The monks said they also want to call attention to what they believe are the global dangers of nuclear power.  “We need to shut down the San Onofre,” Gyosen Sawada of Los Angeles, who said he was born in Fukushima, Japan, told the group before beginning a three-hour walk from Dana Point Harbor. “No more Hiroshima. No more Nagasaki. No more Three Mile Island. No more Fukushima. No more San Onofre.”

As is so often the case with anti-nuclear activists, these monks toss all things nuclear into one evil pile; in their minds atomic bombs and nuclear energy facilities are equally vile.  Funny how they avoided mention of CT scans, diagnostic x-rays, and nuclear medicine which account for virtually all of the man-made radiation exposure we receive (even for members of the public around the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant).

I guess they missed the memo from the Dalai Lama who, after the events at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant went on the record in support of nuclear energy. The Tibetan Buddhist leader said he supports nuclear energy as a way to bridge the socioeconomic gap in developing nations and in the absence of more efficient alternative energy sources. That’s a pretty insightful view from a leader who understands the causes of human suffering and the connection between access to energy and poverty.  He also recognizes alternatives like wind and solar energy will be difficult to expand on the scale needed to alleviate global poverty.

We might expect these monks to hold similarly informed views, after all they come from a Japanese Shingon monastery.  This set of Buddhist teachings falls under the Vajranaña school, which also includes Tibetan Buddhism.  On the other hand, one of the monks described himself as a “homey from the projects in New York City.”  Perhaps he’s been more influenced by the misguided energy policies of NY Governor Andy Cuomo than by the teachings of the renown Tibetan spiritual leader.

Activists, medical practitioners and politicians who have demanded moratoriums [on uranium mining] may have various reasons for doing so, but their claims that the public and environment are at risk are fundamentally wrong.

That about sums up the facts on the safety of uranium mining and the validity of motives of those who oppose it.  What’s particularly noteworthy about this statement is its source: Michael Binder, the President of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.  It’s impressive to see this level of leadership from the Canadian equivalent of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

It’s also in stark contrast with the actions of former NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko who remained silent last year when the US Department of Interior banned uranium mining for 20 years across 4000 square km of Arizona.  Their excuse was “protecting the Grand Canyon,” but the area in question is outside both the Grand Canyon and the buffer zone that protects the park.

It would be great to see new NRC Chairman Allison Macfarlane following Mr. Binder’s lead to dispel the myths around uranium mining and take a first step in overturning the arbitrary ban.

What better way to celebrate National Nuclear Science Week than to acknowledge amazing career opportunities that exist for people interested in joiningthe nuclear renaissance. If you are a middle or high school student (or are the parent of one) considering college alternatives, you would be hard pressed to find a better investment than earning an associates or bachelors degree in nuclear-related science, engineering, or technology.

Opportunities for entry level positions have not been this rich at any time during the past three decades, and the nuclear industry is partnering with many schools to ensure graduates have the knowledge and skill for success as power plant engineers, operators, and technicians. Because of a combination of national and international trends, there have never been more opportunities for young people to begin careers in the nuclear industry.

About 120,000 people are currently employed in the U.S. nuclear industry. Over the next several years, many of these workers will retire. As a result, the industry will need to hire more than 25,000 new employees just to maintain the existing workforce. The economic slowdown  over the past few years has caused many workers to delay their retirement.

Today retirements are once again on the rise because 401K balances have recovered and workers have earned additional credits in pension plans. For example, in 2011 about 2,000 workers retired from the 104 operating nuclear plants in the United States, prompting many utilities to increase hiring. Four new nuclear plants being built in Georgia and South Carolina will each add up to 2,400 workers during construction, plus 400 to 700 permanent jobs when each is operating. In addition, the nuclear industry is booming overseas with more than 60 plants under construction around the world and many more planned. All of this means ample opportunities for rewarding careers in many nuclear related fields.

The industry hires almost every type of engineer, not just nuclear engineers. The most common are mechanical, electrical, civil, and power systems engineers. Since there are engineering colleges and universities in every state that offer one or more of these degree programs, opportunities are plentiful. Earning a bachelors degree in these engineering majors opens the door to an entry-level engineer position with a starting salary of approximately $60,000 to $65,000.

Some of the positions in greatest demand at nuclear plants are power plant operators and technicians. These opportunities generally require an associate’s degree or equivalent training. Starting salaries range from around $45,000 per year to about $50,000. As workers gain experience, salaries can rise $20,000 or higher to an average of $65,000 to $70,000, and overtime pay often adds thousands more to annual income.

In the past, finding a college that offered education courses for future operators and technicians could be difficult, but this is no longer the case. Several years ago the industry began working with colleges across the United States to create new degree programs. Today there are more than 40 community colleges around the U.S. offering what is known as the Nuclear Uniform Curriculum (NUCP). The NUCP is a standardized associates degree program that prepares students for careers as nuclear operators and technicians. Students who earn a B grade or better in their core courses are awarded a transferable certificate that is recognized at all 104 nuclear plants.

For workers interested in advancing into leadership roles, these positions in engineering, operations, and other technical fields are excellent starting points for future management positions.

According to the College Board, the national average for community college tuition and fees is about $3,000 per year. Thus, for about $6,000 a student with a solid math and science background can attend an NUCP school for two years and earn an associates degree and a transferable credential. This would qualify them for an entry-level position as an operator or technician earning a starting salary of $45,000 to $50,000. This is certainly one of the greatest deals in education today!

More information on careers in the nuclear industry is available from theAmerican Nuclear Society, theNuclear Energy Institute, and atGet Into Energy.

John Wheeler

The pipeline runs through Sinai, a Nairobi ghetto of corrugated tin and cardboard huts.  When the pipe began leaking hundreds of people gathered around to scoop up the spilled gasoline.  As the crowd grew a spark from a cigarette butt or some other heat source ignited the fuel.  The blast incinerated scores of people nearby.  Flames cascaded down on nearby huts then raced through the crowded slum.

Trying to image the chaotic and horrific scene, I realized there was something so far outside my own paradigm that I had to stop for moment to collect my thoughts…who runs TOWARDS a leaking gasoline pipeline?  Maybe that’s a silly question; but if anyone reading this came upon a leaking gasoline pipeline they would stop, back away, and call for help.  You would keep your distance while warning others not to go near for fear of igniting the leak and causing a fire or explosion.  If you were forced to approach the leak you would fear for your life and rightfully so!

So what is different between you and the hundreds of people in Kenya that did the exact opposite?  As word spread through Sinai about the leaking pipeline hundreds of people grabbed every container they could find and rushed towards the explosive spill! You might settle on a simple socioeconomic answer: because they are poor they’ll risk their lives for a few dollars worth of anything of value.  The real answer is a lot more complicated.  These people are not only poor, they are super poor, and one of the factors that separates the poor from truly impoverished is the lack of access to even basic energy sources that human beings need to survive.  They are energy destitute.

Another way of saying this is availability of plentiful, accessible energy is the greatest single factor that allows people to rise out of poverty.  All of the world’s developed economies got that way because they had access to plentiful supplies of energy.  For the energy destitute, a few kilowatts will replace dung or scraps of wood for cooking and warmth.  A few more kW and a village will have running water and refrigeration, and fewer people die of water or food born disease.  A bit more and machines can aid in harvesting or processing food in larger quantities.   Even more and suddenly the schools have electric lights and access to information that accelerates learning and further socioeconomic growth.

The people who ran towards that leaking gasoline pipeline did so knowing there was a risk of fire and death, but they accepted the risk and went anyway.  They placed such a high value in a few gallons of gasoline that they consciously or subconsciously decided it was worth risking their lives.  If they lived with even small amounts of reliable energy in their daily lives they would not have placed such great value on a few thousand BTUs of energy from a can of gasoline.  They would have reacted like you and me.

The investigation will unfold, and the cause of the fire will be known; a broken valve and a cigarette butt, or a rusty pipe and a static spark.  But it won’t really matter because they’ll ignore the real culprit.  The real blame rests on short sighted and corrupt political leaders around the world who have perpetuated energy policies that keep the world addicted to dangerous and limited fossil fuel supplies.  As a result, human beings compete for this limited energy with rationing accomplished by the economic divide.  The billions of impoverished people at the bottom have not a chance of getting the energy they need.  To make matters worse, as fossil fuel supplies dwindle and the earth’s population grows the problems will become acutely worse.

The only real solution to this worsening problem is to adopt global energy policies that improve access to low cost, abundant energy.   That energy will have to be low carbon because to continue dumping fossil fuel waste into the environment in such increasing amounts would result in an environmental disaster! Solar and wind energy can help, but in most applications they are too expensive or too intermittent to be useful for the growing billions of energy destitute and impoverished people.

The only realistic alternative is nuclear energy.  While nuclear power plants are relatively expensive to build, the per unit price drops with each successive plant of similar type built.  Once built, nuclear plants are cheap to operate because the fuel costs are so low.  New technologies like molten salt breeder reactors, fast breeder reactors, and “traveling wave” reactors offer additional fuel economy and safety advantages.  Thorium and used fuel from existing reactors will provide an almost limitless supply of fuel as these new reactors spread across the world.

Pundits will argue the risk of meltdown is too great, but the truth is in the numbers.  More than 100 people died in Kenya this week, and these types of accidents are becoming increasingly common.  About 5,000 people die around the world each year in coal mining accidents. Tens of thousands more die prematurely from fossil fuel waste products dumped in the air.   Yet the world takes these deaths in stride because we’ve been brainwashed to view these casualties as “worth the risk” and not reason enough to stop using fossil fuels.

By comparison, reactor accidents at Fukushima Dai-ichi, one of the “worst nuclear accidents” in history resulted in exactly zero deaths, and none are likely to occur in the future because radiation exposures to workers and the public have been low. While there is much media hype around “contaminated” soil and food, experience from places in the world with naturally high radiation levels, and from Chernobyl, where radioactive contamination of the soil was far worse than in Japan, has taught us that people have little to fear from the small increase above natural radiation they are likely to receive living near Fukushima.

The wealthy, elite anti-nuclear activists who jet around the globe to preach conservation and renewables own their share of the Sinai casualties.  Their successful efforts to demonize nuclear energy and slow its expansion around the world serve to perpetuate the world’s reliance on fossil fuels.  This in turn feeds the chronic energy shortage that exists for impoverished people everywhere.   They promote so-called “green” renewable energy sources that, because of their intermittent nature, require almost continuous fossil fueled backup.

While renewable energy can help, realistically only nuclear energy can supply clean, carbon-free energy in sufficient quantities to feed an energy starved world.

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

If things are running properly there are redundant transmission lines, spinning reserves, and power plants on standby.  When a failure happens a single transmission line may go down, but system operators can reroute power around the failure and if necessary order standby power plants to pick up the load.   What happened in San Diego is likely a symptom of a much bigger problem.  Strategies focusing on conservation and expanding intermittent renewable energy sources, while ignoring the need for base load power plants close to population centers may have weakened the California grid.

In southern California there exists insufficient electrical generating capacity close to electrical loads; the cities.  Instead, utilities rely heavily on power imported over long distances from neighboring states, and there may be too few power plants inside transmission “bottle necks.”  This places cities like San Diego at much greater risk of blackouts.  When the umbilical cord from Arizona was unexpectedly severed, the few power plants close to the city simply could not provide enough power to maintain grid voltage.  As voltage dropped those power plants automatically disconnected to protect themselves from the low voltage condition.  The result?  A major blackout.

If the San Diego grid had sufficient local power they should have been able to isolate a small part of the grid and continue to run on their own power plants.  Even if the local grid lost power, they should have been able to call reserve power plants into operation to repower the grid within a few minutes.  Unfortunately, the power plants were over loaded; there simply wasn’t enough capacity to repower the grid without assistance from the outside.

California’s much touted renewables were of no use.  The wind was blowing only 8 mph at the time, and skies were partly cloudy.  Any tiny wind and solar capacity that was available was out-gunned thousands to one.

New York had better take notice!  Shutting down Indian Point Nuclear plant would have exactly the same impact on the electrical grid.  This is because Indian Point’s 2100 megawatts are physically located INSIDE the transmission bottleneck feeding New York City.  In a future without Indian Point operating, a similar failure of a single transmission line could easily black out New York City, just as it did in San Diego this week.  The NY Independent System Operator has already warned Gov. Andrew Cuomo that if Indian Point is shut down prematurely the grid in southern New York will become unstable.  As a result, New York City will be more susceptible to blackouts.  Gov. Cuomo’s plan? Shut down Indian Point now and hope that 2100 megawatts of generating capacity will magically appear to replace it.

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

Podcast – Download Audio File Here

This is a follow up to the podcast titled “Water Wars in New York” on May 27, 2010 in which I discussed how NY State is using their authority to issue Water Quality Certificates to wage war against the Indian Point Nuclear Plant.  In case you missed that show, New York is holding the plant’s 20 year  license renewal hostage by refusing to issue a Certificate of Water Quality unless the plant agrees to install expensive cooling towers.  The plant has argued that the cost of cooling towers, approximately $2 Billion, is excessive and disproportionate to the environmental benefit that would be derived.  In fact, the plant has identified an alternate technology that would provide greater environmental benefits at about one-tenth of the cost of installing cooling towers. Thus far those arguments have fallen on deaf ears.

In my further research on this topic I discovered a damning piece of evidence that proves NY State is giving preferential treatment to fossil fuels while at the same time imposing unfair regulations on neighboring nuclear energy facilities, the largest competitors to fossil fuels.

There are several other large power plants on the Hudson River that generate electricity by burning coal, oil, and natural gas.  All of those plants, like Indian Point, use the Hudson River for cooling.  One of the plants, the Bowline plant, is in Haverstraw, NY only about five miles across the river and downstream from Indian Point.  Bowline is a two unit gas and oil fired power plant with a combined output of 1,182 MW (slightly larger than each Indian Point nuclear unit).

There are many similarities between Bowline and Indian Point: Bowline, like Indian Point, is required to maintain a NY State water permit.  Bowline, also like Indian Point, evaluated several alternative technologies to reduce fish and fish larva mortality. The Bowline analysis reached similar conclusions to the one performed by Indian Point; they concluded that converting to a closed cooling water system using cooling towers would provide the greatest reduction in fish mortality, but at a very high cost.  Instead, the Bowline plant offered to use a combination of technologies that would provide 80% to 95% percent of the benefit that would be derived from the vastly more expensive cooling towers, but at 1/30th of the cost.

That’s where the similarities end.  In the case of the Bowline oil and gas plant, the New York State Department of Environmental Conversation accepted the lower cost alternatives to installing cooling towers.  On the topic of cooling towers, in a letter from Denise Sheehan, the DEC Commissioner they stated;

The estimated cost of retrofitting Bowline with a closed cycle cooling system is more than 30 times greater than the selected suite of technologies yet yields approximately equivalent reductions in impingement mortality. While potential entrainment reductions from closed-cycle cooling would be approximately 10 -15% greater than called for in this permit, the Department has determined that, at this time, the cost of closed cycle cooling at Bowline is wholly disproportionate to the reductions.

The cost of the “alternative technologies” at Bowline were estimated to be less than one percent of one year’s revenue, while the cost of cooling towers were said to be about 30 times more.

So here’s the “smoking gun” proving institutionalized anti-nuclear bias in the NY State government: for a gas and oil power plant they allowed the cost of various technologies to be considered, and they ruled out cooling towers because the high cost was “disproportionate” to the benefit provided.  Yet, when the nuclear plant next door tried to make the exact same argument the state refused!  In the case of Indian Point, New York stated cooling towers are the only available option, even though the plant provided for lower cost alternatives that would, over the life of the plant, provide GREATER reductions in fish fatalities!

Here’s another tidbit to consider:  because of the high cost of oil and natural gas the Bowline plant (according to NY State) operates only about half of the time.  If Indian Point is forced to install cooling towers the plant will have to shut down for about 44 months.  During that time Bowline will be one of the electricity generating plants that will be called upon to make up for the lost generation.  This means the Bowline plant will be running more, killing more fish, and emitting more air pollution and greenhouse gases.  And don’t forget when they run at 100% rather than their normal 50% their profits double too!

This favoritism towards oil and gas and bias against nuclear is occurring in a deregulated, competitive electricity market.  The state’s role in a deregulated energy market is to set fair policies and laws that promote fair competition and to protect the customers from unfair practices.  In this case NY State is doing the opposite by imposing unfair and onerous rules on one form of generation while giving competitors a pass!  If the state gets their way the ratepayers will suffer two ways; their electricity bills will be higher and the air they breath will get dirtier. I’ll pose this question to my listeners, “In light of this clearly biased treatment, do you think the federal government should intervene?  Could this case fall under the jurisdiction of either the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or the US Environmental Protection Agency?”

Indian Point is not alone in this battle.  The State of New jersey is going down the same path with the Oyster Creek Nuclear plant, and the State of California has recently imposed similar rules on nuclear plants on the Pacific Ocean.  At least in California they are applying the rule uniformly to fossil fueled plants, but that’s a story for another day.

Links to Documents discussed in this show:

• Letter on the Bowline Plant from the NY DEC
• Response from the NY DEC on Indian Point’s Water Permit Application

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

# # #

Fast Fission Podcast #23 – Download mp3 Here

Ever thought about how many zeros there are there in a “pico” something?

Remember back in grade school when we learned the metric system of measures?  We started out with units that are easy to visualize: meters get 1000 times bigger and become kilometers; meters get 1000 times smaller and become millimeters.  We understand these intuitively because we have a frame of reference and can visualize each of those unites of length and distance.  Units of mass are the same way; we know a gram is a small unit of mass – we can hold a gram of almost any material in the palm of our hand.  For example, a penny weighs 2.5 grams. Stack up 400 pennies and you have a kilogram, or 1000 grams.  Cut a thin copper shaving off a penny and you have a milligram, or one 1,000th of a gram.  Again, these are things we can see, and that makes it easier to understand.

As our schooling progressed we learned about very large and very small numbers, exponents, and scientific notation.  We put these principles to use in science and learned there are other units of measure larger than a “kilo” and smaller than a “milli”.  These are harder to visualize because we have to think in terms we can’t see.  For example, the mass of Mount Everest,  is 3E18 grams, or 3 “exa-grams” and the mass of the planet earth is 6×10^24 kg, or 6E27 grams (6,000 “yotta-grams”) (see note below).

On the opposite end of the scale is the prefix “nano” or 1E-9 of a unit. A nanometer is 1E-9 meters, and a nanosecond is 0.000000001 seconds.  I had a hard time visualizing a nano second of time until I learned that it takes about 1 nanosecond for a beam of light to travel one foot.  That kind of puts a nano into perspective, doesn’t it?  The newest computer chips, for example have transistors with a thickness of 45 nanometers!  We can only see things that small with powerful electron microscopes.

A “pico” is even smaller than a “nano” , 1000 times smaller!  “Pico” means there are 12 places behind the decimal point.  Even for a person like me who deals with engineering and science all the time, it can be difficult to visualize a “pico” of something.  A pico is so small that even a million picos is still very small amount. It takes a million, million pico grams to make one gram.  If you have a million pico-curies in a liter of water, it would take one million liters to provide a total of one curie.  To give you a sense of scale, an Olympic sized swimming pool (about 2.5 million liters) filled with water containing one million pico-curies of tritium per liter would hold a total of about 0.3 milligrams of tritium.  Said another way; if I had an olympic swimming pool full of pure water and I sprinkled in 0.0003 grams of tritium (less than the mass of one drop of water), then mixed it up, I would have a mixture containing 1,000,000 picocuries of tritium per liter.

It is very hard to measure anything as small as a nano or pico of anything.  There’s one area where we can: with advances in science, we’ve gained the ability to measure radioactivity in very, very small amounts down to the energy released by single energy particles or beams.  This gives us the ability to quantify radioactive material in extremely small quantities.

Anti-nuclear activists around the country aided by an uninformed media have grabbed on to the issue of tritium leaks at some nuclear plants around the USA, and are using the issue very effectively to create fear and distrust.  Nervous politicians are retreating from positions of outward support for nuclear plants even though the federal government, state agencies, and independent scientists all agree that the leaks pose no threat to public health and safety. The leaks have produced concentrations in special monitoring wells (not drinking water wells) in the range from few hundred to a million or so pico-curies per liter.  As I’ve shown, a million pico-curies per liter may sound like a lot, but in reality it is a tiny, tiny amount.

Every form of energy production has some impact on the environment.  Even wind and solar energy which are viewed by many as environmentally benign, have measurable effects.  The production of solar panels results in highly toxic chemicals, and worn out panels could leach chemicals into water supplies. Wind turbines cause noise pollution, kill bats and migratory birds, and catastrophic blade failures can throw lethal fragments hundreds or even thousands of feet.  Coal plants dump toxins into the land, water, and air, and the radioactive releases from coal plants are hundreds of times higher than allowed by nuclear plants.  Gas power plants emit greenhouse gases and, as we’ve seen in the last week, can and do explode and kill people.  Gas pipeline accidents kill people in the USA every year.

When nuclear plants shut down all the other plants in that market make money – lots of money.  Don’t think for a moment that fact is lost on people who are in the business of selling electricity from natural gas.  The increase in gas demand causes gas prices to rise and that hurts everyone else, except but gas distributors, of course.  I’m also sure this cash bonanza is not lost on politicians who are recipients of donations from coal, oil and gas companies.

It’s time for lawmakers, public service boards, and elected officials to do a reality check.  In the case of tritium in groundwater we’re talking about microscopic amounts of material with ZERO safety impact, and ZERO environmental risk.  Any time a nuclear plant is shut down, forced to reduce power, or delayed in starting up the replacement power has to come from another form of energy, usually natural gas.  When gas demand rises the price goes up and we get higher electricity bills, huge increases air pollution, and further reliance on a volatile, dangerous energy source.

John Wheeler

This Week in Nuclear

2/16/2010 Note: Thank you to a listener who recognized errors in my discussion of the mass of  Mt Everest and planet Earth – my numbers were way too low! After double checking my math, and performing the Earth mass calculation from scratch  (there were errors in my source data) I revised these show notes with the correct values.  I’ll update the audio podcast as soon as I am able.

John

Get the MP3 Here

Download printable version here

I have a family member that I love dearly and have an infinite amount of respect for.  She is a fantastic mother, a caring person, respected in her chosen profession, and a good friend.  She would do anything she could to help someone in need.  When we first met she was strongly opposed to nuclear energy.  Over the years we have discussed it from time to time and I’ve had some influence on her perspective.  She’s not totally won over yet, but we’re making progress.  Not too long ago she asked me, “But what about the waste?  That really worries me!”  She really didn’t believe me when I said “There’s no such thing as a nuclear waste problem.  That’s nothing but a myth.”

Let me explain.

Used nuclear fuel is very safely stored in earthquake proof storage pools and dry storage casks at nuclear plants around the USA.  It can stay there until we’re ready to recycle it, and we WILL recycle it eventually because it would be a waste not to do so.  When we remove used fuel from a reactor more than 90% of the potential energy is still in the fuel.  It would be wasteful to even consider putting it in a hole a mile underground!  Also, when we do recycle it, the left over material is much smaller and is much easier to handle, but we’ll talk about that in a few minutes.

First we need to look at the components of used power reactor fuel, and recognize that with recycling each of the components can be separated from one another.  A typical batch of used nuclear reactor fuel is made up of the following materials (not counting the structural materials):

When the fuel is new the concentration of the isotope U-235 is about 4% and U-238 is the rest.  After the fuel is burned in a reactor the uranium is mostly U-238 (very close to the isotopic mix of natural uranium) because most of the U-235 gets burned out by absorbing neutrons and fissioning.  There is also a small but important amount of plutonium that is formed when uranium atoms capture neutrons but do not fission.  This is called “breeding” and in fact at the end of life of a reactor fuel load more than 20% of the heat generated is from the fission of plutonium atoms formed by breeding.  All of this plutonium and uranium can be mixed back together to make new nuclear fuel.  This is what is commonly referred to as mixed oxide fuel, or MOX fuel.   MOX fuel is currently used in commercial reactors in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium.

Risk of Diverting Used Power Reactor Fuel for Weapons

This is a good time to discuss a common misperception about reprocessing and the risk that a rogue nation would use commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing as a source for weapons grade plutonium.  It turns out this really is not an issue.  The plutonium from used fuel is a mixture of five isotopes, Pu-238 through Pu-242.

Let’s take a look at how each plutonium isotope would affect a nuclear weapon:

Pu-238, 240, and 242 all spontaneously fission which produces neutrons and a lot of heat.  If used in a bomb, the material would heat up and melt the high-explosive material used to trigger the device.   The neutrons can also cause an early detonation which would lower the yield of the bomb.  Pu-241 decays to an undesirable isotope americium-241.  Americium-241 emits intense alpha particles and gamma rays.  If used in a weapon it would cause a high radiation fields that would make handling the device very difficult.  It would also make the weapon easier to detect.  Only Pu-239 is good for weapons.  In weapons grade plutonium, the Pu-239 makes up more than 90% of the total, but in reactor grade plutonium only about 53% of the material is Pu-239.  The rest made up of the other undesirable plutonium isotopes.

So while it is technically possible to create a nuclear explosion using reactor grade plutonium, in the real world with real world limitations and constraints it would be virtually impossible to create a deployable nuclear weapon from reactor grade plutonium.  The US NRC agrees with me in this.  On the safety of MOX fuel fabricated from down-blended weapons grade plutonium after it has been used in a nuclear power plant the NRC says,

Using the plutonium in the reactor as MOX fuel makes using it for any other purposes difficult.

Of all of the nations that have developed nuclear weapons, none have ever obtained their plutonium from used nuclear fuel from a power reactor.  Usually it comes from special kind of test or research reactor called a “fast reactor” that makes mostly Pu-239.

This raises a logical question; if reactor grade plutonium is unsuitable for building bombs, why did the USA ban reprocessing commercial fuel in the mid-1970’s?  The basis for the commercial fuel reprocessing ban was political and was NOT supported by sound science or engineering.  Even though President Reagan later overturned the ban, the damage was done.  Now, thirty years later, companies like Areva and GE are proposing new fuel recycling facilities in the USA but those are years away from being a reality.  In the mean time, this is yet another area where the USA has lost it’s technological lead.  Canada, Russia, France, and the UK all went on to develop reprocessing industries and now sell MOX fuel to customers around the world.

We have not completely overcome our national irrational aversion to MOX fuel.  NRC rules make it very difficult for commercial reactors in the USA to take advantage of MOX fuel.  It is not enough for plant operators to prove MOX fuel will perform as expected based sophisticated computer modeling and hundreds of reactor years of experience around the world.  Any operator who wants to take advantage of MOX fuel must

1. Amend their operating license to allow using MOX fuel, a process that includes public comment and inevitable interference by anti-nuclear groups,
2. Operate with test fuel assemblies for “a few years”
3. Analyze the performance of the fuel, then submit a report to the NRC
4. Finally, the NRC must review and approve the final application.

Utilities are in the business to make electricity, not perform research and development.  Unless the rules are streamlined to allow the thoughtful application of international experience it is unlikely many utilities will choose to use MOX fuel.  The Catawba nuclear plant in South Carolina went through this process as part of a US DOE funded program.  They ran a test from 2005 through 2008 with several MOX test assemblies.  The MOX fuel in the test was fabricated from down-blended weapons grade plutonium, not from reprocessed reactor fuel, and was part of a government program to dispose of excess weapons grade material.

Let’s Finish Recycling Our Used Nuclear Fuel

After we remove the uranium and plutonium and recycle it back to other reactors to be burned again we are left with a combination of actinides and fission products making up about 5.5% of the original mass.  Within this mixture there are several highly valuable isotopes that can be extracted and sold commercially.  Many like strontium, cesium, iodine, chromium and iron have medical uses such as treating various kinds of cancer and perform special tests.  There are also many industrial uses for isotopes like  californium, americium, and krypton.  These materials can fetch hundreds or even thousands of dollars per gram!

Recycling Nuclear Fuel is a Good Idea

Including structural materials and other factors, with reprocessing the volume of waste requiring long term disposal is only about 25% of the original volume.  This can be safely vitrified (mixed with glass) as is done in France, or encased in corrosion resistant containers,  then monitored while the radiation decays to near background levels.  Also, when the MOX fuel is returned to the reactor we are greatly increasing the amount of energy extracted from the original uranium.  This means we need to mine less uranium ore (creating less environmental impact) and we greatly extend our fuel supply.  It does cost more to reprocess fuel compared to the current once-through fuel cycle, but because the price of uranium is such a small component of the total electricity costs from nuclear plants, the financial impact is very low.

The chemical / mechanical process used to recycle reactor fuel is called the PUREX process.  In this process the used fuel is first dissolved in aqueous nitric acid.  Then kerosene and tributyl phosphate, an organic solvent are added.   The Pu and U stay together and separate out from the minor actinides and fission products.

What is “Depleted Uranium” and Is it toxic?

Anti-nuclear activists often try to make a big deal out of how “depleted” uranium is handled.  When dug out of the ground, natural uranium ore contains three isotopes, U-238 (99.27%), U-234 (0.001%), and U-235 (0.2%).  To prepare the uranium for use as a reactor fuel the percentage of U-235 is raised to anywhere from about 1% to about 4% of the total.  This is accomplished by removing some of the U-238 from the mixture to increase the relative amount of U-235.  This process is called “enriching” the uranium.  The left over U-238 that is removed during the enrichment process is called “depleted” because it is depleted of U-235.

Because the U-235 is more radioactive than the left over U-238, depleted uranium is less radioactive than natural ore.  If we chose to, we could put the depleted uranium back into the hole in the ground where we extracted the ore, and we would be leaving the encironment less naturally radioactive than it was in its natural state.  Of course, environmental regulations won’t allow that.  That’s no worry; there’s a good market for depleted uranium because of its unique physical and chemical properties.  It is very dense (about twice as dense as lead) so it makes great counter weights for aircraft.  Depleted uranium (DU) is a very good radiation shield, so it is used as safety shielding for medical personnel who work in nuclear medicine around x-ray machines and other imaging devices.  Also, DU is very tough so it is used by the military as armor for vehicles and in armor piercing rockets.

According to the World Health Organization, the health risks of exposure to depleted uranium are extremely low.

Under most circumstances, use of DU will make a negligible contribution to the overall natural background levels of uranium in the environment. Probably the greatest potential for DU exposure will follow conflict where DU munitions are used.

With this in mind, the WHO inspected sites where DU weapons were used in Kosovo and concluded there was very little risk of exposure to people who live nearby.

References:

1. Federation of American Scientists at http://www.fas.org/nuke/intro/nuke/plutonium.htm
2. “Terrestrial Energy” by William Tucker
3. Answers.com at http://www.answers.com/topic/nuclear-fuel-reprocessing
4. The European Nuclear Society http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/p/purex-process.htm
5. NRC on MOX Fuel at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/mox-bg.html
6. World Health Organization in depleted uranium at http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs257/en/

Download the Audio File Here

In this podcast I discuss the question “Is Nuclear Energy Renewable?” that I first posed in a recent blog post.

In addition, I added the following discussion of recent news and events:

Indian Point License Extension Proceeds Despite Anti-Nuclear Hurdles

Despite barriers erected by anti-nuclear groups to block the license renewal for the Indian Point nuclear reactors, the two unit nuclear plant in NY has passed two major hurdles in the life extension process.

• On August 12 NRC issued their final safety evaluation report and concluded there are no safety issues that would preclude running the plants for another 20 years.
• On Sept 23 the independent Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards, and independent team of experts that advice the NRC, recommended that the license extension be granted.

Unless renewed, the current licenses expire in 2013 and 2015.

In 2007 the anti-nuclear group Riverkeeper filed five contentions opposing the 20 year license extensions.  The NRC granted Riverkeeper a hearing to review arguments on three of their five contentions.  In those hearings Riverkeeper was unable to provide sufficient evidence to support their claims and the NRC ruled the contentions had no merit.

On the NRC’s web site they have a schedule showing a tentative final decision on Indian Point’s relicensing in February of 2010.

Riverkeeper’s opposition of the plant is backed by several elected officials including Andrew Cuomo, the State Attorney General with a long family tradition of anti-nuclear politics.  Twenty years ago his father, then Governor Mario Cuomo successfully closed the brand new Shoreham nuclear plant.  In Super Mario’s deal the state purchased the plant for $1, and passed on $5 Billion in construction costs to taxpayers who received nothing in return except some of the highest electricity rates in the country.  That case was a perfect example of the flawed two-step licensing process in which utilities were first issued a permit to construct the plant, and then after the plant was built they applied for a license to operate the reactor.  The new reactor licensing process is a combined construction and operating license (called a COL) that should be more predictable for utilities and investors.

The NRC has received 17 COL applications from utilities interested in building 26 new reactors, but has suspended the review of four applications at the request of the applicants.

Pro-Nuclear Victory in Germany

This week there was a huge win in Germany for supporters of nuclear energy.  Angela Merkel was reelected Chancellor and vowed to reverse that nation’s plans to prematurely shut down their 17 nuclear reactors.  Nuclear energy currently provides 31% of Germany’s electricity and closing the reactors will mean higher energy costs and greater reliance on imported coal and natural gas.  Her coalition government now has a comfortable majority over the opposition Green Party and Social Democratic Party who were responsible for instituting the nuclear phase out in 1998 in favor of wind and other renewable energy sources.

Germany’s plan to replace nuclear energy and fossil fuels with renewable has not yielded the results that the Green Party promised.  While it’s true that with heavy government subsidies the production of wind energy in Germany has grown exponentially, the amounts are still too small to offset growth in demand.  Since 1991 Germany’s coal imports have more than doubled from 20 million short tons per year in 1991 to about 49 million short tons in 2006 and their natural gas imports have risen by more than 10%.  German utilities are planning to build several new coal plants to keep up with demand.  With the possibility of nuclear plants staying open beyond 2020 some of those coal plant projects will need a second look.

Other News

INL has created a new FaceBook page for news, videos and photo galleries of energy research projects.  They have recently won several new energy research grants (thanks to Tom Fields and Ryan Weeks)http://www.facebook.com/idahonationallaboratory

Upcoming Events:

Center for Energy Workforce Development – Annual Summit October 7-9 in Indianapolis, IN

Symposium on Nuclear Energy in Pennsylvania and the Mid-Atlantic – October 15 – 19 State College PA (thanks to Karen from Penn State)

Thorium Energy Alliance – First Meeting in Washington DC on October 19 and 20, 2009 (Thank you to John Kutsch)

“How to Identify, Control & Mitigate Risk Factors for Time and Cost Effective Project in US Nuclear Construction” – By Nuclear Energy Insider on Oct 26-27 in Washington DC.  $200 discount if you mention “This Week in Nuclear” when you register (thanks to Louise).

ANS Winter Meeting – November 15-19 in Washington DC

Peace!

John Wheeler

Rivers go dry with over use and periods of drought, and winds shift with changing weather patterns such as those that will occur with global climate change.  The availability of biomass is dependent on favorable weather and must be replenished using agricultural processes that are reliant on fossil fuels.  The ultimate energy source of all these “renewables” is the sun, and while the sun is not “infinite,” it is unlikely to extinguish during the course of human existence.  The ability of the sun to replenish hydro, wind, and biomass make these energy sources renewable.

In contrast, the source of nuclear energy is fuel contained entirely on planet Earth.  And while there are a finite number of uranium and thorium atoms on the planet, the supply will last for as long as human beings need it.  The myth propagated by the anti-nuclear crowd that we will run out of fuel for nuclear reactors is simply untrue.  They grossly underestimate the amount of uranium that exists, they discount already proven technologies like breeder reactors, and they ignore the existence of thorium, a fuel even more plentiful than uranium.  We have sufficient nuclear fuel to last for more than 1,000 years, even if we expand the number of nuclear plants by more than a factor of ten.  This makes nuclear energy inexhaustible.

I’ve often discussed the how Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) will encourage investment in wind and solar energy, but alone will NOT result in the desired reductions in CO2 emissions.  If the goal is CO2 reduction, why not promote the expansion of nuclear energy, the greatest source of low-carbon energy in existence?

Keith Johnson of the Wall Street Journal Blog discusses the “renewable” question, and issues surrounding the logic of a national RPS in his recent post titled “Is Nuclear Power Renewable Energy?“.  In particular, Keith points out the inconsistencies in the Waxman-Markey approach to fighting climate change.

Nuclear-power proponents are puzzled by what seems a logical inconsistency on part of Democrats who consistently shoot down the [nuclear energy] proposals.   If the goal is to promote low-emissions power sources, then nuclear power should be part of the mix.   If the goal is to promote new power sources, then existing wind and solar power facilities shouldn’t be showered with federal goodies.  That is, states that already have loads of wind power would be half-way to meeting new renewable-energy targets without building any new clean energy.

And later…

But if the whole game in Washington is meant to be about producing electricity with fewer emissions of greenhouse-gases, it seems odd that nuclear power wouldn’t be under consideration.

Read the blog, then take some time to browse the comments…some are excellent!  Others (by anti-nuclear activists) serve to illustrate the very points Mr. Johnson makes in his article; climate change advocates who argue against nuclear energy simply don’t make sense.

A comment by one fellow nuclear blogger, Jim Holm provides a great example for the Nuclear = Renewable case.

As dissolved in sea water, uranium is a renewable resource.  It comes from mountain granite, washed down to the sea as sand, finally leached out as uranium.  Every year this source of sand is renewed by winter weathering.  The Japanese developed a process that can extract it from sea water for about 4 times street price.

Check out Jim’s web site at http://www.coal2nuclear.com.

William Tucker has helped to influence my opinion on this topic.  Check out his book “Terrestrial  Energy.”