Nuclear is Our Future Pro-nuclear activist group

Bellona has issued a report stating that there are 21,000 spent fuel assemblies in a storage system that will explode if water leaks in, and that water is leaking in.

It’s kinda flawed.

1. All uncontrolled reactions are not explosions. A reaction can be uncontrolled merely because a person or mechanism is not in charge of it–there were 16 natural nuclear reactors in an African uranium deposit, and they formed in a very similar configuration to this postulated accident. How did they stop? The energy released heated the water and eventually boiled it–and without the water, there’s no reaction. After it shut down, it cooled off, letting the water back in; this process was repeated for millions of years until it simply ran out of fuel. No explosions were involved–it didn’t even disrupt the ore.
2. There will never be a homogeneous mixture. Ceramic does not dissolve in water, there’s no way to get enough water into the fuel assemblies even if it did, and expecting every single one of those 21,000 tubes to open up, let the water in, and not let any of it out afterward is ridiculous.
3. This isn’t gasoline. A critical configuration in one area does not create a critical configuration in another nearby area.

Sounds a bit like the Brookhaven Report, which was written in 1957 with no access to computers, and said that if the core of a nuclear reactor were pulverized and deposited equally into the lungs of 10,000 people, they would die. Well, yes–but what’s your point? The amount of water in a filled bathtub could drown 40,000 people. Blaming nuclear power for things it didn’t, doesn’t, and can’t do doesn’t save lives. It cynically manipulates tragedy for political purposes.

Filed under International, Nuclear Exceptionalism, Physics, Safety

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 2 Comments »

Once every few weeks, people who want to portray depleted uranium as the most dangerous substance on the face of the Earth trot out a document from the Manhattan Project stating that uranium could be aerosolized and used as a radiological weapon.

This happened recently, and doesn’t have anything to do with what we know about uranium’s radiotoxicity today. It doesn’t prove any conspiracy theories and doesn’t make uranium magically increase its radioactivity when aerosolized.

For the record.

Filed under Applications, Conspiracy, Non Sequitur

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 2 Comments »

The British government was given documents in 1941 describing how to build a nuclear reactor.

And they sat on them.

Until Thursday, May 31.

The Manhattan Project scientists had a plutonium bomb design ready in 1944 and had to wait for a specialized weapons-production reactor to be completed in order to actually build it. If they had known the plutonium was going to be available before 1945, they could have started work on the implosion mechanism–the most difficult part–and had it ready by mid-1943.

I’m sure the families of every person killed on both sides in 1944 and 1945 will say, “Thanks, guys.”

More from We Support Lee.

Filed under Proliferation

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

The author of this article posted to Know_Nukes admits that their conspiracy theories about depleted uranium are probably wrong.

But what if they weren’t?

That boils down to an extremely conservative attitude. It is formally known as the Precautionary Principle: don’t do anything unless all the possible problems to future generations are known and solved. Since humans aren’t infalliable and can’t predict everything, don’t do anything–even if you know the problems you’ll cause are less severe than what you’re currently experiencing.

How can you know that it’s a net gain if you can’t know everything that will happen in the future? Easy. Today’s problems, if unsolved, will continue unabated into the future, indefinitely. Thus, whatever problem is eliminated, whatever net gain is made, will be projected into the future from this day forward.
I’m all for precaution–eliminating, reducing, and optimizing risks; establishing a coherent system by taking problems that will always be there and letting them work against each other. Given two two-by-fours, I’ll lean them against each other instead of trying to balance them on their ends and complaining that doing so requires perfection and is inherently unstable, and mere humans cannot be trusted with two-by-fours as a result. However, I am not in favor of swinging in trees.

The Precautionary Principle has nothing to do with precaution. It is simply a reactionary philosophy that has been with humanity since our first consciousness, and is keeping humans who have the bad luck to be born in the Third World barefoot and sick when solutions are well-known and available.

Give me the real left wing. Not the left wing of Amory Lovins, but the left wing of FDR. Give every person everywhere an American standard of living, and watch their environmental impact go down as they rely less on nature for their needs. Telling a man who is up to his waist in a rice paddy in Bangladesh that he needs to use less energy is not the answer. A radical overhaul of the poverty lifestyle forced upon him by reactionaries is the answer, and doing so is our moral obligation.

Filed under Applications, Sustainability

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

You can understand it, with the expense of keeping all that manufacturing equipment for one plant’s fuel, but still–the Russians? Couldn’t they get it from us?

One thing is certain: if the American nuclear industry doesn’t immediately forget any illusions that it is special and start acting like an industry, they’ll stagnate just like they have over the past 35 years.
The nuclear industry outside of Russia is the only industry in the world to respond to a great opportunity for growth by screaming “SLOW DOWN!” Well, guess what. You’re never going to have everything you need to be perfect, and your suppliers that you so often complain about move at the normal speed for private industry–meaning a complete turnaround in two years is not unheard of–instead of yours. Don’t worry about them. Get the orders, start innovating, and the workers will come as soon as there are jobs for them.

Remember: if not for Chernobyl–meaning, if they had banned the RBMK in 1950 like we did, and if the Soviet military hadn’t tried to build power plants out of their bomb factories–the Russian nuclear industry would have a perfect safety record. They do have much better financial and management performance. There are lessons to be learned from the Russians; they’re getting these orders for a reason.
And if you don’t get going, the Russians are going to come over here, get the VVER-1000 certified by the NRC, and build a fleet. Do you really want that?

Link.

Filed under Fuel Cycle, Industry Performance, International

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 1 Comment »

They’ve hired some consultants to do a comparison of the major available reactor designs.

I disagree with the Society of Energy Professionals, however, and fully expect that McKinsey will rate AECL’s Canadian nuclear technology near the bottom. The current designs remove the CANDU’s traditional commercial advantages and are competitive only if there is a requirement to consume American-style reactors’ waste–which Canada doesn’t have. They could build a fleet down here, but in places without a lot of LWR waste, they might as well just build fast breeders.

Link.

Filed under Fuel Cycle, Industry Performance, International, New Build

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

George Bush has proposed a series of international meetings on how to replace the Kyoto Protocol with something that works. At this point, I think it’s fairly evident that:
1. The Kyoto Protocol doesn’t go far enough and has set up a system which has been manipulated to obstruct real progress.
2. Global warming as a result of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere beyond the capability of natural systems to absorb it is a fact of physics.
3. We need a concrete procedure in place for an orderly, face-saving transition from the combustion era instead of more meetings and non-binding agreements.

Count me skeptical. I don’t see anything here that satisfies the third point, but perhaps George Bush knows by now that any proposal of his will be rejected simply because it came from him (which is wrong, even though I don’t agree with him on much), and is trying to set up an international conference where Obama or Hillary will present something nearly identical to what he would have.
Let’s just hope that successor doesn’t drop the ball.

Link.

Filed under Environment, International, Politics and Regulation

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 1 Comment »

As of May 31.

USEC has also committed to keeping Paducah open for another five years. The American Centrifuge Plant will not be fully operational until at least 2012; they say it will start enriching uranium in 2009.

Link.

Filed under Fuel Cycle, Industry Performance, New Build

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

The NRC has proposed implementing one of the few POGO recommendations I agree with: reducing hours for security guards at nuclear power plants. I’d like to take this opportunity to draw a distinction between watchdogs and attack groups. We don’t like to engage either, since neither tend to know what they’re doing, and the NRC’s unwillingness to admit anyone to discussions who isn’t a member of the good ol’ boy network doesn’t help, but I submit that there is a difference that we need to be aware of.

We’re used to being under attack; there hasn’t been a moment in the last 40 years when we weren’t. We are used to ignorant arguments coming from groups that are trying to shut down the industry, and accordingly have gotten used to taking any ignorant argument as a threat to shut down the industry. This, I believe, is a mistake.

Greenpeace and NIRS are attack groups. They have campaigns, use words like “shut” and “stop,” and have a stated aim of trying to destroy nuclear technology. They cannot be reasoned with; they must be exposed as fools in public, their sources of volunteers and money cut off, and the loons in charge marginalized. We are familiar with them, their message, their strategy, and their tactics.

POGO, on the other hand, suffers from exactly the same problem as the industry and NRC: nuclear exceptionalism. They are a watchdog group; they believe that the NRC and government in general are not doing the best possible job and are trying to expose problems so they can be fixed. We disagree with them a lot, but they’re not out to get us. They aren’t the problem. Don’t attack them in the manner that Greenpeace and NIRS attack the industry.

Joe Six-Pack thinks nuclear power plants pollute, are unsafe, and produce piles of leaking, deadly waste. They want a good reason to think that nuclear power plants don’t do any of those things, and we can provide it–if we act graciously and professionally, and not wimpy or suburban, and destroy these urban myths with real information. As I’ve said before, people are not dumb–they just have other things to worry about. Tell me an auto mechanic can’t understand how a nuclear power plant works.
The key is, they can’t figure it out on their own. We have to do what every other technology proponent does, and provide information and involvement. Whatever you want to say about how it should be, the public is the boss.

Filed under Activism, Nuclear Exceptionalism, Politics and Regulation, Security and Terrorism, Their Actions

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

They say it’s “incoherent.” And it is; that’s the sad part.

The report does not make any concrete proposals. It recommends that more committees be set up and the issue discussed, saying that the British government is moving too fast.
That’s right: telling the British government to slow down. It’s difficult to think of a recommendation that lacks initiative to a greater degree.

They also are fixed on geologic disposal and do not seem to be interested in processing beyond the existing PUREX-and-storage instead of recycling or beneficial use of fission products. That’s a terrible mistake; these materials can be useful and shouldn’t be dumped.

Filed under Applications, Politics and Regulation, Waste

Posted on June 3, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »