RE: The Sun, The Wind and Nuclear Power?

["Jaro" <jaro-10kbq@sympatico.ca>]

John Jacobus posted the article "The Sun, The Wind and Nuclear Power?" which

included the following three statements :



" [Nuclear] 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. " and,

" Early in its history -- back in the 1950s, [nuclear power] was advertised

as producing electricity 'too cheap to meter'" and,

" 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. "





As regards the first statement, I recently put the following text on one of

the pages of our CNS-Quebec web site, (the translation from French to

English is just below) :



http://www.cns-snc.ca/branches/quebec/Montreal/Montreal.html



.....Montreal n'est pas une zone < libre de nucleaire > puisque tous les

materiaux de la ville, y compris ses citoyens, et meme les politiciens et

les activistes antinucleaires, sont composes des atomes avec des noyaux de

protons et neutrons. Comme le disait l'astronome populaire americain Carl

Sagan, < nous sommes faits de poussieres d'etoiles >. Plus precisement,

toute la planete, ainsi que nous-memes, sommes faits des dechets nucleaires

provenant des reactions thermonucleaires (la fusion nucleaire) dans les

etoiles - principalement les explosions de supernova.

Certains de ces dechets nucleaires demeurent radioactifs meme aujourd'hui,

plus de cinq milliards d'annees plus tard - l'uranium, le thorium, le

potassium-40, le rubidium-87, etc. En fait, chacun de nous (adultes de

taille moyenne) subit environ huit mille desintegrations nucleaires par

seconde provenant de son corps (principalement du au potassium-40 et le

carbone-14), accompagnees d'emissions de rayonnements gamma et beta.

Jusqu'a present, aucun gouvernement au monde n'a reussi a trouver une

solution pour le stockage a long terme de ces dechets radioactifs globaux

(< ou pourrait-on enterrer la planete ? >).

Par contre, la decouverte de la fission nucleaire nous permet d'utiliser l'

uranium pour liberer de l'energie nucleaire dans des centrales de production

d'electricite, comme Gentilly 2. En meme temps, nous transformons l'uranium

en produits de fission - d'autres dechets nucleaires - mais cette fois avec

des temps de decroissance radioactive d'une duree qui est beaucoup

inferieure a celle du combustible lui-meme. Et, tandis que la terre stocke

des produits radioactifs au hasard, l'industrie nucleaire les gere d'une

facon bien securitaire, controlee par la Commission canadienne de surete

nucleaire (CCSN-CNSC).<end quote>



ENGLISH TRANSLATION :



....Montreal is not a "nuclear-free" zone, since all materials in the city,

including its citizens and even politicians and antinuclear activists are

made of atoms with nuclei of protons and neutrons. As the popular American

astronomer Carl Sagan said, "we are made of star stuff." More precisely, the

entire planet, including ourselves, are made of nuclear waste from

thermonuclear reactions (nuclear fusion) in stars -- mostly supernova

explosions.

Some of those nuclear wastes remain radioactive to this day, more than five

billion years later -- uranium, thorium, potassium-40, rubidium-87, etc.

In fact, every one of us (adults of average size) experiences about eight

thousand nuclear disintegrations per second within their body (mostly from

potassium-40 and carbon-14), accompanied by emission of gamma and beta rays.

To this day, no government on earth has has succeeded in finding a solution

for the long-term storage of these global radioactive wastes (" where do we

bury the planet ?").

However, we have found that nuclear fission allows us to utilise uranium for

releasing nuclear energy, in nuclear power stations such as Gentilly-2 [in

Quebec]. At the same time, we transform the uranium into fission products --

another kind of nuclear waste -- but this time with radioactive decay times

very much shorter than the fuel itself. And, whereas the earth stores its

radioactive substances haphazardly, the nuclear industry manages theirs in a

very secure fashion, controlled by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission

(CNSC).



<end quote>





As regards the second statement, that "back in the 1950s, [nuclear power]

was advertised as producing electricity 'too cheap to meter'" , a colleague

recently sent a letter to the editor of a Canadian newspaper saying :



Dear Editor



The nuclear industry did not claim, during the 1950s, that nuclear energy

would be "too cheap to meter" ("New nukes - or none?" by Matthew McClearn,

Dec 8 2003).  That overly quoted phrase was made by Admiral Lewis Strauss,

chair of the US Atomic Energy Commission, in an address to the National

Association of Science Writers on September 16th, 1954: "It is not too much

to expect that our children will enjoy in their homes electricity too cheap

to meter, will know of great periodic regional famines in the world only as

matters of history, will travel effortlessly over the seas and under them

and through the air with a minimum of danger at great speeds, and will

experience a lifespan far longer than ours as disease yields and man comes

to understand what causes him to age."  His speech was similar to other

technological visions of the 1950s - robots doing household chores,

hypersonic airliners and human colonies in space, all by the year 2000.



More practical but less glamourous are statements by technical people in the

nuclear industry, starting with Sir John Cockroft - the first director of

Canada's Chalk River nuclear laboratories from 1944 - 1946.  In the Joule

Memorial Lecture of 1951, Sir John said of UK reactor development: "we do

not expect to produce a cheaper source of power than that derived from

coal - it is likely, in fact, to be somewhat more expensive.   What we are

aiming at is to increase the total power available."   He concluded by

saying: "The essential thing is now to get on and build some power

reactors."  Dr. David Keys, Scientific Adviser to the President of Atomic

Energy of Canada Limited, said in a speech to the Empire Club on April 7

1955: "It is expected that power from nuclear energy can be generated at a

cost competitive with that from coal but such factual knowledge can only be

gained by actual experience."



As for nuclear power, it has a significant place in our present and future.

The amount of electricity, delivered by CANDU nuclear power stations to

Canada's grids, would supply the entire country for 3.6 years at present

consumption rates.  The wholesale value of that electricity would be about

$80 billion today.  Those same reactors have avoided the production of over

1.5 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, and huge amounts of smog-producing

chemicals and particulates, because coal-fired power stations would

otherwise have been built.



There is no doubt we must, and can, reduce our consumption of energy and raw

materials.  We should encourage the development of renewable electrical

sources, cleaner gas and coal-fired generation, and improve energy

management and efficiency.  And nuclear science and technology has a role in

the solution - as an employee in the nuclear industry, I am proud to play my

part.



sincerely



Morgan Brown, P.Eng.

Deep River, Ontario

<end quote>



As regards the third statement, that " A study.... 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, " an excellent assessment of CO2

emissions from CANDU including the nuclear fuel cycle and heavy water

preparation is posted on the CNA website.

According to one of its authors, Duane Pendergast, "It was sparked by a

letter in the Globe and Mail which made much of the CO2 emissions from

mining and processing uranium. Nefarious studies undertaken over the years

look at uranium mining and processing CO2 emissions. They assume needed

energy comes from fossil fuel and conclude that the CO2 from uranium

production will soon exceed that saved by nuclear plants as lower grade ores

are utilized.  Possibly so but they conveniently overlook the fact that

nuclear energy could replace the fossil fuels currently used to mine and

process uranium.

We used data from the actual mining operations of Cogema and Cameco. We also

looked at the preparation of heavy water from the perspective of fossil fuel

and nuclear steam as the energy source.

I recall Cameco and Cogema  produced annual environmental reports which

quantified other emissions and environmental impacts too. I believe they are

public reports available from the CNSC."



The assessment, in pdf format, is available at

http://www.cna.ca/english/files/Climate%20Change/candureactors.pdf



John, as I am not a subscriber to "know nukes," I would like to ask you to

forward this posting to it.



Thanks



Jaro



http://www.cns-snc.ca/branches/quebec/quebec.html













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