WHY DO YOU FEAR..........NUCLEAR ENERGY?

by Terry 50 Replies latest watchtower scandals

Soledad

I don't fear it at all, I think that as consumers we should have this option available instead of just petrol.
A nuclear power plant will create many jobs. Many areas in the US can use that right now.
SeymourButts

Three Mile Island and Chernobyl provide us with a reminder that these plants can release dangerous radioactivity, or even melt down. The waste from these operations needs to be addressed as well. This radioactive waste is extremely long-lived, with half-lives of many of these radioisotopes being from centuries to millennia long. Is it possible to safely bury this waste without fear of it leaching out? For thousands of years? Do you really think that we could confidently produce such a plan, given our past record? Do we want to burden our children and descendants with the responsibility of this danger___because we weren't able to find a safer way to generate electricity? Most plants also use or generate plutonium and uranium which can be used in the manufacture of nuclear weapons. This will be a never ending temptation for terrorists and rogue nations. If all of the issues of safety, waste, and weapons could be solved, nuclear energy might be a good solution, at least until a better alternative comes along. Unfortunately, as demonstrated by our past, these conditions have not been met nor does it appear that they will be in the foreseeable future. Violations of safety standards continue to appear and the regulatory commission has failed to enforce these rules. Does this inspire confidence in the nuclear industry?
FreeWilly

Hey, what a coincidence. As I write this post I'm working at a Nuclear Power Plant! (with the help of others of course). I've been in the nuclear field for the past 17 years so I'd like to add a few things’.

Nuclear energy despite all of the drawbacks mentioned, is still one of the few workable solutions to current/future energy requirements. This becomes abundantly clear when you compare it with alternative methods of producing energy. That being said, I do not necessarily think this is a good thing.

Nuclear Plants make LOTS of energy for the small area they occupy. A typical 2 reactor facility makes 2000-2500 Megawatts and occupies 10-50 acres of land. To make that same amount of energy using solar arrays you would need to deploy photovoltaic arrays over an area ~250-400 square miles! Even then you only have power when the sun is shining AND it cost approximately 40 times more.
Waste is a challenge, especially since we do not recycle our nuclear waste like other do. But all things considered it's not a very big challenge and certainly not a big enough one to stop countries from developing nuclear energy. Only 5% of nuclear fuel is actually by product, the rest can be recycled and reused. At the facility I work at all of the hi level waste generated for the past 15 years occupies a space the size of a swimming pool. Again compare that to a comparable sized fossil fuel facility which exhausts 14000 TONS of greenhouse gasses every year into the atmosphere. Yuk! Sure a tribe of wandering nomads could dig up a waste site a thousand years from now and spread some on their baloney sandwhiches and die from it, but seriously, do you really think that's going to be a a big deal in the scheme of things? I don't think waste presents a big issue. It's primarily a philosophical one, not a practical one IMHO. Besides this will probably be a non issue anyway since it is currently possible to nuetralize waste in the laboratory and will likely emerge as a treatment process. (Transmutation via partical acceleration and critical x-rays)

Renewable Energy is a popular buzzword these days, but when you break down the rhetoric and examine exactly what they are referring to, you see that renewable energy is grossly incapable of providing a real and substantial energy source any time soon, if ever. Windmills are expensive, unpredictable, kill endangered birds by the thousands, pollute miles of scenery just to produce a scant amount of electricity. The numbers necessary to make any sizable contribution to our energy needs is staggering especially when you calculate the number and area they must occupy. Even the people of 'green' Germany are resisting the installation of more windmills on their countryside. Solar energy is prohibitively expensive, area intensive, not very reliable and has environmental issues of its own. However I think it still has some promise especially for solar heating and photoe\voltaic building materials. Biomass might have a future, but is not practical now. Tidal energy may also show promise in the future, but not as of now. All of these methods of producing electricity are at least 10 times more expensive than the current methods. Not only does that add another zero to your electrical bill, but it exacerbates environmental problems in poor countries that already resort to extremely wasteful methods to make heat and light for themselves.
THE REAL PROBLEM WITH NUCLEAR ENERGY

The biggest problem with nuclear energy is the fact that it IS NOW being massively deployed Earth wide. It is an answer to global energy demands, dwindling resources and air pollution. It is comparatively clean, it is effective, it is not a greenhouse contributor, fuel is abundant and cheap and many countries around the world are in the process of building reactors right now. China is building 30 reactors in the next 15 years, India plans to build 20 or more in a similar time frame. The US, Russia, Brazil, Vietnam, France, Japan, South Africa and others are all making serious investments in more nuclear plants. In my opinion, with this massive deployment under way Humanity's biggest challenge will be the proliferation and control of weapons grade Nuclear Material. Nuclear power plants typically do not create easily available weapons grade materials, but the technology to do so runs hand in hand. Spent nuclear fuel does contain fissile material dispersed within the waste. It's difficult, but it can be extracted as North Korea constantly reminds us. Humans are opting for more nuclear energy whether we like it or not. Along with this, IMHO, is an increasing threat of nuclear material being used by those who seek to harm others. I think it's reasonable to assume that the proliferation of Nuclear power will also result in a greater availability of weapons grade nuclear material. Once you have weapons grade material, constructing a weapon is child's play, well within the reach of any idiot.

If you ask me that's the major consideration with Nuclear energy. So we're left with a dilemma. Do we pollute ourselves to death and fight over dwindling resources, or do we roll the dice with nuclear power and hope no one blows up our cities? It looks like we are opting for the latter for lack of an alternative.

PS Simon, your edit feature has bugs
Gill

There are also MANY alternatives to nuclear power that are renewable.
Wind energy. God knows you have plenty of wind in the USA!
Hot rock energy. Water is driven deep, deep into the earth and into the hot rock layer where it is heated to boiling point and is driven upwards to drive turbines. This could be used almost anywhere. Do we use it? No.
I don't know the full details but it does require quite a big initial outlay, but then so does and nuclear power station.
However, no one's genes risk getting mutated!
Don't forget how ingenious the human race really is! We could put our minds to anything.
What the hell we're doing being held captive by the middle east when we could have moved on from petrol a generation ago is simply down to money and not wanting to lay down an initial investment into other forms of energy.
FreeWilly

Gill,
Both Wind and geothermal are different ways to make energy. They are both employed now. Wind is one of mankinds oldest and most developed source of energy. Both of the sources you mention require NO fuel costs. Yet they still rarely used to make electricity - why? There's no conspiracy, it's a matter of cost and effectiveness.
How many hundreds of miles of hill-top country side are required for windmills to provide just half of your countrys' electrical needs? (hint: ALOT more than people will tolerate)
How does wind energy compare cost wise ?
How reliable is the wind ?
How dependable are the contraptions themselves?
One problem with wind energy is that it doesn't replace any other sources of electricity. Full capacity power plants are still needed as backup for slow or non windy days. So you just end up with redundant infastructure.
A few years ago in California people had the opportunity to opt for "green" only sources of electricity. Of course their choices were reflected on their electrical bills. The program was grossly under utilized and ultimately abandoned primarily becuase, despite being heavily subsidized, was already 7 times more expensive than normal. Only rich environmental enthusiests participated.
Gill

Hi Free Willy!
I agree with you entirely that people will not tolerate, wind mills EVERYWHERE and that only so much geothermal tech can be used but the real problem is that homes are not set up for using renewable energy. If they were built with a combination of renewable power sources available for different conditions then it would be a different story all together.
There have been examples of homes built that use a combination of solar, wind and 'usual' electrical power sources. Some of these homes end up selling their excess power to power companys.
Industry is also not set up for using renewable power. It would also need several sources of energy.
Basically, though ingenious, the human race is intrinsically lazy and does not like change but change WILL come. We will end up running out of fossil fuels and we WILL have to make the choice between renewables and nuclear.
I fear we will take the lazy course and go for nuclear.
The world is run by big profit companys not common sense. Hence, the mess!
4nick8

Nuclear waste is something to fear. So are all the other by-products from any other endevor. Make particle board out of sawdust. Find a way to use the waste in a productive way then everyone's happy right?
Maybe the good people of France view their waste as potentially something valuable?
Tracy

SeymourButts

With the recent upswing in license renewals for the operation of the nuclear power plants, there will be much more waste being stored on-site at the reactors along with additional road and rail transport of this waste. Lets take the state of New York for example. In New York, reactor re-licensing means: Due to re-licensing, three New York nuclear reactors could generate an additional 1,000 tons of nuclear waste that cannot be stored in Yucca Mountain under current law. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) recently granted the reactor at the Ginna nuclear power plant a 20-year license extension. The NRC is currently considering a 20-year license extension for the two reactors at the Nine Mile Point nuclear power plant. To accommodate the reactors' additional waste, Congress will have to expand Yucca Mountain's capacity or the waste will have to be stored on-site at Ginna and Nine Mile Point. Nationwide, nuclear plants that have been recently re-licensed and those that have pending applications to be re-licensed would produce more than 15,000 additional tons of nuclear waste during their re-license periods, almost none of which could be dumped at Yucca Mountain under current law. If Congress expands Yucca Mountain's capacity and the Department of Energy (DOE) uses trains as the primary means of transporting the waste, 16 additional nuclear waste train shipments from recently re-licensed reactors will cross New York on their way to Nevada (DOE has selected "mostly rail" as its preferred means of transport). If DOE chooses trucks as the primary means of transportation, 146 additional nuclear waste truck shipments from recently re-licensed reactors will cross New York.

The only reactors that will get rid of their waste completely, according to the Department of Energy, are those that are closed today.

Thousands of New York residents are at risk of exposure to deadly nuclear radiation is if there is an accident or terrorist attack. In New York:

995,305 people live within 1 mile of the Department of Energy's proposed high level nuclear waste transportation routes. 3,193,616 people live within 5 miles. 598 schools are within 1 mile of the Department of Energy's proposed high level nuclear waste transportation routes. 1,578 schools are within 5 miles. 22 hospitals are within 1 mile of the Department of Energy's proposed high level nuclear waste transportation routes. 55 hospitals are within 5 miles.

Accidents Happen

There are 60,000 tractor-trailer wrecks on interstates each year, 3,300 of these involve rollovers. In New York there were 866 fatal semi-truck wrecks from 1994 through 2001, 141 occurred on interstates. There were 1,861 train wrecks in New York from 1990 through 2001 including 761 derailments and 169 collisions.

Since 2000, 26 nuclear reactors at 15 power plant locations have received 20- year operating extensions from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Not a single relicensing application has been denied. License extensions are pending for 18 reactors at nine power plants.

South Carolina, Virginia, and Florida lead the nation in nuclear waste that will be produced as a result of current nuclear reactor re-licensing, with 2,400, 1,400, and 1,100 metric tons of new nuclear waste respectively.

In total, these extensions will produce an additional 9,000 metric tons of high level nuclear waste, almost all of which will remain on site for decades at the reactors where it was produced. Virtually none of this newly-generated waste can be shipped to Yucca Mountain without a formal, legal, expansion of the repository.

Waste remaining after Yucca Mtn. is full Reactor site (in metric tons)

McGuire, NC	1,416
Catawba, SC	1,409
Edwin I. Hatch, GA	1,103
Oconee, SC	1,095
North Anna, VA	1,082
Peach Bottom, PA	927
Calvert Cliffs, MD	767
St. Lucie, FL	746
Arkansas Nuclear One, AR	743
Surry, VA	726
Turkey Point, FL	623
Summer, SC	593
H. B. Robinson, SC	291
Fort Calhoun, NE	221
Ginna, NY	214

Current License Extensions Will Leave More Than 1,000 Metric Tons of Nuclear Waste at Five Power Plants “Under intense questioning from Nevada's two senators, [Secretary of Energy] Abraham conceded that the Yucca Mountain repository as currently envisioned could handle only a fraction of the waste expected to be generated by commercial power plants and the government in the coming decade.”—Associated Press, Friday, May 17, 2002

Nuclear power is an outmoded, heavily subsidized, high-risk relic of the Cold War that presents far too many serious hazards to justify its continuation. From terrorist strikes, to transportation of waste, to the constant risks presented by operating the plants themselves, nuclear power is, by any rational measure, far more risky than it is worth.

Yet as a nation, we rely on nuclear power for 20 percent of our electricity. The time is now, for the United States to begin to cut our dependence on nuclear power, and seriously fund alternative energy sources that are far less risky to our health, our environment, and our national security.

An excellent way to begin this transition is to halt the knee-jerk re-licensing of nuclear power plants, and to take the time we have left under current operating licenses to move the nation to cleaner, safer transitional energies like natural gas and cleaner coal, and ultimately to renewable energies such as solar and wind combined with a serious commitment to energy efficiency. If these alternatives were subsidized at amounts equal to the subsidies granted the nuclear industry, there is no doubt that a transition to a nuclear-free future could be achieved over the next 20 years.

Terry

Coninuation of article begun above in first post concerning FEAR and the French people:
"For example, while French citizens cannot control nuclear technology anymore than Americans, the fact that they trust the technocrats that do control it makes them feel more secure. Then there is need. Most French people know that life would be very difficult without nuclear energy. Because they need nuclear power more than us, they fear it less.
Civaux baker Jacques Rambault, admits that this technology is potentially dangerous and needs skillful management. As Chernobyl showed, the Russians, he says, were not "up to the task. But the French scientists and engineers are." For other citizens, rubbing shoulders with workers at the plant has made this once exotic technology an everyday thing. Many other risks concern them more. Madame Schoumacher, who has lived in Civaux most of her life, says "I would be much more frightened living next to a dam [France has about 12% hydroelectric power] or getting into her car in the morning." Others like bar owner Alain Cauvin cite "mad cow disease as being much scarier than nuclear power.
Ironically, the French nuclear program is based on American technology. After experimenting with their own gas-cooled reactors in the 1960s, the French gave up and purchased American Pressurized Water Reactors designed by Westinghouse. Sticking to just one design meant the 56 plants were much cheaper to build than in the US. Moreover, management of safety issues was much easier: the lessons from any incident at one plant could be quickly learned by managers of the other 55 plants. The "return of experience" says Mandil is much greater in a standardized system than in a free for all, with many different designs managed by many different utilities as we have in America.
Things were going very well until the late 80s when another nuclear issue surfaced that threatened to derail their very successful program: nuclear waste.
French technocrats had never thought that the waste issue would be much of a problem. From the beginning the French had been recycling their nuclear waste, reclaiming the plutonium and unused uranium and fabricating new fuel elements. This not only gave energy, it reduced the volume and longevity of French radioactive waste. The volume of the ultimate high-level waste was indeed very small: the contribution of a family of four using electricity for 20 years is a glass cylinder the size of a cigarette lighter. It was assumed that this high-level waste would be buried in underground geological storage and in the 80s French engineers began digging exploratory holes in France's rural regions.
To the astonishment of France's technocrats, the populations in these regions were extremely unhappy. There were riots. The same rural regions that had actively lobbied to become nuclear power plant sites were openly hostile to the idea of being selected as France's nuclear waste dump. In retrospect, Mandil says, it's not surprising. It's not the risk of a waste site, so much as the lack of any perceived benefit. "People in France can be proud of their nuclear plants, but nobody wants to be proud of having a nuclear dustbin under its feet." In 1990, all activity was stopped and the matter was turned over to the French parliament, who appointed a politician, Monsieur Bataille, to look into the matter.
Christian Bataille resembles the French comedian Jacques Tati. His face breaks into a broad grin when asked why he was appointed to this task. "They were desperate," he says. "In France, executive power dominates much more than in Anglo-Saxon countries. So that if the Executive asks parliament to do something it means they are really at the end of their ideas."
Bataille went and spoke to the people who were protesting and soon realized that the engineers and bureaucrats had greatly misunderstood the psychology of the French people. The technocrats had seen the problem in technical terms. To them, the cheapest and safest solution was to permanently bury the waste underground. But for the rural French says Bataille, "the idea of burying the waste awoke the most profound human myths. In France we bury the dead, we don't bury nuclear waste...there was an idea of profanation of the soil, desecration of the Earth."
Bataille discovered that the rural populations had an idea of "Parisians, the consumers of electricity, coming to the countryside, going to the bottom of your garden with a spade, digging a hole and burying nuclear waste, permanently." Using the word permanently was especially clumsy says Bataille because it left the impression that the authorities were abandoning the waste forever and would never come back to take care of it.
Fighting the objections of technical experts who argued it would increase costs, Bataille introduced the notions of reversibility and stocking. Waste should not be buried permanently but rather stocked in a way that made it accessible at some time in the future. People felt much happier with the idea of a "stocking center" than a "nuclear graveyard". Was this just a semantic difference? No, says Bataille. Stocking waste and watching it involves a commitment to the future. It implies that the waste will not be forgotten. It implies that the authorities will continue to be responsible. And, says Bataille, it offers some possibility of future advances. "Today we stock containers of waste because currently scientists don't know how to reduce or eliminate the toxicity, but maybe in 100 years perhaps scientists will."
Bataille began working on a new law that he presented to parliament in 1991. It laid plans to build 3-4 research laboratories at various sites. These laboratories would be charged with investigating various options, including deep geological storage, above ground stocking and transmutation and detoxification of waste. The law calls for the labs to be built in the next few years and then, based on the research they yield, parliament will decide its final decision. Bataille's law specifies 2006 as the year in which parliament must decide which laboratory will become the national stocking center
Bataille's plan seems to be working. Several regions have applied to host underground laboratories hoping the labs will bring in money and high prestige scientific jobs. But ultimate success is by no means certain. One of these laboratories will, in effect, become the stocking center for the nation and the local people may find that unacceptable. If protesters organize, they can block shipments on the roads and rail. The situation could quickly get out of hand.
Nuclear waste is an enormously difficult political problem which to date no country has solved. It is, in a sense, the Achilles heel of the nuclear industry. Could this issue strike down France's uniquely successful nuclear program? France's politicians and technocrats are in no doubt. If France is unable to solve this issue, says Mandil, then "I do not see how we can continue our nuclear program."
Big Dog

What's the matter with you people? Don't you remember, all the nuclear waste was stored on the moon, and in 1999 it blew up, tearing the moon out of earth's orbit, wrecking havoc on the planent and stranding the personnel of moonbase alpha on a runaway moon. Oh, er, whoops, bad tv show, fiction, not fact, forget I said anything.
But on the serious side, my understanding, limited that it is was that the waste was a real problem.

WHY DO YOU FEAR..........NUCLEAR ENERGY?

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