Yucca Mountain a must for nation, energy chief says

[NVMojo]

On his first trip to Las Vegas as energy secretary, Samuel Bodman admitted Wednesday that there have been flaws with the quality of the science in the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste project. But he vowed to hold the course for opening a repository because the nation, he said, increasingly will rely on nuclear power.

The 67-year-old chemical engineer from Massachusetts said a bill to speed the process and clear the way for expanding the planned repository from holding 77,000 tons to more than 120,000 tons of deadly nuclear waste and spent fuel assemblies is key to achieving that goal.

The Bush administration's nuclear power cost-sharing initiative to license three or four civilian nuclear reactors by 2010 "is going pretty well," he said.

"The problem is we don't need three or four nuclear plants in my judgment. We need 14 or 24. We need a large number. And that's the driver behind Yucca Mountain," Bodman said.

more...

http://www.reviewjournal.com/lvrj_home/2006/Apr-13-Thu-2006/news/6840781.html

[NNadir]

1. Actually, we don't need 14 or 24 new nuclear plants.

The amount of coal we burn is the equivalent of 250 nuclear power plants. That is the minimum amount we need.

[ramapo]

2. Mind boggling

...an average of five per state. We would need to build multiple complexes supporting a number of reactors each. Even with an unimaginable conservation effort of 50%, we'd still need 125 reactors. Just contemplate how long this would take...

I have not been a fan of nuclear power but have come to understand that the ongoing use of coal is a creeping (walking?) disaster. What clinched it for me was the recent issue of National Geographic that highlighted the absolute destruction wrought by coal mining, specifically the technique of scalping off the top of the mountains of West Virginia and surrounding states. Couple that with the CO2 and toxic emissions and you have a lose-lose situation

Although the technology has existed that would allow for a substantial reduction in harmful coal emissions by installation of hi-tech scrubbers, I don't believe these would help the CO2 situation. But no matter how much technology is installed to reduce coal emissions, we would continue to destroy vast swaths of land.

Aside from the political/social/anti-nuclear sentiments arising from TMI and Chernobyl, it is interesting to note that real progress on the energy front ground to a halt not long after the U.S. ditched the manned space program. (I don't really count the shuttle program as a space program.) I think that through the 1960s there was an appreciation and excitement for science and the possibilities for a better future. Thirty-five years later science has been politicized, demeaned, and despite the math/science education hype, become not such a great career path. Perhaps if not for Reagan's delusional policy of scrapping most (all?) alternative energy research, we'd be in better shape.

Seeing that new nuclear plants might be a basic requirement for survival, where might they best be situated? Wouldn't it make sense to build them away from the most densely populated areas?

The waste issue has bothered me over the years, you know "plutonium is forever" and all that. But what concerns me a lot more is the thought of 125 prime targets, each with it's own lightly guarded stash of hot stuff. If I was dictator for a day, the first thing I'd do is have all nuclear waste transported to a secure facility out in the desert where at least it can be guarded and cared for while the wrangling goes on over Yucca.

[phantom power]

3. Coal is a disaster in a flat-out sprint.

[NNadir]

4. Some comments.

I'm glad you have recognized the huge environmental impact of coal, which by far dwarfs the damage associated with nuclear power.

This fact has been measured now, and if one comes to the subject with objectivity, it is very clear that nuclear power is an excellent choice.

As for your concerns, I personally think that nuclear power stations are perfectly acceptable in populated areas. They are much less dangerous than trash burning facilities, much less dangerous than coal facilities, and, for that matter, much less dangerous than natural gas facilities.

In fact, the reason that people freak out about nuclear power, is because nuclear power is the only form of energy for which the possible consequences were examined before the industry was built. The men who conceived of the industry were first rate scientists, Nobel winners in some cases, men like Enrico Fermi, like Hans Bethe, Glenn Seaborg, Eugene Wigner, Alvin Weinberg and Neils Bohr. They were not only first rate scientists, but they were idealists with a highly technical orientation. Therefore they analyzed the situation to death, and built there systems with a comprehensive set of decision trees and probabilistic analysis.

The public, however, doesn't do probability very well. Most people, for instance, believe that they are going to win the lottery, even the vast majority of people won't. Similarly people believe that any disaster that could happen will happen. This is why the American people have surrendered a brilliant constitution for a trivial concern like terrorism. Nobody is likely to be killed by a terrorist. You are infinitely more likely, in fact, to be killed in a car accident, or to get cancer or be killed in a plane crash not involving a terrorist. The number of people killed in the World Trade Center is outnumbered by the number of people killed by lightning in the last 30 years. When the public saw, somewhere in the 1970's, that scientists had analyzed putative nuclear disasters and found that in a worse case scenario, thousands of people would die, they completely misinterpreted what that meant.

I don't think of nuclear power plants as terrorist targets. There has been zero acts of terrorism involving nuclear power plants, and a great many acts of terrorism involving fossil fuels, including acts of terror committed by the United States government. Even if a nuclear power plant were the target of a terrorist, there is a very, very, very, very small probability that the attack would succeed, and there is a zero probability that the consequences of such an attack would approximate the injury, death, and morbidity associated with air pollution not even including the dire consequences global climate change.

Plutonium is not forever. The primary isotope, Pu-239, has a half life of about 24,000 years. The geochemistry of plutonium has been exhaustively examined, including its behavior over billion year periods (via the naturally occurring nuclear reactors that operated in Oklo, Gabon.) Fission products also decay. Indeed, the much contemplated "nuclear waste" is the only form of energy side products that has an equilibrium value. There is an upper limit to how much you can create, since all radioactive materials are decaying at the same time as they are being formed. Any physical system that is subject to competing rates of reaction will approach an equilibrium. This is a law of physics. (The particular position of this equilibrium depends on fission yield, half-life, and the amount of power being produced.) Many fission products have already approached this equilibrium value, Ce-144, for instance. If you found a wonderful use for Ce-144, and wanted more than exists, you would have a hard time getting it without ramping up the number of nuclear reactors in which it is made. It has been shown in many places by many people at many times that the use of nuclear power will decrease the radioactivity of the planet, especially in the fuel recycling case, where the risk associated with spent nuclear fuel will be lower than the risk of natural uranium in about 1,000 years.

I compare this equilibrium situation with the heavy metal contamination associated with coal. No equilibrium applies here. You can put as much mercury into the environment as you have coal to burn. Although carbon dioxide is subject to biochemical and physical equilibria, there is good evidence that no such equilibrium applies in this case either.

Therefore the special concern for so called "nuclear waste" is in fact a case of exceptionalism. So called "nuclear wastes" when compared to other wastes is actually an environmental benefit of nuclear energy, but somehow people have translated it, mostly through mysticism, into a negative.

The probability that someone will ever be injured by the storage of so called "nuclear wastes" is very low. Moreover, as I have pointed out quite frequently here, there is good reason to suspect that the spent fuel will, in fact, be a much valued resource in the future.

With the last statement in mind, I would propose that spent fuel be stored for several hundreds of years, unless it is needed sooner, in casks pending the needs of future generations. I think Yucca Mountain is a bad idea that grows out of a waste mentality and the rather silly notion that the matter must be "solved," before we can proceed. It is not exigent. Again, spent fuel has injured no one. If we are looking to "solve" an important environmental problem, I think we should start with something with far more serious implications, global climate change, for instance, or plain old ordinary air pollution.

I would love to have a nuclear power plant near my home, even in my town (where I would enjoy tax revenues). I would have no problem with spent fuel storage in casks on site. It beats the hell out of coal ash. Nor do I have a problem with a more central location for spent fuel casks such as you propose. It is not really necessary that it be a desert or some remote location in my mind. But I do not believe in "permanent geological disposal" of nuclear materials, which will involve putting them in a state that by definition, will make retrieval difficult. Note that I believe that such a disposal structure will be very, very, very low risk, much lower than the risk of even one component, say nitrogen oxides, of air pollution. Still, I think it is not wise.

As for how long it might take to build 250 nuclear power plants (or more), I note that the United States built more than 100 reactors in a 15-20 year period. France built more than 50 in a similar time frame. Moreover, I note that in the US case, many of these reactors were more or less "first of a kind" reactors. Many of the approaches to building them were not systematized and there was few "one size fits all" approaches.

Those who have kept the faith with nuclear power, those who analyzed it's weaknesses, have made huge strides. It is my opinion that with a concerted effort and real commitment - which would involve a clear thinking public (something of dubious availability) - we could indeed build thousands of reactors world wide in the next few decades. I don't know that this will happen, but it is certainly possible. To the extent this possible, the survival of humanity and many other species is possible. Nuclear energy is the best shot we have. Other tools can help but no tool exists that will give us as large a chance as nuclear power. Even with nuclear power, our chance of survival is small now, I think, but without it, it is nearly impossible.