Written by Brian King   

Why Not Nuclear?

Amidst worldwide concern over increasing atmospheric C02 and Climate Change, there has been a lot of discussion about humanity’s energy future. If we are to get the atmosphere back to a climate-safe zone below 350 parts per million, we are going to have to drastically cut our use of fossil fuels. Microsoft’s Bill Gates thinks we have to get down to zero fossil fuel burning by 2050. But if we aren’t burning the stuff any more, how are we going replace it?

And it’s not just about replacing the fossil fuels we are using today. World population currently stands at around six billion, and approximately half of these people are poor enough to have little or no access to electricity and it’s attendant amenities, like refrigeration and rapid, efficient communication. By 2050, we can expect to add another 2-3 billion souls, all of whom are going to need access to electricity in their homes, not to mention other energy uses like transit and agriculture. Many experts expect world energy use to double between now and 2050.

Some in the environmental movement believe, or want to believe, that we can replace fossil fuels solely with a combination of energy conservation and increased renewables (solar, wind, hydro and thermal power) and keep up with increasing demand for energy over the next 40 years. But I don’t think it’s reasonable to place all our eggs in the conservation/renewables basket.
It’s very hard to confidently predict the ability of any form of clean (non-C02 producing) energy to achieve the scale necessary to replace our predicted fossil fuel use over the next 40 years or so. Advocates of different forms (solar, wind, nuclear, etc.) tend to understate the advantages of rival forms of energy, and to overstate the kind that they support. Keep in mind, wind doesn’t always blow and solar turns off when the sun is not out.

I want to address a few issues that are often associated with nuclear power, in the hope that this can help people to decide: Why Not Nuclear?

SAFETY
The first thing that scares people about nuclear power is, of course, radiation, which is dangerous unless you keep it contained. Containment of radiation is a top priority at all of the World’s 440 operating nuclear power plants, and they seem to do a good job keeping the radiation where it belongs, inside the reactor. People living near nuclear power plants actually receive less radiation that those who live near coal power plants, because it turns out that there is radioactive material, among other bad things, in the exhaust from coal plants.

The really scary issue about nuclear power is the possibility of a core meltdown that releases radiation into the environment. Three major accidents that included core melt come to mind: Three Mile Island in 1979, Chernobyl in 1986, and Fukushima in 2011. These three events were terrible mishaps brought on by early design faults and operator error.
But it should be kept in mind that these accidents were not nearly as deadly as many of us feared. According to UNSCEAR, The United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, about 100 people died as a result of Chernobyl, and none from either Three Mile Island or Fukushima Six thousand cases of mostly treatable thyroid cancer have been diagnosed in the children near Chernobyl, mainly because the Soviet government failed to warn people to not let their children drink strontium contaminated milk. Beyond the Chernobyl deaths and thyroid cancer, UNSCEAR expects there to be few, if any, detectable health effects from these three events.

To place these accident results in perspective, I would urge people to read the excellent paper by Hansen and Kachera concerning the estimated number of lives saved by nuclear power over the period of 1970-2010. The nuclear power plants of the world have reduced the amount of coal burned over that period by offering a clean alternative to coal plants. The additional number of lives we would have lost without nuclear power is set at 1.84 million for the time period. Nuclear allows us to avoid deadly coal.

Another way of looking at it is provided in Forbes Magazine, http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/. This study shows us that, measured in deaths per trillion kilowatt hours, nuclear is by far the safest source of energy, safer than solar by a factor of 4.5, and twice as safe as hydro. Nuclear is safer than coal by a ratio of 1700 to one.

The critics of nuclear power have been loud and persistent over the last 40 years. These critics might not realize how closely leaders in the nuclear industry have been listening to their criticisms. In fact, the developments in the area of reactor safety, production, and disposal of waste have been nothing short of marvelous. The danger of possible nuclear weapons proliferation has been reduced also in the new generation reactors.

Argonne National Laboratory, headquartered in Illinois, has long held the major responsibility for developing nuclear power in the U.S. By 1980, there were two main goals at Argonne: 1. Develop a Nuclear power plant that can’t melt down, and 2. Build a reactor that can run on waste from other nuclear power plants.

In the early 80’s Argonne opened a dedicated site for the generation IV project in Idaho, and in about five years they were ready for a demonstration run at the plant. Scientists from around the globe were invited to watch a test of what would happen if there was a loss of all power and cooling to the reactor, a condition very similar to the one that occurred at Fukushima.

A film was made inside the control room as the test proceeded. It looked like the visiting dignitaries were pretty anxious as power to the cooling system was turned off. The event at Fukushima resulted when the cooling system shut off and the cores of the reactors overheated, then melted down. Dr. Charles Till, the director of the generation IV project, calmly looked at the gages on the panel as core temperature briefly increased, then dropped precipitously as the reactor shut itself down without any operator intervention!

The Argonne Generation IV project was as complete a success as one can imagine, except for one thing. It couldn’t get past the anti-nuke politics of the 90’s and was shut down by the Clinton administration in 1994 because we didn’t “need it.”

One can only imagine what the world would have looked like today, 20 years later, with a fleet of generation IV nuclear plants coming on line that would run safely for hundreds of years on all the waste sitting at storage sites around the globe. No CO2 and ever increasing amounts of clean, reliable power.

So, why “Not Nuclear?”

It’s pretty common knowledge that most American environmentalists are against nuclear power. The same goes for a majority of left-liberals in the US. The Democratic Party is afraid of anti-nuclear sentiment. How else explain what happened at Argonne in 1994? To name a few: Monthly Review Magazine, Progressive Democrats of America, the Nation Magazine, The Sierra Club, In These Times, and many more, all anti-nuke.

Why are all these people against such a safe and promising source of energy? Why not the same opposition to the vastly more deadly coal over the last twenty-five years?

For one thing, I believe that nuclear power has been tarred with the same brush as nuclear weapons. Nuclear power plants can’t explode like bombs, but people still think of them like that. They are designed in a completely different way. Also, I think that there is also a matter of group prejudice, not unlike a fervently religious group or an audience at a sports event of great importance to local fans. People are afraid to go against the beliefs of their peers, no matter how scientifically unsubstantiated those beliefs may be, and everybody is against nuclear power, right? Besides, it’s hard for groups to admit that core beliefs are in error, even after many in the group start to realize the mistake.
The Sierra Club is an interesting case . In the early 1970’s, The Sierra Club supported the development of nuclear power, as a reasonable alternative to construction of more river valley destroying damns in California. This changed by the mid 70’s, when The Sierra Club joined the anti-nuclear power stampede.
Another problem is the complexity of the issue. Nuclear fission and nuclear power plants are hard to understand. There’s a lot of science, math, and engineering to learn before you want to try explaining to your friends why you support nuclear power.

But another force pushing anti-nuclear power sentiment in America is a very interesting one.

TV channel MSNBC’s Chris Hayes devoted a portion of one of his recent shows to the necessity of abandoning a huge amount of oil, coal, and gas, and leaving it in the ground, if we are to have any hope of limiting the damage from climate change. Hayes pointed out that the last time a powerful group in America was forced to abandon that much wealth, estimated at ten trillion current dollars, it was Southern slave owners, in the middle of the nineteenth century. And it took a civil war with 750,000 casualties to get them to give up all those slaves. Are the fossil fuel owners going to put up that much of a fight? I sure hope not! But they are in the background of this struggle.

Any time there is that much money at stake, it’s a pretty safe bet that the people who control the wealth aren’t going to just sit back and allow an open democratic debate on what we should do about what they believe is rightfully theirs.

Nuclear power, if it lives up to the promise of its’ fourth generation reactors, poses a deadly challenge to fossil fuels. It‘s safe, clean, potentially abundant, affordable, and it operates regardless of how sunny or windy it might be. It’s always available power, like coal, without all the pollution. Is there evidence of fossil fuel owners inserting their money into this debate? There is some, but it’s not overwhelming. I think they’ve been pretty careful.

During the 1980’s, the Shoreham nuclear power plant was built on Long Island in New York State. The plant was decommissioned before it could be opened because of a huge protest movement. One of the flyers calling on local residents to block the opening of the plant was shown in the movie Pandora’s Promise. At the bottom of the page a stamp could be clearly seen that said it had been distributed by the coal, oil, and gas industry. Not exactly a smoking gun, but clearly an indicator of what might be happening.

In my opinion, pressure from the coal, oil, and gas industry offers the only logical explanation for what happened to the Argonne reactor in 1994. Hazel O’Leary was Clinton’s Secretary of energy at the time, and her former job was as a lobbyist for Big Oil. If Argonne’s EBRII had worked as well as it looked like it was going to, fossil fuel companies would have been be in real trouble.

So, there you have it. Nuclear power has made giant strides in safety, management of waste, and efficient use of resources. Fourth generation reactors will be even more resistant to nuclear weapons proliferation than those currently operating, and existing nuclear plants are very resistant to proliferation.

Two potential uses for nuclear power plants should also be mentioned.

One of the really frightening consequences of global warming is the melting of glaciers. Millions in Asia, Latin America, and Africa depend on these frozen behemoths for their water supply. We have a few in Washington State that will be sorely missed when they are gone. Nuclear power is already hard at work in Russia and the Middle East desalinating water from the sea. Desalination will spread all over the world as water supplies dry up, and it’s critically important that we not use fossil fuel power to accomplish this important task, which would make global warming and draught worse. Imagine fleets of generation IV reactors dedicated to maintaining water supplies around the world, without producing any CO2!

A group at University of Newcastle, in Australia, is looking into the very real possibility of drawing CO2 out of the air and using it to make carbonate bricks. These bricks could be used as building materials, and if we used nuclear power to make them, we wouldn’t produce any CO2 while we were doing it! With many reactors put to work on this project, it’s just possible that we could return the atmosphere to a safe CO2 level in a hundred years or so. Go Newcastle!

One of the most intelligent suggestions to come from the movement against climate change is to institute a tax on all forms of CO2 production. A gradually increasing tax would encourage people all over the world to shift to non-carbon producing energy. My concern about this good idea is; can we get a tax passed without a competitively priced alternative for people to use instead of fossil fuels? Lots more nuclear power will help us get a gas tax passed.

The realities of coming Climate Change are too horrible to ignore. We must come up with a way that future generations have a life as beautiful as ours on this wonderful earth. Let’s get America back to her rightful position of leadership in developing the energy source that will save humankind; safe, clean, abundant, cheap, always on, nuclear power.


Brian King
Seattle
January 20, 2015