Politics of replacing fossil sources by nuclear energy

[struggle4progress]

Is there a credible political scenario for nuclear replacement of fossil energy?

Nuclear has sometimes been proposed as a solution to problems associated with oil and coal. I want to ask whether this suggestion is credible, under any realistic view of political economy. To avoid vague generalities, I prefer to focus on the United States.

My purpose is not to discuss whether oil and coal consumption causes significant environmental damage and can present unacceptable risks to worker safety and public health. Nor is my purpose to discuss whether complete nuclear replacement of fossils really would reduce environmental and health/safety impacts associated with energy use.

The issues I want to raise here concern instead political and economic mechanisms associated with resource use and the actual effects of constructing a new generation of nuclear power plants.

Opponents of environmental protection, worker safety, and public health include well-organized corporate interests with easy access to media and political decision makers. Such opponents are therefore well-positioned to push a deregulatory agenda, together with propaganda that protecting the environment and workers is too expensive to be worthwhile. Would constructing new nuclear capacity reduce the production of laissez-faire ideology by the corporate classes?

Large organizational structures develop their own momentum. The fossil fuel industries involve extraction, processing, and distribution sectors involving a large number of people who naturally resist any changes they consider against their own economic interests. This inertia further limits our ability to change statutory context to limit pollution and to require meaningful worker protection. Would new nuclear capacity affect the political-economic inertia associated with the fossil sector or the hostility of this sector to pollution controls and safety regulations?

Many energy companies simultaneously invest in nuclear and fossil technologies. Why would new nuclear capacity encourage companies, that had invested in fossil technology, to abandon those investments? Could nuclear-powered coal gasification plants be our future?

The US market economy is driven by product consumption. Companies continually invest in advertising to attract additional consumers by creating desires together with promises that these desires can be met cheaply. And standard political wisdom emphasizes economic growth. Are new energy sources likely to displace existing fossil consumption? Or will new sources, by providing additional energy for consumption, a simply lead to increased energy demand and resource exploitation?

[spag68]

1. Nuclear

is not and never was looked at as a "permanant" fuel source. I personally have worked as an electrician in the construction of both coal fired electric plants and a coal to gas plant in Western Pa. The best coal tech. anywhere is at the U of Pgh. These forms of generation all have problems, but could be used as a bridge to a real green solution, ie wind, solar etc. I can assure you that flying a plane into the containment of a nuclear plant would only amount to some cement dust, and a destroyed plane. The standard at which they are built are: a head on hit with a utility pole at 150 mph. the worst problem is desposal and storage of the spent fuel rods. true, but I have always believed that someday, we might find a use for all that stuff. Coal to gas could be done as stated by Govs. in Pa and Montana. It also has some problems, but in the end, it takes dirty coal and without hurting too much sends out a very clean fuel. So lets get it together and try to get out elected officials to take us on the road to a greener impression on this earth.

[struggle4progress]

2. The point of the post isn't really plane crashes etc ...

... but your claim appears to be wrong

Vulnerability of US Power Plants to Terrorist Attack and Internal Sabotage

... As early as 1982, the Argonne National Laboratory, a Department of Energy (DOE) facility, conducted a study detailing the likely damage that a jetliner could inflict on the concrete containment walls protecting nuclear reactors. The study described possible scenarios where an accidental jetliner crash could compromise the safety of a nuclear power plant's primary containment wall and interior structure. The report estimated that even if just 1% of a jetliner's fuel ignited after impact, it would create an explosion equivalent to 1,000 pounds of dynamite inside a reactor building. An explosion of this magnitude impacting on a containment structure that has already been weakened by the crash of a high-speed jetliner crash could potentially compromise the integrity of the power plant. While the report refrained from providing detail, in these accident scenarios, about how and when radioactivity might be released, it stated that "the breaching of some of the plant's concrete barriers may often be tantamount to a release of radioactivity" ...

Immediately after the September 11 attacks, the NRC stated that American nuclear power plants could withstand the crash of a commercial jetliner like those used against the WTC and the Pentagon. Within days of this assertion, however, the agency spokesmen found themselves backpedaling and stating that before Sept. 11 the NRC had not considered and prepared for the danger of an aerial attack on U.S. nuclear reactors involving large commercial planes loaded with jet fuel. The agency had no serious contingency plans for such attack because, as the NRC spokesman Victor Dricks stated, "it was never considered credible that suicidal terrorists would hijack a large commercial airliner and deliberately crash it into a nuclear power plant."7

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has also confirmed that current nuclear power plants are structurally vulnerable against the September 11 attack scenario that destroyed the World Trade Center Buildings. According to IAEA Spokesman David Kyd, " Reactors have the most robust engineering of any buildings in the civil sector - only missile silos and nuclear bunkers are built to be tougher. They are designed to be earthquake-proof, and our experiences in California and Japan have shown them to be so. They are also built to withstand impacts, but not that of a wide-bodied passenger jet full of fuel. A deliberate hit of that sort is something that was never in any scenario at the design stage. These are vulnerable targets and the consequences of a direct hit could be catastrophic." In an interview with CNN's Moneyline program, Kyd asserted that successful use of a large passenger airliner to attack a nuclear power plant is a rather unlikely scenario. In the course of the same interview however, Kyd acknowledged that, if such an attack were successfully conducted, "the containment could be breached and the cooling system of the reactor could be impaired to the point where radioactivity might well be set free."8

According to experts, if a large airliner were to hit a nuclear power plant's containment structure, the jet engines could penetrate the structure, leading to the introduction within the building of jet fuel and most likely a severe explosion and fire similar to those witnessed at the WTC and the Pentagon on September 11. Nuclear power plants are not well equipped to deal with severe fires, known as "common-mode failures." Such accidents could actually cause various safety systems to fail simultaneously, leading to a loss of coolant that cannot be mitigated and ultimately resulting in a meltdown of the nuclear fuel ...

http://www.psr.org/home.cfm?id=pressroom18

[spag68]

3. nuclear

I don't know where your experts come from, but consider the defenses in N.J. at the fuel terminals, 3 miles from an airport. Further some of the original investigations in the early 70s are still valid, and if you don't think a containment could withstand the test, you should visit one in person. Inviromentally a coal fired plant puts much more radition into the air then even three mile island did.

[ktlyon]

4. hydrogen and solar are the way to go

We can all be off the grid on solar in the near future, if we had the will.
Oil, coal, gas and nuclear must end. Nuclear is just not cost effective and the waste is still unsolved. Fusion has possibilities. We need government leadership not fossil fuel corporate management.

[spag68]

5. future fuels

No one who has thought about it thinks that oil, coal or nuclear are the end all be all. I'm all in favor with all the resourses we can throw at the better uses of the planet, but we have to make choices along the way. Nuclear, you can like it or not, will have to be used to help break the arabia stranggle hold on our country. I never doubted we could do it, but I have a pragmatic streak in me so don't write me off for it.

[struggle4progress]

6. How is nuclear going to "break the arabia strangle hold on our country"?

The Gas, Oil, & Petro lobby currently controls our Executive branch. They started off their conquest of government by getting together with the VP and passing out maps of the world oil fields. Soon after, the US was announcing its support for the short-lived coup government in Venezuela.

How would providing new nuclear capacity change the political forces that produced our current "energy policy"?