The Emperor Has No Clothes A Practical Guide for Environmental and Social Transformation (20 page)

By reprocessing it is possible to eliminate
most of our inventory of this material.xlvi At the present time all
the other major users of nuclear power do in fact reprocess their
fuel. We used to reprocess our fuel but the Carter administration
stopped it for political purposes. There is no doubt that producing
and having to store long lived radioactive waste is a big problem.
It is strange to me though, that the antinuclear power advocates
aren't urging that these wastes be sent to Canada for reprocessing
(the Canadians have a reprocessing facility), or restart our own
reprocessing. Reprocessing would eliminate ~ 60 % of it and there
also would be no need to mine uranium for several decades.

Another source of incorrect information is
the use of obsolete facts. Much of the material presented in the
mass media originated in the 1970's which became “conventional
wisdom” when little was known about low levels of radiation
exposure, and also when nuclear power plant technology was having
start up problems. Starting in the late 1960's the electric
utilities began to place a lot of orders for nuclear power plants,
however at that time the generating capacity of a nuclear reactor
was around 200 megawatts, the utilities wanted 800 – 1000 megawatt
plants. The power plant vendors responded to this demand and scaled
up their designs to plants of the desired size. The degree of size
scale up was beyond what the level of engineering capability could
support, i.e., the scale up was too large. The result was that a
lot of plants were built that had problems and needed shut downs to
be debugged. To correct these problems they were off line a lot and
only producing around 50% - 60% of their rated capacity. The
nuclear electric generation industry tried to cover these problems
up, which of course was eventually found out. When these coverups
became known it caused a loss of their credibility and established
a negative reputation that still lingers on.

Another source of information distortion
originates from a small but very vocal group of ideologically
motivated people. These people create and use controversy for their
personal purposes. For example, in 1964 an ambitious Ralph Nader
testified before congress that nuclear power was not needed because
by the mid 1980's geothermal electrical generation would be
providing most of our energy. Well, here we are 50 years later and
its supplying .41% of our energy. It did serve his purposes though
to provide career leverage to obtain a high position in the federal
bureaucracy.

The question is, why is nuclear electric
power generation still getting such bad press? It's been quietly
perking along for 40 years without any significant problems since 3
Mile Island. Little is mentioned in the popular press that it has
been offsetting the production of billions of tons of pollutants?
Well obviously we have the opposition groups already mentioned and
not all the people who oppose it are opportunists or motivated by
ideology, but by concerns about its use. There is no doubt that
many of the people are well intentioned but badly informed as a
result of the type of the coverage it gets in the electronic and
print media. For example, I recently read an article in the New
York Times about a water leak at a nuclear power plant. A water
pipe on the side of the cooling tower had leaked water on the side
of the tower as a result of a wood support structure decaying,
allowing a pipe to move out of position. The water that was being
spilled on the side of the tower never had any contact with the
nuclear reactor. How often have you seen this type of trivial
incident reported in one of the largest newspapers in the United
States if it had happened at a coal or gas fired power plant?
Another interesting fact is that nuclear reactors are being built
right now in the United States for use in naval vessels. For
example, the Gerald Ford aircraft carrier mentioned earlier. I
would argue that a significant nuclear reactor accident is much
more likely on a military ship than at a land based power plant; in
fact a number of nuclear powered ships have sunk. One scarcely
hears even a peep about the construction of these nuclear reactors
or any protests about their deployment in a setting that has a much
greater likelihood of having catastrophic results than a commercial
unit.

Let's consider another possible source of
opposition to nuclear power by looking at who's ox would be gored.
I would speculate that much of the opposition is a result of the
activities of the fossil fuel and their support industries. Once
again we will use coal for our analysis keeping in mind that gas
and oil are also used to produce a minor amount of electricity.
[77] The amount of coal used for domestic consumption in the United
States is slightly over 1 billion tons at the present time. The
cost of coal is slightly over $41 per ton. Almost all of this coal
is shipped by rail at a cost of a little over $17 per ton. So if we
replaced coal as an energy source the owners of the coal mines
would lose the profits on $41 billion and the owners of the
railroads the profits on $17 billion each year. There are a number
of other businesses that profit from this, for example,
manufactures of explosives, mining equipment, etc. Lets consider
the activities of these businesses that we do know about. The
fossil fuel industry has waged an expensive, protracted PR campaign
for decades to create doubt and confusion in the public mind about
the scientific evidence relating to the connection between
greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. They have done this by
employing the same type of disinformation campaign pioneered by the
tobacco industry. The question is, why would they do this? The
answer is that once a public consensus is reached that green house
gas emissions are a cause of warming that will significantly
destabilize the earths climate a motivation for change will exist.
Then the appropriate action to mitigate the problem would be to
reduce and ultimately eliminate fossil fuel usage. The details of
their disinformation campaign are well detailed and documented in
Orekes & Conway's book already sited in the bibliography. The
fossil fuel industry is capable of and does perform the sorts of
assessments that were performed in the last chapter of potentially
or currently competitive technologies to their products. Once a
hard look is taken of all these technologies it becomes obvious
that nuclear power is really the only option available that can be
currently implemented to significantly reduce or eliminate fossil
fuel usage. If the actual performance of our light water reactors
are evaluated, they have been providing 19.8% of our electrical
power for the last 40 years, and at a lower cost than other methods
of electric production. For example, a 1982 study by Commonwealth
Edison found the following: a cost of 2.24 cents per kWh for
nuclear generated electricity, and a cost of 4.33 cents per kWh for
coal, coal cost 1.9 times more than nuclear. A slightly later study
by the European Economic Community produced a study that showed
similar results. A more recent 2005 analysis of the comparative
production costs of energy sources for electrical generation gave
the following values per kWh: nuclear 1.72 cents, coal 2.12 cents,
natural gas 7.5 cents, and oil 8.09 cents.xlvii

Light water reactors do have several
disadvantages. The largest disadvantage is that they produce large
amounts of long lived radioactive waste. The second disadvantage is
that they are expensive around $4000.00 per kWh to construct. Upon
consideration of the undesirable characteristics that light water
slow neutron nuclear power plants have, in my judgment no new
plants of this type should be constructed. The current fleet of 104
light water plants have around another 20 years of life expectancy
and should be continued to be used, since they can provide
environmentally benign electricity for the rest of their life. The
long lived nuclear waste they produce can be used for 4th
generation reactor fuel, thereby mitigating their waste
disadvantage.

77. The cost of producing electricity using
oil and gas is much greater than coal, that's why it's used for
peaker plants which are only operated to adjust electric supply to
intermittent fluctuations in electrical demand (they can be started
up fast).

The new 4th generation fast neutron reactors
do not have the disadvantages of the obsolete light water plants.
In 2005 General Electric – Hitachi testified before congress that
they can produce Prism 4th generation reactors for $1,300.00 per
kWh. The cost of a coal fired electrical generation plant costs
between $1000.00 - $1500.00 per kWh to construct. Comparing the
two, a 4th generation nuclear reactor has about the same
construction cost as an average coal plant. Besides the
environmental and health problems produced by the use of coal, it
also has to be continuously purchased to burn. The new 4th
generation nuclear power plants uses radioactive waste for fuel and
have no fuel cost. [78] Not only would these plants reduce and
ultimately eliminate our stockpile of nuclear waste but it would
also eliminate fossil fuel and uranium mining. Another great
advantage of 4th generation nuclear is that it does not need an
upgraded electric distribution grid. So as the old fossil fuel
plants are decommissioned, a nuclear plant can simply take its
place on the existing grid. The Prism power reactor is a
standardized 311 mega watt modular design. By using a modular
design the start up problems due to excessive scale up and non
standardized plant design that occurred with the 2nd generation
power plants in the 1960s – 1970s is avoided.

Well its time to run the numbers to see how
much it would cost to change to this type of power source. I will
use the 300 million kWh value for the calculations which includes
replacing coal, gas, and oil fired types of power plants. I will
return later to how the peakers can be eliminated using base load
reactors.[79]

~~~~~~~~~~

The cost to replace fossil fuel generated
electricity:

Total: $390.06 Billion.

Land Usage: 60,000 Acres.

Number of one million kW plants: 300
comprised of 947 modules.

This will produce a 49% reduction in the US
greenhouse gas

output as well as other types of
pollutants!

See below for a detailed breakdown.

~~~~~~~~~~

In order to get an idea about the status of
development of fast neutron reactor technology a brief history is
now appropriate. When commercial nuclear power was starting to be
implemented it was known that the light water reactors would
produce large quantities of long lived nuclear waste.

78. The
4
^th
generation plants produce about 1 ton of radioactive waste
per year for a 1 million kWh plant that requires 500 years to
completely decay away.

79. So we need 300 million kWh of
electricity.

Cost for reactors 300 million kWh
X $1,300.00 / kWh = $390 Billion.

We need 300 one million kWh power
plants comprised of 947 modules.

The average land requirements for
a single plant is 200 acres. Thus, we need 300 plants X 200 acres =
60,000 acres.

The land cost is 60,000 acres X
$1,000.00 / acre = $60,000,000.00

Total Cost
$390.06 Billion

To address this problem the federal
government implemented two approaches to deal with the waste
products. In 1964 a fast neutron reactor named the EBR2
(experimental Breeder Reactor 2) was built to provide a means of
developing a commercial fast neutron reactor design, the program
was called PRIZM. In addition to having the objective of
eliminating the impending nuclear waste problem, it was designed to
have both a competitive construction and energy production cost
relative to fossil fueled plants. The envisioned technology also
had the goal of producing a process that would make its use
impractical for production of bomb making materials. EBR2 / PRIZM
was operated successfully until 1994 (30 years) and is the basis
for the General Electric – Hitachi PRISM that is now available. It
has resulted in a electrical generation reactor that has met all
the goals originally sought. The second means of dealing with
nuclear waste was to create a disposal site where radioactive waste
could be buried and left to decay to a safe level. The current site
where this may take place is Yucca Mountain. In order to fund the
eventual storage costs after the site was developed at taxpayer
expense and ready to accept waste materials, the US government set
up an escrow account in 1982. The escrow account was funded by the
utilities who would pay into it at the rate of .1 cent per kWh of
energy produced in their light water plants. The electric utilities
have been unwilling to voluntarily pay for their clean up costs and
have been fighting the .1 cent charge. Recently they have won in a
DC court which ruled that these payments could be eliminated in
2014. The escrow account currently contains $30 billion. The
estimated disposal costs for the nuclear waste they have produced
is $175 billion, leaving a funding short fall of $145 Billion that
would have to be payed by the taxpayer.[80]

80. It should be noted that the eventual
actual cost isn't really known since the Yucca Mountain facility
isn't ready for operation so far $8 Billion has been spent on it.
When it will be in operation isn't known at the present time.

How safe are the 4th generation nuclear power
plants? One of the goals of the PRIZM project was to design an
extremely safe reactor. This type of reactor does not have high
pressure in the reactor vessel like the 2nd generation light water
reactors that are now being used, where the water is pressurized to
about 136 atmospheres. PRISM uses liquid sodium metal as a coolant
and operates at ambient air pressure. The PRISM reactors have
passive and active safety features: if the pumps used to circulate
the liquid sodium failed, the coolant in the reactor would still
circulate as a result of convection which works by gravity. A
second safety feature would also come into play if coolant pump
failure occurred, the reactor would leak out neutrons which are
essential for the production of a chain reaction, automatically
shutting the reactor down. By stopping the chain reaction, the
production of heat is terminated eliminating the possibility of
core melt down. A third safety system for shutting down the reactor
employes control rods that would drop into the reactor core by
gravity. A forth safety system is comprised of boron carbide balls
that absorb the neutrons that cause the chain reaction.xlviii So as
we can see the 4th generation reactors incorporate multiple
redundant safety systems. Since half of them are passive there is
no possibility of a core melt down as a result of operator error,
as happened at Chernobyl and 3 Mile Island. Or have the reactor
vessel rupture which occurred at Chernobyl as a result of excessive
pressure. The only safety criticism of 4th generation reactors is
the use of sodium as a coolant. Sodium metal reacts with water to
form a caustic chemical (sodium hydroxide) similar to the lye used
for cleaning stopped up drains. The Japanese have a fast neutron
reactor (not of the same design as PRISM) where this type accident
occurred and it did produce a significant chemical cleanup problem
which required the plant to be shut down. This accident produced no
problems with radioactivity or core meltdown. The problems with
this plant are being corrected and it is anticipated that the plant
will be restored to operation. The type of accident that happened
at the Japanese plant isn't possible in the PRISM design.