[GJM] More Consequences re: nuclear reactors - Jim Bell

[marguerite hampton]

Thanks to Eco-Designer Jim Bell for this 

excellent article. 



My only comment is that if San Diego rooftops

are coverd with solar panels, what happens 

when the 20 -40 foot projected ocean rise from

glacial ice melt forces people out of the city and 

into higher elevations? Or if drought forces an

exodus, or quite possibly unprecedented coastal

storms.  Any or all of  the above appear quite likely

in the not-too-distant-future. 



And, isn't it best to be prepared for the "worst case 

scenario"?  and not get caught short? 

 

Wouldn't it be better for everyone to have a 

suitcase-size Zero Point Energy source that can be 

carried anywhere with them and set up easily in a 

new location?  Not to power your appliances, but 

to get the food growing and keep necessities for 

survival rolling along? 



Do you want to have to look your children or grand-

children in the eye and tell them this was an option

that you didn't feel was worth pursuing? 



So, let's get this distributed far and wide through our 

networks and continue to keep nuclear out of our lives. 



And think about "new energy" a little more seriously.. 



eco 







From: Jim Bell

Date: 01/18/07 21:32:28

To: marguerite hampton

Subject: Re: More Consequences - re: nuclear reactors

 

  

Nuclear Power - One of Humankind's Biggest Mistakes

 

By Jim Bell

 

www.jimbell.com, jimbellelsi at cox.net, 619 758 9020

 

 

 

Nuclear Power was a mistake and remains a mistake. If the human family

survives it, our descendants will wonder what we were thinking to justify

leaving them nuclear power's toxic legacy -- a legacy they will be dealing

with for hundreds if not thousands of generations.

 

 

 

And why did we do it? To power our lights, TVs, radios, stereos, air

conditioners, etc. and the tools we used to make them.

 

 

 

Our creation of nuclear power will be especially difficult for our

descendants to understand because they will know that in the nuclear era, we

already had all the technologies and know-how needed to power everything in

ways that are perpetually recyclable, powered by free solar energy and which

leave zero harmful residues in their wake.

 

 

 

On its own, nuclear power's toxic radioactive legacy should be enough to

give any thinking person sufficient reason to want to eliminate it as

quickly as possible and do everything to protect our descendants from the

radioactive wastes already created.

 

 

 

The human family has been at war with itself for the majority of its

history. Human history is full of successful, advanced and sophisticated

civilizations that utterly collapsed. To the informed, even our current

civilization(s) don't feel very solid. Plus there are earthquakes, tsunami's

volcanoes, severe weather, terrorism, and just plain human error. This

given, who can guarantee that anything as dangerous and long-lived as

nuclear waste can be kept safe for even 100 years much less the hundreds to

hundreds of thousands of years it will take before some of these wastes are

safe to be around.

 

 

 

And even if an insurance company did guarantee its safety, what is their

guarantee worth? What could they do to protect us and future generations if

San Onofre's spent fuel storage pond lost its coolant water. If this

happened an almost unquenchable radioactive fire would spontaneously erupt,

spewing radioactive materials wherever the wind blew for weeks if not

months -- rendering Southern California a dangerous place to live for

thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years.

 

 

 

Notwithstanding the above, the nuclear industry is lobbying the public and

the government to continue supporting them politically and economically so

the industry can expand.

 

 

 

Its latest rational is that nuclear power will produce fewer greenhouse

gases than what would be produced using fossil fuels to make electricity.

This is true if one only looks at what happens inside a reactor. It's not

true when accounting for all the fossil fuel energy consumed during nuclear

power's fuel cycle, and what it takes to build, operate and dismantle plants

when they wear out. Additionally, even if nuclear power was ended today,

fossil fuel energy must be consumed for millennia in order to protect the

public from the radioactive residues that nuclear power has already

generated.

 

 

 

An increasing number of former industry and non-industry experts are saying

that at best nuclear power releases slightly fewer greenhouse gases to the

atmosphere than if the fossil fuels embodied in it had been burned to make

electricity directly.

 

 

 

In his 2002 book, Asleep at the Geiger Counter, p. 107-118, Sidney Goodman,

(giving the industry the benefit of the doubt on a number of fronts and

assuming no serious accidents or terrorism), concludes that the net output

of the typical nuclear power plant would be only 4% more than if the fossil

fuels embodied in it had been uses directly to produce electricity. This

means, best-case scenario, replacing direct fossil fuel generated

electricity with nuclear generated electricity will only reduce the carbon

dioxide released per unit of electricity produced by 4%. Goodman is a long

practicing licensed Professional Engineer with a Masters Degree in

Mechanical Engineering.

 

 

 

Other experts believe that nuclear power will produce about the same amount

of energy as was, is, and will be consumed to create, operate and deal with

its aftermath. This case was made in an article published in Pergamon

Journals Ltd. Vol.13, No. 1, 1988, P. 139, titled "The Net Energy Yield of

Nuclear Power." In their article the authors concluded that even without

including the energy that has or would be consumed to mitigate past or

future serious radioactive releases, nuclear power is only "the

re-embodiment of the energy that went into creating it."

 

 

 

In its July/August 2006 edition, The Ecologist Magazine, a respected British

publication, featured a16-page analysis of nuclear power. One of the

conclusions was that nuclear power does not even produce enough electricity

to make up for the fossil fuels consumed just to mine, mill and otherwise

process uranium ore into nuclear fuel, much less all the other energy inputs

required This is not surprising given that typical U-235 ore concentrations

of .01% to .02%, require mining, crushing and processing a ton of ore to end

up with 1/2 oz to 1 oz of nuclear reactor fuel.

 

 

 

To put this in perspective, the typical 1,000 MW nuclear power plants uses

around 33 tons or over 1 million oz of nuclear fuel each year.

 

 

 

As a teenager I saw a TV program that showed a man holding a piece of metal

in the palm of his hand. He was saying that if what he held was pure uranium

it would contain as much energy as the train full of coal that was passing

by him on the screen. I became an instant "true believer" in nuclear power.

I thought if something that small can produce the same amount of energy as

all that coal, there will be plenty of energy and therefore plenty of money

to address any dangers that using it might pose.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, to get that level of energy from a small amount of pure or

near pure uranium it would require that it be exploded as an atomic bomb. Of

the uranium used in a reactor, only a fraction of the energy in pure uranium

gets used. That's why we are left with depleted uranium and other long-lived

wastes.

 

 

 

The nuclear industry says that nuclear power is safe, a big net energy

producer, and that it will be cheap and easy to keep its wastes out of the

environment and out of the hands of terrorists.

 

 

 

But if these claims are true, why has an industry that supplies only 8% of

our country's total energy and 20% of its electricity consumed hundreds of

billions of tax dollar subsidies since its inception? The 2005 Federal

Energy Bill continues this trend. According to U.S. PIRG, Taxpayers for

Common Sense, Public Citizen and the Congressional Research Service the

recently passed 2005 Federal Energy Bill includes "a taxpayer liability of

$14 to $16 billion" in support of nuclear power.

 

 

 

If nuclear power is so safe and wonderful, why does it require the Price

Anderson Act? The Price Anderson Act puts taxpayers on the hook if the cost

of a major radioactive release exceeds $10.5 billion. According to a Sandia

National Laboratory analysis, this puts taxpayers on the hook for over $600

billion to cover the damage that a serious radioactive release would cause.

Another Sandia Laboratory study focusing just on the Indian Point nuclear

power plant in New York, concluded the damage caused by a serious release

from that plant could cost up to a trillion dollars. Needless to say, any

serious radioactive release from any U. S. plant would wipe out any net

energy gain by nuclear power if -- there ever was one.

 

 

 

Realizing the potential cost of a serious radioactive release,

manufacturers, insurers and utilities, were unwilling to build, insure or

order plants. They only got seriously involved after the Congress assigned

these cost to the taxpaying public. On page 7 of a report by the Institute

for Energy and Environmental Research titled The Nuclear Power Deception,

they included the follow 1996 quote from then NRC Commissioner James

Asselstine, "given the present level of safety being achieved by the

operating nuclear power plants in this country, we can expect a meltdown

within the next 20 years, and it is possible that such as accident could

result in off-site releases of radiation which are as large as, or larger

than the released estimates to have occurred at Chernobyl." Bare in mind, a

meltdown is only one of several things that could happen with nuclear power

to cause a serious radioactive release.

 

 

 

As I said in the beginning, nuclear power is a mistake. Especially

considering we already have all the technologies and know-how needed to make

us completely and abundantly renewable energy self-sufficient. Solar energy

leaves no radioactive residues for our children or future generations.

Additionally, although not completely environmentally benign yet, solar

energy collection systems can be designed to last generations, be

perpetually recyclable and leave zero toxic residues behind.

 

 

 

If San Diego County covered 24% of its roofs and parking lots with PV

panels, it would produce more electricity than the county consumes. This

assumes that 3 million resident use, on average, 10 kWh per capita per day

after installing cost-effective electricity use efficiency improvements. For

details read my free books at www.jimbell.com. They are also available in

most local libraries.

 

 

 

For ourselves, our children and future generations, let's move into the

solar age.