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 »

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’re planning to cut through the red tape by summer 2008, with construction starting around 2013 and operation in 2018. That leaves five years for the Finnish government to make a decision.

I again state my firm belief that there is nothing about a nuclear power plant that merits all this bureaucratic baloney. If the thing burned oil it’d be up and running in two years, but a nuclear power plant with less environmental impact by far must jump through hoops that include a full vote of the Finnish Parliament.

Link.

Filed under International, New Build, Nuclear Exceptionalism, Politics and Regulation

Posted on May 31, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“It is necessary that such a research will be undertaken by scientists independent of industrials. This is not the case today, the assessments of the Chernobyl disaster reach us only through the filter of powerful pronuclear organizations.”

-Commission de Recherche et d’Information Indépendantes sur la Radioactivité

Pro-nuclear, meaning anyone who does not have a pre-existing political agenda to kill off nuclear power?
And the idea that pro-nuclear organizations–not the industry, whose agenda is to ensure that their paychecks keep coming, but pro-nuclear organizations, whose agenda is the promotion of nuclear technology–are powerful is ludicrous. For example, if NIOF were to send a representative to the WNA Symposium in September (which we’re considering doing, only to suggest that the industry not step on our toes or put their feet in their mouths while we try to organize students), we would have serious problems putting an airline ticket together. We as a movement have skilled people to a certain extent, but we’re not rich by any means and aren’t organized politically. The power is in the politically savvy, well-organized, litigious, and vicious anti-nuclear movement and its allies in the renewables (and to a lesser extent, the fossil fuel) industries.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Politics and Regulation, Scientific Method

Posted on May 28, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“The worst result thus far of these cost cutting practices occurred at BE’s Hunterston B nuclear station in Scotland. A loss of power accident there threatened to turn into a Chernobyl-scale disaster, due in great part to understaffing.”

-Michael Steinberg

A power outage is not going to turn into Chernobyl, not because of staffing, but because of physics. Hunterston B is not Chernobyl, doesn’t work like Chernobyl, and can’t experience a Chernobyl-scale accident.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Chernobyl, Economics, Nuclear Exceptionalism, Safety

Posted on May 27, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“Nuclear proliferation is the next excuse the duuhbyaist regime is using to justify another invasion, occupation, and spree of nation building, US taxpayer bankrupting contractor kleptocaracy.”

-’amazngdrx‘

Those of us in the reality-based community wouldn’t agree.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Scientific Method

Posted on May 21, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Part 2 of this anti-nuclear email alert contains two major misconceptions.

1. That the security presently used at nuclear power plants is necessary. There is absolutely no point to it; a terrorist couldn’t really do anything if they did get in. It reflects the nuclear industry’s tendency to accomodate requests because they can (not due to necessity) and their penchant for overkill.

2.

“Nuclear plant operators can build all the walls or blast-resistant chambers they want, but if they’re not screening the security personnel, none of that will matter.”

-Rep. Ed Markey, perennial friend of nuclear power

Actually, yes, it all does matter, and physics overrides the intentions of those involved–good or not.

Filed under Physics, Practical Problems, Security and Terrorism

Posted on May 20, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

Even though it was at a military facility and covered up for over a year! It’s amazing how neither condition was able to turn a nothin’ chemical spill into the end of the world.

Must be sheer coincidence, not physics–like the creationists always love to say about evolution, as though it weren’t deterministic.

Link.

Filed under Politics and Regulation, Safety, Scientific Method

Posted on May 20, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“A single accident releasing radiation into the environment could cost tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars to clean up, and could kill and injure hundreds of people (according to Dr. Marvin Resnikoff of Radioactive Waste Management Associates, a graduate of the University of Michigan nuclear science department).”

-Nuclear Information and Resource Service

What purpose, other than scaring people, is served by speculating on the number of people killed by the physically impossible?

By the way, Jan Peczkis is a graduate of the Northeastern Illinois University Geology Department. That doesn’t mean that Northeastern endorses any of his strange ideas, but the above internationally-prominent anti-nuclear group apparently feels the need to associate one of their creationist-style “independent researchers” with a credible educational institution. Note: Northeastern, nicknamed “Northeasy” and/or “Northleastern” by many Chicagoans (including its students) is essentially a diploma mill; it’s basically one step up from the City Colleges. Peczkis is notable in that he is the only major “creation scientist” who has a degree from an actual secular institution instead of a “degree” in “biology” from a bible college.

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Crackpots, Health, Missing the Point, Non Sequitur, Physics, Practical Problems

Posted on May 11, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »

“The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s environmental impact statement gives facts and figures on the plutonium facility’s pollution and contamination. It reveals:

Workers at the facility would be exposed to a dose of 15 person-rem per year, three times the maximum limit of five rem per person, per year required by the Code of Federal Regulations.”

-Don’t Waste South Carolina

By what measure–the amount of radiation emitted by the materials, or the amount of radiation that gets to the workers?

Filed under Anti-Nuclear Quote of the Day, Fun With Statistics, Health, Plutonium, Practical Problems, Radiation

Posted on May 5, 2007 by Stewart Peterson | 0 Comments »