Why I am against nuclear power

[NNN0LHI]

http://candobetter.org/node/672

Why I am against nuclear power

Posted July 21st, 2008 by
Dr. Ross McCluney

Ross McCluney, Ph.D., Chattanooga, TN, 21 July 2008 rmccluney < AT > comcast net

Periodically I’m asked why I oppose new nuclear power plants. I have B.A., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in physics, so have had some exposure to nuclear physics in my training. I also studied the subject during the first wave of nuclear power plant applications. So I guess I’m not surprised that some people expect me to be in favor of nuclear power.

I am surprised by the question, however, because the nuclear industry in the U.S. has been all but shut down for over 30 years. I thought everyone understood the multiple dangers and threats inherent in nuclear power. I guess I didn’t count on all the youngsters who have come along during the hiatus period and who haven’t learned much about the history of nuclear. Newcomers to the nuclear controversy seem to think of nuclear as clean, safe, and a great antidote to global warming. This is reinforced by that cute pro-nuclear animated commercial by Areva, with its catchy tune, that you might have seen on TV and by several pro-nuclear politicians. So let me state the primary reasons I’m against this resurgence of nuclear power.

1. Radioactive waste and other radioactive releases. The waste products from nuclear power, including the wastes from manufacturing the fuel, the wastes spewed into the air and water by every nuclear power plant (admittedly modest in quantity under normal operating conditions, but dangerous nevertheless), and the “spent” fuel left over from operating the reactor, has half-lives ranging from short to tens of thousands of years. The half-life is the time it takes for half of any quantity of a radioactive material to decay to another substance – in some cases this may be a stable element, in others it may be one or more other radioactive elements. The types of radioactive materials and emissions produced are also varied in type, including alpha, beta, gamma, and neutron radiation. For more on these see http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/sci/A0860620.html http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/sci/A0860620.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionizing_radiation

Radioactive waste, either routinely emitted or accidentally released in high quantities or concentration, is very damaging to living things. Ionizing radiation from radioactive substances receives this label because the radiation is so energetic on the microscopic scale that it can strip electrons from atoms, ionizing them, leaving them positively charged and therefore very chemically reactive, meaning that the charged atoms and the molecules to which they are attached, easily undergo chemical reactions with other atoms and molecules in their vicinity, producing new chemical species in the process. It doesn’t take a lot of this inside biological cells to cause a lot of disruption, leading to failure of the cells to operate properly, usually making the organism ill. High energy radioactive radiation can also produce genetic mutations, disrupting genes in the human body. We naturally have this happen within us regularly, due to the presence of cosmic rays and solar storms from outer space and a low level of background radiation from the soil, rocks, and other sources. Plus there is still some residual radiation from atmospheric weapons tests in times past and a little from nuclear accidents at power plants, weapons labs, and industrial plants. All of this is dangerous and is thought to cause at least some of the cancers from which humans increasingly suffer.

[MadHound]

1. Yep, I think that's part of the problem,

We've had an entire generation pass since the bad ol' days of nuclear power, and this generation did experience the horror of nuclear power in this country and around the world. They tend to think like those at the dawn of nuclear power thought, that nuclear was a panacea that will provide clean, green cheap energy when exactly the reverse is true.

We've got enough truly green alternatives besides nuclear that we don't need to revisit it again. To do so only invites further disaster, which we can't afford since we haven't finished cleaning up the mess from the first time around.

[TheWraith]

4. Care to specify what disaster that is?

Because here in the US, civilian nuclear power has never produced a death, despite many accidents in the early days when they didn't know what they were doing.

[MadHound]

10. Hmm, cancer hot spots, thyroid hot spots,

Massive tritium releases into the groundwater, TMI, Chernobyl, on and on it goes.

Tell you what, can we bury tons of radioactive waste over your groundwater source?

[TheWraith]

23. Can we drop a coal fired power plant right next to your house?

Since we've apparently degenerated the conversation to silly, ridiculous comparisons.

If you read the actual research you'll notice that "hot spots" do not necessarily correspond to nuclear plants--or anything else, for that matter. As the statisticians say, random chance is sometimes lumpy. The fact that maybe you've got a larger than normal number of people in a given area with a certain condition doesn't always mean something caused it. Sometimes it happens because somewhere, the odds say that a bunch of people who live in the same general area are going to have cancer.

You'll also find out that, again, coal fired plants release more radioactive material directly into the air than nuclear plants produce in total.

Now when you can find a civilian nuclear accident in the US that has killed even one person, then I might consider listening to you.

[Stellabella]

28. Those aren't the only two options.

If solar and wind energy had had the kind of subsidies that nuclear power has had: billions of dollars over the past 30 years, we'd be in great shape.

BTW, in college my roommate was very pro-nuclear power. She became a doctor specializing in nuclear medical research. And died of cancer 10 years ago.

[TheWraith]

2. Has anyone informed Dr. McCluney...

...That under normal operating conditions, a coal-fired power plant releases more radioactive material--primarily trace uranium and thorium--than a nuclear plant produces in a safely sequestered manner?

[Oregone]

6. Oh, is he pro-Coal?

[TheWraith]

12. Evidently he is.

Because there are only two currently viable green energy technologies that have major growth potential: nuclear and wind. To supply the amount of power the US generates from coal--just from coal--you'd need 800,000 1 megawatt wind turbines. Or about 150 nuclear plants. Installed cost for wind: around $900 billion dollars. Installed cost for nuclear, between $300 and $450 billion. Mix and match is great, but anyone who's pursuing a practical solution to getting rid of coal knows that nuclear is and has to be part of the equation.

[NNN0LHI]

7. He doesn't sound like a fan of coal-fired plants either. From the article

4. There are much better, safer, much less expensive alternatives based on a combination of reducing the need for electricity through conservation and improved efficiency in energy-using-equipment and making the electricity we need from clean renewable sources such as direct solar conversion to electricity, wind power, and hydroelectric power. The large sums to be spent on new nuclear power plants around the world could be much better used to improve energy conservation, efficiency, and use of renewable energy. The jobs created by an expanded conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy industry will be more numerous and less dangerous than those which might be created by a dramatic expansion of nuclear power.

[TheWraith]

16. He should stick to physics. Economics isn't his strong suit.

"4. There are much better, safer, much less expensive alternatives based on a combination of reducing the need for electricity through conservation and improved efficiency in energy-using-equipment and making the electricity we need from clean renewable sources such as direct solar conversion to electricity, wind power, and hydroelectric power."

Actually, of those only hydro is actually as cheap as nuclear, with a very similar layout: high install cost followed by reasonably cheap operation. Wind is much more expensive, and solar much more expensive than wind.

Conservation is great, but it doesn't cut our electrical demand in half. Nothing does, unless we're willing to nuke-bomb the east coast. Furthermore, one of the defining trends of sociology is that as a civilization advances it requires more energy. So we have to plan not just for a lack of major decreases, but eventually increases in demand.

"The large sums to be spent on new nuclear power plants around the world could be much better used to improve energy conservation, efficiency, and use of renewable energy. The jobs created by an expanded conservation, efficiency, and renewable energy industry will be more numerous and less dangerous than those which might be created by a dramatic expansion of nuclear power."

No. I live in an area that's being peppered with wind farms--they don't create all that many jobs, nor does changing your lightbulbs.

[MadHound]

8. Umm, that's a bullshit meme

Yes, burning coal does release uranium and thorium up the stacks. However are you counting all the radioactive waste that comes from a nuclear plant, not just uranium, but radioactive steel, aluminum, etc.? What about all that tritium that is being leaked into the groundwater.

You have to fully account for all material on both sides of this equation, not just one.

Oh, and it doesn't boil down to a strict nuclear vs. coal. We have many other alternative sources that are much cleaner than both coal and nuclear.

[TheWraith]

14. No, actually it's called science.

"Yes, burning coal does release uranium and thorium up the stacks. However are you counting all the radioactive waste that comes from a nuclear plant, not just uranium, but radioactive steel, aluminum, etc.?"

You're talking about secondary radioactivity from neutron infection. It doesn't merit mention because neutron activated materials decay incredibly quickly. Drop that steel in storage somewhere, it'll have cooled off and be ready for recycling in a couple years.

"What about all that tritium that is being leaked into the groundwater."

If you can find someplace where tritium is being leaked into the groundwater, report it, because that's illegal.

"You have to fully account for all material on both sides of this equation, not just one."

And I have.

"Oh, and it doesn't boil down to a strict nuclear vs. coal. We have many other alternative sources that are much cleaner than both coal and nuclear."

Really? Name them--and the math behind them. I just did upthread. Enough nuclear power to replace coal: $300 to $450 billion dollars. Enough wind: $900 billion. Solar doesn't even bear mentioning. Tidal power is still experimental. The Polywell shows a lot of promise, but it's at least 5 years away from real-world application, and waiting isn't a good idea.

Unlike most people, I've actually done the research on this, rather than preferring to read whatever opinions agreed with my own.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

15. So you're saying for about the price of the bailout, we can replace coal with wind.

Great.

No reason then to fuck around with nuclear energy.

[TheWraith]

18. Well, it's a little more complicated than that.

Those "installed cost" figures are based on average costs to build one of each item. What they don't take into account is the fact that we've never tried to build 800,000 wind turbines before. Or 150 nuclear plants, for that matter. With either we'd have to ramp up our industrial capacity in a way that hasn't been seen since World War II, which would cost more money and time. Those being directly proportional: the faster we want to do it, the more it'll cost. The reason I left such things out of my figures is that there are too many variables to properly cost-out the industrial impact. How fast, what we're building, what we can retool from, what factories are idle, etcetera. Wind would probably suffer a bit more from cost issues, since it's harder to build 800,000 of something than it is to build 150 of something larger.

Of course I should also note that these figures ONLY refer to the half our electricity that comes from coal. Mind you that in the other half, we've got nuclear and hydro accounting for 19 and 7 percent respectively, but about 22.5 percent of our electricity would still come from non-green sources.

Gasolene doesn't enter into this equation.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. So it'd probably be much more expensive for nuclear plants.

Because they're so expensive to operate, clean up, etc.

We haven't built a nuke plant in decades, but wind plants are springing up all over the place. That certainly points to them being more cost effective.

[TheWraith]

21. No, not really.

As I pointed out upthread, if you want to read the math, on a per-item basis nuclear plants cost substantially less than wind per megawatt installed. The lack of new plant construction has been primarily an artifact of anti-nuclear public sentiment, and the fact that nobody apparently cared about the 40,000 people a year killed by coal-fired plants.

And by the way, we are building new reactors.

We've got a bunch of wind farms up, but wind is still less than 1 percent of our energy production, so arguments based on what's cost effective might not wash.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

22. But TheWraith...

you keep "reading the math" and then ignoring it whenever it fits your pro-nuke arguments.

Kind of silly.

[TheWraith]

24. You haven't presented any math. Neither has anyone else.

In fact, I'm the only person on this thread who's dealing in real world numbers. Frankly, I'd much rather that the numbers favored wind power, but they don't.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

26. I presented your "math."

Then when you didn't like it, you changed your mind on the "math."

[livetohike]

3. The first commercial nuclear plant in America was in southwestern PA

(Shippingport- that plant is no longer in service). I'll look for a link, but the incidence of thyroid related diseases is very high in sw PA compared to the rest of the country. I don't know what the overall cancer incidence is, but I wouldn't doubt it was all related.

[qb]

5. Imagine if the US had spent this much on wind & solar power...

5. The costs of nuclear power are huge. In addition to the 18 billion U.S. dollars, and more, likely to be spent in building a typical nuclear power plant in my country, the U.S. government, using our taxpayer dollars, spends fortunes:
a. Insuring power plant operators from excessive costs in the event of a disastrous nuclear accident (no private insurance company will insure a nuclear reactor for the full costs of a terrible accident)
b. Providing security and protection against possible terrorist attacks
c. Historically pouring more than 65% of all research funds on energy into the development and protection of nuclear reactors
d. Researching and making nuclear fuel for power plants and guarding the processes
e. Researching and otherwise trying to figure out what to do with radioactive wastes and spent fuel, which can remain radioactive for tens of thousands of years
The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is supposed to evaluate and approve or disapprove nuclear power plants and monitor their operations. This is a very expensive operation. Though the nuclear industry pays for NRC operations – NRC sends a budget to Congress and then Congress invoices the industry – not all federal government (taxpayer) costs are covered by the industry. This might explain why the NRC works more for the industry than for the people of the United States.

If this were not enough, there are the high costs to operate the plants, transport the fuel to many power plants around the country and abroad, transport the wastes and spent fuel to processing or storage sites, also sprinkled around the country.

6. There are high costs to secure all this radioactive material, in storage and in transport between sites, as well as to guard the power plants themselves, and the radioactive storage areas not usually inside the thick walls of the containment buildings built to keep the nuclear reactors themselves isolated from the outside environment.

[MadHound]

9. Actually I don't have to imagine, I know

Back in 1979 when I was in high school debate the topic was, guess what, energy. One of the more interesting facts I ran across at the time was that if we had started on a serious conversion to wind and solar then, we could have been providing 48% of our energy needs with clean energy alternatives like wind and solar by the year 2000. And that was using 1979 technology, which has vastly improved in both technologies since then.

[TheWraith]

20. Again, these really aren't facts.

"5. The costs of nuclear power are huge. In addition to the 18 billion U.S. dollars, and more, likely to be spent in building a typical nuclear power plant in my country,"

Nooo... even the most pessimistic projections are in the $6-7 billion dollar range, and a lot of that money is spent on overcoming the anti-nuclear lobbying effort (and lining the pockets of contractors). The actual cost of a plant, installed, is more like $2-3 billion.

"a. Insuring power plant operators from excessive costs in the event of a disastrous nuclear accident (no private insurance company will insure a nuclear reactor for the full costs of a terrible accident)"

No private company CAN do so, for the same reason that no private company can cover all the damage from a hurricane. A company can't legally issue insurance beyond its own value. As yet, though, no reactor in the US or any western country has ever actually NEEDED such protection.

"c. Historically pouring more than 65% of all research funds on energy into the development and protection of nuclear reactors"

That's only if you include this little thing called the Manhattan Project, as well as all the work that's gone into our fleet of nuclear subs and surface ships.

I'm just going to stop here. This reads like a regurgitation of the fact-light and citation-free stuff that's always thrown around. Suffice to say, most of it is either completely untrue, or so shaded and distorted that it deliberately misleads the reader.

[Silent3]

11. If there were high safety disposal methods for nuclear waste...

...then I'd be all for more nuclear power, but I'd agree that without such disposal methods using nuclear power isn't a viable global warming/energy independence solution.

I also understand that uranium reserves aren't large enough to serve more than, say 50-100 years of heavy use (off the top of my head -- don't trust me on that figure!) and to extend the lifetime of nuclear fission as an energy source we'd have to use breeder reactors. A world economy dependent on the plutonium produced by breeder reactors doesn't strike me as a very good idea.

IF, and it's a very big IF, reasonably safe waste disposal could be achieved, combined with reasonably safe reactor designs, such that the total risk is lower that the risks from equivalent fossil fuel energy production, then nuclear power should perhaps be considered as one component among other stop-gap measures as we ween ourselves off fossil fuel energy, working towards widespread use of renewable sources.

[TheWraith]

25. There are. Waste reprocessing.

It deconstructs the spent fuel, salvages the usable uranium, extracts whatever other isotopes are useful, and you're left with a far smaller and less radioactive mass of unusable stuff.

That uranium figure is a bit silly. It's like the people back in the 70s who claimed we were going to run out of oil by 1990 because they didn't account for future increases in known reserves. Besides which, we have the technology to filter uranium out of the ocean water... which provides about a 4,000 year supply.

[madokie]

27. Gonna get it out of the ocean are we???

You betcha', you durn tootin' we are :rofl:
America will not be building anymore nuclear power plants as they exist today. Hide and watch

4000 year supply even :eyes:

[Silent3]

29. I stated the issue of supply with a caveat for a reason...

...since I really couldn't recall the source of that vaguely remembered idea. Still, I have to wonder, has it been determined that filtering uranium out of ocean water is economically viable, and that the uranium thus extracted produces a reasonable energy surplus vs. the energy required by the extraction process?

Are traditional mined sources of uranium more plentiful than I'd imagined?

Back to the nuclear waste: What's done with the waste that's left over after processing? Something like vitrification? Is plutonium part of what you're calling "whatever other isotopes are useful", with plutonium being part of what you'd plan to keep and use? Even if the processed waste is relatively safe, what do we do about NIMBY?

[hunter]

13. If anyone cared about cancer or maimed and dead people we'd get rid of cars.

Nuclear power plants are a negligable source of carcinogens compared to the exhaust streams of gasoline and diesel engines. The stuff you put in your fuel tank is also a carcinogen, and so is that black gunk in your crankcase. The tread that wears off your tires is a carcinogen too. We all breathe that stuff, drink that stuff, eat that stuff.

A good reason to oppose nuclear power might be that it props up an environmentally destructive consumer society. But the amount of environmental and human health damage caused by nuclear power doesn't even come close to the damage done by our cult of the automobile.

Once we get rid of cars, maybe I'll turn my attention to nuclear power. But right now it's a mote in our eye compared to the bloody petroleum soaked plank stuck through our chest.

[Greyhound]

17. I too am generally opposed to nuclear power, but have you heard about this new

method of generation? I heard this guy talking on on the Peter Collins program in the car and apparently it consumes nuclear waste, including depleted uranium. It sounds interesting.

[DonEBrook]

30. Not impressed. For every human who has died from nuclear power production,

way more than a thousand have succumbed to fossil fuel hazards.