I oversaw the U.S. nuclear power industry. Now I think it should be banned.

[jpak]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/i-oversaw-the-us-nuclear-power-industry-now-i-think-it-should-be-banned/2019/05/16/a3b8be52-71db-11e9-9eb4-0828f5389013_story.html?utm_term=.bde48a2da325

Nuclear power was supposed to save the planet. The plants that used this technology could produce enormous amounts of electricity without the pollution caused by burning coal, oil or natural gas, which would help slow the catastrophic changes humans have forced on the Earth’s climate. As a physicist who studied esoteric properties of subatomic particles, I admired the science and the technological innovation behind the industry. And by the time I started working on nuclear issues on Capitol Hill in 1999 as an aide to Democratic lawmakers, the risks from human-caused global warming seemed to outweigh the dangers of nuclear power, which hadn’t had an accident since Chernobyl, 13 years earlier.

By 2005, my views had begun to shift.

I’d spent almost four years working on nuclear policy and witnessed the influence of the industry on the political process. Now I was serving on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where I saw that nuclear power was more complicated than I knew; it was a powerful business as well as an impressive feat of science. In 2009, President Barack Obama named me the agency’s chairman.

Two years into my term, an earthquake and tsunami destroyed four nuclear reactors in Japan. I spent months reassuring the American public that nuclear energy, and the U.S. nuclear industry in particular, was safe. But by then, I was starting to doubt those claims myself.

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[in2herbs]

1. I'm sure there will be some on DU that will disagree with this article, but IMO, until nuclear waste

is safe nuclear energy is not safe.

[AtheistCrusader]

9. Nuclear Proliferation rules are almost entirely why nuclear waste is a problem.

We can re-burn that 'waste' over and over in breeder reactors, but the side-product of plutonium and a Carter-era law about reprocessing rule it out for now.

When you REALLY run nuclear fuel through the ENTIRE fuel cycle, you get less waste that lasts about a 100 years. But because we don't for policy reasons, the waste we generate will last 10,000 years, and we generate a lot more of it. (And we also burn more fossil fuels mining that fuel, because we go through the fuel faster.)

The solution seems obvious.

[NeoGreen]

2. A very important point from the article...

...

For years, my concerns about nuclear energy’s cost and safety were always tempered by a growing fear of climate catastrophe. But Fukushima provided a good test of just how important nuclear power was to slowing climate change: In the months after the accident, all nuclear reactors in Japan were shuttered indefinitely, eliminating production of almost all of the country’s carbon-free electricity and about 30 percent of its total electricity production. Naturally, carbon emissions rose, and future emissions-reduction targets were slashed.

Would shutting down plants all over the world lead to similar results? Eight years after Fukushima, that question has been answered. Fewer than 10 of Japan’s 50 reactors have resumed operations, yet the country’s carbon emissions have dropped below their levels before the accident. How? Japan has made significant gains in energy efficiency and solar power. It turns out that relying on nuclear energy is actually a bad strategy for combating climate change: One accident wiped out Japan’s carbon gains. Only a turn to renewables and conservation brought the country back on target.

Emphasis added.

[Ghost Dog]

3. This is a very important article.

We all need to learn to consume less energy, basically.

But... fissioning thorium would be safer than fissioning uranium?

And, is the ITER fusion project moving forward as fast as it could?

[True Blue American]

4. Republicans in Ohio

Just approved a bill going away from clean energy and Natural gas, providing subsidies to Nuclear and Coal plants!

Thanks Mike DeWine and all you ignorant old fogies!

[eppur_se_muova]

5. By Gregory Jaczko nt

[Staph]

14. Thanks for posting the author.

Those of us who can't get behind the paywall needed to know!

[yaesu]

6. I've been watching Chernobyl on HBO & I remember quite well when that happened

it was releasing the amount of radiation equivalent to almost 2 Hiroshima type bombs every hour for days. They had 48 hrs to pump out water in tanks below the core or it would have completely destroyed the surrounding area with a blast of several megatons, left Eastern Europe uninhabitable for hundreds of years. It is still trying to be controlled decades later. It is a very dangerous form of energy when things go wrong & they do.

[SergeStorms]

8. I've been watching that as well.

It's very eye-opening to see what went on behind the story we were told. The number of people who died from the radioactivity blows me away. When things go wrong they're wrong for centuries, not days or weeks. I don't know if we'll ever be told the true price that's being paid from that one 'accident'.

[AtheistCrusader]

10. In fairness, the RBMK reactor that exploded, didn't even HAVE a containment.

It just flat doesn't have what we would consider a containment. At all.

Add to that, the RBMK has a positive void coefficient. In western designs, water is a neutron moderator, causing the neutrons to hang around and hit more fuel, giving more reactivity. If it flashes into steam in ours, reactivity DECREASES because neutrons escape without reacting. In the RBMK, if the coolant water flashes into steam, the reactivity INCREASES. So you can get a runaway effect. That's how a 1mw thermal reactor hit 33mw of thermal output (according to the stuck instruments in the control room) at the moment it exploded.

Add to that graphite moderation, with physical cracking/thermal damage preventing insertion of the boron control rods, AND the reactivity margin where the rods did work (There is a delay when you insert the rods, between the loss of water moderation displaced by the rods, and the damping effect of the boron, where reactivity actually increases)….

The whole design of Chernobyl looks less like a power plant, and more like a bomb. This wasn't a simple case of 'things going wrong'.

[LiberalLoner]

15. +1

[CDerekGo]

7. We only fooled ourselves

with Nuclear Energy, and how 'clean' it was, until we saw that somehow, someway, we still had to dispose of that Nuclear Waste. Where does it go? How long is it Radioactive? How long till we know it's no longer a danger?

Of course, carbon based fuels will always be a danger, and now we know that Nuclear Generation, while initially being 'cleaner' has it's downsides as well. No matter what Hairplug Himmler states about Windmill Cancer, I fail to see any downsides to Power Generation from Windmills or Solar Panels It's our future, at least it's our future, if we want one.

[AtheistCrusader]

11. About a hundred years of danger, if we actually fully burn the fuel.

It's only dangerous for tens of thousands of years, because we throw the rods away with 90% of the fuel unburnt.

[Hekate]

12. The older I get, the more I think of humans as just very clever monkeys dressed up ...

...as the Sorcerer's Apprentice. It's not a terribly hopeful point of view.

Yes, we occasionally produce the isolated instance of the Wise Woman or Wise Man, and yes, individuals show signs of learning. But so often I look on what we've accomplished as a species and think, "Clever, clever monkeys."

Nuclear power, mythologically speaking, was supposed to be the magic wish-fulfilling jewel, but we've known about its Shadow side for a long time now.

[AtheistCrusader]

16. This is true of ANY power generation. ANY.

It may get better in the future, but solar panels are toxic to produce, and just as or worse to recycle. They last about 30 years.
Wind turbines kill birds. Not as much as some people like to exaggerate, but it's not ideal either.
Concentrating solar also vaporizes birds.
Geothermal releases some CO2/other greenhouse gasses.
Hydro is monumentally expensive in initial carbon outlay to construct, damages fish habitats, and releases carbon from the land claimed for the reservoir behind the dam. And dams can fail, as we saw in the same earthquake that broke the Fukushima Dai-ichi reactors. The Fujinuma dam in the same prefecture collapsed, washing away homes and a bridge. 4 bodies were found, 8 missing. It actually killed more people than the reactors.
Nuclear needs a massive ultimate heat sink, which also causes problems for fish. Weapons proliferation risks. Meltdown risks. Fuel storage. Carbon from construction and the fuel cycle.

There is no power source, not even photovoltaic solar power, that is not without drawbacks and risks. That's part of why I endorse all of the above power sources, assuming proper regulation and implementation.

The only thing that is really risk-free, is conservation. (which I also heartily endorse)

[IndyOp]

13. Watch "Chernobyl" on HBO - estimated deaths 60 million after explosion

Soon after the core exploded they pored boron and carbon at the reactor to decrease extreme strong radiation emanating from the core - equivalent to dozens of Hiroshima bombs going off daily. The core was so hot that they inadvertently made “lava”. When they realized that and also realized that water tanks that were empty when the reactor was shut down had been filled with water when local emergency crews used water to put out fires they estimated that, if they could not empty the tanks a series of blasts would occur that would kill 60 million people and poison the ground water and thus water and food for everyone in Russia and neighboring countries.

The mini-series starts with the recollections of one of the physicists brought in at the time of the explosion to deal with the catastrophe. After a few minutes of recollections he commits suicide and then the story starts to unfold from the beginning.