Swiss Suspend Work on Nuclear Plants

[abqmufc]

Source: New York Times

BERLIN — The Swiss government suspended plans to build and replace nuclear plants on Monday, becoming the first government in Europe to take such measures following the accidents over the last few days at Japanese nuclear operations.

The Swiss energy minister, Doris Leuthard, said no new plants could be permitted until experts carefully reviewed safety standards. Their conclusions would apply not only to planned sites, but also existing plants, she added.

The suspension would affect all “blanket authorization for nuclear replacement until safety standards have been carefully reviewed and if necessary adapted,” she said in a statement.

“Safety and well-being of the population have the highest priority,” Ms. Leuthard said.

Switzerland has five nuclear reactors, which produce about 40 percent of the country’s energy needs.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/business/global/15euronuke.html?src=busln

[haikugal]

1. Can you provide a link the the article please?

[abqmufc]

3. It was included...

Here it is again...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/15/business/global/15euronuke.html

[JuniperLea]

2. Wise move...

This is NOT clean energy by any stretch of the imagination.

[closeupready]

12. Agreed. And the risks of sabotage are too great.

To say nothing of a freak natural disaster.

[jkappy]

4. Okay, but post 9/11 "adjustments" for safety were made at US

nuke sites, and these, as i recall, were more a matter of PR than reality. The way Leuthard couches her word does not offer a great deal of confidence. But for the moment, it is a first and immediate step that can be praised--with reservation.

[fatbuckel]

5. Here`s some fact for ya.

Deaths statistics from the fuel chain for coal and nuclear

Higher level of deaths from coal in public health would be related to the increased deaths from particulates. The deaths totals are more from coal occupation are mining.

The World Health Organization and other sources attribute about 1 million deaths/year to coal air pollution. Coal generates about 6200 TWh out of the world total of 15500 TWh of electricity. This would be 161 deaths per TWh.
In the USA about 30,000 deaths/year from coal pollution from 2000 TWh. 15 deaths per TWh.
In China about 500,000 deaths/year from coal pollution from 1800 TWh. 278 deaths per TWh.

The construction of existing 1970-vintage U.S. nuclear power plants required 40 metric tons (MT) of steel and 190 cubic meters (m3) of concrete per average megawatt of electricity (MW(e)) generating capacity. For comparison, a typical wind energy system operating with 6.5 meters-per-second average wind speed requires construction inputs of 460 MT of steel and 870 m**3 of concrete per average MW(e). Coal uses 98 MT of steel and 160 m**3 of concrete per average MW(e); & natural-gas combined cycle plants use 3.3 MT steel and 27 m**3 concrete.


Metal/Nonmetal fatalities in the USA (iron and concrete components mainly)


Coal and fossil fuel deaths usually do not include deaths caused during transportation. The more trucking and rail transport is used then the more deaths there are. The transportation deaths are a larger component of the deaths in the USA than direct industry deaths. Moving 1.2 billion tons of coal takes up 40% of the freight rail traffic and a few percent of the trucking in the USA.

Uranium mining is a lot safer because insitu leaching (the main method of uranium mining) involves flushing acid down pipes. No workers are digging underground anymore. Only about 60,000 tons of uranium are needed each year so that is 200 times less material being moved than for coal plants.

But what about Chernobyl ?
The World Health Organization study in 2005 indicated that 50 people died to that point as a direct result of Chernobyl. 4000 people may eventually die earlier as a result of Chernobyl, but those deaths would be more than 20 years after the fact and the cause and effect becomes more tenuous.

He explains that there have been 4000 cases of thyroid cancer, mainly in children, but that except for nine deaths, all of them have recovered. "Otherwise, the team of international experts found no evidence for any increases in the incidence of leukemia and cancer among affected residents."


Averaging about 2100 TWh from 1985-2005 or a total of 42,000 TWh. So those 50 deaths would be 0.0012 deaths/TWh. If those possible 4000 deaths occur over the next 25 years, then with 2800 TWh being assumed average for 2005 through 2030, then it would be 4000 deaths over 112,000 TWh generated over 45 years or 0.037 deaths/TWh. There are no reactors in existence that are as unsafe as the Chernobyl reactor was. Even the eight of that type that exist have containment domes and operate with lower void co-efficients.

[zogofzorkon]

6. Writing skills and motivation can turn shit to gold, its the new Alchemy. n/t

[abqmufc]

7. look at entire cycle, mining milling and storage of nuclear..

then the numbers change. It doesn't have to be one or the other...the goal is neither (coal or nuclear).

[fatbuckel]

8. ???

Averaging about 2100 TWh from 1985-2005 or a total of 42,000 TWh. So those 50 deaths would be 0.0012 deaths/TWh. If those possible 4000 deaths occur over the next 25 years, then with 2800 TWh being assumed average for 2005 through 2030, then it would be 4000 deaths over 112,000 TWh generated over 45 years or 0.037 deaths/TWh.

If all of the workforce involved with storage of Nuclear Byproducts died the numbers would still be better than anything else.

[abqmufc]

9. Most deaths that are linked to exposure are written off

I worked with Navajo (impacted by mining and milling of uranium) and the Tribes in the Northwest (who were impacted by Hanford).

i quote from "The High Cost of Uranium" a very concise and short article covering some of the impacts felt by Navajo people (and to a lesser extent the people living in Gallup, Grants, Los Alamos (the town which is near the lab) and Albuquerque, NM.

" In February 1978, however, the Department of Energy released a Nuclear Waste Management Task Force report that said that people living near the tailings ran twice the risk of lung cancer of the general population. The Navajo Times carried reports of a Public Health Service study asserting that one in six uranium miners had died, or would die prematurely, of lung cancer. For some, the news came too late. Esther Keeswood, a member of the Coalition for Navajo Liberation from Shiprock, N.M., a reservation city near tailings piles, said in 1978 that the Coalition for Navajo Liberation had documented the deaths of at least fifty residents (including uranium miners) from lung cancer and related diseases.
The Kerr-McGee Company, the first corporation to mine uranium on Navajo Nation lands (beginning in 1948) found the reservation location extremely lucrative. There were no taxes at the time, no health, safety or pollution regulations, and few other jobs for the many Navajos recently home from service in World War II. Labor was cheap. The first uranium miners in the area, almost all of them Navajos, remember being sent into shallow tunnels within minutes after blasting. They loaded the radioactive ore into wheelbarrows and emerged from the mines spitting black mucus from the dust, and coughing so hard it gave many of them headaches according to Tom Barry, energy writer for The Navajo Times, who interviewed the miners. Such mining practices exposed the Navajos who worked for Kerr-McGee to between 100 and 1,000 times the limit later considered safe for exposure to radon gas. Officials for the Public Health Service have estimated these levels of exposure; no one was monitoring the Navajo miners' health in the late 1940s. "

SOURCE:http://www.ratical.com/radiation/UraniumInNavLand.html

Another great source of info (but lengthy, an entire book on the subject) is: If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans by Peter Eichstaedt. I used this book as the basis of my graduate research on the subject matter.
It is available on most popular websites that sell books, you can find a short bio on it their.

Both sources point out that b/c of cultural lifestyle, such lack of birth certificate, marriage certificate, or death certificate, those impacted by the uranium mining did not receive federal compensation, nor where there health impacts (including death) counted by the federal government in any official numbers. In short firmly believe that 100,000s have died from the nuclear legacy in this country but are not accounted for.

We also see in data that many deaths and health impacts due to the nuclear industry are not attributed to the expoure. For example a worker at Hanford exposed to radiation and died from cancer was not always attributed to the exposure even though they had thyroid cancer (the main cancer found in those exposed). If the worker smoked cigarettes that was often given as the reason for death. The government found any reason not to link death and health impacts to exposure.

Please understanding, I by no means want a pissing contest over which is worse - coal or nuclear. I've worked on national and international policies for both (as they impact Native American communities) and neither is good. Both need to be removed from the table of viable options for energy. I personally don't look at death as the bottom line. There are much more health impacts we see from those working in the nuclear industry due to exposure than death. The same can be said for the coal industry. I look at all negative human and non human health impacts when I base risk for either and conclude both are bad.

Thanks.

[fatbuckel]

10. I just read the article linked to in your post...

When are we going to stop shitting on Native Americans? If it were up to me, Native Americans should be able to pick and choose who gets to stay in North America. Period.

[abqmufc]

11. Thank you....

[plumbob]

13. Now please give the same analysis for mining air for wind generators.

No use saying they won't work. They ARE working 5 miles from my house. Just one farm owned by Duke Energy produces enough for 44,000 homes, the size of my town.

Last October and November, wind counted for 25% of all electricity in Texas.

And those were not wind plants that froze input pipes. They were natural gas, coal, and nuclear.

Thanks in advance!

[fatbuckel]

14. This what your looking for?

Wind power proponent and author Paul Gipe estimated in Wind Energy Comes of Age that the mortality rate for wind power from 1980–1994 was 0.4 deaths per terawatt-hour. Paul Gipe's estimate as of end 2000 was 0.15 deaths per TWh, a decline attributed to greater total cumulative generation. By comparison, hydroelectric power was found to to have a fatality rate of 0.10 per TWh (883 fatalities for every TW·yr) in the period 1969–1996. This includes the Banqiao Dam collapse in 1975 that killed thousands.

[plumbob]

16. Nope, since it's 2011, sure would be nice to have some numbers

generated since GW's first year in office.

But thanks.

[roguevalley]

15. so, because we can die from this we should give nuclear a pass?

How about using our brains and getting rid of all of them? And i don't think coal shit has a half life of a zillion years. Give this meme a rest. it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Getting rid of nuclear which we don't know how to use with any degree of sense would mean ONE LESS death machine.