Uppity Wisconsin

I loved the fact that Nuclear subs can run for 33 years off of the initial charge of fuel. Same goes for a Nuclear Power Station, eh? Compare the handful of SNF barrels to the thousands and thousands of tons of polutants from a single Nuclear power station - what is your problem. Have you ever lived downwind from a coal fired power plant or seen the yellow sky? You can't deny the strip mining, piles of ash and the deadly effect on the water table. Compare that to SNF -- then get back to me.

Spent nuclear fuel (SNF) is being stored safely at plants in the US right now. There are a variety of possible plans for what to do with SNF in the long term. The Obama administration has commissioned a panel of experts to review these possibilities and determine the best course of action. However, whether or not there is a way to dispose of SNF right now is not the subject of this article.

No one is saying that nuclear power should be considered without some sort of plan for SNF. The Task Force says, “the Public Service Commission must find the nuclear waste plan for the plant is economic, reasonable, stringent and in the public interest, given the safety and other risks presented by such waste.” I am simply asserting that because nuclear power is a large-scale, low emission electricity source we should be able to consider it as an option so long as it meets the criteria set forth in the Task Force's document.

The task force's recommendations clearly state that “the Public Service Commission must find the nuclear waste plan for the plant is economic, reasonable, stringent and in the public interest, given the safety and other risks presented by such waste.”

The article by Ms. Slaybaugh, and the recommendation of the Govenor's task force makes the appropriate demand that a viable, economical, storage solution for the spent nuclear fuel be demonstrated before a nuclear plant will be built in Wisconsin.

Paying for spent nuclear fuel storage has been part of the generation costs of nuclear power plants since 1983. As an alternative baseload supply, this makes nuclear plants far more attractive than Wisconsin's current source for baseload electricity COAL! Which has never had to account for a major part of its waste stream, CO2.

It is slowly becoming clear that CO2 will sooner or later be a regulated/taxed emission of the energy sector. Once this occurs electricity that comes from natural gas and coal will come with the cost of the CO2 that went into that electricity's production (FINALLY). While this will certainly level the playing field for renewable sources it doesn't deal with the inherent problem of intermittency from which all renewable sources suffer.

We will still have hospitals and manufacturing facilities (hopefully) that require electricity 24/7. Renewables cannot provide this, and nuclear energy remains the only carbon free energy source that can. That being the case, it just isn't responsible energy policy to take nuclear off the table.

Now, no one is saying that spent nuclear fuel isn't dangerous. It does however have properties that make it easier to deal with than the waste streams of our other baseload options. SNF is solid and largely insoluable. It is contained within fuel assemblies that do a very good job confining the material. From a technical standpoint it is well within current technology to build a repository for SNF. From a political standpoint... well that's different.

I think I may have wandered into my own editorial here but I hope people find it informative and I'm interested to see what others think about this issue.

There are a few basic technical points which I would like to raise which are often missed in the whole renewable/nuclear power debate.

1. Solar Power (photovoltaics) is often touted as the solve all for all energy problems and generally speaking a back of the envelope calculation is presented on how much solar flux the earth receives and how we can solve the energy crisis. A very important point overlooked is the intermediate mechanism between solar radiation and electricity. Which is essentially the solar cell.

Solar Cells are manufactured using Metals like tellurium, selenium, cadmium, silicon compounds etc. and they are mixed with impurities to give them the ability to generate electricity when exposed to sunlight. Now most of the metals used in manufacture of solar cells are extremely rare and some also toxic and their metallurgy involves rather complicated chemical separation processes which generate toxic waste of their own. Solar cells do not last forever, their ability to generate electricity recedes over a period of time and eventually they have to be discarded. This itself presents a waste disposal problem as the metals present in the cells cannot be just junked in a trash can.

Also many of the metals used are extremely rare metals. For example Tellurium is a by product of Copper or Lead Mining. Now each of these processes apart from generate toxic waste are also natural resource consumers.

Silicon might be available in abundance in nature and is a good candidate for solar cells but its purification and extraction chemistry is also fraught with waste of toxic nature.

The point here is not to discredit solar power but to put out in open that solar power is 'NOT' a magic wand or a silver bullet. It has its engineering and technological limitations which normally are not brought out into the open. It "ALSO" generates waste which is toxic in nature. There is no waste generated while power is generated (similar to Nuclear), but there is waste generated while making solar cells (like in Nuclear which has by products of Uranium extraction) and waste to be disposed when the solar cells die out (like used Nuclear Fuel to be treated and disposed).

The point to be studied is pound by pound which has a better energy to waste generated to fuel/material required ratio.

To have an ecomony completely based on something like Solar Cells would put tremendous amount of strain on mining resources and also generate an unimaginably large amount of industrial mining waste which right now is dealt with in the same way as Nuclear Waste, either box it or try to separate it chemically into constituents which still remain toxic, but can be dealt individually.

2. Wind power is one candidate which systemically is clean but unlike solar power where we are assured of a steady solar flux, wind is far too unreliable and cannot be expected to sustain the energy needs of a whole industrialised economy. Sure it can handle an odd rural building maybe even a village, but not of a textile looms churning out clothes to satisfy the needs of 6.8 Billion peoples. At least not right now.

3. Hydro electric power is one which is very promising in both its ability to generate power cleanly and also having zero waste to take care off, given the fact it relies natural gravity. But it has its own problems of flooding which takes place when dams are built and silting which happens at the base of dams over a period of time which is an ecological hazard and also reduces the efficiency and life of the dam.

4. On the point of safety parameters of nuclear power plants. It should be noted over the past 50 years of operation there have been to be honest two major accidents where the public safety became a question. Namely Chernobyl and the Three Mile Island. In the three mile island Accident the average civilian exposure was 10 micro Sieverts. To put things in perspective the average cosmic radiation received on earth (something we cannot control and even right now inside the building one is being subject to) is about 2 mill-Sieverts. (Notice the difference in scale). The other being Chernobyl which to be honest was a failure of adherance to good engineering practices. But also it was a reactor which might not have been designed to be inherently safe.

What it means is most nuclear reactors designed as on today's date, it is attempted to design them to be intrinsically safe that is they cannot even in theory given the fuel loading they will have and the geometry they have ever go out of control. If they are going out of control the reactor and fuel by design and its nature will behave in a way that increase in rates will lead to shutting down or slowing down of the reactor operation. A phenomena known as temperature feedback, where the change in temperature due to increased (possibly uncontrolled Fission) will have an effect on the important reaction rate affecting properties of the fuel (called Cross sections) to change such that the reaction slows down.

5. On the point of used nuclear fuel. A very efficient way to deal with the used nuclear fuel is to reprocess it. That is to separate the components of the fuels so that they may be dealt with individually and if possible used as opposed to as an agglomerate. France and Japan are examples of two heavily industrialised countries which have a major chunk of their needs met by nuclear power (79 and 35% respectively) who also actively engage in reprocessing. While reprocessing is definitely not a end all solution, it is a very practical solution as each element present in the mixture can be used effectively once it is separated.

The reason the United States does not pursue Reprocessing is more political rather technological. The explanation of security is given there is a possibility of generation of weapon grade plutonium via purification (which can also be used as nuclear power fuel) , but considering the intensity at which power and the reliability at which power is generated (independent of weather and climatic patterns) it would not be irrational to demand military level security for reprocessing facilities.
The other elements which are separated in the processes in trace quantities most have industrial uses.

6. The essential point being, as of today we need a power source which is clean in its operation (relatively) and can handle the economy of scale which we have (to cater to 6.8 billion people) over at least the next 200 years during the time which other more reliable sources and still cleaner sources can be explored like Hydrogen Fusion which once controlled is a systemically clean process according to our current understanding of pollution.

In the whole debate on various fuels an important missed points are the systemic route behind each power source, our needs today, engineering limitations faced and reliability of the source. To be fair in all aspects of life we need not prefer excellence or perfection but something which is good but more reliable and predictable and controllable as opposed to being dictated by something which we do not control presently like weather. The predictability and controllability gives us the ability to plan and execute development ideas.

Given where we are today, from the point we wake up in the morning when we use a tooth paste and toothbrush (Chemical Industry products) and use water from the washbasin tap (which needs energy to clean and pump) and the soap we use (which is a made in a chemical plant) we are using products and services which are dependent on usage of energy. Objects which are generally presumed to be environment friendly do in reality have a energy dependence.

Processes like recycling have energy needs and generate waste of things which cannot be used or recycled in any form (like pulp of the paper mixed with acid which is dissolved off glass bottles in order to separate glass).

In order to reduce our energy needs what we need is a revamp of how we live our life, and our standard of living, hygiene will undergo a major change something no one in his/her right frame of mind would want to commit to as of today.

To be honest Nuclear Energy has a low margin of error which is essentially the reason why the people involved hold themselves to an extremely high standards. No one questions their own safety practices as much as nuclear engineers. No other industry mining, chemical, conventional power, construction gives as much power to the safety officers are Nuclear Power does. No other field does as much research on safety as Nuclear Energy.

In Many Nuclear engineering programs all over the US, there is a separate field within dealing purely with Safety and regulatory issues something which is rarely heard of in Mining and Chemical Industries.

I want to raise a question why doesn't anyone question metallurgical and mining pollution records like Nuclear is questioned which, to be honest, are much more pervasive than radiation as they enter our water and air streams without registering on our counters. Now a solar cell dependent economy would be heavily dependent on the mining industry. Its a fair question and should be answered sincerely and honestly. I am not saying do not question Nuclear Industry, do so, please we need people to question it as then and only then excellence can be achieved, but it would be disingenuous to not hold every field to the same yardstick as waste generated from all fields has toxic effects on the human population.

In honesty, clean is a relative term. Our focus should be "cleaner" and less pervasive. For 1 megawatt of energy we need to compare how much nuclear waste is generated and how much solar cell mining/metallurgical/manufacturing waste is generated.

Aditya Kumar Pidaparthy
Graduate Student : Nuclear Engineering
UW Madison

Indeed, the waste is an issue that should have more attention, and one should not minimize it. There are great strides we could make in reducing and utilizing
the waste we have with current technologies, and further research should be done on transmuting the waste into harmless products.

That said, however toxic the waste is, the amount of waste generated is minuscule for the amount of power produced. Beyond that, the waste is sequestered in a stable form, which cannot be claimed today for any power produced by fossil fuels. How long will mercury released into the environment be toxic? How long will coal sludge pools pose a hazard? How long will it take the carbon cycle to pull excess carbon from the atmosphere?

To reiterate, the point is nuclear power produces little waste and what is produced is not released. The issues surrounding the waste should not be minimized, but neither should the comparative advantages of minuscule environmental impact.

As stated in the article, the potential merits of nuclear power are found in that nuclear plants have low emissions. Within the context of anthropogenic climate change, this is a huge advantage over coal or natural gas. Solutions for spent nuclear fuel do exist. It is being safely stored in the US right now. Long term solutions do exist but are not currently implemented in the US. But, whether a solution does or does not exist is not relevant to the point of the article. The article is simply saying that nuclear should be considered given that a spent nuclear fuel solution is found acceptable (the 2nd clause of the "new" moratorium).

No one is advocating that we should build more reactors without a plan for the spent nuclear fuel. The Task Force report says “the Public Service Commission must find the nuclear waste plan for the plant is economic, reasonable, stringent and in the public interest, given the safety and other risks presented by such waste.” This seems pretty reasonable.