Rethinking Nuclear Power
Are modern nuclear reactors as bad for us as the environmentalists have painted them?
Filed under Environment
| Skeptoid #92 March 18, 2008 Podcast transcript | Listen | Subscribe |
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By Brian Dunning, Skeptoid Podcast
Episode 92, March 18, 2008
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4092
Let's have a seat at Homer Simpson's control panel, chow down on some donuts, and nap away into oblivion while blinking lights and buzzers warn of impending doom and that glowing green bar of uranium that fell into our trousers. Today we're going to examine the popular notions about nuclear power. Specifically, if xenophobia had not killed nuclear power in the United States in the late 1970's, there's a good chance that we'd have all been driving electric cars for the past 20 years; and uncounted billions of tons of carbon dioxide would never been sucked out of the ground, burned in power plants, and exhausted into our atmosphere.
So let's state the obvious. The immediate reaction to that statement is "OK, that may be true, but look at all the new problems we'd have created with Chernobyl-type disasters and lethal nuclear waste." Fair enough, and important questions, to be sure. Let's start with a quick primer on the various types of nuclear reactors.
So-called Generation I reactors were the early prototypes developed by many nations, and actually placed into production in a few cases. Generation I reactors were characterized by fundamentally unsafe designs, and kludged layers of afterthought safety systems. When most nuclear nations began deploying commercial reactors, they were usually of Generation II design. Generation II reactors were significantly improved, but these changes were primarily evolutionary. Most of the commercial plants in operation in the United States are Generation II designs. A little over ten years ago, Generation III designs began appearing in some of the world's most advanced nuclear nations. Generation III reactors incorporate not only evolutionary improvements, but also revolutionary changes such as fuel cycles that result in much less nuclear waste; reduced capacity for the creation of weapons-grade plutonium; and passive safety designs wherein the reaction cannot be sustained in the event of a problem and the system effectively shuts itself down, by virtue of its basic design. The newest plants being designed for commercial use are called Generation III+, which incorporate all the newest knowledge from operating Generation III designs. If a new reactor was approved and built in the United States today, it would be a Generation III+ design. Even if every plant employee keeled over with a heart attack, neither a Chernobyl nor a Three Mile Island type accident would be possible; the systems are fundamentally redesigned so that the reaction cannot be sustained if things go outside the parameters.
The Idaho National Laboratory is the United States' primary advanced reactor research facility, and they've outlined six new reactor types to be developed for Generation IV. The designs take everything to a new level: Lower cost, safer designs, near-total elimination of nuclear waste, and reduced risk of nuclear weapons proliferation. There are also Generation V reactors in the ether, but these are primarily the domain of late-night rumination sessions at the lab, fueled by tequila and pot.
Then there's fusion power, which is everyone's ultimate goal. Fusion reactors have the profound advantages of using simple tritium or deuterium for fuel, producing no significant waste, and absolute safety since if anything goes even slightly off-kilter, the plasma disappears and you have no reaction. It's the ultimate in cheap, clean, safe, renewable energy, despite gross misunderstandings of the technology expressed by Greenpeace and other factions. The first operational tokamak fusion reactor for research is being built by the international ITER consortium in France and is expected to come online in 2016.
So you can probably guess that Three Mile Island was probably not the newest and safest design, and you'd be right. It was a Generation II design. It was the first and only significant nuclear accident in American history. A broken valve caused coolant to leak into a containment facility designed for that purpose, raising the temperature of the core and causing a partial meltdown. Despite significant confusion on the part of the operators (this being their first experience with an accident), and a somewhat lengthy chain of errors and misunderstandings, everything eventually worked out just as it should. There were no deaths or injuries, and despite 25,000 people living within five miles of the plant, nobody was exposed to any radiation worse than a single chest x-ray. All the studies predict zero cases of future cancer, despite ongoing lawsuits that the courts continue to find to be without merit. With proper perspective, Three Mile Island can (and should) be characterized as a shining example of how well the safety systems work, even in the face of human error and old-fashioned reactor design.
But that's not the way it was perceived. By an unfortunate coincidence, Jane Fonda's movie The China Syndrome about a nuclear accident came out only twelve days before Three Mile Island. The Cold War with Brezhnev was in full force and the words "nuclear accident" were simply too much for a scientifically uninformed public. Three Mile Island became the first nail in the coffin of American nuclear power.
Seven years later in 1986, things got much worse. Chernobyl was suffering from inadequate funding. Much basic maintenance had never been performed. It had only a skeleton crew, nearly all of whom were untrained workers from the local coal mine. The only manager with nuclear plant experience had been a worker installing small reactors on board Soviet submarines. Some genius decided to run a risky test of a type that no experienced nuclear engineer would ever gamble on. The test was to shut down the water pumps, which must run constantly in that type of reactor; and then find out whether the turbines, spinning on their momentum alone, had enough energy to restart and run the pumps during the forty-second delay before the backup diesel generators would kick in. The test was so risky that one faction within the plant deliberately disconnected some backup systems, trying to make the test too dangerous to attempt. The test was run anyway. It didn't work, the pumps couldn't keep up, the graphite core caught fire, the coal miners couldn't find any shovels so they didn't know what to do, and the reactor exploded. If you think I'm exaggerating this, there are extensive resources both online and in print, if you really want the hairy truth. In this short space I'm probably not even giving you ten percent of what a travesty this was — I'm tempted to call it a joke but it's so not funny. For example, they scheduled this right in the middle of a shift change, and the new workers coming in didn't even know what was going on.
Two people died that day, and some 30 to 60 people were dead within three months. Predictions of eventual cancer deaths caused by the radiation run from 1,000 to 4,000. And, of course, the damage to the local environment is extensive and difficult to estimate. The terror of a radiation cloud blowing across Europe was the second nail in the coffin of American nuclear power.
Not only was Chernobyl a monumental failure of the human element, the plant was a Generation I design, specifically an RBMK reactor, which is generally regarded as the least safe reactor type ever built. One design flaw is that the core used combustible graphite, and this distinction is the main reason that Chernobyl-type disasters are not possible in most reactors around the world. Only a very few Generation I designs are still in use, all in the former Soviet Union, and all have been retrofitted with improvements intended to prevent this type of accident. Other nations have long been lobbying for the closure of these reactors, and rightfully so.
How do the dangers of nuclear energy compare to the dangers of fossil fuel energy? A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that some 50,000-100,000 Americans die each year from lung cancer caused by particulate air pollution, the biggest cause of which is coal-burning power plants in the midwest and east. Even taking the maximum predicted death toll from Chernobyl, we would need a Chernobyl-sized accident every three weeks to make nuclear power as deadly as coal and oil already is. Shall I repeat that? If the world was filled with Generation I reactors run by feuding coal miners, we would need a worst-case scenario every three weeks just to match the US death toll we've imposed upon ourselves by clinging to our current fossil fuel system. Next time you see a hippie cheering the defeat of nuclear power in the US, realize that a healthy environment and saving lives are clearly not their priorities.
Well, maybe to them it's more about the future of the planet than about saving lives today. Maybe they just don't want to see high-level nuclear waste created that's going to poison the planet for tens of thousands of years. I can see that. But here's the problem with that logic: The plants we're designing now produce less waste than ever. Some on the drawing board produce none at all. We've already created most of the waste that we ever will. It already exists. It's out there. Lobbying against future cleaner plants won't make the existing waste go away. It's out there now in temporary facilities in neighborhoods all across the country, way more vulnerable than it would be in proper permanent storage in Yucca Mountain. [Update: The Yucca Mountain facility has since been canceled. - BD]
Opponents say that Yucca Mountain is geologically unstable or otherwise too hazardous, so the waste might leak out. Well, trust me: The location of the Yucca Mountain site was one of the most lengthy and expensive decisions the government ever made. What do you think they were doing with all that time and money, picking their noses? Well, it was a government program, so a large part of the time and budget probably was spent on nose mining. Nevertheless, this was one of the most scrutinized decisions ever made. Environmentally speaking it's as good a site as we could hope for. If you're concerned about it, go to a neutral and reliable source and research it personally. From every scrap of reason I can muster, environmentalists should be Yucca Mountain's #1 fans. I can't imagine why they prefer to leave the waste out where it is now, unless they are driven more by ideology than by science. Who would have thought that?
There is a safe and clean solution to our energy crisis, gasoline prices, and global warming. It's the latest generation nuclear reactor.
© 2008 Skeptoid Media, Inc.
References & Further Reading
ACS News Center. "Air Pollution Linked to Deaths From Lung Cancer." American Cancer Society. American Cancer Society, Inc., 6 Mar. 2002. Web. 21 Dec. 2009. <http://www.cancer.org/docroot/NWS/content/NWS_1_1x_Air_Pollution_Linked_to_Deaths_From_Lung_Cancer.asp>
Bernarde, Melvin A. PhD. Our Precarious Habitat... Its In Your Hands. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 2007. 243-287, 417-425.
Cohen, Bernard L. The Nuclear Energy Option: An Alternative for the 90s. New York: Plenum Publishing Corporation, 1990.
Domenici, Pete, Lyons, Blythe, and Steyn, Julian. A Brighter Tomorrow: Fulfilling the Promise of Nuclear Energy. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004. 181-211.
Economist. "Nuclear's next generation." The Economist. The Economist Newspaper Limited, 10 Dec. 2009. Web. 19 Dec. 2009. <http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/tq/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15048703>
Ehresman, Teri. "Next Generation of Reactors." Idaho Nation Labortatory: Nuclear Advances. Idaho National Laboratory, 24 Oct. 2005. Web. 21 Dec. 2009. <http://nuclear.inl.gov/gen4/>
International Atomic Energy Agency. "INSAG-7, The Chernobyl Accident: Updating of INSAG-1." Safety Series. 1 Jan. 1992, No. 75-INSAG-7.
ITER. "The ITER homepage." ITER - The Way To New Energy. ITER Organization, 1 Jan. 2009. Web. 21 Dec. 2009. <http://www.iter.org/>
Manaugh, Geoff and Twilley, Nicola. "One Million Years of Isolation: An Interview with Abraham Van Luik." BLDGBLOG. Future Plural, 2 Nov. 2009. Web. 19 Dec. 2009. <http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/million-years-of-isolation-interview.html>
Moss, Zachary. "Chernobyl accident still haunts UK." Bellona. The Bellona Foundation, 1 May 2003. Web. 21 Dec. 2009. <http://www.bellona.no/bellona.org/english_import_area/energy/nuclear/28808>
Pope, C. Arden III; Burnett, Richard T.; Thun, Michael J. "Lung Cancer, Cardiopulmonary Mortality, and Long-term Exposure to Fine Particulate Air Pollution." JAMA. 6 Mar. 2002, Volume 287, Numer 9: 1132-1141.
Spencer, Jack and Loris, Nicolas D. "Three Mile Island and Chernobyl: What Went Wrong and Why Today’s Reactors Are Safe." Web Memo: The Heritage Foundation. 27 Mar. 2009, No. 2367.
USA Today. "Study: Air pollution, lung cancer are linked." USA Today. Gannet Co. Inc., 5 Mar. 2002. Web. 21 Dec. 2009. <http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2002-03-05-pollution.htm>
Reference this article:
Dunning, B.
"Rethinking Nuclear Power." Skeptoid Podcast. Skeptoid Media, Inc.,
18 Mar 2008. Web.
23 May 2013. <http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4092>
Discuss!
10 most recent comments | Show all 166 comments
@ Nagilum
I understood that in Germany wind energy has a 15% capacity but the actual capacity factor means that it can only generate around 3% of Germany's electricity. This is the problem with wind, it is not always usable, comparing any scheduled maintenance of a nuclear plant with the erratic patterns of the weather is disingenuous.
Also, much of the nuclear debate is based on peoples experiences and perceptions of earlier, less reliable, less efficient and less 'safe' older technologies. Scientists and engineers LEARN, as each new generation plant is designed it is therefore safer.
A bunch of crazies entering ANY nuclear facility is a matter of security itself and nothing to do with the efficiency of the method or power production.
Worldwide nuclear is only something like 5% of energy used, fossil fuels at around 80% are the biggy, something needs to replace them long-term and wind power alone isn't it.
A good mix of renewable is probably part of it but they cannot replace 100% the energy requirements, but a lot of that fossil fuel is not being used for electricity generation.
Here's something to think about, a nuclear powered aircraft carrier like USS Nimitz, with two old nuclear reactors has a power endurance of 25 years per refuel. Those reactors supply ALL the propulsion, heating, cooling and electricity required for the 5,500 crew and its equipment, save for a/c avgas.
Could Nimitz, decks covered in wind generators, supply the same performance for 25 years?
David "sheeple" Healey, Maidenhead, UK
October 10, 2012 12:51pm
I'm happy to change my views on nuclear power provided the "lack of waste" facts are true.
Industrial areas of all sorts carry their particular risks of contamination of some sort, and have to have practices that attempt to keep the workers and techs safe.
My main objection to nuclear power has been because of the waste, not so much of quantity, but of duration.
I don't think the effects of fossil fuels burnt today will still be around in 10,000 years, but I am sure that fossil fuels do create many times as much pollution than nuclear waste in the present.
Nevertheless, I have been against the creation of such a long-lasting dangerous waste product for a few moments of electricity, in the past. The effects of the very few nuclear accidents and incompetent actions have been quite devastating.
But with Brian's informative article here, and if new tech truly does result in little or no pollution, and/or long-lasting radioactive waste, I would happily endorse nuclear power.
I think it would be silly not to, in light of the facts.
Macky, Auckland
October 10, 2012 4:16pm
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf08.html
Has a summary of information on the new reactors. www.nrc.gov has several different forms that have what the design requirements for waste generation was, notably here: http://pbadupws.nrc.gov/docs/ML0229/ML022900705.pdf
Andrew Pennock, Peoria, United States
October 26, 2012 12:42pm
@David
No those 15% is the actual percentage of power provided by wind turbines.
You need to have about four times that amount actually installed.
And as I noted before we had days where renewables provided 50+% of the required energy.
"A bunch of crazies entering ANY nuclear facility is a matter of security itself and nothing to do with the efficiency of the method or power production."
Sorry, but security the ONLY thing that matters here. That's what the whole discussion is all about. No one doubts that the principles of nuclear energy are sound but as humans we make mistakes and lots of them too - which - in connection with such a potentially dangerous technology - just isn't worth the risk (at least to a majority on Germany).
Of course renewables can power a country 100%. Tuvalu is living proof. The projected target date for Germany to achieve this is 2050.
We are not trying to power an aircraft carrier we are talking about a country - something very different.
Nagilum, Germany
November 09, 2012 12:32pm
Modern nuclear energy is clean, efficient, and quite safe. We can either adopt a sensible plan for the future in which we use a combination of modern nuclear power as well as renewable energy, such as wind, solar, etc. We can either embrace nuclear and renewable energy or we can stick with foossil fuels and continue towards climate change and more and more pollution. The wise choice is of course modern clean nuclear energy and renewable energy. It is the only logical path.
Joffbaum, New York, NY
November 11, 2012 3:24am
Personally? Nuclear power and energy savings...we can get a literal order of magnitude of money/energy savings out of recycling (sewer, biofuels, fats, carbonisation) over a single equitable energy solar or wind farm.
This economy isnt about that and as coal mega firms bitch about fracking and vice versa..
I'd far prefer gas..
Mind you, the dumbest idea I have seen is cornahol. Its only 1% more efficient than solar!
Mud (Dr Syd), sin seetee, Oz
November 15, 2012 8:42am
@ Nagilum, Germany
You're being disingenuous using Tuvalu as an example of 100% renewable energy.
1) They are not 100% renewable, period, but do hope to be by 2020.
2) It has abundant sources of energy being islands in a very active part of the Pacific. It uses mostly solar power, because it is very sunny there, which, having been to overcast and dreary Germany several times, I would say was not a viable option there. Tuvalu is planning to use wind power and of course being islands they certainly could use tidal energy.
3) It has a much smaller population whose individual electrical needs are far below that of the modern German.
Renewable energy is not able to guarantee supply like nuclear, coal, oil and gas can, whose power down times are scheduled maintenance.
Maybe if you smothered Germany in windfarms, then on a windy sunny day without high electricity use, with everyone at the beach or on mountains, then MAYBE you can get near 100% renewable, but I doubt it.
Regarding nuclear, security is NOT the only concern, you are using that excuse just to negate a nuclear discussion, the same reason you ignored my aircraft carrier example, I don't believe you to be that much of a simpleton not to have understood my point. The point being that the 5,000 plus sailors are essentially a town of 5,000 people, all powered by nuclear, around the world.
Germany WILL have to accept nuclear power in the future or reduce electrical consumption and security of supply.
David Healey, Maidenhead, UK
January 07, 2013 11:40am
Update? Germany will always be nuclear resourced as it imports power from nuclear nations.
Given the turnaround in german nuclear power philosophy in the last few weeks, you'll find the germanic non nuclear statements would cease.
The really sad thing is that they had pebble bed thorium in the seventies and blew it.
That was a 30 year technology leap on hard power Th/pebble bed abandoned.
For such a fantastic bunch of guys, germany makes some strange decisions from time to time.
Thankfully China is growing its nuclear power faster than we have ever imagined.
Mud, At virtually missing point, NSW, OZ,
January 17, 2013 9:08pm
@Mud: We turned off the nuclear power plants and exported more electricity than ever in 2012.
@David:
"Renewable energy is not able to guarantee supply like nuclear, coal, oil and gas can, whose power down times are scheduled maintenance. "
There are various ways to store energy and advances are made continuously.
With the same reasoning I can say the opposite as the supplies of nuclear, coal, oil and gas are being exhausted.
Of course if you're willing spend 20% your countries budged on military and ruin your ground water supply by fracking you can secure supply for a little while longer but that's just delaying the inevitable.
People are stupid, the longer nothing happens the more likely they will do something dangerous. Not everyone of course but one or two in the right spot is enough. That's why you get a nuclear disaster every 25 years or so given the current rate of proliferation.
Nagilum, Germany
May 05, 2013 4:06am
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Just few updates from Germany..
Average amount of energy supplied by renewable sources for the first half of 2012: ~30%
Net energy export for the first half of 2012: 10 TWh
in the first half of 2011 - while the nuclear power plants were still online: 4 TWh
The prices of energy as they are being traded have been going down as a result of the increased supply by renewables.
Unfortunately this price decrease went straight into the pockets of the energy companies.
Gregory: In Germany you can chose your supplier and basically all suppliers offer tariffs where your energy comes from renewables. (for one two cents more/kWh)
Yes, Transport and storage are still issues being worked on but solar thermal plants typically have molten salt storage tanks that allow them to run 24/7.
Long distance power transmission can be handled by high voltage d.c. cables.
David: I can guarantee that no more than with a nuclear power plant. The safety comes from redundancy - having different sources in different places. Keep in mind that nuclear plants are down in one of four days for various reasons.
Source: http://ag-energiebilanzen.de/viewpage.php?idpage=1
And just latest tale of how secure nuclear plants are: http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/columnists/fissile-materials-working-group/security-y-12-nun-too-good
Nagilum, Germany
October 02, 2012 4:03pm