What's green about nuclear power? Well, it's cheaper, irradiates the planet less than coal and oil, and is less harmful to the environment than hydro, notes commentator and nuclear expert Joseph Neil.
The terms “green” and “nuclear” don't sit well together. It's commonly – but quite wrongly – assumed that they're at opposite ends of the spectrum of environmental correctness. This is understandable; what can possibly be “green” about a huge repository of highly volatile radioactive material boiling away under pressure in a giant steam kettle?
Well, for two thousand years or more, we have mined the earth ferociously, polluting our backyard with toxic slurry and destroying surrounding agricultural land. We have been doing the same with coal fired power plants for nearly two hundred years, and we have been spraying large quantities of oil across the planet for well over one hundred years.
We haven’t really done very much to aggressively control either of these industries, yet it's arguable that with nuclear power, we have gone too far the other way and indulged in emotional and irrational fears based almost exclusively in fact on one or two isolated incidents that have had far less impact on the environment than major oil spills or a normally functioning coal plant (see below).
Instead of emotional reactions, we need to take a considered look at verifiable facts of nuclear power production over a longer time period and rationally compare the risks and benefits of this technology against others used to produce the power we need, including the risk and impact and of potential future Chernobyl-like incidents in the equation.
In other words, let's be brave, not craven, in our assessment of nuclear power.
Two basic nuclear reactions: fusion, and fission.
Fusion, to date, has proven deceptively disappointing. Creating the fusion process requires more energy than the process produces, and, as important, there is no simple way to capture that energy for future use. There have been reported breakthroughs in this domain for thirty years, including the infamous cold fusion and perhaps it will eventually happen. “Eventually” here probably means, well, a very, very long time.
Nuclear fission works. Fission reactors are usually referred to by the technology used in the coolant/pressure combination: those most commonly deployed today are light water (LWR), pressurized heavy water (PWR), boiling water (BWR), and, in Europe and Japan, liquid metal fast breeder (LMFBR). Soviet-designed graphite gas reactors (RBMK) understandably lost favor after Chernobyl. (Engineers had warned that the RBMK reactor design introduced critical instabilities but were ignored. The incident probably served more to confirm engineering diagnoses than give evidence why the world should avoid nuclear power.)
Nuclear plants do not elevate background radiation.
The issue of radiation is an emotional subject immediately raised whenever nuclear power is discussed. Yet it's a banal fact that U.S. residents are exposed on average to 0.36 rem per year of naturally occurring radiation from cosmic rays, naturally occurring radioactive elements such as radon-222, solar radiation, and… from each other.
The measurable radiation release from a normally operating nuclear power plant is indistinguishable from this natural background level. In other words, if you wanted to find a nuclear power plant using a Geiger counter, you probably couldn't. This is a function of the stringent controls the industry puts in place to contain and control any emission, however feeble.
On the other hand, we tolerate and even subsidize many industries that have a much higher level of annual radiation emission, including mining, steel manufacturing, chip manufacturing, oil production, and both gas and coal fired power plants. Of course, the poor operation of a nuclear plant will still have nasty consequences, but this is also true, and historically much more common, for poorly operated coal plants or oil refineries.
There have been several major refinery explosions in the past decade in the USA alone, with many more deaths than the 50 or so verifiable deaths directly attributed to Chernobyl. Oil incidents have given rise to much more horrendous pollution and loss of wildlife.
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Solar, not nuclear
Regarding "Nuclear power is particularly green energy: get used to it" (2007-01-15), there really is no need for anyone to build new nuclear power plants in the US or Europe because there is a simple mature technology available that can deliver huge amounts of clean energy without any of the headaches of nuclear power.
I refer to 'concentrating solar power' (CSP), the technique of concentrating sunlight using mirrors to create heat, and then using the heat to raise steam and drive turbines and generators, just like a conventional power station. It is possible to store solar heat in melted salt or other substance so that electricity generation may continue through the night or on cloudy days. This technology has been generating electricity successfully in California since 1985 and half a million Californians currently get their electricity from this source. CSP plants are now being planned or built in many parts of the world.
CSP works best in hot deserts and, of course, these are not always nearby! But it is feasible and economic to transmit solar electricity over very long distances using highly-efficient 'HVDC' transmission lines. With transmission losses at about 3% per 1000 km, solar electricity may be transmitted to anywhere in the US. A portion of the Mojave desert would be sufficient to meet the entire current US demand for electricity.
In the recent 'TRANS-CSP' report commissioned by the German government, it is estimated that CSP electricity, imported from North Africa and the Middle East, could become one of the cheapest sources of electricity in Europe, including the cost of transmission. A large-scale HVDC transmission grid has also been proposed by Airtricity as a means of optimising the use of wind power throughout Europe. The TRANS-CSP report shows in great detail how Europe can meet all its needs for electricity, make deep cuts in CO2 emissions, and phase out nuclear power at the same time.
Further information about CSP may be found at www.trec-uk.org.uk and www.trecers.net . Copies of the TRANS-CSP report may be downloaded from www.trec-uk.org.uk/reports.htm . The many problems associated with nuclear power are summarised at www.mng.org.uk/green_house/no_nukes.htm .
CSP solar
Great comment - thanks for the pointers. This is one technology that I did not look into quite as thoroughly as I should have and I agree it is very interesting. It has been built out in Spain as well as California. Of course, you need a storage function, otherwise there is a need for associated co-gen at night as with some of the earlier existing parabolic systems. Scale and transport are still problematic - and maybe we will get these under control. I certainly hope so, I want to run my AC my PC, my heater and my TV without hurting the planet if I can avoid it. And I am not by any means suggesting nuclear is all good; I am suggesting it is a hell of a lot better than we are led to believe by the coal and oil lobbies. Unfortunately "green" opponents of nuclear, by fighting the wrong battle, are just facilitating the continued use of coal fired plant, surely the worst of all from almost any perspective, instead of helping replace coal or oil with a cleaner (not zero impact) technology that can help us mitigate the effect of our power choices while we develop and mature solar, local micro hydro systems, and other technologies. My point - lets fight the right battle and get rid of the worse first. Nuclear can then be an ally and not an enemy. Plus, it is cheap - and solar isn't, yet. Still I am cheering it on for sure.
Thanks for this. A few
Thanks for this. A few points:
* Re storage, solar heat can be stored in melted salts (eg nitrates of sodium or potassium) so that electricity generation may continue through the night or on cloudy days.
* Transport is not a problem. HVDC transmission technology is very well established and very efficient. There are other good reasons for building large-scale HVDC transmission grids, including the optimisation of wind power across wide areas.
* For an excellent account of the huge problems with nuclear power, do read Helen Caldicott's book "Nuclear power is not the answer".
Getting used to nuclear
Neil's cogent summary of nuclear advantages deliberatly leaves out solar and wind turbine.
As I understand it, Stanford research indicates enough wind at 300ft to create twice the energy required for the entire US. In fact, if I recall correctly, their report says the US has more wind potential than any other country. Augment this with solar and we should do fine for quite a while.
But the most important consideration is that wind turbine scatters energy production over an immense area, making it a difficult target for terrorists. Plus, it'll be interesting to see what happens to the economics of energy as communities create their own energy production.
No ommission of wind or solar....
I did consider wind and solar. I actually looked at some very comprehensive cost benefit analyses and I will go into them in another article. Both technolgies have high CAPEX and OPEX costs compared to fossil fuels. The intermittent nature of wind power unfortunately means it is also very unreliable (so you need reliable backup co-gen - nuclear for example, or gas, or oil, or coal - to cover unpredictable loss of wind power). Solar has scaling and reliability problems we have not yet solved otherwise we would all have solar panels already (and me too). It is cost related, quite simply.
I agree that we need to look at local micro generation and more effective exploitation of existing resources (eg. efficient very low head hydro such as that being developed by HydroVenturi). Moreover, it is to be hoped that innovations in solar technologies will help us remove some of the dirtier technologies, but my point is that today it is not possible to find a technology that can scale like coal or gas at a similar cost (note that last bit), other than nuclear - and it this latter is not as polluting as we are led to think. Note, I am not an opponent of "green" technologies, I just think we need to avoid an emotional approach.
As for scattering energy production and thus reducing the impact or attractiveness of terrorist attacks, this is a red herring in my opinion. The total US energy industry is already so widely dispersed geographically and by technology mix that an attack on a single facility of any kind would have negligable effect on overall available power and probably cause more hot air through hysteria than through expolosion. The latest nuclear reactors are almost impossible to disrupt in a way that would cause them to explode as at Chernobyl. This has been so for western designs for a long time.
However, I have to admit that he idea of a sort of terrorist Don Quichotte pointing his trusty SUV at a succession of wind turbines frightens the life out of me.....it might make gas prices go up.
Green energy is urgently needed
Thanks Neil for making a strong case for nuclear power. Fossil fuel accounts for 85% of the world energy consumption. Continued wars over oil and gas will intensify as sources of fossil fuels run low.
If we don't act very soon to replace fossil fuel as an energy source, climate change will be unstoppable. In the past when greenhouse gases went to the levels predicted to occur this century, the seas on our planet rose 80 feet above present levels. Because catastrophic sea level rise has happened before, climate scientists can predict with certainty that it will happen again if greenhouse gasses are allowed reach the critical level. There is no time to waste. If atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to grow “with business a usual” we will lower the carrying capacity of the planet. James Lovelock thinks that only one half billion of our 6.5 billion inhabitants will survive. Say goodbye to San Francisco, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. and nearly all of Florida. All will be under water.
Nuclear fission is the only currently available energy source that can meet base-load electricity need, create hydrogen from water, and provide desalination at high efficiency. When all three of these critical needs are harnessed together, the atom can be utilized at an efficiency of 80%. This efficiency will result in cheap electric, cheap hydrogen for transportation, and plenty of good drinking water for our world’s inhabitants. The advanced cycle generation of reactors is capable of using up the spent fuel from our current generation reactors. The new reactors’ only waste products after processing are fission products which require geologic storage for 300 to 500 years to decay to background. The amount of waste from the future reactors is reduced by 99% as compared to our current light water reactors. Useful amounts of plutonium and uranium needed for nuclear weapons are absent from the waste. Because the new generation reactors require much less uranium ore, uranium mines hold an essentially inexhaustible supply of fuel.
Nuclear energy is the safest by as much as two orders of magnitude over all other sources of energy. Neil makes a strong case that nuclear fission is the greenest and cheapest of energy sources.
We need all the resources that we can muster to have a fighting chance of avoiding the tipping point of greenhouse gases. Of course we should also push ahead with conservation and renewables.
green energy is urgently needed
So I am not alone! Yes, I agree, of course we should push ahead to develop robust and less polluting technologies. It cannot come quick enough. But there is no such thing as a step function in this domain; we will not go from coal to wind, or tidal surge power overnight. Nuclear, and especially the more recent reactor technologies, will give us a long period of less polluting power (not zero pollution, no-one is claiming it will do that). As John Tjostem says, we have little time, and we have a well grounded technology that can help us alleviate the current production of greenhouse gases due to the use of hydrocarbon fuels. As China and India, Brazil, Mexico, Nigeria, Indonesia, and other populous nations begin to increase their production of coal and oil fired power, we will be faced with both rising costs of fossil fuel and huge rises in greenhouse gases. While I would agree that it is not totally proven that power generation is responsible for the rise in the greenhouse effect (it is also partly a natural cycle) it would be folly for us to ignore a technology that is low cost and safe and allows us to mitigate the effects since whether it is related to human activity or not the effect on the global environment will be the same. Nuclear proponents have almost been afraid to speak up, partly because of the clamour from the "green" lobby, partly because of Chernobyl, and prior to that Three Mile Island. It is refreshing to see a more realistic attitude to this technology - no it is not perfect, yes it can give us breathing room while we phase out the dirtier systems and develop the renewables.
Anyone heard of thermal pollution?
Nuclear plants kill rivers. There's that issue of indemnity, also -- the nuclear industry will never be self-financing (i.e. economic) because they cannot insure themselves without government indemnity.
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