Stronger Future for Nuclear Power

[midnight armadillo]

http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-59/iss-2/p19.html

Issues and Events
Stronger Future for Nuclear Power

Nuclear reactor builders are jostling for business as energy utilities take another look at nuclear power.

Some two dozen power plants are scheduled to be built or refurbished during the next five years in Canada, China, several European Union countries, India, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, and South Africa. In the US and the UK, governmental preparations are under way that may lead to 15 new reactor orders by 2007.

About 16% of the world's electricity supply comes from nuclear power, and energy demand is increasing (see PHYSICS TODAY, April 2002, page 54). Worldwide, nearly 80% of the 441 commercial nuclear reactors currently in operation are more than 15 years old. To maintain nuclear power's position in the overall energy mix, new reactors will have to replace decommissioned ones, says a report from the Paris-based International Energy Agency.

<more at link>

And info on the AP1000 reactor: http://www.ap1000.westinghousenuclear.com/

[DODI]

1. Go AP1000! (I used to be a System80Plus person)

[Dead_Parrot]

2. It is sort of sad...

That a single news release for nuclear power involves more capacity (39 AP1000's = ~43GWe, 24x7 = 1.3 EJ/yr) than the entire wind and solar industries combined. Still, it beats burning coal...

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. It appears Iran is about 5 years ahead of the US in this regard

.
.
.

From the posted Article:

"Iran is building two Russian-designed reactors, the first of which should go on line later this year."

/snip/

"But the nuclear power industry believes the first new US order is only two years away."

___________________________________________________________

And a nuclear power plant normally takes at least 3 years to build

So maybe all this hoopla on bombing Iran is just to keep Iran behind on the energy supply

US hasn't built a reactor in over 25 years -

not much wonder it has an energy crisis

And the US Admin would just HATE to be outdone by,

well . .

anyone really -

And ain't it the Russians now transporting people and equipment to the Space Station?

US is spending WAY too much of it's GNP on war

Auto Industry falling behind . . .

yadda yadda yada - I could go on and on

But I wouldn't be telling y'all stuff you don't already know.

[iconoclastNYC]

16. Anyone familar with a certain nuke disaster

Would be glad that we're not investing in Russian technology.

[ConcernedCanuk]

23. It's Russian technology that is keeping the Space Station alive

.
.
.

Credit where credit is due methinks

The Russians have saved more than one US mission from disaster

Chernobyl is not a reason to judge a country, just as 3-mile Island should not be - but it should be noted that the US has not built another reactor since 1979 -

Other countries have,

So why not the USA?

Oh right

They are spending all their money on WAR

(sigh)

[iconoclastNYC]

24. I'm not anti Nuke.

I just think that we should be happy that we're not investing in Russian nuke technology, it'd be bad PR for the Nuke industry.

[Oerdin]

33. To be fair.

Soviet designed reactors did not have all of the safety systems designed in them which modern Russian designs likely do have.

[colorado thinker]

4. Do I detect a note of approval toward nuclear power?

People, people, the last thing we want is this incompetent, idiotic bunch of buffoons privitizing nuclear power plants around the country. Global warming? How about instant global frying? Take it from one who has worked in Corporate America for the last 30 years, watching the continued dumbing down of policies and procedures, nuclear power plants will be a clear and present danger from the day they are lit up.

Corporate America has decided to "outsource" aircraft maintenance, to crews of uncertified mechanics whose work is overseen by the one remaining certified mechanic the company will grudgingly employ (they cost more, don't you know). Does that make you comfortable flying in the future?

I predict that nuclear power plant operations will be outsourced as well.

[Dead_Parrot]

5. Do I detect approval of climate change?

Since the alternative is burning shitloads of coal while we wait the 4 or 5 decades for solar, wind and grid storage to become magickally workable, I take it you have no problem with cranking the atmosphere's CO2 level up by 2ppm/year, melting the tundra, icecaps and methane hydrate deposits?

(welcome to DU, BTW!)

[colorado thinker]

6. Excellent point

No, I don't approve of climate change, quite the opposite. However, one or two Chernobyl episodes in the continental United States and it will be moot, won't it?

Neither coal, nor nuclear power, is the answer, I'm afraid. But since I'm not a qualified physicist, nor an atmospheric scientist, I don't have an answer. I do believe, however, that population density will be the downfall of us all; I predict that human arrogance and blindness will insure we spend far less time on this planet than did the dinosaurs. We may have reached an impasse. We may be at a point where there is no viable source of energy that can support the population on the planet today, much less 50 years into the future.

And with Bush and Co. in charge, I'm not very hopeful.

[yop]

9. Third way

This neatly illustrates our current predicament. Renewables like solar and wind require massive technical breakthroughs to be capable of providing the energy we require. Nuclear, on the other hand, is technically capable, but would require an equally massive seachange, this time political, to be viable.

Our best bet, with the best mix of current technical know-how and political acceptability, is probably "clean" fossil fuels. CO2 sequestration.

[iconoclastNYC]

20. I disagree.

The power of the anti-nuke lobby is severly overstated.

[yop]

55. Not the lobby

The resistance to nuclear doesn't come from the permanent anti-nuke lobby. It comes from NIMBYs. And the arena where they fight back isn't just in the legislatures, it's also in the courts. Letters and phone calls to their elected representatives, plus lawsuits that stall construction, then later, potentially lawsuits over cancer clusters. The net effect is that investment in nuclear power is highly uncertain and speculative. A speculative utility? High risk with no potential for a huge payoff? Doesn't sell well with investors.

[Dead_Parrot]

56. Depends on the Nimby...

...Put this in your pipe and smoke it...

[yop]

60. If you can

convince an entire community to think like this, then more power to you. But I think you're wasting your time, at least in the U.S. How long has it been since a new nuclear power plant was built in this country? At least 25 years....

[NNadir]

61. Actually 13 new reactors are planned in the US. Communities have

been fighting to get them.

Here's one example: http://www.platts.com/Magazines/POWER/Power%20News/2005/051005_1.xml

[yop]

62. We'll see....

Time will tell how many of those 13 actually get built. In the meantime, how many other nuclear power plants are reaching the end of their life cycle?

Then, if all 13 actually get built, you'll just need to increase that number by a couple of orders of magnitude to put a serious dent in our need for GHG-free energy production.

I don't think it's going to happen. For the next 20 years at least, carbon sequestration is our best option for GHG emission reduction.

[NNadir]

63. Carbon Sequestration is trivial compared to nuclear energy.

If we take nuclear thermal efficieny as 30%, we see that nuclear produced 30 exajoules of primary energy in 2003:

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls

If we take coal as 30 GJ/ton, we see that nuclear energy prevented the burning of 1 billion tons of coal, representing 3.67 billion tons of carbon dioxide.

http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/energy_conv.html

If you are dreaming that there is some carbon sequestering technology that can control that much carbon dioxide in the next twenty years, you are engaged in some serious day dreaming.

You are proposing to replace a technology that is well known, and has operated for 10's of thousands of reactor years with one that has been demonstrated in a few places for a few years on a relatively small scale.

I hope you're not calling this a fondness for saftey.

[yop]

64. Incentives

True, CO2 sequestration for GHG reduction is currently only measured in the millions of tons and has been in operation for only a few years.

But sequestration is poised to grow very rapidly, because the technologies involved are well known.

Since the late '80s, significant quantities of H2S and CO2 have been safely injected underground in the U.S. and Canada. (These gases are unwanted byproducts that accompany oil and natural gas. In the old days, they simply flared them off into the atmosphere, but flaring off H2S contributes to acid rain. The CO2 is injected along with the H2S simply because it is cheaper to do so than to separate the two gases.) So industry's experience with geological sequestration of gases is somewhat larger in scale and longer in history than NNadir's last post would suggest.

Furthermore, for decades, the oil and natural gas industries have injected CO2 underground in order to boost their recovery of oil and gas. So industry's experience with capturing, transporting, and injecting large quantities of CO2 underground is fully mature. They have not concerned themselves with ensuring that the CO2 stays underground, however, simply because there have never been any incentives to do so.

The technology is there, only the incentives are missing.

But once those incentives are put into place, look at the potential. There is a smooth continuum of potential storage sites that will become viable as the incentives increase, ranging from locations where CO2 is already being pumped underground and merely needs to be sealed away, to locations where a great deal of CO2 injection would yield only a small amount of extra oil/methane, to locations where one might have drilled in the hopes of finding gas/oil, but came up dry. This smooth continuum means that carbon sequestration could be implemented astonishingly quickly, as early developments catalyze later developments by reducing costs through improvements in technology and economies of scale.

As for capacity, several hundred billion tons of CO2 could be sequestered in the world's oil and natural gas fields, and the total potential for geological sequestration exceeds the CO2 that would be generated by burning the world's entire supply of fossil fuels.

[NNadir]

65. Well this is all fine until a well head breaks.

Then no one can control the out-flux of a gas. The potential of this sort of thing is indicated by Lake Nyos, where 1,700 people died in one evening when a nearby lake out-gassed its carbon dioxide.

In many cases, maybe not all cases, the geological containment of gaseous compounds is likely to fail, especially in the cases where the structures have been pierced repeatedly by well drilling.

I note that hydrogen sulfide is an extremely toxic compound, roughly comparable to hydrogen cyanide. Where hydrogen sulfide is flared it is of course oxidized to sulfuric acid, accounting for its acid rain properties, but if it is sequestered as H₂S it represents a huge toxicity problem should the containment fail.

Including the CO₂you are talking hundreds of billions of tons of gas. Further you are talking about placing this gas in structures that may not be near the plants that use them. When a mountain in West Virginia is removed for its coal content, no structure capable of containing that carbon dioxide is created. What is created is a huge hole in the ground (leaching acids usually), which is not a structure where carbon dioxide can be stored. Therefore if the coal in question is burned nearby - and coal plants are usually economic when they are located near coal fields or strip mines - the carbon dioxide must be piped to some sequestration facility. This is expensive since gases are not cheap to ship.

In any case, this may come as news, but not all CO₂ can be captured. In fact, no CO₂ is captured from say, automobiles, or home heating systems. It can only be captured in theory at industrial facilities like coal fired power plants. Moreover, even when one uses relatively efficient means of separation, such as selective gas permeable membranes, the separation itself involves energy, meaning you still have to burn more coal to sequester it.

Thus at best, using CO₂ to push out yet more oil is a dubious affair at best.

The best incentive for reducing CO₂ is not to attempt to bury it, which will ultimately fail, but to replace fossil fuels, all of them, as rapidly as possible, to ban their use. This is only possible through the use of nuclear energy and renewable energy. These choices have their own set of difficulties and drawbacks, however their probability for success is almost infinitely higher than sequestration technologies.

The safe use of fossil fuels has not been demonstrated on an industrial scale. The dangerous use, on the other hand, has been demonstrated. It is destroying the planet, rapidly, right now.

[yop]

66. Now there's something you don't see every day....

A proponent of nuclear power resorting to scare tactics!

The fact is that the risks associated with geological CO2 sequestration are perfectly manageable. Carbon dioxide is a pretty benign chemical. It better be- after all, we happily consume grams of the stuff every time we suck down a Coke. Piping carbon dioxide is safer than and as cheap as piping natural gas, a risk we live with every day without a second thought. The risk to human life from carbon dioxide sequestration, while not completely negligible, is certainly reasonable.

As to the statement that sequestration "will ultimately fail," this is true in a certain sense. Geological CO2 sequestration is not permanent; it will only stay locked away for a few thousand years. But where will we be in a few thousand years? Will a bit of extremely diffuse CO2 slowly seeping out of underground storage be a serious problem in the year, say, 5000?

Lastly, the comment that sequestration does not address CO2 from cars or home heating systems is a red herring. This is separate issue and is completely beside the point. Anyone interested in this issue should look into plug-in hybrids and the hydrogen economy.

The bottom line is that geological CO2 sequestration is the best option on the table to head off global warming.

[NNadir]

67. Carbon dioxide is NOT a benign chemical. It is destroying that atmosphere

You are confused about concentration effects.

Water is of course safe to drink, but it is not so safe if you are floating in the middle of an ocean with no ships or land nearby.

Maybe you haven't heard about this, but in many places on earth natural gas is still flared because it is too expensive to transport. Gases are indeed much more expensive to transport than liquids and solids, particularly gases that are going to be dumped. (The low energy density of hydrogen is why the gas cannot be shipped as far as electricity can be shipped.)

There is no carbon sequestration that is anywhere near 7 or 8 billion tons per year, therefore any claim that it is a "best" option is purely speculative. In fact, proposed solutions that do not have an extensive on scale history are not applicable to "solving" global climate change. You are aware that a balloon with 7 billion tons of carbon dioxide, if spherical and uncorrected for pressure gradients, would have a radius of 5000 km? Do you have a sense of this scale?

The claim about the ultimate use of fuel is not a red herring since it bears directly on the subject of the use of fossil fuels. You are assuming, with NO justisfication whatsoever that a liquification technology will limit itself to in situ uses. Given that the use of fossil fuels is not subject to any such controls now, it is rather a leap of faith to assume it will be in the future.

I repeat that any outgassing of carbon dioxide has the potential to be catastrophic. It is, as another poster said, sweeping the matter under the rug.

I have already discussed in many places why a hydrogen economy - especially one based on fossil fuels is nothing more than a fantasy and will not repeat it here, except to say that the transportation of hydrogen is even more problematic than the transportation of CO2.

[yop]

69. Manageable

Risks:
Show of hands-- who out there is afraid to leave their home? No one? Come on, people! Don't you realize that if you get hit by a car, it has the potential to be catastrophic? Stay home and avoid the risk! What's that? You say you're smart enough not to stand in the middle of the street? And your mom taught you to cross at the crosswalk and look both ways? Oh, I see....

Avoidable, manageable risks are nothing to get worked up about, no matter that they have "the potential to be catastrophic."

The risks of geological carbon sequestration to human life can be minimized by choosing locations that are away from population centers, by choosing locations with unrestricted air flow, by using fences and signs, and by careful monitoring.


Transport costs:
Pipelines are an extremely efficient way to transport large quantities of a gas or liquid. The larger the quantities involved, the more economic a pipeline becomes. As the previous post in this thread points out, the quantities involved with geologic CO2 sequestration are very large, so the transport cost per unit will be very small.

(Why the economies of scale? Several factors come to mind:

Property rights- Regardless of the size of your pipeline, you need to buy/rent the same plots of land along the route. Cheaper to spread this cost over a large capacity pipeline than a small one.

Inspection costs- A worker can inspect a certain length of pipe, largely irregardless of size. Again, cheaper to spread this cost over a large capacity than a small.

Construction costs- Picture welding lengths of pipe segment together. The amount of welding required is equal to the circumference of the pipe and is therefore directly proportional to the radius (circumference = 2*pi*radius^1). Meanwhile the capacity of the pipeline is related to the cross sectional area and therefore varies with the radius to the second power (area = pi*radius^2). So as you increase the size of your pipe, your capacity increases much faster than your welding costs. Again, increasing the size decreases the cost per unit transported.

There are probably others, as well. Anyone?)


Storage capacity:
This was covered in a broad way in post #64. Not a problem. And by the way, 7 billion tons of CO2, at one atmosphere of pressure and 25 degrees Celsius, would form a sphere with a radius of less than 9.5 km, not 5000 km as the previous post in this thread stated. Even 9.5 km massively overstates the necessary storage volume, because we will be injecting the CO2 underground at much higher pressure. Then, once sealed away underground, it will adsorb to surfaces, dissolve in underground water, and react to form thermodynamically stable carbonate minerals. These chemical states all allow much higher densities at much lower pressures.

[Dead_Parrot]

70. What the fuck...

The risks of geological carbon sequestration to human life can be minimized by choosing locations that are away from population centers, by choosing locations with unrestricted air flow, by using fences and signs, and by careful monitoring.

What sort of shit is this? CO2, in case you hadn't noticed, is a gas that readily mixes with the air. It's not going to pay any attention to a fence or sign. If, say, a trillion tons escapes from an old mine, it's in the air permanently. It doesn't lie around waiting to be mopped up, it doesn't decay, it just merges into the air acting like a greenhouse. It really doesn't matter where the population is: I'm in NZ, breathing CO2 from California.

Pipelines are an extremely efficient way to transport large quantities of a gas or liquid... Perhaps you should tell the oil companies that are still burning off gas that they can pipe it. I bet they never thought of that! They will be really grateful.

[yop]

71. Perplexed

Dead_Parrot, you ought to re-read the thread. Then, if you are still confused, you can ask questions, and I will try to explain it so you can understand.

[bananas]

68. In several thousand years we'll face another ice age

so the CO2 could come in handy then.

[NNadir]

10. If you were a qualified physicist, you would understand why Chernobyl

is irrelevant to most of the world's nuclear energy capacity.

Here is a qualified physicist, one of the best physicists ever who analyzed the Chernobyl accident: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Albrecht_Bethe

[jpak]

19. The old fallacious ad homnium attack

and the same old fallacious "appeal to authority" that makes me...

:rofl:

[iconoclastNYC]

21. It's an appeal to SCIENCE and to HISTORY

So laugh all you want. You have no facts behind you.

[jpak]

25. The Chernobyl disaster is a historical fact

it killed people - fact

it rendered large areas of the Ukraine uninhabitable - fact

it will cause cancer in an large but unknown number of people in the future - fact.

Chernobyl apologists appeal to pseudoscience and revisionist history - fact

them's the facts...Jack

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

26. More facts

More people have died from coal emmisions since I got up this morning than have died from the Chernobyl fire in 25 years.

More people will die from coal emmissions before I go to bed tonight than will ever die from the Chernobyl fire

CO2 production has caused more wisedpread damage to the enviroment than the Chernobyl fire

Atmospheric CO2 is 200% of the normal interglascial level, and still increasing by 2.2ppm per year

The world uses 15 trillion KWh of electricity per year. At the current rate of growth, solar and wind will would that demand in 2056 - assuming the storage problem is solved with 100% efficiency. By then, CO2 will be around 500ppm - The highest it's been for around 50 million years.

Just some facts for you.

[jpak]

27. Here's some facts for you

Growth in CO2 emissions are highest among countries with large nuclear power programs.

Greatest reductions in CO2 emissions have occurred in countries that have eschewed nuclear power in favor of renewable energy and conservation.

Just a reminder....

[Name removed]

28. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jpak]

30. LOL!!!!!!!!

Here are some "bullshit" facts...

Change in annual CO2 emissions 1997 to 2003 (million metric tonnes per year)

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/environm.html#IntlCarbon

The Nucular Countries

UK +4
France +27
South Korea +40
Japan +49
Canada + 59
Russia +149
India +151
US +259
China +502

The Idiot Greenie Countries

Sweden -4
Denmark -15
Germany -34

...and yes - life cycle GHG emissions from nucular power plants are greater than gas-fired power plants....

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,15822495%255E1702,00.html

:rofl:

[Dead_Parrot]

34. I'm going to ask you over for the next cherry harvest...

...you're a natural. Lets look at this chart again, shall we?



Is Monaco a big nuclear power? I don't recall them being on the security council, but the're the worst country for CO2 production. How 'bout Portugal? Spain? Actually, Spain do have some nuke power. Evil. Ireland? Greece? No.

Let's look at the best 5: Latvia: No nukes. Lithuania? Hmm, seems they have nuke power! My my. So do Bulgaria, but Luxumborg and Estonia don't.

The biggest nuke user on the chart - in term of percentage - is France: No change at all in thier CO2

Y'know, it strikes me that your argument is a total fabrication, since there's no correlation whatsoever.

[jpak]

37. Which country has successfully employed nucular power

to reduce GHG emissions since 1997 (when the Kyoto Treaty was open for signature)?????

...and which countries have used conservation and renewables (in lieu of nucular power) to reduce GHGs over the same interval?????

Simple questions - obvious answers....

[Dead_Parrot]

39. Yes, they are obvious:

None of them, as I've just pointed out. It's just not a factor. Hell, look at NZ - almost exclusivly renewables, and our emmisions are still through the roof.

[jpak]

40. Denmark Sweden and Germany have used conservation and renewables

to reduce GHG emissions.

Whereas NO country has reduced its GHG emissions using nucular power...

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

44. Sweden and Denmark are up from 1990 levels

Germany are up from 1999 levels. At least look at the data you're making claims about. Here's the link again, in case you've lost it:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/tableh1co2.xls

[jpak]

47. But I have - and Germany's trend is down not up

Germany, Sweden and Denmark all have reduced their GHG emissions since 1997 - without the use of nucular power....

Furthermore, Sweden has recently announced it will eliminate its reliance on oil through conservation and renewables - not nucular power.

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

51. Come again?

In 1997 Germany released 381.93 Mt of CO2, and 409.18 Mt of CO2 in 2003. On which planet is this a downward trend?

But congratutlations on the Sweden/Denmark cherry-picked year. Have a cigar, and ingore Swedens increases since 2001. Or that Denmark's CO2 have risen 8% over the 2000 levels. You really are clutching at staws here...

Don't get me wrong, I like renewables. But they are globally insignificant at the moment: and my original point was, that we don't have time to wait for them to become significant. You never did address the growth rates or enviromental impact, so may I drag you back to that point?

[jpak]

58. The table I'm looking at sez

Germany 1997 = 876.9 Mt

Germany 2003 = 842.03 Mt

Difference = 34.46 Mt

[DODI]

46. I believe Sweden has nukies.

[jpak]

48. Yes, and so does Germany

But both countries are going eliminate them by attrition.

And they did not reduce their GH emissions building new nucular plants....

[Dead_Parrot]

52. You're right...

...they did not reduce thier CO2 emmisions.

[Dead_Parrot]

29. Well that was a pointless non-argument

The US has 25% of the worlds PV, and produces 25% of the worlds CO2. Therefore solar is evil!

Here's a chart showing the global warming/pirates correlation:


Any other pointless strawmen you'd like to throw out? Or are you really suggesting nuclear power produces co2? :rofl:

[jpak]

32. Ahrrrrrr matey and the Stripper Factory for me

Just pointing out that countries that have rejected future growth in nucular power and have advanced conservation and renewable programs have significantly reduced their CO2 emissions.

Whereas those countries that have large and expanding nuclear programs also have the greatest growth in CO2 emissions.

Renewables and conservation made the difference - not nucular....

[Dead_Parrot]

36. Well, the two bigest investors in PV (US & Japan)

...also make your "worst offenders" list - suggestting that renewables (at least, some renewables) actually make fuck all difference.

[jpak]

38. No Germany is the biggest investor in PV

and Germany has invested in conservation and other renewables

and has successfully reduced its GHG emissions.

(and has eschewed new nucular power plants).

Japan and the US have not.

Simple as that...

:)

[Dead_Parrot]

41. my appologies...

...looking at an old site.:blush:

I think if you at Germany's internals, though, the shutting down of most of East Germany's factories played the major part in that - which is the reason (in case you hadn't worked it out yet) why most the "best perfomers" on the emmisions chart are ex soviet/pact countries.

Germany's emissions, having nosedived since reunification, are actually up from thier 1999 levels - but they're fairly stable, so well done to them.

[jpak]

43. Rule #1

Never appoligize...

:evilgrin:

[Dead_Parrot]

45. :-) nt

[Oerdin]

35. That's laughable.

The reason nuclear power using countries have the highest CO2 output is because nuclear power requires lots of up front capital costs so only developed countries can afford it. Of course the 1st world countries have the highest CO2 output as well as the highest rates of increase.

You need to go back to school and begin to understand the difference between cause & effect vs unrelated issues. I understand that you are anti-everything other then solar, wind, and geothermal but attempting to tie unrelated things just makes people laugh at you. Do you think that will convince anyone you are correct?

[jpak]

42. What horseshit

No country has EVER used nucular power to reduce its GHG emissions.

none

Several EU countries, however, have used renewables and conservation to reduce their GHG emissions.

It is you that needs to go back to school....

:rofl:

[Name removed]

57. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[jpak]

59. Yes they have

"plonker" indeed...

[NNadir]

31. Here is how one discerns what constitutes an "appeal to authority" fallacy

One uses an "appeal to authority" fallacious argument when one appeals to an authority who is not qualified to make a pronouncement.

For instance, the anti-nuclear movement got great mileage from the pronouncements of Ralph Nader. But Ralph Nader is not qualified to speak on the subject of nuclear energy. He is a lawyer.

Now I could remark on the fact that Ralph Nader has questionable ethics, but this would have no bearing on the validity or lack of validity of the anti-nuclear movement. What does have validity is that Ralph Nader is spectacularly uninformed on nuclear issues and has no discernible education on the subject.

Hans Bethe was one of the inventors of nuclear reactor technology. Therefore he is qualified to understand how nuclear reactors work. In fact, his prediction that a graphite cooled reactor is very different from a PWR or BWR has been borne out by experience: There have been zero radiation related deaths from the operation of PWR and BWR plants, just as Dr. Bethe indicated over twenty years ago. No PWR or BWR has ever released the bulk of its radioactive inventory in a steam explosion followed by a fire.

Another "Appeal to Authority" argument consists to people linking to the "Union of Concerned 'Scientists'" (inner parentheses mine) to make anti-nuclear arguments. Here are some members of the board of that august organization.

Adele Simmons is a senior associate at the Center for International Studies at the University of Chicago and vice chair of Chicago Metropolis 2020. She is a senior adviser to the World Economic Forum. Previously, Dr. Simmons was president of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Earlier, she was a professor and dean at Princeton University and Tufts University and president of Hampshire College. She was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to his Commission on Environmental Quality and served on the Commission on Global Governance between 1992 and 1995.

Nancy Stephens is an actress and political activist. A California gubernatorial appointee to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Advisory Board, Ms. Stephens also serves on the executive board of the Earth Communications Office, the advisory board of Liberty Hill, and the board of Americans for a Safe Future. She is a longtime member of the Environmental Leadership Forum of the California League of Conservation Voters.

Thomas H. Stone is chairman and chief executive officer of Stone Capital Group, Inc., a family-owned investment company. He devotes significant time to not-for-profit organizations that work with high-risk youth, as well as those working on global environmental problems. Mr. Stone serves on the boards of the Ravinia Festival Association, the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, the MERIT Music Program, Concertante di Chicago, and the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra.

Ellyn R. Weiss is an artist and a retired partner in the law firm of Foley, Hoag & Eliot. General counsel to UCS from 1977 to 1988, Ms. Weiss served as assistant attorney general for environmental protection for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and was a partner in Harmon & Weiss, a public-interest law firm. From 1994 to 1995, she served as special counsel and director of the Secretary of Energy's Human Radiation Experiments Initiative and as deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Environment, Safety, and Health within the US Department of Energy.

http://www.ucsusa.org/ucs/about/board.html

One is encouraged to think that members of this organization are, in fact, 'scientists' - indeed the implication is in the name. I can tell you though, from experience - having once been a member, that all I had to do to join was to send a check. There was no check of my scientific credentials - I could have been a hairdresser. In fact I could have been Dick Cheney. Or George W. Bush. I could have been a third rate hack Marine Biologist, or an inmate at an instutition, or the Chairman of the Board at Hostess Cupcakes.

Still the organization includes the word "scientists" as an obvious case of the fallacy "appeal to authority." There is no evidence that these people have contemplated the full range of qualifications to judge the matter of nuclear technology.

Now, it happens that there is at least one Nobel Laureate on the board of the UCS. He is Mario Molina, who won and deserved a Nobel Prize for his work on the chemistry of chlorofluorocarbons in the atmosphere. However, Mario Molina, has very little expertise on nuclear engineering, I'd bet. Therefore if one said "Nobel Laureate Mario Molina opposes nuclear energy," it is a very different thing than saying "Nobel Laureate Hans Bethe supports nuclear power." The first statement represents the logical fallacy of "appeal to authority" because Mario Molina is a physical chemist whose Nobel Prize is in an area that does not involve the technology of nuclear reactors. The second statement is not an "appeal to authority argument." Hans Bethe is a Nobel Laureate who was very much involved in nuclear reactor technology - right from the beginning. After the Chernobyl accident he was asked to evaluate the question of whether the accident could happen here. Why? Because he is an expert. It is his field. He was involved in the design of nuclear reactors. The logical fallacy does not apply because the world turned to Dr. Bethe to ask the question, "Could Chernobyl happen here?" His answer was a resounding "No!"

In any case, even if the answer were a resounding "yes," one would still need to do comparative evaluations to see whether or not nuclear technology is a good idea to embrace in these times. It is not necessary that nuclear power be totally free of accidents or loss of life to better than its alternatives. It is pretty clear thinking to state the homology that "being better than its alternatives" consists wholly of "being better than its alternatives." When fossil fuels are eliminated, the question of the technologies that have replaced them and their relative merits can be examined and debated, but in a time of profound global climate change there really isn't time to quibble. We must go with what we know and with our experience. We have tens of thousands of reactor-years of experience with nuclear reactors. We know how they work and how they don't work.

In more general terms, in the nuclear debate one almost always sees poor thinking and poor logic, which is, of course, the basis, in my opinion, for the entire anti-nuclear argument. This is why I often find myself addressing the matter of clear thinking and how it works. This is somewhat quixotic on my part, since trying to teach people who think poorly is at best a dubious enterprise. I think that the case can be made that I have failed in this endeavor. Poor thinking resists instruction because, well, it is poor thinking.

Nonetheless (sigh) I will link the site (once more) that is a guide to the instance of this logical fallacy, knowing that it will do no good: http://www.fallacyfiles.org/authorit.html

If one pokes around in this website, one can also find the correct spelling of the term ad hominem. I suspect that it is nearly useless to point out the correct usage for that term, however.

[jpak]

49. Gee, but what about "ad homnium" attacks????

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ad-hominem.html

But you're right...

No one that don't have no Nobel Prize in Fizzics can authoratatively comment about nucular power on DU.

No one

:rofl:

[NNadir]

50. I merely note that an appeal to ignorance is self evident in its intent.

I have no doubt whatsoever that contempt for physics is fashionable in certain circles.

Contempt for scientific (and technical) analysis is exactly what I argue against. But I do recognize that appreciation for technical and scientific analysis undermines religious arguments.

That is my point.

[hunter]

53. Hans Bethe had class.

As a college journalist in the early 'eighties I was interviewing Hans Bethe by telephone when he invited me along to a small high society dinner party he was speaking at. Never mind that I'd been involved in all sorts of anti-nuclear activities, mostly of the moonbeam trespassing dumpster-diving sort, and I'd burned through two senior thesis advisors and was busy pissing off a third with my bizarre behavior, despite all that, he and I had some very interesting conversations.

I often think it's a miracle that I have a university degree, and Hans Bethe is one of the people who contributed to that. He was very rational, and very civilized; a gentleman in every way. I may have learned just enough by his kindness and good humor not to be kicked out of university a third time.

"Appeal to authority??????"

Bethe is the guy who figured out how the sun and stars work. He was the head of the theoretical division at Los Alamos. He knew what nuclear power was, better than anyone here. You can disagree with his opinions, but it's not easy. At the very least you have to know something.

[Dead_Parrot]

54. Bethe invited you to to dinner?!

You lucky, lucky bastard... (I did astrophysics, BTW - I spent hours trying to wrap my head around Bethe's and Weizsacker's work...)

[Dead_Parrot]

14. I would also be concerned...

...about letting someone like Haliburton run a dozen reactors on a self-regulating basis. That is something we could easily fix with a few months of a Dem in the WH, though - and no new reactors in the US ae going to be operational this side of 2008, even with an 18-month contruction time. The French manage OK, so it's not impossible.

[iconoclastNYC]

22. Nuke is the most heavily regulated industry ever.

I woudl advocate overlapping inspections by state and federal agencies as an improvement but the saying nuke energy is self regulating is a lie.

[iconoclastNYC]

18. Learn about Chernobyl.

That technology was flawed and the Russians knew it. That disaster was more about the failings of communism then about nuke safety.

Fourth generation pebble bed reactors are walk away safe. If everyone in the plant died and all the safety systems failed the reactor would automatically stop.

Learn about the technology before you act like an expert.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. Nuclear's problems

As you said, it's the "incompetent, idiotic bunch of buffoons" who own the energy infrastructure and who oversee its operation. Nuclear power per se is much safer than most of us grew up believing. Unfortunately, it is in the hands of rat-bastards with more greed than brains.

Anti-nuclear activism hasn't been helping, because it isn't changing the way nuclear energy is controlled. What should be a public trust with strict scientific oversight remains a lowest-bidder cottage industry underwritten by the government but held privately by the plutocrats. A new round of strategic political planning needs to be done by the anti-nuke movement and their "opponents" alike, together, to address this, our common problem.

Our good fortune is that the actual plants themselves are not as dangerous as they have been hyped as being; there are still significant risks involved, but we've also had a run of good luck. But if you look at most of the accidents so far, they show the unmistakable stamp of lax oversight, poor training, and corner-cutting while under construction.

Whether the source is nuclear or non-nuclear, the scientific and technical skills and expertise exist to get the job done safely. But money talks, and what it's saying is, "Let them eat Yellowcake." Even if we abandon nuclear energy and make a 100% commitment to renewables, the same people will simply transfer their money and their arrogant incompetence to the renewables industry. They will find a way to make wind energy kill babies, and solar power cause cancer. We have a LOT of political and business reforming to do before we even start to inch closer to the scientific progress we've made.

So it's not nuclear vs. renewables, it's idiot greedheads vs. the people who want to prevent disaster.

It's just a damn shame that we need get to work on energy solutions NOW.

--p!

[dcfirefighter]

8. Public v Private

Is completely up to the contract involved. IOW, in my experience, I've seen the government be lax and cut corners as often as I've seen private industry; I've seen private industry be consciencious and innovative as often as I've seen government.

Case in point: the GSA had been responsible for maintaining the steam tunnels and pipes beneath the national mall for years. They're crap. Now some private contractor is responsible for it, and 1) their upgrading connections and valves that haven't been touched in years and 2) they are familiarizing the FD with the hazards associated with it.

Similarly, The Richmond, VA EMS system is run by a private contractor under contracte & oversight from a public board. Their response times and level of care are leaps and bounds better than what is found an hour and half up I-95.

The key to making a contract work is enforcing it's rules: if a private co. can lose a contract due to lax performance, they'll generally not allow lax performance.

[NNadir]

12. Of course one of the big factors in the Chernobyl accident was that

the ownership, the regulatory body, and the operators were all the same: The State.

The test that was being done on the reactor that caused it to explode had no independently verifiable protocol and was basically carried out on an ad hoc basis. In fact the test was supposed to address a test that had not been done before the reactor operated because everyone, the builders, the operators, and the regulators got a bonus if the reactor's timelines were met. Since there was no time to do the test, the reactor was run without it. As a result the test was run at the end of the fuel cycle rather than before it. (Had the test run before the fuel cycle, there is very little to suggest that it would have become quite the same international incident that it did become. The reactor would have been much less radioactive.) In the west this would have been a serious violation involving a huge fine and the operators would not risk it. Moreover, the owners would not risk the asset.

In Japan a few years ago, some falsified documents were found by regulators and as a result, a huge part of the industry was shut for some months. This was a very expensive deal for the owners, and I very much doubt they will repeat the same mistake. (In spite of the document failure, not one person was injured in any operation.) This is how it should be.

Finally the reactor at Chernobyl was one of the few types of commercial reactors that could be made to operate for dual purposes, power and weapons. In a system of divided responsibility, regulatory vs ownership, this could not happen and does not happen. I note that the only dual purpose reactor ever built in the United States was the Hanford "N-reactor" pushed through by Scoop Jackson and John F. Kennedy against the advice of the technical staff, which raised objections exactly like those that should have been raised against the Chernobyl reactor.

A system of checks and balances assures the maximum probability for success not only in government, but in the operation of technology as well.

I am very pro-nuclear as most know. However I very much want independent oversight of all nuclear operations, from manufacture, enrichment, plant operations, and the management and allocation of spent fuel. From my perspective the ideal situation would to be have independent government regulators operating under a system of international law, administered by the Nobel Peace Prizing winning IAEA. The issue of nuclear resources involves all of humanity and in order for us to have access to this essential resource, we must maximize the potential for smooth maximally safe operations.

[midnight armadillo]

13. Gov regulation is failing here in the US

A system of checks and balances assures the maximum probability for
success not only in government, but in the operation of technology as
well.


No argument there.

The revolving door between regulatory agencies and industries ("NNadir, go work for the feds for a year and we'll bump your salary by $40k when you return!") is destroying the system of gov. regulation of industries. This is my single greatest fear of nuclear power in the US - that corporate greed will result in the older plants being certified to run past safe lifetimes and with lax oversight and maintenance due to failed regulatory actions on behalf of the gov. A major Chernobyl-style meltdown at Pilgrim Nuclear (in MA) or Seabrook (in NH) would make my life difficult...

[NNadir]

15. Um, Chernobyl was not a meltdown. It was a fire.

Your analogy is rather like saying that a crash in a 1962 Corvair is the same as a crash in a 2001 Volvo. It is not.

I submit that if nuclear regulations were really that lax, we would not hear about every loose bolt in a nuclear power station, wherever one occurs. But we do. The nuclear industry is the only energy production industry that pays fines when it fucks up normal operations, even if they don't fill the paperwork out properly. This is why there are so few scrams these days. The operations need to be meticulous.

It is not international news when a coal ash dam collapses and destroys 75 miles of river, but it is international news if a nuclear reactor scrams. In fact, one can fairly certainly predict that every scram of a nuclear power plant will generate at least one, if not more, DU threads. Not so when an entire community is poisoned by mercury from coal ash.

Nuclear power plant operations are conducted in over 30 different countries with varying governmental regulation levels. In only one country, the former Soviet Union, has poor regulation led to a disaster leading to loss of life.

Many tens of thousands of reactor years of experience have accumulated in the meanwhile and the inescapable conclusion is that nuclear energy is a very safe technology, certainly not perfect, but no form of energy is perfect. None, excepting wind power, and in some places, hydroelectric, are as safe as nuclear.

www.externe.info

I have bumped several times the thread on 65 guys lost in the coal mine in Mexico a few days ago. That one accident killed more people than Chernobyl killed immediately, yet people don't give a rat's ass about it. Therefore the matter is one of perception, not reality.

In any case the exceptional case of a reactor malfunction that harms no one is very different than the ordinary normal operations of fossil fuel plants that kill whenever you turn them on.

The problem is that whenever some one even imagines a nuclear accident, everyone acts like it is a certainty - whereas when other forms of energy actually cause severe health and environmental damage, people act as if they are certain it is harmless.

I also submit that the effects of global climate change is going to make your life difficult as well. There is no need to use a conditional tense as you do when referring to Seabrooke and Pilgrim.

Finally, I'd like to touch on another point. I don't work in the nuclear industry. If I had my carreer to do over, I might choose nuclear engineering, because it is exciting and intellectually demanding work that serves humanity in an important way. I believe that nuclear regulators are highly trained professionals, and it would probably be an honor to know many such people. The assumption that everyone who works in government has automatically been corrupted because an incompetent freak has been installed in the White House is unfair. There are no doubt many thousands of people working in the NRC who have decades of experience, and who have operated through their entire professional carreers with honesty and integrity and who have no intention of changing their ways. Certainly our regulatory infrastructure has been damaged by this disasterous interlude in our history. But to automatically assume that everyone in government has instanteously been corrupted is absurd. I submit that nuclear power is one of the only major exajoule scale forms of energy in the United States that has operated for decades without major loss of life. That in itself says something about whether or not the system is working.

For the record, I have been outside of Seabrook. I have been to Newburyport many times, and in fact stayed there, at the Garrison Inn. Not once have I had a single worry about Seabrook killing me, because I know how nuclear reactors like Seabrook work. From my perspective, that's one beautiful machine. The only regrettable thing about it is that Unit 2 is not complete. They should have finished it. It would have saved lives.

The basic point remains: There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[Odin2005]

11. Great, another victim of "Nuclear is teh evil" paranoia.

:crazy:

[iconoclastNYC]

17. They are already outsourced.

There are very few not-private nuke plants in the USA. Most are owned by private companies like DUKE or DYNEGY.

The key to this is rigirous inspections by independant and forecious government agencies.

If it were up to me inspectors would get a $1,000 bonus for reporting problems with reactors and there would be indpendant teams of inspectors for the FEDERAL, STATE and LOCALS for redundancy.