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.
Hi everyone
I have just read your arguments with great interest, as I am currently writing a paper on the “Greenness” of Nuclear power.
It seems that most emphasis has been put onto nuclear waste, which is certainly a major problem. However the environmental impact of mining the uranium, and the fact that just like fossil fuels, uranium will one day become scarce, has not been touched upon. The suggestion from Klaus that the lack of recycling of spent uranium is due to environmentalists seems quite far fetched, especially as more environmentalists (such as Greenpeace president) are becoming pro nuclear.
Klaus also suggests that no suitable storage for wind energy has been found. How about a combination hydro - wind energy solution? the water in the lake can be as an energy store for when it is required.
The Chrenobyl incident has been quoted repeatedly during the forum, rightly so, as it has been the worst nuclear power leak leak so far. However, the disaster occured at the end of the life of the uranium, the safety systems test which sparked the problems was scheduled just before a fuel change shutdown. If there is any nuclear engineers out there, I would be interested to know if the disaster could have been much greater if the fuel rods had been fresh.
Also, hydro electricity has been identified as being much more dangerous due to dam bursts etc. I would like to point out that most of these accidents have occured in developing nations, which have been previously assumed as having lesser safety standards as the west. the same nations which are currently investing in nuclear energy.
Solar and wind energy is continuing to improve through technology, and although it has been stated otherwise, the efficiency of these technologies is increasing, and the environmental impact lessening.
Nobody has mentioned tidal or wave energy.
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Rachel,
When I was reading your comment I had a feeling that maybe living close to Nuclear Power Plant is really dangerous. I always have such feeling when I read how nuclear oppenent cites some inconvenient fact. But only to the moment I check what The Fact is really about. The 30 years old Ichikawa Fact that You cited is true. NPP generates additional one thousandth of an average background radiation. And radiation cause mutations that are detectable by specially suited genetical experiments. But the weight of this argument is similar to claiming that NPP makes shadow, and plants in the shadow don’t grow. True but totally irrelevant. Radiation in many parts of the world is several to even hundred times bigger than average. Read about Ramsar in Iran.
http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/ramsar-natural-radioactivity/ramsar.html
In case You didn’t know. In every cell of your body (some 60 trillion cells) takes place 2.2 damages of DNA each second. Only 5 % of this is caused by radiation. The rest comes from heavy metals and free radicals. Are You worried? Because I’m not.
QUOTE: “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.”
its not hard to disagree with the view that wind energy doesn’t fit the bill. you are probably thinking that “the wind doesn’t always blow when you want it to”. i read an article in New Scientist recently about a project in the USA that will be able to store surplus energy produced by the turbines until it is needed, so there will be a continuous supply.
i think nuclear power is a good thing and should be used to get power in the future.
[...] of any real solution to the American energy problem needs to involve offshore resources and nuclear power…which generates electricity without producing greenhouse gas emissions and has a minimal [...]
How much uranium ore do we have? How long would it last, given an expontial rise in it’s consumption?
oops. (exponential)
Think again about Chernobyl
“Debris removal
The worst of the radioactive debris was collected inside what was left of the reactor, much of it shoveled in by liquidators wearing heavy protective gear (dubbed “bio-robots” by the military); these workers could only spend a maximum of 40 seconds at a time working on the rooftops of the surrounding buildings due to the extremely high doses of radiation given off by the blocks of graphite and other debris. The reactor itself was covered with bags containing sand, lead and boric acid thrown off helicopters (some 5,000 metric tonnes during the week following the accident). By December 1986 a large concrete sarcophagus had been erected, to seal off the reactor and its contents.[49]
Many of the vehicles used by the “liquidators” remain parked in a field in the Chernobyl area to this day, most giving off doses of 10-30 R/hr (0.1-0.3 Gy/hr) over 20 years after the disaster.[50]“
Nuclear plants put out 1 billion watts of electric power a day. They also put out 3 billion watts of heat energy per day. That heat could easily be used to evaporate sea water and turn it into potable water, an important function considering our depleting water resources and rising sea levels.
Radiation is actually a poor carcinogen, probably why it works so well combating cancer. It wouldn’t make sense to kill off one kind of cancer with something that caused 14 other types now would it?
Coal ash is highly radioactive and toxic (arsenic and lead) and responsible for poisoning many of our nations water supplies. The typical coal plant produces 600 tons of this toxic mess a DAY which is dumped with little regulation. A nuclear plant produces enough radioactive waste in a YEAR to fill one coke can. That coupled with the fact that this waste is partially recyclable and one Nuke plant out powers a coal plant any day kind of kills the “OMG! Nukular waste!” argument.
I realize my arguments are not the most well articulated but I get tired of people using bad 1950’s movies for their perception on nuclear power. Talk to a nuclear engineer, talk to a radiation health physicist… they can explain the dangers and the risks… Too many groups take worst case scenarios written for their mathematical simplicity while realistically impossible (like spherical chickens in a vacuum makes a physics problem easy to write) and parade them as the MOST LIKELY event instead of the impossible extreme they were intended to be.