the nuclear option, part II

Lets imagine that the issues i covered in part I are simply either wrong,or immaterial. Are there further objections to the nuclear option?

Water is a resource that has long been taken for granted in some parts of the world, but is more and more becoming an issue as increasing populations and food growth pressures bring water usage policies to the fore. Here in the mountain west, it is not at all uncommon to be restricted in water usage. The southeast US is experiencing an exceptionally harsh drought this year. water is quickly become a serious concern, and climate change will only exacerbate the problem.

So we need nuclear power to stop climate change and help relieve water issues, right?

Here is a little fact from Georgia, a state currently hit rather hard by drought: "the (four) Nuclear power plants in Georgia require huge amounts of water, consuming tens of millions of gallons of water per day."

So we should change the warming earth problem for a lack of water problem?

Interestingly, in looking for information on this problem, the primary response from pro-nuclear writers is that nuclear plants can easily operate in drought conditions. Or the even more disturbing "there is no technical reason preventing future plants from being built to minimize water usage." Thats nice. i am glad there is no technical reason...

the issue, to me at least, is not "will the plant still be able to make energy while people are unable to get water for drinking or cleaning," but rather the whole "unable to get water for drinking or cleaning." i am sure that is rather picky of me, but i rate drinking above electricity. i know which one i can live longer without.

yes, before anyone asks, i am well aware the fact that we are not in such desperate straights that we can not get water to drink. Yet. And yes, i also know that other electrical generation methods need water. But the fact that we are not yet looking to trade drinking water for power does not mean that we should proceed as if that is not a future concern. short sighted solutions are how we got into the state we are in now. such solutions are not going to correct the problem as much as they will create new problems.

But lets even forget the question of water usage. Lets assume that perhaps some other cooling method (not sodium, that has proven disastrous) is usable, or perhaps that plants can be situated in such a way that water usage is not an issue. Lets take that concern and put it with the misleading "carbon free" claim and the "waste lasting longer than the human race" issue, and lets assume that they don't matter.

There is still a question of centralized vs decentralized power generation. Centralized power generation, in the form of nuclear, coal, gas, or even many solar, wave and wind plants, is simply less efficient. Generating power hundreds or thousands of miles from where it is going to be used is as intelligent as living on a farm, and raising your own wheat, but selling that wheat and then shipping in bread from the other side of the world.

Power that is generated by any method and then transfered over mile after mile of line is simply inefficient. The line loss, or amount of energy lost as power is sent long distances only increases with nuclear due to what the comedian George Carlin calls the NIMBY effect. "Nuclear power? Yeah i think we need more plants! But Not In My Back Yard!"

Centralized power is simply a bad choice in many respects. The University of Minnesota reported in September, 2006, on the economic advantages of community (decentralized) vs corporate (centralized) ownership of wind farms. Community owned projects provided benefits over corporate owned with a 16% increase in output, 42% increase in wages and 25% higher increase in local jobs. Local business revenues were 53% higher and tax revenues 8% higher than the corporate owned farms in the comparison.

Naturally there is no similar study on nuclear power, since the prohibitive price, technology, and risk of nuclear plants prevents decentralization. They are safe on that score. Even without the NIMBY effect, only a huge power company,with government help, can manage to built one of these massive and expensive plants. The cost of nuclear energy makes it the second most expensive power option, according to the University of Chicago. And that is once the plant is in production. The fact that the nuclear industry is given, year after year, R&D reimbursement, operational subsidies, construction subsidies, etc, etc, etc, never seems to be noticed. If you take away the taxpayer funding, nuclear is the single most expensive power generation in the history of mankind. We have spent, in the United States alone, we have well over half a trillion dollars into this industry. If your power bill reflected the tax dollars you have given to nuclear already, and further broke down the cost of electricity by how it was generated, people would be marching on Washington demanding that the remaining plants in operation be put out of commission, rather than asking for new plants to be built.

According to the Nuclear Energy Information Service, "Since 1950, nuclear power has received over $97,000,000,000 in direct and indirect subsidies from the federal government, such as deferred taxes, artificially low limits on liability in case of nuclear accidents, and fuel fabrication write-offs. No other industry has enjoyed such privilege." That is more than 30 times the amount that all alternative energy generations have received. Ever. Combined.

What could solar power be like today if that level of funding had been sunk into it? Or wind? Or tide generation? We may never know.

Finally, I started my questioning of the nuclear option with the statement that nuclear is being portrayed as a "green" energy solution. The argument is that climate change is now such a threat that we should, or even must, embrace nuclear energy as a way to save mankind. But even if all of the factors i have considered so far where not true, there is a final issue to address. Time. Nuclear plants are a huge under taking, and even beyond the price, risk, and long term solution, there is the simple fact that it would take several decades (as well as money and resourses we don't currently have) to build enough nuclear plants to make a difference in greenhouse gases. And most experts agree we simply do not have decades.

We can cut our energy use now. Immediately. By some estimates between 30 and 45% of the energy generated in the US is wasted. Replacing a few light bulbs or turning down the heat while you are away is actually be better for the environment than nuclear energy....

....and we can think of the lack of nuclear waste and things like that as little side benefit.

the nuclear option

There is a growing belief that nuclear is a green energy. i am, frankly, totally baffled by this. Not only is it an odd choice from an environmental perspective, but from an ethic perspective as well. I not only can't see how nuclear is assumed to be a possible choice, I fail to even see how it has benefits...

The carbon assumption
As author and environmentalist Bill McKibbean says in answer to the 'why nuclear' question, "because it is low carbon- and that is the only reason." Nuclear energy is being pushed by many as a green energy because of its assumed low carbon foot print. There is just one little problem with the nuclear carbon foot print. It isn't all that small. Nuclear creates a carbon foot print in mining, milling, enrichment, fuel rod assembly, plant operation, maintenance, temporary storage, reprocessing, and long-term storage. That is a lot of places to slip in some carbon exhaust in a "carbon free" energy source. And none of them are small.

Pretty much all energy production methods are going to require mining, but nuclear energy actually requires constant mining to supply it with uranium for reactions. And since uranium is low volume, and low concentration in its appearances in the earths crust, it tends to be mined in massive open pit mines. Or sometimes it is produced from a process known as heap leeching, which produces massive piles of low radiation tailings. Something you just love to have sitting around, a pile of radioactive dirt. And that wonderful by-product is created by burning massive amounts of fossil fuels to power the machinery used to create the open pit disaster that we leave behind. Since i live not far from the largest open pit disaster..... umm, mine in the world, i can tell you, they are great to have around. If huge hole of environmental destruction that is visible from space, and a pile of radio active dirt sound less than "green" to you, well, you just haven't been listening to the nuclear industry.

Naturally after the earth is ripped up, we have to create the fuel rods, burning still more dead dinosaurs, reprocess it to be enriched, (guess what, that takes energy too) then assembled, etc, etc.

Even if we discount the massive amount of energy burned in the building process, nuclear is a far cry from carbon free. But lets assume, as many studies do, that it is still more carbon friendly than, say, coal fire plants. That hardly seems to be a tough claim to defend. So isn't nuclear a real possibility?

Carbon and Environmentalism

The problem is that over the last few years carbon has become the representation of fear among environmental groups. Now i am not one these payed flacks by the "burn more dead dinos" companies that have fought even discussing the possibility of global warming being discussed, and i am not about to say that CO2 is good for you, but I am afraid that some of us have forgotten that there are other issues in the world.

Back up this post a few lines i mentioned the open pits and the radio active tailing piles, recall those? Many people would argue that those things are also environmental issues. If we trade CO2 for open pits and piles of U-238, will we be gaining ground?

The United States DOE has stated that America has "thousands of tons of spent nuclear fuel and material" and also "huge quantities of contaminated soil and water" right now. Today. Some of the radioisotopes that come out of a nuclear reactor as waste will be radioactive for literally millions of years. 4000 thousand years ago, egyptians where building pyramids. 30,000 years ago humans were painting on cave walls. 300,000 years ago, the first modern humans evolved. One million years ago their ancestors left the very first signs of tool using "hominins" inside the borders of modern china. That is the kind of time scale we are dealing with when we talk about nuclear waste.

Seven generation sustainability, the idea that decisions should be considered for their impact on the seventh generation to come, inspired by the laws of the Iroquois, is sometimes mentioned in environmentalist circles. Figuring out how many generations we impact by leaving million year waste is an exercise left to the math inclined reader......