[ RadSafe ] Nuclear's New Friends (Yet another story of people believing in nuclear power)

Sat Jul 21 15:57:11 CDT 2007

>From a coworker.  

(I am unsure of the purpose of minisubmarines and
dolphins at the end of the article.)

------------------------
http://www.minyanville.com/articles/nuclear-environmental-ge-greenpeace-westinghouse-DUK-TVE/index/a/13365/from/yahoo

Nuclear's New Friends

 There are some major proponents of nuclear power that
might surprise you. 

Justin Rohrlich
Jul 16, 2007 2:15 pm 

No single approach will accomplish the goal of
reducing the impact we have on the environment. 

As R. Stephen Berry, the former Special Advisor to the
Director of Argonne National Laboratory for National
Security wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, “We can’t afford to bet on only one
roulette number.” 

Nuclear power provides 78% of France’s electricity,
58% of Belgium’s, 50% of Sweden’s, 40% of South
Korea’s, 37% of Switzerland’s, 31% of Japan’s, 27% of
Spain’s and 23% of the UK’s. Overall, 30% of the
entire European Union’s electricity is generated by
nuclear power. 

In the U.S.? 20%. 

Reactor makers General Electric (GE), Westinghouse,
and Bechtel would surely like to see more nuclear
construction. 

So would nuclear operators such as Duke (DUK), Entergy
(ETR), Progress Energy (PGN), Southern (SO) and the
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVE)— companies that must
add generation to meet future demand. 

There are some other major proponents of nuclear power
that might surprise you: 

Gaia theorist James Lovelock, who believes that
nuclear energy is the only way to avoid catastrophic
climate change. 

Britain’s Bishop Hugh Montefiore, a longtime board
member of Friends of the Earth who was forced to
resign from the group’s board after he wrote a
pro-nuclear article in a church newsletter. 

Norris McDonald, president of the African-American
Environmental Association, who said, “If we believe
that global warming is a real threat to our planet,
then the very best way to provide baseload electricity
is through emission-free nuclear power.” 

And Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace. 

Last year, in The Washington Post, Moore wrote: 

"In the early 1970s, when I helped found Greenpeace, I
believed that nuclear energy was synonymous with
nuclear holocaust, as did most of my compatriots.
Thirty years on, my views have changed, and the rest
of the environmental movement needs to update its
views, too, because nuclear energy may just be the
energy source that can save our planet from another
possible disaster: catastrophic climate change. Look
at it this way: More than 600 coal-fired electric
plants in the United States produce 36 percent of U.S.
emissions -- or nearly 10 percent of global emissions
-- of CO2, the primary greenhouse gas responsible for
climate change. Nuclear energy is the only
large-scale, cost-effective energy source that can
reduce these emissions while continuing to satisfy a
growing demand for power."

It is cost effective. Current operating costs are 1.82
cents per kilowatt-hour versus 2.13 cents for
coal-fired plants and 3.69 cents for natural gas. 

As far as carbon emissions, nearly 700 mln additional
tons of carbon dioxide would be released into the
atmosphere every year without nuclear power— the
equivalent of the exhaust from 100 mln cars. 

On the flip side, the Clean Air Council reports that
coal plants are responsible for 64% of sulfur dioxide
emissions, 26% of nitrous oxides and 33% of mercury
emissions in the United States. 

Additionally, the idea of lingering nuclear waste
sitting around poisoning the planet for hundreds of
millions of years is simply misleading. Within 40
years, used nuclear fuel has less than one-thousandth
of the radioactivity it had when it was removed from
the reactor. And, 95% of the potential energy is still
contained in the used fuel after the first cycle. Now
that the United States has removed the ban on
recycling used fuel, it will be possible to use that
energy and to greatly reduce the amount of waste that
needs treatment and disposal. 

Guess who instituted the ban on recycling used nuclear
fuel? 

None other than that bastion of spectacular ideas,
Jimmy Carter. 

In 1977, Carter banned reprocessing in the U.S. in
favor of a so-called “once-through fuel cycle.” The
Carter Administration decided not to reprocess on the
grounds that if other countries could be persuaded not
to reprocess, the likelihood of nuclear proliferation
would be reduced. 

Without reprocessing, the spent fuel remains
radioactive longer and has to be better guarded,
because it contains plutonium. 

What about alternative energy, which is all the rage
these days? 

Jesse Ausubel, director of the Human Environment
program at New York’s Rockefeller University, called
renewable energy sources “false gods” in a Wired
magazine interview. 

Despite all the tax breaks, and incentives, the
proportion of U.S. electricity production from
renewables has actually fallen in the past 15 years,
from 11% to 9.1%, he said.

Also, renewables are hardly attractive to land
conservationists. A run-of-the-mill 1,000-megawatt
photovoltaic plant would require about 60 square miles
of panes alone— which would be the largest industrial
structure ever built. 

Ausubel says that 1,300 birds of prey are killed by
the rotors of the 5,400 windmills in California’s
Altamont Pass annually. 

Plus, growing the amount of cellulose required to
shift U.S. electricity production to biomass would
require farming an area the size of ten Iowas.

Not exactly the most implementable idea.

There also don’t seem to be as many “NIMBY” objections
about nuclear plants as one might think. Of Entergy’s
Grand Gulf Nuclear Generating Station near Port
Gibson, Mississippi, Michael Herrin, pastor of Port
Gibson’s First Presbyterian Church says, “In this
town, the dragon is unemployment. Entergy is the
hero.” 

As far as safety, while nothing is 100% safe, to
paraphrase Patrick Moore, if we banned everything
that’s potentially dangerous, we would never have
harnessed fire. 

So, just how safe is nuclear power? 

When a reactor core melted down at Three Mile Island,
the concrete containment structure did just what it
was designed to do—prevent radiation from escaping
into the environment. There were no worker injuries or
deaths, and none among nearby residents. 

In fact, no one has ever died of a radiation-related
accident in the history of the U.S. civilian nuclear
reactor program. 

By comparison, 100 coal miners are killed each year in
the U.S. in coal mine accidents and another 100 die
transporting it. 

Isn’t Chernobyl the 800-pound gorilla in the room
here? 

No. 

Chernobyl had no containment vessel, was an inherently
bad design and its operators literally blew it up. The
U.N. Chernobyl Forum reported that 56 deaths could be
directly attributed to the accident, most of those
from radiation or burns suffered while fighting the
fire. 

The U.S. Navy has been powering ships and subs with
nuclear reactors for 50 years and has never had one
nuclear accident. 

Neither has the French Navy, a former member of which
has started a company called Exomos, which builds
personal submarines. 

Herve Jaubert says his subs will offer people the
“ultimate romantic destination.” 

He told Bloomberg News that he has clients who have
trouble conducting undersea affairs smoothly. 

Apparently, dolphins can spoil the mood. 

“Dolphins are easily excited when they sense people
making love,” says Bruce Jones, president of U.S.
Submarines. “They get jealous and bang their noses on
the windows.” 

At least the dolphins are still with us— thanks to the
hard work of many laudable environmental groups.

. . .

+++++++++++++++++++
““Few of their children in the country learn English... The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages ... Unless the stream of their importation could be turned they will soon so outnumber us that all the advantages we have will not be able to preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.”
-- Benjamin Franklin, circa 1750, on German immigration to Pennsylvania

-- John
John Jacobus, MS
Certified Health Physicist
e-mail:  crispy_bird at yahoo.com

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