Common Ground: Power Play

Going Nuclear

So we know nuclear power is dirty stuff, but how many of us understand exactly how it works? Defined most simply, nuclear energy occurs in the form of heat created by the subatomic interactions of protons and neutrons within atoms like uranium and plutonium. These heavy metals do not usually occur naturally in sufficient density to create nuclear activity, but condensed via centrifuge, shaped into bundles of long narrow rods called fuel assemblies, encased in protective metal containers and put to work in thick-walled structures called nuclear reactors, the material generates immense amounts of heat through nuclear fission. Water, pumped past the encased uranium, absorbs the heat and creates steam, which powers adjacent turbines. They, in turn, generate electricity.

But in the process, nuclear power creates waste that remains potentially dangerous for thousands of years. While we’ve yet to incur a serious, large-scale nuclear waste disaster, opponents to nuclear power fear the potential of accidents during road or rail transport, as well as the likelihood that capsules containing uranium refuse will corrode over time, allowing radioactive material to leak out and contaminate water, soil and air.

Those concerned about the nation’s current swerve toward nuclear dependence are encouraged to contact their senators and representatives and voice opposition toward the government’s loan guarantee program for nuclear investors.

February 2008 | Green Scene

Power Play

Lobbyists and PR flacks are spinning nuclear power as the solution to climate change. But renewable energy proponents say don’t believe the hype

By Alastair Bland

Nuclear power has inspired fear, debate and protest marches for decades. Initially developed as a terrifying tool of war, the physics of nuclear power have since been harnessed by moguls of electricity production, who tout the technology as cheap, clean, virtually bottomless and relatively safe. And while many people still shudder at the thought of a world buzzing with radioactive power plants (not to mention the infamous disaster at Chernobyl and the scare at Three-Mile Island), for a growing body of politicians, businessmen and — brace yourself — environmentalists, nuclear power is quickly becoming the chosen energy source to satisfy skyrocketing electricity demands without overloading atmospheric carbon.

As the world grapples with intense climate change anxiety, resurging interest in nuclear power is a somewhat predictable — if reactionary — response. Currently, coal is the go-to source for the vast majority of electricity worldwide. Incinerating coal heats water, creates steam, rotates turbines and finally, generates electricity. Fumes created in the process, however, send dozens of hazardous particulates into the atmosphere, among them selenium, arsenic, nitrogen, radium, lead and mercury. By dramatic contrast, argue advocates, nuclear power is remarkably clean.

“Nuclear plants don’t generate carbon emissions,” said John Keeley, Manager of Media Relations at the Nuclear Energy Institute in Washington, DC. “If we’re concerned about addressing the climate change emergency, we have to be looking at nuclear power.”

Atomic smoke and mirrors

It’s true that there are no smokestacks or billowing black clouds associated with making nuclear energy. But beneath the squeaky-clean wrapping, there are heavy environmental and logistical costs beginning at the source — uranium mining, an activity that can scar landscapes and contaminate watersheds.

Clint Wilder, co-author of 2007’s The Clean Tech Revolution and contributing editor at Clean Edge, a San Francisco-based journal covering the world of clean energy research, denounces the nuclear energy lifecycle from start to finish.

“First, you need to mine uranium out of the Earth, so already it’s not a renewable resource. Then you have to construct the plant, which is a very lengthy and very carbon-heavy process that uses lots of cement — one of the most carbon-intensive things there is. But the number one reason why nuclear isn’t clean is the waste issue: where do you put it?”

For over a decade, the Department of Energy has been considering Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as a suitable place to dig 1000 feet into the earth and stash spent uranium, with the hope that the facility will remain intact and groundwater won’t penetrate the repository (at least for the next 50 millennia or so). In the meantime, the nation’s 65 nuclear power plants store all their waste onsite. Keeley swears such treatment is perfectly safe, and points out that all radioactive waste produced in the United States in the last four decades would only occupy the first ten yards of a football field in a mound 10 feet high.

Whatever that means. Statistics on the quantity of radioactive waste are entirely irrelevant, points out Will Callaway, Legislative Director of Physicians for Social Responsibility in Washington, DC, and a veteran of more than 20 years analyzing the effects of radioactive materials on miners and laborers.

“To say that nuclear power produces very little waste becomes a pretty spurious argument if you’re trying to downplay dangers the waste creates,” Callaway explains. “I’ve personally met dozens of people with a laundry list of ailments which can be attributed to exposure to nuclear waste.”

Consider this: fuel assemblies — bundles of 12-foot uranium rods — must be removed from the reactor and replaced by fresh material every 18 to 24 months, and the resulting waste (independent of how much space it takes up in a football field) may emit radiation for thousands of years. In fact, one year after removal from the reactor, a 150-rod fuel assembly could, in less than 10 seconds of intense exposure time, deliver a dosage of radioactivity lethal to a person. Fifty years later, the same bundle of uranium could deliver a lethal dose in three to four minutes. Aside from death, exposure to high levels of radiation can cause tissue and organ damage, says Callaway, not to mention cancer and birth defects decades after exposure.

The first nuclear energy plant in the United States was built in 1957 in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. A surge in the development of national nuclear infrastructure followed, then stopped altogether in the mid-1980s due to an economic recession and prohibitive interest rates. For two decades not even a single new plant was built. Meanwhile, energy providers settled on coal, the cheapest form of electricity production available.

Last September a fresh application was submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a new reactor in New Jersey. Several more applications followed immediately, and according to Keeley, the NRC expects to be reviewing as many as 25 applications for new plants by the end of 2008. No new applications have yet been approved, but the flood of nuclear interest is likely to continue as electricity demand balloons in our era of iPods, cells phones, laptops, blackberries and an exploding human population. In fact, numerous energy officials estimate that to meet escalating requirements for energy, the United States will need to build 300 nuclear power plants by 2050.

Grasping at nuclear straws

There has been much debate around “base-load” energy requirements — the energy needed to generate electricity 24/7 for a given populace. Proponents of nuclear power argue that base-load energy can only be met by the coal, hydroelectric and nuclear sources, and that renewable technologies simply don’t have what it takes.

Well, yes and no, says Clint Wilder. “This is not, should not be and never has been an issue of all or nothing,” he explains. “It can’t be only renewables, of course, but to make the dent in carbon emissions, we don’t have to eliminate coal burning 100 percent, just greatly reduce it. Wind, solar thermal and geothermal industries can definitely contribute to base-load electricity as a part of that process.”

Today, the United States generates 51 percent of its electricity from coal plants and 20 percent from nuclear plants. Renewable energy sources, like wind, sun, waves and geothermal hotspots, supply just 3 percent of our electricity.

That’s nowhere near their potential, says Kurt Zwally, Global Warming Solutions Manager for The National Wildlife Federation. “There is a wide range of safer, cheaper and faster ways to reduce global warming pollution other than expanding nuclear power,” Zwally asserts. “These alternatives, such as renewable energy sources and the vast untapped potential to improve energy efficiency in vehicles, buildings and industry, have far greater promise for large-scale reductions in global warming pollution.”

While wind and solar energy production are increasing at 30 to 40 percent per year, it’s still not fast enough, says Zwally, who blames the current administration for funding nuclear power at the expense of cleaner, more efficient renewables. “Federal subsidies for nuclear power potentially siphon fiscal and technology resources away from more promising technologies,” Zwally laments.

Most recently, the federal government has implemented a loan guarantee program assuring each power company that, should their facility fold — which the Congressional Budget Office has suggested is more than 50 percent likely for a given power plant — the government (at the tax payer’s expense) will pay off any loan taken out on the failed endeavor. The big kicker: the average price tag for a nuclear power plant, warns Callaway, is $5 to $7 billion.

Nuclear opponents agree that the world can’t simply unplug all nuclear energy plants, because we currently rely on them too heavily. Moreover, there is no “silver bullet,” no single renewable energy that could fully replace our nuclear infrastructure.

As Gwyneth Cravens argued in Power to Save the World, a chronicle of her transition from naïve environmentalist to nuclear power enthusiast, renewable energy infrastructures include their own very considerable sources of pollution. Building solar panels, argues Cravens, involves chemical treatments that can desecrate the environment and every wind turbine requires constructing a massive and costly cement base of 1000 cubic yards or more (although compared to the ramifications of “going nuclear,” their risks are far less dramatic. Any site marked with the presence of a nuclear power plant becomes uninhabitable forever. Renewable technologies, on the other hand, carry no such legacy of danger; beneath a wind turbine crops can grow, animals graze or children play.

Every energy technology has some environmental risk, which is why it doesn’t make sense to rely on one type alone. Instead, argues the anti-nuclear camp, we need to shift the conversation from “which single source is the solution” to “what combination of sources will provide the cleanest and greenest energy.”

“It’s certainly not all one technology,” said Clean Edge’s Wilder. “It’s wind in the Midwest, sun in the Southwest, geothermal in California. If we could only redirect some funding and place nationwide emphasis on this, we could do it. Renewable energy could be mainstream, money-making, big business. It’s not just hippy dippy stuff. These technologies really do work. We just need to invest in them.”

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