This is an attempt to look calmly, dispassionately, and rationally about the future of nuclear power. Disclaimer: I have absolutely no connection with the nuclear power industry and have no dog in this fight.
If I could wave a magic wand that would divert the course of history so that nuclear power never came to be then I would do so
without hesitation. That's not possible. We can proceed only from what we have right now, not what we'd like to have right now.
We have a wide spectrum of opinion on what to do next, but most people fall into one of two polarized groups: either end all nuclear power immediately or full speed ahead. The reality is that the first option is not feasible and the second is not sensible (actually I'd say that the second option is batshit insane). The reality is that we have a number of options and
none of them are good.
Why can't we shut down all nuclear power immediately?
Because it provides about 6% of the world's energy and 13–14% of the world's electricity. Some countries are more dependent upon nuclear power than others: France generates 80% of its electricity from nuclear generators; the US 19%.
We can't shut down all nuclear power right now without creating major energy problems. France almost certainly doesn't have enough mothballed conventional electricity stations to compensate for the loss of nuclear generation. Even if it did, the lost nuclear power would have to be compensated by burning more oil and coal.
In case anybody hadn't noticed, we're already on track to wiping out most of civilization with the twin threats of global climate change and peak oil. Global climate change would be exacerbated by switching from nuclear to oil, and it's already on track to disrupt the climate so much that the majority of the world's population could die either from extremes of temperature or from crop failures. We may already have entered peak oil, and demand will soon outstrip supply even if we retain nuclear power—most of the world's system of intensive agriculture relies upon cheap oil so look forward to the majority of the population starving even with nuclear power.
Of course, an intensive effort to deploy renewable/green energy sources would lessen the impacts of climate change and peak oil, but it seems there's little chance of that happening in time.
Why not full steam ahead?
The regulatory process is broken, and hence so are the behaviours of the companies that design and/or build and/or operate nuclear reactors.
As I said
here, the problem in Japan was not caused by building nuclear generators, or by building them in an earthquake zone, or building them on the coast. The real problem, caused by broken regulatory processes, was not designing the reactors to cope with tsunamis in a country that gave us the word "tsunami" because it has so many of them. A disaster was then turned into a catastrophe because the regulatory processes didn't spot any problem with putting the spent fuel cooling ponds where they could be damaged by a reactor explosion, magnifying the amount and the danger of radioactive release considerably.
In essence, nuclear power is seen as too big to fail. Regulators don't want to expose design flaws and demand they be corrected in case it disrupts the nuclear power industry. Operators cover up incidents, pretend nothing happened and do nothing to prevent recurrences because it would cost money and worry the public. It recently emerged that TEPCO delayed using seawater to cool the reactors because it would damage the plumbing so badly the reactors would have to be decommissioned, so they tried other (ineffective) measures first and made the situation worse.
Until and unless we can come up with mechanisms whereby special interests and worries about profits cannot over-ride safety concerns we cannot allow further construction of nuclear power stations. Not even those of new designs that are supposed to be inherently fail-safe. I have serious doubts that we ever can fix the regulatory processes to that degree.
So what now?
Immediate term
In the immediate term we have to shut down
all GE Mk 1 Boiling Water Reactors (the type in Japan) as quickly as possible. Even the ones far from earthquake zones and coasts. It's not that they're likely to have a disaster if they are far from earthquakes and tsunamis but the magnitude of the disaster no matter what the cause (operator error, faulty repairs, etc). The location of the spent fuel cooling ponds turn a disaster (however unlikely) into a major catastrophe.
In the immediate term we have to evaluate all the other designs of existing nuclear power stations to see which others are too dangerous to be permitted to operate and shut down the dangerous ones
as quickly as possible (which may take several years because we have to deploy replacement energy sources).
Short term
Short term we have to continue with nuclear power. As I said at the start, we can't just close them all down immediately—too much of our energy comes from them and we don't have alternatives ready to take up the slack.
In fact, we'll probably have to phase the shutdown of even the
really dangerous ones (ones where failure has a relatively high probability and ones where failure is relatively unlikely but the consequences would be very serious) over a period of years. I don't like that thought, but nor do I like the thought of long-duration, widespread power cuts during near-arctic winters.
Medium term
Medium term we must deploy alternative energy sources as quickly as possible so we can replace nuclear power stations. Preferably renewable resources (because of peak oil) but at least green sources (because of global climate change).
I have to say I have serious doubts that this will happen either. Neither climate change nor peak oil seem to have much influence on governments who appear to be more susceptible to bribes from the coal, oil and nuclear industries.
Even if it does happen, it's a
big project that will take many years. Solar power is available only during daylight. Wind power is sporadic. Continent-wide power grids can even out wind power because there can be strong winds in one part of the continent and still air in another, but it means a lot of wind turbines. Some sort of storage system could even out solar power, but that is going to mean a hell of a lot of money with technologies we have today.
To give an idea of the storage problem, the CEGB (the Central Electricity Generating Board of England and Wales, before Thatcher sold it off) wanted a way to cope with surges in electricity demand of the type that occur during adverts in a popular soap opera on TV (when people switch on a kettle to make tea or coffee). So they
hollowed out a mountain in Wales so they could pump water into it during low demand and power turbines from it during the adverts. These days power companies use gas turbines (essentially a jet engine powered by natural gas driving a generator) to cope with surges, but Dinorwig Power Station (which coped with surges of no more than 5 or 10 minutes) gives an idea of what would be needed to store enough solar power to cope with darkness using current technologies.
We have several storage concepts on the drawing boards and some of them may turn out to be practicable. Deploying any of those that turn out to be feasible in sufficient quantity would probably take several years.
Long term
Long term we either abandon nuclear power completely or determine if there could be any design that is intrinsically safe.
It seems like a no-brainer. If we manage to deploy sufficient alternative energy sources in the medium term then we don't need any nuclear power no matter how safe it is. But...
We have a lot of depleted uranium (DU) we need to dispose of. Depleted uranium is U-238, which is a different isotope from U-235 (the stuff used in most nuclear power generation and in one type of nuclear weapon). Uranium is typically 99.27% U-238 and 0.72% U-235, so we have a hell of a lot of U-238 left over.
U-238 has a half-life of 4,500,000,000 years. That doesn't mean that after 4.5 billion years it's all gone but that after 4.5 billion years you have half as much as you started out with. Another 4.5 billion years and you're down to 1/4 of the amount you started with. It's not the radioactivity that's the real problem (not with a half-life that long) but the toxicity. It is mutagenic and carcinogenic. Oh, and it is good at binding to DNA where it can do the most harm.
We need a good way of disposing of U-238. Problem is, we don't have any good ways of disposing of it, just very bad ways:
- One is to leave it in drums stored at separating plants. With this method we have to hope that our civilization survives the billions of years before the Sun turns into a red giant and engulfs the earth so there could be no possibility of a future civilization that might happen upon it without realizing how toxic it is.
- Another way is to inter it. Somewhere we can be reasonably sure a future civilization won't mine down to it (nowhere we can dispose of it is out of reach of future civilizations). Somewhere geological forces won't cause it to get into groundwater (Yucca mountain was proposed as such and finally rejected on geological grounds).
- Use it in breeder reactors. These turn U-238 into plutonium, which can be used to fuel more reactors (provided we don't ban nuclear power). The only downside is that plutonium can be diverted to use in nuclear weapons. It's cheaper and easier to chemically separate plutonium produced by a breeder reactor than it is to separate U-235 from uranium ore. In fact the first nuclear reactors, sold to the public as generating electricity, were dual-use breeder reactors and the plutonium was diverted by the US, Britain and France for weapons.
- We turn it into munitions. The US military loves DU munitions. The density means it has great penetrating power. It's also self-sharpening. Best of all, it's pyrophoric so burns with an intense heat. A wonderful weapon against tanks, where it turns the occupants into what the US military calls "crispy critters." There's a small downside: when it burns it produces nano-particles of uranium oxide that are carried by the winds all over the globe. Cancers and birth defects in Iraq went up by a factor of around 10 after Bush-the-smarter's gulf war and we've used a hell of a lot more in Bush-the-moron's gulf war. We're increasing the rates of birth defects and cancers globabally (many children in Iraq have been born with cancer, which was almost unheard of 20 years ago), but at least we're disposing of those big drums of DU.
None of those disposal methods are good ones. However, at least two new-generation reactor designs that claim to be intrinsically safe (take that with a large pinch of salt) have the ability to "burn" U-238 (they are effectively breeder reactors, but radically different from previous designs). In one of them (run only in computer simulations, so far) nuclear proliferation appears to be almost impossible. The plutonium it produces is used as fuel immediately. It may, if it actually works in reality as claimed, be the
only safe way we have to dispose of U-238. See more about it
here.
Conclusion
We have no good way forward from here. Really. If you think any of them are no-brainer decisions, you have no brain. They all have the potential to cause a lot of deaths, one way or another. But whichever way we go, it has to be decided upon by detailed, rational thought, not emotion.
I'm just glad that my family medical history means I probably have only 10–20 years of life remaining and that I have no children. The future is starting to look like a place I'd rather not visit.