Next Generation Energy is managed and written entirely by Seed editors and expert guest bloggers. Read more about them Our question last week about energy diversification sparked a debate among commenters over one solution in particular—nuclear power.
It's been around since the 1950s when a nuclear reactor was first used to generate electricity by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. But falling oil prices and the high cost of new nuclear plants in the '70s and '80s led to a slowing down of the nuclear movement. Then came the tragic 1979 and 1986 disasters in Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, which heightened fears about nuclear meltdown and the hazards of radiation. Opposition to nuclear power gave rise to the "NIMBY" acronym: Not In My Backyard, people said; while they acknowledged it might be useful, nobody wanted a nuclear plant anywhere near them.
In the modern era, nuclear power still does not find an overwhelming wealth of allies. Additional fears about the potential for nuclear warfare have been added to the standard reasons for reluctance. But nuclear power is being touted by several climate change activists as both a short-term and long-term solution to the energy crisis. One appealing feature is its adaptability to any region of the world, unlike solar and wind power which would have to travel far—through extensive direct current transmission lines—from areas of prime production to other, less ideal locations.
So, has nuclear technology improved to the point that we are now willing (or desperate enough) to give it another shot? Do the potential benefits outweigh the admittedly unsettling risks? And how do we balance nuclear power with other technologies? Check in all week for our bloggers' opinions.
Environment
Comments
One concern I've heard about is the total quantity of usable nuclear material--I've heard an estimate that we can generate some 50 TW-years (terawatt years) of energy given the amount of U235 available on the Earth. Is this correct?
(An argument, I suppose, for many more breeder reactors to be built)
Posted by: tcmJOE | July 30, 2008 2:13 AM
I think a primary concern has been the storage of spent fuel rods, which is definitely a NIMBY issue. It's also a transportation issue. I hope that at least one of the bloggers address this question.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | July 30, 2008 2:17 AM
The interesting thing about diversification is that it implies breaking up huge centralized energy production sources into smaller decentralized facilities. Nuclear does not fit this description. A study by the Rocky Mountain Institute argues that the smaller a power source, the greater its efficiency. What we need is a distributed resources system, to which alternatives such as wind, solar, and even hydropower are much better suited than nuclear. (See the report and an analysis: Electric Power Plants - Size Matters).
Posted by: Tim | July 30, 2008 3:04 AM
tcmJOE -
Depends on how you do the figures; the low-uranium-availability calculations I've seen tend to make very conservative assumptions indeed about abundance, energetic costs of extraction and processing, burn rates and not reprocessing, let along breeding.
There's also thorium based fuel cycles which are far more preferable in terms of proliferation and waste (i.e. much harder to try and make weapons, shorter lived waste).
It has to be said breeder cycles are environmentally good because they drastically reduce the amount of mining, and the amount of long lived waste.
Posted by: Andrew Dodds | July 30, 2008 3:06 AM
"It has to be said breeder cycles are environmentally good because they drastically reduce the amount of mining, and the amount of long lived waste. "
Breeder reactors have to use liquid sodium as their heat transport fluid. Have you ever handled sodium metal? I have. Just a tiny bit. It explodes in water, and burns in air.
Now picture tons of molten sodium. That's what you need in breeder reactors.
Just saying; it's a safety nighmare, and I'm not even talking about the radioactive part of it.
Posted by: NM | July 30, 2008 5:02 AM
All breeder reactors do not have to be cooled by liquid sodium (btw, yes I have been lucky enough to see an operating liquid sodium cooled reactor).
For example the GenIV gas cooled gas reactor can breed fuel.
All you really need is some U238 and a somewhat hard neutron spectrum. Even boiling water reactors operating today breed fuel in their upper core regions due to increased moderator voids (i.e. harder spectrum).
I continue to be pleased that a growing number of people are actively seeking objective information about nuclear power. Maybe the technology will see a significant resurgence, maybe it won't; but the right decision will only come through civil, objective engagement of all sides and stakeholders.
Posted by: Ed | July 30, 2008 8:03 AM
"The interesting thing about diversification is that it implies breaking up huge centralized energy production sources into smaller decentralized facilities."
Why? It can be this way, but that's not a necessary implication of energy diversification. We can have rooftops full of solar panels, but also giant wind farms in the west - and nuclear plants, too. That's certainly valid diversification.
"Just saying; it's a safety nightmare, and I'm not even talking about the radioactive part of it."
There are dangers in everything,... and solutions to minimize the danger. The big problem is that people fail to recognize - or at least to fear - some very real dangers. For example, coal kills far more people than nuclear power ever did. It's not even close. But those deaths are usually scattered and receive little notice. But a nuclear accident, even one with no deaths at all, gets played up for years and years.
One fundamental problem with fossil fuels is that many of the costs are paid by everyone, not just the users. That's why they're relatively cheap. We shouldn't be talking about a 'carbon tax,' since that gives entirely the wrong idea. They should simply be required to pay the full cost of production. That's not a tax!
Unfortunately, we've got plenty of knee-jerk anti-nuclear activists who will not look at nuclear, no matter what. It's not a technological problem, but a social and political one. And people being people, they'd rather believe in pie in the sky than confront the facts. Wind and solar are great, but I think we need a dose of reality, at least in the short term. We are really under the gun here, with little time to spare.
Posted by: WCG | July 30, 2008 8:03 AM
Three Mile Island was a tragic disaster?
There were no deaths or even injuries. The estimated *maximum* dose received by anyone was less than 1/3 of the *average* exposure a person in the US receives in a year and there doesn't seem to have been an increase in cancer in the area.
Accident that suggested there was danger of a tragic disaster, sure, but not a tragic disaster itself.
Posted by: MRW | July 30, 2008 8:49 AM
Have you ever handled sodium metal? I have... it's a safety nightmare...
Have you ever handled live steam at high pressure? I have -- and it'll start flaying flesh off the bone very soon after inflicting third-degree burns.
And yet it's all over the place, from heat-transfer systems in solar-thermal systems... to vanilla fossil-fuel power plants as well as some types of nuke... to the auto shop down the street, where they clean engines with it. It's a ubiquitous safety nightmare, and Something Ought To Be Done.
Posted by: Monte Davis | July 30, 2008 9:03 AM
I'd like to read more about it, but I've heard Three Mile Island described by reliable sources as a testimate to how well the safety measures worked, not how they failed.
And there's never been any other problem except for one that was basically begged for. Technology's come a long way since USSR, 1965. A lot of Europe has been using the things just find for dozens of years, and have more efficient means of recycling the fuel rods.
I'm aware that spent fuel rods are somewhat nasty stuff. And I'm aware that uranium isn't a renewable resource and will run out eventually. And if it were up to me, I'd just raise peoples' taxes, install the wind and solar, and be done with it. But it'll never happen that way. Nuclear will buy us much-needed time. It sounds scary; it brings out peoples' emotions, but when you seriously weigh the pros and cons - fuel rods that can be contained and very very small risk of incident - versus the consequences of global warming, the decision seems obvious to me.
Posted by: jeffk | July 30, 2008 9:42 AM
This whole discussion is largely pointless. The IAEA estimates show that construction of nuclear power plants is incapable of meeting current increases in demand, let alone replacing extant power plants.
Posted by: llewelly | July 30, 2008 11:08 AM
llewelly, the same problem applies to renewable-energy sources. In both cases, the only way to raise the construction capacity is to start building.
Posted by: red craig | July 30, 2008 11:48 AM
llewelly
what does that even mean? Is there some magical force that's stopping us from building? And what's the IAEA anyways - is that an acronym I should know?
Posted by: jeffk | July 31, 2008 12:27 AM
construction of nuclear power plants is incapable of meeting current increases in demand
No one type, even with aggressive efficiency and conservation measures, can come close to meeting demand, if your definition of demand includes making it possible for a billion or two people to move beyond gathering twigs and dungpats to burn.
In fact, it's not clear that all of them together can fill the projected gap. We may have preferences, but the world -- as distinct from dwellers in the G8 -- really doesn't have the luxury of ruling some sources out of court.
Posted by: Monte Davis | July 31, 2008 7:11 AM
Magical? No. It's just that upstream supply chains don't scale up at infinite rates. It takes time to build stuff and train people.
If you're going to discuss nuclear power, then yes, you should at least be aware of the existence of the International Atomic Energy Association - in much the same way that if you want to be taken seriously in a discussion of American football, you should have some idea of what "NFL" stands for.
Posted by: Dunc | July 31, 2008 9:32 AM
Let me hit a few points very quickly:
In the early 90s it was estimated there was about 200 years worth of fissionable material without fuel breeding and reprocessing, 500 years with breeding. There was an expectation within the nuclear power community that that 500 years' worth of fuel would buy society enough time to make fusion a practical energy source after which fission plants would be phased out.
Since the late 1980s the focus on US LWR designs has been on building in passive safety features (natural circulation cooling, large heat sinks, etc.) to reduce the overall number of active components that can fail or (in the case of TMI) be turned off.
The same focus was applied to the DOE Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) concept piloted at INEL in Idaho. The reactor was designed such that it would safely shutdown and remain cool with the control rods full out and coolant flow stopped; this was successfully tested a few years before the Clinton Administration defunded the project. The IFR concept is very interesting in that the plant is built with all the fuel it will ever need - onsite reprocessing obviates the need for new and spent fuel shipments during its operating life and the reprocessing scheme is resistant to diversion and criticality accidents.
The obvious downsides are no long-term fuel supply contracts from vendors and putting the plant operators in the position of being chemical plant operators (via requiring onsite reprocessing) but overall the program was innovative, practical, and addressed a lot of societal needs in terms of security and safety.
As to the danger of liquid metal coolants, we've been working with them safely for years in the research arena. Certainly there's a danger, but consider the dangers of high pressure steam, namely the need to maintain a pressure boundary both in the piping system and in the containment building. By reducing the stored energy in a high pressure coolant system, you eliminate a large class of safety problems by reducing both the probability and consequences of pipe leaks and breaks.
Remember, this issue goes beyond the primary coolant system. Pressure from a steam line break is the main challenge to the containment building and the current generation of (US) plant designs address it in several ways:
"large dry containment" makes no attempt to deal with steam pressure other than to give it a large volume in which to expand
"suppression pool containment" used primarily by GE for their series of boiling water reactors (BWRs) uses a building-within-a-building model with the two buildings connected by vents submerged in a large pool of water with the theory being that piping breaks within the smaller interior building would pressurize the atmosphere to the point of steam pushing through the submerged vents and mostly condensing in the process thus dropping the pressure in the outer containment building, and
"ice condenser containment" in which baskets of ice are kept in an insulated ring around the outside of a scaled-down large dry containment building and under accident conditions, dampers would open allowing steam to melt the ice and condense, thus dropping pressure. As one would imagine, there are very few plants with ice condensers.
Note that the latter two designs came about to reduce the size and cost of building, testing, and maintaining an immense containment structure all because of the use of high pressure water as a primary coolant.
I'd also like to note that in addition to fly ash, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen and sulfur oxides, coal plants also emit tons of radioactive material into the atmosphere due to trace amounts of radium, thorium, etc. in coal. Radiologically, coal plants are far dirtier than nuclear units and are completely unregulated in that respect. It's well documented but (unsurprisingly) not well publicized. Before fretting over the risk of the small normal emissions of a nuclear plant, look at your current exposure so you have a sense of perspective. The recent NYT article on radon emission from granite countertops is a perfect example of idiotic scaremongering. In order to make informed decisions about the risks and benefits of a technology - any technology - you need a comprehensive understanding of risk, the risks you are now taking as well as new and different ones.
Speaking of idiotic scaremongering, since when has the Rocky Mountain Institute been a credible source for anything but antinuclear propaganda? Who's next, the NRDC? Greenpeace? Jackson Browne? Please.
Posted by: Bob | July 31, 2008 2:03 PM
Bob - If by 'antinuclear propaganda' you mean cogent, referenced arguments as to why nuclear only gets ordered by people who don't have to worry about the cost because of very large scale subsidies, then yes, its propaganda.
On the other hand, if you live in a world where you should be expected to make a reasonable profit without large subsidies http://climateprogress.org/2008/05/09/nuclear-subsidies-enough-is-enough/ , shell out for your own insurance and clean up your own mess, then its sounds like basic business economics.
As a UK taxpayer, I'm expected to stump up for the retirement of Britain's existing nuclear stations, which seems to be heading for 100 billion pounds (last year 73 billion, this year 83...), and is a complete mess http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/24/nuclearpower.energy.
Of course I've already poured billions in subsidies one way or another over the years http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/voodoo_economics.pdf , including basically giving 600 million pounds sterling to a private company to stop them becoming bankrupt.
Then there is of course the now closed Thorp and Mox reprocessing plants. Mox was vastly over budget, neither have ever been profitable. And then Thorp had a radioactive leak which no one noticed for months. The only people who got it right about the economics of Thorp? Friends of the Earth, not the nuclear industry.
As for new nuclear build, I'm also expected to pay for the eventual clean-up of any new stations, over a capped amount to be paid for be the operators. I suspect that this capped amount will be more advantageous to the operators than the taxpayer. I'm also apparently paying for storage of their nuclear waste. Thanks.
Amory Lovins points out that even with US subsidies equalling the cost of actually building a plant, no one seems to be buying. The British government and business establishment are talking about it, but no one has actually ordered one yet. The French? They will probably go for it, but its the French taxpayer which is going to take the hit (for the huge cost of decommissioning the existing ones , clean-up of various 'incidents' and the huge hole in EDF's pension fund for starters). And the two nuclear reactors being constructed in Europe? Almost two years late, even though they are about two years into construction..
I'm not knee-jerk anti nuclear. We may indeed need nukes. But I'm sick and tired of the nuclear industry refusing to stand on its own two feet, constantly promising things which turn out to be totally untrue and sucking money which could be better spent elsewhere on the same big stupid projects which failed to make any money last time round.
The RMI is asking sensible questions. So why doesn't the nuclear industry answer them by building on time, on budget, without support, and paying their own way? If, of course, they can.
Posted by: MikeB | August 3, 2008 4:05 PM
There are two types of fools in the nuclear power debate that make a reasonable approach difficult.
No reason to more than mention the knee-jerk anti-nuclear folks. But probably more powerful per-capita and rapidly increasing in number are knee-jerk pro-nuclear people.
Nuclear is not THE answer to our energy problems. Hell, it may not even be a bit part of the answer. First and foremost, it isn't cheap and is potentially dangerous on a scale that dwarfs most other tech.
As for safety, yeah, new plant designs are much better than old ones. But you still have to actually build and operate the plant to spec (watch The China Syndrome again). However, even with 'safe' design and operation, the potential for problems exists... and what differentiates a nuclear accident from a burst steam line or petrochem plant explosion isn't so much the number people immediately killed: Nuclear accidents have the potential to 'salt the earth' for an extremely long time. (Only hydro comes anywhere near that scale, and it is still a distant second.)
Anyone who talks of 'fast tracking' the design, approval, and building of nuclear facilities should be laughed out of the room. That is simply insane. Nuclear power may be the best option, but it isn't an easy or even a really 'good' one.
Posted by: travc | August 11, 2008 12:18 AM
One pound of fissile uranium gives as much energy as five or six million pounds of coal, and its waste weighs just under a pound. The carbon dioxide from twelve pounds of carbon weighs forty-four pounds.
Given that coal freely emits toxic acidic gases and particulates, some with enough radioactivity to shut down a nuclear power plant, and that the USA generates half its electricity from coal, and that a permit for building yet another one in Virginia has had to be contested, we ought first to question whether nuclear should be subjected to more stringent requirements than coal.
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