The Sun, The Wind and Nuclear Power?

[John Jacobus <crispy_bird@YAHOO.COM>]

I received this through another mailing list and

thought I would pass it along.



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The Sun, The Wind and Nuclear Power?



By Dan Whipple, United Press International



BOULDER, Colo. (UPI) -- The suggestion that nuclear

power might be the best available option for easing

greenhouse gas emissions sends conservationists into

tortured simile. The Sierra Club's Brendan Bell told

United Press International, "Switching to nuclear

power from coal-fired power to help the environment is

like running to McDonald's to lose weight."  

Likewise, Paul Gunter, director of the reactor

watchdog project for the Nuclear Information and

Resource Service, told UPI it would be like

prescribing heroin to help someone quit smoking. At a

certain level of examination, however, nuclear power

can make a pretty strong environmental argument.



Bernard L. Cohen, in his 1990 book, "The Nuclear

Energy Option," estimated deaths from the entire

nuclear fuel cycle were about 0.3 per gigawatt of

energy produced per year. Whereas, Cohen continued, a

single, 1,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant causes

25 fatalities, 60,000 cases of respiratory disease,

$12 million in property damage and nitrogen oxides

emissions equivalent to driving 20,000 cars each year.



Cohen, a professor emeritus of Physics and of

Environmental and Occupational Health at the

University of Pittsburgh, said he concluded that

nuclear power is more than 1000 times better than coal

burning, based on the number of deaths caused. Even

solar power is ten times worse than nukes, he said,

based on the coal burning required to produce the

materials. The problem with nuclear is twofold "Waste

and transportation are the biggest issues," said Bell,

a conservation assistant in the club's global warming

program. 



The Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada is

scheduled to go on line in 2010 and begin taking in

the spent reactor fuel now being stored at temporary

sites around the country. That waste will have to be

isolated from the environment for about 20,000 years

-- much longer than human civilization has lasted up

to now -- a challenge even usually confident engineers

and administrators admit is daunting. Early in its

history -- back in the 1950s, when it was advertised

as

producing electricity "too cheap to meter" -- many

environmental groups endorsed nuclear power. But they

got over it, and at the moment none show any

indication of reviving their enthusiasm.



"We advocate clean energy, like wind and solar power,"

Bell said. "The Department of Energy has found that we

can produce 20 percent of our energy requirements from

those sources by 2020, which will also lessen demands

on natural gas and reduce the price ... By making our

air conditioners alone 30 percent more efficient, we

could save the need for 204 power plants, saving

61,400 megawatts of power -- about as much power as

went out during the blackout this summer."



The Bush administration has other ideas. Its energy

bill, which currently is stuck in Congress, puts a

priority on nuclear power. It contains a subsidy of

1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for nukes, 20 percent

higher than the 1.5 cents per KWh for alternative

energy. The nuclear subsidy "represents one of the

largest industry giveaways in the entire bill, and

would cost each family in America on the order of

$600," said Daniel Hirsch, president of the Committee

to Bridge the Gap, a nuclear policy group in Los

Angeles.



"Exchanging one set of environmental consequences for

another is not a real solution," said Gunter of the

coal-vs.-nuclear question. "The long-term impacts of

nuclear waste represent a daunting environmental

problem. Long after the last watt of electricity is

produced, succeeding generations will receive all of

the environmental liability." Moreover, he said,

nuclear energy is not really free of carbon dioxide

emissions. Just as solar component manufacturing

causes greenhouse gas emissions, so does processing

uranium fuels.



A study by Dr. Nigel Mortimer for Friends of the Earth

in England, which is widely cited by nuclear

opponents, found that a nuclear plant, through its

fuel cycle, emits as much CO2 as an equivalent coal

plant. The industry contests this conclusion, however,

finding CO2 emissions are somewhere between 0.5

percent to 4 percent of the emissions from equivalent

coal-fired generating capacity.



Len Ackland, who wrote the book, "Making a Real

Killing," about the U.S. nuclear weapons facility at

Rocky Flats, Colo., and a former editor of the

Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, said there is much

more to nuclear power than CO2 emissions.  "Nuclear

power needs to be looked at in totality, and not in

little slivers," Ackland, who also is co-director of

the Center for Environmental Journalism at the

University of Colorado in Boulder, told UPI. Both the

environmental community and the industry "are looking

at a snapshot rather than the whole film," he

continued. In addition to traditional environmental

concerns, such as clean air and CO2 emissions, there

are at least two other, major worries.  "One is

operating risk," he said. "Chernobyl is the example of

operating risk. You have to put that in the equation."



The other is the connection between nuclear power and

nuclear weapons. Though this is not necessarily a

safety concern within U.S. borders, it persists as a

threat in other nations. "The case of Iran is right on

point," Ackland said.  For years, the United States

has been exporting research reactors all over the

world under the Atoms for Peace program instituted by

President Dwight D. Eisenhower. "Every nuclear plant

creates plutonium," he said. "Is that plutonium

separated from the spent fuel? That's what North Korea

did. That's where the plutonium for their bombs came

from -- by reprocessing the used fuel."



The weapons material argument may be strongest against

nuclear power in the age of terrorism, and the reason

why environmentalists may find support among

non-believers in opposing it. It is much harder to

make a weapon of mass destruction out of coal than out

of spent nuclear fuel. Harder still to make one from

the wind or the sun.



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Movies Off The Web Possible by 2005



HOLLYWOOD (UPI) -- Hollywood executive Jack Valenti

has said

technological developments could mean newly released

films being

available online by 2005. The Motion Picture

Association Of America

chief said issues of secure delivery were nearly

resolved, and that

eventually, the BBC reported films could go straight

from big screen

to Internet well before rental release on DVD and

videotape. According

to Valenti, film industry insiders are working with a

number of

companies, including Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard to

develop a secure

system for delivering films to the Internet.



"I really do believe that maybe by this time next year

we'll be able

to have the beginnings of some really sturdy,

protective clothing to

put about these movies," Valenti said. Many of this

year's

blockbusters, including "The Matrix Reloaded" and

"Hulk" were

available before they were released in theaters. One

service,

Movielink, allows users to download films for a fee --

although most

films are not made available until a few months after

they have been

in theaters, and currently the service is only

available in the United

States.



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"Style is knowing who you are, what you want to say, and not giving a damn"

Gore Vidal



-- John

John Jacobus, MS

Certified Health Physicist

e-mail:  crispy_bird@yahoo.com



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