Devil’s Advocate: 10 Green Arguments for Nuclear Power
I never thought I’d consider nuclear power a desirable solution to climate change until I read James Lovelock’s latest book, “The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & the Fate of Humanity” (see my previous post on the issue here).
Though I’m still not 100-percent convinced, Lovelock’s arguments are factual, rational and highly persuasive. So I thought I’d take a similar crack at making the case for nuclear energy as a way to help curb our greenhouse gas emissions … maybe in part to clarify my own mixed feelings about the matter.
Here goes:
1. First, there’s a truly powerful pro-nuclear argument I’ve never seen given much attention before: according to the Keystone Center’s “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” released last year, failing to replace existing nuclear power plants over the next half-century would actually increase carbon emissions by 12.5 gigatons. Unless we’re planning on replacing all the nuclear facilities set to go off-line with something other than coal or natural gas plants, we’ll be making climate change worse.
2. As scary as the “what-if” scenarios for a nuclear reactor failure are, the reality has — so far — proved much less so. The World Health Organization (WHO) carried out several studies after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster; one, conducted 19 years later, concluded that 75 deaths could be directly attributed to the accident. Other WHO findings: 28 deaths among first-responders in the year after the accident could be directly linked to acute radiation sickness; there was a large increase in highly treatable tyroid cancerns among young people and no clearly demonstrated increases in leukemia or other non-thyroid solid cancers; and the lifetime risk of cancer deaths among those exposed to Chernobyl radiation was about 3 to 4 percent higher than average. (You can find the complete digest report here.)
3. By comparison, the health impacts of the 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the U.S. were minuscule, with no attributable illnesses or deaths. The Keystone Center’s “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” last year said the average dose of radiation to the region’s 2 million people was about 1 millirem, with the maximum exposure to individuals right outside the site at less than 100 millirem. By comparison, a full set of chest x-rays delivers 6 millirem of radiation, and a year’s exposure to natural background radiation gets you 100 to 125 millirem.
4. Participants in the Keystone Center “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” all conceded that “on balance, commercial nuclear power plants in the U.S. are safer today than they were before the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island.” In fact, an industry study in 2003 found that even a direct-side impact by a large commercial airliner wouldn’t cause a loss of coolant at a nuclear power plant.
5. A National Academy of Sciences study found a low risk of widespread harm from either a terrorist attack or a serious accident involving spent nuclear fuel. And the Keystone Center’s “Nuclear Power Joint Fact Finding” found that “the risk of a major accident at a nuclear facility is not seen as a significant risk by investors today.”
6. A 2001 study by the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland (quoted in “The Revenge of Gaia”) found that, beteween 1970 and 1992, nuclear power had the best safety record of all major energy sources, both in terms of total deaths and deaths per terawatt of energy produced each year. The results for the top four sources were coal: 6,400 total deaths, 342 deaths per terawatt per year; hydro power: 4,000 total deaths, 884 deaths per terawatt per year; natural gas: 1,200 total deaths, 85 deaths per terawatt per year; nuclear power: 31 total deaths, 8 deaths per terawatt per year.
7. A life-cycle assessment by Meier Engineering Research (thanks redcraig!) found that nuclear fission energy actually had a lower life-cycle greenhouse gas emission rate than solar (using an eight-kilowatt, building-integrated photovoltaic system for the assessment): 15 tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent per gigawatt-electric of electricity, compared to 39 tons for photovoltaic. Of course, those rates were considerably higher for fossil-fuel sources like natural gas (469 tons) or coal (974 tons).
8. Nuclear power makes economic sense. According to the Energy Information Administration (thanks again, redcraig!), operation, maintenance and fuel costs per kilowatt-hour for nuclear plants are more than twice those for hydroelectric, but nearly a third less than those for fossil steam energy and two-thirds less than either gas turbine energy or small-scale photovoltaic or wind energy.
9. During the nuclear testing heyday of the Cold War era, the superpowers set off numerous nuclear weapons; in 1962 alone, test bombs equaled the output of 20,000 Hiroshima warheads. Such tests, Lovelock argues, released radioactive materials into the air equal to two Chernobyls a week for a whole year … yet no proven health damage to humans was observed in subsequent years. (For more details, see “The Revenge of Gaia,” pages 94 - 95).
10. Finally, Lovelock argues — and it’s hard to disagree with his view — that “a continuous supply of electricity is an essential requisite for civilization.” Nuclear power, unlike wind or solar energy, fits that bill.
All that said, I still have doubts about the viability of nuclear power as our way out of dangerous climate change, and I don’t believe my concerns are the result of a conspiracy by environmentalists, as some pro-nuclear types suggest. I’ll take on the “con” side of the issue in another post soon.
Finally, a well-reasoned defense of nuclear energy! Thank you for taking the time to do some due diligence on this. I am strongly Green (I’m even a registered Green), but I’m also a physics student who understands the benefits of nuclear power. There are certainly a number of problems with nuclear power plants, just as there problems with wind farms and hydroelectric dams, etc, but they are not unsolvable, as the French and Japanese have shown. We truly need nuclear energy; those who rail against it without trying to understand it are being foolish.
Know Nukes!
Thanks, Jim. As I said, I still have some nagging doubts, but I’m surprised at how much my view of nuclear power has changed in a short time after digging into the subject a bit deeper.
Of course, the billion-dollar question is: can we help enough others come around to the same viewpoint and build the plants needed to stave off catastrophic climate change? What will it take?
no one knows enough about nuclear energy. the only thing we do know is that each time we interfere with the laws of nature, we end up paying the price one way or another. for some reason we never seem to learn the lesson and still try to detroy the planet for our own convenience. as for the problems we have with wind farms and hydroelectric farms, at least we know that these are not unreversible probelms, as opposed to the damage that nuclear will expose us to.
What about the waste?!? That is really the key issue - that stuff is radioactive and dangerous for millenia.
Also, while the WHO might have checked into the deaths associated with Chernobyl, there was a lot of other damage. I was living in Germany then, at the very Western edge (i.e., thousands of miles from the accident). The farmer across the street from us had to dump his milk because it was too radioactive for human consumption. I believe that most of the German milk from around that time was converted to milk powder, which nobody wanted since it was radioactive. Some clever and irresponsible politician came up with the idea to donate it…
Nuclear energy is not an alternative. It is not safe even under normal operations (there are studies documenting mutations in animals living around nuclear power plants). While it certainly reduces carbon emissions (of course! You’re not burning fossils!), it comes with a host of other problems.
Let me “briefly” address the issues raised by elie and Rachel:
Nuclear energy *is* one of the Laws of Nature. If you don’t believe me, please do your own research. We live on a nuclear power plant of incredible complexity (we call it “Earth”), and we derive our remaining power (of all types) from a huge fusion reactor. We live in a radioactive universe, and it’s a good thing that we do; our lives are easier because of it. In fact, we exist because of radioactivity. The difference here is that nuclear power plants are human-designed attempts to control Nature’s forces, just as wind farms and coal-powered burners and hydroelectric dams and automobiles and all the rest are. Any time humans design things, there is a chance for error. But let me ask you this: how many people have been killed by automobiles, or dam collapses? Hundreds of thousands more than have been killed by nuclear power; some have died today in car accidents, in all likelihood. Safe nuclear power can, and is, being produced, right now, around the world, and we can continue to do so. The key is writing laws and regulations that make the chances of accidents vanishingly small.
Nuclear waste is a real issue; too bad we let the politicians write the laws, instead of letting scientists and engineers handle it. There are several solid proposals for handling spent fuel rods: sending them to the Moon and burying them in subduction zones are but two of them. They can also be reused in power plants, when properly “recharged”. The “problem” exists because politicians are not generally very visionary or practical. It’s the same reason why our health-care system is such a mess; we let politicians write the laws, rather than letting doctors and patients work things out. Politicians and bureaucrats are very useful at times, but they are also some of our worst enemies.
Please cite any studies that discuss animal mutations near active nuclear power stations. I tried to google for them, but came up with nothing really useful in the first 5-6 pages. I *did* find several articles about the wildlife preserve that surrounds the Chernobyl plant. National Geographic’s website has at least a couple of articles about it, and the journal, “Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry”, Vol.19, No.5, pp.1231-1232, 2000, has a letter that addresses the improved conditions for flora and fauna directly outside the station. No mention of mutations in either source was made. As I live in Southern California, where two large nuclear power plants exist (San Onofre and Diablo Canyon), I keep up with any information that is disseminated about them. Several studies and collection trips have produced no evidence of mutations around these stations. Believe me or not, but I have far too many friends who are opposed to nuclear power not to have heard if such evidence existed; they would rub my nose in it. As far as I have been able to determine, mutation outside nuclear power stations does not happen.
I do not mind at all if people are opposed to nuclear power. What I mind is a reliance on “them” for information. Please do your own research. Do not trust a “friend of an acquaintance of a relative” for your information. Learn all you can about nuclear power; you will be better able to defend your opposition to it if you can cite facts.
I should have noted in my immediate above that there are still on-going studies at Chernobyl as to any increased mutational effects in the animal and plant populations. The jury is definitely still out on this. There is no argument that radiation from strontium, cesium and other decaying elements is higher within the Chernobyl reserve than in a “normal” area. This is certainly a cause for concern. The thing to remember is that Chernobyl was a poorly-designed station that had a serious melt-down, something which has not happened anywhere else in the world. Three Mile Island, the Santa Susana Field Lab, and other events were far smaller, and were often contained. To the best of my knowledge, no currently-active nuclear power station has radiation levels outside the containment buildings higher than the normal “background radiation” that we all live with every day. If anyone has solid documentation to the contrary, I’d be pleased to read it.
elie, I do hear you; as I said, I’ve been pretty skeptical about nuclear power until recently. If you haven’t yet, I would suggest reading “The Revenge of Gaia,” (especially the chapter on “Sources of Energy”) … I’d be interested to know if it changed your mind at all.
I do agree with you about some of the negative effects of our tampering with nature. That’s why I’m vehemently opposed to so-called geoengineering fixes like seeding the oceans with iron to promote plankton blooms and carbon dioxide absorption. Give me a choice between nuclear power and any of the proposed geoengineering solutions to climate change — the long-term effects of which we really don’t comprehend — and I’ll have to choose nuclear.
Rachel, thanks for the perspective of someone who lived near Chernobyl at the time of the disaster. The contaminated milk issue actually came up as one of the greater concerns in the WHO followups. In fact, the organization cited the consumption of radioactive milk as the likely cause of so many thyroid cancers among people who were young children or adolescents at the time of the accident. Fortunately, that type of cancer proved to be much more successfully treatable than leukemia and other forms of “solid” cancer.
As I said, I plan to explore the “con” arguments against nuclear power in another post soon. Even absent documentation of mutations, etc., I think there are still legitimate reasons to approach the nuclear power solution cautiously.
Then again, caution implies time … which I don’t believe we have much more of before the feedback mechanisms and extreme effects of climate change start making themselves felt.
I did a Google search on “mutations around nuclear power stations.” The first and second hit are to a research article called “In situ monitoring with Tradescantia around nuclear power plants” by Sadao Ichikawa. To quote from the abstract: “Significantly increased mutation frequencies were observed and were correlated to the operation periods of the nuclear facilities and to predominant wind direction, but not to other environmental factors. Considering physical monitoring data of radiation dose in the air, internal exposure due to incorporation and concentration of man-made radioactive nuclides seemed to be of a greater importance in increasing mutation incidence.”
You are not citing the National Geographic article but the title of one I found is “Despite Mutations, Chernobyl Wildlife is Thriving.” It goes on to say: “The effects of the Chernobyl catastrophe are still being felt today—whole towns lie abandoned, and cancer rates in people living close to the affected areas are abnormally high.” So, animals have adapted. Bravo. Nature is an amazing thing. That does not mean that nuclear power is safe.
For a moment I was afraid that I fell into the trap of “reliance on ‘them’ for information” as Jim47 put it. I remembered this vaguely from my childhood, which is a “few” years ago… Thanks for calling me on the carpet, Jim! I think you are absolutely right: This topic is too important to decide on hear-say. But it looks like the mutation issue is real.
Shirley - according to mapcrow.info, I lived about 1043 miles (1680 KM) from Chernobyl at the time of the accident. Not sure if I’d consider that “near” but it’s certainly closer than the US…
And then again, this is what they found in rats around Chernobyl: “It is concluded that the diversity and abundance of the small-mammal fauna is not presently reduced at the most radioactive sites. Specimens from the most radioactive areas do not demonstrate aberrant gross morphological features other than enlargement of the spleen. Examination of karyotypes does not document gross chromosomal rearrangements.” (http://tinyurl.com/yvxtj3) Not much, certainly no mutations… The Ichikawa article I cited above was published in the same journal (http://tinyurl.com/2hudc9).
Shirley,
Nice article, well done and I understand the siren’s call of nuclear very well. But until there is some way to dispose of the waste, I’m against building more plants.
We seem to forget that the world’s 439 nuclear power plants provide about 16 percent of electricity, not much of a change in 20 years.
As plants get older, so does the possibility of an equipment breakdown or a sudden, inadvertent human error, I like to call the “Oops Factor”.
Developing countries are joining the nuclear renaissance, if you will, and therein lies another concern, corrupt governments and the lack of proper safety standard accountability. I’m not saying they’re all corrupt, but those governments do exist.
Rachel makes a strong argument about radiation poisoning with her recollection of the farmer across the road dumping milk because it was to “hot” for human consumption.
One more thing I think we tend to forget. As long as man can make it and operate it, it can break, or man can compromise its safety. Like it or not, Murphy’s Law exists.
Looking back at the Chernobyl accident and the effect it has had on the area and people who are still dying from radiation-caused illnesses, I’m reminded of Nevada’s atomic bomb tests. The incidence of lymphoma alone in St. George, UT is still much higher than other areas of the country. St.George was downwind of those tests, and the poisoning goes on.
Should, for whatever reason, a cloud of high-level radioactive waste be released into the atmosphere, thousands will eventually die.
Nuclear proponents are, to use an old gambling term, “betting on the come”, that nothing will happen and we can all live happily ever after.
I may never live to see it, but I pray I’m proven wrong.