Comment: Nuke people are saying anything to make people feel safe with Nuke Power, calling it green, really, uranium is not green, nuke plants waste is not green, NO NUKE POWER, NO URANIUM MINING!
Posted April 9th, 2009 by xoff
in Sustainable Energy
I'd rather be writing this for readers of the Wisconsin State Journal, who have been fed a steady diet of pro-nuclear news and views lately, but the WSJ was not interested in my point of view. (They weren't too interested in it when I worked there 30+ years ago, either.)
I considered raising the $600,000 or so it would take to buy up all of the Lee Enterprises stock and shut down the whole chain, including the State Journal. But that will have to wait.
In the meantime, the recent op ed column by an editorial page intern demands a closer look, even if it is only for my own readers. It's headlined, "Nuclear fear factor: It's really not so bad."
The premise is that young people have grown up with a lot of false worries about how dangerous nuclear power is.
There are so many targets in the piece that it's hard to know where to aim. Let's just settle for picking a few choice quotes:
Even though no one was hurt at the (Three Mile Island) accident and no radiation escaped...
Oh, really? There are those pesky studies and reports that found higher incidences of lung cancer and leukemia in communities near the accident, which did release radiation, although there is debate about how much. Who you gonna believe, the nuclear industry or your own lying eyes?
(Nuclear waste) is a deal-breaker for (uninformed students) because this leftover stuff will be dangerous for a scary couple millions of years.What they don't know, however, is how well we already have this waste problem under control. The majority of it is just spent fuel, pretty similar to the original stuff we dug out of the ground.
Well, yes, except for the stuff that isn't. Like Plutonium 239, one of the waste products which is highly dangerous and has a half life of a mere 24,000 years. So in 250,000 years, give or take 10 or 20,000, it's just as safe as dirt. (Actually, it's not, but is a lot safer than it is today.) Xenon-135 decays into cesium-135, an isotope with a 2.3-million-year half-life. Uranium-238 has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. And, yes, nuclear reactors produce that, too.
"Leaving it where it is is pretty safe right now," says Paul Wilson, assistant professor of engineering physics at UW-Madison and an expert on nuclear energy. Keeping this spent fuel at the plants they originate in is totally safe over the short term, he says, because it's "contained, compact and cared for." It's not as if barrels and barrels pour out of these plants, needing an immediate home.
The waste is piling up next to nuclear reactors, including those at Point Beach and Kewaunee. In the short term, it is safer there than being shipped around the country to more temporary sites.
But it is accumulating in huge quantities. There is already more spent reactor fuel waste (70,000 metric tons) than the troubled Yucca Mountain disposal site could handle, even if it were approved, which seems unlikely.
Wilson said it's the long-term containment that worries most people, with long-term meaning centuries, not decades. But while leaving this work to our descendants may feel a like a bit of a cop out, it's almost certain we'll conquer this problem within a century.
Doesn't that make you feel better? The nuclear industry and the government have already had almost 60 years to try to solve the problem, with no success. The solution is always just around the corner -- or certainly within the next century. One thing seems certain: None of us will be around to see it, if it every happens. "A bit of a cop out?" What would a full-fledged cop out seem like?
But sometimes it's not the issue of waste that most worries opponents. Al Gore recently told The Guardian he's "sceptical" of nuclear power because of its ties to nuclear weapons and terrorism.... Should we shut down electric plants because of their association with electric chairs?
Should we campaign against biology labs because of their link with anthrax and Ebola? Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are drastically different technologies. Supporting one does not support the other.
Remember that Plutonium we discussed earlier? Every nuclear power reactor generates plutonium; a 1000-megawatt reactor (the size of Point Beach) generates enough to make 40 nuclear bombs a year. You can't take it out of the reactor and put it into a bomb; you have to "reprocess" it first.
Reprocessing is one of the "solutions" suggested to reduce the amount of nuclear waste. After 50+ years of generating more dangerous waste every day, with no permanent way to dispose of it, you wouldn't think people would warm up to the idea of building more plants to produce more of the deadly stuff, would you?
The nuclear industry thinks that's about to happen, because people are looking for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to combat global warming.
And there is a major push underway in Wisconsin to make it easier to license new plants, by relaxing the state law passed, for good reason, in 1983.
It requires that there be a licensed federal disposal site for waste before we build any reactors that will produce more of it.
That seems like common sense, although the State Journal and the nuclear industry will continue to tell us
"It's not so bad."
Don't believe it.
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