Huge costs of nuclear power
hobbit...@yahoo.com
By Helen Caldicott
Outside View Commentator
Washington, DC, May. 21 (UPI) -- There is a huge propaganda push by the
nuclear industry to justify nuclear power as a panacea for the
reduction of global-warming gases.
At present there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation around the
world. If, as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to
replace fossil fuels on a large scale, it would be necessary to build
2,000 1,000-megawatt reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant
has been ordered in the United States since 1978, this proposal is less
than practical. Furthermore, even if we decided today to replace all
fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear power, there would only
be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to
four years.
The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted
for. The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidized by the U.S.
government. The true cost of the industry's liability in the case of an
accident in the United States is estimated to be $560 billion, but the
industry pays $9.1 billion -- 98 percent of the insurance liability is
covered by the federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the
existing U.S. nuclear reactors is estimated to be $33 billion. These
costs -- plus the enormous expense involved in the storage of
radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years -- are not included
in the economic assessments of nuclear electricity.
It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very
different.
In the United States, where much of the world's uranium is enriched,
including
Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Ky., requires the
electrical output of two 1,000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit
large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50 percent
of global warming.
Also, this enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, release
from leaky pipes 93 percent of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted
yearly in the United States. The production and release of CFC gas is
banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is the main
culprit responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also
a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon
dioxide.
In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilizes large quantities of fossil
fuel at all of its stages -- the mining and milling of uranium, the
construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic
decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its
20- to 40-year operating lifetime, and transportation and long-term
storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste.
Contrary to the nuclear industry's propaganda, nuclear power is
therefore not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors
consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into
the air and water each year. These releases are unregulated because the
nuclear industry considers these particular radioactive elements to be
biologically inconsequential. This is not so.
These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases krypton, xenon and
argon, which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near a
nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty
tissues of the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs,
near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit
high-energy gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm
and cause genetic disease.
Tritium, another biologically significant gas, which is also routinely
emitted from nuclear reactors is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen
composed of two neutrons and one proton with an atomic weight of 3. The
chemical symbol for tritium is H3. When one or both of the hydrogen
atoms in water is displaced by tritium the water molecule is then
called tritiated water. Tritium is a soft energy beta emitter, more
mutagenic than gamma radiation, which incorporates directly into the
DNA molecule of the gene. Its half-life is 12.3 years, giving it a
biologically active life of 246 years. It passes readily through the
skin, lungs and digestive system and is distributed throughout the
body.
The dire subject of massive quantities of radioactive waste accruing at
the 442 nuclear reactors across the world is also rarely, if ever,
addressed by the nuclear industry. Each typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear
reactor manufactures 33 metric ton of thermally hot, intensely
radioactive waste per year.
Already more than 80,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste sits
in cooling pools next to the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants, awaiting
transportation to a storage facility yet to be found. This dangerous
material will be an attractive target for terrorist sabotage as it
travels through 39 states on roads and railway lines for the next 25
years.
But the long-term storage of radioactive waste continues to pose a
problem. Congress in 1987 chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 90 miles
northwest of Las Vegas, as a repository for the United States'
high-level waste. But Yucca Mountain has subsequently been found to be
unsuitable for the long-term storage of high-level waste because it is
a volcanic mountain made of permeable pumice stone and it is transected
by 32 earthquake faults.
Last week a congressional committee discovered fabricated data about
water infiltration and cask corrosion in Yucca Mountain that had been
produced by personnel in the U.S. Geological Survey. These startling
revelations, according to most experts, have almost disqualified Yucca
Mountain as a waste repository, meaning that the United States has
nowhere to deposit its expanding nuclear waste inventory.
To make matters worse, a study released last week by the National
Academy of Sciences shows that the cooling pools at nuclear reactors,
which store 10 to 30 times more radioactive material than that
contained in the reactor core, are subject to catastrophic attacks by
terrorists, which could unleash an inferno and release massive
quantities of deadly radiation -- significantly worse than the
radiation released by Chernobyl, according to some scientists.
This vulnerable high-level nuclear waste contained in the cooling pools
at 103 nuclear power plants in the United States includes hundreds of
radioactive elements that have different biological impacts in the
human body, the most important being cancer and genetic diseases.
The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years following exposure
to radiation. It is important to note that children, old people and
immuno-compromised individuals are many times more sensitive to the
malignant effects of radiation than other people.
I will describe four of the most dangerous elements made in nuclear
power plants.
Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield
in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the United
States, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in
leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut
and the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it
can later induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2,000 children
have had their thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never
before recorded in pediatric literature.
Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it
concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast
during lactation and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer,
bone cancer and leukemia.
Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food
chain, particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in
muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.
Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is
so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 440
pounds is made annually in each 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant.
Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in
the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can
induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung
cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide,
it can cause severe congenital deformities.
Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause
testicular cancer and induce genetic diseases in future generations.
Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living on to induce cancer and
genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.
Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons -- only 11 pounds is
necessary to make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 440 pounds
per year. Therefore any country with a nuclear power plant can
theoretically manufacture 40 bombs a year.
Nuclear power therefore leaves a toxic legacy to all future
generations, because it produces global warming gases, because it is
far more expensive than any other form of electricity generation, and
because it can trigger proliferation of nuclear weapons.
--
(Helen Caldicott is an anti-nuclear campaigner and founder and
president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, which argues that
nuclear energy is dangerous.)
--
(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written
by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important
issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United
Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum,
original submissions are invited.)
Bert Hyman
@yahoo.com wrote:
> (Helen Caldicott is an anti-nuclear campaigner and founder and
> president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, which argues that
> nuclear energy is dangerous.)
"The Nuclear Policy Research Institute (NPRI) was established to educate
the American public through the mass media about the greatest single threat
to our country's -- and indeed the world's -- public health, namely the
profound medical, environmental, political and moral consequences of
perpetuating nuclear weapons, power and waste. NPRI is led by Dr. Helen
Caldicott, Founding President of Physicians for Social Responsibility
(1978-83) and Women’s Action for Nuclear Disarmament (WAND); and executive
director, Julie R. Enszer. "
http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/About.cfm
--
Bert Hyman St. Paul, MN be...@iphouse.com
W. D. Allen Sr.
decades. Meanwhile, the U. S. Navy has accumulated millions of miles safely
on nuclear power. If she and the other enviro-socialists are so anti-nuclear
power why is it France, the original home of Socialism, derives three
quarters of all its power from nuclear reactors?
"When the end becomes obscure the means become frantic!"
end
<hobbit...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:1116692647.5...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Nog
points. Surely you exagerate. Uranium is found amost everywhere. Nuclear is
still the cleanest and safest green power you can find next to hydro in
usable amounts to run cities, factories and farms. If there were more nuke
plants you wouldn't be using all the coal for enrichment and nuke plant
construction as you would be using nuke power. Disposal of spent fuel is not
a problem there is little of it. It just looks like a lot because of
containment vessels. In the future a use will probably be found for all the
stored high level waste. There is also fusion reactors that will be coming
on line in the future. In the mean time we have to get the fuck of middle
east oil and burn coal cleaners ways. I see very little movement in
electric vehicles where some now are capable of 300 miles before charging.
Why do European car companies make at least 3 models of vehicles that get
over 50 miles and the US makes NONE! The Geo Metro is a Suzuki.
A 3 cylinder hybrid could get 120 miles per gallon. I would like to know
what the fuck the the US thinking and when are they going to get of their
stupid asses and produce some energy efficient transportation. Maybe they
have to lighten up on some of the stupid fucking safety EPA bullshit. I
don't have safety belts or air bags on my motorcycle, nor do I wear a
helmet. Why can't I have an economical car without all the safety bullshit.
Is this the only reason we can't import high milage cars? Let's cut the
phychotic safety bullshit and get with the rest of the world.
Roy. Just Roy.
be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to
four years.
I don't understand - the half-life of uranium-234 is 245,000 years. How
would fuel "run out" in 3 to 4?
http://www.ccnr.org/decay_U238.html
/Roy
nadero
http://www.engin.umich.edu/class/ners211/pro01/home/final_rebuttal.ppt
http://www.engin.umich.edu/class/ners211/pro01/home/ProPBMRPaper.doc
"technologies exist which can extend its use 60-fold if demand requires it"
http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/whyu.htm
"Current situation
According to the summary of uranium resources published jointly by the
Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD and the UN's International Atomic Energy
Agency, known reserves of uranium from conventional sources are slightly
more than 3 million tonnes. Reactor requirements are fairly steady at about
60,000 tonnes per year. Thus there is about 50 years supply of uranium known
at this stage to be available.
This is, however, an oversimplification of the situation. It is now clear
that uranium is not scarce and it is known that it averages almost two parts
per million of the Earth's crust. There are substantial resources that are
not yet fully proven. These so-called speculative resources are likely to be
of the order of 10 million tonnes, about three times the known reserves.
While prices remain low, there is no incentive for exploration activities to
identify new deposits. Experience with other commodities has shown that
increased demand has led to increased prices, and a subsequent increase in
exploration and discovery."
http://www.world-nuclear.org/factsheets/uranium.htm
And we need fision only for several of decades, until we have nuclear fusion
techonologies well developed.
<hobbit...@yahoo.com> escribió en el mensaje
news:1116692647.5...@g47g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
Torsten Brinch
>No, the lowest costs and the cleaniest source of energy.
>
>http://www.engin.umich.edu/class/ners211/pro01/home/final_rebuttal.ppt
>http://www.engin.umich.edu/class/ners211/pro01/home/ProPBMRPaper.doc
>
>
>"technologies exist which can extend its use 60-fold if demand requires it"
>http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/whyu.htm
>
>"Current situation
>According to the summary of uranium resources published jointly by the
>Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD and the UN's International Atomic Energy
>Agency, known reserves of uranium from conventional sources are slightly
>more than 3 million tonnes. Reactor requirements are fairly steady at about
>60,000 tonnes per year. Thus there is about 50 years supply of uranium known
>at this stage to be available.
>This is, however, an oversimplification of the situation. It is now clear
>that uranium is not scarce and it is known that it averages almost two parts
>per million of the Earth's crust. There are substantial resources that are
>not yet fully proven. These so-called speculative resources are likely to be
>of the order of 10 million tonnes, about three times the known reserves.
>While prices remain low, there is no incentive for exploration activities to
>identify new deposits. Experience with other commodities has shown that
>increased demand has led to increased prices, and a subsequent increase in
>exploration and discovery."
>http://www.world-nuclear.org/factsheets/uranium.htm
How does one fit the possibility of a 60-fold increase of the use of
nuclear power, to known uranium resources to last only 50 years
assumedly at -current- rate of resource use?
(even if we include the speculative resources, 200 years,
200 years/60 that would seem to last us only about three years,
given a 60-fold increase.)
Bama Brian
> "W. D. Allen Sr." <ball...@adelphia.net> wrote:
>
>>Helen Caldicott has been on her anti-nuclear hobby horse for almost four
>>decades. Meanwhile, the U. S. Navy has accumulated millions of miles
>>safely on nuclear power. If she and the other enviro-socialists are so
>>anti-nuclear power why is it France, the original home of Socialism,
>>derives three quarters of all its power from nuclear reactors?
>>
>>"When the end becomes obscure the means become frantic!"
>
> Commentary and opinion, but no rebuttal to her points?
Does Caldicott herself have a green plan to get away from both nukes and
fossil fuels?
If not, she's just another of the writers you see in the supermarket
tabloids. You know the ones; they write stories on the order of, "Boy
Trapped In Refrigerator Eats Own Foot!".
--
Cheers,
Bama Brian
Libertarian
nadero
King Amdo
Christopher P. Winter
>Outside view: Huge costs of nuclear power
>By Helen Caldicott
>Outside View Commentator
>
>
>Washington, DC, May. 21 (UPI) -- There is a huge propaganda push by the
>nuclear industry to justify nuclear power as a panacea for the
>reduction of global-warming gases.
>
[remainder snipped]
...and a corresponding propaganda push by Dr. Caldicott in the other
direction.
The argument that nuclear power is undesirable because so much of it is
fueled by coal-burning plants is one I hadn't heard before. I hope I never
hear it again; it's absurd.
Then we have her statement that "Nuclear reactors consistently release
millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year.
These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry considers these
particular radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential."
My reply is the next four words from her very own press release: This is
not so.
It all adds up to a counter-productive screed that causes most people to
ignore the good points she makes.
Ian St. John
> How dare these scum poison the Mother Earth for half a million years.
You mean, how dare Mother earth have such poisons in her system ( the ores
are naturally occuring and radioactive for billions of years, just as much
as the spent fuel but without the benefit of power production. )
Please rent a clue. The spent fuel is, at most, more dangerous than the
original ore for at most a millenia, and much less if reprocessing allows
use of the short lived (and highly active ) isotopes for nuclear medicine
and thermoionic power generation.
Nog
The Silence of the Nuke Protesters
Christopher Helman, Chana R. Schoenberger and Rob Wherry,
01.31.05
Atomic power is making a comeback, and you hear only muffled
squawks from the usual opponents. Could that have something to do
with the price of oil? Or maybe global warming?
Sandra Lindberg and her husband, Samuel Galewsky, intended to
start a ruckus. She, a theater professor at Illinois Wesleyan
University, and he, a biology prof at Millikin University,
entered the Vespasian Warner Public Library one night in April
2003 to discuss a proposal by Exelon Corp. to add a brand-new
nuclear reactor to its existing plant in Clinton, Ill.
Lindberg and her group, No New Nukes, drew inspiration from three
decades of protests. Like other towns where an outraged public
defeated plans for new plants, Clinton, she hoped, would reject
this one. No new reactors had been proposed in the U.S. since the
Three Mile Island disaster. Outcry over the proposed repository
for radioactive waste at Nevada's Yucca Mountain showed that
America wanted nothing to do with nuclear power.
Or so she thought. By the time of the second meeting, in
December, the town--once split 50-50 on the new reactor--now
overwhelmingly supported the project. Economics, not
environmentalism, seemed to be swaying this rural community. With
unemployment at 8%, Exelon, Dewitt County's largest employer,
said that if the plant were built there would be 3,200
construction jobs, 600 new full-time positions to operate the
plant and a big jump in the county's tax take. By the time
Galewsky finally rose to speak out against the plant, it was late
and the room was almost empty--an outcome that could have been
foretold. With backing from the industry's powerful lobby, the
Nuclear Energy Institute, Exelon had spent weeks meeting with
leaders and heading off the very concerns about health, safety
and the environment that Lindberg hoped would galvanize the crowd
against the plan.
Hot Spots
The U.S. has the largest fleet, but 19 countries get more of
their total juice from nukes. An up-andcoming player: China.
COUNTRY % OF NUCLEAR POWER COUNTRY TO TOTAL OUTPUT
Lithuania 80%
France 78
Slovakia 57
Belgium 55
Sweden 50
Ukraine 46
South Korea 40
Slovenia 40
Switzerland 40
Bulgaria 38
Armenia 35
Hungary 33
Czech Republic 31
Germany 28
Finland 27
Japan 25
Spain 24
U.K. 24
Taiwan 22
U.S.A. 20
Russia 17
Canada 13
Argentina 9
South Africa 6
Romania 9
Mexico 5
Netherlands 5
Brazil 4
India 3
China 2
Pakistan 2
Source: World Nuclear Association.
Yes, nuclear power is back, after a quarter-century of suspended
animation. The industry has avoided the kind of direct
confrontation that might arouse the wrath of an American public
that still doubts the safety of reactors and is spooked about
terrorism. Over the last five years fans of atomic power have
quietly lined up the support of federal and municipal governments
and have cozied up to General Electric and Westinghouse Electric
(now part of the British BNFL Group) in service to an ambitious
agenda: building perhaps 5 new reactors by 2015, a dozen by 2020
and 50 by midcentury.
The U.S. nuclear construction industry was presumed dead. It is
anything but. If oil prices stay high, if people worry about
carbon dioxide causing global warming, if the Middle East stays
violent, nuclear power stands a good chance of making a huge
comeback in this country.
Six weeks before the last Clinton library meeting, Marilyn Kray,
an Exelon vice president, had gathered 11 executives from the
largest nuclear operators and reactor vendors at a private room
in Olives, a tony Washington, D.C. restaurant three blocks from
the White House. As the dominant player, with 17 of the nation's
103 commercial reactors, Exelon of Chicago took the lead in
discussing the future of the industry. (The company recently
launched a $27 billion bid to buy PSE&G, a deal that would give
it 3 more nuclear reactors and customers in Illinois,
Pennsylvania and New Jersey.) Sitting next to Kray was Dan R.
Keuter, her counterpart at Entergy, the number two operator. As
diners nibbled their salads, the two led them through a 23-page
report. Kray asked, Why not band together to help each other
build new plants--and usher in a new dawn of nuclear power?
Two meetings followed in conference rooms at the Hartsfield-
Jackson Atlanta International Airport. The result was a
consortium called NuStart Energy--comprising utilities with 30.5
million residential customers and $97 billion in annual revenues,
as well as GE and Westinghouse. Its goal is to choose two of five
sites by September, then go after the permits. By 2007 NuStart
expects to see certification of GE's reactor design and to have
its financing, at $1.5 billion per plant, in place--so a utility
could put a plant out for bid the following year. On that
schedule groundbreaking should be in 2010. Assuming construction
goes well, the first new reactor could be hooked up to the grid
five years later. By then there will be nothing stopping this
consortium, and a dozen more plants may be starting to go up.
Fifteen years ago no one even considered building new reactors.
There was still a bad hangover from the Three Mile Island
meltdown in 1979 and the Chernobyl explosion in 1986. The
economics of the business stank. Far from being "too cheap to
meter," as promoters predicted at the dawn of atomic power a
half-century ago, nuclear energy was a lot more expensive than
energy from coal and natural gas. Many small nuclear-power
operators couldn't even turn a profit on their old reactors.
A big problem was the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, known for
being unpredictable and fatally slow. In 1997 it had 14 plants on
its "watch list" and fined others for such trivial non-safety
violations as recording maintenance records on the wrong form.
Howard Bruschi, former chief technology officer at Westinghouse,
recalls that a regulator asked him to provide additional specs on
an exhaust fan for a men's locker room.
It's usually a mistake to attack the bureaucrats that run your
life, but at a certain point the nuclear power industry decided
it didn't have much to lose. The utilities complained to Senator
Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) and the industry's patron saint on
Capitol Hill. In 1998 he faced down NRC chief Shirley Ann Jackson
and gave her an ultimatum: Fix the agency or see its funding cut
by $50 million a year. Jackson (now president of Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute) concedes that shutting down so many plants
was a mistake, but insists that reforms Domenici takes credit for
spurring were already in the works for two years. She says the
new set of risk-based regulations--which focus on safety, not
men's room fans--"was my baby."
__________
Please pass the word on this, become a pro-safe clean nuclear
energy advocate, and start contacting your representatives and
pushing them to.
And get as many people as you can to register at Yahoo Groups and
join http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Safe_Clean_Nuclear_Power/
Karl Johanson
> How dare these scum poison the Mother Earth for half a million years.
How dare you provide a market for their electricity, by choosing to use
the internet.
Karl Johanson
Into the living sea of waking dreams
IT is my understanding that 3 mile island only released tritium. not
Iodine 131.
j.
charliew2
sense.
"Ian St. John" <ist...@noemail.usa> wrote in message
news:yOuke.3526$dZ5.3...@news20.bellglobal.com...
Ian St. John
No. Charlie. David only cuts and pastes irrelevant news. When you find
reason and sense, it is easy enough to tell that I wrote it. If necessary,
examine the headers and find out what ISP service it is on. You will find
that I post though Bell Sympatico. David used to post via Univerity of
Toronto and now posts on sprint.ca.
Coby Beck
news:11a50j0...@corp.supernews.com...
> This just HAS to be a David Naugler forgery, because it makes too much
> sense.
charliew2, I know it is tempting to fall into an "us and them" mindset, but
seriously, you think Naugler's spamming us with weather reports about how
cold winter is makes sense?
--
Coby Beck
(remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")
James Annan
Coby Beck wrote:
> "charliew2" <char...@ev1.net> wrote in message
> news:11a50j0...@corp.supernews.com...
> > This just HAS to be a David Naugler forgery, because it makes too much
> > sense.
>
> charliew2, I know it is tempting to fall into an "us and them" mindset, but
> seriously, you think Naugler's spamming us with weather reports about how
> cold winter is makes sense?
>
It seems that anything which distracts from science is good in
charliew2's book. Which, given the standard of his contributions, is
hardly surprising, but nevertheless regrettable.
James