Posted on 09/04/2002 1:15:22 PM PDT by Willie Green
For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.
From Col D. T. W. Gibson, Woodcote Cottage, Hamstead Drive, Yarmouth:
TO DEVELOP renewable sources of energy to reduce emissions is clearly a good idea.
NEG Micron Rotors plays an important part both in the Island and in the UK economy. The company needs a research and test facility but why does it need to be put on the open, unspoilt land near Wellow? A site by the industrial estate, or on rough ground behind the Newport Golf Course would seem more convenient.
We all rely on a reliable supply of main electricity, 220 volts at 50 Herz, steady enough to run clocks on cookers, etc. The snag with renewables (wind, solar, tidal currents and waves) is that they vary over 24 hours. The painful truth is that 90 per cent has to come, as now, from fossil fuels and nuclear plants, because these can be managed to even out the variations in renewables.
Wind farms are relatively small players in the whole UK grid and of small local significance. They need to be sited at the best and least obtrusive site. Only a relatively small one could be fitted in to our crowded Island without spoiling it.
An article in the New Civil Engineer (July 11) discusses the future needs of UK considering the need to reduce the use of fossil fuels. Its conclusion is to start now to build ten 1000 MW nuclear-power stations over the next 20 years.
This would allow us to use off-peak supplies to generate hydrogen to fuel vehicles and eliminate exhaust pollution.
We are bathed in radiation of all types all our lives; too much can be dangerous of course, but it is part of life. Nuclear waste is manageable and using nuclear fuel reduces the amount of radioactivity in the world.
Unlike fossil fuels, there is plenty of nuclear fuel at a stable price.
I can imagine the anguished protests from many worthy people when they read this but some tough decisions must be taken if our restless, mobile society is to survive intact. So save electricity and learn to love nuclear power!
Well stated. The sincerity of someone whining about global warming is 100% correlated with their willingness to support nuclear power as a solution.
If they say "sure, build nukes", then they are clearly genuinely concerned about the issue. If they say "oh no, we might have a 3 Mile Island and that would be worse than global warming", then they're using global warming as a stalking horse for a different (socialist) agenda.
That is not true.
Current reserves, at current depletion rates, will be gone in about 60 years. Depletion rates are increaseing, although resources are most likely out there to balance it.
The impetus needs to go beyond acceptance of nuclear power, and include research into better reactor technology. Nukes are good, but they can be improved.
In fact, moderate amounts of radiation are actually good for you.
Nuclear waste is manageable and using nuclear fuel reduces the amount of radioactivity in the world.
I'm pretty sure that's wrong. It's my understanding that the total radioactivity of the waste products exceeds that of the original ore. (This is because the fuel breaks down into decay products that have a shorter half-life, but aren't suitable as reactor fuel.) In any case, we are digging uranium out of the shielding ground and storing its most radioactive fraction in steel drums in populated areas, so the effective radioactivity is increased regardless.
a few enviro wackos are begining to come out in favor of nuclear power, its going to be a long process though, particulary in the U.S.
In Asia where the brown cloud from rapid economic growth is literally choking people to death, nuclear power development is growing rapidly. That part of the world has two choices go nuclear or return the population to poverty living conditions.
In the U.S. a number of projects are under way to extend the life of existing plants. The enviro wackos are laying low to avoid the political fallout. 22% of our energy is in nuclear and the increased population growth can't be supported in an envoromentally friendly way by burning more fossil fuels.
We are referring, of course, to nuclear power. This industry has been brought to a virtual standstill in this country based on fears that nuclear power is far too dangerous to use. Those fears are unfounded, however, and America should take a second look at this amazing form of power generation. France, Belgium, Switzerland, and other countries that generate a higher percentage of their electrical output via nuclear power than does the United States have been able to do so without loss of life and without harming the environment. Why should it be any different here?
This is not to say that nuclear power is 100 percent safe. (No form of power generation is perfectly safe.) Nuclear power is simply safer than other alternatives for generating large amounts of electrical energy, such as oil or coal plants. This is true, in part, because the fuel in a nuclear power plant is highly concentrated. One uranium fuel pellet — typically measuring about 0.3-inch diameter by 0.5-inch long — can produce the equivalent energy of 17,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 1,780 pounds of coal, or 149 gallons of oil. Because relatively little fuel is used, relatively little waste is produced. Moreover, the waste that is produced in a nuclear power plant is contained within the plant itself, where it can eventually be removed for long-term storage. This is not the case with fossil fuel plants, which emit tons of pollutants through their smokestacks into the atmosphere. Nuclear plants do not emit pollutants into the air and for that reason they do not have smokestacks. Some nuclear power plants have cooling towers that are sometimes mistaken for smokestacks, but those cooling towers emit water vapor.
Interestingly, an article that appeared in the January-February 2000 issue of Foreign Affairs, entitled "The Need for Nuclear Power," also concludes that fossil fuel electrical power plants are actually more hazardous to people than nuclear power plants. That conclusion, in that source, is particularly notable since Foreign Affairs is the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the CFR is a promoter of internationalism as opposed to American independence. Yet the nuclear power option could make the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil.
Written by Richard Rhodes and Denis Beller (neither of whom, by the way, is a member of the CFR), the Foreign Affairs article notes that pollutants from coal-burning plants cause an estimated 15,000 premature deaths in the United States every year. In fact, write Rhodes and Beller, "A 1,000-megawatt-electric (MWe) coal-fired power plant releases about 100 times as much radioactivity into the environment as a comparable nuclear plant." Moreover, they explain:
Running a 1,000-MWe power plant for a year requires 2,000 train cars of coal or 10 supertankers of oil but only 12 cubic meters of natural uranium. Out the other end of fossil-fuel plants … come thousands of tonnes of noxious gases, particulates, and heavy-metal-bearing (and radioactive) ash, plus solid hazardous waste — up to 500,000 tonnes of sulfur from coal, more than 300,000 tonnes from oil, and 200,000 tonnes from natural gas. In contrast, a 1,000 MWe nuclear plant releases no noxious gases or other pollutants and much less radioactivity per capita than is encountered from airline travel, a home smoke detector, or a television set.
What Are the Risks?
Arguments against nuclear power reactors generally revolve around three main issues: nuclear waste; plutonium build-up; and radioactivity. Each of these issues is addressed below:
• Nuclear waste: Reactor fuel consists of uranium that has been formed into a usable metal alloy and produced as small pellets, rods, or plates. The fuel is encapsulated with a metal cladding, such as zircaloy, to provide mechanical strength and to prevent inadvertent outside radioactive contamination. Nuclear reactor waste or spent nuclear fuel consists of the fuel pellets that have been used in a reactor for a long period of time (usually several years) and have lost their ability to efficiently release energy. The spent fuel has many radioactive byproducts, such as the fission fragments, and must be stored to prevent hazardous exposure.
Presently, spent fuel is stored in shielded basins of water or dry storage vaults at the nuclear power plants. The radioactive byproducts must be allowed to decay to safe levels, which will take hundreds to thousands of years. Solid nuclear waste containers are designed, through both natural and engineered safety barriers, to withstand underground storage for at least 10,000 years.
Spent fuel can be safely stored on a permanent basis once a national repository is finally approved. Planned nuclear waste storage facilities such as the Yucca Mountain site are still undergoing environmental impact studies, having suffered numerous delays for the opening date. At present the opening of a national repository for the long-term storage of nuclear waste is over 12 years behind schedule, and at least one government laboratory source (see http://nsnfp.inel.gov) states that a national repository may not be available for another 20 years. But the problem is political, not scientific.
One way to address the nuclear waste issue is to reduce the amount of waste that needs to be stored. Other countries, such as France, have progressive nuclear fuel recycling programs whereby a large percentage of the unused uranium (and the small amount of plutonium produced) in the spent fuel is salvaged and then processed into new reactor fuel. According to the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), only 3 percent of spent fuel is actual fission byproduct waste; 96 percent is unused uranium, and the remaining 1 percent is the unused plutonium created during the fuel cycle. The benefits of spent nuclear fuel recycling include more efficient nuclear fuel usage, reduced chance of nuclear materials proliferation, and less buildup of nuclear reactor waste byproducts. The benefits of making more efficient use of nuclear fuel are obvious, yet the United States does not have a nuclear fuel recycling program in place at this time.
• Plutonium build-up: Western nuclear power reactors are constructed and engineered in a manner that minimizes plutonium build-up, and much of the plutonium that is produced inside the reactor is used during an ordinary fuel cycle. Moreover, it should be kept in mind that using fissile material for reactor fuel is a far better method of preventing nuclear proliferation than storage or burying those materials. After the fissile material has been used as nuclear fuel, it cannot possibly be used for weapons, thereby eliminating the possibility of use by potential terrorists.
• Radiation: The amount of radiation that is emitted by nuclear power plants, as already indicated, is minuscule. According to EPA guidelines, the annual whole body dose to the public is limited to 25 millirems for uranium fuel cycle operations (see 40 CFR part 190.10).
But before anyone panics at such a generous regulatory allotment, let’s put into proper focus how much radiation a millirem is. According to information from the NEI, the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), natural background radiation from the Earth’s crust ranges from 23 millirems per year at the Atlantic Coast to 90 millirems per year on the Colorado Plateau. Radiation inside the body is approximately 40 millirems per year from the food and water we consume and up to 200 millirems per year from natural levels of radon in the air we breathe. The annual radiation dose reaching us from outer space ranges from 26 millirems at sea level to 53 millirems at elevations between 7,000-8,000 feet. The radiation dose from a simple medical X-ray is approximately 20 millirems, and the average radiation dose from a 1,000-mile airline flight is about 1 millirem — meaning that a traveler who flies across the country and back will accumulate about 5 millirems. We also receive 1-2 millirems annually from watching television and would receive another 7 millirems annually from living in a brick building. Now consider this: We would receive .03 millirem annually by living within a 50-mile radius of a coal-fired power plant, but only .009 millirem by living within a 50-mile radius of a nuclear power plant! Incredible as it may seem, we would have to live near a nuclear power plant for more than 2,000 years in order to receive the same amount of radiation that we would get from a single diagnostic medical X-ray.
Anti-nuclear propaganda notwithstanding, there is nothing unnatural about radioactivity, radioactive elements, or even nuclear reactors. In fact, all three have existed in nature without any help from man and continue to exist today. At least 14 naturally occurring fission reactors have been documented in the Oklo-Okélobondo natural geological uranium formation in Gabon, a country on the west coast of Africa. These "fossil reactors" contained sufficient concentrations of U-235 for the chain reactions to occur, and those reactions were not regulated by control rods or any other form of human intervention. The discovery of these natural reactors clearly discredits the anti-nuclear, alarmist claim that man is somehow tampering with nature by building nuclear power plants.
What If Something Goes Wrong?
Nuclear power plants are based on multiple layers of defense designed to protect the environment from the radioactive material inside the reactor core. But what happens if something goes wrong — so terribly wrong that those layers of defense are breached? What then?
The most serious accident possible is the release of radioactive material into the environment. It is not a nuclear explosion, for the simple reason that the uranium fuel used in a nuclear power plant does not contain a high enough concentration of U-235 to make a nuclear explosion even theoretically possible. To make such an explosion possible, the uranium fuel inside a reactor would have to be enriched to about 90 percent U-235, but it is only enriched to about 3.5 percent.
The worst nuclear power plant disaster in history occurred when the Chernobyl reactor in the Ukraine experienced a heat (and gas) — not nuclear — explosion. If such an explosion were to have occurred in a Western nuclear power plant, the explosion would have been contained because all Western plants are required to have a containment building — a solid structure of steel-reinforced concrete that completely encapsulates the nuclear reactor vessel. The Chernobyl plant did not have this fundamental safety structure, and so the explosion blew the top of the reactor building off, spewing radiation and reactor core pieces into the air.
But the design of the Chernobyl plant was inferior in other ways as well. Unlike the Chernobyl reactor, Western power plant nuclear reactors are designed, under operating conditions, to have negative power coefficients of reactivity that make such runaway accidents impossible. The bottom line is that the flawed Chernobyl nuclear power plant would never have been licensed to operate in the U.S. or any other Western country, and the accident that occurred there simply would not occur in a Western nuclear power plant.
The circumstances surrounding the Chernobyl accident were in many ways the worst possible, with an exposed reactor core and an open building. Thirty-one plant workers and firemen died directly from radiation exposure at Chernobyl. Also, it is projected that over 3,400 local residents will eventually acquire and die of cancer due to their exposure to the radioactive fallout. By comparison, within a matter of hours more than 2,300 were killed and as many as 200,000 others injured in a non-nuclear accident when a toxic gas cloud escaped from the Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India. According to conventional wisdom, the worst nuclear power accident in this country occurred at the Three Mile Island plant in Pennsylvania. Yet, in that incident, nobody was killed and nobody was injured.
One exception, perhaps, could be Dr. Edward Teller, the distinguished pro-nuclear physicist who played a key role in the development of nuclear advancements during and after World War II. In a two-page ad appearing in the Wall Street Journal for July 31, 1979, Dr. Teller explained that, at 71 years of age and working 20 hours per day, the strain of refuting some of the anti-nuclear "propaganda that Ralph Nader, Jane Fonda and their ilk" were "spewing to the news media" in the wake of Three Mile Island led to a heart attack. He continued: "You might say that I was the only one whose health was affected by that reactor near Harrisburg. No, that would be wrong. It was not the reactor. It was Jane Fonda. Reactors are not dangerous."
The event at Three Mile Island occurred from faulty instrumentation that gave erroneous readings for the reactor vessel environment. Due to a series of equipment failures and human errors, plus inadequate instrumentation, the reactor core was compromised and underwent a partial melt. Yet radioactive water released from the core configuration was safely confined within the containment building structure, and very little radiation was released into the environment.
The Three Mile Island incident actually underscores the relative safety of nuclear power plants since the safety devices worked as designed and prevented any injury from occurring to humans, animals, or the environment. Moreover, the accident directly resulted in improved procedures, instrumentation, and safety systems, and now our nuclear reactor power plants are substantially safer. The Three Mile Island Unit 2 core has been cleaned up and the radioactive deposit properly stored; Three Mile Island Unit 1 is still operating with an impeccable record.
Status of the Nuclear Industry
There are now 104 operating nuclear power units in this country that are responsible for about 20 percent of our total electrical generation. By comparison, over half our electricity is generated by coal-burning plants.
Our nuclear power plants have not only been generating electricity safely, they also have been doing so economically. The February 2001 issue of Nuclear Energy Insight listed the average nuclear energy production cost for 1999 as 1.83 cents per kW-hour, as compared to 3.18 cents/kW-hr for oil-burning plants, 3.52 cents per kW-hr for natural gas plants, and 2.07 cents per kW-hr for coal plants.
But the initial capital costs for constructing a nuclear power plant are generally high. Part of these costs can be attributed to improved safety features and tighter government regulations, many of which are not imposed on other types of power plants. And of course there are the seemingly endless environmental impact statements and delays that — thanks to the environmental lobby — also add to the cost of building a nuclear power plant. Finally, there is the public relations problem created by anti-nuclear propaganda. All of these factors must be weighed by those who might invest in nuclear power plants. In fact, one of the risks these investors must consider is whether or not they can even get their nuclear power plant online in today’s anti-nuclear regulatory climate.
Consider, as a case in point, the Shoreham Nuclear Power Plant on Long Island. The newly constructed facility had acquired all of the necessary approvals and permits, was complete and fully functional, and was already operating at low power. Governor Cuomo, however, refused to approve the plant’s emergency evacuation plan, an arbitrary decision based on "political correctness" rather than facts, and the plant was not licensed for full operation. Instead, the utility that owned the power plant sold it to the state of New York for the ridiculous amount of $1.00, and the state dismantled the plant in 1994. Dozens of unfinished (and presently abandoned) nuclear power plants at various stages of construction are scattered across the United States.
So even though other countries are expanding their use of nuclear power, the number of operating units here peaked at 112 in 1990 and has since begun to decline. According to NEI-supplied statistics, no nuclear power generating plants have been ordered in this country since 1977, and no new construction permits have been issued since 1979. On the other hand, there have been 117 nuclear power plant order cancellations by utilities since 1973. The last year that an operable nuclear unit came online was 1996, and since then another five reactor units have been shut down.
Nuclear power plants are generally licensed to operate for 40 years but can apply for a license renewal for an additional 20 years. Because many of these plants became operational during roughly the same time period (25 reactor units became operational prior to 1973, 15 came online in 1973, and another 15 came online in 1974), there will be a rapid decrease in nuclear nuclear power generating capacity beginning in about 2010 — unless renewals are issued to the plants whose licenses expire.
In fact, it is projected that by the year 2015, over a third of our operating reactor units will come due for license renewal or decommissioning. Fortunately, because of the rising electrical power demands, license renewals are being given to most plants requesting the extension.
For too long the nuclear industry has been a victim of scare tactics and outrageously false propaganda. Yet truth is a much more potent weapon than falsehood, and the truth about nuclear power is that it provides a viable and safe means for satisfying our growing need for electricity. The looming specter of a severe energy shortage in this country should spark an increasing demand for nuclear power on the part of Americans who don’t want to be left in the dark. And that, of course, will create a growing problem for the radical environmental lobby that is not only anti-nuclear power but anti-development.
Dr. McGregor has authored or co-authored over 36 research publications on radiation detectors, and presently has six patents filed on various detector concepts. He has a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Texas A&M University and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of Michigan. Dr. McGregor has also performed research for the Los Alamos and Sandia National Laboratories. To see the entire issue concerning nuclear power, go to http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/2001/04-23-2001/vo17no09_nuclear.htm)
Anything can be improved. Are you aware of the research on nuclear reactors during the last 10 years?
Details escape me, I'll see if I can find some of the references.
Not true. With recycling, there is more than enough in just mill tailings on the surface right now to supply every watt of power needed for the next 600 years.
Going with the old-school semantics that reserves are known and avaialable, while resources encompass reserves as well as what is not yet discovered, or what is not yet avaialable with current technology. Sorry for the dated syntax. Does that mean I'm an old geezer yet?
Current reserves of anything are generally a few decades away from depletion, for the simple reason that if the known supply will last a generation, there's no incentive to undertake a search for more. If the known supply gets a bit tight, the price goes up, and the searches start.
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