The greening of nuclear energy
In a recent conversation with Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace, proclaimed environmentalist from Vancouver, British Columbia, and now a consultant to the nuclear industry, I was treated to a whole new perspective on the crucial importance of nuclear power as the cleanest and cheapest answer to almost all contemporary energy dilemmas. His “facts” were quite startling.
In this discussion, the focus will be the real cost of nuclear power and its newly acquired green image as to CO2 output. It will be a response to Moore”™s widely disseminated views on the subject.
The local discussion on nuclear power has been limited to the safety of Indian Point in Buchanan, N.Y., located near a densely populated region and the ineffectiveness of any emergency evacuation plan versus an intensifying PR effort on the part of Entergy regarding rolling blackouts that would occur if the plant were to shut down and painting nuclear power as the greenest and most sustainable power source.
There is lot more to this subject than those two opposing views.
Nuclear energy cycle
Let”™s talk about nuclear power in general as a starter. When the government gets involved in solving energy by subsidizing certain modes, (ethanol, for example) a multibillion-dollar boondoggle is the likely outcome. We shall see if this interference also applies to the nuclear industry.
In order to fairly compare the various energy modes currently on the table one must take in the entire cycle. In the case of nuclear energy the process begins with mining and milling uranium to make “yellow cake,” which creates a mountain of dangerous tailings. Until recently uranium ore was dominantly mined in New Mexico ”“ on a Navajo reservation. New reserves are being discovered in other parts of the country, most recently in Virginia. According to Moore, two-thirds of known uranium reserves are now found in Canada and Australia. Developing a new uranium mine takes many years, adding to the already high cost of nuclear energy, a cost that is on the rise, as are all non-renewable resources. Some supporters say nuclear energy should be considered renewable energy.
These are the facts. Uranium reserves are calculated to last between 30 and 60 years, depending on how many new reactors are built, hardly renewable. Uranium mining is one of the most CO2 intensive industrial operations as well as the most harmful to those who live and work in the region. As more mines are developed the damage will increase. The enrichment process and the transportation of the resulting fuel rods to nuclear plants around the entire country, further contributes to CO2 output.
Calculating the costs
Building a plant takes many years, costing from $5 billion to $9 billion. Merely assessing the CO2 associated with the end point of nuclear generation hardly seems to justify the green claim.
Environmentalist Bill McKibben, author of “Deep Economy,” when asked what he thought about the extraordinary cost of building a nuclear reactor, responded that “such a sum would buy a lot of conservation initiatives.” It would also build a lot of renewable energy facilities. Or it would make up for the government”™s lack of financial support for R&D on renewable energy, currently a poor cousin to the federal support accorded to the real polluters.
Indeed, what seems to be missing in any discussion of the benefits of nuclear power is the true cost of its creation and the waste that it generates. The final cost, of course, must include the matter of the spent fuel rods, sufficiently radioactive to be a danger for countless generations. Currently, every reactor in the nation is a radioactive waste dump. Why? Because the promised repository, at Yucca Mountain in Nevada, has not been completed, or more accurately, cannot be verified to be safe for 10,000 years. Even it were ready it would immediately be filled by all the waste already generated. Another multibillion-dollar facility would have to be built immediately. Nothing is done immediately in the nuclear field.
There is another solution, though it is just in the preliminary discussion phase. That is to reprocess the radioactive waste into a form that can be used to continue to create more power. One problem ”“ reprocessing creates bomb-ready plutonium that is more likely to wind up in the wrong hands because it is more easily transportable. According to Moore, there are ways to overcome that flaw in the reprocessing but it is unclear to me how that is accomplished. However, the older waste already created is generally too degraded to be reprocessed into new energy. So the problem remains.
Listen to the market
Now, let”™s talk about the future of Indian Point. It is already built and it is supplying much-needed electricity to the region. It would be disastrous to shut it down precipitously. However, the relicensing of these facilities in 2013 and 2015 simply puts off our need to aggressively develop alternative energy sources and conservation strategies of the type we can barely imagine at this juncture.
At this writing, Wall Street financiers are not lining up to invest in these “dinosaurs” (Wall Street”™s word), and a number of utility executives have publicly doubted the wisdom of building new nukes. When the market speaks we should listen. Be reminded that Silicon Valley is discovering solar energy ”“ money and brains now focused on a promising renewable. Texas is choosing wind over coal ”“ another promising hint of the future. As for nuclear energy ”“ it ranks dead last in the efficiency sweepstakes if you factor in the entire fuel cycle.
Before he became an industry consultant, Moore wrote in a 1976 Greenpeace report his thoughts on nuclear power: “Nuclear power plants are, next to nuclear warheads themselves, the most dangerous devises that man has ever created.” The report ended with the statement: “The time to stop this crime against ourselves and countless future generations is now.”