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.
Thanks for the comments, Max. You raise a good point that I plan to address in my soon-to-come “con” post on nuclear power: the fact that a growing number of reactors are going up in developing and less-than-stable parts of the world. The safety standards and oversight in those regions can often be questionable, which is a great cause for concern.
Nuclear energy isn’t interfering with the laws of nature - it’s simply understanding and applying the laws of nature - the laws of physical science.
It is physical laws that tell us how to make nuclear power intrinsically safe, and it is physical laws that tell us how we most certainly isolate radioactive waste safely in deep geology for the time scale required.
16 nuclear fission reactors existed in nature two billion years ago, in Oklo, in equatorial west Africa. They operated, naturally fissioning uranium in the Earth’s crust, because the laws of nature provide the capacity for nature to do this. They created highly radioactive fission products, plutonium, and actinide elements - just like the used fuel from our nuclear power plants. Over two billion years, these radioactive materials did not migrate through the rock much at all - they were successfully isolated, without humans having any hand in it. Today, all the radioactivity thus produced has completely decayed.
We know that the nuclear weapons tests in Nevada had a health effect on some parts of the population - but a nuclear power plant is not an exploding nuclear bomb.
If all the highly radioactive fission products in the nuclear fuel were somehow released in the atmosphere and dispersed, then it would create a medical disaster - much like the Chernobyl accident. But that’s an extremely big IF. The Chernobyl reactor was of a design designed for military plutonium production in the Soviet Union - it had no containment vessel, and it was operated in a dangerous, unstable situation, and safety procedures were violated, with almost all the control rods being removed, with the reactor being run by operators with no understanding of reactor physics at all, in an environment with no safety culture at all.
Could it ever happen to our light water reactors in the Western world? No.
The radioactive fission product waste from the recycling of used nuclear fuel will remain dangerous for about 300 to 500 years, not millennia.
I am one who has been converted from anti-nuclear to pro after reading through ALL the facts with a scientifically trained mind.
Consider the alternatives:
Hydro consumes vast resources in building, destroys habitats on a large scale, and has higher dangers of catastrophic failure with subsequent whole-sale loss of life than nuclear has (dam breaks). Aside from which, it is mostly already tapped out.
PV is too expensive, and always will be. There are simply natural laws against it attaining higher efficiency. As an electronics engineer I also know how many toxic materials and energy is used in the production. With much less controls and oversight than nuclear. Some material are much more toxic over the long term (forever, no half-live) than for example plutonium.
Wind energy cannot supply any energy amount even close to what is needed, as it cannot supply energy on demand. In fact it has been shown in Denmark and Germany that it has a negligible effect on greenhouse gas emissions. Because coal fired plants cannot be shut down and fired back up to make up for the vagaries of wind. So they have to still run at close to capacity. No large-scale storage for wind generated electricity has even been seriously proposed as the scale needed would boggle the mind. Also the use of concrete alone per actually produced wind-MWhr is of a factor 2-3 higher than even for the most inefficient (current generation 2) nuclear plant.
Geothermal is possible only on a small, limited scale in select locations. Same as solar thermal.
Nuclear fusion is the technology of the future. Always has been, and always will be. At least for the next 50-100 years. Aside from that it would produce MORE radioactive waste material than fission (just read about the fast neutron spectrum fusion creates).
So, what have we left. We need energy to keep civilisation going. Yes, you can make a small dent by conservation. But there are thermodynamic and practical limits to how much. Most savings possible are in the private sector. But that is vastly dwarfed by industrial energy use. And there the best energy conservation methods known are already widely used. If for nothing else, for monetary reasons. Energy costs are a large cost factor for energy intensive industries. And so it has always paid handsomely to use least and use the best conservation technology available.
Believe me, I know. I have lived off-the-grid for years. Using photovoltaics, batteries and backup generators. I am glad I am now ON the grid.
- Klaus
Oh, I forgot to mention two more alternative:
CO2 sequestration:
For every ton of coal burned in a coal power plant, 3 tons of CO2 are produced. CO2 is in low density gaseous form, while coal is in solid form. The amount of CO2 that would have to be handled really boggles the mind. Nobody has really any implementable idea how it could be done.
Natural Gas:
Aside from it being a limited resource, it also produces CO2, just not in the same amount as coal. But natural gas is mostly methane. And THAT is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Leaks at gas piplines and gas power plants are inevitable. Not only large, but small, not significant ones also. I have not found a study how much methane is cumulatively released into the atmosphere from that. I suspect it would be significant.
- Klaus
I guess there’s one main argument for nuclear, just like there’s one main argument for most of the other power sources that you might push:
- It’s not burning fossil fuel.
This means that:
- It’s not altering the physics and chemistry of the entire atmosphere.
- It’s not creating acid rain.
- It’s not producing particulates that kill thousands every year.
- It’s not laying waste to vast tracts of countryside by mountain-top removal.
- It’s opening up the option of using electricity for transport (rail, bus, plug-in).
- It’s saving hydrocarbons for more useful applications further into the future (not as popular this one, but I like it).
and more specifically, using the CHP concept:
- Desalination becomes a large-scale option.
- Hydrogen production becomes a large-scale option.
- Biofuel production can be supported “free” (with process heat)
and finally
- Widespread poverty, which arises from energy poverty, can finally be looked at with some hope of solution, in a controlled international effort.
A well known argument against nuclear power is of course the longevity of nuclear waste. As the following graph shows, it is really a political problem, not a problem of nuclear power itself.
http://www.energyfromthorium.com/postimages/spentFuelToxicity.gif
The red line in the graph is the lifetime of untreated nuclear waste from a once-through fuel cycle without reprocessing, as done today. You can see that it decays after 300,000 years to the radioactivity level of natural uranium ore as found in many places on earth.
When reprocessed, so that Plutonium and Uranium is removed to make new fuel (blue line), the then resulting waste decays to the radioactivity in 9000 years. If Actinides are also removed and fed back into reactors for transmutation, the resulting waste decays to that level in 300 years, and to the level of natural background radiation in 400 years. I’ve lived in Europe in houses that are older than that.
The reason we don’t reprocess the fuel is political. Forced on the nuclear industry by so called “environmentalists”. The main CO2 production of nuclear power is from mining. Reprocessing the fuel would cut the mining requirements per GWhr to 10% of what is needed now with the once-through fuel cycle, where only 2-3% of the potential energy contained is used.
One could argue that the nuclear waste problem is one actually created by the anti-nuclear movement.
- Klaus
I’ve not been able to check in here for a couple of days, but I just now was able to catch up with all the posts. Excellent work, one and all! No bromides, no appeals to emotion, just lots of well-considered commentary on both sides, backed up with lots of data
I really appreciate that citation from the Japanese study; I shall definitely give it a read.
One comment I should make is that, vis-a-vis Chernobyl, this was a “spill”; there will definitely be measurable effects from that accident. I never meant to imply that there would not be; if I gave that impression, I apologize. My point was that the long-term effects *from the current levels of radiation*, appear to be minimal. Humans, being far more genetically complex than most other animals, will be more likely to suffer from increased levels of radiation. I would never want to imply that people should start building homes near the nuclear plant!
On another blog here, I post a link to a website for the WIPP project, a facility in New Mexico which is a depository for military nuclear waste. In that website are links to a lot of good, solid scientific information about plutonium, particle decay, etc. Here is that link: http://www.wipp.energy.gov/ I recommend clicking on the “NEWS and INFORMATION” link in the blue bar near the top and then scrolling down to the “Fact Sheets” link. Lots of excellent info in there
Much of it will need Adobe Reader, but everyone should have that, considering that it’s free and extremely useful.
elie’s post reminds me of what nuclear energy really means for humanity: It is the next quantum leap in our ability to move forward and harness the forces of nature for progress, enterprise and exploration.
This is a rare event which has only happened a very few times in human history.
First it was combustion. Without fire there would be no civilization. It was the first energy man mastered and used for warmth, heat and later to smelt metals and forge machines.
No doubt some like elie were afraid of fire. They saw that it burned and could destroy. They probably thought it evil. Luckilly they did not win.
Next was the ability to create mechanical energy from thermal energy. This was at first steam. It made industry possible. Some certainly feared it. They saw boiler explosions and ran in fear and ignorance from the loud and fast locomotives and the clanking of gears.
Then came electricity. With electricity there could be our modern society and telecommunications and such. Electricity was feared by some at first who did not understand this strange force. Even Thomas Edison campaigned against AC current because he thought it unsafe. People did things like remove lightbulbs when not in use so the force they did not understand would not make them explode or jump down and zap them.
elie’s fear and ignorance is like those who, in the past, ran in fear from each quantum leap, each new order of magnitude in human expansion and understanding. It is based on the simple fact that some cannot appreciate the awesome potential offered by forces they cannot comprehend and see as only destructive.
Thanks for the WIPP link, Jim47: I’ll check that out.
Drbuzz0, you’re right that each technological advance in human history was accompanied by skepticism and/or fear. Lovelock does an excellent job of dispelling many of those concerns regarding nuclear power in “The Revenge of Gaia.”
Still, though, I believe the fear of nuclear power is unique in some ways, having been fueled by all those scary bomb drills during the Cold War and — not least of all — by the images of post-bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. While nuclear power and nuclear weapons are two very different things, it’s hard not to equate the two after seeing such vivid and horrifying evidence of the damage and destruction an A-bomb can cause.
Still, I’ll get back to Lovelock and agree that we need to create a rational, sensible debate over the real aspects of nuclear power: it might be our only way to ensure continued civilization as we know it.
Lovely, well argued cases, Nuclear Power is the way to go. There’s no point using wind/solar power because you cant fill the globe with wind turbines can ya?