You are correct to label this as an industrial accident that killed 5 people and then you go to great pains to point out how this has shaken the Japanese public confidence in nuclear power. Maybe you should catalogue all of those industries in Japan in which there have been more than 5 such deaths in total, over the last few years, and put them higher up your list for speculative comment, and let the Japanese know about them. The Mihama accident would then occupy a place on the list that would make it seem positively minor, as tragic as it was.

It was an accident at a nuclear power plant, but not a nuclear accident. And yes, there was obvious negligence in the utility for not testing the thinning of pipes in high pressure steam flow areas. This should be common practice, and is, in many thermal plants where high-pressure steam is used. Undoubtedly it will now be written into the program of tests at ALL thermal facilities and not just at nuclear power plants.

I listened to the first reports of this accident in a BBC broadcast and was quite amazed at their focus upon the fact that there was – as yet – no release of radiation, as though it was just a matter of time. At one time, the BBC could have been trusted to report such a situation accurately instead of inventing speculative possibilities that were unlikely to arise, considering that it was a turbine-side accident.

Such accidents, involving steam, in any thermal plant are not uncommon, but it is only when they occur in a nuclear facility that they seem to be widely publicized in the journalistic tradition (scare the hell out of them by speculation) that you seem bent on continuing.

I look forward to seeing your writing even more negatively on using coal burning thermal plants, because of their overall association with deaths from pneumoconiosis, silicosis, mine accidents, transportation accidents, pollution deaths, groundwater pollution, toxic metal releases and in-plant accidents comparable to, or generally much worse than the one at Mihama. You could then follow it up with comparable reporting on oil and gas accidents.

However, despite various polls in which any issue can be massaged entirely out of context, the Japanese probably have enough wit to recognize that if they were to let the deaths of five workers in an industrial accident cause them to rethink their domestic nuclear policy, then, common sense and a balanced assessment of relative energy risks, should dictate that they should long ago have abandoned their use of coal, oil, hydro and gas, as they all suffer much higher accident rates than is seen in the nuclear facilities and the nuclear life cycle, but without the usual hysterical accompaniment.

This then leads to the obvious question: if they can be so easily spooked about an unfortunate, widely publicized, but typical industrial accident, leading to such infantile hand wringing about trusting nuclear energy, how will they and their economy survive into the future when coal, oil and gas are even more expensive, and even less available, never mind about looking at relative safety.

I think the Japanese should stop listening to the armchair quarterbacks and get on with developing their economy based – as did France - upon, ‘no coal, no oil, no gas, no choice’. They already recognize - as the Chinese and many other nations appear to be doing, and as much of the rest of the world will soon do - that nuclear power is not only the best way forward but it is safer than any of the other rational energy options. This will happen despite your single minded focus upon the Mihama tragedy, as though comparable and worse accidents do not happen every day, and more commonly, in ALL other energy generation industries. They do.

I must in that case then express my disappointment at your emphatic focus in this article on the problem (public perception) while totally ignoring any prescription for a solution, a shortcoming which I presume you must be intending to rectify in a forthcoming part 2 of a series.

You may believe that "if you cannot say anything nice about nuclear power, you shouldn't say anything at all." Sorry, that's not how it works in journalism. If you fail to recognize that the Japanese nuclear industry is in serious trouble with the public, then no amount of reporting will convince you. This incident, or any future incident, moves the tipping point of support further against continued development. I know that the utilities believe the "solution" is to convince the public that it is wrong and "misguided" to be concerned about safety and cost issues, but they are failing to do so.

Sure, there are other things happening in Japan, like local cooperatives sponsoring wind turbines in Hokkaido harbor and Tokyo Bay, with the grudging support of the utilities. And Japan is the world leader in installation of PVs.

But that's not what this item was about.

You are both free to write the articles you wish to see published in Pulse, but you have the same obligation as I do: to get the facts right.

I would say that one fundamental comment that all of us are making concerns what I would say is the article's implied point, i.e., that the Japanese industry (or perhaps nuclear power in general) needs to "shape up" or it is doomed (and perhaps deservedly so). I, for one, would take great issue with that. By all rational measures, nuclear's performance in terms of public health, the environment, and industrial safety, are vastly superior to all other major energy sources (fossil fuels). Simply put, nuclear doesn't need any impovement, period, (with the possible exception of plant capital costs). Not judging by any technical and/or objective standard, anyway. There are no tangible problems, just problems of perception. For decades now, nuclear's ONLY problems have had to do with politics, public releations, and the media, and the astonishingly biased and unfair treatment is receives from those entities. This unfair treatment is the real source of anger and frustration for all three of us (I believe).

You suggest that one more incident may finish the industry, implying that they have to get their act together so that it doesn't happen again. Sorry, but this will not be possible, and it's not the answer either. No large, heavy industry can operate for decades without even minor events (and occasional deaths) occurring. It's simply not going to happen, anywhere. It happens in all industries (the difference being that they are not reported for other industries).

No, the entire problem lies in the media/political reaction to these extremely small events, something that is occurring with escalating absurdity in Japan. If the industry improved their safety record, the media would just choose to give the same massive coverage to smaller and smaller events. Japan experience so far confirms this, with an enormous ongoing media tempest, over a set of events that are pathetically trivial, even when all considered together (I count 8 deaths over the Japanese industry's entire history, oh boy!!). Consider the ingeniously intellectually dishonest phrase "the worst event in (Country X's) nuclear industry's history.....". Ingenous!! You get to say it just the same, no matter how good the industry's record is (there is always a "worst" event), and it all sounds so..... dangerous!!

The statements made by the media, and by various "experts" in reaction to this event (as well as all of the other trumped up events in the Japanese industry's "sordid" history) are literally certifiably insane. I'm serious, this is clear evidence of a severe phychological/societal problem. Either that or a deliberate conspiracy to defame the industry...... We're talking about a total of 8 deaths over a ~30 year period for a major heavy industry that supplies 1/3 the nation's power. One death every four years. This is negligible in terms of overall risk, for almost everything in daily life, and is relatively low compared to the industrial safety risks of other industries and energy sources (let alone the vastly higher risks from pollution).

The entire public mindset (in Japan) is a complete fabrication, by the media, based on literally nothing! It's an example of, if you repeat something enough times, people will start to believe it, no matter how non-sensical or completely w/o basis it is. A small, common industrial accident should cause you to lose trust in the whole industry, or question the wisdom of the entire nuclear option? WHY!! That's absolutely absurd!! Especially given that its known fact that the main alternative (i.e., fossil) options have risks that are several orders of magnitude greater?? Just last year there was a natural gas explosion that killed several hundred people in China. Do we respond by questioning the wisdom of using gas as an energy source? No!! Yet this is what the press is saying, over and over and over again. The whole thing was hardly newsworthy, and would have only merited a small sidebar in a local paper if it were a fossil plant. Notice, also, how all these press reports fail to discuss the risks of fossil fuels (i.e., thousands of annual pollution deaths) for comparison, to help put these events in perspective.

I'm going to lay out the reasons why turning away from nuclear in Japan would be idiotic and insane in a following post. I'll conclude here by returing to the main issue discussed, which is what can/should the Japanese industry do? I reiterate that any type of improvement in objective performance will do nothing. Nuclear already has a lower industrial accident rate than any major power source, in addition to emitting no air pollution (a FAR greater overall public r

(a FAR greater overall public risk), emitting no CO2, and not relying on fuel imports. On the objective side, if this is not enough, nothing will be. In your response, you say that the industry has failed to educate the public/media. All I can say to that is, well then I'm at a loss. The only solution to the industry's problem involves public/media relations, and somehow getting the press/public to develop the ability to put things in perspective. Barring that, all hope is lost, no matter how good their objective performance is. As we've seen in this country, even when there are no reported mishaps/events, the anti's can get by just fine with theoretical, or possible events that "could" occur (with exaggerated consequences, of course).

Ever since humans began using steam, there have been fatal accidents. They came with frightening regularity in the early days of the steam age, but improvements in materials, engineering and inspections have made them less frequent. However, steam accidents are still not uncommon and are generally not considered to be newsworthy. When you have high (or even moderate) pressure steam moving rapidly through pipes you have the potential for leaks. When steam leaks in the presence of human beings, you have a large potential for injury or death of a particularly painful nature.

A little remembered fact is that a significant portion of the deaths in the first Persian Gulf war were the result of a steam leak on an oil burning amphibious ship. If my dimming memory serves, 17 American sailors lost their lives due to a steam pipe rupture.

Please explain why it is so much more newsworthy when the steam - which caused the deaths - was created with heat from fission instead of from fossil fuel combustion?

Rod Adams www.atomicinsights.com

Former contract worker at Alabama nuclear plant files whistle-blower complaint A former contract worker at TVA's Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant has filed a nuclear whistle-blower complaint against two TVA contractors after he was fired for complaining about "widespread safety violations and fraudulent billing practices." The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn. --Sep. 2 TVA change in nuclear waste storage system worries some TVA is running out of space to store highly radioactive waste at its nuclear plants and plans to spend millions of dollars on a new system called "dry-cask fuel" storage -- a system critics say leaves the utility open to accidents and terrorist attacks. The Knoxville News-Sentinel, Tenn. --Sep. 2

Current nuke plants, as shown here above thru Mr McDonnel's article, are inherently UNSAFE. This accident in Japan has been narrowly avoided in 68 of the 102 nuke plants that the US is endowed with (boric acid leaks), closing them of for months of even years for some. Who's joking here, huh?

I only will accept nuke plants when they will be cheap, not custom built and inherently SAFE.

That's not yet the case. Let's hope the chinese can pull this pebble bed nuke plant concept to it's safe fruition. You guys will then be looking for another job, that's for sure, given clear incompetence.......

in the meantime, let's focus on renewables to diminish our reliance on imported fossil fuel that are poisoning our world.

A new report- ‘Energy Rich Japan- Full renewable energy supply of Japan’- claims that Japan could make a ‘transition to clean,renewable energy without any sacrifice in living standards or industrial capacity’. The report takes Japan’s current energy use, based on 1999 levels, and shows that demand could be reduced by 50%with energy efficient technologies that are already available around the world today.

The “ERJ High Efficiency Demand Model” shows that using highly energy efficient technologies could save nearly 40% of today’s energy consumption in the industrial sector, more than 50% in the residential and commercial sectors and about 70% in the transport sector. The report then shows how renewable energy could be used to meet that new level of demand, reducing and ultimately eliminating the need for imports. Six scenarios of how this might happen are outlined in the report, all of which can provide 100% renewable energy for Japan.

Starting from a basic model (Scenario One) providing more than 50% of total energy needs from domestic renewable sources, each subsequent scenario provides variations or expansions on Scenario One, gradually reducing the reliance on imported energy, factoring in different population projections and expected improvements in renewable generation capacity and energy efficiencies, until by Scenarios Five and Six, no energy imports are required.

For more information see http://www.energyrichjapan.info The summary can be downloaded from: http://www.energyrichjapan.info/pdf/EnergyRichJapan_summary.pdf An animation of the dynamics of the electrical system is at: www.energyrichjapan.info/en/animation.html

What actually occurred at this plant was not an explosion but a criticality accident. Workers in the plant incorrectly poured several batches of enriched uranium into a precipitation tank that was encased by a cooling water jacket. A criticality event occurred when the total amount of uranium in the tank reached about 7 times the safe amount authorized. The cooling water jacket reflected neutrons from the chain reaction back into the tank, which sustained criticality while, at the same time, prevented the tank contents from boiling. Had the water in the tank boiled off, the chain reaction would have stopped due to a lack of moderator. Had the tank exploded, the chain reaction would have stopped as well. But, because there was no boil off and no explosion, the reaction continued for nearly 24 hours until boron was injected into the precipitation tank. At that point the reaction went subcritical and recovery efforts began.

As a final point, Greenpeace, whose opposition to most things nuclear is well known, always referred to this event as a “nuclear accident” and never called it an explosion.

JH, yes, your anger and frustration are showing, but the extreme implications you ascribe to me are not in what I wrote. I never wrote the words "doomed", "worst event in history", "sordid history" or that "the industry has failed to educate the public/media." These are your reactions, not my reporting. In a reply above, I did observe that the Japanese utilities are failing to convince the populace that their fears and concerns are misguided.

You seem to believe I wrote (or implied) "Shut down all the nukes, or we're going to die!" when what I wrote was that Kansai Electric was told to shut down its nukes (not its coal plants, not its gas peakers, and not its few solar stations) by a state agency to perform safety testing, and that last year Tokyo Electric had to shut down its nukes as a result of the cover-up scandal. I also indicated that there are costs associated with those incidents, measured in economics and in public perception.

In another of these back&forths following one of Mr. Sutherland's articles, one person suggested that the issue is "trust" and that the nuclear industry has lost the public trust. I can see that. And I can see why in the way that certain nuclear professionals respond to any form of criticism or adverse reporting.

More than five years ago, there was negligible opposition to nuclear policies in Japan, and now there is a growing opposition. That is noteworthy from a reporter's perspective, and the situation ought to be understood rather than dismissed as "complete fabrication, by the media, based on literally nothing!" One can point to specific incidents along the way that brought about this change.

And, frankly, there do appear to be "tangible problems" when utility executives cover up safety issues, admit to lapses in maintenance and suffer investigations into potential criminal negligence associated with worker fatalities.

Forgive me for rejecting your relative risks toss-off, but even one death is too many (and that goes for the dozens of coal workers in China who die each month, as well, and for those lost in other industrial accidents, factory fires and explosions, roadside construction accidents, etc. ).

When there was a fatal steam rupture at the Mohave coal plant in Nevada, many years ago, I covered it as a news story because it WAS a news story. So was this "pathetically trivial" incident. I sometimes write about birds getting killed by wind turbines, too. I'm not so arrogant that I think such things don't matter.

If KEPCO is found to be at faultfor not doing proper maintenance on its steam turbines and piping systems for decades, it really doesn't matterwhich side of the operation the fault occurs...the entire operation will be implicated, the whole plant will be shut down and the entire industry suffers a further loss of public support. Will people just assume the problems are confined to a certain set of pipes?

Not in the current context.

And ya know what? In a democracy, even an Asian democracy, people (citizens, voters, taxpayers) sometimes get to choose their destiny, for good or ill, no matter how "idiotic or insane" you personally might consider the choice.

So I think you should be prepared for more anger and frustration.

This might be one of those times.

I want to reiterate and clarify that for the most part, the statements, actions, and mindsets that I take issue with in my response are those of the Japanese media and public figures, as opposed to you or your article. Your replies suggest that I failed to make this clear. For the most part, you were just reporting on a reality in Japan that I have been well aware of (and have been reading about) for years now. I don’t dispute at all most of the things that you said. I just took the opportunity to express how I felt about the situation (not the contents of your article).

I also want to clarify that I did not mean to imply that these events should be considered “trivial” in the sense that the industry should not be concerned about them, or spend significant resources to correct it. Indeed, if such an event were to occur (in the US anyway), there would be a very serious response (through INPO, etc…). Of course the nuclear industry takes these things seriously, especially given the microscope it knows it’s always under. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t have one of the lowest industrial accident rates of any heavy industry (and of all major energy sources). I didn’t specifically state this in my earlier post, as I believed it didn’t even need to be said.

I also did not mean to suggest that these events were not serious enough to warrant a shakeup in the specific companies involved, including penalties, and perhaps even the replacement of management, etc….. I also don’t mean that such events are not worthy of a news story, all though I still insist that industrial events at nuclear plants receive orders of magnitude more coverage than similar events at fossil plants, and that this is a real problem. If these were the only things (responses, measures) discussed in all these articles, I’d have no problem with any of it, in fact I may agree.

The main point is that while the corrective measures described above are necessary and appropriate, responding to these events by questioning the wisdom of using nuclear power in general is grossly disproportionate and absurd. These events are “trivial” in magnitude in comparison to the scale of issues or problems that would actually warrant abandoning nuclear power and using other sources (primarily fossil fuels) instead. This is where a discussion of the overall risks of nuclear in general (number of deaths, health/environmental effects, etc…), in comparison to that of other energy sources and industries is entirely appropriate. In this context (of choosing between energy sources), statistics and the actual overall documented safety/environmental record of each energy source over the last several decades, is simply what must matter most.

The comparison between nuclear and fossil fuels for Japan (primarily oil, and perhaps gas, I believe) produces a pretty obvious result. The smallest term in the equation is lives lost to industrial accidents. Japanese nuclear has lost 0.25 people every year to industrial accidents. Fossil plants have probably lost more (if US data, which shows that nuclear plants have by far the best OSHA/industrial performance, is any indication). Note that with respect to this specific story, steam pipe rupture, fossil plants are just as vulnerable as nuclear plants, if run by negligent utilities. How would responding to this by insisting these same utilities run fossil plants instead of nuclear plants solve this problem?

But the real point is that this is all negligible compared to pollution effects. Based on rough extrapolation from US studies (the latest showing ~24,000 annual premature deaths from fossil fuel power plants), Japanese fossil plants kill on the order of several thousand people every year. Western nuclear power has never had any measurable public health effect over its entire ~40-year history. On top of this are (very important, especially to the Japanese) issues of foreign energy dependence, balance of trade, and long-term energy resource management. Nuclear is the clear winner (over fossil fuels) here, especially with the dwindling supplies, and rising costs, of oil and gas. And finally, there is global warming, with Japan being a Kyoto signatory, and the fact that it will be nearly impossible to meet their goals if fossil fuels are used in lieu of nuclear (or even if nuclear no longer expands). On all of these counts, nuclear is the clear winner, by a wide margin. Apparently, the articles say that in Japan, nuclear even wins out on cost (for now at least, and w/o reprocessing).

I have no problem with press reports that simply describe the situation, and/or what is being done to remedy the problem (including industry shakeups, etc..). My specific issue is with how many Japanese media reports, as well as other public figures, have repeatedly made the absurd suggestion that these events and problems are sufficient to warrant questioning the wisdom of using (or increasing) nuclear power, or that they are a reason to oppose building new plants in the local area. I agree that this developing political situation is a topic that journalists should be interested in. At the same time, however, the Japanese media needs to recognize the large role that they played in CREATING that very change in attitude, due to their constant repetition of the notion that these events rise to that level (despite the fact that this notion does not survive logical inspection). The Davis Besse situation in the US was at least as serious as these Japanese events, and the industry/NRC response was appropriately severe. But at least the media reports generally stuck to the real issues at hand, i.e., questions of plant management and NRC oversight, and whether they could/should be improved. You didn’t hear any questioning of nuclear in general, or reports that “the US public is turning away from nuclear because of this….”

The other complaint is that in all the Japanese media reports, I have never, NEVER seen any of the salient points I’ve raised above aired. By this I mean comparisons of industrial accident rates of nuclear plants vs. fossil plants, as well as a comparison of the overall environmental and public health effects of nuclear vs. coal, oil, and gas (due to pollution, etc…). Present the statistics! Actually educate the public! Help them put things into perspective and make their own informed decision. BTW, these complaints apply very specifically to the Japanese media, and their coverage of events there. I have much less problem with US/European media coverage, which is actually improving quite a bit over the last several years (although the spin is still decidedly negative on balance, IMO).

Mr Hopf : do you have read the 100% renewables for japan plan that I posted hereup? What are your comments on this bright study?

If I have to choose continuing our present course (meaning: more nuke, more big hydro, more natural gas, less oil, less coal) or trying something new (meaning doing far more with far less and using free natural resources to cover the rest), I choose trying something new.

After all, The West (Japan, South Korea, USA, Canada , EU) got were they are now by using their ingenuosity to improve their lives. And bright people all around the world are proposing feasible solutions that would reduce and eliminate our needs for fossil fuels and nuke power in the long term. See it as a new Manhattan Project, influencing our next 50 years. After all, in 1942, the only fuel we had was wood, big hydrodams, dirty coal and oil......

I saw two days ago on an european channel a proposal for something that I though completely ludicruous when the reportage started. The proposal was to built in Australia a giant tube of 1 km hight. That tube would be placed at the center of a dark painted tent having a 7km diameter, the textile being hung around 20 feet from the ground. That dark textile would heat up the air under it, that lighter air would then flow to the vertical tule, and activate a 200MW set of air turbines put in the tube at lower heights, to use the suction power.

My tought was : this is simply insane and stupid.

Then the German engineer who tought it out started to put the economics on the table :

a) 200MW capacity would produce electricity at around 0.05cent/kWh b) 15% of the sahara covered with such monstruosities would be enough to cover all current electricity needs of the WHOLE WORLD. c) any country in the world could manufacture a carbon steel tube of 1 km length, and dark textile canvas is available everywhere.

The idea is so good, that Australian are putting money where their mouth is : they are build a real scale model in their country, right now.

Where are you putting your money , Mr Hopf, Sutherland and Gould ?

Send e-mail to Roger Witherspoon : rwithers@thejournalnews.com

What is seriously both dissapointing and makes me suspisious of your motivation is your failure to acknowledge that Mr. Sutherland, James or myself even have any point at all. The obvious absurdity (and numerical inacurracy) of the above quoted example pretty much finishes it. I for one will no longer be able to read your material as if unbiased, and therefore won't be reading any more.

"What is seriously both disappointing and makes me suspisious of your motivation is your failure to acknowledge that Mr. Sutherland, James or myself even have any point at all. "

The problem with people like you are that they look to nuke plant using rose colored glases, and principally dismiss ANY alternative approach to energy supply and energy use as pure hogwash, while also refusing to acknowledge that the current concept of nuke plants is inherently UNSAFE, even when the track record of the nuke sector is rather good, given the numerous controls that are applied to those installations. How many Chernobyl's will you need to change your views ? I know, chernobyl is far away from where you live, but I had to swallow the exhaust that came over my country, since most of western europe was sprayed by the fallout. Who cares, huh ?

That rose colored glases attitude makes me very suspicious of your motivation, to return you your own compliments.

Let's hope the chinese will succeed in creating that pebble bed nuke plant concept. What a shame for you guys to have to acknowledge that a third world country did pull it off, where hundred of billions in first world countries didn't result in success. . .

Until then, let's give renewables and energy efficiency their chance.

Obvious now that that group doesn't really have a problem with nuclear power, just any progress in developed countries, particularly North America. The old "anit-progress" syndrome.

And Mr O'd., to quote him, he states "YOU ARE MY HERO"

I have a problem with nuke power in it's current form. They cost a fortune to build, cost almost the same fortune to mothball a few decades later, are expensive to maintain while staying inherently UNSAFE and don't provide any safe , CHEAP and secure way to store spend fuel rods for the thousands of years that they will remain radioactive.

If you can provide me a nuke plant that doesn't blow up when safety systems go awry for any reason, are so cheap that windturbines looks expensive next to it and spend fuel is as harmless as the shit I spout every day on my toilet, then I don't see any reason why I should be against nuke power plants.

So my point against nuke power in it's current form remains valid: it is a big hoax to pretend that they represent the only solution to our energy problems, given the set of alternatives availabe right now, and the massive subsidies they enjoyed in the past and current present.

Until you (hopf, sutherland and you) do agree with my points, I will remain opposed to the current concept of nuke plants.

That refute your 'anti-progress' syndrome statement concerning my attitude toward nuke power, since you nuke power plant guys are only interested in promoting the current expensive, inherently UNSAFE and always custom built form of nuke power plants, rejecting any new concept in any form, and also rejecting any alternative way of producing electricity as cheap as possibly could be.

A dogmatic attitude toward a certain very narrow minded defined process technology is the best way to get better idea's killed. That's why I called Mr McDonnell my hero. He understand that the Inquisition attitude prevailing amongs Mr Sutherland and Hopf and you will put the lid on modernisation and diversification in energy supply resources that made us become what we are today, and hopefully provide a better future for the next generations. Promoting a losing concept has never been the best way to provide a better future for the next generations.

As long as you nuke junkies will adopt that fundamentalist attitude, I will try to combat your preconceptions, in order to allow a democratic open debate to what remains an open issue : how to save our planet from pollution, while finding a cheap and totally clean energy resource.

a b I thought you were anti-everything with a strong slant toward doing less with much less.

Len You've been holding out on us. I thought you were for renewables and not someone promoting nukes' equality regardless of their track record. Oh, wait. They do have a good track record in any regulated and monitored environment.

The other two You should know better than to question the motives of an article that didn't actually state a hard opinion. Unfortunately undertones can't be accounted for in the media. See now you've gone and ran off the author and we won't get to be 'informed' anymore. That goes for you too Len.

You probably won't understand that, but who cares?

Go live in developing countries for a few years as I did, and maybe, just maybe you will start to understand what it means to have energy available at the flick of a switch, without having to check if the backup generator fuel reserve is sufficient to get thru the next 3 days blackout that is certainly coming up, somewhere next week.

Otherwise, you previous post is a total waste of time.

Also, it strikes me how quickly any meaningful discussion gets perverted by human malice, jealousy, spite, and hubris. Lighten up, people, none of you are in charge of the planet.

My view of nuclear stems from my joint background as a social scientist and an engineering Phd: I understand all the major technical reasons why it should be the best thing since sliced toast, but our species has not yet evolved the infalliblity, stability, and impregnable social institutions necessary to deploy such a potentially catastrophic technology on a large scale. Just look at the world around you: war to the left, right, and center. Mistakes large and small abound at every level in every society.

Short term problem: 9/11, e.g. catastrophic (often deliberate) "accidents". So such a concentration of dangerous material is unsafe prima facie. Distributed resources mean distributed, and hence diluted, dangers.

Long term problem: Our republic is the oldest stable government on earth at just over 2.25 centuries. Now consider the half-life of nuclear waste...how can we possibly presume to provide protection of ANY kind for thousands of years? We won't be here. There may not even be a MAP left in the world showing where Yucca Mountain is.

These are the issues. Not the historical death rate. This is a technology in its infancy. It's like the bomb. Just because, through some miracle, 59 years have passed since a nuke was detonated to kill, can we conclude that the human race is responsible enough to handle the technology going forward ?

Good governance favors pre-emptive caution, and a consideration of the seventh generation out, etc.

Thanks

TC

You got a point.

Maybe because when an LNG terminal blows up, the damage is done and the place can be rebuilt once the fire is extinguished. If a nuke plant blows up for whatever reason, the area is contaminated for thousands of square miles, and that for thousands of years.

Chernobyl has led to the fact that Ukraine, the grain farm of the old Soviet Union, has lost 'forever' a third of it's prime grain farming ground, had to relocate a third of it's population and try to treat hundred thousands of new cancer cases. That's far worse than a LNG terminal blowing up, although the mercury that coal plants are blowing are inherently as harmfull as nuke exhausts, in my humble opinion.

Renewables like the wind, hydro and the sun don't give such problems. I still wonder why our species is so focused on using the resources your stated, Mr Gould, instead of trying to harvest the obvious and non-polluting resources that nature gives us for free.

Wow! Spiirited debate. If I may, I would like to weigh in on the side of John, Len, James and Rodney. But first I would offer a refrain often voiced by a former boss of mine: "Maintain perspective." I would do that by referring you to a recent program on the Discovery Channel that chronicled the fate of a damaged commerical airliner that was forced to land without flaps (e.g., at more than 200 mph) and without landing gear. More than 100 people miraculously survived the controlled crash, but upwards of 40 did not. How did this happen? A turbine blade failed in a rear engine that penetrated a rear wing and severed the hydraulic system that operated some of the controls. Thus, the pilots could not bank for turns to the right, nor operate the flaps nor landing gear. However, as it turned out, the inspection personnel for the airline were not castigated for not finding that cracked turbine blade nor were the maintenance personnel castigated for not replacing it. All aircraft of that type were not immediately grounded, nor was the president of the airline told to resign. Even though more than 8 times as many people died in that crash as at Mihama. So my first question is: "Where is the perspective.?" As others have said, we would all agree that one preventable death is too many. But we also recognize that live in a world that is fraught with risk, so our challenge is how best to manage the risks. And in one respect, I would tend to agree with Mr. O'Donnell, SOME of the folks managing the nuclear power plants in Japan have not done a good job of managing risk. Second, I would thank Jan Radder for setting the facts straight on the Tokaimura accident, and that kind of reporting errors is the most serious concern with O'Donnell's reporting: gross errors and distortion of facts. Let's try a few. Fact: a nuclear power plant like Mihama has two sub-plants: a reactor plant and a production plant. The production plant is just like a fossil plant without the boiler, but larger than most. Fact: hot water under pressure turns to steam when the pressure is reduced. Fact: the steam exhausted from the turbines in the production plant is condensed back into water and pressurized and heated before going back to the "reactor plant". Fact: the accident at Mihama occured in the Condensate System (e.g., hot water @ 300 psi, 280 degrees F.) not a steam pipe. Fact: when the pipe wall thinned to failure, the pressure was released and the hot water turned to steam resulting in a large steam energy release. Fact: there is no radioactive material in the production plant. Fact: when there is a pipe rupture in the production plant, there is an interuption of the hot water supply to the "reactor plant", so yes, levels will drop as expected. Fact: nuclear power plants are analyzed and designed for a "spectrum " of POTENTIAL accidents. This pipe rupture is one them. Fact: the plant responded and safely shut down as designed. Fact: there are miles of piping in a large nuclear power plant. It is no more possible to inspect every foot of pipe in the plant than inspecting every turbine blade in every commerical jetliner or every foot of hydraulic tubing - perspective remember? Fact: there are formal programs for identifying and inspecting susceptible areas of Flow-Accelerated-Corrosion (FAC) of carbon steel piping in US plants. Replacements are made before imminent failure can occur. Those are a few facts that you could have gotten straight, Mr. O'Donnell, if you had done some homework. If we assume that you could correct the facts, the third problem with your piece is that you condemn an industry because of PERFORMANCE problems of a few. The focus should be on the performance deficiencies and what needs to be done to correct them. Questions that need to be explored: Did Mihama have a FAC inspection program? Did it get management support? How were decisions made for scheduling inspections and/or replacements? These and many more performance intensive questions need to be asked and answered - followed by a formal corrective action process. I also wouldn't comment on the offerings of a.b. whoever that might be. As another boss of mine was prone to say: "if you have something you deem worthy of placing into the written word, then have the courage to place your name next to it."

Kyushu Elec. Finds 292 Damaged Pipes at Nuke Reactor Kyushu Electric Power Co. said Friday that damage has been discovered in 292 pipes of a steam generator at its Sendai nuclear power plant's No. 1 reactor in the southern Japanese prefecture of Kagoshima. Sep 10 - Jiji Press English News Service

Davis-Besse reactor shuts down unexpectedly during testing Akron Beacon Journal, Ohio --Aug. 5 OAK HARBOR, Ohio — The Davis-Besse nuclear power plant reactor unexpectedly shut down Wednesday during testing, marking the first problem for the plant since it resumed generating electricity at full capacity in April after being shut down for two years. No workers were in danger, and two U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors were present when the shutdown occurred at 10:24 a.m., said NRC spokesman Jan Strasma. Todd Schneider, spokesman for FirstEnergy Corp., which owns the plant, said the cause of the shutdown was unknown. The plant along Lake Erie in northern Ohio was closed in February 2002 for routine maintenance. A month later, inspectors found corrosion on the reactor. Leaking boric acid had eaten almost through a 6-inch-thick steel cap. The damage led to a review of 68 similar plants nationwide. Davis-Besse has undergone $600 million in repairs. Improving the safety culture of the plant was one of the requirements FirstEnergy had to document before it was allowed to end the long repair shutdown. www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/ content/gen/ap/OH_Davis_Besse_Shutdown.html

Possibly more influential for the general public was last year's scandal in which Tokyo Electric Power -- the nation’s preeminent electric utility -- admitted that it had falsified records at its nuclear facilities to cover up some fairly substantial safety problems. As a result, nearly all nuclear stations in the country were taken out of service last summer, including 17 operated by TEPCO. Source: Above, mr Mcdonnells article.

The persistent radioactivity of tens of thousands of nuclear plants' waste is already shallowly buried underfoot*. Eventually we will deeply bury that of tens of thousands more. There is nothing imprudent about this.

--- Graham Cowan
fireproof fuel, real-car range, no emissions

The discussions on new and alternative technological developments must continue for the future of the world economy as we know it. I'm not convinced they are immediately pertinent to this discussion.

I read many good things about Nuclear plant safety, reliability, cost effectiveness and future improvements in trade literature. Why is that message not getting to the general public to counteract the negative disinformation of NP opponents. I'm surprised there isn't more of an effort to get this story out. Efforts to collect this information, package it and then communicate it would seem to be of paramount importance to the future of the current players in the existing energy industry. Yet, I see no evidence of this. Where are the full page ads in national news papers and magazines? Where are the knowlegable voices in the public forum?

If the public perception is poor, acknowlege it, and move to change it!

In this industry forum, I propose expending more effort fixing the problem (public perception) rather than debating whether the situation is fair or what the next best technology is. Much of the information presented and comparisons drawn in this discussion would go along way toward bringing balance to public opinion if a media-savvy professional would package it correctly. Any takers?

There is no large national effort to improve the image of nuclear power in the U.S. because there is not a national need to build new plants. If any new nuclear get built it will be in locations where there are existing plants with good reputations. The most asked question will not be about safety but about property taxes going down. Strong local opinion is will out way in the permitting process protestors in the city.

LCP

Cowan: I think you should exercise more caution in presuming what is best for the seventh generation. That caution is, after all, the essence of the seven generations mode of thought. Also, you are patently wrong in your assumption that only people in advanced fossil fuel consuming nations fear nuclear power. Finally, although the earth's crust contains radioactivity galore, it is in general very widely distributed. In general terms, hazardous materials are only hazardous due to concentration.

Gould: No, every argument I make could not be leveled against these other fuels. My short-term arguments, yes, perhaps, although even there the disruption from a 747 (e.g.) penetrating a nuclear reactor outclasses the same incident at a coal or ven LNG plant by a wide margin. My long-term arguments apply only to nuclear. All that said, I DO think we should be VERY cautious siting LNG facilities for many of these same reasons. One lesson of 9/11, very loosely stated, is that crazy s--t happens, sooner or later...

Voci: long introductory-level diatribe on power plants not needed here -- I don't think the subject anymore is this one incident in Japan -- that is merely the searchlight that highlights the action, not the action itself. And as you very well know, the fact that this particular accident was radioactively benign is sort if irrelevant, because it still occurred in what is supposed to be -- and perhaps is, in the narrow sense of worker deaths in an average year -- the "safest" industry in the world. The point is, if this steam rupture can happen in a nuclear plant, what else might (sooner or later: will) happen?

All: We must resist the urge to patronize just because we have taken a risk analysis class somewhere or because we think we understand on some deeper level that life is inherently risky. Every toad knows life is risky. It's entirely wimping out (this goes for any argument or issue) to say that because we cannot eliminate ALL risks, we should not work to eliminate ANY.

What measure or measures would you use to answer your rhetorical questions? Is the number of ongoing wars your measure? The number of human errors?

Given the fact that the nuclear genie has been out of the bottle for many years, how can we possibly presume to provide NO protection of ANY kind against the radioisotopes you profess to fear?

If one concludes that a nuclear power plant is like a bomb, shouldn't he further reason that he must be responsible enough to go forward with the technology to extend the miracle? Those probability risk assessment classes do have uses other than patronization. Might even lower a risk or two as the technology moves forward.

It seems pre-emptive caution is a two-edged sword and will remain so despite our fallibility.

If I understand your argument correctly, you are arguing that nuclear technology must be pursued to protect us from nuclear technology. Or, to be a little more generous, to help us control and stay on top of a technology that, once discovered, can not again be lost. Responding to the latter interpretation, I find merit in that concept to the extent that I support the pursuit of nuclear science. But pursuing nuclear science no more condones the expansion of the current global nuclear industry than the pursuit of genetic manipulation condones the premature establishment of a large-scale commercial cloning enterprise, or the laboratory study of pathogens condones arming our troops with bioweapons. To argue against nuclear proliferation is not, at least in my case, the same folly as to think that nuclear science ought to be completely shuttered. Just treated with more pre-emptive caution than other industries, because, despite the insistence of many in the industry, it isn't just another large industry. It's a rather special case, for reasons that should be obvious but perhaps need restatement...degree of lethality, latency of lethality, longevity, complexity, and potency as a weapon.

Ted

BNFL Wins Gas Release Battle British Nuclear Fuels Ltd is to be allowed to continue releasing a radioactive gas blamed for 100 cancers a year - even though it was first ordered to prevent the pollution 27 years ago. Sep 14 - Irish Times

Britain Burying Nuclear Waste From Overseas Nuclear waste from overseas power stations has been sealed in concrete and buried in the UK in several kilometres of trenches in breach of official government policy. Sep 14 - Irish Times

Hundreds of thousands of tons of solid nuclear waste and millions of gallons of liquid nuclear waste are stored in open storage facilities across the United States. Spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are currently stored in temporary facilities at 129 sites in 39 states. These storage sites are located in cities, suburbs, and rural areas. Most are located near large bodies of water. An estimated 161 million people reside within 75 miles of temporarily stored nuclear waste. Mr. Sheppard adds "We have had some small commercial traction and contacts to date and success within the industry, including containment at Chernobyl, where EKOR has demonstrated its ability to perform, as designed, at the world's most challenging nuclear waste site." "We believe the recent attention on nuclear storage and transportation concerns as a terrorism threat may be the impetus we have needed to have our technology implemented as a part of safe containment. EKOR could certainly mitigate the damage from a terrorist attack." http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nuclear-civil-04o.html

Here's a refute to your personal position. I and many people do entirely agree with the content of mr goldsmith position. Do YOU ?

No, thanks - Zac Goldsmith Editor of 'The Ecologist' There is finally a consensus on the gravity of the threat we face from climate change, and most people agree that something urgently needs to be done to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. But given the depth of our dependence, that's no small task. And so in panic, a number of high-profile commentators are calling for the widespread adoption of nuclear power. Greens, they say, have to choose between climate change and their old enemy - nuclear power. But it's a manufactured choice, peddled by an industry in the final spasm of a struggle to survive. Fundamentally, nuclear power is a problem, not a solution. And it's a problem on virtually every level. Take the issue of security. About a week before the 11 September 2001 atrocity, the director of the French nuclear installation giant, Cogema, was asked about the risks of an airborne attack on a French power plant. He answered that there was no risk, because "it is forbidden to fly over it at low altitude." As far as I know, it's also illegal to fly planes into New York buildings. Shortly after the attacks, the International Atomic Energy Agency warned that an attack on a nuclear plant is "far more likely" following 11 September. "If the terrorist is willing to die," the director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, said, "that changes the security equation drastically." British Energy echoed those calls, and pleaded with the Government to take protective measures. British Nuclear Fuels meanwhile described the prospect of a fuel-laden commercial jet colliding with a nuclear plant as "unthinkable". It's worth thinking about it, for an attack on Sellafield in Cumbria would be 100 times more disastrous than the Chernobyl accident and would likely cause more than 2 million people to die of cancer. But with or without terrorists, the lives of countless British people dangle in the hands of the technocrats each and every day. And as we know, technocrats make mistakes. Last year, for instance, Sellafield came close to disaster when explosive gases were allowed to build up in tanks that store highly-radioactive nuclear waste. Amazingly, the BNFL staff on duty ignored warning alarms for nearly three hours. Even without potential disasters, routine radioactive emissions ensure cancer clusters around virtually every installation. Sellafield, for instance, boasts a cancer cluster 10 times the national average. Two years ago, Vice-President Dick Cheney lamented that the US government hadn't approved a single application for a new nuclear power plant for 20 years. What he didn't say was that there had been no application. Nuclear power is a bad investment. Without massive government involvement and incalculable public subsidies, it simply wouldn't exist. According to The Economist, OECD governments poured $159bn (£89bn) into nuclear research between 1974 and 1998. BNFL, meanwhile, has admitted it faces a bill of £34bn to clean up waste, and it expects that waste to increase by a minimum of 500 per cent over the next decade. On every level, nuclear is an unattractive option, unless you happen to belong to al-Qa'ida and want to close down an economy overnight. So for the industry to be granted a life-extension requires belief that it is the only solution to an even bigger problem - climate change. But even there, nuclear power is a false hope. The instinctively pro-nuclear Mr Blair was told last year by his own energy advisors that nuclear is a "red herring". "You can achieve a low-carbon economy without nuclear," they told him. And, they might have added, such a goal can be realised without smothering Britain in wind turbines. For one thing, such a scenario assumes demand will always be as high, if not higher than it is now. But demand need not grow. According to a recent US study, investing $5.2bn in energy conservation in the federal government's 500,000 buildings would lead to savings of more than $1bn each year, indefinitely - an enormous return by any standard. It's quite clear that with investments in energy conservation, energy consumption would shrink dramatically without the need for sacrifice of any sort. Such a scenario also assumes that wind is the only renewable alternative. Currently, it does seem to be the most effective. The Cabinet Office's Performance and Innovation Unit has said that offshore wind alone has the potential to provide 10 times more electricity than is currently used. But equally, whole villages in Britain's West Country are on the verge of being powered by environmentally benign small hydro proje

Energy efficiency applications could reduce worldwide energy consumption by 30% overnight, thus eleiminating the need for nuke power overnight, without requiring any change in lifestyle whatsoever.

So who wants his taxes to be used to built those nuke plants, and who is in favor of using his garden to store some of the generated nuke wastes?

Mr Gould , you are a genius, period. Mr goldsmith is stating that a bad choice gets heavily subsidised, while other free resources are treated as the bad poster child of energy supply, leaving them NOT to able to compete with the heavilly subsidised cheaper electricity produced by the dangerous and polluting alternatives that currently forms our ONLY energy supply grid. Thus not allowing any development to occur on alternative clean energy supply resources.

Of course, if the subsidies were cancelled and the real cost of harvesting, environmental pollution , storage of spend fuels be accounted to the electricity sold to everybody, we wouldn't even have this conversation, since our electricity supply would be derived from the sun, air, hydro and biomass.

As humanity is projected to jump from six to nine billion souls over the next few decades (something like 300 million to 450 million in the United States), humanity is also expecting to increase the standard of living for a large proportion of its numbers. Humanity is also expecting to stop, or at least slow down, the rate at which it is fouling its nest. Unless the four horsemen are to take care of the problem for us, this necessarily means a very large increase in energy consumption, and that it cannot continue to come from dirty combustion of fossils. Period.

Where is that energy to come from? Improved efficiency and conservation can probably provide some negawatt hours, but relying on these can't cut it. It also does not cut it to simply claim that energy for the future can come from solar or wind or whatever other supposedly green renewable source one cares to mention.

It seems to me that energy for the future has to come from sources that yield substantial positive net energy. Period.

From what I'm able to tell, today's nuclear industry does yield substantial positive net energy.

In contrast, I have not been convinced that any of the green renewables yields positive net energy. Intuition tells me that wind turbines may do so, but when I consider the intermittent nature of something like wind, and start adding up the energy input required for additional infrastructure to overcome intermittence, I start to get hopeless. I've not seen the subject of wind net energy treated definitively, as I have seen done with respect to nuclear. Same with solar. I have a solar water heater, but it seems unlikely that the energy required to mine the copper, make the glass, smelt the case and so on will ever exceed the energy saved by tapping the sun. Maybe so, but I doubt it and I have not seen studies convincing me that my solar water heater makes energetic sense.

Unless you can provide more energy with a given technology than went into producing the infrastructure to do so, it seems to me to make little sense.

If you're pouring today's relatively cheap oil-based energy into producing technologies that'll eventually yield less energy than the oil-derived energy used to build it, you're essentially building a battery, not an energy source.

I hope someone, Chinese or South African, French, British, American or Russian, anyone, can advance the fission industry to ultimate safety and sustainability, but I fail to see how we can afford to stop the present state of the art.

If anyone can help me feel better about green renewable positive net energy I'd appreciate it. But I won't be impressed with ratios of 1.5 or 2, as seems generous with such as corn alcohol. Industrial energy today sports numbers in double digits, and oil seems to be dropping fast.

Please help me out here. How can we possibly advance or even sustain ourselves on the basis of green renewables while tossing the present state of the nuclear energy art? As of now I don't think we can get there from here. It's rather depressing.

Now, this isn't something I would want to live next to, and that much de-oiled sand has a lot of neighbours. It might have a lot of human neighbours except it's in northern Alberta. But it is significant in a nuclear power context: it suggests a black marine shale whose uranium content was energetically equivalent to six mass percent oil would also be worth going after.

But with the nuclear reactors that are common today, mined uranium yields the same heat as 14000 times its weight in petroleum. So uraniferous black marine shales are likely to be energetically worthwhile uranium ores even if their uranium content is only 0.0004 percent. However, they typically are 0.006 percent uranium, 15 times richer, enough richer that only ~2 percent of their uranium will pay the energy cost of extracting 100 percent. Each trillion tonnes of black shale therefore can yield the same net energy as 20 trillion tonnes of Alberta oil sand.

Finally, 20 teratonnes is more oil sand than is likely to exist, but according to a figure by Deffeyes and MacGregor that may be seen on p. 29, aka p. 1-15, of http://www.ne.doe.gov/reports/GenIVRoadmapFCCG.pdf, uraniferous shales exist in the hundreds of trillions of tonnes. So no-one really expects uranium to become scarce no matter how much reliance we put on it; not for many centuries. Breeder reactors would make uraniferous shale 2000 times more energy-yielding than oil sand, but within that many-century horizon there is no need for this.

Now why did this point need to be made ... well, solar energy is even more abundant, and its use to make a chemical fuel that can be kept outdoors in heaps would eliminate its difficulty with clouds, night, and winter. Solar energy technology doesn't necessarily have low energy return on energy invested. The forms of it that are praised by today's hydrocarbon tax money do have low or negative return; that's why it praises them. High-net-energy forms of solar power will excite the same sort of meretricious opposition as nuclear energy, with a similar lack of public backing (although they will claim it), and with similar lack of success.

I hope that's encouraging.

--- Graham Cowan
how personal mobility gains nuclear cachet

--- Graham Cowan"

Not really encouraging yet, but I've enjoyed and appreciated your post so far.

When you write about solar derived heaps of cloud- and night-proof chemical boron(?)-based fuel, you are still dealing with an infrastructure to collect and utilize abundant but dilute solar energy. Are you not, then, back to one of the probably-net-energy-negative schemes?

Perhaps I mis-interpreted your post. Maybe you're envisioning boron as a nuclear energy carrier? It's been a long week and maybe I'm being even denser than usual.

I think it would be fun to chew this up at happy hour, but in the meantime I remain rather hopeless. I think humanity has just about reached its limitations. Maybe we can't distinguish Mishima from Chernobyl or equate "rock and a hard place" with exponential growth in the face of limits. Time will tell. Three cheers for the nuclear junkies!

Please elaborate or point me to something showing high EROEI for solar energy. I'd also be interested in why you think it's not a commercial reality today. Or is it? I try to pay attention yet remain mostly ignorant.

How high could the EROEI have been of something that fossil fuel energy undercut on price shortly after 1912? The fact of the undercutting does not imply any limit. It could have been a million, and if gross energy from fossil fuels had to be, just to pick a number randomly, 13 percent ploughed back into getting them -- EROEI 7.7 -- fossil fuel could still shut down the solar industry if that gross energy were cheap enough. In fact to beat a source with infinite EROEI, if all other costs are equal, a source with 7.7 EROEI just has to use gross energy that is 13 percent cheaper. Since all other costs are never equal, and lots of things are scarce besides energy, even that isn't guaranteed.

The EROEI of a concentrated-sunlight heat engine can best be estimated not by supposing it must be less than that of systems that beat it -- as above shown, it doesn't -- but by a model; perhaps quite a crude model, if all we want is a conservative lower bound. The energy invested in a mirror system very likely will be dominated by the energy invested in the mirrors themselves. A square km of mirror, suitably sited, gets 250 MW of sunlight as a year-round average. If it succeeds in averaging 150 MW of sunlight concentrated onto the hot end of a 25-percent-efficient heat engine, and 30 percent of that heat engine's output is worthless because of intermittency, we have 26 MW of usable output.

Suppose the mirrors are centimetre-thick fused silica. A square km has volume 10,000 cubic metres, mass 22,000 tonnes. How long does it take to melt 22,000 tonnes, 366 million moles, of silica with 26 MW? This (NIST table lets me estimate heating silica from 298 K (room temperature) to its 1996-K melting point costs 119 kJ/mol, and heat of fusion is 8.2 kJ/mol, total 127.5 kJ/mol. So the melting energy is 4.667 terajoules, and divided by 26 MW that gives a melting time of 1.795 million seconds. That's a little less than three weeks.

Now, as you look out your window, which is also made of glass that is mostly silica, ask yourself, what is the average age of the windows in your house? Do they still have many years of life expectancy? That doesn't matter, since we're after a conservative lower bound. Assume numerous large birds will break them all tomorrow. Divide the implied lifespan by three weeks. The quotient is a reasonable lower bound on EROEI of mirror-concentrated solar heat engines. (What do you get?)

Do B2O3-cracking solar plants that heap up B in the summer and sell it all winter need to "collect and utilize abundant but dilute solar energy" -- yes. Am I therefore back to one of the probably-net-energy-negative schemes? No, because concentrating and converting sunlight probably isn't net-energy-negative. Its past commercial failure does not imply a sub-unity EROEI, nor even a small one.

Do I like boron, the pure element, as a nuclear energy carrier -- yes. I like it as a solar energy carrier too.

--- Graham Cowan
how personal mobility gains nuclear cachet

You approach the problem by the wrong side.

One hour of sunrays hitting the earth is enough to provide electricity for the whole world, anno 2004. If all current buildings would be covered by silicone PV cells having only the current meager 12% efficiency, no oil would be needed anymore, since the juice gained from PV cells would cover all electricity and hydrogen generating demand 5 times over. But we don’t even capture 0.001% of all those sunrays hitting the earth. And we don’t spend money to built that infrastructure, while we still have the oil&gas available. All wave energy in the world is sufficient to provide ten times over the amount of electricity we need globally, even when we are 20 billion on earth. But we don’t even have an industrial model harvesting that resource, simply because we find oil far more convenient and far cheaper (yet). The Scottish government has partially funded a now operating prototype (pelamis) supplying 750kW continuously at $16 cent/kWh. In ten years, the estimated powergen figure per model will be 10 times bigger, while the electricity cost 2 times lower. But otherwise, we don’t spend money to built that infrastructure, while we still have the oil&gas available. The great plains of the US of A have enough wind ‘juice’ to provide the electricity for the whole 500millions US of americans forecasted for 2030, and still export 100% more to mexico and canada. We barely have windfarms installed, just 640 x 1MW models of them for the whole empty US midwest. Current windturbine models recuperate the energy invested in their manufacture till up to their mothballing 20 years later in just 3 months. Still, we don’t chain built current 4.5MW models that are already available. We oppose almost every installation, on the ground that they are visually disturbing, even when there is no horse to been seen for mile around in the empty midwest. So we don’t spend money to built that infrastructure, while we still have the oil&gas available.

That's correct, we are awash in very very thinly dispersed uranium ore.

Have you already figured out how to deal with the liquid and solid radioactive waste streams that will come out of the spent fuel rods by the Billions of tons, if we start using nuke plants in their actual form as only energy resource? Dump them in Africa as usual, bribing a local despot who is willing to store them as collateral for money on his own private account in Switserland?

Read the comment I posted underneath "The Energy Challenge 2004 By Murray Duffin" , to see how great breeder reactors are functioning in the UK, whata mess in waste streams they generate, and what a problem it is to decommission an old nuke plant. I am pretty sure you will volunteer to do the decommisioning job, after reading what actually happens in the real world (over there in the UK). I won't touch one of those things with a barge pole, even if they give me a fortune to do it.

And some people on this forum are arguing that it is the only solution to our problems, given the security they supply us. . . . About a cracker.

Do you now think, as I do, that concentrating solar power stations naturally tend to have, for what it's worth, high EROEI? (I was a little surprised to find this out. I knew the knights who say EROEI were cargo cultists, able to talk about arithmetic until an innumerate donkey's hind leg falls off but unable to do any, but given the non-up-springing of solar concentrators, thought maybe they weren't totally whacked on this one.)

Or (2) is the energy taken in making their large mirrored surfaces not the dominant component of their EI? Then what is? Or -- this would be very weird, but for completeness's sake -- (3) are there many energy inputs, all of the same order of magnitude, so that it's not possible to say, count this and you're within a reasonable error bar of counting everything. (As is characteristic of usual power law distributions. So, for instance, count the mass of Jupiter and you're quite close to counting the mass of all solar planets, count the volume of Lake Superior and you've pretty well got all the Great Lakes.)

Or (4) -- ??

--- Graham Cowan
Boron: A Better Energy Carrier than Hydrogen?

Did you obtain all of your professed nuclear energy/industry knowledge from the Greenpeace outpost in Key West? Your ignorance is scary! Please stop representing yourself as a nuclear energy expert on this website.

I do agree with you re: the need for the US to develop more renewable energy resources. Also, the US is very wasteful and has a long way to go on the energy efficeincy front.

Sincerely, F. Michael Salva PE Nuclear

Maybe so but I don't think so. I don't mean to quarrel too much with you on the merits of wind, which intuition tells me may make sense, or with the other alternatives you mentioned that may have wide application, a niche or no value at all. My problem is that I don't see the sorts of studies that take into account all of the energy with respect to the popular green renewables. I tend to agree with some of what you wrote, but not enough to agree with your stance on nuclear energy.

There's a piece on the IWEA site (http://www.awea.org/faq/bal.html) which says that wind turbines deliver the energy used to make them in about two months to two years, depending on the wind and boosted by a factor of almost three to equalize for the inefficiency of a coal plant, but not taking into account the cost to wind of intermittence. From what I conclude they are not being comprehensive. This stuff is hard, and I feel that what I'm exposed to is basically marketing materials.

(That the same IWEA report shows that nuclear pays its primary energy back in just a few weeks, 0.7 months, was a bit of a surprise. Not that I buy the figure. From what I can tell, a better figure would be something like a tenth of the plant's life, certainly a few years. I don't think they're being comprehensive here either.)

I can certainly go along with you that all wave energy in the world is, as you say, sufficient to provide ten times over the amount of electricity we need globally. But that doesn't mean that it can be harnessed to yield substantial positive net energy. And if it can't, then it's no good. If it can be harnessed with substantial positive net energy, great, but I have not seen it shown. All I see is demonstration projects here and there, and no analysis of net energy, cost of intermitence, and so on. Am I just not looking hard enough?

Solar photovoltaics? OK, maybe, but where's the comprehensive net energy study? The study that includes the energy going into the, count 'em, nineteen 1500 ton chillers I've seen running in just one semiconductor chip fab (along with all the losses of that energy's production and transmission)? Aside from the chillers, the question gets so complex that the tendency is to use a money proxy for energy. I'm afraid money proxies won't work. Economists may flag my ignorance, but it's the economist who thinks growth can go on forever in the face of limits, which seems crazy to me.

My point and my concern is that insufficient attention to the question of net energy on an infrastructure basis means we're running the risk of building batteries, essentially, charged with present cheap energy, not viable sources of energy for the future. All I'm saying is that I'd be more hopeful if the question of energy return on energy investment were being fully and seriously considered with respect to green renewables before people go off wanting to shut down a proven technology.

This net energy question should be considered right along with questions of capacity. For example, wind turbines may be great, and their infrastructure may yield substantial positive net energy. But what seems plain of wind is that it can't deliver anywhere close to the bulk of even our present energy needs, let alone increases from 150 million additional people in this country. So we're back to looking at other sources and making sure that THEY provide substantial positive net energy.

I don't think we can afford to do without existing and new nuclear energy. Helium cooled pebble beds or whatever other advances may turn out to be great sometime in the future, as might fusion, but please don't run the serious risk of insufficient energy for our modern industrial and digital society by advocating the shutting down of nuclear energy or rejection of new projects. The risk of insufficient energy is a serious risk considering what would probably follow in its wake.

Graham Cowan: "Do you now think, as I do, that concentrating solar power stations naturally tend to have, for what it's worth, high EROEI?"

Intuition tells me that might be right, as might the assertions of wind backers, but so far the only net energy report I've seen and been convinced by had to do with nuclear energy.

I take that back. I was also convinced by corn methanol backers that their project had positive net energy, but it only seems to sport a ratio of about 1.5, or 2 at the most, which does not count as "substantial positive net energy" in my book. Wind and corn methanol share the problem of scale, too. So corn methanol strikes me as a waste of time and money except possibly to corn producers.

"...but given the non-up-springing of solar concentrators, thought maybe they weren't totally whacked on this one."

I have the same question about various of the frequently mentioned renewable sources. If they're so great why are they not out there producing energy? What became of that great Fr

By the way, I think your number 3 is a good question with a complex answer that's different in each case. Maybe some alternatives are of your Jupiter nature, but some aren't. From what I've seen things are not necessarily obvious or intuitive even if you do get past the politics. I don't know if energy to make the concentrating mirrors is the main driver; I think there's a good chance it's not. Energy of facilities, transportation, equipment, mining and a long list of other items has to be looked at. All I know is that it's complex and I have not seen net energy dealt with convincingly except in a couple of cases.

What's your take on the non-up-springing question?

The labour to maintain 10,000 mirrors shouldn't change much when each one grows from 1 square metre to 100 square metres, so it seems one should just scale up. But a solar concentrator is a three-dimensional structure, and scaling up will involve some actual geometric upwardness. The radio telescope shown at bottom left of http://www.radarpages.co.uk/news/greenbank.htm could be converted into a pretty nice solar plant, one that could sell 1.5 million kWh every year ... but it would be harder with the one on the right.

A sun-fired heat engine to produce a saleable gigawatt-year each year has to be able to produce five to ten gigawatts peak. With a nuclear heat source, 1.2 GW would be enough.

Some of the largeness of the necessary peak capacity is because of losses in storage. What storage?

I figure three things would cause solar heat engines to spring up. (1)Answering the storage question. (2)Finding ways for the heat engine at the focus to cost so little per peak gigawatt that one doesn't mind its low average utilization, and (3) finding ways for three-dimensional structures to scale up without their mass per unit area, as seen by the sun, increasing. And if the wind disturbs them, when it lets up they should return to the right shape without manual intervention.

The SPS people would answer 1 by saying solar power satellites don't have clouds, night, and winter. No storage required. 2. Without clouds, night, and winter, and without losses in storage, heat engines can be just a little larger in capacity than their year-round average output. 3. Three-dimensional arrangements are easy in high orbit, and there is never any wind to recover from.

These are good answers, and if large cargo-lifting rockets had been developed before nuclear energy, no doubt we would now be hearing from anonymous internet entity "c d" about how crazy the existing hundreds of gigawatts of space solar power are.

--- Graham Cowan --
How individual mobility gains nuclear cachet

Maybe so, but unless and until the net energy question is answered comprehensively, I think it wold be foolish for the Japanese to back away from or fail to promote new nuclear energy projects. The Japanese have lots of coastline and lots of waves, but can they supplant nuclear energy that way, or with other popular renewables? Not if the effort fails to yield substantial net energy, a question not comprehensively studied that I'm aware of. I hope I'm wrong about that, but it seems to me that when these things are studied, it's all about money, which is not the same as energy. Sure, money is important, but from my perspective it can't serve as an energy proxy as we approach the end of the age of oil.

As for scaling up three-dimensional structures for concentrating solar energy, I think the heliostat array makes much more sense than a parabolic dish. I made a simple heliostat as a lab exercise 20 years ago in college, and I can envision inexpensive, small heliostats by the thousand, acting individually to concentrate enormous energy. But I don't know about the net energy of a scheme like that. As you pointed out, we have not seen a great many such plants spring up. As for solar power satellites, maybe some day, but they are in the category that includes fusion. Not of today, which is when the problem needs to be addressed.

Off topic, are we? Maybe the following will help. In 1995-2000 the Japanese government was making about US$40 per barrel of imported oil.

Monday, February 12, 1996: In the Financial Times -- or maybe it was Sunday the 11th, I saw it reprinted in another paper -- Emiko Terazono reports "rising anti-nuclear sentiment" in Japan.

May 4, 1998: in Maclean's magazine, editor Robert Lewis notes that "unease is growing" in Canadians with respect to nuclear energy, and I notice the pattern.

September 8, 2004, in these pages, Arthur O'Donnell says, "More than five years ago, there was negligible opposition to nuclear policies in Japan, and now there is a growing opposition".

Negligible, eh? But rising, growing, growing... why, it must be up to US$60 a barrel by now.

--- Graham Cowan --
How individual mobility gains nuclear cachet

I like Graham's "nuclear unease grows at approximately the same rate as the price of oil". There are certainly more mechanisms than conspiracy to explain it though, with the second-most plausible being that as the price of oil goes up, the economics of nuclear improve making new construction more likely, which causes/forces "religious" anit's to step up their efforts, with "soft money" encouragement such as from the author of this article.

--- Graham Cowan
how personal mobility gains nuclear cachet

http://www.energycentral.com/centers/news/daily/article.cfm?aid=5144861

ao'd

This from the Japanese press March 26, 2005:

"Strong public criticism of Kansai Electric Power Co. apparently lies behind the resignations of two senior executives Friday to take responsibility for a fatal steam blowout last summer at a nuclear power plant that killed 4 people (sic) and injured 7.

But the long delay in offering a sop to public opinion indicates the company still has a long way to go to fully regain public trust.

The resignations of President Yosaku Fuji and Chairman Yoshihisa Akiyama came more than seven months after the incident at the No. 3 reactor of Mihama Nuclear Power Plant in Mihamacho, Fukui Prefecture.

The fatal steam blowout occurred as a result of the wall of a steam pipe becoming eroded to below government standards. An Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry investigation team said KEPCO's corporate morals were underdeveloped in recognizing the importance of maintaining safety standards.

The reason KEPCO took so long to offer up two executives to placate public wrath was that the firm's management insisted on viewing the fatal incident as an unavoidable labor accident. And as such, there was no need for the company's top brass to resign to accept responsibility--even though they were ultimately responsible for the incident, a KEPCO board member said. "