The United States Federal government passed the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act in 1957. It covers the issue of liability for nuclear accidents and problems for non-military nuclear facilities. Prior to the passage of the act, there was a liability coverage of sixty million dollars per reactor which was considered to be inadequate by the industry.
Fracking has been in the news a lot recently. Basically fracking is the process of injecting fluids into holes drilled into underground zones containing oil and natural gas. The purpose of this procedure is to fracture (hence the name) the rock strata to release the oil or natural gas which is then pumped to the surface. Primitive fracking began in the mid 1800s and was used to extract oil in a number of states.
One of the main problems with the debate over nuclear power has to do with the scope of the debate. There are many different issues in the debate and it can be difficult to understand the connections between them and the trade-offs that may be present.
There is a Latin phrase used in law – cui bono – which translates as “as a benefit to whom.” This is a good question to raise in the debate over using nuclear energy to generate electrical power. Perhaps another Latin phrase would be useful such as “cui malum” or “as an injury to whom.”
Nuclear reactors for power generation have a lifespan. Older reactors were licensed for about thirty years of operation. New reactors may be licensed for up to sixty years. Recently, extensions have been sought for reactors reaching the end of their licensed lifespan. When a power plant reactor reaches the end of its licensed period, original or extended, it has to be shut down, dismantled, and decontaminated. This process is called ‘decommissioning.’
I have posted a number of blog entries about design of nuclear weapons and treaty negotiations to reduce their number. One question that I need to address is what you do with the old weapons when you want to get rid of them. This is referred to as decommissioning. Estimates of the number of nuclear warheads in the world vary but there are tens of thousands. The majority of the warheads are possessed by the United States and Russia with close to ten thousand each.
I have posted a number of blog entries about nuclear weapons held by different countries including estimates of how many each has. The problem with these estimates is that the exact number of nuclear warheads possessed by each nuclear power is a closely held military secret. Nonetheless, I will try to present a good estimate of global totals in this post.
We have come to the last major subject in the concern about nuclear energy. Nuclear waste may be the end of our list but the big problem is that some of it does not end for millions of years. Waste is generated at every stage of nuclear energy as well as nuclear weapons production. There are high level nuclear wastes that will kill with direct exposure and lower level wastes that may lead to poisoning and cancer.
I have covered some of the problems with nuclear weapons, uranium mining and uranium processing in previous posts. Today I am going to briefly list some of the major problems with nuclear reactors used for power generation. This list is not meant to be exhaustive but if there were no other problems with nuclear power, these alone would be enough to justify shutting it down.
Once uranium is mined, it has to be transported and refined for use in nuclear weapons or reactors. As with mining, there are major problems involved in such activities.
