It is the cleanest of all available and proven technologies that can grow rapidly. We have to grow the stable supply base, not just grow the renewables. It is our safest bet for independence, reliability and fighting global warming. Nuclear “enjoys” unjustifiable bad public opinion. That’s where leadership is needed to shift public opinion.
Build more nuclear power stations:
- Step 1 — Double the capacity of existing nuclear stations by building next to existing stations. Required: Federal and local government fast track for building next to current nuclear reactors. Given the enormous regulatory roadblocks, and the time it would take to remove them, it is the fastest way to add capacity (or replace decommissioned one).
- Step 2 — Build in new locations. Required: a federal law that will force the states with the largest energy growth requirements to build part of their new generation infrastructure as nuclear. It should be enforced with financial penalties (i.e., withholding federal transfers to the state). It should be a severe financial “whip”. NIMBY cannot be an option when it comes to the crisis we are facing. There are also industry capacity questions that could be solved by the market if demand will be “guaranteed”.
Develop and implement technologies that will allow us to economically extend the usable life of current aging nuclear power stations. The national energy laboratories should be assigned with the R&D task in close cooperation with industry. Many nuclear power stations will be retired within 10-15 years (some have already been shut down). Electrical energy shortages could be expected in some regions in the near term.
The ban on nuclear reprocessing should be lifted immediately. As a safety measure, only a small number of breeder reactors should be built in selected areas. The policy will be re-evaluated in 15 years (depending on availability of U235 and other generation technologies). We can save time by learning from the French experience with breeder reactors. They are electricity exporters to neighboring countries.
The storage facility in Yucca Mountain should be opened as soon as possible. There should be a federal way to enforce it on Nevada. The current storage places (in the power stations) are by an order of magnitude more dangerous to the nation from security point of view and from an environmental risk than the use of Yucca Mountain.
Thorium breeder reactor — The national energy laboratories in cooperation with industry should be assigned the task of building a Thorium based nuclear reactor as soon as possible. If economic feasibility is proven, licenses for new reactors should give preference to Thorium breeder reactors. Thorium is an abundant mineral. The process does not create “bomb” type materials; therefore it could be implemented in many developing countries. We are already behind India in Thorium reactor research.
It is unfair to say that negative public opinion surrounding nuclear is unjustified. Nuclear has historically spawned a variable host of perceived and actual risks in both defense and civilian scenarios. Certainly it cannot be argued that the U.S. nuclear weapons complex has not resulted in some of the most difficult environmental challenges, unsettling workplace exposure scenarios, and budgetary expenses. In the nuclear energy context, it is precisely poor leadership that has created much of the public dissent. In the case of Yucca Mountain, the siting decision imposed on Nevada by Congress pursuant to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1987 took advantage of Harry Reid’s junior status in Congress, and therefore resulted in significant push back from Nevadans. Meanwhile the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in Carlsbad, NM was supported by the locality in NM, resulting in a less difficult permitting process. WIPP is open for business, while the Yucca Mountain Project is officially on hold.
Forcing nuclear on States and communities is likely to waste funding that could otherwise be used to reduce carbon. Proper siting processes need to be taken seriously.
Keep in mind that reprocessing creates new waste streams.
Innovative nuclear technologies have been proposed that utilize spent nuclear fuel (SNF) as an energy source – and rendering a permanent geological repository for SNF unnecessary. “One man’s waste is another mans resource.”
Technology is advancing quickly – Thorium breeder reactors do not represent the most advanced nuclear tech to date.
The benefits of the thorium fuel cycle are vast and the research is very advanced in nature. That is why on March 24, 2009, Congress directed the US Navy to investigate the use of thorium-based nuclear reactors for naval use. See Canon Bryan’s piece on thorium’s potential:
http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=187:thorium-as-a-secure-nuclear-fuel-alternative&catid=94:0409content&Itemid=342
Cleanest from a greenhouse gas emissions perspective. Not from a nuclear waste perspective!
Before we decide to build more nuclear power plants, we should take a serious look at the economics of nuclear and see if, given the limited amounts of capital we have to spend on electricity generation and fighting climate change, nuclear is the most effective way to go. Quoting Amory Lovins and RMI’s analysis of the issue (A.B. Lovins et al., “Nuclear Power: Climate Fix or Folly?,” RMI, 31 Dec. 2008, http://www.rmi.org/images/PDFs/Energy/E09- 01_NuclPwrClimFixFolly1i09.pdf): “Renewables and efficiency can [meet our energy needs] at far lower cost [than nuclear energy], with no proliferation, nuclear wastes, or major risks. [...] Even if the nuclear part of a new plant were free, the rest—two-thirds of its capital cost—would still be grossly uncompetitive with any efficiency and most renewables, sending out a kilowatt-hour for ~9–13¢/kWh. [...] In contrast, the average U.S. windfarm completed in 2007 sold its power (net of a 1¢/kWh subsidy that’s a small fraction of nuclear subsidies) for 4.5¢/kWh. Add ~0.4¢ to make it dispatchable whether the wind is blowing or not and you get under a nickel delivered to the grid.”
With the apparent cancellation of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository by the Department of Energy under the direction of President Obama, the question of what to do with all the spent nuclear fuel accumulating at reactor sites and high level nuclear waste at US national laboratories becomes more important. The Department of Energy has created a “Blue Ribbon Commission” headed by Lee Hamilton and Brent Skowcroft to evaluate options for what to do with these wastes.
New consideration is being given to the use of reactors to consume the accumulated plutonium as a non-proliferation strategy. The large question about these types of reactors is whether they can function without separating plutonium from the waste so that it can be made into a fuel. Additionally, some reactors are being used and proposed that can make more fuel than they consume – so called breeder reactors. The non-proliferation challenge is to have the reprocessing (recycling) of the fuel such that the processes do not produce separated plutonium. Lastly some reactors, those in France for example, use separated plutonium from recycled light water reactors to make mixed oxide fuels for light water reactors. New reprocessing technologies are being developed that do not require separated plutonium for recycling.
The U.S. has pushed this type of development in countries where supporting traditional nuclear technology (i.e. that which uses the same fundamental chemical process to produce civilian and military fuel) could be a threat to national and international security. According to a 12 April, 2010 NYT article, “India, too, is making new weapons-grade plutonium, in plants exempted under the agreement with the Bush administration from inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency. (Neither Pakistan nor India has signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.) The Obama administration has endorsed the Bush-era agreement. Last month, the White House took the next step, approving an accord that allows India to build two new reprocessing plants. While that fuel is for civilian use, critics say it frees older plants to make weapons fuel.”
The relationship between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is a critically important issue. It is also one that is fraught with confusion, misunderstanding, and misinformation. To sort out what’s what, we first need to know a little about the different types of nuclear weapons that can be built, and their characteristics.
What follows next is short section of background information on nuclear weapons. After that is a section on Policy Implications. Conclusions are summarized in the last section, The Bottom Line.
Background
There are two general categories of fission bombs: uranium and plutonium. In uranium bombs, the fissile material is highly enriched uranium (weapons-grade HEU). It does not require a great deal of technical sophistication to build a workable uranium bomb — provided that one has first acquired the necessary quantity of HEU. A terrorist organization that had acquired sufficient HEU probably could assemble a workable uranium bomb.
The degree of uranium enrichment required to produce HEU suitable for nuclear weapons is considerably higher than that used in commercial reactor fuel. Weapons grade uranium is typically enriched to around 80% or higher U235 (vs. typical 5% for reactor fuel, and 0.7% in natural uranium (NU).) A bulkier uranium bomb can be made from uranium that is less highly enriched than 80%, but a bomb cannot be made from stolen reactor fuel. HOWEVER, it is true than any entity owning the ability to enrich uranium for reactor fuel also owns the ability to produce weapons-grade HEU. The enrichment process is the same in either case; it’s just a question of how far the process is taken.
That’s the issue the US has had with Iran’s desire to produce its own reactor fuel; even if a country has signed the NPT and allows inspection of its nuclear facilities, it’s hard to be certain that it isn’t diverting some of its reactor-grade output to secret facilities where the enrichment to weapons-grade HEU might be completed.
If HEU were the only path available for building nuclear weapons, then preventing nations outside the nuclear club from acquiring enrichment capabilities would make sense as the focus for anti-proliferation policies. However, that is not the only path. It is not even the easiest or most likely one.
Any country that wanted to secretly acquire nuclear weapons would be foolish to take the highly visible route of building a uranium enrichment infrastructure and then count on deceiving inspection teams while they diverted output and produced weapons-grade HEU. It is much more likely that they would simply do what nearly every state that has chosen to build nuclear weapons has done: build plutonium bombs from weapons-grade plutonium produced in special military (not power) reactors. The US, Great Britain, Russia, France, China, South Africa, and Israel have all done that. India has too, except that the reactor they used to produce weapons-grade plutonium was a converted research reactor acquired from Canada many years earlier, and not one of their own making. Of all the states in the nuclear weapons club, only Pakistan has relied on uranium enrichment as their sole path for acquiring nuclear weapons. They were responding to India’s weapons tests, and not concerned about hiding their efforts.
A military reactor for production of weapons-grade plutonium is very much simpler and many times easier to build than a power reactor. It runs on natural uranium and is a close descendent of the first nuclear reactor ever built — the one hand-assembled by Enrico Fermi and a couple of assistants in a racquet court under the stands of the University of Chicago football stadium. That reactor was built from wood timbers and blocks of uranium and graphite, assembled into a literal “pile” around its control rods. The control rods were raised by hand until neutron detectors showed that the pile was beginning to operate. Military plutonium production reactors have shielding and are designed to operate at vastly higher thermal power levels than the Chicago pile, but they are conceptually similar. It doesn’t require high tech to build one; these days a workable plutonium production reactor could probably be be designed by a bright physics student with a PC and internet access.
The weapons-grade plutonium from a plutonium production reactor is mostly Pu239. It is qualitatively different than the plutonium recovered from spent fuel rods from a nuclear power reactor. The latter will have been subjected to a high thermal neutron flux inside the reactor for a year or more. In that time, much of the Pu239 initially bred from U238 will have absorbed further neutrons, creating heavier isotopes of plutonium. The heavier isotopes are much more radioactive than Pu239; their concentration in reactor plutonium creates a high rate of spontaneous neutron emission from the material. That causes severe complications for using it to build a plutonium bomb.
In the past, it was believed that the high content of heavier plutonium isotopes in reactor plutonium would make it impossible to use if for bombs. The issue is that when the bomb is detonated, the high rate of spontaneous neutron emissions is likely to initiate the nuclear chain reaction too soon. For an effective nuclear weapon, the chain reaction must be delayed long enough for the detonating explosion to compress the plutonium core significantly beyond its critical mass limit. Then when the chain reaction is initiated, inertia will hold the plutonium at super-critical density long enough for most of it to fission. If the reaction starts too early, the material will just flash and expand beyond its critical mass size. The chain reaction will fizzle. The “fizzle” will contaminate a large area with condensed micro-droplets of plutonium, but as a bomb, the blast will be less effective than the truck bomb used in the Oklahoma City bombing.
In the last few years, opinions about the “impossibility” of using reprocessed reactor plutonium in bombs have had to be revised. New types of explosive, made with nanoparticles of aluminum and iron oxide, can deliver exceptional energy and brisance. Calculations reportedly show that they could potentially drive the implosion of a core hard enough and fast enough to make a high-yield weapon from reactor plutonium. Whether it makes sense to do so is another question.
A high fraction of heavy isotopes would make the core for a reactor-plutonium bomb hot — not just in the radioactive sense, but also in the sense that it would be a source of heat energy. It would need constant cooling to keep it from overheating. A bomb made from such material would have virtually no “shelf life”; upon assembly, radiation from the core would begin degrading both the blanket of explosive material required to detonate the bomb and the electronic circuitry of its triggering mechanism. At the same time, with the blanket of detonator explosives insulting it, the core would heat up; physical expansion and warping would destroy the micron-level dimensional tolerances required for successful detonation of a plutonium bomb.
A bomb that had to be detonated immediately after assembly would be useless for military purposes. Any organization that had the advanced technical capabilities required to build such a bomb in the first place would certainly have the ability to produce weapons-grade plutonium. A bomb made from weapons-grade plutonium would be both easier to build and infinitely more useful for military purposes.
Policy Implications
Military-style plutonium production reactors of the type used by the US for the Manhattan Project could be built by any nation that wanted to. They do not require advanced technology. It would also be easy to acquire enough natural uranium to fuel them. Furthermore, the knowledge of how to extract weapons-grade plutonium from such reactors, and how to build nuclear weapons from the extracted plutonium, has long-since leaked from the classified realm into the world at large. The genie of nuclear weapons know-how has escaped from its bottle, and there is no possibility of chasing it back in.
Given that fact, the only sensible non-proliferation policy must focus, as its first priority, on working toward an international climate in which nations have no motivation to acquire nuclear weapons. That will involve a broad spectrum of both incentives for cooperation and sanctions for non-cooperation. But incentives and sanctions are a bare beginning. Nations generally seek to acquire nuclear weapons because they feel threatened, and view nuclear weapons as the surest way to deter an enemy attack. So above all else, an effective anti-proliferation policy must address the security concerns that drive nations to seek the dubious protection of their own nuclear deterrent.
Against the threat of weapons proliferation from low-tech, locally built plutonium production reactors, any proliferation risk from even widespread deployment of commercial nuclear power reactors is negligible. In fact it very likely goes the other way around. The chief destabilizing factor in the world today and the biggest threat to world peace is competition for oil and for increasingly scarce mineral resources. Anything that works to reduce that competition and the prospect of resource wars will help to limit weapons proliferation. An adequate alternative to oil is absolutely essential for that.
Aiming to build a more prosperous and equitable world, where the kind of desperation that fosters war is laid to rest, should be the centerpiece of our nuclear non-proliferation policy. That is not blind idealism; it is simple self-interest and the best hope we have for surviving the crises that are building around us. Encouraging nuclear power is a logical part of that.
That said, some nuclear reactor technologies are more desirable than others. The current generation of light-water reactors is only about 1% efficient, in terms of the amount of energy it obtains from each ton of uranium ore. Although there is plenty of uranium to fuel the world’s current fleet of nuclear reactors, if we allow that fleet to expand tenfold with reactors of the current generation, then in a short 30 or 40 years, we could be facing the same sort of competition for high-grade uranium deposits that we are starting to see now for oil. That would be tragic.
There are various reactor designs that could, in principle, extract 100 times as much energy from each ton of ore as current light water reactors. Not only would these designs produce vastly less nuclear waste, many are actually capable of taking what we currently classify as “nuclear waste” and burning it as fuel. They do not require enriched uranium, and would eliminate the justification for countries like Iran to develop enrichment facilities in support of a domestic nuclear power industry.
These next-generation reactors are receiving some modest research funding, but at a low level of priority. It has been felt that with the nuclear power largely stalled — at least in most of the West — existing uranium reserves would be ample for at least several decades. There seemed to be no reason to accelerate the development of safer and more efficient reactor designs. That needs to change.
Bottom Line
With regard to the specific questions that participants in Our Energy Policy were asked to address:
>What should our foreign policy be regarding the development of breeder or burner >reactors or even recycling of spent nuclear fuel in existing reactors? Do we just say >no, or is there an alternative? How will that be perceived by other nations?
The issue of recycling of spent nuclear fuel in existing reactors is largely a red herring. Both the risks and the payoff from that type of recycling are generally overstated. Focusing on that issue is a distraction from the more critical issue of improving international relations in general and reducing the motivation for countries to develop nuclear weapons. However, the US should be vigorously pursuing the development of “deep burn” reactor technologies that do not involve removal of fuel elements from the reactor and extraction of plutonium from them. That makes sense for reducing proliferation risks, but also because of its inherent safety, enrironmental, and economic advantages.
>To what extent can we separate nuclear fuel for civilian energy production on the one >hand and military weaponry on the other? How do we assure that misuse of nuclear >technology does not occur?
In no case has military weaponry ever depended on the infrastructure for civilian energy production. Commercial power reactors have never been used as a source of plutonium for nuclear weapons, and there is no reason to believe they ever will be; there are easier and better ways, if a country is determined to develop nuclear weaponry. Uranium enrichment facilities, however, can and do support both civilian power and military weapons programs. There is every reason to accelerate the development of reactor technologies that can reduce stockpiles of nuclear waste and that don’t require enriched uranium.
>If the process of nuclear energy production always includes using the same means to >produce civilian fuel as arms fuel (despite the quite different levels of enrichment – >95% weapons vs 5% for reactors – and plutonium purity for reactors vs weapons), >can we say that pushing nuclear energy for climate change in countries with >emerging economies like India is actually a security threat? What can we or should >we do?
The premise is valid for reactors that require enriched uranium for fuel — which includes the vast majority of reactors both currently deployed and being built. It need not be true in the future. However, the real issue is not enrichment per se, but rather control of supplies. The established nuclear powers have or could easily build the capacity to supply the world with all the enriched uranium it might need to support developing economies. Under that scenario, there is no security threat to the established nuclear powers from promotion of nuclear power in developing nations. However, developing nations have every right to fear that if they become dependent on supplies of enriched uranium controlled by the established powers, they would be subject to economic blackmail by the threat of a supply cutoff. It is quite natural that they would want to control their own supplies.
The long term solution is technologies that give nations control of their own energy supplies without the risk of nuclear proliferation. But there are near term solutions that should be possible, if we are serious about the problem. They would likely involve control of enrichment facilities in neutral locations by chartered international entities. Those entities would need to include representation from both the established nuclear powers and the developing nations to whom reactor fuel was being supplied. So far as I can tell, however, no serious attempt to explore such arrangements has even been attempted.
A little background on our current national dialogue on nuclear waste disposal: The state of Nevada is opposed to the siting of a nuclear waste repository some 100 miles north of Las Vegas in Yucca Mountain. Congress chose this site in 1987 based on environmental and geological assessments of three alternatives. The federal government owns this site and it is located on the former nuclear weapons test range. Since that time The Department of Energy (DOE) has spent approximately $14 Billion on Yucca Mountain on collecting scientific data, preparing the design of the repository and supporting systems and structures, performing analyses to demonstrate the safety of the facility in support of the license application, etc. In June of 2009 DOE submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) a license application to build the repository. The NRC has completed its technical review and is prepared to move to public hearings on the issuance of the license.
However, early in his presidential primary campaign in Nevada, President Obama made a pledge to stop Yucca Mountain from being built. When he became president, Mr. Obama directed U.S. DOE to withdraw the application from the NRC and disassemble the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (a body that was created by the Nuclear Waste Policy Acts of 1982 and 1987). The technical staff from US national labs and the US Geological Survey that had been working on the repository program has all been reassigned, leaving essentially no technical resources to support public hearings should they be held.
In response, President Obama directed DOE to form a “Blue Ribbon Commission” to review what should be done with the nuclear waste problem, essentially starting over. The DOE has instructed the Blue Ribbon Commission that Yucca Mountain is “off the table”; but so far, no sufficient technical reason for withdrawing the application or taking Yucca Mountain “off the table” has been provided by DOE. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology recently released a summary report ( http://ourenergypolicy.org/docs/33/nuclear-fuel-cycle.pdf ), intended to inform the Blue Ribbon Commission’s discussion, called The Future of The Nuclear Fuel Cycle. Full disclosure: I contributed to this report. In our report, we point out the need for a repository regardless of the fuel cycle chosen.
I pose the following question to the group: Should Yucca Mountain be dropped outright, or should the Nuclear Regulatory Commission finish its assessment to determine the safety of the repository (in a proper legal proceeding whereby opponents and supporters are allowed make their case)? What are the arguments in favor of or in opposition to either option?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission should be given the opportunity to go through all of the scientific and environmental data and look at the design of the repository to make sure that it can meet environmental and safety standards. The NWPA does not give the Secretary of Energy the discretion to substitute his policy for the one established by Congress in the NWPA that, at this point, mandates progress toward a merits decision by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on the construction permit. So, unless Congress directs otherwise, DOE should not be permitted to single-handedly derail the legislated decision-making process by withdrawing the Application.
I can’t get excited about Yucca mountain, one way or another. The endless safety reviews and environmental studies are an annoying waste of funds, but as far as I am able to judge, the outcome doesn’t matter. We don’t need a “final solution” for nuclear waste disposal. Dry cask storage appears perfectly viable for the next hundred years. By then, if we haven’t begun deploying the type of reactors that can burn our current “wastes” as fuels, we might as well hang it up. We’ll be dead as a civilization.
There are serious setbacks to nuclear power that might make it more worthwhile to invest in safer renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, geothermal and hydroelectric power. While any power source has its drawbacks, none of these has the potential for catastrophe that nuclear does. The nuclear scare right now in Japan is evidence of that.
That’s because uranium is needed for nuclear power and uranium is a finite resource. There will be peak uranium just as there will be peak oil. And uranium mining is destructive to the environment.
Also there is the question about all that harmful radioactive waste. Plutonium has a half life of 24,000 years. Where do we store all that nuclear waste?
Real clean, renewable energy — solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, algae oil and hydroelectric power. NOT nuclear. NOT coal. NOT oil. NOT gas.
Say NO to nuclear power.
Since that tragic day of March 11, 2011 when an enormous earthquake and horrific tsunami struck the northeastern side of Japan, we have been inundated by media reports on the ongoing attempts to bring the nuclear plant into a stable condition. The technical challenge is enormous but the task is simple – keep the core and the spent fuel covered with water. While being designed to withstand earthquakes of magnitude 7, a magnitude 9 was felt at the site. While being designed to withstand a tsunami of approximately 22 feet, a wave of 30 feet swept over the site. The visual devastation witnessed by the world of this wall of water wiping out everything in its path was unimaginable. This same wave slammed the nuclear plant sites of Daiichi and Daini where 10 reactors stood bracing for the onslaught. The major structures survived but what was lost was the ability to cool the core and the spent fuel pools for four of the units.
According to reports, the plant withstood the earthquake but the wave was too much for the auxiliary equipment needed to supply power and electricity to the emergency cooling systems designed to protect the core. We cannot call it an accident, since it was a natural disaster that needed to be managed. Having followed the event closely, it was difficult to get reliable status reports as to what was happening and why. The utility, TEPCO, itself had difficulty for the same reasons – electricity lost, roads and highways destroyed, communications difficult and unreliable, and understanding the magnitude of the damage at 10 stations required time. What information was made available by the government, the national Nuclear and Industrial Safety Regulator and TEPCO was limited and incomplete encouraging speculation as to what was really happening. Given whatever information was available, trained nuclear engineers could begin to assemble what was happening based on their technical understanding of nuclear systems and fuel behavior under various possible scenarios for these types of reactors. Even with that, most of the discussion was conjecture since we did not know exactly what happened.
There was a group of “experts” that were often quoted and seen on television who would, without hesitation or qualification, give the media what they wanted to hear -scenarios of disaster, fear and unbounded “china syndrome” core meltdown stories. When many of these faces began appearing, I did a background check on some – one often sought after “expert” in nuclear engineering was a psychology undergraduate major with a Ph.D. in political science from a prestigious university. Another group was from an international peace organization. We also have physics professors would willing speak to nuclear engineering issues, not recognizing that quantum mechanics has little to do with net positive suction head. It is through these mouths, written words, and faces, that the story of Fuskushima is being told to a public that really wants and needs to understand what is going on. If only our national media would do some background checks on the people that they call upon as experts before they put them on television or quote them to inform us, we would be so much better off. Instead, they seem to find people who fit their “story line”.
Sadly, the tragedy of the expected 25,000 deaths caused by the tsunami is compounded by the media who failed miserably in informing and educating the public on an important energy source. The Fukushima nuclear event will affect the public perception of nuclear energy for decades. Despite the disaster, it could have been a learning opportunity for the public.
The nuclear industry is taking the Fukushima event seriously by reviewing all their designs and preparedness for events that are beyond design basis. We are now in the 4th level of “what ifs” with nuclear power. First was the hypothetical accident in which a main coolant pipe was somehow severed requiring the installation of emergency core cooling systems with back up electrical power; then came Three Mile Island and the new procedures and systems to deal with core melt accidents including severe accident management; third was the 9-11 response in which nuclear plants needed to show how they would deal with a terrorist flying a jet into a nuclear plant. We are now at the 4th level where we are going to review what would happen if all capability was lost (as in Fukushima) and how we would manage that regardless of the type of disaster.
You can be assured that the lessons learned from Fukushima will be applied to all operating and future reactors. As President Obama stated and other national leaders have reinforced, nuclear energy is a vital part of our energy mix and we need to do whatever is necessary to assure the safety of these facilities from whatever “acts of God” may come upon us. As of this writing, there have been no known public fatalities arising from the difficulties of the Fukushima nuclear plants. This is good and should always be kept in perspective.
Andrew C. Kadak Ph.D. and Master’s Degree in Nuclear Engineering from MIT
Former CEO and President of Yankee Atomic Electric Company
Past President of the American Nuclear Society
Former Professor of the Practice in the Nuclear Engineering Department of MIT
Andrew,
Thanks for the perspective. God knows we the public need real experts commenting on the reality of the situation right now in Japan.
I still remain highly skeptical of nuclear power for three reasons –
1. The Uranium issue. What about peak uranium as a finite resource and the environmental destruction from uranium mining?
2. The Nuclear Waste issue. We still don’t have a good way to properly dispose of radioactive waste besides burying it deep under the earth. What are we going to do with all that waste from spent fuel rods?
3. Terrorists and rogue states like Iran. It is a fine line between nuclear power and uranium enrichment to make nuclear weapons. How do we prevent terrorist states like Iran from going nuclear?
If you could address these questions I’d appreciate it.
Thanks, Josh Marks
Today the connection between nuclear power and nuclear weapons is even more remote than ever before because weapon technology is, unfortunately, widespread. I believe that making or not making nuclear weapons is much more a matter of national will than anything else. There are countries, e.g., Canada, Japan, South Korea that have nuclear power plants and could make nuclear weapons, but they choose not to. There are countries that have or would like to have nuclear weapons, but effectively have no commercial nuclear power plants, e.g. North Korea, Iran, Israel(?). There are countries that have both weapons and nuclear power plants, like India, USA, Russia. Even in countries that have nuclear weapons, like the USA, many, perhaps all, made weapons before they built power plants. It is not at all clear how preventing construction of nuclear power plants in countries that already have nuclear weapons provides more national security or that such an approach is justified when balancing the risks from climate change, should there be more greenhouse gases released because of fewer nuclear plants. One can also examine the impact of the very long time period in the USA between the time when the last nuclear power plant was built and 2011. Did this hiatus have any effect on preventing countries, like Iran, from seeking to build nuclear weapons?
As to nuclear wastes, I think of the whole Yucca Mountain history as a bookshelf with two politically expedient actions as the bookends and good science and construction in between. The first bookend was the political expediency of a number of states that did not want a nuclear waste facility in their states. Originally there were a number of states that were early candidates for a waste repository. These states and others ganged up on Nevada in what is known as the “Screw Nevada Act”…pure political expediency. Years go by and Senator Harry Reid of Nevada becomes the Senate Majority Leader and, it is said, has candidate Obama agree to halting the Yucca Mountain project, if elected, in return for political support. Again, pure political expediency. In between there is science and construction. As one person put it, the repository is 1000 feet below the top of Yucca Mountain and 1000 feet above ground water level. It is safe.
I am sympathetic with Senator Reid because his political colleagues did his state an injustice. However, with serious issues about climate change and dangerous reliances on imported oil which might be reduced by using plug-ins powered off a grid that has “carbon free” nuclear power as a major source of electricity, blocking Yucca Mountain is another case of political expediency. Two wrongs do not make a right.
The risks from nuclear wastes are infinitesimal, even if the whole Yucca Mountain facility failed some time in the distant future. Radionuclides, especially those placed in clay deposits, just don’t go anywhere even over 100s of millions of years. For those who would like to learn more, please read about the OKLO Phenomenon in Gabon, Africa: Go to http://nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionE.htm#v3 Then go to Section E.2 for “What does nature tell us about nuclear waste disposal?”
Herschel Specter
From AP:
TOKYO — Japan’s nuclear regulators raised the severity level of the crisis at a stricken nuclear plant Tuesday to rank it on par with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster, citing the amount of radiation released in the accident.
The regulators said the rating was being raised from 5 to 7 – the highest level on an international scale overseen by the International Atomic Energy Agency. However, there was no sign of any significant change at the tsunami-stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant.
The new ranking signifies a “major accident” with “wider consequences” than the previous level, according to the Vienna-based IAEA.
Dr. Andy Kadak is right on target. One of the toughest and most important lessons the U S had to learn from TMI-2 was the importance of public information. TMI was a media disaster for the first week. After that things began to settle down. However, the news media kept a lot of misinformation coming for many weeks. Use of unqualified and sensational commentators as experts did not help.
We hope it will never be needed, but we also hope that the nuclear industry has organized and practiced response to conceivable accidents. Even much less serious accidents become media field days.
Perhaps more important, the government made serious reporting errors at TMI. There were a lot of lessons that should have been learned from those errors as well. President Carter’s personal visit to TMI was very important. It took top political leaders in Japan a couple of weeks to get information out and put in personal appearances. Japanese officials should have employed fluent translators in several languages to make their reports clearer. A lot of bad vibes came to other countries, certainly to the US, from official sources.
Dave Rossin
NYTimes: http://nyti.ms/qp3Bkh
I am pleased to finally see this important work in public view. What the Sandia National Lab study showed was that natural forces: physics, chemistry, and biology inherently limit the health effects from severe accidents at nuclear power plants. The nuclear plants act like large, passive, filters which would greatly reduce the radioactive releases to the environment, even in very rare severe accidents. These natural forces do not need any safety equipment to be effective or safety actions by plant personnel to keep releases to very low levels. This, in turn, greatly reduces the potential threat from acts of terrorism or unplanned accidents.
A few words about the offsite health effects due to the limited quantity of radioactive material that might be released: It is very unlikely to cause any radiological early health effect beyond two miles from the point of release, regardless of the size of the release. Therefore all nuclear power plants with zero to small populations within two miles of the reactors effectively have a near zero risk of early health effects, independent of the size of the release. Our study of emergency planning at Indian Point showed that for highly populated sites the best response is to evacuate the inner two miles and take shelter beyond that point. In this way the direct exposure during cloud passage is significantly reduced, as are inhalation doses. It is likely that there will be some “hot spots” downwind from the point of release. Those sheltered people in a hot spot should be relocated. These emergency responses, sheltering beyond two miles and selective relocation, lower the long term latent fatality risk. Our studies show that mass evacuation of a highly populated site actually increases exposure to radiation compared to a response that combines evacuation of the inner two miles and sheltering beyond that point. Mass evacuations at highly populated sites are slow and evacuating in automobiles does not have the same sheltering benefits as staying indoors Further, it was established years ago that one has to balance radiological risk reduction against the risks and hardships of over-evacuating. One only has to look at the difficulties faced by many Japanese who are still in shelters because the Fukushima response had a far too large evacuation radius.
Comments by Dr.Lyman of the Union of Concerned Scientists are misleading. One example of this is consequence- to- consequence comparisons when he compares natural background cancer fatalities to those caused by exposure to radiation from a nuclear plant release of radioactive material. The nuclear event, particularly severe accidents, might occur once in ten million years whereas the background cancer rate is a certainty, i.e. a frequency about ten million times larger. Additionally, Lyman argues that if you include the projected latent fatalities beyond ten miles from the damaged nuclear plant the total number will increase. What he omitted to say is that the number of background cancer fatalities would also increase. In fact, the further one goes out from the plant the smaller the ratio of nuclear fatalities to background cancer fatalities. This ratio is already very small even close to the nuclear plant, so much so, that it would be difficult for health statisticians to identify any nuclear component in latent cancer rates compared to the normal year- to- year statistical variations in this number.
Bottom line: nuclear risks from light water reactors are inherently very small, Lyman or no Lyman.
Best,
Herschel
All risk analysis has limitations because whomever is creating the models has to input probabilities. And just like terrorism, many of the acceptable probabilities are just unknown. The NRC, frankly, has a poor record on such probability assessments and their recent lack of oversight and judgement is rather sobering.
Described by the NYT in 2010, “a New Jersey man accused of joining Al Qaeda in Yemen spoke openly of militant views while working at American nuclear plants, according to a report by the inspector general of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Mobley, 26, worked between 2002 and 2008 as a laborer at six nuclear plants in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland.” http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/05/us/05mobley.html
Even more agregious was the whistleblower. In March 2007, John Jasinski sends the Nuclear Regulatory Commission a letter alleging guards are sleeping throughout the nuclear plant in York County, Pa. The NRC refers the concern to plant owner Exelon and security provider Wackenhut, who denies it and blames a nuclear employee of being disgruntled. The NRC accepts the statement. On Sept. 10th WCBS in New York informs the NRC that it has a videotape of guards asleep or nodding off in a “ready room” near the nuclear reactor. A newspaper documented one of the nuclear staff who worked more than 150 hours during a 14-day period, and averaged more than 54 hours a week for more than 10 months. Finally on Sept. 21st (six months later), an NRC inspection confirms that only the 10 guards caught on tape were sleeping — one of the four shifts is implicated. On Nov. 1st Exelon terminates its contract with Wackenhut and takes over the plant’s security. Whistle-blower Kerry Beal, on leave during the investigation, is not among the Wackenhut guards rehired by Exelon.
Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio has been the source of two of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979. On June 24, 1998 the station was struck by an F2 tornado.The plant’s switchyard was damaged and access to external power was disabled. The plant’s reactor automatically shut down at 8:43 pm and an alert (the next to lowest of four levels of severity) was declared at 9:18 pm. The plant’s emergency diesel generators powered critical facility safety systems until external power could be restored. In March 2002, plant staff discovered that the borated water that serves as the reactor coolant had leaked from cracked control rod drive mechanisms directly above the reactor and eaten through more than six inches (150 mm) of the carbon steel reactor pressure vessel head over an area roughly the size of a football. Repairs and upgrades cost $600 million, and the Davis-Besse reactor was restarted in March 2004. The U.S. Justice Department investigated and penalized the owner of the plant over safety and reporting violations related to the incident. The NRC determined that this incident was the fifth most dangerous nuclear incident in the United States since 1979. The NRC and Ohio EPA were notified of a tritium leak accidentally discovered during an unrelated fire inspection on October 22, 2008. Preliminary indications suggest radioactive water did not infiltrate groundwater outside plant boundaries, The facility’s original nuclear operating license expires on April 22, 2017. On August 11, 2006 FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FENOC) submitted a letter of intent (Adams Accession No. ML062290261).
The NRC has publicly said that because we had no accidents since Three Mile Island, they have done their job. Many of us in the security and energy field find fault with this logic as well as their analytical risk models. Just like Katrina and the three terrorist attacks on September 11th, these scenarios were not adequately accounted for in the security analysis. Nuclear power is unlike any other energy generation source, in that a miscalculation can impact untold lives and incalculable damage to property. This might be acceptable if there was no other way to create steam to generate electricity, or no other ways to generate electricity without use of water — but that is not the case.
MIT’s recent study that geothermal can meet at least 10% of US electricity needs, Oak Ridge National Lab’s conservative study estimates that combined heat and power could meet 8% of US electricity needs, US Dept of Energy report that wind could meet 20% of US Energy needs, the combined national lab study that concentrated solar electric could meet 10% of US electricity needs, the EPRI study that water energy technologies (freeflow hydropower, tidal , wave, ocean currents and thermal) could meet 10% of US energy needs, and of course domestic natural gas could easily meet another 20 percent of US electricity needs — makes the nuclear safety modeling issue somewhat moot.
Scott Sklar
President
The Stella Group, Ltd.
The publication of the NRC research sponsored efforts at Sandia National Laboratories has been known for several years and should have been widely published then. It has many profound implications/applications and could have been very helpful in responding to the Fukushima accident in Japan.
To expand a bit on the NY Times article, not only might far smaller amounts of radioactive material be released to the environment than thought before, these small releases would evolve much more slowly, leaving far more time for off-site emergency responses. Health effects from radiation is often divided into early health effects, those that might occur within 60 days of exposure, and latent health effects, those that might appear years after exposure. As to the early health effects they are further divided into early fatalities and early injuries. In order to cause an early fatality one has to be exposed to very high radiation levels which can only occur when there is a high concentration of radioactive material, usually airborne. However, natural forces like meteorological diffusion, cause the cloud of radioactive material to drop in concentration as it moves away from the site. Human biology is such that even small decreases in exposure levels greatly reduce the likelihood of causing an early fatality. As a result of both the dilution caused by the meteorological diffusion of a radioactive cloud and the biology of humans, the risk of causing an early fatality is confined to a very small radius near a nuclear plant. For releases much larger than those calculated by Sandia, this radius would be less than a mile from the point of release for any plausible scenario. For small releases like those calculated by Sandia, the early fatality risk is essentially zero at all distances. Non-fatal early injuries, like vomiting, would be restricted to a radius of less than two miles, again with an assumed release larger than those presently calculated by Sandia. This lesser risk, using modern Sandia analyses, would also be close to zero. So attention turns to latent fatality risks. Based on present health physics models some number of long term latent fatalities are projected to occur. However, they would be such a small fraction of the normal background non-nuclear cancer fatality rate, they would likely be statistically undetectable compared to the year-to-year variations is reported cancer fatalitities. Note also that a release of radioactive material larger than a few percent of the inventory of radioactive material in the plant’s reactor vessel is extremely unlikely. For plants sited in the United States the probability of such a release is in the range of once in a million years to once in ten million years. By comparison, background cancer fatalities has a probability of occurring of 1.0…such background latent cancers happen each year. So not only are the long term consequences of severe nuclear accidents very small compared to natural background rates, they are far less likely to occur, at least a million times less likely.
What the NY Times article did not bring out about the Sandia study was that the very low calculated release rates are the result of naturally occurring chemical and physical processes. The experimental and analytical analyses assembled by Sandia show that radioactive material “likes” to cling to cooler nearby surfaces such as inside the reactor vessel and within the reactor building (containment) that surrounds the reactor vessel. Furhter, many radioactive elements form soluble compounds which then get dissolved into the numerous puddles of water created by an accident’s broken piping or a failed reactor vessel. Limiting radioactive material releases to the environment does not require the use of special engineered safety systems, which would virtually end the accident, nor is it required that plant operators take specific safety actions to terminate the accident. These small releases would occur naturally. In effect, the nuclear plants act like complex, passive filters all on their own. This means that even successful terrorist attacks would only lead to small releases of radioactive material and there wouldn’t be thing that these terrorists could do to stop these natural forces.
The Sandia study has many immediate ramifications. For example, it enhances evaluations of the Fukushima Japan emergency response. The 12 mile (or more) evacuation radius used in Japan is far larger than necessary to prevent early health effects. The Japanese would have been better served if they just evacuated the inner two miles and then had all downwind people take shelter. This should have been followed by off site radiation surveys and any sheltered people in a “hot spot” should be relocated to an emergency center where they would be sheltered. This emergency center sheltering of people who evacuated the inner two miles plus those relocated from hot spots would have greatly reduced the burdens on the emergency shelters and the hardships of many excess people there who should not have been encouraged to massively evacuate. It has always been a basic principle of emergency planning to balance the radiological risks of not evacuating (but taking shelter) against the non-radiological risks/hardships of being confined to evacuation centers for long periods of time.
The Sandia study, among others, underscores the very poor judgment of the NRC Chairman who recommended a 50 mile evacuation of Americans near Fukushima.
Are light water reactor nuclear plants safe? Yes, inherently so.
Herschel Specter
The New York Times has reported that General Electric has “successfully tested laser enrichment” of the isotope uranium 235, effectively achieving a long-sought technical breakthrough in the process of enriching the nuclear fuel. Proponents of this technique call it a “game changer” that could cut the cost of nuclear fuel enrichment by a “factor of ten.” Critics argue that the technique could increase nuclear weapons proliferation by making it easier to enrich uranium secretly.
General Electric is seeking the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s approval to construct a $1 billion facility near Wilmington, North Carolina that would produce nuclear reactor fuel using this technique. This facility could produce enough uranium each year to fuel up to 60 large reactors, which could power more than 42 million American homes.
Citing fears of nuclear weapons proliferation should the technique be adopted commercially, critics – including the American Physical Society, which last year submitted a formal petition to the NRC requesting that risk assessments be required for all new nuclear facility licensing – have requested a detailed risk assessment of the processing technique and General Electric facility. The General Electric facility could produce enough fuel to power more than 1,000 nuclear weapons, they say.
Do the benefits of the laser enrichment technique outweigh its risks? What impact might it have on the US nuclear power industry, or the energy sector as a whole? How might it complicate national or international security efforts? Should the NRC require risk assessments of all new nuclear facilities as a condition of licensing?
The greatest fear I have with the future of nuclear energy is the proliferation and illicit use of fissile material. The easy path to a weapon today is for a nation to mine their own uranium and enrich it. Laser enrichment technology will make that easy path even easier.
Larry Foulke
It would be useful to have a review. However, since it’s been done, other parties will inevitably work out how and if they want to do it, they’ll do it. The world needs to make better use of nuclear fuel.
John Sheffield
Testing a process and scaling-up a process are very different activities. Many great capabilities that are proven and developed in labs never get to commercialization due to problems that happen in scaling-up, accelerating, and maintaining processes. We need to be careful not to extrapolate small scale capabilities into large scale commercialization visions. The nuclear industry has done this many times beginning with their “too cheap to meter” early campaigns. Unfortunately, I see this as just another vestige of that thinking.
Scott Sklar
President
The Stella Group, Ltd.
The issue of laser enrichment is a difficult one. Contrary to GE’s claims of a breakthrough for the nuclear industry, it seems more like breakthrough for GE. I say this because I believe that the price of nuclear fuel only affects a few percent of the overall cost for nuclear electricity, perhaps in the 4% range. So the cost for nuclear enrichment via lasers would only have a small effect on nuclear electricity costs.
I don’t understand the comment that because laser enrichment a domestic effort that this somehow enhances national security. GE needs to explain this statement. We don’t rely on other nations to enrich our nuclear fuel now.
As to proliferation risks I want to know how small a facility is needed to enrich a few bombs per year. Is it garage sized like some claim or much larger and more detectable? Now that GE has made its announcement it seems likely that others will revisit this subject, even if this large laser facility is never built. The proposed risk analysis may be worth doing, but I suspect that the answer will be subject to a great deal of uncertainty.
Herschel Specter
Practically speaking, what limits Iran, China, USSR, Pakistan and India from stealing the technology?
The $1 Billion is USD. China and the others could implement the technology for far less and with fewer safeguards.
Is it not to our advantage to perfect the technology and license these countries except for Iran and Pakistan?
Knowing something is possible and is implemented inspires others to develop on their own, so if the enrichment cat is already out of the bag and others are or have been pursuing, this discussion is somewhat moot and the statement better GE in the US now than the others later with no benefit to GE or the US.
If the process so dramatically lowers fuel cost, the expansion of nuclear Plants can occur at a more rapid pace and be more competitive with coal. To reduce GHG requires significant expansion of nuclear Power. Reducing cost of fuel and mak9ing fuel more efficiently helps achieve this goal.
Karl Boldt