Waste storage dilemma crimps nuclear future

[lindisfarne]

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/06/11/NUCLEAR.TMP&type=printable

Waste storage dilemma crimps nuclear future
- David R. Baker, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, June 11, 2006

Avila Beach, San Luis Obispo County -- In a quiet, air-conditioned room deep inside the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant sits a small pool filled with water colored an unnatural blue. It's packed with radioactive waste.

The pool holds roughly half of all the used fuel ever pulled from the plant's reactors. The other half sits in a second concrete tank nearby, slowly cooling beneath 25 feet of water. Some fuel rods have been there about 20 years. Both pools are nearly full. Neither was designed to store this much waste. But there's nowhere else to put it.

The government long ago promised Diablo's owner, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., that it would haul away the waste and entomb it deep below Nevada's Yucca Mountain. But, in the face of unrelenting opposition from Nevada residents irate over the prospect of becoming a dumping ground for nuclear waste, the repository never opened.

With the nation's appetite for energy growing, the U.S. nuclear industry appears poised for a renaissance. President Bush has made building nuclear plants, for the first time in decades, a cornerstone of his energy policies. And some former foes are willing to give the technology another look, lured by the promise of generating abundant power without belching greenhouse gases from more fossil fuel plants.

But the industry and its supporters in Washington still have not resolved one of the biggest issues that derailed nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s -- what to do with the waste, which remains radioactive for thousands of years. Yucca Mountain remains bottled up by Nevada politicians.

<snip>

[NNadir]

1. But the fossil fuel waste problem is of no concern whatsoever.

This is because we just dump carbon dioxide and other fossil fuel wastes, dangerous acids, carcinogens into the air, water, and land. Who cares?

Unlike the problem of so called "nuclear waste," which is easily solved, the waste of fossil fuels has no solution. Therefore fossil fuels, which actually kill people on a scale of millions, not even counting resource wars, are perfectly acceptable.

So called "nuclear wastes" which have zero fatalities connected with them are what we should really worry about. They're scary.

[lindisfarne]

2. Actually, the article doesn't say that. But solar and wind can go quite

a ways toward offsetting fossil fuels, as can conservation. Better to find an alternative to the fuels (fossil, nuclear) which cause difficult, long-lasting problems; clean fuels like solar and wind are good alternatives.

[NNadir]

3. And the wastes from solar and wind go where?

The external cost of nuclear energy is lower than solar energy, which has yet to produce a single exajoule of energy on this planet fifty years after it's invention. In fact that no one notices the toxicity associated with solar power is largely a function of the fact that, on practical terms, the industry is miniscule. There is not one nation on the face of the earth that produces even 1% of its electricity from solar power, although people have been bragging about solar power for 50 (useless) years. Meanwhile they spew out oil and coal wastes, happily, with huge indifference, killing people in the millions, year after year, and making big speeches about so called "nuclear waste," which has thus far killed zero people.

Wind power is intermittant. Therefore if you exclude nuclear power as a backup, you are insisting on the use of fossil fuels.

The safest, continuous scale, scalable fuel in the world, by far, is nuclear power.

The external costs of various forms of energy are given, as always, here:

http://www.externe.info/expoltec.pdf

Figure 9 gives the results in such as form as anyone can see.

The claptrap about solar and wind fantasy is a form of inaction. The world as a whole should be screaming to become like France where almost all of the electricity is nuclear. Most of our lives will depend on that.

[lindisfarne]

5. I realize YOUR opinion is fixed, but there are respected experts who

disagree with your opinion.

Just what is your objection to conservation?
Wind and solar have become more and more efficient; had government research funds been dedicated towards improving them as Jimmy Carter called for in the late 1970s, they would be much more widely used and more efficient than they are right now.

You cite one source, but there are many others who disagree with that source.

[NNadir]

15. What experts?

I'm dying to see who you regard as an expert on this subject.

[lindisfarne]

6. I would suggest we solve the problem as to what to do with the existing

nuclear waste before we build any more plants to generate more of it. And there are many sources which are not in agreement with your source.

Most sources suggest that the total costs associated with nuclear power (from construction to mining the uranium to decommissioning and dealing safely with nuclear waste (which we are leaving for humans to deal with thousands of years down the road)) exceed the costs associated with wind energy which generates an equivalent amount of electricity (and solar has become much more cost effective as well). "Even the pro-nuclear Bush Administration admits that the costs of nuclear energy exceed those of wind energy, for example." http://www.energybulletin.net/937.html; US-Energy Information Agency: Annual Energy Outlook 2004 with Projections to 2025, www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/index.html

The cost of an accident would be huge - not only to the power plant but to all the areas affected. Complete clean-up would not be possible. (without a doubt, this applies to the fossil fuels as well, but I've argued for renewable forms of energy (which doesn't include nuclear) to replace fossil fuels) to a large extent (Denmark gets 25% of its energy from wind).

"An accident like Chernobyl could have bankrupted the world's largest companies, and even a "minor" accident like the one at Three Mile Island required a decade-long, multi-billion dollar clean-up effort. Although nuclear power plant owners in the United States and many other countries are legally protected from off-site liabilities, the immediate damage to the plant and its owners could be devastating. A multi-billion dollar asset can be turned into an even larger liability in seconds, and this puts a risk premium on nuclear power plants. ... Of course, nuclear power could be completely reinvented with some currently undreamt of fuel cycle, or perhaps "cold fusion" will pan out. But such ideas are little more than speculative dreams, and meanwhile, a host of renewable generating technologies that don't rely on carbon-based fuels are rapidly entering the market. And in the last few years, there has been nearly as much solar and wind capacity being added each year as there is nuclear capacity. ... Renewable energy is available in vast quantities, easily able to provide all of the world's power in the next century. The solar energy alone falling on the earth's surface each day is equivalent to 6,000 times total commercial energy use. Europe could easily get 30 percent of its electricity from wind power alone, and solar energy and biomass could provide similar amounts. ... Systemic change can begin slowly, but gather momentum quickly. At the turn of the twentieth century, the gasoline-powered car was still competing with the horsedrawn carriage and the steam engine- and electric battery-powered car, while oil accounted for just 2.4 percent of U.S. energy use. Within a generation, however, the internal combustion engine had displaced the others; oil had surpassed coal by 1921; and by 1930, 80 percent of the country's industrial equipment had been electrified."
http://arkisto.sll.fi/tiedotus/pressreleases/DeclineOfNuclearPower.html
===========================================
Only recently is the reality of the Chernobyl accident coming to light (yes, I am aware it was a reactor that worked in a way different from those in the US); it is turning out that there was a lot of cover up in terms of numbers of people affected, amount of fallout, etc. Even in the US, however, we have come close to catastrophic accidents with nuclear power plants.

==============================================
Just one overview of some of the relevant factors concerning nuclear power can be found here:
http://econet.sk.ca/issues/mining/green_alt.html
A cheaper and more effective alternative to an investment in uranium/nuclear is to invest in an energy path based on a mix of sustainable options. The most promising approach, especially in the short term, is a systematic plan to improve energy efficiency.

This can be accompanied by the development of a wide range of small, benign, affordable, socially acceptable, and renewable energy alternatives such as co-generation, wind, solar, and biomass conversion.
=================================================
(By the way, you never responded to my question (in the herbicide from GM corn) about where the evidence about the potential danger (or safety) of a product is supposed to come from if the corporations don't run the tests to ascertain the safety of their products)

[NNadir]

16. I suggest we give a rat's ass about wastes that kill people.

Did you ever hear of carbon dioxide?

The usual anti-nuclear arguments, which have all been more or less rejected by anyone who matters, ignore dangerous wastes (those that cause global climate change) while worrying about those that have killed zero people.

If you, unlike the thousands of people who parrot this scientifically and morally abysmal nonsense, year after year, day after day, decade after decade, can produce the body of one person killed by the storage so called nuclear waste, do so. I can easily produce evidence of millions of people killed each year by air pollution - something to which you are completely indifferent. I have issued this challenge hundreds of times on this website, and have yet to find, including Chernobyl an example where the person in question can reproduce as a product of nuclear energy the number of deaths from air pollution in a single year in the United States. Nor can I find examples of persons able to reproduce the number of deaths associated with coal mining. Nor can I find an example of a person who can understand a simple journal article on actinide chemistry. Maybe you haven't noticed, but tens of thousands of people have died in resource wars while we wait for your grand renewable future.

I have not met one person of the "solar will save us" nonsense religion who can address one of these comments. Not one. Nor have I met a single example of such a person who can show a single exajoule produced by solar energy out of the 440 exajoules of energy demanded on the face of the earth, even at the vast majority of the six billion people here live in abject poverty. Nor can I produce one who can tell me what exactly they suppose to do when the wind isn't blowing at night should their Disneyland vision of energy come to pass. Nor, for that matter can I find one who can manage even the most simple discussion of nuclear engineering, never mind the reactor physics of advanced fuel cycles.

What the clarion call to solar-wind-tides blah, blah, blah really is, is nothing more than a middle class call for inaction in the name of the banal comfort of self-congratulatory ignorance. But the lives with whom you are gambling are not just the lives of people who buy into your wishful thinking; they are the lives of my children. And I am going to defend my children against the snake oil you are selling.

You are all at about at the same intellectual, scientific and moral level, which is, in my view, outrageously pathetic.

You come here seeking the mantle of an expert, mouthing claptrap about which you clearly know nothing, clap trap that has been exploded in this forum several thousand times, and have the gall to demand a response.

100% of the time, I get from people (with zero appreciation of science) a list of their favorite self-referential websites all of which that "prove" nuclear power is dangerous. What zero percent of these people can produce is an alternative that are 1) less dangerous - and it isn't solar energy - 2) that is reliable 3) that is scalable and 4) affordable. What I hear is just a list of 50 year old platitudes about what rich spoiled brats can do with $50,000 in spare change available to "save the earth," "saving the earth," being remarkably coincident with "saving their middle class butts," while trying to conceal the guilt.

And what I find really, really, really, really, really reprehensible is to hear a luddite argument from someone who claims to despise industrial agriculture, about the potential of biomass. You have absolutely no right whatsoever to appeal to biomass. You have already said that you favor the limiting of crop technology. You cannot produce a single farm from your holistic fairy land that operates on a closed fuel cycle. Not one. How do I know? Because I've been looking at this 3 card monty game for decades.

I'm glad that you can shop at the organic food store and buy "wholesome" soy milk raised from fields fertilized by cow shit from organically fed free range cows treated with great sensitivity and kindness right up to the moment they're executed to be placed, chopped into little pieces, on the wholesome "organic" meat rack at Mother Gooch's in Los Angeles at twenty bucks a pound. That isn't happening in Mali or in Mauritania. I'm glad that you have installed $50,000 worth of solar equipment on your organic farm. The people in Indonesia or in most of India cannot do this.

You have no idea about energy, and are perfectly willing to take food out of people's mouths to fuel your automobile, of course, because it's no skin off your back. You don't know what hunger is, at least not yet. You may find out however, especially when global climate change crashes on the heads of all humanity, something that you - with this nuclear energy fear mongering - are working to see happen.

Tonight I'm watching the film Empire of the Sun wherein a spoiled child ends up discovering that he will make almost any moral compromise for a potato. Somehow I think this movie has some relevance to the argument about solar energy, although I'll bet that the "solar will save us" crowd would have as hard a time comprehending how this is so. The ability to comprehend what I mean here from this crowd might even fall below their of understanding risk/benefit analysis and the expectation values associated with energy risk.

I've been hearing this same bull crap about the grand renewable future for more than 30 years, and the reciters of these chants and prayers still don't have even the remotest sense of scale. They've had decades to put up and still they will revert to excuses, platitudes and a circle jerk of links to self-referential websites.

100% of the people making the same tired claims you make here are perfectly let the seas rise up to our necks, to let billions of people starve, while waiting for their sun god to magically descend. I have been saying the same thing over and over and over and over to the people who produce this nonsense: It is immoral and elitist.

As for your nonsense stuff about GM corn, which is a classic in misapprehension of science and poor thinking, I already gave it too much attention. It deserved what it got from me, but it deserves nothing more. Sometimes I think I dignify illiteracy too much by responding to it. I'm doing it right now in fact, and now, shaking my head, I'm going to stop on the grounds that you've already have had more comment than you deserve. You are a conspiracy thinker, appealing to nonsense about "cover-ups" and demon "corporations."

It's pure crap.

[lindisfarne]

19. We'll have to agree to disagree. You're quite forceful in your opinions

but your force isn't backed up with convincing evidence. I've cited a variety of sources to back my opinions up. Chernobyl, Love Canal, are two examples of the danger of nuclear power plants (about Chernobyl's Impact on France: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042506H.shtml; see also http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/index.cfm/page/article/id/2654 for a Le Monde article; see http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/index.cfm/page/article/id/2654 for an article discussing the concerns that the concrete "sarcophagous" covering the Chernobyl reactor is deteriorating quickly - one quote: "Earlier this year Julia Marusych, the head of information at Chernobyl, admitted on Russian TV that the sarcophagus was in appalling condition: "The construction is unstable, unsafe, and does not meet any safety requirements.").

It's not a choice: either continue our current rate of use of fossil fuel, or go nuclear. There are options such as wind power and solar which are viable, and which greatly reduce CO2 and other pollutants; wind power reduces CO2 more than nuclear power does (once you take in all the sources of CO2, from construction to decommissioning, to protecting plant, to dealing with nuclear waste). See my other messages in this thread for documentation.

As for your question about instances of danger from nuclear power plants and fuel storage - here are a few:

(to see abstracts for first three peer-reviewed articles below, go to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=PubMed and type in author's last names; year or article title may also help; I restricted the search to just one journal: Archives of Environmental Health).
1: Mangano JJ, Sherman J, Chang C, Dave A, Feinberg E, Frimer M. Related Articles, Links
Elevated childhood cancer incidence proximate to U.S. nuclear power plants.
Arch Environ Health. 2003 Feb;58(2) 74-82.
PMID: 12899207

2: Mangano JJ, Gould JM, Sternglass EJ, Sherman JD, Brown J, McDonnell W. Related Articles, Links
Infant death and childhood cancer reductions after nuclear plant closings in the United States.
Arch Environ Health. 2002 Jan-Feb;57(1):23-31.
PMID: 12071357

3: Hoffmann W, Dieckmann H, Dieckmann H, Schmitz-Feuerhake I. Related Articles, Links
A cluster of childhood leukemia near a nuclear reactor in northern Germany.
Arch Environ Health. 1997 Jul-Aug;52(4):275-80.
PMID: 9210727
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http://www.nuclearpolicy.org/index.cfm/page/article/id/2611
Cosgrove recalled a 2002 spill of diesel fuel that was initially mischaracterized by Braidwood's operators as run-off from a parking lot. When information about the tritium spills arose as part of the town's since-dropped lawsuit over the fuel, Exelon asked the court to bar any questions about it.
<snip>
A local doctor and his wife, Joseph and Cynthia Sauer, whose daughter contracted brain cancer when they lived near the Dresden plant, have collected data about heightened rates of cancer and birth defects near the Illinois plants in the period after the spills began. They say they were brushed off by the NRC.
<snip>
In recent months, Exelon disclosed that water with tritium spilled four times from the underground pipe between 1996 and 2003. Those spills contaminated groundwater outside the plant and led to four recent lawsuits, one filed by Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan and State's Atty. James Glasgow, against Exelon.

Glasgow was at the Exelon meeting, as were representatives from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, which has cited Exelon for the groundwater contamination. So was the Nuclear Regulatory Agency, which is probing spills at Braidwood and two other nuclear power plants Exelon owns in Illinois.

Tritium, a byproduct of nuclear generation, can enter the body through ingestion, absorption or inhalation. Chronic exposure can increase the risk of cancer, birth defects and genetic damage. County, state and federal officials have said the levels of tritium in groundwater outside the Braidwood plant are not a public health threat.
<snip>
"What I am alarmed by is the number of years it has taken, and how lax the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been, and how lax the corporation has been in informing the community fully" about the spills, he said.

[lindisfarne]

7. wind power: lowest ext. costs of all energy technologies–0.1 eurocent/KWh

Costs of wind power: http://www.scandinavica.com/culture/nature/wind.htm
Wind turbines cause virtually no emissions during their operation. The EU Commission’s ExternE Research Project calculates that wind power has the lowest external costs of all energy technologies – 0.1 eurocent/kWh compared to 4 and 7 eurocent/kWh for coal and brown coal in Denmark. Denmark’s use of clean wind energy is saving our atmosphere from about 5.2 million tonnes of CO2, contributing to a cleaner planet.
http://www.scandinavica.com/culture/nature/wind.htm

[Dead_Parrot]

8. "during their operation" is the key phrase

When you include the production of the wind turbines (or PV, or whatever) you'll find a slightly different picture. Nuclear waste isn't melting the fucking glaciers, CO₂ is. When the CO₂ generated from the production of wind turbines and PV is as contained as the waste from a nuclear power station, come back and bitch about it. But while the waste from nuclear power is contained, and the waste from wind is just spewed out into the atmosphere, you really don't have an argument there.

Incedentally, nuclear waste isn't quite the problem you think it is. Instead of googling "Yucca mountain", google "COGEMA La Hague".

[lindisfarne]

10. Nuclear power plants while in operation may not generate much CO2 but

the costs associated with building and decommissioning nuclear power plants, and dealing with nuclear waste, as well as cleaning up nuclear fallout from a nuclear accident, certainly generate CO2. And CO2 isn't the only dangerous thing to worry about; I'm just as worried about the problems resulting from nuclear accidents and the issues associated with nuclear waste remaining radioactive for thousands of years as I am about CO2.

I don't think nuclear power is the only option. Surely the US could, for example, conserve - we use on average per capita 2-3 times the energy that is used in western Europe. Additionally, the costs associated with building wind turbines (and the CO2 resulting) is not huge - certainly not larger than all the CO2 resulting from building & decommissioning power plants, and storing nuclear waste for 10,000 years, along with the CO2 resulting from protecting them from terrorist attack. Solar power indeed still has a ways to go, but had adequate research dollars been invested by the federal government in the last 30 years, we'd be a whole lot closer. Indeed, in the last 10 years, great strides have been made with solar power and quite frankly, investment in solar power does pay for itself, it simply takes 10-15 years. Right now solar panels are quite expensive as Germany and Japan have been buying the bulk of what's available and production isn't keeping up with demand. But the demand should lead to greater investments in production, and mass production leads to cheaper prices, so with time, the price should go down.

Your use of "bitch about" was impolite and uncalled for. Please be more polite in the future. Even when one disagrees with another person, one can do so politely and civilly.

[Dead_Parrot]

17. Did you even look at the graph I posted?

The lifecycle GHG emissions of nuclear power are below the lifecycle emissions of any other form of power. Including wind, wave, solar, even hydro. Again I will point out that used nuclear fuel - even on a brain-dead once-through cycle, such as the US currently employs - is not causing the icecaps to melt.

No, nuclear is not the only option. But neither should be be discarded because people like Greenpeace lack a basic understanding of the technology. That you are as scared of another Chernobyl as you are of climate change shows, unfortunately, that you have absolutely no idea of exactly how much trouble the planet is in at the moment. I'd suggest you go and watch "An Inconvenient Truth" when you get chance - and if you've already seen it, watch in again but pay attention.

As to solar being set back by the government, I would point out - again - the the US is not the entire planet. Reagan didn't cut the research budgets of the Japanese or the European states, who spend a lot more on R&D than the US. And solar is still 30 years from being useful - 30 years that we just don't have.

As for being polite and civil, let me tell you my circumstance:

I am a father. I have a daughter, about 18 months old. For the sake of her future, we have moved from the UK to NZ, which - on current projections - is the country that should be least affected by climate change. It is a net producer of food and has fairly intact biodiversity. The cost of this, is that we are now nearly 12,000 from our friends and family, which I hope you can grasp the meaning of: but it's a price we're prepared to pay.

Despite this, she is growing up in a world of melting icecaps and bleached coral, storms and heat waves, and a biosphere that simply cannot cope with the billions of tons of CO₂ we produce. The insistence of certain parties that we wait 20 or 30 years to switch straight to renewable power is adding to the problem, not detracting from it.

When the anti-nuclear protesters apologise to my daughter for given her a spoiled planet, I'll change my attitude. Not before.

[lindisfarne]

18. You're more responsible for pollution than the anti-nuclear protesters.

How much pollution do you yourself generate? Certainly far more than the world's average citizen. What are you prepared to give up in order to conserve? I suspect you already conserve quite a bit, relative to the average citizen of New Zealand, or the US, but you still are responsible for far more pollution than the world's average citizen (on a per capita basis, a person in the developing world produce a fraction of the amount of the world's pollution that a person in the developed world produces).

I did look at your graph, but other sources disagree with that graph, including the US Energy Information Agency, largely due to their taking into account all CO2 produced by everything associated with a nuclear power plant (construction, protecting, decommissioning, safe-guarding power plant and nuclear waste). For example: Even the pro-nuclear Bush Administration admits that the costs of nuclear energy exceed those of wind energy, for example." http://www.energybulletin.net/937.html ; US-Energy Information Agency: Annual Energy Outlook 2004 with Projections to 2025, www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/index.html
(I posted this in an earlier message).

However, even if your graph were correct (and I'm fairly certain it's not for the nuclear), the difference between nuclear and wind is quite small, and solar isn't too far behind. Surely replacing 30%-50% of fossil fuel sources with wind and solar would go a long, long way to dealing with CO2 - without taking on the risk and expense of nuclear power plants; conservation in the US could easily reduce emissions by another 20% (if there was the political will to do this).

Locally produced energy is far more preferable in many ways - wind and solar represent a means of local production. Nuclear is not a local source, yet another problem with nuclear.

Additionally, CO2 isn't the only pollutant we have to worry about; there are many others, and just to remind: nuclear waste is a pollutant, too.

Also, see my message about nuclear power in unstable areas: do you really want to see the world have no alternative but nuclear? Accidents like Chernobyl would become far more frequent. Even the world's superpowers had "accidents" or came very close to them. If they can't prevent "accidents", who can? Stable regions in one decade can become instable in the next - which increases greatly the risk of nuclear power plants and "accidents". This is just one more factor contributing to the value of using renewable sources of energy rather than nuclear.

[Dead_Parrot]

20. Really?

Between the three of us, we get through about US$75 of mainly hydro-generated power per month, heat and hot water are from a local sustained forest and the car hasn't moved in three weeks. It adds up to about 700kg per year, while the global average for 3 people would be 3420kg (19,800 kg for 3 average Americans). So no, unless you're suggesting we sit in the dark at night I don't have many options for reducing it.

But you raise an interesting point about the rest of the world: Most people need more power, not less. Unless, of course, you're suggesting that the 3 billion or so people who currently get by without modern hospitals, communications and transport can stay in poverty.

Hey, that's a good idea, we can tell them to fuck off and we'll stop increasing global emissions. That way, those of us in the Western world can carry on burning coal while we wait 30 years or so for cheap solar and a magic backup for wind power.

Then we'll let them have more than one light bulb in the village.

(We'll ignore the implications of peak oil and the vast amounts of extra primary power we're going to need in the near future, because that might involve thinking.)

I don't like repeating myself, but I'll say it again: I am not saying that there is no alternative to nuclear. What I am saying is that it shouldn't be discarded because the waste is actually contained and has to be dealt with. Since you appear to think that a 35-year-old soviet reactor is the state of the art in nuclear power, I don't expect you to fully grasp the implications, but I'm not your teacher. You'll have to educate yourself if you want to get to grips with it.

It's not that hard, BTW - both myself and NNadir used to be anti-nuclear campaigners, but we got better. :)

[Dead_Parrot]

4. The article reflects the problem quite well...

...albeit unintentially: Like the article, the US is more interested in terrorism than it is in recycling. SFGate seems to following the Bush line, which is odd - I always had it pegged as a fairly liberal paper.

The extent to which Europe recycles fuel already is hardly conveyed by "it's far from clear that reuse will ever happen", but then we see on a regular basis that opponents of nuclear power like to look at the piss-poor US nuclear industry, rather than take lessons from the French.

Oh well.

[Oerdin]

9. I've given up.

These anti-nuclear people are too stupid to bother with. They will continue masturbating to the dream of solar power after the ice caps have melted and they'll still be pointing fingers at everyone else. You see, their obfuscation could never be part of the problem. It will always be someone else's fault. :rolleyes:

I blame this on the failure which is the American education system. Uneducated people can't understand science no matter if it is evolution or nuclear energy which we are talking about. The uneducated are simply sheep who will be herded which ever way the wind blows. We are in a very sad place as a society and DU is no exception.

[lindisfarne]

11. So you'd have no objection to moving to the area right around Chernobyl?

Or being in the area of fallout from a nuclear accident? What about all the costs (in terms of pollution) associated with building & decommissioning power plants, transporting and storing nuclear waste (for 10,000 years), and protecting nuclear power plants from terrorist attack (even if you don't believe such attack is likely, they are being protected)?

What if the US cut its energy consumption by 20%? On a per capita basis, we use 2-3 times that of the countries of Western Europe. Just increasing overall fuel efficiency in cars & trucks by 50% (technologically, easily done; politically, it seems much more difficult) would get us pretty close to this 20% mark.

Nuclear power seems only to be trading one problem for another. Renewable energy and conservation are the far better options.

[Massacure]

12. Chernobyl is a wild life reserve now due to the lack of human activity.

We should keep it that way and not disturb the flourishing ecosystem.

[lindisfarne]

13. There are plenty of people living in the fallout area from Chernobyl

There's a 30 km zone immediately around Chernobyl which is closed, but beyond that, people are still being affected by the accident, including children born years after the accident.

So I repeat my question: are you willing to live in the fallout area around Chernobyl (in the area where people are allowed to live). And add a question: would you be willing to risk your life the way thousands of men did in the days immediately after Chernobyl? (I spoke to someone who came from hundreds of miles away - they were allowed to go in for some ridiculously short period of time (a minute or so) and that was it. They had a huge radiation exposure in this short amount of time and now these people are suffering health effects. Men came from all over the western areas of the former Soviet Union (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia; the person I spoke to was in the Pskov region of Russia) - without their willingness to take such a huge risk, the damage would have been even greater.)
------------------------------------
Belarus suffered most: according to the World Bank, 70 per cent of the radioactive fallout landed there, affecting more than 3,600 towns and villages, 2.5 million people and a quarter of farmland and forests. A quarter of Belarus still has some contamination. Most of the problem was and is in the Gomel region.
<snip>
'Before 1985, the common number of kids being born in Gomel region was 28,000 a year and the hospital had 350 beds,' says Olga Pushchenka, the hospital's deputy chief doctor. 'Now the number of kids being born is about 14,000 and the number of beds is the same and we don't have spare beds. The kids suffer more often, and diseases are more severe.'
<snip>
Later Iryna Kalmanovich, a senior doctor in the hospital's intensive care unit, tours the wards, where she says they have daily evidence of a huge increase in premature children. In several cots are unmoving babies who, like Sasha, have hydrocephalus. One two-day-old boy is trembling due to a problem with his nervous system. Many of the tiny bodies are hooked to ventilators and drips. 'We can give life, but not quality of life,' says Dr Kalmanovich, standing in the drab corridor, echoing with children's chatter. 'The number of absolutely healthy newborns is around 25 per cent, maybe 30 to 40.'

She says the hospital is full of fallout from Chernobyl: 'Young women who were girls then, now they are becoming mothers and the health of those young women is not really good.'
<snip>
The scientists found unexpected increases in thyroid cancer in children born after the isotopes of iodine believed responsible for it would have ceased to be a danger. 'It is still very early days in terms of evaluating the full radiological impact.'

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1759370,00.html
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Another source: http://www.nirs.org/c20/torch.pdf , p. 77
By January 2005, 3,270 patients had been operated on for thyroid cancer in Ukraine (9). Children from 17,000 communities (ie 60% of all communities of Ukraine) received thyroid doses greater than the limits in force. The total collective dose to the thyroid in Ukraine is estimated to be 1,300,000 man/Gy, of which about half (607,000 man/Gy) is to 0-18 year
olds. Also the cumulative incidence of thyroid diseases is expected to increase in future. (7, 12) Various experts estimate that the lifetime risk of thyroid cancer for children who were 0-4 years old at the time of the accident will reach 30%. (12, 13). These estimates cannot be treated as final (12) until the completion of cohort epidemiology studies (over
the next 20 years when all the radiation–induced thyroid cancers in the exposed population will have arisen).

For cancers in the exposed adult population, there has been a 2-fold increase in breast cancer, and a 2 to 7 fold increase in thyroid cancer. (7)

In the post-accident period, increases in cardiovascular, neurological, respiratory, digestive, and bone-muscular diseases have been registered among the affected populations. Over 105,000 disabled exposed people are registered in Ukraine, including over 2,000 children. They are disabled from diseases related to a complex of factors from the Chernobyl catastrophe and require annual therapy. The children are registered as invalids due to cancers, congenital malformations, and diseases of endocrine, nervous, respiratory and digestive systems. (8)

Genomic instability from long-term low-level radiation exposure is a newly discovered effect which remains under investigation. Uptakes of low levels of caesium, strontium, plutonium and other radionuclides by mothers and their fetuses may cause additional cancers, leukaemias and congenital diseases in the first generation. This makes the problem especially urgent. Unfortunately, there is little coordination between post-Chernobyl researchers in Ukraine, as there has been no systematic collection, standardisation and evaluation of findings as yet. This means that valuable findings are not properly analyzed or compared with other findings. Data from the National Chernobyl Registry are not properly assessed which makes it impossible to estimate the real levels of radiation effects on the population from the accident at present. The main health effects considered to be connected to Chernobyl exposures are cancers and diseases of the cardiovascular, blood and nervous systems; and among children – cancers and congenital malformations.(9).
During 2005, mortality indices increased slightly among the population affected by Chernobyl and total mortality in Ukraine also increased. Mortality indices among liquidators are constantly increasing. The highest mortality level is among the adult population resident in radioactively-contaminated territories. At the same time, birth rates in all observation groups are distinctly decreasing. Taking into account a decreased latency period of oncological abnormalities, the survival of Chernobyl victims becomes even more problematic. (9)

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See also http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.htm?programID=06-P13-00016&segmentID=2

GELLERMAN: Scientists aren't only looking at cancer. New studies indicate a rise in cataracts and perhaps heart disease among people exposed at levels previously considered too low to have an effect. To understand the long-term impact of radiation Chernobyl researchers have had to turn to Japan.

Chernobyl producd 250 times as much radiation as was created by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.

[lindisfarne]

14. How about nuclear reactors in instable areas of the world? We already

have Chernobyl as an example of how a nuclear accident extends far beyond a country's borders.

In my opinion, it is far better to invest in renewable energy sources to make them affordable to instable countries, rather than have these instable countries invest in nuclear power. As the recent turmoil (last 15 years) in the Balkans has shown, even relatively stable areas can become instable. How do we ensure that nuclear power plants in those areas remain safe? Even superpowers (the Soviet Union and the United States - Love Canal came really close, and there have been other more minor safety issues in the US) couldn't ensure this, and I greatly worry about China, given their environmental track record.

As nuclear power plants age, they become less safe - steps can be taken to manage this but it remains without question an issue; this is why nuclear power plants have a limited life. This is a huge issue for many of the world's nuclear power plants because so many of them are nearing the end of their expected life cycle.