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.

              The debate has to start with the need for electricity. The increasing population of the world and the increasing industrialization of the developing world demands more electrical power for consumer and industrial purposes. There are a number of different ways to generate electrical power. Coal, oil, natural gas, biomass and nuclear energy can all be used to heat water to turn steam turbines. Water and wind can turn turbines. Solar energy can be captured and converted to electricity. Fuel cells can convert hydrogen and other fuels to electricity. There are devices that can convert heat directly to electricity. This wide diversity of sources complicates any discussion of electric generation.

              Because of the many different ways to generate electricity, comparing the cost of any one type of generation to any other type can be very difficult. Some methods require a fuel that must be extracted from the earth but even these types vary greatly in extraction processes. Some fuels must be refined which can be expensive and polluting. Some are renewable but cannot generate power consistently. Some types of generation can be done locally with small infrastructure investment and some require enormous investment to create a centralized generation facility. Some methods generate pollution as a side effect and some create waste that threatens the ecosystem and must be dealt with properly to prevent harm.

             Some sources of energy also have other uses benign and hostile. The petrochemicals used to create fuels are also used as chemical feed stocks and weapons. The radioactive materials created in nuclear reactors have wide uses in industry and medicine but can also be used for weapons.

              When comparing the pros and cons of any source of electrical energy, there are a number of different dimension that can be part of the discussion but any particular type of electricity generation may not even appear on a dimension that is important for the other type being compared. For instance, fuel and waste are not relevant to renewable such as wind and solar but are very important for petrochemicals and nuclear power.

              When different groups with different agendas and priorities are discussing power  generation, they may difficulty even agreeing on what is important in the debate. Environmental  groups will focus on threats to the ecosystem while industrial groups will focus profits and governments will focus on stability and availability.

             It would be great to have a simple scale that would allow you to assign a rating to any given power source so they could all be compared and an informed choice could be made as to which was the “best.” Instead, we have a messy set of dimensions of varying relevance which makes comparison and selection extremely difficult. Nuclear energy may have high positive ratings on some indexes and high negative ratings on other indexes. And, the different interest groups emphasize different dimensions as being important. Nonetheless, it is necessary to do the best we can to compare the pros and cons of different energy generation methods and make the best choice we can.

              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.”

           Who benefits from nuclear power generation? Obviously the people who need electricity would be a quick response. But digging a bit deeper, it is obvious that there is a thriving industry supplying uranium fuel, reactors, waste handling, etc. to nuclear power plant. The companies who own the plants also benefit from the profits made selling electricity.

           Digging deeper still, we find that there are many politicians who benefit from the money fed to their campaigns by the nuclear power industry. These paid for politicians work hard to insure that licenses will be granted for nuclear reactors, regulations will be minimal with poor inspection and enforcement, violations will be met with minimal or no punishment and taxpayers will pick up most of the tab for cleaning up after any accidents that may occur.

           And, finally, governments who are interested in developing and maintaining arsenals of nuclear weapons find it convenient to spread the cost of nuclear weapons development to nuclear power generation and, sometimes, to hide the intent of nuclear weapons programs behind the claim that their nuclear facilities are only intended for the development of peaceful nuclear power.

           Who is injured by nuclear power generation? The people who are exposed to radioactivity that may impact their health is an obvious answer. First in the chain are the indigenous peoples of remote areas of the world where uranium is being mined. They are often exposed to radiation without being educated in the dangers. They are left with a polluted toxic landscape.

            The workers in the uranium refining and fuel production facilities are often poorly trained and work without proper equipment and safeguards. The people who manage the nuclear power plants also have the same problems with poor training, poor equipment and poor oversight. And, at the end of the fuel life cycle, the transport, storage and disposal of nuclear waste can expose the workers and the people in the area to radiation. Without proper long term disposal of waste, people in the future may be exposed to radiation.

            If there is a major accident with release of radioactive materials, ocean and atmospheric currents can carry the radiation around the world, exposing people thousands of miles from the site of the accident to dangerous radiation. Billions of dollars will need to be spent on cleanup from a major accident and much of it will come from the taxpayers. Large areas may be rendered uninhabitable because of a major accident. In the future, the plants and animals may return and people may not know that a particular area is dangerous because of an ancient nuclear accident.

           There are winners and losers in the use of nuclear energy to generate electricity. It would appear that the winners are primarily businesses, politicians and governments while the losers may include just about everyone else on earth in the present and in the future.

             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.’

          Decommissioning is a very complex task. When a nuclear power plant has been successfully decommissioned, the plant has been totally dismantled, any radioactive materials have been cleaned up and there is no longer a risk of exposure to radioactivity. At this point, the site of the plant is no longer under regulatory control and the organization that licensed the plant is no longer responsible for the safety of the site.

          The International Atomic Energy Agency has defined three different ways in which a nuclear power plant may be decommissioned. In all cases, a license must be sought that includes an assessment of possible environmental damage that may be caused by the decommissioning.

           The first option is called ‘immediate dismantling’ or ‘early site release/decon’ in the United States. This process starts within months or a few years of end of operation of the nuclear power plant and is accomplished within a few years. When the facility has been decommissioned, regulation ends and the site is available for other uses.

           The second option is called ‘safe enclosure’ or ‘safestore.’ This process starts with the shutdown of the plant and preparation of the site for storage. The regulatory controls are not removed for around fifty years until the reactor is dismantled and the site decontaminated.

            The third option is called ‘entombment.’ This process prepared the reactor and site to retain some of the radioactive materials and contamination indefinitely. The radioactive material is compacted into as small an area as possible and the building a concrete shell around that area that will permanently prevent the release of radioactivity.

            A number of reactors have been decommissioned in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia and Russia. Decommissioning is very expensive. There are companies that specialize in decommissioning and they are making a very tidy profit. It is also a long drawn out process accomplished in stages that may last for up to fifty years. A low estimate for decommissioning a nuclear power plant is in the range of two hundred million dollars with a high estimate of up to a billion dollars. Individual plant decommissioning projects have experienced huge cost overruns and incompetent oversight and execution.

           There are decommissioning funds that are supposed to be maintained for the decommissioning of particular plants. The problem with these funds is that they may be insufficient for the projected cost or may be being spent on other projects. The U.S. NRC have demanded that eighteen nuclear power plants deal with problems in their decommissioning fund. A potential major problem with the decommission of nuclear power plants is what would happen if a company that owns an operating goes bankrupt and disappears and there is no decommissioning fund available. In this case, the citizens of the country where the plant is located would be on the hook for decommissioning costs. With some countries in the world on the verge of bankruptcy themselves, there is a very real possibility of a orphan nuclear power plant that would not be decommissioned properly and could pose a public health danger for centuries.

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. In response to a number of treaty negotiations through the years, some U.S. and Russian warheads have already been dismantled and many more are slated for disposal.

            In order to decommission a nuclear warhead, it has to be dismantled. This does require the proper facilities and trained technicians for handling radioactive materials but such facilities and technicians are available. The biggest problem in disposal involves the disposition of the plutonium core that is the heart of the warhead. If we dismantled all the warheads in the world, there would be tens of thousands of these highly radioactive plutonium cores to get rid of.

            One possibility would be to send these plutonium cores to facilities such as Russia’s Mayak Chemical Combine, Frances La Hague or England’s Sellafield for reprocessing. The goal would be to convert the plutonium into a nuclear fuel call MOX or mixed oxide for nuclear reactors. There would, of course still be useless nuclear waste produced by the reprocessing. There have been problems in the past with leaks from these reprocessing facilities where waste has been dumped into public waterways. Sellafield is currently under attack for just such problems. The problem with MOX fuel is that plutonium is much more toxic and dangerous than the uranium used for fuel. If there is an accident that disperses plutonium into the environment, it poses a much greater health and environmental hazard than uranium fuel

            . A recent U.S. Government report stated that it would take decades to set up a proper reprocessing facility to recycle warheads and spent fuel into new reactor fuel in the United States and there does not seem to be an interest in doing it. Having the reprocessing done abroad in other countries would require the transport of the cores exposing them to accidents and possible terrorist seizure. So it would appear that the U.S. will have to bury the dismantled warheads. We do not have a permanent storage facility yet and it will be decades at best before we have one. Therefore, plutonium from dismantled warheads will have to be stored in temporary facilities with all the attendant problems.

            Part of the problem of disposal is the argument over the funding for the dismantling program in the United States. Given that an estimate for dismantling all our nuclear weapons runs around seven billion dollars a year for ten years, it seems rather silly to fight about it when that would amount to around 1 % of the annual Pentagon budget. In addition, the U.S. has been assisting the Russians in the dismantling of their nuclear warheads and there is a fight about the funding for that program. I would think that this expenditure is definitely relevant to national security.

           The world will be a safer place when nuclear weapons have been eliminated but there are a variety of logistical, technical, safety, political, and economic problems that will impede the elimination of all nuclear weapons worldwide. Still, it is a very important goal for the safety and wellbeing of the human race.

Dismantling a U.S. W56 warhead:

           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.

           The world inventory of operational strategic nuclear weapons such as intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach any spot on the globe in minutes is currently around 4000 warheads. About half of these are on high alert, ready for use at any time on short notice. These have been the main focus of arms reduction talks. The U.S. and Russia are dismantling strategic warheads but the Chinese are manufacturing more and deploying new delivery vehicles.

           Nonstrategic nuclear weapons are shorter range delivery vehicles for smaller nuclear warheads such as artillery; short-, medium-, and long-range ballistic missiles; cruise missiles; and gravity bombs. It is estimated that there are about two hundred such warheads that are operational. They have been deployed in Europe by the United States. Russia no operational warheads deployed but has several thousand retired warheads awaiting disassembly.

           In the category of Reserve/nondeployed combines both strategic and non strategic weapons are being held in reserve or being overhauled. There are about six thousand of these warheads around the world.

           Military stockpiles of warheads in storage, some of which are awaiting decommissioning, contain around ten thousand warheads.

           In addition to the number of warheads in the United States – around eight thousand, there are fifteen thousand plutonium cores stored at the Pantex Plant in Texas and the Y-12 Plant in Tennessee. In Russia, there are around eight thousand five hundred warheads with several thousand warheads awaiting disassembly.

           So the estimated global inventory of all nuclear warheads of all type is around twenty thousand as of December 3012. These numbers are compiled by the Federation of American Scientists from the Nuclear Yearbook of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, the appendix of the SIPRI Yearbook and the FAS Strategic Security Blog. The best estimates are for the United States and the worst estimates are for North Korea with the rest of the nuclear nations, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Israel, Pakistan and India somewhere in between.

            Despite reduction of nuclear arsenals from Cold War levels, all the nuclear states seem to be committed to updating their warheads and delivery systems. None seem to be inclined to consider the elimination of their nuclear military capability. International tensions wax and wane. Some countries that were enemies are now allies. But it is still assumed that the possession of nuclear weapons is a strong deterrent to attack from an enemy.

Graphic from nucleardarkness.org. Visit their website to find out how you can contribute to reducing the prospect of nuclear war.

              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. The half life of the radioactive isotopes in nuclear waste can vary from hours to more than a million years with some types of wastes being dangerous for hundreds of thousands or millions of years. It is estimated that there are currently around 250,000 tons of nuclear waste around the world.

             First, there is the problem of the waste tailings left after uranium has been removed for processing.  This waste product is almost as radioactive as the uranium that has been removed. We have already mentioned this under uranium mining. If not properly dealt with it can pollute the air, water and soil posing a threat to human and animal health.

             Processing separates isotopes in order to create a higher ratio around twenty percent of the highly radioactive U-235 to the U-238 which constitutes most of the naturally occurring uranium. This enrichment process produces U-238 as waste which is radioactive and must be disposed of properly.  Nuclear weapons production has to raise the ratio of U-235 to U-238 as high as ninety percent which produces a great deal of waste U-238.

             After the nuclear fuel rods are depleted, they are removed from the reactors and temporarily stored in the spent fuel pool at the reactor. These pools are often outside the containment vessel and more vulnerable to accidents or terrorists. If the coolant in these pools drops below the level of the rods, they can burst into flame spontaneously spewing radioactive particulates into the atmosphere.

            The spent fuel pools in the United States are going to be full in five years. The intent was to have a permanent nuclear waste disposal site built to take spent fuel rods by 1999. Since the cancellation of the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Repository, there is not even a plan for a U.S. waste repository. The fuel rods will have to be stored onsite or offsite in temporary storage casks. These should be safe storage for decades but may still be threatened by accidents or terrorists.

            Most plans for permanent waste disposal focus on digging a deep hole or using an existing hole like a mine. Searches go on for extremely stable geological formation with little movement of groundwater and no fault lines that may cause earthquakes. There are ten waste depositories around the world.  Yucca Mountain in the U.S. turned out not to be so safe after reconsideration. Germany had to shut down a waste depository because there was unexpected leach of waste products by groundwater. If a waste depository is opened, then nuclear waste must be transported by truck, rail and/or ship which will increase the risk of accidents that will spill radioactive materials into the environment.

           Other methods have been suggested for disposing of waste such are processing in reactors, shooting into space, drilling extremely deep wells and other schemes. All of these ideas are untried and will be expensive and difficult to test and verify.

           Nuclear waste is a threat to humanity and a good reason to end the use of nuclear energy for power.

            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.

            Many minor accidents with a variety of causes have plagued the nuclear power industry. Though low in probability major nuclear accidents do happen and can threaten the health of millions and large areas of the natural environment. Chernobyl and Fukushima are dramatic examples of what can happen.

            Calculations of the cost of nuclear power often don’t include the governmental subsidies, the wildly fluctuating cost of uranium, environmental degradation, the health costs of accidents, the problem of nuclear waste and the cost of decommissioning nuclear power plants. When everything is taken into account, nuclear power is not cheaper than renewable alternative energy which don’t have the dangers.

            When mining, processing, transport, construction, waste handling and decommissioning are taken into account; nuclear power is not as beneficial to reducing carbon dioxide emissions as has been advertised.

            Huge amounts of water are needed to cool nuclear power plants. Some of the rivers that supply water to cool power plants have insufficient flows to allow plants to operate at peak power all the time and the situation will just get worst. Recently the rising temperature of the ocean due to global warming caused the shutdown of a nuclear power plant that drew cooling water from the ocean.

            The big corporations that run the nuclear power plants are often guilty of incompetence or callous disregard in following proper procedures in the construction of power plants, their regular and safe operation and response to emergencies.

            Government agencies that are supposed to inspect and regulate nuclear power plants and to punish infractions by plant operators are often guilty of incompetence or even deliberately ignoring infractions and handing out light punishment when infractions are recognized.

            The spent fuel pools of nuclear reactors are filling up with spent fuel rods and, without permanent nuclear waste disposal facilities, when these pools are full, reactors will have to be shut down until sufficient temporary storage can be constructed.

            Most of the currently operating reactors are approaching the end of their intended lifespan. Either they will have to be shut down, decommissioned and replaced with new reactors with all the attendant costs and problems or they will have to be relicensed and continue to operate as they age and deteriorate, increasing the danger of a major accident.

           Because the construction and operation of new reactors has been slowing in recent decades, interested in jobs in the industry has been declining as well. There is a shortage of nuclear engineers in the world today to replace the current aging operators at nuclear power plants.

            One of the problems that does not get enough attention is the fact that the nuclear industry is complex and global. Uranium is mined in one country and processed in another country. Reactors are constructed by global companies that source their parts from different countries. Waste may be moved to different countries for processing or disposal. As countries drop the use of nuclear power and companies rethink whether they want to stay in the business of supplying reactors and reactor components, the construction of new reactors and the fueling and maintenance of reactors will become more expensive and meet growing public resistance. One of two more major accidents could seriously impact the global nuclear industry and make further use of nuclear power much more difficult and expensive if not impossible.

            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.

           Once uranium is leached from crushed ore, it is precipitated from solution and washed to produce a coarse powder which is around 80% uranium oxide. The powder has a strong order and cannot be dissolved in water. Although this powder is referred to as ‘yellow cake’ because of early ore extraction techniques, today most of the ‘yellow cake’ is brown or black.

            The yellow cake is transported in sealed containers via rail or truck to plants where uranium fuel rods are manufactured. If the seal is maintained, the main dangers are from dust escaping from loading and unloading the containers. However, if there is a train derailment or a truck accident, a container could be broken open, spilling yellow cake out into the environment where wind and water could carry it away from the location of the accident.

         When the yellow cake reaches the purification facility, it is smelted into uranium metal which is then combined with fluorine and subjected to isotopic separation where the level of highly radioactive U-235 is increased. Twenty percent U-235 is use to create uranium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods while highly enriched uranium with more than ninety percent U-235 is use to create nuclear weapons.

           As with any complex industrial process, there is the potential for a number of problems. If the staff is not well trained and conscientious, such incompetence may lead to exposure of workers to radioactive materials or release of such materials into the environment.  The company operating the facility may not be conscientious in providing properly functioning equipment and enforcing rigorous safety standards. And, finally, the government agencies tasked with overseeing uranium enrichment may fail to inspect and hold enrichment facilities responsible for breaches in following regulatory guidelines..

          If the dangerous materials such as yellow cake or any of the products of intermediate stages of uranium enrichment as well as the finished fuel pellets and rods are not properly handled because of any of the problems mentioned above, workers can be exposed to radiation and radioactive materials may escape into the environment.

          Highly toxic chemicals are used in enrichment such as fluorine gas. Fluorine bursts into flame when it comes into contact with ammonia, ceramics, copper wire and many organic and inorganic compounds. It changes to hydrofluoric acid when it comes in contact with moisture. It is highly damaging to the tissue of the respiratory tract. The gas formed when uranium interacts with fluorine is even more dangerous because it contains a heavy metal and is radioactive. Fluorine and uranium hexafluoride gas would be a serious health hazard if released into the environment.

         Individual enrichment facilities around the world have been criticized for one or more of the above problems prompting protests aimed and redressing the problem and/or closing the facility.

             I have covered uranium mining in previous posts and mentioned some of the protests and resistance actions against it. In this post, I am going to recap some of the issues with uranium mining.

              The best deposits of uranium ore have only one percent uranium so a huge amount of ore must be mined in order to obtain a small amount of uranium. In the U.S., with a quarter of a percent uranium ore, a ton of ore needs to be dug up in order to get five pounds of uranium. If the mine is the open-pit variety, it is usually necessary to remove a surface layer to get to the uranium ore. The ore that is left after the uranium is removed is almost as radioactive as the uranium and should be isolated from the environment for hundreds of thousands of years in order not to be a health hazard.

              Mining produces vast amounts of radioactive dust, much of which escapes the mining site, especially in open pit mines, and pollutes the environment. Mine workers are exposed to the dust even with protective clothing and dust masks.

              Uranium decays in a complex process that goes through fourteen stages before it finally become non-radioactive lead. Radon gas is produced in during one of the decay steps and enters the atmosphere where it can travel for miles. Miners need to wear special gas masks in order to be protected from the radon gas.

              One of the extraction processes is call leaching where the ore is piled in a trench and caustic toxic chemicals are poured over the ore. The uranium is leached from the ore and accumulated at the bottom of the trench. However, some of the leaching solution often escapes into the environment pollutes the soil, ground water and/or surface water. The fumes create air pollutions.

              In another extraction process, the ore is finely ground to extract the uranium. Radioactive dust from the grinding process can escape and pollute air, water and soil near the extraction plants.

              Uranium and other elements that are found in the ore are heavy metals. Even if not radioactive, these heavy metals escape into the environment and pollute the soil and water, posing a severe health hazard to humans, plants and animals.

              Uranium mining is a very dirty process that pollutes the environment near the mine with radioactive dust, radon gas, heavy metal and toxic chemicals. There is really no efficient way to remove the pollution of uranium mining from the air, water and soil around the mine. The mines render the areas around them dangerous and useless for any other purpose. Over time, the pollution from a mine spreads beyond the local area over a much wider area.

             When the cost of nuclear power is advertised by the nuclear industry, I don’t believe that they are including the environmental degradation and the health hazards from the mining of uranium.

Ranger Uranium Mine in Australia:

              I have done a whole series of posts on nuclear weapons but I have neglected one type that I mentioned in a recent post; the neutron bomb. One of the problems that I covered in that post was that nuclear weapons are so incredibly destructive that they destroy infrastructure in cities such as factories and equipment that might be useful to the attacker. The neutron bomb was dreamed up to help deal with this problem. The basic idea is to explode a nuclear device in the atmosphere that will not destroy all the buildings and equipment but that will create a sleet of neutrons that will kill all the people and animals in the area.

             The neutron bomb was designed in 1958 at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and tested underground in Nevada in 1963. The neutron bomb is also called the Enhanced Radiation Weapons (ERW). It is based on a hydrogen bomb that is designed to generate much higher levels of lethal radiation than conventional hydrogen bombs. The fast neutrons from such bombs could penetrate heavy shielding and cause maximum casualties. Although there is still a powerful destructive atomic explosion from such a bomb, its main use is for killing people.

              In an ordinary hydrogen bomb, the casing is made from uranium or lead in order to absorb a great deal of the neutrons generated by the explosion. In a neutron bomb, the casing is made from chromium or nickel which do not absorb the fast neutrons generated. Around an ounce of tritium is also used in making neutron bombs. Neutron bombs release about fifty percent of their energy in a burst of radiation as compared to a five percent radiation release from a fission bomb of the same kiloton or megaton yield. The energy of the neutrons released by a neutron is about ten times that of the neutrons released by an equivalent fission bomb.

             Neutron bombs were originally developed as tactical weapons. The United States feared a massive Soviet invasion of Europe and felt that neutron bombs could be usefully deployed on the battle field against the troops, tanks and other armored vehicles of a Soviet invasion without doing as much damage to the infrastructure of the invaded countries. Their destructive potential would be a deterrent against the Soviets who would be able to roll over conventional defending forces. The heat from the blast of a 1 kiloton neutron bomb would kill unshielded human beings out to about 1600 feet. Unprotected people would die in days from the radiation out to about 3000 feet and half the people within a 4500 foot radius would die within weeks. If a 1 kiloton bomb was exploded more than 1600 feet above the ground, infrastructure damage would be minimize while people would die in an approximately 4000 foot radius under the blast.

            Neutron bombs were slated for deployment in Europe during the late 1970s. After a halt in development caused by protests, development was resumed under President Reagan. There was a brief deployment of a neutron warhead for the Sprint anti-missile system in 1975. Neutron warheads were also developed for short range tactical missiles and for artillery shells. President George H.W. Bush cancelled the neutron bomb program in 1992 but it took until 2003 for all the neutron warheads to be disassembled.

            Neutron bombs are no longer considered to be more effective against tanks that any other explosive because modern tanks are heavily shielded and would not be affected by the radiation of a neutron bomb alone.