan Plant yet they were always able to fight it in the courts using loopholes the Feds provided. PGE, the former owner was bought out by Enron. In Washington State we had WPPSS - well known as “Whoops!” and the largest municipal bond default in history. The plumbing in one of their reactors which never got finished was installed backwards. Do we really want these geniuses of finance and engineering playing with our future and radionucleides? They are more interested in making stockholders wealthy as soon as possible, which is their only mandate - at minimal cost. They are not interested in saving the planet. They are just trying to greenwash their way to riches. They could care less about global warming - but are just using this as a marketing tactic.
Just as an interesting aside concerning nuclear insurance:
Wasserman mentions the incident at Davis-Besse. He is correct that this was a near miss. It was due to sloppy maintenance and the corporate bean counters getting the upper hand over the techies.
The reactor was offline for about 2 years for repairs but also for the utility to do “retraining”, a form of penance. As part of that “retraining”, the utility wrote an extensive explanation of their judgement errors to the NRC.
Having the reactor offline for 2 years was, of course, enormously expensive because, in addition to the actual cost of the repairs, the utility had to buy replacement power for its customers. The utility filed an insurance claim for their costs. They described the damage to the reactor as a suprise and unforseen. The NRC got a copy of the insurance claim and told the utility that, if they did not withdraw the claim, the utility vice president who signed the claim would be charged with fraud. The utility withdrew the claim and had to eat the costs (justice!).
Bill
Mark Abram: but newer generations of reactors will be inherently safer or completely immune to any possibility of a meltdown or other catastrophic operating accident.
The capitalists said the same kind of thing at the start of the nuke age. They say the same kind of thing when they push all their opiates. We’ve been burned, burned again and again. It’s insanity to expect a different result each time we hear the same tired old capitalist sales pitch - and listen - we all want to give the capitalists a chance - and we gave the capitalists chance after chance, you know? It’s only gotten worst. Sure, we’ve made regulatory progress in the 1970s, even the 1980s, even the 1990s. But now it’s regression time with the White House criminals declaring an eight year free for all, collapse of political opposition, all reason down the drain in Washington, ehh? And you want to give the capitalists yet another chance? You know why they like nuke power? Because it is a fantastic lever of economic/political control, oppression over the people. Screw that! We’re going solar, wind, biofuels - things that your local small farmer and craftsman can produce without “capital finance”, without “intellectual property”. Splendid future to look forward to - a capital-less future - wow! Problem solved - now we have something REAL to celebrate - heh heh - what a novelty.
There is something of a misunderstanding in a couple of the posts:
Weapons grade material is not made in the light water type of reactor we have in the US.
Natural uranium, coming out of the ground has less than 1% of the U-235 isotope in it. To be used in a light water reactor the uranium must be processed to raise this to 3 or 4%. To use the uranium in a weapon the isotope must be raised to over 20% (This is the official point where the government gets worried about it. Actual weapons use about 95% U-235).
The uranium going into a US power reactor has, as stated above, about 3 or 4% U-235 in it. The rest of the uranium is the U-238 isotope. When the fuel is brought back out of the reactor after 2 or 3 years, it is still mostly uranium but most of the U-235 has been “burned” or fissioned. The uranium coming out of the reactor is down to maybe 1% U-235.
The uranium isotope that is desirable for weaponry, U-235 has been reduced in the reactor, not increased.
As mentioned above, most of the uranium going into the reactor is U-238. It does not just sit like a bump on a log in the reactor. For the most part, U-238 will not fission but it will absorb some of the neutrons bouncing around inside the reactor.
When U-238 absorbs neutrons, it usually becomes plutonium-239. This is the isotope of plutonium that is very desireable for making nuclear weapons. If you want to make this isotope in the purity needed for weapons, what you need to do is turn your reactor off after about 2 weeks and take out the fuel for reprocessing.
If you run your reactor for 2 weeks, take it off line and refuel (which normally takes about 4 weeks) and turn it on for another 2 weeks, someone will notice that you are using your reactor in a very peculiar manner and big brother is going to pay you a visit (actually big brother has a resident office at every operating reactor so he is already there).
If you don’t take your fuel out after 2 weeks and leave it in for 2 to 4 years, which is normal, the Plutonium-239 will probably either fission or absorb another neutron and become Plutonium-240.
After 2 years about 4% of your uranium -238 will have been converted to plutonium-239. Most of it will fission. About 1% of the fuel that comes out of a US reactor will be plutonium. About 60 to 70% of that plutonium will be Pu-239. Most of the rest will be plutonium-240.
Plutonium-240 will cause a weapons designer to pull his hair out. It gives off a flood of neutrons and will make it impossible to make a predictable weapon. If you try to use plutonium with more than a trace of Pu-240 in a typical weapon design, you can be pretty sure that you will get a premature detonation.
Plutonium for weaponry, essentially pure Pu-239, is made in special reactors designed for the purpose such as the North Korean reactor or that the US used to operate at Hanford, Oak Ridge and Savannah River.
Bill
Waste is a problem. Primarily waste is a political problem.
The way the nuclear industry is structured in the US is part of the definition of the problem. The nuclear utilities pay a fee ($0.001/kwh) to the federal government for the government to take posession of the used nuclear fuel. The utilities can reprocess the fuel if they wish, however this fee is lower than the cost of reprocessing. The utilities, therefore, do not have a vested interest in the disposal location, method or cost of used fuel (i.e. from a fiscal point of view, they don’t own the problem)
At issue then, is what is the government to do with the used fuel.
The current official approach is to bury it in Yucca Mountain. The federal government has executed this approach very badly. It has underfunded the science. It jammed the repository down the throats of the Nevadians and the Indian governments in Nevada. The Nevadians have fought back tooth and nail.
The Bush administration is considering reprocessing used nuclear fuel. This decision is likely to carry over to the next administration, regardless of who wins the election. This would reverse the moritorium on domestic reprocessing which has been in place 30 years. Reprocessing redefines the waste problem because now the government needs to figure out what to do with the individual material streams coming out of the recycle process. Reprocessing does not eliminate the need for a repository of some sort, be it Yucca mountain or another such place.
One of the streams coming out of reprocessing is the fission fragments. This is intensely radioactive material and is the most dangerous of the outflows of reprocessing. It needs to be safely isolated from society for several hundred years. It does not need the 10,000 years of protection currently envisioned for Yucca Mountain.
One of the advantages of recycling is that the plutonium and other transuranic elements which tend to be the very long lived ones, can be repackaged and used as fuel in a fast reactor.
Fast reactors are feasible and practical but more expensive than light water reactors. The utilities have no interest in fast reactors because of their somewhat greater expense to build and operate. We are thus back to depending on the government to construct and operate the necessary fast reactors.
One alternative to the government participation in this essentially industrial activity is to restructure the used fuel fee in some manner that makes reprocessing and fast reactors economically attractive to the utilities.
These problems are primarily political. There are technical challenges but the biggest hurdles are political.
Bill
BILLY: I am in no position to argue the chemistry of nuclear power, BUT anything Bush does has to be suspect given the entire legacy of his egregious false presidency. So to your comment, “The Bush administration is considering reprocessing used nuclear fuel.” I would fully expect these bastards to send the spent fuel in shipments disguised as something else, leave it on the shores of some 3rd world place like Haiti and let the populace be damned quite literally. How different is this from the judicial outrage the people exposed to Dow Chemical’s explosion in Bhopal was? How different from the deplete uranium being designed INTO weapons currently under use? This playing with the fire of the gods on the part of highly wounded and thus dangerous egos has no rationale given all that CAN and often does go wrongly.
CBWIM: Interesting posting.
When it comes to technology, there’s a chance humans will make mistakes with design or operations.
However, I haven’t worked in a nuclear facility, so maybe their maturity level is more advanced than less mission critical systems.
Our energy corporations manipulate the government institutions to dominate world energy policies.
Obviously energy is the main reason the U.S. government attacked and occupy Iraq.
I want improvements in cheaper solar energy options for my home, combined with a new conservation movement.
I want new energy options for individuals to leverage, in hopes for a dramatic change, similar to the personal computer revolution that took off in the 80’s.
The corporations and government institutions cannot and will not solve this issue in time.
The best thing that could happen is to limit our dependence on them.
It’s likely this innovation will occur outside of the U.S. due to issues with corruption, politics, and fear in the American society.
It does not matter where these options comes from, we just need the options available at the individual level.
Thanks rene for posting the article on the Cancers from 3 mile island that was “safely contained” as Mark assures us.
It amazes me how these government apologists talk like they were a gallon of cooling water…no emotion .. Are they logical? Only if they talk the propaganda and run when the questions come pouring in. Is that why they show no emotion? They never talk about what to do with the waste. What would you say to a store that sells toilets that can’t flush? (I know they already do)
What about the waste? Yucca mountain…Yeah, and today there was an earthquake in Nevada…
That excuse that TMI was sabotaged is a beaut. What about sabotage? If 3 mile was sabotaged when times were better in the 70’s then Now and the economy is getting worse, what about it? I don’t think Cheney cares.
Let China and Iran learn and deal with those problems…we are in Debt like they will never see.
Desalination can be done much safer with wind wave and solar power.
Mark. your the expert…got the solution?
The USA is in a position from economic necessity (certainly not from moral values since the falling dollar rules) to lead the industrial world to a new energy solution. The Politicians are always talking about America leading the world … now we can.
If they can’t answer these questions about cost, sabotage, waste storage and the risk of catastrophic accidents, Cancer and Dirty bomb material in trucking it all over the world maybe it would be a good idea to have Israel bomb the new plants before they are completed.
It is true nuclear war ships have much stronger and safer power plants…thats because they are designed to take most of whatever an enemy can throw at them They are designed to survive intense Warfare!
Oh and those who say Obama supports new nuke plants are making it up.
He said there are many safety concerns to address first… You gotta read his total statement.
The article by John LaForge which Rene referenced is simply a compilation of statistical fluctuations. Particularly for rare diseases, sometimes the rates will increase, sometimes decrease, and sometimes “clusters” will appear to be correlated with the locations of power plants, but they could just as well be correlated with Spring flowers. If you select from an unrestricted record of fluctuating statistics, you can “prove” any correlation you want. No competent epidemiologist would do this, but an “activist” like Mr. Laforge is free to do so.
Billy_y4 is right about many things, but wrong to assert that the plutonium in spent light water reactor fuel can’t be used to make nuclear weapons. The US would not use it, for the reasons he states, and it would be hard for a proliferating state or terrorist group to make an effective weapon using it, but experts such as nuclear weapons designer Theodore Taylor and others have stated unequivocally that “reactor grade” plutonium can be used to make nuclear weapons and that with modern technology those weapons can be reliable and have high yield.
I don’t think this is terribly significant, though. Spent reactor fuel is extremely radioactive and cannot be handled by terrorists, sold on the black market, etc. States today that want nuclear weapons capability can get it, independently of nuclear power programs, as seen by the cases of North Korea, Iran and now Syria. There are many states which have nuclear power plants and could make nuclear weapons but have chosen not to do so. I think the link between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is not really any closer than that between metalworking and cannon forging. Just because a nation has advanced industrial capabilities does not mean it will necessarily build a big army and launch an aggressive war.
Why is anyone seriously discussing insurance?
The real problem is nuclear power plants and the possibility of an accident that could permanently wipe out a land area for safe use the size of New york and New Jersey combined and kill millions of people.
Is that likely? __ NO, is it possible?__ Yes. There has never in history been a man made object that either didn’t or couldn’t eventully fail. Why take the risk when it is not necessary, even if we had insurance that fully covered any losses. How much is a child worth in dollars anyway?
We’ve already had the Three mile accident that very luckily wasn’t a major disaster. There have been several other close calls. Lets say we add twenty or more nuclear power plants to the 104 now in operation and some day there is a major disaster, caused by an earthquake, a human error, sabatoge, equipnent failure, or a tornado. Impossible? Nope, not at all. When that accident happens, what do we say? __ “Oops, I just hate it when that happens.”
We have a choice, either totally clean energy, which is affordabe, feasable, totally clean, no atomic waste to worry about, no major accidents to worry about, and no mineing of uranium to be concerned about.
Or, we can go with atomic power and have all of the above problems to worry about and when the major accident does arrive, then we’ll go with the other option. __ Bet on it. So why not just take the better option now and forget about nuclear power?
And Billy, nice a man as you are, your bean counting arguments just don’t wash. NO sensible person can honestly deny the possibility of a major nuclear disaster is always present at every single one of the 104 plants now in operation. And the accidents documented with nuclear waste are too numerous to list here, not counting the use of DU for weaponry. ___ Google nuclear accidents.
Finally, we need fast action, we don’t just need it we must have it. A massive effort to develop enough clean energy to enable us to shut down every one of the coal fired plants and then start phasing out the nukers. We don’t have time to argue and then build more nuclear plants. Put that money into Geo, wave, tidal, wind and solar and do it now.
Yeah and if Obama is our next president those safety concerns he mentions will be addressed to his satisfaction. He’ll make a terrific speech and he and we will have nuclear energy. General electric is supporting Obama and they want nuclear power. Money still talks.
Hey KEM, Billy, Siouxrose, et al, and thanks all for having a dicussion on such an emotionally laden subject in a civil manner. Hey Billy, I’m in Richmond, and it would be interesting perhaps to meet F2F sometime. Just because I don’t agree with you on some points doesn’t mean I don’t respect you & your knowledge. I know KEM & I have learned a lot from you, and I hope you feel the same about research we’ve come up with. KEM is correct, though, we need to make some sort of mutually satisfactory move on the power issue because time is running short. We also can’t allow such important decisions to be made based on politics or corporate greed. The people need more of a voice in such a matter that will affect us all, and could prove detremental or even fatal to many. Unfortunately, some of the sanest most rational people seem to be always excluded from formulating the most important policies. Regardless of position on this issue everyone should be included in the debate, and any propaganda or ’spin’ must be excluded. A difficult task indeed given the current polarized political climate we live in.
My two-bits is that “atomic power” is a misnomer. It’s just a heat source to heat the water to turn the turbines.
If the heat source is coal, it’s a “coal-fired” power plant - “not coal-” or “oil power”.
“Water-” and “wind-power” is correct, because the wind and water kinetic energy is directly used to turn a turbine to make power. Likewise with “solar energy”, when applied to the silicon wafers or, for that mattter, grass and trees –
siouxrose,
I have signed the impeachment petition. I am no fan of the Bush administration.
I am also not a fan of the PUREX process that was used to reprocess the fuel for the weapons program (i.e. plutonium production). It is also the process that the French, English and Japanese use to reprocess their commercial power fuel. Most of the major nuclear environmental messes in the western world have been related to this process; Hanford being the best known. It is this process or the closely related processes that is being considered for reprocessing in this country.
The point of my post was, if you do reprocess the fuel, you really do redefine the waste issues. I believe reprocessing will carry over into the next administration.
PUREX (and its derivatives) is a wet process. The used fuel is dissolved in acid and then processed to separate out the uranium, plutonium, fission fragments and so forth. The environmental messes have been related to this wet process.
There are dry processes that are in development but are not quite ready for full commercial deployment. One of these is called the DUPIC process and is being developed jointly by the Koreans and Canadians. This reprocessing is most applicable to the Canadian style reactor rather than the US style reactor but could be extended to the US light water reactors. Another is being developed by US national laboratories and is called a pyrometallurgical process.
My personal preference would be to continue our current policy of using the fuel once and storing it. I would favor continuing this until a more environmentally benign reprocessing technique can be developed.
Bill
Kem,
The reason I posted on insurance is that the original Wasserman article stated: “Not one of the 104 US reactors now licensed to operate, and not one of the new ones being hyped, can get insurance from private sources”.
He is dead wrong. All of the 104 reactors has private insurance.
Bill
It would be premature to get overly excited about nuclear power plants having private insurance before reading the “fine print”.
Hurricane Katrina victims of insurance companies are just one example of how simple it is for insurers to take your money in the form of protection premiums and then tell you to take a hike when you ask for compensation from loss.
And Kem is right on target. This is about people - not money.
For my money, Arvy’s post @ 4:30 pm was the most telling. What happens–paraphrasing the implicit question–if legally empowered terrorists like Bush/Cheney take control of a nation’s nuclear power industry? Safety measures are all but irrelevant.
Chuck,
Nice to have an English major join in.
The term “nuclear (or atomic) power reactor” is an historical nomenclature. It includes the purpose of the reactor and distinguishes it from other reactor types.
You have:
Power reactors for making electricity
Production reactors for making weapons grade plutonium
Isotope production reactors for making medical and industrial isotopes
Research reactors which are self evident but also occasionally an euphemism for a production reactor
Naval propulsion reactors which are self evident
Bill
Kem,
I am with you on the urgency of deploying non-emitting electrical generation. I agree with you that all reasonable renewables should be pursued. I, of course, would also include nuclear power as an essentially non-emitting electricity source.
I am appalled that Scotland and Germany are expanding their coal burning to facilitate a nuclear phase out.
Bill
nukes are viable for the same reason solar/other ecologically sane energy sources are not –
energy providers can exploit people with it whether there’s a disaster or not –
anyone can make a solar panel — and once it’s done, there’s no endless set of calculations regards cost to a ratepayer –
with nukes, you control the source, you control the output, you control the ability to extract payment for the energy
disasters are incidental –
aside from all this, one issue no one really touches is the ‘opportunity costs’ — of course, you would invest in geo-solar-wind — …but the nukes come first and they have a tendency to eat money, so the rest will have to limp along on scattered tidbits of finance regardless of viability –
if the pentagon could build houses or water purification systems for a billion dollars each, they might do it, but people would wonder what’s up –
no one can challenge the invisible costs of a bomber or hi-tech weapon– after all, who knows what they’re supposed to cost? (and they’re so important to have around) so the opportunity to invest in humanity and humane solutions to the world’s problems just goes by the wayside —-
which of course is just another opportunity for some ‘more suitable’ solution, as in gm crops for the hungry –
— when the planet’s population finally gets decimated –
the logical conclusion to the confluence of events regardless of whether we’re projecting ten years or a hundred into the future, the remaining population will find wonderful accommodations in empty missile silos and equally useless federal office buildings
Three Words - Con Ser Vation.
We generate way more than we need already. Building retrofits across the board could save enough to not have to build new generating capacity for years, maybe decades now that it’s getting economically unviable to build more monster homes and big box stores.
No-one mentions waste heat capture. This is where some clever monkey hooks up power generators to industrial stacks that are already in operation. If this were fully exploited, supply would outstrip demand for a long, long, long time.
The article states - “Every dollar invested in increased efficiency saves seven times the energy a dollar invested in nukes can produce.” This is true of all your other forms of generation as well, with perhaps a different number in tow. And the savings (and the “extra” power you get) last forever. Much like nuclear waste.
It saddens me to see people fight over how they want their power generated. Use less! Waste Less! Don’t put solar panels on your roof until you’ve weather sealed and replaced all your light bulbs.
Of course, if demand for power goes down, the power companies will not be able to honour the future pay-outs they’ve promised, the governments and central banks will slide them a “liquidity injection” and the powercos will invest it where it is sure to grow - food futures. Then only people who can get liquidity injections will be able to afford food. Seems fair.
Mark,
Your “statistical fluctuations” argument about caner around TMI which you say can be made about living near flowers is the same kind of arguments used against Global Warming. Of course statistics fluctuate, that is why they are statistics… It is the degree of fluctuation that is important and the way the government most always dismisses any scientific fact that tells them they must change. You say waste is too dangerous for terrorists to handle… but for nuclear waste haulers it is safe right? Nobody in the government we are told thought terrorists could handle a jet airline too…until it happens.. and why would suicide bombers care about the safety anyway? They could hijack a truck and put on some protective gear and cut into some canisters, load some bombs-in or around it and crash it anywhere lots of people go…If I can think of a way around your “Waste is too dangerous for terrorists but is fine for us” then I think they could figure a way around your assurances of the safety of highly radioactive waste. What to do about the waste? you are dodging that by implying it is safe for everyone but some suicidal terrorists… nice job, you should work for the government.
Kem, I agree with everything you said but your claim of knowing what Obama would do about Nuclear energy is just speculation from your dislike of Obama…. I guess the Clintons and Lieberman are more in line with your concerns, eh?
Dubs,
you make great points I would like Mark to address and also we can openly find out the truth with all alternate fuel but it is because of the threat of endless war that the government and Nuclear Corporations who get their money from the citizens that we will never be told the truth about what they are doing…it is against the law to tell the truth about “Natioanl Security” matters and whatever they do will be kept secret.
I don’t understand why you keep saying I dislike Obama ~Jim~. I don’t dislike him, I just don’t believe he will do the best as president. Do you think every person who didn’t vote for him dislikes him? Clinton has voted more progressive than Obama, far more. That’s a fact and she is not in line with Lieberman. I’m sorry to see a nice person like you so messed up on facts. But whatever makes you happy, have fun. If Obama is the nominee, I’ll send him a big check and support him and vote for him.
Sigurdur11, you are so right on. “Mr. Wasserman seems to forget how many reactors there are on US Navy ships, and have been running for years and years without a major glitch.” Yes, the loss in 1963 of the nuclear submarine Thresher with 129 crew on board was only a minor glitch.
>> Jim Glover April 27th, 2008 10:33 am
Mark,
Your “statistical fluctuations” argument about caner around TMI which you say can be made about living near flowers is the same kind of arguments used against Global Warming. Of course statistics fluctuate, that is why they are statistics… It is the degree of fluctuation that is important and the way the government most always dismisses any scientific fact that tells them they must change. <<
Jim,
If the only evidence of global warming were articles by political activists listing incidents of hot or extreme weather, I would not believe in global warming. However, decades of work by hundreds of careful scientists has established beyond doubt that global warming is real and is caused primarily by CO2 emissions. This is the result of careful data analysis and modeling, not a compilation of anecdotes.
The difference between professional industrial handling of nuclear waste and any plausible terrorist operation is the large scale of facilities and time available for industrial operations. It is barely plausible that terrorists could hijack a waste shipment truck, but these shipments are and will be so carefully guarded and monitored that if I were a terrorist I’d bet on another type of operation. If spent fuel did get into the hands of terrorists, the worst they could do with it is make a dirty bomb, which would cause great panic and economic loss but probably not kill anybody.
The waste disposal problem is mostly a matter of NIMBY politics. For the time being, waste storage in ponds or dry casks gives us as much more time as we need to study long-term geological storage issues and come up with a plan that can be implemented politically
As interesting as this thread has been to read, and as much as I’ve learned about about nuclear power, I still can’t help saying (with respect) blah, blah, blah. We wouldn’t be having this debate if mankind could only learn that the real solution is to breed less and buy less. Face it, we all were screwed when we got out from behind our ox and started shoveling coal into a steam engine, without the slightest thought to where we might be headed. And,let’s not forget that we’ve largely ignored solutions to an “energy crisis” because they weren’t profitable.
We’re strapped to the tracks of the future we’ve chosen, and consequences are less than 1/4 turn of the locomotive’s wheel away from our heads. Mankind’s history on the planet is brief, in real time, to say nothing of the insignificant blip that “modern” industrial society has been. In health care, it’s shown that 90% of expense goes to keeping one alive in the last 2% of one’s life.
Civilization, particularly Western, has squandered its chances. I think we greatly overestimate our own importance.
The fact is indisputable, that mankind has caused global warming, which is actually excess C02 in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels and coal. That in turn has created the “Green House” effect on our water world and heat cannot escape from our upper atmosphere as it should. That excess Co2 does not just evaporate in a few years time, we can be breathing C02 which was emmitted from the Civil War Merrick and Monitor ships and Henry Ford’s first model T.
We must attempt to stop the insanity of burning coal and fossil fuels and do it now, time is running out for mankind and all other life. ___ Last month, Russian scientists were not only shocked at what they had seen with their own eyes in the Arctic, it scared the crap out of them. There are large, now unfrozen lakes which are literally boiling from escaping methane gas. Those lakes had been frozen over for more than five million years.
Why is that so frightening? Here is a link with an article which was penned in 2004, few paid any heed. The author is a world renouned geologst and has spent his entire adult life in that field of expertise. It takes about two minutes to read his article, and if any have any doubts of what global warming is doing, they should read it. If any are unawre of the real life dangers of methane gas escaping into our atmosphere, they should read it.
Perhaps the most interesting sentence is the one where he states,__”Once it starts, there is NO turning back, __ NO do-overs, once the methane starts to “burp” out into the atmosphere, it will likely play itself out.”
We don’t have the time to argue, we have to have clean energy and have it world wide, that’s it, ___ that’s the bottom line. __ Deny and die.
http://www.energybulletin.net/3647.html
Paul,
I think it would be fun for a f2f. I have been thinking of chasing you down at one of your gigs. If I had to hang out only with people with whom I agree, I would be lonely indeed. I am in Falwell territory.
Bill
And you stay there?
Gotta eat.
I enjoy my career but one of the downsides is that there are very few locations for a nuclear materials metallurgist.
Bill
Mark,
That was my point, nuclear waste is material for a dirty bomb, anybody with a torch could cut into a cannister and a dirty bomb would be worse than 9/11.
Also the expense of trying to store it safley when this stuff will be dangerous for thousands of years…. that means with the cost of inflation and our falling dollar we will have money to store it and have money for nothing else if our future generations are lucky to be around in a hundred or so years to deal with this time bomb…
alternatives have none of these endless problems of nukes.
Kem, sorry if I thought you did not like Obama… my mistake. But I don’t thik he is for building new Nuke plants when he is confronted with the cost now and the future endless and growing costs.
Dubs,
The renewables, particularly wind, are in fact viable. The production tax credit makes them an attractive investment for a utility if they have an appropriate site.
The production tax credit is a year-to-year program by the federal government. If it stops, domestic orders for wind power grind to a halt. If the federal government would make it a 10 or 20 year program, the wind turbine industry in the US would increase capacity and wind would be installed at a faster rate.
Right now, wind is the 2nd fastest growing generating technology in the US, behind only natural gas.
Bill
And Geo-thermal is even better, if and whenever they get the money to develop it.
That’s Okay Jim. We’ll see what happens. Obama will most likely be the nominee and I fear McCain will take it. McCain leads by 20 in the electorial votes against Obama, he trails Hillary by 40.
With either McCain or Obama, we’ll go with nuclear power. GE has been supporting Obama from the get go and insuring powerful people endorse him and of course GE controls much of the media. Hillary is not pro nuke.
End tax payer subsidies of all business, especially energy. You can’t pick and choose what to subsidize just because somebody thinks it’s good and noble. This is where we end up. As the author points out, there’s plenty of private capital going to alternatives.
If we end all energy subsidies and tax pollution of all kinds, alternatives will win hands down.
The greatest and enduring engineering structures of all time are the pyramids. They have stood for a mere 4,000 years and they failed in their purpose of keeping out intruders.
Nuclear waste will need structures and containers that will have to last in excess of 100,000 years.
But don’t worry. Enron will select the lowest bidder to construct them so they are sure to be more than 25 times more enduring than the pyramids. And with their “mark to market” price structures, all of the costs for the next 100,000 years will be paid in advance.
Anybody want to buy a bridge?
Mr. Wassermans article was posted in The Smirking Chimp also. I just had to comment on his myth of Chernobyl and the
supposed danger. It’s plain and simple scare tactics perpetrated by corporate amerika. I HAD a great deal of respect for Mr. Wasserman til this article. I fear Mr. Wasserman has sold out to the highest bidder. BTW, I said much the same thing in SC.
So you believe nuclear waste and nuclear power plants are safe enough huh ~Old Hippy~?
Just for fun, Google nuclear accidents. Or simpler yet, just read BOB Ks comments posted here at 1:44 pm. Maybe you could find reason to argue that common sense filled post.
Kem, if his name links to MSN,
He ain’t old and he ain’t a Hippy.
Old Hippy,
Wasserman is associated with Greenpeace. Greenpeace probably doesn’t knowingly take money from coal interests (Don’t know, just a guess on my part). Much anti-nuclear activity, however, is quietly funded by coal companies. Generally the money is washed through foundations which appear independent. Much of the “What Global Warming-Its Not Real” crowd is also quietly supported by coal money.
Nuclear power generation is a direct threat to coal. The two technologies compete for base load generation.
Most of the renewables, because of their intermittent nature, displace natural gas generation. Natural gas is used intermittently to supply the peak load and will not be run if renewables are available. Renewables are not really a threat to coal baseload generation.
Bill
Sen Obama, Nuclear Power, Illinois…. there is a connection.
Hi Jim. I’ve noticed that some of the TROLL types have their names in blue lettering, which means a website. If we click on that name they have our E-mail address. ___ I think??
Obama gave a speech in Indiana Tuesday and said we need nuclear power for clean energy.
Oh my gosh, ___ PAUL MAGILL SMITH___ uses blue letters on his name and he’s NO troll. Probably one of the brightest bloggers here at Common Dreams. ___ He makes radiation detectors and they work. You can click on his name any time.
My insurance policy categorically states I am not insured against a nuclear accident. Have you checked yours?
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), which exists to spread the peaceful use of the atom, reveals in a new report that nuclear power generation could not grow fast enough over the next decades to slow climate change - even under the most favorable circumstances.
“m__b April 27th, 2008 12:24 pm
Sigurdur11, you are so right on. “Mr. Wasserman seems to forget how many reactors there are on US Navy ships, and have been running for years and years without a major glitch.” Yes, the loss in 1963 of the nuclear submarine Thresher with 129 crew on board was only a minor glitch.”
Thresher (and Scopion as well) was lost for reasons independent of and unrelated to the reactor. Yes, it really is possible to lose a ship at sea, including a submarine.
Navy vessels are proof that you can take a teenager and run a reactor. Admittedly the teenager has to be sent to school so long, likely he isn’t a teenager when he is done. The operating procedures are strict, the inspections rigorous, and the reactors built to a common design.
The Navy has an operating philosophy - When you are dealing with something inherently and exceedingly dangerous, you either do it whole hog, practice it extensively, train more than adequately, operate that way all the time, and make it as near fool-proof as you can. Or, don’t do it. Most of the nations of the world don’t operate planes from carriers or nuclear subs, because these are two of the best examples. You do them proficiently or not at all.
I’ve never seen the Three Mile Island plant or any of the other 103 plants sail out to sea. How many TONS of nuclear waste is produced by a nuclear sub, waste to be “SAFELY” stored forever? Has the Navy ever had a nuclear accident? Google atomic accidents.
Hey KEM - got a link for your information on the Russian scientists who found their once frozen lakes now boiling? I believe you, but I want to read the entire story.
Thanks.
Andrew,
Do you have a reference for your claim on the IAEA?
I did a signficant search of their website today and could find nothing that indicated that nuclear expansion would not slow global warming. It seems like it either an erroneous quotation or out of context. Any electric power generation source that does not have significant CO2 emissions contributes to mitigation of global warming.
Thanks,
Bill
kendpotter,
FYI, I recently heard a talk by Skip Bowman, head of Nuclear Engineering Institute who was head of the Naval Reactors program before he retired from the navy. He stated that, by coincidence, the navy operates the same number of reactors as the civilian power fleet: 104. That would include aircraft carriers, submarines and training reactors.
Bill
Don’t have a link TRU ORANGE, it was on the Science channel. There is a like article today though on the headlines articles, the picture of the Earth over on the left side.
Hi Bily Are the Navy ship reactors as large as a commercial plant’s reactors and do they produce as much atomic waste per year?
There are four major sources producing carbon emissiions.
Electrical generation 42%
Transportation 24%
Industrial 20%
Residentila/commercial 14%
So elemnating burning coal, oil or gas for electrical use is the largest and burning coal is the most serious problem.
~Andrew Taynton~ is probably correct if the IAEA is speaking in terms of DECADES.
We don’t have the luxury of DECADES. We have to have a MASSIVE program to develop clean energy, ___ Solar, wind, geo, tidal and wave. It can be accomplished with a world wide effort and have it operational within four years and STOP burning coal. We either do it, or we kill the planet’s atmosphere and life on Earth. ____ That’s it, ___ the bottom line. There is nothing to argue about in that regard.
Hi Bill
The reference you asked for is at “Nuclear Power ‘Can’t Stop Climate Change’” by Geoffrey Lean
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0626-05.htm
I still cannot understand why anyone would promote nuclear energy when renewables can do a better job so much quicker, and you don’t have the exorbitant cost of decomissioning old nuclear power plants, no terrorist threat of radioactive clouds from blowing up a wind farm, no long term radioactive waste problems, and renewables are getting cheaper by the day, and they provide many more jobs than nukes.
Promoting nuclear energy is plain crazy. We need to phase out nuclear plants altogether and dramatically reduce coal fired power stations.
Progressive countries are converting to 90-100% renewable energy in the next few decades. Its the only sensible future.
Great recent article on renewable energy in Germany
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/apr/16/renewableenergy.windpower
“The European public is still strongly opposed to the use of nuclear power; those who are worried about climate change are even more fiercely opposed.”
Gallup, Attitudes on issues related to EU Energy Policy, European Commission, DG TREN, April 2007
Andrew,
I did not go back 4 years in my review of IAEA publications. I will try to do so. Here is a quote from the 4 year old CD article:
….Alan McDonald, an IAEA nuclear energy analyst, told The Independent on Sunday last night: “Saying that nuclear power can solve global warming by itself is way over the top.”….
He is quite correct. Nuclear power by itself cannot solve global warming.
Bill
Kem,
The US navy does not publish the power of its nuclear reactors. The available figures from the Russian and the French navies would indicate that they are a good bit smaller.
It has been publically stated that the US navy uses highly enriched uranium. If this is so, then they would have very little long lived waste. They would have a lot of fission fragments which are (relatively speaking) rather short lived in the used fuel. Fission fragments need to be safely stored away from society for 400 or 500 years.
Most of the long lived waste comes from uranium-238 in the fuel. That is where the plutonium, americium and cerium start from in a commercial power reactor. These are most of the transuranic elements which are a problem 100,000 years down the road. There is very little uranium-238 in highly enriched uranium.
Using highly enriched uranium in a commercial reactor would be cost prohibitive unless it were a breeder reactor.
Bill
Andrew,
There have been a series of news reports recently that Germany, Italy and Scotland are reinvigorating there coal burning to support their anti-nuclear agenda. They may talk about renewables (and they are installing them) but they are building more coal plants.
Italy and Germany are building new coal plants. Scotland is taking an older coal plant out of mothballs and reopening a coal mine.
Personally, I don’t think coal is a good substitute for nuclear electricity.
Bill
Bill the trend is to renewables. No coal, no nukes.
I know that is hard for you to swallow, but as German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said - there are three stages to a new idea, at first, it is ignored. Second, there is strong opposition against it. And finally, those who once opposed it set about introducing the initiatives themselves as if they’d been theirs all along.
I like to see your opposition to renewables, its an excellent sign.
Andrew
Bill
By the way, if nukes could not stop climate change in 2004, they are even less likey to now.
There are absolutely no grounds to justify nuclear energy, renewables are far superior.
Germany closing down its coal mines:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,463172,00.html
Hi Billy, I know naval ship’s nuclear reactors are much smaller and therefore wondered why some of the discussion here was about how safe they have been, etc, etc. That’s a Red Herring argument which has no bearing on the issue of using nuclear energy for commerial and residential use.
On the argument of nuclear power cannot solve global warming, nothing can solve it if someone is speaking in terms of “decades”. We have to start speaking in terms of four to eight years.
Billy_y4
“It has been publically stated that the US navy uses highly enriched uranium.”
That is correct, the reactors have a much higher power density and operating pressure levels. Obviously, when you are space and weight constrained you have to design differently. One would think that being “higher strung” would make them more prone to accident.
Of course there are some people that will take any set of facts and interprate them whatever way they want to support their point, but I believe operating a pint-size, high-output plant in a hostile environment would tend to be the opposite of a red herring.
I would think that operating a small nuclear reactor on a ship, is not anything at all like a Three Mile Island facility. Of course I may be wrong to think that, but don’t see how it could be wrong.
NO one here has explained how it is possible the two could be similar as to size, or the amount of nuclear waste developed. So to bring up the subject here about nuclear power plant in boats is a Red herring, or perhaps better stated; A load of bull-crap.
Kem,
You are right, you are always right, just ask yourself.
Looking back on what I wrote, I am clearly not saying that a shipboard nuclear reactor is anything like TMI. Operating at sea is a much more difficult and dangerous environment.
I also, quite clearly did not say anything about waste. You are once again reading things just the way you want them.
I could probably say that you were an instructor at the Air Force Academy and you would reply “that it is not too, so located in Colorado, you scumbag”.
Would you please forget that I exist. I am sick to death of your non-sequitirs, blind refusal to acknowledge anyone else’s opinion, and willful ignorance of chemistry/physics.
Sure I can easily pretned that you don’t exist ~KENDPOTTER~, would love to, but that would be as false as your opinions often are. If I’m always right as you state and then you say I’m always wrong, then you must always be right. BTW, I never mentioned your name here till now, nor attempted to use any chemistry or science to support my opinions on the dangers of nuclear power.
Science, or being a nuclear physics wizard is not necessary to know nuclear power is frightenng and dangerous, or that burning coal is also. A fifth grader with an IQ of 85 can fully understand that.
It was ~Sigurdur11~ who first brought up the use of nuclear power for ships and for some strange reason criticized the author for neglecting to mention that off topic point. ___ Then a ~M__B~ chimed in and said ~Sigurdar11~ is soooo right about navy ships using nuclear power. ___ Then later Mr.~Kendpotter~ says they are both right-on, and gives us all a long disartation about nuclear power on ships. __ Who cares? ___ That’s not the issue here.
Finally, there are about 30 others here who are against the use of nuclear power and about four who are pro on the issue, and so you jump on my case once again.___ LOL. ___
Well at least you didn’t tell me to go fuck myself, as you have done previously when I had the audasity to disagree with your scientific opinions on the subject. You didn’t say anything about nuclear waste? __ I know it, I can read. I did, when questioning the reasoning for bringing up the dumb subject of ships in the first place.
Andrew,
I believe you misunderstand my position.
IMHO the response to global warming should be to deploy, as rapidly as practical and with due respect for the environment, all forms of electrical power generation that do not emit CO2.
That response should include non-combustion based renewables such as wind, thermal and PV solar, and to the extent practical geo-thermal, wave and tidal. It includes biogenic methane collection for gas fired generation. It includes waste biomass (wood, refuse and crop waste) combustion.
In addition to these renewable sources, I believe we should continue to deploy nuclear power generation. World wide, there are about 30 nuclear plants under construction. In the US there is currently one. Ground has been broken on another. There are about 35 in various stages of planning in the US. In seven years we might have as many as 5 new plants in operation.
To 100% replace coal burning in the US today would require about 200 new reactors to be added to the 104 currently in operation. This clearly is not going to happen in time to arrest our CO2 emissions in ten years.
To replace the generating capacity of the coal plants would require about 62,000 square miles of wind turbines (at 100% of rated capacity). That is not going to happen in 10 years either.
I believe we need all forms of non-emitting generation in an, as Kem would say, a MASSIVE program. I don’t believe nuclear power can replace coal burning by itself. I don’t believe renewables can replace coal burning by themselves. I pray that, together, they can replace coal burning in time to prevent a mass extinction which includes humanity.
Bill
I agree wth you Billy. ___ Except my idea of a Massive progam is probably much more Massive than you picture. I want to see it completed in four years and it could be done.
Bill
The debate is not between coal and nukes. They are both out. The debate is how do we phase out nukes and dramatically reduse coal and go 90 to 100 % renewables.
Have you seen this New Scientist article?:
New Scientist, Apr. 24, 2008
REASONABLE DOUBT
By Ian Fairlie
Among the many environmental concerns surrounding nuclear power plants, there is one that provokes public anxiety like no other: the fear that children living near nuclear facilities face an increased risk of cancer. Though a link has long been suspected, it has never been proven. Now that seems likely to change.
Studies in the 1980s revealed increased incidences of childhood leukaemia near nuclear installations at Windscale (now Sellafield), Burghfield and Dounreay in the UK. Later studies near German nuclear facilities found a similar effect. The official response was that the
radiation doses from the nearby plants were too low to explain the increased leukaemia. The Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment, which is responsible for advising the UK government,
finally concluded that the explanation remained unknown but was not likely to be radiation.
There the issue rested, until a recent flurry of epidemiological studies appeared. Last year, researchers at the Medical University ofSouth Carolina in Charleston carried out a meta-analysis of 17 research papers covering 136 nuclear sites in the UK, Canada, France,
the US, Germany, Japan and Spain. The incidence of leukaemia in children under 9 living close to the sites showed an increase of 14 to 21 per cent, while death rates from the disease were raised by 5 to 24
per cent, depending on their proximity to the nuclear facilities (European Journal of Cancer Care, vol 16, p 355).
This was followed by a German study which found 14 cases of leukaemia compared to an expected four cases between 1990 and 2005 in children living within 5 kilometres of the Krummel nuclear plant near Hamburg, making it the largest leukaemia cluster near a nuclear power plant
anywhere in the world (Environmental Health Perspectives, vol 115, p 941).
This was upstaged by the yet more surprising KiKK studies (a German acronym for Childhood Cancer in the Vicinity of Nuclear Power Plants), whose results were published this year in the International Journal of Cancer (vol 122, p 721) and the European Journal of Cancer (vol
44, p 275). These found higher incidences of cancers and a stronger association with nuclear installations than all previous reports. The main findings were a 60 per cent increase in solid cancers and a 117 per cent increase in leukaemia among young children living near all 16
large German nuclear facilities between 1980 and 2003.
The most striking finding was that those who developed cancer lived closer to nuclear power plants than randomly selected controls. Children living within 5 kilometres of the plants were more than twice as likely to
contract cancer as those living further away, a finding that has been accepted by the German government.
Though the KiKK studies received scant attention elsewhere, there was a public outcry and vocal media debate in Germany. No one is sure of the cause (or causes) of the extra cancers. Coincidence has been ruled
out, as has the “Kinlen hypothesis”, which theorises that childhood leukaemia is caused by an unknown infectious agent introduced as a result of an influx of new people to the area concerned. Surprisingly, the most obvious explanation for this increased risk — radioactive
discharges from the nearby nuclear installations — was also ruled out by the KiKK researchers, who asserted that the radiation doses from such sources were too low, although the evidence they base this on is
not clear.
Anyone who followed the argument in the 1980s and 1990s concerning the UK leukaemia clusters will have a sense of deja vu. A report in 2004 by the Committee Examining Radiation Risks of Internal Emitters (2
Mbyte PDF), set up by the UK government (and for which I was a member of the secretariat) points out that the models used to estimate radiation doses from sources emitted from nuclear facilities are riddled with uncertainty. For example, assumptions about how radioactive material is transported through the environment or taken
up and retained by local residents may be faulty.
If radiation is indeed the cause of the cancers, how might local residents have been exposed? Most of the reactors in the KiKK study were pressurised water designs notable for their high emissions of tritium, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Last year, the UK government published a report on tritium which concluded that its hazard risk should be doubled. Tritium is most commonly found incorporated into water molecules, a factor not fully taken into
account in the report, so this could make it even more hazardous.
As we begin to pin down the likely causes, the new evidence of an association between increased cancers and proximity to nuclear facilities raises difficult questions. Should pregnant women and young children be advised to move away from them? Should local residents eat vegetables from their gardens? And, crucially, shouldn’t those governments around the world who are planning to build more reactors
think again?
Ian Fairlie is a London-based consultant on radiation in the
environment
Sorry,
I forgot - Kem, Go fuck yourself.
Don’t worry KEM.
Thats what people say when they don’t have an intelligent answer.
You obviously won the argument.
Wonder what the nuke engineers are going to spin against the New Scientist article, second above?
HI ~Andy~I don’t care that much if I won a silly argument with Kendpotter. I mean, who couldn’t?
His last post is really funny though.
He writes with a manner of superority, as he is highly educated, but his posts are usually filled with egosim and are effluvial.
Kem,
You agree with me except on timing? Did you read the post carefully? (This may be a champaigne night!)
Regards,
Bill
BTW, if you followed kendpotter’s direction, I hope it was fun for you.
Andrew,
The issue very much is coal vs nuke.
According to the NYTimes, there are about 50 new coal (or conversions to coal) plants in the pipeline for western Europe; Germany, Italy, Belgium, England and others.
Germany is expanding its coal burning capacity to shutdown its nukes. Germany has asked to expand its CO2 emission credits to permit the increased coal generation.
According to current statistics published by NEI, in the US there are 18GW of coal generation (61 plants) under construction in the US; there is 6GW of renewable capacity under construction. (Their statistics are based on nameplate capacity. Most of the renewables were wind which typically produces about 30% of nameplate.)
To say that coal is ‘out’ is clearly whistling in the dark.
Your article from New Scientist, which I am still digesting, is concerned with apparent traces of radioactivity emitted from nuclear power plants and fuel processing facilities. The radiation released by a coal plant is an order of magnitude greater than a nuclear plant. Coal contains traces of both uranium and thorium as well as the daughter products. Some of this inevitably goes up the stack.
As evidence of the radionuclide content of coal, China has started processing the ash, both cinder and fly ash, from several of its coal fired plants as uranium ore. Other countries are considering adopting the practice.
Bill