I am not affected by the hysterical news. I watch all news with some distrust. But I also realize the government and the nuke company have a reason to sugar coat the information. I give them even less trust.
Ah, but see the west and southwest don’t really need nukes that much, with all that wind and sun. If the southwest US gets the idea the east is dumping its pollution and problems on the southwest, it’ll never fly.
Back the question posed by the title of the thread:
Last week, I was cautiously supportive of nuclear power while retaining what I considered to be a healthy level of skepticism of the ability of private industry and it’s pal government regulatory system to create safe and effective design and operational procedures.
Now, after the incident, and after reading information like FXMastermind’s link as well as this article…
…I have zero faith in the nuclear industry, and believe we should immediately begin winding down operations at all plants of the same design/age as Fukushima, and have a full and complete accounting of all safety considerations for plants of any other design currently in operation world wide, including any and all “proprietary” engineering information, with criminal liability for any corporate or government officials who are found to have swept safety concerns under the rug.
I should know better. I went to summer camp down the road from Fernald.
Well crap. I never heard about that. Millions of pounds of Uranium dust? That doesn’t sound good at all.
This is the stuff that makes me stabby. 90 percent probability of bursting should the fuel rods overheat and melt in an accident. 90 percent? Really? So in the event of crap hitting the fan the first thing the reactor does is feed a hydrogen gas bomb into the outer containment structure. I guess an explosion heard 25 miles away makes a good early warning system.
You will note in the 2nd article, the AEC safety official described the pressure safety system used in the GE reactors, in Japan, as an unacceptable safety risk. He then said “what are the advantages of pressure suspension apart from the cost”.
That is a point I keep making. Corporations will cut safety for profits. The government should build any new plants . There should be with no profit motive.
FXMastermind Your quote from the Guardian said
** “To produce the 25 tonnes or so of uranium fuel needed to keep your average reactor going for a year entails the extraction of half a million tonnes of waste rock and over 100,000 tonnes of mill tailings. These are toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. The conversion plant will generate another 144 tonnes of solid waste and 1343 cubic metres of liquid waste.”**
Waste rock and mill tailings, toxic for hundreds of thousands of years? That rock was already there, right in the ground where the water table is, just as “toxic” and horrible. If we weren’t worried about it before we dug it up, why can’t we put it back into the ground where it came from and stop worrying about it? I’d also dispute that the rock is “toxic” at all in any case.
“Contamination of local water supplies around uranium mines and processing plants has been documented in Brazil, Colorado, Texas, Australia, Namibia and many other sites. To supply even a fraction of the power stations the industry expects to be online worldwide in 2020 would mean generating 50 million tonnes of toxic radioactive residues every single year.”
Water contamination is an issue with every kind of mining, and it can be controlled. It’s a matter of technology use. It would also be nice to know the degree of contamination the article is talking about. Yes, if you have a local uranium mine the local radiation levels are going to elevate due to dust from the mine. The local radiation levels also elevate if you move to a higher altitude, or to a different geographic location, or to a city where granite blocks are used for construction (granite sets a geiger counter buzzing quite nicely.) What are the actual numbers?
“These tailings contain uranium, thorium, radium, polonium, and emit radon-222.”
The horror. So do coal mine tailings. So does coal, volcanic rock, or just about anything from deep underground. The concentrations of these awful substances and whether they are water-soluble and bioavailable is a completely different matter.
“In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency sets limits of emissions from the dumps and monitors them. This does not happen in many less developed areas.”
So? The US also has speed limits for safety. Should it abandon cars because “less-developed areas” don’t? The answer is to only import uranium from places that mine it responsibly.
“The long-term management cost of these dumps is left out of the current market prices for nuclear fuel and may be as high as the uranium cost itself. The situation for the depleted uranium waste arising during enrichment even may be worse, says the World Information Service on Energy.”
Numbers please. Analysis. Show me the data! The World Information Service on Energy sounds like some sort of official, possibly governmental organisation providing information on energy in general but it is nothing of the sort. It is an anti-nuke propaganda organisation based in The Netherlands. Their own info page (who is WISE? link):
"We’re small. We’re powerful. We’re anti-nuclear. We are grass-root oriented. And we are proud of what we have achieved. We are anxious to go on, serving people with important information and skills. We have existed since 1978, in a small office with seven people working at WISE Amsterdam.
We focus primarily on our role as networker. Nevertheless, we also like to be involved in campaigns and (direct) actions. We are fully aware of the fact that political and social changes (needed to tackle the nukes) only happen if enough pressure is being put on decision-makers."
I wasn’t sure about the info, hence no commentary on it. WISE Uranium Project That’s probably all propaganda as well. I’m sure there must be a site out there touting the virtues and benefits of uranium mining.
Well the 90% figure was from a “Harold Denton” according to the NYTimes article, and was disputed. The rest of the article was mostly taken from the 1972 Hanauer memo, which the NYTimes was good enough to provide a link to:
I suggest you read it. Hanauer’s concerns was with the use of small containments with a large volume water pool at the bottom. The thinking behind these containments was that in the event of the high-pressure steam system failing, the steam gushing into the containment would condense on contact with the cold water and keep the pressure down. Hanauer argued that the “pressure suppression pool” might not be able to compensate for a really fast steam escape and the small volume of the containment would cause the pressure to rise really fast. (worst case model for the containment was a “double guillotine fracture” in a steam pipe, i.e. the equivalent of a section of steam pipe vanishing leaving two full-bore open pipe ends.) He also wasn’t happy about the reliability record of safety valves. His conclusion wasn’t a condemnation of the design or a “whistleblow” however. Instead it was a recommendation to phase pressure-suppressing designs out in favour of brute force, large-heavy-containment dry designs.
I’m quite sure there are issues and concerns with uranium mining, as there are with any kind of mining or bulk-handling of rock. WISE put the most negative, misleading spin that they possibly could on it, though.
Still waiting on the cite for the core radiation.
I don’t particularly disagree with this. gonzomax, are you saying that you don’t have a fundamental objection to nuclear power but you believe corporations are too conflicted by the profit motive to implement it safely?
Both. It is not cost efficient.The plant cost a ton to make and require 10 years of construction. They can not be an immediate answer to anything. I suspect by the time one gets built, solar and wind will have advanced considerably.
We have not put enough stress and money into green energy. A lot of green energy does permit a builder or operator to make billions of dollars. It is done by home owners, one at a time.
I see nuclear as yesterdays technology. There are a lot of people working on new energy. We should not put a lot of money in old and dangerous technology.
How about someone give to some more solid facts about uranium mining, rather than just going with the first Googled hit? That’s still OK in Great Debates, right?
Fact: since 2006 there have been no deaths due to uranium mining or processing in the US. There have been a total of 49 injuries. Meanwhile, coal mining averages 35.4 deaths and 4,069 injuries per year over that same time period.
Cites: USDepartment of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration, annual coal mining deaths: http://www.msha.gov/stats/charts/coal2010yearend.asp
See yearly reports for coal and uranium here: http://www.msha.gov/ACCINJ/accinj.htm
Fact: Chinese coal mining deaths have wide margins of error due to reports of coverups, but in 2009 the official numbers show 2,631 dead in 2009 and 3,215 dead in 2008.
Cite: “China reports fewer coal mine deaths in 2009” Reuters Feb 14, 2010.
Fact: Uranium miners do suffer from respiratory effects, but breaking out the radon effects from silicosis, diesel soot, dust, and the various carcinogens they are exposed to is difficult.
Fact: Namibian uranium miners may have suffered DNA damage from radiation exposure, but this is not proven. Given what I’ve seen of Namibian mining, I think controlling for other environmental hazards is questionable.
Cite (for the last two items above): Brugge, Doug et al. “Exposure Pathways and Health Effects Associated with Chemical and Radiological Toxicity of Natural Uranium: A Review” Reviews on Environmental Health 20.3 (2005): 177-193.
Fact: Navajos exposed to uranium tailings may have triple the normal rate of kidney disease due to uranium mine tailings on their property. However, again, no direct link has been proven, although the circumstantial evidence seems compelling.
Cite: DeLemos, Jamie L. et al. “Development of risk maps to minimize uranium exposures in the Navajo Churchrock mining district” Environmental Health 8 (2009): 29-44.
Fact: Studies of nearly 60,000 German uranium miners found increased lung cancer risk of >2.5% per year worked. While there appears to be a significant link to radon, it’s also difficult to separate out the lung risk from the overall risk working in mines. Nonetheless, given the hazards of radon, it’s also compelling.
Cite: Kreuzer, Michaela et al. “Cohort Profile: The German uranium miners cohort study (WISMUT cohort), 1946–2003” International Journal of Epidemiology (2009): 1–8.
There are some other studies out there which I have not yet had time to review (some are being mailed to me). Overall, however, despite their being risks, I haven’t found any smoking gun which says uranium mining is even a tenth as hazardous as coal mining.
Uranium mining is just as safe as as a GE reactor.
Another summary is available from Barry Brook at BraveNewClimate. These have been the most accessible explanations of what’s going on that I’ve found. Easy to follow if you’re not technically illiterate, but not over the head of non-engineers/scientists.
Ah…
I should have known better than to try to bring some facts to the table. The fault is mine, really, for trying.
Gonzo this is ridiculous. First of all anyone who builds anything cuts safety. If a non profit builds a plant they will have work within a budget as well. Safety is a trade off with other factors.
Solar and wind have inherent, scientifically proven, insurmountable limitations. They have a lot of current uses and potential for certain specific applications but they are not going to replace nuclear or coal or oil. Not because of evil corporations, because of the physical reality that anything resembling modern life requires immense amounts of concentrated energy. If you do not understand this you do not understand even the basics of this issue. Waiting for Green Energy to show up and save you isn’t much different than waiting for Bat Man.
We already have the best wind power tech, we invented it thousands of years ago, it’s called a sail boat. And the best solar tech we ever invent might just be a garden and a bicycle.
Thank you for your post, Una. It may have been wasted on some readers, but I for one appreciate your effort. I’m sure others agree.
Three of the Tokyo nuke plant execs resigned in shame for fudging safety records. They were caught . It was some time ago. That is business as usual in power.
You should read up on alternative energy. There are some interesting developments coming up.
CNN is saying they withdrew the last 50 workers from the plants. The nuke expert ,who was mostly pro seems shocked.
Fukushima: Mark 1 Nuclear Reactor Design Caused GE Scientist To Quit In Protest - ABC News It is largely a human problem. But not totally.