Nuclear Issues

I just read through the company's .pdf information. I was struck by how no mention was made of the risks of nuclear contamination. The 9/11 scenario was introduced, and Areva says contamination is not very likely under new building rules.

Issues surrounding Yucca Mountain are raised. Yucca is the mountain sacred to the Shoshone, Paulte, and other First Nations peoples. Yucca is apparently TOO SMALL to house the current store of nuclear waste. (Nuclear waste is used to make depleted uranium, which is shipped to any country in the world free of charge by the US government.)

Now on the positive side, Areva's new core reactor design attempts to reuse and recycle spent uranium fuels, to close the waste cycle. Now the CO2 generated by non-renewables like coal, oil, and gas does make nuclear more earth-friendly, but not if radioactive waste and extremely toxic compounds escape the process.

As a for-profit company, Areva is naturally trying to shrink the permit process, to improve ROI. I don't think the US should try to hurry nuclear power plant construction. Until Areva can prove its new reactors are safe (public issue), the profitability issue (private issue) is secondary.

Of course, it'd be nice if energy producers could make more money with non-greenhouse gas-producing energies, but at this point I don't think nuclear can qualify on the basis of safety, considering Areva's leak in France.

Looking at ethanol, and the way gov't subsidies have led that industry, I don't think nuclear (or ethanol) will succeed without gov't help. Plus, downwinder issues (article, see websites) up and down the supply chain make uranium mining (also heavily subsidized) dangerous.

I'd say the renewables of solar and wind should be the primary focus of a sadly missed national energy policy. The expense and risks of nuclear power generation should make it a secondary source of energy, unless/until safer versions can be devised, ideally ones that don't produce radioactive waste or can safely recycle almost all of it.

by JohnPeebles (7 articles, 10 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 34 comments) on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 1:04:44 PM
 

So far little change from the two approved candidates.

McCain is all for them and though Obama says he is for renewables first he has in his circle representatives from the nuclear corporation Excelon. Considering how Obama has back tracked on the FISA bill and NAFTA, I suspect he will do so with the nuclear energy issue as well. We shall see.

by nightgaunt (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 251 comments) on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 2:14:07 PM
 

No Nukes Is Good Nukes

Time to get out the signs and bullhorns again.  Areva, take your cutesie commercials and sweetheart deals and go home.  You are not welcome here.  Bush-Cheney&Co must have bought a lot of stock in the company and are standing to make a bundle from spreading the "newcular" poison.

by macdon1 (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 103 comments) on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 2:44:22 PM
 

Future Cars as Power Plants - will undercut nuclear power

Revolutionary new technology can turn future cars into power plants when parked. The connection to cooperating utilities will be wireless. These electric cars will generate electricity, converting a never before comercialized, abundant, renewable source of energy that exists everywhere in the universe. These cars will be able to pay for themselves by selling power. They will not need to plug-in.

See my posts on this site. Latest releases can be found at renewableenergyworld.com

Our website is magneticpowerinc.com

by Mark Goldes (8 articles, 1 quicklinks, 3 diaries, 27 comments) on Saturday, August 16, 2008 at 3:30:41 PM
 

Nuclear Energy

The article repeats the standard anti-nuclear exaggerations and fabrications based on junk science promulgated by hard-core neo-luddites of GreenPeace. Some original founders of GreenPeace like Patrick Moore now support nuclear power and admit they have been wrong opposing it.  Green nuclear power is the only practical solution to simultaneously (1) ameliorate global warming, (2) avoid dependence on foreign oil/gas, and (3) overcome oil/gas depletion. Only two prime energy sources, coal and uranium, can affordably deliver terawatts of "mother" electricity for: (a) heavy industry, i.e. manufacture of automobiles, ships, airplanes, bridges, etc; (b) power for vast fleets of future electric plug-in autos; and (c) production of portable synfuels (hydrogen and ammonia) and biofuels to replace oil. However coal worsens global warming and should be preserved as raw material to make plastics and other organics when oil/gas is gone. This leaves uranium as the only "big-mama" green energy source, an "inconvenient truth".

Solar and wind energy are useful for small-quantity power generation in select locations. But at terawatt levels, immense areas of land and/or sea would be needed, requiring enormous maintenance operations, spoiling scenic land- or sea-scapes, and destroying local ecosystems. As scientifically documented in "The Nuclear Imperative - A Critical Look at the Approaching Energy Crisis" (ISBN 1-4020-4930-7), by 2050 when petroleum fuels are basically exhausted, only uranium and thorium can affordably sustain global energy needs for some 3000 years, using  fuel reprocessing and advanced reactor technology. A serious in-depth analysis of our future energy shortage by engineers (not by anti-nuclear hand-waving philosophers) reveals that nuclear power is essential to rescue our children from a future economic collapse. For the USA, 500 additional nuclear reactors are required, built on 9000 acres (@ $1.5 trillion), compared to 1,500,000 windmills with storage batteries on 6,000,000 windy acres (@ $4.5 trillion). Ten times these numbers are needed for the entire world. (Costs are in 2006 dollars; for later years, these costs must all be multiplied by the dollar inflation factor).

Because it takes a decade to design, license, and build a reactor, action must be taken immediately to prevent an economic catastrophe by 2030 when oil starts to run out. Contrary to false propaganda by anti-nuclear groups, the cost of electricity at terawatt levels is three times less expensive with nuclear than for wind or solar. Solar and wind power generation requires expensive energy storage systems (batteries, etc) when there is no sunshine or wind. Also many miles of access roads for maintenance and repair are needed to keep blades or solar panels clean from bird droppings, dead birds, sand erosion, and storm damage, and to periodically replace electrodes on storage batteries. Aficionados of renewables usually quote peak windmill or solar station capacities, neglecting to multiply their numbers by a factor of four to account for a year-averaged availability of only 25% of peak wind or sunshine. Reactors run continuously all year at 90% capacity. Should the USA limit itself to solar and wind energy, it is guaranteed to become impoverished and dependent on portable synfuels imported from other countries (the future OPECs), who have expanded their nuclear power generation when oil fields are depleted.

Modern nuclear power plants are absolutely safe. Because of the negative "coefficient of reactivity", reactor fuel elements only melt (an explosion is not possible) during a maximum credible accident in which the emergency core cooling system totally fails. This was "experimentally" proven in the Three-Mile-Island (TMI) accident. A negative coefficient of reactivity means that neutron multiplication is automatically stopped when the temperature in the reactor gets too high. The Russian Chernobyl reactor which took the lives of approximately 60 people, had a positive coefficient of reactivity because it used graphite as moderator, a design for nuclear power plants which is now prohibited in all countries. Furthermore the Chernobyl reactor had no containment vessel, as is the law in all Western countries and now worldwide. The assertion that perhaps thousands of people could still die from radioactive fallout around Chernobyl is nonsense. Of the 60,000 inhabitants of Pripyat who had been exposed to fallout, about 9,000 will die at an advanced age of cancer because worldwide 15% of all people ultimately die from cancer. To ascribe those 9,000 deaths to Chernobyl's fallout is equally ridiculous as claiming that such a death toll is due to drinking coffee because 15% of all people drink coffee. Security precautions and containment measures for today's nuclear power plants do reckon with the possibility that terrorists might crash a large airplane or bomb on a reactor. Even if aerial obstructions (e.g. balloons) or underground construction can not prevent penetration of the large dome-shaped containment vessel, the reactor core vessel is designed to remain mostly intact. It can further be inundated with neutron-poisoning borated water which suppresses all further uranium fission in case of an accident.

A stale anti-nuclear cry is "what do we do with all the long-lived radioactive nuclear waste". The volume of waste amounts to one aspirin tablet per year per person using nuclear electricity, compared to tons of air pollutants and globe-warming gaseous CO2 emitted by coal or fossil-fuel combustion. Nuclear waste can be easily stored and safely transported, as the US nuclear navy has done for half a century. Contrary to allegations that uranium and plutonium in spent fuel elements pose a problem because of million-year half-lives, they are separated from fission products by reprocessing and burnt as fuel in future fast-breeder reactors. They will not be dumped. This reduces 50,000 tons from ten-year accumulation of spent fuel to 500 tons (with shorter decay lives) of fission products, taking centuries instead of decades to fill the Yucca Mountain repository in Nevada. The notion that long radioactive lifetimes are undesirable is also erroneous. The longer the decay lifetime, the less the radiation emitted per gram of radio-isotope. Most elements that make up our bodies (hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, etc) have infinitely long decay lifetimes. All humans are "hot" because everyone has radioactive potassium-40 (K-40; 0.012% abundance) in his body, which continuously emits beta particles with a half-life of one million years! Man successfully evolved in this environment, and there are even indications that low levels of radiation benefit health (called hormesis). The hue and cry about possible terrorism and "dirty bombs" is also highly exaggerated. By the reasoning of anti-nuclear activists, we should stop flying 707 jets because they can be used as weapons to kill thousands of people.

Energy is man's third most important need after water and food. Those who hinder expansion of nuclear power will be viewed as irresponsible neo-luddites by future generations. Any further delay of a committed worldwide nuclear energy program will cause certain impoverishment and death of many people by 2050. Those responsible will and must be held accountable for this. Without greatly expanded nuclear power, desert cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix will become ghost-towns. Originally the US had planned to have 300 reactors by the year 2000, but instead there are only 104 today. After the Three-Mile-Island (TMI) reactor meltdown in 1979 in the US (with 0 casualties) and Russia's Chernobyl accident in 1986 (with 57 fatalities), public hysteria fanned by fear-mongering antinuclear activists caused cancellations and moratoria on construction of new nuclear plants. While the USA was once the leader, most US businesses with reactor manufacturing know-how closed. Instead France, Russia, Japan, South-Korea, India, and China are now in charge. Zealous anti-nuclear lobbyists and a mal-informed government have created the pending energy crisis. We are entering a war-like energy-deprivation period as serious as WW-II or Al-Qaida. Strong Manhattan-project-like leadership is now needed to reverse the short-sightedness and follies of prior administrations.

Jeff W. Eerkens,  Adjunct Research Professor,

Nuclear Science and Engineering Institute

University of Missouri, Columbia

by shef (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments) on Tuesday, August 19, 2008 at 2:48:43 AM