Huge propaganda campaign to justify nuclear power (Helen Caldicott)

[Carolab]

Washington, DC, May. 21 (UPI) -- There is a huge propaganda push by the nuclear industry to justify nuclear power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases.

At present there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. If, as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to replace fossil fuels on a large scale, it would be necessary to build 2,000 1,000-megawatt reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant has been ordered in the United States since 1978, this proposal is less than practical. Furthermore, even if we decided today to replace all fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to four years.

The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for. The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidized by the U.S. government. The true cost of the industry's liability in the case of an accident in the United States is estimated to be $560 billion, but the industry pays $9.1 billion -- 98 percent of the insurance liability is covered by the federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing U.S. nuclear reactors is estimated to be $33 billion. These costs -- plus the enormous expense involved in the storage of radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years -- are not included in the economic assessments of nuclear electricity.

It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.

(more) http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050520-023103-2877r.htm

[mhr]

1. Peak Oil Will Demand More Nuclear Power

Despite Ms. Caldicott's protestations people will not give up their suburban lifestyles.

[Squeech]

2. I agree with you

And with Atrios, who mentioned the Price-Anderson act, which says that nuclear plant operators aren't liable for damages their reactors might cause above a certain dollar level. He said something to the effect of, when the industry thinks they're safe enough to cover their own risks, then we can talk about building new nukes.

I don't like fission for the same reasons I don't like combustion-- it's a sloppy way to get energy out, and you get byproducts you can't control. When we eat a carrot, we convert plant sugars into CO2 through a multi-step chemical process, getting useful energy out every step of the way, and using most of the other components too. But the consumer society way of dealing with it is like shoveling a bushel of carrots into the firebox of an old steam locomotive, which is just too crude.

[LifeDuringWartime]

3. as long as we dont use wind power!

dont want those horribly ugly windmills blocking the smoggy view

:sarcasm:

[dbackjon]

4. You mean the wind turbines

kill hundreds of eagles/hawks plus tens of thousands of other birds yearly?

[RC]

7. I have never seen a dead bird around a wind turbine.

Birds can see and avoid them as well as people. The blades do not turn that fast.

[dbackjon]

9. Please get informed......

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm

But for just as long, massive fiberglass blades on the more than 4,000 windmills have been chopping up tens of thousands of birds that fly into them, including golden eagles, red-tailed hawks, burrowing owls and other raptors.

[RC]

10. There are wind turbines around here.

I will say it again. I have never seen a dead bird around a wind turbine.





Now you tell me how a bird that is smart enough to fly around in and among the trees is too dumb to avoid a wind tower?

[aeolian]

11. The ones that kill birds spin like propeller blades.

Not like windmills.

[RC]

12. I think you may be talking about the farmers stock tank pumps.

[RC]

5. Fast Breeder Reactors

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene/fasbre.html

Under appropriate operating conditions, the neutrons given off by fission reactions can "breed" more fuel from otherwise non-fissionable isotopes. The most common breeding reaction is that of plutonium-239 from non-fissionable uranium-238. The term "fast breeder" refers to the types of configurations which can actually produce more fissionable fuel than they use, such as the LMFBR. This scenario is possible because the non-fissionable uranium-238 is 140 times more abundant than the fissionable U-235 and can be efficiently converted into Pu-239 by the neutrons from a fission chain reaction.

France has made the largest implementation of breeder reactors with its large Super-Phenix reactor and an intermediate scale reactor (BN-600) on the Caspian Sea for electric power and desalinization.

<Another Article>
Nuclear Waste and Breeder Reactors - Myth and Promise
In my earlier articles on nuclear power, I reviewed how fissile Uranium-235 drives a nuclear reactor, and how Uranium-238 participates in the process by transforming into Plutonium-239, which is fissile like Uranium-235. This phenomenon of nuclear physics lies at the heart of a conceptual blueprint by which the United States once and for all can end its energy dependence on fossil fuels and the unstable Third World nations who export petroleum.

Two significant obstacles stand in the way of an energy-independent United States: (1) Finding a solution to the immense amounts of dangerous and highly-radioactive spent reactor fuel already on hand, and (2) Implementing reactor designs that generate electricity while creating more useful nuclear fuel.

In order to see how this can be done, it's first necessary to review some basic physics: Plutonium-239 produces significantly more energy than Uranium-235. And the process continues to produce the additional isotopes Plutonium-240 and 241 and 242. This raises an interesting question.

Can we take these fuel rods that contain all this Plutonium, separate out the Plutonium and whatever Uranium was not used, and make more fuel rods? You bet. In fact, we actually end up with more fuel after the process than what we started with. Why is this not being done?

Plutonium is used in atomic bombs - the fact that it's pure Plutonium-239 that makes an atomic bomb work, and not the other three isotopes, apparently didn't matter, because in 1977 President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order that banned the reprocessing of nuclear fuel in the United States. The rationale was that the Plutonium could possibly be stolen, and terrorists might be able to use it to make atomic bombs.

Never mind that in the real world, it is essentially impossible to separate out the Plutonium-239 from the other isotopes in sufficient purity to use it for bomb making. The British tried it, the Russians tried it, the French tried it, and we tried it, but nobody did it very well, even though we had the best scientists and all the money in the world to throw at it.

If you try to make a bomb with such a mixture of Plutonium isotopes, forget about it - it won't work, ever. We're talking about the laws of physics, Greenpeace notwithstanding. Unless you have pure Plutonium-239, your bomb will fizzle. So throwing away all that valuable nuclear fuel to prevent terrorists from making a bomb that won't work anyway is just plain dumb.
http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear%20Waste%20and%20Breeder%20Reactors.htm

* * * * * * * * * *
There is more B.S. about the evils of nuclear power than generated by the bu$h administration about why the rich not paying taxes are a good thing.

[formercia]

8. Here's the real world

"Never mind that in the real world, it is essentially impossible to separate out the Plutonium-239 from the other isotopes in sufficient purity to use it for bomb making."

This is a lie. It turns out that the Soviets did use Pu239 in weapons. The problem was that thet emitted large amounts of radiation just sitting on the launchers. Of course they didn't tell the troops that had to handle them. One of the favorite spots to sleep was in the cab of the transporter that just happened to be next to the warhead which was hot to the touch. And they wondered why their hair was beginning to fall out.

[formercia]

6. Free U 235 and Plutonium

The Federal government wants to give away material recovered from weapons to use as fuel. A shipment of weapons-grade Plutonium was shipped to France last year to be converted to MOX (Plutonium+ Uranium Oxide) fuel to be used in a new class of reactors.

Funny thing is that 15 KG of plutonium somehow went missing from the time the ship left the US to when the material arrived at the reprocessing plant in France. Just enough to make a nuclear device.

Plutonium has a fuel value of several hundred thousand dollars us per Kilo, so you can see why companies are promoting nuclear power.

[amandabeech]

13. You might want to take this discussion over to the Environment

and Energy forum, where the pros and cons of nuclear power, as well as various renewable energy sources, are discussed at length and in detail on a regular basis.

[Carolab]

15. Feel free to repost there if you want.

I just wanted it to get more attention.

[amandabeech]

16. I'll check to see if the Calcicott piece has been discussed over

there. If it has, I'll bring it up. Otherwise, I'll repost.

[sweetheart]

14. Nuclear power has a really problematic NPV

NPV (Net Present Value) is the current cost of spending further in
time. So say you have a nuclear plant and it generates waste that
requires safekeeping for 1000 years, at a cost of 10,000 dollars current
per tonne with a rate of inflation of 3%.

This means, political change aside, that the cost of managing the waste
product increases with interest every year, as there is no permanent
solution in terms of security for dirty-bomb waste. So the problem
really is in doing a proper valuation given the half lives of the
waste products. Rather the industry today treats this as an externality,
something the public pays for later.... and is not calculated in to
their marketing.

When you add in this externality, nuclear power is grossly unsustainable.
Its fraudulent economics they use, and as the white hous is big on
economic fraud, they buy in to it with wishful thinking... like that
the externality is not important, as in the future, a new magic technology
will be developed to make nuclear waste just disappear... poof!

But the fact is, that this is not the case, and that it IS in ground
water supplies, it has leaked in to oceans and the environment
and the public has had to step in with billions in cleanup costs
just to contain the superfund fuckup messes that the nulear industry
has washed their hands of. Chernobyl alone is an economic disaster
of profound proportions when you calculate all the economic costs,
really all of them that ukraine has sustained from the disaster...
and it turns out that those kilowatt hours were a tad more expensive
... in fact, so expensive, that they were not worth it, EVER... but
nobody is responsible in the marketing of nuclear power... and they're
all selling a load of crap.