How We Can Get Clean Energy—Is Nuclear Power Safe?Robert Zubrin
29 Apr 2022
Editor's note: this is the second in a three-part series on how we can get clean energy. Part I explains the relationship between Fuel and Human Progress, Part II answers the question “Is Nuclear Power Safe?” and Part III provides an answer to “What Needs to Be Done?”N.B.: See the original article for links to the other partsA lot of fuss has been raised about nuclear power plants. Some say they emit cancer-causing radiation, that there is no way to dispose of the wastes they produce, that they are prone to catastrophic accidents, and could even be made to explode like bombs. These are serious charges. Let’s investigate them.
Routine Nuclear Power Plant Radiological Emissions* * *
The annual radiation doses that each American can expect to receive from both natural and artificial radiation sources are provided in the table below.
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Examining the table, we see that the amount of radiation dose that members of the public receive from nuclear power plants is insignificant compared to what they receive from their own blood (which contains radioactive potassium-40), the homes they live in, the food they eat (watch out for bananas!), the medical care and air travel they enjoy, the planet on which they reside, and the universe in which their planet resides.
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Nuclear Waste DisposalOne of the strangest arguments against nuclear power is the claim that there is nothing that can be done with the waste. In fact, the compact nature of the limited waste produced by nuclear energy makes it uniquely attractive. A single 1000 MWe coal-fired power plant produces about 600 tons of highly toxic waste daily, more than the entire American nuclear industry does in a year. The portion of this that is not simply sent up the stack piles up near the power plant, or is dumped somewhere else, eventually finding its way into the biosphere. Despite the clear, non-hypothetical consequences of this large-scale toxic pollution, no one is even talking about establishing a waste isolation facility for this material, because it is not remotely possible. In contrast to such an intractable problem, the disposal of nuclear waste is trivial.
It must be said: The hazards of nuclear waste disposal have been exaggerated by environmentalists, with the openly stated purpose of seeking to create a showstopper for the nuclear industry. They claim to be interested in public safety and ecological preservation. Neither claim is supportable.
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Nuclear accidentsNuclear accidents are certainly possible, but rare. Throughout its entire history, the world’s commercial nuclear industry has had three major accidents: Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, in 1979; Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986; and at Fukushima, Japan, in 2011.
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The 2011 Fukushima accident was much more serious. Caused by a powerful undersea earthquake and the resulting tsunami that buffeted the facility with waves nearly fifty feet high, the power plant flooded, and both grid power and the on-site backup diesel generators were knocked out, eliminating the emergency core cooling system. This eventually led to full meltdowns of three of the six reactors. Nevertheless, if anything, the Fukushima event proved the safety of nuclear power. Amid a disaster that killed some 28,000 people by drowning, collapsing buildings, fire, suffocation, exposure, disease, and many other causes, not a single person was killed by radiation. Nor was anyone outside the plant gate exposed to any significant radiological dose.
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Can Reactors Explode Like Bombs?In a word, no.
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Nuclear ProliferationBut can’t the industrial infrastructure used to produce three percent enriched fuel for nuclear reactors also be used to make 90 percent enriched material for bombs?
Yes, it can. It is also true, however, that such facilities could be used to make bomb-grade material without supporting any nuclear reactors.
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Source:
https://quillette.com/2022/04/29/how-we-can-get-clean-energy-part-ii/
