There is a controversial decision to be made in Maryland soon regarding a nuclear reactor that might be built there. Similar to reactors being built in Finland that British and Finnish regulators are finding problems with, this reactor would be built largely by a French nuclear technocratic elite who are operating in a questionable and risky way.

The project in Maryland is a 4.5 billion dollar deal that is trying to skirt public service regulation. Thanks in part to a regional coalition, the Chesapeake Safe Energy Coalition (CSEC), and their ability to get 650 petition signatures sent to the Public Service Commission (PSC), the nuclear business elite are running into responsible and practical decision-making that will give more public accountability.

An in-depth report of the history of nuclear technology in France that leads into the situation today was completed by international nuclear expert and consultant Mycle Schneider in May of this year. There are many issues put forth in this paper that are discussed in great detail and with appropriate connection to various global issues (i.e. issues regarding political conflict and the environment). Six key points from the report are introduced below:

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With the historic passage of climate legislation through the House of Representatives, many concerns have trickled forth. Does the climate legislation do enough? Will it even work? Does it have the right aim? With the issuance of similar concerns have come proposed solutions and substitutions. The republicans have proposed that 100 nuclear power plants be built by 2030 in place of the proposed cap-and-trade climate bill. I’ve recently written two articles on the Republican “solution” to both the climate and economic crises. And today I’m writing more.

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) announced his own personal blueprint for the nation’s recovery. He began by re-stating the Senate Republicans’ plan that would replace the cap-and-trade legislation passed by the House, which includes building 100 nuclear power plants within 20 years, the encouragement of electric cars for conservation, offshore exploration for natural gas and oil and doubling energy research and development to make renewable energy cost-competitive.

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“We all remember this time last year,” said Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Monday. “We were in the midst of an energy crisis, paying $4 for a gallon of gasoline, and Americans were seeing their utility bills skyrocketing.” Since then, he went on to say, the energy problems haven’t disappeared and no changes in policy have been made. He warned that, though the prices have gone down, if we do not make any changes, we will fall into the same hole in which we found ourselves last summer.

His solution? Nuclear. Stating that “the cornerstone of any real solution to the American energy problem needs to involve offshore resources and nuclear power…which generates electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions and has a minimal impact on the environment.”  The first step to escaping America’s current energy crisis according to Wicker is to build more nuclear power plants.

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And now the blueprint:

“Nuclear power is the obvious first step to a policy of clean and low-cost energy. One hundred new plants in 20 years would double U.S. nuclear production, making it about forty percent of all electricity production. Add 10% for sun and wind and other renewables, another 10% for hydroelectric, maybe 5% for natural gas—and we begin to have a cheap as well as clean energy policy.”

The second step is to transition into an electric vehicle nation, where half of the cars are electric. According to Brookings Institution scholars, this could be done without building more power plants because of the vast amounts of energy that goes unused at nights. That power, which is already produced, would be used as vehicles charged overnight.

The third step? “Explore offshore for natural gas (it’s low carbon) and oil (using less, but using our own).”

And finally, put more money toward research - doubling funding. We need to work to create answers to meet energy challenges, which include: improving batteries for plug-in vehicles, making solar power cost competitive with fossil fuels, making carbon capture a reality for coal-burning plants, safely recycling used nuclear fuel, making advanced biofuels (crops we don’t eat) cost-competitive with gasoline, making more buildings green buildings and providing energy from fusion.

Here lies his blueprint. He exposed it to proponents and opponents alike. And he closed by stating that “our policy of cheap and clean energy based upon nuclear power, electric cars, off-shore exploration and doubling energy R&D will help family budgets and create jobs. It will also prove to be the fastest way to increase American energy independence, clean the air and reduce global warming.”

He welcomes comments at www.alexander.senate.gov.

For a full text of his speech, click here.

Photo Credit: www.alexander.senate.gov

Marilyn was chief editor when she wrote the stories, Power Hungry, Gathering Clouds and Frontier Justice-in a Good Way. Wanting to know more, I picked up the phone and was honored with a few moments of her time.

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Ward Sproat, shown in the Las Vegas Review-Journal photo at the left, is director of the Department of Energy’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management, and announced Tuesday that Yucca Mountain in Nevada is still a long way from receiving any spent nuclear fuel. Sproat told Nevada’s Legislative Committee on High-Level Nuclear Waste, that lack of funding will result in significant worker layoffs at the facility. He is quoted as saying, “They’re going to come in waves”.

Podcast, if you’d rather listen: This post contains additional media. Click here to view the full post.

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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.

And now the blueprint:

“Nuclear power is the obvious first step to a policy of clean and low-cost energy. One hundred new plants in 20 years would double U.S. nuclear production, making it about forty percent of all electricity production. Add 10% for sun and wind and other renewables, another 10% for hydroelectric, maybe 5% for natural gas—and we begin to have a cheap as well as clean energy policy.”

The second step is to transition into an electric vehicle nation, where half of the cars are electric. According to Brookings Institution scholars, this could be done without building more power plants because of the vast amounts of energy that goes unused at nights. That power, which is already produced, would be used as vehicles charged overnight.

The third step? “Explore offshore for natural gas (it’s low carbon) and oil (using less, but using our own).”

And finally, put more money toward research - doubling funding. We need to work to create answers to meet energy challenges, which include: improving batteries for plug-in vehicles, making solar power cost competitive with fossil fuels, making carbon capture a reality for coal-burning plants, safely recycling used nuclear fuel, making advanced biofuels (crops we don’t eat) cost-competitive with gasoline, making more buildings green buildings and providing energy from fusion.

Here lies his blueprint. He exposed it to proponents and opponents alike. And he closed by stating that “our policy of cheap and clean energy based upon nuclear power, electric cars, off-shore exploration and doubling energy R&D will help family budgets and create jobs. It will also prove to be the fastest way to increase American energy independence, clean the air and reduce global warming.”

He welcomes comments at www.alexander.senate.gov.

For a full text of his speech, click here.

Photo Credit: www.alexander.senate.gov