US has 103 nuclear plants for 20% electricity use

[donsu]

103 places of danger and toxic waste for 20% ?


http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040405&s=hertsgaard

Three Mile Island

On the morning of September 11, 2001, after the second plane hit the World Trade Center and it was clear that the nation was under attack, US authorities issued an emergency alert, grounding air traffic and ordering nuclear power stations and other potential terrorist targets to go to their highest level of security. At the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, security guards sprang into action but soon ran into trouble: A gate designed to keep attackers out of the plant refused to close. Two hours later the guards were still struggling to shut it.

-snip-

But the legacy of September 11 may thwart these plans. The fourth plane hijacked that day crashed a mere 120 miles from Three Mile Island, highlighting the vulnerability of nuclear plants to terrorist attack. The industry rushed out a claim that government tests had shown nuclear plants withstanding a direct hit from a 757 jet. But the scientists at the Sandia National Laboratory who conducted those tests disavowed that conclusion. Meanwhile, other government tests had found that security forces at nuclear plants had failed to repel mock terrorist attacks more than 50 percent of the time--even though the forces knew well in advance exactly what day the "terrorists" were coming. Such shortcomings will surely raise concerns among any state or local public officials considering approval of new nuclear plants.

-snip-

So, twenty-five years after Three Mile Island, nuclear power is still not dead in the United States. As the industry pushes for a revival, it has two advantages: US electricity demand is growing steadily as the Internet revolution advances; and, although most environmentalists won't admit it, the industry has a point about the deadly effects of today's dominant source of electricity production, coal. Coal smoke has killed millions of people over the past three centuries, including today, while its carbon content has pushed the climate toward a potentially catastrophic instability. Nuclear power may kill millions of people someday, but it hasn't yet, and the longer the industry goes without another major accident, the more attractive nuclear will look--assuming, of course, that its costs are reduced. Better than either coal or nuclear would be a wholesale shift to a less centralized energy system based on solar and other renewables, using improved energy efficiency as the bridge to get there. But all these are political choices. The nuclear option will stay alive as long as the government keeps subsidizing it, and that seems likely as long as George W. Bush is President.
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[analogman]

1. Nuclear may be the way of the future though...

Oil and coal will one day run out. We're going to have to have some way of generating electricity for home and industrial use as well as powering our cars, planes, trains, and ships. Solar and wind are nowhere near efficient enough to do the job.

[donsu]

2. and the waste? hide it under the carpet?

nt

[megatherium]

5. We already have plenty of nuclear waste,

and most of it is sitting in pools inside nuclear plants. So we've got to deal with it already. We might as well assume that this will be done, eventually, in a safe and environmentally sound manner.

on edit: a typo.

[ThomWV]

7. Actually You Damn Near Could

South and east of Pittsburgh there is a large Mall complex called Centruy III. Just to the north of it there is a slag pile that was dumped over the decades that covers at least 500 acres and is probably 300 feet tall. There are waste dumps from coal burning just like it all over this country. That ash has to go somewhere you know. Mercury, and God only knows what else, leaches out of those piles every time it rains and for days after.

Did you know that if you took all of the spent fuel from every reactor ever run in this country and spread it out on a football field that the pile would be less than five feet tall? Do you honestly think that we could not find a way to deal with that? I think we can, and will.

[ThomWV]

3. And The Stars Will Fall From The Sky

I am more worried about being stuck by an astroid than the world running out of coal. Natural gas and oil are another matter.

We import one hell of a lot of natural gas from Canada and Canadian production is dropping at a rate of about 6% per year. What is even more important than the current rate of drop is that the new sources that are being drilled are much smaller than those found in the past and as a consequence those wells being drilled or pumped today have a considerably shorter life than those of just a couple of years ago. What that means is that the 6% per year production decline is going to grow larger. For those who like to feed on the Peak Oil scare this is one to really be concerned about. Peak natural gas in North American has already come and gone, we are on an increasingly steep downward slope for gas. That problem is compounded by the simple fact that almost all new power generation facilities built in the USA in the last decade are fired by natural gas.

Peak oil? If you are reading this right now you will never see peak oil in your lifetime, but your children will.

Coal and Nuclear. My goodness there is a lot of it. It is the filthiest nastyist stuff immaginable. I would far prefer to have a nuclear plant in my neighborhood than a coal fired plant. Anyone with any vision at all can clearly see that if we care one single iota about our environment that nuclear energy will be the source for our electrical power in the future. It is patently absurd that our nation has not put the full force and resources of our National Laboratory system behind development of fool-proof safe nuclear plants and attacked the question of waste from those plants from origination at mine portal to disposal at mine portal. It is just a disgrace that we have not done this.

If you really want to understand the problem with coal just look at the volume of waste generated each year and the volume that is pumped into the air. Now compare that to the waste generated by nuclear plants. The nuclear waste is more dangerous and its danger is longer lived but that does not for a moment mean that it is beyond our capability to deal with it. Coal waste, being tended to by private companys who's motivations are profit centered rather than public health centered, is carcinogenic and exists in vast quantitys. Most coal fired plants will generate a greater volume of waste in an hour than an equivelent power output nuclear plant will in years.

[treepig]

4. further, coal generates RADIOACTIVE waste

at much higher levels than nuclear power

see

http://geology.cr.usgs.gov/energy/factshts/163-97/FS-163-97.html

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

[megatherium]

6. And don't forget mountaintop removal coal mining,

a true environmental horror story.

Fortunately there is progress being made on nuclear. There are good fuel cycles (resistant to nuclear weapons proliferation because they involve isotopes of plutonium and other elements unsuited for bomb-making). There are reactor designs inherently resistant to melt-down. There are designs that are easy to build and refuel. And there are sound ways to deal with waste (reprocessing to recover more usable fuel and to cook away hot isotopes). A "gas-pebble" reactor is being built in South Africa that is considered to be particularly promising.