Abundant, reliable, affordable energy makes our jobs, health, living standards and civil rights possible. Remember that when you read about people losing their jobs or having to choose between heating, eating, paying the rent or mortgage, giving to charity, or covering healthcare, college, car or retirement costs. Remember it when Congress makes more hydrocarbon energy off limits – or puts more obstacles in the path of nuclear power that generates a fifth of America’s electricity.
I recently visited nuclear power plants and a fuel reprocessing plant in France, which gets almost 80% of its electricity from uranium. And I’ve read some shockingly ill-informed claims about nuclear power and its supposed alternatives. Here are some essential facts.
1. Reliability.
Nuclear plants generate electricity over 90% of every year, shutting down only occasionally for maintenance, repairs and changing fuel rods. Wind turbines can be relied on just 30% of the time, on average – and just 10% of the time during hot summer days, when air conditioners are on high, but there’s barely a breeze.
2. Operational safety.
Three Mile Island was the “worst accident in US history.” But it injured no one and exposed neighboring residents to the radioactive equivalent of getting a CT scan or living in Denver for a year. It led to major improvements in nuclear plant management, operation and training.
The Chernobyl disaster was due to its shoddy design, construction, maintenance and management. According to the World Health Organization, “fewer than 50” people died as a direct result of this massive meltdown and fire, and nearly all were employees and rescue workers.
3. Storage of used nuclear fuel.
The Energy Department spent 25 years and $10 billion studying the Yucca Mountain site in Nevada, before concluding that it will meet all safety standards. In fact, the largest expected annual radiation dose for someone living near this geologically stable site would be less than 1 millirem – compared to 1,000 millirem from an abdominal CT scan.
America’s 104 nuclear plants generate enough electricity for nearly 75,000,000 homes – and produce about 2,000 tons of “spent” uranium fuel annually. So Yucca will be able to hold all the used fuel from the past 50 years, plus another 35 years of used fuel, without expanding on the original design.
Spent fuel and other wastes (high-level defense wastes, plus low-level wastes like protective clothing) are solid materials. There is no liquid that can leak into rocks or groundwater. Liquid wastes, like water used in reactors, are treated and reused.
4. Transportation safety.
Shipping containers are constructed from layers of steel and lead, nearly a foot thick, and carried on trucks or rail cars. (The 25 to 125-ton containers are too heavy to go in airplanes.) They’ve been slammed into concrete walls at 85 mph, dropped 30 feet, burned 30 minutes in 1475-degree fires, and submerged in water for hours. They haven’t broken or leaked.
Over 3,000 shipments of spent fuel have traversed 1.7 million miles, with no injuries, deaths or environmental damage. Only one significant accident occurred. A semi-truck overturned while avoiding a head-on collision, and the trailer and attached container crashed into a ditch. No harmful releases of radioactivity ever occurred.
That hasn’t stopped imaginative writers from saying “catastrophic” accidents could put “millions” of Americans at risk of exposure to “deadly radiation” or even death, especially if an airplane crashed a cargo of nuclear wastes into a city. They’ve been watching too many Hollywood movies, where every car accident becomes a raging inferno.
5. Theft and terrorism.
The notion that spent (or even fresh) power plant fuel could be stolen and turned into a powerful bomb is likewise more Hollywood than reality.
Those pesky little atomic numbers and enrichment levels are confusing, but important. Weapons grade materials are plutonium, uranium 233 and highly enriched (better than 20%) U235. Power plant fuel is slightly enriched (under 4%) U235. Spent fuel is U238, which cannot cause a chain reaction.
Turning spent fuel into a bomb would require sophisticated reprocessing facilities, which terrorists are unlikely to have. Even a “dirty bomb” (radioactive materials around a non-nuclear explosive) would cause more fear than actual damage. And the US nuclear industry’s commitment to safety applies to plant design and management, shipping and storing wastes, and guarding against theft and terrorism.
The bottom line? We need the electricity that nuclear power provides, and we can get it safely. Just try to imagine life without all the things that require electricity. Remember the pain, inconvenience and financial losses you or people you know suffered when storms or blackouts knocked out the electrical power.
Consider the warnings of experts: We are dangerously close to experiencing major brownouts and blackouts in many parts of the United States, especially in our western states, because we haven’t built the power plants and transmission lines we need for a growing population that depends on electricity 24/7/365.
We need to conserve more, install more insulation and better windows, and use more efficient light bulbs, computers, servers, heaters and air-conditioners. We need more wind and solar power, where those sources make economic, practical and environmental sense. But we also need a lot more affordable, reliable electricity from nuclear power plants.
Ponder how far our heating, cooling, communication and other technologies have come in just 100 years – and where we’re likely to be 50 or 100 years from now. However, we’re not there yet.
Futuristic technologies – like solar generators orbiting above the Earth, beaming electrical power to urban receivers – for now are pure science fiction. They’ll be reality about when Scotty beams Captain Kirk back to the Enterprise. We need to work on them. But we need real energy for real people, today.
Otherwise, homes, factories, offices, schools and hospitals will go dark. Bread winners will go jobless. Energy prices will soar even higher. Families won’t have basic necessities, much less luxuries. And poor and minority citizens will see civil rights gains rolled back, because only energy and a vibrant economy can turn constitutionally protected rights into rights we actually enjoy.
Roy Innis is chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, co-chair of the Campaign to Stop the War on the Poor, and author of Energy Keepers – Energy Killers: The new civil rights battle.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
When Greens, pollies and warmers advocate the use of nuclear power, maybe its time to start worrying about AGW. Until then a touch of sceptiscm should be essential……
Instead of desal plants if we put the money into gen 4 thorium nuclear reactors on our coastlines we could have clean power for home and transport and fresh water for many centuries.
By which time nuclear fusion will have solved the problems of fission.
Does that sound too sibyl, Simple?
spangled drongo ,
“Does that sound too sibyl, Simple?”
You doesn’t know politicians well does you? Simple! Ha!
Spot on, Toby. How can anyone take the greens claims of catastrophic carbon seriously while they still insist on playing ducks and drakes with the one energy source that has already delivered the Swiss, Swede’s and French a per capita emission level of only 5t CO2/year with a high living standard?
They have a choice of either getting serious about emissions or playing “silly buggers”. And the record shows they chose to play silly buggers.
Spangled; imo it’s too early for us to jump into bed with the Thorium/- fuel cycle for our major power generation. After a quick glance via Google on hazards
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/Pubs/rp/2007-08/08rp11.htm
http://www.iaea.or.at/inis/aws/fnss/fulltext/te_1319_6.pdf
more general info
http://www.idust.net/Tutorial/DBish001.htm
Not sure what point you’re trying to make with the links gavin. A quick read suggests they agree that thorium may be a safer alternative but that there are still technical issues.
The government document says a major stumbling block in Aus would be green group resistance – the theme of this topic and it’s initial comments.
However, they’re interesting reads – thanks
Those who consider themselves on the green side have to face a reality. The more opposition you make to coal the closer you get to Nuclear. Lawrence Solomon in his book “The Deniers” realised this and gave it as a reason for him to look at why there is dissent from the AGW view. He greatly fears the nuclear option more than AGW it seems. Australia has ideal method of storing waste and there is little of it anyway. Many things our industry does is extremely dangerous nuclear is not an exception. Here in Canberra we could put a nuclear power station on Lake Burley Griffin and store the waste in Black Mountain. Now we have 4 Greens in government their efforts will help it happen even though they don’t realise that is the end game. So to all you Greens out there thanks for working so hard towards a nuclear future!
Common sense is not so….. common…is it Ian!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/29/2404489.htm
Spot on Ian and Toby
Of course more shrill nonsense from the WWF such as this, just shows what the agendas are.
So we utilise 7-8-Ha to live, and have an economy etc, but what it doesnt say is what it is comparing this 8Ha with, and to what end.
Another typical greeny beat up by the WWF. Its more about filling up their coffers with donations from the masses of delusional dopes and barflies.
Gavin,
As bikerider says, the underlying message here is that this is not a bad bed to be in.
The thorium produced fuel has a big advantage over traditional nuclear fuel in that it does not produce plutonium [weapons material], the thorium fuel cycle is proliferation resistant and the waste is nowhere near the problem. [Half life 24.1 days, U238 4.5 billion years]
Also nuclear accidents can be almost eliminated. The reactor cannot “melt down” and at a melting point of 3300 deg. C, thorium dioxide has the best thermal and physical properties.
Also, you can DIY with used gas mantles [thorium]and smoke detectors [americium] and never buy electricity again.
Gavin,
As David Deming correctly stated, “technological progress is our birthright and destiny”.
Malcolm, Toby and Spangled one, could you drop me a line on sceptic1@live.com.au please. Something has come up that you may be interested in hearing about.
Not much of an article is it Malcolm. But I d expect nothing less from WWF.
I know a fella who fenced of his land at great expense to keep out feral animals so that his land could become a nature reserve. He asked the WWF if they would like to put up signs on fences….sure they said that will be $20,000.
I noted in teh comments section on your link Malcolm discussion of how degraded grazed land is. My Brother in Law ran Commonwealth Hill and Mobella sheep and cattle stations, they border the dog fence, once side ( his side that is grazed), is healthy( for the outback!). When I was there a coupel of years ago the sturt desert pea was out and many other wildflowers, there was even green around due to recent rain….but the other side of the dog fence where there is no grazing was pretty much barren waste land.
I must say i was very surpised, but as my brother said, “mate we cant afford to over graze, we always run these places as if we are in drought…that way we survive”
There are many power cuts in Sweden despite that we rely for 50% of nuclear power.
I must also say that the post is very ignorant. Can the poster please post a link with the WHO info that about 50 people died in Chernobyl!
We all know that the danger with the radiation comes in the long run. You don’t die immediately , the illnes will come many years later.
FYI , radiologists used to have longer vacancies than other doctors due to the radiation risks.
What we seem to forget about the Chernobyl , is the radioactive clouds with contaminants that swept over northern Scandinavia and polluted our wilderness( mushroom, berries, lichen etc) and made the meat of reindeers and moose useless, causing much economical ruin for hunters and reindeer herders.
Spangled,
A substance with a half life of 4.5 Billion years is not terribly radioactive. Depleted uranium (mostly U238) has been used as mass balance in aircraft control surfaces(Lockheed C5A) and if a reference I saw recently is to be believed, in the Boeing 747 engine pylons(There it mass balances the wing itself).
Ann,
And studies on nuclear power workers have them with lower morbidity than the population at large.
Why don’t you take your emotional claptrap and just piss off?
Thanks
Ann, a quick google will give you many references….but heres a few
http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2005/pr38/en/index.html
‘A total of up to 4000 people could eventually die of radiation exposure from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) accident nearly 20 years ago, an international team of more than 100 scientists has concluded.
As of mid-2005, however, fewer than 50 deaths had been directly attributed to radiation from the disaster”……so 20 years on less than 50 deaths.
They go on to say over 200, 000 emergency workers were exposed to heavy radiation doses in teh 86-87 clean up.
In Australia, Peter Garret has frequently said over 100,000 people died…ignorance is everywhere Ann and its important to recognise that greenpeace is a pusher of exageration.
I am not trying to belittle the accident, it has caused cancer rates to increase, but there is massive exageration from non nuclear proponents.
Coal related deaths are large, but we still use it.
Modern Nuclear reactors are very safe and Australia is in a magnificent position to sell and store nuclear waste.
If AGW is real, to not be considering this reliable source of energy is ridiculous.
another link for you…
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/chernobyl/inf07.html
“28 people died within four months from radiation or thermal burns, 19 have subsequently died, and there have been around nine deaths from thyroid cancer apparently due to the accident: total 56 fatalities as of 2004.
An authoritative UN report in 2000 concluded that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed. This was confirmed in a very thorough 2005-06 study.”….now this is published by the world nuclear association so they might be biased, but I would expect the UN and WHO to be biased the other way?
regards Toby
Eyrie,
Agreed. It’s a bit like the background radiation you get from the monazite when you lie on the beach.
The UV will kill you long before the radiation.
er, from the monazite, that is.
Thanks Toby for your references even though I knew this was the fact of it. I read a argument for the high figure once it went like this.
Well you may directly attribute only fifty but if you look at the overall deaths 5% will not included because of the statisical degree of confidence in your trend line. That is why the death rate did not rise! So if we take the 5% attribute it all to Chernobyl we get the magic 90 to 100 thousand.
Total BS of course.
Thanks Toby for your links.
strange sort of logic for sure DHMO, BUT WHY LET FACTS GET IN THE WAY OF A HORROR STORY!
“The Chernobyl disaster was due to its shoddy design, construction, maintenance and management. ”
From what I’ve read about events there wilful neglect and wilful disregard for safety was also involved to the extent that calling it an accident is a bit of a stretch.
There is one thing with the pro nuclear comments here. When people in Sweden ( over 50% are pro nuclear) are promoting nuclear power , they want to distance themselves as far as possible of reactors of Chernobyl type . The pro nuclear lobby hardly states that ” only” 50 persons died in Chernobyl , they state that the new generation of reactors are of a different type than the Chernobyl one.
An interesting link is this http://www.kiddofspeed.com/ I don’t think it is an argument for anything but give an interesting view of the area recently. I have read elsewhere there is a lot of wild life there now because people don’t go to the area. Perhaps you have to know about radiation before it can affect you!
I could argue that the poor bastards who were affected by Chernobyl weren’t actually getting much quality medical care from their communist thugocracy and after the event were being looked at very carefully. I wonder how many lives were saved by early detection of all sorts of medical conditions as a result?
You’ll never see an official estimate of this.
Chernobyl would never have been licensed in the west. Dumb commies.
In any case the radiation levels there now are for the most part lower than naturally occurring in many parts of the world where people have been living for millenia and show no signs of problems.
Ionising radiation is a poor mutagen and a weak carcinogen. Lots of chemical compounds are far worse.
Bottom line:
(1) How much fuel is there realistically and how long will it last?
(2) What’s the TOTAL ROI for a plant’s life cycle?
Whenever it comes to nuclear power another enquiry is launched and the issue goes away. This is a mistake. The idea is simply to scope out a thousand sites where people could potentially build a nuclear power plant. Square it with the State and Local government that these potential places are fine for nuclear power if someone is willing to buy the real estate for that purpose and then put in place the 50 year tax exemption for company and individual revenues earned at these places. Also we can have the uranium royalties-free for 50 years if used up in these sites.
Why another enquiry? Its just going to be more lies associated with it? This is an emergency. And we cannot wait for the ten years of red tape that these things typically take. Without the red tape this is the cheapest form of electricity. It can crowd out coal-electricity so the coal can be liquified. The coal can be liquified using nuclear heat generation and the off-peak electricity generation of hydrogen via hydrolysis.
This will inspire great careers for a whole new generation of science graduates. You’ve got the plasma chemistry and the plasma physics that go into this. You’ve got the ability to turn municipal waste and any waste plant material into high-grade fuel. This will require enourmous development in technology to be able to manipulate these plasmas at temperatures well over 1200 degrees centigrade. To be able to separate all the impurities and refine them for commercial use. With the tax exemptions we can get to a place of being the lowest cost producer of high-grade liquid fuel. We can make the Middle East look like yesterdays news in terms of energy production. And the thing is we are in a high-energy era that will create enourmous pain until such time as nuclear crowds out coal electricity and coal goes to liquids. And once we are in that position we are back in a cheap energy environment. Access to cheap energy ought to be considered a human right.
“(1) How much fuel is there realistically and how long will it last?”
There is heaps of Uranium and its likely to last tens of thousands of years. Its the most abundant of our energy resources with that sort of heat flux density. Far more abundant then hydrocarbons. And it can make our hydrocarbons go a lot further. Uranium is about as plentiful as Tin or Magnesium.
“(2) What’s the TOTAL ROI for a plant’s life cycle?”
That would depend on your competition policy with regards to electricity. And your tax policy. It also depends on your litigation. Because the main cost of nuclear electricity is not the fuel. Its the IMPLIED INTEREST ON THE CONSTRUCTION COSTS. Whereas a good nuclear power plant only costs three years to commission from scratch it is a common saying that nothing happens in ten years in the nuclear world. But this is only because of the modern contempt for property rights. We have to scope things out in advance to avoid any delays. Because its the nature of finance that the difference in the implied interest cost when you have 3 years before you are earning money and 10 years when you are earning money is a big difference.
The internal rate of return won’t be all that high if we plan for massive overcapacity. Because its the level of capital investment in any industry that brings the prices down. Profitability across industries tends towards equalisation just so long as capital investment is able to accumulate to where the higher than normal profits go. Hence it is not in our interests to get the government doing this. Rather it is in our interests to set up a very long-run tax exemption for this power generation and make sure there are no barriers to entry and plenty of potential sites where all legal problems are done and dusted in advance. That way many plants will be built and the electricity price will be low because of competition and overcapacity. So it need not cost the taxpayer even one cent.
Put it like this. We don’t want to sell our wharves or current power generation to the Chinese communists. Because they are strategic resources and that would give a foreign power both pricing and strategic leverage over us. But if it is determined in advance that private investors are going to create a massive overcapacity of wharves all along the coast the sheer capacity and numbers of wharves we wind up with means that wharves cease to be a strategic asset that some coterie gan gain undue leverage on the rest of us with. It ceases to be a situation where a wharfies union (for example) can make enourmous gains at the expense of the public at large.
It is this same thinking that ought be applied here.
Now as to the useful life of the plant. All capital goods are things that are used up in production. But in the case of fixed durable goods the using up is sort of transferred to maintenance costs. A well thought out plant ought to be able to last as long as you want to make it last. You just update some parts of it a bit at a time and replace other parts of it a bit at a time. Generally speaking when people make estimates of the useful life of a plant though they would estimate a nuclear plant as lasting twice as long as a solar plant or a windfarm. But in principle the nuclear plant ought to be able to last indefinitely.
Chernobyl is still going. Actually there were parts of it that never shut down at all.
“Not sure what point you’re trying to make with the links gavin. A quick read suggests they agree that thorium may be a safer alternative but that there are still technical issues.”
Its pretty hard to determine that something is SAFER then something else that is already perfectly safe. The record of the nuclear industry speaks for itself. It is the safest, cleanest, cheapest form of electricity production yet invented. Thorium is just another fuel added to the already hyper-abundant uranium.
If there are still technical issues they are not issues we need to worry about. We just set it up as a no-lose situation for us and let the investors worry all they want.
Yes Graeme, you have to love how we keep being told there is only enough uranium to last 50 years, but heh, never let facts get in the way of your bias!
Hey people. Put hyperion nuclear module in the google. This is magnificent. The breakthrough we’ve been looking for. I heard a rumour about this miracle awhile back. But now its come out of the closet.
Here’s a picture of it on my blog.
http://graemebird.wordpress.com/2008/11/07/nuclear-miracle-the-new-hyperion-module/#comment-18245
Here’s another really promising source of energy. Boron fusion using Plasma Physics. Actually its hard for me to figure why it is caused fusion. Since you are adding a proton to a Boron atom and that atom is splitting up into three helium atoms and releasing a motherload of electrical energy.
It seems more or less criminal to me that these guys aren’t getting funded. The potential of this scheme looks obvious. We want to have our tax and investment setup sorted here so well that people like this wouldn’t think of anywhere else BUT Australia to come and do the research and set up the prototype.
http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-1518007279479871760&ei=U8KDSZnjJKqyqAPixuzoCg&q=Eric+J+Lerner&hl=en
Now notice that the mindset that the anti-carbon lunatics have put about in no way helps us when it comes to funding promising non-carbon energy. In fact the mindset that has been put about is such that these people are not the least bit interested in anything that is actually likely to work. So biofuel, solar, wind turbines on top of Manhattan buildings…. well thats just sweet and lets have billions in stolen money finance. But a plan to bring energy costs down to $3 per barrel equivalent through boron fusion/fission and bursts of plasma-focus high-voltage energy….. well that just seems to be creating a big fat yawn.
This fellow is only looking for a couple of million funding for the next three years. And nobody seems to want to come up with the money. I find this almost hard to believe given just how convincing his presentation is.