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Monday, January 28, 2008

Responding to Neil, re Nuclear Energy

In a comment to my first post on the subject of the SE drought and its effects on area nuclear power plants, Former TBV blogger Neil said this:

If we could close some coal-fired power plants by putting more nuclear power online, I would go for it. The climate change challenge is enormous, and I am pessimistic about the effectiveness and timeliness of our response. I think we need to build nuclear power plants now, as part of a broad program of climate change-related policies.
You know much more than I do about the climate change issue -- do you really think we can meet that challenge without nuclear power in the mix of solutions?

I am probably even more pessimistic than you are, Neil, about the possibility of our effective and timely response to the climate challenge facing the planet. I personally don't think we have an adobe rowboat's chance of meeting this challenge anything like soon enough. (For optimism, see Tankwoman, she still seems to have it.) And I am all too afraid that the massive subsidies and tax rebates that governments, both federal and state, want to give the nuclear industry will result in the bringing of more nuclear power online as just about the only "solution" that will actually be carried out. But the truth is that nuclear power, at this point, is old technology, not the direction in which we should be looking for our future energy needs. There are many voices supporting this opinion. As Umbra Fisk says in her column in Grist magazine, "Two Evils, Nuclear vs. Coal:"

Cursorily, nuclear power is a potential Xtreme disaster waiting to happen both in terms of operation and of "homeland security," cannot save us from our immediate crisis, and is a completely unresolved toxic-waste issue that we are handing down to the next hundred generations.

This is the Union of Concerned Scientists' short take on nuclear reactors:

Inherently Safe Reactors: An inherently safe reactor, in theory, would be designed, operated, and monitored in such a way that the reactor would never be damaged and, as a result, no radioactivity would ever be released to the environment. No such reactor currently exists. The risk from existing reactors is so real and so large that liability insurance from private companies is financially impossible, thereby requiring federal liability protection

For lots more from the UCS, I link you to this position paper: Nuclear Power and Global Warming, this article: Unlearned Lessons from Year-plus Reactor Outages and this issue brief which is more germane than ever right now: Nuclear Heat:

Summer heat waves increase the demand for electricity and reduce the ability of nuclear power plants to meet that need. This issue brief explains how rising summer temperatures challenge nuclear plant output during normal operation and nuclear plant safety under accident conditions.

From the Nuclear Information and Resource Service here is a fact sheet that may answer some objections to this anti-nuke line of thinking: Nuclear Power Can't Stop Climate change...a few of the reasons: Not Enough Uranium, Not Enough Money, Not Enough Time (a big one), Not Enough World (for disposing of the waste that would be generated by the number of reactors we'd need to build). From Natural Resources Defense Council: The Myth of 1300 Power Plants, based on information from the Energy Dept's own study, Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future.

That's the long answer to the question you asked me, Neil, in links that will take you traveling to read what people who know far more about it than I do are thinking on the issue. If what Tankwoman proposes in her optimistic post: "We need to create a task force much like the Manhattan Project during WWII, only instead of death and destruction, let's bring the planet clean energy solutions, and hope for the future." were to become a true priority for government, corporate America and the majority of our voting public, I think we could move quite swiftly to find solutions to global warming that bypass both fossil fuels and nuclear energy. As long as this remains a matter way down the list of priorities that concern the voting public, it ain't gonna happen. However, as Tankwoman also points out, the only place we seem to feel true pain is in our wallets. When opening our electric bills feels like sticking our hand in a live socket, perhaps our priorities will change.

Technorati Tags: energy needs, global climate crisis, nuclear reactors, Union of Concerned Scientists,

posted at 11:22:00 AM by marigolds2

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