President Obama kills Yucca Mountain in his draft budget

16 Responses to “President Obama kills Yucca Mountain in his draft budget”

1. Charles Langley on May 12th, 2009 3:06 pm

   Mike,
   Great article about a little-known topic. It seems that the Yucca Mountain debate has evolved into a political strategy of the US, not just Presidents Bush or Obama, to place leverage on Tehran, Iran. In exchange for nuclear businesses sending their waste to Russia, a very lucrative deal, they will help “desist” Iran in their nuclear ambitions. Brought up by President Bush, it seems Congress is not satisfied with that solution. However, I don’t know the current thinking from the new administration.

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/07/AR2006070701588.html

2. William Larsen on May 13th, 2009 1:41 pm

   Mike, great easy to read information. As you know I designed and built nuclear reactors for the Navy and worked on high level waste storage on the civilian side.

   In 1992 we put together a list of all reactor sites, the size of their spent fuel pools and the number of fuel assemblies in both the core and spent fuel pool. Without doing anything these reactors would have to shut down prior to end of life (40 years). The reason was they were paying a tax for the government to take the fuel away.

   One method and cheapest is to use poison pins and rewrack the fuel pool. This allows the spent fuel assemblies to be spaced closer together. This generally allows 10 to 15% more assemblies to be stored.

   Then there is dry storage. I worked on what was called CONSTAR. A large 100 ton concrete cast with a life of 40 years using heat tubes to dissipate the heat. This was costly, heavy and the utility needed a land. Other units are Nuhomes.

   Then there was disassembly of the fuel assembly. I worked on and tested a machine to pull the fuel rods out of the fuel assembly, identify the fuel rod number, keep track of the location in the container and crush the non fuel bearing material. For every ten fuel assemblies you free up four spaces. This was far cheaper than any other option but had one snag. The agreement was to take the spent fuel. If you disassembled the spent fuel rod from the non fuel bearing structure, you were on the hook for the non fuel bearing structure disposal.

   We looked at temporary storage sites located on Indian land. The Indians liked it. It provided income. This was shot down when states prohibited the transportation across through their states.

   Then there is a problem with Boiling water reactors. This type has a high amount of Ferris Oxide with a bit of cobalt. The stuff is highly radioactive and “bleeds” as the fuel assembly is moved from the reactor core to the spent fuel pool making it hard to see what is being done as well as contaminating everything in the water (tools, equipment, casks, everything).

   My view of nuclear power is it is dead. This does not mean that nuclear power is not safe, it is, but the problem with storing the nuclear waste is not feasible. The cost of storing this waste for thousands of years is cost prohibitive. The cost of shipping this waste is costly. To secure this waste will be a monumental cost. The best thing to do is to move the waste from the utilities to Yucca Mountain and lock it up.

   The last time I checked 18 reactors have applied for or are in the process of shutting down ( 103 original units). The rest will be off line shortly. We also have six or more utilities with nuke plants who a are suing the DOE for breach of contract for not taking the nuclear waste as contracted. The Cost will be in the 100’s of billions.

3. Bob G. on May 22nd, 2009 11:01 am

   Makes me wonder after all those plant “decomms” where EXACTLY is that spent fuel SUPPOSED to go anyway?
   (hint: I’ve got more than a few political alimentary canals in mind, that are available)

4. William Larsen on May 22nd, 2009 11:36 am

   When a plant shuts down, the spent fuel pool is kept in operation to store the thousands of one ton fuel assemblies. This entails many things.

   You need security to guard the stuff. This stuff is highly radioactive. You need to constantly add DI water as the spent fuel gives up heat causing the water to evaporate. You need pumps to circulate the water in the 40 foot pool. You need overhead cranes to move the spent fuel assemblies.

   How long are the stainless steel pools good for? I know from first hand experience that irradiated fuel assemblies shatter like glass. Granted, the neutron flux in the spent fuel pool is very low compared to an operating core. However, glass turns yellow after a few months. Poly hoses become brittle in weeks.

   Nuclear power may be clean in producing electricity, but storing the waste is a headache beyond anyone worst nightmares.

   PS.. I was asked to be part of a team to design a storage cask for YUCCA mountain. The design criteria was to be leak tight for 10,000 years.

5. Steve G on May 23rd, 2009 7:31 am

   What has been done lately about advanced reprocessing techniques for waste material? The French are more dependent on nuclear energy compared to US (75% to 20%). They are more capable to reuse their waste material.

   How does Obama plan to generate enough electricity for his new GM line of electric cars? Wind generators???

6. William Larsen on May 27th, 2009 1:54 am

   Steve, President Carter signed an executive order back in 1976 that prohibited the US from reprocessing nuclear waste. The reason was how to manage the by product plutonium. With so many fuel assemblies, who would be responsible for keeping track of every single fraction of a gram? This led to charging utilities a fee for every fuel assembly. This fee was to pay for the transportation by the DOE to a storage facility operated by DOE.

   Now the French have the a high number of reactors based on their size. They also reprocess their nuclear waste and this reduces the amount of usable energy that in the US would be buried. It also separates out a tiny fraction of the actual unusable waste to be stored. However, let us get back to basics. The cost of operating a nuclear power plant is about the most expensive energy there is. T.Boon Pickens placed a $2 Billion order for windmills. The output was equivalent to two nuclear power plants. The latest quote for a nuclear power plant was over $14 Billion ant it was still increasing.

   Advance reprocessing techniques? There really is nothing mythical about reprocessing nuclear waste. You break it up, dissolve it, put it through a centrifuge,extract and separate the plutonium, U-235 and U-238. You then make new fuel pellets, insert them into a tube, weld two end plugs on it, drill a hole in one plug, draw a vacuum and laser weld the hole shut. Add this fuel rod with many others to form a fuel assembly. PS make sure you have a lot of shielding while you disassemble the fuel assembly and its sub processing. Maintenance is a PIA.

   A nuke plant would take ten years to construct if not more. Until it was completely done, not a single watt of electricity would ever reach the power grid. However, windmills would be capable of adding additional power each day to the grid on an incrementally increasing basis.

   As for producing electricity to operate electric cars, it does not take a large nuclear power plant to do it. Right now they are looking at integrating windmills along existing power lines. The windmills have much lower output which means the existing lines can handle the power and it is decentralized doing away with the need for large capacity lines.

   To me the choice is simple. Burn coal at a cost of 6.8 cents a kwhr, nuclear at 14 cents a kwhr (not including waste storage), natural gas at 6 cents a kwhr and windpower at 3.8 cents a kwhr, clean coal technology will cost tens of billions to develop and even more to implement increasing the cost to 20 cents or more per kwhr making it more costly than solar panels today.

   Sure the wind does not blow all the time, so you have to have more reserve capacity than with nuclear or coal. How much reserve capacity can you buy for the cost of nuclear, clean coal, dirty coal or natural gas?

7. Keith on November 24th, 2009 12:30 am

   Mr. Larsen, you seem to have a lot of technical knowledge about things nuclear, but I don’t buy your logic, or many of your exaggerated claims. I’ve worked in the nuclear world most of my life, and your descriptions are a little over blown.

   Fuel rods don’t shatter on impact. BWRs aren’t a nightmare to refuel, and wind power is not cheap, not to mention that there’s no way it could replace the capacity of nuclear.

   All the “headaches” you enumerated for storing spent fuel and reprocessing are simple engineering issues and are successfully dealt with in other countries.

   The big crime is that Obama can come along and pull the plug on 25 years of work, as if he just “knows better”, even after Yucca has been recommended by the SEc of energy, and the previous President, and licensing on the way. We ought to all be up in arms that he would be so irresponsible with our money.

   If we really cared about the environment, climate change, and all that, we’d all be pro-nuke.

8. William Larsen on November 24th, 2009 2:18 am

   Keith, I have ten years in designing nuclear reactor components for the US navy and Commercial Reactors.

   The US does not reprocess nuclear waste. The only two countries I know of that do are France and Russia. All other countries that operate a nuke plant have an agreement to send the fuel back to the country of origin for storage or processing. the reason is that this material would be capable of supplying plutonium. Carter signed an executive order that prohibited the US from reprocessing. If this was changed, then yes the spent fuel waste would be greatly reduced.

   I spent four years in high level radioactive waste designing dry storage casks for storing spent fuel. I have actually been part and observed the removal from Millstone of one spent fuel assembly. The concept was to remove the fuel rods from two fuel assemblies (Cooled ten years) and place the rods in one container and shear the non fuel bearing cage dropping the pieces into another container. Performing this on ten fuel assemblies would require only six spent fuel spaces, freeing up 4. The cage shattered like glass. The smaller the pieces, the higher the packing fraction. Would this work, yes!!!

   However the DOE contract with utilities was to take the spent fuel. If a utility removes the fuel rods then the DOE will only take the fuel rods leaving the highly radioactive cage on site. By leaving the fuel assembly in one piece, the DOE will take it all.

   There is a difference between BWR and PWR reactors. BWR used non stainless pipe to the steam turbines. This pipe has cobalt. They did not use low cobalt alloy. Because of this, the Cobalt is highly radioactive and the steel has rusted. BWR spent fuel assemblies bleed like red ink when moved in the spent fuel pool. This stuff is called CRUD. I spent time with a team developing a magnetic filter to remove the Fe3O4 that comprises the CRUD. It is micron size and coats thickly the bottom half of the fuel rods. When the rods are pulled, this crud is removed and contaminates everything.

   I also worked in dry storage on CONSTAR, a 100 ton concrete cask with stainless liner and heat tubes to remove the heat from the decaying material. Loading these dry storage casks are not a technical challenge. You have a transfer cask that goes in the spent fuel pool, move the fuel assembly into the transfer cask, remove the cask, drain the water by drawing a vacuum and transfer the fuel assembly to the storage cask. Our storage cask required about 15 transfers.

   These dry storage casks are licensed for 40 years and then must be replaced. The cost is about $1 million each and they hold roughly 35 fuel assemblies out of about 300 in a core and 5,000 in a spent fuel pool.

   When I looked at building CONSTAR I found limited rail capabilities for moving it, build it on site. The team did a study on the 105 reactors that were in operation in 1991. Based on spent fuel pool size, age of the reactor, re-racking with poison pins and the total number of fuel assemblies being removed yearly, it was not possible to ship the necessary fuel assemblies fast enough to YUCCA mountain before there was a cascading shut down of nuclear sites due to reaching full core reserve.

   As for the enviornment, let us look at cost. Nuclear power without waste storage is well over 10 cents a kilowatt. Hydro electric is by far the cheapest at 3.7 cents. Wind Power comes in at 3.9 cents, followed by coal at 6 cents and natural gas is 6.5 cents and you do not want to consider solar at over 24 cents.

   According to Sandia National Laboratories, their study shows the US has over four times the wind needed to produce 100% of all the electricity in the US. They are refining this as windmill blades get larger and studies show how wind can be captured more efficiently by using a spiral type blade, to increase the friction of the wind on the blade, increasing power output.

   I was pro nuke for decades, but after working in the field, calculating the costs, the security, the waste, it just is not cost effective.

9. Andy on November 24th, 2009 11:19 am

   William Larsen, great statement regarding nuclear power:

   “Nuclear power may be clean in producing electricity, but storing the waste is a headache beyond anyone worst nightmares.”

   How are we even to consider adding more nuclear power plants when we can’t even “rid” ourselves (Yucca Mt.) of our current nuclear waste ?

   @Keith -

   I wouldn’t underestimate clean renewable energy if I were you.

   The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences report published this year illustrates the vast potential wind power has in supplying the world’s power needs:

   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/5603178/Wind-farms-could-supply-planets-power.html

   A couple huge factors to note about wind power:

   The wind is free. Sure you have to construct and maintain the turbines, but for the last bazillion years here on Earth, the wind has continued to blow and is available for those who are able to harness its power.

   You don’t have to go mine wind (like you would for the open pit mining needed for uranium in nuclear power, or remove mountain tops like the coal industry currently does in WV). No lakes, streams or drinking water will be polluted due to wind power. No black lung disease has ever been attributed to wind power.

   Want to be free of Mideast oil ? Switch to American wind power.

   Wind can be found almost anywhere. The study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states:

   “The analysis suggests that a network of land-based 2.5 megawatt turbines operating at as little as 20 per cent of rated capacity, confined to non-forested, ice-free regions would be more than sufficient to account for total current and anticipated future global demand for electricity.

   “The potential for the contiguous US could amount to more than 16 times current consumption. Important additional sources of electricity could be obtained by deploying wind farms in near-shore shallow water environments.”

   The last statement here is a biggie:

   16 times (the United State’s) current consumption.

   This doesn’t even factor in the potential solar power has in powering the southern portion of the U.S.

   In my opinion, the train has already left the station. Coal, oil, and natural gas will continue to power a good portion of the world, BUT the future is in renewables. Oil is finite. Coal is finite. Natural gas is finite.

   Wind and the sun have been around and will continue to be here, long after we are gone.

10. Keith on November 24th, 2009 1:38 pm

    Andy,

    I don’t think I’m underestimating renewables. If anything, I’m first and foremost an environmentalist. One of the main reasons we want renewable energy sources is to protect the planet. But those statements by Mr. Larsen that you like so much are just overblown hype. Storing (and/or reprocessing) spent fuel is in fact NOT a nightmare (his statement is just emotionally-charged opinion, with no basis in fact). The political struggle that has ensued (largely because of overblown hype like that) is what is the nightmare.

    Now, I’m a pragmatist, and I do realize that at some point, when the political will to do something is simply not there, it doesn’t make any sense to keep fighting. I’ve almost given up on nuclear because it is clear that between Carter and Obama, they’ve pretty much killed nuclear power. I think it’s a dreadful shame.

    The thing is, that the other claims of Mr. Larsen about the advantages of wind power are also overblown. There are numerous studies available that show that the REAL, leveled cost of wind power is among the highest (except solar) available. These studies take into account the entire lifecycle costs of all the power sources, and compare them as baseload sources. If you are claiming that wind can supply all our needs, then you are by definition assuming it is a baseload source.

    Of course, none of this touches on the other negatives of wind. You have to have the right kind of real estate, and lots of it. Or you have to put these things offshore, further raising the costs, etc.. Also - there is no such thing as a free lunch - ALL sources of energy have environmental costs. Producing, shipping, and siting turbines is not environmentally benign, nor is the maintenance, or disposal of the waste, nor is the impact of the spider-web of high-tension distribution lines that would have to engulf the country.

    The only real “down-side” to nuclear is waste disposal, the technical issues for which are not show-stoppers. In fact, when you look at the waste situation - think about it - essentially ALL the harmful waste generated at a nuke plant is measured, monitored and accounted for, and the overwhelming majority of it is sequestered and contained, packagable for transport, and readily dealt with for the long term. With other forms of energy, the waste products are pumped by the millions of tons into the atmosphere (think about the emissions produced when making the metals, plastics, composites, etc., that go into production of the millions of turbines and distribution lines needed). All those poisons go into the environment.

    What we need to be thinking about is MW/square foot - *power density*. The only reasonable way to meet the energy demands of our country or the world is to have energy sources that produce on order the same energy density as a large coal or nuclear plant. It takes on order of one thousand of those 2.5 MW turbines to churn out as much power as a two-unit nuclear site. Depending on whose estimates you go by, that wind farm would require something like 50,000 acres (compared to maybe 20 acres for a nuke). Wind power requires gigantic swaths of land (yes, you could farm some of the land, or make other use of it, but it would be dominated by the generators). And not everybody wants to see wind turbines towering above their heads everywhere they look. There are other known and unknown impacts to the environment.

    Mr. Larsen, I’ve worked at those Naval and commercial facilities you say you helped design components for. I’ve seen and handled fuel assemblies close-up, have been involved in lots of refuelings, at both PWR and BWR plants. I know what crud is. ALL fuel pools are grossly contaminated; the differences in PWR/BWR are dealt with in the design of the systems. These are simply non-issues.

    I’m also aware of the current state of the industry with respect to reprocessing, etc. Again, none of the technical problems with nuclear technology are show-stoppers. All of the impediment is political. But, as I mentioned, that’s as real as any impediment, and it may be that we’re just not going to go there. Again, in my estimate it’s a shame. I just hope we (or our grandchildren) are able to sleep in the bed we’re making for ourselves.

    I’d like to see us use the nuclear option for the next 100 years or so, in order to quickly get off the fossils, and buy some time. It’s the only technology we could quickly switch over to, that can adequately replace coal production, given the infrastructure and distribution systems currently available (without superhuman effort, this could be done in 20 years - complete replacement of fossil power). Then, during that 100 years that we buy (while cleaning up the atmosphere) we can be putting together the long-range plan. Any real sustainable future of power production scheme will require a complete reformation of power production and distribution technology. That is not going to happen by planting some wind-farms.

    Keith

11. Andy on November 24th, 2009 2:55 pm

    @Keith -

    I want to address a couple of statements you made:

    “The only real “down-side” to nuclear is waste disposal, the technical issues for which are not show-stoppers.”

    Myself and others would consider nuclear power plants to have other “down-side(s)” as well A big one would be MELT DOWNS, as we experienced at the United State’s Three Mile Island Nuclear power plant. According to a North Carolina study which compared cancer rates from residents who lived downwind from Three Mile Island at the time of the 1979 melt down, lung cancer rates were 2 - 10 x’s HIGHER than those of residents who lived upwind from the plant. Naturally, anyone living near or around a nuclear power plant would have valid safety concerns based on this study.

    The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster of 1986 is also an event which causes people to think twice about the consequences of nuclear energy. According to an IAEA report on the Chernobyl disaster, it is estimated that 800,000 people living around the power plant, suffered radiation exposure.

    Also, in order to have nuclear power for energy, we have to mine uranium in order to enrich the fuel. If you consider yourself to be “first and foremost an environmentalist” you would understand the negative and unhealthy consequences open pit mining of uranium has on our planet.

    There have been many studies conducted on the effect of uranium mining and the high rate of lung cancer in the workers who worked the mines. The Navajo Indians who worked in the uranium mines of the southwest U.S. have an abnormally high rate of lung cancer consequently attributed to their exposure to radon gas. The United States government even went as far to attempt to compensate uranium miners with the passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990. The name of the act speaks volumes alone…

    Not to mention, open-pit mining is one of the worst ways to mine. If you have ever had the good fortune to visit the Montana mining town of Butte, check out the Berkeley Pit. It once was a massive open pit copper mine, but now is a massive, open pit, toxic, cesspool lake. The site is now one of the largest Superfund sites in the U.S. of A. The abandoned Hanford site in Washington state is another large-scale superfund site which represents not only the environmental costs of nuclear production, but the long term financial costs to taxpayers as well.

    From the Dept of Energy Hanford webpage:

    “More than 53 million gallons of liquid radioactive waste remain in 170 aging, underground single-shell tanks (7 single-shell tanks retrieved to date).”

    Again, where are we going to store the nuclear waste generated from adding additional nuclear power plants in the U.S. ? People have huge concerns on the transporting, storage and security issues which accompany nuclear toxic waste.

    For the record, there have been no wind farm meltdowns, and no cases of cancer attributed to them. Further more, I see no Acts of Congress or Superfund site creation (bankrolled by taxpayers) needed to clean up a wind farm site in the advent it should close.

12. William Larsen on November 24th, 2009 4:35 pm

    Keith wrote “The only real “down-side” to nuclear is waste disposal, the technical issues for which are not show-stoppers. In fact, when you look at the waste situation - think about it - essentially ALL the harmful waste generated at a nuke plant is measured, monitored and accounted for, and the overwhelming majority of it is sequestered and contained, packagable for transport, and readily dealt with for the long term. With other forms of energy, the waste products are pumped by the millions of tons into the atmosphere (think about the emissions produced when making the metals, plastics, composites, etc., that go into production of the millions of turbines and distribution lines needed). All those poisons go into the environment.”

    Building more nukes will create more waste. Do you have any idea how much stainless goes into a commercial plant? The reactor vessel is huge. Nuetrons affect metals and make them brittle as they age. This is the reason why the 40year life span on a reactor vessel was set. Can the life be extended, yes, but where do we put the fuel that the spent fuel pool cannot hold? How do we transfer 20,000 fuel assemblies a year from the existing nuke plants when the casks hold 10 fuel assemblies? What do we do with the casks once they are past their life span, bury them too? What about all the fuel burned to transport a 1 ton fuel assembly? The cask weighs 26,000 lbs. It takes special trucks and its over weight. You also have to make sure the travel route is protected and keep traffic from either side. Do we make a dedicated road from each site to YUCCA mountain? We could use trains, but we run into the same problems as to sheilding as well as burning fuel (compact fuel) to move it.

    Has any waste been moved from one site to another in the U.S. in volumes of greater than ten fuel assemblies, no! Dry storage is an intermediate storage container prior to permanent storage and must be moved again at the end of 40 years into another container. I was asked to design a cask that was leak tight for 10,000 years. Do you have any idea of the complexity of this criteria? If it leaks (allows air into the cask and then as it is heated, causes a natural convection out of the cask, we would have potentially a problem. We would need to remove the cask from YUCCA mountain and place the fuel assemblies into a new cask. However, this evolution would be required every 10,000 years of so.

    The site I designed required spacing these large containers about 100 feet apart simply to move them to a pad. You then have the long term exposure to radiation. Dry storage containers do not have the same shielding as a spent fuel pool 24 inches of water = 1 inch of lead, 2 inches of steel = 1 inch of lead. 40 feet of water minus the height of the fuel assembly and rack leaves 20 feet above you which is equal to 10 inches of led. There is no dry storage container I know of that uses lead. All use Steel.

    Megawatt density is a nuke plant, no doubt about it. However a nuke plant shuts down for periodic outages to rearrange the core, remove spent fuel and add new fuel. This outage is normally about 2-3 weeks. Think about the loss in utilization during this time 100% removal of a core for generating electricity.
    A nuke plant of 3,500 megawatts (very large) would cost about $10 billion. You can buy 7,000 megawatts of wind turbines for the same cost and you do not have to pay for fuel. To build a nuke would require 10 to 15 years. You can begin installation of wind turbines in two months and begin generating electricity in three. In simple terms you can install the same power equivalent of wind in 1/10 the time it takes to build a nuke.

    Keith wrote “Depending on whose estimates you go by, that wind farm would require something like 50,000 acres (compared to maybe 20 acres for a nuke).”

    The nice thing about wind it that it does not required it be great land for farming. It can be creek bottom. I am looking at windpower on land in IL. I can fit up to six wind mills. The lease to the power company can provide about $90K a year, possibly more if energy continues to rise. The best part is the land can still be used to grow crops. Yes the wind farm might cover 50,000 acres, it would be well diversified in the even t of storms, ensuring power to local areas and still allow the majority of the acreage to be farmed. How much land do you think storing all the spent fuel from 105 reactors will take? Off course it would be buried in YUCCA mountain that spent billions already, but that was to dig some tunnels, not the entire project.

13. Keith on November 24th, 2009 5:10 pm

    Andy,

    I can address some of those issues. But, I always ask that these discussions must occur in context - nothing we do is without risk, and often, the risks of nuclear power production are not compared against other risks, they are simply pointed out, and deemed unacceptable. If we take that approach with any form of human activity, we will judge it to be too hazardous to do.

    “MELT DOWNS, as we experienced at the United State’s Three Mile Island Nuclear power plant.”

    Worst-case estimates of doses from TMI to members of the public are less than 100 millirem. You receive about 3-5 times that EVERY YEAR from natural and mandmade sources of radiation in the environment (mostly naturally occuring radioactivity and medical exposure). Those estimates have been shown to be reliable in study after study.

    “According to a North Carolina study which compared cancer rates from residents who lived downwind from Three Mile Island at the time of the 1979 melt down, lung cancer rates were 2 - 10 x’s HIGHER than those of residents who lived upwind from the plant.”

    You are referring to Steve Wing’s (anti-nuke activist) highly flawed study. If you read this study, you’ll see that he even editorializes about the dangers of nuclear power in his conclusions (you just don’t do that in a serious scientific study). This study has been completely discredited by the scientific community. Unfortunately, because it got so much attention (and is still carried around like a shrine by the antis), the state of Pennsylvania had to spend millions to commission their own studies just to prove once again what had already been shown by other studies, that there are no detectable cancer risks associated with TMI (which is what would be expected, based on the very small doses to people).

    “Naturally, anyone living near or around a nuclear power plant would have valid safety concerns based on this study.”

    They should not base their concerns on this study. They should base their understanding on the myriad other scientifically valid studies that have shown over and over that living near a nuclear power plant does not increase one’s cancer risk (because the doses are essentially nil).

    “The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster of 1986 is also an event which causes people to think twice about the consequences of nuclear energy. According to an IAEA report on the Chernobyl disaster, it is estimated that 800,000 people living around the power plant, suffered radiation exposure.”

    We ALL “suffer” radiation exposure. That figure means nothing. There is an old adage that is applicable to radiation, “the dose makes the poison”. There were a lot of people “exposed” to radiation by Chernobyl, but only a relatively small number received doses that were significantly above background.

    Now, hear me on this. Chernobyl was a disaster; a tragedy. Lots of people died (but there’s been an exaggeration of even that). And the sad part is that it was unnecessary. It was caused entirely by human error based in Soviet-era arrogance regarding the inherent safety of the plants and how the risks were no match for the “superior intellect” of the Soviet mind. If you have the chance, you should read NUREG-1250, the NRC’s report on Chernobyl, and also, even more importantly, if you can get your hands on it, an obscure publication called “Chernobyl Notebook” by Grigoriy Medvedev, it goes by the number JPRS-UEA-034-89. If you know anything about how a U.S. nuclear plant runs, what the procedures are like, what the resources are like, and you read this, it will astound you. You would not believe the inadequacy or total lack of any provision for basic nuclear safety, emergency response, radiation monitoring equipment, etc.; just the bare minimum of what is expected in the U.S. This document brings into stark contrast the night and day differences in the U.S. and Soviet programs (the obvious big difference that everyone knows about is the fact that Chernobyl has no containment building - the reactor and primary systems sit in what amounts to a Kelly Building).

    Again, Chernobyl was awful. But, keep in mind that a similar accident in the U.S. is essentially impossible, and again, there are risks in everything. There was a dam collapse in China some years back that killed over 200,000 people. Gas, oil, coal, hydro, geothermal, even wind power has risks associated with it. Oil refineries explode, etc., etc. (yes, even in the U.S.). But you don’t hear anyone banging the table screaming that we need to shut down all oil refineries immediately. There are thousands of deaths and injuries to workers and people in the public every year associated with energy production. Why do we hold nuclear power to the standard that NO deaths or injuries are tolerable, when we tolerate it from every other arena?

    “Also, in order to have nuclear power for energy, we have to mine uranium in order to enrich the fuel. If you consider yourself to be “first and foremost an environmentalist” you would understand the negative and unhealthy consequences open pit mining of uranium has on our planet.”

    Yes, I do. All uranium now mined in the U.S. is done by in-situ leaching. Yes, there are potential drawbacks to this method too, so environmental impact has to be looked at closely.

    “There have been many studies conducted on the effect of uranium mining and the high rate of lung cancer in the workers who worked the mines.”

    Mining (coal, uranium, whatever) is dangerous work. The same illnesses that beset uranium minors occur in non-uranium miners. Today, in the 21st century, we can learn from what we now know about these hazards, and either eliminate them through engineered controls, or use different technologies (like leaching).

    “The United States government even went as far to attempt to compensate uranium miners with the passage of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990. The name of the act speaks volumes alone…”

    If you let it, fear will destroy you. The RECA had as much or more to do with the “down-winders” of the nuclear test sites and the so-called “atomic vets” from military exposures as the miners. This turns quickly into a political argument, but, I can tell you this. The compensation act is NOT scientifically based (read what the Health Physics Society says about it http://hps.org/documents/compensation_ps014-0.pdf). This position statement was directed at the RECA though it doesn’t state it straight out. The intentions of the people who enacted the RECA were good. They aimed to compensate people who were potentially harmed by radiation from cold-war efforts. But let’s be clear on this. The act simply awards people money if they come down with one of the listed diseases, and they are identified as being in the subject group. It has NOTHING to do with any kind of scientifically-based assessment of whether or not those people contracted the disease from exposure to radiation. My personal feeling is that we owe that entire generation of Americans more than we can ever repay, and to them I say “thank you”, and I don’t begrudge a dime that we’d pay them for their service (and I said that in an OpEd a few years ago). But we should de-couple the idea that these payments are connected to actual harm done by radiation - nothing of the kind is taking place.

    “Not to mention, open-pit mining is one of the worst ways to mine. If you have ever had the good fortune to visit the Montana mining town of Butte, check out the Berkeley Pit. It once was a massive open pit copper mine, but now is a massive, open pit, toxic, cesspool lake.”

    Again, U-mining isn’t done that way anymore. Is anyone calling for the elimination of copper? We definitely don’t want to give up our wires and motors and cell phones and other items made from copper.

    “The abandoned Hanford site in Washington state is another large-scale superfund site which represents not only the environmental costs of nuclear production, but the long term financial costs to taxpayers as well.”

    Hanford was not a commercial nuclear power plant. Let’s make sure we keep things in proper context. The cold war era weapons program created lots of legacy issues we’re going to have to deal with. Nothing remotely like that (high level waste tanks, etc.) goes on at a commercial nuke. I wish we could do the weapons program over again, knowing what we know now. But we can’t. There is a price to pay for that ignorance (and the excesses and arrogance that sometimes were part of it). But we live in a different world. We need to learn from the past, not run away, thinking we have to keep making those mistakes.

    Keith

14. Keith on November 24th, 2009 7:05 pm

    Hi William,

    We will just continue to disagree on these things, I’m sure. What I hear from your argument basis are a lot of technical details that are not in themselves insurmountable issues. Sounds like you’re an engineer (as am I). I think you’re focusing on nuts and bolts things that are engineering problems to be worked out with engineering solutions. Anyway, we do disagree. A few notes below.

    “Building more nukes will create more waste. Do you have any idea how much stainless goes into a commercial plant?”

    Yes, I do. When a plant is decommissioned, much of that steel could be recycled for use in the nuclear industry (yes, dedicated “hot” recycling facilities would need to be used). This is already done, in fact. There are metal-melt facilities that produce things like large steel shield blocks, shipping casks, and other useful items from low-level metal waste.

    “…but where do we put the fuel that the spent fuel pool cannot hold? How do we transfer 20,000 fuel assemblies a year from the existing nuke plants when the casks hold 10 fuel assemblies? What do we do with the casks once they are past their life span, bury them too?”

    A typical refueling cycle is 18 months. Depending on the core, you only swap out about a third of the fuel (maybe 50 bundles). I don’t get 20,000 assemblies a year from that. Whatever number you want to use, the answer is, you start moving it at whatever rate it can be moved. Doing nothing with it certainly doesn’t get the job done.

    “What about all the fuel burned to transport a 1 ton fuel assembly? The cask weighs 26,000 lbs. It takes special trucks and its over weight. You also have to make sure the travel route is protected and keep traffic from either side. Do we make a dedicated road from each site to YUCCA mountain? We could use trains, but we run into the same problems as to sheilding as well as burning fuel (compact fuel) to move it.”

    The best way to move spent fuel (the way it is currently moved) is by rail. Rail transport is very inexpensive in terms of fuel per ton of freight. You worked for the Navy, so you know that ALL the spent fuel from Naval reactors is currently put into spent fuel casks and moved via rail to Idaho - has been for decades, ever since there was a Naval nuclear program. The shielding, decay heat, safety, etc., are not problematic. The dose rates on fuel cars are not that high (you don’t have to keep people away). The DOT regulates RAM transport just like every other type of hazmat, and the requirements for it are exponentially higher than most other hazardous materials (it is over-regulated in general in my view, considering the ACTUAL risks).

    “Has any waste been moved from one site to another in the U.S. in volumes of greater than ten fuel assemblies, no!”

    Can’t remember (and wouldn’t say if I did) the number of cells you can put in a spent fuel car. No, it’s not hugely more than ten, but it’s enough to get the job done. Shipyards don’t stockpile it.

    “Dry storage is an intermediate storage container prior to permanent storage and must be moved again at the end of 40 years into another container. I was asked to design a cask that was leak tight for 10,000 years. Do you have any idea of the complexity of this criteria?”

    Yes. Such criteria are ridiculous. I’ve often said that I don’t know how engineers that get tasked with such things can look at themselves in the mirror. The human race may very likely be gone in 10,000 years. We should be engineering things for periods for which we can make valid models. Then, if we’ve lived that long, as technology advances, we reassess. What other hazardous material is required to be isolated from the environment that long? It’s completely ludicrous.

    “The site I designed required spacing these large containers about 100 feet apart simply to move them to a pad. You then have the long term exposure to radiation. Dry storage containers do not have the same shielding as a spent fuel pool 24 inches of water = 1 inch of lead, 2 inches of steel = 1 inch of lead. 40 feet of water minus the height of the fuel assembly and rack leaves 20 feet above you which is equal to 10 inches of led. There is no dry storage container I know of that uses lead. All use Steel.”

    Again, William, I think you’re getting bogged down in details that are not insurmountable. The dry casks being used are perfectly suitable for their application. I live near a nuclear site that uses dry cask storage. I know some of the RP staff who work there. They have no issues with them. Yes, they are temporary (i.e. 20-40 years), but, again, we need to be moving forward in a long-view approach that gets us out of the “temporary” solutions. That’s the frustrating part. We have not “program”, no “system”, as is used in many European countries, Japan, etc. We’re too short sighted here. Immediate, short-term, politically expedient. That’s all we know.

    “However a nuke plant shuts down for periodic outages to rearrange the core, remove spent fuel and add new fuel. This outage is normally about 2-3 weeks. Think about the loss in utilization during this time 100% removal of a core for generating electricity.”

    The utilization efficiency of a nuke station is off the map compared to wind or solar energy. With solar, you have an immediate 50+% reduction. I don’t know the capacity factors for wind, but it’s nowhere near as high as nuclear.

    “The nice thing about wind it that it does not required it be great land for farming. It can be creek bottom. I am looking at windpower on land in IL. I can fit up to six wind mills. The lease to the power company can provide about $90K a year, possibly more if energy continues to rise. The best part is the land can still be used to grow crops. Yes the wind farm might cover 50,000 acres, it would be well diversified in the even t of storms, ensuring power to local areas and still allow the majority of the acreage to be farmed. How much land do you think storing all the spent fuel from 105 reactors will take? Off course it would be buried in YUCCA mountain that spent billions already, but that was to dig some tunnels, not the entire project.”

    The plan at Yucca involves an area a little less than the size of the Mall at Washington DC (underground footprint). So, even if the eventual storage area needed was ten times that, or 100, or 1000 times that, it would pale in comparison to the land use needed to site wind or solar generating plants sufficient to power the country. These generating sites all would take up usable space on the surface (yes with wind there are some sharing options). The underground repository is transparent to the surface activity. The storage tunnels would be 1000 feet underground, and not impact land use above. And the area is completely uninhabited anyway. It’s not like someone’s going to want to build a city on Yucca Mt. It’s already all government owned land - already useless to the private sector.

    We agree on this, I think. We have to make choices. But we need to make sure we’re comparing properly.

    Keith

15. William Larsen on November 24th, 2009 11:19 pm

    Keith,

    You obviously know a bit about nuclear plants. There is a huge difference between a Navy unit and a commercial unit. Having worked with both at the design, prototype and manufacturing stage, I know the criteria for them. A nuke plant is basically a steam kettle using a 21st century fuel converted by 18th century conversion process. A nuke plant is about 29% efficient based on the fuel consumed and what it produces.

    I know of only one commercial nuke site that has a very large spent fuel pool and it attempted to lease out its space to those nuke sites needing more storage. I am not sure any assemblies were ever transferred to this site. In 2008 there were I believe 17 nukes listed for decommissioning. 2009 has even more nuke sites listed for decommissioning.

    Toledo Edison, Commonwealth Edison, New York Power and light, and Florida Power and Light I know have filed suit for breach of contract with the DOE. I believe the list has grown to over ten utilities. They are seeking hundreds of billions from the taxpayer because the DOE has not taken the fuel the utilities paid them to take starting a decade ago. They seek damages from lost revenue, early shut down, dry storage costs and more.

    Three Mile Island was built by Babcock and Wilcox in Lynchburg, VA. Had the operators at 3-mile-island simply gone home, the plant would have shut down. They were performing its first start up. It had produced not a single watt for sale. The operators got an alarm and disregarded it. They did not believe it. They then disregarded a second alarm and turned that off as well as the backup coolant. In addition, the control room had only one phone line and neither the NRC nor the engineers at B&W could get through to 3-mile-island. I agree with you, U.S. nukes are safe. The Russians used a graphite reactor and it was poorly maintained. The most serious U.S. accident happened out in Idaho back in the early 60’s or maybe it was the late 50’s.

    I have been to the NRC and spoken with them. I have presented presentations and I have to say they are slow moving. They are the slowest of the slowest government agencies around.

    As for windmills, Sandia National Labs have determined that the height of the windmill can improve efficiency considerably (who would have guessed). Once you get above 150 feet you are pretty much assured of continuous wind. New blade designs have improved efficiencies that now produce 5 megawatts units in low wind. The best place to put them is the Great Plains. As for transmission lines, they can transfer power with low losses up to 3,000 miles.

    Denmark and Germany produce a substantial amount of the energy from wind and they are striving for 100% which they may reach in ten years. GE’s wind division is doubling sales every year. They cannot build them fast enough.

    In summary I would rather not leave a mess for future generations. The greatest generation has left us with most if not all the problems we face now. The national debt in 1957 was $271 billion. The National Debt today is $12.1 Trillion. The sum total of the interest paid on the debt since 1958 is over $11.7 Trillion. Had there been no debt been passed along to those in 1958, we would have no national debt today. In simple terms each generation burdens the next by not paying its bills. If we as a country are serious about nuke power, then we must own up to the costs up front, not low ball them and let a future generation suffer the consequences. Social Security has had over 72 years to fix its problems and all that has happened is to get worse. Medicare started in 1965 and it has had 44 years to fix itself and now look at it. The DOE is another prime example. The list is very long. Can engineers solve the technical problems, probably. Is it worth the cost and time, maybe not.

    At Homestead HS many years ago, they purchased a computer with a modem in it. They were really proud of it. They were demonstrating it to the open house attendees. They were attempting to use the modem to communicate with a computer in Saudi Arabia. After more than a half hour and still not connection, my dad walked over to a pay phone, go the international operator and told them, “Hey for I got them in less than a minute using a phone that cost less than $50 while the computer cost multiple thousands.” The moral of this lesson is use the right technology for the job. Sometimes simple is best. The world is going nuclear while the U.S. where it was developed is not.

16. Keith on November 24th, 2009 11:46 pm

    If having a windmill in my backyard is the price I have to pay for energy independence, I’m okay with that. But I don’t necessarily want to have a windmill in view everywhere I go. As I said, I’m a big fan of renewables (and I consider nuke power to be fundamentally a renewable energy source). I want an all-electric car, but not sure if now is the time to buy. But, every killoWatt we use for charging a car just puts more stress on the power system. And I don’t like the fact that what that ultimately means right now is that causes us to burn more fossils. So, while in principle, I could ride around thinking about how green I was, I’d just be adding to the problem, since we have a dirty electric grid. Things need to change.

    Yes, yes, I’m aware of all that stuff about nukes. Like I said, I’ve been in the biz for going on 30 years. The SL-1 accident was in 1961. As you know, it bore no resemblance to a commercial nuke. TMI was a shame indeed. In my view, the big shame of it was that it did so much positive, but is seen as a negative. It demonstrated the robustness and safety of a U.S. designed nuke. It woke the industry up to the potential for problems, it reinvented nuclear training, it led to the creation of INPO, it made U.S. nuclear energy safer overall, and it did all that without contaminating anything offsite or hurting any member of the public. It did destroy a perfectly good reactor, and cost a lot of money to clean up. It also killed licensing of new units after that.

    I sort of side with those utilities who are suing for breach of contract. The government has made a lot of promises, and let politics get in the way. The utilities have been paying into the waste fund all this time in good faith. The waste disposal is actually being paid for by the utilities, but they’re not getting anything for the money.

    I think we share a lot of similar concerns. We just see different approaches to the problem.

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