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TechnoratiEurope Going Nuclear Despite Warnings
PRAGUE - The EU seems to be backing nuclear energy as the response to global warming and gas dependency, but civic groups warn that safety and waste processing should be preconditions for the industry's growth.
These issues were debated in Prague May 22-23 at the second European Nuclear Energy Forum, an EU (European Union) initiative to discuss opportunities and risks of nuclear energy.
Civic groups criticised their extremely low representation at the event, seen by them as a gathering of nuclear energy supporters lobbying the EU.
"There is no energy technology free of risks. We have to live with that and do our best choices among existing possibilities," Ulla Birgitta Sirkeinen from the EU's Economic and Social Committee, a consultative body, told participants. "This committee has the view that nuclear energy is needed."
"We all share the (EU) objective of reducing greenhouse emissions by 20 percent by 2020," Nicole Fontaine, a European Parliamentarian, told participants. "Although there are many solutions such as renewable energy, reality dictates we use nuclear energy, which covers 32 percent of European energy needs.
"It doesn't have the greenhouse effect, and it allows ensuring security of supply," she said, hinting at the high European dependency on Russian gas, to which many believe nuclear power could be an alternative.
The EU is the biggest nuclear energy generator in the world.
Czech politicians, who named their country one of the leaders in the field, stressed that only nuclear power can ensure freedom and independence by reducing over-reliance on Russian gas.
Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek attacked "ideologically motivated" environmentalist groups for their negative stance on nuclear energy, and called nuclear waste treatment a "pseudo-problem" of a political, not technical nature.
Topolanek said the EU's organisation of this conference was another sign of Brussels becoming favourably inclined towards nuclear energy.
But the whole of the EU is not going nuclear, said Patricia Lorenz from Friends of the Earth. EU members such as Spain, Sweden, Belgium, Germany and Austria all have doubts about nuclear power.
"There is strong pressure at this conference from industry and political groups to give support for nuclear energy, and this is not legitimate, because many countries are not nuclear and the public is mostly against it," Lorenz said.
While most participants spoke of how better to tackle "inevitable" increase in energy consumption, Lorenz believes the key lies in reducing consumption.
"No one wants to hear this because it means many changes in transport," she told IPS. "But only when consumption goes down we can bring in renewables.
"No technology can maintain our level of consumption," she added. "Not even nuclear: uranium will also run out in 40 or 50 years."
Industry representatives seemed less concerned. "Renewable energy cannot provide us with basic electricity, and the question is politically important because lots of jobs are at stake," Thomas Mock, head of the German association of energy intensive industry consumers told the conference.
Walter Hohlefelder from the German energy company E.ON seemed confident that controversies over nuclear energy could be minimised by harmonised safety rules, saying these would bring transparency and public acceptability.
Fontaine also said the harmonisation of rigorous safety standards was one of the objectives of the forum. A high-level group is expected to present a proposal to the EU Council in July.
But Andrej Stritar, acting chairman of the High Level Group on Nuclear Safety and Waste Management of the Council, suggested that enthusiasts of "nuclear renaissance" should "slow down and reconsider everything, especially issues of nuclear safety."
But Electricite de France board member Bruno Lescoeur said "the barrel of oil costs 135 dollars, and it is urgent to act; the industry cannot wait for convergence to emerge on all subjects on the industry, it has to implement solutions quickly."
Critics have claimed that efforts at harmonisation could be an excuse to lower standards. Lorenz also brought up the issue of liability. "Industry is protected against potential threats; it must be liable to pay for what happens," she said.
The activist also pointed to one of the most contentious issues. "There is no solution for waste; industry is not coping well with this problem and is not really trying. The de facto solution has been to export to Russia, and this will remain the solution."
Lorenz said "it is not possible to find an effective way to treat nuclear waste; they proved it themselves by not coming up with anything. There is no affordable technology for the amounts of waste involved." The EU generates 40,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste a year.
But there are enough optimists around at the political level. "There will be a feasible solution within a short period, I believe, in the development of science and of humankind," János Toth, president of the energy section of the European Economic and Social Committee told IPS. "If you look back in history, all energy sources have progressed, solutions have always been found."
Copyright © 2008 IPS-Inter Press Service.
56 Comments so far
Show AllLA quaker,
You don't want either of those gentlemen near your head. You will get burned one way or the other (x-rays or steam)
Regards,
Bill
Bill, i mixed up Wilhelm Röntgen with William Rankine- off the top of my head.
I trust your not the next collateral casualty of our nuclear power fuel chain.
So sorry
xx
LAquaker
That was funny ~Quaker~.
Guess what Bill will have for breakfast? Maybe he'll tell us tomorrow.
"Acquired Immune Deficiency" is from insult to the subject's immune system. One "marker" for A.I.D.Syndrome, "Karposie's" Sarcoma, has been around since the late 1890s.
"Bill"; your eyes and ears are failing you, find some of your beloved magic(99% man-made)plutonium and leave it in your ass, like hard-luck miners do, and let us know how many disease vectors move in for their holiday.
Here's a great one on radiation hazards from atomic power, it gives me goose bumps.
http://library.thinkquest.org/3426/
I believe the Quaker meant ~PTSD~ Billy.
http://www.cadu.org.uk/
LAquaker,
AIDS is caused by uranium dust? I could have sworn it was a virus.
Bill
... the miners and their families dead and dieing from a Total Body Burden carried home on their trousers. Acquired Immune Deficiency overwhelming "them"..(tongue click)..poor Indians, poor Africans, poor dumb fucks.
rtdrury,
The first couple of the second generation reactors currently in service in the US were delivered on time and on budget. There was very little protest from environmentalists-they did not have their act together yet. The build time was about 4 years from first concrete to first power.
After that, the construction time stretched out due to multiple factors. Some construction facilities were overbooked and late delivering piece parts. The AEC (predecessor of the NRC) revised construction and design requirements on the fly (see the building inspector in my example above). There were some quality control/shoddy work issues which caused delays. The single biggest cause of delay was that environmentalists (some funded by the coal companies which were very threatened by nuclear power) using the power of the courts. Many reactors sat for several years fully completed awaiting resolution of suits before they could be turned on. After the first couple of units the average first concrete to first power time rose to about 10 years.
Under the new licensing regime interveners have the same opportunities to object or comment but the timing is different. Now all objections (except construction defect issues) are resolved prior to the start of construction.
The opportunities to intervene are:
1) While the reactor design is under consideration. Two designs have now passed this milestone and are no longer open to comment. Three are under examination by the NRC.
2) When a site is under consideration. An early site permit has an opportunity for challenge. This spring an early site permit was under discussion for a Georgia site and there was a great deal of comment and discussion because of the water consumption issue for the proposed reactor. Near me in Virginia, a proposed reactor by Dominion had the cooling methods revised because of public objection to the heating of a utility owned lake which is used for public recreation.
3) When a specific site and reactor are designated and a combined construction and operating liscense is filed.
4) Limited opportunity upon completion of construction (open to quality issues only).
Bill
Our actual history as a speci is about the multitude of paths not taken, as is each person's life. Many many paths, more posibilitys than any of us could ever take, many roads before us, that gorgeous seductive Witch i did or did not merry. but for what ever reason, the deadly one has not yet been our choice.
I volunteered for the draft in 1969, i became the first white face in this town in 1988, my neighbor still has lots of money on the other side of the wood wall...
Practical gain is the only criteria. I can find the "reasons" later.....
The modern human society is only possible because of humans are continuosly comming with new ways of using natural resources to create power.
Without that, we might as well climbe back to the trees.
Of course, there always is a cost to the human developement, so even if there is a nuclear disaster of Chernobyls proportions, it still makes sense.
Overall, if you count all the advantages and disadvantages of of nuclear power the numbers are clearly in favor. For example, train trasportation is the safest way of transport, even despite the numerous train disasters people will not stop using it. You just accept the risk knowing that you might be the one paying the ultimate price...
Every human endeavour has a risk associated with it, even simple things like crossing a street. The ONLY way to totally minimize it is to stay at home and do NOTHING.
As evolution has shown, this is not an option for human race, if we and this plante survives the development of humans remains to be seen...
And thank goodness, all of the nuclear power plants in the world are located where a massive earthquake cannot ever occur. We are smart us humans. Some are really smart.
Hi Billy, back up systems for the mechanical things we humans build are wonderful. Teh Titanic was designed to be unsinkable, it was that well desinged by man.
I was on a C-130 crew once which can fly until it runs out of fuel on any two of the four engines. We lost three of them however. "Oh shit". There have been numerous nuclear power plants that had mechanical failres and accidents serious did occur. Some day there will be a massive meltdown at one, are we ready to rumble?
John 'Bomb Bomb' McCain just announced he wants massive nuclear power in the US to replace oil and gas.
He is also saying 'steps' must be taken to 'limit' other nations (Iran) from getting nuclear weapons technology. McCain announced he would like to see a central repository (in America) for the collection and storage of ALL spent nuclear materials to 'prevent' other nations from building nuclear or radiological weapons.
Yup. This confirms it.
He's delusional.
"People, lets be realistic here, nuclear power is here to stay. Ther is NOTHING to replace it, coal is too dirty, oil too expesive, wind and solar too unreliable, geothermal and watter limited to specific locations.
"Energy consumption is going up, no matter what. No politican is crazy enough to come with a plan for "rationing" energy, that is a political suicide."
Someone who says this, to me, just doesn't understand context of the issue. Nature doesn't "understand" anything but it's own laws. If we consume too much, and cut down all the trees, it might be politically popular, but we've destroyed the forest, and the costs are far greater than being rationale in the first place and just cutting back our consumption. There is a finite amount that we can pollute as well. It might not be politically popular to admit it, because people are ignorant about what we're facing, but deadly to all if we don't.
We have the only habitable planet that we know of at this point in the universe. We, as a planet, we lucky to be given a blue, habitable world to live in, many of the conditions that make life so easy here were created by life over billions of years. LIFE created oxygen, the ozone layer, certain organisms can convert sunlight into energy, the worldwide eco-system is a self regulating system. It's a beautiful wonder, the only we know of at this time in the universe, and our stupidity and greed are ruining it. If we do, we're stupid beyond comprehension. I'm sorry, but "leaders" exist for this very reason, to articulate uncomfortable truths even when it may PERSONALLY cost them.
The only option in the long run is lower consumption. If that doesn't become a reality we WILL, and are, destroy(ing) this planet. Nature doesn't give too damns how flawed the economic system is that we've wedded ourselves too, or the lifestyles of the ecologically ignorant folks that call themselves "American" or "European" and say that their way of living isn't negotiable. We are in a position now where a politician can be politically popular for essentially destroying the eco-system that we rely on to survive because some of us don't want to change our habits. There might come a time when war, at least rhetorical, will have to be called on those destroying the planet. Like any just war, it comes down to bare bones survival, and people who are for the status quo are increasingly the enemy.
Gotta love secular fundamentalists. To them every problem caused by science can only be solved by science, never a dose of common sense.
Great posts here,.... except the LaRouche hacks singing in acapella, like a hundred of the same such fools did last year at the Democratic Convention in San Diego, stymieing all debate. ""(see EIR Jan. 19)""
""solar will become a competitive energy source in 5-10 years"", Far less time than it takes to build One nuke reactor, even if there were NO tree huggers.
""because we have no replacement for oil as a transportation fuel and won't until we have a new cheap energy source (solar) some decades from now"" See NH3 below
""new baseload electricity generation, there are essentially three choices: gas, coal, and nuclear"" WHY is wave power off the table, Nancy Peloswi ¿
""Proliferation has become a moot issue, since many countries have nuclear power and weapons potential but have not chosen to make nuclear weapons, while India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran have proven that short of war you can't stop any country that wants to from getting the bomb"" Try taking class in writing, or logic.
""The US is not self sufficient in natural uranium production or enrichment capacity at this time. The expansion of both mining and enrichment will serve primarily the domestic market (although the markets for both are international)""
There's mountains of the stuff in central Africa, thus we secured the Congo in 1940 AND in 1960, when American miners read of the hopeless fate of Czechoslovakian uranium miners. In our Zaire and in the French's Rwanda, lives are cheap. First you kill Lumumba.
""There are a total of 4 enrichment facilities under consideration in the US rather than just the 2 you mentioned. USEC is building a new centrifuge operation in Piketon Ohio and GE is building a laser based enrichment operation in Wilmington NC.""
A hundred detention camps are also being prepared to store the people that will clean up your mess. If your face is whiter than a brown paper bag, that fact won't save you this time.
""The US market for enriched uranium has been suppressed for several years by the downblending and sale of weapons grade uranium from both US and Russian weapons stockpiles. As desirable as the demilitarization of this material is, it has significantly disrupted these markets"" "The Wages of Fear" has up till now, limited your profit margins on the manufacturing of your plutonium death...the market is a bitch mistress.
""Solar and wind could spring up like weeds if we paid only the costs of implementing these technologies — stripped of the multiplying costs of interest"" Good line, good point.
""hidden cost of mining transport and storage of waste, cheaper to generate? Bushit, not to mention the weapons grade plutonium from every plant,,,,half life dimwits = no life, go ahead jump in a reactor leak""
Harsh.... and IQ has nothing to do with the VERB ig-nor-ance.
""At the end of the fuel cycle about 1% of the used fuel weight is plutonium...""
But this is a million times greater than the ratio in the mine ore.
""We're too stupid to survive much longer."" Selfish and ig-nor-ant, if anything.
""Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, in 1979, injured no one""
Clinton said after we destroyed Yugoslavia "No One Died". HE lost not one American Soldier. No alpha leaks were monitored during TMI. "China Syndrome", released a week before, was about the LIES. "Silkwood" was a movie about the fraud in the nuclear industry.
""....which simply shut the (nuclear) plant down if there is an operator error or equipment failure.""
The "pump failure' at TMI was as stupid as backing up an o-ring with a second o-ring THAT WILL FAIL IN THE SAME circumstance, and kill the first astronaut-school teacher. Save the cash, shut off the whole insane industry.
""---the entire electric grid system pays the price of having to provide stand-by redundant power-generating capacity---""
BUT, because we centralize profit with megawatt Coal, LPG and Nukes that take DAYS to bring up to heat, or lose days of energy when going offline, low-load hours are an energy charge-back (loss).
""...For this reason, in the 1930s, the electric utility industry was regulated by Federal and state governments, to protect consumers from financial manipulation""
Like every Legal Device, BigMoney has turned a good idea into a Monopolistic tool.
The largest Solar Farm in the world, built in the early 1980s by Luz at Kramers Junction Calif, was disaster economically because Pres. Carters "spin the meter backwards" was never allowed to apply to local Apartment size generators tying to the grid. The last "co-generator" came on line by Mission Electric in 1989, burning oilfield gas's. (discloser: two of my grandfathers built a successful communist power co. that runs today in Merced county. Grampa Bryan was electrocuted in the power station about 1925) After Deregulation "Bluebook", to this day, condominiums or other small scale local generators are verboten, only single family homes can benefit from state eco-power legislation, or only very large enterprises who get sweetheart rates from BigPower.
""the only sensible and renewable replacement for petroleum-based liquid fuels is hydrogen, ""
Try NH3, with retail qualitys almost like propane in the big farm states, except it is safer: stinks (rabbit piss) naturally W/out odorizers and is lighter than air. Hard to burn, but will run todays IC car, diesel truck or aircraft turbine, injected as a liquid. We sold 6.4 billion pounds to each other last year, pipes run across state lines. Aussie's are using ammonia as a almost lossless megawatt sized liquid-gas storage battery. Remote cellphone towers run on liquid NH3 fuelcells in Africa today, diesel irrigation pumps burn ammonia from nurse tanks in the fields. How do we keep Carbon out of the future; create ammonia with wind, by the local Grange, in the fields, in the corn belt. Making NH3 with same techniques as hydrogen. Using air&water as feed stock instead of petroleum, as the H industry does now. All old technology.
maybe, on your next vacation, the pilot will trim his spools to spread a little ozone back into the stratosphere.
""Besides, (IN 2008!!) Nuclear power is very safe (Despite Chernobyl), and with luck we will have nuclear fusion in 40+ years that will resolve this."" ""...with next-generation, high-temperature nuclear fission reactors""
One problem with "fusion", with or without MHD generation, is that the containment and everything within the device GETS "hot" over it's service life. The debate is about finding materials that will function without too long a half-life when they wear out, are dismantled and buried....millions of pounds of millions of dollars of metals that men die to extract from all over the globe. lifetimes of disposable highest-tec manufacturing employment, before a skillet of squash is fried.
In 1952 my daddy worked for Caltech when Edward Teller et.al. were convinced fusion electricity was just about to be solved, in 1978 Pop got patent 4164677, useful for high-energy laser-fired fusion reactor designs, Livermore tried to hire him 30 years ago for their (still today) endless fusion-power reactor project. Daddy got laid off when he turned 81 in 1999. Any day now...
The Americans vented their old underground bomb tests during Chernobyl, got caught by the Swedes. Thousands of people got millions of Rankins, sent into the mess each for a few moments, to clean up the impossible fetid horror of the Currie's death trap. For what...
I can kill my neighbor with my microwave, through the wall, and steal her money without any trouble. Building a way to boil water with radioisotopes will keep me employed for a lifetime, with or without ever boiling the water. Too moral for you ¿
Good point Bill. In the 1970s the people actually had a little clout in Washington and the industrialists were held to account much more than today. If what you imply really happened, that the industrialists were blind-sided, then yes that's a problem. But today we have a totally different environment - it's a bonanza for industrialists. The people have almost zero clout, and the White House has given industrialists a seat at the table and they are exploiting it - you see that in the gasoline prices. You see it in the White House's involvement in the 2001 California electricity crisis, etc. We suspect that if the nuke industry doesn't ask for the moon, the White House will surely fork it over anyhow.
rtdrury,
Just as a mind game: You are going to build a house. You get a design approved by the zoning board. You go to the bank and borrow the money to build it and you start construction.
You are now working on the second floor and the building inspector comes by and says "We have changed the building code. Your basement walls need to be 2" thicker." After stopping construction you re-dig your foundation and somehow add the required 2". All of the carpenters for the second floor standby waiting while you fix the basement.
You go back to work and your next door neighbor says your house will block his beautiful view of the mountains. He sues you and ties you up in court for 4 years. The suit is finally decided in your favor. During the 4 years the house is not under roof and you have to go back and repair water damage from the 4 years.
The house is now finished 5 years late.
Question: Do you think your original loan will have covered your cost of construction?
Welcome to the nuclear build of the '70's.
Bill
KEM,
You are quite correct; mechanical systems fail. That is why nuclear reactor (and other well designed high value industrial installations) have back up systems.
The French EPR reactor currently being built in France and Finland and planned for several installations has 4 completely redundant sets of backup safety systems. Any one system will operate the plant but three are required by the operating rules.
The Westinghouse reactor to be built in both China and the US has all of its backup safety systems independent of mechanical intervention (they depend on natural circulation and gravity).
The Japanese reactors that were in an earthquake last year are fine. There was some water splashed out of the used fuel pool. (There has not been a final decision as to whether to turn them back on because of the new found fault.)
None of the Chinese nuclear reactors were near the massive earthquake. There is a nuclear fuel plant in the quake zone that was not damaged.
Regards,
Bill
The choice offered by pro-nuclear is a future of problems, or maybe no future at all.
Future generations, assuming there will be, will judge us on how we respond to resource depletion. All resources relate to energy. Energy is used in mining, planting and harvesting, production and transport of everything we eat or otherwise consume.
Energy, if produced from any mined or drilled source, darkens our skies and fouls our waters. When something does that, we need to use less.
But, people don't like to use less. So we will keep producing and consuming more, and have problems that will make future generations shake their heads and wonder why we could not see with more clarity and less selfishness.
To avoid "recession", we need to restructure society so we produce and use (i.e. waste) less, and are not made to be afraid of economic consequences.
MiMiCcS, LaRouche's claim that environmentalists exploded the costs of US nuclear power plants is insane. The same capitalist profiteering in the Iraq occupation explodes the costs of all US infrastructure. Just look at other countries for your market value benchmark, e.g. look at Japan's/France's value of high speed rail and demand the same - US capitalists will shriek communist coup.
Beyond the extremely poor economic value and potentially catastrophic radiation and terror risks, nuclear power plants alter the ecosystems of large bodies of water with waste heat which will only increase with global warming. The huge amounts of waste heat from rankine cycle nuclear power plants (75% of input energy) cannot be captured for industrial uses because of risk of nuclear accidents.
Dispersing power generation to small local stations offers many advantages but is infeasible with nuclear power which is intended to leave people unskilled, unemployed, dependent on, and at the mercy of far-flung control centers. Also, central power plants require expensive, lossy and ugly high voltage lines all over the landscape. Huge subsidies are required to string lines from central power plants to rural areas. It's much better to build small power plants locally in commercial/industrial centers and on farms. These districts tend to have large surface areas available for collecting solar energy. Small scale solar plants require fewer resources due to lesser mechanical stressors (lower profile collectors, shorter rotor axles, smaller rotor diameters).
One of the basic arguments for central power plants has been a reduction in human labor, enabling more people more freedom to pursue other activities. The result of this, especially in the USA, has not been so beneficial, as people only became more dependent on the control centers, and spent more time in low-value occupations. Nuclear power only encourages more people to become more disconnected from responsibility, more dependent on the control centers, and more likely to be exploited or enlisted in misadventures. It's much better to perform energy conversion at the local level with systems that the people can own and operate, greatly increasing their political/economic independence, naturally damping consumption, and minimizing risks and environmental impacts. Power to the people!
The choice offered by pro-nuclear is a future of problems, or maybe no future at all.
Future generations, assuming there will be, will judge us on how we respond to resource depletion. All resources relate to energy. Energy is used in minimg, planting and harvesting, production and transport of everything we eat or otherwise consume.
Energy, if produced from any mined or drilled source, darkens our skies and fouls our waters. When something does that, we need to use less.
But, people don't like to use less. So we will keep producing and consuming more, and have problems that will make future generations shake their heads and wonder why we could not see with more clarity and less selfishness.
To avoid "recession", we need to restructure society so we produce and use (i.e. waste) less, and are not afraid of economic consequences.
There has never ever been a man made object or system that did not eventually fail. NEVER! Even the pyramids and Great Wall Of China are falling apart. At least they don't emit radiation hazards. They also aren't constructed with metals which corrode, or rely upon electrical switches and valves to stay put together and hazard free.
There have been numerous serious nuclear accidents other than "Cheery Noble". Hey, and how about natural disasters? Any nuclear plants in China??? They might have a massive earthquake over there someday.
That type of a natural disaster could happen here in the United States, Indonesia, India, or in Japan someday. Of course we don't have any nuclear power plants near any quake fault lines. ___ "Oops, Dang it, I hate it when that happens", says the chief nuclear plant engineer.
The technology to have solar, wind, geo-thermal, wave and tidal electrical power is viable and afforadable. Those are far less expensive than nuclear to develop and have on line. We could do it, but the money boys, the ones who own the coal, uranium and oil fields don't want it, so we arent going to get it.
~JSTEVENS~ is exactly correct, burning coal is going to be our demise and before we have ten more nuclear plants on line, the methane gas is going to do us in. Here is a fun link that takes about three minutes to digest. Scary too.
http://www.farnorthscience.com/2007/09/26
Now I will wait in agonizing antisipation for a reply from Billy, who is a swell and very intellignet man, who suffers from tunnel vision and a severe case of Nuclear Uranium Total Syndrome or (NUTS).
Obama will get along with these folks fine. Meanwhile, here we'll pay for our own glow in the dark look as we kill ourselves with cancer.
MiMi,
TMI was not sabotage. It was incompetent operation exacerabated by design weaknesses in a vent valve and instrumentation. If the operators had kept their hands off the controls it would have been ok.
Oil companies do not control uranium reserves. Many of the companies that own the uranium reserves are vertically integrated nuclear companies but they are not oil (Cameco and AREVA come to mind.)
Unlike generation by fossil fuel, the cost of uranium is not terribly important to the cost of electricity generated by nuclear power. The biggest cost is amortizing the initial construction.
There is indeed such a thing as nuclear waste. After the uranium and transuranics are removed from used nuclear fuel, you have fission fragments. These are intensely radioactive and dangerous. Great care must be taken to avoid personnel exposure or environmental leakage for as much as 500 years.
Bill
Hi all,
Not sure how many here at CD are familiar with Lyndon Larouche, but MiMiCcS who keeps posting here - who says nukes are safe and necessary, who says human overpopulation is not a problem, who says global warming is a hoax, etc etc etc - MiMiCcS is a Larouchite. MiMiCcS cited two Larouche web sites yesterday, and today references EIR, which is a Larouche journal.
If you aren't familiar with him and you wonder what might be wrong with following Lyndon Larouche, Google his name and see what you come up with.
Larouche has a bizarre history, and a bizarre set of "theories" about who is responsible for what is wrong in the world. i recall reading a transcript of a talk Larouche gave after the WTO protests here in Seattle, in which he demonstrated his deep knowledge of the workings of the world by claiming that the protesters were "paid terrorist killers" sent at the behest of the British crown, in order to destabilize the US financially. Bizarre.
There is too much Hypocracy about nuclear energy from Europe and USA they build nuclear power stations or bombs at will but then it's propaganda 24/7 if Iran or any other country tries it.
Nuclear anything should be banned and all weapons/ power stations safely destroyed.
We keep coming to this theme that the only solution to these problems is reducing consumption and population control.
The European and North American populations of 35 years ago have not increased. Fertility rates have been at or below replacement levels (2.1 per women of child bearing age) for 35 years. The population growth has been entirely immigration related (legal and illegal, as well as children born to the immigrants in this period). This has also increased our consumption. Population growth and consumption growth are not being driven from North America and Europe. We are importing the excesses from elsewhere in the world. Growth is being driven from Asia, Africa and south of our borders as the rest of the world catches up to us.
And when we talk about population control, what are we talking about?. Are you willing to give up more of your liberties. Let Big Brother decide who can have children, who can not, based on your DNA test to determine if you have the right genetic material?. Let them decide how many you can have?. Which ones you can keep? Let them determine if someone is a burden on society such as the old, mentally incapacitate, disabled, and must be helped along into the next world. Kind of like Stalins "if you don't work, you don't eat approach"?
Some people go into overdrive about global warming and CO2 emissions. Yet offer a nuclear solution, perhaps only a temporary one until a cleaner source is developed, and they protest. Despite believing in the Man made Global Warming Hoax, an imminent threat which is going to toast our planet and kill it. Despite believing in the Peak Oil hoax, where we will run out of Oil due to it is a finite resource, causing massive starvation and depopulation should this occur, and with no viable alternatives. Despite these beliefs, the main concern over nuclear is with the safety of nuclear power, and what will happen to the nuclear waste hundreds of years from now.
And of course, now that Big Oil and the elite have used the downtime in nuclear expansion to control over 80% of the uranium reserves, they are generating a Peak Uranium hoax (we will run out in 40 years), so nuclear power can be used as a weapon as oil is now.
Enrichment for nuclear weapons is beyond most countries ability and attempts to do so are easily detected.
Here is a Q&A from EIR (my comments in parenthesis)
Q: Aren't nuclear power plants dangerous to public health?
A: In fact, there has never been any nuclear accident in the United States that has endangered the health or welfare of the public. The worst American accident, at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, in 1979, injured no one.
(and some evidence supports this was sabatage, coming on FEMA's first days of existence to discredit nuclear power so oil could be used as a weapon w/o fears of nuclear power)
Q: What about the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine in 1986?
A: The severity of that accident was a function of a poor reactor design, and inadequate training of plant personnel. In the United States, oversight by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission provides the standards for reactor design and plant operation, which has contributed to our excellent nuclear power plant safety record.
The new generation of nuclear power plant designs, already being built internationally, feature passive safety systems, which simply shut the plant down if there is an operator error or equipment failure.
By comparison, during 2006, more than 5,000 miners died in China, during the production of the more than 1 billion tons of coal that power its economy. The health of the public in China's cities is also endangered, by the pollution caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
As far as vulnerability to "terrorist" attacks is concerned, there is no public infrastructure that is as well protected as nuclear power plants. There is no scenario under which a release of radiation (which effect in low dosages is, in any case, completely exaggerated), would significantly affect public health.
Q: What do we do with the radioactive waste from nuclear power plants?
A: There is no such thing as nuclear "waste." This is a term used in popular parlance by anti-nuclear ideologues to frighten the public, and its elected representatives. More than 95% of the fission products created in commercial power plants can be reprocessed and recycled. The spent fuel from a typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant, which has operated over 40 years, can produce energy equal to 130 million barrels of oil, or 37 million tons of coal.
In reprocessing, fissionable uranium-235 and plutonium are separated from the high-level fission products. The plutonium can be used to make mixed-oxide fuel, which is currently used to produce electrical power in 35 European nuclear reactors. The fissionable uranium in the spent fuel can also be reused. From the remaining 3% of high-level radioactive products, valuable medical and other isotopes can be extracted.
Q: But if the United States goes ahead now with reprocessing, doesn't making this technology available increase the risk that other nations will develop nuclear weapons?
A: No nation has ever developed a nuclear weapon from a civilian nuclear power plant. If a nation has the intention to develop nuclear weapons, it must obtain the specific technology to do so. Israel is an example of a nation that has no civilian nuclear power plants, but has developed nuclear weapons.
The nonproliferation argument—that controlling technology will reduce the risk of weapons proliferation—is an historically demonstrable false one. Nations make decisions based on their security and military requirements, not on which technologies are available.
Q: Isn't it the case that nuclear energy is more expensive than fossil, or "alternative" fuels?
A: The radical escalation in the cost of building nuclear power plants in the late 1970s and 1980s was the result of political actions, not economics. Some plants projected to cost less than $1 billion ended up costing ten times that amount, because anti-nuclear "environmentalists," and legal intervenors were given free rein, using specious and ideological arguments, to delay plant construction for years, sometimes, for decades. Where there has been no political interference, new nuclear power plants have been built in 38 months, on schedule, and on budget, such as in Japan.
(Volckers raising interest rates in response to inflation caused by high oil prices in the late 70's were responsible for much of the over budget costs in the 80's as well)
While it does require less up-front capital investment to build a gas-fired power plant than a nuclear plant, the operational cost over the 30-or-more-year lifetime of the gas plant swings heavily in favor of nuclear power. And compared to coal, the overall economy is not taxed to transport millions of tons of fuel.
So-called renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are not only inefficient because their energy is so dispersed, (see EIR Jan. 19) for discussion of energy flux density), they are so unreliable that back-up power supplies (fossil or nuclear) must be available for any time it is not sunny or windy. So, not only do consumers bear the expense of inefficiency, the entire electric grid system pays the price of having to provide stand-by redundant power-generating capacity to ensure grid reliability.
It was determined in the 1970s, that alternative, "soft" energy sources would only be competitive with fossil and nuclear plants, when energy costs reached a $100/barrel oil-equivalent price. To bring these uneconomical sources on line before then, political decisions were made to spend $20 billion in Federal subsidies for alternative energy, while Federal expenditures for advanced nuclear technologies came to a screeching halt. It has been this irrational investment policy that has made nuclear power "expensive."
Q: How can the large capital cost of new nuclear power plants be financed?
A: The provision of reliable and affordable electricity,...is not a luxury, but a necessity. For this reason, in the 1930s, the electric utility industry was regulated by Federal and state governments, to protect consumers from financial manipulation and fraud, and to ensure that affordable power would be available to every home, farm, and factory.
The deregulation of the U.S. utility industry, beginning in the early 1990s, has nearly destroyed an electrical energy system that was the envy of the world. Utility companies must have access to low-interest, long-term credit, assurance from government regulators and policy-makers that "environmental" sabotage and delay will not be tolerated; and that a crash effort will be made to rebuild the nuclear manufacturing industry, which has nearly disappeared. These must be approached as a national policy, not dependent upon Wall Street financiers, but by directing resources into infrastructure through fiscal policy.
Q: But the immediate energy crisis is our dependence upon petroleum. How does nuclear energy alleviate that problem?
A: In two ways. In the long term, the only sensible and renewable replacement for petroleum-based liquid fuels is hydrogen. When next-generation, high-temperature nuclear fission reactors (which are under development now in South Africa and China) come on line, splitting water into its constituents elements will make hydrogen available as a versatile and universally available transportation fuel.
In the near term, petroleum consumption could be dramatically reduced through large-scale investment in mass transit and rail. Our decrepit diesel-fueled rail system should be electrified. Half of the nation's truck-hauled freight should be taken off the road and put on the rails. Millions of miles, and hours, of commuters driving automobiles should be eliminated, by using public transportation. A crash program to build conventional intra-city commuter trains, and magnetic levitation (maglev) systems for inter-city transport, would replace finite and polluting fossil fuel-based transport with nuclear power.
(yeah, infrastructure development that could be financed by government printing it's own debt free money and loaning it out at low interest rates that would reduce our dependence on oil. Might even be used to fix some of the bridges before they collapse)
Here we go again, making decisions based upon crony economics rather than reason, driven by greed and control of the resource rather than common interest or common sense. Combine that with continuing denial of a massive species-destroying kind, and a religious superstious ignorance that defies life and reaffirms a death wish, as we march lemming-like into the dying seas. We're too stupid to survive much longer.
Bet my ass on hopes and beliefs? Hardly.
Nukes are the last gasp of the world of big headed anthropoids who like their ancestral kin, exceeded the carrying capacity of their environment.
Merry,
The 104 nuclear power plants currently operating in the US and the 30 odd plants in the planning stages do not and cannot make weapons grade plutonium.
Plutonium is both created and fissioned during the 12 to 24 months of a reactor fuel cycle. At the end of the fuel cycle about 1% of the used fuel weight is plutonium. It is plutonium but it is decidedly not weapons grade.
Weapons grade plutonium is at least 93% pure Pu-239, preferably higher. The plutonium in used commercial fuel is less than 80% Pu-239. Used fuel has a high concentration of Pu-240 which renders the plutonium quite unsuitable for weaponry. Pu-240 releases a flood of neutrons and will cause unreliability in a weapon. Pu-240 also gives off a lot of heat which makes it very difficult to fashion into a stable pit with surrounding explosive lenses.
The IAEA says it might be possible to get reactor grade plutonium to explode but that it would not be reliable or predicatable. It has never been known to be done by any weapons state.
Bill
Bob- Ontario, and Quebec are the largest hyrdo electric power producers in the world,, it is funny that, with the so called de-regulation of Big Power, many small city and community owned hydro plants were bought and shut down and/or torn down, yah for the fish, but after a hundred years you'd think they'd be use to it, seems more like a wicked plot, to control use,,,"i sold my soul to the company Store"...takes on a whole new meaning when we owe more than we make, and growing,,,,mortgages, insurance, health care, fuel bills electric billlsss and on and on,,,but don't grow yer own or have yer own solar and smalll wind generator, and by god don't walk or heaven forbid ride a bike,,,,LED lighting, thruout the world would by estimates of the World Energy Council, save enough energy to shut downb two thousand generating plants ,,,put that in your nuclear pipe and smoke it, which of course is the problem, we are all in more danger , as well as the hidden cost of mining transprt and storage of waste, cheaper to generate? Bushit, not to mention the weapons grade plutonium from every plant,,,,half life dimwits = no life, go ahead jump in a reactor leak
You know, the main reason we "can't afford" new energy-efficient infrastructures and the social reorganizations which would readily conquer these problems is just "economics." That is, the "interest" and multiplying debt of financing these natural objectives is the barrier to accomplishments we would readily achieve otherwise.
If you want to avoid going nuclear, you better start giving serious scope to mathematically perfected economy. We could easily wean ourselves from oil in 5-10 years if we established a financial system which imposed no extrinsic costs/obstructions on doing so. Solar and wind could spring up like weeds if we paid only the costs of implementing these technologies -- stripped of the multiplying costs of interest -- and if we paid for the implementations as we consumed of them.
The overall costs of the technologies might be 25% would they are under the present central banking systems; and periodic costs would even be far less, because we would pay for the implementation over its full lifespan, versus over the far shorter span of typical "financial" terms.
http://perfecteconomy.com/pg-parable-of-perfect-economy.html
If we want to keep the lights on at a reasonable price, we must go with nuclear power plants. The only other reasonable alternatives for mass producing electricity is plants fired by oil OR natural gas OR coal OR hydraulic (assuming where you live is geologically lucky enough to have a Niagara Falls or a Hoover Dam nearby). Oil is close to production peak, natural gas will eventually approach peak and don't even consider coal although I would imagine coal peak would be greatly accelerated with massive future use.
France produces 80% or so of its electricity with nuclear technology. Ontario produces about 50% of their electricity from nuclear plants and so on. We may not like nuclear generated power but we sure as hell will need it.
Big_money,
Your suggestions to subsidize efficient applicances and geo-heat pumps is a worthy one. The applicances and pumps you are suggesting will still require electricity, however.
70% of the electricity in the US is generated by fossil fuel. You will not be able to wring a 70% reduction out of our consumption by conservation/efficiency measures. We still need new, non CO2 emitting generation if we are going to reduce our emissions.
Blobber,
If you read the fine print past the smoke and BS, the "distributed generation" that Lovins/RMI advocates is electrical generation with natural gas using small plants rather than big ones. There are some efficencies that can be gained through reduced transmission line losses and if you can use the reject heat for industrial process or a greenhouse.
Bill
cutting edge,
The US is not self sufficient in natural uranium production or enrichment capacity at this time. The expansion of both mining and enrichment will serve primarily the domestic market (although the markets for both are international).
There are a total of 4 enrichment facilities under consideration in the US rather than just the 2 you mentioned. USEC is building a new centrifuge operation in Piketon Ohio and GE is building a laser based enrichment operation in Wilmington NC.
The US market for enriched uranium has been suppressed for several years by the downblending and sale of weapons grade uranium from both US and Russian weapons stockpiles. As desireable as the demilitarization of this material is, it has significantly disrupted these markets.
Bill
Every serious student of these issues understands the following:
* Solar energy conversion is the long-term solution, but costs are still too high, and energy storage for nighttime is either an unsolved problem or another prohibitively high cost. Based on current growth and technological progress, we can reasonably project that solar will become a competitive energy source in 5-10 years and can essentially power the world some few decades from now.
* The oil crisis is here and is going to cause massive economic disruption, because we have no replacement for oil as a transportation fuel and won't until we have a new cheap energy source (solar) some decades from now.
* The climate crisis is close behind and we have to begin reducing carbon emissions now.
* Wind, solar, biomass and other renewables can take some of the burden off in the near term, but wind and biomass have only limited potential and solar is not ready yet.
* India, China, and the rest of the developing world are hungry for electricity and would like their share of the oil, or at least what's left of it, please.
* For new baseload electricity generation, there are essentially three choices: gas, coal, and nuclear. Gas is becoming too expensive and unreliable, and is needed for home heating and transportation. That leaves coal and nuclear. Therefore, either global carbon emissions are going to dramatically increase in the next decades, or else there will be thousands of new nuclear power plants built.
* New technology can provide adequate nuclear safety, nuclear waste disposal is a political, not a technical problem, and the answer to uranium depletion is reprocessing and mixed uranium plutonium fuel, plus possibly other cycles. Proliferation has become a moot issue, since many countries have nuclear power and weapons potential but have not chosen to make nuclear weapons, while India, Pakistan, North Korea and Iran have proven that short of war you can't stop any country that wants to from getting the bomb.
* In the long term, we may not want the waste and security burdens created by massive reliance on nuclear power. But in the immediate future, we have to choose between nuclear power and global meltdown.
Malthus...I prefer population control as an energy conservation strategy. Legal abortion is preferable to nuclear devastation and wastes causing genetic damage for thousands of years into the future.
Legal abortion has been in place in the US since the 1970s. Last time I checked the population is still on the rise. Are you suggesting voluntary or state mandated population measures? China has tried the latter and has not had much luck solving the problem. Not to mention that would be an infringement on our basic liberties that everybody here seems very concerned about. Fewer people on this planet is a very tantalizing solution to our woes. But I don't see how you can do it without violating many of our ethical beliefs. If there is someone out there who has a solution, I would love to hear it.
Thanks
Big Energy doesn't give a damn about the greenhouse effect or any other environmental consideration. They just want to keep the power supply centralized (nukes, coal plants, etc) to keep profits in their hands. The last thing they want is to have everyone conserve, put solar panels on their roofs, wind in their back yard, and effectively eliminate Big Energy.
The G8, under pressure from the US and Russia, embraced this new proliferation of nuclear power in 2007 and now it's time for the EU to pony up and buy more deathly technology from the two superpowers. When all else fails, sell death at gunpoint.
Blobber: Your suggestions are intriguing but confusing. I can understand 'central generation and grid distribution' but the terms 'backbone', 'distributed players' etc are beyond me.
If your ideas have technical and economic merit they deserve expository clarity. Could you provide same within the space constraints of these blogs?
My education is limited--I never was taught how many electrons there are in a moron.
Thanks.
I hope these power plants are located at least 25ft above current sea level or should it be 25 meters? I am confused as to how high the sea will rise over the next several decades, but I know that many coastal nuclear facilites will need to move or close. I prefer population control as an energy conservation strategy. Legal abortion is preferable to nuclear devastation and wastes causing genetic damage for thousands of years into the future. Who believes that nuclear power plants will be free from terrorist attacks?
The operation of nuclear power plants will also require fossil fuels for their construction and maintenace; I am willing to bet. Since fossil fuels are limited as is uranium, it looks like a smaller population working with the sun is the best long range prospect--if we even have one.
"If you look back in history, all energy sources have progressed, solutions have always been found."
you can always trust technology to make possible another turn of the destruction of the ecosystem--alway another round of fake profits and fake progress
"If you look back in history, all energy sources have progressed, solutions have always been found."
This is an odd bit of logic. There are no Mayans running around today, looking back on their history and saying things like "haven't you noticed that no matter what happens we always seem to pull through somehow?" There are no Minoan or Anasazi historians bragging about their clever solutions. If you want to consult history you in fact notice that civilizations, for one reason or another, tend to end up sandwiched into the fossil record.
The human experiment has entered a kind of chain reaction of its own in the industrial age. Wind and solar power would work for utopian villages, but the human race is embarked on a grander madness with a life of its own, requiring huge amounts of energy from finite sources. We will apparently proceed down this path whether we see any solutions on the horizon or not, reasoning, like a community of cancer cells, that our survival is assured by exponential growth alone.
The issue of nukes is one that has split the EU and is of particular import to Belgium. As the article stated, Belgium is against nukes, but is unfortunate enough to be a neighbor of France, who is one of the EU's biggest pushers of nuclear power. The French built a nuke plant 10 miles from the border with Belgium, so if a disaster at that plant happens, Belgium is affected as well. In fact, prior French conduct regarding their nukes has been most American, with the Rainbow Warrior bombing as a prime example, as well as a massive propaganda campaign by the government posing as a "public information campaign." That EU nuclear producers are actively looking for dump sites in the USA is not surprising at all.
I first want to thank cutting edge for comments regarding the poisoning of the Navajo Nation along with much of New Mexico's Indian lands and people. Then to the "There is no alternative to nukes" people, this is just crazy, technological determinant talk. The new move in electrical generation is to what is called a distributive grid run by feed in rates. Think mainframe computers morphing to the internet. That was a wires change from one central player to distributed players all talking to one another. Same thing is happening with the electricity grid. Cut the wires from centrally fired coal plants, eliminate costly transmission lines, install a backbone of concentrating solar, and back it up with distributed generation based on biodiesel, thermal, or whatever else energy entrepreneurs bring to the table in the form of dispatchable power. They'll be paid with a long term contract from rates, but only for what they generate. This system is double the efficiency of central power (nukes) generates no greenhouse gas OR poisonous waste OR toxic mining, and leaves money in the community owned grid. It so far outstrips nuke and coal, and they totally depend on each other by the way, as you don't have nukes without coal backup. It's a matter of thinking once again, not just transferring stupid coal fired grids to stupid nuke grids.
While the nuclear movement has been effectively squashed in America with no new plant built in almost 3 decades, over a hundred new coal plants are in various stages of development. China is putting up a thousand new coal plants.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the end of the planet.
The nuclear waste issue is nothing compared to soaring CO-2 levels.
People, lets be realistic here, nuclear power is here to stay. Ther is NOTHING to replace it, coal is too dirty, oil too expesive, wind and solar too unreliable, geothermal and watter limited to specific locations.
Energy consumption is going up, no matter what. No politican is crazy enough to come with a plan for "rationing" energy, that is a political suicide.
Besides, Nuclear power is very safe (Despite Chernobyl), and with luck we will have nuclear fusion in 40+ years that will resolve this.
The real problem is limited supplies of oil that is wasted for transportation, there are way more important things you need it for (ever wondered what you medicine is made of?)
The Swedes may have reservations and concerns about the safety of nuclear power. This does not stop them from producing it however. Currently (according to SKI the Swedish Nuclear Institute) 45 - 50 % of all electricity consumed in Sweden comes from their own nuclear power plants.
In the EU who will own and operate these monstrosities? will it be public or private? my guess is that the profit will go into private hands, while the cost is hurled onto the public. ANOTHER WIN-WIN for the richfilth.
I say let them build them, on the condition that THEY MUST BURY THE SPENT REACTOR RODS IN THEIR OWN BACKYARDS...
and while i sympathize with those in eastern europe who are held hostage by PUTINS policies of holding heating oil hostage, there MUST BE BETTER WAYS!!! What happened to wind, solar, and the other options?
Its amazing to me to see how brainwashed people with institutionalized backgrounds persist in believing institutions will save them. In all situations, including education, institutions have destroyed civilizations and their cultures, breeding contempt and ignorance towards all that get in the way, leaving nothing but the numbers tattooed on your arm before you are sent to the showers.
This kind of bullshit reminds me of a letter to the editor recently in a local paper. A guy writing like a teenager wrote in about a piece on nuclear energy, claiming (among other hilarious things) that disposing of nuclear waste isn't a problem. All that would be required would be to bury it in the desert with a fence around it, then post warning signs so people would know not to go in. That system would be fine for "10,000 years or more," he said.
Can we dismantle industrial civilization yet?
Cancel a nuke project, use the money to give uber-efficient fridges free to anyone with a 15 year-old fridge, get more available power in the grid, and have freon not plutonium to dispose of. Nice outcomes, except for the rich. Cancel another nuke project and use the money to install geothermal heat pumps in homes. Same result. Why do I even bother to suggest such things, the rich have profits to serve.
Europe is re-colonizing the US - and especially New Mexico - to make its fuel for nuclear power plants, leaving most of its waste outside of Europe.
For nukes to expand in Europe, Navajo people will die from the new uranium mines, large areas of the US will be polluted, and billions of gallons of water will be used and contaminated. Two new European uranium enrichment plants are being built, one in SE New Mexico and the other in Idaho. Workers will die from exposure all through the process.
This is not clean energy, it spreads invisible but extremely deadly pollution that lasts for hundreds of thousands of years.
While most participants spoke of how better to tackle "inevitable" increase in energy consumption, Lorenz believes the key lies in reducing consumption.
"No one wants to hear this because it means many changes in transport," she told IPS. "But only when consumption goes down we can bring in renewables.
"No technology can maintain our level of consumption," she added. "Not even nuclear: uranium will also run out in 40 or 50 years."
Natural law and logic dictate that our level of consumption must drop as our numbers increase. Chasing the production of more energy (and food) to meet ever-increasing demand is a dead-end - everything on this planet is finite (expect for human desire, it seems).
Once again, it comes to individual consumption habits. Can we, as individuals, get ourselves off the merry-go-round? Only if we want to.