The Nuclear Option
There is a maddening confluence of events that are gathering into a perfect storm on the energy front. America, as a nation, has an understanding that a dependence on foreign oil presents economic and national security risks that are unreasonable. The current administration has balked at the idea of further domestic exploration and drilling. It is instead bankrolling the "green energy" sector as a way to deal with this problem. The reasoning bolstering this line of attack is that it will kill two birds with one stone. It will wean us off of foreign oil, and it will solve the problem of climate change by reducing our greenhouse gases.
As we have explored before, much of this is pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking. Solar and wind power are wildly inefficient and inconsistent. Large parcels of land must be set aside to generate a fraction of the energy that one coal or diesel-powered electric generation plant would produce. This requires a much larger environmental footprint, which will necessitate their location to remote areas away from population centers.
Other than the southwest, solar energy is impractical on a large scale. Other than the Great Plains states, wind power is impractical on a large scale. Even if developed on a large scale in these areas, the problem of transportation of that energy from the remote areas to the population centers needs to be tackled. Our current technology of cables and energy grids does not lend itself to this type of long distance energy generation. A cable can only handle a certain electrical capacity, and energy is lost over the transport of distance. This energy can be reboosted with transformer stations along the route, but no such stations exist that can handle the capacity outputted by remote generation sources. It is a similar problem to cell phone coverage - unless a signal can bounce off of cell towers and be reboosted, the signal is lost after about 7 miles. That is why the landscape is littered with cell towers, and why you can't get a signal in Montana. T.Boone Pickens, the billionaire Texas oil man (and green energy guru of the 2008 Presidential campaign), ran into this very problem. After investing billions of dollars in a Texas panhandle wind farm, Pickens found that he had no way to get the electricity generated to even the nearest population centers in a cost-effective manner. He has abandoned the project.
Other "green" energy sources have other problems. A lack of efficient long-life batteries is hampering electric cars. The GM Volt had been reconfigured from a "plug-in" vehicle to a vehicle sporting a gasoline powered generator. This redesign occurred when it was calculated that the plug-in recharging costs added to the average family's electric bill would be more costly than the amount of gasoline purchased over the same period. The Obama Administration caught wind of this and instantly demanded and received the original “plug-in” design.
Biodiesel burns cleaner but uses more energy to be manufactured than it produces. It is the celery effect - digesting a stalk of celery uses more calories than you get from it. Good for the waistline, but horrible for energy efficiency. The underlying problem with all of these "green" energy sources is that the technology for all of them is in its infancy. This is not to say that research into them should be abandoned, only that there is no market ready solution in these at the present, and our present needs demand to be addressed.
Nowhere in the discussion is the obvious solution - nuclear energy. Which begs the question, whatever happened to nuclear technology? Two events occurring nearly simultaneously put the nuclear energy solution in intensive care. The first was the release in 1979 of the science fiction movie "The China Syndrome". It posited the scientifically impossible scenario of a reactor meltdown potentially boring a hole through the earth all the way to China.
The second occurred 12 days after the release of the movie - the partial meltdown of reactor #2 of the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. This was a fully contained incident where the superheated nuclear material melted through it's containment vessel and spilled out onto the reactor floor. Immediate and subsequent studies showed little effect to the surrounding area and population, but public reaction was galvanized against the nuclear industry and a moratorium on new nuclear projects has been in existence ever since. Nuclear energy was pronounced dead in this country following the Chernobyl meltdown in Ukraine in 1986. This is considered to be the worst nuclear accident to have occurred.
For purposes of discussion here, we are going to dismiss the movie, and concentrate on the aftereffects of the two incidents. Three Mile Island was the subject of many investigations at the time. These investigations came to the conclusion that the release of radioactive material was minimal. Health concerns were projected to be insignificant as a statistic due to the small release of radiation into the atmosphere. This has been borne out by follow-up studies tracking residents of the area since the incident. Environmental effects were also negligible. Reactor number 1 is active today. Reactor number 2 has been removed, but the site has not been de-commissioned for nuclear power generation. It remains inactive. No similar accidents have occurred at the facility since 1979.
Chernobyl, on the other hand, had significant environmental and health effects. The reactor actually exploded due to a power surge which resulted in a plume of highly radioactive fallout peppering the area. The cloud of radiation settled over parts of Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, forcing the evacuation and resettlement of approximately 336,000 people. There were 56 direct deaths most of which were attributed to radiation poisoning. Studies following showed an additional 4000 cancer deaths among the 600,000 people with the highest radiation exposure. Scientific monitoring of most areas affected by the blast have found them to now be safe for habitation. Though people have not returned to the areas still showing higher levels of radiation than normal, wildlife is flourishing there, with no ill effects to animal populations. Chernobyl caused a worldwide wake-up call to examine the safety of nuclear plant design and engineering. Many changes have been adopted and current designs are considered to be far superior and safer than existing nuclear power plants online today in the United States.
20% of our current generated electricity in the United States comes from nuclear power plants, all completed before 1979. Upgraded procedures and training have been put in place and no accidents involving radiation release have occurred in the US since Three Mile Island. This generation percentage is the highest of any alternative energy source to fossil fuels. No other source provides greater than a 2% contribution to our nation's energy generation capability. Nuclear power is here. It is market ready. It is safe and has been made safer since the accidents. It is efficient. It produces no greenhouse gases. But what about the radioactive waste?
The volume of high-level waste produced from a family of four using nuclear fuel for 20 years is roughly the size of an iPod Shuffle. This is the waste that must be permanently stored. Low level waste is reprocessed into high level waste, reducing its volume, and thus the storage space required to house it. A typical large reactor will produce 25 - 30 tons of low-level waste which after reprocessing yields about 3 cubic meters of high-level waste - roughly the size of a small garbage dumpster.
It is important to differentiate between the high- and low-level waste. Low level waste can be stored in cooling pools safely. There are numerous such sites throughout the United States. It is considered waste because the reactivity is spent - it is essentially used up except for the heat that it continues to generate. It no longer has the capability to efficiently produce electricity.The material cannot be used to fashion nuclear bombs.
High level waste is extremely radioactive and must be stored with care. Commercial electricity generation only accounts for 1% of the high level waste produced by the United States. The vast majority of this waste is related to defense. Increasing our nuclear electrical generation would do little to increase our production of high level waste. However, if existing nuclear facilities were run with fossil fuels they would throw 688,720,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere (as well as 2.65 million tons of sulfur dioxide and just under 1 million tons of nitrogen oxides). This is with just 104 commercial reactors operating commercially.
Increased electrical production using nuclear energy would cut carbon emissions even further. It has been projected and reported by the AP that if proposed nuclear power plants on the planning table in 1979 had been constructed and brought online as planned, we would be exceeding the goals set for the United States for the reduction of greenhouse gases proposed by the Kyoto Protocols. Not meeting the goals - exceeding them.
As previously stated, nuclear energy generation is here, it is safe, and it is reliable. It is shunned like a leper because of misconceptions arising from a science fiction movie 30 years ago, and a small accident that coincided with the film. If the Administration is hell-bent on eliminating fossil fuels from the American energy diet, they need to do it with more than systems that cannot possibly meet the needs of the nation, or with pipedreams that are still only being conceived of in engineering labs across the country.
Nuclear energy is not an instant solution. There is no instant solution. Fossil fuels will be with us for the for quite some time. Still, if new ground is broken on a nuclear facility today, a real step has been taken towards reducing our appetite for fossil fuel. There are 30 applications for new nuclear facilities sitting in front of the Nuclear Regulatory Agency right now. We urge their approval.
A new energy producing facility completed does not add to our carbon footprint. The energy produced will be our own, and no outside force will be able to threaten us by withholding it. Nuclear produced energy may not be the absolute answer, but it will keep us sustained while we perfect better methods to meet our energy needs. It will produce permanent real jobs with good pay. If we are seeking a commonsense solution to suppling our energy needs, nuclear energy needs to be a primary tool in achieving those goals.