Inspired by some talks I was having with people earlier about oil and other fossil fuels, I just had to ask what was wrong with nuclear. I mean, it’s clean, it’s controllable, it’s very powerful, you can breed new fuel for at least a while going from U-238 to Pu-239, and it’s an alternative to fossil fuels. I know it has its own risks and problems, but so does every other type of fuel and power we’ve ever used. Solar and wind take up lots of space and aren’t incredibly efficent. Hydro can mess up rivers. Places where geo can work easily are limited. Fossil fuels are used up and won’t be easily replaced unless we can come up with a nifty way to simulate millions of years of pressure.
So, what’s the problem? Is it the n-word? Have weapons and Chernobyl scared the public so badly that they can’t see the peacetime applications? Are the people who demand alternative sources of energy and condemn nuclear hypocrites? What about the NIMBYs? I just don’t understand the objections.
For a moment, I thought this was going to be a debate about why some people (including our Commander-in-Chief) pronounce “nuclear” as “nuke- you-lar”. But then this would be in the Pit.
Apart from general concerns about radiation leakage from the power plants themselves, a big issue is waste disposal – nuclear waste takes a long, long, long time to degrade, and in the meantime can leak into the groundwater etc, etc. It also has to be transported from the power plants to the waste disposal site, often via populated areas which would rather not deal with the risk of a radioactive spill in their vicinity (although the containers used on trains which transport nuclear waste are incredibly safe these days, at least in the UK). The big advantage of wind and solar is that while they’re not as efficient, they’re pretty much waste-free once they’re up and running.
It “burns” clean, but the waste is far fron clean, and hazardous to the human body on a cellular level. In the U.S. we generate over 1600 tons of it every year with no long term disposal options currently available other than burial. Given enough time, any burial method of disposal will eventually fail, possibly allowing radioactive material to migrate into the water table and atmosphere.
december: I think it is too simplistic to say that the problems are only political and not scientific. There are genuine scientific concerns regarding the transport and long-term disposal of the waste.
Nuclear is hard to weigh because clearly from, e.g., a greenhouse emissions point of view, it is very good. (I hear the uranium mining process is pretty bad on this score but my guess is that the greenhouse gas emissions from this still are pretty small compared to the energy you end up getting out in the end.) However, the problem is the small, but non-negligible probability of a catastrophic accident (or terrorist incident), either in its use or the transport or storage of waste.
It is also important to note that nuclear in the U.S. has not been able to succeed economically. Noone has decided to “get rid” of nuclear energy in this country…It is just that it hasn’t been able to compete economically (in the building of new power plants…The ones already built can compete since the bulk of the costs are in the building rather than operation). Admittedly, this may be partially due to subsidies, both direct and indirect (in the sense of not internalizing pollution costs), to fossil fuels. On the other hand, nuclear itself has received non-negligible subsidies.
Some argue that the costs are driven up by overzealous regulation but I think they have failed to make the case that the regulation can be less severe and still make it safe enough. Also, even the nuclear industry seems to avoid this argument that they are victimized by current regulations (while voicing concern that the regulations must keep up with the times in the future). Here is the industry’s own take on it: http://www.nei.org/doc.asp?catnum=4&catid=125
[It is worth noting that a study that compared nuclear and fossil fuels in U.S., France, and Japan found that the reason why nuclear seems to be so much more of a viable economic option in France than here in the U.S. is not because the costs of nuclear power are much different in any of the three countries but rather because of the dramatic difference in fossil fuel costs.]
All that planet, and we still have to try and store our high-level nuclear waste on indian reservations until we can build a permanent long term disposal facility?
I agree that nuclear energy does have distinct benefits, e.g. reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, but the dangers associated with waste disposal (as well as the slight chance of nuclear catasrophe) aren’t imaginary.
Here is a chronological time line of pre-Chernobyl nuclear events, mistakes and accidents. Some 360 different episodes over a 20 year period without one single complete meltdown. Not bad!
Why does it matter? We are talking about the same thing.
It’s like Arguing about the proper way to pronouce Potato, or the proper term for carbonated beverages (Soda? Pop? Cola? WHAT’S THE ****ING DIFFERENCE?). Completely and utterly pointless.
I think thermonuclear fusion, not fission, is the best way to harness nuclear energy, but those type of reactors are not feasable with our current level of technology. (apparantly, unless some breakthrough has happened that I overloked in my lay-person science magazines). Until that happens, we will continue to see state politicians manuever behind the scenes to keep the money in their states while minimizing any real dangers to the public. All just an opinion, of course.
What is the worst-case scenario that can result from a catastophic failure of a regular power plant? A quite large explosion, probably several dozen, maybe even a few hundred deaths, some pollution resulting from fossil fuels that were thrown out or leaked as a result. Pretty unpleasant.
What is the worst-case scenario that can result from a catastophic failure of a regular power plant? A quite large explosion, probably several dozen, maybe even a few hundred deaths. Little or no fossil fuel pollution but radioactive poisoning of (potentially) vast areas. Poisoning that won’t go away for a very, very long time.
Fossil fuel pollution will injure or kill a large number of humans and other animals. Radiation poisoning not only does that but also affects the descendants of everyone expoosed to it for generations into the future.
I’d like to think this statement this was given sarcastically, but somehow I doubt it.
Even if the number of episodes is actually higher than the 360 cited (but surely we can trust industry and governemt to be fully open and honest about these things), I’m not reassured. I’m also curious, just how many meltdowns, or even smaller scale Chernobyl-size events are acceptable. We’ve had commercially available electricity for over 100 years now, so if nuclear fission remains a standard power source over the next hundred years we can expect 1800 episodes if that rate remains constant.
A nuclear power plant is an incredibly complex machine and failures are a given. Things break, people screw up, other people skimp on components to save a few bucks. In the end, I sincerely doubt that we’ll see even another 20 years without a meltdown somewhere, even precluding intentional action by terrorists. I can suggest Charles Perrow’s Normal Accidents if you want some further insight on the subject.
On the bright side, it’s nice to hear that december has volunteered his back yard as a waste repository.
Oh no, trust me, if we’d acheived cold fusion you would have heard about it. It’s certainly one of the current Holy Grails of science. It would undoubtably be the bestway to harness nuclear energy. It would be envoronmentally benign, the resulting ash would be mere helium and hydrogen, the afterheat would be much less than in a fission reactor and would result in a greater thermal mass, and perhaps best of all it couldn’t run out of control because fusion isn’t a chain reaction; any perturbation would cause the plasma to extinguish itself. Hopefully we’ll create one of these tiny suns on the earth’s surface soon.
The ionizing radiation of nuclear fission waste materials is highly dangerous to life that is exposed to it. That is why so many of the Chernnobyl clean up workers died. The stuff his very dangerous and very complex to handle when it is working correctly. That does not mean it is impossible to handle correctly, just that there are high losses when there is a problem and many opportunities for things to go wrong before ever getting to the storage issue. This is the kind of risk situation that professional risk managers like to avoid.
The storage issue is that the spent fuel has a radioactive half life of approximately 25,000 years, meaning in layman’s terms that it is dangerous for 10 half lives, or 250,000 years. If the fuel is taken care of over that time, no problem. But that starts to be a lot of fuel to take care of, and human beings don’t exactly have a track history of taking proper stewardship of garbage for any length of time. In short, the benefits gained from the availability of nuclear power are vastly outweighed by the costs of taking care of an ever increasing pile of garbage for 250,000 years. It cannot possibly be economical when compared to other sources of electricity, which don’t require sucking up monitoring money for, have I said it enough: 250,000 years. When the cost of dealing with the waste is factored in, this will be the most expensive source of electricity ever conceived.
Is it fair to factor in the cost of disposing of the product? Sure, any business that is retiring equipment or dealing with a potential environmental clean up puts such a cost on an accounting sheet as a liability.
Do we really have to monitor this stuff? Not at all. All of us here will be long dead before piles of this stuff stored in remote places melts through its containers and poisons the environment in such a way it gets back to civilization. If we discount completely the cost to future generations, sure, it’s really cheap. But I am not prepared to ignore what I consider a responsibility to future generations to avoid burdening them with ridiculous debts.
I had a physics teacher that had a similar argument. The dangers of nuclear energy were no more that the teething problems of a young industry and no different than the risks and disasters that use to be so common in early energy industries, like coal mining.
My answer to that was I don’t recall any mining accidents that polluted 100s of square miles of the surrounding countryside for 1000s of years and made people who weren’t even born at the time ill.
It was my answer, but somehow never got further than my head at the time. I wasn’t in the mood for an argument with the teacher.
Well, it doesn’t meet all of your conditions, but I give you the Buffalo Creek Disaster.
I seem to recall another monumental disaster (in Wales, perhaps?) involving the collapse of a small mountain of mine waste that buried a school and killed most of the village’s children.
On top of these, thousands upon thousands of people have been killed in coal-mining accidents over the past couple of centuries. And the wastes produced by coal mining are often highly toxic.
A small aside: I’m always amused by folks who claim that wind power and large-scale solar power are environmentally friendly. I think within a few decades, we’re going to look back in amazement, and think, “Geez, how did people ever think that filling a beautiful high mountain pass with huge steel towers with propellers on them, or covering acres of pristine desert with rows of mirrors, was a good thing to do?” A century ago, most people thought that there was nothing wrong with damming a river and filling a valley with water, but now we see that doing so is not so benign.