[Type text][Type text][Type text]

1Kuznets-Speck

Ben Kuznets-Speck

Prof. Ed Caner

February 1, 2015

UNSA 288-C

On Nuclear Naivety: What we dont know and why its probably going to hurt us.

Weve all seen the headlines condemning nuclear power, lamenting its evils and the dangers that lie within reactors, and calling on the people to do something about it, but what we usually dont find in the blizzard of media coverage is the truth. Whether the topic is safety, waste, cost or alternative fuel sources, if we simply take a look at the facts, its not all that hard to realize that common misconceptions about nuclear power have twisted the truth beyond recognition. Lets start with the thought on everyones mind: what about the danger, the meltdowns and the increased incidence of radiation poisoning and death that lie therein. These are most likely the first thoughts to pop into ones mind concerning the topic of nuclear power simply because they get the most airtime. Take Fukushima for example; before an earthquake took out the power to three of the reactors in early March 2011, eventually causing a meltdown, most Americans, and most Earthlings for that matter, hadnt the slightest clue of where Fukushima was, let alone any fear of the power plant there. After the meltdown however, headlines concerning Fukushima were plastered on almost every news station and paper in the world. Although its true that a reactor meltdown of any size is cause for concern, the easiest reason for Fukushimas prolonged coverage is that when people hear nuclear catastrophe, they get scared and fear sells. The fact of the matter, though, is that nuclear power is not all that dangerous. For example, on March 11, 2011, the day of the Fukushima meltdown, CBS news reported that the highest dose of radiation recorded at the site was 1000 millisiverts (CBSNEWS). Well that is certainly cause for concern and mass panic, right? Not quite; in fact, that figure translates to 100 rem (the common unit concerning radiation), which wouldnt even be notice if exposed to it (Muller 96). Followed by the fact that the radiation quickly dropped to below 600 millisiverts, and that to this day apart from Chernobyl, no nuclear workers or members of the public have ever died as a result of exposure to radiation due to a commercial nuclear reactor incident we see that perhaps the media blew the Fukushima incident a bit out of proportion (WNA). Furthermore, when we take into account that about 80% of nuclear mishaps can be directly attributed to human error the question of whether America should continue her nuclear pursuits is raised (WNA). On one hand, it seems like a future reactor meltdown is inevitable; on the other hand, the percent of fatalities to terawatt year of power produced in nuclear plants is 48 compared to 111, 597 and 10,285 for natural gas, coal and hydro plants respectively (hydro plants kill almost 215 times as many people, but we dont hear about them) (WNA). These questions are important ones, and must be answered with facts, not anecdotes, for as the shift from fossil fuels to alternative power comes to the foreground of Americas picture of energy, we need to be able to objectively assess the risks of nuclear power.Perhaps the most gaping misconception the public has about nuclear power is that concerning waste. It may be common knowledge that nuclear plants produce radioactive waste that must be disposed of, but this procedure is causing us more trouble than previously thought. Because the spent fuel rods will continue releasing unhealthy doses of radiation for anywhere between 100 million and 4.75 billion years (depending on the fuel type) after they go out of commission, they need to be kept somewhere where they wont be in contact with humans and their air and water supplies, somewhere with the capacity to handle the approximately 4000 metric tons of waste per year, in America (Muller). Rebecca Lunn, professor of engineering geosciences at the University of Strathclyde, says: Geological disposal of nuclear waste involves the construction of a precision-engineered facility deep below the ground into which waste canisters are carefully maneuvered. (Bell) Due to these constraints, it takes an average of twenty years to find a suitable location before even beginning to discuss political and commercial permissions. One only needs to look at the predicament both Great Britain and the United States are in to realize the severity of the problem; both the proposed Cambria County and Yucca Mountain (UK and USA respectively) waste sites, which were both well over a decade in the works, were recently declined (Bell). Without large in ground facilities, we are forced to store nuclear waste in shallow facilities which are more susceptible to natural disaster and contamination, and are therefore not a viable long term option. Another option for nuclear waste that has been drifting around the airways as of late is reprocessing decommissioned fuel rods in an attempt to get some of the fuel back. Oh my; where do we begin. How about the fact that under the non-nuclear proliferation treaty we (the United States) dont allow other countries to reprocess their nuclear waste for fear of unwanted nuclear weapons programs, and that we have had some very public disagreements with North Korea and Iran in recent years concerning just this. Not only will the United States [not be able to] credibly persuade other countries to forgo a technology it has newly embraced for its own use, but reprocessing is far from becoming even close to economically or environmentally feasible (UCS). Consider this: the 100 reactors in the United States generate substantial domestic economic value in electricity sales and revenue$40 billion to $50 billion each yearwith more than 100,000 workers contributing to that production which averages to about $45 billion when considering salaries (NEI). Now take into account that the cost premium for reprocessing spent fuel would range from 0.4 to 0.6 cents per kilowatt-hourcorresponding to an extra $3 to $4.5 billion per year for the current U.S. nuclear reactor fleet, and that it would cost at least 20 billion dollars to build a single reprocessing facility, of which we would need two (UCS). Furthermore, the public should not be fooled by the term reprocessing which commonly leads us to believe that it is somehow better for the environment and therefore possibly worth the economic inefficiency; in fact, after reprocessing, the remaining material will be in several different waste forms, and the total volume of nuclear waste will have been increased by a factor of twenty or more, including low-level waste and plutonium-contaminated waste. The largest component of the remaining material is uranium, which is also a waste product because it is contaminated and undesirable for reuse in reactors. Even if the uranium is classified as low-level waste, new low-level nuclear waste facilities would have to be built to dispose of it (UCS).So now we are dealing with a possibility that would require us to spend orders of magnitude more on the entire nuclear operation only to produce an order of magnitude more waste than before, not to mention the costs associated with decommissioning old reprocessing facilities and building new ones. This possibility seems to be lying at the bottom of a very deep hole. The call for alternative reactors, such as thorium, by the media is also misconstrued. Long story short, many have been pitching the idea that thorium nuclear reactors are the solution for long-term nuclear power, citing that it is much more abundant in nature and produces less harmful waste. On the surface, this proposition doesnt seem so ridiculous; after all, thorium, a naturally occurring radioactive element, is four times more abundant than uranium in the earth's crust (Rees). The truth is that if this discussion was happening 70 years earlier, proponents of thorium reactors would be right. This is because the real reason we use uranium over thorium is a result of wartime politics. Cold War-era governments (including ours) backed uranium-based reactors because they produced plutonium handy for making nuclear weapons (Hadhazy). Because uranium was indisputably the go to element for nuclear power when the original plants were being designed and constructed, they employ processes that are not compatible with thorium. Since current uranium plants would take years to convert to thorium, at great cost, and the best bet for a new thorium reactor would be in the form of a molten salt reactor, which is still theoretical, far from optimized and would call for a tax subsidy hike of about an order of magnitude, thorium cannot be considered an economically responsible choice (Hadhazy, Rees). Furthermore, the hype about thorium being better for the environment is just that, hype. Thorium cannot in itself power a reactor; unlike natural uranium, it does not contain enough fissile material to initiate a nuclear chain reaction. As a result it must first be bombarded with neutrons to produce the highly radioactive isotope uranium-233 'so these are really U-233 reactors,' says [Nuclear Radiologist, Peter] Karamoskos, which will still produce an abundance of waste (Rees). These factors make the possibility of thorium reactors quite bleak.The moral of the story here is not that nuclear power is this, that, or the other; it is that in order to make informed opinions on it, one must be informed. The big questions that come with a possible nuclear future are not just of concern to political leaders, but the public at large. When voting on or debating whether to write an elected official about a nuclear project in your area, the issues that come to mind should not be based in fear of meltdowns and mishaps, but on how long the project will be running, how much it will cost and if there is a promising long-term waste management solution. Not taking the ladder into account will most likely result in misplaced funding and unhappy taxpayers in the long run.References"Radiation Spike Hinders Work at Japan Nuke Plant." CBSNEWS. CBSNEWS, 16 Mar. 2011. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. .

"Safety of Nuclear Power Reactors." World Nuclear Association (WNA). WNA, 1 Dec. 2014. Web. 1 Feb. 2015. .

Muller, Richard A. "Nukes." Physics For Future Presidents: The Science Behind The Headlines. New York: W.W. Norton, 2008. Print.

Bell, Rebecca. "Nuclear Waste Must Be out of Sight, but Not out of Mind." The Guardian. The Guardian, 1 Nov. 2014. Web. 31 Jan. 2015. .

"Nuclear Reprocessing: Dangerous, Dirty, and Expensive." Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). UCS. Web. 31 Jan. 2015. .

"Cost & Benefits Analyses." Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI). NEI. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. .

Rees, Eifion. "Don't Believe the Spin on Thorium Being a Greener Nuclear Option." The Guardian. The Guardian, 23 June 2011. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. .

Hadhazy, Adam. "Why Aren't We Using Thorium in Nuclear Reactors? The Answer Boils down to Wartime Politics." Discover Magazine. Discover Magazine, 7 May 2014. Web. 26 Jan. 2015. .