[ RadSafe ] Equal time - a negative view on Nuclear Power

[Sandy Perle]

Nuclear Power - One of Humankind´s Biggest Mistakes
By Jim Bell
www.jimbell.com, jimbellelsi at cox.net

Nuclear Power was a mistake and remains a mistake. If the human 
family survives it, our descendants will wonder what we were thinking 
to justify leaving them nuclear power´s toxic legacy -- a legacy they 
will be dealing with for hundreds if not thousands of generations.

And why did we do it? To power our lights, TVs, radios, stereos, air 
conditioners, etc. and the tools we used to make them.

Our creation of nuclear power will be especially difficult for our 
descendants to understand because they will know that in the nuclear 
era, we already had all the technologies and know-how needed to power 
everything in ways that are perpetually recyclable, powered by free 
solar energy and which leave zero harmful residues in their wake.

On its own, nuclear power´s toxic radioactive legacy should be enough 
to give any thinking person sufficient reason to want to eliminate it 
as quickly as possible and do everything to protect our descendants 
from the radioactive wastes already created. 

The human family has been at war with itself for the majority of its 
history. Human history is full of successful, advanced and 
sophisticated civilizations that utterly collapsed. To the informed, 
even our current civilization(s) don´t feel very solid. Plus there 
are earthquakes, tsunami´s volcanoes, severe weather, terrorism, and 
just plain human error. This given, who can guarantee that anything 
as dangerous and long-lived as nuclear waste can be kept safe for 
even 100 years much less the hundreds to hundreds of thousands of 
years it will take before some of these wastes are safe to be around.

And even if an insurance company did guarantee its safety, what is 
their guarantee worth? What could they do to protect us and future 
generations if San Onofre´s spent fuel storage pond lost its coolant 
water. If this happened an almost unquenchable radioactive fire would 
spontaneously erupt, spewing radioactive materials wherever the wind 
blew for weeks if not months -- rendering Southern California a 
dangerous place to live for thousands if not hundreds of thousands of 
years.

Notwithstanding the above, the nuclear industry is lobbying the 
public and the government to continue supporting them politically and 
economically so the industry can expand.

Its latest rational is that nuclear power will produce fewer 
greenhouse gases than what would be produced using fossil fuels to 
make electricity. This is true if one only looks at what happens 
inside a reactor. It´s not true when accounting for all the fossil 
fuel energy consumed during nuclear power´s fuel cycle, and what it 
takes to build, operate and dismantle plants when they wear out. 
Additionally, even if nuclear power was ended today, fossil fuel 
energy must be consumed for millennia in order to protect the public 
from the radioactive residues that nuclear power has already 
generated. 

An increasing number of former industry and non-industry experts are 
saying that at best nuclear power releases slightly fewer greenhouse 
gases to the atmosphere than if the fossil fuels embodied in it had 
been burned to make electricity directly.

In his 2002 book, Asleep at the Geiger Counter, p. 107-118, Sidney 
Goodman, (giving the industry the benefit of the doubt on a number of 
fronts and assuming no serious accidents or terrorism), concludes 
that the net output of the typical nuclear power plant would be only 
4% more than if the fossil fuels embodied in it had been uses 
directly to produce electricity. This means, best-case scenario, 
replacing direct fossil fuel generated electricity with nuclear 
generated electricity will only reduce the carbon dioxide released 
per unit of electricity produced by 4%. Goodman is a long practicing 
licensed Professional Engineer with a Masters Degree in Mechanical 
Engineering.

Other experts believe that nuclear power will produce about the same 
amount of energy as was, is, and will be consumed to create, operate 
and deal with its aftermath. This case was made in an article 
published in Pergamon Journals Ltd. Vol.13, No. 1, 1988, P. 139, 
titled "The Net Energy Yield of Nuclear Power." In their article the 
authors concluded that even without including the energy that has or 
would be consumed to mitigate past or future serious radioactive 
releases, nuclear power is only "the re-embodiment of the energy that 
went into creating it." 

In its July/August 2006 edition, The Ecologist Magazine, a respected 
British publication, featured a16-page analysis of nuclear power. One 
of the conclusions was that nuclear power does not even produce 
enough electricity to make up for the fossil fuels consumed just to 
mine, mill and otherwise process uranium ore into nuclear fuel, much 
less all the other energy inputs required This is not surprising 
given that typical U-235 ore concentrations of .01% to .02%, require 
mining, crushing and processing a ton of ore to end up with 1/2 oz to 
1 oz of nuclear reactor fuel.

To put this in perspective, the typical 1,000 MW nuclear power plants 
uses around 33 tons or over 1 million oz of nuclear fuel each 
year. 

As a teenager I saw a TV program that showed a man holding a piece of 
metal in the palm of his hand. He was saying that if what he held was 
pure uranium it would contain as much energy as the train full of 
coal that was passing by him on the screen. I became an instant "true 
believer" in nuclear power. I thought if something that small can 
produce the same amount of energy as all that coal, there will be 
plenty of energy and therefore plenty of money to address any dangers 
that using it might pose.

Unfortunately, to get that level of energy from a small amount of 
pure or near pure uranium it would require that it be exploded as an 
atomic bomb. Of the uranium used in a reactor, only a fraction of the 
energy in pure uranium gets used. That´s why we are left with 
depleted uranium and other long-lived wastes.

The nuclear industry says that nuclear power is safe, a big net 
energy producer, and that it will be cheap and easy to keep its 
wastes out of the environment and out of the hands of terrorists.

But if these claims are true, why has an industry that supplies only 
8% of our country´s total energy and 20% of its electricity consumed 
hundreds of billions of tax dollar subsidies since its inception? The 
2005 Federal Energy Bill continues this trend. According to U.S. 
PIRG, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Public Citizen and the 
Congressional Research Service the recently passed 2005 Federal 
Energy Bill includes "a taxpayer liability of $14 to $16 billion" in 
support of nuclear power.

If nuclear power is so safe and wonderful, why does it require the 
Price Anderson Act? The Price Anderson Act puts taxpayers on the hook 
if the cost of a major radioactive release exceeds $10.5 billion. 
According to a Sandia National Laboratory analysis, this puts 
taxpayers on the hook for over $600 billion to cover the damage that 
a serious radioactive release would cause. Another Sandia Laboratory 
study focusing just on the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New 
York, concluded the damage caused by a serious release from that 
plant could cost up to a trillion dollars. Needless to say, any 
serious radioactive release from any U. S. plant would wipe out any 
net energy gain by nuclear power if -- there ever was one.

Realizing the potential cost of a serious radioactive release, 
manufacturers, insurers and utilities, were unwilling to build, 
insure or order plants. They only got seriously involved after the 
Congress assigned these cost to the taxpaying public. On page 7 of a 
report by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research titled 
The Nuclear Power Deception, they included the follow 1996 quote from 
then NRC Commissioner James Asselstine, "given the present level of 
safety being achieved by the operating nuclear power plants in this 
country, we can expect a meltdown within the next 20 years, and it is 
possible that such as accident could result in off-site releases of 
radiation which are as large as, or larger than the released 
estimates to have occurred at Chernobyl." Bare in mind, a meltdown is 
only one of several things that could happen with nuclear power to 
cause a serious radioactive release.

As I said in the beginning, nuclear power is a mistake. Especially 
considering we already have all the technologies and know-how needed 
to make us completely and abundantly renewable energy self-
sufficient. Solar energy leaves no radioactive residues for our 
children or future generations. Additionally, although not completely 
environmentally benign yet, solar energy collection systems can be 
designed to last generations, be perpetually recyclable and leave 
zero toxic residues behind.

If San Diego County covered 24% of its roofs and parking lots with PV 
panels, it would produce more electricity than the county consumes. 
This assumes that 3 million resident use, on average, 10 kWh per 
capita per day after installing cost-effective electricity use 
efficiency improvements. For details read my free books at 
www.jimbell.com. They are also available in most local libraries.

For ourselves, our children and future generations, let´s move into 
the solar age.

Sandy Perle
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614 

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714  Extension 2306
Fax:(949) 296-1144

E-Mail: sperle at dosimetry.com
E-Mail: sandyfl at cox.net 

Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/ 
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/