Go Nuclear

I found this on Frontpage Magazine:

The ongoing energy crisis – with skyrocketing prices, short supplies and growing environmental concerns – has again brought to the fore the advantages of nuclear power. With zero carbon footprint and abundant fuel supply, nuclear energy is not only relatively inexpensive but also the most environmentally friendly means of electricity generation.

Many advanced countries have long structured their energy policy around this fact. Leading the way is France which derives nearly 80% of its electricity from nuclear power. It is followed by Lithuania (72%), Belgium (54%) and Sweden (52%). Other developed nations that get a substantial portion of their electricity from this source include Switzerland (40%), Germany (32%), Czech Republic (31%), Japan (30%), Finland (27%) and North Korea (26%).

Not content to lag behind, many developing nations are now also taking the atomic road to address their energy needs. New reactors are being constructed in China, Russia, India, Brazil, Romania, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan among others.

But while the world is increasingly going nuclear, the United States is falling behind. Today nuclear energy accounts for only 18% of our electricity production, a decline from the early 1990s when the figure was well over 20%. The explanation is simple: No new reactor has been built in this country in nearly 30 years.

For many years now it has been impossible to build a nuclear plant in America, as every such project is opposed – often hysterically – on safety grounds. Not surprisingly, since after many years of relentless propaganda many people believe that a nuclear reactor is a ticking bomb which can potentially set off a disaster of catastrophic proportions.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Contrary to popular perception, nuclear power is the safest method of electricity generation. And even though the possibility of disaster is routinely given as the reason for not building, accidents are extremely rare. In fact, there have been only two notable ones since the inception of the atomic age. Their impact, however, has been enormous, for they have been passed off as “evidence” of nuclear power’s unsafeness. This is truly unfortunate, since any honest evaluation leads to the opposite conclusion.

The most serious accident on record took place in the nuclear facility near the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl, then part of the former Soviet Union. On April 26, 1986 an explosion took place in the plant’s number four reactor and was followed by a massive release of radioactive material. The initial flare-up claimed 54 lives. Four thousand more died in subsequent years as a result of exposure, mostly from thyroid cancer.

Though Chernobyl is often given as evidence of dangers of nuclear energy, there is virtually no chance that a similar event could take place in the western context. Built in what was essentially an impoverished third-world country which had little respect for human life, the reactor was designed with scant regard for safety and most rudimentary safeguards were omitted in order to save money and meet deadlines. During construction, paperwork was falsified to show that non-existent safety devices were in place. To give an idea of the carelessness involved, bitumen – a combustible material – was used in the construction of the reactor building and the turbine hall.

To make things worse, in the mid-eighties the Soviet Union was teetering on the brink of collapse and lacked the financial resources to conduct proper maintenance. Finally, the unsafe situation was further exacerbated by the kind of overt negligence that is endemic in state-run enterprises.

Contrary to what most people think, the Chernobyl disaster was not caused by an explosion of nuclear material. The initial event was a steam explosion which tore the roof from the reactor and exposed its nuclear core. Because of the gross heedlessness in design and construction, the reactor had no containment vessels to capture the escaping radioactivity. Containment vessels have always been a standard feature of reactor designs, but the cash-strapped Soviet regime did not consider them necessary. Had they been in place, the amount of radioactive material released would have been significantly smaller.

Of the subsequent 4000 deaths most could have been prevented had the Soviet government promptly evacuated the nearby communities. The communist leadership, however, refused to notify its citizens of the danger and for days denied that anything happened at all. It thus needlessly and criminally exposed hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to excessive levels of radiation.

Rather than an indictment of nuclear power, Chernobyl was from beginning to end a classic case of communist incompetence and malfeasance. As such this event is irrelevant to safety considerations in a western setting.

The only serious accident in a western nuclear facility occurred in the United States. In March 1979, one of two reactors at the Three Mile Island Generation Station in Pennsylvania experienced a partial core meltdown. The chain of events began so inconspicuously that it took operators many hours before they realized that anything had gone amiss, but once the incident became known the coverage bordered on hysteria.

A number of “experts” came forth evoking cataclysmic scenarios. Environmental and peace activists joined hands to demonize nuclear power as dangerous and destructive. The frenzied coverage combined with fantastic claims made a deep impression. In the months and years that followed books, movies and songs were written about the incident. Bruce Springsteen put out a tune called “Roulette” and Jimmy Buffett sang "I don't want to land on no Three Mile Island/Don't want to see my skin a-glow."

But amidst all the hysteria and alarmism, one important fact seemed to escape general notice: No one was killed as a result of this supposedly catastrophic event. Not only there were zero fatalities, there was not one injury. Jimmy Buffet’s reference to glowing skin notwithstanding, not a single person was exposed to a dangerous degree of radiation. Among some 25,000 people who lived in the close vicinity of the site no one was harmed in any way. A government study found that “there will either be no case of cancer or the number of cases will be so small that it will never be possible to detect them. The same conclusion applies to the other possible health effects.”

The absence of injuries should not surprise given the limited extent of the initial explosion and the fact that only a small amount of dangerous radioactive substances escaped. Because of this, the damage was almost wholly confined to the plant site.

It is a lasting testament to the mendacity of foes of atomic energy that the frenzy they whipped up was a major factor in stopping its development in the United States. Thanks to their hysterical claims public support for nuclear power dropped from 70% before the accident to 50% afterwards.

The World Nuclear Association describes the devastating impact this event had on America’s nuclear industry:

Nuclear developments in the USA suffered a major setback after the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, though that actually validated the very conservative design principles of western reactors, and no one was injured or exposed to harmful radiation. Many orders and projects were cancelled or suspended, and the nuclear construction industry went into the doldrums for two decades.

That even with no fatalities, no injuries and no great environmental damage the Three Miles Island accident is the most serious event involving a nuclear plant in the West is a powerful testimony to the extraordinary safeness of atomic power. In the course of more than 40 years of civilian nuclear power generation by more than 400 western-built reactors no one was ever killed or even injured by a radiation leak. Those isolated casualties that did take place were invariably a result of general occupational hazards common to all industries.

Statistics and studies consistently show that nuclear power is the safest method of electricity generation both for those directly involved and the general public. One of the most in-depth and comprehensive surveys on this subject was conducted by the University of East Anglia in the early 90s. It studied fatalities in the United States and Great Britain which occurred as a result of primary energy production in the period between 1970 and 1992. The record shows that fatalities were highest in the coal industry (6400) followed by hydro power (4000) and natural gas (1200). At 31 deaths the nuclear industry posted the lowest figure by far. The number was in fact 40 times lower than that of the next safest method. All 31 were workers on facilities and – it bears repeating – not one died as a result of radiation. This means that not a single member of the general public was ever killed or harmed by civilian nuclear energy.

This phenomenal safety record is due to the extreme care with which nuclear plants are constructed and operated. Western type reactors are built to the highest standards based on stringent safety requirements, advanced designs, careful workmanship and best materials. They invariably incorporate multiple levels of safety redundancies and utilize diverse systems for fault detection. Each safety system usually has more than one backup and is designed to accommodate human errors. Today’s reactors are built in such a way that even the most serious type of accident – the meltdown of the nuclear core – is to be contained wholly within the plant site without the need for evacuating nearby residents. Such is the care exercised in the construction of an average nuclear reactor that safety systems account for about one quarter of its capital cost.

Despite the industry’s superb record, nuclear power is still seen by many people as inherently dangerous. This perception runs completely contrary to reality and is a result of the lies and distortions that have been spread about this subject.

It is one of the great ironies of our time as well as a masterstroke of political demagoguery that safety concerns have been used to stop the development of the safest source of energy in the United States. It is time to rationally assess the facts and reverse this situation. It is time to resume the development of nuclear energy in this country.

I couldn't agree more. I cannot see why America is generating so much as one volt of electric power by any means other than nuclear. Oil, natural gas and coal are needed for motor fuel. There is no reason to waste them in electric power production.

Once again we find that a bad situation is the fault of the left. The hysteria the environmentalists and their bought dogs in the Jackass party have created has set the United States back decades.

Greenpeace founder now backs nuclear power

Greenpeace founder Patrick Moore says there is no proof global warming is caused by humans, but it is likely enough that the world should turn to nuclear power - a concept tied closely to the underground nuclear testing his former environmental group formed to oppose.

The chemistry of the atmosphere is changing, and there is a high-enough risk that "true believers" like Al Gore are right that world economies need to wean themselves off fossil fuels to reduce greenhouse gases, he said.

"It's like buying fire insurance," Moore said. "We all own fire insurance even though there is a low risk we are going to get into an accident."

The only viable solution is to build hundreds of nuclear power plants over the next century, Moore told the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday. There isn't enough potential for wind, solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal or other renewable energy sources, he said.

With development of coal-fired electric generation stopped cold over greenhouse gases, the only alternative to nuclear power for producing continuous energy at the levels needed is natural gas. But climate change isn't the only reason to move away from fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels also are a major health threat. "Coal causes the worst health impacts of anything we are doing today," Moore said.

Plus, uranium can be found within the United States and also comes in large quantities from Canada and Australia. Nuclear Power reduces the reliance on supplies in dangerous places including the Middle East, he said.

The climate is changing. That is because it is in the nature of the climate to change. It has been changing since the beginning of time and will change as long as the earth endures. Humans, for the most part, have nothing to do with this but if one must believe that there is some possibility of harm from greenhouse gasses to support something as startlingly sane as nuclear power then that's fine with me.

Rejoining the nuclear age

WASHINGTON, Sept. 24 — In a bid to take the lead in the race to revive the nuclear power industry, an energy company will ask the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Tuesday for permission to build two reactors in Texas.

It is the first time since the 1970s and the accident at Three Mile Island that an American power company has sought permission to start work on a new reactor to add to the existing array of operable reactors, which now number 104.

The company, NRG Energy, based in Princeton, N.J., wants to be the first to pour concrete in the main section of the plant, allowing it to qualify for the maximum federal benefits, David Crane, its chief executive, said in a telephone interview.

NRG is applying under a new process intended to avoid the extensive delays and cost overruns in the last round of nuclear construction. In the 1970s and ’80s, more than 100 of the reactor projects were canceled, some abandoned in late stages of construction, mostly because they no longer made financial sense.

Revived interest in nuclear power, experts say, is being driven by a combination of strong growth in electric demand, high prices for natural gas and the potential for imposing higher costs on climate-changing carbon dioxide emissions, which would make coal use more expensive.

Some people anticipate that reactors will be made profitable by a tax on carbon dioxide emissions, but Mr. Crane said that was not needed. More important, he said, were “robust prices” for natural gas, the fuel for most of the plants built in the last few years.

Three other companies are likely to apply for licenses by the end of the year, according to industry experts. One of those, Constellation Energy, like NRG, has also ordered parts for its plant, planned for Calvert County, Md., and says it believes it has an advantage because its reactor will be precisely modeled on one now under construction in France.

God bless them and speed their plans to completion. It is a deeply shameful thing that the United States lags behind France [spit] in the use of nuclear power.

Perhaps that is the angle to take in overcoming the certain firestorm of protest from the moonbat left. After all they all love France - if it weren't for Cuba France would be their most favorite country in the world - so surely they can't object to America becoming more like France, can they?

I would also expect less trouble from the moonbat greens this time around. They have managed to work themselves up into such a state of hysteria over greenhouse gasses and global warming that nice clean nuclear power could start to look good to them.

The fact is that we ought not to waste fossil fuels to generate so much as one amp of electricity in this country. Hydroelectric and nuclear should be how we get our electric power and our motor fuel should be made from liquefied coal.

The United States government should announce a prize to be awarded to the first company or individual who can present a working prototype of a practical (meaning that the price has to be in line with what other cars cost at the time) automobile large enough to be used by a family of four (meaning that it has to be comparable to a Ford Taurus in size) that can go fast enough to be driven on the interstate highway system (meaning that it must be able to cruise at 75 mph for at least several hours) and be refueled as quickly and easily as pulling into a gas station for a tank of gas is today. The car must be designed to run on liquefied coal and it must get at least 100 miles per gallon.

This would not be a terribly difficult goal to meet. If the car were to incorporate the extensive use of composite materials (like Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner) and were to use a true hybrid engine it could very well achieve 150 mpg or even higher.

What is meant by a "true hybrid" engine. This would be basically the same concept as used by the railroad industry's diesel/electric locomotives where a diesel engine which is designed to run at one constant speed (so that its fuel economy is maximized) is used to power an electrical generator which in turn powers an electric motor with the surplus power being stored in batteries.

The prize should consist of an amount of money large enough to offset at least 85% of the R&D costs and a contract to supply all the government's automobiles for a period of 20 or 25 years. The winning company would be given what amounted to patent protection for 2 years after which they would have to freely share the technology with all other US auto companies and foreign auto companies who manufacture cars in America. Foreign companies who do not manufacture in America would have to pay a license fee if they wished to sell cars using the new technology in the US.

The advantages of using a prize rather than research grants are twofold. One is that if the project proves impractical the taxpayers are not out one cent. The other is that the grant system actually slows down research and development. Those receiving the grants have a large incentive to stretch out the R&D process as long as possible, reporting just enough progress to keep more grants coming. With the prize system the payoff only comes if you succeed and do it first. This creates incentives to work quickly and efficiently putting money only into areas which show genuine promise and abandoning those which do not.