The spectacle that has really gotten me concerned is watching our leading addicts - the people who spend a lot of time flying around in jets, helicopters, and armored convoys - consuming vast quantities of oil jetting over to the turf where the key suppliers live to convince them to pump enough new product so that we can go back to being contented, satisfied junkies with slightly lower monthly costs of supporting our habit.

Of course, you have heard some good advice from many people about how to reduce your own dependence and you might have even read some decent advice about how the whole country can work to reduce its habit to more manageable levels. What you have not heard much about, however, is a prescription that has the potential for completely fracturing the power of the pushers and stopping the unbalanced flow of money that has distorted the world’s system of production and rewards.

My preferred solution is the one offered by President Eisenhower, a man who knew a bit about the benefits of negotiating from a position of strength. In 1956, when the Saudis threatened to us “the oil weapon” against western countries, President Eisenhower sent a personal representative to King Saud who told him that America no longer needed his oil because it was developing atomic energy. He then followed that promise up with continued support for developing nuclear power for ships (including a demonstration commercial ship), submarines, and electrical power stations. In a somewhat less successful program, he even supported an investment in an effort to develop a long range aircraft that used fission instead of combustion to provide heat for its jet engines.

Conventional wisdom in energy focused debates is that there is little relationship between oil consumption and atomic fission (aka nuclear power), but that is a false statement. Here are some facts that you can verify by spending some time digging through the statistical pages on the Energy Information Agency web site.

In 1973, oil supplied about 17% of the electricity used in the US and more than 45% of the electricity used in France. In both markets, nuclear power permanently captured nearly all of oil’s electricity market share and made inroads on the market share for other fossil fuels. The same pattern is visible in the energy histories in Taiwan, South Korea, and several other countries that now operate nuclear power plants. Overall, the electricity now produced in the world’s nuclear power plants has an energy value that is equal to about 12 million barrels of oil per day. That is about 30% larger than the contribution to the world’s energy markets provides by Saudi Arabia’s oil. The oil that was not burned in power plants did not disappear, but became available for other uses.

What is not clearly stated in the statistics pages is the resulting effect on the world’s energy market caused by the growth of nuclear power. Since fission was pushing oil out of some markets in a way that could not be controlled by OPEC, producers lost some portion of their control over the overall supply level. When that happened, they lost the only real hold that they have on market prices. From about 1985 until 2000, the continued insertion of more nuclear fission into the world’s energy market helped to create a situation where consumer power outweighed pusher power.

Unfortunately, consumers did not keep the upper hand. Eventually the effort to slow the growth of nuclear power achieved nearly complete success and the rate of increase in demand for more energy shifted the supply-demand balance back into the hands of the suppliers. One question I love to ask people is if they really believe that the slowing of nuclear power was independent of the fossil fuel suppliers and their frustration over loss of revenue and market power.

Like methadone, my prescription for breaking America’s oil addiction is a bit controversial. Some believe that it simply replaces one form of addiction for another, others are afraid of the potential side effects, and, some people are rather content to remain dependent on oil.

I am not content and do not like the idea of continuing to provide the pushers with access to more cash than most of us can even imagine. It is bad for the neighborhood for that kind of economic activity to have so much sway. I also happen to be exceeding excited about the fact that fission produces no air pollution and that the major suppliers of the fuel material are Canada, Australia, and South Africa.

Image credit: US government stock photo of the NS (Nuclear Ship) Savannah. (Dated sometime in the early 1960s)

Related commentary:
The Big Oil Company Scam
75% of Greens OK with Nuclear Power
Can Hillary Clinton Take On Big Oil?

So I thought it might help to pose the future-of-our-energy question in another way: What do I WIMBY? (As in, Want In My Backyard?)

OK, here we go: Following are photos illustrating several clean and/or renewable energy options that could help us curb greenhouse gas emissions and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Which ones would you be willing to view from your backyard as a tradeoff for a cleaner, brighter future? Be honest now: I’m asking literally if you would say OK if one of these was what you saw when looking out of the window of your home.

Is it Nuclear Power?

Image credit: Anna Gomez at Wikimedia Commons, released into public domain.

Concentrated Solar Power?

Image credit: Sandia National Laboratory at Wikimedia Commons, released into public domain.

Distributed Solar Power?

Image credit: Downtowngal at Wikimedia Commons, under a Creative Commons license.

Wind Power?

Image credit: Dirk Ingo Franke at Wikimedia Commons, under a GNU Free Documentation license.

Hydroelectric Power?

Image credit: U.S. Bureau of Reclamation at Wikimedia Commons, released into public domain.

Tidal Power?

Image credit: TidalStream Partners at Wikimedia Commons, under a GNU Free Documentation license.

Or Geothermal Power?

Image credit: Gretar Ívarsson at Wikimedia Commons, released into the public domain.

I’ll be the first to answer: I’d have to say distributed solar (rooftop panels) and tidal. Honestly, I’d find all the others unsightly when viewed from my home. (Though I have to acknowledge that’s clearly selfish: if it’s a choice between saving the Earth — and civilization — from the effects of catastrophic climate change, I’d take any of the above.)

Of course, by the time any of us really has to make that choice, it’ll be too late to stave off a climate catastrophe. That’s the problem with NIMBYism.

I spoke with Kenneth Bossong, co-director of UAEA, about the anniversary, and asked him to tell us more about his organization.

bossong-final.mp3

National Geographic Photo

Yes, this is a reader poll, and it is not a statistical representation of the public attitude of any country in particular. But it is striking that the 133 readers who did vote, were all doing so from a blog network called Green Options. Get it? Simply put, the public attitude towards nuclear power has undergone a seismic shift in recent years. This evidence indicates that this is not the same environmental movement that emerged in the early 1970’s.

But as consumed as I am with energy issues and the politics that surround them, I remain somewhat agnostic about nuclear power. Why is that? There’s no simple answer. Part of it is not wanting to reconcile the tensions between nuclear power as a low-carbon alternative with the ecological dangers of mining uranium and the big issue of transporting and storing nuclear waste. [If you want to know more about the specific dangers and problems facing nuclear power, Judith Lewis has written an excellent article in the most recent issue of Mother Jones addressing these issues in great depth.]

I would also argue that the reason I (and many other greens my age) are not particularly averse to nuclear power is because the pressing environmental issues that were building blocks to my own environmentalism were generally not related to nukes. I vaguely remember the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island. And I was in high school when the more serious accident at Chernobyl happened. But that’s it. There has not been a new nuclear power plant built in this country in 30 years, and for that reason nukes have faded away as one of the critical rallying issues of the modern environmental movement.

With that said, I recognize that nuclear power must be part of “the discussion.” I just want to be sure that the discussion happens, and that it is thorough, and geographically specific. In other words, nuclear power will not be the answer everywhere. One of my biggest concerns is the issue of water. And I will leave you with the words of Judith Lewis, who also holds that concern. She wrote in Mother Jones,

“Light water” reactors, used at the majority of the world’s nuclear plants, use water both to moderate the chain reaction and produce steam to spin turbines—2 billion gallons per day on average. Most of it returns to the adjoining river, lake, or ocean up to 25 degrees warmer, an ecological impact that could significantly interfere with nuclear power’s chances as a climate-change solution. Already, wherever a light-water reactor sits near a sensitive body of water, its intake pipes kill fish and its outflow distorts ecosystems to favor warm-water species.”

Britain may not have much choice in this matter as its government seems determined to take the nuclear route in an effort to bring Co2 emissions in line with its reduction pledges and mitigate its dwindling North Sea oil and gas supplies.

Announcing plans to enter into a technology partnership with France, the UK government proposes replacing its 24 aging reactors - which currently provide 20% of the nation’s electricity - with a new set of nuclear power plants which will double Britain’s nuclear power generating capacity. In doing so, Britain hopes to become a “world leader in nuclear technology”, according to Energy Secretary John Hutton.

Whilst nuclear energy has at least one advantage in providing plentiful carbon free power, there are numerous objections, not least due to concerns over safety, long term handling and storage of radioactive waste and the potential distraction from long term renewable energy projects. Indeed, there are many complex arguments behind the nuclear question, a topic which cannot be succinctly summarised in a single blog post, and on which I must admit I lack a clear opinion.

Therefore I decided to call in some people who actually know what they are talking about.

Rod of Atomic Insights and Matt from TalkClimateChange have agreed to lend their expertise to this discussion in a currently ongoing debate on our discussion boards, which I am sure will provide the necessary depth of argument and cover the full range of pro’s and con’s.

We’ll be back with a follow-up post containing the highlights (and maybe a final opinion) from this debate next week. In the meantime, feel free to watch the debate or chime in with your views.

Of those 177, sixty-seven are confirmed leakers, meaning their contents are leaching into the soil and headed toward the Columbia River. Most have exceeded their anticipated 50 year life span, creating fear of a catastrophic tank failure.

Thousands of tons of radioactive and hazardous waste has been buried in unlined landfills and 450 billion gallons of liquid waste has been poured into ponds, ditches and drainfields at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in the state of Washington.

These figures come from an article in today’s Washington Post, which I don’t intend to re-write. My purpose is only to call your attention to this article and hope you will read it and sense the gravity of the situation in that state.

More than a million people living downstream from Hanford are being threatened by a huge plume of groundwater contaminated with radiation and heavy metals moving their way.

The Bush administration’s proposed cleanup budget has trimmed $800 million from cleanup funding, and increased funding for nearly all other categories in the government’s nuclear program.

And they want to mine more uranium, build more nuclear power plants and pile up more spent radioactive material with no where to go, but possibly our drinking water and riding along with that breeze we inhale.

If you’d like to review some Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports on nuclear issues, I suggest you start with these eye openers.

• GAO report on the Hanford facility as recent as Jan 22, 2008.
• GAO reports on nuclear cleanup issues as recent as Nov 15,2007.
• GAO reports on hazardous waste issues as recent as Nov 13, 2007.
• GAO reports on uranium mining cleanup as recent as Oct 26, 2007.

You may find some duplicity in the reports, but there’s plenty of information to keep the interested person quite busy.

The afternoon and evening hearings are set for Tuesday, March 4, in Middletown, Pennsylvania.

Three Mile Island’s operators are asking for a 20-year extension for reactor 1, whose existing 40-year license is set to expire on April 19, 2014. Such extensions have so far been fairly easy to come by, with the NRC having OKd 48 extensions so far for the U.S.’s 104 operating nuclear plants.

NRC officials say reactor 1 has operated safely throughout its history. Unlike the no-longer-functioning reactor 2, which became the source of the most serious nuclear accident in U.S. history on March 28, 1979.

The accident occurred when the reactor’s water-cooling system failed, leading to a partial meltdown of the reactor core. The incident caused some release of radioactive material into the atmosphere, but subsequent studies have not found any evidence of health problems in the area surrounding the facility near Harrisburg.

A study from the Keystone Center concluded the average radiation exposure to people in the vicinity of Three Mile Island was small, about one-sixth the amount provided by a full set of chest x-rays.

The latest estimates are, that if Yucca Mountain isn’t finished until 2017, “we” will owe the utilities an estimated $7 billion in penalties, provided by law, because the repository isn’t finished. Bump completion time up another 3 years, and the bill goes up to about $11 billion.

When this repository thing started some 30 years ago, the feds agreed to dispose of spent fuel created by nuclear power stations. I’m sure there were some very good reasons for that decision, not the least of which retaining control over the stuff, which could fall into the wrong hands and become something very dangerous.

So the government and the nuclear industry agreed that if the repository wasn’t finished by a certain date, the government would pay the power stations for having to store their own waste until it was completed. Sweet deal, they create high-level, radioactive waste and taxpayers stand the expense of putting it away for millennia.

What that means Mr. and Mrs. taxpayer, and utility rate payer, is the federal government promised to have the Yucca Mountain repository finished ten years ago. Each day that goes by, the ante goes up for the utilities, and if the project is scrubbed, then what, will the settlement option still be on the table until a repository is completed? Another 20 years maybe?

Well shucks, why shouldn’t we help make the nuclear energy folks wealthy, after all, they’re providing a service we can’t do without. As a matter of fact, they want to build more facilities and create more waste. You know what that means, “we” get stuck with providing a “nuclear dump” and they get paid if it isn’t ready.

This is a ludicrous situation at best. Nevada doesn’t want the thing and I doubt any state would want it, but every thing’s gotta be somewhere, and since they’ve dug a five mile long hole in the mountain, they might as well fill it up with nuclear waste as planned. So every time Nevada Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) pressures Congress to dump Yucca, I wonder whose side he’s really on.

Ward Sproat, director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management for the DOE, told me in a podcast interview (Why Has It Taken So Long?) that nuclear utility rate payers are charged a fraction of a penny per kilowatt hour of electricity they use, to help fund construction of the Yucca Mountain repository.

That fund now stands at an estimated $21 billion, and Sproat told the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners that the project’s budget is $400 million a year. He is quoted as saying, “we are never, ever going to build this repository with that kind of cash flow funding; it just ain’t going to happen.” He believes that over time, construction costs will rise to about $1 billion a year until, and if the project is completed. Mr. Sproat also told me that he was required by law to send a report to Congress later this year, outlining the need for a second nuclear waste repository. That’s “second”, not a replacement for Yucca Mountain. He said the report will go to congress with a recommendation that another site be chosen and developed.

My cynical nature makes me wonder if that $21 billion is even there anymore, considering the way our representatives have been throwing money at the war in Iraq and God only knows what other excuses have been used to raid the fund. Could that be one of the reasons the budget is so low?

Face it, “we” (taxpayers and ratepayers) are subsidizing nuclear facilities, as well as paying the going rate for service, and will continue to do so until either a repository is completed, or there’s a major change in the law.

Of course proponents of nuclear power generation won’t have a problem with paying the extra dollars, after all, it’s a part of doing business.

I think it’s an abomination and it’s time to get off the pot, tell Congress to set the wheels in motion to finish the Yucca Mountain project as soon as possible and get that stuff out of backyards in 39 states.

Yes, this is a reversal of my earlier comments on Yucca Mountain. It took that interview with Mr. Sproat to wake me up to the reality of what’s happening to the “little guys and gals”, you and me.

What do you think?

Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal

But this may change during the next decade as many European countries begin to face energy shortfalls. Many governments have been caught short as the decommissioning of old power stations, increasing demand for electricity and new EU targets for renewable energy have all coincided, causing many analysts to predict a demand / supply deficit of up to 20% over the coming years.

For obvious reasons, cheap oil, coal and gas power plants are out of favour. Nuclear power is expensive and is still viewed with deep suspicion, meaning that additional capacity is unlikely to be available for some time. Many believe, therefore, that the time for renewable energy has finally arrived.

Unfortunately however, renewables are facing challenges of their own. Plans to build one of Europe’s biggest wind farms in Scotland suffered a set back last week as planning permission was refused on environmental grounds, highlighting some of the problems that will be faced in providing renewable energy on a vast scale. To put the issue in perspective, the world is currently building a wind turbine every four hours. To provide enough wind energy to provide 20% of the EU’s current demand we would need to build a new turbine every 15 minutes for the next 20 years.

As Europe begins to face critical electricity shortages and tries to fund expensive renewable energy programs, prices will inevitably rise to a point where consumers are less likely to take consumption for granted in the way that we do today. High prices will put focus on the option that is too often forgotten – efficiency.

For all the talk of CFLs and low energy appliances, few people aggressively manage their electricity consumption as a scarce resource. However, higher prices will mean a real focus on efficient appliances as consumers start to chase down ‘vampire devices’ such as set-top boxes and mobile phone chargers which slowly consume electricity whilst we sleep. Just as high oil prices cause fuel consumption to be a major selling point for cars, power consumption will become a selling point for the millions of electrical devices we purchase every year.

High prices are coming, it’s going to hurt, and will cause much consumer anguish. But it might make us appreciate the magic a little more, take it less for granted, and be more clever about how we use it.

Sources and further reading:

BBC – Britain facing energy shortfall

BBC – Massive wind farm ‘turned down’

EGL – European electricity markets

Wikipedia – List of countries by electricity consumption

An Alabama reactor had to shutdown for a brief period in the summer, and officials in the Southeast now say it is becoming a crisis.

Water is essential for the operation of a nuclear facility, primarily to cool used steam generated by the nuclear reactors which run the electricity-generating turbines.

Some plants recycle cooling water in what is known as a closed system, so that process doesn’t create a real water problem.

How much water does a plant use? The Harris reactor near Raleigh, N.C., draws 33 million gallons of water a day, with 17 million gallons lost to evaporation in the cooling towers.

Duke’s McGuire plant near Charlotte, N.C. sucks up more than 1 billion gallons a day from Lake Norman, but most of that is returned to the source. The problem there, is that the lakes level is now 93.7 feet, down nearly 5 feet from a year ago. If it drops another foot, the plant may have to cease operations.

The ratepayer in the Southeast may have to eat some high rates if the trend continues. An energy analyst says replacement power would cost 10 times the going rate should plants shut down.

Source: MSNBC

The answer to the waste situation was supposed to have been Yucca Mountain, a remote natural structure some 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. Since it’s inception nearly 25 years ago, Nevadans have fought creation of a long-term storage facility in their back yard.

I wanted to know more about Nevada’s opposition to the Yucca Mountain project, so I picked up the phone and talked with Robert Loux, Executive Director of the Agency for Nuclear Projects in Nevada. He’s been going head-to-head with the DOE and other agencies for a long time, and has some interesting things to say about the project and the DOE.

As you know, Department of Energy officials have announced layoffs at the unfinished facility, and it appears Yucca Mountain may not fulfill it’s promise as a high-level nuclear waste repository. That told me Nevada’s been pretty successful in its fight against the government, and I felt it was time to learn more.

The interview was long, and has been separated into three segments, each covering a specific area of Nevada’s concerns about the project.

In the 1st, Loux explains his office and it’s responsibilities, then tells why the state is so critical of the DOE and it’s practices.

The 2nd interview concerns the regulatory process, and he talks about the mountain’s unsuitability due to earthquake faults, the threat of young volcanoes, and that water and air move freely through the structure.

In the 3rd segment, Loux addresses transportation issues connected with Yucca Mountain and why, at this point, there is no hope of getting large amounts of spent fuel to the facility in the next ten years, if ever.

A 4th segment is yet to be announced. I have calls in to the Department of Energy, and to Nevada Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), author of a bill awaiting action that would put a dagger through the heart of Yucca Mountain and make nuclear facilities responsible for their own waste products.

So we start with Mr. Loux introducing himself and the responsibilities of his agency.

loux1.mp3

Here is a link to the State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects.

A link to the Government Accounting Office information mentioned in today’s interview.

The State of Nevada has opposed the Yucca Mountain project since it’s inception, and now, years overdue and billions of taxpayers dollars later, it’s still at least 10 years away from completion.

She criticized the Bush administration for it’s continuation of the project, calling it botched science.

Not only has Hillary promised to stop Yucca Mountain’s progress toward nuclear storage, but all Democratic candidates for president have done the same. Even Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul has ruled it out.

While Yucca Mountain is Nevada’s signature issue, the concern for shipment of nuclear materials stretches across the nation. I’ve included links to two sites showing proposed rail, truck and barge routes, with links to individual states showing which cities will be affected.

The waste, according to Las Vegas-based transportation consultant Fred Dilger, would arrive in 10,000 shipments, many going through major cities like chicago and Atlanta. Railway and truck accidents could have tragic consequences, especially since shipping routes are open to terrorist attacks.

So it looks as if we’re headed back to square one again, if Yucca Mountain is scrubbed as a high-level waste repository, where will it go? And, with more reactors apparently coming on line, how much is going to pile up before something terrible happens?

Potential Rail, Barge and Truck Routes to Yucca Mountain

Truck Shipments

State of Nevada Agency for Nuclear Projects

Though I’m still not 100-percent convinced, Lovelock’s arguments are factual, rational and highly persuasive. So I thought I’d take a similar crack at making the case for nuclear energy as a way to help curb our greenhouse gas emissions … maybe in part to clarify my own mixed feelings about the matter.

Here goes:

1. First, there’s a truly powerful pro-nuclear argument I’ve never seen given much attention before: according to the Keystone Center’s “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” released last year, failing to replace existing nuclear power plants over the next half-century would actually increase carbon emissions by 12.5 gigatons. Unless we’re planning on replacing all the nuclear facilities set to go off-line with something other than coal or natural gas plants, we’ll be making climate change worse.

2. As scary as the “what-if” scenarios for a nuclear reactor failure are, the reality has — so far — proved much less so. The World Health Organization (WHO) carried out several studies after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster; one, conducted 19 years later, concluded that 75 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident. Other WHO findings: 28 deaths among first-responders in the year after the accident could be directly linked to acute radiation sickness; there was a large increase in highly treatable tyroid cancerns among young people and no clearly demonstrated increases in leukemia or other non-thyroid solid cancers; and the lifetime risk of cancer deaths among those exposed to Chernobyl radiation was about 3 to 4 percent higher than average. (You can find the complete digest report here.)

3. By comparison, the health impacts of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the U.S. were minuscule, with no attributable illnesses or deaths. The Keystone Center’s “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” last year said the average dose of radiation to the region’s 2 million people was about 1 millirem, with the maximum exposure to individuals right outside the site at less than 100 millirem. By comparison, a full set of chest x-rays delivers 6 millirem of radiation, and a year’s exposure to natural background radiation gets you 100 to 125 millirem.

4. Participants in the Keystone Center “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” all conceded that “on balance, commercial nuclear power plants in the U.S. are safer today than they were before the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.” In fact, an industry study in 2003 found that even a direct-side impact by a large commercial airliner wouldn’t cause a loss of coolant at a nuclear power plant.

5. A National Academy of Sciences study found a low risk of widespread harm from either a terrorist attack or a serious accident involving spent nuclear fuel. And the Keystone Center’s “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” found that “the risk of a major accident at a nuclear facility is not seen as a significant risk by investors today.”

6. A 2001 study by the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland (quoted in “The Revenge of Gaia”) found that, beteween 1970 and 1992, nuclear power had the best safety record of all major energy sources, both in terms of total deaths and deaths per terawatt of energy produced each year. The results for the top four sources were coal: 6,400 total deaths, 342 deaths per terawatt per year; hydro power: 4,000 total deaths, 884 deaths per terawatt per year; natural gas: 1,200 total deaths, 85 deaths per terawatt per year; nuclear power: 31 total deaths, 8 deaths per terawatt per year.

7. A life-cycle assessment by Meier Engineering Research (thanks redcraig!) found that nuclear fission energy actually had a lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emission rate than solar (using an eight-kilowatt, building-integrated photovoltaic system for the assessment): 15 tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per gigawatt-electric of electricity, compared to 39 tons for photovoltaic. Of course, those rates were considerably higher for fossil-fuel sources like natural gas (469 tons) or coal (974 tons).

8. Nuclear power makes economic sense. According to the Energy Information Administration (thanks again, redcraig!), operation, maintenance and fuel costs per kilowatt-hour for nuclear plants are more than twice those for hydroelectric, but nearly a third less than those for fossil steam energy and two-thirds less than either gas turbine energy or small-scale photovoltaic or wind energy.

9. During the nuclear testing heyday of the Cold War era, the superpowers set off numerous nuclear weapons; in 1962 alone, test bombs equaled the output of 20,000 Hiroshima warheads. Such tests, Lovelock argues, released radioactive materials into the air equal to two Chernobyls a week for a whole year … yet no proven health damage to humans was observed in subsequent years. (For more details, see “The Revenge of Gaia,” pages 94 - 95).

10. Finally, Lovelock argues — and it’s hard to disagree with his view — that “a continuous supply of electricity is an essential requisite for civilization.” Nuclear power, unlike wind or solar energy, fits that bill.

All that said, I still have doubts about the viability of nuclear power as our way out of dangerous climate change, and I don’t believe my concerns are the result of a conspiracy by environmentalists, as some pro-nuclear types suggest. I’ll take on the “con” side of the issue in another post soon.

Sir David King has been quoted as saying: “There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves ‘green’ are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century.

“[Their argument is] ‘Let’s get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the 20th century’, and I think that is utter hopelessness.”

King also maintains that nuclear power must be seen as part of the solution as we seek to combat carbon emissions.

My initial reaction to these comments was one of frustration and disappointment.

Why is it that if I rely on public transport, I’m the Luddite, yet if a car owner scoffs at modern sustainable technology, they aren’t a Luddite.

What’s so advanced about a combustion engine?

And with reference to King’s comment, what’s so advanced about nuclear fission or nuclear fusion? As Greenpeace maintains, why renew our faith, dating back to the 1950s, in nuclear power? It didn’t work then. Why should it work now? His views on the green movement are extremely generalised and outdated.

It seems to me we’re dealing with double standards.

Just because nuclear energy avoids the burning of fossil fuels, this does not equate that it is forward thinking. In my opinion, nuclear power is far from safe and the waste created hardly means that it is a clean energy. Max Lindberg argues a very strong case against nuclear power here.

Yet a closer inspection of King’s opinions negated my initial dismay. The short Press Association piece went for an incendiary angle, clearly designed to rile.

An in-depth interview that ran in the UK’s Guardian newspaper reveals a different man. It describes a level-headed scientist who takes global warming very seriously indeed.

I certainly don’t concur with his views on nuclear power. I’m not even obliged to after all, yet some of his views are indeed extremely sound.

I ask that you read the interview here. You’ll smile, you’ll shout, you’ll nod your head, you’ll shake it in annoyance, yet at least the UK has a scientist who is stressing the importance of global warming and volunteering his solutions. He’s co-authored a book entitled The Hot Topic where he discusses the subject in depth.

I’ll leave you with one of King’s retorts to a young woman who asked what she could do to help combat global warming.

“Stop admiring young men in Ferraris,” he replied.

Source:

Image courtesy of Akuppa at Flickr

I’ve created a podcast from this material. If you’d rather listen, the link is here: nuclear-jan-10.mp3

Looking at the current mess we have with nuclear waste, landscapes scarred with huge open-pit mines and tons of unprotected waste from those operations, greenhouse gasses and pollution of our waters, to name a few, I think the old saying is correct.

We seem hell-bent on creating a radioactive society, betting that human frailty and the failure of “modern technology” will never become an issue with respect to radioactive contamination of our environment. All for a flawed concept that touts nuclear energy as “clean”. It isn’t.
Now, our friends across the “pond” in the UK, are up in arms about a proposal made by Prime Minister Gordon Brown. He wants to replace England’s aging nuclear power facilities with 10 new ones, and that’s brought out the critics.

Chief among them is Greenpeace UK, with “The Case Against Nuclear Power” a pdf file available on the site. This is a thorough look at how the British Government has, “understated the real risks to the taxpayer and the lack of clarity on economics”. I suggest a look at the Greenpeace front page too, for their solutions to tackling climate change and energy security in the UK.

Meanwhile, let me refer you to Pem Charnley’s article, “Unbelievable UK Nuclear Decision“, an incisive look at the furor growing in the UK with some excellent links to UK media sources.

I commented on one researcher’s view that “Nuclear Energy is Clean; Renewables Damage the Ecology“, claiming that implementation of renewable fuel options is a “rape of the land”. Go to Google and put in a request for images of open pit mines, or more specifically, open pit uranium mines. Look at the picture that accompanies this article, it was taken by Kennecott at it’s Wyoming Sweetwater Pit in 1980. To give you some perspective on how large this hole is, the brown specks at the bottom of the image are not fly specks, but the huge trucks that haul ore from the pit to the mill. To me, that’s a “rape” of the land.

One of the major issues about nuclear power is, of course, waste management, my favorite subject.

Here’s a quote from the World Nuclear Association, and their take on waste management:

• Nuclear power is the only energy-producing technology which takes full responsibility for all its wastes and fully costs this into the product.
• The amount of radioactive wastes is very small relative to wastes produced by fossil fuel electricity generation.
• Used nuclear fuel may be treated as a resource or simply as a waste.
• The radioactivity of all nuclear wastes diminishes with time.
• Safe methods for the final disposal of high-level waste are technically proven; the international consensus is that this should be deep geological disposal.

Doesn’t that just make you want to stand up and cheer? You might want to look at another of their pages, World Uranium Mining. While obviously biased, there is a great deal of good information on this site.

Let me take their points to task, in order…

• Ask the Native American nations in the Four Corners area, or in the Dakotas how well the nuclear industry has taken care of it’s mine waste. You might want to access the Southwest Research and Information Center’s pages, and see how they’ve been dealing with uranium mining and resultant waste left on tribal lands. It’s just one of many indications that the nuclear industry is not living up to it’s promises.
• According to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), nuclear power generation facilities alone produce about 261,590 cubic yards of Low and Intermediate Level Waste (LILW) and 13,079 cubic yards of High Level Waste (HLW) each year worldwide. We’ve been creating this waste for about 50 years now. Do the math.
  
• What an understatement! Some nuclear waste is being recycled, but it’s not a 100% deal, there’s still plenty of waste after the process. I love this statement, “treated as a resource or simply as a waste”. Oh, if it were only that “simple”.
• Half life of LILW waste degrades in a period of about 30 years or more, while HLW will take millennia to degrade, tens of thousands of years and maybe more depending on the material. So why should we worry, our lives are short by comparison, so why not “go with the flow”, take the money and run? Let future generations worry about this stuff buried in their back yards, or sitting in rusting cannisters. That is, if there will be humans that far into the future. On the other hand, by then, they may have come up a solution to safe waste disposal. Let’s hope so.
• Yes, deep geological disposal is the answer, but there is no such repository, and the way it’s going at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, maybe not for a very long time, if at all. So we’re stuck with HLW sitting in sometimes rusting cannisters in an uncovered lot, or submerged in several feet of water at nuclear power plants around the world.

While on the subject of storage, a brief note on security. Those cannisters sitting in open lots are prime targets for someone with high explosives and a way to gain access to the property. They could send up a radioactive cloud over populated areas with one blast. No, it won’t trigger a nuclear explosion, but highly radioactive dust will be released into the air. And I’ll call your attention to an earlier article, “Video of Sleeping Nuclear Station Guards“. Call me Chicken Little, that’s ok, it’s just that throughout my life I’ve been witness to things that “should never have happened”. We can’t be too careful, especially in this age of terrorism.

The cost of building nuclear power plants is staggering, a 1,250-megawatt unit would cost about $5.5 billion. Building new plants to replace old ones begs the question, what to do with the old ones? Decommission, of course, but that’s every bit as costly, and where do you put the old infrastructure that’s been contaminated by years of exposure to radiation? Probably in a deep pit somewhere, if there is one. If you think I’ve given you a lot to read, that’s the whole idea, I can’t possibly begin to cover all the areas of this very complex industry, and besides, I like the idea of going beyond one person’s opinion and looking at facts presented by other sources.

I do have in the works, a series on the nuclear industry, beginning with mining through waste and possible storage. It will be ready soon, there’s so much research to be done and every time I seem to answer a question, five more spring up.

If you’ve wondered why I’m so adamant about nuclear power and radiation, this goes back 60 years to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The damage left by those two atom bombs was hard to believe, but what made a lasting impression on me was the damage done to the human body. Pictures of Japanese citizens burned by radiation convinced me that dealing with high level radiation is a danger not only to our species, but all species on earth.

And let’s not forget Chernobyl, and the thousands of people who had to move from their homes, maybe forever, and those who died and are still dying from radiation sickness.

I’d also like to recommend two recent articles on this subject by Shirley Siluk Gregory:
Is Nuclear Power the Answer to Climate Change?

Critics Call U.K. Nuclear Power Plans ‘Misleading’

Can we stop the proliferation of more uranium mines and nuclear power stations, not only here in America but around the world? What are the answers, what can we, as citizens of the world do, and are we even willing to get that upset?

Britain has decided to return to nuclear power in a big way. No matter that one of our former environment ministers was interviewed earlier and stated categorically what an absolutely ill-advised decsision this is. Gordon Brown’s government have today made the nuclear decision official.

One of the arguments for this decision is that the government states that it will help them tackle CO2 emissions.

Yet, according to experts, the reduction in emissions will be a hideously pathetic … 4%. That’s no argument for nuclear.

We trail the rest of Europe when it comes to investment in sustainable energy. We currently glean just 4% of our energy from sustainable sources, yet live on a windswept isle surrounded by strong tides courtesy of the gulf stream. Compare this with, for excample, Sweden, where between 35 and 50% of their energy sourced is sustainable.

Caroline Lucas of the UK’s Green Party sums it up succinctly:

“[The government are] very successfully pulling the wool over people’s eyes over whether or not we need nuclear. The bottom line is there are much greater, safer, quicker, cheaper ways of achieving greater emission cuts than going down the nuclear route. Plus the signal that it gives out internationally is an incredibly negative one”

For more details on this story, please click on the following links:

Channel 4

BBC - includes the opinions of experts - including Ms Lucas’ as quoted above.

In-depth Green Party reaction

My doubts arose after reading James Lovelock’s “The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & the Fate of Humanity” (2006, Basic Books). In it, Lovelock warns that, within this century, climate change could very well end civilization. He also argues — more persuasively than I expected — that nuclear power is the only energy source today that will let us both stop pumpking lethal amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and preserve modern life as we know it.

I’ve heard that argument before, though never as eloquently as Lovelock puts it. But even if nuclear energy is as safe and reliable as Lovelock says, I still question whether it’s as low-carbon as its advocates make it out to be.

For one, there’s the matter of mining uranium for fuel and transporting it to reactor sites — that requires fossil fuels, doesn’t it?

Then there’s the construction of the nuclear plants themselves, with all their thick concrete shielding. The cement-making process creates a lot of carbon dioxide … possibly as much as a ton of carbon dioxide for every ton of cement produced, according to George Monbiot’s book “Heat.”

Assuming we could muster the will and finances needed — and overcome the guaranteed public objections — to embark on a nuclear plant construction spree today, wouldn’t we just be sending our carbon emissions into overdrive, at least until the reactors are up and running? Is it worth the risk, or do we have no other choice?

Photo courtesy of Tristan Nitot, posted on Wikimedia Commons

Before continuing, once again I’ve produced a podcast on this subject, so if you don’t have time to read, tune in here: gaia.mp3

Now, 86 year old Dr. James Lovelock, pictured at the left, has written a book, The Revenge of Gaia (Penguin Books 2006), where he makes no bones about it - nuclear energy can save humanity, and “there is no sensible alternative to nuclear power if we are to sustain humanity,” a quote taken from the pages of the World Nuclear Association’s web pages.

Mr. Lovelock’s career as an environmentalist and scientist is without question. You can read all about him on his website. Gaia, in case hadn’t heard the term, refers to a hypothesis formulated by Dr. Lovelock in the 1960’s. Essentially, living and nonliving parts of the earth have a regulatory effect on the Earth’s environment.

What caught my eye today as I was rolling through countless websites was a blog written by James A. Finch, and I just had to comment, with all due respect to Mr. Finch and his opinion.

In his article, Mr. Finch claims environmentalists won’t read the book, and quite possibly, their bosses will ban them from reading it. And should they sneak out and get a copy, according to Mr. Finch, they may very well become lobbyists for the nuclear cause. That is, of course, if they bathe, shave and spiff up a bit.

This is good stuff, and it gets better. In a forward by the “Editor” of “Blowing Our Tax Dollars on Wind Farms” and I’ll just quote him, ”

“Editor:
Mr. Lovelock seems to love nuclear and hate wind farms. The “Green Movement” loves wind and hates nukes. Odd. The “Green Movement” is based on the theory of Gaia by Mr. Lovelock.

Gaia is like a religion to the “Greens”. I appreciate Mr. Lovelock’s concern for the planet and I share that concern with him. According to Mr. Lovelock, just about everything the “Greens” are trying to shove down our collective throats, he disagrees with. The problem with the Greens is that their agenda is quite different to that of Mr. Lovelock. Al Gore, Maurice Strong, David Suzuki, Ted Turner and all the other leaders of the “Green Movement” are using Gaia to push for control, power and money under the guise of sustainability. The “Green Movement” is a fraud. They should be honest, they are about globalization or,”One World Order” controlled by the UN or a similar body.

Realistically they should be tried for treason against their respective countries”.alternative energy - “James Lovelock’s Latest Book Trashes Renewables, Endorses Nuclear Energy’

Are we having fun yet? OK, getting back to Mr. Finch and his comments. He points out certain areas of the book, like Chapter Five, “Sources of Energy.” Mr. Fitch said the good Dr. “concisely and cogently answers every silly ‘theory’ about renewable energy sources hyped by the ‘green’ movement.”

Then we travel on to the exact same type of trashing stated by Mr Ausubel in his paper, taking each renewable energy source and thoroughly discounting it.

In the book, Finch says Lovelock addresses Three Mile Island, Chernobyl and other events over the past half-century, then says if you ever wondered about radiation and cancer, well Dr. Lovelock has answers for that as well.

Here’s the second best part of Mr. Finch’s article, and I quote, “You may leap up, after reading those pages, and start faxing them off to every environmentalist group you can contact. It may be the most definitive analysis of the disconnect the media and the ‘greens’ have about nuclear energy and its impact on our health that you have ever read”. Ok.

The capper for me is a statement made by Dr. Lovelock in his book, “I have offered in public to accept all the high-level waste produced in a year from a nuclear power station for deposit on my small plot of land. It would occupy a space about a cubic metre in size and fit safely in a concrete pit, and I would use the heat from its decaying radioactive elements to heat my home. It would be a waste not to use it. More important, it would be no danger to me, my family or the wildlife.”

Finch finishes with this statement, “That should enlighten the yokels arguing against the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository“.

Well, hell, why didn’t we think of that in the first place? Shut down the Yucca Mountain money pit, dig a hole in Dr. Lovelock’s back yard and bury all that waste just waiting for a place to fizzle out, around 10,000 years or so. That way, he can heat the whole town for eternity.

If you’d like a fun read, I suggest Mr. Finch’s article. Every “yokel” needs a good laugh now and then.