Re: [Phys-l] Nuclear Reactors

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@mindspring.com>]

At 11:30 -0600 04/07/2009, John SOHL wrote:
> Personally, I see nuclear power as an intermediate step. Not because 
> of technology but because of humans. To convert to a system that is 
> dependent on renewables will require changes in our behaviors and in 
> our ability to accept responsibility for our actions and impacts on 
> the planet -- including population control, the 200 kg gorilla in 
> the room.

First, nuclear power just isn't in the cards as an "intermediate" 
step. It takes about 10 years or more to go through the planning, 
designing, licensing, building and certification process before a 
nuclear plant can come on line, and we need change *now,* not 10 or 
12 years from now (there are plants in other parts of the world that 
have been 20 years and more in the building and still aren't 
completed--we don't have that kind of time to fool around with a 
problematic technology, that may be abandoned before it even can have 
an effect). Second, I don't see how renewables will require much in 
behavior change. The goal is primarily to keep the electric power 
(and other needed energy sources) coming when and where they are 
needed. I agree that if we try to create a system that requires 
massive lifestyle changes, the problem becomes dramatically more 
complicated. The object is to integrate renewables and efficiency 
into the fabric without making a big deal about it, so that the main 
thing people will notice it their utilities bills decrease 
(overall--there may be increases in one sector or another, but the 
total utilities costs should come down), and the air getting cleaner. 
If we electrify the railroads and make it economically feasible to 
shift most long-haul shipping away from trucks and onto the 
railroads, the costs of maintaining our highway system should 
decrease by up to 40%, and the roads will become less congested. The 
net effect should be to make life better and at lease a bit less 
expensive. This shouldn't require a major change in our behavior, 
although the increase in freedom these changes bring might encourage 
us to do even better.

I agree that the population problem is with us still, and will be for 
at least the next couple of centuries, which makes it all the more 
important that we move as quickly as possible on energy efficiency, 
so that all the gains made in how we produce our energy won't be 
erased by uncontrollable population growth. But the solution to that 
problem has less to do with how we fix the climate change problem 
than with the education, freedom and empowerment of women world-wide. 
It is well established that in those regions where women have control 
of their own reproductive systems, and have access to family planning 
information, birth rates decline. I see the largest problem in the 
population arena is in figuring out how to successfully manage a 
world whose population is stable. For too long we have based our 
economic system on an ever-increasing population, to the point where 
governments faced with a stable or even declining population don't 
have a clue about how to deal with it, and often panic--either 
importing labor or enacting policies to encourage increased birth 
rates.

> I don't see that as happening quickly unless there is a crisis. It 
> would also take tremendous political will to move the country in 
> that direction quickly (10 to 20 years). One or two politicians with 
> vision and knowledge and will is not enough. Look what happened to 
> Gore for example.

Well, there is a crisis, and we need to start moving the country in 
that direction *now,* not in 10 to 20 years. We need to start a 
massive PR campaign in support of renewable energy--to convince 
people that wind turbines are beautiful (which I, personally, think 
they are) and that, combined solar energy, both PV and concentrated 
thermal can meet our energy needs if we do it intelligently (with the 
prospect of geothermal and wave energy in the not-too-distant 
future). That, of course, starts with a smart national grid, which 
will enable us to efficiently move electrical energy over large 
distances (perhaps superconducting?) and to use the grid to control 
how we use our electricity and to enable feed-in from individual 
sources (rooftop PV, etc.), as well as to eventually enable plug-in 
electric and hybrid vehicles to serve as our energy storage system to 
meet high demand situations, when the penetration of such vehicles 
into the market is enough to support that.

>  As for nuclear power, we are in some serious trouble. The power 
> plants that were built in the 60's and 70's were made to last for 30 
> years. Well, that "warranty" has expired. The metals are getting 
> brittle, the containment buildings are getting weaker, and on and 
> on. Those are also old designs with fewer safety features. Yet, we 
> cannot afford to turn them off as Hugh has pointed out.

There is considerable pressure now to re-license many of those aging 
plants, which are facing deterioration problem that you mention, not 
to mention the aging of the nuclear engineering and plant operator 
populations, most of whom will be retired within the next decade or 
two. And the designs for the new generation of reactors is still very 
fluid. None has yet been finally approved by the NRC (the 
Westinghouse AP-1000 has just been sent back to the drawing board for 
rework, putting the plans for most of the 35 new reactors planned for 
this country on hold). We cannot afford to turn them off all at once, 
but relicensing should be done very carefully, and it is likely that 
an aggressive efficiency program, including building retrofits as 
well as new construction, and encouraging the use of solar thermal 
and solar PV units on homes as well as solar PV on commercial 
rooftops and parking lots can obviate the need for any new plants, so 
that the conversion to renewables can be phased with the retirement 
of exiting coal and nuclear plants as they come to the end of their 
design lifetimes.

>  I visited the Idaho National Laboratory a few years ago and was 
> quite impressed with the technology of newer designs for nuclear 
> power plants. (The name of this lab is a curious example of public 
> pressure and fear in its own right. The name has changed several 
> times to make it sound more cuddly. Swapping the word "nuclear" for 
> "environmental" and then dropping that all together.)
> https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=255&mode=2
>
> They have developed a system that results in glassified nuclear 
> waste that they claim is very hard to reprocess into weapons 
> material or to leak into the ground water. That said, the technology 
> is new and experience with it is limited.

And of course that is a problem in itself. We need a storage 
technique that will be reliable for millennia, and we're talking 
about techniques with which we have "limited experience." It's clear 
that, even if by some political accident Yucca Mountain comes back 
into the picture, we have a long way to go in figuring out how to 
handle the nuclear waste. Another good reason for not creating any 
more of it than we are now doing.

>  I'd love to see the shift straight to renewables, but I just don't 
> see that happening. I agree with the closing quote that Hugh uses 
> from Chip Giller. But I just don't see the USA heading in that 
> direction because it requires personal change and thinking long 
> term. (I just saw the movie "Idiocracy" which is crude and vulgar in 
> many ways but is disappointingly accurate in even more ways. Maybe 
> that is coloring my thinking right now...)

There is a lot of inertia in the system. Power companies don't like 
to get away from the old technologies that they are familiar with, 
but this is an emergency, and I think that if the government takes 
the lead in emphasizing the critical nature of the problem that we 
can start moving in the right direction, but it has to be well 
planned. We can't build a bunch of wind parks or solar farms without 
having a robust means of getting that energy to market, and we can't 
afford to turn the problem over to people who don't have sufficient 
appreciation of the situation. We need to make sure that we have the 
capability to provide the base power needs until we can get the 
renewables well-enough designed and distributed to that they can pick 
up at least part of the base load requirements as well phase out the 
coal and nuclear plants and phase in the smart grid technologies that 
can provide the base load capabilities that will be needed for the 
long term.

> Even so, we would still be left with issues like uranium mine 
> tailings. I come from a state (Utah) that has one of the worst mine 
> tailings problem on the planet with the old Atlas mine tailings next 
> to the Colorado River near Moab, Utah. A legacy of our 1950's rush 
> to all things nuclear. So even new technology nuclear plants is at 
> best a stop gap measure. But, as Hugh points out, there are loads of 
> problems with coal too.

Cleaning up the uranium tailings mess is easily comparable but not as 
dramatic as cleaning up the mess left over from building weapons. And 
the cost in lives to the miners, mostly Native Americans, on whose 
lands these predations were committed, is still going on. Cancer 
death rates among miners and other living near the mines (including 
children who played in the tailings piles without realizing the 
danger they placed themselves in) remain elevated and the life 
expectancy among those people has been measurably reduced by their 
exposure to the uranium ore that had lain safely underground for eons.

>  Short of a national, in your face, crisis that directly impacts the 
> "average Joe" in obvious and direct ways, I just don't see a direct 
> conversion to renewables.
What the "average Joe" is concerned about, and rightly so, is his or 
her job and this or her family's future. By any ethical principle, we 
need to make sure that our efforts in environmental cleanup and GHG 
reduction end up being an opportunity for those people to better 
their own and their families' lots. Proceeds from such things as 
carbon cap and trade sales or carbon taxes or any other forms of 
revenue raising that goes on in the name of converting our energy 
sources to renewables, must be used to provide the opportunities to 
those whose present jobs will be impacted by such things as closing 
coal or uranium mines, or operating power plants, or other jobs that 
have kept them at least existing for decades if not generations. If 
they can see a future for themselves in what we are trying to do, 
they will not oppose the efforts and can be enlisted to help in them. 
A 21st Century "WPA," especially in the current economic downturn, 
will provide those who are facing a bleak future as our energy 
economy shifts from coal, uranium and petroleum to cleaner renewable 
sources with some hope that they will be a part of the new prosperity 
as it develops.

There are a dozen or more books on the market now that provide 
prescriptions for achieving a transition to renewable energy within 
the next 40 years, but my favorite is Arjun Makhijani's "Carbon-Free 
and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U. S. Energy Policy," published by 
RDR books. It is available at Amazon, or can be downloaded for free 
from <http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/CarbonFreeNuclearFree.pdf>

Much of what I have said in my two posts on this thread is lifted 
from the pages of that book.

Hugh
--
Hugh Haskell
mailto:hugh@ieer.org
mailto:hhaskell@mindspring,.com

So-called "global warming" is just a secret ploy by wacko 
tree-huggers to make America energy independent, clean our air and 
water, improve the fuel efficiency of our vehicles, kick-start 
21st-century industries, and make our cities safer. Don't let them 
get away with it!!

					Chip Giller, Founder, Grist.org