Uppity Wisconsin
Making Wisconsin Progressive Again
Send a message: Don't nuke Wisconsin's climate
Fri, 05/29/2009 - 11:56am | xoff
An online petition campaign to maintain Wisconsin's existing regulations on licensing of new nuclear reactors has been launched by the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice, (WNPJ) in cooperation with One Wisconsin Now (OWN). The message:
Dear Friend,
We urgently need your help to maintain reasonable restrictions on nuclear power in Wisconsin.
Learn more and sign our petition here, or read on.
Wisconsin has wisely had a state law in place since 1984 that prohibits the construction of new nuclear reactors unless two conditions are met:
1. There is a federally-licensed facility to dispose of high-level radioactive waste from the reactors, and
2. The Public Service Commission makes a finding that nuclear power makes economic sense.
The nuclear industry, using concerns over global climate change, is trying to resurrect itself as a viable option, calling nuclear energy a “clean” solution. The Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming, as part of a long list of recommendations, has proposed relaxing the law on nuclear reactors and eliminating the requirement that the waste disposal problem be solved.
To license more reactors to produce more deadly radioactive waste without any way to dispose of it is not only irresponsible. It is unconscionable.
Sign HERE to stop that from happening.
The waste generated by the reactors is so deadly that the Environmental Protection Agency has issued rules requiring that it be kept out of the environment and away from humans for up to a million years! To put that into perspective, 15,000 years ago Wisconsin was covered by glaciers.
Opening Wisconsin to more nuclear plants could have another dangerous side effect – increasing federal pressure to select our state as the repository for the nation’s radioactive waste, in the granite formations in central and northern Wisconsin.
Nuclear power has never made economic sense, despite rosy predictions. No new nuclear plants are being built because the economic risks are too high. That's why the nuclear industry keeps looking for billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidy.
Act now! Sign this petition!
Tell the governor and legislators there are far better ways to fight global warming than risking the safety and economic well-being of Wisconsinites by opening the door to more nuclear reactors.
Thank you,
Chamomile Nusz and Bill Christofferson, co-chairs,
Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice.
Tags:
The debate that surrounds nuclear power is a peculiar one to say the least. Most, if not all, of the anti-nuclear folks know little about it. Those that have been educated in nuclear science support it, but are all said to be biased. However, there is less bias here than we think people. The professors, students and full-time nuclear employees are going to get and keep their jobs whether or not we build more nuclear power plants. Believe it or not, most of these people have learned through years of study and experience that this thing called nuclear power is an answer to a lot of our energy problems. However, when they reach out to tell the nation they are met with an overwhelming amount of unwarranted backlash. More often than not, pro-nuclear people want nothing more than to help society and the general public can't seem to believe it.
What blows me away is the utter disrespect shown to those who have dedicated their lives to producing pure, unbiased, scientific answers by those who have read a few biased, fear-inducing articles.
This is not the abortion debate. There are no morals involved. You either know what you're talking about, or you don't. More than anything, an anti-nuclear argument is like stand-up comedy for anyone who knows anything about nuclear power. Hey, did you guys hear the one about being afraid of a nuclide with a million year half-life? Oh you did? Me too. You shouldn't be, it's stable.
Come on people, you're making yourselves look stupid.
It may be a plan, but it's not economically or politically viable, even if we ignore the scientific argument. It's not happening for at least another four years, if at all. The money for the project is not in the current budget plan. If it were to be approved and funded, it would be immediately filled with all the spent fuel rods that are in temporary storage around the country, so we would then need to build another one somewhere. There isn't a consensus that it is a good idea, despite the rather large amount of money spent on it. Let's see - million years of storage of a deadly environmentally-hazardous material in a geological structure that is a result of seismic shift, and that is riddled with fissures. What could go wrong there? Well - the contamination of the area ground water - and at that point we really are talking about eating the stuff. Yucca Mountain can, for one, only keep going over the objection of the state government where it's placed.
What I'm talking about here is the political and economic reality. Nuclear power is only going to be viable if the government makes it artifically viable in the US. The nuclear industry is incapable of standing on its own, and I can't support an artificial house of cards as a solution to energy production, at least not until such a time that other alternatives get an equivalent fair shake.
Steve H. (thanks for having this site) has made many assertions without support. The writing above includes no references to reliable sources, or, for that matter, any sources. This is, in my experience, typical of anti-nuclear writing: it is rich in extreme and inflammatory statements that seem to me to be calculated to get people to adopt positions based on fear.
The technique is the same approach taken by the Bush Administration to sell the Iraq war.
Energy is an important issue and it deserves careful attention and analysis.
1. Yucca Mountain economics. The money for Yucca Mountain has been collected from ratepayers via a $0.001 (tenth of a cent) per kWh charge on electricity produced by nuclear power plants. It is held ""in trust," like Social Security contributions. Like Social Security contributions, the money is invested in government securities a/k/a "treasuries." Steve states no basis for his claim that Yucca Mountain is not "economically viable" - - anti-nuclear writers rarely feel the need to identify any basis for what they are saying. If he means that there is not money, then he is wrong. There is money. It is controlled by congress, but it has been collected from ratepayers.
2. Yucca Mountain politics. Steve may be right that Yucca Mountain is not politically viable. This means that an alternative solution will have to be found. I have written elsewhere on this site that I support alternative solutions, specifically recycling and re-use of used nuclear fuel, so that we get more electricity out of it. I also support keeping whatever is left in safe storage pending further development of nuclear technology. See, e.g., http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2006/05/introduction-and-basic-principles.html as one promising possibility. Recycling and re-use reduces the amount of radioactive material, and further developments will do so further.
Yucca Mountain was designed to accommodate monitored retrievable storage for at least 100 years, and I think it should be used for that. If spent fuel is not moved there, it could be moved to some other central location where it can be monitored and available for re-use. That seems like a good policy.
Here is what Secretary of Energy Chu said in 2005, probably before he foresaw being in President Obama’s Cabinet:
“Suppose instead that we can reduce the lifetime of the radioactive waste by a factor of 1,000. So it goes from a couple-hundred-thousand-year problem to a thousand-year problem. At a thousand years, even though that's still a long time, it's in the realm that we can monitor - we don't need Yucca Mountain." (end of quote)
Source: http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/10/03_chu.shtml
3. Geology. Geological time actually exists, and so do geological formations. All of them, by the way, have a history of "seismic shift." This does not mean they are not stable for the required time period. Nuclear materials very similar to the waste from today's reactors have already been stored in the earths crust for millions of years without getting exposed to the ambient biosphere.
Natural nuclear reactors operated in water-saturated zones for millions of years on this planet while life was evolving. The resulting plutonium has moved only about 10 feet.
Source: http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0010.shtml
As for Yucca Mountain being "riddled with fissures" that have some sort of meaning, other than that it sounds scary and therefore is "something to say against nuclear power," I would need some scientific and factual source in order to address this assertion.
Neither Bonnie Raitt nor Jackson Browne nor Alec Baldwin are scientists, so please do not use them as a source.
4. "Artificially viable" nuclear energy. The same assertion of "artificial viability" could be made for wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, wave energy and hydroelectric energy. Virtually no installation of these forms of energy would have been, or would be, viable without government support.
Various advocates "cherry pick" a) time periods and b) what they count as a "subsidy" to make various arguments. There is so much data out there from which to cherry pick that it becomes confusing. I arrived at my change of position from anti-nuclear to pro-nuclear by focusing as close as I could on government and academic sources of information that I thought were less biased.
A study commissioned and published by the National Academy of Science demonstrated that, contrary to the myth that nuclear power has been highly subsidized, it has received fewer overall subsidies than renewable sources of energy, even though nuclear power's comparative contribution of power has far outstripped all renewables combined. In fact, over the last 15 years the increases in production at already-existing nuclear power plants have contributed more carbon-free electricity than all new renewable energy installations combined.
As for subsidies, take a look at ISSUES IN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, Spring, 2006 Source: http://www.issues.org/22.3/realnumbers.html#
Here is some of what was said:
"SURPRISES ABOUND. TAX SUBSIDIES OUTPACE R&D SPENDING.SOLAR R&D IS WELL FUNDED. OIL PRODUCTION IS THE BIG WINNER.COAL RECEIVES ALMOST AS MUCH IN TAX SUBSIDIES AS IT DOES FOR R&D. NUCLEAR POWER RECEIVES MUCH LESS THAN COAL FOR R&D."
* * *
"As for future policy, there appears to be an emerging consensus that expanded support for renewable energy technologies is warranted. We found that although the government is often criticized for its failure to support renewable energy, federal investment has actually been rather generous, especially in light of the small contribution that renewable sources have made to overall energy production. As the country maps out its energy plan, we recommend that federal officials pay particular attention to renewable energy investments that will lead to market success and a larger share of total supply."
* * *
"The perception that the renewable industry has been historically shortchanged is open to debate. Since 1950, renewable energy (solar, hydropower, and geothermal) has received the second largest subsidy—$111 billion (17%), compared to $63 billion for nuclear power, $81 billion for coal, and $87 billion for natural gas."
* * *
"Recent federal R&D expenditures bear little relevance to the contributions of various energy sources to the total energy mix. For example, renewable sources excluding hydro produce little energy or electricity but received $3.7 billion in R&D funds between 1994 and 2003, whereas coal, which provides about one-third of U.S. energy requirements and generates more than half of the nation’s electricity, received just slightly more in R&D money ($3.9 billion). Nuclear energy, which provided 10% of the nation’s energy and 20% of its electricity, was also underfunded, receiving $1.6 billion in R&D funds."
I'll try to keep this short, and be a bit selective and skeletal in responding to Jablonski June 4.
Paragraph 2: The Chu quote is entirely baffling. "If we could reduce the lifetime of the radioactive waste by a factor of 1000..." But the lifetime of radioactive waste is governed by the half-life of the radionuclides in it, and the half-lives of daughter radionuclides that appear as the waste decays. These half lives are all physical constants, not subject to human modification. Neither Chu nor Jablonski asserts that we CAN reduce this lifetime to any extent. So what is the point here?
And (to pick on something else that's not too hard to locate in Jablonski's long post) the final quoted paragraph, "Recent federal R & D expenditures..." Accepting at face value the figures Mr. Jablonski quotes, it appears that he endorses the idea that R & D for a particular technology is "underfunded" or not according to whether it funded in proportion to its current fraction of the energy mix. Mr. Jablonski, is that actually what you believe? If not, why cite this quote without comment?
The radioactivity of nuclides is indeed governed by the half-lives of the isotopes. This can not be changed. However, what can be changed are the isotopes themselves via nuclear reactions.
The "bad stuff" is primarily in the actinides (think plutonium, americium). The fission products themselves have much shorter half-lives and most are gone in a few centuries as opposed to 100,000s of years. These can be separated out with chemical processes and placed in special nuclear reactors designed to convert these into fission products, which have shorter half-lives.
Right now the primary motive for not doing this is economics. Uranium is relatively cheap now and for the foreseeable future. If all energy sources had to dispose of their waste streams, the story would be quite a bit different.
Also, from an environmental perspective such recycling schemes have had a few unacceptable mishaps (leaks). This is not a fundamental issue with the technology so much as it is a better call for better oversight of the entire process.
It's the content of YOUR argument that I am sarcastically using to try to prove a point. The point is, when waste is properly disposed of, it does not affect (effect?) the general human population as being "deadly". I'm a nuclear engineer, and I have had design projects and entire classes where we learn about nuclear waste, radioactivity, and the general physics of the entire process. I can say with 100% certainty that the way in which we contain it now is safe for the long term (unless people tried opening the containers). I know this for a fact, I learned about it, I helped design it (not the real thing of course), and I actually understand it. Once you can prove to me that the waste is hazardous upon the current disposal techniques by using the physics behind radioactive decay, shielding, and the general interactions of the subatomic particles, I may feel you have a valid argument. Until then, please let me know your source and reason behind your argument. The basis behind mine is science, nuclear physics, the monte-carlo interaction computer modeling, and an experiment that we actually conducted in lab regarding radiation protection.
The containers that store waste are one thing, and the NRC is so strict that even the amount of radiation leaking from the containers must be so low. Combine that with the fact the dose is inversely proportional to the square of the radius. What that would mean is as long as you are far enough away from the source, of which for this case the source is the container that already blocks the bulk of the radiation, the exposure is negligible. (for the record, you could hug these containers and still be safe from the waste inside, nevertheless 200 feet or even 200 miles from civilization, if yucca were to pass).
What's deadly is the exposure to the waste, and all the strict requirements in eliminating exposure are all to ensure safety. Scientifically speaking, the containers DO hold and protect from the waste inside. Scientifically, exposure rates outside the containers is SAFE to humans, even right next to them. Scientifically speaking, the waste DOES NOT contaminate sources around when disposed of correctly. Scientifically, water kills more people than nuclear waste.
Also, your "we don't isolate it and don't have a plan" You must not have heard about Yucca, and even if that doesn't pass, the containers are all safely held at various locations across the United States, mostly nuclear reactors, of which even those locations are even isolated enough.
Anyone was freaking suggesting that people were going to go and eat the nuclear waste, or bathe in it. It's interesting that everyone on this side of the argument keeps saying that the waste can be properly isolated - but we don't do it, we don't have a plan, and there's no convincing scientific evidence that there IS any form of storage that will work in the long run.
Please, if you're going to argue that nuclear is safe, make some sort of cogent argument about it beyond "It's safe if you don't eat it".
Nuclear Waste is deadly. So is an airplane prop... If you get too close and try to touch it, you may die. However, if you are wise enough to keep your distance, like a few common sense people out there, I really think that you will be OK and escape it's deadly wrath. Water is pretty deadly, I've heard people have died from that. Oxygen blows up, so lets get rid of that too. Do you really know anything about nuclear power, or does the sole fact that it creates waste (which, contrary to the article, CAN be properly disposed and isolated) cause you to turn such a blind eye to the economical and environmental benefits of the issue? Calling it deadly is really oblivious to the fact at hand, and the benefits it serves far outweigh the dangers associated with people trying to eat it and touch it (or smoke around it or swim in it I guess...)
I think these are called specious arguments. All things being equal, would you rather hear on the radio that some water has inadvertently been released from a nuclear reactor near you, or some radiation?
EPA has not, to my knowledge, issued a rule that either water or oxygen are so deadly that they must be isolated from the environment for a million years. The world is full of calculated risks, but even the U.S. EPA (hardly a bastion of radicalism) recognizes that radioactive waste creates risk that cannot be compared with anything else, since no other substance must be isolated for that long. Comparison with water, oxygen, and airplane props is just silly.
By this writer's standard, apparently we don't need to worry about anything unless we are dumb enough to get close to it. The problem is, if there's equipment failure or human error (or both) at a nuclear reactor, the radiation that would be released would very quickly get close to US no matter how smart we think we are.
Okay - so your argument here is that piling up the waste in temporary storage dumps at the reactors is "available and proven" in the sense that nothing bad has happened yet. I don't find that really reassuring. I think it's appropriate to maintain our current moratorium on nuclear plants in Wisconsin until there really is a proven technology for storage. Being able to keep this stuff under control for 50 years without any serious accident is one thing. Being able to keep it under control until it decays is completely another.
I certainly will not argue that coal is safe, and that we don't need to move away from it - but replacing that hazard with another for which we really have no viable solution is not good policy.