Huge Costs of Nuclear Power - UPI article - very interesting reading.

[JohnWxy]

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050520-023103-2877r.htm

I thought this article was important enough to deserve it's own thread. As I said before storing the nuclear waste for thousands of years is a problem conveniently forgotten in Nuclear advocates presentations of the cost of nuclear power. It's one issue that should not be over-looked. (The issue of whether nuclear waste actually CAN be stored anywhere for thousands of year without getting out into the environment is, I believe, still subject to debate.)

Nuclear advocates will I'm sure will offer arguments to counter some or all of the points raised in this article. Then interested parties can evaluate such arguments presented as to their logical soundness and practicality. I dont know what the final answer is on nuclear (fission) power is. I just thought ALL the issues and attendant costs should be considered when evaluating nuclear power as an energy source.


Outside view: Huge costs of nuclear power

By Helen Caldicott
Outside View Commentator

(emphasis my own_JW)

Washington, DC, May. 21 (UPI) -- There is a huge propaganda push by the nuclear industry to justify nuclear power as a panacea for the reduction of global-warming gases.


At present there are 442 nuclear reactors in operation around the world. If, as the nuclear industry suggests, nuclear power were to replace fossil fuels on a large scale, it would be necessary to build 2,000 1,000-megawatt reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant has been ordered in the United States since 1978, this proposal is less than practical. Furthermore, even if we decided today to replace all fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to four years.

The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for. The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidized by the U.S. government. The true cost of the industry's liability in the case of an accident in the United States is estimated to be $560 billion, but the industry pays $9.1 billion -- 98 percent of the insurance liability is covered by the federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing U.S. nuclear reactors is estimated to be $33 billion. These costs --

plus the enormous expense involved in the storage of radioactive waste for a quarter of a million years -- are not included in the economic assessments of nuclear electricity.

It is said that nuclear power is emission-free. The truth is very different.

In the United States, where much of the world's uranium is enriched, including

Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Ky., requires the electrical output of two 1,000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50 percent of global warming.

Also, this enrichment facility and another at Portsmouth, Ohio, release from leaky pipes 93 percent of the chlorofluorocarbon gas emitted yearly in the United States.

The production and release of CFC gas is banned internationally by the Montreal Protocol because it is the main culprit responsible for stratospheric ozone depletion. But CFC is also a global warmer, 10,000 to 20,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide.

In fact, the nuclear fuel cycle utilizes large quantities of fossil fuel at all of its stages -- the mining and milling of uranium, the construction of the nuclear reactor and cooling towers, robotic decommissioning of the intensely radioactive reactor at the end of its 20- to 40-year operating lifetime, and transportation and long-term storage of massive quantities of radioactive waste.

Contrary to the nuclear industry's propaganda, nuclear power is therefore not green and it is certainly not clean. Nuclear reactors consistently release millions of curies of radioactive isotopes into the air and water each year. These releases are unregulated because the nuclear industry considers these particular radioactive elements to be biologically inconsequential. This is not so.

These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases krypton, xenon and argon, which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near a nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty tissues of the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit high-energy gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm and cause genetic disease.

Tritium, another biologically significant gas, which is also routinely emitted from nuclear reactors is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen composed of two neutrons and one proton with an atomic weight of 3. The chemical symbol for tritium is H3. When one or both of the hydrogen atoms in water is displaced by tritium the water molecule is then called tritiated water. Tritium is a soft energy beta emitter, more mutagenic than gamma radiation, which incorporates directly into the DNA molecule of the gene. Its half-life is 12.3 years, giving it a biologically active life of 246 years. It passes readily through the skin, lungs and digestive system and is distributed throughout the body.

The dire subject of massive quantities of radioactive waste accruing at the 442 nuclear reactors across the world is also rarely, if ever, addressed by the nuclear industry.

Each typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33 metric tons of thermally hot, intensely radioactive waste per year.

Already more than 80,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling pools next to the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a storage facility yet to be found. This dangerous material will be an attractive target for terrorist sabotage as it travels through 39 states on roads and railway lines for the next 25 years.

But the long-term storage of radioactive waste continues to pose a problem. Congress in 1987 chose Yucca Mountain in Nevada, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as a repository for the United States' high-level waste. But Yucca Mountain has subsequently been found to be unsuitable for the long-term storage of high-level waste because it is a volcanic mountain made of permeable pumice stone and it is transected by 32 earthquake faults.

Last week a congressional committee discovered fabricated data about water infiltration and cask corrosion in Yucca Mountain that had been produced by personnel in the U.S. Geological Survey. These startling revelations, according to most experts, have almost disqualified Yucca Mountain as a waste repository, meaning that the United States has nowhere to deposit its expanding nuclear waste inventory.

To make matters worse, a study released last week by the National Academy of Sciences shows that the cooling pools at nuclear reactors, which store 10 to 30 times more radioactive material than that contained in the reactor core, are subject to catastrophic attacks by terrorists, which could unleash an inferno and release massive quantities of deadly radiation -- significantly worse than the radiation released by Chernobyl, according to some scientists.

This vulnerable high-level nuclear waste contained in the cooling pools at 103 nuclear power plants in the United States includes hundreds of radioactive elements that have different biological impacts in the human body, the most important being cancer and genetic diseases.

The incubation time for cancer is five to 50 years following exposure to radiation. It is important to note that children, old people and immuno-compromised individuals are many times more sensitive to the malignant effects of radiation than other people.

I will describe four of the most dangerous elements made in nuclear power plants.

Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the United States, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2,000 children have had their thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded in pediatric literature.

Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast during lactation and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia.

Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food chain, particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.

Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 440 pounds is made annually in each 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant.

Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause severe congenital deformities.

Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and induce genetic diseases in future generations. Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living on to induce cancer and genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.

Plutonium is also the fuel for nuclear weapons -- only 11 pounds is necessary to make a bomb and each reactor makes more than 440 pounds per year. Therefore any country with a nuclear power plant can theoretically manufacture 40 bombs a year.

Nuclear power therefore leaves a toxic legacy to all future generations, because it produces global warming gases, because it is far more expensive than any other form of electricity generation, and because it can trigger proliferation of nuclear weapons.

--

(Helen Caldicott is an anti-nuclear campaigner and founder and president of the Nuclear Policy Research Institute, which argues that nuclear energy is dangerous.)

--

(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)

[glitch]

1. You will NEVER hear nuclear proponents talk about enrichment costs

Or any of the other externalized costs, for that matter.

[phantom power]

2. Here's a table of externalized costs, including nuclear:

From here:
http://www.externe.info/

[glitch]

4. You're right, I should've said true externalized costs, many of which are

still not even known, let alone incorporated.

[phantom power]

7. What do you mean, when you say "many are not even known?"

[glitch]

9. The cost of enriching the uranium in the first place, done by the Soviet

Union. Where are those numbers? The fact that the EU got the product on the cheap from a failed state firesale doesn't internalize that cost.
The cost to the citizens of Kiev for Chernobyl, where are those? The impacts on health that haven't even been felt yet, let alone treated.
The failsafe storage of waste, which hasn't even been developed yet. These aren't included in the study you cited.
They are truly externalized.

[jpak]

16. The Russian Mayak nucular complex is an environmental disaster

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4759224.stm

http://www.nti.org/db/nisprofs/russia/fissmat/pumayak/nucwaste.htm

http://www.antiatom.ru/entext/040428_5anc.htm

http://www.rferl.org/features/features_Article.aspx?m=12&y=2005&id=629F9FFF-943C-45E8-A5CA-72CF21D1B768

..and know one knows how bad things are at Russian U enrichment plants...

[Dead_Parrot]

22. True...

But pointing to a production screw-up by half-wits does doesn't mean the technology isn't useful.

Lets face it, more people have died in car crashes than will ever die in nuclear mishaps. Does this mean that the Wheel is evil? Or does it mean we shouldn't let the drunk, stoned and half-witted drive?

[jpak]

14. There's a lot of qualifiers in those estimates

Those were the preliminary estimates.

There is only one estimate for PV.

They were for European - not US - nucular fuel cycles or plants.

There are no confidence intervals associated with any of the estimates.

The authors admit that the statistical uncertainties are 2-4 times larger or smaller than the mean values.

The only thing that can be concluded from that study was that nucular and PV had similar and low external costs.

[One_Life_To_Give]

3. Compared to 10,000 premature deaths/yr from Coal

Yes Nuclear Power is dangerous.

But so is staying with our current power generation scheme.

[Dead_Parrot]

8. Try 700,000

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1374/is_2_63/ai_98469791

[NickB79]

5. I wonder how much a 50-ft tall seawall around New York City costs?

Or what it will cost us when half of Florida is underwater as the poles melt?

[Dead_Parrot]

6. Here's a quick stab at it...

Not the greatest nuclear advocate, but I'll have a go at some of the weird logic. :)

it would be necessary to build 2,000 1,000-megawatt reactors. Considering that no new nuclear plant has been ordered in the United States since 1978, this proposal is less than practical.

Quite possibly. However, the same can be said of any other proposal for a non-fossil future. How many GW wind, solar, wave, tidal, biofuel, fission, ZPE or pixie-dust plants have been built in the same time? also none. I think it's safe to say that "business as usual" is not going to fix the problem.

even if we decided today to replace all fossil-fuel-generated electricity with nuclear power, there would only be enough economically viable uranium to fuel the reactors for three to four years.

They don't give the figure's they've used, but it looks like they picked the measured reserves and ignored the unproved reserves & fuel awaiting recycling. They certainly don't mention thorium, which is a more abundant fuel: Without working the figures out, it's closer to a 1000 years (scaled up like this) than it is to 4.

In the United States, where much of the world's uranium is enriched, including

Australia's, the enrichment facility at Paducah, Ky., requires the electrical output of two 1,000-megawatt coal-fired plants, which emit large quantities of carbon dioxide, the gas responsible for 50 percent of global warming.

We've seen the "uranium is mined/refined using fossil power" before. The same goes for the steel in wind turbines and wave machines, the silicates in PV panels, the steel in your bio-crop harvester, so and so forth. We can either replace fossil fuels (which is sort of the point) or go back to the neolithic for our technology. Choose one.

"Each typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33 metric tons of thermally hot, intensely radioactive waste per year.
Already more than 80,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling pools next to the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a storage facility yet to be found."

Assuming their talking about used fuel here, it can be recycled. That is isn't at the moment is more a question of economics rather than ability: Besides, we'll need the fuel. :) There is also non-fuel waste, which does indeed need storage: Since it's more solid than CO2, this is actually an option.

Yucca mountain is unsuitable...

Possibly. Somewhere else, then?

Terrorists!

Fear, fear. Got tuna? Two possibilities: A: Keep the stuff secure (not too hard, no-one's going to smuggle a 4 metre fuel rod out of a plant under their turban) and B: stop pissing everyone one off with crusades for oil. Probably things that should be happening anyway.

Death, cancer, more fear

The worst nuclear accident in history has killed, over the last couple of decades, less people than died falling off a ladder in London last year. We should therefore destroy all ladders to protect our children from certain death. (The first bit - 70 people a year - is actually true).

Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver...

True. Anyone eating a used fuel rod will probably die.

[JohnWxy]

10. What about wind power potential being estimated at 1-2 times the

current total U.S. energy output?

Wind power right now is small but they are building wind power facilities as quickly as they can. Right now the Wind Turbine manufactureres can't keep up with the demand.

Research/ development by wind turbine manufacturers will enable more power extraction from lower wind speeds which will increase that potential power figure - possibly significantly.

Wind power is actually the cheapest source of power today (5-7 cents/kiloWattHr (yes, even cheaper than coal- a little over 7 cents - with no external costs included.).

of course, as fuel becomes more expensive solar will become a viable (economic) option. And they will be bringing the cost of solar down into the future.

Do you think the fuel rods in one power plant come to 33 metric tons? I really don't think so. Anything that is directly irradiated becomes 'hot', the lead shielding, plumbing, structural steel, everything, even the water or other fluid (sodium is used too) to pass the heat to a boiler. It all becomes 'hot'.

And it takes thousands of years to decay down to a safe level.

I just wonder if all these issues have really been thought all the way through. And the nuclear advocates, in their enthusiasm, do have a tendency to forget (or minimize) these real world considerations.

I just think we should look at these issues before we start running down a path which will create a whole lot more of this waste material which remains dangerous for thousands of years.

[phantom power]

11. It's not as simple as saying "there's enough raw wind energy out there"

I'm sure that's true, and then some. But if you are going to externalise that scenario, you have to include the cost of all the energy time-shifting hardware. You have to either be able to store up terawatt-hours of energy, to have available when the wind isn't blowing, or have enough wind turbines deployed in enough places, with attendant power lines, to shift power all around the continental US (just for simplicity, I'm assuming the continental US here). Probably, both.

So, what storage facility are you going to use, to store all that electricity, and what are the external costs (or the plain old economic costs, for that matter) of those storage facilities?

As for radiation, I think all of us nuclear enthusiasts get it, that radiation in sufficient dosage will either make you sick or kill you. I'm not planning to carry around any spent fuel rods in my bare hands, in much the same way that I'm not planning to stick my head into the path of the blades of a wind turbine, lest it be severed verily from my neck. The point we repeatedly try to make is that with appropriate handling, nobody has to be exposed to dangerous dosages of radiation.

[JohnWxy]

24. Storing excess generated wind power - use reservoirs (sp?)-

In England they pump water into the higher reservoir and when power demand is above what active wind power can generate they let the water flow into the lower level producing hydro-power - on demand. Keep in mind these reservoirs do not have to be enormous as they get replenished whenever the wind generated power exceeds demand and only release the water at peak usage times when the demand exceeds the wind power's 'live' generating capacity.

Now, this obviously runs into additional costs, but it is a entirely clean (environmentally) option (yes, I realize there are some pollutants released in manufacture of wind turbine components, but relative to the 30 yr life of a wind turbine were talking a pretty small pollutant 'signature'.).

IT's the extra costs of handling/processing nuclear waste that I wonder whether they have been rather significantly underestimated. (Union of Concerned Scientists Report on Extracting Plutonium from Nuclear Reactor Spent Fuel

Reprocessing would be very expensive.

Reprocessing and the use of plutonium as reactor fuel is also far more expensive than using uranium fuel and disposing of the spent fuel directly—even if the fuel is only reprocessed once. In the United States, some 55,000 tons of nuclear waste have already been produced, and existing reactors add some 2,000 tons of spent fuel annually. Based on the experience of other countries, a commercial scale reprocessing facility with an annual throughput of about 1,000 tons of spent fuel would cost anywhere from $5 billion to $20 billion to build. A facility with twice that capacity would be needed to process the new spent fuel produced; taking into account economies of scale, it would cost from $7.5 to $30 billion, excluding operating costs. A second facility would be needed to also reprocess the existing spent fuel over a period of some 30 years.

I'm just appealing for accurate (or at least legitimate) numbers to make sensible comparisons of all the alternatives.

[Dead_Parrot]

27. Erm, they WOULD need to be enormous.

I don't know the exact capacity, but we could put a theoretical maximun of the Dinorwig plant at 20GWh: Enough to power the US baseload for ~6 minutes, if you could generate it fast enough. You'd need 120 Dinorwigs to get you through one windless night: If you're doing away with oil and getting all you primary energy from electricity, that number is more like 500.

Dinorwig's the largest PH scheme in Europe, FWIW.

(BTW - before you get flamed by a mad celt - all the UK's PH is in Scotland or Wales, not England :))

Edit: Found Dinorwig's capacity, it's 9.1 GWh. So you'd need at least 263 of them, up to a thousand or so.

[Dead_Parrot]

12. I thought we were discussing nuclear power?

Since you ask: Yes, there is a lot of wind potential in the US. Although without solutions for TWh storage facilities or multi GW on-demand plants, it's sort of useless. The US baseload is something like 200 GW: Even if it's not windy, that juice has to come from somewhere. On demand hydro is the only the only current technology for that, if you don't mind dams popping up like mushrooms.

If you don't mind destroying hundreds, maybe thousands of square miles of land for vast hydro schemes, I really don't see what the problem is with a hole in the ground (which you'll notice I agree would be needed for non-usable waste).

I'll agree, however, that all the issues need to be thought through. Unfortunatley, people have a habit of saying "let's use wind and solar" without thinking about it too hard - because if they did, they realise it's not as simple as they like to pretend.

[JohnWxy]

13. Nuclear waste Half Life and Hazardoues Life - not the same (with link)

http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/llwfct.htm

WHAT IS "LOW-LEVEL" RADIOACTIVE WASTE?

"Low-Level" Radioactive Waste includes:

Irradiated Components and Piping: reactor hardware and pipes that are in continual contact with highly radioactive water for the 20 to 30 years the reactor operates. The metal becomes "activated" or radioactive itself from bombardment by neutrons that are released when energy is produced. Also called Irradiated Primary System Components.

Control Rods: from the core of nuclear power plants--rods that regulate and stop the nuclear reactions in the reactor core.

Poison Curtains: which absorb neutrons from the water in the reactor core and irradiated fuel (high level waste) pool.

Resins, Sludges, Filters and Evaporator Bottoms: from cleansing the water that circulates around the irradiated fuel in the reactor vessel and in the fuel pool, which holds the irradiated fuel when it is removed from the core.

Entire Nuclear Power Plants if and when they are dismantled. This includes, for example, from a typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor building floor: over 13,000 tons of contaminated concrete and over 1,400 tons of contaminated reinforcing steel bar.

The highly radioactive and long-lived reactor wastes are included in the "low-level" waste category along with the much less concentrated and generally much shorter-lived wastes from medical treatment and diagnosis and some types of scientific research.

~~~~
~~~~

HALF-LIFE and HAZARDOUS LIFE

Radioactive elements decay by emitting energy in the form of radioactive particles and rays. As radiation is given off, other elements (some radioactive and some stable) are formed.

The Half-Life is the time it takes for HALF of the radioactive element to decay (give off half of its radioactivity). Different radioactive elements have different half-lives.

The Hazardous Life of a radioactive element is about 10 or 20 Half-Lives. (It is best to measure the amount of radiation after 10 or 20 half-lives before releasing waste from active controls.)

Reactor waste remains hazardous for a very long time. Most medical waste from treatment and diagnosis is hazardous for a very short time. Research and industrial waste can contain small amounts of some long-lived radioactive materials.

Among the radioactive elements commonly found in nuclear reactor "low-level" waste are: Tritium, with a half-life of 12 years and a hazardous life of 120-240 years; Iodine-131, half-life of 8 days, hazardous life of 80-160 days; Strontium-90, half life of 28 years, hazardous life of 280-560 years; Nickel-59, half life of 76,000 years, hazardous life of 760,000-1,520,000 years, and Iodine-129, half-life of sixteen million years, hazardous life of160-320 million years.

By contrast, common medical waste elements include Technetium-99m, with a half-life of 6 hours and a hazardous life of 2.5-5 days; Galium-67, half-life of 78 hours and hazardous life of 1-2 months; and Iodine-131, with its half-life of 8 days and hazardous life of 80-160 days.

The vast majority of medical waste is hazardous for less than 8 months. Yet, it is in the same category as reactor waste that will be hazardous for hundreds of thousands to millions of years.

Clearly, the definition of "low-level radioactive waste" must be changed. It would make sense to redefine the more concentrated and/or longer-lived waste as high-level. Active recontainerization and operational control must be provided for the entire hazardous life of the waste, yet the NRC requires only 100 years of passive institutional control. Thus, waste hazardous longer than 100 years could be forgotten. Retrievability is essential.

PLANNED LEAKAGE AND "ACCEPTABLE" RISK

Waste containers and forms will not last as long as some waste remains hazardous. Therefore, waste should be placed in a manner which will facilitate recontainerization and make continued isolation from the environment possible in the future. If the waste is "disposed of" as the NRC currently requires, it will not be isolated from the environment. "Planned leakage will occur at (what NRC considers) an "acceptable" leak rate leading to "acceptable" public radiation exposures and health risks. The allowable leak rates and exposure levels are determined by federal agencies, not those experiencing the risk.

To avoid leakage, above-ground, engineered storage at or near the source of generation could allow responsible routine monitoring and repair.

[Dead_Parrot]

17. Well, I'm glad you're educating yourself

Don't forget to google "background radiation" so you know what you're getting anyway. I'd hate for you to go bugshit with fear about tritium whilst forgetting your body already contains radioactive potassium and carbon - or the uranium and thorium under your feet and the radon in the air. And for pity's sake, don't go outside in daylight!

:D

[rfkrfk]

15. meaningless BS, this presumes no reprocessing .n/t

[JohnWxy]

18. sooooo, there won't be ANY nuclear waste???

Cool! Problem evaporates! ... uh, you mean reprocess

" Poison Curtains and

Resins, Sludges, Filters and Evaporator Bottoms: from cleansing the water that circulates around the irradiated fuel in the reactor vessel and in the fuel pool, which holds the irradiated fuel when it is removed from the core.

and :

Entire Nuclear Power Plants if and when they are dismantled. This includes, for example, from a typical 1,000 megawatt nuclear reactor building floor: over 13,000 tons of contaminated concrete and over 1,400 tons of contaminated reinforcing steel bar. "

Then we don't have to store all that waste in Yucca mountain? Wow. Maybe you better let the Government in on this! Boy, will they be relieved!

[JohnWxy]

25. Reprocessing - what does it cost? - Union of Concerned Scientists

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_security/nuclear_terrorism/extracting-plutonium-from-nuclear-reactor-spent-fuel.html

... reprocessing does not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste, and a geologic repository would still be required. Plutonium constitutes only about one percent of the spent fuel from U.S. reactors. 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. And to make a significant reduction in the amount of high-level nuclear waste that would require disposal, the used fuel would need to be reprocessed and reused many times with an extremely high degree of efficiency—which is very expensive and would take years. For example, in 1999, the Department of Energy estimated it would cost $279 billion over a 118-year period to fully implement a reprocessing and recycling program for the entire inventory of U.S. spent fuel.<1>

Finally, reprocessing would divert focus and resources from the U.S. geologic disposal program and hurt—not help—the U.S. nuclear waste management effort. The licensing requirements for the reprocessing, fuel fabrication, and waste processing plants would dwarf those needed to license a repository, and provide additional targets for public opposition. What is most needed today is a renewed focus on secure interim storage of spent fuel and on gaining the scientific and technical consensus needed to site a geological repository.

Reprocessing would be very expensive.

Reprocessing and the use of plutonium as reactor fuel is also far more expensive than using uranium fuel and disposing of the spent fuel directly—even if the fuel is only reprocessed once. In the United States, some 55,000 tons of nuclear waste have already been produced, and existing reactors add some 2,000 tons of spent fuel annually. Based on the experience of other countries, a commercial scale reprocessing facility with an annual throughput of about 1,000 tons of spent fuel would cost anywhere from $5 billion to $20 billion to build. A facility with twice that capacity would be needed to process the new spent fuel produced; taking into account economies of scale, it would cost from $7.5 to $30 billion, excluding operating costs. A second facility would be needed to also reprocess the existing spent fuel over a period of some 30 years.

For more information contact Dr. Ed Lyman, UCS Senior Staff Scientist: [phone]; [email protected]; UCS, 1707 H Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


1. "A Roadmap for Developing ATW Technology," Report of Accelerator Technical Working Group, ATW Roadmap, September 1999, LA-UR- 99-3225.

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Contents
Nuclear Terrorism Risks
Fissile Materials Basics
Military Stockpiles of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU)
NRC Oversight of Nuclear Plant Security
Risks of Highly Enriched Uranium Exports
Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at Indian Point Nuclear Power Plant

more...

Nuclear Terrorism & Nuclear Reactors
DOE proliferation resistance
Extracting Plutonium from Nuclear Reactor Spent Fuel
NRC: Plutonium Protection Inadequate
Testimony: NRC Needs Greater Oversight
Nuclear Plant Protection and Homeland Security
NRC Oversight of Nuclear Plant Security
Nuclear Waste Disposal
Research Reactors Fueled by Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU)
Nuclear Research Reactor Spent Fuel Takeback

more...

Nuclear Terrorism & U.S. Policy
The Bond Amendment: Making It Easier for Terrorists to Get the Bomb
U.S. Needs Stronger Export Controls on Highly Enriched Uranium
Scientists' Letter on Exporting Nuclear Material
Experts' Letter on Exporting Nuclear Materials
Nuclear Terrorism & International Policy
Disposition of Fissile Materials: Status and Prospects
Strengthening Protections for Nuclear Facilities and Materials
Military Stockpiles of Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU)
Japan: Strengthen the Non-Proliferation Treaty
Research Reactors Fueled by Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU)
Scientists' Letter on Exporting Nuclear Material
Atoms for Peace speech

ONce you have created Nuclear Waste you have to deal with it. If you do not deal with it properly you could be putting the environment at risk. And we need to know what is it going to cost to deal with it properly.

[NNadir]

19. Dr. Helen Caldicott absolutely amazes me.

She's been selling this snake oil for 40 years, going back to the days when she was something of a babe, albeit a dumb one, making a living at it - without any qualifications whatsoever - and still has not managed to learn the half-lives or nature of the fission products or actinides. Apparently she has not managed to learn any chemistry either.

Of course, I haven't seriously looked at her blather in decades, and of course, it is just as nonsensical as ever but what depresses me above all is that there are still people who can look at this stuff and still think of it as being meaningful. Fortunately, people on the level of Caldicott are increasingly on the fringe, but damn, it is absolutely astounding how long bad thinking can persist.

Of course, one can understand how it is that Caldicott has remained ignorant of the basic facts of chemistry and physics - if she ever knew them, and there is no evidence she ever did: She only hangs out with people who know even less than she does. In fact one of the big clues that you don't have a clue in the first place is that you're in her audience. There is no one around who can correct her, since people who know what they are talking about don't bother with her.

I have to tell you John, when I read your posts, I feel very much like I'm watching Woody Allen's Sleeper which has the same plot (so people tell me) as Austin Powers. Where exactly have you been for the last 30 years? You're a riot.

Dr. Helen Caldicott (and her fellow professional nuclear opponents, Gofman and Sternglass) has done all the damage she (or they) is (are) going to do. The world has rejected anti-nuclear ignorance, hopefully in time to save something, although I am not so sanguine on that point. We have but a few years left, if any, to reverse the course. The old fart Caldicott will probably not live to be called to account morally for what she has done. Life is unjust.

[JohnWxy]

28. Okay, do you have some specifics to mention?

I read your post and didn't find any specifics addressing my very basic questions such as:

-- How long do we have to store the nuclear waste?

-- I could ask if it's feasible to store and isolate nuclear waste from the environment (as long as it is necessary, whatever THAT figure is) as I sense this is a debate that will endure as long as the nuclear waste will!

-- What will it cost to store said nuclear waste?

-- If we are going to be building more nuclear plants and producing more waste each year and assuming that the waste will have to be stored and isolated for quite some time (what, thousands of years? even hundreds of years is a huge project) How much space is going to be required to store this radioactive material? - keeping in mind one must be very careful about siting of the storage facility -- do we have enough likely sites to handle this waste as it accumulates year after year??


You didn't address any of these questions with specifics. ... WHY AM I NOT SURPRISED???

You earlier stated that the cost of decommissioning and cleanup of accidents were ALL the costs associated with nuclear energy. Well, I think you forgot a couple things. Let me elaborate:

YOu have to mine the ore, refine it, concentrate it (how much fissionable material do you get from the raw material - 2%, 1%?) the rest is waste which again must be dealt with - which costs money. You then have to build a power plant and lets not forget the cost of insuring the power plant - a not insignificant cost (expecially with nuclear). (I know the Government picks up most of this cost, but for a realistic evaluation of the true costs we need to include those figures). And of course decommissioning and cleanup doesn't cover the cost of storing the waste for however long you must store it. You don't just store it and forget it. It has to be monitored and, I understand recontainered, since no containers last as long as the nuclear waste does. (Let's not forget, were talking about storage for a very long time - or do you have any idea how long this stuff will have to be stored?).

And to get to some specifics is this data from Caldicott article inaccurate?:

"The true economies of the nuclear industry are never fully accounted for. The cost of uranium enrichment is subsidized by the U.S. government. The true cost of the industry's liability in the case of an accident in the United States is estimated to be $560 billion, but the industry pays $9.1 billion -- 98 percent of the insurance liability is covered by the federal government. The cost of decommissioning all the existing U.S. nuclear reactors is estimated to be $33 billion."

I'm just asking, is it wrong? IF so, what is the actual figure, for insurance and for enrichment costs?


None of these issues did you address. Suggest you check out the links I provided in other posts in this thread to further explore this issue.

[NNadir]

32. John, my entire series of posts on this site address these concerns.

I am not going to spoon feed every googler on this site who googles his way to Caldicott, Gofman and Sternglass. I'm a grown-up. These folks had their day and it's over. I not going to respond to every freaky bit of incomprehensible nonsense from that crazy old bat Caldicott linked here. It's beneath my dignity.

I owe you nothing, kid. It's not my job to educate you. You ain't going anywhere in any case, pal. (What was that Lennonism, "If you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao...")

The world has rejected your concerns on the grounds that they are specious, poorly informed and are a function of the type of selection pressure that insists that nuclear energy be without risk rather than lower risk of all of its alternatives. It is not true that nuclear energy be absolutely perfect while all other forms of energy are allowed to do what ever the fuck they want, irrespective of risk. Nuclear energy must merely be the best option, which it is. It doesn't need to be perfect.

The wolf is at the door, and people worldwide are figuring out that the environment is a serious matter for serious people who can seriously way different options.

I've been at this twenty years. The fact that the world has rejected the specious anti-nuclear argument relieves me of the onus of worrying as much as I once did about anti-nuclear mythology and poor scientific comprehension from sources like Candicott et al. When I started at this, especially as I have always traveled in liberal, environmentalist circles, people used to look at me like I was nuts. No so now. Basically everything I said back then is finding its way into common parlance and common understanding. Is it because I'm skilled at argument? No. It is because what I say is true. Although of course I am saddened and frightened (for my children) about the global climate change catastrophe, I take some solace have done my share to address it by exploring the nuclear option in public spaces like this. Regularly I see my arguments reproduced (without any prompting from me) by other writers, which makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. The world is planning or building almost 200 new nuclear plants and new ones are being announced regularly. It's hardly enough, but it's a start.

[JohnWxy]

35. Any opinions on the Union of Concerned Scientists?

Do you feel like denigrating ALL who ask questions...."kid" ? That sort of behaviour doesn't elevate your arguments or you.

I am not the only one asking these questions. I have noticed others asking them. Is it your design to denigrate everyone who asks questions about nuclear power?

And I don't believe nuclear power has to be perfect to be practical. I just think there are considerable unknowns here that have not really been adequately quantified.

If Caldicott is as reckless and 'out-of-it' as you say, maybe you should raise this issue with the United Press International. They published the article and they do have a responsibility to review submissions for wild inaccuracies and unsupported assertions.

speaking of her article, what about some specifics. Are these statements from her article false:

I will describe four of the most dangerous elements made in nuclear power plants.

Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the United States, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2,000 children have had their thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded in pediatric literature.

Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast during lactation and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia.

Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food chain, particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma.

Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 440 pounds is made annually in each 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant.

Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause severe congenital deformities.

Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle, where it can cause testicular cancer and induce genetic diseases in future generations. Plutonium lasts for 500,000 years, living on to induce cancer and genetic diseases in future generations of plants, animals and humans.

and a reference to a National Academy of Sciences study (are they goof-balls and punks?) form her article:

a study released last week by the National Academy of Sciences shows that the cooling pools at nuclear reactors, which store 10 to 30 times more radioactive material than that contained in the reactor core, are subject to catastrophic attacks by terrorists

[NNadir]

39. Yes, basically I regard these kinds of questions as goofy.

I pretty much judge people by what they say.

My opinion of anti-nuclear hysteria is well known and consistent. The media - which also reported that Saddam Hussein was likely to have nuclear weapons - is a terrible source of scientific information - as evidenced by the fact that all of the Candicott stuff you repeatedly reference shows up in it. You can repeat quotes from Candicott five thousand times - and I suspect you will do so - but you cannot make them meaningful. They are nonsense.

Risk is measured by what is known as an expectation value which is the probability of an event multiplied by the number of people it effects. Since global climate change now effects every single person on the planet, any probability involving it must be necessarily multiplied by 6 billion.

The failure of any one nuclear plant - and there as only been one in tens of thousands of reactor-years of experience in an atypical and now forever rejected reactor design, will necessarily be confined to a smaller population. In fact the impact of a severe breach of a major power reactor is well known by experiment. It happened at Chernobyl, a site located in the Ukraine, if you haven't heard of it. Chernobyl changed my mind about nuclear power. When I was a stupid kid, I thought such an event would wipe out half of Europe. What we continually learn by experience is that the actual event was considerably less than that dramatic.

As for the question of what could happen, the perennial nonsense about terrorist attacks and other desperate Candicott type remarks blah, blah, blah, ad nauseum, I note in response the there is a huge difference between postulated/imaginable nuclear events and what has happened, fossil fuel based terrorism, what IS happening, a little something called global climate change - which by the way may have some effect on biofuel fantasies of various types.

There have been zero incidents of nuclear terrorism, even though the media reports fears of this crap every day - since the media lives by fear. There have been zero deaths from the storage of spent nuclear fuel even though every day, 365 days a year thousands of such scenarios are dragged out. In fact, more people are probably killed each years falling off farm tractors harvesting corn each year than are killed by nuclear fuel - even though UPI doesn't bother to report in headline articles farm related deaths.

Every few days we get some wonder kid dragging out all this what if stuff like it's some kind of revelation. It's not. It's fear mongering.

And yes, basically I put everyone who tows this shit around in the same category, because I have children, because I care about my children, because I want a future for humanity, and because I take global climate change as a serious issue - not as an opportunity to drag out 50 year old pet fantasies about corn liquor and the like. My low opinion of the anti-nuclear hysterics is justified by the fact that I know what the fuck I'm talking about. I may be arrogant, but I'm also right. How do I know I'm right? Because I worked hard for decades to see if I was right. That makes all the difference, kid.

[JohnWxy]

41. Union of Concerned Scientists, National Academy of Sciences?

Union of Concerned Scientists? ..obvious hysterics

National Academy of Sciences? .. nut jobs, right? http://www4.nationalacademies.org/news.nsf/isbn/0309096472?OpenDocument

Spent Fuel Stored in Pools at Some U.S. Nuclear Power Plants Potentially at Risk From Terrorist Attacks; Prompt Measures Needed to Reduce Vulnerabilities

WASHINGTON -- Spent nuclear fuel stored in pools at some of the nation's 103 operating commercial nuclear reactors may be at risk from terrorist attacks, says a new report from a committee of the National Academies' Board on Radioactive Waste Management. The report calls on the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (USNRC) to conduct additional analyses to obtain a better understanding of potential risks and to ensure that power-plant operators take prompt and effective measures to reduce the possible consequences of such attacks. Because potential threats may differ according to a specific plant's design, the committee recommended that plant-by-plant vulnerability analyses be performed.

These conclusions were based on a detailed review of security analyses performed by the USNRC, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the nuclear power industry, and independent experts. The committee noted that many security improvements have been instituted at U.S. commercial nuclear power plants since the events of Sept. 11, 2001. On several important questions, however, it was unable to obtain enough information from the USNRC to assess their effectiveness. The committee therefore recommends that an assessment of such measures should be undertaken by an organization independent of the USNRC and the nuclear industry.

"Within the six-month time frame requested by Congress, our committee of technical experts completed a very sound, evidence-based analysis," said committee chair Louis J. Lanzerotti, distinguished research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, and consultant, Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill, N.J. "We received input both from scientific professionals and the public. Our findings were unanimous. While the committee identified several terrorist attack scenarios that could have potentially severe consequences if carried out successfully, we also identified two relatively simple measures that could be implemented immediately at vulnerable plants to greatly reduce the risks."

The committee found that an attack which partially or completely drains a plant's spent fuel pool might be capable of starting a high-temperature fire that could release large quantities of radioactive material into the environment. The committee recommended that two measures be taken promptly to reduce the potential for such fires: reconfiguring the position of fuel assemblies in the pools to more evenly distribute decay-heat loads, and making provisions for water-spray systems to cool the fuel that could continue to operate even after the pool or the building in which it is housed is damaged.

Now, when were speaking of factoring the risks by numbers exposed, there is another factor - TIME. And when you are talking about nuclear waste - I still haven't heard a good estimate of the time were going to have to keep this stuff isolated but it's going to be at least 500 years and maybe several thousand years. And how much resources will it take to maintain this isolation/storage over the centuries (and what if any leaks)?

Just a bit of advice, personal attacks on those who are just asking questions or denigrating those who don't immediately see things your way doesn't help get your point across. Do you think you are really doing yourself any good that way?

Your attacks on me don't bother me. ...and they don't impress me either.

Good luck, friend.

[NNadir]

44. The Union of Concerned "Scientists" has no credibility in my opinion

I have been writing about them for years.

I have also written extensively about the logical fallacy of "Appeal to Authority." All anti-nuclear arguments depend on such appeals. You certainly are not the first nuclear opponent to use this fallacy. All nuclear opponents use this fallacy. If I hear about the Union of Concerned "Scientists," an organization notable for its lack of science, I'm going to throw up.

I note that the National Academy link you give includes the words may, some, might. On the other hand it is NOT true that global climate change may have an effect on humanity, or that it might have an effect on some of humanity. The conditional words are not used in the case of global climate change because it is now a certainty. One of the more obviously fallacious misrepresentations about nuclear issues is the pretense that a possibility is the same as a certainty. In fact global climate change is a certainty, since it is occurring. Thus the onus upon nuclear opponents is to demonstrate that a small possibility is of more risk than a certain event.

They cannot do this.

I don't think you have a clue about time and nuclear materials, John. The behavior of nuclear materials in the environment is known, and what's more, is known over periods of billions of years. Here is the abstract of just one scientific paper on the subject:

http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/esthag/2004/38/i12/abs/es0353863.html

Here is yet another description of the phenomenon:

http://www.physics.isu.edu/radinf/Files/Okloreactor.pdf

Here is another:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/doe/lanl/pubs/00285784.pdf

At Oklo, the nuclear materials involved largely didn't migrate, nor did the fission products concentrate in nearby living things.

So when people carry on about the alleged properties of nuclear fission products, and how long they might last (and usually they have the issue of half-lives and the like all fucked up) they basically need to ignore that this behavior is known experimentally, on a times scale of billions of years.

I am constantly being lectured on how to get my point across as well. I know, I know, I'm supposed to be polite. But I'm not. I'm rude and dismissive. When I see a ridiculous argument, I say it's ridiculous. By the way, I'm not interested in impressing you at all, or any of the other purveyors of this same nonsense, all of which is the same.

I am very satisfied with the response to my writings over the years and, as such, I am not taking advice on how to improve my presentation. My presentation is effective, mostly because it appeals to the facts of the issue.

The basic facts, again, are these: Global climate change is real. The risk of very severe effects from global climate change is very much larger than the risk of using nuclear power to ameliorate it. The issue is not one of risk elimination which is impossible. (Yes John people are killed by farm machinery.) The issue is one of risk minimization. As I say often, "there is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy."

Nobody, and I do mean nobody has a demonstrated scalable form of energy that is safer than nuclear energy. People pretend they do, but they cannot point to a demonstration of their claims on a significant scale.

[JohnWxy]

50. Evaluate these 'risks'

UN accused of ignoring 500,000 Chernobyl deaths

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x47299

[jpak]

37. LOL!!!!

How many new US reactors were ordered over the last 20 years????

(zero)

"this technology has failed"....

:rofl:

[Dead_Parrot]

38. Yeah, US energy policy has been spot on for the last 20 years

It's not like the fucking icecaps are melting or anything.

:eyes:

[NNadir]

40. The reactor that came on line last week in Japan exceeds solar electrical

output for the entire United States.

http://www.plunkettresearch.com/Industries/RenewableAlternativeEnergy/RenewableAlternativeEnergyStatistics/tabid/192/Default.aspx

Hamaoka-2 runs at 1300 MWe and does so at nearly 100% capacity loading. A powerplant of this size operating at near 100% capacity, irrespective of fuel produces about 11 billion kilowatt-hours, or 5 times as much energy as the United States produced from solar energy in 2004 by again the entire United States.

The nuclear plant occupies a few hectares of land.

The production of nuclear power over the last 30 years is given here:



In fact, the increase in nuclear production since 1976 easily exceeds the entire production of renewable energy in the world, world renewable energy producing just over 1.1 exajoules of energy, an insignificant quantity. Nuclear power, as we see from the graph, has increased by 2000 terawatt-hours or 7.2 exajoules since 1976.

If there is any failed technology, especially given the fraudulent representations about it, it would be solar power. We all want solar power to succeed of course, just as many of us would like to believe in Santa Claus.

[NickB79]

48. Now NNadir

You know that the United States is virtually the entire world, don't you? What a few ignorant, backwards people do on a dinky insignificant island on the other side of the world has nothing whatsover to do with us. If it doesn't happen here, it doesn't mean anything :sarcasm:

[Odin2005]

20. Don't tell the Nucleophobes...

...that they have NATURAL Carbon-14 and pottasium-40 in thier bodies, they might have a heart attack. :dunce:

[TheMadMonk]

21. You've got a lot of half truths and omissions there mate.

Chernobyl was just about as bad as it gets, and a highly atypical incident at that. But just for the sake of argument let's assume it was typical and that with the projected 2500 reactors we will see 1 such incident every 10 years or so. (Less than 1 a century would be more realistic I think, given advances in design over the uncontained pile of bricks which represents a Chernobyl style reactor). Yet even at one in ten the number of deaths per MWhr which can be directly and indirectly attributed to nuclear power is considerably lower than for coal. The only real difference is that, apart from mining accidents coal deaths, are nameless statistical entities, whilst it is possible to put a name and a face to many of the victims of Chernobyl.

Oh and don't forget to factor in all those .0...1 radiation deaths brought about by the radioactivity in the fly ash from coal fired power plants which we incorporate into concrete.


Who is paying the cleanup costs of Katrina? It certainly isn't the fosssil fuel industry whose product is almost certainly responsible for the recent upswing in the number and intesity of sorm events. Or for the carnage on our roads? There we can point directly at fossil fuel and car manufacturers who deliberately and with cold calculation, set about engineering a situation which maximised traffic densities and hence the subsequent death and injury toll.

So either hold all industries to the same standards or simply accept that the taxpayer is going to end up footing the bill for any large disaster or significant but highly difuse deaths.


While 3-4 years available uranium may indeed be true, there are plenty of other fisile elements available in far larger quantities, which will burn in approriately designed reactors or can be made to burn. Hell between waste and weapons stockpiles, there is more than enough potential fuel lying around, that the mines could be shut down for decades.

As a minor bonus these self same reactors will also burn the vast majority of all that nuclear waste that "we have nowhere to put." The remaining "ash" amounts to just a few tens of pounds of waste per year virtually all of it with half-lives so short that dealing with it is a matter of keeping it under water for a few weeks or months and then processing the remains as one would any other industrial waste metals.

Sequestration is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. For a while it looked like the only option, but not any more. "We have the technology."

Properly designed a fast breeder reactor will burn virtually any fuel. Every now and then "spent" fuel is taken out and processed. Some of it can be immediately tossed into the industrial waste stream to be processed conventionly. "Hot" "ash" with sufficiently low half-lives goes into the pools to cool off for a while before going to the industrial waste stream. Fissile elements are extracted chemically. This keeps weapons grade isotopes thoroughly mixed in with the rest. This stuff will burn nicely but will not explode. The remaining radioactive material is formed into a jacket around the reactor core to soak up stray neutrons and be transmuted into more easily managed materials.

Better still, the whole process can be carried out oun site, right next to the reactor, which essentially eliminates the possibility of accidents and interception during transport. Once constructed, the only input is utterly non-explosive thorium and natural (or depleted) uranium and the only output a few tens of pounds of heavy metals per reactor per year.

Fast breeders do indeed have a lot of bad press, but most of that is due to the purpose to which they were put. To make bombs. And what is rarely mentioned, is that the process of separating out the weapons grade material is just as technically difficult as enriching natural uranium to weapons grade. It just ain't feasible for any entity short of a moderately sized country.

Yes, that still leaves open the possibilty of dirty bombs. However, given a choice between a heavily guarded nuclear facility and a foundry or hospital, where do you think the terrorists will go looking for their raw materials?


Pie in the sky? Wishfull thinking? Not at all. Every single thing above can be done right now with existing, demonstrable techniques and processes. The only hurdle left to overcome is scaling them up to the necessary industrial levels. And even that is a no brainer, since analagous industrial scale processes already exist.


Nuclear power does indeed have it's dangers, no one with an ounce of sense would deny that. However comparatively speaking those dangers are far less (and more readily managed) than what we willingly (if not cheerfully) accept as the price of living in an industrialised world. Motor cars, industrial and agricultural pollutants of all stripes, dodgy preprocessed food.

Fear of THE BOMB is really what all the fuss is about, and it's a very reasonable fear to have. However, refusing to take advantage of the peaceful (and relatively safe) uses of nuclear energy, makes as much sense as refusing to use explosives for mining and construction.

[hunter]

23. Helen Caldicott, UPI... how much credibility do you demand?

I first met Helen Caldicott in the 'seventies. She was speaking and fundraising among various groups opposed to the Diablo Canyon nuclear power station. I was a teenaged anti-nuclear activist then, and quite easily impressed.

A few years later I met her again when I was more of a hardcore sort of activist and came away with the distinct impression that we made her very uncomfortable. It was probably for good reason, since some of the data we were collecting by unconventional means was reality-based but did not support some of Dr. Caldicott's hyperbole.

The big problem at the time was that the utilities and the military had much clearer data about the risks of nuclear power than was ever publicized, and in a few cases they deliberately misrepresented what they knew. The government was too often willing to classify as secret anything that might look bad to a misinformed public. On the other side of the coin many anti-nuclear activists were simply making stuff up.

Eventually I decided I wasn't serving any truth. The nuclear industry covered things up, while the anti-nuclear activists presented things we'd uncovered entirely out of context. Typically the antinuclear activists collected huge lists of scary looking "facts" without knowing anything at all about what they meant -- Caldicott's "Plutonium has a predisposition for the testicle" is just one such gem -- I can't help but think of General Ripper in Dr. Strangelove and his quest to protect our precious bodily fluids.

[JohnWxy]

26. Okay, how about the other site I mentioned:

http://www.nirs.org/factsheets/llwfct.htm

HALF-LIFE and HAZARDOUS LIFE

Radioactive elements decay by emitting energy in the form of radioactive particles and rays. As radiation is given off, other elements (some radioactive and some stable) are formed.

The Half-Life is the time it takes for HALF of the radioactive element to decay (give off half of its radioactivity). Different radioactive elements have different half-lives.

The Hazardous Life of a radioactive element is about 10 or 20 Half-Lives. (It is best to measure the amount of radiation after 10 or 20 half-lives before releasing waste from active controls.)

Reactor waste remains hazardous for a very long time. Most medical waste from treatment and diagnosis is hazardous for a very short time. Research and industrial waste can contain small amounts of some long-lived radioactive materials.

Among the radioactive elements commonly found in nuclear reactor "low-level" waste are:

Tritium, with a half-life of 12 years and a   hazardous life of 120-240 years;

Iodine-131, half-life of 8 days,           hazardous life of 80-160 days;

Strontium-90, half life of 28 years,         hazardous life of 280-560 years;

Nickel-59, half life of 76,000 years,          hazardous life of 760,000-1,520,000 years, and

Iodine-129, half-life of sixteen million years,      hazardous life of 160-320 million years.

By contrast, common medical waste elements include Technetium-99m, with a half-life of 6 hours and a hazardous life of 2.5-5 days; Galium-67, half-life of 78 hours and hazardous life of 1-2 months; and Iodine-131, with its half-life of 8 days and hazardous life of 80-160 days.

The vast majority of medical waste is hazardous for less than 8 months. Yet, it is in the same category as reactor waste that will be hazardous for hundreds of thousands to millions of years.

Clearly, the definition of "low-level radioactive waste" must be changed. It would make sense to redefine the more concentrated and/or longer-lived waste as high-level. Active recontainerization and operational control must be provided for the entire hazardous life of the waste, yet the NRC requires only 100 years of passive institutional control. Thus, waste hazardous longer than 100 years could be forgotten. Retrievability is essential.

PLANNED LEAKAGE AND "ACCEPTABLE" RISK

Waste containers and forms will not last as long as some waste remains hazardous. Therefore, waste should be placed in a manner which will facilitate recontainerization and make continued isolation from the environment possible in the future. If the waste is "disposed of" as the NRC currently requires, it will not be isolated from the environment. "Planned leakage will occur at (what NRC considers) an "acceptable" leak rate leading to "acceptable" public radiation exposures and health risks. The allowable leak rates and exposure levels are determined by federal agencies, not those experiencing the risk.

To avoid leakage, above-ground, engineered storage at or near the source of generation could allow responsible routine monitoring and repair.

In other words when you stick it somewhere, you can't just forget about it. It has to be monitored. And this will cost money and require space (as you add nuclear waste over the years more and more space).

[hunter]

29. Many toxins industry spews have a half life of ***FOREVER***

Take for example, mercury pollution caused by coal power plants. Where does all the mercury in the coal we burn go? Much of it ends up in our air and water. Some of it gets into our brains and makes us not quite so intelligent as we might have been.

This toxic substance does not decay. Yet we make only very feeble attempts to contain it.

The remarkable thing about nuclear waste is that we have some reasonable expectation of containing it until it is not significantly more toxic than other common substances found in our natural environment.

Even if we do a bad job of sequestering nuclear waste, in a couple of thousand years it isn't going to be a significantly greater environmental problem than our non nuclear wastes.

To the extent we are using coal to generate electricity when we might have been using nuclear power, we have done immense harm to ourselves and our environment.

[JohnWxy]

43. Nuclear waste - sequester for 10,000 years Dept of Energy

"The U.S. Department of Energy last month issued a Yucca Mountain science and engineering report that demonstrates there is ample scientific basis for making a decision to dispose of used nuclear fuel at the remote desert site 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The report states that “(b)ecause of the characteristics of the natural system, the drip shields (that would be built in the repository), and the waste packages, the DOE does not expect water to come into contact with the waste forms for over 10,000 years.”


Is this an indication of how long nuclear waste will have to be isolated over 10,000 years"!??

Incidentally, I've seen reports that the viability of the Yucca Mountain site has been seriously questioned and that it is not isolated from ground-water is has been claimed by DOE.

[NNadir]

30. I covered the "hazard" associated with I-129, and the others here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=5609&mesg_id=21363

In it I gave a primary reference discussing I-129.

Environmental Science and Technology Envir. Sci. Tech. 2001, 35, 4470-4476

The anti-nuclear position is a dangerous fantasy.

There is no such thing a risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is NOT ethanol. It is nuclear power.

[JohnWxy]

31. Until they put 4 wheels and a pair of headlights on a Nuclear Power plant

I don't see what this has to do with ethanol - used now and in future for transportation applications.

Now if you want to talk about renewables the more appropriate one in this context is Wind Power.


I don't think I ever said let's reject Nuclear power outright. I am just asking if we have really considered all the costs to nuclear. I'm sorry if asking these questions gets some people upset but I think we need to really know what we are getting into before we commit to it.

The big concern I do have, to repeat (again), is can we store the waste and isolate it from the environment for as long as it needs to be stored (and CAN ANYBODY ADMIT HOW LONG IT HAS TO BE STORED???) and what is it going to cost to store it??? Also, reliable figures on cost to decommission, reprocess and anything else that will have to be done but which was somehow left out of the total cost calculations.

[NNadir]

33. It has everything to do with ethanol John.

I have also covered DME here, extensively.

How is that you so much want to know about so called nuclear waste? Is it because you have a solution for the problem of carbon dioxide waste? Can you name someone who has been injured by the storage of so called "dangerous" nuclear waste? Why does it require special attention?

For the record, if you must know (sigh) - I've probably posted this about a zillion times - the toxicity of spent fuel in a recycling motif will exceed uranium ores for about 1,000 years - after which the use of nuclear power will make the radiotoxicity of the planet smaller than it has ever been in the history of the planet. This result can be found on page 231 of Stacy's Nuclear Reactor Physics" (John Wiley and Sons, copyright 2001). After 500 years, the radiotoxicity is dominated by actinides, chiefly Am-241. The production of Am-241 can be diminished by fissioning Pu-241 before it decays.

However acknowleging radiotoxicity is not the same thing as asserting that injuries will occur. After the operation of the naturally occurring reactors at Oklo in Gabon the fission products and actinides for the most part migrated a few meters in billions of years, even though for much of the 2 billion years in question the area was in a rain forest.

But let's get back to you...

How is that you have no concern with the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico associated with farm runoff, which is destroying a portion of the environment the size of the State of New Jersey, and you are so concerned with so called "nuclear waste" which has not caused the elimination of a single habitat?

Why do you pipe in with a special thread leaking us to the questionable Dr. Candicott, about whom you clearly know very little?

Wind power, by the way, is not an alternative to nuclear power, not even close. Anything that can compete with nuclear power must be constant load. There is only one main competitor for nuclear energy, coal. Wind power can replace the far more dangerous form of energy associated with natural gas, but it cannot replace nuclear power, since wind turbines, unlike nuclear turbines, stop without input from the operators.

In any case, wind power is still way below an exajoule in production world wide as are all the non-hydro renewable forms of energy. When the use of most dangerous form of energy, fossil fuels, has stopped, we will all be in a position to debate the merits of the renewable vs. nuclear argument - but that time will NOT occur in the lifetimes of anyone here.

[JohnWxy]

36. who said I am not concerned with unnecessary over-use of

chemical fertilizer. There are those in the agricultural field who contend it's not necessary to use anywhere near as much fertilizers as is now being used. It involves changing the way farmers farm. This is a change which is coming, albeit slowly.

RE Wind Power, until you reach 20% of the total power output you can use wind without concerns for winds variability. Even with the huge increase in building of wind farms (wind turbine manufacturers can't keep up with the demand right now) we have a long way to go to get to 20% of total power from wind. When you go beyond 20% yuo can do what has been done in England - when you have exesss power from wind you pump water into a reservoir. When demand exceeds the current wind power production you let the water out and generate hydro-power. Now, this will be more expensive but, as I said, this is some time off yet.

I will provide more links to others who havae questions re nuclear power in the future. You will have your chance to denigrate them all you like too!

[jpak]

34. But everyone knows that 129-I can't hurt you and if you contaminated

your thyroid with it - you could use iodized table salt to control it!!!

Not

:rofl:

Anyone that thinks the release of 129I from a nucular accident would have no adverse health health effects is *ahem* "pulling your leg" (to put it mildly)...

[NNadir]

42. Results for Iodine prophylaxis is reported in Am J Med. 1993 May;94(5

The article is entitled "Iodide prophylaxis in Poland after the Chernobyl reactor accident: benefits and risks." Of course the prophylaxis in question was in response to the release of I-131, which is a horse of a different color than I-129.

The prophylatic treatment of contamination with radioiodine with iodine supplements is well known and well reported.

It is in fact reported on the CDER site of the FDA. I quote:

IV. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

A. Use of KI in Radiation Emergencies: Rationale, Effectiveness, Safety

For the reasons discussed above, the Chernobyl data provide the most reliable information available to date on the relationship between internal thyroid radioactive dose and cancer risk. They suggest that the risk of thyroid cancer is inversely related to age, and that, especially in young children, it may accrue at very low levels of radioiodine exposure. We have relied on the Chernobyl data to formulate our specific recommendations below.

The effectiveness of KI as a specific blocker of thyroid radioiodine uptake is well established (Il'in LA, et al., 1972) as are the doses necessary for blocking uptake. As such, it is reasonable to conclude that KI will likewise be effective in reducing the risk of thyroid cancer in individuals or populations at risk for inhalation or ingestion of radioiodines.

Short-term administration of KI at thyroid blocking doses is safe and, in general, more so in children than adults. The risks of stable iodine administration include sialadenitis (an inflammation of the salivary gland, of which no cases were reported in Poland among users after the Chernobyl accident), gastrointestinal disturbances, allergic reactions and minor rashes. In addition, persons with known iodine sensitivity should avoid KI, as should individuals with dermatitis herpetiformis and hypocomplementemic vasculitis, extremely rare conditions associated with an increased risk of iodine hypersensitivity.

http://www.fda.gov/cder/guidance/4825fnl.htm#Reliance%20on%20Data%20from%20Chernobyl

The article in Am. J. Med. is famous for people who actually know what they are talking about with respect to iodine. People who don't know what they are talking about of course, ridicule the common sense notion that radioiodine is flushed by natural iodine. The Polish government's quick response probably prevented some Thyroid cancers in Poland, although the truth be told, the number of such cancers - it is mostly curable and not fatal - is tiny when compared, say, the number of cancers attributable to air pollution from wood burning.

In fact, I-129 is of essentially zero risk, owing to its low specific activity and the effects of dilution. It has been found that the concentration of I-129 in the Mississippi river is about 1 atom in 3 billion. As I have noted elsewhere, this fact is reported in Environmental Science and Technology Envir. Sci. Tech. 2001, 35, 4470-4476. I also noted that any activity attributable to such a low level is easily dwarfed by background radiation, particularly that resulting from natural potassium which is found in all living things.

As I have shown before, a person whose intake of I-129 was the same as Mississippi river water, given that iodine is a trace element, would experience 9 decays per day, compared with 4200 decays per second attributable to natural potassium.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=5609&mesg_id=21520

The contention that I-129 is dangerous is ridiculous and demonstrates the foolishness of the anti-nuclear position and how absurd and completely fallacious its contentions are. They are all, when you inspect them, more or less of this quality. One should weigh all anti-nuclear nonsense in the light of this very specious claim about I-129.

[jpak]

45. Charlatans will tell us that they contaminated their thyroids

in a laboratory over a three year period and they controlled their contamination with iodized table salt (without the NRC pulling their license and fining the shit out of them)...

This is physiologically impossible.

These charlatans would have to consume several kilos of iodized salt to achieve the same prophylaxis as commercially available KI or NI tablets.

These same charlatans "believe" in the sick delusional pseudoscience of radiation hormesis even though >20 years of research by NAS BEIR committees have concluded that there is NO FUCKING DATA TO SUPPORT IT...


:rofl:

[NNadir]

46. I think the data on the subject is clear.

People who understand physiology also understand that the amount of iodine physiologically required is a trace on a microgram scale.

The average person consumes, worldwide, about multigram quantities of salt a day, as reported by the International Council of Treatment of Iodine Deficiency Disorders.

Chronic salt deprivation produces loss of weight and appetite, inertia, nausea and muscular
cramps. Excessive heat as in desert summers depletes body salt, leading to possible vascular collapse
and death. On the other hand, excessive sodium in salt and other foods can contribute to hypertension, and to heart, liver and kidney diseases.

While salt is perhaps the only food item other than water that is universally consumed, its
intake varies considerably with factors such as climate, culinary habits and occupation. Hot tropical
summers and heavy manual work with excessive sweating increase salt requirements. The rice-eating
populations of the world also consume more salt (15-20 g/day) than others because rice is very
deficient in salt. In temperate climates consumption is much lower (5-8 g/day).

http://www.micronutrient.org/Salt_CD/4.0_useful/4.1_fulltext/pdfs/4.1.1.pdf

In the United States, the concentration of iodine in salt is 77 mg/kg, provided as the potassium salt. http://indorgs.virginia.edu/iccidd/iodman/iodman7.htm

Thus a person who eats 10 grams a day of US table salt, will ingest almost 800 mcg of iodine. This is about 5 times as large as the minimum daily requirement for salt. Thus anyone who ingests iodized salt in the US will, in fact, excrete the element much faster than those who have a dietary deficiency. (Ironically, just such a deficiency historically has been characteristic of the Ukraine.)

Under normal dietary conditions, without Iodine supplements, the biological half-life of I-125 is about 42 days, compared to its 59.9 physical half-life. The isotope is eliminated both by decay and by excretion. It is observable that one can shorten the biological half-life. This isotope, which is used in curie scales for the manufacture of RIA kits and for the treatment of disease, is an item of ordinary commerce. Therapeutically people typically are treated with millicurie amounts of iodine-125.

The manufacture of RIA kits, which involves the oxidative iodination of aromatic rings (generally), usually generates small amounts of volatile iodine-125. These iodinations are typically conducted on a multi-millicurie scale, although the kits themselves typically are delivered in microcurie amounts. It is invariable, given the laws of physics that volatile iodine on a millicurie scale will generally contaminate some people who work with it. All persons who work in this field are therefore required by their licenses to be monitored for exposure. However it is widely understood, at least by people who are knowledgeable about health physics, that detectable contamination is inevitable. After all, the mean molecular speed of ¹²⁵I₂ is about 120 m/s at 300K. Of course, the existence of measurable concentrations of iodine is not the same as dangerous concentrations of iodine. Even at Chernobyl, where thousands of curies, kilocuries of radiodine were released, only a few hundred people have contracted thyroid cancer since the accident. Most people exposed to radioiodine have, in fact, survived, indicating that exposure does not always lead to disease. Many thousands of people have worked with radioiodine without notable incident.

I have observed that precisely the people who work with the smallest amount of radioactivity - let's say microcurie quantities, are usually the same people who have the highest level of paranoia about radioactivity and the poorest understanding of radioactivity.

In any case the fact remains, as shown by the references in my previous post, that I-129 is not a hazard in any meaningful sense. However desperately one might attempt to distract people from this question with silly asides, the fact remains that I-129 is not a serious hazard that is even remotely comparable to the hazard of air pollution or global climate change.

[Name removed]

47. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JohnWxy]

52. Just sticking to the Caldicott article she was referring to I-131 right?

NOw let's see if I get you right here:

YOu are saying because I-131 can be treated we:

1) don't have to worry about it.

2) I-131 doesn't need to be stored as a carcinogenic substance and

3) Caldicott was making a fallacious assertion by including I-131
in a list of dangerous , cancer causing substances found in
nuclear waste.

Is that what you are saying Nuclear Nadir?

I-131 is harmless??, even though you later referred to the "Prophylaxis in Poland after the Chernobyl reactor accident"?? quoting from you:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=46584&mesg_id=46829

"The article is entitled "Iodide prophylaxis in Poland after the Chernobyl reactor accident: benefits and risks. Of course the prophylaxis in question was in response to the release of I-131, which is a horse of a different color than I-129."

{correct me if I'm wrong but isn't I-131 what Caldicott referred to in her article? Here's quote from the article:

"Iodine 131, which was released at the nuclear accidents at Sellafield in Britain, Chernobyl in Ukraine and Three Mile Island in the United States, is radioactive for only six weeks and it bio-concentrates in leafy vegetables and milk. When it enters the human body via the gut and the lung, it migrates to the thyroid gland in the neck, where it can later induce thyroid cancer. In Belarus more than 2,000 children have had their thyroids removed for thyroid cancer, a situation never before recorded in pediatric literature."}

again using your own words:

"The prophylatic treatment of contamination with radioiodine with iodine supplements is well known and well reported."

NOw I would submit to you that if I-131 requires prophylactic treatment that, how shall I put this: IT'S A FUCKING CANCER CAUSING SUBSTANCE.

Am I being clear enough for you? DO YOU UNDERSTAND THE PHYSIOLOGICAL PROCESS KNOWN AS CANCER? It involves mutation and uncontrolled cellular colony growth leading to a pathological condition referred to colloquially as DEATH. ARE YOU STILL WITH ME?

in fact here is a quote you provided, maybe you should read it:

" For the reasons discussed above, the Chernobyl data provide the most reliable information available to date on the relationship between internal thyroid radioactive dose and cancer risk. They suggest that the risk of thyroid cancer is inversely related to age, and that, especially in young children, it may accrue at very low levels of radioiodine exposure. We have relied on the Chernobyl data to formulate our specific recommendations below."


Now, as to the presence of other forms or the same form of Iodine being in the environment in trace amounts - is that an argument for adding a lot more of this stuff to the environment? That's an argument only Dr. Strangelove would appreciate.

So, when Caldicott included I-131 in a list of hazardous, (i.e. Cancer causing agents) she was not lieing or 'blathering' was she?

But let's not stop there, she mentioned several other substances in additon to I-131. Quoting:

"These unregulated isotopes include the noble gases {b]krypton, xenon and argon, which are fat-soluble and if inhaled by persons living near a nuclear reactor, are absorbed through the lungs, migrating to the fatty tissues of the body, including the abdominal fat pad and upper thighs, near the reproductive organs. These radioactive elements, which emit high-energy gamma radiation, can mutate the genes in the eggs and sperm and cause genetic disease."

"Tritium, another biologically significant gas, which is also routinely emitted from nuclear reactors is a radioactive isotope of hydrogen composed of two neutrons and one proton with an atomic weight of 3. The chemical symbol for tritium is H3. When one or both of the hydrogen atoms in water is displaced by tritium the water molecule is then called tritiated water. Tritium is a soft energy beta emitter, more mutagenic than gamma radiation, which incorporates directly into the DNA molecule of the gene. Its half-life is 12.3 years, giving it a biologically active life of 246 years. It passes readily through the skin, lungs and digestive system and is distributed throughout the body."

"Strontium 90 lasts for 600 years. As a calcium analogue, it concentrates in cow and goat milk. It accumulates in the human breast during lactation and in bone, where it can later induce breast cancer, bone cancer and leukemia."

"Cesium 137, which also lasts for 600 years, concentrates in the food chain, particularly meat. On entering the human body, it locates in muscle, where it can induce a malignant muscle cancer called a sarcoma."

"Plutonium 239, one of the most dangerous elements known to humans, is so toxic that one-millionth of a gram is carcinogenic. More than 440 pounds is made annually in each 1,000-megawatt nuclear power plant."

"Plutonium is handled like iron in the body, and is therefore stored in the liver, where it causes liver cancer, and in the bone, where it can induce bone cancer and blood malignancies. On inhalation it causes lung cancer. It also crosses the placenta, where, like the drug thalidomide, it can cause severe congenital deformities."

Okay, now were there any innaccuracies in those statements. I'm just sticking to what was in the article I posted. Any lies or inaccuracies or bullshit in what I just quoted above????

Caldicott also said:

"Each typical 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactor manufactures 33 metric tons of thermally hot, intensely radioactive waste per year."

"Already more than 80,000 metric tons of highly radioactive waste sits in cooling pools next to the 103 U.S. nuclear power plants, awaiting transportation to a storage facility yet to be found.
~~
Last week a congressional committee discovered fabricated data about water infiltration and cask corrosion in Yucca Mountain that had been produced by personnel in the U.S. Geological Survey. These startling revelations, according to most experts, have almost disqualified Yucca Mountain as a waste repository, meaning that the United States has nowhere to deposit its expanding nuclear waste inventory.

"... a study released last week by the National Academy of Sciences shows that the cooling pools at nuclear reactors, which store 10 to 30 times more radioactive material than that contained in the reactor core, are subject to catastrophic attacks by terrorists, which could unleash an inferno and release massive quantities of deadly radiation -- significantly worse than the radiation released by Chernobyl, according to some scientists."

"This vulnerable high-level nuclear waste contained in the cooling pools at 103 nuclear power plants in the United States includes hundreds of radioactive elements that have different biological impacts in the human body, the most important being cancer and genetic diseases."

Now, are there any inaccuracies in those quotes? I think addressing specific statements would be much more meaningful if you have anything to say regarding these specific statements than generalized pejorative comments about the author. Willing to give it a shot?

[JohnWxy]

49. Do you care to address any statements made in the article I quoted.

This was interesting biographical material but how about the article at the top of this thread?

IF there is anything inaccurate or wrong or alas, fraudulent now is your chance to "have at it". Anything in that article that's wrong.


Actually this goes for anybody. Point out anything in the article that's wrong. Seriously, I really do want to know if there is anything wrong in that article.

One poster says Iodine isotope mentioned is not harmful. If Iodine is not harmful that still leaves several others. How aboaut them?

[JohnWxy]

51. Again, Do you care to address any statements made in the article I quoted.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=46584&mesg_id=47211

[NNadir]

53. How many times are you going to ask before you get it?

No, I am not going to address your statements any more than I already have. Again, I don't owe you or the nutcase Caldicott anything.

I have linked a my long discussion of the chemistry and physics of many of the fission products (and, if I may so, there is a huge difference in quality between what I write and what nutty Helen writes, since I actually know the half-lives of fission products and how to look them up) in a previous post. If you didn't get it - of if you can't understand any of it - I can't help you.

I note that the onus is on you, not me. You are the one who started a thread about the "hidden" costs of nuclear power.

Now what about you? Are you going to produce a case of one person injured by the storage of spent nuclear fuel in the United States? You've made some very dramatic statements here, after all, statements that play into the serious matter of global climate change that threatens all humanity. So let's see how sharp you are. Again, produce one dead body from the storage of 50 years worth of commercial nuclear fuel, which produced almost 50 exajoules of electrical energy and 150 exajoules of primary energy since 1980. (I note that 150 exajoules is 1.5 the entire annual energy demand of the United States, meaning that if nuclear power had been shut down in 1980, the United States would have added an extra year and half's worth of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.) So, come on kid, produce a body.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iealf/table27.xls

You can't?

Why is this unsurprising?

I can produce this article on fuel related deaths from a tanker explosion, it takes me two minutes of googling:

http://tcattorney.typepad.com/wrongfuldeath/2004/02/maritime_disast.html

Surely, with your high level on analytical ability and your need to cite Helen the Hysteric, you can produce the same sort of thing. Let's have at it, kid.

[JohnWxy]

54. Actually, that was meant for Hunter. but the same goes for you

Here is a discussion of some of your bullshit with more specificity (about the hazardous waste not being hazardous. That is, did Caldicott inappropriately identify substances that are not dangerous.) -

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=46584&mesg_id=47421

actually, your wrong. It is incumbent upon the nuclear power industry, whom you have taken it upon yourself to represent (Listening to you enthuse about Nuclear power's wonders and your dismissal of the real safety issues YOU SOUND LIKE A GEEK AT A FUCKING STAR TREK CONVENTION preaching about the profundity of Star Trek to the nonbelievers) to demonstrate to the public the safety of nuclear power. Your problem isn't with me it's with millions of people who find your industry's public relations copy to be not totally convincing.

I don't have to produce a dead body (you obviously read my post here already) to demonstrate the risks of nuclear waste. The matter of cancer comes to mind. Is that a physiological process you understand? We are talking about risks that will go on and grow for thousands of years (14,000 years, is that a good number? Oh yeah, no comment right?). I have discussed this in teh Yucca mountain falsification of documents posting, which you have read.

Of course, DOE (public relations arm of the nuclear power industry) will of course say, "Hey, you can't prove they got cancer because they lived a few miles from Three MIle island, or from Hanford - because it's impossible to single out one source of cancer causing agents when there are many in the industrial environment. But will that convince anybody that in many cases (where the individuals lived within a certain radius of the source of nuclear pollution) that the nuclear site wasn't the driving cause. Will that convince people that if the nuclear site or release hadn't been there the cancer would still have developed?

I just think we should exhaust any and all possible sources of energy and only resort to nuclear as a very last resort. We haven't begun to develop renewable sources yet. Given that wind power potential for the U.S. equals 3 times our total demand, that is worth trying.

Don't preach to me about global warming. I know its real. I'm just not convinced nuclear power is our savior, that it is the ONLY source of energy we have available to us.

Hope you enjoy my comments. Oh yeah, keep you phaser on 'stun', Trekkie.

[hunter]

55. Sorry, I chase a lot of threads here on DU.

What we do in the United States isn't going to matter a whole lot, since it is my opinion we are a crumbling superpower. Pretty soon now I think we'll start to notice. Unless we decide to go down fighting, the United State's take on energy development will be largely irrelevant. Meanwhile other nations will continue to build nuclear power plants.

I live in California. Maybe 9000 people here die every year of medical conditions aggravated by air pollution. Those are pretty solid numbers. The numbers surrounding nuclear power production are not so solid.

If I had a choice of living next to a nuclear power plant or a coal fired power plant I would choose the nuclear plant. Diablo Canyon and San Onofre turned out to be relatively benign compared to any of the southwestern coal fired power plants I've visited.

I'll repeat this: To the extent my opposition to nuclear power encourages the construction and operation of coal, oil, or gas fired power plants, I am harming the earth. This does not mean I support nuclear power, it means that I think it is the lesser of two evils.

Our current civilization and population is supported by energy derived from fossil fuels. If we quit these concentrated centralized energy sources "cold turkey" many, many people will simply die in the inevitable economic disruptions. As we continue to use these fossil fuels many more people will be killed by them.

Personally I could afford to put solar panels on my roof. But most of the people in my city don't have those financial resources; most people here must choose between rent, health insurance, transportation, and eating. Most people drop their health insurance because that's usually less pressing than homelessness and hunger. The infrastructure to deliver nuclear power to their homes already exists, in fact over 20% of their electricity is already nuclear. Expanding nuclear energy is probably the least technically and financially challenging way of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. Natural gas that is currently burned for power or heating could be diverted for the production of cleaner transportation fuels.

By necessity any transition to non-fossil fuel energy sources will be subsidized by the government. Many governments such as France and India have already decided nuclear power is the only realistic alternative to fossil fuels, while nations such as Germany, for example, have decided otherwise. But for all the German investment in non-nuclear alternative energy sources, I don't believe they will be able to shut down their nuclear power plants while reducing their dependency on fossil fuels.

If you want to talk about Star Trek, send me a PM... ;)

[poopfuel]

56. so nnadir can froth at the mouth, here's 3 mile island anniversary article

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0328-30.htm

[hunter]

57. The United States drank everything in the house.

Drank some more from the neighbors, and then drove away and crashed the SUV.

Now we are puking our guts out all over Iraq.

We really aren't in any kind of position to determine the world's future energy supply.

Common dreams talks about global perspectives, but they write from a very isolationist U.S. point of view.

I can assure you, people in France do not regard nuclear power as human history's most expensive technological failure.

[poopfuel]

58. i cannot link up to todays wall street journal

because it is restricted. But there is a piece on French nuclear power and their arrangement.
I do not find it a convincing argument for nuclear power. Some may. They raise issues of terrorism and safety.
I continue to argue it's not needed. We can power ourselves with microturbine cogenerators on a small scale, use biofuel to power us. It's time to decentralize energy.
And we can definitely contribute to the world's energy supply thru biofuels. I've posted many times on this subject and don't wish to go over it again. I have a life, unlike Mr. Nadir.

[JohnWxy]

62. Trekkie comment was not intended for you.

Just remember nuclear waste will be around about 14,000 yrs (if you or anybody would feels they have a better figure, I'm always interested to hear what you have to say and I am open to correcting the number I used.)

[NNadir]

59. You're about the par for the course.

When you say "I think..." I regard the claim as being on the same level of the rest of your stuff.

Like everybody else with the "renewable will save us" fantasy of denial you need to start with learning what an exajoule is.

You apparently are lacking even a remote clue about how much time we really have left, kid.

[JohnWxy]

60. Still want to ignore this post ?

Yous still prefer to not address specifics in Caldicott ariticle except to say that we dont have to worry about radioacitve Iodine because it's treatable.

Here's a tip, if there is a protocol for prophylactic treatment for radioactive iodine exposure that means there's risk it will cause cancer. Cancer, is that physiological condition you DON'T understand? It's characterized by uncontrolled cell divisions and death.

But you think Caldicott was crazy for including it in a list of hazardous substances? What is it about prophylactic treatment for radioactive iodine exposure you don't get.

Here is my complete post (it's on this thread):

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=115&topic_id=46584&mesg_id=47421

[hunter]

61. Have you ever inhaled gasoline fumes? Diesel exhaust?

There's all sorts of carcinogenic crap in that.

Radioactive Polonium in cigarette smoke is another good one. Any Las Vegas casino must be a radioactive hell.

Furthermore, in many places you shouldn't venture into the basement.

My point is that you have to quantify all these risks. You can't just grab one little particle of dust and scream "OMG, the sky is falling!"

Our government and the nuclear industry spewed a lot of crap. People like Helen Caldicott did not solve any problems by spewing a lot of crap back at them. In fact she may have made things worse when more reasonable people decided neither side was credible and simply abandoned the argument. We may be stagnating here in a hole, watching our world become a miserable place, when there is some good evidence that technologies like nuclear power could lift us out. But we don't know because very few people are willing to wade through the endless streams of bullshit.

It is extremely frustrating when people lie to you, especially when it's government officials. It's also frustrating to get dumped upon by people who don't know what they are talking about.

I admire your enthusiasm, JohnWxy, but before we talk minutiae about radioactive Iodine, you've got to convince me it's a greater problem then something like, say, the acidification of the oceans.

BTW I've done quite a few Radioactive Iodine Assays in the medical field, back before there were better non-radioactive tests, and I'd like to think I know a bit about the risks. I could also dig through the papers in my garage and see some of the stuff me and my friends turned up on Humboldt and Rancho Seco. In my opinion both plants were rightfully shut down, but not for some of the reasons many anti-nuclear activists claimed. I now trust that San Onofre, Diablo Canyon, and Palo Verde benefit the environment to the extent they displace coal generated electricity.

If it was mine to decide, I would shut down every damned coal fired power plant in the nation, even if some compromise demanded they be replaced by nuclear power plants.

Sure, a massively decentralized and entirely renewable energy system would be utopia, but I don't yet see how it could be done unless three quarters of our population suddenly decides it's okay to live as most people do in places like Bangladesh.

I'm tired JohnWxy. Learn how to do your own research, and how to determine who is credible, and who is not. Otherwise someone is going to come along and screw you if they haven't already.

[JohnWxy]

63. NOw you are answering for the Trekkie.

Nuclear Nadir's comments on radio iodine were that it's nothing to worry about and that Caldicott was wrong to include it in a list of hazardous materials. Then he refered to an article about prophylactic treatment of radio iodine. Does Nuclear Nadir think prophylactic treatment of exposure to a substance means it's NOT hazardous? Let me see, if someone presents himself as an authority on something is it not pertinent to point out an obvious fucked up bit of reasoning?

Lets move on from radioiodine. Several other hazardous materials were mentioned in the article. Radioiodine was just one. Does dismissing radioiodine (while later pointing out there is a protocol for treating exposure to radioiodine) cover the whole issue?

The point I am making is a generalized attack on the author is not a substitute for criticism of the points made in the ariticle. I don't really give a damn if Caldicott is a cross-eyed Siamese twin, when someone attacks the author and doesn't address points in the article, they are not engaging in legitimate argumentation.

IT seems to me such an obvious disjointed reasoning is worthy of criticism ...and explanation.

As I told the Trekkie, it's up to the nuclear energy industry for whom he has presumed to speak, to demonstrate the practicality of nuclear energy. Not just to me, but to all the people who have a say in this matter. Now, here is something to think about: you and I and everybody reading posts on this site will only be around for a few more decades. The nuclear waste we have produced and will add to if we significantly increase nuclear power (which I don't think will happen) will be around about 14,000 years. Before we embark on an expanded experiment in nuclear survivability We should make every effort to fully develop safer sources of energy such as renewable energy. Only develop nuclear as a last resort.

[Dead_Parrot]

64. I/We're actually a gestalt entity

called Dead_Nilhil_Nadir_Phantom_Hunter. I/We just like messing with you.
Resistance is futile.
:D

[hunter]

66. Damn, I like your answer better.

:rofl:

[hunter]

65. "legitimate argumentation"

Can I have a pet name too?

I'm more of a stubborn asshole than a Trekkie, if you need any hints.

Protecting what's left of the earth's environment is an issue that's close to my heart. I've had some bad experiences with people who later turned out to be trouble, Bev Harris being my most recent misadventure. She's gone from DU, but I'm still here.

Some of my anti-nuclear adventures turned out much worse than that, and the only reason I don't discuss them here in detail is that I still feel some loyalty to a few of the people involved who would rather the past remain buried, sometimes with good reason. When Bush and his thugs are living in shameful exile, maybe my old friends will stop by and say hello.

I'm simply offering up my own experiences to anyone who wants to heed them. Credibility and personal integrity are a big deal, much more important than promoting every little last nugget of information (and quite possibly deliberate misinformation) that happens to support your position.

When somebody mentions that UPI is NOT a credible source, and expresses their unease with Helen Caldicott, you might want to look into that. Hell, send me your phone number and I'll call you. If you convince me you're something beyond an anonymous screen name on DU, and not simply a massive cut-and-paster to various anti-Bush sites, then I may send you my my number first.

Does that sound reasonable?