Ways & Means: Fantasy Nuclear by Carl Pope (Sierra Magazine)

[Kolesar]

Ways & Means: Fantasy Nuclear
"Make a wish and hope for the best" as energy policy
By Carl Pope


This spring, the nuclear industry and its promoters were urging Americans--once again--to "take another look at nuclear power." It doesn't rely on foreign oil, they argued, it produces no greenhouse gases, and there hasn't been a major accident for a long time.

At the same time, the United States was threatening military action--even a nuclear first strike--to prevent Iran from developing its own atomic industry. Iran insists its intentions are purely peaceful, but the enrichment process it is developing could be used to make weapons as well as electricity. (The country's know-how comes courtesy of renegade engineer A. Q. Khan, who stole the weapons secrets that made Pakistan a nuclear power, which he later sold to Iran and North Korea. See "Dangerous Liaisons," May/June 2005.) It doesn't take sophisticated reprocessing of the sort the Iranians are attempting to create a grave threat; even waste material from a peaceful power plant could be used in "dirty bombs" that could render entire cities uninhabitable.

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons go hand in hand. What were touted as "peaceful atoms" in India and Pakistan soon found their way into bombs; now Brazil is preparing to open a uranium-enrichment facility and denying inspectors full access. For nuclear power to slow global warming, it would have to be widely employed, not just domestically and among our friends but in developing nations where energy is desperately needed and the desire to join the atomic club is great. How secure would a nuclear industry be in the Congo?

"Just because nuclear technology can be put to evil purposes is not an argument to ban its use," argues Patrick Moore, the Greenpeace cofounder turned nuke cheerleader. His solution is to "use diplomacy and, where necessary, force to prevent countries or terrorists from using nuclear materials for destructive ends." That means endless Iraq-like confrontations--a hellish price to pay to boil water, which is all a reactor does.

Most nuclear boosters ignore proliferation and terrorism altogether. They prefer to contemplate "fantasy nuclear." In this world, reactors can't melt down or leak, fuel is contained in small, harmless pellets, and massive subsidies are unnecessary. International agreements (or, failing that, secret agents) ensure that fantasy-nuclear materials and technology never fall into the wrong hands. Fantasy waste can be safely stored someplace. Fantasy nuclear is cheaper than anything else we could substitute for fossil fuel.

By now, Americans ought to be wary of policies so thoroughly unmoored from reality. In the real world, accidents could easily happen. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn't even require nuclear power plants to protect themselves against rocket-propelled grenades--available for as low as $10 in the world's arms bazaars. In every country where nuclear energy flourishes, it does so only because of enormous public subsidies. In the United States, even with lavish federal grants, loan guarantees, and risk insurance, only three applications to build new nuclear plants are currently pending--possibly because Standard & Poor's declared in January that "an electric utility with nuclear exposure has weaker credit than without" and that any such rash company would likely see its credit rating downgraded. And no one has yet solved the problem of how to safely dispose of radioactive waste.

Even so, nuclear boosters are still talking about building as many as 15 new reactors in the United States. Will they be the "intrinsically safe" reactors we hear so much about? Well, no. Apparently, these designs are just phantasms. Why else would the industry continue to build nothing but the inferior and dangerous variety?

True, nuclear reactors do not emit carbon dioxide. Neither do double-paned windows, solar cells, wind turbines, and insulated ceilings. Sure, we could build hundreds of nuclear plants, and global warming would be reduced. But we could get the same results, faster and more safely, by developing hybrid trucks, more-efficient gas turbines, and biofuels. For half the money we are likely to spend in Iraq, we could retrofit the entire U.S. auto industry for high-efficiency vehicles. Just think what we could do with the money we'd spend on a similar confrontation with Iran--a confrontation that may come thanks to the deadly contradictions of the actual nuclear world.

Carl Pope is the Sierra Club's executive director.

http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200607/ways_and_means.asp

[Dead_Parrot]

1. Dipshit

Nuclear power and nuclear weapons go hand in hand

:eyes:

we could get the same results...by developing...more-efficient gas turbines

Which bit of "CO₂ is killing the fucking planet" doesn't he get?

[struggle4progress]

4. Nothing says "I'm an environmentalist" like attacking the Sierra Club, eh?

http://www.sierraclub.org/globalwarming/

[NNadir]

5. Well since you're a Sierra Club environmentalist, maybe you

can tell us what exactly the Sierra Club plans to do about global climate change.

From you're link, all I see is a statement that "global climate change is bad."

That is a surprise.

Then there are the usual platitudes, and a cool program called cool cities. The Sierra Club is very cool. Almost no one drives a Chevy Tahoe or a Hummer.

Other than not buying Tahoes to drive the kids and the dogs to soccer games, what, exactly is the Sierra Club's plan to deal with this:



That little tiny purple line includes about 12 billion dollars worth of ethanol that may turn to dust because of this:

[Dead_Parrot]

7. I'll let the article speak for itself

This guy wants to continue burning fossil fuels rather than use nuclear power. I'm not saying it's representative of SC, I don't know enough about them. But yes, he's a dipshit.

[struggle4progress]

9. I'll say again what I've said before: the first problem is political.

The single largest culprit in global warming is our United States. The waste of energy here, including the waste involved in consumer products that promptly become garbage, is staggering. Automotive behaviors account for a substantial chunk of US greenhouse gas emissions. Any alleged solution that does not involve country-wide changes in behavior cannot have a meaningful effect, because it will not affect the underlying politics.

Simply building more nuclear plants (or more other power plants) will not reduce energy waste: it is likely, rather, to increase wasteful behaviors, leading to increased pressure to mine and burn additional coal, supported by the familiar chorus of "we have to balance energy against environment." Some of this pressure is likely to come from the nuclear reactor companies which are often closely tied to coal companies and from whom we hear regular proposals for marvels such as "nuclear-powered coal-gasification plants."

There is no simple-minded way to solve this political problem: twenty or twenty-five percent of the US population will deny global warming until the polar ice is substantially depleted. And they will be increasingly vocal about their opposition to any restrictions on consumption behavior; to win, it is critical to forestall these voices. As the price of gasoline increases, the US public will move most easily on transportation issues; moves for higher auto standards and public transportation will, however, be resisted by a New Centurian crowd that would prefer military action abroad as a means of securing oil sources; this can only averted by an effective peace movement and by the development of alternative sources such as biofuels, which have the advantage of merely recycling existing atmospheric carbon rather than adding further fossil carbon. Thus, gasoline prices offer an opportunity to start developing attitudes, new transportation habits/expectations, and new energy industries which, done properly, could lead to further political gains in favor of garbage reduction, recycling requirements, and energy efficiency mandates.

As part of this program, one should strengthen Clean Air Act requirements to reduce the various emissions (NOx, SOx, Hg, &c&c) of fossil fuel plants by scrubbing mechanisms. Carbon taxes may also be a useful mechanism, if done in such a manner that they do not permit large corporations to cointinue adding fossil carbon indefinitely; such taxes could be used to promote use of biofuel alternatives if recycled and fossil carbon were taxed differentially. The effect of such requirements will be to increase the cost and reduce the attractiveness of greenhouse gas emission.

Second, the problem is global. The developed world, including the US, faces a stark choice: either we can decide that we alone are entitled to the benefits that we have received while squandering energy and resources, and can by force of arms attempt to prevent other nations from using fossil carbon, while providing no real development alternatives, or we can commit ourselves to helping the rest of the world establish real alternatives, including solar and wind systems that produce energy. Unless we can eliminate and reverse development pressures against large forested areas, we continually lose existing carbon sinks. Unless we can stop population growth and slowly reduce population size, population growth and increasing expectations alone will provide a constant pressure for continually increasing emissions. These are issues involving diplomacy and foreign aid (much different from the military "aid" we now provide in the form of weapons produced by American manufacturers).

There's no magic button for this problem. It's easy to sneer at groups that put much time into campaigns with little immediate effect or to call somebody a "dipshit" based on a crude cartoon image of what they say. But it's just silly to imagine that there's one simple technical fix to these problems or to pretend that asking Americans to stop using fossil fuels "right now today" will have any effect whatsoever on behaviors: those are simply prescriptions for feeling self-righteous while accomplishing nothing.

Meanwhile, of course, the elites propping up the Bush regime are funding military action and trying their best to demolish existing international diplomatic structures, while simultaneously packing the courts with judges who would throw out most of the required statutes, and setting up a surveillance system that will enable the war party to undermine any movement away from the status quo. As long as that crowd's in power, no meaningful change will occur

[Dead_Parrot]

17. Some good points...

You're right about the problems in getting governments in general (and the US in particular) moving in the right direction: and without the US, the rest of the world could give up all emissions tomorrow, and we'd still be fucked. The closest thing to a "magic button" is getting the voters educated on the state of the planet: I guess we'll have to see how long "Inconvenient Truth" circulates for, as it seems to getting to a few people who weren't sufficiently scared before.

Reversing population and suburbanization are going to be vital, but we don't have time to put anything in place before the shit really hits the fan: we really do need a "fix" (or rather lots of fixes) that will support our current fucked up system relatively intact, while we sort the mess out. And that is going to take so long, I'd rather we went for broke and hope we make it in time...

...which we probably won't, but what the hell.

[struggle4progress]

11. No, he says it's a fantasy that "nuclear is cheaper than anything else we

.. could substitute for fossil fuel."

I suspect it requires some dedicated carelessness, to read such a sentence as saying "I want to continue burning fossil fuels," but such carelessness apparently occurs from time to time in this forum.

[Dead_Parrot]

14. How careless do I need to be?

It's not enough cut back a bit, we need to get off the fucking fossil fuels.

But we could get the same results, faster and more safely, by developing hybrid trucks, more-efficient gas turbines

I really don't get how burning fossil fuel in a more-efficient gas turbine is "the same result" as not burning fossil fuel. Perhaps you would spell this out for me in small words.

Unless he's invented a machine that builds icecaps, this is not any sort of solution. It's like the Union of "Concerned" Scientists and their half-arsed "25% of energy by renewables" policy.

[struggle4progress]

21. OK. I will say it yet another time, using different words:

First, with regard to eliminating fossil fuels: well, duh.

Second, pick an option: (A) We have no economy because we just shut down all fossil fuel use tomorrow morning; (B) we aim for a phase-out of fossil fuel use, with appropriate substitution. Let's put aside abstract ethical questions for the moment, because it's just a fact that abstract ethics has essentially zero impact politically.

The question is: which of options (A) or (B) is doable politically?

My own cynical suspicion is that nobody gets near option (A) verbally without committing political suicide and that anyone who looks like they might actually been taking meaningful material steps in the direction of option (A) is likely to meet a quick untimely end, perhaps by lynching. That suspicion has nothing to do with what I would LIKE the state of affairs to be: it simply results from my effort to form a realistic view of American culture and history.

That leaves option (B) as the only possible starting place, with the vague hope that constant pressure can be exerted continually to speed up the substitution. The country is reliant on combustion: the easiest transition is to substitute fuels that recycle current atmospheric carbon; one gets an extra punch by increasing the efficiency of turbines, other engines &c; economic forces can be brought to use through higher prices, but of course if that were done improperly all it would do is create a social ruling class with access to energy and a lumpen-class withouit much access to energy, so that pushing for dull things like mass transit become essential for a workable society. Simultaneously, you start to price coal out of the market by standard environmental statutes and regulations: restricting or banning strip mining and mountaintop removal, by holding companies and directors liable for environmental cleanup costs, and by establishing meaningful emissions standards on combustion facilities. Electric appliances similarly get hit with efficiency restrictions and perhaps taxes. From any sensible point of view, such steps need to be taken anyway, whether or not one thinks nuclear energy belongs in the final mix.

If the object is to reduce carbon emissions as quickly as possible, then efficiency improvements and conservation, with no net increase in new power sources, gives the fastest start out of the gate: continuing to bow to new demand during the transition simply creates political and economic incentives to continue with current practices and delays the transition. Sure, that's not option (A), but I frankly don't see any plausible path to option (A) at present; under our current system, proponents of anything like option (B) will already face constant accusations of being "environmental extremists."

[Dead_Parrot]

29. See how easy that was?

What you've actually done is boil the issue down to it's key points, and offered a vaguely practicable policy. You haven't vomited forth a diatribe on the evils of nuclear power, you've said "whether or not one thinks nuclear energy belongs in the final mix" which is a perfectly sane question to ask.

Not even the screaming carbon-nazis like me actually expect to get off the stuff tomorrow morning, but what we'd like to see is a series of measures - like pricing coal to the stratosphere and taxing end-user use. Pretty much as you outlined.

Good post :)

I'd suggest reading your post again, then reading the OP article, then giving yourself a pat on the back (for not being a dipshit).

[NNadir]

2. Most nights I lay awake worrying about a nuclear attack from Belgium.

Finland is a really scary country too.

But the worst threat to humanity is Japan. Their nuclear program, after all, is the same one responsible for Rodan and Godzilla.

[Dead_Parrot]

3. So when does the US invade Lithuania?

Y'know, there's a high probability there's still some communists there.... :scared:

[struggle4progress]

6. What a misleading graphic: US generates about thirty-five times

.. as much electricity by nuclear means as Finland and almost twice as much as France. Does the webpage you found that graphic on even mention conservation?

[Dead_Parrot]

8. So, that's an excuse for burning coal?

on which planet? :shrug:

[struggle4progress]

10. That seems a dishonest characterization of the original post. eom

[NNadir]

12. Well, if you know how to look at graphs (this involves mathematics)

you will see that the thickness of the line represents the amount of power generated, and the length of the line involves the percentage of total electrical energy produced.

I recognize that in order to be anti-nuclear, you can't be too bright or perceptive, and that two concepts at the same time are difficult to manage, but still...

Speaking of misleading, the idiotic claim that nuclear power presupposes weapons would seem to indicate that there are 31 countries with nuclear weapons, since there are 31 countries producing nuclear power, including those fearsome nations Canada and Mexico. Maybe we should launch a preemptive strike?

Switzerland, of course, is a tremendous threat to get into a nuclear arms race with Sweden and Germany.

In fact, in all of history, there has only been one known nuclear weapon produced with commercial grade plutonium, although you wouldn't believe this in the soccer mom club for calendar sales. This was a 1962 nuclear test that disclosed by Hazel O'Leary during the Clinton administration. While the test worked, the bomb was not particularly easy to handle, and gave a low yield. While the test proved that once through commercial reactor grade plutonium could be used, albeit with difficulty, to make nuclear weapons, it created no industrial movement to do so. It was too problematic. Commercial plutonium has been used for one purpose and one purpose only: To generate electricity.

Neither does it matter that Isreal is a nuclear weapons state without having a commercial nuclear industry, or that the first nuclear weapons state, the United States possessed nuclear weapons long before it possessed a single commercial nuclear power station.

I note that there have been millions of people killed by wars involving petroleum, and that's not just because napalm is made from oil. In fact, the Second World War, one of the most cruel wars in history, was heavily involved in oil politics. The Japanese decision to launch attack on Pearl Harbor was an outgrowth of the American decision to embargo oil. The Japanese considered that they could not survive without oil and therefore would need to secure the oil fields of the Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia). To do this, they believed that they would need to eliminate the US fleet. Although the primary consideration of Hitler's attack on the Soviet Union was racism, concern over the Romanian oil fields and desire for the Caucus fields played a roll in the final German decision to begin a chain of events that would kill twenty million people.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi//3625207.stm

Right now, it happens that the United States is involved in a criminal war to steal oil. Big deal? Apparently not.

In what source of energy is constantly maligned by fossil fuel apologists on the subject of war? Nuclear power. There have been a gazillion oil wars, and just one nuclear war, but hey, who's counting? We can do whatever we want for oil: murder, destroy the atmosphere and seas, enslave people, torture people, steal, starve, whatever, and not raise a word of protest from the likes of StruggleforProgress.

Doublespeak.

He's concerned about the least used weapons, nuclear weapons, although there has not been one nuclear attack in more than 60 years. Note that he is not concerned with the actual diversion of commercial fuel to nuclear weapons purposes since he can no more produce such a case than he can produce a case of someone killed by the storage of commercial nuclear spent fuel. In fact, the nuclear power industry has been burning military surplus fuel since the 1990's. The nuclear industry, unlike the oil industry, is destroying weapons. Strugglefor"Progress"'s concern is what could, in theory happen. Why? Because he thinks that the detestable reality is a subject of moral indifference while his imagination is enough to ask other people to die.

StruggleforProgress cannot begin to grasp that the permanent dismantling of nuclear weapons would be next to impossible to permanently destroy without a commercial fission based industry. There are zero paths to the destruction of weapons grade plutonium without the use of nuclear reactors. Zero. No matter. Struggles insists that this plutonium can be wished away by buying Sierra Club Calendars. He will not countenance the work of tens of thousands highly educated nuclear engineers - people who can gather two pieces of data from a graph - inventing fuel cycles that render nuclear war increasingly unlikely.

The reality of oil wars, meanwhile, current wars, not postulated wars, can click along and no amount of ripped flesh and burnt flesh and mangled flesh will raise even a whimper of protest from him.

What do we hear from the fossil fuel boys? Nuclear energy is about war. Why is this so? Because they, from Dick Cheney to Donald Rumsfeld to StruggleforProgress, say so. Does it matter that Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Sweden, all produce quantities of primary energy that are greater than, or close to, exajoule scale and that none of these nations have even considered building nuclear weapons? No. Does it matter that there are almost continuous wars for fossil fuels? No. The rule is once again, nuclear exceptionalism, the claim that all other human energy practices are irrelevant, that only the risks associated with nuclear can or should be considered because nuclear is spelled with an 'N.'

All energy involves risk, but nuclear energy is the only scalable, constant, on demand, source of exajoule scale energy that is risk minimized. This is true not only for matters like global climate change and other types of pollution, but for the risk of war as well. How does the risk of nuclear war compare to the risk of global climate change? The solution to global climate change involves only driving to the mall in your SUV to buy a Sierra club calendar.

Fossil fuel apologists suck.

[struggle4progress]

13. I don't use ESP when reading graphs: meanings I have to imagine ..

.. (because not supplied by axis labels or legends, say), I tend to ignore. So if you post a graphic like that, with line widths unexplained, I see no reason whatsoever to assume any particular interpretation of line width or area, since none was provided. Representing power generated by line width is still a poor choice BTW, because then the areas of the rectangles represent a meaningless product of local power generated by percentage of world capacity.

Most of the rest of your post is simply noise.

[NNadir]

15. I don't care.

I understood the meaning of the graph immediately, but then again, I understand nuclear energy and you don't.

I don't have a very high opinion of your perceptual skills in any case. I think that you don't understand very basic things, and any attempt on my part to increase your comprehension level would be a serious waste of time.

[greenman3610]

16. the point being made is

that Republicans are ready to start nuclear war if
someone that they don't like builds a nuclear power
plant.

that's kind of a problem.
I haven't heard your solution to it.

[NNadir]

18. The Republicans use nuclear scare stories as a cover.

When people buy into the "mushroom cloud" scenarios, they deserve what they get.

I don't live in fear of the Republicans. They don't have the resources for another war based on another appeal to nuclear scare mongering. The first one played out and it's clear they simply are overwhelmed.

I am more concerned about global climate change than anything else. Because nuclear energy is an essential cog in addressing the problem, I am deriding nuclear ignorance.

Nuclear ignorance, however, can do damage in ways other than limiting the tools we have to fight global climate change: I note that if Americans were better educated about nuclear science, they would have never bought the Niger uranium story for instance. They would have been far less credulous about nuclear "terrorism."

I knew it was nonsense immediately. Why? Because I understand nuclear technology. I suspect that many other people knew as well.

In any case, your contention that the Republicans will start a nuclear war is dubious at best. Why am I supposed to buy into it? Any special reason? Are you a member of the joint chiefs of staff who knows something I don't? Further, if they do in fact, start such a war, not one of the weapons will consist of materials obtained from commercial reactors.

The contention from the middle class idiot who has co-opted John Muir's group is that nuclear power presupposes nuclear war. I have offered evidence that no such connection is necessary. It is possible that some countries, at enormous expense will assemble nuclear weapons, but there is no definitive link meaning that one implies the other. The situation is not unique to nuclear energy. The existence of petroleum refineries does not presuppose the manufacture of napalm, for instance. The existence of a steel industry does not presuppose an industry manufacturing tanks.

I am not calling for the disbanding of the petroleum industry because of the existence of napalm or kerosene fueled stealth bombers. I am calling for its end on environmental grounds, on the grounds that it is destroying the atmosphere. I am not calling for the banning of coal because coal can be used to fuel battleships. I'm calling for its end because it is destroying the atmosphere.

I note, with satisfaction however, that the use of nuclear power is the only way to destroy the fissionable materials that now make up nuclear weapons. Therefore the only possibility to reduce the risk of nuclear weapons is to have nuclear power plants available. There is no other way. As it happens, in fact, weapons grade plutonium can be used in certain fuel schemes to burn up minor actinides like americium, collecting an energy bonus in the course of so doing. During this process some of the weapons grade plutonium is fissioned and thus destroyed forever, and the rest is denatured so as to make its use in nuclear weapons far more difficult and therefore far less probable.

Weapons grade plutonium, which was not manufactured with my approval - I was a child when much of it was made - cannot be made unavailable by prayer. It is not destroyed by printing Greenpeace brochures or by have Greenpeace members dress up in clown suits and climb flagpoles. Weapons grade plutonium can only be destroyed by exposure to a neutron flux.

This fact of physics is not a function of what Republican assholes threaten or how they posture.

Nuclear power as practiced almost everywhere on earth is not involved in war. The claim to the contrary is just another fraudulent figment of opponents imaginations.

[Dead_Parrot]

19. What, they're nuking North Korea?

Or might you be referring to a major oil exporter that's threatening to sell in Euros?

[struggle4progress]

20. LOL

[Finding the Trurh]

22. Fantasy Nuclear

Just a few questions.
Would the nuclear industry exist without massive government support?

Would nuclear energy be cost effective if the industry had to pay all of its own costs? Liability Insurance?, etc.

How can true red blooded conservatives support an industry the requires massive (big government)subsidies, requires intense regulation thus ballooning the size of government? (NRC) Distorts the free market by making other technologies compete with with its subsidized pricing (Socialism)

Or do I have this all wrong?

[NNadir]

23. The answer to the first three questions is yes.

Nuclear power plants operate in 31 different countries and in most of them, they are profitable without subsidy. This is especially true because the price of the extremely dangeous fossil fuels are rising - which is a good thing.

I am always amazed at how people who nominally identify themselves as leftists are uniformly willing to appeal to insurance executives as the arbiters of science. Any company in the Western world collecting insurance premiums for the last 50 years would have done so without a single payout. I have heard endlessly about "insurance" justifications for nuclear opposition, but I have not heard one such person raising such a point who can tell me who pays the claims for people killed routinely, daily, by air pollution or global climate change. The fact that the damage from fossil fuels, including war, is not insured somehow goes right under the radar, always.

"Why?" one asks.

The third question is the use of a logical fallacy known as "begging the question," which is a classic in poor thinking (poor thinking constituting the entire anti-nuclear argument). The poor quality of this thinking is demonstrated by this website: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/begging-the-question.html If one pokes around there, one can also find "guilt by association," as in "Dick Cheney supports nuclear power."

It seems that every time I meet a new nuclear opponent I am required to refer to a website clarifying the nature of logical fallacies. I have not met one nuclear opponent who can successfully make the anti-nuclear argument on substantive grounds. All of the arguments attempt to substitute conditional statements, like "if a nuclear waste truck in Chicago turns over on I-90, then 15 brazillion people will die," for factual statements like "fossil fuels cause global climate change." All of them rely on selective attention.

Comparative analysis reveals quite a different, i.e. rational, picture: www.externe.info.

Your thinking is certainly wrong. As for what else you say, who knows?

[struggle4progress]

24. The industry has received and continues to receive massive subsidies

which in the mid-90's were estimated at $7 billion annually in the US; the industry here regularly lobbies for substantial subsidies, whining that it needs them. Canada toyed with dropping subsidies but reinstated them. The picture in the rest of the world appears to be similar.

I don't know what a "true conservative" would think -- because I've never met one. I know that when Reagan was wailing and gnashing his teeth about fictitious welfare queens driving Cadillacs, none of the conservatives I met showed the slightest interest in eliminating subsidies for nuclear industry. From this, and similar experiences with other issues, I've concluded that conservative concern for free market discipline is a largely a propaganda ploy, being nonexistence when topics not matching the current playbook buzzwords are under discussion or when there is hope of raiding the public treasury for private benefit.


Take the Rich Off Welfare
by Mark Zepezauer and Arthur Naiman
Odonian Press, 1996

Nuclear Subsidies: $7.1 billion a year

... Since 1959, the government has also limited the liability of nuclear utilities for damage caused by accidents. Until 1988, the utilities were only responsible for the first $560 million per accident; then the limit was raised to $7 billion.

But $7 billion wouldn't begin to cover the costs of a core meltdown, or even a near meltdown like Chernobyl. That accident's total costs are estimated at $358 billion-not to mention the 125,000 deaths the Ukrainian government figures it has caused ... <more>

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/Nuclear_Subsidies.html


Nuclear Subsidies: Time To End The Tax Drain
by Gordon Edwards, Ph.D., CCNR President

The nuclear industry is unlike any other. Private investors did not create it; the government did. And yet, despite fifty years of massive government support, it still can't stand on its own two feet.

Nuclear power currently provides less energy in Canada than firewood or "hog fuel" in British Columbia. Nevertheless, it receives about twice as much each year in federal R&D subsidies than all other energy options combined -- including coal, oil, natural gas, conservation and renewables.

Independent studies in Canada and elsewhere have concluded that nuclear power is an expensive and quite ineffective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Investments in energy efficiency are not only cheaper and faster, but they typically displace about seven times as much in the way of greenhouse gas emissions (per dollar invested) than nuclear power does ...

http://www.ccnr.org/subsidies.html


Subsidies or Kyoto essential for nuclear power
David Uren
May 29, 2006

HEAVY taxpayer subsidies would be required to get privately owned nuclear power into operation in Australia unless the Government joins the Kyoto Protocol.

A report prepared for the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation finds the Government would have to foot 21.4 per cent of electricity bills for the first 12 years and contribute to the cost of building the plant.

"If the owner takes the entire financial risk, then the nuclear station produces electricity at a cost that is significantly higher than would a new coal-fired or gas turbine power station," it says ...

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19288921-2702,00.html


The Future Role of Nuclear Power in the United States
The Near-Term Economic Picture for Commercial Nuclear Generation

On the other hand, the last unit to enter commercial operation was TVA's Watts Bar Unit 1 in June 1996, and the last successful order for a U.S. commercial nuclear power plant was in 1973. No energy generation company in the Unites States has been willing to order and construct a new nuclear plant in more than thirty years, and none have taken anything more than preliminary steps towards purchasing and constructing a new nuclear plant today in the absence of a promise of huge Federal subsidies. This is not because of public opposition; not for want of a licensed geologic repository for the disposal of spent fuel; and not because of the proliferation risks associated with commercial nuclear power. Rather, it is because new commercial nuclear power plants are uneconomical in the United States.

http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/pnucpwr.asp


Published on Saturday, May 19, 2001 in the Portland (ME) Press Herald
Dirty and Unsafe
Nuclear Power No Relief From Energy Woes
Wind, solar, biomass and geothermal sources are the wave of the future.
by Susan Sargent

... Additional supports are granted in the form of a taxpayer-financed insurance policy known as the Price Anderson Act. At the state level, nuclear power plant operators have cost consumers higher-than-average electricity rates and have reaped billions of dollars in so-called "stranded costs" in states that have undergone deregulation of their electricity markets. Nuclear power has remained an energy option over the past decades largely due to these huge taxpayer subsidies.

In France, the nation that made the biggest investment in nuclear energy, the national utility, Electricite de France, is carrying a $30 billion debt, mostly because of its nuclear investments.

And while French nuclear advocates like to praise the nation's cheap domestic power prices, in reality, when compared to 10 other European Union nations, France ranks fifth in domestic power prices. In fact, since 1985, France's electricity prices have seen the smallest decrease in the EU. And while four new reactors are under construction there, none have been initiated since 1996.

Most other major industrialized nations have stopped construction of nuclear power plants altogether, and many are planning to shut down plants that are still working ...

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0519-04.htm

[Massacure]

26. We spend $450 billion on a military to subsidize oil...

You cannot really complain about $7 billion.

[NNadir]

27. Nonetheless he will complain, because he has no sense of scale.

He gives not a rat's ass that we all subsidize oil and coal with our lungs. Nor does he have a sense of the meaning of numbers, how many billions of dollars of damage fossil fuels do, or how much the imports cost, many billions of dollars per week. He gives not a flying fuck for what fossil fuels cost to the health of citizens of the entire planet, or the fact that no resources exist to undo this damage.

He has no plan to deal with global climate change, because he is indifferent to it.

On the other hand, I do have a plan:

Were I in charge, I would not be worrying about subsidies to nuclear power plants, except that they are too small. I favor a massive government funded building of hundreds of PWR reactors, enough to replace all of the coal and gas plants now operating. Noting that a comparable scheme succeeded spectacularly in the 1960's and 1970's, when much less was known about nuclear technology, I have confidence that it will succeed as well as the first nuclear era. In advocating this, I am proposing something that has already been achieved.

Coal and gas and petroleum combined produce in the United States generated about 2,800,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2004.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat1p1.html


This translates to about 10 exajoules of electrical energy, or about 30 exajoules of primary energy, and would require roughly about the same number of reactors built world wide, about 450 of them. Such a program would cost likely more than a trillion dollars, but global climate change, the on going health catastrophe associated with air pollution and the cost of oil imports. I would fund this by "cutting and running" in Iraq, since there should never have been anything to cut in the first place, and by placing high carbon taxes on all fossil fuels, comparable with their external cost.

What the fossil fuel apologists do not tell you, with their selective attention, is that in last month the United States imported $24 billion dollars worth of oil. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060609/bs_afp/useconomytrade A carbon tax, which would effectively double the price, would, barring conservation, therefore collect enough each month to fund about 8 nuclear plants for imports, a comparable amount for domestic oil, and probably a much larger amount for coal. The pain would be intense, but necessary, like cancer surgery, but people would indeed be inspired to conserve to the maximum amount.

Anti-nuclear nuts think you're stupid and will impressed by the numbers for what they represent (aslo fraudulently) as nuclear subsidies, numbers that represent decades, not months. Because they do not have even the poorest comprehension of numbers, a graphic like the one on this website:

http://zfacts.com/p/196.html

Neither do they present any proved alternatives, but merely reassert more meaningless, claptrap and blather about what the purple line can do in spite of 50 years of failure:



What is even more pathetic is that people with such a low level of comprehension of numbers don't even know how laughable they are. This speaks to an appalling lack of education on the part of Americans about a sense of scale. It is almost certain to be fatal.

Of course, oil is not primarily used to generate electricity, with only half an exajoule of oil being burned for this purpose in 2004. But the cost of energy, which is known, and the cost of global climate change which is largely unknown as yet, easily speak to exactly how tortured this nonsense can get.

[struggle4progress]

30. Look at the other side of your graphic: see all the wasted energy?

[Massacure]

31. There is a limit to how much of it can be captured.

Let us say that you heat water to 2000 degrees fahrenheit to generate electricity. Based on the laws of thermodynamics you can expect to convert half of that heat into electricity based on the formula n = 1 - the square root of the temperature cold reservoir (probably room temperature) divided by the temperature of hot reserver (1200 degrees kelvin)

Good luck dealing with that kind of heat. You'd have to nearly double the operating temperature of current power plants.

[NNadir]

35. Did you ever hear of the 2nd law of thermodynamics?

You haven't?

Why is that not surprising?

[Ready4Change]

33. Do you have that same chart, only showing research expenditures?

How much money has been spent developing nuclear, vs hydro, or biomass, or wind, or solar, or liquified coal (lord help us)?

I'm really not being critical, here. I'm really curious. My impression is that development dollars for alternatives pale in comparison with that spent on radioactives. And while I know petroleum and coal are cheap energy, I'd be willing to bet a fair penny has been tossed their way for development as well.

How does THAT side of the chart compare?

[struggle4progress]

28. I certainly think the present war is entirely about oil but cannot agree

that oil is exceptional in this respect. Historically, US military and covert operations have been used to consolidate control over all manner of resources: toppling the Arbenz government in Guatemala supported US corporate control of fruit production and toppling the Allende government in Chile supported US copper mining interest; French interests in Indochina that ultimately led to our Vietnam involvement included rubber and iron. French policy towards Africa has been strongly shaped by uranium procurement issues, and based on the historical record it is reasonable to expect that the United States would go to war over uranium issues as quickly as it went to war over oil if our economy were as dependent on uranium as it is currently on oil.

Incidently, companies with large nuclear operations can also profit from an oil war in Iraq:

Rebuilding Iraq -- The Contractors

... Bechtel Group Inc.
The Contributions: $1,303,765 (59 percent to Republicans; 41 percent to Democrats)
Total to President Bush: $6,250
The Contract: USAID awarded the largest of its postwar Iraq contracts to Bechtel Group Inc. April 17. The capital construction contract gives Bechtel an initial award of $34.6 million, but provides for funding of up to $680 million over 18 months subject to Congress’ approval. Bechtel’s primary activities under the contract will include rebuilding power generation facilities, electrical grids, water and sewage systems and airport facilities in Iraq. The company has said it plans to subcontract a number of these projects ...

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/rebuilding_iraq/index.asp

[NNadir]

36. So your claim is that Bechtel is funding the Iraq war to sell nuclear

power plants to Iraq?

Why do I find this claim as unsurprising as all of the other ridiculous objections to nuclear power? Maybe I should be surprised to find that there is, in fact, a new bottom to exactly how absurdly distended these very weak arguments can get.

Your description of the causes of the war in Vietnam is ridiculous. Synthetic rubber was industrialized during the Second World War when access to the Far East was obviously limited on the part of nations that very much depended on rubber supplies. The Germans also had industrial experience with synthetic rubber from butadiene dating to the First World War.

http://www.students.dsu.edu/lobiend/french_colonialization.htm

I note that French colonial policy did not arise out of a need for tires or uranium, as much of it occurred in the 19th century when neither of these commodities were industrially crucial, unless you count pottery glaze (uranium) as a crucial commodity. Most literate people recognize that tires became important only after the invention of the internal combustion engine. Much of the impetus for colonialism involved access to controlled markets, cheap labor, and most importantly to a sense of religious and cultural superiority. Rubber happened to be a local resource that the French profited from, ultimately, but it was not the guiding goal. Napoleon III did not wake up one morning and say, "France needs tires." The pretext for the French attack on Vietnam involved a dead bishop, not a rubber plantation.

The uranium for the first nuclear reactors did not come from French colonial possessions, but from the Belgian Congo and from some French reserves (originally mined in Czechoslovakia) at, IIRC, the Curie Institute. Supposedly this uranium was spirited out of the country just before the advancing German army.

France, of course, was a pioneering nation in the chemistry and physics of uranium, but effectively the liberation of Africa, including French Colonial Africa, predated the ultimate predominance of nuclear power in France. Since then France has constructed the best uranium recycling plants in the world, and could easily fuel nuclear plants for centuries with the stocks of uranium it already has, depending on the types of fuel cycles chosen. The French, for instance, are the inventors of the CORAIL cycle, which is extremely interesting and exciting. (France is a world leader in advanced fuel cycles.)

If you don't know what you're talking about, make stuff up.

[struggle4progress]

37. ... Huh ... ?

"So your claim is that Bechtel is funding the Iraq war to sell nuclear power plants to Iraq?"

Uh ... no ...

But thanks for writing and do feel free to continue to send a postcard now and then from whatever that place is ...

[NNadir]

39. Never mind. I guess your point about "large nuclear corporations"

was confusing to you too.

I was remarking on the incoherence of bit of typical confusion from you that read as follows:

"Incidently, companies with large nuclear operations can also profit from an oil war in Iraq:

Rebuilding Iraq -- The Contractors

... Bechtel Group Inc.
The Contributions: $1,303,765 (59 percent to Republicans; 41 percent to Democrats)
Total to President Bush: $6,250"

I really shouldn't try to figure out whatever it is you're trying to say in attaching nuclear operations to the war in Iraq. Maybe you're Dick Cheney. He said "nuclear" and "Iraq" together as often as possible too. Of course, he is certifiably insane. What's your excuse?

There might be some people who note that some rations distributed in Iraq are from the Baskin and Robins Corporation in an attempt to malign ice cream, but really, the point would be pathetic wouldn't it?


You probably had some thought in mind when you felt the need to drag Bechtel into this, but it no doubt not worth considering in a serious discourse.

Whatever. :eyes:

[struggle4progress]

41. Bechtel Wins Iraq War Contracts

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=6532

This isn't terribly complicated. The war is driven by financial interests. Companies with large nuclear interests, like Bechtel, are perfectly happy to reap the profits from an oil war; they'd feel the same if it were a war over uranium deposits.

[NNadir]

42. Oh, so that is your tortured point, a "guilt by association" fallacy with

a little ad hominem thrown in for good measure.

Whatever. The corporate policies of Bechtel have nothing to do with the question of whether nuclear energy is safer than coal, which is a matter of physics and chemistry.

As always, your thinking is tortured.

[struggle4progress]

43. Subthread to post #26.

[struggle4progress]

40. Of course military intervention to "secure" resources is common:

I merely use France as an example that Americans might understand more clearly than they understand their own country's behavior; the point, as was perfectly clear in my previous post, is simply that interventionism is not limited to the resource "oil," and cannot be expected to end magically if somehow another finite resource were substituted for oil.

With regard to rubber and other interests in French Indochina, there is the testimony of the Pentagon Papers and the history of the Michelin rubber plantations; it seems peculiar to deny such facts, since there is no other reason for France to have attempted to reclaim the colony after WWII.

In our now supposedly "post-colonial" period, France regularly intervenes in Africa, maintains bases there, develops militaries there -- and a common theme can often be found, which is related to France's energy choices, originally made by De Gaulle; I do not hold these up as especially shocking, in comparison to the behavior of more power countries than France, but the pattern is perfectly clear.

... With France having to give the African countries of Niger and Gabon their formal political independence, the French were in a bind with regard to uranium. However, the French used the ties it would create with all of its former colonies to make sure that it would continue to receive uranium from both Niger and Gabon. This is evident in that all of the companies that were mining uranium, SOMAIR and COMINAK in Niger and COMUF in Gabon, were majority owned by COGEMA, the French nuclear fuel company. The French now had what they wanted, a source of uranium for its military and civilian nuclear energy programs that was very reliable. But how stable were the countries of Niger and Gabon? As it turns out, because of the French, Gabon was very stable. The only major event that has marred the stability of Gabon, was an unsuccessful coup in 1964. It was during this coup that, some Gabonese military officers ousted Leon Mba, the French installed leader of Gabon, from power. A new provisional government was created but it lasted only a day. France sent in some of its military forces to restore Leon Mba to power. The French claimed that the Vice-President of Gabon enacted the French-Gabonese defense agreement and France had sent troops in under those auspices. However, this could not have possibly happened because the same Vice-President was with the American ambassador to Gabon until after the French troops had landed. Why would the French break international law and risk international wrath for the under-developed country of Gabon? Perhaps France wanted to keep its supply of uranium constant and unaffected ... http://www.acdis.uiuc.edu/Research/OPs/Pederson/html/contents/sect11.html

... France plays a significant role in Africa, especially in its former colonies, through extensive aid programs, commercial activities, military agreements, and cultural impact. In those former colonies where the French presence remains important, France contributes to political, military, and social stability. France maintains permanent military bases in Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Gabon, and Senegal. France deployed additional military forces to Cote d’Ivoire in 2002 and to Central African Republic in 2003 to address crises in both countries and, with EU partners, led an international military operation to the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2003. In 2004, it deployed military forces to provide humanitarian relief supplies to refugees from Darfur in Chad and to monitor the Chad-Sudan border. French forces are also serving with international operations in Burundi, Ethiopia/Eritrea, and Liberia. France has also deployed forces to Togo (in support of operations in Cote d’Ivoire), Cameroon, and the Central African Republic ...
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/3842.htm

As of 1996:
... In addition to the Central African Republic, French troops are deployed in Gabon, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Senegal, Chad, Djioubti ... Paris has brokered so-called military cooperation agreements with governments of Mauritania, Burkina Faso, Mali, Benin, Togo, Equatorial Guinea, Congo, Zaire, Rwanda, and Burundi ...
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/35/218.html

... France, whose investment in Africa is 5 per cent of its external trade, and whose sense of 'national grandeur and power'---to quote Rachel Utley's seductive phrase ---has been a projection overseas of its potential to exercise unmistakable influence and power, has since the 1960s militarily intervened in at least nine African countries. France intervened in Mauritania, Senegal, the Congo, Gabon, Cameroon and Chad in the 1960s; in Chad again, as well as in Djibouti, Western Sahara, the Central African Republic and Zaire in the 1970s; and in Chad twice more in the 1980s; in Togo in 1986 ... http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?ItemID=5769

Uramin is prospecting in Central African Republic, Chad
Motapa Diamonds, Pitchstone Exploration, Cameco are prospecting in Gabon
Democratic Republic of Congo is trying to reopen a uranium mine at Shinkolobwe
Murchison United is prospecting in Mali, Mauritania
See http://www.wise-uranium.org/upafr.html

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/35/218.html

In Cameroon:
... Uranium mining has taken place on Mirrar land for twenty years, and it is critical to address the impact that continued mining will have on the traditions of these people. In May 2000 it was made public that there had been a leak from the existing Ranger mine into the surrounding Kakadu National Park. The leakage, of over two million litres of liquid, contained manganese, uranium and radium. Since mining activity commenced, there has also been a decline in Mirrar traditions in relation to food collection, ceremony, social interaction and socio-political systems ... http://www.rio-plus-10.org/en/info/impoverishment/

Senegal has uranium deposits: See http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Senegal-MINING.html

... Burkina Faso and Mali have had a long-standing dispute regarding the territory of Agacher Strip, a border region about 160 by 30 kilometres in size. The Agacher Strip is a territory in north-eastern Burkina Faso, where considerable amounts of mangan, gas, titanium, and uranium are suspected. Both sides hoped that the exploitation of these natural resources would help improve their desperate economic situation: especially the government of the Republic of Mali attempted to change the border to own advantage ... http://www.acig.org/artman/publish/article_460.shtml

... Niger is the world’s third largest uranium producer, after Canada and Australia. Uranium accounts for the bulk of foreign earnings in Niger and represented 70% of export revenues in 1997. Niger has two main uranium producing areas, the Arlit and Akouta situated in the north of Niger. French uranium company, Cogema operates both mining concerns. Niger has estimated resources and reserves of over 53 000 t of uranium, producing 3,076 t of uranium in 2002 Production costs are high and uranium products are purchased under special agreements between the Niger government and customers France and Japan, who effectively subsidise the operation. Due to the location of these areas, nearly all of the production is either transported by air/road to Cotonou in Benin ... http://www.mbendi.co.za/indy/ming/urnm/af/ni/p0005.htm

In Equatorial Guinea:
... Undeveloped natural resources include titanium, iron ore, manganese, uranium, and alluvial gold ... http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ek.html

... In the beginning, almost 90 percent of the United States' uranium supply was imported from the Belgian Congo and Canada. The Shinkolobwe mine in the Katanga Province <11°10'S 26°40'E> is also known as the Kasolo Mine, Chinkolobwe, and Shainkolobwe. Shinkolobwe's urainium deposits were discovered in 1915. This mine, near the southern Congolese town of Likasi, produced uranium for the first atomic bombs. The Shinkolobwe uranium mine ceased was closed in 1960, when Belgium granted Congo independence. Belgian authorities filled the main uranium shaft with concrete ... http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/congo/index.html

... Burundi does have important reserves of vanadium, uranium and nickel ... http://www.africa.upenn.edu/NEH/beconomy.htm

[Ready4Change]

32. If nuclear is so profitable

Let it pay its own way. Then, let's use that 7 billion a year to develop the alternatives we WILL be needing, once we run out of the radioactive resources which are to save us from global warming.

I'll admit I'm starry eyed about solar and wind. And I also agree that reducing CO2 emissions is vitally needed. However, what I have said before, and what nuclear advocates barely address, is the fact that radioactives are a finite, limited resource.

Let's assume we embrace nuclear fully. In doing so we reduce our CO2 emmissions by 90%. Hurrah. (No, really, that would be great.)

However, if we were to increase demand for radioactives to that degree, how long would they last? I've heard estimates of 150 years at CURRENT usage rates. If we go whole hog nuke we get what? Maybe 50 years? THEN what?

We'll burn coal, is what. And oil. And natural gas. Maybe someone will make the breakthrough needed to use those undersea methane crystals. (You think we're in bad straights NOW?)

The only way to escape the CO2 trap is renewables. The only justification I can see for nuclear is to gain time for developing renewables. Solar or wind which have very small lifetime CO2 footprints. Or bio-fuels, which have the potential of recycling existing CO2, rather than introducing new C02. (Really, basically, just biological solar collectors.)

Otherwise we'd better all move to Antartica.

[Massacure]

34. Better yet. Let us cut all energy subsidies cold turkey.

May the best energy win.

[hankthecrank]

38. Welcome to Energy Forums

Enjoy your stay but please due bring your hard hat.

[Odin2005]

25. The Sierra Club has offically lost my respect.

It looks like they have joined the NIMBYists and luddites club instead of being serious enviromentalists.