The priest at our parish is giving a series of talks on major issues of our time. One of those talks scheduled for mid-February concerns the environment. I sent the following letter to the priest since this topic is near and dear to my heart.
Dear Father,
Thank you for the excellent Masses this past week, and the great homilies therein. Evoking the lesson of the prophet Hosea and his faithless wife Gomer in Friday evening’s homily was especially noteworthy. Additionally, the celebration of the Eucharist Ad Orientem was positively beautiful. I am also happy to learn that you will be delivering a series of instructional talks on major issues of our time on Wednesday evenings over the next two months. I look forward to attending. One of the topics caught my specific interest. It was related to the environment. Being a 40+ year nuclear energy professional, this topic is of course near and dear to my heart. So below I am presenting a short distillation of the environmentally positive aspects of nuclear energy. Of course, as a priest you should neither support nor oppose any particular technical methodology of good stewardship of God’s creation – that over which He has given us dominion. And I suspect your topic will likely not touch on the technical aspects of what I present below. In fact, you may already be aware of much of this. But I fully expect so-called environmentalists to be as critical of nuclear energy (if not more so) as they are of carbon-emitting fossil energy (though their reflexive anti-nuclearism is slowly changing). And while I am no climate change activist (I do NOT adhere to or otherwise believe in the fiction of anthropogenic global warming), anyone with normal intelligence can see that indiscriminately dumping billions of tons of fossil fuel pollution into the environment year in and year out is an untested experiment which inevitably will have unanticipated and undesirable consequences. Don’t pollute isn’t just good theology. It’s common sense – one doesn’t poop in one’s backyard (sorry for the visualization, but I am a submarine sailor). J
DISCLAIMER 1: this paper is NO criticism of anything you have said or done (quite the contrary, you’re one of the best priests I know). But it is a long winded explanation based on my 40+ years of training and experience as a nuclear energy professional. So please forgive me for having “diarrhea of the keyboard” (humor – Ha! Ha!). And forgive any typographical errors.
DISCLAIMER 2: I have freely “plagiarized” from various sources in the discussion below (yes, I know I am long-winded, but I can’t distill those 40+ years of training and experience into a Facebook sound bite or a Twitter meme, so you may want to read the rest of this when you have time). I have include screen capture diagrams and have identified the source where I have “plagiarized” (I don’t know everything and I rely heavily on sources like the US NRC, NEI, IAEA, etc. – people who do know more than me). I cover the following:
Fuel Comparison
Pollution
Land Use
Capacity Factor
Mortality Rate per Terawatt Hour
Accidents (TMI, Chernobyl, Fukushima)
Spent Fuel
Radiation Hormesis
The only thing I can add to these sources is the following: I have worked in nuclear power for 40+ years. I have stood watch in an enclosed metal tube right next to a 158 MWth nuclear reactor while 1000 feet beneath the ocean’s surface (obviously it’s called a submarine). I have held uranium pellets (unirradiated of course) in my hands and have had my nose mere inches away from newly manufactured uranium fuel rods (again unirradiated). I have stood above spent fuel pools full of irradiated fuel rods, I have worked atop the head of a reactor pressure vessel at a 1000 MWe reactor plant, I have dismantled and installed instrumentation on reactor plant components in radiologically controlled areas, etc. ad nausaeam. If radiation were as deadly as environmentalists say, then I would be dead by now. But the good Lord has (for some reason unknown to me) kept me alive (in spite of my best efforts to the contrary). Nuclear power is the safest, most environmentally benign form of power generation, even including solar, wind and all the rest of the so-called renewables. My life is proof of that because if I had been working in coal, oil, gas, wind or solar, then I would be dead (long story for a different letter).
FUEL COMPARISON
According to the European Nuclear Society, “With a complete combustion or fission, approx. 8 kWh of heat can be generated from 1 kg of coal, approx. 12 kWh from 1 kg of mineral oil and around 24,000,000 kWh from 1 kg of uranium-235. Related to one kilogram, uranium-235 contains two to three million times the energy equivalent of oil or coal. The illustration[s] show how much coal, oil or natural uranium is required for a certain quantity of electricity. Thus, 1 kg natural uranium - following a corresponding enrichment and used for power generation in light water reactors - corresponds to nearly 10,000 kg of mineral oil or 14,000 kg of coal and enables the generation of 45,000 kWh of electricity.”
POLLUTION
“The World Nuclear Association carried out a review of over twenty studies assessing the greenhouse gas emissions produced by different forms of electricity generation. The results summarized in the chart below show that generating electricity from fossil fuels results in greenhouse gas emissions far higher than when using nuclear or renewable generation.”
“In 2011 the world's nuclear power plants supplied 2518 TWh (billion kWh) of electricity. The following table shows the additional emissions that would have been produced if fossil fuels had been used to generate the same amount of electricity.”
NOTA BENE: nuclear power’s life cycle carbon emissions come from initial construction and from periodic testing of the emergency diesel generators. These emissions are orders of magnitude smaller than fossil fuel emissions. Read also the following essay from the late Dr. Bernard Cohen of the University of Pittsburg: “Environmental Problems with Coal, Oil and Gas.”
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter3.html
LAND USE
A company (for which I once worked) did a study some time ago to compare “…how much land would be needed to produce 1,800 Megawatts of solar or wind energy compared to the amount of land currently in use at the Arkansas Nuclear One Station.” This study states:
Assuming the wind and sun were able to generate electricity at a 90 percent capacity factor (of course the sun cannot shine 22 hours, or 90 percent of each day), land requirements necessary to generate 1,800 MW of electricity, the equivalent of our nuclear facility, would be as follows:
Modern Wind Power
- Power Output: Above Average Wind Turbine Generates2.5 Megawatts/turbine
- Number of 2.5 MW Turbines Needed to Generate 1,800 Megawatts:720
- Average Acres Per Megawatt: 60
- Land Use: 108,000 acres (169 square miles)
Modern Solar Power
- Power Output:1 Megawatt per 7.4 acres of photovoltaic solar panels
- Land Use:13,320 acres (21 square miles)
The bottom line is that a massive amount of land area must be torn up for so-called renewable energy and that has an environmentally harmful impact. Why such large land use? Because sunlight and wind are diffuse and highly variable sources of energy. Such is NOT the case for nuclear power.
CAPACITY FACTOR
The following graph comes from the Office of Nuclear Energy in the US Department of Energy:
“Nuclear power plants are typically used more often because they require less maintenance and are designed to operate for longer stretches before refueling (typically every 1.5 or 2 years). Natural gas and coal capacity factors are generally lower due to routine maintenance and / or refueling at these facilities. Renewable plants are considered intermittent or variable sources and are mostly limited by a lack of fuel (i.e. wind, sun, or water). As a result, these plants need a backup power source such as large-scale storage (not currently available at grid-scale) — or they can be paired with a reliable baseload power like nuclear energy.”
“A typical nuclear reactor produces 1 gigawatt (GW) of electricity. That doesn’t mean you can simply replace it with a 1 gigawatt coal or renewable plant. Based on the capacity factors above, you would need almost two coal or three to four renewable plants (each of 1 GW size) to generate the same amount of electricity onto the grid.”
The bottom line is this: if solar and wind were so great, then why don’t we still bake bricks in the sun as the ancient Sumerians did, and why don’t we sail across the sea in sailing ships as the Vikings did? Solar and wind have capacity factors of less than 30% and always require polluting fossil energy backup as spinning reserve for the 70% of the time that they can’t generate electricity. Every renewable energy plant is a methane gas power plant, and they pollute.
MORTALITY RATE PER TERAWATT HOUR
Nuclear energy has the lowest mortality rate per terawatt hour of electrical power generation. The following chart comes from Next Big Energy Future and is a summary of data from the International Energy Agency. Nuclear has 0.04 fatalities per terawatt hour (even including Fukushima and Chernobyl and TMI and Windscale) compared to solar at 0.1, wind at 0.15, gas at 20, oil at 52 and coal (USA) at 10.
ACCIDENTS
There have been three big accidents during my professional nuclear career:
TMI
Chernobyl
Fukushima
You can read about the TMI accident here:
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/3mile-isle.html.
In the TMI accident the operators did not believe their indications and incorrectly secured the safety injection pumps. If they had done what they were supposed to do, then the accident would not have been nearly as severe as it was. That said, not one member of the public was injured or died from the TMI event. And the amount of radioactivity that was released in the form of noble gases (argon, krypton and xenon) had no significant impact on background radiation levels to which local residents are exposed with or without nuclear power.
You can read about the Chernobyl accident here:
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/chernobyl-bg.html.
Read also Dr. Bernard Cohen’s essay, “The Chernobyl Accident – Can It Happen Here?”
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter7.html .
Regarding the Chernobyl accident, this reactor was a mad atheist communist design: water cooled, graphite moderated reactors are inherently unstable by the laws of physics (positive void coefficient of reactivity). I won’t go into details here, but this design – RBMK (Реактор Большой Мощности Канальный or High Power Channel-type Reactor) – could never be licensed in the West. Yes, scores of people died. That’s what communism does. This was a communist problem, NOT a nuclear power problem. The fools there did a test outside of procedure, overrode automatic reactor protection, and then the God-ordained Laws of Physics took over. I can explain more but the explanation requires some rudimentary knowledge of nuclear physics which is beyond the scope of this discussion. Bottom line: obey God’s Law, whether divine or physical, because you won’t like the consequences if you don’t.
You can read about the Fukushima accident here:
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/japan-events.html.
In the Fukushima accident, for decades TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) ignored advice that it was given by General Electric (GE) and the rest of the West. You see, when the earthquake happened off Japan’s east coast in March, 20011, the six reactors at Fukushima were placed in safe shutdown right away. The emergency diesel generators were started to keep vital safety-related equipment running. But the diesels were essentially on the beach and exposed to the tsunami which of course hit. This flooded the diesel intakes and the safety-related cooling water equipment eventually de-energized when backup batteries died. Then the inevitable happened: physics. The Japanese had to learn that God’s Law is immutable, and they learned it the hard way. If TEPCO hadn’t been so cheap and had built its diesels above the 35 foot tsunami line as GE told them to, then the accident would never have happened. Again, the issue isn’t nuclear power. The issue is taking stupid risks and expecting that God is going to exempt you from the Laws of Physics. That’s not what will happen – or in this case, happened. Nevertheless, not one person in the public died from the Fukushima accident (compared to the thousands who died from a near dam failure and from explosions at petrochemical installations in the Chiba Prefecture), and less than a half dozen died on site, all due to industrial accidents from recovery operations, not any radiological event.
SPENT FUEL AND WEAPONS PROLIFERATION
Currently designed light water reactors in the West (Boiling and Pressurized Water Reactors) typically use only 5% of the available energy content in the fuel. The reason why is the low enrichment of U-235 in the fuel and the accumulation of fission product poisons as the core operates over a few year’s time. We store spent (or more properly used) fuel for eventual geological repository, hence the never ending fight over Yucca Mountain. Why did we do that? Because first Gerald Ford then his successor Jimmy Carter enacted a policy of no reprocessing on unfounded fears of the proliferation of plutonium for weapons use. But that’s ridiculous. Why? Because the only isotope of plutonium that is usable in bombs is 92+% pure Pu-239 and spent fuel from light water reactors has too much non-fissile Pu-240 mixed in. Any bomb made from such material would fizzle out. It wouldn’t be a militarily useful weapon (as the North Koreans found out when they exploded several duds). Sadly sometimes Presidents (Republican and Democrat) make stupid decisions, and this was one (though Jimmy Carter, a former nuclear trained submarine officer, should have known better; he was one of Admiral Rickover’s few failures). Bottom line: reactor fuel cannot be used for a bomb because a bomb requires 92+% enriched U-235 or Pu-239, and reactor fuel is enriched to less than 5%.
In the case of Candu heavy water reactors in Canada, the Canadians don’t enrich their fuel at all. They use natural uranium and heavy water as the neutron moderator. Their reactors do produce some plutonium, but there’s so much Pu-240 mixed with the Pu-239 that it can’t be used for a bomb.
So now we have enough spent fuel from 100 reactors in the US to fill a football field to a depth of some scores of feet (compare that to the multi-million ton coal ash accident Duke Energy spilled from one coal fired power plant into the river system in North Carolina). And we plan to send used fuel to Yucca Mountain. But 95% of its energy content remains. Why don’t we use it? We could build fast neutron burner reactors like GE-Hitachi’s PRISM sodium cooled reactor, or something like a Carlo Rubbia Energy Amplifier to consume all the long lived actinides that present the long-term radiation hazard. There are plenty of other designs too: Oak Ridge’s molten salt thorium reactor from the 1960s, General Atomics high temperature helium cooled reactor, Westinghouse’s DaVinci lead cooled reactor, etc. With any of these we could obviate the need for Yucca Mountain because fast neutron burner reactors leave behind "ash" that decays in 600 years, not a million years. Compare that to heavy metal pollution in coal ash from coal fired power plants which never ever decays away – BTW, coal fired generation releases far more radioactivity than nuclear because coal contains naturally occurring uranium, thorium and radium that’s dumped will-nilly into the environment in the coal ash:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste/
We don’t have a spent fuel problem. We have a political problem of greed. Not reprocessing spent fuel means we leave ourselves reliant on fossil fuel and that enriches fossil fuel purveyors and the politicians who receive tax revenue therefrom.
RADIATION HORMESIS
The International Atomic Energy Agency has a paper on radiation hormesis here:
https://inis.iaea.org/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/35/034/35034260.pdf.
“Hormesis is defined as the stimulating effect of low doses of agents that cause an inhibiting effect at high doses…..The theory of radiation hormesis states that low doses of ionizing radiation are not only harmless, but they have beneficial effects by stimulating the immune system and repair mechanisms.”
Dr. Bernard Cohen maintained that the current no linear threshold theory of radiation exposure (which asserts that any radiation exposure is harmful) is erroneous. His essay on “How Dangerous is Radiation?” is noteworthy:
http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter5.html.
Read also Atomic Insights’ article on radiation hormesis:
https://atomicinsights.com/radiation-hormesis-a-profound-truth-that-might-induce-a-few-more-converts-to-support-nuclear-energy/.
The bottom line is this: we are exposed to radiation all the time: cosmic radiation, radiation from soil and ricks, radiation from foods like bananas naturally containing radioactive potassium, etc. If radiation were as dangerous as environmentalists assert, then we should all be dead.
I will stop for now. There is so much to say and explain and I have continued for nine pages (and perhaps have bored you to tears if you managed to make it this far). So that’s long enough. I hope that some of this information may be of some small use to you. I however repeat that as a priest you must maintain objectivity and be “agnostic” (dare I use that word?) with regard to energy sources and technical methods of environmental stewardship. But I can personally assure you based on my 40+ years of training and experience that you won’t die from a reactor accident at the nearby nuclear power plants south of the greater metro area or ones north of that area.
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