Hard Questions on Nuclear Front

Wednesday, March 30, 2011

A doctor friend told me about a medical meeting he attended in the '80s, where the subject was AIDS and the speaker posed a question to the medical professionals present.

"If there was one person in the world you desired more than any other and he or she suddenly took a sexual interest in you but you knew that he or she had AIDS, would you make love to that person if you could use a condom, knowing that sometimes condoms fail to prevent the spread of STDs?"

The speaker asked the members of the audience to raise their hands if they would have protected sex with the infected person, and not one hand went up. My friend's point was this: when intelligent people are given adequate information, they tend to make the correct decisions.

I know, of course, that there's no connection between garden-variety sex and nuclear power - or at least I can't think of one that's immediately obvious - but we are now faced with a decision concerning our energy needs and the dangers we face if we can't come up with safe sources of renewable energy.

Watching the reactors explode after the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan hasn't filled me with confidence regarding the safety of nuclear power plants.

The Japanese are able engineers. Their products are among the most reliable. Millions of Japanese cars are on our highways. We gobble up their state-of-the-art electronics because they're dependable. Despite their technical skill, the Japanese weren't prepared for the recent earthquake and tsunami, and the backup systems at the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant didn't prevent a nuclear disaster.

Radiation is turning up in the food chain in Japan, and much of the land surrounding the Japanese plant will no doubt be uninhabitable. There's no telling how many people will develop cancer because of the accident, and the economic cost of the disaster is incalculable.

There are 442 nuclear power plants in service worldwide, another 64 are under construction. Many of these plants are located in countries whose technical know-how probably doesn't measure up to that of the Japanese.

Argentina, Armenia, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, Hungry, India, Iran, Mexico, Pakistan, Romania, the Russian Federation, the Slovakian Republic, Slovenia, and Ukraine - what would happen if a nuclear accident equivalent to the one in Japan occurred in one of these countries? Would they be able to control a deadly release of radioactive material? How far would the radiation spread? How long would the danger last?

Admittedly, the 1979 Three-Mile Island partial meltdown didn't cause much damage. Twenty-five years ago, Chernobyl had to be entombed, but the Russians argue that not many people died, just a few technicians and some volunteers, although the governments of Belarus and the Ukraine give a much higher number. Some estimates go as high as a million deaths.

On Sunday, I drove by the Shearon Harris Plant and watched steam from the cooling tower rising into the clear blue Carolina sky, and I felt as if I were seeing the plant for the first time. I've made hundreds of trips up U.S. 1 since the Shearon Harris opened, but I'd never looked on the plant as a threat. Now I do.

I remember many years ago driving through Raleigh when the rock band The Who was performing at Carter-Finley Stadium. Traffic was backed up in all directions for at least 10 miles, and the stadium holds only 57,000 people. I was sitting in my car by a highway sign announcing that I was on an emergency evacuation route. A 2009 census estimate puts the population of the Raleigh-Durham-Triangle area at 2,726,000. Go figure.

So here's the question: You're going to be given the house of your dreams. Every possible luxury will be provided - servants, fancy appliances, swimming pool, beautiful furniture, any convenience you desire - but the house is located very near a nuclear power plant. Would you and your kids move in?

Stephen Smith lives in Southern Pines. Contact him at travisses@hotmail.com.

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Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

Absolutely!

RmeMP 2 years, 1 month ago

I would definitely move in!

"ignorance is bliss" - do you know how many people are killed every day in cars? Do you still drive Stephen?

Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

Thorium is a good idea, and can be used in pebble-bed reactors and radio-isotope generators. Thorium is more plentiful than uranium, too.

Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

So, when can I move in? You do have thjis house available for me, yes?

Seriously, Obama's Energy Czar said he'd rather live next to a nuclear plant than a coal plant.

The Japanese are now admitting their mistakes in designing, siting, and building the Fukushima plant. It all goes back to ignoring the risks and failing to compensate. Most of us have no room to criticize them; we build in the immediate flood plain of major rivers (not the 100-year, 500-year, or 1,000-year flood plain, the yearly or seasonal flood plain!), We live on the beach in hurricane-prone areas, We build skyscrapers in major fault areas rated to withstand quakes far less than have historically happened there. We buy homes on major thoroughfares with near-freeway-speed traffic, then complain and want to change the law so the traffic accomodates our bucolic housing. Getr over it folks. Nothing is safer than nuclear - the risks are simply less mystical. Our eyes glaze over at explanations of nuclear physics, and we deem it black magic, while ignoring dioxin, radon, and other health risks that affect far more families with more understandable risks. It's the contempt of familiarity - I get the idea behind this threat, so I don't have to worry. I don't understand that threat, so I stay up nights over it. To use your analogy - how many folks would pursue the relationship if the other person had herpes instead - and not even worry about using a condom? HIV was a scary, unknown, not understood bogeyman in the 80's, herpes wasn't. Same deal.

Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

Another thing to remember is that during an evacuation, the roads are no longer two-way traffic, and lights don't matter. Off-ramps will be blocked until you are out of the danger zone, so traffic backups due to drivers waiting at lights and signs to get onto surface roads can't happen.

My family evacuated Katrina, and all lanes were northbound, moving fast. Nobody could exit until well clear, so they didn't slow down people behind them.

jimt 2 years, 1 month ago

Nuclear power reactor accidents are "low probability, high consequence" events. Their track record has been amazingly good. No one has known to have died from any nuclear power accident in the U.S. or Western Europe. We don't know if anyone will die from the problems now confronting the Japanese. By contrast, every year Americans die from coal mining accidents and from the terrible consequence of black lung disease. And the prospect of creating "clean coal" burning power plants may be illusory, or cost prohibitive.

So which is more tolerable? Nuclear or coal?

Scientists and engineers have developed a next generation of nuclear power reactors that they say are virtually "idiot" proof (Three Mile Island was due to human error, if I recall). Should we believe them?

When the government and the President suggest or mandate energy saving devices and life-sytle habits to us they are attacked by the Right, while the Left demands even more "green" energy projects.

I tend to favor nuclear power as a viable option. But it is cost per kilowatt generated as much as anything that makes nuclear power a questionable option. The plants are hugely expensive to build, add the environmental impact statements, the lawsuits over the environmental impact statements, the inevitable Not In My Backyard protests and they take a decade to build as a result. Then there is the highly radioactive, and thus deadly, spent-fuel problem. The plants can be built to store all the spent-fuel they will generate over their expected life-cycle. So what! The spent-fuel remains dangerous forever (at least in terms of a civilization's life time is concerned) So at some point the stuff has to be moved. To where? Not In My Backyard (even if the nearest backyard is hundreds of miles away)!

Renewable energy is the obvious "school solution." Wind and solar. I fly over the southwest United States two or three times a year. The emptiness is simply astounding. We could build literally thousands of square miles of solar panels there and hardly anyone would notice. Will we? The American "heartland" is a wind power enthusiasts dream come true. We could build hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of windmills there. But here people would notice. Not In My Backyard? And both of these options would require reconfiguring our national electric grid at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. We could create tax incentives for private companies to do this. Should we? Is that politically acceptable to the Left and the Right?

Somebody call me when they've figured out what's in our best national interest to do.

Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

Wind and solar are good supplemental sources, but cannot meet peak demand. Soliton reactors can reprocess spent fuel for reuse several times over for various uses. When it's past reprocessing, we should pour leaded glass over it, and once that hardens, put it in the sub-duction zones. Where tectonic plates meet, one plate is drawn under the other, and any material placed there will be drawn back down into the mantle of the planet, where it came from in the first place, Natural processes will handle it.

jimt 2 years, 1 month ago

Re wind and solar -- we don't know whether or not they can meet peak demand because we don't know how many can/will be built, how efficient next generation wind and solar power generation will be, and how the energy they produce can be stored effectively so that it can meet peak demand periods.

Soliton reactors have never been built. They are unproved consequently. It will be 20 years or more before one is moved from the drawing board to construction. From my reading it is not clear if the reactor's core can be stopped when it begins generating plutonium 239. If it can, that's a proliferation problem, because plutonium 239 is used in nuclear weapons. Light-water reactors, such as those in use just about everywhere, are not proliferation problems because they just keep on runnin', and in doing so "poison" the plutonium 239 with plutonium 240, which is lousy for nuclear weapons. But, maybe this is not a problem, providing the reactor cannot be readily stopped without the IAEA's knowledge.

As to placing the waste in subduction zones I have a question. Just how far down will the shafts needed to place the glassified waste be? Is there any record of anyone ever safely drilling that far down?

Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

How much ground can you cover with solar or wind plants? I just don't see giving up enough land to meet peak demand anywhere - in sunny locales, real estate is at a premium. Add in rainy/cloudy/snowy days, days with low wind, and the bird/bat kill-off issue with windmills, and I just don't buy it as the backbone of the grid. Off-shore wind would have far fewer problems, just higher expenses, on the land/reliable wind/flying creature kill-off issues, but would be vulnerable to sea storms and hurricanes. in most places they'd be feasible to build. Soliton reactors can be used as breeders, yes. I don't propose using them for power, but to reprocess waste as many times as we can before it becomes untenable. Proliferation would not be an issue, because any plant that can make weapons-grade material would have supervision. I don't care about IAEA, but Uncle Sam wouldn't give a permit to operate a breeder or soliton reactor without having people on site to make sure that no weapons-grade fissiles are made without their OK. I don't see a need to drill. Just place the stuff on the seafloor near the point where the plate is drawn under. The most important factor really is just keeping scavengers from trying to retrieve it.

jimt 2 years, 1 month ago

My proliferation concern isn't based on these new reactors being operated in the U.S. On further thought, it's also hard to imagine that they would/could be built in countries of proliferation concern.

Sorry, I guess we'll just have to disagree about the potential of solar and wind. Much of the land in the southwest is federally owned, hell, most of Nevada is owned by the feds. The government could simply provide licenses for solar firms to build and operate huge solar electric plants on this land. The principal technical problem is storing the energy and developing a new grid that doesn't waste half of it before it gets to consumers like the grid we have now does.

If the Dutch can undertake the development of sea-based wind power so can we. We outnumber the Dutch, obviously, but we have a lot more coastline than they do too.

As to the bird kill problem, that may be another NIMBY obstacle to overcome. But we have to weigh and prioritize our energy options. It's a cold hard judgment, I admit, but I'd rather kill birds than have thousands of American die from mining coal, breathing coal dust, and breathing air contaminated by coal-burning electrical plants (An estimated 10,000 do so every year).

Putting glassified highly-radioactive waste on the sea-bottom and waiting for subduction to do its thing over the course of the next few thousand years doesn't strike me as a viable option. Any serious research on this option out there that you're aware of?

Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

I wouldn't vote to give enough land to solar to work, nor would most folks - unless you're talking about maser transmission from orbital solar. The Dutch don't have hurricanes; we do. The bird kill problem is that the pressure differential can rupture their lungs in a large field of windmills. I forget details, but there's a slightly different problem with bats, too. I don't really see an issue with the my waste proposal, but haven't heard anything about it from media sources. Since radioactive materials come from the planet's mantle and core, I don't see any harm in returning them. It'll be harder for terrorists and other countries to try to steal that far down, so long as we keep watch to prevent them from bringing a bathyscaph.

jimt 2 years, 1 month ago

I'm not sure if deciding to site huge solar energy production facilities, including using large tracks of Federal land for solar panels would require your vote or mine.

The North Sea produces some pretty fierce weather, clearly the Dutch believe the windmills can withstand the winds and sea states they generate. These windmills are gigantic, if I recall, each blade is over 150 feet in length. If putting sea-based windmills is problematic for the Gulf or Southern States bordering the Atlantic, that leaves plenty of room for them off the California coast. I grew up there, don't recall any hurricanes.

Sorry, I still think putting highly radioactive nuclear wastes on the ocean floor and waiting for thousands of years for subduction to "dispose" of them is a pretty harebrained idea, and could very well violate one or more International Treaties to which the U.S. is a party. But even if this is plan is technically and legally viable, you still have to transport the waste from each power reactor site to a glassification facility then transport the now glassified waste to some port, put it on a ship and then what, just throw it over the side? You'll have NIMBYism of the highest order all along the route, whether the transport is done by truck or train. I investigated issues that could arise from transporting spent nuclear fuel, for a group of Europeans who wanted to recoup the uranium and recycle it into new fuel assemblies. It wasn't fiscally viable in the mid-90's and I doubt if it is today. No one would provide liability insurance for such a project. Public opinion polls clearly indicated that there was absolutely no support for transporting spent-fuel hither and yon throughout Europe and I doubt if such a plan would garner much support in the U.S. Indeed, even before all the problems were found with Yucca Mt. as a would-be depository for U.S. spent-fuel no agreement had been reached between the USG and individual states regarding how to ship the spent-fuel to the site. Whether such knee-jerk opposition is reasonable or rational misses the point, the opposition is there, notwithstanding the fact that new nuclear fuel assemblies and highly-radioactive nuclear isotopes were/are being transported by truck and train already.

Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

Covering such huge swaths of the country in solar panels would not officially require a vote, but there would be enough protests that it will not happen quickly, if at all. I've been in the North Sea, and I've been through a typhoon - as in sailed straight through it, not huddled in an attic. No comparison. Yes, you can put them on the west coast, but that doesn't help the rest of the country that much. I was in Nevada when Yucca Mountain became an issue - they were happy to take the government's money for the study, and when - surprise, surprise, surprise, the study showed that Yucca Mountain was viable, THEN they suddenly howled NIMBY. I was thinking that the glassification should take place at the plant to allay fears of transport. Once on-site, have a submersible crane lower it, letting us control where we set it down. Folks don't understand how BIG this planet is, and how resilient. All the 'environmentalists" scream about 'the fragile environment', never mind that that environment absorbed the damage of Tunguska and the KT extinction event.

SH59 2 years, 1 month ago

I don't agree that nuclear power is bad, we just have to learn and make sure we have good backup in place. The one thing that went wrong in Japan was the pump system didn't have power backup and wasn't able to pump water into the chambers. We need to learn and adjust, not abandon nuclear. Sure, it''s dangerous but there wouldn't have been any problems if there hadn't been an earthquake. I do however question the building of a nuclear plant where there is a fault, it's bound to be a problem. We just don't credit nature as being an advisairy and somehow forge ahead with the assumption nothing is going to happen. When 3 mile Island happened we were all afraid and couldn't imagine how this could work but I feel today we know more than we did then.

Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

One possibility is plants on ships. No earthquake issues, and if a tsunami is coming,, they get underway. Once they're off-shore the wave passes underneath them, not rising until in shallow water.

positiveguy 2 years, 1 month ago

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SouthernShooter 2 years, 1 month ago

Two thoughts regarding the outrage over nuclear issues.

First, I agree the Japanese are very able engineers. However, I believe their nuclear reactors were engineered by General Electric.

Secondly, concerning radioactive environmental contamination. I'm curious why there isn't more outrage over the frequent use of highly radioactive waste as ammunition used by our troops overseas. Depleted Uranium (DU) rounds start shedding radioactive waste from the time they are fired all the way to the target. A10's and Bradleys are mighty fond of the stuff. Got to love those pictures of children playing on the remains of tanks taken out by DU rounds. Not to mention many of our young veterans suffering from "unexplained" illnesses. IMHO.

Darkwing 2 years, 1 month ago

DU is supposed to have been replaced with tungsten. That done, the outrage passed. If they're still using the stuff (and I'd like a source for that accusation), then the fact that the changeover was announced and supposedly complied with diverted attention to other causes.

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