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Nukes Aren’t the Answer
When President Obama rolled out his proposed budget to Congress for the coming year, he said it would build “on the largest investment in clean energy in history.” But Obama’s definition of “clean energy” includes a commitment to help companies garner billions of dollars in loans for nuclear reactor construction. And, unfortunately, nuclear energy isn't safe or clean and it's too costly for the nation.
The government’s role in the energy marketplace is clear in its loan-guarantee programs. This year, the Energy Department proposes to provide $166 billion in federal energy loan guarantees to aid the ailing auto industry and help finance nuclear, coal, and renewable energy projects. Sadly, the nuclear industry is slated to get the largest—and riskiest—share of that support.
Wall Street has refused to finance nuclear power for more than 30 years, rendering new construction impossible. The Obama administration, in a move to placate Senate Republicans, proposes to fund new power reactors with some $54.5 billion in federal loan guarantees. Because of the way the guarantees are structured, the actual loans will be made by the Federal Financing Bank out of the U.S. Treasury. Last year, the Government Accountability Office estimated that these loans have more than a 50-50 chance of failing. Because of skyrocketing costs, these loans might pay for five reactors—and merely expand the nation’s electrical supply by less than 1 percent.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is moving to terminate funds for the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste disposal site in Nevada. After nearly 30 years of trying, disposal of high-level radioactive waste is proving to be extremely difficult, so Obama has convened a “blue ribbon” panel of experts to recommend what to do with it. The accumulation of spent power-reactor fuel poses new safety issues, which will be the reality for several decades to come. Spent fuel pools—which currently contain about four times what their original designs envisioned—are more vulnerable to terrorist attacks than reactors.
In 2004, a National Academy of Sciences panel concluded that drainage of water from a spent fuel pond by an act of malice could lead to a catastrophic radiological fire. A year earlier, my colleagues and I pointed out these risks could be greatly reduced by putting most of the spent reactor fuel into dry, hardened concrete and steel containers—as nations like Germany have already done.
Meanwhile, despite Obama’s rhetoric about reshaping America's energy future, he’s asking for a budget that would have the Energy Department continue to spend 10 times more on nuclear weapons than energy conservation.
Even with economic stimulus funding, the department’s actual energy functions comprise only 15 percent of its total budget and continue to take a backseat to propping up the nations’ large and antiquated nuclear weapons infrastructure. In fact, the Energy Department’s proposed budget for the 2011 fiscal year, minus stimulus money, looks a whole lot like it did in the Bush administration, and as it has during several presidents’ tenures.
More than 65 percent of our energy budget covers military nuclear activities and the cleanup of weapons sites. Its single largest expenditure maintains some 9,200 intact nuclear warheads. Even though the department hasn’t built a new nuclear weapon for 20 years, its weapons complex is spending at rates comparable to that during the height of the nuclear arms race in the 1950s.
There’s currently a 15-year backlog of discarded nuclear warheads. Yet, Obama’s proposed budget would halve spending on weapons dismantlement over the next five years. The physical elimination of nuclear weapons continues to have a low priority in Obama administration because it competes for funds to build a new weapons production complex—a “holy grail” of the nuclear weapons establishment.
The Energy Department faces a brave new world in which, for the first time, it is being called on to employ millions of Americans to create a new energy future for the United States. It doesn’t appear that the Obama administration will meet this challenge. Instead, more of the nation’s tapped-out treasure is going for costly nuclear power, and nuclear weapons we don’t need and could never use.
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27 Comments so far
Show AllFeb 4th tweet by earth_architect:
"Global climate change began as a headache, then the clean coal proponents argued clean by technology, a migraine, now nukes, a tumor engulfs"
Obama is repeating and exacerbating all the mistakes made during the 20th century.
We need a 21st century president.
Why are so many young Americans still supporting Obama ? Perhaps the schools they attended didn't teach them anything about rhetoric and propaganda ?
There is no such thing as Peaceful Nuclear Power.
"department’s actual energy functions comprise only 15 percent of its total budget and continue to take a backseat to propping up the nations’ large and antiquated nuclear weapons infrastructure."
That's why no-one believes Iran that it's program is strictly for electrical generation, because they all said the same thing while they were developing their weapons stocks.
And since the world's current consumption of Uranium is set to deplete that mineral of all known sources within 40 years, building more nukes would shorten the tinmeframe.
And the waste!
It's good to see Obama put an end to Yucca Mountain. It was a bad idea and it became a boondoggle. The best answer for hot waste would be to insert it deep into the silt at the bottom of the Aleutian Trench, 7KM below the surface of the ocean, a place where things flow in and don't flow back out, where the silt continues to layer up and the plates, deep underneath the silt level, are acting as a conveyor taking everything in the trench (slowly) back to the magma.
Currently, the waste is piling up in facilities that were not designed to handle this much material for this long. With the extended age of the commercial plants and the shoddy workmanship of the plants themselves, it's only a matter of time before an accident occurs, nevermind Trrrrrsm.
After 9?11, there was a six mile no-fly zone extended around NukePlants. A guy I know in New London, Murray the Plumber(!), a crusty old knuckledragger of the New England variety, got a buddy of his to take him up in a lightplane and they circled Millstone Nuclear Station in Waterford for 45 minutes with a video camera "waiting for the F-16s" that NEVER SHOWED UP.
Homeland Security?
Right.
Yes, CV, and if the 9/11 skyjackers had really wanted to do truly immense damage to the people of the United States, instead of horrible but largely symbolic damage, the planes would have been flown into the spent-fuel holding-pool buildings of nuclear power stations near the major city centers.
The resultant fires and destruction would have enabled the start of unquenchable nuclear fires, and the radioactive fallout from these would have contaminated huge areas around the cities of the east coast, rendering entire cities uninhabitable, including NYC, and creating vast numbers of radiation casualties. Because nuclear power plants are essentially in-situ giant dirty atomic bombs, only with controlled as opposed to uncontrolled reactions. Just ask the ghost of Enrico Fermi, the guy who built the very first working nuclear chain-reaction power plant, which led directly to the very first working atomic bomb.
And as your security-testing flying friend found out with his could-have-been-a-flying-bomb puddle jumper, there is no such thing as full security for even the nuclear plants that are already operating, even with all the 'heightened security' of today. So obviously, sure, it makes sense to build a whole lot more plants. That then really can't be protected. Also.
Then, of course, there's the waste product. As of yet, still, there is no nuclear pooper scooper. Nor is there an atomic poopie bag. So the stuff will just pile up, to later be driven all over the damn place until it lands... somewhere or other.
Great plan.
Bill, as always,
Thanks for your great reply. I am just a private citizen not affiliated with any group, not privy either to any classified data. However, I was a B-747 pilot for a few years. I took college physics as you no doubt did. Tripling or quadrupling the mass of an aircraft of which approx 1000 may now be in airborne condition means our exposure goes up tremendously if 100 new nuclear plants are built in the US to the old standard as some advocate. The weight of the 1954 Boeing 707 is not classified. Neither is the weight of the 1969 Boeing 747. They span the range from 222,000 pounds to 875,000 pounds at takeoff. Neither classified is the fact that the B747 is faster and the freighter -200 version is capable of MMO Mach .92 sustained cruise (when empty) or in a dive at 800,000 pounds. Energy applied goes up exponentially with speed, as I'm sure you can appreciate. Containment building standards of buildings erected prior to 1969, I assumed were based on the largest jet aircraft known at the time, the B-707.
A building does not have to completely fall down to be structurally compromised to the point at which it is no longer serving it's stated purpose. The Three Mile Island (TMI) containment buildIng did indeed fail to serve it's stated purpose to isolate radioactive emissions from civilians living in the area. The industry dishonesty about how that event occurred is what I am emphasizing here. The industry pretends the release was controlled, when operator statements relied upon in the investigation of five individuals indicate (to me at least) that loss of containment building pressure at TMI was the result of what the NRC called an uncontrolled "hydrogen burn" (i.e. explosion.) in the sub-compartment surrounding the reactor. In physics, A pressure vessel fails when it no longer holds positive pressure against ambient outside pressure. The TMI pressure vessel failed at the precise instant the operator reported building shaking , as evidenced by the 2 psi positive pressure that spiked off the chart over 28 psi and returned to a 0 (Zero) psi differential reading one second later, and remained un-pressurized thereafter.
In an airliner, a zero psi pressure differential like this would necessitate an emergency descent to avoid hypoxia and brain death of the passengers. In a nuclear facility, while the containment building might be rated to survive a momentary 40 psi pressure spike excursion, it was not designed to contain a hydrogen explosion of 100 psi in the sub-compartment, which is still inside the containment vessel.
People's animals in the area died and symptoms of radiation poisoning showed up in the human population.
Iodine-131 showed up in the milk at the Hershey's plant 150 miles away. Ask yourself, if only ten million curries released could do that?
My point is this. The B-747 is the safest airliner ever built but still 49 out of 1416 airframes are hull losses many due to terrorism. Out of 104 nuclear power plants in the US, a number have melted down, or partially melted down, exposing citizens to, many times, long-term health risks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747_hull_losses
July 26, 1959 — INES Level needed - Santa Susana Field Laboratory, California, United States - Partial meltdown
A partial core meltdown took place when the Sodium Reactor Experiment (SRE) experienced a power excursion that caused severe overheating of the reactor core, resulting in the melting of one-third of the nuclear fuel and significant releases of radioactive gases. [9]
October 5, 1966 — INES Level needed - Monroe, Michigan, United States - Partial meltdown
A sodium cooling system malfunction caused a partial meltdown at the Enrico Fermi demonstration nuclear breeder reactor (Enrico Fermi-1 fast breeder reactor). The accident was attributed to a zirconium fragment that obstructed a flow-guide in the sodium cooling system. Two of the 105 fuel assemblies melted during the incident, but no contamination was recorded outside the containment vessel. [10]
March 28, 1979 — INES Level 5 - Middletown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, United States - Partial meltdown
Equipment failures and worker mistakes contributed to a loss of coolant and a partial core meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station 15 km (9 miles) southeast of Harrisburg. While the reactor was extensively damaged on-site radiation exposure was under 100 millirems (less than annual exposure due to natural sources), with exposure of 1 millirem (10 µSv) to approximately 2 million people. There were no fatalities. Follow up radiological studies predict at most one long-term cancer fatality. [16][17][18]
[A partial meltdown is a accident by definition, wouldn't you agree? Since I'm feeling charitable, i'll exclude international meltdowns in my comparison]
Let's see, 3 partial meltdowns, divided by 104 plants equals a 2.88 percent US partial meltdown rate. Right? Only slightly better than the B-747 world-wide 3.46 percent hull loss rate. But the B-747 has not exposed 2 million people to adverse health effects as happened at TMI has it? At most the B-747 has killed a few thousand people and hurt a few thousand more.
I trust you find my "hull loss" comparison fair. Now is running 30 year old plants 120 percent of rated power is a good idea? Based on the questionable premise that they haven't had hull breaches in the past? Is building new ones on old standards a good idea?
I have lost all faith in the nuclear industry as a reasonable custodian of public safety.
Best Regards,
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson
I agree with libertarians on a lot of issues but sometimes they are obvious hypocrites. The defense budget being the biggest but nuclear power is another. On sites like Reason and Lew Rockwell's site you'll see articles promoting nuclear power just as you see Republicans who are supporting it. NOTHING IS MORE SOCIALIST THAN NUCLEAR POWER. It seems absurd to me when I see these so-called free market pundits arguing for such a communist solution.
It is a clear sign that their libertarianism is just a conservative ploy to push for their agenda. Nuclear power needs big central government. It needs bailouts and guarantees in the same way banks get guarantees and bailouts. Right-wing libertarians talk about the "moral hazard" of bank guarantees and corporate bailouts but yet seem to completely ignore nuke power socialism, even support it. If there weren't any centralized federal governments, there would be not be a single nuclear power plant anywhere in the world.
It is not just the subsidies and the guarantees and all the government money that has been used for nuke research and not wind and solar, nuclear power by it's very nature is centralized and needs big crony capitalist companies. Exactly the sort of crony capitalism that libertarians and Republicans claim to be fighting to help entrepreneurs. No one will ever start a nuclear power plant out of their garage like so many innovative American companies have been started. But anyone could start a renewable energy company out of their garage. And every house in the country could potentially create it's own energy. Could anything be more libertarian and lead to more individual rights and opportunity than being able to own and use your own energy source? Libertarians are for an individual's rights to own a gun and keep their money but not create their own energy I guess. Or maybe they are just right-wing two-faced hypocritical liars. In states like Florida, instead of every homeowner having the right and opportunity to produce energy they are being TAXED to support the centralized totalitarian fascist commie solution of nuclear energy. Republicans are pushing for taking away people's rights in exactly the same way they accuse the liberals.
The waste is yet another issue with only communist solutions. To protect and secure it will require more federal government power and money. Waste stays toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. So because of nuclear power waste we are going to need taxes and government agencies for thousands of years into the future. And I thought libertarians and Republicans were opposed to taxes and centralized power. I guess not.
This absurd hypocrisy by Republicans and so-called libertarians needs to exposed.
Robert Alvarez is one our most experienced, active knowledgeable voices in issues concerning US nuclear weapons, but Bob incorrectly said Yucca Mountain is located in Washington State, it is of course in Nevada---a slip of his electronic pen.
Now that Yucca Mountain will not be developed as THE nuclear waste "repository", Hanford, Washington will become the defacto "repository" since it will take 100,000 years to clean up what waste is already at Hanford.
Good News !!!!!!!! The unemployment rate in the Tri-Cities where Hanford is located has been among the lowest in the nation during the past two years and is expected to stay low even though most other parts of the US will continue to see record high unemployment for years to come !
The engineering firm I worked for in 1998 offered me a job at their Hanford project and guaranteed job security for the rest of my life...and then some !
Isn't "clean, safe nuclear power" (Obama quote) wonderful ???????????
100,000 years... now that's what I call a jobs program, that's what I call an employment contract! I am so sure that this infinitely-long-expense is included in all considerations of the true costs of nuclear energy. Talk about an adjustment for inflation!
I happen to know some scientists who have been to Hanford to assess its giant underground plumes of the superpoison plutonium that are now starting to contaminate the Columbia River, along with all the other nasties that were supposed to be 'safe' in those rusting barrels and old holding pools and disintegrating concrete and decrepit buildings. And there is nothing that can be done about it. Whoops!
So if you take that job, my friend, don't drink the water! Try not to breathe too much of the air! Be sure to bury the clothes you wear in cement after each day- burning releases the radiation. And don't ask any questions. You won't like the answers. If you get any.
Mr. Alvarez has moved Yucca Mountain to Washington while nobody was looking. I thought it was in Nevada.
Nuclear power is a prime example of the engineering mentality: Do it because we can. All that elaborate effort to boil water? Surely you jest. I can't decide which analogy is better, the elephant on roller skates (the wonder is that it is done at all, never mind that it's not done well) or a Rube Goldberg cartoon, with midgets and parrots and stuff.
I suspect that if the accounting were done correctly one would find that a nuclear plant never produces as much energy as it took to create the thing in the first place.
A white elephant is only a white elephant until you bribe enough US politicians to get eternal corporate welfare like the military industrial media complex, banksters, insurance industry, drug makers and now nuclear industry have.
My guess is coal is not, but gas may be marginally better, all things considered. But true alternative sources outrank both, of course. Boiling water is pretty old-fashioned.
Yes, despite how bad it is putting carbon in the atmosphere causing Global Warming, it's not as bad as putting nuclear waste in the ecosystem.
Why?
Global warming will cause climate change that could destroy our civilization and maybe even our species. But the earth will survive just fine, thank you very much, with new ecosystems that will fit the new climate. A few hundred thousands years from now the earth will be just fine.
Nuclear waste on the other hand will affect the ecosystem for hundreds of thousands of years. Thirty thousand years is the half life. That means in that amount of time one half of the material decays and is no longer radioactive. That means it takes hundreds of thousands of years for tons of this stuff to disappear.
Replacing carbon with nukes is as wise as smashing your head with a hammer to cure a terrible migraine headache. Migraines are terrible. But brain damage is worse.
Gulkezoid. It opens up its mouth and it says, "I am my brain." And, it is. So that, you are not talking to a person, you are speaking at a brain.
Gulkezoidism is materialism. No mind, no spirit, no soul, no morality, no consciousness.
Behaviorists are gulkezoids, unless they have a strong moral sense, in which case they are mortalists, since they live with the certainty that they will cease to exist when they die.
Psychiatry (brain chemisty and drugs) is gulkezoidal.
How many scientists aren't gulkezoids? What is the totality of money/power contained in the wills of this world's scientists?
How many scientists have access to this world's nuclear weapons?
The detonation of a hyrogen bomb would be, for a gulkezoid, an act of prank, neither more not less.
Good points, CV.
I had not heard of the Aleutian Trench and did not realize that on parts of the planet the crust is actually being recycled into the magma. However, I doubt that the powers that be will ever solve the nuclear waste problem either that way, or as proposed by Edward Teller decades ago---to seal the stuff in glass beads and fire it into space! They want to retain access to the waste in case they figure out another use for it---like DU weapons.
As for your friend's experience flying around a nuclear plant for 45 minutes...Homeland Security is yet one more huge corrupt boondoggle. (On the Yucca Mountain boondoggle I knew 25 years ago that it was a disaster when I found hundreds of "classified" Battelle documents on it and the Texas salt dome alternative, in two dumpsters along a public alley in Columbus OH. Interesting reading, if you were into things like that, which I was back then.)
-30-
Nukes aren't the answer but they're here to stay anyway. People are going to be desperate for any jobs. Without green jobs available, nuclear jobs will be booming. Nukes suck but they're here to stay.
I'd planned on becoming a nuclear engineer until I became familiar with the effects of radiation poisoning and the number of "little" accidents that kept occurring (usually due to operator error or bad design or construction). Building a nuke power plant is so involved and complex it rivals building a Space Shuttle. It costs like the dickens from the planning stages to permits to actual construction (which seems ALWAYS to be late and way over-budget) to a comparatively short lifespan of energy production (30-40 years compared with much longer lifespans for alternative sources using renewable energy).
Even transporting waste (and old power plants parts now radioactive) to a deep-sea trench and dumping it in to become part of the planetary nuclear reactor at our core is problematic. So much can go wrong, such as the ship sinks in a super-storm thanks to climate change.
The nuclear program is an elaborate boondoggle for the energy industry which the last time I checked was doing quite nicely without any (more) government help -- which it demands before building another nuke plant.
Gary
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods."
-- Albert Einstein
SURPRISING ALTERNATIVES TO NEW NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS!
As unlikely as it may seem, water will be the inexpensive fuel of the future and can replace oil and uranium.
A remarkable energy source, fractional Hydrogen, allows a barrel of ordinary water to become the equivalent of 200 barrels of oil.
If automotive applications of this revolutionary breakthrough are developed rapidly enough, water can replace uranium and proposed thorium nuclear plants.
Chava Energy is developing technology that leads to hybrid cars that may travel 1,000 miles on a gallon of water.
BlackLight Power, a competitor, calls fractional Hydrogen hydrinos. They are the subject of a comprehensive recent article: Newly Discovered Hydrinos can Provide Cheap Power for the World, at: http://www.american-reporter.com
Chava prefers the term ECHO™ - Energy from Collapsing Hydrogen Orbits. ECHO makes possible SPICE™ - a Self Powered Internal Combustion Engine.
A car with a hybrid SPICE, fueled by a small amount of water, is expected to become a power plant when suitably parked, selling electricity to the local utility. No wires required.
Such cars and trucks can eventually be expected to pay for themselves! For more about ECHO and SPICE, see: www.chavaenergy.com
Two laboratories, Rowan University and GEN3 Partners, have validated fractional Hydrogen to date. More should do so without delay.
If this breakthrough (and an even harder to believe magnetic parallel) can be convincingly confirmed, that should prompt a 24/7 development program.
What better prospect exists to help avoid any need to build new nuclear (or coal) power plants?
An outgrowth of this research suggests that nuclear waste in the form of spent fuel rods, which are sitting in ponds next to all existing nuclear facilities, can be used as fuel to generate even more electricity, on-site, than the original plant generates. This will avoid any need to remove the waste. These rods might be the final nail in the coffin in the program to build new nuclear plants.
These developments will provide millions of well-paid new jobs as they inherently will restore the automotive industry, turning new cars and trucks into power plants that might pay for themselves. They can also power homes and businesses.
Large parking lots will become cost-competitive megawatt scale replacements for conventional power plants.
Here's a great Wiki starting page that proves Large Scale Solar plants work, at least in the Southwest. (And if Germany can become a world leader in Solar something tells me Solar can work a bit farther north too)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_plants_in_the_Mojave_Desert
There are several solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which supply power to the electricity grid. Solar Energy Generating Systems (SEGS) is the name given to nine solar power plants in the Mojave Desert which were built in the 1980s. These plants have a combined capacity of 354 megawatts (MW) making them the largest solar power installation in the world.[1]
-----------snip--------
Solar One operated successfully from 1982 to 1988, proving that power towers work efficiently to produce utility-scale power from sunlight. The Solar One plant used water/steam as the heat-transfer fluid in the receiver; this presented several problems in terms of storage and continuous turbine operation. To address these problems, Solar One was upgraded to Solar Two, which operated from 1996 to 1999. Both systems had the capacity to produce 10 MW of power.[5]
The unique feature of Solar Two was its use of molten salt to capture and store the sun's heat. The very hot salt was stored and used when needed to produce steam to drive a turbine/generator that produces electricity. The system operated smoothly through intermittent clouds and continued generating electricity long into the night.[7]
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In December 2007, the U.S. Air Force announced the completion of a solar photovoltaic (PV) system at Nellis Air Force Base in Clark County, NV. Occupying 140 acres (57 ha) of land leased from the Air Force at the western edge of the base, this ground-mounted photovoltaic system employs an advanced sun tracking system, designed and deployed by PowerLight subsidiary of SunPower. Tilted toward the south, each set of solar panels rotates around a central bar to track the sun from east to west.[10] The 14-megawatt (MW) system will generate more than 30 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year and supply approximately 25 percent of the total power used at the base. The Nellis Solar Power Plant is one of the largest solar photovoltaic systems in North America.[11][12]
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much more at wiki link
Of course Solar is decentralized and it's tough to bill for sunlight. And insurance is many times more important for nuclear plants. Which may be one reason that our good friends in DC prefer something more centralized.
The French seem to disagree.