This post is my reply to a pro-nuclear comment on a previous post of mine covering this issue.
Nuclear energy is NOT a good option for our current or future power needs.
Regarding greenhouse gases, many are produce in the production of materials to build, shipping of materials, and building of nuclear power plants. Then there is a large amount of greenhouse gases produced in the further transporting, storage and reprocessing of nuclear waste. The energy is not entirely emissions free unless one unrealistically removes all indirectly related emission from surrounding activities.
People will still want to drive their cars once oil is gone, but if you look at the numbers, it just can't happen, nor can we all freely fly around the world at will. There will not be enough energy, even if you build dozens of nuclear power plants. An interesting side note is that it would take about twenty nuclear power plants to replace the level of energy used from natural gas to fuel operations in the Athabasca tar sands, and that's just so that they can get the oil out of the ground so it can be shipped to the U.S. to be processed.
In articles all over the media, people are talking about the future need to replace oil, as peak oil might be upon us in at most a few decades, and at soonest... right now. The problem isn't that we will need to find a way to meet our growing energy demands. I think that will prove to be impossible without cheap abundant fossil fuels. Instead the problem is that somehow people across the entire world will need to learn to live on far less energy. In the future the grid distribution system may prove so inefficient that it will be entirely unusable. Decentralized local energy generation will likely be the solution, but without oil, we'll have trouble even maintaining and replacing those systems. So, how easy will it be for our future society to maintain, replace or decommission nuclear power generators, or to ensure that radioactive waste continues to be stored in a safe and secure manner?
Nuclear energy is NOT an option for our power needs.
Nuclear power will never be completely GHG free. There are so many other things that we need to do before we try to promote nuclear energy as some kind of solution to global warming. Isn't it completely possible that our society would simply continue to consume fossil fuels at the same pace, regardless of how much extra energy for other purposes is from nuclear power? If we build nuclear power plants, will we drive less? Ship goods by truck less? Heat our homes less?
The waste issue which is thoroughly understood by the anti-nuke community is a very big issue. Waste can be reprocessed, but as France is discovering, eventually the leftover waste that cannot be reprocessed will build up and huge amounts will have to be dealt with. Nuclear waste could be put back in the ground, but there will always be a risk of contamination. This process has been utilized by the French for many years and they are starting to realize that there are issues with the sustainability of this strategy that is simply burying the problem and delaying the inevitable.
Radiation release is a concern with nuclear plants. No one has experienced radiation exposure from working in a solar panel or wind turbine factory.
I lived in Toronto many years ago when it was discovered that the Pickering Nuclear Power plant was not living up to promises.
Ontario Hydro failed to report decades of copper and zinc emissions from steam condenser tubes 1,800 tones into Lake Ontario, Southern Ontario's and northern New York States drinking water. Ontario Hydro admitted that groundwater at Pickering nuclear power plant has been contaminated with high levels of tritium since 1978. Ontario Hydro disclosed that up to 150,000 liters of waste oil had been illegally dumped in a landfill in the late 1970s. Both the tritium contamination and the oil dumping were brought to light by whistle-blowers not Ontario Hydro.
In October 1997 it was revealed and widely reported in the media that the Pickering nuclear power plant had 30 fires the previous year thats more than two a month. This nuclear power plant is just outside Toronto in a densely populated area on the shores of Lake Ontario. The water of Lake Ontario is used as a coolant in the reactors and then pumped back into the lake - the drinking water of Southern Ontario and Northern New York.
For more on Tritium see this story:
Canada vs. U.S. Tritium Standards in Drinking Water (A Primer on Tritium)
Also, terrorist attacks weren't on the top of peoples minds back then, but we seriously need to consider the fact that a nuclear power plant is a possible target for terrorists. They wouldn't need to try to break in to get the fuel rods to try to make bombs, as some might suggest. There is a concern about the nuclear plants themselves being possible targets.
Nuclear plants are very expensive to build. There is a tremendous amount of concrete and steel that goes into their construction. They are heavily subsidized with taxpayers money and the ongoing costs including the costs of decommissioning a nuclear plant make nuclear energy one of the most expensive forms of energy.
Some might try to say that only small amounts of fuel are needed to yield huge amounts of energy, and while this is technically true, 'small' does not equal safe, or manageable, or responsible, or even adequate, meaning that we will need 'large' amounts of fuel if we are to try to attempt to run the grid on nuclear energy. Very large amounts.
A lot of those who are pro-nuclear mistakenly dismiss people who are anti-nuclear as being uninformed or not in possession of the facts. I'm not 'crying out' that we'd all need a power plant in our backyards. In my well informed opinion, one nuclear power plant is one too many. We'll all be leaving behind highly toxic waste for our children's children's lives and beyond.
Nuclear power is a horrible source of energy.
Here are some links to some must read stuff that will help inform the pro-nuclear individuals who are not in full possession of the facts.
Nuclear energy 'not a viable response to climate change' - enviro group
Earlier this week, Sancan criticised State-owned Eskom for being “misinformed” about the sustainability of nuclear energy as a response to the threat of climate change, arguing that the full fuel cycle of nuclear power generation was fossil-fuel intensive and that nuclear energy was emitting large amounts of greenhouse gasses.
By March, Eskom would complete a business case for new nuclear investment, which would be predominantly conventional projects and could see the current installed nuclear base rise from 1 800 MW to over 20 000 MW over the next 20 years.
The action group also stated that the mining, milling, processing and transportation of uranium fuel for reactors were all carbon-intensive industries and that nuclear power was releasing three to four times more CO2 per unit of energy produced than compared with renewable energy.
Worthington said that renewable energy initiatives involved smaller power generation units, which was opening up opportunities for greater employment.
He also said that risk of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as was evident in the international attempts to get Iran to shut down its uranium enrichment, was showing that enrichment for power generation and enrichment for the proliferation of weapons were one industry.
“There is no such thing as peaceful nuclear,” he said, adding that South Africa had enough renewable energy resources to provide energy for the whole of Africa.
The Long Emergency - James H. Kunstler (book review)...Nevertheless, he does not see nuclear power as more than a short-term stopgap. Its ultimate limitations come first from safety issues with regard to plant operations and the disposal of waste fuel (although he points out that coal has cost far more lives than nuclear power, especially in the West). Second is the large amount of oil needed to mine and process nuclear fuel and to build and maintain nuclear plants. And the third, formidable objection Kunstler makes is that "Atomic fission is useful for producing electricity, but most of America's energy needs are for things that electricity can't do very well, if at all. For instance, you can't fly airplanes on electric power from nuclear reactors"—although, as he notes, the U.S. military has tried...
The Peak Oil Crisis: Alternatives – Decentralized Power Most electricity is generated in massive remotely located plants – be they powered by coal, oil, natural gas, or nuclear reactors. These edifices, on average, waste two-thirds of the fuel that goes into them. Most energy is lost as waste heat that goes into the air or a local body of water, and the rest in line loses while bringing the power tens or hundreds of miles from the generator to the user.
In terms of green house gases, we could have the same lights, appliances, heating and air conditioning for half the carbon emissions if we simply switched from the current paradigm to decentralized power generation. If we toss some user conservation into the equation -- more efficient lights, appliances, insulation, and whatever – it just might be possible to stretch dwindling supplies of oil, natural gas, coal, and uranium far enough to allow time to replace fossil fuels with renewable sources of energy.
Government can’t solve energy crisis it created...Americans are expected to consume 28 percent more oil in 2030, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates, as global demand for oil increases more than 50 percent. Even under the most optimistic scenarios, alternative fuels, including nuclear, hydropower and renewables like ethanol, will account for less than 20 percent of our total energy profile...
My note: Interestingly, this article completely ignores that global warming and the climate crisis is human caused, and that fossil fuels are a huge part of that. It goes on to suggest that the government relax regulations and provide incentives to the oil & gas industry so that companies can get to the oil as fast as possible. The numbers indicate that even with aggressive increasing of nuclear power it will be impossible to meet the energy needs of North Americans.
The nuclear energy option - Why environmentalists go silent when it's raisedLast week, John Rowe, chief executive of Exelon Corp., speaking at the CERES conference in Boston where hundreds of environmental officers from major corporations were in attendance, advocated the use of nuclear power to meet future energy needs.
The room went silent.
This is a telling sign of the state of the energy industry as a whole: "Environmentalists" create a lot of noise about creating alternative energy sources. The oil and gas industry quietly goes about its business. And when the nuclear option is brought up...no one has much to say about it.
The silence from the environmentalists can be attributed to the fact that nuclear power doesn't create carbon emissions. And it's readily available. It's an answer to the issue of global warming.
However, nuclear power isn't "clean energy" like solar or wind power. It's source and waste are radioactive material and therefore dangerous.
I personally don't want to bet the long-term future of the planet on whether we can find a solution to the carbon emissions from fossil fuels with nuclear power that in the short term can decimate pretty much every living thing on the planet.
There has to be a solution to meeting the world's energy demands, predicted to increase by 50% over the next 25 years. But nuclear power isn't it. There are too many hazards to consider.
There is NO solution save for reducing our levels of consumption of energy. Not solar, not hydro, not wind and not nuclear. Nuclear energy will meet part of the demand, but this is akin to widening the freeway to accommodate more cars in order to reduce congestion, only to see more and more cars and renewed congestion, or buying bigger pants and a bigger belt to accommodate weight gain.
Nuclear is NOT an option.
Union of Concerned Scientists on Nuclear Power and Global WarmingIt must be borne in mind that a large-scale expansion of nuclear power in the United States or worldwide under existing conditions would be accompanied by an increased risk of catastrophic events-a risk not associated with any of the non-nuclear means for reducing global warming. These catastrophic events include a massive release of radiation due to a power plant meltdown or terrorist attack, or the death of tens of thousands due to the detonation of a nuclear weapon made with materials obtained from a civilian-most likely non-U.S.-nuclear power system. Expansion of nuclear power would also produce large amounts of radioactive waste that would pose a serious hazard as long as there remain no facilities for safe long-term disposal.
In this context, the Union of Concerned Scientists contends that:
1. Prudence dictates that we develop as many options to reduce global warming emissions as possible, and begin by deploying those that achieve the largest reductions most quickly and with the lowest costs and risk. Nuclear power today does not meet these criteria.
2. Nuclear power is not the silver bullet for "solving" the global warming problem. Many other technologies will be needed to address global warming even if a major expansion of nuclear power were to occur.
3. A major expansion of nuclear power in the United States is not feasible in the near term. Even under an ambitious deployment scenario, new plants could not make a substantial contribution to reducing U.S. global warming emissions for at least two decades.
4. Until long-standing problems regarding the security of nuclear plants-from accidents and acts of terrorism-are fixed, the potential of nuclear power to play a significant role in addressing global warming will be held hostage to the industry's worst performers.
Countries Undecided on How to Store Nuclear Waste France Deals with Legacies of its Nuclear ProgramsPBS.org - Why the French Like Nuclear EnergyHere's an informative video clip about Frances nuclear waste crisis. It's surprising free of anti-nuclear rhetoric.
Greenpeace on Frances Nuclear Waste
