The Nuclear Renaissance and the Questions We Aren't Asking

A new series of reports on National Public Radio is looking at the "renaissance" of the nuclear power industry - after 30 years of no new construction of nuclear plants, there is a sudden rush to license and build new facilities to generate the electricity demanded by a growing world population and economy. The nuclear industry advertises itself as environmentally friendly, generating no carbon emissions or greenhouse gases and providing a nearly inexhaustible source of clean, safe energy. The lessons learned from the disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 and the near-disaster at Three Mile Island in 1979 have been factored into the construction and operation of new plants, nuclear proponents say, and there's now no reason not to invest in the "new" nuclear.

Or is there? Before we go there, let's look at two incontestable points.

First, and most obvious, is that we need electricity. We can blog at each other because we have computers and an Internet which run on electricity. I love my computer my iPod, my coffee maker, my electric range and oven, and my microwave, refrigerator, and hot water heater. I've grown used to my electric heat in the winter and air conditioning in the summer. When the power is out, life as we know and like it grinds to a halt. There's no way around it: we need electricity to power our modern life.

Since we need electricity, we have to make electricity. We can make the electricity we generate today go farther by building more efficient appliances and practicing conservation, but the fact is that as populations grow and economies boom, we must generate more and more electricity each year. How? We're running out of dammable (?) rivers to exploit for hydroelectric power, and those dams create their own environmental consequences (see the Chinese experience with the Three Gorges Dam). Wind turbines are assailed by environmentalists for killing birds. Solar power requires large and ugly collection arrays and generally works best in areas with abundant sunlight. Geothermal and ocean wave power generation can't produce enough output at current states of technology. And so on. So what does that leave to generate electricity in large quantities? We can burn fossil fuels like coal and petroleum (generating carbon emissions and greenhouse gases and wrecking the environment with coal mines and oil fields) or split atoms.

Which brings us back to the "new nuclear." I'm willing to concede that the latest nuclear power plants are probably as safe as they're likely to get. But, as in so many things, we're not being told the whole story, and if we're going to enter a new nuclear age we need to do it with our eyes open to the risks as well as the benefits.

The biggest drawback to nuclear power, and the one that receives the least attention, is the problem of nuclear waste. Power plants that run on fossil fuels generate smoke and gas that belches into the atmosphere. Nuclear plants generate radioactive waste which must be stored and protected over vast spans of time. The most dangerous radioactive wastes will remain deadly to humans (and animals) for tens of thousands of years. It will be dangerous long after our great-great-grandchildren's great-great-grandchildren are dead and forgotten. It will be dangerous for so long that we don't even know how to let generations that far in the future know how dangerous it is...go back and read my blog post from September 1st of this year titled "Don't Dig Here!" for a look at that problem.

And yet we drag our feet on creating the facilities to store and protect this waste: no one wants it stored in their back yard, much less their state or country. No one wants it transported through their communities. It won't go away. Where does it go?

The Department of Energy has spent years building a facility under Yucca Mountain in the remote Nevada desert, but it appears that the earliest date at which the facility might begin receiving waste is 2017. In the meantime, the waste continues to accumulate at less secure and protected facilities.

So let's be honest. We need nuclear power. New nuclear plants will be built. But let's acknowledge the full costs and admit that there's no nuclear free lunch. Let's agree that the storage facilities have to be built and the waste has to be brought to them somehow. This crazy aunt in the attic won't go away, as much as we try to ignore her. I'm waiting for the nuclear industry and its supporters to clearly and honestly address the problem of the storage of nuclear waste, but I think I'm waiting in vain, and I think that the issue will still be swept under the discussional rug when my grandchildren write their blogs many years from now.

Don't let it happen. We need electricity, and no matter how we generate it, there will be problems. Make your voice heard, but understand and be willing to live with the consequences of the option we select. There's no choice.

It'll be tough to blog by candlelight on a wind-up computer.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo