DC Reade
traveling
April 7, 2019
Times Pick
I'm noticing the usual array of objections to nuclear power: 1) that high level waste storage is impractical; 2) that reactors are easy terrorist targets; 3) that radiation is such a horrific form of pollution that only zero tolerance will suffice; 4) that the track record of Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Miles Island demonstrates that the technology is inherently unsafe.

If people were to investigate these objections instead of regarding them as truisms, they'd find that 1) high-level nuclear waste can be reprocessed using fast-neutron reactor technology and reused to consume nearly all of it; 2) nuclear reactors are not exactly soft targets for terrorist groups, particularly in terms of making bomb-grade fissile material available to them; 3) some level of radiation is inescapable simply in the course of residing on the planet, and people incur much more of an additional radiation load as airline passengers than people do by living in proximity to a nuclear power plant; and 4) Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island are more examples of failure to heed ordinary good sense precautions than they are indications of an inherently dangerous technology.

Furthermore, the best and cleanest nuclear reactor designs- Gen III and Gen IV- are only now coming online. There are designs that don't use water for cooling. There are designs that don't even require uranium.

It's imperative to not fall into the trap of obsessing over every problem while objecting to every solution.

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10 REPLIES
Lynn commented April 6, 2019
L
Lynn
New York
April 6, 2019
@DC Reade
"high-level nuclear waste can be reprocessed using fast-neutron reactor technology and reused to consume nearly all of it"
So is anyone doing that first with all the waste that's already lying around with no plan to go?

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Ian Rasmussen commented April 6, 2019
I
Ian Rasmussen
Chicago
April 6, 2019
@Lynn As my understanding goes, the way to reprocess as @CD Reade mentions is called a Breeder Reactor, and yes, they are used around the world. That's what the authors are talking about when they say "we can either burn the waste as fuel in new types of reactors or bury it underground." For whatever reason we don't use them in America, I'm not sure why, probably politics. Europe and I believe Japan have used them for a while, and China just opened one in the last decade as they push forward on nuclear power. Could be some nuclear arms treaty fine print or something that prevents us in the US, or just the general fear of the word nuclear.

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DC Reade commented April 6, 2019
D
DC Reade
traveling
April 6, 2019
@Ian Rasmussen

In the US, the obstacles are based in politics and litigation. I've gotten to view most of that resistance as based in irrational fear- with the (dys)functional result being that high-level nuclear waste products continue to be stored on-site in cooling ponds long after they've cooled enough to be moved, which is a much more potentially hazardous than transporting the material for reprocessing in a breeder reactor, or moving it to a remote storage site that's nowhere near any bodies of water and relatively secure from being mobilized by the wind and weather.

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617to416 commented April 7, 2019
617to416
617to416
Ontario Via Massachusetts
April 7, 2019
@DC Reade

"Fukushima, Chernobyl, and Three Mile Island are more examples of failure to heed ordinary good sense precautions than they are indications of an inherently dangerous technology. "

And are we confident that "failures to heed ordinary good sense" are a thing of the past and that we've now entered an era where humans will be free from error, always rational, and never motivated by passion, greed, or anger?

The failure to heed ordinary good sense is a significant risk that any truly rational person can't ignore!

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K D commented April 7, 2019
K
K D
Pa
April 7, 2019
@DC Reade
The incident at Three Mile was handled exactly the way it was suppose to be handled. They followed procedures and no radiation escaped.

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Cactus commented April 7, 2019
C
Cactus
RI
April 7, 2019
@DC Reade
You've said everything better than I could. I understand many anti-nuclearists think they are protecting life on our planet. If only they would educate themselves----we are so mis-informed. The author's book is a good start as is Gretchen Craven's Power to Save the World.

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Anne commented April 7, 2019
A
Anne
Chicago
April 7, 2019
In a few years homes can fully power themselves (https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/fuel-cells/solar-panel-prototype-splits-water-to-produce-hydrogen).
That leaves a much smaller production need for industry and vehicles which can be largely covered with other renewables. The US has the open space and latitude for it.

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Peter Melzer commented April 7, 2019
P
Peter Melzer
C'ville, VA
April 7, 2019
@Ian Rasmussen,
Russia is the only country that claims to have developed functional commercial-scale fast breeder reactors. France's Superphenix produced power for a few weeks before the project was abandoned because of technical difficulties. Japan's Monju project never went on grid. Construction of the Clinch River reactor in the US was abandoned in its early infancy.

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Varsityvic commented April 7, 2019
V
Varsityvic
NJ
April 7, 2019
@Ian Rasmussen I worked as a nuclear engineer on the breeder reactor. Government funded, cancelled a few years after TMI accident for both political and economic reasons. They are much more complex than normal reactors. I’m surprised no mention of geothermal in article or comments by others.

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Dirk commented April 7, 2019
D
Dirk
Camden, Maine
April 7, 2019
@K D It may have been handled exactly the way "it should be" but it never should have happened in the first place. What it proves is that nuclear accidents (and blunders) WILL happen. Full Stop.
Therefore we need to expect more of them if we build more of them. You didn't mention the costs of 3-Mile Island. From what I can gather it cost $973M (or almost a billion dollars) to clean up -- which doesn't include the cost of building the reactor. It was new at the time it failed so all the imbedded costs in its construction and startup were lost. These babies are not cheap and some will fail. 3-Mile Island came very close to a complete meltdown. Fukishima is not done melting yet -- it's still a major disaster in progres. But that said, it's predicted to cost Japan over $200Billion (American dollars) over time. Five of those and you have a Trillion. This is playing with fire. Solar is not.

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paul commented April 7, 2019
P
paul
White Plains, NY
April 7, 2019
Times Pick
Finally, a voice of reason in an age of anti-nuclear rhetoric. Nuclear power is efficient, economical and safe, despite the fear mongering of people who simply ignore the science and the facts. Look at New York state, where the witless Governor Andrew Cuomo has frightened the residents of the Hudson Valley into the imminent shut down of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. Where will the replacement power come from? How much will it cost? No amount of wind or solar power can generate what Indian Point does, but Cuomo simply ignores the economic realities. Sheer stupidity, or more likely the outright political manipulation of the people.

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rosa commented April 7, 2019
R
rosa
ca
April 7, 2019
Times Pick
I'm 70.
I was born about the time that nuke-poer and nuke-weapons came on the scene.
Nuke power, they said, was going to be cheap!Evry one would use it for pennies a day!

And they never said anything about nuke waste.
They didn't have to.
There was a terrific site in Washington. All they had to do was scrape a deep trench in the soil, throw in the waste, scrape a cover over it, and, VIOLA! No more problem!

When I left Washington, they had 'discovered' that, ooops, the trenches were leaking. Into the Columbia. Heading downstream. So, don't eat the fish.

You'll forgive me, young men, if I don't believe anyone when they say they have a solution to.... pretty much anything, but especially, nuclear waste.

We still have no solution to Chernobyl.
We have no solution to Fukushima Diachi.
Yucca Mountain? It's one of the most earthquake states, Nevada, that there is.
And what about that nuclear power plant that was built on the California coast?

Sorry.
Never.
There is no industry in the world that is run by a more incompetent bunch, ever.
I am 70.
So are nukes.

Seriously, NYTimes?
Is this the next subject that shall be "normalized"?

Solar.
Wind.
Hydro.
Tidal.
They are all cheaper - and safer.
No nukes - for any reason - until the problem with "WASTE" is solved.

Start with the state of Washington.

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3 REPLIES
spike commented April 7, 2019
spike
spike
NYC
April 7, 2019
@rosa Nukes always seem like a great idea on paper, but in the end they always end up much more expensive then alternatives. Any mistake is very expensive to fix, the waste problem is endless. The need to place them next to water and near cities means any problem becomes catastrophic. The huge capital cost means engineers will always be pushed to cut corners so that Diablo Canyon and San Onofre are sited over faults. Hindsight always shows ways that disasters could have been avoided- Fukushima would have survived if the fuel tanks for the back up pumps have been underground so that they were not swept away by the tsunami. But all systems fail at some point. After the Tohoku earthquakes probably the safest place to put a nuke plant is Fukushima- it wouldn't see another earthquake a large for a very long time. Instead Japan maintains nuke plants at other more vulnerable locations. Probably the safest place to dump nuclear waste would be in the deep oceans, where it would be slowly diluted by the vast ocean. Instead it will be placed on land where it will be vulnerable to terrorists, earthquakes, leak into water supplies and always be a danger.

3eeeeeeeddddededeeeee

Blue Moon
Old Pueblo
April 7, 2019
Times Pick
Three Mile Island had a seriously adverse effect on the American psyche. After that, no new nuclear plants were licensed for startup until 2012 (33 years later). And many plants that were being planned at the time wound up delayed or canceled.

China is on track for 100 nuclear generating stations in the near future (as well as robust investment in wind and solar). If they can do it, why can't we? And if we still decide not to do it, that decision isn't going to stop the Chinese.

There is no rational reason for America not to pursue nuclear power in earnest again. We fell off the wagon. It's high time to get back on.

Rod Adams
Rod Adams
Trinity, FL
April 7, 2019
@b fagan Your link points to a graph of installed and projected CAPACITY, not generation.

Because nuclear plants run at 100% of their capacity for major portions of each year, they produce more electricity per unit of capacity than variable sources like wind.

Though nuclear CAPACITY was just 2% in 2016, nuclear electricity generation in 2018 was 294.4 billion kWh. That's 4.2% of the total generation and an 18% increase over 2017.

In 2018, China put 8 new nuclear plants into operation; most of them only generated power for a small portion of the year. Expect another large incremental growth in nuclear electricity production for 2019.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-01/24/c_137771695.htm

One more thing - China is also building one of the world's largest nuclear powered icebreakers. I'm pretty sure that wind powered icebreaking isn't even a thing.

Blue Moon
Old Pueblo
April 7, 2019
@seattle expat
Natural gas burns cleaner than coal but still pumps CO2 into the atmosphere. Fracking represents an extreme environmental hazard (e.g., water table contamination, earthquakes). Realistically, wind and solar will take many decades to implement effectively for a large portion of the U.S. population, requiring a "transcontinental railroad" infrastructure effort to transmit the power from solar and wind farms to where it is needed. Battery storage capacity will take many more decades to properly develop for commercial applications. We can get nuclear plants up and running within 20 years, in abundance. Natural gas to nuclear to renewables (wind, solar) is the best progression and the way we need to go. Threats from nuclear waste disposal and accidents pale in comparison to the existential threats of global warming and climate change. China certainly has its share of problems, but safely embracing nuclear power generation is not one of them. Nuclear power will provide the path to powering our electric cars of the near future. It is foolish to shun it.