Advice to Advanced Nuclear Advocates: Move On From the Past
As much as I stand behind the developers of solar, wind, and any other forms of renewable energy that can be made cost-effective, it appears that we will be unable to turn the corner on the environmental catastrophes associated with energy without the use of nuclear power. And fortunately, there are some exciting new technologies in this space that need to be understood by our leaders and by the voters who elect them.
Having said this, many of the promoters of this new approach to nuclear energy are making the mistake of promoting all nuclear, asserting that all designs—even old ones, are far safer than fossil fuels. In fact, this is true, but it’s hardly relevant, and it represents an impediment to their progress.
Promoting nuclear as an ongoing continuum of technologies makes for an uphill PR battle, and it’s one that doesn’t need to be fought. Even people who know nothing about the subject remember the names Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima–and understand that something distinctly bad happened at each one. Why run up against this when you don’t have to? Simply distance yourself from old, bad things.
Today’s advocates for modern nuclear need to create a separation between “the nuclear reactor designs of the 1950s” and “advanced nuclear,” i.e., designs that take a completely different approach and can’t melt down, blow up, foster the development of weapons, spread contaminants, or leave hazardous waste (all of which are true of the liquid fluoride thorium reactors that are being developed today). Advanced nuclear has almost nothing in common with these primitive technologies from half a century ago. Why not just say that–if the subject comes up at all?
Here are examples of proper and improper handlings of important matters that illustrate my point.
Well Done: Watergate, 1973/4. The word was clear: what happened was wrong. It wasn’t “partially wrong” or “wrong when reviewed in a certain context.” It was completely and inexcusably wrong. It was only a matter of days before the president of the United States of America would have been rounded up and sent to the same prison that housed his henchmen, if he had not resigned in abject disgrace and finagled a pardon from the only person in the world who had the power to grant it. A corrupt government had been exposed and cleaned up. It wasn’t a happy time for Americans, but we could all live with it–and move past it, as the truth, albeit ugly, had come out. In fact, many Americans (and I was one of them) were pleased to see that “rule of law” actually meant something; we didn’t have a coup where some junta ganged up and murdered the guy as if he were an arch-duke or a czar. But we sure as hell were going to throw him in prison, just as if he were a bank robber, and he knew it.
Poorly Done: U.S. Use of Torture, 2014. The word is not at all clear. Who knows the true extent of our participation in torture? And who believes that this report somehow represents an end to it? Interpreting the report itself (depending on the spokesperson) what happened was some blend of “acceptable under the circumstances,” “not really torture in the first place,” “unfortunate but consistent with American values” and, worst of all, proof that “America is awesome.” Very few people in recent memory have faced as much ridicule as the reporter who tried to make this point, simply because no one believes that the truth is up front, our policy is redefined, and that we’re moving forward. I’m not sure it would be “awesome” even if that were the case, and it’s most certainly not.
Lesson: everyone experiences bad things, many of which are of our own doing. (In fact, we have responsibility for far more–good and bad–than we allow ourselves to believe.) When we make mistakes, the way to handle them is distancing ourselves from them by telling the truth, refusing to make inane excuses, admitting that we were unequivocally wrong, and moving forward into a bright new future. Otherwise we’ll wind up like the fool above—or Anthony Wiener with his sexting or Rob Ford with his crack cocaine.
It’s how I try to live my life, it’s what I tell my kids, and it’s what I advise anyone who wants to succeed at anything.
Agreed.
Incidentally, the division of opinion in America on the subject of torture is the result of massive quantities of propaganda (and the misunderstanding it produces).
Both the senate report and the CIA’s own report firmly conclude that torture (politely termed “enhanced interrogation techniques” by torturers and their supporters) yielded no actionable intel – period. The people who were tortured, who did divulge actionable intel, only did so BEFORE they were tortured, not during or afterward.
Torture is not only ineffective, but serves as both a recruiting tool for extremists (on both sides), and it opens our soldiers more indefensibly to being tortured themselves.
In other words, torture is worse than pointless – it’s self-defeating.
The United States of America, the people of the U.S., want an honest, truthful, respectful, and all the rest of nice attributes, and they want to be respected as that. The US government has derailed every aspect of the people’s wishes (and commands!); the government has come to the point where they don’t care about anything but their (the government leaders) permanency. That is what has resulted from the people of the US not keeping their representatives in their places for a long time.
The US started as a God following people’s government, respecting everybody and has expecting everybody to do it, no matter what. The US started out as a God following republic and has put God aside, with the result we are seeing right now; expect no better from now on, unless we turn to the right director (God), and follow him. And that has to start from above and trickle down to the people.
Nuclear reactors keep being a controversial and dangerous solution, although, as we are, will have to play a big role in the near future. Let’s hope that when they arrive, they chose right, and that they deliver as expected, but we must be careful and vigilant always. We have examples of corruption and malpractice all over, and that is, we haven’t put the other, darker problems that exist in human nature.
What nuclear power generation technologies do not produce nuclear waste? Does anyone know of any?
To say that liquid fluoride thorium reactors make “no” nuclear waste is a slight exaggeration; they make small amounts of short-term waste.
Do we know that liquid fluoride thorium power generation technology will be used widely enough and soon enough to halt man’s emissions of greenhouse gasses entirely?
No, we can’t predict the future. The world uses a shade over 100 billion megawatt-hours of fossil fuel per year. That’s a lot of anything, to be use.
Nuclear Energy will never be a viable source because NOBODY will allow a Nuclear Power plant to be built in their community. We already know how dangerous Nuclear Power is, we already know how dangerous Oil, Natural Gas and Coal is to the Environment, our Health, and our National Security. Renewable Clean Energy technologies is the only avenue we as a nation and our government should be pursuing. Time to end tax giveaways,subsidies, tax credits and wars for the oil/fossil fuel industry to fatten the wallets of a select few OIL Cartel Barons and Defense contractors at the expense of the American Tax payer money, health and Environment!
You’re right about the NIMBY effect you mention here, but I wonder how people feel about being downwind of a coal plant. Anyone who thinks he’s safer in the latter position is totally misinformed.
Please identify the nuclear products that have zero waste!
If the answer to that question is no we don’t, then why would we not put as much money and effort into developing and deploying power generation technology that can produce power without emitting CO2 and can even be used to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and can help double solar and wind power generation?
Nuclear power plants do not generate CO2. In addition, it is possible to design nuclear reactors and fuel cycles which generate only about one percent as much as our present mediocre nuclear technology with the waste requiring being sequestered for only a few hundred years instead of a few thousand years.. The only possible excuse to produce more pressurized water reactors is that, compared with fossil fuels, they are the lesser of two evils and it will take a while for R & D to make better nuclear reactors available. Whether that excuse is sufficient can be discussed.
There are places where nuclear power may never be a reasonable option, such as in small island nations or places so remote that it would be impractical to connect them to the grid. In such situations, the limitations of renewable power sources are probably tolerable when compared with the problems of the Diesel power which is now being used. There are also moderate sized countries which have considerable hydro power. In such cases, if the amount of water available for the hydro systems is not adequate, wind and solar systems could, when their power is available, be used to reduce the water consumption of the hydro systems thereby making it possible to rely on renewables alone. So, even though I do not believe that we can reduce CO2 emissions to acceptable levels without nuclear power, there is still a place for renewables.
We cannot know for certain which will ultimately be the best nuclear technology. Right now, the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR) seems to be the most promising. There could be unanticipated problems and there are different ways to design them. If the LFTR does not work out, there are other nuclear technologies that would be safer and generate less waste than our present pressurized water reactors. If the U.S. government had not a few decades ago unwisely stopped funding nuclear power R & D, it is likely that by now we would have a much better nuclear technology in operation.
There have been proposals to extract CO2 from the atmosphere. Whether that is a reasonable thing to do I don’t know. Perhaps consideration should be given to extracting CO2 from the oceans. Even if doing either is not practical now, it could become practical of more efficient methods of extracting CO2 are discovered.
I believe we in the USA will do better if we can show the world a much more viable means of enabling greenhouse emissions reductions globally, and a way to power society on extraction of greenhouse gasses already emitted into the atmosphere.
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“It is in our vital interest to diversify America’s energy supply — and the way forward is through technology.”
– President George W. Bush, 2007 State of the Union Address
It would be unwise to assume that such systems will ever be able to provide for the power needs of most large prosperous developed countries. On the other hand, it would also be unwise to brand them as totally impractical regardless of situations. Renewable power resources are not the same all over our planet, nor are power requirements the same all over our planet.
We really need to stop making assumptions about what will work and what will not work. Instead of merely thinking pleasant thoughts and investing money based on guesses, we need to do very thorough quantitive analyses. That would make much more sense than spending trillions of dollars on power systems THEN finding out that they will not do the job.
Everyone is downwind from thousands of coal plants.
Everyone is downwind from thousands of coal plants and I’ll add that anyone who doesn’t understand that has a very very weak understanding of the facts.
Ha! You have a point there — though data is starting to emerge on “cancer clusters” around coal plants: http://clusteralliance.org/2011/01/02/cancer-cluster-linked-to-coal/.
I had a couple of college professors that told me in 1977 at ucsb that nuc power was using a flawed theory and that we have just been lucky so far .I don’t know anything about the advanced nuc’s you speak of but consider you reliable .SO here’s the question ….what would you prefer to see proliferate as our next form of energy .I realize the answer is probably a mix of sources but it would be nice to hear a sort of where would you put your money
There are several forms of nuclear power plant design on the drawing board which could offer substantially less risk than the existing plant.
Any new nuclear plant design needs as described to “fail safe” without human intervention, greatly reduce the production of nuclear waste, and be inherently resistant to use for the production of nuclear weapons material.
Aside from Liquid Fluoride Trorium reactors, there are other options such as pebble bed modular reactors, the Traveling Wave Reactor being developed by TerraPower. and Lockhead Martin’s Skunkworks which claims to be developing a prototype compact fusion reactor (Though some experts have expressed doubt)
http://www.lockheedmartin.co.uk/us/products/compact-fusion.html
There is of course one kind of naturally occurring “nuclear reactor” built into planet Earth, and which has been exploited for centuries, and that is geothermal energy – a significant proportion of which derived from heat given off by the decay of natural radioactive isotopes in the Earth’s crust and core. In my view, geothermal has huge potential to deliver very low carbon baseload power and heat available 24/7. I would very much like to see substantial investment in researching better prospecting methods (to reduce “dry wells”) novel deep drilling techniques, and heat exchanger formation techniques. It may also be possible to use super-critical CO2 as a heat carrier in which case, loss of some of the heat carrier underground would make the process carbon negative, and allow it to act as a form of carbon capture and storage.
Probably more R & D should be done on geothermal systems. Whether they would ever be able to provide a significant portion of the power required for the entire earth has yet to be demonstrated, but it would be unfortunate to assume prematurely that it is impractical.
Iceland gets a considerable portion of its power from geothermal systems. That is a special case because the geology of Iceland makes it easier to tap geothermal heat, but perhaps ways can be found to make it practical even where the geology is less favorable.
I’ve been excited about Thorium reactors for several years, so I’m glad to see you bringing this up. A google search led me to energyfromthorium.com/thorium where Kirk Sorenson makes a good case for pursuing liquid salt thorium reactors. But it also led me to an article in the Bulletin of The Atomic Scientists asserting that Thorium reactors were a dead issue partly because the byproducts were more useable in weapons than had been claimed (thebulletin.org/thorium-wonder-fuel-wasnt7156). No wonder Thorium use is floundering.
You talk about Thorium reactors like they exist. Actually, this technology was mothballed and only in the last decade or so have people started working on it again. Not saying we shouldn’t, but there are a LOT of challenges to overcome before this could be mainstream. meanwhile, lowering the cost of solar, wind, bio, geo, and storage (for 24×7 supply) is happening and will continue with scale and innovation. These sources have great environmental footprints. Nuclear needs to be on the table – especially fission, but we need to go much faster to clean energy sources than we are doing already. Obama has done a great job here, and China is leading everyone now.
I completely agree that nuclear energy is a vital component in our clean energy future.
I also agree that we should continue to fund research on a diverse portfolio of advanced nuclear technologies.
But that’s where you’ve lost me. There’s a lot of ground in between the designs of the past and the designs which only exist on paper, and we should be exploring it. In the sixty some-odd years that we’ve been operating nuclear reactors, we’ve developed a tremendous body of knowledge about how to improve their designs, for better safety characteristics, greater efficiency, and reduced cost. We need to leverage that knowledge to build the nuclear facilities that will allow us to safely reduce our CO2 emissions now. We can’t afford to wait twenty-plus years to deploy new reactors.
Furthermore, abandoning improvement of our current reactor technologies in favor of only the more exotic advanced technologies because of a small number of well-publicized accidents doesn’t make sense. It would be like stopping all work on automobile safety in favor of researching teleporters because people die in car accidents sometimes. Cars work, so we improved them by adding seatbelts, and airbags, and early crash warning systems, and traction control. Let’s keep doing the same for our nuclear facilities.
That’s an excellent point, and I like your analogy to the development of our cars. Your point is actually similar to Louis’s who wrote, “You talk about Thorium reactors like they exist.”
You may be aware that the numerous supporters of thorium reactors say that we’re five years and $5 billion away. If that’s anywhere close to being true, it may be worth waiting to deploy a technology that is intrinsically safe, doesn’t pose a waste disposal problem, and can’t be used to develop nuclear weapons.
Until citizens who must live around whatever infrastructure is built can trust that we are being told the truth and that our safety and maintaining the value of our property are goals, it’s going to be hard to sell most energy infrastructure. People in the rural area I live in believe that decision makers have decided that we and our part of the state are “expendable.” For decades that’s what’s happened to communities where coal was/is mined. Most people have never visited one of these communities and has no idea how the workers and the environment have been treated.
There are people who want to mine uranium in our state. And there are three 42 inch pipelines proposed to move fracked gas using eminent domain. It’s hard to trust that the communities where these things would be located won’t become the latest that society writes off, telling the people who live there they need to accept it for the greater good. It’s easy to decide that someone else must live with something you know there’s no chance you’d have to experience.
I’m very saddened to read this, Irene. You’re most certainly correct in that this is not at all in the public consciousness. In fact, most people, me included, believe that coal miners loved their jobs and are fighting hard to thwart the efforts of people (like me) who are trying to make them disappear.