In the wake of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima, the Obama administration is pushing for 8 billion dollars in funding toward nuclear energy, according to the Huffington Post. This brings so many questions to mind, the first being, is nuclear energy safe?
Safe, it turns out, is a relative word. The radiation from Chernobyl in the Soviet Union in 1986 has caused dozens of deaths and an estimated 4000 cases of thyroid cancer. And although various news outlets are spreading outright terror and making strong comparisons to the two, David Brenner, a professor of radiation biophysics at the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University, maintains that this incident might be more like Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979 than Chernobyl, which though scary, was not catastrophic. The nuclear plants in Japan have shown signs of melting at the core. Unlike what happened at Chernobyl, which spread massive amounts of radiation because there was no containment unit once the core melted, the core at Fukushima is surrounded by containment units made of concrete and steel that may remain intact if the core does indeed melt all the way through, reports NPR.org.
Let’s take a look at the death tolls at the hands of fossil fuels. There are the wars and the environmental risks (which the republicans have gone on record to publicly deny exist in the wake of scientific findings, but that’s another column), and the hole we have dug for ourselves both financially and technologically when the finite resources run out.
There’s coal, whose dangers are widespread in both widely publicized mining accidents and in the environmental risks, not to mention the causation of cancer that results from the fine particulates that float in the air as a result of high temperature burning, landing on our lungs.
Back to nuclear energy. It seems that disasters do happen and that they are scary. Yet it might be possible that lessons are learned at the hands of each disaster and more safety precautions are set in place. Is it right to abandon research at this point, when nuclear energy is the “only non-greenhouse-gas-emitting power source that can effectively replace fossil fuels and satisfy global demand," according to Patrick Moore, a co-founder of Greenpeace.
Something to consider is that while the Obama administration is stepping up efforts to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, it is unlikely that democratic or like-minded Presidents will follow his lead. The republican ideology of deregulation in the name of freedom is what led to the destruction of the BP oil spill. What needs to be made certain is that any gains in technological knowledge and safety regulations are made permanent as we move into a very uncertain future.
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Max Rivlin-Nadler
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"Oh, let's not do this!!"
"Oh, let's not do that!!"
"Oh, let's not not not not~~~~!!"
Of course, those who whine with these frightened neuroses NEVER have any answers as to what TO do.
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Really, no disrespect to you, but there are much deeper considerations that have been voiced elsewhere on Open Salon that have not been given this placement.
The reason is simple: these are very complex issues and Open Salon, like the rest of the media is opting for simple comments about intensely complicated questions.
First things first. The containment chambers at Fukushima HAVE been breached. The evidence is obvious. You don't get plumes of steam from an intact containment chamber. Period. The whole point of an containment chamber is to keep the radioactivity IN the chamber. No one is seriously contesting the point that at least three of the containment chambers have been damaged.
More importantly, very hot fuel rods in the cooling pits are right now exposed to the open air because the top of the reactor building was blown away by a hydrogen explosion, which is prima fascia evidence that the core has been exposed because that's where the hydrogen is generated by the splitting of water molecules by the intense heat of an uncovered core.
The hydrogen explosions indicate that super hot fuel cells have been exposed to the air. Attempting to cool the exposed rods by dumping water on them from helicopters also argues that these rods are exposed.
What makes this more troubling is that, while fuel rods in a reaction chamber are surrounded by cadmium or boron control rods, the rods in the cooling chambers are not.
Here's the rub: there are cooling chambers in each of the reactor buildings, all built the same way, outside the containment chambers.
If you want a cogent argument against nuclear power it is simply this:
The reasons that these used fuel rods are being stored in this manner is that the corporations that built these reactors didn't want to spend the money to build a secure storage system for the fuel rods....as they do in France and other countries.
This was an economic decision, not a scientific decision, aided and abetted by legislators who wrote laws permitting spent fuel rods to be stored in this manner.
Aside from the obvious stupidity of building nuclear power plants on fault lines or in areas vulnerable to tsunamis, we are faced with the prospect that ALL nuclear power sites are vulnerable to anything that interrupts electrical service to the plant.
It is ironic - and stupid - that none of the fail-safe measures at Fukushima included the ability to draw power from their own reactors.
When you shut down a nuclear reactor, it doesn't stop immediately. It continues to make steam for several hours, which means that a properly sealed generator (generators can be operated under water if properly designed) could have continued providing sufficient electricity to keep the reactors from losing coolant.
Once again, the reason that the plants at Fukushima were not designed this way was that the power company didn't want to spend the money for that sophistication.
The idea that only those reactors that are in earthquake zones or tsunami prone areas is belied by these simple facts:
The accident at Three Mile Island was caused by a stupid human error. Someone turned off the pumps by accident (or with malicious intent; one never knows) and no one noticed this for TWO HOURS.
The accident at Chernobyl was caused by a procedure performed DURING a safety exercise designed to practice the activation of the stand-by diesel electric generators.
Agreed, the Chernobyl reactor was a very bad design that should never have been built....but these two examples document an inconvenient truth: neither of these accidents resulted from earthquakes, tsunamis, terrorist infiltration, or material failure.
They were the result of human errors made in the design and operation of the plants involved.
I have been a strong proponent of nuclear power all my life but, having studied these problems intensely for long periods of time, I have been forced to the conclusion that we're not smart enough or diligent enough to handle nuclear reactors.
As a famous red neck philosopher has reminded us: You can fix ugly. You can fix ignorance, but you can't fix stupid.
Or, as an even more famous engineer one said, "Whatever can go wrong, will."
Nuclear energy is a red herring. It costs an astronomical amount of money compared to other existing energy systems, beginning with hydroelectric plants, that can be operating for hundreds of years.
We have literally hundreds of thousand of places where we can locate small scale hydroelectric plants and the aggregate cost of those decentralized plants would be an order of magnitude LESS than the aggregate cost of the same generating capacity from nuclear energy.
Unlike solar or wind generation, hydroelectric power is constant, virtually uninterruptible, pollution free, and impervious to malicious attacks.
Until someone explains to me why we have turned away from hydroelectric energy, I am going to keep harping on it until someone pays attention.
The reason that we keep falling for large-scale generating projects like nuclear, solar and wind generating systems is that there are people who have a vested interest in selling us those systems because they can make huge profits on them.
But the truth is that without government subsidies, nuclear power is a financial loser...and that's the real reason there have been no new plants built for the past thirty-five years....because the federal government hasn't been willing to underwrite them with loan guarantee programs.
Germany is closing down over half of its older nuclear plants in response to citizen protests. Now there's a government that actually LISTENS to its people.
You raise some good points. Thanks for sharing.
I'm sitting here in my comfortably heated suburban American home (of course, far too large by world standards, for four people and a dog). I use a dryer, not a clothesline (which I could easily use for six months of the year). I don't have solar panels on my roof (I could). I use my air conditioner in the summer. My kitchen light is on right now because I haven't gotten up to turn it off.
It's events like this one that make me think. Sure, I'd like to have no nuclear power. I'd like to take the dams off the Columbia river and let the salmon swim free again. But what am I willing to give up to get there? Hmmm? Beuller?
I suspect I am not that far off from the norm.
The questions change entirely when I apply them to myself.
For every finger I point at a nuclear power plant (or a fish-killing hydroelectric dam), three are pointing back at me (and my dryer, and my air conditioner, and my too-big house).
radiation thus far released may be the result of ancillary plumbing failure.
the techs working to contain and repair are in danger, but it is not a suicide mission, unlike chernobyl.
the total possible death toll is a trivial percentage of what the tsunami has done.
in short, the japanese are coping with one of the worst disasters in human history and the power station part of that is small, and still unclear. let's calm down and see how it turns out rather than adding to the panic of ignorance and fear.
Second: you are using NPR for a news source. GMAFB.
Third: your title makes it sound like it is Obama's choice. It will have to be *our* choice to get off our couches and quit using 25% of the planet's resources. Like froggy said, it comes down to the personal. While I own a clothes dryer, I haven't used it in a year. We all make choices with every move we make...
Fourth: nuke plants on fault lines? No problem, said the supreme court back in the 80's - there is so much corruption and money-grabbing at the nuke tit it makes it hard to comprehend.
Germany is doing something intelligent, at least, looking at their older plants in light of this disaster. I hope we will do the same.
Sagemerlin has it right: "I have been forced to the conclusion that we're not smart enough or diligent enough to handle nuclear reactors." There are lots of better ways to create power; we need to follow the money and *stop* the leaking of millions and billions into private hands while Mother Earth just waits to unleash the next lil' rumble and show us how ridiculous we've been.
There's something like 60,000 TONS (who knows?) of spent nuclear fuel stored in reactors in the US, apparently New York state is number 5 on the list of of the ones with the most stored. Just like in Japan and other countries we keep them on the Mississipi, the Great Lakes, the Pacific and the Atlantic because they need the water to keep it cool.
Sage Merlin is right, without power there's no cooling system. Storms knock power out all the time, tornados, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, you name it all those things knock out buildings and power alike. These aren't simple gadgets like aircraft that just kill a few hundred people and take a small chunk of earth out. I keep in mind new and old components fail nonetheless. These will kill potentially millions and leave a large area uninhabitable for who know how long. I'm old and I still care what I leave behind, I bet you do too.
Here's a none too reassuring google earth map of the reactors currently storing that spent fuel in the reactors themselves. I wouldn't feel very secure living on the Atlantic seaboard but so far so good. Personally, I think it's only a matter of when and which one. Mother nature and father time conspire against us often and this year was brutal.
http://www.energynow.com/node/3963
I'm not much better off in Idaho, our power is cheap hydroelectric (at the expense of the salmon) but we have our worries. For a small fee, the state has been accepting casks of spent fuel and burying them in shallow pits near the Snake River aquifer since the 1960's. At that time the finest minds determined the casks would be secure for 50,000 years. Now there's ongoing scientific debate on whether that number should be revised down to the casks being safe for another 30, the difference in estimates is not reassuring. They just took in more this year for another fee, sigh. Who knows they could decide the original casks will hold for 80 billion years. How do they even pick these numbers?
In the 90's there was talk of wind turbines on private farms and ranches the farmers could sell the excess to power companies, I think power companies don't like the idea of people using wind because they can't charge for wind.
It's the same as deloping solar technology for homes, back in the 70's there was a fashion of primitive solar panels on homes, they didn't have storage devices though and it never went farther. The power companies can't charge for sunlight.
To a large degree energy can be stored, either in batteries in a chemical form or in electrical capacitors, we see them in all gadgets big and small. Aircraft need a lot of electricity for their instrumentation and systems, and they don't fly with extension cords or enormous batteries, they're filled with things like capacitors that will store the charges created. In the same way when you unplug your TV and stick a screwdriver in you can get a hell of a shock if you touch a capacitor, it's that way with many electical systems, big capacitors store so much they're dangerous to people. There are step up and step down transformers because you don't want the same amount of power everywhere. I don't understand the ins and outs of power plants, I only have basic knowledge of electrical components from 35 years ago when I was an Avionics tech but we should be advancing more in creating, storing and distributing this basic power source. Using fossil fuels, coal and nuclear energy are primitive beyond belief.
In my limited understanding of the hybrid cars the problem is they have to use chemical storage (batteries) and we need more lithium, like the resources in Afghanistan, sigh. We need better small storage devices to take advantage of free clean sources, like wind, sun and water and sun.
It's hard to believe we haven't advanced at all in the area of generating and storing basic electricity. If they can make all these tiny gadgets why not bigger ones? If they can create micro computer chips why not micro electricity creating and storing devices. Perhaps because there's no way to charge us for the power sources, just a one time fee to build it. We're sending a rocket to Mercury next month, we can surely do better with electricity.
Here's an article from Aug 2010 with a cool little super-capacitor (with photos) they created that can power a laptop for day! This is hopeful and a step in the right direction. Where the heck is the giant one for our houses or office buildings?
http://news.discovery.com/tech/super-capacitor-power-energy.html
Sorry my comment is so long but I thought you have a questioning mind and based on this one post you're concerned with the environment. Please keep asking questions and keep digging, the answers are there and they will only be revealed if we keep pushing.
Personally I wish they'd start shutting these things down but we have no replacement sources. We need an alternative and based on what we can't definitively say, I think we need it yesterday. Thanks for the post. Rated.
Here we are again, completely dependent on oil AND nuclear reactors. Same old, same old. Keep pushing, we need change.