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Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Nuclear Power the Cheap, Environmental Choice
By Marshall Berman
Physicist
I spent almost 20 years studying potentially very serious accidents at nuclear power plants. Billions have been spent on research and regulation concerning reactor safety.
But after 50 years, there have been no nuclear plant-related public deaths in the United States, despite the 1979 failure at the Three Mile Island plant.
The worst accident we could have imagined during our extensive research already occurred at Chernobyl in 1986. To date, only 56 deaths can be directly attributed to the Chernobyl accident. Possible additional late deaths may approach 4,000, but this would be very hard to measure.
Wildlife evidence from the most contaminated areas around the reactor showed no genetic damage or excess cancers in mammals that lived their entire lives in a relatively high-radiation area.
Compare this record to about 5,000 coal miners dying every year around the world. Yes, hundreds of early uranium miners died of cancer before we understood radiation better. But after 40 years of experience, there have been no cases of illness from uranium mining in Australia and Canada, two leading producers of uranium today.
Coal plant air pollution is estimated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to cause about 25,000 deaths per year.
Operating costs have fallen significantly with about 10,000 reactor-years of experience worldwide. The average capacity factor of U.S. reactors is about 91 percent, much better than the 1970s level of around 60 percent.
Fuel costs are a very small fraction of operating costs. Total nuclear plant costs include decommissioning, waste disposal and insurance. Public Service Company of New Mexico's estimates of costs per kilowatt hour, ranging from cheapest to most expensive, are coal, 4.5 cents; nuclear, 5.4 cents; wind, 6.2 cents; natural gas, 7.3 cents; and, solar, 22.2 cents
A typical coal plant releases about 100 times more radioactivity than a typical nuclear plant.
More than 600 U.S. coal-fired plants spew about 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually, equivalent to the exhaust of about 300 million autos, making up 36 percent of U.S. CO2 emissions. Nuclear plants do not emit CO2.
After 20 years of research, public input, lawsuits and regulatory struggles, the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant began operations in 1999. To date, no problems.
After 30 years of study (including 20 years of intense research) and about $9 billion, the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain is still not licensed. The problems are political, not technical. Nevada's politicians are adamantly against Yucca Mountain, ignoring the fact that Nevada itself had been used for both atmospheric and underground nuclear explosions for many years.
Waste is transported safely today by rail and truck using containers that have been extensively tested in extreme environments (explosions, crashes, fires) and approved by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission. There have been no radiation releases.
About 1 cubic meter of waste is generated a year by each plant. After 200 years, the waste no longer generates significant heat; after 500 years, the waste will be less radioactive than the original mined uranium.
A naturally occurring nuclear reactor occurred about 2 billion years ago in Central Africa and ran for several hundred thousand years. But non-volatile fission products only migrated a few centimeters in the last 1.5 billion years.
Reprocessing the waste would provide significant new fuel (about 25%) and reduce waste, which is already very small.
Proliferation in not a problem in the West or Japan, but might be of concern in Russia, Pakistan, Iran or North Korea.
The real problems involved in nuclear generation of electricity include:
n Finding enough craft labor for specialized nuclear plant components.
n Since the domestic nuclear plant production industry is essentially defunct, large steel orders, like the massive reactor vessels, are no longer made in America and must be purchased from Japan or France.
n Plant delays are expensive.
n Security against terrorists needs to be improved at some plants.
But the bottom line: All energy options should be considered, including conservation, solar, wind and biomass. The primary urgent baseload choices, however, are coal and nuclear.
Based on cost, emissions, radioactivity, and safety, nuclear is the preferred option.
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