Is Nuclear Energy a Viable Solution?
The word “nuclear energy” always inspires awe, and sometimes fear, because we always associate terms like “nukes” and “radiation” when we talk about something nuclear. But it is not as ominous as it sounds and in fact, for some countries it is a major source of energy. 75% of energy in France is generated by nuclear power and even in the United States, 19% of electricity is derived from nuclear energy.
Currently a major portion of energy is derived by the combustion of coal, oil and natural gas, which release lots of carbon-dioxide into the atmosphere that significantly contributes to the greenhouse effect. Many scientists, probably on the payroll of petroleum companies, argue that no matter how much carbon-dioxide we produce, it will be absorbed by the land and the oceans and this in turn will enrich the plant life both on the land and under the water. Changing climates, capricious weather patterns, dying species and out-of-control epidemics narrate another story.
No matter what the arguments are, even a child knows these days there is more carbon-dioxide in the air than can be absorbed by nature, and we desperately need energy sources that don’t take the environment’s health as a cost. The more fossil fuels we burn to generate power and run automobiles, the greater amount of greenhouse gases we release into the atmosphere.
Nuclear energy has its perils, but compared to the dangers of using fossil fuels like coal and petrol, these perils are minuscule. The greatest threat is the radio-active waste that is produced when nuclear energy is used to produce energy. This can be countered by formulating strict national and international laws that make it mandatory to process radio-active wastes before releasing them into the environment.
Nuclear energy is one of the least air-polluting alternative sources of energy. Less land is required to set up nuclear plants, and the fission of an atom of uranium produces 10 million times the energy produced by the combustion of an atom of carbon from coal.
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May 10th, 2008
Have you investigated how France deals with its nuclear waste?
Hint: a whole bunch gets shipped to Russia for “reprocessing” and the vast majority of it simply “disappears” there.
Are we likely to be able to get away with the same practice in the US?
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I don’t like nuclear because of the waste disposal issue and because nuclear plants are constructed and run by humans. And humans cut corners and screw up. Especially if they’re highly motivated to make money.
But, that said, we might need to build more nuclear.
But, that said, I have a feeling that solar has pushed new nuclear off the table.
Nuclear produced electricity is not cheap. And if solar (PV and thermal) provide the peak electricity that we need then those high return kWhrs are not going to be available to pay for new nuclear plants.
Look at where big private money (T. Boone Pickens, the Google Boys, etc.) is flowing. It’s not to build nuclear plants but in price competitive ‘green’ generation which can be brought on line in a mere fraction of the time it takes to build a nuclear plant.
May 11th, 2008
Anything, as long as we don’t have to ::shudder:: conserve.
May 14th, 2008
I think that we need to focus more on things like E85 which is less harmful for the environment than nuclear energy. With the US being one of the biggest targets as enemy in the world, the last thing we need is to be shipping, moving, and setting up nuclear plants. It almost seems like you are trying to wave a mouse in front of the hungry cats face.
May 14th, 2008
Well, nuclear energy is a viable alternative to petroleum as an energy source but the disposal and construction costs render nuclear energy cost-ineffective.
Plus, we must consider the environmental hazards that nuclear energy will cause. To date, there have been many cases of radiation poisoning amongst nuclear power plant workers. In that aspect of it, nuclear energy poses extreme health risks to humans.
In my opinion, we should just concentrate on solar and wind energy especially since solar technology is becoming increasingly advanced now. Slowly, but surely, solar energy will become a major energy source in the future.
May 14th, 2008
Of course not! The US can barely manage it’s own normal AND nuclear waste NOW. What makes you think it can handle it the years to come?
Besides, the only way the US is dealing with nuclear waste is by forcing Native American reservations to take the nuclear waste(even if they refuse), causing increased cancer, mutations, sicknesses and death. What monsters. It makes me cringe to be a under today’s government. Hopefully the next generation will be smarter in solving the worlds problems.
Also, no matter WHERE you put the nuclear waste or how far deep, it will always come back to you in the end. Remember what happened 10,000? Ice age moved EVERYTHING and changed the entire landscape! And that was only 10,000 years ago; TINY compared to the whole lifespan of the earth. Things change. Whatever is buried in the ground will eventually come back; leaving that later generation to deal with OUR waste.
This article is much too one-sided. We need to look at ALL aspects, both good and bad, of the picture. Not just that it’s better than coal. In my opinion, the negatives FAR over-weigh the positives on nuclear energy.
May 14th, 2008
Read up on how that nuclear “golden child”, France, deals with its nuclear waste.
Some is shipped to Russia to be ‘reprocessed’. About 10% returns. The other 90%?
And read up on how they crammed a nuclear dump down the throats of one little sparsely populated village.
And their leaking dump in Champaign.
No one has a demonstrated solution for nuclear waste.
May 21st, 2008
I’m not much for big federal programs but I believe we should be developing and operating nuclear power plants, paid for out of our tax dollars. No more utility bills. Just pay your taxes and turn on the light.
How long do you think it would take Americans to convert their terrorist-fueled, gas-guzzlers into garden planters and switch to electric cars?
Don’t do it to appease environmentalists, it’s a much more important issue – national security!
May 24th, 2008
As respondents 1,4,5, and 6 point out, potentially lethal nuclear wastes have an unacceptable waste isolation record and no realistic prospects for improving the record. If the costs of safe decommissioning and waste storage are accounted, nuclear cannot compete with even current efficiencies of solar and wind. Without including those costs, proliferation is the cost we would bear - also unacceptable, thus the early demise of breeder reactor plans in Europe and elsewhere.
As importantly, any investment in nuclear is continuing a path of diminishing energy returns on energy invested. Uranium is finite, requires massive fossil fuel inputs for mining, and will only require more as rich ores are depleted within the next hundred or so years.
We need to focus our full political, social, and technological will on the transition to renewables - whose EROEI will continue to increase - so that we can live within the physical limits of our planet. If we don’t self-impose such limits, climate change, irradiation, nuclear war, or simple Malthusian reality will set them for us.
May 26th, 2008
Of course the U.S. should utilize more Nuclear Energy! The empirical evidence is very clear, especially for those concerned for the environment:
1. Nuclear Energy creates minuscule greenhouse gases.
2. Nuclear Energy is the only other alternative energy proven to provide the amounts of energy comparable to what oil and coal currently produce. Hydro-electric is next in line. Solar & wind power, as great as they are, cost more than 1000% more to operate and require a great deal more precious of our real estate.
3. The U.S. currently has a large domestic supply of Uranium, as long as we don’t keep exporting it to China & France, so we will not be dependant on foreign resources.
3. The U.S. has been a leader of Nuclear Technology - an expertise under-utilized in this country only to be put to use (with critical acclaim) by countries like France.
4. Nuclear waste, while some if it is extremely toxic, can be controlled and protected. A Chernobyl style melt-down is the overarching fear. Modern designs have made that type of meltdown near impossible. Even then, the deaths & environmental impact due to nuclear energy is negligible compared to oil fires, oil spills, coalmine disasters, etc.
May 26th, 2008
Your #2 is so grossly incorrect that it negates your entire post.
May 26th, 2008
To be sure, as the cost of oil increases, alternatives become more cost effective. I did, however, pull data from two sources for the current delta in costs & profitability:
1) Dr. Thomas Hinderling, “Solar Islands: A new concept for low-cost solar energy at very large scale”, 20 May 2008.(http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4002).
The article states: “All current solar solutions are at least 5 times, most often rather 10 times (500%-1000%) more costly than .”
2) WallStreet Journal, “Wind ($23.37) v. Gas (25 Cents)”, 12 May 2008. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121055427930584069.html?mod=Letters)
The article states: “The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and “clean coal” $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59.
May 27th, 2008
Re: posts 9 and 11:
Nuclear greenhouse gases: though the nuclear reaction that produces heat and thereby electricity produces no CO2, that’s a minuscule part of the equation.
Life cycle analysis (LCA) of nuclear energy clarifies CO2 outputs: 1, mining, milling, and processing of the ore chain; 2, construction, operation, maintenance, and decommissioning of plants; 3, transportation, excavation, construction, etc., to sequester waste. These inherent parts of using nuclear are fossil-fuel intensive and would make nuclear’s CO2 production exceed other nonrenewables once our rich ores are depleted within decades.
Nuclear’s amount of energy cf. fossil fuels: excellent point, and the crux of nuclear’s risk. Because nuclear is so energy-dense _at the moment_, some are tempted to pursue it at the dire opportunity costs of lost investment in renewables and other localized, sustainable solutions. We would need such technologies as the Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) of nuclear turns negative anyway, and lost time will compound the chaos of such a fundamental cultural transition.
“cost” vs. solar and wind: nuclear has a price advantage over these, but not a cost advantage. We are not paying the full costs of nuclear now, just as we are only beginning to pay the full costs of fossil fuels i.e., climate disruption. Dollar per MWh subsidy comparisons are fallacies for the same reason: nuclear is energy-dense at the moment with decreasing EROEI, while renewables are energy-distributed with increasing EROEI.
Uranium supply: only adequate as a means to help us transition to renewables within the next 30-60 years.
See http://www.oxfordresearchgroup.org.uk/publications/briefing_papers/pdf/energyfactsheet4.pdf
Toxics: Chernobyls are far from the only risk. Just as one example, humans cannot control our nuclear wastes over an historical span (e.g. fissiles proliferated from a fractured USSR), so there is less than reasonable hope that we could do so over geologic time.
It’s time for us to step up, make real technological change, and end the denial/bargaining stage of our collective easy energy grief.
May 30th, 2008
The Rössing mine in Namibia mines low-grade 330 ppm uranium ore. Their energy consumption and production figures are public and from them you can deduce that ~500 times more energy is available from this uranium in a light water reactor than is consumed in mining it. If you apply Storm Van Leuweens methodology and figures to the Rössing mine you get an estimate of about 5; at which the Rössing mine would consume more energy than the country of Namibia.
Storm van Leuween is also quite fond of quoting the energy intensity of enrichment in the inefficient gaseous diffusion plants, rather than the much more efficient centrifuges that now dominate the market. He not very fond of mentioning CANDUs which use natural uranium or “spent” LWR fuel without enrichment. He doesn’t like to mention insitu leaching, far more energy efficient but unable to recover valuable byproducts like copper.
Energy intensity is clearly not a serious hindrance for mining low-grade ore-bodies; but it could be the case that it’s somehow uneconomic to mine low-grade uranium for other reasons. I don’t think that would be the case either as a pound of yellowcake, costing about 60$/lb, will give you ~50 barrels of oil equivalent of heat in a light water reactor and ~5000 BoE in a breeder reactor.
The cost of natural uranium is a vanishingly small part of the cost of operating a nuclear plant. It’s not even a large cost of the fuel elements themselves(enrichment and fuel fabrication/cladding both being much larger parts). LWRs could easily afford to pay 10 times the price for yellowcake and breeders 1000 times the price. At such prices it becomes, at some point, economical to mine sea-water with ion-exchangers. Sea water contains an estimated 4.6 billion tonnes of uranium, that’s about 1000 times more uranium than we’ve ever mined(and it’s in equilibrium, more will leach into solution if you remove some; until a new equilibrium is reached).
And then there’s thorium; molten flouride reactors look promising but only a few experimental ones were ever built(it wasn’t what the navy wanted and it eventually got mothballed).
May 31st, 2008
Post #13 further demonstrates the necessity to externalize nuclear’s costs to call it affordable.
With Namibia’s globally second-lowest population density, 30-40% unemployment, 2$/day living standards, and 20%+ HIV rate, the Uranium mining companies might affordably budget to pay residents there to eat the radioactive mine tailings. Those companies assuredly don’t face political will to make them pay anything like the real costs of safe mining or remediation, so they don’t pay those costs. The Storm material, being a life cycle analysis, incorporates such costs, thus definitely derives a higher energy cost than current Namibian practice.
Another mine often cited to demonstrate the affordability of mining low-grade ore-bodies, Olympic Dam in Australia, achieves its remarkable cost effectiveness by operating outside The Aboriginal Heritage Act 1988, the Development Act 1993, the Environmental Protection Act 1993, the Freedom of Information Act 1991, the Mining Act 1971 and the Natural Resources Act 2004.
If exempted from law, environmental and public health responsibility, and effective safety regulation, and consideration of proliferation risk, nuclear is clearly the affordable choice.
Breeder reactors have so far proven unworkable by a combination of market forces, safety and proliferation risks. It would be inadvisable to hold one’s breath for news of net-energy-positive seawater Uranium extraction, unless one lives in Namibia.
June 13th, 2008
No breeders haven’t demonstrated to be able to afford even zero uranium fuel costs as their investment (capital) costs are so prohibitive, it’s a total non-starter.
I like nuclear power but the negative learning curve effect of light water reactors worries me. By the time the new nukes that are being build/contracted in the US are completed they may have already become obsolete on economical grounds. However we shouldn’t be building any more conventional coal powered plants, and for me that’s priority number one.