For Mr. Jonas Siegel

In regards to commmercial nuclear power, a history spanning over 50 years, whith 433 units operating world-wide, you state:

"...nuclear energy has not overcome a range of risks—safety, nuclear proliferation, and waste..."

Safety - what would be an acceptable level of safety for you?

Nuclear Proliferation - how does commercial nuclear power in the United States contribute or relate to nuclear proliferation and weopons?

Waste - is the "waste" issue a technical issue or a political issue?

Thank you and Regards

For Mr. Harvey Wasserman

Q1:

You state "The radioactive fuel chain is a major cause of global warming." Please explain the means by which the nuclear fuel cycle contributes to global warming and the factual basis for such a conclusion.

Q2:

You state that commercial nuclear power is a source of "weapons proliferation." Please expain how or where this is occuring in the United States?

Thank you and Regards

For Mr. Harvey Wasserman

Q1: If solar and wind power are already cheaper than nuclear power, why do they - together - produce less than 1/20th as much electricity each year in the US?

Q2: If solar and wind power could replace nuclear power, why is Germany planning to build at least 20 new coal fired power plants as they move towards the phase out of nuclear power planned by Gehart Schroeder, Germany's former chancellor and current director of Russia's Gazprom project to build a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany?

Q3: Why do you believe that nuclear plants as terrorist targets are any worse than any other? Have you ever seen a containment dome up close or been through security at an operating plant?

It amazes me how people with little knowledge can comment on this issue.
I spent 20 years in design and building Nuclear Power Plants and can assure you NOT one built is safe against any form of catastrophic outcome from mis-management,poor construction due to corrupt contractors and to terrorist attacks.
Most are built with known faults and cover-ups with corrupt owners looking after the pockets of government and the shareholders.
It's all about money, how much can those involved make on the side and safety is never an issue.
It's all about money and to hell with the safety of the surrounding communities.
Some plants are secretly closed due to poor design and construction leading to radiation leakage.
Spent fuel is stock piled and they have no way to dispose of this dangerous waste.
I am ashamed to have been involved with the knowledge of the faults and future catastrophic disasters just waiting to happen.
We should look to the obvious fuel to power our future needs and that is the everlasting Sun but the profit making is less to encourage investors or the governments to build.

I may be viewed as an equal opportunity offender but still I have to ask how can reasonable people still see nuclear power as an option?
It makes about as much sense as burning coal and apparently we use coal burning power to process the enriched uranium required for a nuclear plant.
Nuclear power is not economically sustainable.
It costs billions to build, update and expand.
It costs billions in subsidies to sustain it and the ONLY ones that profit are corporations and the lobbyists that feed off this free lunch at the taxpayers expense.
It costs billions to store the waste.
And it costs billions to decommission this failed science project.

So nuclear is costly, pollutes the planet with radiation and then you are stuck with a hazardous waste by-product. Coal is dirty and also pollutes the atmosphere.
So why are they still considered viable energy alternatives?

If big oil had one shred of decency, with their billion dollar profits they could could have turned the tide twenty years ago and invested in the development of sustainable energy like solar and wind and been ahead of the game and become environmental stewards instead of pariahs.

The fact that nuclear has an even darker side with the it's use in weapons I think makes this a no brainer. Just say NO to Nukes.
Questions can be answered by anyone with an opinion.
Thanks

elemental jim:

Most of your questions can be answered by simple physics and mathematics. If solar and wind were sufficient to meet the needs of humans for weather independent power, they would be used. To think that the billions who have gone before you and realized that there is some energy in the sun and wind were simply fools is rather vain. We know that the energy exists, but we also know that it is diffuse, unreliable and expensive to collect. It simply cannot meet our needs as naked apes to live in hostile climates or our desire to have a better than subsistence life style. As someone who has a computer at your disposal, you need to become more aware of how it gets its power and why those choices were made.

Judith Lewis, you say, "Nuclear energy is far from environmentally benign". Do you believe getting the same power from some other source would be closer to benign? It seems to me that workers (http://www.komotv.com/news/local/9383316.html) are part of the environment too.

'elemental jim': if you're so cynical about "big oil", why does it not occur to you that you have been tricked into saying the things you say about nuclear power by slick big-oil-funded liars?

(It stands to reason big oil would still be angry about losing the electricity generation market. If the oil-fired generators they had on the string in 1970 were still going, they'd be burning oil at $12 million per tonne-of-uranium-equivalent. The real thing costs $0.17 million per tonne.)

From Harvey Wasserman:
Good to see this going. FYI, I have posted an article about Chernobyl at www.freepress.org on 4/26, for the 22d anniversary of that catastrophe.
To start:
1) There is more nuke than solar/wind capacity in the US not because of market forces favoring nukes, but because the US govt, iniitally at the behest of the nuke weapons industry, has poured hundreds of billions into the technology. A report done for Harry Truman in 1952 urged the US to go solar, but when Ike came in 1953, he decided otherwise, which is why we are where we are. A similar decision to go solar was in the process of being made in the late 1970s when Ronald Reagan arrived and pulled the perfectly functional solar panels off the White House roof, then helped send a nascent solar/wind industry down the tubes. Never believe that the fossil/nuke industry (or KingCONG---coal, oil, nukes & gas) could survive without your taxpayer subsidies, starting with federal liability insurance, without which all US reactors would close tomorrow. Nonetheless, there are $6 billion in wind farms on order or under construction in the US, versus zero new nukes. The nuke industry has made it very clear there will be no "renaissance" without massive govt. subsidies. What does that tell you?

To answer Mr. Wallace

Q1:

You state "The radioactive fuel chain is a major cause of global warming." Please explain the means by which the nuclear fuel cycle contributes to global warming and the factual basis for such a conclusion.

IN RESPONSE: The mining of uranium release significant amounts of greenhouse gases, as does the milling process. The milling has also left us with billions of tons of "tailings" sitting at mill sites that emit substantial quantities of radon gas, among other things.
Milled ore must then be shipped to Paducah, Kentucky, for enrichment in a process that requires very substantial electricity coming from coal-fired power plants.
Initial construction of the reactors themselves also require very substantial energy inputs, much from fossil fuels.
The fission process does circumvent the GHG "middle man" in global warming by dumping very substantial quantities of heat directly into the air (in the form of steam, much of it chemically treated) and rivers/lakes/oceans (in the form of hot water).
The management of spent fuel remains an uncertain process, but also requires substantial fossil-fueled energy inputs.
And the decommissioning of reactors is a fuel hog of undetermined appetite.
These last two factors remain major uncertainties in terms of financial and ecological cost.
And there may be more. Consider, for example, the fossil-fired energy requirements of dealing with a melt-down or explosion, as at Chernobyl and, possibly, during a future terror attack.

Q2:

You state that commercial nuclear power is a source of "weapons proliferation." Please expain how or where this is occuring in the United States?

EVERY ATOMIC REACTOR creates radioactive by-products usable in a "dirty bomb" that need not be a fission device, but that could be merely used to distribute lethal quantities of radioactive materials over large areas through pedestrian explosive means.
There are also fissionable materials in radioactive waste that could be used for fission bombs, particularly if there's an attempt to reprocess, as is being done in France, with enormous financial, ecological and security costs.
Furthermore, all reactors are themselves potential "bombs" in that they're subject to attack from a wide variety of means, any one of which could lead to an apocalyptic radiation release. Though containment domes are of varying strength (some 30 US containment systems are weaker than the one at Chernobyl 4) a dome need not be penetrated to cause an unfathomable disaster. Control rooms, cooling systems, spent fuel pools, off-site power and other weak links in the reactor operations chain are potential targets.
This is not a scenario we want to describe in great detail, but it's one that must be avoided at all costs, which is why there is absolutely no future for atomic power. No terrorist will ever threaten to destroy an entire region by bombing a solar panel.

To S. Brand
Having worked around nuclear weapons and around an uranium ore field, my feelings are that the people(humanity) have already voted against the nuclear option in that they collectively said, "not in my backyard," for the desposition of radioactive material waste. Plus, I don't remember anyone ever poisoning a Native American Indian reservation to produce either windpower or solar power nor the industries having the need of paid mercenaries and involvement of federal officers? Then, there are the engineering standards(science) in designing the plants themselves with pie in the sky lifetimes. Reality catches up later with the public being stuck with another bill. It is not the investors which have profited which are ruined. This is why the government is needed to "insure" that which the private sector won't.
If the "government" built them, you would have two types of scenarios; either low bid(corner cutting) or no bid(which works just so well in Iraq).

To answer Rod Adams:

Q1: If solar and wind power are already cheaper than nuclear power, why do they - together - produce less than 1/20th as much electricity each year in the US?

AS MENTIONED ABOVE, in 1952 the Paley Commission advocated a massive shift to renewable energy, and predicted 15m solar-heated homes in the US by 1975. But Eisenhower embarked on a "Peaceful Atom" program that shifted government funding to nukes. It was done in no small part to paint a "happy face" on the nuke weapons industry. The utility industry was strong-armed into building reactors, and demanded a legal, financial and liability blank check. A trillion dollars later, there is still no level playing field in energy, and nukes still can't compete. Today wind is the cheapest new form of electric generation to build, and PV is not far behind, even in straight market terms, without accounting for the "ancillary costs" of fossil/nukes. And even with all the government subsidies, nukes cannot get private financing, or private disaster insurance. In a truly open market, all of them would shut, and no new ones would be seriously considered, even despite all the high-priced corporate hype.

Q2: If solar and wind power could replace nuclear power, why is Germany planning to build at least 20 new coal fired power plants as they move towards the phase out of nuclear power planned by Gehart Schroeder, Germany's former chancellor and current director of Russia's Gazprom project to build a gas pipeline from Russia to Germany?
GERMANY IS MOVING rapidly toward renewables and efficiency, but not rapidly enough. The phase-out of their reactors tells us they know something the French, who are right next door, and whose industry is a disaster, won't face.

Q3: Why do you believe that nuclear plants as terrorist targets are any worse than any other? Have you ever seen a containment dome up close or been through security at an operating plant?
I'VE BEEN THROUGH THE RANCHO SECO nuke (it's dead!) and have seen far too many containment domes to have any faith in any of them. What does on-the-ground security, which has been penetrated frequently anyway, have to do with an attack from the air? No other kind of industrial facility can inflict the kind of damage that can come from a nuke.

I want to respond first to the commenter, Tom Wood, who claimed disbelief over non-experts having opinions. I’ve spent time in France, and I learned there that any reasonably bright 12-year-old can tell you quite a bit about nuclear power. Not everyone’s for it (contrary to what you hear), but they do know how it works. I don’t think we can live in a democracy where we rely on “experts” to make decisions about our future. We’ve already seen how well that’s worked out. We need to start thinking for ourselves.

Second, I want to respond to Harvey Wasserman about that “radioactive fuel chain”: Several agencies have conducted studies comparing cradle-to-grave carbon-dioxide emissions of different energy sources, including coal, gas, solar, wind, geothermal and nuclear. They include the European Commission’s “ExternE” research (http://externe.jrc.es/ger.pdf), a University of Wisconsin Ph.D. thesis, a study by Switzerland’s Paul Scherrer Institute and a joint analysis by a team of Canadian and Japanese researchers. There’s also Fthenakis and Kim's study comparing just nuclear and solar.

On greenhouse gas emissions alone, nuclear energy does very well in these studies. While coal-fired electricity generation emits around 900 kg of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity generated, nuclear leaves us with only 16 to 55 kg CO2 per MWh (that’s including mining, milling, enrichment, plant construction, waste disposal -- the whole deal). At its best – that is, when the enrichment process is done in centrifuges, the way the Europeans do it, it’s comparable to wind. At its worst – enriched in energy-sucking (and, until recently, CFC-leaking) gaseous diffusion plants, it's equivalent to solar.

That’s not to say nuclear doesn’t have serious drawbacks. But we also have to be honest about its advantages. And whether the pros outweight the cons really does depend on how urgently worried we are about catastrophic climate change.

The only answer to all of our problems is radical energy conservation; failing that, there just isn’t any energy nirvana. You say solar is the answer, but I was just out in the Mojave Desert, where California utilities intend to install solar plants tens of thousands of acres wide, and build transmission towers two-thirds of a mile across to transport that electricity to cities. I was in favor of the projects until I went out there and walked among the bighorn sheep tracks and desert tortoises – endangered species whose habitat would be severely diminished by them.

Nuclear’s footprint per megawatt is tiny compared to solar’s, and that only seems trivial until you walk the land solar will cover. (That said, solar panels should absolutely cover every available rooftop where the sun shines).

The problem is not that nuclear is expensive. The problem is that coal is cheap.

That brings in government, in the US and everywhere else. Only severe regulations can make coal "clean," and the hoped-for Carbon Capture and Sequestration technologies will make it expensive. Add various forms of carbon tax, cap & trade, and mandates which are crucial to decrease carbon emissions, and nuclear competes well.

On the subsidies issue, nuclear gets substantially less than renewables.
Quote:
The perception that renewable energy has been short-changed at the expense of other
energy sources is not correct: Federal subsidies for renewable energy (including
hydroelectric power) totalled $111 billion, compared to $87 billion for natural gas
and less for each coal and nuclear.
Unquote.

That's from "A half-century of US federal government energy incentives: value, distribution, and a policy implications," by Roger Bezdek and Robert Wendling, in the International Journal of Global Energy Issues, No. 1, 2007.

Let's see if this link works:
inderscience.metapress.com/index/7U3K1GL3NXXD0KFL.pdf

Sorry, I should have added that the period of the quoted subsidies is 1994-2003.

Judith, I'm impressed that you walked around where the large solar footprint might tread.

A paper that really wades into that one is by Jesse Ausubel (brother of Bioneers leader Kenny Ausubel). He is head of the Program for the Human Environment at Rockefeller University and one of the earliest leaders on climate change. In his paper, "Renewable and Nuclear Heresies," he examines detailed comparative footprints of nuclear versus wind and solar and concludes that "Nuclear is green. Renewables are not green."

The paper is in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology, No. 3, 2007.
Link:
phe.rockefeller.edu/docs/HeresiesFinal.pdf

Question for everyone -- One of my favorite bloggers, Charles Hugh Smith says this about Coal:

"It seems that burning 700 million tons of coal every year to generate about 50% of the electricity in the U.S. is releasing 1,000 tons of radioactive uranium and thorium every year."

SOURCE: LINK HERE

IS this true? He goes on to say that living next door to a coal plant subjects you to a magnitude more radiation than living next to a Nuke plant. Obviously no one's in favor of more coal here, but given the choice, it seems like a win for nuclear.

Thoughts?

For all:

I am by no means a nuclear expert; in fact, I know very little about it. But I guess that's why I'm asking all of you.

From what I have read, it seems that the earth's available supplies or uranium are starting to run low, or will start to run low in the near future. Is this a concern for the nuclear industry? Can the nuclear industry continue to grow if their fuel source is being depleted at a quickening rate?

Thank you,
Ross L.

If nuclear energy is going to save us, why hasn't it already? The technology has been around for decades. Why does it seem to take big subsidies to get plants built and operating? If it is so plentiful and efficient why haven't companies been beating down the doors to get these plants built? I don't buy that it's just politics or anti-nuclear sentiment. Coal burning has rendered our freshwater fish inedible, yet the political impediments there have been negligible. If it is so bountiful, where has nuclear energy been for the last 30 years?

Rod Adams,

You seem to be operating under the assumption that the world's energy policy is founded on reason and logic when you ask why aren't more wind and solar power plants built, if they are more productive than nuclear plants.

As I understand it, wind and solar power are rapidly maturing technologies. I also understand that nuclear power has also matured since the accident at Three Mile Island. However, I am old enough to remember that debacle, as well as the catastrophe at Chernobyl, and I am less likely to support any technology that has the potential to render my state unliveable for the next 300 years or so (I made that figure up; I don't know the actual move-back-in date at Chernobyl), not to mention a technology that creates a waste so toxic that no one wants it stored anywhere near them.

It seems to me that conservation, particularly in the U.S., China and India, combined with clean and renewable energy sources such as solar and wind, is the only reasonable way to go if we are truly serious about saving this planet.

Harvey - I saw you talk about nuclear power at an E-Town taping a couple years ago. You said there that Nuclear power can't help the global warming problem because it heats the earth directly. Could you say more about that?

And to all the panel I am curious about whether we could get a net benefit from bringing our percentage of nuke-generated power up to the levels of Japan and France. Are they exporting emissions by refining offshore? Have they so far avoided major trouble that is due sometime?

In response to Mr. Wallace’s question regarding the connection between nuclear proliferation and nuclear power:

One of the most vexing aspects of the current system that governs the use of nuclear technologies and materials is that it allows for countries to build much of the infrastructure necessary to make nuclear weapons in the name nuclear energy development. The same uranium enrichment facilities that enrich fuel for power production can also enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. The plants that reprocess spent fuel after it is taken out of a reactor can be used to make additional fuel--or plutonium for nuclear weapons.

If more countries decide to build nuclear reactors and the infrastructure to manage all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle within their national borders, then there is the risk that those countries will someday decide to use that infrastructure to make nuclear weapons. Even if a country decides not to build uranium enrichment plants or reprocessing facilities within their borders, they will have to deal with transporting fissile materials to and from their nuclear facilities, storing them, and securing them—not trivial tasks.

The United States continues to deal with the dangerous legacy of earlier nuclear energy development. Through the Reduced Enrichment for Research and Test Reactors program, Energy Department officials help to reduce the risk of proliferation by removing highly enriched uranium fuel (which can be used to make a nuclear weapon) from reactors throughout the world and replace it with low-enriched uranium fuel, which does not pose as serious a proliferation risk.

Now, the United States already has nuclear weapons. As a legacy of its once gigantic—and still large—nuclear arsenal the United States has an inventory of more than 10,000 kilograms of highly enriched uranium and around 100 metric tons of separated plutonium within its borders, according to the International Panel on Fissile Material. Much of this material came from nuclear weapons and could theoretically be used in nuclear weapons again. This material could also be used to make more nuclear energy fuel. If the United States begins to reprocess spent fuel from nuclear reactors (as has been advocated under the Globel Nuclear Energy Partnership) its stocks of separated plutonium will likely grow. Not to mention it still has a large-scale enrichment infrastructure—why, I have no idea.

sometimes when I wonder...why isn't solar/wind/etc more prevalent? ...I realize...if I were a major power supplier...why would I want to sell you a system that you buy once that will provide all your power for years to come, when instead I can build a coal or nuclear energy plant that you'll have to purchase the energy from me for years to come? This is why I believe it is so slow in coming....the major players have too much to lose.

In considering nuclear power plants...I rarely see included in the discussion a true assessment of how the radioactive waste will be dealt with. It is simply an awful by product that is not worth producing. I believe we have a moral obligation not to produce and put more it on this earth.

To sum up I agree wholeheartedly with the comments in the post below from Jim:

I may be viewed as an equal opportunity offender but still I have to ask how can reasonable people still see nuclear power as an option?
It makes about as much sense as burning coal and apparently we use coal burning power to process the enriched uranium required for a nuclear plant.
Nuclear power is not economically sustainable.
It costs billions to build, update and expand.
It costs billions in subsidies to sustain it and the ONLY ones that profit are corporations and the lobbyists that feed off this free lunch at the taxpayers expense.
It costs billions to store the waste.
And it costs billions to decommission this failed science project.

So nuclear is costly, pollutes the planet with radiation and then you are stuck with a hazardous waste by-product. Coal is dirty and also pollutes the atmosphere.
So why are they still considered viable energy alternatives?

If big oil had one shred of decency, with their billion dollar profits they could could have turned the tide twenty years ago and invested in the development of sustainable energy like solar and wind and been ahead of the game and become environmental stewards instead of pariahs.

The fact that nuclear has an even darker side with the it's use in weapons I think makes this a no brainer. Just say NO to Nukes.
Questions can be answered by anyone with an opinion.
Thanks

Posted by: elemental jim on 04/27/08 at 12:18 PM Respond

I would like to ask anyone advocating against nuclear power a quick question, that being, what alternative can be proposed here?

If my understanding is correct, Nuclear power is our only source of an energy source to meet our base load which does not produce a direct carbon waste. With reprocessing, the actual dangerous waste products are greatly reduced, and as could be pointed out by any nuclear engineer Chernobyl-style accidents are not possible with modern reactors. Whatever cons can be found here, I do not see how they can possibly outweigh the benefits of replacing our coal -based base energy supplier with one which is significantly less carbon heavy.

If you read Henry Wasserman's comments in his profile, it is OBVIOUS he knows what he's talking about, and is CORRECT in his assessment. An to anyone oblivious to the dangers that are posed merely from design flaws and human error(leaving out terrorist attacks)...do your homework and read about Chernobyl and gain an understanding of the loss that will impact literally generations and generations and generations. Then make your decision if you want nuclear power plants in your state/country.

To answer Mark Ruff's comments: Conservation, and solar/wind technology, in that order.

Mr.Adams,
I appreciate the response although it came off a little like a backhand and then I followed your link. So you work in the nuclear industry and are pro nuke. I am not as nuclear knowledgeable as you but I'm logical and not in denial with regard to nuclear problems.
Doesn't that make you a bit of a "tool"?

Solar starts to get some traction and special interests and corporate greed manage to get it put on the back burner again and again. Mr.Wasserman has pointed this out. Kinda like the electric car by now solar should economical readily available.
At least that's the info I'm getting from my computer.

Here is a very helpful site in understanding and learning more about solar options
www.thesolarvillage.com

For Steward Brand...about Biomimicry and mimicking how biological systems use energy.

As Wendell Berry makes the distinction between biological and mechanical energy, why can't we accept that the Earth is subject to limits and boundaries, as Biomimicry instructs, to define an alternate path, rather than the hollow debate about footprints too complicated for our understanding and practitioners to measure? More solar energy strikes the earth in less than one hour than what humans consume in a year.

That's our limit, of the biophysical world, to which we must adhere. Instead of recognizing that in Nature, limits create room for innovation, using diversity as a tool...we fall into arbitrary arguments about relative costs of different alternatives. Coal is not cheap!!, as I bet you'd agree. So to say, "coal is cheap," is to ignore the externalities and true cost of our energy decisions.

Below is a different position, based on Biomimicry and Wendell Berry...to a client to hopefully convince them to adopt a community geothermal system.

My question to you is in a world of finite time, for cultures, individuals and natural populations...why bother even arguing the false strawmen of today's economic doctrine? And I'd appreciate any thoughts you had about the argument below, as it is directly against nuclear (if only because nuclear energy does not use benign manufacturing!).

.............

We now understand that the quality of energy and structure of energy in a community matters, much more than any quantum of efficiency. In developing a community energy plan for [the Project] “social-ecological system”, the first step is “Quiet Our Cleverness” and look humbly to Nature as Mentor.

Biological communities tend to degrade energy in a high number of small steps rather than a small number of large steps, as human systems do. Each step in a biological systems tend to be highly structured and essential to the system; what community members take in they change, but change it always into a form useful or essential to a living body of another kind. In this way, resilience is found in healthy biological patterns,
“an order, a pattern of forms, kinds and processes that include any number of offsets and variables.”

Energy made available by living systems is not available in infinite quantities but rather in discernable patterns that join social-ecological components in a kind of energy community. Consequently, while we cannot create or destroy biological forms of energy (any more than atomic or fossil fuel energy), we can, in a practical sense, preserve and even augment it in use.

Nature uses energy to solve less than 5% of its survival strategies, while human technology manipulates energy for 70% of our solutions to technical challenges. In biophysical ways, we have substituted energy for information (in the design and form of physical structures such as homes) and technology for skill (in doing the actual building).

Each of us are consumers of energy in some form. To achieve biological sustainability, the Near West Side, as a consumer, must become equal in some ways to its energy needs—its buildings must become not only producers of energy, but members of an energy community that shares energy over a higher number of small steps, in ways that prove essential to local residents (and local inhabitants of our 1.8 to 30 million co-resident species).

This level of community resonance requires requires a third step beyond production and consumption in design, “Return,” which involves responsibility and care of a higher resonance, even in net-energy-positive buildings that produce more energy than they consume. Simply, consumption and production must balance at the level of community, more than the sum of its parts, just as with material producers and decomposers (recyclers).

Using the template of a biological energy community, it becomes possible to develop develop a physical structuring of energy flows at a social-ecological community level.

Different facilities require heat, air conditioning and/or hot water at different times. The typical solution, roughly described, is to isolate buildings, add energy to hold some internal equilibrium, decreasing internal entropy. But since buildings exist as “open systems” relative to the surrounding socio-ecological environment, this form of design, following the Second Law of Thermodynamics, increases the entropy of this environment outside of its walls. Modeling and other machine-based technologies only act to reinforce the manipulation of energy as a “survival strategy” for anthropocentric designs, by concentrating on stability near a defined equilibrium of “efficiency, control, constancy, and predictability.” This sort of system exports degraded heat, disorder and pollution, in a simple two step process: fuel in, waste out. It is a “specialists” system that works in isolation, and creates more disturbances than solutions in biological patterns.

But in accepting this limit, opportunity emerges. By assessing key operating parameters and resources in each building at a community level, it is possible to mimic the structure of biological systems, over a pattern of highly-structured, higher-frequency steps that degrade in forms and processes useful or essential to other “residents.” For example, living machines resembling solar greenhouses utilizing heat rejected by ________ to grow biologically diverse heritage crops while purifying community blackwater, managing stormwater, employing local residents as gardeners. Laundries that capture the waste heat from adjacent air-conditioned buildings to heat the water to do the laundry.

This possibility of biological resonance in the energy systems of human communities means that the design of energy must function at the level of community, more so than in the isolated design processes of each building, home or school in the neighborhood. Because neighborhoods embody a diversity of uses and needs, it is necessary to consider diversity also as a template of design, mimicking how Nature uses diversity as one tool of a set to generate ecological resilience in natural communities.

Two qualitative forms of diversity are particularly essential for communities.

The first form is functional diversity. This refers to the set of groups or species that perform different functions in natural systems, at different scales of time and space, e.g., predators of leaf-defoliators, structure-building corals in reefs, decomposers, autotrophs. In human systems, it is possible to adapt this concept to develop a taxonomy or list of functions required and/or present in a socio-ecological community, such as “food production,” “food composting and recycling,” and “shelter,” as examples. It is possible to evaluate groups, nonprofits, government, citizens by the function(s) each performs in a community.

Closely related is the concept of response diversity. Inside of each functional category, there usually exists a range of species, groups, or individuals that provide essentially the same function (i.e., they are inside of the same category of functional diversity) but that perform this function in slightly different ways. This generates a redundancy that is a “most intricate and close grained diversity of uses that give each other constant mutual support...that supplement each other in certain concrete ways,” as one writer describes the role of redundancy in communities. In this way, social-ecological resilience derives from overlapping functions within spatial and temporal scales (i.e., houses, to a street of homes, to a block, to the neighborhood, City, region, etc.) and the reinforcement of function across scales (i.e., designing for cross-scale redundancy such as community geothermal loops).

It becomes possible to design a form of biological energy community on the basis of these (and other principles not outlined herein).

Consequently, to become a “living socio-ecological community,” [the Project] must conform to natural limits and biological patterns and limits rather than mostly mechanical energy (e.g., higher-efficiency HVAC or building envelopes) or economic models. To adapt these Life's Principles into the work of stewardship in community design involves the “practical intricacies of collaboration” with the local human and other inhabitants of the 1.8 to 30 million co-resident species.

I don't see a single mention here of thorium fueled nuclear plants which do not produce plutonium and are not capable of meltdowns. A great deal has happened since the days of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Not all nuclear power works in the same way. It seems to me that everybody on this board has some reading to do.

Does thorium produce nuclear waste?

Questions for Ms Lewis & Mr Brand:

Do you see any near term chance of utilizing thorium as a nuclear fuel to address proliferation issues? My understanding is that uranium rich countries have abundant thorium reserves as well.

What is your opinion of the pebble bed modular reactor design and the efforts of South Africa to create a standard PBMR for the developing world?

Thanks!

A question for Mr Wasserman:

I gather that you are not enthusiastic about coal, so, without nuclear, how can we produce baseload power to meet projected demand, even assuming substantial conservation? Massive solar thermal may do the trick for the Southwest, but how do we provide for Buffalo, Minneapolis & Flint?

Follow-on to my question for Mr Wasserman:

My thanks to you for your response as well.

Q for Mr Siegel:

Do you see any chance of an internationally administered nuclear fuel bank coming into existence? Such an organization would be the owner and responsible party for nuclear fuels and would lend them to consumer countries for energy production only.

Thanks!

gooc: The thorium fuel cycle will produce radioactive waste, as will all fission fuel cycles. The long term radioactivity of the waste from the thorium fuel cycle would be less, though.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle#Thorium_cycle

What do you think about Thorium based power ?

nuclear fuel has a safety record better than any fuel known 2 man
and cost thats why we fill up an aircraft
carrier once every 30 years instead of
every 30 days

Sorry about the duplicate posts.

For Mr. Jonas Siegel,

If the usual civilian-style reactor is unsafe, why can't we use reactors similar to the ones being built for the U.S. Navy? The Navy has operated nuclear-powered vessels for over 50 years without a single reactor accident. Why can't we build similar land-based reactors?

"I don't buy that it's just politics ... where has nuclear energy been for the last 30 years?", asks Bob.

British Petroleum keeps a downloadable spreadsheet -- .XLS file -- that can shed some light on this, if you have Excel or OpenOffice. It goes back not just to 1978 but to 1965.

Some highlights: in 1978 in the USA, nuclear plants made electricity that, if made by oil-burning plants, would have required 65.8 million tonnes of oil. In 2006, 187.5 million tonnes.

Worldwide in those two years, million tonnes of oil equivalent, 140.2 and 635.5.

In recent years, the generators that the USA has been building have been gas-fired. Try working out how much prevented natural gas revenue those numbers represent.

Hmmm, somehow a post I made on uranium supply and thorium didn't make it into the postings.

A quick recommendation... all of the questions so far, and many more good ones are well answered in a new book by Gwyneth Cravens, POWER TO SAVE THE WORLD. She's a longtime greenie and New Yorker staffer who spent years on the road looking at the whole nuclear energy apparatus up close.

I gladly blurbed the book, "The best introduction to the current realities and benefits of nuclear power."

(My rule on blurbing is not to do it unless the book is so good I would buy copies to give to friends.)

I may be viewed as an equal opportunity offender but still I have to ask how can reasonable people still ignore the basic tenants of economics.
Coal costs 3 cents a kwh and makes big black clouds, nuclear is roughly 5 cents a kwh, natural gas is around 12 cents, and wind solar are around 20 cents. nuclear is at the moment more expensive than coal, as such it needs to be subsidized, but nuclear produces negligible Co2, IF there were to be a carbon tax, than nuclear could become cost effective. Solar and wind need a lot of development until they are ready to replace base loads. If you don't like big nuke putting out a crap product w/ little returns, than wait till big wind gets rolling, it will put what is happening w/ ethanol now to shame. Plus when it comes to development, Nuclear is showing a lot of promise in the generation 4 reactors that would be very safe, and would produce much less waste that, with reprocessing, after 300 years would be just as volatile as what is in the ground now. I like green, but I also like eating, and when it gets down to basic FACTS, at the moment most "green solutions" are digging your canal uphill. I hate to say it, but if you want to have a non-feudal economy and low emissions, than our only proven tech is nuke.

For Mr. Brand:

Nuclear power IS risky -- but most folks don't know that 50% of the total (officially assessed) risk comes from loss of off-site power -- which is typically due to turbulent weather. As climate destabilizes and power outages increase, the risk of a major reactor accident increases (due to the small chance of total station blackout wherein there is no power to keep the pumps moving)-- simply a throw of the dice...

Do you factor the expense of dealing with the increasing potential for dire nuclear consequences in a period of climate instability? If you continue to hawk nukes will you, at the very least, push the lax regulators to increase attention to this pesky detail?

Mary Olson

If you look at the DOE energy flow diagrams, specifically Diagram 5 for US electricity (http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/pages/sec8_3.pdf), the biggest single flow is "conversion losses" at 65%.

So we continue to kvetch over the smaller flows on the supply side, specifically what happens if we let the 20% nuke collapse and be replaced by coal.

So why not concentrate more on reducing that HUGE flow of lost energy by encouraging cogeneration and/or converting existing plants to use more of the heat?

Nukes make even less sense when you realize we're throwing most of the energy away as heat. No new power plants should be build without a cogen component.

To use the heat you'd have to site an industry that could use the heat near the power plant. That proximity would make nukes (and coal to a lesser extent) less attractive because nobody wants them as neighbors.

Why are people compelled to say that nuclear energy is clean? It burns clean, but the waste is one of the worst on the planet. This negates the "clean" in every way. We have no clear solution for this waste. How is this not the MAIN issue?

Anyone who wants cheaper fuel prices needs to ask his representatives
at the local, state, and federal levels, what are their plans and
policies for Energy Independence. If they don't have any, don't
vote for them. They are costing you money and in the future they
may cost you your freedom. We need to stop paying dictators,
terrorists, and tyrants oil money. We have all the coal, oil,
nuclear power, and liquid natural gas we need to be come
energy independent. In addition, a healthy investment in
alternative sources will keep Energy Independent for the
foreseeable future.

Thank you , Mr. Wasserman, for your responses:

You cite how the nuclear fuel cycle and plant decommissioning contributes to GHG. Have you done a similar analysis for other means of electrical generation on a “per kilowatt” basis? All forms of generation require mining of metals, processing, construction, transportation, and decommissioning. The real test is calculating those impacts on a per unit cost.

You cite that 30 U.S. nuclear plants have containments weaker than Chernobyl’s. Please provide a list of those 30 plants.

You cite proliferation includes the making of dirty bombs. Explain how terrorists could get their hands on any used reactor fuel in this country? And even if they could, how would they survive handling this material?

Mr. Siegel

Thanks for your response. A couple more thoughts for you.

You cite hypotheticals related to building nuclear power plants in foreign countries. Why should that be a reason not to build nuclear power plants in this country?

Certain rogue countries, including Iran and North Korea, have and are pursuing nuclear weaponry. Syria and Saddam’s Iraq were as well until the Israelis took care of their plans. Bad guys will be bad guys regardless of international pressure. Their political decisions should not be the basis for others pursuing a rational energy policy.

There is a lot of talk here about Chernobyl, and I am waiting for it to be pointed out that what happened at Chernobyl is not possible in modern reactors. I would hope so, or I as a nuclear engineering student have been gravely misinformed for several years.

Nuclear reactors, like any machine can cause problems if built poorly. Chernobyls RBMK reactors had a positive void coefficient, making it possible for such runaway meltdowns to occur. all current reactors, which use water instead of graphite have a negative void coefficient, making them safe from a chernobyl-style incident.

Judith: Thank you for your response that included the numerical data from nuclear fuel cycle studies. It is nice to see someone who thinks and recognizes that facts and figures matter more than vague generalizations like those that Mr. Wasserman provided. He quantified the problem with terms like "significant", "substantial" and "very substantial" while you provided a direct comparison on a per kilowatt hour basis.

For Elemental Jim and anyone else who is curious: I do not and never have worked for the nuclear industry. I have served as a commissioned officer in the US Navy for about 27 years (6 of those in the Naval Reserve). I know enough about nuclear power to have served as the Engineer Officer on a 27 year old submarine and passed several intensive exams. My undergraduate degree, however, is in English and my MS is in Systems Technology (Command, Control and Communications). Whatever you might think of the information that I share, please understand that I am no one's tool; I speak from the heart about things I know and understand very well.

For Mr. Wasserman: You can be forgiven for not being completely up to date, but your comment about "zero new nukes" on order was made obsolete a couple of weeks ago when Georgia Power signed an Engineering, Procurement and Construction contract for a new plant at their Vogtle site. (See, for example MSN Money's April 9, 2008 article titled Shaw and Westinghouse Sign Landmark EPC Contract for New Nuclear Power Generation)

Also for Mr. Wasserman - Recognizing that new wind turbine orders have been so fast in coming that most manufacturers have a significant backlog, do you think that any of those orders are a result of Renewable Portfolio Standards that MANDATE utility purchases, or as a result of the 1.9 cent per kilowatt hour federal Production Tax Credit, or because of the 5 year accelerated depreciation, or because the companies installing the turbines simply believe that they will make good photos for the company literature? When it comes to subsidies for a mature technology - humans have been using wind power for several thousand years - wind is hard to beat on a per unit power produced basis. It is also fascinating to me that the recipients of the subsidies are enormous, politically connected companies like General Electric, FP&L, Siemens, Vestas, and - formerly -Enron.

For those who think that nuclear is "expensive" a word with no meaning without comparison, here are production cost figures as of 2006, the last year when complete data is available:
Nuclear - 1.72 cents per kilowatt-hour
Coal - 2.37 cents per kilowatt-hour
Gas - 6.75 cents per kilowatt-hour
Petroleum - 9.63 cents per kilowatt-hour

If you have done any driving recently, paid your winter fuel oil bill, or listened to communications from your local natural gas supplier as they sought double digit rate increases, you know that fossil fuel prices have increased a bit since 2006. Those price increases have a direct impact on the production cost for generators that use them to produce electricity - somewhere between 77% (coal) and 92% (natural gas) of the cost of fossil fuel electricity generation is the cost of fuel. For nuclear plants, the cost of uranium is about 13% of the cost of generation, so the increases in that raw material cost have not had as much impact.

Going back to Mr. Wasserman: I like Ike. No matter what you might think of his presidency, the fact of the matter is that he was the most practically educated president of the 20th century. He had a strong engineering and logistics background and a real understanding of what it takes to make a country and economy function. He brought atomic fission out of the closet of tight security and government controlled monopoly imposed by the Truman Administration after the war because he recognized that America and the world needed a new energy source. You are right that he had to drag the utility industry in; many had huge fossil fuel interests to protect.

He even used his knowledge of the power of that energy source to defuse the 1956 Suez Crisis by sending an envoy to the Saudi king and telling him to back off - if he was not careful the rest of the world would no longer need his oil.

People like you talk about the COSTS of nuclear fission, but you never mention the financial benefits. That provides a skewed view - sort of like looking at only one side of a balance sheet.

Nuclear power plants in the US currently produce more electricity each year than all power plants put together did in 1960, the year that Eisenhower left office. The value of that electricity is somewhere between $40 and $100 BILLION dollars per year depending on how you price the electricity.

The plants were initially licensed for 40 years because that was the license term for the other federally licensed power generation source - hydroelectric dams. It is a complete misconception when people claim that they were only "designed" to last 40 years. They were designed to be robust machines that could be maintained by humans in such a manner as to last indefinitely as long as the maintenance continues. I can guarantee you - based on lots of computations and personal discussions with people I know and trust - that the owners of those low production cost electricity producers maintain them with great care. They are HUGE revenue sources that stop being revenue generators and start being major cost items as soon as they stop operating due to maintenance issues. There is no perfection claim there (as a military leader, I have a pretty good understanding of human limitations), but there is plenty of incentive for excellent performance and careful attention to detail.

Bob asked why, if nuclear power is so good, hasn't it taken over the market yet. I have a lot of answers to that question, and may address that in another post, but here are some things to think about: fission power competes (and wins on several measures) directly against the "establishment" fuel source - fossil fuels. The fossil fuel establishment has plenty of means, motive and opportunity to kill or maim the nuclear competition.

Nuclear fission is actually quite new; my father was an adult before Fermi proved the basic physical process of self sustained chain reactions. Dad is no longer alive, but he would only be 83 years old if he was. Compare that to the sun, the wind, fossil fuels, falling water and biomass. We have learned a lot about how to make use of fission based heat, but there is still a world of knowledge left to be gained. We are still on the low flat portion of the technological 'S' curve when it comes to fission, but on the top flat portion for all other energy technologies.

Too long. Sorry. Perhaps more later.

I would encourage folks who consider themselves anti-nuclear (and even those who consider themselves pro-nuclear) to learn more about thorium and the liquid-fluoride reactor. Here is a slide presentation with a brief introduction to the technology, as well as a link to our discussion forum on the subject.

"Chernobyls RBMK reactors had a positive void coefficient, making it possible for such runaway meltdowns to occur. all current reactors, which use water instead of graphite have a negative void coefficient"

"Runaway meltdown"? Chernobyl had runaway fission, and blew up. Those modern reactors that cannot support such a runaway include all built in accordance with Dr. Teller's rules after about 1950 -- even if they have graphite in them.

(The very beginning of a runaway, or as I think nuclear people call it, an excursion -- note the "curs", same word but more classical -- must increase temperature. If that slows down fission, as it does in Teller-approved reactors, then that's where the runaway ends.)

(Yes, we learned the lessons of Chernobyl in 1950, we have never taken such a chance. Pity the lessons of Skikda and Ghislenghien and New Mexico, etc., aren't so easy to apply, unless "No more gas" is learnable.)

WASH-1097 gives a detailed picture of the thotium fuel cycle,
http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2006/08/complete-wash-1097-document.html

WASH-1097 suggests that up to 98% of thorium fuel would be burned in a thorium fuel cycle reactor. In contrast a Light Water Reactor only burns around 0.6% percent of its potential nuclear fuel.

Further, many of the fission product coming out of a thorium cycle reactor are no longer radioactive. Only about 20% of the nuclear fuel will be radioactive for long periods of time. If a thorium cycles reazctor is well managed, it will produce no plutonium, and plutonium is the biggest problem in nuclear waste.

A one billion watt thorium reactor will produce 400 pounds of nuclear waste a year. The same size coal power plant will produce a ton of radioactive waste (uranium and thorium) every year while the same size light water reactor will produce at least 40 tons of waste every year.

Even supposably safe renewable energy plans pose radiation dangers. Proposals to store energy from Solar and wind generating sources - see the "Grand Solar Plan" in January's Scientific American - invove the storage and recovery of huge amounts of compressed air, under the earth's surface. This scheme would inevitably lead to the release of large amounts of radon gase trapped in the rocks in which compressed air is stored. Hence renewable energy storage schemes involve exposing the public to large amounts of radiation. It is an example of the short ideological focus of the anti-nuclear "experts" that they have not identified this radiation hazard.

This arguably thorium cycle reactors may pose a smaller radiation danger to the general public than renewable energy storage schemes do.

The problem of nuclear waste is primarily caused by light water reactor inefficiencies. An examination of the materials found in so called "nuclear waste" reveals that about almost all of it is actually usable as nuclear fuel. The most logical way to handle this problem is to reuse the "nuclear waste" in more efficient reactors. untill the potential nuclear fuel is burned down to fission products.

Most stable fission products are not waste at all thery are useful and even valuable materials that can be recovered from truly spent fuel for use in industry. A nuclear fuel cycle that included the recovery of useful materials from post-reactor fuels would be largely self managing, and would pay for itself in the sale of recovered and stable minerals and metals. A reactor using a thorium fuel cycle would produce only a few hundreds pounds of isotopes involving long term radiation risks, and even some of those could be used in nuclear medicine.

To Mr. Wasserman:

Carbon dioxide is a problem because is effect is cumulative and therefore amplified by several orders of magnitude. But the effect of direct heating is completely negligible compared to the total solar heating of the Earth. Do the math. Inputs are the total power consumption of the Earth, the area of the Earth and solar power density.

Furthermore, using direct heating as an argument to attack nuclear power is especially disingenuous. Producing the same amount of power with solar energy, for example, would emit even more heat by covering large areas with dark surfaces (the effect of concentrating mirrors is equivalent).

You raise many issues which are true in principle but end up being insignificant when actual numbers are plugged into the equations. Yes, mining Uranium requires energy. But the potential energy of each kg of Uranium is so high that it does not constitute a significant percentage of the energy produced. The total amount of uranium ore that needs to be mined and processed for the entire lifetime of the reactor is far smaller than the limestone mined for cement to build it (which is, in turn, much smaller than the amount of cement required to erect wind turbines of equivalent power).

Claiming that enrichment needs "coal-fueled power plants" is also misleading. There is no reason why it can't be nuclear. France uses less than 2% of its nuclear power output for the enrichment of fuel to run all its reactors.

And when we finally switch to Thorium this issue will become irrelevant. 100% of the thorium mined can be burned in a suitably designed reactor (compared to 0.25% of fissionable U-235 in natural uranium).

Mr Wassermann:

Regarding your comment above regarding tailings and radon:

The radioactive daughter products of uranium which are present in uranium "tailings", such as radium, are naturally occurring in the uranium bearing rock - the mining and milling of uranium does not create these materials. The emission of radon gas during the radioactive decay of this material occurs naturally in the natural mineral - radon being released from the Earth's crust is an unavoidable fact of life in areas of uranium-bearing geology. Uranium mining does not create or increase the quantities of those radionuclides - it just separates the desired uranium from them.

The USEC enrichment plant gets its electrical power from the electrical grid, just like any other industry generally will. In the case of the Tennessee Valley Authority's electricity network, over 30% of the electricity generated comes from greenhouse-gas-free hydroelectricity and nuclear energy.

Your fallacy of excessive whole-of-life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with the nuclear fuel cycle has been addressed by other commenters, so I will not bother repeating at this stage.

You say "Initial construction of the reactors themselves also require very substantial energy inputs" - well, of course you're actually completely correct. But construction of anything on that scale requires substantial energy inputs!

The construction of solar farms, or wind farms, or anything else, for the same scale of electrical output, is a very substantial construction and engineering operation - energy inputs, raw materials, and transport and construction infrastructure are required equally for all such things.

And then there's this ridiculous statement:

"The fission process does circumvent the GHG "middle man" in global warming by dumping very substantial quantities of heat directly into the air (in the form of steam, much of it chemically treated) and rivers/lakes/oceans (in the form of hot water)."

It is a fundamental law of nature that all thermal engines discharge thermal energy into some heatsink - which is usually the ambient environment. All electricity generating plants based on thermal engines - all solar thermal, geothermal, nuclear and fossil fuelled power plants - discharge waste heat into the environment.

The laws of thermodynamics are in no way prejudiced against nuclear fission heat sources, or solar thermal heat sources, or fossil fuel heat sources. The same laws of thermodynamics apply to all things.

You mention steam being discharged into the air - "much of it chemically treated". Whilst the water in a Rankine cycle power plant will typically have certain things added to it for pH or corrosion control, such as ammonia or hydrazine, this applies equally to all Rankine cycle power plants - coal fired, nuclear heated, solar thermal, or whatever. The tertiary cooling water used in cooling towers is completely separate from the water inside the power conversion system, anyway.

"Though containment domes are of varying strength (some 30 US containment systems are weaker than the one at Chernobyl"

That's an interesting claim, given that there were no "containment domes" associated with the reactors at Chernobyl.

"4) a dome need not be penetrated to cause an unfathomable disaster. Control rooms, cooling systems, spent fuel pools, off-site power and other weak links in the reactor operations chain are potential targets.
This is not a scenario we want to describe in great detail, but it's one that must be avoided at all costs, which is why there is absolutely no future for atomic power."

Why don't you want to "describe in great detail", when it comes to backing up your argument?

If a control room at a nuclear power plant was a potential terrorist target, what exactly are the terrorists going to do, if, hypothetically, they have access to a plant control room?

"Cooling systems" are a concern with regard to terrorist attack? Which cooling systems, exactly? What is going to happen to them? If these particular cooling systems are compromised, exactly what is going to happen then?

Even if something absolutely incredulous happens to all the reactor core cooling systems, and offsite power, and backup power systems, and all the emergency core cooling systems, then the worst case scenario might be a loss of coolant with the potential for core damage - a worst case scenario that we're all familiar with from Pennsylvania in 1979. However, even with the most catastrophic scenario possible - the fearsome "meltdown" - thanks to that containment vessel that you mentioned above as not being breached, there are no significant consequences in terms of radiological dose to the public, and no-one harmed or killed.

Reply for Nick Aster:

It's quite correct. The ionising radiation dose to the public in the US from coal-burning power plants is in fact fully 100 times what it is from nuclear power plants.

Reply for Jonas Siegel:

"The plants that reprocess spent fuel after it is taken out of a reactor can be used to make additional fuel--or plutonium for nuclear weapons."

The separation of pure plutonium from all the other constituents of irradiated reactor fuel is not at all necessary for the efficient recycling of nuclear fuel.

There is the risk that any countries will someday decide to make nuclear weapons - having nuclear reactors or nuclear power is in no way a prerequisite to do so.

mike:

"An to anyone oblivious to the dangers that are posed merely from design flaws and human error(leaving out terrorist attacks)...do your homework and read about Chernobyl and gain an understanding of the loss that will impact literally generations and generations and generations."

You are aware that the Chernobyl disaster, and the technology and realisation and operation of the nuclear reactor used there, has got absolutely no relevance to any use of nuclear energy today, especially to the use of nuclear energy in the United States and Western world, right?

I'm not sure how Mr. Wasserman can be considered a nuclear "expert" since a brief perusal of his blog, website, and comments on this board uncovered numerous factual and physical errors, which it appears many people have attempted to correct. If Mr. Wasserman continues to persist in posting erroneous statements then it is his own credibility that he is hurting.

If this website considers Mr. Wasserman a "nuclear expert" then it is their own credibility they are hurting.

Bob: "If nuclear energy is going to save us, why hasn't it already? The technology has been around for decades. Why does it seem to take big subsidies to get plants built and operating? If it is so plentiful and efficient why haven't companies been beating down the doors to get these plants built? I don't buy that it's just politics or anti-nuclear sentiment. Coal burning has rendered our freshwater fish inedible, yet the political impediments there have been negligible. If it is so bountiful, where has nuclear energy been for the last 30 years?"

Nuclear energy has been producing reliable energy for millions of people for the last thirty years. There are two main reasons it isn't producing more:

The first is political opposition. There has in fact been almost no opposition to coal until recently, while any proposal to build a nuclear plant in the last forty years would inevitably result in fanatical opposition and organized protests and obstruction tactics, inflamed by the hysterical circulation of false "information" about nuclear power by certain activists. Coal is now becoming controversial, but there is still no organized anti-coal lobby.

The second reason is natural gas. The trend for the past decade or two (in the U.S. at least) has been to build gas-fired plants instead of coal fired. Natural gas is much cleaner than coal, and is currently still fairly cheap; however, it produces large amounts of carbon dioxide and reserves are quite limited (and many countries have none at all).

Natural gas is an excellent fuel for heating; to exhaust our precious supply of it to produce electricity that could easily come from uranium is a crime. When it comes to producing baseline electricity, our choices are coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium. It's a no-brainer.

Can we get an understandable answer: what is the cost of new wind, new coal, and new nuclear production?

Wind has not yet seen the backlash that nuclear and now coal have seen. If costs for wind are competitive with coal and nuclear, I would expect utilities to build what they can get built -- wind. Last year, utilities installed 4 GW of new wind, and it appears they will install more this year. They are within an order of magnitude of the total amount of new production capacity required in the U.S.

Eventually, there will be problems handling the variable generation of all these wind turbines. Germany has had a huge binge of new wind installations, but is still planning new coal plants too. That suggests the wind plants don't solve the whole problem.

I suspect that wind is going to be most of new U.S. production for the next decade or so. Once it runs into problems, we are going to need something else. I suspect nuclear is the right answer, but only if it's ready. Readiness will require a modest level of nuclear build for the next two decades, essentially for practice.

To: Stewart Brand
From: Harvey Wasserman

I attempted to access the Metapress document you suggest and found it is proprietary. Can you somehow make it available?

The figure you have given for subsidies to nuke power is way too low, dating back to at least one study done for Greenpeace in 1991. Furthermore, one should not compare subsidies for renewables that include large-scale hydro, which we do not support.

I read the Rockefeller document found it amusing but unconvincing, especially in its assessments of how much land is used for wind turbines, among much else.

Please note that nuke power is the ultimate corporate control machine. We advocate not only a transition to green power, but a transition to COMMUNITY-OWNED green power, which is not feasible with large central generators. The barriers to this transition are corporate, not technological, and certainly not economic when compared to the real costs of atomic energy.

Since you have quoted a Rockefeller study, how about we quote Al Gore, in a letter (to me) dated November 3, 2000:

Thank you for your recent inquiry regarding nuclear energy and the Kyoto Protocol. Let me restate for you my long held policy with regard to nuclear energy. I do not support any increased reliance on nuclear energy. Moreover, I have disagreed with those who would classify nuclear energy as clean or renewable. In fact, you will note that the electricity restructuring legislation proposed by the [Clinton] Administration specifically excluded both nuclear and large scale hydro-energy, and instead promoted increased investment in energy efficiency and renewable energy. It is my view that climate change policies should do the same....Al Gore

This letter is posted at the www.nirs.org web site, where answers to many of the other questions raised in this dialog can be found.

No Nukes/HarveyW

Wind is already running into problems due its inherently unreliable nature; blackouts can only be prevented by the availability of a reliable power source. There is also the question of cost; wind is currently subsidized to keep its cost competitive but we can't afford to subsidize wind power on anything like a scale to replace coal. Wind energy is expensive, and someone has to pay.

Wind is really only viable where there's ready access to hydropower with pumpable storage. Unfortunately, sites that are good for dams tend to be not very good for wind. If we do install a lot of wind farms, we can expect frequent blackouts and high energy prices.

A question for Mr. Wasserman:

If decentralized "renewable" power is economically feasible, why doesn't anyone pursue it? Aren't there any number of corporations that could profit by investing in it, if it were feasible?

Isn't it primarily the large corporations that benefit from the heavy subsidies on "renewable" power? Aren't they the ones building wind farms?

There's nothing inherent in atomic energy to prevent it from being used at the "village" scale, by a locally-owned system, other than the ponderous bureaucracy of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that insists that a 10 MWe reactor needs the same oversight as a 1000 MWe reactor.

I think Rod Adams would enjoy having a discussion with folks that are interested in a small, portable, inherently-safe reactor. It's not a light-water reactor, so many of your standard nuclear concerns can be put to bed.

We have "villages" that cruise around underwater for months powered only by their "local" nuclear reactor, which provides them all the energy, air, and water they need to stay alive in what would otherwise be a lethal environment.

Here is a concern of mine: isn't water vapor a more significant greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide? If so, how and how much water vapor does the average nuclear plant create everyday (and how does the release of warm waters into streams and rivers affect wildlife)?

H2O is a greenhouse gas, but the amount we humans put into the atmosphere in the process of cooling thermal power plants (nuclear, coal, gas, or solar thermal) is negligible compared to what evaporates from the oceans.

The release of warm water from the cooling of thermal power plants is already regulated to protect the ecosystems of the receiving waters.

For Stuart and others:

Perhaps I have missed it, but I have not seen any mention of Nuclear plant reliance on copious amounts of water.
Didn't a Tennessee plant have to shut down recently because of a drought in the Southwest?
Are predictions that water will be a scarcer resource than oil in the future
off base?

Sadly, if not yet tragically, for half a century American science has studied and argued solutions ad nauseam, so we have accomplished nothing to protect Humanity and Earth. And that’s why “we screwed” now that tipping points are toppling.

Water, per se, is not at all scarce; clean, drinkable water, on the other hand, is already in critical shortage in many parts of the world. The most obvious way to solve this problem is through desalination of seawater and pipeline distribution - both of which consume large amounts of energy.

If indeed we are at the point where we can't provide cooling water to power plants, we are in serious trouble already.

Heather, yes, nuclear plants use copious amounts of water.

For cooling.

So do all other thermal plants, including solar. The laws of thermodynamics are not unique to nuclear power.

But that water is for cooling. It is returned, warmer, to the body from whence it came. It is not "lost".

There are three nuclear plants on the Tennessee River about 30 miles to the west of me. The amount of heat they dump in the river (~6000 MW thermal) is equivalent to six square kilometers of sunlight striking the river. And there's a lot more than six square kilometers of surface area on the river in that area.

Mark, water vapor is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, but once released it becomes part of a global water cycle involving condensation and rain. CO2 doesn't condense out of the atmosphere (except maybe in the dead of winter in Antarctica).

The amount of water vapor released by a nuclear power plant is nothing--nothing--compared to the water vapor being released by solar heating of seawater over 3/4ths of the planet. Consider that the Sun is pumping 500 million gigawatts of thermal energy into the illuminated side of the Earth, continuously, and a typical nuclear reactor is releasing 2 gigawatts of waste heat.

500 million vs. 2.

Three questions:

France uses nuke power to produce 80% or more of its electricity. What does France do with all its waste?

What is the supply of uranium for nuclear power? How much is there? How long will it last?

We always here Fusion power is about 10 years off. (for last 30 years we hear this). How long before we have viable fusion power reactors?

Thanks.
Sons

What France does with their nuclear waste: They reprocess it to make more fuel. The unusable residue is a tiny volume; it is vitrified (turned into glass, to make it inert) and stored - the amount is so small that storage space is not an issue.

What is the supply of uranium: For the current reactor fleet, centuries. If many more reactors of the same type are built, decades. With more efficient types, thousands of years.

If the high-grade uranium ore is exhausted, there is basically an unlimited amount of low-grade uranium reserves (including seawater).

Timeline for fusion: Forever. Any practical application of fusion would require a dramatic scientific breakthrough, which cannot be predicted.

Thorium would produce a lot less waste...maybe .1% of what a standard LWR produces now. Since they run at only one atmosphere of pressure, they would be much cheaper to build as well.
See: http://www.energyrfromthorium.com

I think Mr. Wasserman makes some outlandish statements. That nuclear energy causes global warming, for example. At *every* stage of the fuel cycle...all if can be energized by nuclear. Thus...in France, which Mr. Wasserman claims is a "disaster" (but fortunately back up all that 'renewable energy in German and Denmark') there is virtually ZERO CO2 from the nuclear fuel cycle because with the exception of mining, it's all done in nuclear energized France...so where is the CO2? It's not there. This offends, clearly, the anti-nuclear sensibilities of Mr. Wasserman.

If the US built out to about 5 times the nuclear power we have no