Vol. 5, No. 7
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February 1, 2008
Nevada's Online State News Journal-- Serving Informed Nevadans Since 2003
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COPYWRITING
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The Nuclear Energy
Debate Is Worldwide
The Danger Factor
Often Overlooked
by Johnny Gunn
The U.S. Government's Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository is rapidly becoming a dead issue as Congress chops $100 million from the budget. Hundreds are laid off, gates are chained shut, and the Nevada director Ward Sproat is declaring that a Nuclear Regulatory Commission license application is probably not going to happen during the current administration's time in office. But Yucca Mountain is a very small part of the current international picture as it deals with nuclear energy.
Many of what used to be considered third world countries have moved into the 21st Century with money, education, and a desire to do better in all those areas. Safety records of some, like China, North Korea, Sweden, and others are not up to world standards and there have been major problems. Fires have swept nuclear plants and not been reported for a long time, Japan had a nuclear accident and tried to hide it, and the biggest problem of all is what to do with the hundreds of thousands of tons of high level waste that is being created.
Waste comes in many forms as the nuclear energy is drawn off to heat water to drive turbines. Some have a half life of 24 years, others, such as plutonium has a half life of 24,000 years. The next question, how many half lives does the waste have to go through before it can be considered safe? After much testimony, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. determined that 200,000 years would probably not be enough time for the waste to become relatively safe. The Environmental Protection Agency arbitrarily said one million years would be adequate.
Right now, the United States has more nuclear energy power plants than any other country with about 120 of them located in 39 states. France as a country derives more energy from nuclear power, percentage wise, than any other nation, and within a couple of decades, China will have more nuclear plants on line than exist in the world today. The nuclear power industry in the U.S. is planning to build more than 100 new plants within the decade, uranium mining is picking up in the west, and mills to purify the product, long closed, are coming back on line.
It has been seen often over the centuries that industry waits until there is almost a catastrophe before putting all its efforts into making a change. Aircraft prior to WW II were pokey little things until there became a need for speed and size, range and capability, and now from B-17 Flying Fortresses we have the AirBus. The nuclear industry wants to build more plants but they don't want to be responsible for the waste they have already created.
There are between 70,000 and 77,000 tons of high level nuclear waste on the ground in this country right now, the 120 plants that are operating are making more waste daily, and the industry wants more plants built. The only reason that scientific research into reprocessing the waste into useable fuel has not progressed is this country's belief that the plutonium, a waste product that can be used to build nuclear weapons, would end up in the wrong hands. France reprocesses most of its waste, scientists want to create a means of reprocessing, but a mindset created during the 1950s and forward from the cold war is keeping the studies from moving forward.
Prior to the idea of Yucca Mountain, the country was beginning to study reprocessing, and the studies ended, primarily from a lack of funding, with the concept of underground burial. Today's methods, now a quarter of a century behind times, are expensive, but not as expensive as wasting billions of dollars on Yucca Mountain. Today's science can answer the problem but only if the industry creates a desire for recycling. A congressional tour of a reprocessing program in France was attended by Nevada Congressman Jon Porter (R) recently. He said following the tour that Nevada's universities could lead the way in discovering new ways of recycling this most dangerous of waste.
Porter said the nation has ignored what he called a ""viable option" available to the industry. The government has had a ban against recycling for about 30 years. Porter brought up the fact that the Department of Energy has spent almost $90 billion on the Yucca Mountain project while a nuclear reprocessing plant might cost about $15 billion. Porter has been touring international energy sites recently including an oil pipeline from Azerbaijan, and facilities in Turkey.
For or against nuclear energy is no longer the question; what to do with the waste is. The industry is not a safe one, many countries that are looking to expand into nuclear energy do not have exemplary safety records, and it will take a lot of sound science to proceed. The shadow of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl will hover over the industry for years to come. The threat of attack on installations by terrorist groups is very real, and the desire to end the proliferation of coal fired energy plants and the addition of tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere are the drivers right now. The nuclear industry is quick to point out that there is no air, water, or ground pollution from nuclear energy production.
The answers won't be found in Washington, D.C. bureaucrats, they will be found in the laboratories of scientists working for a solution that is both safe and efficient. Without the safety factor nuclear energy is as dangerous, if not more so, than global warming. A disaster like Chernobyl proved that in 1986. The Japanese nuclear accident could have been far worse, and the concept of hiding the problem from the citizens that live nearby is exactly what exacerbated the Chernobyl problem.
The high level nuclear waste question must be answered before any proliferation of new plants can be allowed to come on line. The waste is mostly cesium-137, strontium-90, and plutonium-239. Those products are known killers. It should be up to the nuclear energy industry to learn how to recycle the waste. As one lady once said to me, "you spilled the milk, sonny, you clean it up."
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