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After Fukushima: Enough Is Enough
The nuclear power industry has been resurrected over the past decade by a lobbying campaign that has left many people believing it to be a clean, green, emission-free alternative to fossil fuels. These beliefs pose an extraordinary threat to global public health and encourage a major financial drain on national economies and taxpayers. The commitment to nuclear power as an environmentally safe energy source has also stifled the mass development of alternative technologies that are far cheaper, safer and almost emission free — the future for global energy.
Officials in protective gear check for signs of radiation on children who came from the evacuation area near the Fukushima Daini nuclear plant in Koriyama, March 13, 2011. (Reuters/Kim)When the Fukushima Daiichi reactors suffered meltdowns in March, literally in the backyard of an unsuspecting public, the stark reality that the risks of nuclear power far outweigh any benefits should have become clear to the world. As the old quip states, “Nuclear power is one hell of a way to boil water.”
Instead, the nuclear industry has used the disaster to increase its already extensive lobbying efforts. A few nations vowed to phase out nuclear energy after the disaster. But many others have remained steadfast in their commitment. That has left millions of innocent people unaware that they — all of us — may face a medical catastrophe beyond all proportions in the wake of Fukushima and through the continued widespread use of nuclear energy.
The world was warned of the dangers of nuclear accidents 25 years ago, when Chernobyl exploded and lofted radioactive poisons into the atmosphere. Those poisons “rained out,” creating hot spots over the Northern Hemisphere. Research by scientists in Eastern Europe, collected and published by the New York Academy of Sciences, estimates that 40 percent of the European land mass is now contaminated with cesium 137 and other radioactive poisons that will concentrate in food for hundreds to thousands of years. Wide areas of Asia — from Turkey to China — the United Arab Emirates, North Africa and North America are also contaminated. Nearly 200 million people remain exposed.
That research estimated that by now close to 1 million people have died of causes linked to the Chernobyl disaster. They perished from cancers, congenital deformities, immune deficiencies, infections, cardiovascular diseases, endocrine abnormalities and radiation-induced factors that increased infant mortality. Studies in Belarus found that in 2000, 14 years after the Chernobyl disaster, fewer than 20 percent of children were considered “practically healthy,” compared to 90 percent before Chernobyl. Now, Fukushima has been called the second-worst nuclear disaster after Chernobyl. Much is still uncertain about the long-term consequences. Fukushima may well be on par with or even far exceed Chernobyl in terms of the effects on public health, as new information becomes available. The crisis is ongoing; the plant remains unstable and radiation emissions continue into the air and water.
Recent monitoring by citizens groups, international organizations and the U.S. government have found dangerous hot spots in Tokyo and other areas. The Japanese government, meanwhile, in late September lifted evacuation advisories for some areas near the damaged plant — even though high levels of radiation remained. The government estimated that it will spend at least $13 billion to clean up contamination.
Many thousands of people continue to inhabit areas that are highly contaminated, particularly northwest of Fukushima. Radioactive elements have been deposited throughout northern Japan, found in tap water in Tokyo and concentrated in tea, beef, rice and other food. In one of the few studies on human contamination in the months following the accident, over half of the more than 1,000 children whose thyroids were monitored in Fukushima City were found to be contaminated with iodine 131 — condemning many to thyroid cancer years from now.
Children are innately sensitive to the carcinogenic effects of radiation, fetuses even more so. Like Chernobyl, the accident at Fukushima is of global proportions. Unusual levels of radiation have been discovered in British Columbia, along the West Coast and East Coast of the United States and in Europe, and heavy contamination has been found in oceanic waters.
Fukushima is classified as a grade 7 accident on the International Atomic Energy Agency scale — denoting “widespread health and environmental effects.” That is the same severity as Chernobyl, the only other grade 7 accident in history, but there is no higher number on the agency’s scale.
After the accident, lobbying groups touted improved safety at nuclear installations globally. In Japan, the Tokyo Electric Power Co. — which operates the Fukushima Daiichi reactors — and the government have sought to control the reporting of negative stories via telecom companies and Internet service providers.
In Britain, The Guardian reported that days after the tsunami, companies with interests in nuclear power — Areva, EDF Energy and Westinghouse — worked with the government to downplay the accident, fearing setbacks on plans for new nuclear power plants.
Nuclear power has always been the nefarious Trojan horse for the weapons industry, and effective publicity campaigns are a hallmark of both industries. The concept of nuclear electricity was conceived in the early 1950s as a way to make the public more comfortable with the U.S. development of nuclear weapons. “The atomic bomb will be accepted far more readily if at the same time atomic energy is being used for constructive ends,” a consultant to the Defense Department Psychological Strategy Board, Stefan Possony, suggested. The phrase “Atoms for Peace” was popularized by President Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950s.
Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are one and the same technology. A 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor generates 600 pounds or so of plutonium per year: An atomic bomb requires a fraction of that amount for fuel, and plutonium remains radioactive for 250,000 years. Therefore every country with a nuclear power plant also has a bomb factory with unlimited potential.The nuclear power industry sets an unforgivable precedent by exporting nuclear technology — bomb factories — to dozens of non-nuclear nations.
Why is nuclear power still viable, after we’ve witnessed catastrophic accidents, enormous financial outlays, weapons proliferation and nuclear-waste induced epidemics of cancers and genetic disease for generations to come? Simply put, many government and other officials believe the nuclear industry mantra: safe, clean and green. And the public is not educated on the issue.
There are some signs of change. Germany will phase out nuclear power by 2022. Italy and Switzerland have decided against it, and anti-nuclear advocates in Japan have gained traction. China remains cautious on nuclear power. Yet the nuclear enthusiasm of the U.S., Britain, Russia and Canada continues unabated. The industry, meanwhile, has promoted new modular and “advanced” reactors as better alternatives to traditional reactors. They are, however, subject to the very same risks — accidents, terrorist attacks, human error — as the traditional reactors. Many also create fissile material for bombs as well as the legacy of radioactive waste.
True green, clean, nearly emission-free solutions exist for providing energy. They lie in a combination of conservation and renewable energy sources, mainly wind, solar and geothermal, hydropower plants, and biomass from algae. A smart-grid could integrate consuming and producing devices, allowing flexible operation of household appliances. The problem of intermittent power can be solved by storing energy using available technologies.
Millions of jobs can be created by replacing nuclear power with nationally integrated, renewable energy systems. In the U.S. alone, the project could be paid for by the $180 billion currently allocated for nuclear weapons programs over the next decade. There would be no need for new weapons if the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals — 95 percent of the estimated 20,500 nuclear weapons globally — were abolished.
Nuclear advocates often paint those who oppose them as Luddites who are afraid of, or don’t understand, technology, or as hysterics who exaggerate the dangers of nuclear power.
One might recall the sustained attack over many decades by the tobacco industry upon the medical profession, a profession that revealed the grave health dangers induced by smoking.
Smoking, broadly speaking, only kills the smoker. Nuclear power bequeaths morbidity and mortality — epidemics of disease — to all future generations.
The millions of lives lost to smoking in the era before the health risks of cigarettes were widely exposed will be minuscule compared to the medical catastrophe we face through the continued use of nuclear power.
Let’s use this extraordinary moment to convince governments and others to move toward a nuclear-free world. Let’s prove that informed democracies will behave in a responsible fashion.
Comments
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60 Comments so far
Show AllThank you, Dr. Caldicott; and you're so right about the allegation that those who stand in the way of this technology are characterized as Luddites, or otherwise accused of being hysterical for speaking of the obvious, the evidence, and the oh, so damning Truth!
The most fascinating thing in my view is the way what's been promoted as Defense, that which would provide citizens of modern lands with safety, through its furtherance of nuclear power & the weapons' grade fuel generated, has to the contrary, consigned thousands upon thousands to slow deaths by cancer and other degenerative diseases. Because it's so difficult to establish the chain of proof, the trespassers continue to dress up in uniform, and tout the miracle of the peaceful atom, while killing so many of us softly, with their martial song.
yes, it is silly to use nuclear radioactivity to boil water...
much better to destroy mountains or valleys to do it...
after all, nuclear material's true power lies in blowing things up...that incredible transformation of mass into energy via the square of lightspeed...that amazing cloud...
of course, Helen, it really doesn't matter how electricity is generated...
we cannot afford to continue manufacturing the supporting infrastructures, nor the products that run on it...
as life forms, we still require the planet to be in the form of planet...
you know, alive...as opposed to 'powered'...
Thank you for Dr Caldicott's article, but unfortunately we do need energy to power our households: none of the appliances we came to rely upon could be easily discarded. As for how we generate that energy: nuclear is expensive, not entirely environmentally friendly and almost all the nuclear power plants of the world have suffered some kind of emergencies to date! The spent rods also constitute a huge contamination danger.
So, what now? Back to coal? What is environmentally friendly about coal mining or coal burning? Hydro? Maybe it's a good one, discounting the destruction of existing valleys with their villages and sundry infrastructure (think of the Three Gorges in China, among others).
Solar? Apparently the panels are quite polluting...
Windmills? It is said they kill the birds and are a bit noisy...
So what now?
Maybe we should just better the designs. No energy generation is without faults or inconveniences. We can't just categorically declare them unsafe and shut them down!
I am no expert, but I've read somewhere, that the new "pebble bed reactors" are supposedly much safer than the old "pressurized water reactors". Maybe some engineer on the forum could tell more than some layman like me...
It is possible to have the power we need, and we need far less than countries like the USA use, with renewables. Even s UN study has shown this. The only reason people think we can't do it is because the fossil fuel industry keeps lying and propagandizing that it is not possible. They like there humungous profits and don't care who dies because of it. Coal and Nukes are both bad. We need to get rid of them. We need a far maore conservative lifestyle if we are to survive and we can do it without fossil fuels. Humanity survived without fossil fuels for eons.
Yes, we can try to lessen our dependence on ANY energy. We have solar panels on our house, we even heat the pool with solar - mind you, we live in Tropical North Queensland with plenty of sunshine.
We made a conscious decision NOT to have air-conditioning, but we have wrap-around verandas around the house, french doors and large windows with louvres - although we do have ceiling fans. We have not only extremely hot summers, but the humidity is awful, yet by opening the doors and windows, it is quite pleasant inside the house.
So that is a huge saving for us.
Thanks for the opportunity.
Pebble bed reactors can kind-of-legitimately be called safer than PWR, but it's relative, like Stalin was more liberal than Pol Pot. Explosion risks are lower (but still present) and leaks of radioactive gas are considered (though I have my suspicions about this) less trouble than radioactive liquids - they cover a wider area, so the measured concentration is lower.
The density of nuclear material and waste is lower with PBR than PWR, but the volume is greater. There's more of the stuff.
Swings, roundabouts.
Hydro-electric power doesn't need large scale projects like dams. Fixed or tethered turbines can extract an appreciable amount of energy from a stream or river with almost no environmental impact - think of a wind turbine, but underwater (and they move slowly, so they don't chew up fish). Or go proper Old Skool and bring back waterwheels.
The manufacture of photovoltaic cells can be quite polluting (though their major constituent is effectively sand), but PV is not the only form of solar power - thermal updraft and reflector/steam turbine based systems don't have that problem.
Wind turbines? I've visited sites and have noticed no more noise than a nearby road and no piles of dead avians, but if these are concerns, stick 'em a few miles offshore. The bases of the turbines can also be built with a cavity to generate tidal power and with electrically, hydraulically or pneumatically coupled floats to pick up on waves.
Sources of energy are just sitting there waiting, but inertia and established industries are acting against them.
Hi TG..., You make some points, but I think you're being a little misleading in the dangers of hydro, solar, and wind turbines. For hydro, ...people relocate and once it's done the rewards are enormous. The massive hydro electric plant in northern Quebec powers all of the provence, and they sell 40% of the surplus to the US. Wind turbines move slowly and pose little risk to birds, ...no more likely than them flying into a ship at sea would. The do have very good vision, and it's not like the blades are moving so fast as to become a blur. They move slowly and birds have good agility. And for the pollution produced by solar panels, ...you're not speaking of them producing pollution in their use. You're speaking about a specific incident of illegal dumping of toxic chemicals in China. I'm sure the makers of solar panels it the US have more stringent guidelines. At the least, these three are the least polluting and the most sustainable. Our dependency for oil must end before it's depletion if we are to continue as a human race and supporting 20 billion people 50 years from now. And we must stop delivering 80,000,000 barrels of it every day into our already carbon saturated atmosphere. I totally agree with Helen about the perils of nuclear energy.
Windmills are neither bird killers nor noisy. GET THAT. Go stand under one. And they are built at least a quarter mile from a dwelling. It is insane that there isn't a windmill in every square mile. The last wind storm we had here would have boiled your water til hell froze over. which it may if we don't get this whole thing under control
I am so glad Ms. Caldicott is still willing to talk to any of us. With all she's done, and written, to still be fighting this fight must really tick her off.
Did you hear her 'debate' with George Monbiot on Democrcy Now? It is worth a listen.
Yeah I heard it. After hearing Monbiot, a pro-nuke power as a so-called green power technology advocate, defend nuke power even in the immediate aftermath of Fukushima & then say w a straight face that only 50 people died as a result of Chernobyl in the past 25yrs, I was basically thru w Monbiot as someone who can be trusted to tell the truth [Just as I'm done w Juan Cole for advocating that phony R2P bombing assault on Libya in the name of humanitarianism- which killed as many as 50,000 {and counting} Libyans & unleashed a racist assault on Black Libyans & other Africans]!
All three major nuclear accidents happened because of pump failure. Lets not in our horror over the Fukishima accident turn our back on research that can not only provide us with power we need but also burn the remaining energy in the spent fuel rods. Only 5-10% of the energy in nuclear fuel rods is burned, leaving the rod toxic and needing safe storage for 10,000 years. The new breed of nuclear reactors are small, faster to build and do not depend on pumps to cool fuel rods. These include Nuscale, http://nuscale.com/ . They are small units and can be buried on sites of coal plants and use existing grid systems, and they require NO PUMPS. Terra power is developing technology to use the spent fuel rods and burn through much of the energy left in them rendering them toxic for only two centuries. That’s quite an improvement over 10,000 years. Terra Power website http://tinyurl.com/49ohg2c. The meltdown in Japan was so horrible because they had tons of waste rods stored there in only a water bath and not in safe containers. Its the same in the over 100 aging nuclear plants in the US that were built in the 1950's. Tons of spent fuel rods stored there as well. We need C02 free energy now. Wind and solar isn't energy intensive enough. There is one wind farm in the US that produces the same amount of power as a nuclear plant. It has over 300 windmills and covers 30 square miles. That is not going to be our answer. It’s the same story with solar as the biggest plant produces enough power for 6000 homes. We only have 10 years left to greatly reduce our C02 emissions or get the worst of climate change. What choices do we really have?
Hello to the nuclear industry's low-paid boiler-room bloggers.
You know, for an extra 50 cents an hour they might organize their texts into multiple paragraphs.
Of course you have a choice. When the drug dealer promises this new pill won't land you in the hospital like his last one did: You can err on the side of caution and say: NO NUKES PERIOD in my body, buddy.
It's clear that the nuke industry only cares about one thing: money. They don't care about the horrors they inflict on those downwind when the new "magic bullet" melts down.
No more magic bullets. Hydro is superclean. Solar is Superclean (despite trolls claiming otherwise.) Wind farms in the ocean in Japan are still working and released ZERO emmissions after the earthquake and tsunami. The hell with the phucking "birds-will-die" Red Herring. We can live without a few species of birds that are going to die anyway eating radioactive fish in the red-hot Pacific Ocean that the Nuke Industry is secretly dumping waste using the Mafia.
Anybody who supports nuke power is insane or ignorant or both.
That's what I think.
TJ
That's what you think? Let me tell you what I think. You are absolutely correct.
Yes it is possible to design reactors whose state in a power outage is dormant cool-down - no new reactor license should be granted without this design. Yes there are reactor designs based on thorium which can consume old fuel elements while producing power - any new reactor should be one of these; all existing reactors should be converted to thorium in the next fuel rod change-out. If we had the political will and vision, we could successfully engineer our way to reversing the hole we have dug ourselves into regarding the huge amount of radioactive waste materials that have been produced in the effort to make electricity using nuclear fission. We owe it to our progeny to return the world to at least the condition we found it in before we contaminated it with fission reactor wastes. The U.S. southwest deserts have enough solar power potential if developed to power all of North America. The Solar Road paving concept combined with 'smart' grid technology would provide enough power to replace all the nuke plants and produce a lot of sustainable jobs and restore our infrastructure. Decentralizing power sources is also of value. Time to think different.
All three? If you buy into the amusingly euphemistic International Nuclear Event Scale there were only two "major nuclear accidents", but I'm guessing you're including the "serious nuclear accident" at Kyshtym.
What about the other "accidents"? A list of just those "with wider consequences" contains names a few might have heard of - Windscale, Three Mile Island, First Chalk River and Lucens. The list goes on to "accidents with local consequences", "Incidents", "Anomalies" and the delightfully named "Deviation". Not all were due to pump failure.
But Nuscale? Would that be the Nuscale that went bankrupt when it's fund manager was indicted for *allegedly* running a Ponzi scheme, and is now majority owned by the Fluor Corporation, whose customers include BP, the US military and the Trans-Alaska pipeline?
Interesting choice of example.
The choice you have is to begin. Begin using sustainable, renewable, and non-polluting energy sources, and diminish the need for more dangerous sources until there comes a day when we will be free of our dependency of it. Every step is a distance one way or the other. Let's choose a path that will leave something for our children.
And that's good to know, 300 windmills can produce the same energy as a nuclear power plant. I don't see a problem with that. Have you ever been to the midwest where you can see nothing but corn for a hundred miles? The wind turbines could tower over those with no adverse effects. And of course the off shore potential is enormous.
Chicaree, Ahh! the dream of technological solutions to human relations, could life be any better than it has gotten? Are there be any problems to this dream?
Yes! The theoretical reactors which you are talking about have myriad problems in the exploration, mining, refining, operation, disposal, massive expense and risks at every stage just as the present 'atoms for peace' program has. However we have learned a thing or two about 'the precautionary principle'.
Truth is that there are thousands of complementary energy solutions which take our present bad design, capture energy and restore environments for human use.
1) Building mounted linear axis helical wind turbines for example captures the 12 fold wind strength built up along wind shear surfaces on building corners, along windblown streets and roof-lines to develop energy right where we use it without the typical 50% electric loss in power-line transmission from centralized power stations. Building mounted wind can deliver 20% of electrical energy.
2) These same linear axis turbines can be mounted on bridge pylons to capture prevalent valley wind concentrated by the pylons. When linear pylon wind is combined with linear axis water generators from kinetic non-dammed water flows in turbines mounted on pylons below the water line, most regions can deliver another 20% of electricity needed.
3) If we capture biogas from small alterations to existing sewer systems and harvest its geothermal and fertilizer by-products, we have another 20% of need to meet methane gas carburant, fuel, electricity, heating energy needs. In this process, our water ways are simultaneously cleaned up and our food production greatly augmented.
4) Increasing windows mounted on the south side of most buildings with overhangs to keep out the summer sun and let in the lower winter sun provides another 20% of energy need.
5) Building insulation, capture of water from roofs, green roofs for water filter, insulation, porches and overhangs on the south side of buildings, separating urine from fecal humanure and bio-digesting both give another 20% efficiencies.
https://sites.google.com/site/indigenecommunity/design/9-complementary-energy
These 100% solutions are just a small fraction of safe low-cost technologies, which will also clean up the world we are polluting at an unprecedented rate. We don't need more energy, just the right energy carefully organized around human realitites.
Let me add humbly that we also need the will.
We need a few concrete things:
1. We need teachers bent on solving our clean energy challenge.
2. We need students willing to study invention. There's no curriculum. Start by asking your teachers, then try some small projects. Learn all about invention. Why do some small inventors succeed and why do many large projects fail? What makes a good project. Learn about inventor's notebooks (which will stop being legally valid on March 15, 2013, curse this Congress for seven generations of their progeny.)
3. We need other students willing to study the business side of startups.
4. We need customers willing to accept a prototype. A prototype costs money and may possibly not work. Why would any profit-grubbing customer take on such a challenge? Because customers are not 100% profit-grubbing. No one can simultaneously serve both God and money (mammon), states the Bible, and people who prefer God (or well-socialized atheists with decent hearts) might want to change the future of the world for the better, knowing the risks, knowing that winning a small piece of the energy/climate invention game is one of the super-coolest things on earth that you can do.
5. We really could use a government that gives a flying leap at the moon, but a civilized government is one more thing that needs to be invented. Sharpen your pencils. Here's an envelope, please sketch something out on the back side, see how it might work.
Right you are {see comment below}!
Right you are! The way out [absent {or in addition to} fusion power- hot &/or cold] is: solar power [more than converting sun light to electricity - sun-light in warmer climes can be used directly to heat water & even cook], Biogas [which can address 3 issues: organic waste management, clean-burning methane gas & also organic fertilizer production], wind-power [People criticize wind turbines as a potential threat to birds & bees, etc as if that can't be managed - but they seldom talk about the real & current threat of jet aircraft to birds {remember that plane that had to crash-land on the Hudson River in NYC a couple of yrs ago was due to a flock of birds being sucked into its engines causing them to stall.} -&- IMO More birds were killed in last yr's BP's Gulf Oil Disaster than by ALL wind-turbines in now existence!], tidal power [Wikipedia &/or google Salter's Duck a potentially very efficient technology that's been suppressed for decades], and just plain ole greater efficiency & conservation [promoting public over private transport, hi-speed rail over jet-setting, increasing mileage standards to 45 - 55 {or more} mpg rather than the current 25 - 35, more efficient building construction for heating / cooling], etc... And we have to think more about how to get off the grid & meter - which is nearly impossible to do w nuke power.
Dr Caldicott's point about the traditional link between fission nuke reactors & nuke weapons development & production is vital to understand. The nuke industry & Gov't had the option to roll-out nuke-power using thorium reactors - which are 'theoretically' safer than boiling or pressurized water [BWR & PWR] reactors but chose not to do so [& they're still haven't committed to do so- even in the wake of Fukishima] because they were / are less compatible w a nuke weapons program [think about all the current & on-going fuss about Iran's nuke program - officially geared for electric power generation but the US, NATO & Israel claim that it's really a cover for an alleged nuke weapons prog]! Anyone [IE: O-bomb-em] that honestly claims to be against nuke weapons proliferation & for eliminating ALL Nuke Weapons, cannot be for fission nuke reactors- especially BWRs & PWRs!
Yes! But we do nothing or very little if anything. What about allowing industrial hemp to be grown and used for building materials, clothes and insulation? It makes a wonderful fireproof insulator when mixed with lime Hemp uses a fraction of the water for growing that cotton uses; it doesn't need pesticides, it absorbs CO2 as it grows and when mixed with lime to be used as an insulator, the lime again absorbs CO2 as it sets. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r10SmYkXVQE
>>These 100% solutions are just a small fraction of safe low-cost technologies, which will also clean up the world we are polluting at an unprecedented rate.<<
And, these 100% solutions would create millions of jobs as they are designed, developed and implemented. Win win win all the way.
Thanks Helen. Please keep on keeping on - and Merry Christmas.
Manysummits
=======
What's all the fuss? 10,000 years or two centuries. What kind of legacy is that to leave our generations to come? The waste issue alone is enough for me to consider nuclear power pure insanity. We waste so much energy to bring about so many unnecessary "things" and conveniences... and what do we get ? mindlessness... Like my 80 year old uncle said... "and now you don't even need to flush the toilet - it does it for you"
Would you take strychnine if everybody was doing it?
What if everybody was served a bowl of strychnine salad and only 1% of the bowls contained strychnine, and all sorts of responsible doctors knew this was happening?
Are you accepting nuclear power because some other fools live near the nuclear power plant, and they're the ones that will get cancer when the plant goes boom? Is all fair in our society? How else can we mistreat each other?
Once again, it has been claimed in comments above that wind turbines kill too many birds. While any is more than desired, this has been blown out of proportion.
Research by Benjamin Sovacool has discredited the claim that wind turbines kill birds excessively. Sovacool has shown that far more birds are killed by natural gas electric plants, on a per-kilowatt-hour basis. And there are far more killed by high-rises, (windows, etc.). See http://www.spp.nus.edu.sg/docs/fac/benjamin-sovacool/Published%20Papers/Sovacool-Contextualizing_Avian_%20Mortality.pdf
. . .the 2nd page of this pdf starts the contextual analysis.
The biggest killer of songbirds is domestic cats. I wish wind turbines killed them. My apologies to cat lovers. Spay or neuter, keep them inside.
The biggest killer of songbirds is pesticides. Sick birds are easy pickings for predators, so they hide until they recover or (more often) until they die. Then micropredators consume them. We never notice the casualties unless a huge application causes a large flock of geese in a certain pond to suddenly disappear, but birds disappear by the millions.
The proponents of nuclear power don't care a whit about human life--only profit. I worked on nuclear submarines, and know that no nuclear reactor is safe, that eventually, maybe not today, maybe not this century, but eventually they will kill. Nuclear power--either bombs or power plants--will be the death of us all. I see it as God's way of making sure a species is truly intelligent. WE FAIL.
Nuclear power--either bombs or power plants--will be the death of us all.
------------------------------------
I think you mis-spelled "fossil fuels".
Not even a global atomic war is guaranteed to make us go extinct, but continuing to burn coal and oil _does_ come with that guarantee. The extraction and combustion of fossil fuels kills _millions_ of people around the world _every year_ and simultaneously brings us closer to pan-extinction via catastrophic methane release.
No matter how scary people might find nuclear radiation, the _actual harm_ does not even begin to compare with the everyday harm from fossil fuel extraction and combustion. (And most radiation deaths come from radon, according to WHO, not reactor accidents. Radon is the second most common cause of lung cancer --ca 21K deaths p.a. in the US)
Profit uber allus! Greed is good. The hell with health of people.
It appears to me that the great human fallacy is in thinking that humans can collectively plan for problems that are longer term than a human life span. We understand gathering what we need, having income to provide for ourselves and our family and wanting what is needed for them. Beyond three generations the goals become misty with the clouds of indefinite future history. It is clear that we have used up about half of the petroleum, gathering what was easy to get and now having to try to contend with the extraction of the more difficult remainder. It is also clear that substitute technologies are having problems. Wind generated power is available when there is wind, not necessarily when we need it. How would you feel about postponing your next meal until the winds pick up - say, next week? And meanwhile put on three sweaters and an overcoat. And certainly hope the pipes don't freeze! It turns out there is no good way to store large amounts of electricity for future use. Our best efforts on that front are to build dams to store water as potential energy sources, to be converted to electricity upon need, but that only works in the right terrain. Otherwise we need fueled steam plants or nuclear reactors.There is some promise of using tidal energy of the sea to generate electricity but I do not believe it has been tried in anything other than small tests, like a buoy that lights its own beacon. I keep hearing hints that "cold fusion" or something similar is about to save our necks, but it never seems to materialize as something that actually works. Last January there was such a promise made by some Italians, but I waited in vain for their promised release of a product in October.
Alcohol fuel made from plants requires a huge space to farm and the energy costs of the farming approach the energy size of the benefit we can extract in the form of alcohol. In other words it is of low efficiency, except in a few special places, like Brazil where they use sugar cane as the energy storage of solar energy. When we have tried crops like corn, it cuts into someone's food supply and drives prices too high.
Wind turbines kill not only birds but nighttime bats that normally do the huge task of eliminating much of the insect pest population. They are also turning out to be dangerous to be around because they fracture explosively without warning and make enough noise to keep you from sleeping as they turn.
It is true that nuclear power plants present much danger, in their present state of engineering, but we know how to get rid of the stored used fuel rods. The deepest ocean trench in the world, the Marianas trench, has a constant influx of bottom sediment and the entire thing is sub-ducting into the lower parts of the earth and will not come up again until the radioactivity of the fuel rods would have completely dissipated. Much nuclear waste could be embedded in glass blocks and those blocks safely discharged into that trench. The rate of influx of bottom sediment there is between 60 & 90 feet per year, so any glass breakdown would only occur after it was quite safely buried, centuries into the future.
Since the human population keeps going up (it has far more than doubled in my lifetime) it is obvious that we need every source of energy we can get hold of. We will extract and burn every bit of carbon containing fuel that we can find. We will figure out how to extract every bit of mechanical energy of falling water, evaporation, wind, radioactivity, chemical energy of fossil fuels, geothermal energy, sunlight and possibly technologies not yet thought of. We will end up doing environmental harm in our relentless hunger for more energy, and in the careless storage or release of wastes.
It is possible that we will destroy our environment, the biosphere of our planet. In that case the human race will die out, but life itself will still be present. In a few million years intelligent insects may assume the task of finding enough energy for their needs.
Sounds a bit like a cop-out actually. What if renewable, clean alternative energy is not that hard to find? We assume a lot since we have only put a fraction of our efforts into development. And we have not even tried to save energy as yet, even though we are faced with these huge problems. We could start to save at least 30% of our energy as soon as tomorrow. But we don't have the collective will. We have had campaigns for AIDS, diabetes and other social problems yet no campaigns for mustering our collective will to start saving energy in every possible way and direct our minds to putting in research and developing alternative energies. Cars are still being driven to cities exactly as they were thirty years ago. Public transit has not improved significantly if at all. Buildings still lose enormous amounts of energy through drafts and negligent wastage. Many people still have no idea the amount of wasted energy they are responsible for. That's because the interests of the oil industry dominates and pervades information dissemination and influences lawmakers. The people aware of energy usage and "do the right thing" are minuscule compared to the majority that don't have a clue or doesn't care to have a clue. I would like to see energy be rationed and any usage over a reasonable amount become really, really expensive. It's too cheap right now and the price does not include the cost of clean ups, loss of life and health. While this distortion exists, our whole system is compromised and rests on shaky foundations. It is far too lazy to sit back and just with a casual brush of the hand say we're all done for eventually. Anyway it shouldn't be long now before something gives. That will get people moving, idiots that we are.
So your answer to the nuke waste problem is to dump it in the ocean?! As if the ocean ain't polluted enough by Fukushima & BP / Exxon Valdez type Oil spills [& there's an island of plastic circulating in the ocean's currents as well]! Talk about lacking vision beyond the immediate future! Also water can act as a moderator for nuclear fission reactions [thats partly why they use water in reactors]- but if you dump spent fuel in the bottom of ocean who's & how is it going to monitored & what could they do if an inadvertent uncontrollable criticality occurs at that depth & ocean pressure [remember the problems they had trying put a lid on last yr's BP Gulf Oil spill & that was only 1 mile deep- the Marianas trench is what 7 - 8 miles deep]?! The nuclear age is about 72yrs old now & still no-one has figured out what to do w the nuclear waste problem [part of the Fukushima accident was due to spent fuel being stored on site which is par for the course for nuke reactors across the World]! Even France's much hyped 'solution' of recycling ain't what it's cracked up to be because the vast majority of the spent fuel is stored - not recycled & they are also running out of space!
There is a way to make fission nuke reactor nearly 100% safe [of course the only real 100% safe alternative is NOT to build them] even in event of a total core melt-down China-syndrome scenario [most likely whats now happening at Fukushima], that is to build them in underground mine-shafts &/or mountain caves far away from known earth-quake zones / faults & water supplies / tables- thus a Chernobyl / Fukushima type accident could 'theoretically be contained' in such a cave. BUT the reason that's not done is because to run BWRs & PWRs you need huge amounts of water & because that would locate nuke power plants hundreds if not thousands of kilometers away from Cities that use their power- thus the power grid would have to be upgraded - all of this would increase the already prohibitively expensive nuke power plants by 3Xs-4Xs-5Xs or even more!
Although I agree that most current so-called bio-fuel schemes [or scams] are counter productive [using food & good farm-land {& also cutting down rain-forests} to fuel cars rather feeding hungry people] to say the least; - Your arguments against wind power [though intermittent in some areas - yet fairly steady in other areas- depending on the location & season] & especially about it being a threat to birds & bees - PLEASE- As if those things can't be worked out &/or managed effectively! Plus wholesale dumping of nuclear waste as you suggested will likely kill off a whole lot more species of sea-life or radically alter their genetics for God Knows how long- just as I'm sure the BP & Exxon Valdez Oil disasters have killed / are killing off more birds [& also sea-life] than ALL wind-turbines currently in existence!
"It turns out there is no good way to store large amounts of electricity for future use."
Perhaps true, but storing and distributing hydrogen is no more difficult than what happens at the moment with hydrocarbon gases.
Hydrogen can be produced from water using electricity and with oxygen as the only "pollutant". It can be burnt at the other end of the pipe, with the by-product being water.
Those "intelligent insects" will have one big advantage over us. And it's not that they're insects...
And sometimes when the sun is shining, and the wind is blowing, the excess electricity produced at those times can be used for that electrolysis to produce the hydrogen, which can not only be burned as a traditional fuel, but can also be used in fuel cells to produce electricity, heat, and pure water. Hydrogen may in fact be the best way to store energy produced from the sun and the wind and the tides. WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY. All we lack is the will to get to work and DESIGN, DEVELOP AND IMPLEMENT.
Well, Jerry, I find your reasoning twisted, if not inverted. Your post starts out wisely stating that human beings don't have the resources to think ahead more than a generation or two, and then use the rest of your post to support nuclear power. You offer scenarios intended to denounce every other energy resource. The truth is, it is precisely because human beings cannot see ahead, that they ought not leave behind tons of radiation that future generations may not be prepared to cope with... especially if the pattern of earth changes, fueled by climate shifting, impedes or interrupts the fabric of roadways, accessible electricity, and those agencies designed to provide aid. Your post is not only unconvincing, it reads like industry PR.
Enhanced Geothermal Systems should not be considered intermittent and they have the potential to give many countries over 30000 years of electrical power, To my knowledge most of the problems EGS are technical safety issues that can be over come. The benefits of all the alterative energy sector plus EGS far outweigh any nuclear power, and have been so since Tesla first proposed hot rock geothermal and helped build hydro electric plants which means the only reason we get nukes pushed on us is so our governments can have their nuclear weapons to further their dreams of empire creation.
Geothermal sites just in Utah are sufficient to power the entire US, if tapped. If we'd spent that $Trillion for post 9/11 imperialist wars on a "Smart Grid" and developed these sites along with more wind&solar; sorry just day-dreaming.
It's adorable how so many of you kling to your creature comforts. "I need my air conditioned!" "I want electrical grid power 24/7 !" You're like puppies in the presence of meat. There is a problem however. NUCLEAR MATERIAL CAN AND WILL DESTROY ALL LIFE ON THIS PLANET IF IT IS NOT SEQUESTERED IMMEDIATELY. Of course, there will be some impressive fungi and bacteria riding the radioactive waves until the sun consumes the solar system, but that is hardly and inspired ending. In the short and brief, you all suck, enjoy your Plutonium poisoning from the Fuku vulcano. That's right, just wait till that molten corium hits the groundwater. Where did you think the pressure would go. Here's a hint: UP, OUT.
To jerrymat---
While I believe your post to be well intentioned, I suspect you to be a victim of the prevailing propaganda and less familiar with thermodynamics, etc. than most of us should be (including myself).
................ One example: "Much nuclear waste could be embedded in glass blocks and those blocks safely discharged into [the Marianas] trench." This is a variant of Dr. Edward Teller's infamous proposal that nuclear waste could be put into glass and sent into outer space---as though such disposal would be cheap! Do you really think the nuclear power industry would encase spent fuel rods in glass and dump them over an earth crust fault? Cost to do so? As with Fukushima, U.S. nuclear power plants, largely, are storing spent rods above ground (or sometimes at just below ground level) in water containment because the water inhibits release of much remaining radioactivity. A CHEAP short-term solution to a very expensive long-term solution.
................. "Alcohol fuel made from plants requires a huge space to farm and the energy costs of the farming approach the energy size of the benefit we can extract in the form of alcohol. In other words it is of low efficiency, except in a few special places, like Brazil where they use sugar cane as the energy storage of solar energy. ..." Hitler ran his tanks on alcohol ! That he knew alcohol is less energy intensive than distilled oil explains his North Africa campaign. If Germany, oil-starved while fighting France for the coal-rich Alsace-Lorraine border region was to restore its manufacturing capacity to a level competitive with other world powers, it needed access to oil. But none of that history should lead us to dismiss alcohol as an energy source (as you note, Brazil has become quite efficient in using it).
.................. "Wind generated power is available when there is wind, not necessarily when we need it. How would you feel about postponing your next meal until the winds pick up - say, next week? And meanwhile put on three sweaters and an overcoat. And certainly hope the pipes don't freeze! It turns out there is no good way to store large amounts of electricity for future use. Our best efforts on that front are to build dams to store water as potential energy sources, to be converted to electricity upon need, but that only works in the right terrain. Otherwise we need fueled steam plants or nuclear reactors." This is where you get into BULLSHIT. A minor but vast example of your distortion is this: In the U.S. Midwest a majority of municipalities have WATER TOWERS. They function by fluid dynamics and the Law of Gravity. They expend energy to pump the water into a huge container around a hundred feet above ground, so as to DISTRIBUTE water as the community needs it. They use electricity to pump the water up to defy gravity. HOW MANY MUNICIPALITIES have installed electric-generating turbines to recover some of that displaced energy as the water falls back down so you can take a shower? Even if only to light the warning beacon on top of the water tower! Cheap to do, but name a place where it is done... Storage of electricity can be done like water towers by many relatively cheap methods for the same purpose of distribution on demand.
................ "Wind turbines kill not only birds but nighttime bats that normally do the huge task of eliminating much of the insect pest population." Have you ever watched birds or bats? If they can evade a hawk or an eagle in mid-flight, what makes you think they cannot evade a wind turbine which is far more predictable in its motion than an avian predator? If wind turbines are killing birds or bats, the latter have probably been weakened by pesticides going up the food chain. Also, there are other forms of wind power. You can cut a 55-gallon drum in half vertically, mount them strategically on a ball-bearing based shaft (the split halves BECOME a "windmill"), hook that assembly to a pulley leading to an old 12-volt auto alternator: that is a form of wind power. It takes intentionality by individuals---not huge corporations---to do that, while in the urban environment it requires community collectives, but it can be done.
................... Your post argues that we MUST continue the current (pun intended) CENTRALIZED DEREGULATED MONOPOLY power-generating model of coal-fired, methane ("natural gas")-fired, nuclear-fired electrical generation. You are WRONG, and your handlers should be paying you less!.
...................-30-
"The concept of nuclear electricity was conceived in the early 1950s as a way to make the public more comfortable with the U.S. development of nuclear weapons." That statement hit me like ...well... an atom bomb. My guess is most people don't think about WHY we have nuclear energy -- it has just been part of the mix. That statement also reminds me how much the military industrial complex has its hands in almost all aspects of our lives. If everyone just thought of the implications of that... our way of life runs on the industry of death and destruction! This way of life will eventually lead to the fait accompli of the military industry's original purpose -- the eradication of the living ( all of us.)
Price-Anderson Act.
No accountability.
A nuclear death spiral.
US plants will be run until they fail.
Thanks for mentioning Price-Anderson.
If the US government hadn't decided that taxpayers would act as the insurer of last resort, and pick up the "costs" [purely financial - they couldn't see anything more important than that] of nuclear accidents, incidents etc. etc., it's doubtful that the nuclear industry would have happened at all.
If you get it right, you get rich. If you get it wrong, the taxpayer will cover it. And you will get rich.
That smell is getting all too familiar.
Privatize the profits, socialize the costs. That's Capitalism. Keep the profits, let the taxpayers clean up the environment. Keep the profits. Let the taxpayers bail you out when you fail. That's Capitalism. And SOCIALISM is the "dirty word" -- unless it is applied to the filthy rich when their greed gets them into trouble.
The Nuke power industry [including the AEC] is now pushing for the US' 104 nuke power plants that have run past their original 'shelf-life' to be relicensed for another 25yrs & to be Powered at 20% Over Their Original Maximum Design Specs! If they are allowed to get away w this expect a 3Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima type disaster IN The US every few yrs!
PS: I don't know how many here remember the movie 'China Syndrome' which was released just 2 weeks before 3 Mile Island. Immediately after the opening of 'China Syndrome' which depicted an accident at a nuke power plant, I personally witnessed a ComEd Exec say out of his own mouth that what was depicted in the movie [a potential core melt-down] 'Could Not Happen In a MILLION YRS'! This was literally within 2 wks prior to 3Mile Island's partial core melt-down! So within 32yrs of the whole nuke industry declaring loudly that a core melt-down / core melt-thru / China Syndrome type scenario 'Could NOT Happen in a MILLION YRS'- there been at-least 3 such accidents- that we know of [IE: 3Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima] w each being worse than the previous one! So now nuke industry proponents are saying that 'hey Fukushima's 3 reactors' core-melt downs / melt-thrus / China Syndrome type Scenarios plus an unprecedented spent fuel pool explosion & fire - "ain't as bad as we first thought it might be" '... This is likely nuke industry speak to say 'We're not going to be as concerned about [meaning not putting in any extra effort to prevent] nuke reactors' worst case accidents!!!'
I recently saw the china syndrome on t.v. Excellent movie. Jack Lemmon is always great and jane fonda was good as well. I thought it did an excellent job of showing the mindset of the industry and the media compliance.