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Why nuclear power still matters

The world as a whole needs to find a viable long term solution for reducing the amount of radioactive wastes from nuke plants and more realistic methods of dealing with the waste they do make.

The current technology used around the world was chosen in part to provide weapons grade materials for the military. Take those requirements away and other technologies become available that can produce as much energy with less waste.

Some of these alternate technologies have been around for decades, but the US government always short funded the research because they failed to meet the weapons source standard.

The Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) project created a nuclear reactor that was fueled from the waste (actinides and DU) from existing nuclear plants.

We can easily power our country for over 1,000 years just on the waste we already have.

Bill Clinton canceled it in 1994, saying that the project was "unnecessary."

Dan Rather Reports recently did a story on the technology (see "Power Play" on iTunes).

Because ?there are no better alternatives available? has to be the lamest justification possible. We have been able to achieve miracles by refining existing technologies--put the resources into developing better alternatives, for god's sake. As long as we have no idea how to dispose of nuclear waste in a safe manner, nuclear power is unsustainable. And the consequences of nuclear "accidents" are horrific. As a species, we never seen to learn from our mistakes--have we already forgotten Chernobyl?

First, we don't need to develop "better" alternatives when nuclear power IS the best option.

Second, you can't blame Chernobyl on the U.S. The worst U.S. nuclear reactor disaster was Three Mile Island, and the radiation exposure from the radioactive steam released has been calculated to effect .05 people. The leak was so small that more people get cancer from weeding their garden without wearing sunscreen than they do from the Three Mile Island "disaster".

We use chemical energy to make vehicles move, we store a lot of that energy in the vehicles. We generate electricity and put it on a grid to be distributed through power lines. There is another way that is theoretically possible and that is to broadcast power, similar to broadcast communications but sending power instead of signals.

Tesla was working on broadcast power but was not able to develope broadcast power. Tesla had a lot of criticism that reduced funding and others have not been able to reproduce his broadcast power experiments; the result was that no one thinks that broadcast power is possible or practical.

What broadcast power would do is eliminate the need to store fuel in tanks to make a vehicle move. The vehicle would require less energy to move without having to move the weight of fuel as well. Home power would not need electrical lines because the appliances could run off broadcast power.

Assuming broadcast power can be done, it would probably use the same sources of energy we use now, including nuclear. It may be worth studying to see if broadcast power is possible and whether it is practical. It could also be more efficient for global energy use.

Tesla didn't have a free power system. He had a HF power broadcast. If you tuned just right, you could receive power. He picked a frequency that resonated with the earth, so he could build up a very high signal strength. Yes, he did run an electric car on it, from more than 50 miles away. But, he had to put the power in before he could take it out. The system also caused arcing in large metal framed buildings. We would have to redesign all buildings of more than five stories to prevent arcing before we really use Tesla's system. That will never happen. Too many skyscrapers, power plants, manufacturing facilities, Aircraft carriers, etc. Also, the frequencies are in commercial use now. A power transmitter would totally drown out any other signal.

How Tesla did it is not a secret. But, it isn't something that we could really use now.

It's not competitive and not needed.
1) Free market has not and cannot support it--too many liabilities, too big, too complex, too risky in its current forms.
2) Other renewables are free market supported, affordable and a good investment. As a result, true renewables jumped from supplying 2% of new energy growth in the US in 2004 to 55% in 2009.
3) Nuclear power is too risky of a technology: it's so unforgiving that a failure of a backup energy supply at Fukushima AFTER the nukes were shut down ended up destroying 4 out of 6 reactors and costing 20-100 Billion dollars. Who wants to take on risks like that, even with the Price Anderson Act limitation on liability?
4) New nukes--and old ones for that matter--have a consistent history of huge cost overruns. And what do you think will happen to the already-sky-high 8 billion dollar pricetag of the new nukes planned in Texas and Georgia after Fukushima?
5) It is far cheaper for a utility to invest in negawatts, i.e. in saving energy and promoting energy efficiency as a means to meet its future needs, rather than investing in a new power plant. This gives them time for renewable energy technologies to mature and so when it's time for existing power plants to retire, low carbon alternatives will be even more affordable.
6) Centralized power plants are like mainframe computers: no longer necessary. Just as the desktop/laptop/smart phone sequence is infinitely more adaptable, affordable and versatile than the mainframe, so it is with energy. New buildings and subdivisions can generate their own power needs through locally controlled, decentralized power sources, added to the existing grid in modular ways that the transmission system knows how to adapt to, and the grid is getting smarter and smarter every day.

Will nuclear ever be relevant? Who knows what the future will bring? Some folks are enamored with thorium, which eliminates many of the proliferation/contamination/accident potential, tho not completely. One thing is for certain: nobody in their right minds should be trying to build more of the water cooled reactors, complete with adjacent spent fuel pools. Time to move on. The same amount of money can and should be spent much more productively pursuing other energy paths.

For an interesting summary, check out Amory Lovins' Economist magazine article:
http://www.rmi.org/rmi/Library/2011-03_EconomistDebate

In Asia, they build nuclear power on time and on budget, for under $2 per watt. There is nothing inherent uneconomical about that.

If it were not for government subsidies, solar power would be non-competitive.

...doesn't change the content of the message? Show me what the subsidies on the Asian nuclear power are, please, and you'll realize that the solar subsidies are paltry in comparison.

The reality is exactly what Amory is talking about, by the way: utilities and investors are lining up to invest in solar and wind compared to putting their money into the behemoths of new coal, carbon sequestration technologies and nuclear. And it's a simple financial calculation based on returns, on the ability to make affordable electricity, which nuclear and new coal simply have been unable to do in the US---even with their subsidies, which are much larger than solar and wind.

The fed govt underwrites the nuke industry's insurance. No private company will. The industry would not exist except for this.

When the feds held up the loan guarantees for solar and wind, their respective industries came unglued until Congress renewed them. Solar and wind would not exist either if the feds didn't guarantee their loans. See link below:

http://www.environmental-finance.com/news/view/1708

One thing is for certain: nobody in their right minds should be trying to build more of the water cooled reactors, complete with adjacent spent fuel pools. Time to move on.

We need newer technology if nuclear is to be relevent.

Nobody mentions the best alternative nuclear cycle - Thorium. The Thorium cycle has been known about since the Manhattan project, but was abandoned because it couldn't be used to make plutonium for weapons. The Thorium cycle also doesn't run away because it needs an outside neutron source - stop the supply, & the reaction stops also. Another benefit is that Thorium is much more plentiful than Uranium, so its cheaper.

Pebble bed reactors could be another safer nuclear plant option. It can use an inert gas (such as nitrogen or helium) to circulate in the core and to spin the turbines. You can use a gas that cannot become radioactive, so a cooling leak will not be radioactive. Also, you don't get meltdowns since the reaction is self-limiting. As the core temperature rises, the reactor power decreases (and the temperature goes down). Each "pebble" is also stable enough that disposal could be easier too.

The IFR is more proven than thorium reactors. We should do those first.

The Gen IV International Forum did a 2 year study of all the reactor designs.

IFR was rated #1.

How about we start with the top rated design and build it?

After all, it was OUR design and we already put $10 billion of R&D into it.

We'd have a fast reactor running today if BIll Clinton hadn't canceled the project.

I heard this weekend that the FBI confiscated Teslas personal papers from his apartment when he died in 1943. All of his research documentation and personal diaries are still held as national secrets.

It would be great to read of a source for this assertion, otherwise it isn't worth even mentioning. It lends nothing to the conversation - sorry!

@kdoylekeenan, The Article is right, there are no better options available.

There is a current worldwide famine, caused by the rage for biofuels in Europe in the US. The real reason for the Arab uprisings is hunger. When given the choice between food and fuel, the first world picked fuel. The rest of the world sensibly picks food.

Hydro power is maxed out in the US and Europe. There are no major locations for large dams that will not cause severe damage.

Solar for large plants causes a great deal of environmental damage too. Small solar, on rooftops, and over parking lots is doable, but will never be more than a minor contributor to total energy needs. I live in Arizona, and when I see the periodic proposals to build a lot of large solar plants here to power the US, I have to laugh. Those plans ignore several mountain ranges, and building the plants would destroy several thousand species of plants and animals. The EPA would never permit it. Neither would the Sierra Club.

Wind power kills a lot of birds, bats and insects. It also affects climate. Taking power out of the wind, slows the wind. That also slows wind transport of rain and warmth/coolness. Recent scientific papers I have seen are warning of wind/wave/ocean current power plans and the truly massive global climate change they would cause. There are limits to how much energy can be safely extracted from these sources without turning places like the American Great Plains or the Amazon basin into deserts like the Sahara.

Fusion still doesn't work, after 80 years of trying. There has never been a fusion reactor that produces enough energy to run the reactor. We should keep trying, but I wouldn't count on any technology until 10 years after it works. It still doesn't work.

Orbital solar should be an option in 15 years. But, it still doesn't work. The US Military wants to get a working unit in 5 years or so. We know how, but there is a lot more to learn. Still, there is a lot of room to put it there. Space after all is big, as the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy notes. There is lots of sunshine that never hits the Earth. But, it will take a century for this kind of thing to make a major contribution.

Advanced combustion of coal, oil and natural gas can reduce the waste products, but the waste products are still there. Carbon sequestration just delays the impact. Everything leaks. Costs are going up for these sources too. Even if we could deal with the CO2, we get the CO2 by removing O2 from the biosphere. After a while, that will be an insurmountable problem.

So, that leaves Nuclear Power as the only option. This is the point of the referenced Article. You have a problem with current Nuclear Plants. I can understand that. The plants we have are 60 to 70 years old. They use technologies developed during the 1950's. We should be able to do better. We can do better.

You appear to be worried about the long lived 'waste'. These long lived wastes are really unburned fuel. A good design would burn this fuel. It is called 'reprocessing'. The French have been doing this since the late 1960's. The US talked about it, but never has done it. Just by changing the temperature the reactor operates at, the unburned fuel can be burned. That would require a different reactor design, and perhaps different materials during construction. The US is not ready to start building advanced, modern reactors yet.

You seem worried about the Japanese reactor safety. The reactor was designed to withstand a 7 point earthquake. It rode through a 9 point earthquake, so while damaged, it withstood 100 times the earthquake that was expected when it was built. It was not designed however to withstand a tsunami. It could have been. There has been a lot of press about the future danger from the leaks. But, not much coverage of the very real damage done to the area by the earthquake and tsunami. They are easily 10,000 times bigger than the danger from the 4 reactors at Fukishima. As this site reported a week or so ago, the accident has released enough radiation to raise exposure in an area withing 40 Kilometers (about 25 miles) around the plant to about twice the natural background level. that means that if you live there, you might get enough exposure to make you sick in about 200 years. Inside the plant, it's another story, of course.

Chernobyl, is another story. Our lesson there is that corrugated steel doesn't make an adequate containment vessel for a working reactor.

However, power is always dangerous. A large coal plant puts out as much radioactive material over a 20 year span as has been leaked by the four Fukishima reactors to date. Radiation is all around you, and always was. We make reactors work by concentrating natural radioactive materials, and manipulating conditions to speed up the decay. a reactor works by releasing a million years of natural radiation every month. with some work, we could use most of the highly radioactive by-products as fuel too. many of the rest are valuable for other uses too.

Sad to say, but the nuclear industry (and now people) will bear the cost of cutting corners. Japan, courtesy of General Electric, isn't the only nation to permit the construction of nuclear facilities in tsunami zones. In California, one can see nuclear facilities in these zones as well . Look at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon plants. They are tsunami inundation zones and on seismically active plates.

Incredibly poor planning, I'd say. So how is the industry going to address these issues? Id say how this is done will say far more about the future of nuclear energy than anything else. And I've been a proponent of nuclear energy!

San Onofre and Diablo Canyon are near major faults, but I am not at all convinced that they are vulnerable to tsunamis.

Thanks @YetAnotherBlob for the informative comment. It justifies itself as a miniarticle for the information in contains. It really show how well-learned you are.

However, I am afraid many of the readers here have missed out on the hidden nuggets of wisdom. Maybe someone (lika an editor at smartplanet), should expand and explain the terms, or the background facts (such as how the Ricther Scale works), that you have taken its understanding among the public for granted.

Along these same lines, be it IFR or Thorium cycle, the general human psyche do not care for scary names that carry an old stigma. Look at this problem from a pyschological perspective. Give these technologies a NEW UMBRELLA NAME. Something like "Nu2clear" or "Nu Gen 2" Technology. History has shown us that human beings need to be rushed into a new era via symbolic totems.

(And form the proverbial carrot and sticks: Begin to market and subsidize these "NuGen2 technologies" as we outlaw classic "nuclear technologies". Every switch involves labour pains, but always better to move than to suffer afterwards.)

Thorium Reactors: Cheap, efficient, with little radioactive waste, and meltdown-proof.

http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/thinking-tech/a-meltdown-proof-nuclear-reactor-may-alleviate-fears/6494/

http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/thinking-tech/china-to-develop-a-greener-nuclear-reactor/6205/

Too many people today were born too late to remember Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. As recent events reveal, it's not a matter of if an accident happens (or the spent fuel makes it into the hands of the terrorists), it's when! No energy is worth the price we'll have to pay in the face of an accident or attack.

I'd like to see what this guy would say if they built one in his backyard. They have to put the plants and spent fuel somewhere!

All this talk permits us to avoid the real question - voluntary population control. Even nuclear power won't save us from overpopulating the planet (just make it easier!), and if we could reduce the number of humans on the planet, we wouldn't even need to consider something as dangerous as nuclear power.

Nature has a way of balancing things on her own, but we might not like result. There's no guarantee that the equilibrium she finds will be conducive to human life!

Thanks for that bit of information. Tesla was the one who figured out polyphase AC to run motors, he also was a big influence in getting the US on AC power. Tesla made many pronouncements such as making death rays and broadcast power; those pronouncements may have been why the FBI confiscated Tesla's documents.

Its not nuclear power thats dangerous, its reactor design. Obviously
the fuel needs to be transported and stored safely, but... so do most
(all?) fuel types. What we need is a revolution in reactor design, and,
surprisingly, theres a lot of them in the waiting for funding.

This is basically a technical problem with a thick layer of politics. The main problem with the nuclear industry is dealing with the waste. The solutions for waste management are digging a big hole and burying the waste or vitrification which turns the waste into glasslike material. Both solutions may work the best than one over the other.

Most of the long term depositories have problems ranging from ground instability to areas with a lot of faults prone to earthquakes. Vitrification can lock up the hazardous materials so that one can hold them without being contaminated. Storing vitrified wastes in places like Yucca Mountain can decrease the environmental problems.

The current practice of storing spent fuel in cooling pools waiting for a permanent disposal method is the least safe alternative as we have seen with the tsunami damaged reactors with the cooling pools above the reactors. Getting a reasonable solution for the disposal of reactive wastes is just one problem. Another problem is dealing with decommissioned reactors.

Nuclear power is probably going to be around for a long while. New reactor designs may lower the risks of accidents and using other reactive materials may increase the safety of reactors. The costs to design, build and operate a nuclear facility is still pretty high and has never delivered on the "Too cheap to meter" promise.

Still, while neither cheap or clean, nuclear power can compete with fossile fuels that are becoming less cheap and clean. It is a trade off from one kind of enviromental contamination for another.

The shortcoming to nuclear power is the shortage of fissionable material. There is not enough mine-able material to replace more that 20% of current power needs, much less future needs.

The ignorance spouted here by the anti-nuclear power crowd are even more mind boggling than usual.

#3. sboverie 04/25/11: Assuming broadcast power can be done, it would probably use the same sources of energy we use now, including nuclear. Er...so your wonderful new solution isnt a souce of energy at all, just a tramsmission system! Dont confuse the two. Dont waste everybody's time. Especially with a completely non-existent technology that would defy physics.

#4. klassman6 04/25/11 ...true renewables jumped from supplying 2% of new energy growth in the US in 2004 to 55% in 2009.
. What weasel words, Klassman, as you well know. Shame on you! The clue is in the word GROWTH. Many readers will have read this hurriedly to mean that renewables were supplying 55% of the US power in 2009 whereas the truth is far different isnt it? How about you responding right here on this blog with the tiny percentage of power across the whole of the US currently supplied by renewables in 2011 . Please take this as a test of your integrity. Or would it be just too painful to confront the truth?




It is far cheaper for a utility to invest in negawatts, i.e. in saving energy and promoting energy efficiency as a means to meet its future needs, rather than investing in a new power plant. Oh yeah? A what insignificant percentage reduction is this going to make, offset as it will be by ever oncreasing industrial and consumer demand over the coming years?

It's interesting to read lines like 'we as a species refuse to learn
from our mistakes' and such emotional appeals, when despite all
its problems, Nuclear power has a track record of working, and
while it's dangerous, so is everything else. Nuclear accidents
COULD kill tens of thousands of people. Dam breaks HAVE killed
tens of thousands of people. Yet why are we not tearing down all
the hydropower.

There's promise in 'alternative' energy but so far they all have
one huge failing, no way to store energy, and huge space
requirements. Yes, with research and funding, some of these
problems can be solved or minimized... but too often, fans and
proponents of these are like guys smitten with a pretty girl they
hardly know: she's so beautiful she just has to be perfect, and
any issues she might have, they could fix if she'd just give them a
chance... Sorry, no one is perfect, and neither is any technology.
It'd be easier to take alternative energy fans more seriously if
they'd take the limitations of their favorite tech more seriously
themselves. In the meantime, nuclear power actually works, on a
large scale. And all the 'promise' in the world can't replace that
track record. Yes, it's 'unfair' that people won't just take that leap
of faith and invest in something that may never work the way you
hope... but trust in anything is built incrementally. That's just how
it goes, pretty girl or power plant.

I never claimed that it is new technology, just a possible way to distrubute energy. There was also something in Tesla's experiments that seemed to indicate that the energy was coming from the earth as a dynamo but that is another claim by Tesla that would need to be tested.

My point about broadcast power is that a vehicle with a device to receive broadcast power would be more efficient because it does not have to contain its own source of energy in the form of fossil fuels. Tesla claimed that a single transmitter could blanket the globe with broadcast power. His claims are just that until either proven true or false. If Tesla's claims are true, then the reactors can be set be set far away from populations and sensitive environments; which would increase nuclear safety.

They could be located far away from population centers anyway by high tension lines. Tesla designed the modern electrical system used to this day and it works delivering power to the meter on your house. Broadcast power does not have a meter end of story.

know too little about radiation, nuclear physics, and engineering to speak intelligibly about nuclear power. As a result, they are easily swayed by propaganda, distortions, appeals to emotions rather than reason, and outright lies.

Take Chernobyl as the first example. Chernobyl was a very real disaster. The prevailing view is that Chernobyl happened because nuclear power technology "is an accident waiting to happen." The reality is very different.

The chernobyl disaster resulted from a Soviet culture that abrogated safety in the name of the communist revolution. Because of that unsafe culture, four factors came together to cause the Chernobyl disaster:

- The Soviet RBMK reactor design allowed positive reactivity from steam voids during reactor operation;
- The operators were inadequately trained;
- The operational safeguards - including emergency cooling - were disabled for the test;
- The reactor test plan was not properly coordinated between the safety and reactor personnel.

The accident began with the operators violating their test procedure by exceeding their minimum operational reactivity margin with too many control rods extracted too far. Because of the design flaw, steam voids formed inside the reactor during an excessive power transient when the operators started the test run. A positive feedback loop resulted with the reactor producing more heat that created more steam, increasing pressure inside of the reactor vessel.

The operators attempted to SCRAM the reactor, but the catastrophe unfolded in mere seconds and the control rods never reached full depth before becoming jammed. Steam pressure inside of the reactor vessel exceeded design limits and cracked the reactor vessel. Rapid steam release followed and water disassociated into hydrogen and oxygen from steam and zirconium reactions. A hydrogen explosion resulted that removed the top of the containment vessel, exposing the fuel cells. Moderator, fuel, and cladding materials were ejected as the core erupted into a high-temperature metal alloy fire.

Such an accident did not happen at Three Mile Island Unit 2 in spite of the operator doing his worst to damage the reactor core. As a result of the operator's mistakes in repeatedly shutting down emergency cooling, the portion of the core that melted simply pooled in the bottom of the reactor vessel and was contained, exactly as the reactor vessel was designed to do. That was because the TMI-2 pressurized water design is very different from the unsafe Soviet early RBMK design.

and irrationally fear it. The fact is that radiation is natural and is all around us all of the time. Everyone is constantly being dosed from natural and man-made exposure at the rate of about 3.6 milliSievert (360 milliRem) per year:

Radon gas: ............... 55%
Cosmic radiation: ........ 8%
Terrestial: ................... 8% (rocks, dirt, concrete)
Internal: ................... 11% (ingestion, e.g. Carbon 12)
Medical x-rays: ........ 11%
Nuclear medicine: ..... 4%
Consumer products: .. 3%

Cosmic background radiation is why people fleeing Three Mile Island by aircraft actually received more radiation than those who stayed behind.

For real global killers, we need only listen to the World Health Organization:

"Air pollution is a major environmental risk to health and is estimated to cause approximately 2 million premature deaths worldwide per year. ... Significant reduction of exposure to air pollution can be achieved through lowering the concentrations of several of the most common air pollutants emitted during the combustion of fossil fuels."

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/index.html

American power comes from the following sources:

Coal: .............. 44.9%
Natural Gas: ..... 23.4%
Nuclear: .......... 20.3%
Hydroelectric: ..... 6.9%
Renewable: ....... 3.6%
Petroleum: ........ 1.0%

Of all of these, coal is the biggest radiological hazard.

Nuclear fuels and waste are shielded, monitored, and regulated. The same is not true of radiactive products from coal mining and combustion. Coal actually contains Uranium 238, Uranium 235, and Thorium 232. The solid waste of fly ash produced in coal plants contains 10 times its original concentrations in coal ore.

The coal industry has constantly fought EPA efforts to regulate coal mining and coal plant operation release of radioactive isotopes into the biosphere. In fact, the coal industry is seeking to have what fly ash it does capture before the rest flies up the flue and into the air classified as "inert." The coal industry plans to deposit these millions of tons of solid waste in abandoned mines and landfills with no shielding or monitoring, completely free to escape into local water tables.

This radiation from coal pollution is not trivial. An operating nuclear reactor yields about 3 to 6 milliRem per year in background exposure. Coal plant fly ash alone exposes its surrounding population to about 18 milliRems per year - 3 to 6 times an operating nuclear plant. If food is grown near the coal plant as well, then the fly ash radioactivity enters the food chain. The resulting radioactive exposure leaps to about 27 to 54 milliRem per year, 9 to 18 times the level of an operating nuclear power plant.

YetAnotherBob accurately described the options and thier drawbacks for ridding ourselves of polluting fossil fuel technology for power generation.

As far as disposing of conventional fission nuclear waster waste, people should be paying attention to the traveling wave reactor (TWR). The Thorium reactor is also a very promising simple and highly scalable reactor design.

Why aren't there more nukes in the US?
The waste issue? nope.
The nuclear proliferation issue? nope.
The design? nope.
The radiation? nope.
Politics? nope again.

M-O-N-E-Y.
Did you know that Tokyo Electric had a minority share in the
proposed nuclear power plant in Texas? They pulled out:
MONEY. Who is going to go in there and plop down a few
hundred million to take their place? And how much time is it going
to take to re-assemble that financial package and what kinds of
reassurances are the new financiers going to need that this is a
safer design?

And with all of the inherent flaws in water cooled reactor design
being showcased by Fukushima, how many other investors are
having second thoughts? Why shouldn't we wait and invest in a
safer thorium design instead, say the shareholders? And how
many billion dollars will be added to the 8 billion dollar per nuke
pricetag after Fukushima? And exactly why should ratepayers
pay premium prices for those electrons when there are cheaper
alternatives out there?

Nukes are dead because they don't make financial sense, there
are much better ways to spend the energy dollar, and it's just a
bad idea whose time never came. Amory Lovins likened heating
water to 1200 degrees with radioactivity to turn a generator blade
akin to cutting butter with a chainsaw: overkill, plain and simple.

Oh, and by the way cosserat #14, it's not painful at all to admit
that my statement was about growth percentage not total energy
production percentage. My intention was clear if you read the
context, which was that folks are shifting their energy investment
dollars to renewables, not to nuclear or coal. It is you who is
laying on a misplaced meaning to my post that was never there in
the first place. But that's OK--I forgive you.

There are two kinds of people responsible for all things bad on this planet, idiots and greedy ones -although greediness is a form of idiocy. The difference is, the greedy idiot variety controls the plane idiot variety.

You don't have to be a rocket-scientist or a nuclear expert to figure this out:
Whatever the security measures, the technology or the level of safety of a fission reactor, there is always the statistical probability that something will go very wrong, whether from internal or external causes, malfunction, man-error, sabotage or just an unpredictable physical disaster.

So it's not "if" but "when" this will happen and when it does, radiation pollution cannot be reversed. There is no "cure" for radiation.
This might happen tomorrow, in one year, or in 100 years, when exactly it doesn't matter -it will make living on earth WORSE than before, PERMANENTLY. Also the chances are constantly increasing, since more countries with dubious safety measures are building new reactors, even on unsafe (seismic etc) areas.

And while the freaky-tech fans are preparing the next Fukushima-like disaster, there is damage done on a daily basis by the waste disposal. Waste-disposal is not always done properly -because of the cost. There are even cases where boats were sank to make nuke waste "disappear" the low cost way and people that investigated such cases were "disappeared" too. In other cases, they secretly dropped the barrels (not appropriate for nuclear waste) on the sea. As more countries adopt this kind or freaky-technology for the first time, such irresponsible disposal methods will become more common. It's freaky because it targets your DNA, it makes mutants and threatens life itself.

And there is the depleted uranium weapons (made from nuclear waste material). There are dead and deformed babies born, rising numbers of cancers, a dramatic increase in birth defects and other genetic disorders in Iraq and Afganishtan where hundreds of tons have dropped. Serious health consequences are already and will be felt for years also by men and women who were sent over there to fight. Expect the same in any current and future wars.

So we're actually sitting on not one, but many time bombs. Different disaster events might occur, maybe more than one in the next few decades.
The sooner we totally replace nuclear fission with green alternatives, the better. No, nuclear fission is NOT green.

It's not the only source of pollution, it's the only source that has permanent, irreversible destructive results. The only type of pollution that threats the human existence -therefore, the worst one. It simply doesn't worth the risk.
Even dummies should be able to understand that -except the greedy idiots concerned only about their own miserable, tiny lifespan. But even them, would be disappointed if they lived in Fukushima (even if not, if it wasn't beyond their capacity).

The truth about oil and coal; you will not be informed but the information is in pieces parts and there is no study to put it together. Not surprising either as trillions are at stake. Wars will be fought many have already died and more will. Put the thing in perspective, no choice is made without comparison!

to cardhung@...

Congratulations for your unusually accurate and well balanced contributions. In 18 you identify carbon 12 as a naturally occuring radioactive element. A typo I am sure - the "culprit" is carbon 14. You might also include pottasium 41 as well as uranium and thorium and their many radioactive decay products - all quite natural and with us at all times and to some extent, at all locations. It is also worthy of note that those of our species who have lived for generations at high mountain locations, while subject to substantially higher exposure to cosmic radiation than those at sea level, are not particularly short lived or ravaged by cancer. And cosmic radiation has been arriving from outer space for millions of years.

Re 21, I am skeptical, but not informed, so I make no comment other than about thorium "reactors". A fissionable isotope of uranium can be made by neutron irradiation of thorium but as far as I am aware, nuclear fission whether of uranium isotopes or plutonium, generates the radioactive "products of fission", which are hazardous and are storage and disposal problems of considerable consequence.

Your getting into fuel cycles its a good think that used fuel kills its designed that way. Intended not accidental. Supposed to be fatal to handle. Poisoned with intent.

If nuclear reactors are such a bad choice why do many of the developed nations depend upon them and are actively building more. China has something like thirty under construction and many more on the way. France produces 80 percent of it electricity using reactors. I guess they are all just dumb. The link below from Wikipedia gives statistics on what the rest of the world is doing. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country
Most of the other developed countries also recycle the fuel rods. It reduces the waste storage by 95% and they recover useful products. We buy most of our medical radioactive materials from Canada who recycles spent fuel. They make good money on this and employ Canadians with jobs that could have been US jobs.
The radiation danger of stored rods is also very over blown. People apparently just like to be scared of radiation and other super natural things. Perhaps if more of them would spend a few hours reading Wikipedia instead of listening to the insanity on TV, we might be able to make some informed decisions on the future energy policy of the US

Gotta make that gas go higher its just begun to raise. Got a long long way to go up up and away.

Whilst I sympathise with the view that waste is a signifcant problem, people dying as a result of nuclear accidents must be of greater concern.

If Thorium reactors are so much safer, how come none of them are proposed for new nuclear build in the UK and around the world? For that matter how come energy comapnies aren't proposing building a larger number of smaller safer PWR reactors? Economics are ruling over common sense.

If we build nukes we are trying to control a reaction which, if left alone, has catastrophic and unpredicatable consequences. It is this unpredicatbility which makes it virtually impossible to design cost effective safety systems. Almost unique in human endeavour, the feedback after a nuclear accident is all negative. At least with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico we knew what the worst case was. Don't say it can't happen.

Responsible sources, which use data based upon previous health patterns and reported illnesses, not on safe dose rates (which are under question) say that 200,000 people have died in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as a result of Chernobyl. If you want a copy of a press release "What Chernobyl stands for, please contact me via the Communities Against Nuclear Expansion Facebook site.

200,000 is nothing compared to eliminating enough of the human race as to have a "sustainable" energy population. You do not know the dark side of fossil fuel. Let alone wars fought for access to resources.

William Tucker writes:
"Uranium fuel rods sit in a reactor core for five years. During that time six ounces of their weight?six ounces!?will be completely transformed into energy. But the energy produced by that transformation will be enough to power a city the size of San Francisco for five years"

What a load of nonsense! Six ounces is lost out of out of how much fuel in the fuel rod? As nuclear fission occurs, fission products quickly build up which prevent a sustainable nuclear reaction and the fuel has to be removed. The spent fuel which is produced is highly radioactive and continues to generate a huge amount of heat which is wasted and has to be disipated, along with 66% of the heat generated by the fuel when in use, which heats the sea or goes up in steam up a cololing tower. Only a small percentage of fuel is ever used to produce useful energy.

After removing spent fuel from a PWR reactor it has to be actively cooled for at least twenty five years in spent fuel ponds before it can be moved safely into fuel casks. Now it is true that a small amount of nuclear fuel does produce a large amount of energy, but perfect it is not. In the meantime, radiation from spent fuel is a risk to health for more than 10,000 years.

"Will nuclear ever be relevant?"
"We need newer technology if nuclear is to be relevent."

You guys are too funny. Nuclear power is very relevant. There are 442 nuclear plants in operation world-wide, producing 374,958 Megawatts of electricity. France gets 75% of their electricy from nucleare energy. The Ukaraine still gets 50% of their electricity from nuclear plants, post Chernobyl. Tell the French that nuclear power is not relevant.

China has 13 plants and is building 27 more. They have to power their country, now that they are becoming a modern civilization. The United States has 104 nukes producing 100,747 Megawatts. Not relevant? Dudes, wake up and smell the coffee.

"Have we already forgotten Chernobyl?"
"Too many people today were born too late to remember Chernobyl or Three Mile Island."

1> We have not forgotten Chernobyl. Neither have the Ukrainians, who get 50% of their electricity from nukes. Chernobyl was a product of a corrupt Socialist State, and was designed poorly, and safety procedures were not followed.

Three Mile Island? There was no disaster. Coolant water leaked. No one was killed, and several epidemiological studies in the years since the accident have supported the conclusion that the tiny amount of radiation released from the accident had no perceptible effect on cancer incidence in residents near the plant.

William Tucker is absolutely correct when he states that "a coal plant must be fed by a 100-car freight train arriving every 30 hours."

Nulcear plants power France, Lithuania, Belgium, Ukraine, Chian, and the United States (among others) and the US Navy. It's the most effective way to produce clean power. It is highly relevant, and most effective.

The imperative is proper design, and strict adherance to proper safety procedures.

The deaths from Chernobyl are probably no where near 200,000. Check Wikipedia. Anti nuclear organizations report 100's of thousands. Russia and World Health report around 4000. Chernobyl was a result of massive stupidity on several fronts. It was a graphite reactor (an type used by very early researchers) that the managers decided to play with. Another supernatural tale.

to stop it.
we can solve any problem if we just put our collective imagination to work and get it done.
it's the leadership of the possible we need.
as long as the ones' that profit from the success or failure are the one's making the rules, it will continue to be a problem.
we need good leadership, not an Energy Czar that just wants to force his small opinion on the rest of us.
what can we accomplish in this decade?
our present leader wants to degrade our great nation to benefit the impoverished.
we will not see benefits from nuclear until the entire globe is in dire need.
so very sad.


.

bb,
Of course it produces lots of electricity in many countries around the world, and you can bet that each nuclear contractor around the world is looking closely at Fukushima and scratching its head about
1) what are we going to do to make this nuke safer;
2) how much cost overruns are going to up the price;

Then the investors for that new nuke are going to be recalculating how much that electricity is gonna cost per kwh and trying to figure out how they are going to make a profit on those new margins, and some of them will back out. Tepco, for obvious reasons (they are as good as bankrupt), has already backed out of the nukes it was involved with. Who else is gonna pony up?

The French have built all the nukes they can get away with in their own country, having placed their bets on reprocessing spent fuel rods and lost on that front, and have been pushing the new nukes in the US as hard as they can, mostly out of desparation in my estimation. If they don't come up with some new nukes somewhere soon, AREVA is in serious trouble financially. And they can't switch over to a new kind of nuclear power plant because of the heavy investment they have on the current models and the up front time they would need to develop the next generation nukes.

But why should we throw that much money at some nukes to prop up a French multinational? Much better to use free market investors to grow the renewables market and increase the efficiency of our existing consumers, which not only gives us more time and uses money saved instead of money borrowed. It's a much more robust, flexible model to scale up with just like PCs are much more versatile than mainframes.

My 2 cents:
1 - As noted by others, we need so much energy because there are so many people. If we have fewer people, we need less energy, and we will will produce less pollution and other side effects.
2 - Also as noted by others, under the current system, we can produce less nuclear waste. It just takes a little more effort and more money. The additional money to process that can be made up by making money from additional products from the waste, and by needing less money to acquire and produce the raw material.
3 - This section, I predict, is going to set some people off. I welcome comments, but it would be nice if comments actually say something worthwhile and not be just somebody ranting.
The waste we produce now is mostly just sitting there, scaring us that it will radiate us, or blow us up, or whatever other silly things people think of.
The interior of the earth is very hot. That heat is produced by radioactivity. If we were to put our excessive waste as deep into the earth as we could, it would have less effect on us than it does sitting next to a nuclear reactor.
The Marianas Trench is subducting the crust into the earth 30,000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean. If we vitrify, or in some other way solidify, our nuclear waste, then guide it into the bottom of the Marianas Trench, it will become part of the geologic cycle of the planet, never to bother us again. No one I have ever talked to about this has been able to give me a serious objection.
There is no way to get all the energy we need without have some deleterious side effects, but we need to recognize those side effects and minimize them to the best of our abilities.

Until we have a viable solution to power generation and usage issues and keeping in mind that population continues to expand there needs to be a solution in hand that will work now and until other forms of power are available in the quantity that is required by that growing population.

Personally I have done all that I can by making sure my house is tight and well insulated, having a high efficiency air conditioner and having solar PV panels on the roof. My solar, designed to produce 54% of my power needs provided 76% of my needs last month. But most people have not or will not be in a position to do so meaning that power needs need to be addressed. Well planned nuclear, at least for now, needs to be part of the overall equation.

you may have a problem then. Cooking, and off gassing from plastics can cause build-ups of carcinogens. Some people are also sensitive to smaller levels of solvents.

The International Building Council (which writes the building codes for the US) recommends that your AC have around a 10% makeup of outside air to keep these build ups from happening. If your house is as tight as you say, you should look to be sure you are getting the amount af make up air you need(Usually several total air changes per day.)

I hope this isn't a problem for you.

Enough said, look it up.

The End of Nuclear Power. "In other words, before we finish building the next nuclear plant, it will be an expensive and increasingly irrelevant relic of the 1950?s dream of ?atoms for peace.?" http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/rkupers2/English

After 60 years of massive investment and subsidies, nuclear power still cannot compete without being subsidised and underwritten by governments. It is a failed technology.

The only sane choice is renewable energy. It is competitive now, it is clean, it is safe and it will never run out.

I remember when I was in college and took a couple of semesters of Nuclear Engineering. The second semester, we had to examine the development documents for a working reactor. I was with the group that looked at the costs. That was when I decided against completing the Nuclear program.

More than half of the cost to build a Nuclear Reactor in the United States went to Lawyers Fees! Even at that, it is more economical to refit an existing reactor than to shut it down or replace it with a different type of plant. That is why so few existing Nuclear Power Plants have been shut down. ( I am aware of three. All built in the mid 1950's, plus Three Mile Island.)

The fact is that the expense of a Nuclear Reactor if prorated with fuel costs included is lower than anything but a coal plant. If legal costs are deducted, or clean up costs are added for the coal plant, then Nuclear is the least costly way to produce base load power. base load power is the power that must be supplied all the time. Peaking power is the power that is needed only for short times. The current cheapest source for peak load power is natural gas turbines.

Nuclear power will be the main source of power for the next 100 years. The US has enough Uranium in the west for most of that time. Thorium reserves in the east and midwest are more plentiful than Uranium, but will require a different reactor design.

Heavy restrictions on the way things are done, AND the subsidies led to a lack of will to use improved designs.

All that "high level waste" is unburned fuel that can easily be reused but which *might* be a tempting target for terrorists if reprocessed outside the reactor.

Better design (most older designs are modified nuclear submarine cores - built for size, not efficiency or safety) leads to better safety AND to the ability to better extract the potential energy.

Regarding waste heat - ALL heat based generation systems (eg, coal, oil) are only 30% or so efficient. There are a number of ways of scavenging the heat for other uses - banks of low-temp 10kW Sterling engines (but maintenance costs are an issue), neighbourhood heat distribution systems and (paradoxically) driving chiller systems using recent innovations to the old ammonia refrigeration cycle (see solarfrost.com)

All the nuclear leaks from all the world's reactors combined are far less than the total radioactivity pollution from one year's worth of coal burning - and don't forget the USA atmospheric tests put the equivalent of 3 chernobyls into the USA midwest environment in the 1950s/60s but nobody noticed a thing...

Heavy restrictions on the way things are done, AND the subsidies led to a lack of will to use improved designs.

All that "high level waste" is unburned fuel that can easily be reused but which *might* be a tempting target for terrorists if reprocessed outside the reactor.

Better design (most older designs are modified nuclear submarine cores - built for size, not efficiency or safety) leads to better safety AND to the ability to better extract the potential energy.

Regarding waste heat - ALL heat based generation systems (eg, coal, oil) are only 30% or so efficient. There are a number of ways of scavenging the heat for other uses - banks of low-temp 10kW Sterling engines (but maintenance costs are an issue), neighbourhood heat distribution systems and (paradoxically) driving chiller systems using recent innovations to the old ammonia refrigeration cycle (see solarfrost.com)

All the nuclear leaks from all the world's reactors combined are far less than the total radioactivity pollution from one year's worth of coal burning - and don't forget the USA atmospheric tests put the equivalent of 3 chernobyls into the USA midwest environment in the 1950s/60s but nobody noticed a thing...

> ...Wall Street Journal, Tucker ... urges Americans to scale back the knee-jerk reaction to nuclear power as dangerous, expensive and unfit for use as an alternative energy source to fossil fuels.

It's not a "knee-jerk reaction". It's a calm assessment of the facts. Ignoring this is nothing but sticking your head in the sand to push a failed ideology - a common theme in Rupert Murdoch's media.

> Natural gas.

It's not a choice between nukes and natural gas. It's a choice between nukes and clean, safe renewable energy.

> Hydro power.

We use what hydro we have - but note that: US Hydropower can be increased by at least 50% without building any new dams. http://www.nirs.org/alternatives/factoid17.htm

> Wind energy. ?...lining the Hudson River from New York to Albany with 45-story windmills one-quarter mile apart.?

First, it's wind *turbines*. Windmills *mill* things. Good to get the terminology right if you want to be taken seriously.

Second, is anyone suggesting that wind turbines provide 100% of our power? No. It's a portfolio of wind, solar, wave, geothermal, biomass, biogas, etc.

> Solar energy. ?It would take 20 square miles of highly polished mirrors or photovoltaic cells to equal the output of one nuclear reactor.?

Oh no! Highly polished mirrors and PV panels! The horror! So what if it's 20 sq. miles? Are we running out of roof space?

Funny how some people are suddenly horrified by the footprint of human constructions but say nothing about the massive suburban sprawl from McMansions and all the roads needed to link them up with the cities. It's almost as if some people are desperate to find any reason they can think of to object to renewable energy.

> Tucker says that America needs to bite the bullet and innovate in nuclear technology, instead of raising its collective nose up at it.

Tucker needs to do his homework and understand that people have been "innovating" nuclear reactors for 60 years and they still cannot compete in an open market. And instead of blindly supporting a failed technology, he needs to understand that cost and technology makes nuclear fail in competition against renewable energy.

#44, scottdain,

There are a couple of problems with your analysis.

First, the time estimates for radioactive waste are misleading. There are several isotopes represented in the figures, all averaged out. There are also several reasons for the isotope/atom to be radioactive. Some will emit a Gamma Ray, and then be non-radioactive. These decay very fast. Often on the order of a few hours. Some will emit an electron. This is called beta decay. The energy of Beta decay is fairly low. It doesn't penetrate very far. A single layer of cells is enough to stop the radiation. Some will emit a Helium Nucleus. This is Alpha Decay. The atom moves two places down the periodic table. It's a different element and isotope then. Some will emit a neutron. If the neutron is absorbed by another atom, then that atom changes into another isotope. If the isotope is not stable, then it undergoes Beta Decay, and moves up one step in the periodic table. If the Neutron energy is just right, then the atom may fission, or split into pieces. The pieces are then each smaller atoms. There are also neutrons emitted by the shattered atom. If those Neutrons initiate the same process, then a chain reaction is formed.

Each product of a fission event may or may not be stable. If it is not stable, then it is radioactive (Alpha, Beta or Gamma). The species created will have a characteristic half life. The half life is the time for half of the material to stop being radioactive.

The shorter the half life, the more radioactive the sample is. The longer the half life, the less radioactive.

Taking the radiation of the sample when removed from the reactor, there will be a large mix of atoms. Each atom will follow it's own half life. Saying the sample has a half life of 10,000 years is applying some kind of average to the sample. The Uranium 238 will still have a half life of a billion years or so. the Plutonium will still have a half life of a quarter million years or so. the Cesium and Strontium will still have a half life of 50 to 75 years or so. the Radon will still have a half life of a few months. And so forth.

What reprocessing is all about is separating the atoms chemically, so that the most radioactive isotopes can be stored separatly, and they will quickly cool. The longer lived isotopes will cool more slowly, and the fissionable isotopes can be re-used for fuel.

Storage is a different question. My personal belief is that we should store the materials in a safe location that can be accessed at a later date. A vault in an underground area would be ideal.

Many of these radioactive isotopes are very rare and hard to find in nature. There are processes and times where they can be quite valuable. In the future, they will be an important source of income by themselves. Think recycling when talking about Nuclear 'waste'. Just like in other areas, recycling will pay dividends.

#15 xxyl 04/25/11 Congratulations! That is a truly remarkable piece of writing that encapsulates the entire issue. I would recommend anybody who has not read it to scroll back and take a look.

This blog trail, like many others, is full of wishful thinking about alternative energy possibilities. Take #3. sboverie 04/25/11 above who has some completely barmy idea that cars could be driven by wireless waves rather than gasoline, thus reducng their weight and thereby increasing their energy efficiency.

Or #4 klassman6 04/25/11 , whose mealy-mouthed piece implies that 55% of the US energy comes from alternative sources, and who has so far failed to rise to my challenge of responding by telling us the true percentage. Fortunately #20 cardhun@ 04/25/11 has provided the answer, which is a miniscule 3.5%.

What kind of fantasy land are all these people living in?

You apparently have not read my response, coss, that the sole purpose of my quoting that 55% of NEW energy investment went into renewables was to point out that the investment climate is shifting away from fossils and nukes, and will continue to do so for the forseeable future. Nuclear power has never been able to make it in the marketplace without incredible government subsidies, and coal investments have soured so quickly that hundreds of plans have been scrapped in favor of retrofitting, gas, energy efficiency and renewables. I never claimed that the 55% renewables represented total energy output, and this is the second time that I have reiterated this point. You seem to be the only one who is not getting this point--so sorry you seem to have this comprehension disability.

Thanks for your compliment!

Yes, Carbon 12 is a typo. Thanks for the correction!

That would mean America getting 10.4% of its power generation from hydroelectric instead of 6.9%

That is not a scalable option. America would do better to spare the land environments and focus on bridging the gap to renewable energy sources of wind, wave, solar, and geothermal in about 50 years. For that, continued dependence on nuclear power or polluting fossil fuels are America's only two viable options.

I was long a proponent of this approach for disposing of radioactive waste. Now I'd rather see the waste producing energy in traveling wave reactors.

Unfortunately the oxide form which light water reactors need is an impediment to TWRs and the waste will need significant reprocessing (read - contamination risk and lots of politics) to be able to be used in a TWR - however they're still a "very good idea" for fuelled from scratch designs.

How about the "knee jerk" reaction to always cover-up, lie, and misrepresent the environmental and financial and health costs of nuclear by the industry, and the industry owned politicians and NRC?
How much carbon was saved and at what cost in death and billions by Chernobil and the Japan disasters? Why are the poorly kept records always disappearing?
Come on and spend the billions of capital on energy efficiency and not on nuclear plants that no company will insure - so the tax payers get screwed again for all costs and the corporations get the profits -- you know like the other scams, e.g. wall street investment banks.

The "poorly kept records that keep disappearing" are just the unsubstantiatable claims of the anti-nuclear propagandists.

The facts are that the environmental and health effects of Chernobyl are well-documented by multiple world organizations and are readily available online. Fukushima is not the "disaster" the anti-nuclear propagandists want, having only released 10% of the contamination of Chernobyl, most of which was Iodine 131 with a half-life of only 8 days.

Since most freaky-fission supporters talk about France's 78.8% energy cover from nuclear plants as the perfect success story -even as the ideal case of the nuclear fission industry, here are some "fast facts" you might have missed. These are just an excerpt from the free document "Beyond Nuclear Fast Facts":

1. France, like the U.S., has not solved its nuclear waste problem

A. The dirty and polluting process called reprocessing

France reprocesses irradiated reactor fuel by soaking it in acid to extract plutonium and slightly enriched uranium. This results in massive releases of radioactive gases and liquids and the creation of solid wastes that place people and the environment at great risk. Reprocessing operations release larger volumes of radioactivity typically by factors of several thousand compared to radioactive releases from nuclear reactors.

The liquid discharges from La Hague (and the UK. reprocessing plant at Sellafield) have resulted in contamination of area beaches and of seas as far as away as the Arctic Circle and are considered among the ten main anthropogenic sources of radioactive pollution of the worlds oceans.

Two independent medical studies found elevated rates of leukemia in young people living around La Hague. (Similar leukemia clusters have also been recorded around the British reprocessing site at Sellafield which has turned the Irish Sea into one of the most radioactively contaminated bodies of water in the world).

The nuclear waste pumped into the sea from La Hague has been measured as 17 million times more radioactive than normal sea water according to an analysis by an independent French radiological laboratory.

La Hague routinely releases a radioactive cloud that is highly toxic. Concentrations of krypton-85 above the plant were found to register 90,000 times higher than natural radiation levels according to research by a Belgian laboratory. La Hague also releases all of its carbon-14 emissions into the air, identified by the French Nuclear Safety Center as the isotope in reprocessing discharges that is most damaging to human health.

2. Reactors to bombs and the threat to security

A stockpile of more than 80 metric tons of plutonium has accumulated at La Hague. About 30 of these metric tons are of foreign origin. (The British Sellafield plutonium stockpile is even larger at 107 metric tons). The plutonium is stored in tens of thousands of containers representing a high security risk.

Enriching uranium for reactor fuel has produced depleted uranium (U-238 or DU) that remains hazardous for billions of years (DU half-life is 4.46 billion years). France, like all other countries, has no disposal solution for DU waste.

3. French nuclear power has been costly to taxpayers

The economic penalty of reprocessing had been kept secret until a government-commissioned study in 2000. It concluded that reprocessing and the use of MOX fuel in France had raised the kilowatt-hour cost of nuclear-generated electricity and cost the country tens of billions of francs.

When evaluating the true costs of nuclear power in France, the entire nuclear complex must be considered. This includes: waste disposal, reactor decommissioning and dismantlement, uranium extraction and processing, reprocessing, MOX fuel production, accident and security risks, and significant health and genetic damage. Taken together, the costs of nuclear energy are enormous.

France banked on the plutonium breeding program as the basis for its massive nuclear power program. But uranium proved plentiful, plutonium uneconomic as a fuel and the countrys flagship breeder reactor the Superphenix was a costly disaster. Over its 12 years of production, Superphenix produced just 8.2 TWh of electricity a lifetime capacity of about six percent. (The U.S. breeder reactor Fermi I suffered a meltdown in 1966 and closed for good in 1972).

Decommissioning costs are proving to be dramatically higher than predicted. The assessed cost of decommissioning the Brennilis reactor in Brittany currently stands at 482 million ($677 million), 20 times the sum originally envisaged.

4. Aging and Unsafe

A cascade of accidents in the summer of 2008 included leaks and spills from several nuclear facilities, particularly those at Tricastin, where radioactive contamination of two rivers resulted in a ban on drinking and bathing in the water. Tricastin area wine growers saw their businesses suffer while homeowners saw their property values plummet.

France, like all countries with nuclear reactors, has experienced a long list of near-misses. Some of these are listed in the Global Chance November 2008 report, Frances Nuclear Failures.

5. French reactors, and reactor construction projects, are unreliable

The European Pressurized Reactor or EPR (known in the U.S. as the Evolutionary Power Reactor) currently under construction in Finland (Olkiluoto-3) is already at least 60% over its projected $4 billion budget and three years behind schedule.

The EPR under construction in France, at Flamanville on the Normandy coast, has also experienced technical errors and safety flaws. Construction was halted at the site after the French Security Agency (ASN) issued an order concerning the pouring of concrete at the building site and criticized the operator lectricit de France (EDF) for a lack of rigorous oversight.

At least seven EPR reactors are planned for six U.S. sites. Areva, and EDF stand to reap huge U.S. taxpayer funds if these projects and an Areva-owned uranium enrichment plant planned for Idaho go forward.

6. Nuclear power is an unreliable choice under climate change

Reactors rely on huge volumes of water for cooling. During droughts, insufficient water supplies cause reactors to shut down.

During the heat wave of 2003, 17 French reactors were forced to power down or shut down completely as river water temperatures rose. France had no option but to import costly electricity from abroad.

As climate change worsens, water shortages and heat waves will be more common making nuclear power an impractical option, a problem for a country so heavily dependent on nuclear energy supply.

7. The French do not love their nuclear power

More than 50,000 French citizens in just two districts in north-eastern France have signed a petition to request a referendum on whether a nuclear waste dump would be sited in their area. This request has been ignored by French politicians.

More than 25,000 people demonstrated against new nuclear power in Cherbourg on the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Another 60,000 rallied in five cities in March 2007 in opposition to nuclear power. Fewer people rallied in the U.S. on the same day against the Iraq war

In a 2006 European poll, only 8% of the French population thought nuclear power was a solution to climate change.

An annual fall poll in France records as many as 61% of the population favoring a phase-out of nuclear energy despite Frances reputation as a country that loves its nuclear power.

8. Uranium Mining

There are 210 abandoned uranium mines in France. These sites were never adequately cleaned up and radioactive mine tailings have been found in childrens playgrounds and public parking lots.

In Niger, the French nuclear company Areva, under subsidiaries (and its predecessor, Cogema) has mined uranium at two sites for 40 years. This has resulted in contaminated air, dust and water supplies well above World Health Organization standards. Discarded radioactive metals from the mining operations have been sold in public marketplaces and used in household goods.

Doctors interviewed at the two Areva-owned hospitals in the Niger mining towns, have admitted they do not diagnose uranium mining-related illnesses as it would reflect badly on the mining company.

Not bad just look at coal and oil for something really nasty.

if your source is correct, then there must have been millions of dead French citizens. Why is this not showing up in the health statistics? The heavy discharge of radioactive materials into the seawater would have killed most of the western Mediterranean by now. Why is there still fishing in that sea?

I don't think your facts are factual. I could agree that better reprocessing systems would help overall. I would also agree that no system is totally foolproof. However, the alternatives are always something that is proposed without knowing the drawbacks. In the '60's it was natural gas generation and hydropower. In the '70's it was windmills. These turbines were promised to provide all our power needs. It was also 'clean coal' (Scrubbers to remove sulpher compounds that use up 10% of the plants generation). In practice, the scrubbers were turned off, and the Government just ignored it because too many voters complained about the power bill getting higher. In the '80's it was Wind power again, and Fusion. Cold Fusion didn't pan out very well. Wind power remained a non panacea. In the '90s it was Wave power and alcohol. We now have the alcohol in our gasoline, but the wave power never waved. After 2000, it was Wind Power again and Bio-fuels. There are now wind farms, producing around 2% of our power needs. Bio-fuels are too expensive, except for that derived from used cooking oils. That seems to mean that we don't have enough McDonald's. Dietitians say we have too many.

Meanwhile, the real ecologists have come out against many of the panaceas of yesteryear. Hydro has drowned entire ecosystems. Coal burning has poisoned entire forests. Wind power has threatened entire bird species, and now seems to be responsible for several regions drought conditions. Wave power is still more dream than reality. Fusion still doesn't work. Bio-fuels are responsible for a near world wide famine, as crops are burned instead of feeding people. Global carbon levels are acidifying sea water, even if they aren't responsible for global warming (Methane and refrigerants are much better at global warming than CO2. The biggest contributor to Global Warming is water vapor.) So continued burning of coal and natural gas are out. Oil is mostly used for transportation and manufacturing. It's only a minor electric power source. Too expensive.

By the way, your shot at the mining industry is true for virtually all mining. If coal were related to Black Lung Disease, you would find that it dwarfs the total number of people ever irradiated to damaging levels, even including Chernobyl and Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I have several relatives in Kentucky and West Virginia who are disabled due to Black Lung. Still no reliable treatment for it. Hundreds of thousands suffer every year. Many thousands die of it each year too.

What is left?

It's less so than granite.

The issue with all that U238 isn't radioactivity, it's where to put it. The stuff burns hotter than magnesium (which is why the military like it, after a shell penetrates a tank the ensuing fire kills everyone inside) and is fairly toxic until chemically bound.

Note also that "statistically raised rates of lukemia", is a rise of less than 1% over background rates.

Going from 0.3 to 0.6 is a 100% rise but there are a huge number of other variables and chemical toxins are more likely to cause cancers than radiological ones (compare the cancer rates around Hiroshima and Love Canal for 2 examples.) Burning coal gives _much_ higher cancer rates downwind than anything cited above.

The issue with cooling water during heatwaves is valid BUT coal stations had to reduce output in the same period for exactly the same reason - the issue wasn't "insufficient cooling water", it was limits on the temperature rise allowed in the rivers.

This case would be addressed by better (more efficient) heat engines and more use of multistage heat scavenging to convert more of the reactor's output energy to electricity.

Uranium mines are fairly benign. There are _no_ radioactive metals and most of the mining related illnesses are silicosis types - modern techniques don't expose miners to dust. Uranium mine tailings are normally _less_ radioactive than their surroundings but there is always the issue of noxious chemicals (sounds just like coal, doesn't it?)

Decomissioning costs _are_ high, but for some reason the environmental & economic costs of cleaning up around coal mines and power stations seems to slip your mind. I know of multiple coal stations where the costs have gone up 200-fold due to the discovery of blue asbestos during dismantling.

Of course all nuclear power plants should be diligently inspected periodically and retired when appropriate. But criticism of the nuclear power industry ignores the fact that fossil fuels do not just inconvenience property owners, it kills more than two million people per year around the world according to the World Health Organization.

Radioactivity exposure from coal is 9 to 18 times higher than for operating nuclear power plants and, instead of being highly localized, is spread over far broader areas.

Nuclear waste disposal technology no longer requires land storage - which was an incorrect management strategy from the start. Instead, nuclear waste from conventional reactors can be burned to produce energy in traveling wave reactors.

Nuke is still the best and cleanest way to boil water, and that's largely how we make bulk electricity in this world. I'm not deterred by the Japan disaster, but it does make it clear that safety has to be improved. It's still a young science and has a lot of room for optimization, and I think that improvement will continue, it must continue. Some of the zillions of dollars in the invisible Black Budget that we never get to hear about should fund this kind of research. All the other energy sources have dangers and/or drawbacks, too. All energy is potentially dangerous, and all the methods of generation or collection have consequences, all of them. I still like the pebble-bed reactor scenario if it can be perfected. And the Thorium scenario mentioned earlier by YetAnotherBob is news to me but something I want to read more about.

Do not look to government when the leadership is backed by oil and coal.

The Thorium option for nuclear power that is not only safe, but also provides a means to process old uranium fuel rods. Thorium is far more plentiful than uranium throughout the world. One ton of Thorium produces as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3,500,000 tons of coal. Thorium CANNOT meltdown.
What is the drawback of Thorium? You CANNOT extract WEAPONS GRADE PLUTONIUM!!!
Turkish nuclear expert Ayhan Demirba?? has summarized some of the benefits of thorium when compared with uranium as fuel:

Weapons-grade fissionable material (U-233) is harder to retrieve safely and clandestinely from a thorium reactor;
Thorium produces 10 to 10,000 times less long-lived radioactive waste;
Thorium comes out of the ground as a 100% pure, usable isotope, which does not require enrichment, whereas natural uranium contains only 0.7% fissionable U-235;
Thorium cannot sustain a nuclear chain reaction without priming, so fission stops by default.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molten_salt_reactor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LzEn20R8zKw&feature=related

These are just a few of the links available. I find the Cadillac WTF quite interesting. Why not a Thorium reactor for each home? Oh that's right we really need the big power companies, NOT.

Just a little FYI, it is true that Thorium doesn't make fissile Plutonium, but it DOES make fissile Uranium. It is actually easier to make a Uranium bomb that it is to make a Plutonium based one. It is just very hard to separate out the fissile Uranium from the non-fissile uranium, two percent of the mix, and only around a 1% difference in weight.

However, it should be possible to design a reactor, either Uranium/Plutonium or Thorium/Uranium that burns (uses up) the fissile material as it is created. This is called a converter reactor. There have been a couple of these built. But the Government doesn't seem to like them. Probably a hold over from the cold war.

Well you would think its done behind closed doors it is but its no secret the energy producers control supply to set price. So much for free enterprise and free markets its freedom to gouge and soak you to the maxim possible extent given the fact that higher prices would send the world into recession oops careful with that gas price Eugene! Cartel look it up on wiki even if you think you know what it means.

Andrew Nusca needs to pack it up and move to Sundai Japan. I am sure there are plenty of Japanese residents who have lost their homes from the nuclear disaster who would gladly let him live there. And after the Pacific Ocean dies and the West Coast of the US has millions of cancer deaths due to the Fukushima Nuclear disaster, maybe idiots who defend nuclear power will see the light.

They are chaeper, smaller, safer, do not produce highly reactive waste and can not go critical.

I'm all for more Nuclear Power but more safety is needed! It was terrible what happen to Japan but let us use that to set up our safety measures.

The picture at the top for this article just struck me. I don't think the population at large will ever be able to have a rational discussion concerning nuclear power. It certainly isn't ready now, when the publically recognized symbol for nuclear power continues to be a hyperbolic cooling tower which absolutely has no inherent/specific relationship with nuclear power. I've long argued that nuclear is an industry driven by perception and not by technologically based knowledge. Its actually sad.

It's my belief that we can use nuclear energy safely and efficiently. If we embrace the technology of smaller fusion plants, more widely spaced, instead of going for the mega plant it seems we'd be on the right track.

Re: "It's my belief that we can use nuclear energy safely and efficiently. If we embrace the technology of smaller fusion plants, more widely spaced, instead of going for the mega plant it seems we'd be on the right track." alaskagirl May 03, 2011 @ 1:07 PM PDT

I agree, though fusion power has been in research for decades and no feasible design has yet been established. For the time being, we can come close to this concept of small distributed nuclear power sources by deploying thorium and traveling wave reactors.

Re: "The only sane choice is renewable energy. It is competitive now, it is clean, it is safe and it will never run out."

Renewable energy sources provide a mere 3.6% of America's energy. It will take decades of the largest engineering effort ever attempted in all of human history to increase that proportion by even one order of magnitude, much less provide a majority of America's energy needs.

Re: "after the Pacific Ocean dies and the West Coast of the US has millions of cancer deaths due to the Fukushima Nuclear disaster, maybe idiots who defend nuclear power will see the light." GAArcher April 29, 2011 @6:52 AM PDT

Rather, after these earnestly wished-for disasters don't materialize, the above predictions will look very foolish.

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http://health.msn.com/health-topics/cancer/slideshow.aspx?cp-documentid=100272067>1=31036
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GAArcher's post is alarming for how such a clear lack of even the most basic science education can be the product of any technological society.

To assess impacts by weight as Tucker does is extremely naive. Infinitely small particles of radioactive substances can wreak havoc in humans, cause cancer and disfigure our offspring. Small impact? We are all part of this environment and nuclear waste is a reality that can kill us and it stays in this environment for thousands of years. Wake up Tucker!