Counterpunch: America's Eggshell Nukes

[kristopher]

America's Eggshell Nukes

By HARVEY WASSERMAN

The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission has made it clear that America's 104 licensed atomic power reactors are not accidents waiting to happen.

They are accidents in progress.

And proposals to build a "new generation" of reactors are not mere scams. They comprise a predictable plan for permanent national bankruptcy.

On November 10, the USNRC delivered a stunning reprimand to Japanese-owned Westinghouse, which proposes building new atomic reactors here and around the world. The Commission warned that the containment design for the new AP1000 did not include a "realistic" analysis of its ability to withstand a jet crash...

Read the entire article at: http://www.counterpunch.org/wasserman11152010.html

It is an excellent summary of the way the public will get royally screwed if the nuclear industry can convince enough people that they are actually in it for something other than their own well being.

[COLGATE4]

1. More unwarranted scare tactics trying to convince people that

nuclear power in the US is hazardous. The US nuclear power industry has an unparalleled safety record. Its one defect (if it can be called that) is that to make nuclear electricity economically attractive, the plants have to be operated in larger groups, rather than by one or two plants at a time. This is a management problem and an economic one, not a safety one. Nuclear power deserves to be a significant component of our transition away from dependence on fossil fuels, and standardization of nuclear plants with the new generation of reactors will provide cheap, dependable electricity without many of the drawbacks fossil plants currently pose.

[kristopher]

3. That isn't what academics say; even those who want to use nuclear.

This is the conclusion of the 2003 study by MIT "The Future of Nuclear Power". It is considered by nuclear proponents to be one of the best analysis available. those critical of building more nuclear tend to see it as having the flaw of accepting raw nuclear industry data without questioning it sufficiently. Their price projections through 2010, for example, were 400-500% too low while independent analysts were pretty much spot on when looking at the same data but moderating it by reference to historical performance and outside analysis by groups like investment banks.

Below the conclusion quoted, you'll find a page from a presentation by Pres. Science Adviser Holdren (one of the MIT report authors) and links to an example of a recent brush with a meltdown.

Over the next 50 years, unless patterns change dramatically, energy production and use will contribute to global warming through large-scale greenhouse gas emissions — hundreds of billions of tonnes of carbon in the form of carbon dioxide. Nuclear power could be one option for reducing carbon emissions. At present, however, this is unlikely: nuclear power faces stagnation and decline.

This study analyzes what would be required to retain nuclear power as a significant option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting growing needs for electricity supply. Our analysis is guided by a global growth scenario that would expand current worldwide nuclear generating capacity almost threefold, to 1000 billion watts,by the year 2050.Such a deployment would avoid 1.8 billion tonnes of carbon emissions annually from coal plants, about 25% of the increment in carbon emissions otherwise expected in a business-as-usual scenario. This study also recommends changes in government policy and industrial practice needed in the relatively near term to retain an option for such an outcome. (Want to guess what these are? - K)

We did not analyze other options for reducing carbon emissions — renewable energy sources, carbon sequestration,and increased energy efficiency — and therefore reach no conclusions about priorities among these efforts and nuclear power. In our judgment, it would be a mistake to exclude any of these four options at this time.

STUDY FINDINGS
For a large expansion of nuclear power to succeed,four critical problems must be overcome:

Cost. In deregulated markets, nuclear power is not now cost competitive with coal and natural gas.However,plausible reductions by industry in capital cost,operation and maintenance costs, and construction time could reduce the gap. Carbon emission credits, if enacted by government, can give nuclear power a cost advantage.

Safety.
Modern reactor designs can achieve a very low risk of serious accidents, but “best practices”in construction and operation are essential.We know little about the safety of the overall fuel cycle,beyond reactor operation.

Waste.
Geological disposal is technically feasible but execution is yet to be demonstrated or certain. A convincing case has not been made that the long-term waste management benefits of advanced, closed fuel cycles involving reprocessing of spent fuel are outweighed by the short-term risks and costs. Improvement in the open,once through fuel cycle may offer waste management benefits as large as those claimed for the more expensive closed fuel cycles.

Proliferation.
The current international safeguards regime is inadequate to meet the security challenges of the expanded nuclear deployment contemplated in the global growth scenario. The reprocessing system now used in Europe, Japan, and Russia that involves separation and recycling of plutonium presents unwarranted proliferation risks.

The nuclear option: size of the challenges

• If world electricity demand grows 2% /year until 2050 and nuclear share of electricity supply is to rise from 1/6 to 1/3...
–nuclear capacity would have to grow from 350 GWe in 2000 to 1700 GWe in 2050;
– this means 1,700 reactors of 1,000 MWe each.

• If these were light-water reactors on the once-through fuel cycle...
---–enrichment of their fuel will require ~250 million Separative Work Units (SWU);
---–diversion of 0.1% of this enrichment to production of HEU from natural uranium would make ~20 gun-type or ~80 implosion-type bombs.

• If half the reactors were recycling their plutonium...
---–the associated flow of separated, directly weapon - usable plutonium would be 170,000 kg per year;
---–diversion of 0.1% of this quantity would make ~30 implosion-type bombs.

• Spent-fuel production in the once-through case would be...
---–34,000 tonnes/yr, a Yucca Mountain every two years.

Conclusion: Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, but doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.


Mitigation of Human-Caused Climate Change
John P. Holdren

Repeating that conclusion: Expanding nuclear enough to take a modest bite out of the climate problem is conceivable, *but* doing so will depend on greatly increased seriousness in addressing the waste-management & proliferation challenges.

John P. Holdren is advisor to President Barack Obama for Science and Technology,
Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and
Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology...

Holdren was previously the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University,
director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at the School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and
Director of the Woods Hole Research Center.<2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Holdren


Also see UCS -- Aging Nuclear Plants -- Davis-Besse: The Reactor with a Hole in its Head http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/acfnx8tzc.pdf







Scapegoating of Davis Besse by NRC
http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/federal-agency-scapegoating-0141.html

Retrospective
http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/safety/davis-besse-retrospective.html

[TheWraith]

2. Funny, isn't it, that you never see a loud public movement against coal plants.

But hey, those only kill 40,000 or so Americans a year via pollution, whereas civilian nuclear power has never killed one single American. I'm sure that discrepancy has NOTHING to do with the billions of dollars in PR that the coal and oil industry has put into slamming nuclear power.

[kristopher]

4. If you are involved in energy issues you do see loud public movements against coal plants.

It would be great if there were more, though.