Environment & Energy
Related: About this forumSustaining the Wind, Part 3: Is Uranium Exhaustible?
This is my own work, which has been published at Brave New Climate, a website owned and maintained by Professor Barry Brook of the University of Tasmania in Australia, a widely published academic ecologist.
Sustaining the Wind, Part 3: Is Uranium Exhaustible?
Some excerpts:
There is good reason for doing this in a series on wind energy. First, if one spends any amount of time looking into the claims of those who advocate for so called renewable energy one will quickly see that for many of the advocates for this expensive, and thus far essentially useless form of energy, are often less interested in replacing dangerous fossil fuels than they are in displacing nuclear energy. (In Part 5 we will look at some prominent academics associated with this tragic anti-nuclear, pro-renewable energy rhetoric, focusing mainly on Mark Z. Jacobsen, Professor of Civil Engineering at Stanford University.) Since nuclear energy remains, despite much caviling, the worlds largest, by far, source of climate change gas free primary energy, easily outstripping all others, we should suspect that these advocates are spectacularly uninterested in climate change and other forms of air pollution, which I assure you, are far more dire catastrophes than the reactor failures at Chernobyl and Fukushima that so obsess this sort. Secondly, if nuclear energy is safe, clean, and infinitely or nearly infinitely sustainable, the rationale for constructing truly massive numbers of wind turbines collapses...
When we looked at indium in part 2 we saw that because the ocean remains slightly basic despite the policy failures that are leading to its slow but steady acidification one such policy failure is to regard fossil fuels as transitional while we wait, like DEstragon waiting for Godot, for so called renewable energy to become a significant source of energy and because indium hydroxide is one of the most insoluble hydroxides known, ocean water cannot be considered to be a dilute ore for that element. We saw that where indium is concerned, the only likely source is likely ever to be likely available are terrestrial zinc and possibly lead ores, as well as industrially insignificant quantities as a fission product of plutonium...
...Dr. Bardis calculation of the energy content of uranium, 40 MWh/kg, assumes, arbitrarily, that people in a putative nuclear powered world would be dullards who choose to isolate uranium from dilute sources and then choose to throw most of it, the 238U isotope which dominates the mass of terrestrial uranium, away. (This requirement a culture of dullards in a nuclear powered world is counterintuitive, given that the only way for a nuclear powered world to exist would be to have a generally scientifically literate population, a situation, regrettably, not generally observed at present.) For the record, the per kg energy content of a kg of plutonium (the 239 isotope into which 238U can be transmuted under breeder conditions) is 22,300 MWh/kg, suggesting that Dr. Bardis calculations are, um, a little off, by a factor of more than 550. If uranium should cost $460/kg, this would represent a raw material fuel cost, and if the uranium is consumed after transmutation into plutonium, of $0.00002 per kWh.
For comparative purposes, Germany and Denmark, two officially anti-nuke pro-wind countries which happen to feature the most expensive electricity in Europe[13], have electricity prices approaching $0.40 (US) per kwh, as opposed to US prices which are rising with the inane or insane popularity of so called renewable energy of roughly $0.12 (US)/kWh, and France, roughly $0.20 (US)/kWh...
In the case of the Colorado, its just as well: The need for so called renewable energy as well as the exigent need to provide for water for fountains in Las Vegas, carwashes in LA, and golf courses in the Mohave Desert have completely destroyed the Colorado River Delta and its ecosystem and the river is almost always dried up before a drop of its water makes it to the Gulf of California. Thus the uranium in the river which should be expected to be significant owing to the fact that the river snakes through a region of rich uranium ores, some of which have been mined all ends up where the water ends up. This, of course, includes the agricultural fields of the Imperial Valley[24], the source of much of the winter table produce of the United States...
Lets ignore the white people; they are irrelevant in these accounts.
Of the Native American miners, 536 died before 1990, and 280 died in the period between 1991and 2005, meaning that in 2005, only 13 survived. Of course, if none of the Native Americans had ever been in a mine of any kind, never mind uranium mines, this would have not rendered them immortal. (Lets be clear no one writes pathos inspiring books about the Native American miners in the Kayenta or Black Mesa coal mines, both of which were operated on Native American reservations in the same general area as the uranium mines.) Thirty-two of the Native American uranium miners died in car crashes, 8 were murdered, 8 committed suicide, and 10 died from things like falling into a hole, or collision with an object. Fifty-four of the Native American uranium miners died from cancers that were not lung cancer. The Standard Mortality Ratio, or SMR for this number of cancer deaths that were not lung cancer was 0.85, with the 95% confidence level extending from 0.64 to 1.11...
...Lung cancer, of course, tells a very different story. Ninety-two Native American uranium miners died of lung cancer. Sixty-three of these died before 1990; twenty-nine died after 1990. The SMR for the population that died in the former case was 3.18, for the former 3.27. This means the expected number of deaths would have been expected in the former case was 20, in the latter case, 9. Thus the excess lung cancer deaths among Native American uranium miners was 92 (20 +9) = 63...
...On the other hand, roughly 7 million people will die this year from air pollution.[52] Of these, about 3.3 million will die from ambient particulate air pollution chiefly resulting from the combustion of dangerous coal and dangerous petroleum, although some will come from the combustion of renewable biofuels. Every single person living on the face of this planet and, in fact, practically every organism on this planet is continuously exposed to dangerous fossil fuel waste, and every person on this planet and practically every organism on this planet contains dangerous fossil fuel waste. The only way to stop dangerous fossil fuel waste from accumulating in your flesh is to stop breathing, which is, of course, what some people do as a result of such accumulation, many of them as a result of, um, getting lung cancer. This means that about 6.3 people die every minute, on average, from ambient particulate air pollution. Seen in this purely clinical way, this means that all of the Native American uranium miners dying from all cancers, 93 lung cancer deaths and 54 deaths from other cancers, measured over three or four decades, represent about 23 minutes of deaths taking place continuously, without let up, from dangerous fossil fuel pollution...
It's a rather long post, but fun, I think. I particularly enjoyed writing the notes to references 32 and 34, the first of which is about stunts pulled by the (exposed) assholes at Greenpeace, and the second of which examines the laughable notion that liberalism can be defined as enthusiasm for a car ad.
It's a rather cynical piece, but I have done my best to draw out the bad thinking that is causing such destruction to humanity.
tech3149
(4,452 posts)I commend you for the work. I'm pretty secure in my judgement that harvesting energy from the sun is the best and safest alternative we have. I grew up in coal country, had a coal furnace till I was 15. I know all too well the harms of fossil fuels. I also know that transitioning will be an absolute boom for employment and that's one thing we desperately need.
I'm also a kindred spirit with Dr. Caldicott. There is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation.
NNadir
(33,457 posts)Bernard Cohen, who was what she has never been, made mincemeat of her very toxic and very dangerous rhetoric. Of course, unlike Caldicott, he was a scientist.
Nuclear energy saves lives, and it follows that belief in "Dr." Caldicott's absurd fantasies cost lives. She has obviously never taken a course in radiobiology and it is very clear that were she to do so, even at an undergraduate level in a substandard university, she would clearly fail it.
As for radiation, I would note that there being 5 billion tons of uranium in the planetary oceans, and 500 billion curies of radioactive potassium-40 in it as well - both being the at the lowest level ever observed in the history of this planet - it is very clear that all living things evolved bathed in radiation.
If you hold the position that no level of radiation is safe, one wonders why you have never died from eating a banana. Or perhaps you keep them all behind lead shielding. I don't know, and I wouldn't care, except that ignorance costs lives.
tech3149
(4,452 posts)NNadir
(33,457 posts)Finishline42
(1,091 posts)What Nnadir refuses to acknowledge in his blind support for nuclear energy is that nuclear plants are not very fault tolerant. Even with all of their safety systems and redundant operational systems they still have catastrophic failures. And those failures completely change the economics of their use to generate electricity (not to mention the safe disposal of the tons of radioactive waste generated by each and every power plant the world over).
Not only do we have Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and Fukushima for examples of these failures but also in the mining and processing of uranium are there problems. The facility in Paducah, KY has underground seepage that is very close to the Ohio River. Care to imagine what the implications and the cost of that will be if it's not stopped?
NNadir
(33,457 posts)...in Japan were completely destroyed by an earthquake. More than 20,000 people died, not because of the nuclear plants, but because of buildings, cars, and drowning in a low lying city.
The nuclear plants failures were, in terms of lives lost, trivial.
Seven million people die each year from air pollution, and here I am not even referring to the number of dead people killed by climate related effects, merely those who die from the chemotoxicity of dangerous fossil fuel waste.
And yet...and yet..and yet...
I hear endlessly that nuclear power plants are required to meet standards for safety that zero other forms of energy can meet. Let's be clear, coal in Kentucky is killing thousands, if not tens of thousands of people each year. I'm not hearing a damned word about it from any one.
How come we don't have any anti-nukes who carry on insipidly about Fukushima about banning coastal cities? Which killed more people in this century, the inundation of cities in the Indian and Pacific ocean in 2004 and 2011 respectively, or all the nuclear power operations over the last half a century?
I have demonstrated, in the link offered in the opening post, that practically every damn river in the world carries uranium in it, major rivers such as the Mississippi, hundreds of tons a year. This uranium is called in the scientific literature NORM, "naturally occurring radioactive materials." If one was interested in the science behind these issues, one could begin by simply opening the many references provided in Sustaining the Wind. If you were really, really, really, really, serious about knowing some science beyond offering glib selective attention statements that are oblivious to the millions of lives that would be lost if nuclear plants were shut, you could go to a good science library and read one of the many tens of thousands of papers written on the subject of air pollution, dangerous fossil fuel mining,and yes, radiation, each year.
NORM has existed since the beginning of time, well before there were people dumb enough to fear them. In fact, and again this would involve caring about the world and making simple comparisons, NORM is very much involved in the massive radiation releases associated with fracking in the Marcellus shale, because of the radioactive equilibrium with natural uranium with its decay products radium and radon. Environ. Sci. Technol., 2015, 49 (15), pp 93479354 "Fate of Radium in Marcellus Shale Flowback Water Impoundments and Assessment of Associated Health Risks"
And let's be clear about something, OK?
The people who hate nuclear energy because of selective attention, the raising of specious and insipid objections about theoretical and observed interactions of nuclear power plants with earthquakes are responsible for this state of affairs.
They continuously and assiduously assert that every damned person on the planet, every damned living thing on the planet has to face unacceptable, and clearly dangerous and, in many millions of cases each year, fatal exposure to billions of tons of dangerous fossil fuel waste because they have their heads of their asses about an unstable atom appearing in the Ohio River, even though there has been such atoms in the Ohio River ever since its formation.
Seven million people die each year from air pollution: Lancet, Volume 380, No. 9859, p22242260, 15 December 2012 (For air pollution mortality figures see Table 3, page 2238 and the text on page 2240.) "A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 19902010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010" This is the comprehensive work of more than 100 research physicians, research epidemiological scientists and other health authorities. The paper cites 194 references. Nowhere, absolutely nowhere does the risk of nuclear power plants appear, simply because it is too small to measure.
I'm refusing to acknowledge something? In comparison to what? Is it possible that you are not even remotely acknowledging a vast tragedy which is not theoretically involved with a few atoms in the Ohio River while, right in front of our eyes, available to anyone who gives enough of a rat's ass to look, 70 million people die every damned decade from air pollution, more people than died in World War II?
Nuclear energy need not be perfect, need not be without risk, need not address every selective attention fantasies of every fool on earth to be vastly superior to everything else. It only needs to be vastly superior to everything else, which, happily it is.
Nuclear energy saves lives: Environ. Sci. Technol., 2013, 47 (9), pp 48894895 "Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power"
Here's what selective attention in this case is: It's tragic to the point of disgusting.
Have a nice weekend.