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Published on Wednesday, December 9, 2009 by The Herald News (Mass.)
Nuclear Power: Too Expensive, Too Risky
Lofty claims about the benefits of nuclear power are coming from the Nuclear Energy Institute and others.
Meanwhile, news, financial and energy journals make clear that boiling water with uranium is the costliest and dirtiest energy choice. Even Time magazine reported Dec. 31, 2008, “It turns out that new (reactors) would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive.”
Florida Power and Light’s recent estimate for a 2-reactor system is a shocking $12 to $18 billion. The Wall St. Journal reported on nuclear’s prospects May 12, 2008 finding, “[T]he projected cost is causing some sticker shock ... double to quadruple earlier rough estimates. These estimates never include the costs of moving and managing radioactive waste — a bill that keeps coming for centuries.
Radioactive tritium has poisoned groundwater near at least 14 U.S. reactors, including Kewaunee in Wisconsin. Water under Braidwood, Dresden, Brookhaven, Palo Verde, Indian Point, Diablo Canyon, San Onofre and Kewaunee is all contaminated at levels above EPA and NRC standards.
Nuclear power is so clean that Germany legislated a phase-out of its 17 reactors by 2025. Germany’s 1998 decision was based partly on government studies that found high rates of childhood leukemia in areas near its reactors. In July 2007, the European Journal of Cancer Care published a similar report by Dr. Peter Baker of the Medical Univ. of South Carolina that found elevated leukemia incidence in children near U.S. reactors.
U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., attacked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005, writing “The nuclear industry and the NRC have automatically dismissed all studies that link increased cancer risk to exposure to low levels of radiation. The NRC needs to study — not summarily dismiss — the connection between serious health risks and radiation released from nuclear reactors.”
The New York Times reported five years ago that owners of nearly half the reactors in the U.S. “are not reserving enough money to decommission them on retirement, according to Congressional auditors, who also say the NRC is not tracking the money carefully.”
In its July 2007 study “Too Hot to Handle,” the Oxford Research Group calls the hope of quickly building new reactors a “pipe dream.” Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy & Environmental Research, says in his book, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, “Even the leaders of the nuclear industry have said that they will not build new plants without 100 percent federal loan guarantees.”
In his 2008 report “The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power,” Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, concludes, “While little private capital is going into nuclear power, investors are pouring tens of billions of dollars into wind farms each year.
And while the world’s nuclear generating capacity is estimated to expand by only 1,000 megawatts this year, wind generating capacity will likely grow by 30,000 megawatts.”
The Washington Post reported Nov. 24 that “leading environmental figures, including former Vice President Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear’s promise,” because of the high cost of building and the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. Indeed, but leading security and big business figures are skeptical for the same reasons.
The federal Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism has called for halting subsidies that promote nuclear power’s expansion.
In the commission’s Oct. 21 report “The Clock Is Ticking,” recommendation No. 3 is, “The U.S. should work internationally toward strengthening the non-proliferation regime ... discouraging, to the extent possible, the use of financial incentives in the promotion of civil nuclear power.”
And no less than Jeffrey Immelt, current CEO of General Electric — one of the world’s richest nuclear engineering firms — discourages new reactor construction because of financial liabilities.
In the Nov. 18, 2007 London Financial Times, he says, “If you were a utility CEO and looked at your world today, you would just do gas and wind. You would say (they are) easier to site, digestible today and I don’t have to bet my company on any of this stuff. You would never do nuclear. The economics are overwhelming.”
The plague of radiation-induced illness is overwhelming too. Let’s re-write the milk add: Got cancer?
Meanwhile, news, financial and energy journals make clear that boiling water with uranium is the costliest and dirtiest energy choice. Even Time magazine reported Dec. 31, 2008, “It turns out that new (reactors) would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive.”
Florida Power and Light’s recent estimate for a 2-reactor system is a shocking $12 to $18 billion. The Wall St. Journal reported on nuclear’s prospects May 12, 2008 finding, “[T]he projected cost is causing some sticker shock ... double to quadruple earlier rough estimates. These estimates never include the costs of moving and managing radioactive waste — a bill that keeps coming for centuries.
Radioactive tritium has poisoned groundwater near at least 14 U.S. reactors, including Kewaunee in Wisconsin. Water under Braidwood, Dresden, Brookhaven, Palo Verde, Indian Point, Diablo Canyon, San Onofre and Kewaunee is all contaminated at levels above EPA and NRC standards.
Nuclear power is so clean that Germany legislated a phase-out of its 17 reactors by 2025. Germany’s 1998 decision was based partly on government studies that found high rates of childhood leukemia in areas near its reactors. In July 2007, the European Journal of Cancer Care published a similar report by Dr. Peter Baker of the Medical Univ. of South Carolina that found elevated leukemia incidence in children near U.S. reactors.
U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., attacked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 2005, writing “The nuclear industry and the NRC have automatically dismissed all studies that link increased cancer risk to exposure to low levels of radiation. The NRC needs to study — not summarily dismiss — the connection between serious health risks and radiation released from nuclear reactors.”
The New York Times reported five years ago that owners of nearly half the reactors in the U.S. “are not reserving enough money to decommission them on retirement, according to Congressional auditors, who also say the NRC is not tracking the money carefully.”
In its July 2007 study “Too Hot to Handle,” the Oxford Research Group calls the hope of quickly building new reactors a “pipe dream.” Dr. Arjun Makhijani, the president of the Institute for Energy & Environmental Research, says in his book, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy, “Even the leaders of the nuclear industry have said that they will not build new plants without 100 percent federal loan guarantees.”
In his 2008 report “The Flawed Economics of Nuclear Power,” Lester Brown, president of the Earth Policy Institute, concludes, “While little private capital is going into nuclear power, investors are pouring tens of billions of dollars into wind farms each year.
And while the world’s nuclear generating capacity is estimated to expand by only 1,000 megawatts this year, wind generating capacity will likely grow by 30,000 megawatts.”
The Washington Post reported Nov. 24 that “leading environmental figures, including former Vice President Al Gore, remain skeptical of nuclear’s promise,” because of the high cost of building and the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. Indeed, but leading security and big business figures are skeptical for the same reasons.
The federal Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism has called for halting subsidies that promote nuclear power’s expansion.
In the commission’s Oct. 21 report “The Clock Is Ticking,” recommendation No. 3 is, “The U.S. should work internationally toward strengthening the non-proliferation regime ... discouraging, to the extent possible, the use of financial incentives in the promotion of civil nuclear power.”
And no less than Jeffrey Immelt, current CEO of General Electric — one of the world’s richest nuclear engineering firms — discourages new reactor construction because of financial liabilities.
In the Nov. 18, 2007 London Financial Times, he says, “If you were a utility CEO and looked at your world today, you would just do gas and wind. You would say (they are) easier to site, digestible today and I don’t have to bet my company on any of this stuff. You would never do nuclear. The economics are overwhelming.”
The plague of radiation-induced illness is overwhelming too. Let’s re-write the milk add: Got cancer?
Copyright © 2009 GateHouse Media, Inc.
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49 Comments so far
Show AllThe nuclear power industry has received boatloads of corporate welfare during the past 50 years. It will take even more taxpayer money to fund construction, guarantee loans, and insure new nuclear power plants.
As the high quality, easy to mine uranium supply diminishes, it will take more fossil fuels to mine, transport and process uranium, thereby increasing nuclear power's carbon footprint. Waste disposal will require more fossil fuel, not to mention the health hazards of the waste.
Source?
It was claimed 80 percent of fuel was from demilitarizing Nuclear material. That is simply not the case even by the link you provided. As per your link this is closer to 13 percent. Furthermore as per the link all existing stockpiles would only account for one years production meaning Uranium mining as usual once that exhausted.
If every Nuclear weapon dismantled and all the stockpiles of weapons Grade enriched Uranium were to be used as fuel this would only be 12 years total supply at current rates and we know THAT is not going to happen.
Furthermore from what I can clean this does not BURN away the material. It merely dilutes it so it can no longer be used in weapons. The radioactive waste is still there and from what I can glean that amount of Material now "waste" that has to be stored increases exponentially in quantity.
This is like storing a bottle of 100 percent alcohol in a cabinet then , not wanting your kids to get drunk on it while you on vacation you pour the alcohol into 50 bottles and watering it down.
You now gotta store 50 bottles.
This looks accurate, as nearly as I can check.
Weapons uranium gets mined too. We're just talking about extra transport and storage here - quite a bit extra, if it actually comes from Eurasia to the US.
I am very much against the nuclear industry, but given that our modus operandi is choosing the lesser of two evils, I contend that we should move quickly to nukes and rapidly phase out fossil fuel users, and spend the next 30 years developing technologies that will replace nukes.
If we spent just half of our military budget on fusion research, I believe that we would have abundant energy from safe, clean fusion on-line within 30 years.
How about natural gas?
Methane? Fossil fuel. Leave it in the ground.
There are significant problems with using methane to power a continent-wide grid. Transport and security being the 2 biggies. Ever seen an ocean-going methane carrier? Easy target, and equivalent explosive yield to a tactical nuke. I don't wanna be within 10 miles of one.
"Easy target, and equivalent explosive yield to a tactical nuke."
So much for that!
We've got plenty in Texas and fuel generating plants with it. Its not as bad as coal and we pipe it to the plants. I need to find out hom much exposure to blast a plant has.
Thanks.
Gas compressor plants are not a significant problem for safety (not much different to a refinery), unless you live near them. I heard a report on NPR last week about the noise problems associated with living near such plants.
Yield = to a tactical nuke is still far less than a typical nuclear power plant, and we're not talking about the fallout, in most scenarios the greater lethality.
Nuclear power plants don't explode. We have plenty of history demonstrating that.
The equation is simple. Coal or nuclear. Take your pick now. Today. Truly, wind/solar/etc are not a viable 100% substitute (yet), despite what the environmental lobby (they have an a hidden agenda too) tells us.
We simply cannot wait. We need to flip the off switch on coal today.
Actually, we have no history whatsoever that demonstrates that, since no nuclear plant has been hit by a bunker-buster nuclear weapon --- the most obvious of many ways one might be attacked.
Perhaps you assumed I meant an explosion caused by a criticality in the plant's core. Let me clarify.
Involvement in an explosion, in any case, need not involve a criticality. Many explosions are not nuclear, and these do not cease simply because nuclear materials might be present. Were the plant materials involved in a criticality, however --- certainly a possibility where an explosion to compress them --- that would be a major event.
The equation is not simple, and nothing near what want to make it. Without implying that these are your own motives, WTF, such things get repeated almost exclusively because the industry cannot stand introspection and its actions do not bear public scrutiny.
Wind, solar, and etc are far more viable than nuclear technology remade even to the defunct standards of the 1980's and even if we relegate judgement strictly to questions of economics. They can be up and running and even pay for themselves in less time than it would take to create a single nuclear plant from start to finish, let alone run it long enough to pay for itself --- let alone take care of its waste and the people it kills.
Sure the environmentalists have agenda, and human foibles. We have seen some lately with the famous GW email scandal. But this does not mean they match or approach the likes of the nuclear industry, which has what must be as dark a commercial history as any group on the planet.
The environmental movement could use some openness itself, but when I find it irradiating soldiers, farmers, and villagers and hiding the practice decades later, I may be willing to say there's some parity here.
Of course this was military, but there is a tremendous overlap in the people responsible for private and public nuclear arms and power.
This overlap becomes more extensive as one moves higher along the food chain. In the NRC particularly, conflict of interest is rife and almost universally undisclosed.
That does not mean that farmers in Utah or elsewhere should sue power companies over government actions. However, it does mean that the industry is opaque about its practices and can be expected to remain opaque. It has been opaque. The industry has yet to straightforwardly acknowledge the ongoing damages from the Three Mile Island incident, for instance.
Of course, that's not surprising. They have tremendous legal liabilities. Over the States alone, billions of dollars potentially rides on the precedents. It would be unreasonable to expect them to act honestly. But by that very token, management of radioactive materials should not be allowed any organizations so structured.
What kind of organization should manage them? Got me.
WTF said:
"Nuclear power plants don't explode. We have plenty of history demonstrating that."
Absolutely Untrue. Hydrogen explosions did occur at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and ruptured the containment vessels of both plants and in both cases, the public was not informed of the danger. Witnesses to both explosions have documented their observations on youtube.
Each one exposed millions of people to a higher cancer risk. There have been hundreds of accidents and near accidents in the nuclear power industry. Here is a list of the ones we know about and are still suffering from:
http://planetliberty.wikidot.com/nuclear-power-incidents
Notice in the Time magazine radiation detection figure, that just one accident is all it takes to seriously contaminate dozens of countries. Just one atom of P-238 caught in your lungs or walled off by your immune system will keep irradiating you until the day you die.
Nuclear power is unsafe, and not worth the risk under any conditions. People who advocate it's use have never considered the fact that none of the containment vessels can withstand a crash from a B747 since the engineering standard was developed before the 747 came into existence. But the World Trade Center was supposed to withstand a much bigger B707 (vs. B757) and not collapse, and we all know how that worked out.
The ground downwind of Chernobyl is now uninhabitable for 600 years. Multiple closed cities and towns are marked on Google Earth where nobody is allowed to live.
It's just not worth it.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Hi Billy,
Great to see you posting again. Passion, in of itself, has little to do with my posts. My Conclusion was formed from years of reading non-mainstream accounts by operators inside the industry, who's little known positions now mirror my own. See my other post in this thread for the existence of the position that the TMI containment vessel ruptured due to a hydrogen explosion. This was also borne out in the television documentary "Minutes to Meltdown" where the narrative refers to a large explosion that shook the control room and made the operators reference the fictional movie that had just come out called "the China Syndrome".
To draw a parallel here: The factual government account of the reason for invading Iraq was that there were WMD's gravely threatening the world. We now know, that the government account of what happened was complete fabrication by the GWB administration. NO WMD's were found at all. So I assume, your "factual error" charge is based on the Federal Report of the TMI disaster.
Your argument on the basis of industry-sanctioned self-investigation is not credible, imho. I do not think, however, there is some vast nuke-plant conspiracy anymore than airlines hide safety problems and hope it won't result in another fatal accident. It is just the nature of man himself to believe that he can mitigate huge risk to improve the bigger picture of which he is certain is unappreciated by the masses.
Your point is good about the U-238 atom. But when it releases that alpha particle, the potential for genetic damage to DNA telomeres is there, creating an immortal line of tumor cells that your body is not likely to stop (possibly cancer stem cells goes the theory.) Of course, let's suppose that the dust molecule inhaled contains a particle with ten thousand U-238 atoms glued to it.
It's Russian Roulette my friend (pardon the pun). See:
https://qed.princeton.edu/getfile.php?REMOVETHIS
f=Radioactive_fall-out_from_the_Chernobyl_accident.jpg
By the way, I really appreciated your explanations over the years to we laymen. You previously explained the Russian large graphite reactor design to me and, I am as a result, a little more knowledgable on the subject.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Well, I've read the time-stamped transcripts of the operators themselves, and I got the impression that they were scared to death. Instrumentation failed to the point that, not only did they not know what was going on in the reactor, but they were getting false off-scale readings, and in some cases misunderstanding what those readings represented (core and water temps.)
How do you know that during the purge/vent procedure, these operators, who were cited by the NRC as being mis-trained, didn't introduce compressed air by mistake? How do you know that they didn't prevent an equalization chamber outside the reactor (but still inside the containment building) from introducing slightly higher pressure into a low pressure, hydrogen-rich area?
I have a friend who received the presidential metal of honor for his EPA work during the crisis. He is a PHD in Nuclear Medicine and physics and was on the spot when this happened. I was impressed with the section of "Minutes to Meltdown" were the EPA helicopter was hovering over the reactor containment building. He dismissed it as absurd, typical government flying (he is also a helicopter pilot) It was carried-out, if I understood him correctly, just to give the public the impression that something was being done about the situation. He said that those guys could do nothing in that meandering light and variable wind to assist or help the situation.
Bill knew the situation was bad, so he rigged up a radiation detector coupled to his cell phone, dropped it in the river downstream of the plant and got the hell out of there. He wasn't sticking around.
I realize, you probably work for the nuclear lobby so you won't be forthcoming on my other post which details the NRC own words about a "hydrogen burn." [28] The Kemeny Commission referred to "a burn or an explosion that caused pressure to increase by 28 pounds per square inch in the containment building".[36] The Washington Post reported that "At about 2 p.m., with pressure almost down to the point where the huge cooling pumps could be brought into play, a small hydrogen explosion jolted the reactor."[37]
Clearly, your bias working for the industry won't let you acknowledge that full-scale on the TMI containment building pressure vessel (outside the reactor) was something like 40psi? That was the high-scale limit, if I recall correctly, of the instrumentation. So an event could have been over 500 psi consistent with the explosion that rocked the control room but we'll never know because the instrumentation only went up to 40psi. But it happen in a one second interval and then fell immediately down to 14psi.
Separately I have also read, that Leukemia rates downwind of the reactor are now 4,900 percent higher than the rest of the country.
Look Bill, if we introduce another fifty plants in the US, as private profit centers you know what's going to happen. I don't want you jumping out the window when some rookie operator makes another mistake, and you remember this conversation.
Cheers,
TJ
"Bill knew the situation was bad, so he rigged up a radiation detector coupled to his cell phone, dropped it in the river downstream of the plant and got the hell out of there."
There is something awry with your story; there were no cell phones in 1979.
You're right,
Cell phone was the wrong word. But you can be sure, that EPA had big bulky mobile phones back then. You do believe there were helicopters don't you? President Carter believed him. He gave him a medal.
Watch "30 Minutes to Meltdown" if you can find it somewhere. Great documentary that shows actual footage and interviews.
Meanwhile, here is Nuclear engineer and long-time industry executive Arnie Gundersen's technical discussion asserting that a hydrogen explosion occurred that ruptured the containment vessel allowing a radioactive (plume) cloud to escape and cause contamination to residents up to 1000 times in excess admitted by the government:
http://www.tmia.com/march26
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
"You do believe there were helicopters don't you?"
Your ad hominem is out of line.
Sorry WTF,
That was a poor attempt at humor. I should have put in a smiley there. I'm used to the anti-global warming crowd discounting my whole post based on my spelling or grammar. Sarcasm is my only defense. And I should point out that some minor amount of my TMI details are wrong as well since I'm not an nuclear engineer. But imho, numerous sources indicate the situation was far graver and deadlier than ever admitted to the public. Apparently, after the hydrogen explosion, er..... excuse me Bill, after the "hydrogen BURN" (this means Oxygen WAS in the room) the pressure dropped all the way to zero, not 14 psi as I stated. 14.7 is standard sea level pressure and I didn't realize the "sub-chamber" that ignited was next to another chamber that was calibrated to read zero when it really was 14.7 psi on a Standard ISA day. Any way you cut it, the "pressure vessel" was lost and since all functioning radiation sensors inside the plant but outside of the reactor went off-scale high they had actually lost complete control of the plant and didn't report the rupture for two days. But they did refer to it as a rupture: "without any containment vessel".
The analog paper plotter pen jumped off the page in a second consistent with an explosion according to Arnie Gundersen.
Others with backgrounds in nuclear medicine have documented that residents lost their hair, their animals died and mutations showed up in the animal and plant descendants downwind of the reactor. Hershey memos were leaked, I've heard prompting them to discard their chocolate bars and destroy the milk cattle supply.
The same thing almost happened in Rancho Seco California (near Sacramento), and residents got the plant shut down permanently. I believe that was the sister plant to TMI if I am not mistaken. But the MSM kept a lid on that one, and I suspect most of you have never heard of that one.
Secrecy is for North Korea, or the old USSR; it is unhealthy and UnAmerican to cover up FUBARS of this magnitude. The above is, as all my posts are, are just my opinions only.
TJ
We could have abundant clean energy online in about five years with wind and solar. There is no need to spend trillions "developing" fusion energy. If they haven't figured it out by now they never will. For the cost of Iraq alone we could have been up and running with wind and solar and already exporting energy. Get your head out of the nuclei whether for fission or fusion. Too expensive and too unreliable and too dangerous. How do you know what dangers may or may not come with "fusion"?
Building a solar array that covers the majority of Arizona, and a wind farm that covers half of the Dakotas will take far longer than 5 years, and what dangers to the environment lurk there?
Remember, we have 25,000 nuclear weapons in this country, and the only way to dispose of that material is .... burning it in a reactor. Do the sums. 100 new reactors operating for 30 years will produce far, far less waste than just burying 25,000 warheads.
Fusion is not expensive. We are spending this year a paltry $2B/yr for fusion research, and is the reason why energy from fusion is not further advanced. The Europeans are way ahead of us. We spent the equivalent of 2 years of the US' GNP developing power from fission. We will need to spend similar sums to get fusion right.
And besides, fusion research gives us far greater insights into the origin and evolution of our universe. Its fun.
Even at present levels of use and allowing for profits to installation companies, residential solar power pays for itself over several years to a decade --- in all cases considerably less than a nuclear plant, even without allowing for the costs of waste disposal, and health costs that go almost universally ignored. In quite a few places, wind turbines pay for themselves even more quickly.
The power companies would institute them en masse very quickly could they only be insured that they would have exclusive ownership.
The folks who exposed soldiers, farmers, and fishermen to radiation and largely continue to deny it told us that fission plants were clean and nearly cost-free decades ago. They have repeated the same hoopla with variations throughout all the decades since.
Were fusion to be developed, were it to be adoptable, were it to be adopted, we would remain with the problems of opacity that come naturally come of such a highly concentrated and capital-intensive source.
We have technologies that could replace current electricity sources right now. Developing more would be great, but imagining that something wonderful might happen makes no reason to avoid developing what we have.
Since we know already that the nukes (read "light water nuclear reactors") cause horrible problems, just asserting that we should switch to them makes no sense. The plants themselves might be temporary; the problems are not, at least in terms of human time.
Over decades of intermittent research, I have seen nothing that indicates that nuclear radiation already loosed will not outlast the human species.
As to the nuclear budget, why throw good money after bad?
During a drought in France within the past several years, river levels had fallen so that the reactors couldn't be cooled. French officials soberly announced that nuclear disaster had been a breath away. Official comments were made about re-thinking French dependence on nuclear.
That Germans would want to discontinue nuclear should be a colossal red flag to 350+ million Americans, too.
It's my personal hope that citizens step up to insist on high standards for public health and safety along with authentic, visionary energy solutions instead of lazy, crazed status quo and money addictions.
The collective genius, creativity and experience in the nation of people is colossal. Do let's use it for wholesome change.
Of all the self-inflicted wounds mankind has "imposed" upon itself and the planet, nuclear power and weapons are, without a doubt, the most dangerous. The most stupefying element is the half-life of nuclear radiation and the need to cordon off decommissioned plants for at least 50,000 (which, btw, is at least twice the length of years the current edition of mankind, Homo Homo Sapiens, has been on the planet). If future generations does manage to overcome the poisoned legacy we are leaving them, expect those who enabled nukes to replace names like Satan & Baal as sobriquets of scorn and derision in the future.
I have an idea. Instead of spending money building nuclear reactors that aren't really feasible and create toxic waste that lasts hundreds of thousands of year, instead of saying its either nukes or wind or some other high-intensity development and maintenance techno-fix that will never provide what oil has provided...why don't we just USE LESS ENERGY!
I am continually amazed at the arguments that we either HAVE to compromise our childrens' future or spend billions on building massive wind farms or gargantuan solar arrays, as if the amount of energy we think we need is set in stone. For gods sake, is the US that intent on maintaining a lavish lifestyle that we would risk everything?
You will find the wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_energy_consumption_per_capita fascinating.
What reduction in US energy expenditure do you propose?
Cutting our usage by 90% would put our lifestyle and manufacturing ability on par with the poorest nations in Africa. I don't think Americans will buy that.
Cutting our usage by 66% would put our lifestyle and manufacturing ability on par with the Baltic States, Mexico and Eastern European countries. I don't think Americans will buy that, either.
Cutting our usage by 50% would put our lifestyle and manufacturing ability on par with the poorer western European countries. That might work, if city-dwellers can get used to the idea of bicycling everywhere.
I don't want to dampen your enthusiasm, and I agree, it is a wonderful idea and you are absolutely right. But you've got to sell it to 350 million Americans. Reality check, please.
"Cutting our usage by 90% . . . 66% . . . 50% . . . . "
Energy use, manufacturing, and quality of life have no fixed arithmetic relation.
For example, poor Asian and rich European countries both manufacture more than the US. Quality of life is subjective, but by most accepted indices most of Europe now enjoys a distinctly better quality of life than do Americans. They live longer in better health, stay married and raise their children more,
Accordingly, everything depends on how usage would be cut. Just flipping all the switches off and blocking the freeways would probably do worse than you say. But, to my knowledge, no one suggests that.
What could we cut? Most things, frankly. Here are a very few big ones.
Almost all American homes are built with almost no eye to resource use. Most Americans assume that production will be owned by corporations and centered away from residences. Zoning laws and architecture reflect this.
The high desert outside of Los Angeles is still full of housing developments of 2,000 square foot four bedroom houses on guinea-pig-cage lots all built together a mile or more outside of town. This is like an exercise in how many things can be done wrong at once. The houses are made of wood, drywall, and stucco on poured concrete slabs. All these materials have to be transported from elsewhere although the ground on which the houses sit is a superior building material -- as the Cal Earth Institute, not a dozen miles away, clearly demonstrates. Greywater systems are now legal in California (hooray!) but despite being out in the desert where land is as cheap as anywhere in California, no one has them. Even the square shape of the buildings catch the sun like sails catch the wind. Many are painted dark because someone imagines that this will sell, though that will draw the heat in the 100-degree-plus summer.
Homes can be built that require no heating or almost no heating in almost any climate in the US. The same goes for office buildings; these currently suck up electricity with AC and heating something like 24/7. Properly designed, these would be more comfortable than they are now, and cost almost nothing.
Decades ago, when I walked through the streets of Paris at night, in many places the lights would turn on before me as I walked, and turn off behind me after I passed.
Don't you reckon Americans could be trained to do that?
Transportation -- in any or nearly any urban environment, public transportation costs the environment and the larger community way, way less than private autos. Tax funds in these areas, which house the great majority of the population, should move away from maintaining infrastructure for cars and towards subsidizing public transportation.
This should be kept free or low cost in most or all populous areas.
Americans probably should quit buying a lot of junk they do not want, but the major difficulty in selling them on that is that their media, politicians, business leaders and many cultural icons are all trying to sell them on exactly the opposite.
But we have some advantages. Americans do not want much of what they buy, and throw it out almost immediately and almost unused. As a group, they feel used and unhappy, and their pharmacy companies are upping the price of 3/4 of everything that keeps them addled.
The reality check comes back as such: this is changing fast, albeit partly for the worse. We need examples to show, venues from which to shout, and a willingness to vote out incumbents.
Wood framing in LA is dictated by the need for earthquake mitigation. Yes, there are alternative building practices, but they cost money. Lots of money. I estimate the Cal Earth Inst cost $1000/sq ft.
Look, I don't have an argument with you. I don't like nukes anymore than the greenie next to me. I already live off the grid with solar, and spend some of my work hours playing with wind turbines. But no matter how much you get upset, this stuff is not mainstream for the American energy consumer, and it will not be for at least 1, possibly 2, or likely 3 generations.
The climate change clock is ticking, and coal is the biggest culprit. We either do nothing and keep debating and lobbying and hoping Americans wake up, or we flip the switch on coal and replace it immediately with a form that is amenable to industry, Joe American and Congress. Otherwise, we'll be having this exact same conversation in 20 years time, and it will have been raining outside for 40 days and nights.
Congratulations on living off the grid; you are certainly doing better than I, and I hope my disagreements do not come across as motivated by animosity or pretentiousness.
You are wrong about earth construction on two big points, however. Since you are obviously serious about all this and have put quite a bit of time into research, you should check this out.
First, proper earthen construction is safe in earthquakes.
The Cal Earth buildings were tested in Hesperia, California, less than 20 miles off the San Andreas Fault in California's Area 4 earthquake country. The testing equipment placed over twice the stress required before the equipment itself started to break and the test was halted. They still stand several earthquakes later with no problems that I could discover on inspection.
I am told they have to be done right, though.
Fire damage has likely cost Californians more than earthquakes, and all-earthen buildings do not burn.
Next, earthen buildings are cheap.
The two Cal-Earth related projects I know of personally have cost $30,000 and 75,000 from start to finish - the latter considerably inflated by irrelevant municipal code issues.
That's a lot less than stick structures would have cost.
But there's no need to trust me on this. Google "Taos Earthships" and you will find houses off-the-grid ready outside of Taos, New Mexico from $109,000.
These are not the Cal Earth houses, but designs from Michael Reynolds. He says his off-the-grid houses cost more or less what a standard stick house would cost, assuming that one pays for all the labor and plans and does nothing oneself.
Cob houses are worth checking out, too. Owner-builders have created these in Northern California and Oregon. Unlike the Cal Earth structures, one needs to create a traditional roof, but otherwise the material costs can run in the hundreds rather than thousands of dollars.
"Coal is the biggest culprit" relates strictly to the climate issue, and all other problems are advancing at the same time.
For whatever this is worth, I am not upset with you. My state of mind is irrelevant anyway, and I don't intend to make it appear otherwise. However, what becomes mainstream for Americans, Joe & Congress included, will continue to have a lot to do with how they can have energy in practice and day to day. That is by no means fixed.
Were the kind of systems you have explored to receive anything like the massive subsidies that coal and nuclear power have received, they would become mainstream very quickly. I agree that we cannot shut the big plants down completely and immediately. But giving further subsidy to nuclear or coal will not provide a transition to new technology, but further perceived normalcy for its damages and further acceptance by Joe American and the Congress he takes for his.
I had this conversation in the 1980's, as you likely did yourself. But here we are, having to play with solutions in our spare time while so many of the hours we sell go to destruction.
In this case, the limitations are not the materials or the technology, but education and social structures.
We have no disagreements, just passion for what we do, and frustration when it takes longer than necessary. :)
I suspect the Cal Earth Inst was built with volunteer labor. In such conditions, buildings can be very cheap. I have attended straw bale workshops and with volunteer labor, the buildings can be very cheap. Cob building is another goodie when using volunteers, but not much good where I am in New Mexico (the soil is too rocky, and screening increases the cost). Adobe construction is also expensive because the bricks are expensive, but if you do it yourself, can be cheap (but the permitting is a headache).
I took a trailer home and bermed it; total cost $8,000 (including the trailer), but again, I did most of the labor myself, which was not much as I used a tractor. The home is not permitted. Yes, building can be done cheaply. I know Michael Reynolds and have considered his Earthship design, but decided against their use in southern NM (they work great in cooler deserts). For what it is worth, Earthships are notorious leakers, and require a lot of work to make them water tight.
However, for folk living in suburban environments with covenants, full-time jobs and a desire to maintain property values, contract labor has to be used. In such environments, alternative building practices become very, very expensive because finding experienced contractors is extremely hard, and a hassle to permit.
Again, we need a society-wide paradigm shift, and accomplishing this with 350 million Americans who are mostly conservative will not happen overnight.
Nuclear power = Attempted National Suicide
Three Mile Island almost completely melted down and got into the ground water and the river whereby millions would have to evacuate to another state. Up to that point, the argument went, it was safe because no catastrophy ever happened.
At least two million people got zapped and all the MSM did was report what the EPA helicopter found while trying to chase a "plume" of radioactive combustibles in almost still air (which is virtually impossible to do.) A former nuclear CEO on youtube claims the pressure graph inside the containment building went to infinity and then to immediately back down to ambient (outside) pressure indicating a huge hydrogen explosion had ruptured the containment building. TMI officials claimed this did not happen and that the public was safe. The explosion version of what happened is verified some say, by the hot chocolate bars that showed up downwind, as the milk cattle 100 miles away all got sick and produced Iodine 131 in their milk.
Let's just hope you weren't eating chocolate bars back then.
From wiki:
On the third day following the accident, a hydrogen bubble was discovered in the dome of the pressure vessel, and become the focus of concern. A hydrogen explosion might not only breach the pressure vessel, but, depending on its magnitude, might compromise the integrity of the containment vessel leading to large scale release of radiation. Fortunately, it was determined that there was no oxygen present in the pressure vessel, a prerequisite for hydrogen to burn or explode. Immediate steps were taken to reduce the hydrogen bubble, and by the following day it was significantly smaller. Over the next week, steam and hydrogen were removed from the reactor using a plasma recombiner and, controversially, by venting straight to the atmosphere.
[edit]Radiation release
According to the official figures, as compiled by the 1979 Kemeny Commission from Metropolitan Edison and NRC data, a maximum of 480 petabecquerels (13 million curies) of radioactive noble gases (primarily xenon) were released by the event.[1] However these noble gases were considered relatively harmless,[28] and only 481 to 629 GBq (13 to 17 curies) of thyroid cancer-causing iodine-131 were released.[1] Total releases according to these figures were a relatively small proportion of the estimated 37 EBq (10 billion curies) in the reactor.[28] It was later found that about half the core had melted, and the cladding around 90% of the fuel rods had failed,[6][29] with five feet of the core gone, and around 20 tons of uranium flowing to the bottom head of the pressure vessel.[30] However, the reactor vessel maintained integrity and contained the damaged fuel.[31]
HOWEVER, the official figures are not uncontested. Independent measurements provided evidence of radiation levels up to five times higher than normal in locations hundreds of miles downwind from TMI.[32][33][unreliable source?] According to Randall Thompson, the lead health physicist at TMI after the accident (a veteran of the US Navy nuclear submarine program and a self-confessed "nuclear geek"), radiation releases were hundreds if not THOUSANDS of times higher.[28][34] Some other insiders, including Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear industry executive turned whistle-blower,[35] concur; Gundersen offers evidence, based on pressure monitoring data, for a hydrogen explosion shortly before 2 p.m. on 28 March 1979, which would have provided the means for a high dose of radiation to occur.[28][unreliable source?] Gundersen cites affidavits from four reactor operators according to which the plant manager was aware of a dramatic pressure spike, after which the internal pressure dropped to outside pressure. Gundersen also notes that the control room shook and doors were blown off hinges. However official NRC reports refer merely to a "hydrogen burn." [28] The Kemeny Commission referred to "a burn or an explosion that caused pressure to increase by 28 pounds per square inch in the containment building".[36] The Washington Post reported that "At about 2 p.m., with pressure almost down to the point where the huge cooling pumps could be brought into play, a small hydrogen explosion jolted the reactor."[37]
A later scientific study noted that the official emission figures were consistent with available dosimeter data,[38] though others have noted the incompleteness of this data, particularly for releases early on.[39] UNQUOTE (Caps emphasis mine).
According to Randy King a Nuclear power consultant in 1982, only two of the seven radiation detectors were working outside the containment building. But since they only went up to 1000 millirems and stayed pegged-out at that limit of 1000 millirems for three days, the government's radiation release calculation has to be way low. From what I can tell, Three Mile Island was a massive cover up. How many more have we had?
See the unreported accident at Rancho Seco, California as an example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rancho_Seco
Steam generator dry-out
On 20 March 1978 a failure of power supply for the plant's non-nuclear instrumentation system led to steam generator dryout. (ref NRC LER 312/78-001). In an on-going study (ref NRC Commission Document SECY-05-0192 Attachment 2 [1]) of "precursors" that could lead to a nuclear disaster if additional failures were to have occurred, the NRC concluded (as of 24-Oct-2005) that this event at Rancho Seco was the third highest ranked occurrence (second highest if one omits the event at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station).
When the reactor was at power, a failure of the NNI power supply resulted in a loss of main feedwater, which caused a reactor trip. Because instrumentation drift falsely indicated that the steam generator contained enough water, control room operators did not take prompt action to open the EFW flow control valves to establish secondary heat removal. This resulted in steam generator dryout. UNQUOTE
Nuclear power is not safe in my humble opinion. Here are the dozens and dozens of known accidents and incidents I am aware of:
http://planetliberty.wikidot.com/nuclear-power-incidents
AND You might want to watch this before you decide it's O.K. to live in a state with a nuclear power plant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=671cf3tpJY0&feature=related
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
Both coal and nuclear forms of energy are capable of generating endless wars, poverties, and more health care costs. Shame on government for providing taxpayer funded subsidization to artificially lower the prices and mislead the public. Oh for the love of God, please stop the nukes !
If there was ever a poison that could wipe out humanity, it is radwaste. One Chernobyl made uninhabitable an area the size of Alabama. Marshall Islanders can never occupy some of their ancestral Islands and atolls like Bikini because of nuclear tests. Vast areas of desert in Nevada can never be occupied due to the radioactivity left there from nuclear bomb tests. People around Three Mile Island cannot easily prove how they developed cancers and chronic diseases over the years Radioisotopes like Plutonium last for 150,000 years and one dust speck of it if inhaled will cause cancer.
If there ever was no such thing as a free lunch, it is a nuclear powered one. Radioactive substances bio-concentrate in living tissue and make plants and animals carcinogenic. It is favored by the oligarchy as an enormously expensive, but publicly subsidized centralized energy source that produces big profits for them with no liabilities regardless of human costs.
The hazards of nuclear power are greater than the power of human society (and intelligence) to control them. Think Yucca Mountain. Think storing radwaste for at least 50,000 years.
Now think about this: your family may have some old reel-to-reel tapes lying around in storage. Do you have a machine that can play them? Ditto 33-1/3-rpm records. Do you have a working turntable? Or how about all those "floppy disks" full of geneological data created on an old Apple II; have you transferred the data to a modern Mac? Played any cassette tapes lately? When was the last time you used a three-and-a-half-inch disk in lieu of a USB flash drive? I'm talking about a mere thirty-year technology progression/regression here where the sole issue is how to store and access data. For most of us, the method used by the previous generation is lost to us.
Do you remember your great-grandfather's sister's given name? If it was written somewhere, can you find the document? Do you know where she is buried?
We are little more than talking monkeys and most of it is thoughtless babble, and much posted on this thread is proof.
Simply put, the nuclear fuel cycle is inimical to the integrity of DNA, NOT because it cannot be controlled or isolated from DNA IN THEORY, but because such theoretical control is beyond the capacity of the human monkey. (The decision to bomb Hiroshima, thus releasing tons of radiation into the atmosphere when scientists had known for decades that radiation was dangerous, was a human monkey decision.)
Think Oppenheimer mumbling about Vishnu after the Trinity "Proof of Concept." In many ways life is magical, but there are also empirical Laws of Nature that no amount of "magical thinking" can reverse. It turns out that from the perspective of Life as we know it, nuclear power is an oxymoron.
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OleManRiver,
Radiation has always been and will always be. Our DNA evolved to where it is now based on its past history which was more radioactive than it is now. I don’t think you are being scientifically accurate in your description how radiation interacts with our DNA.
Please take a moment to look at this wikipedia link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_hormesis
Left over nuclear fuel that our current fleet of nuclear power plants and hopefully are new nuclear power plants will produce is a major issue. But let us consider what is more pressing left over “nuclear waste” or the deadline of 2050 when scientist think that the increasing acidity in our oceans created by CO2 will kill off all oceanic crustacean life. I think having an ocean filled with clams, fish, coral reefs and shrimp is a more pressing issue than that of “nuclear waste” which is currently being stored safely in dry casts.
Secondly the US’s fast breeder reactor which was developed at Idaho National Laboratory could go a long way to solving our “nuclear waste” problem. The Integrated Fast Reactor can use fissile and fertile material to power itself. This means our used fuel rods and vast quantities of depleted uranium can be used as a fuel source. In fact we currently have enough fuel from these two sources that we would not have to mine for uranium/thorium for another 500 years if and when we deploy fast breeder reactors.
There are many other reasons for supporting nuclear power. I feel the more one knows the more one looks at nuclear power as an inexpensive, safe, clean, and reliable way to meet our future energy needs. It is scientific logic that persuaded Stewart Brand, Stephen Tindale, Dr Patrick Moore, and others to change their opinion about nuclear power. These people are not part of a conspiracy but rather logical people who looked at all the facts and weighed the consequences. They became pro nuclear on their own accord. I hope with all my heart others will follow their courageous lead for as you already know it our very planets survival that is at stake.
Viva the Nuclear Renaissance,
Jfarmer9
What a fantastically educational discussion. I've always had a morbid fascination with anything nuclear. Unleashing the power of the atom could ultimately lead to the end of the world. Before 1945, the mind was not boggled by the potential for all life to be destroyed by the fire storm caused by nuclear weapons and the radiation damage caused by (the potential) fallout (from nuclear power). I would gladly be arrested, again, for protesting this dangerous and excessively expensive form of power. We don't need nuclear power!
To Jfarmer9---
From what I've read elsewhere, Stewart Brand and Stephen Tindale are turncoats and are in it for the money. They gained their expertise while working for environmental groups, then switched sides. See recent writings (sometimes published by CD) by Harvey Wasserman. I don't know about the third person you mention.
You write:
"Radiation has always been and will always be. Our DNA evolved to where it is now based on its past history which was more radioactive than it is now. I don’t think you are being scientifically accurate in your description how radiation interacts with our DNA."
I never attempted to describe "how radiation interacts with our DNA." I am also quite aware of the reductionist argument that background radiation "has always been and will always be," as you say, the implication being that it isn't harmful. This is a classic argument used over the decades by pro-nuclear-power lobbyists such as yourself. Tell that to the DU mutants in Iraq. Or the uncompensated victims of the TMI "plume." (See TJ's post above...) You might also want to study the early research of the late Edward Martell (like James Hansen, a renegade government climatologist), who studied the impact of alpha radiation on lung and other organ tissue. In fact, since 1945 the level of "background radiation" has been increasing (part of it coming from coal-fired plants, part from medical applications, etc.).
As for the threat of acidification of the oceans, that goes to the increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere caused by combustion of fossil fuels and now biofuels, and the absorption of part of that atmospheric CO2 by the oceans. Here again, you are posing the lobbyist's classic Either/Or argument. I never said I favor burning coal over nuclear power, for example. I oppose both. I favor "alternative" sources such as solar, wind, geothermal, tidal, etc. in a decentralized mix that in the long run makes us each more energy independent. See Wasserman's latest book: Solartopia, for starters.
Over the decades, from the time of Madame Curie and Roentgen, as scientists have studied the biological harm caused by a host of different forms of radiation from X-rays to inhaled plutonium, the realization has grown that the harm is greater than we knew "back then," by ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE. Given the science, the "precautionary principle" ought to apply here.
Finally, anyone who would end a comment here with your glib "Viva the Nuclear Renaissance," is obviously a lobbyist or a satirist. I am familiar with the old playbook from which you plagiarize. You, sir, are no satirist.
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