To Nuke or Not to Nuke? That is a question.

To Nuke or Not to Nuke? That is a question.

In 1962, Rachel Carson first published Silent Spring, and so began the modern re-awakening of environmental awareness. It has taken more than 40 years, but the world seems, at last (and despite George Bush & Dick Cheney), to have reached a consensus that global warming is a serious problem that needs to be addressed.

Unfortunately, pressed by the very real need to reduce global warming, and the equally real need to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, many politicians, and even some environmentalists, are advocating the need to construct a new generation of nuclear power plants. Both John McCain and Barack Obama have publicly stated their support for building more nuclear power plants as a response to global warming and our reliance on imported fossil fuels. There are even a few notable environmentalists have reversed their opposition to nuclear power.

This is a very bad idea for a number of reasons.

First using nuclear power will NOT reduce greenhouse emissions.

There is a lot of information on the internet regarding the carbon footprint of nuclear power. However, most of it is either on nuclear industry web-sites or regurgitates, without questioning, what can be found on them.

The industry (and certain politicians) want us to believe that nuclear power plants have a much smaller carbon footprint than fossil fuel electric plants.

And the truth is that the OPERATION of nuclear power plants generates fewer carbon emissions than the OPERATION of coal, gas or oil plants.

However, if you take into account the carbon emissions of the entire nuclear cycle, you get a very different picture.

The nuclear cycle includes mining uranium ore, refining it, processing it, fabricating it into fuel rods, recycling the used fueld rods & storage of the spent nuclear fuel. It includes the cost of transporting nuclear fuel. It includes storing depleted uranium (what's left over after processing) and tailings (what's left over after refining. and construction, It includes constructing the plant, operating it during its life cycle, decommissioning it at the end of its useful life and storage of the radioactive containment. the carbon footprint is about the same for both the nuclear and the fossil fuel industry.

Further, the world's known supplies of uranium are expected to be exhausted between 2030 and 2050, as the supplies become more limited in quantity and quality, the environmental footprint becomes increasingly larger.

The net result is that when you consider the entire fuel cycle, not just the operation of the plant, the net result is that the nuclear fuel cycle does not provide any significant reduction in carbon emission over the fossil fuel cycle, and may, in fact result in a net loss.

Second the nuclear fuel cycle CONSUMES more electricity than it Produces

I knew that as of 1980 three percent of total US electric production (25% of total nuclear electric generation) was used simply to run the country's three nuclear fuel processing plants. So I have always assumed that adding in the cost of mining, construction, operation and waste storage had to add significantly to the total power cost.

However, the statistics to which I had access were 28 years old, and I was, after all, only making an assumption. I decided it was time to find something more recent.

It is remarkable how little information there is on this point on the internet. You can easily find estimates of how much electricity is produced by nuclear generating plants. You can also find a wealth of statistics on how much of the electricity in any given area (the world, a country, a state, a county) is produced by nuclear power, and what percentage of that localities power is produced by other means in comparison.You can even find statistics broken down between commercial and residential and various industrial sectors.

But what is almost impossible to find is an analysis of how much electricity the nuclear power industry actually consumes.

Nuclear Power - The Energy Balance, a report by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen, Senior Scientist, Ceedata Consultancy, Chaam, Netherlands, and Philip Smith, updated as of February 2008 concludes that after taking into account mining, refining, processing, fabricating, recycling and storing nuclear fuel, constructing, operating, decommissioning and storing nuclear power plants, and the quantity and quality of known and suspected world-wide deposits of uranium ore, that the net electric output of the nuclear cycle is profoundly negative. In particular the report concludes that the industry while marginally positive now, will drop sustantially into the negative between the years 2030 and 2050 as minable uranium deposits decline in quality.

Personally, I think the author has made some assumptions that are more favorable to the nuclear industry than is deserved. For example, he assumes every nuclear power plant will have a useful life of 50 years, though not a single reactor has reached that grand old age and several have been retired prematurely (Chernobyl and Three Mile Island are two well known examples. The Enrico Fermi plant in Detroit, less well known than the other two, melted down on it's first day of operation and was encased in concrete. The story is the subject of the book "We Almost Lost Detroit.", so-titled after a quote by one of the emergency service workers, and Gil Scot Heron's song of the same name.

But little quibbles aside, the report's unmistakable conclusion is that investment in nuclear energy is a losing proposition, that on balance the nuclear industry CONSUMES more electricity than it produces.

Now the point is, of course, arguable and this is the only study I have found. But it is very well researched and I urge you to take a look at it and draw your own conclusions.

Nuclear Power is NOT a smart investment

Even if the net result of forty year's operation of nuclear power plants is negative, either from a standard of greenhouse emissions or net power generation, it may be argued we need the energy now as we develop new technologies. I have two response to this argument.

First, constructing a nuclear power plant is no simple feat. From planning state to completion it takes a minimum of ten years to build one nuclear power plant (Long Island Lighting Company took 20 years from planning stage to completion of its Shoreham Nuclear Power Station, bankrupting itself in the process and ultimately agreeing to be bought out by the Long Island counties that it served). Not a single application for a construction license has been issued in nearly 30 years. If we decided to start building nuclear power plants tomorrow they would have ZERO impact on our energy situation for AT LEAST TEN YEARS and possibly much more.

Second, constructing nuclear power plants is incredibly expensive. When LILCO descited to build the Shoreham NPS it first estimate the cost at $65 million, than $170 billion, than $2.6 billion, than $3.3 billion. When the company finally ceded control to the Long Island Power Authority it had spent in excess of $5.2 billion dollars and had still not put the plant into commercial operation. The $5 billion dollar plus cost of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station drove its owner/builder, Public Service Co. of New Hampshire into bankruptcy, where it's assets were sold and its shareholders received nothing in return for their investment (it should be considered that many retirees hold stock in public electric companies because they are considered safe investments with stable returns, the bankruptcy of PSCoNH, financially ruined not just a company, but a large number of fixed income retirees who had depended upon their investment in it).

Now, imagine that the cost of constructing a power plant now hasn't inflated in 20 years, the cost of building ten nuclear power plants will be somewhere around $52 billion. The cost of builing 100 will be HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS and they won't produce as much electricity as a AAA battery for at least ten years.

Is that a wise investment strategy? It is if you own a company like Halliburton that constructs nuclear power plants. But for the rest of us, I think we'd be better off if we spent 1/100th of that money on funding truly alternative, renewable energy sources: sources we can start using right now, not ten years in the future.

Walk the Walk or Don't Talk the Talk?

If nuclear power is so obviously the answer, why do we hear so much talk about it? Why aren't they building plants.

If you believe the hype, they stopped building nuclear power plants because of the radical environmentalists and public protests at the plants and the regulatory structure (blamed by the industry on the radical environmentalist agenda, but nowadays credited by the industry with making US designed reactors the world's safest).

Let's debunk that myth really fast. I was there. I became involved with the anti-nuclear power movement in 1976 (three years before Chernobyl). I helped to organize anti-nuclear protest marches and rallies, including a 1979 rally in Battery Park, NYC, that brought 250,000 people and a nuclear freeze rally in Central Park that brought 800,000. I helped plan civil-disobedience actions at the gates of Shoreham and other nuclear power plants. I was frequently quoted by local television, radio and newspapers.

I would LOVE to take credit for stopping the nuclear power industry back then. I really would. But the reality is, and I knew this then, that the nuclear power industry had stopped seeking construction licenses long before Three Mile Island.

[fn. I keep mentioning TMI because it was a watershed moment in the public's perception of the nuclear industry.]

While TMI dramatically exposed the economic and health risks of the industry. This occured in 1979 at a time when a relatively few power companies were struggling to complete the last power plants that had previously commenced construction.

This construction of these few plants, in each case, was impossibly over budget. Theserecord construction costs were passed on to customers (who were not receiving energy in return as the reactors were under construction). For example, At one point in the early 1980's LILCO sought a 51% electric rate increase, wholly for construction costs.

The dramatic public airing of the TMI crisis, joined to the economic interest of homeowners struggling, even then, to pay their energy bills, swelled the ranks of the anti-nuclear environmentalists for a period of time and accorded the movement significant publicity.

However, by that point the movement was only trying to (i) stop the industry from completing the few plants in construction and (ii) close the ones that were already operating. The construction industry had already decided that it was no longer going to build these albatrosses.

Further, the influence of the anti-nuclear power movement waned as the few plants still under construction were completed or cancelled, and public attention drifted. The heyday of political power for the anti-nuclear power movement lasted a glorious three years from 1979-82, and it was never particularly powerful at that, being viewed mostly by the public as a small bunch of radicals marching to and sitting-in at the power plant gates.

Does anyone really believe that we had the kind of political power necessary to overcome the alligned interests of Westinghouse, General Electric, Bechtel Corporation (led by Caspar Weinberger, later Reagan's Secretary of Defense), the mining industry, the electric power companies, the banks that financed them? For christ sake, I walked around back then wearing long hair and a bandana.

I believe in America, I believe in Democacy, I believe that people CAN make a difference. But even I am not that gullible.

So I would LOVE to take credit for ending the nuclear power industry. I would LOVE to take even partial credit for that. Even a tiny, iddy-biddy, little partial. BUT, I have to admit that we had nothing to do with it. Nuclear power generation is economically unsustainable. Three years of occasional back-page news coverage of small ineffectual protests, really had nothing to do with the fact that the nuclear industry, all by itself, decided that nuclear power plants were not worth building. All we managed to do (some of us) was gleefully accept the blame when the power companies blamed us for their own undoing.

When you read about how many nuclear reactors there are in France or another country, the first thing you have to ask yourself is who owns them? In America, most electric power is generated by investor owned utilities. Independent corporations. In most of the world, electric production is considered a public function. There are nuclear power plants in France, but they were built and paid for with French tax francs.

If our utility companies are not willing to build these plants, if they recognize that they can not build these plants and make money doing so, why should we spend our tax dollars to subsidize them? We're being asked to pay for the electricity twice, to build it for the company, and then to pay them to run it. Are we to anticipate the nationalization of our electric industry as in France? I don't think so.

But as they say, walk the walk or don't talk the talk, there has been nothing preventing any company from seeking a license and constructing a nuclear power plant except for the fact that it doesn't make financial sense to anyone. If it was really a viable business, someone would already be building them.

So when you hear someone touting nuclear power and how much we need to produce more of it, ask them if they are talking about producing energy, or subsidizing some of the wealthiest and most powerful construction companies on the planet. If Halliburton isn't willing to risk it's money on nuclear power, than why should we risk our tax dollars to ensure their profit.

What About Insurance?

Nuclear power is a safe bet right? It's so safe the power companies should be able to insure themselves against any risk of loss right?

Wrong. The insurance industry does not take risks. It makes rational assessments based on extensively researched data sets. Insurance companies don't want to have anything to do with nuclear power.

The insurance industry's unwillingness to take on nuclear power nearly crippled the industry at the outset. No one was willing to build a commercial nuclear plant even though firms were willing (back then) to guaranty construction costs (in business terms, we call this a loss-leader, build one at a guaranty now, even if it's a loss, so we can build ten later at cost plus pricing).

Congress came to the rescue by passing the Price-Anderson Act in 1957. In short, the Price-Anderson Act (as amended in 1988), limits the liability of any single nuclear plant, and the entire nuclear industry, for any single nuclear accident. But allow me to explain it in the words of the Nuclear Information & Resource Service:

The provisions that create liability coverage for nuclear power are interesting: essentially the industry is yoked at the neck--all will pay if any one has a major accident.

First, reactor owners pay into a self-insurance pool of $200 million, designed to cover events that fall short of a Chernobyl-style disaster. A second pool of about $8 billion would be composed of fees levied to every operating reactor in the US, to be triggered by an accident that exceeds the first pool. Each reactor–there are 103 operating today–would pay a share prorated from the total, up to $79 million each ($75 million plus a 5% insurance surcharge), paid over a 7-year period--or $10+ million per reactor, per year. The liability of the nuclear industry for that accident is then capped.

Thus ~ $8 billion is the maximum financial "contribution" that the commercial nuclear industry would make in the event of nuclear catastrophe. Beyond the cap, taxpayers would pick up the tab in the form of disaster relief funds, and /or affected individuals–victims– would absorb the real costs.

Eight billion dollars is a "fine chunk of change," however some estimates have placed the costs of Chernobyl above $350 billion to date. Sandia National Lab in 1982 projected that a major accident at the Indian Point reactors on the Hudson River near Manhattan would exceed $300 billion (in 1982 dollars). Taxpayer exposure to nuclear liability under Price Anderson is significant, and shows $8 billion to be what it is: a small contribution.

In other words, if a Chernobyl type accident were to occur tomorrow, the private company that owns the plant will pay no more than $75 million, the industry will kick in $8 billion over ten years (oh, by the way, that's all charged to the electricity users, consumers, customers, you and me!) and the balance of the damage, possibly as much as $342 billion or more will be paid by Mr. & Ms. John Q. Taxpayer (or we can borrow it from the Chinese like everything else these days).

This is one more example of economics only an idiot could admire.

All That's Besides the Point

Okay, so nuclear power is a wash as far as global warming is concerned, it is a wash as far as our energy future is concerned, and it is financially ruinous.

But all of that is besides the point. Let's suppose the scale really tips out at even, or maybe even a little bit in the industry's favor.

The real issue remains health and safety. The 1986 Chernobyl disaster resulted in the evacuation and resettlement of over 336,000 people. The IAEA has concluded that approximately 9,000 people will die as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Chernobyl left an enormous swath of radiation across vast stretches of Ukraine and Byelaruss, formerly the bread-basket of the Soviet Union. Here's a map prepared by the CIA in 1996 - ten years after the event:

Can you imagine that happening to the American Midwest? What if the plant had been near Chicago or NYC. Can we evacuate and resettle everyone in New York City if there is a Chernobyl type catastrophe at Indian Point? And Chernobyl, as bad as it was, was not the worst possible nuclear accident that could have happened. It is simply the worst that has happened to date.

Hardly a day goes by that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn't receive at least one incident report regarding improper or unsafe conditions or procedures, or radioactive releases at one of the country's power plants. Some of these are serious. The industry's safety record is abysmal as can be testified to on a number of sites on the internet. For that matter, you can go to the NRC's own web page and read the daily listing of event reports (for civilian reactors anyway).

And if John McCain repeats the canard that there has never been a nuclear accident in the Navy's history of handling nuclear powered ships don't buy that either. For starters there are the three sailors who died at the Idaho Falls testing facility (one so radioactive his body was cut into parts and buried in separate cannisters). But you can find more about that on the web to.

And then again, there's the Price-Anderson Act. If nuclear power is Soooooooo safe, then why does the industry need an exemption from liability? If the insurance company's can't price a policy high enough to consider taking on this risk, why should the taxpayer? The Chernobyl accident price tag has been estimated at $350 billion, but if it happend here tomorrow, the industry would only pay $8 billion of that amount (barely two percent). If the industry won't take this risk, why should we, the public, uninvolved, as we are, in any part of the process from the day the ore is mined to to the day the reactor is decommissioned and stored as radioactive waste? The industry wasn't willing to take this risk in 1957 when the price of constructing a reactor was guarantied by the construction firm and under $100 million. Is it conceivable they would undertake a $5 billion or more, ten-year, investment in new construction today if they did not still have this cap on liability? If the Price-Anderson Act was not in force today, you wouldn't hear ANYONE advocating building more nuclear power plants, not even Halliburton.

If they won't walk the walk, why should we listen when they talk the talk?

That IS the Question.

So the question is, if nuclear power, at best, is only a very minor improvement over fossil fuels in terms of net energy production and carbon emissions, if it is a hopelessly uneconomic industry that can not exist without vast government subsidies on the scale of the Iraq war (money we will, of course, have to borrow from the chinese), if we can not know when we spend ten years and five or more billion dollars building a plant whether it will operate for one day or fifty years, if there is a risk that at any moment in the plant's life-cycle that an accident can occur rendering entire cities or vast sections of America's heartland unlivable and unusable, if NOONE is willing to PAY for any of this, if they are only willing to do it if they can place all of the costs and risks on the consumer, taking all of the profits for themselves, and otherwise disclaiming any liability, if all of these things are as true today as they were 30 years ago when the industry stopped spending its own money on these things:

WHY IN THE WORLD WOULD ANYONE THINK IT MAKES SENSE TO INVEST ONE SINGLE PUBLIC TAX DOLLAR IN THEM NOW?

And THAT is the question.

[There is a lot of loose talk and speculation about so-called new "safer" nuclear technologies such as the use of MOX (varieties of uranium oxide fuel mixtures), and pebble bed reactors or PBR's. None of these technologies are any more risk free than those currently in use. MOX fuels are powerful alpha emitters and they cause containment rods (for fuel) and containment vessels (for the reactor) to decay more quickly than other fuels. PBR pellets are just as capable of melting down as are fuel rods. If any of these technologies was truly viable, or truly safe, the industry would be adopting them on a commercial scale.]