Nuclear Power

Nuclear is one of those industries that sounds vastly different on TV, by people, and in mainstream than what it really is. Many reading this section are going to immediately have different pictures pop into their heads relating nuclear. I will classify them into 3 camps:

1. The anti-nuclear crowd has images of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, and WMDs. They will recite stories of mutations, babies born deformed and other horrific images. Nuclear will be painted as a demonic technology that cannot ever be properly utilised and as a consequence will inevitably cause great harm. Vast caverns filled to capacity with spent fuel will ooze poison taking its toll on Mother Earth. We will call these [insert insult here], Greenpeace, WWF, David Suzuki Foundations, and hordes of other groups that say the same dribble.



2. This is a group of people who really don’t give a darn. They will have images of Homer Simpson, Superheroes, Godzilla, or other creatures that are born of radiation. They will have heard of nuclear accidents and think that nuclear is or is not dangerous, but does give lots of electricity. Feelings either pro or con will be minimal and thus little actual knowledgeable reading or educating will be done. Thus, a "gut feel" type conclusion will be made, yeah or nay.



3. The pro-nuclear crowd will mainly be composed of people who are actually in the industry (engineers, physicists, scientists), have lived near a nuclear power plant, or people who understand the experts. They will look at incidents like Chernobyl and Three Mile Island and learn from the mistakes and further improve the industry. Stories of mutations, superheroes, and Homer Simpson will also be considered humorous while recognizing that such stories are removed from truth and science.

Now, like any good brainwashing of the masses, the only way to de-program the victims is to hit them with some knowledge (and please question me as much as you want, because I can prove you wrong). Please remember I am also simplifying the information into a digestible manner, so no snarky remarks about exact wording. Let us start with Chernobyl.

Chernobyl

What is considered to be the worst commercial nuclear reactor accident has been studied extensively by many organizations, reported on by hundreds of media outlets, and is a great source of horrific stories of mutations and the dangers of nuclear power. What was not provided to the masses in 1986 was the truth, being that:

• The Chernobyl accident in 1986 was the result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with inadequately trained personnel and without proper regard for safety.


• The resulting steam explosion and fire released at least five percent of the radioactive reactor core into the atmosphere and downwind.



• 28 people died within four months from radiation or thermal burns, 19 have subsequently died, and there have been around nine deaths from thyroid cancer apparently due to the accident: total 56 fatalities as of 2004.



• An authoritative UN report in 2000 concluded that there is no scientific evidence of any significant radiation-related health effects to most people exposed. This was confirmed in a very thorough 2005-06 study.

Pages upon pages could be written on this incident, and they have been, so rather than repeat and bore you, I will provide you with the following link, and 2 images of the reactor before and after. Note that Chernobyl had no containment building, which all CANDU reactors have had since the first one ever built.

Now you may be sitting there wondering how can the big bad Chernobyl, the accident which brought fear and despair to the world and especially the nuclear industry and assisted in the fall of the Iron Curtain, have had only 54 deaths. Well it did; the media forgot to mention this fact FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS!! The same UN study mentioned in bullet 4, and provided in the following link, stated that more loss of human life and human suffering was caused by poor diets, poor lifestyle factors (smoking, etc.), poverty, and lack of access to health care than Chernobyl ever will.

Thus, the moral of the story is; the worst nuclear incident in the entire history of mankind, caused by poor reactor design, bad training, without regard for proper safety, killed 54 people. This incident brought the nuclear industry to its knees, and caused countries to abandon nuclear power and resort heavily on Coal. On a side note, in May 2005 a train derailment near Amagasaki, Japan caused at least 100 deaths, but there were no cries from Greenpeace to ban trains and shutdown existing train stations.

Now let us discuss Three Mile Island and what happened, or more importantly did not happen.

Three Mile Island

Three Mile Island is one of the funnier incidents in my mind. While the entire US media and public were demonizing the nuclear industry in 1979, the people that worked in the nuclear industry were giving each other high fives and saying “we partially melted the core, and caused no harm to the public. This proves that our safety systems and designs work”. Of course the media, Greenpeace, and other organizations jumped on this like crack addicts and painted a horrific picture. So instead of boring you again, I will provide you with the following bullets of fact and a link to read more about it:

• In 1979 a cooling malfunction caused part of the core to melt in the # 2 reactor at Three Mile Island in USA. The reactor was destroyed.



• Some radioactive gas was released a couple of days after the accident, but not enough to cause any dose above background levels to local residents.



• There were no injuries or adverse health effects from the accident.

Thus, the moral of the second story is; the second worst nuclear incident in the entire history of mankind, caused by a relief valve failing to close, and operators diagnosing the incident to late due to deficient instrumentation and inadequate emergency response, did nothing but scrap a companies equipment. This incident, due to a movie, "China Syndrome", being released brought the nuclear industry to a halt around the world, especially in the US. What makes it really funny is that actual truth and fiction from the movie began to blur, with more and more fiction entering news coverage. As a result, what all these countries did was turned to coal. I should add that over this past Victoria long weekend, 16 people died in car accidents while no cries for banning long weekends were heard from Greenpeace or other organizations.

Nuclear Bad Reputation or Bad Representation?

So far we have learned that the 2 most severe nuclear accidents in commercial nuclear reactors in the world have killed a total of 54 people over 20+ years. Yet somehow the masses have it engraved in their minds that nuclear is dangerous. So, let us apply this logic to other common things that should be banned:

• Trains, planes, cars, ships, and virtually all modes of transportation,


• Guns, knives, forks, spoons, swords, poles, pitchforks, about anything you can hold in your hand,


• Camp fires, swimming, smoking, drugs (the good kind), and virtually anything that can be inhaled or eaten...

Instead of figuring out everything that should be banned that killed more than 54 people, someone tell me something that was invented by man that has killed less than 54 people, that list will be easier to compile.

Nuclear Moneys

So is it all rose pellets, and singing….no. The single largest barrier to nuclear is Capital Cost. Current estimated from all the major nuclear companies put the cost of reactors at $1000 - $2000 per KW, which translates into $1.5 to $2.0 billion dollars. It should be noted that life cycle costs of nuclear power is the lowest, with coal in second place. Furthermore, the price to generate electricity is the lowest for nuclear. This is why France and Sweden have some of the lowest energy costs in Europe (France 80% nuclear, Sweden 50%). The table below includes in the prices, construction, operations & maintenance, fuel and decommissioning.

Source: International Energy Agency, "Projected Costs of Generating Electricity ", 2005.

As for return on investment, well I’m not privy to that kind of info, but the number that floats around the industry to keep a single reactor down for a day is $1 million. Using that number, a single reactor would make $350 million a year (remove some days for maintenance), and thus payback the initial capital in 5.7 years (assuming no interest). This can be done in various ways, public money, private money or a combination. But ask any investor and that turnaround is not fast enough, especially with something as tricky as nuclear power. In the past it has been public money, but governments are trying to create market environment to allow the private sector to take on this tricky deal. Why is it tricky you ask?

Long Time to Build?

Well of course silly, it is tricky because it takes 10 years to build a nuclear power plant... WRONG. It takes 54 months, at least for AECL on Qinshan Unit 1 in China on December 31, 2002. That is first-concrete to full power. So where does this 10 year number come from? Well it actually takes 10 years due to environmental assessments, town hall meetings, filing paperwork with the government, go to court against Greenpeace or WWF, having to redo the environmental assessment (come to same conclusion), redo town hall meetings, re-file paperwork, have a change in government so NDP or Liberal party who cancels/restarts project, have a union strike, go to court again against Greenpeace because on form 456578903 you forgot to cross the "t", re-file paperwork, have laws changed, etc...

I hope you have gotten the picture by now. Long schedule and high budget for nuclear does not come from the technology, but rather the cumbersome overburdening process that is continually forced by various special interest groups, who then argue that nuclear costs too much and takes too long. So what do countries do? They turn to coal.

How Much Nuclear Can the Grid Handle?

So now that budget and scheduling of nuclear has some truth put to it, I guess the anti-nuke crowd needs a new argument--they may try to argue that you cannot have too much nuclear on the grid because it cannot load follow. This argument is hogwash. France has 80% of its electricity generated from nuclear and it load follows quite well, why pray tell? Well nuclear power can actually generate power in the range of 60% to 100% of capacity, but of course the bean counters want to run at full tilt. Theoretically then, nuclear can economically provide 100% of a country’s power. Nuclear is meant to run full tilt all the time, base load, thus it would be advisable to have supplemental generating sources, like coal or natural gas, for peak demand (on a hot summer day for example). Load levelling can help with this issue, by pushing energy consumption from the day into the night, and thus have a more level energy demand.

This is where things like hydrogen or electrical cars could fit in nicely. Use the excess energy from nuclear at night to produce hydrogen or re-charge electric cars. I will not get too futuristic on you, but I will mention that CANDUs are not only good at producing electricity, but they can also be used for desalination plants (making fresh water from salt water), hydrogen generation, utilising spent fuel from US or French reactor designs, utilising actinides and greenhouse heating (done at Bruce in past) just to name a few.

So now with the anti-nukes are biting their nails, and wondering 'boy what is left to scare people about?', this leads us to nuclear waste, or as the industry likes to call it, "spent fuel" .


Spent Fuel?

Spent fuel is exactly what its name implies. For CANDU reactors the fuel stays in the core for about 1 year, it is the removed through online fuelling, and deposited into the storage bay (large pool), after 10 years they move it to dry storage. To date, in Canada all spent fuel from all CANDUs are kept on site and are continuously monitored. Now that may sound scary, but let me give you 2 images:

1. 40 years of spent fuel generated in all of Canada from 22 CANDU reactors is equivalent in volume as a soccer field pile 6 feet high.


2. The city of Toronto generates an equivalent amount of garbage to Canadian spent fuel is a single day.

Now you might all be thinking of that episode of the Simpsons when Mr. Burns pushed a barrel of radioactive waste into a tree trunk (don’t forget the squirrel with laser eyes). Now that is incredibly inaccurate, because not only does spent fuel not go in barrels, it is also not a liquid. Spent fuel looks exactly the same as fresh fuel, see figure. Every bundle is numbered, tagged, and it's location is known, and continuously monitored.

For some reason this is thought of as being scary, so let me make a comparison between spent nuclear fuel and municipal waste:

• Spent fuel comes in solid metallic bundles, which is eventually stored in concrete leak tight multi-layered containers, and are monitored regularly. Containers don’t corrode or react with the environment, and if they did they would be replaced (remember they are monitored), or


• Municipal garbage is anything and everything you throw into your trash (paint cans, used chemical bottles, batteries, food, metal, etc.) that is brought to a landfill and just dumped. It sits there for a prolonged period of time decomposing and reacting with whatever is around. Heavy metals leech into the ground, along with other chemicals.

One of these we regard as dangerous, the other is perfectly safe common practice. So which one is safe? I’ll leave that up to you to figure out, but I will say this; I would rather live near a spent fuel storage facility then a garbage dump.

I should also mention, that the reason spent nuclear fuel should not called waste is because the it can be reprocessed to produce additional fissionable material which can be extracted and re-used.

Summary

We have all been lead to believe that nuclear power is a big bad scary demonic technology that can only do harm. Thanks to the likes of Greenpeace, WWF, David Suzuki Foundation, and many other special interest groups, and due to their tireless efforts, and war on nuclear for 30 years now, they have accomplished a great feat. This is causing the construction of many dirty coal power plants around the planet that emit large quantities of air pollution. They have systematically blocked, cancelled, and prevented the expansion of nuclear power. They have subsequently caused the industry to superfluously increase safety standards (to a point that some may call ridiculous); blocked, prolonged, and took companies to court over environmental assessments, town hall meetings, and general paperwork; all which of unnecessarily add to capital costs.

Nuclear power is safe, clean, and generates cheap constant electricity. It is essentially the exact opposite of what the current mainstream public thinks about it. There are many other added benefits, and of course the above could be expanded upon greatly, which I will leave to next time, otherwise I won't have an excuse to come back and write in Kent’s Blog.

Up and Atom,
Laszlo Zsidai