Do you think nuclear power is safe?

[whirlygigspin]

here's a snapshot of emergency shutdowns from google:

Kewaunee plant may stay shut for 2 months
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, WI - Mar 9, 2005
... The shutdown could overlap with the planned shutdown of Point Beach Unit 2 reactor, which will be refueled and have its vessel cover replaced. ...

Nuclear-plant work comes at a cost
Green Bay Press Gazette, WI - Mar 11, 2005
... Wisconsin Public Service does not know yet how much the shutdown will cost. ... hoped to have the sale complete before the refueling outage and reactor vessel head ...

Unit 2 at nuclear plant is off line
Russellville Courier, AR - Mar 10, 2005
... of the unit’s four reactor coolant pumps will be replaced; and the unit’s two steam generators will be inspected. Prior to the shutdown, plant personnel

FirstEnergy's chief gives upbeat report on its future
Toledo Blade, OH - Mar 11, 2005
... head. The plant had been shutdown for two years following the discovery of a reactor head so corroded it nearly erupted. Davis-Besse's ...

ORNL reactor shutdown due to inconsistencies
WATE.com, TN - Feb 28, 2005
OAK RIDGE (AP) -- Officials say Oak Ridge National Laboratory's research reactor has been shut down because of "some inconsistencies.". ...

TVA Sequoyah reactor restarts after shutdown
WVLT, TN - Feb 25, 2005
Tennessee Valley Authority officials said a reactor at the Sequoyah Nuclear Plant was restarted today after automatically shutting down during maintenance two ...

Shutdowns vex plant
York Daily Record, PA - Mar 12, 2005
... An unscheduled automatic or manual nuclear power reactor shutdown poses no danger to the public and serves as a primary plant safety measure, said Neil Sheehan

Broken breaker forces nuclear disconnect
Portsmouth Herald News, NH - Mar 23, 2005
... While the breaker is being fixed, the reactor is being cooled down, Griffith ... The shutdown comes just as the nuclear plant prepares to undergo another refueling ...

Refueling outage under way at Exelon’s QC station
Quad City Times, IA - Mar 22, 2005
... Unit 1 was shutdown Monday after what had been a 455-day run of safe ... That set a new company record for continuous operation of a two-reactor nuclear energy ...

I feel safe.

*The nationwide average last year was just short one emergency shutdown for each of the 103 commercial reactors in use.

[Warpy]

1. It won't be safe until we figure out what to do with the garbage

The radioactive trash we generate today may be a fuel source for tomorrow, but we're not there yet, and we don't have the technology to keep this stuff encapsulated for 100,000 years.

[seriousstan]

2. When safety measures work, yes, I feel safe.

I think that is why they are there. As someone who works in a science environment, I know that safety features and redundancy is an excellent idea. I also am not throwing a system out when it is functioning as built.....including these safety functions.

[Maple]

3. Yes

It's the waste that's the problem.

For a long long long time.

And we aren't anywhere close to solving that.

[Senior citizen]

7. I think the waste problem is being solved.

We use it in bullets to kill people who we're going to kill anyway, and if it kills our people also, as collateral damage, well, they knew there was a risk and that they'd be considered expendable.

Low level wastes have been found in scrap metal shipments to other countries that end up as cheap cooking pots and salad bowls that are sold here.

Low level wastes have been mixed with sewage and used as fertilizers.

The "powers that be" apparently think that if you dilute the stuff, it becomes harmless, or at least will only harm poor people. They have teams of attorneys to shield them from lawsuits, and hordes of legislators to ensure that they won't be stuck with medical bills.

As for nuclear plants, they are much safer than the cooling ponds which are invariably close to them and vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Or the shipments of nuclear wastes on public roads.

People who plan on being raptured really don't care about the future, as they don't expect to be here.

We are a Christian nation. Our patriarchal war-god stood with us as we used atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We retain the nuclear option. We have slain the Goddess of Life. We are Satan, we are Death, and we don't give a fuck. Safe? Crossing the street isn't safe. Nuclear plants make money. Nothing else counts.

No, this is not sarcasm. This is truth.

[davepc]

4. I grew up in the shadow of Indian Point

and never felt unsafe, and it never did anything to harm me.

Meanwhile I got to breath pollutants that are slowly killing me from coal plants in Ohio.

[NV Whino]

5. Well, when the idiots build them on earthquake faults

What can I say.

The waste is the main problem.

But what I can't figure out, if it is still radioactive for 100,000 or 200,000 years, why can't we continue to use it in some capacity for that length of time instead of burying it and contaminating the earth, air and water?

[XemaSab]

24. That's my question too

If we can get energy out of a rod for the next 100,000 years, hey, why not go for it?

But if we've got a bunch of rods that are so radioactive they light up the night sky that only work for 20 years and then they need to be deep sixed for the next 100,000 years, no thanks.

[lastknowngood]

6. Yes if you're far enough away

n/t

[enough]

9. That is the point.

I spoke in front of a panel at a hearing concerning the licensing of the Limerick power plant -- the last nuke to be licensed in the USA -- not long after Three Mile Island did what it did.

I expected to be treated as an idiot, but there was one thing they agreed on.

The one thing the panelists (otherwise known as the NRC) agreed with me about was -- they DID NOT KNOW what happened at Three Mile Island -- They did not know what was going on while it was happening, and they did not know what happened when they investigated later.

They can say whatever they want. The only way to be safe is to be far enough away.

[phaseolus]

8. Depends.

In the "pro-business" anti-regulation privatize-profits-socialize-costs climate that the Bushies are foisting on us, I suspect Nukulur power is a risky proposition.

With well thought-out safety standards and procedures, it could concievably be safe. Then, and only then, can we consider if it's economical or not. (And you just *know* this gang would relax standards in order to enhance utilities' profitability... which is wrongheaded, by this engineer's judgment...)

[iconoclastNYC]

77. The entired nuclear industry knows...

That if there is another accident, the nuke industry dies. New reactors do not work the way the old ones did. And the biggest thing to do about waste is revoke Carters stupid reg outlawing reprocessing (recycling)

[Massacure]

10. The safety of nuclear power depends on the design of the system

The U.S. reactors are old and make me nervous. From what I have seen and heard, Canada and France have used nuclear power much more effectively than the U.S. has. Breeder reactors reduce the amount of waste and the longetivity of it.

[NNadir]

11. Half of these "shutdowns" are maintainence.

The only difference between nuclear shutdowns and shutdowns (and deaths) everywhere else is that nobody cares about the millions of people who die each year from air pollution.

No one has ever died from a commercial nuclear accident in the United States. No one has ever died from so called nuclear waste. If I'm wrong, prove it.

Thus the lack of "safety" related to nuclear power is simply a function that no one gives a rat's ass about all of the people who die from natural gas explosions, black lung, coal mine accidents, refinery explosions, air pollution, fossil fuel wars, etc. etc, and most of all the people who will be dying over the next decade or so from global climate change.

If anyone cared about safety they'd be screaming for as many nuclear plants as possible as fast as they could be built.

[htuttle]

14. What's stopping them?

I have yet to see the energy industry not get their way under this president. If they really wanted to build new nukes, they could.

The environmental movement in this country didn't even have enough political juice to stop drilling in ANWR, nor enough to get the US to sign onto Kyoto (or keep arsenic and mercury out of the ground water, etc...). It's not the environmental movement that's stopping the building of new nukes. They don't have anywhere near that much political clout in the US.

Could it be that nuke plants aren't that profitable in the end?

[phantom power]

15. It's more like they aren't profitable in the beginning.

Fossil fuel plants are much cheaper. If you are thinking near-term only. And if you ignore the external costs.

[htuttle]

16. So, why don't they build them?

Sure, there's the NIMBY syndrome, but with this administration's propaganda machine at the disposal of the energy industry, overcoming that wouldn't take long.

Is it because the energy industry thinks 'near-term only', as you say? Maybe that's why so many of us are uncomfortable with them operating nuclear power plants...

[phantom power]

17. This administration is owned by the fossil fuel industry,

not the nuclear industry.

[htuttle]

18. Looks like they have a fair amount of clout to me

Nuclear powers charge Bush's campaign
(from 2000)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2000/06/05/politics1509EDT0164.DTL

Mission Impossible
(from 2002, about Yucca Mountain)
http://www.capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=14

Tables of campaign contributions by energy companies
http://www.foe.org/camps/eco/payingforpollution/table1.html

Last I checked, Bechtel and GE were the largest nuclear power companies. Don Rumsfeld used to work for Bechtel, as well as Reagan minion George Schultz, and GE has about as much clout as any corporation outside Halliburton itself.

You don't think they couldn't get their way if they wanted to?

[phantom power]

19. I wish human nature were better than it is, too.

But we go to work with the nature we have, not the nature we wish we had :-)

Pointing out human shortcomings doesn't get us anywhere. OK, so we humans are prone to short-term thinking. Well, that's going to be true whether we embrace nuclear power or not. Our short-term thinking is currently killing us, as applied to fossil fuels. Embracing nuclear power will be an improvement. We either rise to the challenge or not.

Making statements like "we aren't mature enough for nuclear power" is self-destructive, and the track-record doesn't even support the statement. Nuclear plants are being operated all the time, and so far their safety record is good. In contrast, fossil fuels are killing us right now, and they ways they kill us are intrinsic, not avoidable. The various ways that nuclaer might be dangerous are all perfectly avoidable, and in fact have been avoided in the overwhelming majority of cases.

[htuttle]

20. So again, what's stopping them?

Nobody is asking for my opinion on nuclear power except here on DU. I have no say in the matter, nor does anyone else I know. The public's opinion has become increasingly irrelevant on any number of matters, including the construction of power plants.

If nuclear power is so great as you argue it is, once again, why don't the energy companies build nuclear plants? If you are cheerleading for nuclear power, what course of action are you suggesting?

What needs to be done, in your view? Don't just say, "build more nuke plants", since neither myself nor anyone I know is in a position to build their own nuke plant.

[phantom power]

21. What needs to be done...

I can think of two courses of action for people like ourselves.

1) Write your congressmen. Let them know you think the government should encourage more nuclear plants.

2) Try to influence anti-nuclear groups. For example, the Union of Concerned Scientists. Tell them they should drop their anti-nuclear stance. Better yet, tell them you are witholding any donations until they do.

Beyond that, I really don't know. All we have is our voices. I've posed this question a couple of times in this forum, sort of directed at NNadir, since he appears to be the resident expert. I've never received any response, from him or anybody else.

Regarding your theme of "what's stopping them", cost seems like a sufficient barrier. In our current economic climate, it's not a good investment relative to a coal-fired plant. This is because our economics does not address external costs of coal. In my view, that is the reason for governments to step in and manage the discrepancy, but our current government doesn't believe in that kind of management.

However, I expect that another reason is that it's hard to get a nuclear plant approved, because people in this country fear nuclear power. So, if you were a power company planning on building a nuclear plant, you'd have to contend not only with the "business case", you'd have to contend with the fact that everybody would oppose you. Where-ever you tried to build it, people would demonstrate against you. Well-meaning environmental groups would file injunctions against you, etc.

Again, the only way I know to change these conditions is to try and influence our government and other citizens and environmental groups. Which amounts to writing letters, or making phone calls, etc.

[htuttle]

22. The NRC has never denied a nuclear license renewal, from what I can see

http://www.energybulletin.net/2178.html

And I highly doubt that environmental groups could stop one of these things if the energy industry really wanted them. Maybe back in the early 1980's, but not anymore. Who cares what the Union of Concerned Scientists thinks nowdays? Nobody in power does, that's for sure.

However, it appears that nuclear plants may not be as profitable and efficient as you suggest:
http://zena.secureforum.com/Znet/zmag/articles/hartjuly97.html

On April 10, GPU Nuclear Corp., owner of the Three Mile Island station, said it will ask the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities for permission to sell or shut down the Oyster Creek plant by 2000. Utility officials said the cost of electricity generated at the plant in Toms River, NJ, is about 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour more than the going market price. Oyster Creek began operating in 1969 and is licensed by the NRC to run until 2009.

A study by the Washington International Energy Group released in February predicts that 37 plants, representing 40 percent of the nation’s nuclear capacity, will likely shut down within the next seven years because their production costs are higher than projected electricity prices in their markets. Nine Mile Point, Zion and Oyster Creek were among the plants named. Other economists have predicted that anywhere from 10 to 40 plants will close in the near future.

If my tax dollars go toward subsidizing a power plant, I want the public to own it. I'll be damned if I'll subsidize a power plant only to allow a private corporation to keep all the profits from it. If they want to build one, and pass on the costs from it's construction to their customers, that's one thing. Then they'd have to compete with alternative energy sources in the sort of 'fair marketplace' that Republicans like to talk about (but never actually want to implement). That's how it's supposed to work, right? The good ideas make money and stick around, and the bad ones don't, and go away.

But having the public pay for a plant up front, while a private company owns it and keeps the short term profits to pay to their CEO (instead of reinvesting them)? Forget it.

[phantom power]

23. I agree with your last point completely.

One of the biggest pathologies of our current economy is that we allow so many industries to get away with "publicized risk" and "privatized profit". It's unjust, and also simply economically unhealthy.

Regarding license renewal, I would point out if they haven't denied any renewals, they also haven't approved any new plants in decades.

As far as the cost of nuclear power, I'm not qualified to say that one source is more correct than another. One thing I am certain of, generically: the prices we currently pay for energy are artificially low. If nuclear power is significantly more expensive than what we are paying for various fossil fuels, then I would reiterate that's because there are so many costs to fossil fuels that we simply ignore (as has been pointed out frequently in this forum).

The age of artificially cheap fossil-fuel energy is coming to an end. One way or another, we're going to be paying more for our energy. It's either coming out of our pocketbooks, or it's coming out of our hides. In fact, it's already coming out of our hides, so I for one am fine with the idea of paying more money for safer sources of energy.

[hunter]

27. Oyster creek is a 636 megawatt boiling water reactor.

These sorts of reactors were built by General Electric and have a history of various fascinating maintenance problems.

Just for fun you might google "Boiling Water Reactor" and "core shroud." Some of these ragged old reactors are literally held together with high-tech safety pins.

Realistically, I think the United States is now too corrupt and technically incompetent to safely or profitably run any new nuclear power program.

We have become that strange old crazy guy who lives down the street with all the old cars parked on his lawn, some of them running, most of them not. People are only nice to us because they know we have lots of guns.

Look, folks, let's be frank. We've got a president who couldn't describe how a bicycle works, much less how a nuclear power plant works.

We've got entire school districts where teachers are afraid to mention the facts of life -- especially "evolution" or "sex."

We've got people who believe, by some miracle, that Terri Schiavo could somehow regrow enough brain to remember who she was.

You don't believe me that things are that bad?

• How many space shuttles have we lost?
  
• Remember the great blackout of 2003?
  
• How about the huge BP oil refinery explosion in Texas? http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4898761,00.html
  

I could make a much longer and depressing list, but I won't.

The "free" press in the United States is strangely quiet about all of this, as if they are afraid any examination of bad news might destroy our voodo economy.

Heaven forbid the economic black magic sustaining the United States stops; Heaven forbid Asian ships stuffed full of cheap consumer goods stop visiting our ports.

Do I think nuclear power is safe? Yeah, it could be, and it is certainly better than many alternatives, especially coal.

But I don't think, at this point, the United States can do it safely. Before we build a single new nuclear plant we've got to stop our slide into the tar pits of ignorance. We've got to fix our schools, fix our healthcare system, and get rid of this attitude that it's okay to be an ignorant fool so long as you love Jesus and hate sin.

[ChemEng]

30. So how many people have been killed by nuclear power ...

plant accidents in the U.S.? Seems as if your argument is full of holes.

I happen to work in the chemical industry, and we have one of the safest work records in all of industry. One reason is that we learn from our mistakes. Look it up.

[hunter]

51. Working in the chemical industry...

...I imagine you see things changing all around you.

The most interesting question I can ask you is not "how many people have been killed by nuclear power?" which seems to be unrelated to the point I was trying to make, but how many engineers and other high-tech workers in your business are now trained overseas?

Certainly there are many more than you would have seen in the U.S. chemical industry, say, thirty years ago. The same thing is happening in medicine. The U.S. education system cannot keep up with the demand for high-tech workers. The U.S. education system cannot keep up with the demand for "low-tech" workers either.

Here in California I see a lot of imported workers in low-tech jobs such as fast-food, agriculture and hospitality, and a lot of imported workers in high-tech jobs such as engineering and medicine. I'm not sure what everyone else here is doing, except for shuffling papers and money in deals that are basically multilevel-marketing or Ponzi schemes. (Gambling is a pretty big industry too.) Many Americans apparantly believe we can all refinance one another into prosperity while other people do the real work. Enron, WorldCom, WalMart, etc., are not abberations in our faith-based economy.

From this cynical perspective I don't believe the United States is capable of safely restarting the nuclear power industry on it's own.

If we somehow come up with the political will to make nuclear power the foundation of our energy supply it will not be a "home grown" solution; rather I suspect we will be playing catch-up by importing the technology and talent from nations where the nuclear industry is not moribund. We will not be leaders, we will be followers. The average United States citizen will not accept nuclear power until they see it is successful elsewhere.

This shouldn't be surprising news to anyone. The U.S. automotive industry has been working in this mode since the early 'seventies, and it is probably no coincidence that we stopped building nuclear plants at about the same time.

We must not underestimate the dangers of nuclear power, especially any nuclear power program run by our very broken bureauacracy. My example of the space shuttle accidents was not specious -- it proves that the U.S. is capable of the same sorts of bungling and short-sightedness that caused the nuclear accident at Chernobyl. If there is any way to have a nuclear accident then the present-day United States can probably do it just as well as the old Soviet Union did.

Creating a safe nuclear power system in the United States is probably not a technical problem, instead it is a political problem. Our current political system in the United States is too corrupt to determine the actual economic cost of nuclear power compared to other sources of energy, and it is too corrupt to safely regulate a renewed nuclear power development program. For every sincere nuclear power developer there will be a pack of corrupt Enron-style developers competing for government funds, and in Bush-Cheney world, the honest and careful developers don't win, it's the guys who grease the politicians who do.

Whenever I think about nuclear power I remember the Tay Bridge Disaster of 1879, which is one of the classic cases of forensic engineering.

Go here...

http://www.open2.net/forensic_engineering/riddle/riddle_01.htm

...and then click "theories" on the sidebar.

It is very striking that these three after-the-fact arguments are very similar in structure to many modern arguments about nuclear power. It is also striking that the economic and political structures of the 1870's do not seem radically different from the Bush-Cheney economic models.

In the very narrow picture, yes, there are Americans who are competent to safely build and run nuclear power plants, and they do it every day. But the broader picture is that we don't know the true costs of nuclear power in the United States (or of any other energy source for that matter) and we cannot be assured that any renewed development of nuclear power in this nation could be done safely.

I think of it this way: the recent refinery accident in Texas could have been worse... It could have been a high temperature nuclear reactor making hydrogen that spilled it's guts, instead of an isomerization unit.

[Coastie for Truth]

57. I am FORMER chemical engineer

and HazMat Regulator (USCG) - and I am now in the Alternative, Green, and Renewable energy field (photovoltaics, fuel cells, high energy batteries for electric cars and hybrids) - and there's a Wind Farm just up 680-580 from me (Altamont)- and I was born in South Western PA's "coal fields" and grew up over the hill from the coke ovens of Clairton PA and just up the Mon from Donora PA (Google "Donora Smog")

There is no way we can sustain our life style (even if we all drove Mini-Coopers and Priuses, took rapid transit, lived in transit villages where everything was "walkable" and "pedestrian friendly" and replaced our cathode ray tube tv's and terminals with LCD flat panel displays) without nuclear. The sum total of photovoltaic, geothermal, wind, bio-mass, and hydro won't do it -- even going beyond "best available technology" to "most recently published doctoral dissertations" (such as converting farm waste to motor fuel by bugs biochemically published at University of Illinois) won't do it. We "need" nuclear power.

The actual social cost of not going to nuclear far exceeds the statistical or probabilistic environmental cost of going to nuclear.

[hunter]

62. I agree with you.

There is no way we can sustain anything approaching our current "life style" without nuclear power.

Even if we build nuclear power plants according to Victorian-era industrial standards we will probably be better off then if we don't.

We may come to regard some slight nuclear pollution as a sign of "progress" in the same way that people of the 1800's looked at the smokestacks of their coal-fired industries as a sign of progress.

The survivors of the twenty-first century may be slightly irradiated, but any cultures that do not embrace nuclear power will be (in our own twisted visions) "primitive," or much more likely dead.

A best case scenario of a non-nuclear powered world is Ursula K. Le Guin's "Always Coming Home."

http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=7-0520227352-0

(There's a part in that book about an ethanol powered tank that always makes me laugh...)

Another best case scenario would be that the next intelligent life form to inherit this earth will not be so bloody-minded stupid as humans were.

The worst case scenarios are that humans become extinct and there is no intelligent life on earth.

God will not be kind to humanity if we somehow manage to kill off the social insects and fungi. In that case Saint Peter will hand us a card at the pearly gates that says:

Go directly to Hell. Do not pass GO. Do not collect two hundred dollars.

Woooooooof! Just like lighting a match to find a bad gas leak... and we will be falling naked for eternity through clouds of flame.

[dcfirefighter]

26. Call your Senator's office,

Your congressional represantative's office, your state representative's office, and your like-minded friends and tell them:

You want a carbon tax. You want it to be $10 / ton of elemental carbon released to the atmosphere. This is about $0.02 per gallon of gasoline. You want it to increase by $5 / ton C / per year. You'll allow offsets for increased biomass & other sequestering of carbon. You want the entirety of this revenue, less ~1% for management costs, returned to the people of the United States in the form of a universal refundable income tax credit.

Drive a big SUV if you want, it's money in my pocket. Use less than the per capita carbon and you can pocket the difference. It can't hurt the economy, it can only change behavior.

I accept tradeable permits, but the MUST be AUCTIONED, not GIVEN AWAY. Again, the revenue should be returned to the people, who's air is being polluted.

[ChemEng]

29. Because people ....

oppose nuclear power and cause delays that increase financing costs greatly. A natural-gas fueled power plant takes at most four years to build from the time the permitting process begins. Nuclear power plants take ten or more years.

One solution would be to have a standardized plant design that is licensed once. Then we could build the plants in three or four years and reduce construction and engineering costs.

By the way, the same nimby attitude is why we will never see another refinery built in this country. It won't stop us from importing refined products, however.

[htuttle]

31. Name one nuclear reactor that was stopped by public opinion

The only thing close I can find in recent memory was the L.E.S. uranium enrichment plant (not a power plant) in 1997. The NRC partially reversed that decision later, but L.E.S. had moved onto other projects. I don't know if that really counts or not.

Where is this NRC that pays such close attention to public opinion nowdays? It doesn't seem to be the same NRC that I'm acquainted with.

Public opinion might cause DELAYS from time to time (pesky democracy), but it rarely stops the plants from getting licensed.

So again, why don't they build them if they are so great?

[NNadir]

32. Shoreham, Seabrook II, and many other plants were stopped by

public ignorance, myth and stupidity.

I know. I was on the side of the stupid at Shoreham. It's the one of the biggest political regrets of my life.

Nuclear power is expanding wherever people think (and there are over thirty nuclear reactors under construction today, and many, many, many more planned) in countries where people can add and subtract. (The US wouldn't apply as such a country.)

Our public is so fucking stupid that George W. Bush is living in our White House. Oh, and don't lecture on "Democracy." Democracy depends intimately on an informed and educated population. That is definitely NOT what exists in this country, and informed and educated population. What passes for education in this country is a talismanic MBA that teaches how to shuffle papers and little else.

We deserve what we are going to get, which is poverty and poverty that will be capped by even more ignorance, environmental catastrophe and wishful thinking.

[Township75]

12. I feel safe and I wish they would build one in my back yard!

That way, I would have cheap clean energy, and my property taxes would stay low because most people only know nuclear power through movies and TV shows with massive meltdowns resulting in mutants therefore they won't want to build a house near it.

The waste is a concern, but I would rather deal with that as compared to the air pollution, dangers of mining, and dangers of abandoned mines that are associated with coal. I grew up in coal country, and long after those mines are abandoned they still pollute the ground water, can collapse, and other hazards.

Nuclear for me please!

[phantom power]

13. It's far safer than continuing to burn fossil fuels.

[BamaGirl]

25. I live 15 miles from

Farley and I feel safe. Certainly safer from them than some of the plants spewing crap into the air on a day to day basis here. Can't beat it as far as cost either. I pay about $75/month for a family of 5.

[WMliberal]

28. I feel safer than from the effects of fossil fuel fired plants.

Did any of those shutdowns lead to early deaths in America? Fossil fuel burning plants do so by the thousand every year. Looking at the alternative, I feel safer with my local nuke plant than breathing the air from your coal plant.

[SHRED]

33. Wrong energy model

Energy needs to be de-centralized and produced at home.

[NNadir]

35. Oh please.

[Coastie for Truth]

58. Gimme a break

My current project is small scale fuel cell stationary plant - gets natural gas from the utility, reforms it to H2 and CO2, used the H2 to run the fuel cell. Neat - but so what.

I live in a high rise condo - use photovoltaics top charge my battery operated stuff - neat, but so what.

We need nuclear power to avoid the social disloactions that will come - for sure - as "Peak Oil's" consequences begin to bite.

[Tikki]

34. Nuclear radiation killed a member of my family... as sure...

...as if someone held a gun to her back and shot a bullet through her left lung.

Kind of like a slow carbon monoxide leak that lulls you, unknowingly, off to your death, Nuclear radiation released into your environment will kill you.
As for the US Government actually caring about these deaths...well, they are just collateral damage on the way to Progress....Hint: Progress Is Our Most Important Product...

Tikki

[dcfirefighter]

36. If it was Lung Cancer

it was something she inhaled, likely from a coal plant.

[Coastie for Truth]

59. And if it was thyroid cancer

it was probably from the overuse of "diagnostic x-rays" for "sinusitis" (hitting a lot of older baby boomers).

[NNadir]

37. Tell us exactly how you "know" this.

Sorry, but I don't believe you actually know what you are talking about.

One of the least reliable sources on causes of death has to be family members.

[Gregorian]

38. People don't realize that there is nuclear fallout from coal plants

Coal contains nuclear material. It comes with the territory. It's part of what is mined out of the ground. I don't remember the details, but in my senior year in college, we talked about how much radiation is emmited by coal plants. It was astounding. Chernobyl was mentioned. It was something like one year of America's coal fired plants equals one Chernobyl meltdown. I know this is one step removed from heresay. The point is that energy is far from safe, and far from free.

The only good alternative is to lower our lifestyle. I hate to say it. The second best thing is to take immediate steps to stabilize the world population. But since that's dictatorial... get used to radiation.

[NNadir]

39. Here you go.

This link is an excellent one on this subject:

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

[Gregorian]

49. Extremely interesting article.

That is so full of information it's boggling. From the duality in treatment of waste materials from coal versus nuclear, to the potential for making a nuclear bomb from coal effluent.
Once again we can see that it's all about cronyism, politics, corporatism. The people are just pawns, until they know the truth.
But really, I see it in a bigger light. I think we were meant to live less extravagantly. Maybe I'm wrong. But we sure are paying a high price for it.
Thanks. Great article. Everyone should read that.

[struggle4progress]

73. Per unit of electricity produced, nuclear power plants release orders ...

... of magnitude more radioactivity than coal plants.

From the article above,
"According to the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements (NCRP), the average radioactivity per short ton of coal is 17,100 millicuries/4,000,000 tons, or 0.00427 millicuries/ton ... An average value for the thermal energy of coal is approximately 6150 kilowatt-hours(kWh)/ton."

Meanwhile,
"Tritium is also a by-product of light-water and heavy-water nuclear reactor operation. In their coolants, these reactors produce about 500 to 1,000 and 2 x 10{sup 6} Ci/yr, respectively, for every 1,000 MW(e) of power." http://www.eh.doe.gov/techstds/standard/hdbk1079/hdb1079a.html

Thus a light-water reactor is producing from 5.0E-4 to 1.0E-3 Ci/kW-yr and a heavy water reactor is producing 2.0E1 Ci/kW-yr of the radioisotope H-3 in coolant (and essentially all of this will be released), before we consider any other radioisotope production or release; in particular, we have not considered H-3 production in fuel. In comparison, the total radioactive production of the coal plant, according to the figures provided, is (4.27E-6 Ci/ton) /(6.15E3 kWh/ton) = 6.9E-10 Ci/kWh = 6.05E-6 Ci/kW-yr. Note that we haven't discussed tramp fuel, noble gases, or any of a number of other sources of radioactivity releases from nuclear power plants.

The article claims "2,630,230 millicuries" (or about 2600 Ci) of radioactivity is released by coal plants in the US in 1982. If you read many annual radioactive effluent release reports from US nuclear power plants, you'll see that a reported H-3 inventory of 2000 Ci in liquid effluent is not terribly uncommon.

[amazona]

40. I know it isn't safe

My partner had a job assignment in a local nuclear power plant. He had to sign a form acknowledging that if he was separated from his escort, he could be shot on sight.

His escort disappeared almost immediately just the same, leaving my partner very nervous. When the guys with guns came around, they asked if his escort was so-and-so and when he said, "yes," they said, "we've told him not to do this but he does it all the time."

Take Home: Security at these places is just not very secure.

They also tried to get away with sending him into a "dirty" environment without the proper suit. He won't go back into that plant.

We're pretty much asking people to give up years of their lives and die a prolonged, expensive death to work in these places. We ask the same of coal workers but coal workers are at least aware of what they're giving up. A worker told my partner, "I never seen any radiation in this room." Seriously. I suppose when he gets cancer, he'll blame the color TV or something.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[dcfirefighter]

41. It's quite easy to monitor radiation

I've never worked in a plant, nor do I have any insight as to whether or not they follow the rules. It's my impression that they do: how many things at your work do you do 'because you might be sued'? Likewise, despite current evidence to the contrary, most people are good, and like doing their job well.

Anyway, anyone who deals with a nuclear source, from a small X-ray machine, to enriched uranium fuel rods, has to be monitored for radiation exposure. Cheaply, this is done with little plastic film badges, wristbands, or rings that are generally sent out for analysis. More expensively, this is done with pager-style digital devices that alarm if the dose or dose-rate are exceeded.

Radiation is invisible, but otherwise easily detected. It does not propagate, generally, through air currents, or even much through water. Even if a 'dirty bomb' were detonated in a major US city, the cleanup would be straightforward, if incredibly expensive. But, the expense would be relative. It'd probably be cheap compared to constructing a new aircraft carrier.

[amazona]

52. yes they cheated on his dosimeter too

How could I have possibly forgotten to mention that? He wore a radiation badge and because he was trained in handling radiation products knew how to read when the dosimeter was discharged.

They mailed him back a report claiming he was exposed to 0.000 mrems of radiation.

In other words they lied from start to finish.

And they rely on worker/contractor ignorance and fear to get away with it. My partner was a third party contractor, he could not file a complaint or he would risk losing the job and the customer.

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[struggle4progress]

66. You believe radioisotopes are not transported by air or water ???

[NNadir]

42. Really? Can you name anyone who was injured in this transaction?

Or should we allow the Greenhouse effect to kill us all because you know someone who was nervous and someone else who unescorted at a nuclear plant?

You don't think these kinds of things happen elsewhere, say at refineries?

Sometimes I just don't understand people...

[Throckmorton]

50. Sorry, but thats just not true.

My partner had a job assignment in a local nuclear power plant. He had to sign a form acknowledging that if he was separated from his escort, he could be shot on sight.

He was no more likely to be "Shot on Sight" by a guard at a nuclear power station, than you or I are to be shot by a police Officer issuing a speeding ticket.

[amazona]

53. sure he wasn't but if he knows this by now...

...all the world's terrorists also know this. People have done things like pull up in a boat alongside Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania and get onto the site of a nuclear power plant. I could tell you other ways that people get inside nuclear power plants but don't feel like giving the bad guys MORE ideas.

We are told these plants are adequately protected. They're not. And, I agree with the other poster, refineries are not adequately protected either. A terrorist attack on a nuclear power plant, refinery, or both is only a matter of time if security is not improved.

If we can't agree that unknown people should not be wandering around refineries or nuclear power plants, then we have no common ground for discussion and I will have to bow out. If you're fine with unknown people wandering around such plants, all I can do is shake my head in wonder. You will have to understand why working class people who actually go into these plants will not be much impressed that plant safety is of no value -- we're the ones who lose our co-workers and family members in accidents, cancer caused by unsafe exposure, possible terror attack, etc.


When you say that plants with inadequate security and inadequate safety procedures are OK with you, you are saying that it's fine to sacrifice the worker. How then are we any different from the Aztecs? How dare we call ourselves civilized?

The conservation movement is a breeding ground of communists
and other subversives. We intend to clean them out,
even if it means rounding up every birdwatcher in the country.
--John Mitchell, US Attorney General 1969-72

[Throckmorton]

54. I am that worker

who wants to live forever?

[Coastie for Truth]

60. Rickover's advise to Carter after Three Mile Island

Run the civilian plants like I run my submarines -- military discipline.

(Heard that from Rickover's daughter-in-law, and from former Pennsylvania Assembly member - and PhD nuclear engineer - Ivan Itkin).

[Filius Nullius]

43. Solar Tower a Viable Alternative to Nuclear Power?

Fellow Dems, would you believe me if I told you there is technology currently available that is capable of producing over 200 megawatts of renewable, pollution-free energy, that is shaped like an inverted funnel (some say it looks like an enormous bathroom plunger) and that, when constructed, will be over 1,000 meters tall? To put matters in perspective for metrically challenged individuals such as myself, that is just a shade less than twice as high as the world's tallest building.

Link to pic in Time magazine: http://www.time.com/time/2002/inventions/rob_tower.html

Well, it is true. This creative new type of electrical generating plant was selected by Time magazine as one of the best inventions of 2002. It is called a "Solar Tower" or "Solar Chimney," and it may eventually become one of the world's largest producers of clean (i.e., non-nuclear and non-fossil fuel) electrical energy. It is no exaggeration to say that it has the potential to completely revolutionize the way electricity for homes and industry and hydrogen gas for automobiles is produced in areas that receive at least moderately intense sunlight throughout the year.

As a matter of generational equity, it is unfair for a few generations of Americans and Western Europeans living in the 20th and 21st Centuries to continue using up a large proportion of the world's total supply of fossil fuel when there are alternatives available. One of these, the "Solar Tower" or "Solar Chimney" electrical power plant proposed by EnviroMission Ltd of Australia and SolarMission Technologies, Inc. of the U.S., holds particularly great promise as a substitute for electricity generated by nuclear power plants and conventional power plants utilizing fossil fuel. For more information, read on or go to the Solar Mission Technologies site (http://www.solarmissiontechnologies.com/index.html) and also search in Google for "Solar (Tower OR Chimney)."

The Solar Tower plants currently being contemplated in Australia, China and the U.S. are truly massive in scale. The one planned for Australia will have a tower that is 1 kilometer (.62 miles) in height and a collector or "greenhouse" area under glass that is about 5 kilometers (3.2 miles) in diameter. A dramatic animated video demonstration of what a completed Solar Tower would look like may be viewed from a link on the home page of the SolarMission Technologies site, which helps to provide the viewer with some idea of the size of these plants and put them in perspective with some of the other tall structures on the planet. Link: http://www.solarmissiontechnologies.com/SolarTower%20Animation%202004.wmv. The height of the structure of the Empire State Building, for instance, is 381 meters, a little over a third of the height of one of the Solar Tower that is currently under development in Australia. The Taipei 101 in Taipei, Taiwan, which is currently the tallest structure in the world, is just over half as high at 509 meters.

When completed, the Australian Solar Tower will be capable of generating 200 MW of electrical power and supplying up to 200,000 homes with all their electricity needs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Best of all, once construction is completed, there are no fuel costs for the plants. Barring massive earthquakes or terrorist attacks that bring them down, such towers could last for many decades or even hundreds of years with proper maintenance. Once the construction costs have been amortized through the collection of user fees, it is likely that they will provide essentially free energy for a very long time, indeed.

Such a delicious prospect gives new meaning to the term "pie in the sky." Nevertheless, the feasibility of the "Solar Tower" concept has already been tested and proved. A prototype 50-kilowatt plant, built and operated from 1982-1989 in Manzanares, Spain by the German government using technology developed by the German engineering firm Schlaich Bergermann and Partners, demonstrated that the concept is not only feasible, but within easy reach of modern engineering and construction capabilities. See http://www.sbp.de/en/html/home/solar_chimney_quicktime.html.

The principle upon which the Solar Tower works is a simple law of physics: hot air rises. The tower structure collects air warmed by the sun under a semi-transparent covering and then funnels it into the tower. By making use of differences in air pressure that exist at the bottom and top of the tower, it operates in much the same way that a chimney with an open flue draws smoke out of a room. Increasing the height of the chimney to 1,000 meters simply makes the pressure differential between the top and bottom much greater and therefore increases the speed and power of the airflow. This enables it to drive bigger and more powerful turbines, which generate vastly greater amounts of electricity.

Olympic runners can also attest to the reality of this pressure differential. It is why many of them train at high altitudes. The thin air makes it harder to breath and puts greater demands on their bodies, thereby increasing the training effect. When they run actual races at lower altitudes, the pressure is greater, which means that more oxygen is available, and they can run faster.

It is also analogous to the principles that drive electricity. If you increase the voltage or electromotive force between two electrical terminals (i.e., increase the “pressure” differential), more electricity will flow, and it will do so faster. If you also decrease the resistance between the two terminals (i.e., build a tower or chimney to eliminate crosswinds and temperature inversions), the speed and volume of the flow will increase even more.

Although massive in scale, the tower is relatively simple to construct because it does not have to incorporate offices or living space for humans or include elevators, stairwells, plumbing or windows. It only has to do two things: stand up and serve as a giant chimney through which hot air can rise and spin the giant turbines that generate the electricity. Since it is not a structure that would be occupied by people, it is unlikely to cause many human casualties even if it were to be completely destroyed by earthquake or terrorist attack.

No special materials will be needed. The circular tower will be built from ordinary steel-reinforced concrete using “slip form” construction (i.e., construction that uses a form that “slips” upward as each stage is completed). Tying structures spaced at roughly 300-metre intervals within the tower will reinforce the lightweight concrete. Radiating outward from the center like the spokes of a bicycle wheel, these braces will keep the tower in proper vertical alignment.

The 5 km-diameter greenhouse will be made of high-impact glass or semi-translucent polycarbonate attached to a metal frame. The prototype in Manzanares, Spain experimented with both materials and experienced no damage from the baseball-sized hailstones that fell on the structure during violent storms that occasionally assaulted the project.

The potential negative environmental consequences of generating power through fossil-fuel or nuclear power plants are well-known. In the case of fossil-fuel plants, they include CO2, SOx, NOx and particulate emissions leading to global warming, acid rain and smog and the cost of restoring the environmental damage caused by open-pit coal mines. As for nuclear plants, the hazards include the potential for nuclear melt-downs and wide-spread radiation poisoning of citizens, the contamination of regions surrounding nuclear plants for hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of years, the difficulty of safely storing lethal waste materials that have half lives measured in tens of thousands of years (how many civilizations do you know that have lasted even 1,000 years?) and the creation of attractive targets for terrorists, to name only a few. In fact, nuclear plants have been called "weapons of mass destruction pre-positioned on American soil."

The Solar Towers, on the other hand, have a number of extremely positive characteristics, including 0 fuel costs, 0 harmful emissions, 0 nuclear waste and 0 environmental repercussions from a successful terrorist attack on a plant. As an added bonus, part of the electricity they produce can be used to power fuel cells that will produce hydrogen gas from water, which can be used as fuel for automobiles. The byproduct from this process is oxygen gas (O2), which, if released into the atmosphere, will help to reduce concentrations of greenhouse gases. When the hydrogen fuel is burned, it simply reverses the process and generates pure water.

Solar Towers also would be very difficult for terrorists to sabotage since massive amounts of explosives would be required even to dent it, and the solar tower itself is located about 1.5 miles from the periphery of the glassed-in area, a rather lengthy distance for a truck bomber to negotiate successfully. Since these plants rely on the sun, they can be positioned anywhere there is a reliable supply of intense sunlight, which is probably the case throughout the sunbelt. They therefore lend themselves to a distributed model of electrical generation that would make it difficult for terrorists to simultaneously take out multiple plants.

I believe the U.S. public would benefit from seeing a cost-benefit comparison of these plants with new fossil-fuel or nuclear power plants. Building such plants in Iran, North Korea and other developing countries could also offer a constructive solution to the current nuclear proliferation crisis. Ironically, it could also spark a new kind of energy boom in President Bush's native west Texas. See http://www.mywesttexas.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=9302015&BRD=2288&PAG=461&dept_id=474107&rfi=6.

At a time when the nuclear industry in the U.S. is seeking tax credits, grants and regulatory waivers to build new nuclear and fossil-fuel plants, it seems only logical that the federal government should fast-track the construction of at least one Solar Tower in this country. No environmental concessions will be needed for a Solar Tower, but the same types of financial incentives being sought for nuclear and fossil-fuel electrical generation would certainly help to kick-start the Solar Tower movement. Why are our federal and state and governments willing to entertain the granting of concessions to the purveyors of technologies that have the potential of polluting and poisoning the environment while remaining adamantly opposed or, at most, apparently indifferent, to providing any kind of incentives to such promising proposals as the Solar Tower?

Plans are on the drawing boards or already underway to build these plants in Australia, China, the U.S. and other countries. As for the first U.S. Solar Tower, the shot in the arm for the local economy during its construction will be enormous. According to the mywesttexas.com article referenced above, the first Solar Tower built in the U.S. will cost about $350 million US and create over 2,000 jobs during its construction phase. A cost of up to AU$670 million has been predicted for the first plant in Australia. The initial cost projected for the first Australian plant is comparable with the AU$600 million cost of constructing a new 200 MW brown-coal power station and drying plant (the drying plant is necessary because brown coal is nearly 70 percent water by weight). A 200 MW black-coal plant in Australia would be less expensive at AU$440 million. Accurate cost estimates for nuclear plants are difficult to find, but, as best I can tell, they cost several billion dollars US per 1,000 MW of capacity.

$1 AU is currently worth about US$.77; conversely, US$1 is equal to AU$1.30 . However, whatever the cost may be here, in Australia or elsewhere, it will surely go down rapidly as an engineering infrastructure is created, construction techniques are perfected, materials manufacturing plants come online, a trained workforce is assembled and these components are replicated to more and more sites throughout the sunbelt.

The prices quoted above ignore the fact that the required infrastructure, techniques, etc. for coal-fired plants are already in place in Australia and the U.S. If those components had to be developed from scratch, the costs would be far higher. Moreover, these prices do not take into account the still largely unknown environmental and health costs of sulphur, particulates and greenhouse gases emitted by coal-fired power stations. For example, each Solar Tower would abate some 920,000 tons (1.84 billion lbs.) of CO2 emissions annually from fossil fuels. That’s billion with a “b,” and we are talking about pounds of a gas that has to be highly compressed before it has any appreciable weight. They also do not take into account the cost of safeguarding nuclear wastes for hundreds or thousands of years or the incalculable expense of a serious nuclear accident or successful terrorist attack on a nuclear facility.

It is ironic that the first U.S. Solar Tower may be built in President Bush's old stomping grounds of west Texas since he has been so instrumental in loosening environmental regulations on conventional power-plant emissions. A site near the town of Monahans, Texas has been proposed as a suitable location due to the area's hot, dry climate, flat topography and existing energy infrastructure. However, if the plant is built at Monahans, workers would probably also be drawn from the surrounding towns of Midland, Odessa, Kermit and Andrews.

In case you haven't guessed by now, I am a dyed in the wool Democrat. However, if Republicans in "Bush Country" benefit from these fortuitous circumstances, that will be fine with me. I just want to see one of these “Earth-friendly” plants up and running. If that happens, the benefits from this technology will soon be apparent to everyone, and Solar Towers will begin to replace power plants that derive energy from fossil fuel and nuclear fission. They will also start generating clean hydrogen gas for automobiles that can help American finally begin to shake off its dependence on foreign oil. Ultimately, the real winners from those developments will be not only the American people, but everyone on the planet.

In conclusion, two questions come to mind. First, why do we not already have at least one of these plants under construction in this country? Could it be that, once operational, these plants may help to reduce demand for coal, natural gas and gasoline in the U.S. and thereby decrease profits for Bush, Cheney and their business associates in the fossil-fuel industry who, after all, met in secret with the Vice President to formulate the Administration’s energy policy? Second, why aren’t Democrats doing anything about this? As we are fond of saying down here in the South, we should be all over this like white on rice. We should make sure the word gets out so that never again will regulatory approval be granted for the construction of a nuclear or fossil-fuel power plant.

[dcfirefighter]

44. Neat Idea, I hope it works as well as planned.

If it can power 200,000 homes at ~15,000 kW-h a year, that's 3B kW-h (3 TW-H?). At a fairly conservative $0.05 / kW-h, that's $150M annual revenue on a $350M investment? I'm in.

You still have NIMBY issues, but, I think they'd be able to be overcome. You'd be able to see it from 70 miles away.

[dcfirefighter]

45. I wonder what can be done with the greenhouse...

Ideally, all the solar energy entering the greenhouses around the base of the tower would be converted to heat, and transferred to the air. To do this you'd want to insulate against heat loss to the ground and the atmosphere. I could see wanting to have a significant amount of thermal mass to smooth out temporary loss of solar energy from cloud cover. I also wonder what proportion of solar energy is absorbed by plant life, and how much would remain to heat the air. It seems that if the greenhouses were insulated against the ground, and filled with water pools, and algae were grown in the water, the 8 square miles of greenhouses could then produce another 75 million gallons of biodiesel each year. So make that a $225M a year return on a $350M investment.

[Filius Nullius]

48. Greenhouse operations

You are so right about avoiding heat loss. Continuous 24-hour-per-day operation is guaranteed by placing tight water-filled black tubes on the floor of the greenhouse. The tubes heats up during the daytime and radiate heat at night. These tubes only need to be filled once. See the following page http://www.sbp.de/de/html/projects/solar/aufwind/pages_auf/principl.htm.

The large glassed-in collection area at the base will be nearly perfect for greenhouse gardening and hydroponics. The water needs of the growing biomass can be at least partially supplied through the collection and recycling of water that will condense out of the hot air when it cools and passes over metal fins near the top of the tower. Actually, because of the higher humidity in the southeastern U.S., Solar Towers located there might have an advantage as far as the collection of water for agriculture is concerned.

I have no idea about the proportion of solar energy that will be absorbed by the plant life and how much will remain to drive the turbines. However, I have never heard of it being a problem. During the day, the plants will photosynthesize and produce oxygen as a byproduct. If large numbers of Solar Towers are constructed, this may actually be some help in reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Since the plants will mainly respire warm CO2 at night, that will reduce the net oxygen production somewhat, but it may also enhance the ability of the turbines to produce electricity in the evening.

The cultivation of algae is an interesting idea. I do not know if anyone has pursued it yet.

[Filius Nullius]

46. Well, maybe on a very, very clear day.

It would also require an unobstructed view. Here in the southeast we have lots of trees, and I imagine they would be screened from view by the landscape a large percentage of the time if you are more than five or ten miles away. I'm not sure NIMBY will be a big problem out around Odessa and Midland, Texas where the first US Solar Tower may be built. They are already pretty used to oil rigs, pipelines and that kind of blight. Of course, you wouldn't want to see them pop up in truly scenic locales, but there really aren't that many places in America that one can truthfully describe as pristine, except for national and state parks, monuments, wilderness areas, seashores, etc. Nevertheless, I am sure there will be significant opposition in some areas from people living nearby. Personally, knowing that they are helping to reduce America's dependence on foreign oil, reduce pollution from fossil fuels and reduce the threat from global warming, I wouldn't have a problem with them being in view anywhere I go.

[Filius Nullius]

47. Able to see it from 70 miles away.

Actually, I have read articles that say it will be visible from 80 km, which is just under 50 miles.

[NNadir]

55. We covered this specious idea in another thread sometime ago.

First of all this statement "As for nuclear plants, the hazards include the potential for nuclear melt-downs and wide-spread radiation poisoning of citizens, the contamination of regions surrounding nuclear plants for hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of years, the difficulty of safely storing lethal waste materials that have half lives measured in tens of thousands of years (how many civilizations do you know that have lasted even 1,000 years?) and the creation of attractive targets for terrorists, to name only a few. In fact, nuclear plants have been called "weapons of mass destruction pre-positioned on American soil."" is just patent nonsense. The statement is simply ignorance and fear and is, well, pure bullshit.

No one in the United States has died from the use of commercial nuclear power. If I'm wrong, prove it. I have a whole thread here http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=5609&mesg_id=5609 discussing so called "nuclear waste" in detail. In it I examine with pretty pointed technical detail that the fear of so called "nuclear waste," is complete nonsense perpetrated by people who don't think and who in fact don't even have a basic clue.

The plant under discussion, the solar tower, is a plant covering almost 20 square kilometers to generate just 200 Megawatts. Just on these grounds alone, it is extremely doubtful that this technology is either economical or environmentally benign.

Part of the proposal includes building structures taller than those now existing anywhere on earth. Further there is a lot of hand waving about construction costs and every single one of the assertions here is unproven and untested..

Not one such plant functions anywhere on earth. When an operating pilot exists, maybe we can discuss such schemes and examine their economics and environmental acceptability. But this is not a time to be cute or play games. Our planet is in very dire immediate circumstances. Tiny, and I do mean tiny 200 Megawatt solar stations are not going to save the world. The emergency isn't something that's happening fifty years from now when we've ironed out how to play with our erector sets. The emergency is NOW.

[dcfirefighter]

56. We shouldn't have to decide

I'm all for taxing carbon, sulfur, and other emissions, returning the revenue in equal amounts to the individual citizens of the US, and let economics determine how we produce energy.

Also, I'm pretty sure there have been U mining deaths.

[NNadir]

69. I didn't say there weren't U mining deaths. However...

A statement saying there are deaths associated with any form of energy is perfectly meaningless without comparisons with the alternatives. If we banned every form of energy which involved deaths, there simply would be NO energy. Then, of course, people would die as the result of there being no food, no medical care, no home heating etc.

People want me to say that I am claiming that nuclear energy is risk free. I am NOT saying this. All I AM saying is that with the exception of wind energy, nuclear energy is the safEST, form of energy. If one wants to discuss the risk of mining, it is useless to say that "uranium miners have died," without also asking about the number of people killed in coal mines, or oil field fires, or oil wars, etc, etc.

Now I did say is this: "No one in the United States has died from the storage of so called 'nuclear waste.'" Nonetheless people buy this nonsense that so called "nuclear waste" should be called "dangerous nuclear waste." It is NOT dangerous, because, well, it has not hurt anyone. When someone is hurt by it, then maybe we can assess the "danger." Until however someone IS injured, the statement "dangerous nuclear waste," is, well, a lie.

I contend that the statements in the preceding paragraph are all true. I keep asking people to prove me wrong. No one ever does this, because, well, they can't. Instead they change the subject and start talking about Hiroshima, or nuclear weapons testing in Nevada, or North Korea, or some useless shit spouted by the psychotic Republican freak Ralph Nader in the 1970's, shit like this classic from 1978, "If nuclear plants are not shut down in this country in five years, we're going to have a civil war on our hands."

[struggle4progress]

81. Any credible reference for that Nader quote? Or is it another factoid?

[NNadir]

90. I give references for people who know how to read.

Clearly I'm not going to do that here. Try googling.

[Coastie for Truth]

61. What are we going to do when "Peak Oil" really hits home

It won't just be high gas prices?

It will be massive unemployment and massive dislocations. If we don't go nuclear, people will say that "James Howard Kuntsler was an optimist."

Yes, I pre-ordered The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century by James Howard Kunstler, after reading an excerpt (http://www.kunstler.com/) in a link from du.

[dcfirefighter]

63. Well spend a lot more on food

We'll spend a lot more on food, more people will work in agriculture, backyard gardens will be more popular, and industries that depend on oil will take a hit.

Land value in cities will become relatively more expensive, as transport costs are lowest there, benefitting those who own land in the cities.

Worst case, many huge industries collapse, leading many to the unemployment lines. There will be many who want work, and want food, and clean water and homes, education for their children, etc.

It would be relatively easy to align the unemployed with jobs providing the wants & needs to those with wants & needs.

All we'd need is access to land on which to produce these things, and currency to facilitate the exchanges required.

We can't produce more land (I guess we can take it from Canada and Mexico, but that wouldn't be my recommendation), but we can get more use out of ours. We do this by taxing the land value: if you're relatively productive on your land, you'll be able to pay the rent. If you aren't you'll sell it to someone who is. Housing costs go down, as housing units become denser and denser, making more efficient use of the land. Rural land becomes less valuable as potential sprawl development, and relatively more valuable as parkland or agricultural land. Investments in rapid transit raise the land values, and pay for the infrastructure. As land taxes go up, land prices slow, and then decline. Potential homeowners pay less on a mortgage, nothing on interest, and more on taxes. IOW, it become easier to acquire land, harder to keep it. It becomes much easier to acquire, and relatively easier to keep housing.

The currency problem is more entrenched, but easy to fix. We take the ability to create money away from the banks, and give to the Treasury, as was intended by the Constitution. We print greenbacks, and accept them as payment for taxes. If the CPI goes up, we stop printing. If teh CPI goes down, we print more. No more US debt.

Real wages rise, as the alternatives for employment increase, worst case being finding some cheap rural land and farming for yourself.

[phantom power]

64. One thing I've discovered.

Farming is a skilled profession. Even tending a backyard garden is tricky, and that's with access to cheap fertilizers, pesticides, etc. (which are produced from oil).

Which is to say, I have a hard time seeing 300 million Americans just turning around and taking up farming. Especially since this won't be just a hobby. Screw it up, and you starve.

I think a lot of people would starve. Quite possibly myself included. And my wife, and daughter.

Try pondering that happy image at 3am.

[dcfirefighter]

65. I think a lot of people would starve

But very few of them would be American.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biointensive
check the links, esp. bagelhole.

[struggle4progress]

67. Do ya remember this one?

The Fire at the
Brown's Ferry Nuclear Power Station>

That wasn't a design basis accident ...

[hunter]

70. Chevy Vega, 1971-1977

Over one million produced!

That will give you the flavor of American technology at the time.

[struggle4progress]

71. Candle-wielding electricians set reactor control wire insulation ablaze:

candle was eighteenth century technology.

[NNadir]

72. So is combustion.

It still works, just like nuclear power, as opposed to pie-in-the sky make believe 20 kilowatt technology mindlessly praised by the uneducated crowds of people who think that global climate change is some kind of fucking game with unimportant risks.

Anyway, about this burned wire at the nuclear station: Maybe you'll report on the millions and millions who died in this terrible, terrible accident. Maybe you'll also verify that no similar accident ever occurs in any other power plant anywhere at any time.

You can't?

I didn't think so.

By the way I noticed the resounding silence of anti-nuclear anti-environmental activists when the BP refinery blew up and killed unimportant and nameless people.

I'll bet we would have got decades of whining and distortion on the subject if something radioactive had been involved in any of these deaths. Shit, as we see with this bit, if it had been a steam explosion in a nuclear plant (and of course, as my fourth grader knows, steam explosions are characteristic of all power plants), we'd be hearing all kinds of mindless tripe about the "dangers" of nuclear energy.

What characterizes the radiation paranoid is an appalling lack of moral consistency, an appalling lack of ethical awareness. It makes me want to vomit.

[struggle4progress]

74. The important lesson to be learned from the Brown's Ferry incident ...

is that unexpected serious accidents are possible. Arrogance is an enemy in this respect. And the Brown's Ferry accident was potentially deadly: control of the reactor was completely lost for an extended period.

The accident was not repeated because people with brains worked to ensure that that particular confluence of factors was not repeated, a response which seems to me much more ethical than pooh-poohing the whole incident as "a bit of burnt wire." You can easily verify that some regulations changed.

The same sort of response, of course, is appropriate for a range of serious industrial accidents, including events like the recent refinery explosion. But the current anti-regulatory crowd, marching under a pro-business banner, is likely to further undermine any health and safety requirements at all such facilities, including nuclear facilities.

A moral response to the crises we face must include a realization that all of the energy we waste (whether it comes from nuclear, coal, or oil and whether we waste it by lighting empty office towers or by driving ourselves alone to the store in a pickup truck) has a human cost. This cost is not measured only in industrial accidents: it is measured in squandered opportunities to make the best possible use of scarce resources ...

[NNadir]

85. Amusing response.

The biggest disaster possible from human arrogance in my view is the collapse of the atmosphere, a point on which anti-nuclear anti-environmentalist activists are completely devoid any moral authority whatsoever. They are pretending that the only acceptable outcome is some kind of perfect zero impact solution to energy problems. Since that solution exists nowhere, they are thus demanding, if tacitly, an end to energy. And let me tell you, a lot of people on the planet have to die when energy is ended.

Here's a clue about Brown's Ferry: Nobody died. Here's a clue about Three Mile Island: Nobody died. Still we have morally indifferent twits passing over the thousands who died last week in energy related accidents to point to Brown's Ferry and Three Mile Island. So what's the reason. Hatred of technology in general? Blank stupidity? Complete moral indifference? The inability to make comparisons?

In general everybody likes conservation. Everybody likes renewable energy that is affordable and of low environmental impact. But simply reciting a few cute bits of 1970's environmental dogma repeatedly is well, ethically suspect.

The fact is that nuclear energy saves lives and it gives some hope and sadly not a certainty of a future.

Now I suppose that the argument that simply cutting off energy supplies until 80 or 90% of the planet starves to death in order to bring the planet to a carrying capacity wherein all environmental impacts of energy are trivial. So who's the first among our anti-environmental anti-nuclear activists to volunteer for suicide?

Here is what I regard as the ethical way to reduce population: Eliminate poverty, raise the value of women, promote education, be tolerant of gay people - hell, celebrate gay people - provide acceptable health care, clean water, etc, etc. This is a proven means.

Here is what leads to environmental collapse: Religious dogmatism (and one of my least favorite forms is that religion where the mantra is "Radiation! Radiation! Radiation! Oh my!), poverty, oppression, ignorance, etc.

When you are working hard to find the best and lowest risk means to see that people are clothed, fed, and provided with dignity then you can start using the word "moral" in a sentence without engaging in doublespeak.

[struggle4progress]

68. Richard Leroy McKinley

HEADQUARTERS
MILITARY DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON 28, D.C.
In Reply Refer To
AMHRC 31 January 1961

SUBJECT: Internment of Radioactive Remains

TO: Superintendent
Arlington National Cemetery
Arlington 11, Virginia

1. Radioactive remains of SP4 Richard L. McKinley were interred at Arlington National Cemetery on 25 January 1961.

2. It is desired that the following remark be placed on the permanent record, DA Form 2122, Record of Internment:

"Victim of nuclear accident. Body is contaminated with long-life radio-active isotopes. Under no circumstances will the body be moved from this location without prior approval of the Atomic Energy Commission in consultation with this headquarters."

FOR THE COMMANDER:

Leon S. Monroe, II
2d Lt. AGC
Assistant Adjutant General ...

... One technician was blown to the ceiling of the containment dome and impaled on a control rod. His body remained there until it was taken down six days later. The men were so heavily exposed to radiation that their hands had to be buried separately with other radioactive waste, and their bodies were interred in lead coffins ...

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/rlmckinl.htm


If I remember correctly, some body parts from victims of this accident were hacked off and sent away separately for burial as radioactive waste ...

[hunter]

75. So, how is this any different than other industrial accidents?

No really, I want to know...

Three young men, John Byrnes, age 25, Richard McKinley, age 22, and Richard Legg, age 25, were working with a dangerous machine. There was an accident and they died. Their bodies were contaminated with dangerous chemicals.

Bad things like this happen ALL OF THE TIME.

If you really want to see some scary stuff, check out antibiotic resistant "hospital acquired" infections.

Talk about your "chain reactions!"

I got this from:

http://www.consumersunion.org/campaigns/learn_more/001544indiv.html

• According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 90,000 Americans die each year from hospital- acquired infections. More people die from hospital-acquired infections than from auto accidents and homicides combined.

• An additional 1.9 million or so get an infection that does not cause death, but depending on the type of infection, these patients spend from one to 30 extra days in the hospital getting treated. About 5-10% of hospital patients get a hospital-acquired infection.

This problem is almost entirely the result of our indiscriminate use of antibiotics.

[struggle4progress]

79. I completely agree antibiotic-resistant infection is a serious problem.

[struggle4progress]

80. History of SL-1 is worth learning because it shows clearly ...

... the federal treatment of a reactor accident and associated radiological releases as a national security issue (consistent with the intent of the governing Atomic Energy Act of 1954), to be handled secretly, with no effort to limit exposure of the local population.

[hunter]

82. I have no patience with the lies and secrecy on both sides of this issue.

I "retired" as a hardcore anti-nuclear activist almost twenty years ago, after I decided both sides were full of shit.

I've recently adopted the Theodore Sturgeon attitude that 90% of everything is shit, and this allows me, once again, to decide if I am pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear.

One thing I do know -- so long as the corrupt rat-bastards in the Bush Administration control things, I will be anti-nuclear. I wouldn't trust these ignorant clowns to serve breakfast at McDonalds, much less regulate a renewed nuclear power industry.

At the same time I believe nuclear power is one of the few hopes we have of maintaining our high technology "life style." Eventually humans will switch over to a high technology society based on biology (or we will die) but until then nuclear power is not an unreasonable option.

I posted this on the solar tower thread, but here's the google "satellite" picture of the Palo Verde generating station in Arizona:

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Phoenix+Arizona&ll=33.387215,-112.865617&spn=0.051670,0.056562&t=k&hl=en

These are three 1270 MWe reactors.

You tell me how you might replace the electricity they produce, and then we can talk.

"Conservation" is a fine option, but I would rather shut down the coal fired plants first. (FYI, every light in our house is a compact fluorescent, and we don't use an air conditioner.)

My wife and I have a total weekly commute of about ten miles. We have two cars, but if things ever get really ugly and we can't buy gasoline, we don't need them.

So, what next?

[struggle4progress]

83. I have known several people who worked on such issues full-time for ...

... decades, and it has never been my experience that they lied or that were secretive. Mostly, what they did was to read, and to comment on, technical material.

It was rather dull and thankless work to my POV -- and I almost always found them willing to share what they had learned. There were a few, limited exceptions: on the terrorism issue, for example, throughout the 1980's and 1990's, for example, these critics avoided publicizing vulnerabilities.

I don't know what you mean in calling yourself a former "hard-core anti-nuclear activist," but I say you can pick your own friends and you can pick your own behavior. If you associated with liars, perhaps that was your choice.

[hunter]

84. To put it bluntly, I was a dumpster diver.

Whenever I wasn't doing stuff like that I pretty much lived in big university libraries, mostly in California and the Southwest.

This kind of research was rarely dull, or even thankless. It's quite an ego booster when you find some tasty tidbit of information, especially if you believe you are saving the world.

The nuclear industry has a history of keeping secrets. This secrecy has always been used as a free pass to cover up bad stuff. There should not be any secrets in civilian nuclear power plants, and there should not be many secrets in the nuclear weapons industry.

Mostly the kind of lying I'm talking about in the post above happens when a person decides what's right or wrong from the very start, and then gathers facts to support that belief, while ignoring facts that don't.

I've seen good people work themselves into very untenable positions doing that.

Someone sees Silkwood and China Syndrome, goes to a few Helen Caldicot lectures, and then they use these experiences as a foundation for their activism -- they start with the idea that nuclear power is simply BAD.

An example of these very harmful sort of lies is the belief that radioactive pollution is radically different in nature from any other sort of pollution. It's not. Having plutonium in your river is just as awful as having non-radioactive PCB's in your river. A single particle of plutonium in your lung can cause cancer, but so can a single particle of asbestos or diesel soot.

The biggest difference between radioactive pollutants and non-radioactive pollutants is that radioactive pollutants are much easier to find. They advertise themselves by their radiation. An accidental spill of a non-radioactive toxin can go unnoticed, and the toxin can be spread about everywhere before anyone notices, or maybe nobody ever notices. An accidental spill of a radioactive toxin will likely set off alarms, and every last bit of the spill will be cleaned up, even if they have to strip the floor tiles out of a lab. (I have actually seen this happen in labs I have worked in.)

We speak in excited tones about the huge messes of the early nuclear industry, such as those at Hanford. But there are many non-radioactive messes too.

An interesting kind of pollution is found around the sites of nineteenth and early twentieth century gas works. These plants made a gas from coal which was mostly used to light people's homes. Generally the waste from these plants was thrown into nearby pits.

These gas plant wastes are powerful carcinogens.

There were thousands of these gas plants in the United States. Records and memories of many gas plant locations have been lost.

It's very difficult to calculate how many deaths these wastes have caused, just as it is very difficult to calculate how many deaths radioactive waste has caused. But the gas plant waste problem is the same sort of problem as the nuclear waste problem. There is nothing magic about nuclear pollution that makes it any worse than non-nuclear pollution.

I'm a little bit amused by your comment about my own behavior. In the course of my activism I met many interesting people, including Dr. Helen Caldicott, and Dr. Hans Bethe. I was once doing a telephone interview with Dr. Bethe, and he graciously invited me to a dinner where he was the featured guest and we had quite a lovely chat about Jimmy Carter and nuclear non-proliferation.

I don't know about picking my own behavior. If you were ever at any of the rallies opposing the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, maybe you saw me around.

Peace.

[struggle4progress]

87. I am aware of the abandoned PAH-rich sludges associated ...

... with the water-gas reaction plants, and nowhere will you find me on record pooh-poohing that matter.

[SHRED]

76. Oh yeah it's safe alright...

real safe:

Huge toxic pile by river to be moved
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20050407-9999-1n7pile.html

[hunter]

78. As an exercise in critical thinking...

...compare that big mess along the Colorado River to the bigger messes caused by coal mining.

Compare the radiation deaths per kilowatt capacity caused by the nuclear power industry to any hypothetical hemp powered industry.

I dare say there would be more "radiation" deaths resulting from industries powered by hemp than industries powered by uranium or thorium.

I often hear folks saying how Mother Nature was smart enough to put her nuclear power plant 93 million miles from earth, as if the sun is somehow a benign form of energy. It's not. Ultraviolet radiation from the sun kills about ten thousand people in the United States every year. Ultravioet radiation is every bit as dangerous as the sorts of radiation associated with nuclear power generation.

Perhaps more significantly, per kilowatt nuclear power is much less likely to kill workers or the general public than energy derived from agricultural products.

Agriculture is a very dangerous business. The death rate of agricultural workers is FOUR TIMES that of all other industries combined. Agricultural workers are much more likely to be killed or maimed than workers in the nuclear power industry. Furthermore the nuclear power industry is small enough to tightly regulate. But there are so many agricultural workers using dangerous machines and dangerous chemicals that it is almost impossible for any government agency to effectively regulate every aspect of the business.

Citing a bunch of random awful facts about the nuclear power industry does nothing to advance the argument about the safety or dangers of nuclear power. Everything humans do is dangerous. Everything. Sitting in front of your computer can kill you, especially if you have some underlying medical condition that is aggravated by inactivity.

Is nuclear power dangerous? Yes. Is it more dangerous than other forms of energy? That's the question that needs to be answered, and you can only do that by grinding the numbers, and examining the myriad possibilities.

It's hard work.

[Karthun]

86. ...

Sorry to burst your bubble but Hemp is quite possably the worst way to get biodiesel.

Canola and sunflowers give about 70 gallons of biodiesel per acre. Soybeans 40 with very valuable feed byproducts (actually biodiesel is the byproduct of the feed from soybeans). Hemp only 30. Hemp, being a tall grass, would also be on the same place in a crop roation as corn or sunflower and it can NOT follow canola, edible beans, soybeans or sunflowers.

Hemp is also not economical to plant. Per acre the total operating cost of hemp is 532$ canadian. In compairison, soybeans is 232.10$ Canadian and canola is 247.55$ canadian. Sorry about the cost figures not being in USD.

sources
http://www.animana.org/tab1/13gettman-whynothemp.shtml (pro hemp source)
http://www.gov.on.ca/OMAFRA/english/crops/facts/00-067.htm#soil (neutral)
http://www.gov.on.ca/OMAFRA/english/busdev/facts/pub60.htm#soybeans (neutral)

[Coastie for Truth]

88. Safe Compared to What?

My dad was born and grew up just outside of Donora, PA - as in the "Donora Killer Smog" -- http://www.docheritage.state.pa.us/documents/donora.asp
and worked in Clairton PA - site of the principal metallurgical coke operation of USSteel (same off gases as coal burning generators, and exactly the same off gases as coal->gasoline Fischer Tropsch plants) and he died of cancer.

After we left the "Valley" (that the Monongahela Valley) and moved to "The City" (that's Pittsburgh) - I was always laid up with asthmatic type conditions and upper respiratory conditions -- until Mayor Lawrence's ban on coal for home heating kicked in.

S0 - I ask "Compared to What"

I was part of the US Coast Guard team that did the study on massive LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) Super Tankers bringing imported LNG into American ports. "My" failure mode effect analysis was published by the Coast Guard and presented at the October 1969 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Conference in Washington.

S0 - I ask "Compared to What"

Read Nukes Are Green by Nicholas Kristof, New York Times, Saturday, April 9, 2005, link at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/09/opinion/09kristof.html?

S0 - I ask "Compared to What"

As peak oil hits we will not go back to some idyllic, 1890's farm scenario that James Howard Kunstler (a favorite of many of use Progressives) alludes to in The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of the Oil Age, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-first Century (yes - I have a pre-publication order with Amazon). And, what makes anyone thing that the 1890's were idyllic.

S0 - I ask "Compared to What"

I am an acolyte of Amory Lovins and Stan Ovshinsky (except on nuclear power), and an acolyte of Ivan Itkin --- and I did study engineering and work as an engineer (in photovoltaics, fuel cells, high energy batteries, electric vehicle systems, hybrid electric vehicle systems - and nuclear power)

[politicat]

89. yes. Especially with 3rd generation generators.

Pebble Bed Modular Reactors are not your father's Chernobyl. The AVR demonstration reactor (15 MW) ran for 21 years without a problem in Germany. They take away the real danger point in the first and second generation reactors by using inert gasses instead of water, and using a gas turbine instead of steam. These are reactors that cannot go into meltdown, have secure storage for their fuel and spent fuel, and the spent fuel is really spent, not waste that has to be dumped somewhere.

South Africa's Eskom has been trying to get a series of them built for the past ten years; they appear to be cleared to go now, so we'll know then. However, we don't have time to wait for them.

25,000 people die daily directly from coal and petroleum energy sources, either in the production of those fuels or from the by-products and pollutants those fuels create. Even in a worst case scenario, nuclear power is far safer. No one makes a fuss about coal and oil deaths because it's normal and apparently expected. I consider it grotesque that anti-nuclear people ignore those deaths and panic about .010% increases in leukemia. I consider it grotesque that these same people complain about hundreds of annual pounds of nuclear waste from old generators while perfectly happy to buy into industries that put thousands of pounds daily of far nastier toxins into the air, water and soil. To me, it just shows a basic contempt for science and understanding, and an emotional reaction to the unknown that, were it towards a person, would be called xenophobia. It's fear of the other, based on bad B movies from the 50s and 60s, a lack of comprehension of basic physics, and childish distrust of authority.

I grew up near the Palo Verde reactor in Phoenix. Over the years, I've known many people who have worked at, lived near and been directly affected by Palo Verde. Longitudinal studies being carried out while I was in grad school at ASU showed that the community of Avondale (the closest town to the reactor) and the employees at PV had no significantly higher rates of birth defects or cancer than the general population. Employees, in fact, tended to have better health than the average because they had access to medical insurance.

Nuclear facilities are NOT run by Homer Simpson, and they don't create 20 foot tall bugs (and if you knew even basic insect bio, you'd know that those were impossible anyway), malicious, psychic children, or three-eyed fish.

/rant.