Nuclear power, the long-time foe of the environmental movement, is returning to favour in many countries where issues of energy dependency and the rising cost of fossil fuels are driving policy changes.
Fossil fuels are estimated at present to provide about 80 percent of the world’s energy, but production of gas and oil could reach its maximum in the next three decades, experts say.
In the United States, where the nuclear issue is not a hot topic of public debate, authorities are nonetheless keen to acquire a third-generation European Pressurized Water Reactor (EPR), being developed jointly by French nuclear group Areva and Germany’s Siemens.
In Japan energy giant Toshiba on Tuesday said it had been named the preferred bidder for US nuclear power plant maker Westinghouse, beating out stiff competition from General Electric.
Environmentalists can be driven as much by inertia and “tradition” as our most ignorant politicians. Safety and productivity whilst utilizing nuclear power plants are design and construction questions, nothing more.
Taking the bulk of these questions out of the usual loop of lobbyists, good ol’ boys and cronyism is the hard part. Since this has been achieved in France, we should be able to do so, as well. Or have we reached new heights in incompetence?
“…Or have we reached new heights in incompetence?” It depends, I suppose, on your definition of “we”. I don’t know how things are done in France, but in America, we’d build new nuclear power plants the *right* way – they’d be designed in India, parts would be manufactured in China, and the actual construction would be done by Mexican day labor. 😉
Tee-Hee, jeffro. Like the article says, the next reactor being sourced for the US is Franco-German design. But, I’ll bet you have the rest correct.
Yeah — I have to use the national “we” once in a while even though my usual answer to the question, “Are you a patriotic American?” is “I’m embarrassed to admit I’m from Earth.”
The main question in most environmentalists minds is no safety or weapons proliferation, it is the huge, and utterly unresolved problem of waste management. Until that question is resolved, Nuclear power should be approached from a negative perspective.
Highly taunted processes like ‘Vitrification’ are proving to be ineffective (the radiation crumbles the glass), and the costs of just transporting and burying the waste are enormous.
The fact is that nuclear power generation produces some of the most toxic byproducts possible to produce, the toxins last a loooong time, and we can’t just create this poisons without an effective way to manage them through thier lifecycle.
I believe the good’s outweigh the bad’s on the nuclear topic. We all know that the nuclear waste is bad and lasts along……….. time. If there was a way to convert this waste into a useable product that was not radioactive but,, has anyone tried that yet? My only other solution that I could think of would be to send it on a rocket in the rapidly expanding universe. It won’t come back for billions of years.
Most nuclear waste is recycled and reused these days. The only problem with nuclear energy is public misinformation.
Look all the European countries, Japan, and all the other countries that never had any serious problems in all the years they’ve been using nuclear power. Yes, there were Chernobyl and Three Miles Island, but they were caused by poor management, neglicence and low safety standards.
I think of nuclear energy as a mid-term solution to a long-term problem; a solution that brings with it long-term problems.
Could we build safe reactors? Sure. Can we safely dispose of the waste that comes with it…well, we’ve had problems with that in the past, and I don’t see any immediate fixes for those problems.
If building a few nuclear reactors buys us time to develop renewable or natural sources, such as solar, wind, geothermal, or gives us time to come up with longer-term nuclear options that are either cleaner or (if it ever happens) fusion-based, this is a viable mid-term solution.
If we don’t use that time wisely though, I feel sorry for the next few hundred generations that need to deal with the mess we’ve left them.
G
Technical safety issues? I suppose that “protection from small nukes that, if exploded near the containment building, would permanently poison an area the size of Greenland” is a technical safety issue. I suppose “disposal/protection of waste for 10,000 years despite changing political landscapes” could be considered a technical safety issue. I suppose maintenance of plant integrity for thousands of years in case of, for example, catastrophic plague and consequent loss of technical knowledge might be a technical safety issue. I suppose when such long-term problems find good technical answers nukes might be fine.
Why do people always assume that things will continue the way they are? This is like living in Jerusalem, AD 69.
Fabio: Civilian accidents from wikipedia http://tinyurl.com/9rqq6 seem to happen in many different countries: German “safe” pebble bed reactor, Japan, Argentina, UK, US, Russia/Ukraine.
Sorry, but complacency and foolish stinginess are endemic to the human condition, to governments and corporations alike. Can you find a technical solution to foolishness?
James — Cylons.
Vincirelly… good idea… why didn’t I think of that??? Put nuclear waste on top of a rocket… send one up once every couple of weeks… the odds of a bad launch happening and the nuclear waste raining down are what… 1 in 25 or so?
As far as nuclear waste being recyled… that is absolute misinformation.
When you reuse nuclear waste, what you are producing is even more toxic nuclear waste, since you are enriching the waste in the process. That is why ‘breeder’ recycling reactors are not of interest… they not only produce nuclear waste, they produce weapons grade nuclear waste in the process. Do you realize that when you put brand new rods in a nuclear reactor, they can actually be handled with minor (or no) protection because their radioactivity is very low, but when they come out they are lethal after a few seconds of exposure? The recylcling process takes those rods and makes them into even more lethal waste.
Japan does not have a recyling program… it exports it’s waste to France. France then creates MOX, which is very expensive to do, and has a content of at least 5% plutonium. You actually have to extract plutonium from each cycle and store it somewhere. The majority of the nuclear waste is not recycled, but instead kept in cooling/isolation pools.
LIke I said, many of us are not all that concerned about a major accident, which is the ‘safety’ factor that is being touted by the nuclear industry, but the fact is that nuclear waste is a major unresolved problem which we are basically ignoring because the short term gains are more politically expedient than the long term consequences.
The nuclear industry has been VERY effective in disseminating misinformation, making people concentrate on the short term safety of the power plants, while redirecting the discussion away from the long term consequences of the energy cycle.
The issue of storing the waste material is that no one wants it in their back yard, often with good reason Even Yucca Mountain, the proposed site for America’s nuclear wasts is prone to earth quakes. Didn’t the schemers know that Mountains have a tendency to sink over time?
The safest place to store nuclear waste would be underground. As deep as possible, such as South Africa’s diamond mines and gold mines. The area must be stable and away from any fault lines. In North America the safest place to store the waste would in Northern Canada in some of the played out hard rock mines.
The area is remote enough to prohibit easy access by unauthorized people. The ground is stable; being some of the oldest known rock on earth. The remoteness means less displacement of any population and a safe distance from any contamination. The depth of the mine would decrease any potential ground water contamination and sealing the hard rock would prevent it.
The downside to this location is the US would need to stay on Canada’s good side. Canada is much more energy independent then is the US and so doesn’t need this as much. A mutual guardianship would be needed to protect the mine from unscrupulous people. A safe reliable transportation network would be needed to move the waste material to the site that would circumvent the major population centers. But I believe these may be overcome.
Canada would definitely benefit from the decrease in coal generation stations. They have spewed a lot of toxic waste over Eastern Canada. The harmful effects from the storage would be negligible. It could bring a degree of prosperity to desolate regions with minimal environmental impact.
What choice is there? The world will not reduce it’s energy demands, it will increase dramatically. The first generation nuclear plants are getting old, and will need replacement. There’s already some question of long term radiation effects on concrete and steel used in containment buildings. Operating fusion plants are still a dream, perhaps 5 decades off. I don’t see many people begging for more coal fired plants, considering the carbon load on the atmosphere. There will be a new nuclear building boom, it’s just the NIMBY decisions now. You really can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
Growth requires energy. Personally, I lean towards coal-fired plants. Why? Because it do not use coal to heat my home, I use natural gas. But gas-fired power plants have been the rage for the last 15 years, placing my heating bill in direct competition with my electric bill.
But if you believe man is responsible for global warming, then nuclear is the only realistic choice.
Now I’m not really big on conspiracy theories, but I really would like to know why we are not taking more advantage of wind power. I’m not talking about building new generators, I’m talking about maximizing generation from the ones already built. With 40 to 50 percent rate-hikes the norm across the country, I don’t understand why wind generators are barely turning in winds steady at 20-30 miles per hour.
I had to travel the length of Wyoming last month and I fought a head wind for the entire 450 miles. There were signs along the freeway warning of gusts up to 65 miles an hour. And yet only 1 in 10 of the windmills I passed appeared to be cranking anywhere near 100%. Probably a third of them were barely turning at all. There it was– free, clean power being lost forever.
Smith,
Good point, I too think we should use more wind power. The down side is that wind power only generates when the wind is blowing, not a sure or constant thing. It could be used to supplant fossil fuel generators though when they do work.
Nuclear is probably a better way to go. I am sure that the designs have improved a great deal sine the last generators came on line. Their history of extreme cost overruns should be addressed first though.
Coal and natural gas generators may be cheap, but I feel the fuels should be kept for other uses. I think almost every home built today uses natural gas to heat and cook. To use that same fuel to generate electricity when there are alternatives is wasteful, in my opinion. Coal can always be used in gasification plants to produce equivalent natural gas, the same way it was done before we used well natural gas.
Nuclear vs. Coal and Gas – You Be the Judge:
1. Air pollution from burning coal causes 24,000 deaths PER YEAR in the USA alone, including 2,800 from lung cancer. The number is much higher in nations with lower emissions standards (Nuclear Power causes 0 air pollution deaths per year).
2. Over the last 10 years, coal mining deaths have averaged 33 deaths per year in the USA, and more than 6,000 per year in China. Because of the techniques used to mine uranium, there are almost no deaths from uranium mining – and contrary to popular belief uranium miners have no greater risk of cancer than the general population.
3. In the entire history of the nuclear industry the total number of fatalities, even with highly inflated Chernobyl death estimates, is ~16,000 deaths.
4. Coal plants release 800 tons per year of uranium to the atmosphere (from naturally occurring U in coal). The number for thorium is even higher. Nuclear plants release 0 uranium or thorium to the air.
5. In December 2006 “hundreds” of people were burned alive in Nigeria when an oil pipeline caught fire. More than 1000 people have died there in the past year from similar pipeline fires. Outside of Nigeria no one seems to care. It was but a blip on the media’s radar screen. However, if a trashcan catches fire in a nuclear plant, it’s an international event, even if no one is injured. In August 2000 12 people in NM were incinerated while camping near a gas pipeline that ruptured (does anyone even remember that?).
I’m just scratching the surface here, and didn’t even touch on the climate change issues. Go to my blog if you’re interested in more info, or if you would like the sources of my data (it is not from the nuclear Industry).
Buy yourself a load of THPW stock, support thorium nuclear power and eliminate the need for this kind of fear related to nuclear power involving plutonium. Plutonium is going to be outlawed worldwide soon. Thorium is cheaper, more efficient, will run existing nuclear power plants and reactors, and cannot be made into weapons.
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END OF STORY,
and the
BEGINNING of the next generation of wealth and non proliferation of nuclear weapons. We wont even care if IRAN and INDIA and CHINA have thorium based nuclear power. No weapons can be made, and existing nuclear reactors will run on thorium instead of plutonium, with very little cost in changing from plutonium to thorium as their fuel source. It is already happening, India and the US have already put the wheels moving, in December.
http://www.thoriumpower.com
I repeat, buy THPW stock.
Read up and become rich, while changing the world to be safer and going green for the environment. Whether you do or not, it is happening in 2007.