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Rickover. In 1973, Heronemus testified before
a nuclear licensing hearing that it would cost
roughly $2,400 per kW to build one of the
U. S. Navy's nuclear reactors, compared with
$400 per kW for the commercial plant that
was under review. (Note that at present,
capital costs for commercial reactors are closer
to the $2,400 figure.) Heronemus also testified
that he would have refused to approve the
wiring and piping for the Navy that had been
accepted and incorporated in the commercial
nuclear facility.
Advanced Reactor Considerations
According to Dr. Charles E. Till, a nuclear
physicist at the Argonne National Laboratory
(Illinois), a new generation of nuclear fission
reactor, referred to as an "Integral Fast
Reactor," has been under development by the
U.S. Department of Energy for several years.
This new liquid sodium-cooled reactor
configuration is expected to be safer,
minimize corrosion and be more efficient (i.e.,
it should be able to use 15 to 20 percent of the
uranium fuel instead of the 1 to 2 percent
with current reactors), and generate less
radioactive wastes than the existing
generation of light-water reactors in use in
the U.S.
In addition, according to Jerry Griffith, an
associate deputy assistant secretary for
reactor systems development for the DOE, the
Integral Fast Reactor is considered especially
crucial to the future of nuclear power because
it is the best technology for breeding
plutonium. As the world's uranium reserves
become scarce, plutonium will be needed as a
substitute nuclear fuel.
Thus, the Integral Fast Reactor is the key
to nuclear future and a "plutonium economy."
However, there are three primary concerns
with the advanced Integral Fast Reactor
1. Nuclear physicists have had a
relatively poor track record in predicting
the engineering outcome of many
theoretical calculations, and thus far,
not even a prototype of the Integral
Fast Reactor has been tested.
2. Liquid sodium is an extremely volatile
substance that will burst into flames if it
comes into contact with either air or
water. Two liquid sodium-cooled U.S.
prototype nuclear breeder plants were
totally destroyed by liquid sodium fires.
3. Plutonium is an exceedingly difficult
and dangerous material to handle. It is
one of the most toxic elements known.
Plutonium is 35,000 times more lethal
than cyanide poison by weight.
There is an equivalent of 20 million
mortal doses in only 5 grams of
plutonium, which is the weight of a
5-cent coin, and it will remain
dangerous for hundreds of thousands
of years.
This long-term toxicity of plutonium,
in and of itself, creates significant moral
and ethical questions about producing
such long-lived toxic substances that
are invisible to human senses.
It is important to realize that in order to
produce enough energy to displace fossil fuel
resources, which now account for roughly 90
percent of the industrial world's energy
supply, immense quantities of plutonium
would have to be created. And given the
extremely poor track-record of containing or
properly disposing of the plutonium and
other radioactive wastes that have already
been created, the construction of the
thousands of plutonium-fueled reactors that
would be necessary for the "plutonium
economy" to be viable would hardly seem to
be an acceptable alternative. These serious
problems underscore the importance of
evaluating the renewable energy options that
do not pose such long-term unknown
environmental and economic risks.
Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear fusion reactors, in contrast to
nuclear fission reactors, do not split uranium
atoms. Rather, they are intended to fuse
hydrogen atoms in a process similar to that
which occurs in the Sun and other stars.
Although fusion physics is a common
occurrence in stars, it is well to remember that
no biological organisms are able to live in
such high-temperature environments. Billions
of dollars have already been spent on this
highest of high-tech energy technologies,
which has been under development for
decades by governments in the U.S., Japan,
France, Germany, the Soviet Union, and other
European countries. However, it has been as a
result of this research that at least some fusion
reactor advocates are now questioning
whether such high-temperature (over 100
million degrees F) fusion energy systems will
ever play any role in energy production
during the next 50 to 100 years.
According to a recent nuclear fusion
update article by John Horgan published in
Scientific American, the initial hopes of
having small, safe high-temperature fusion
reactors burning cheap, abundant fuel have
all but disappeared. It is now estimated that
exotic and expensive fuels will be required,
they will produce significant quantities of
radioactive waste, and even the smallest
fusion reactor would be comparable in size
and complexity to the largest of today's
fission reactors. Such high-temperature fusion
technologies face staggering technical
problems, and billions of additional dollars
will be needed just to build a prototype. Even
if the prototype plant works from a technical
perspective, the really important question is
whether nuclear fusion systems will ever be
cost effective. As such, it would be irrational
to predicate a nation's energy policy on such
high-risk technologies.
Nuclear Economics
The true cost of nuclear power has been
confused by the quasi-public nature of the
research and development. U.S. taxpayers are
financially responsible for the "back-end" of
the nuclear fuel cycle, which includes
covering any costs not met by the utility for
waste disposal and decommissioning. Billions
of taxpayers dollars have also been spent for
the "front-end" of nuclear research and
developm ent. These costs are not included in
most nuclear cost totals. They include the
construction and operation of the three U.S.
uranium fuel enrichment facilities, that are at
present shut down due to the extensive
problems with respect to radiation spreading.
When all three of these enrichment facilities
were operating at full capacity, their electrical
requirements were actually about the same as
those used by the entire country of Australia.
Other excluded costs include Federal
regulation, long-term waste disposal, and the
numerous health costs that are associated
with people being exposed to radiation.
To comprehend the nuclear issue, it is
necessary to put time in perspective. If toxic
wastes, which will be deadly for 200,000 to
500,000 years, are generated, is it possible for
anyone to comprehend the actual
environmental or economic costs? The very
first civilized groups of people in the Middle
East appeared only about 8,000 to 10,000
years ago. How is it, then, that one generation
could, or should, assume the right to create
insidious radioactive hazards that will remain
deadly for hundreds of thousands of years?
How is it that we have allowed ourselves to
do such things that cannot be comprehended
or calculated in terms of cost or human death
and disease?
The nuclear and other toxic waste
problems are global in nature and have
clearly transcended the capitalist or
communist ideologies, as both political
systems have developed nuclear technologies.
It is interesting to note that both the U.S. and
the Soviet Union ~ as well as most other
countries - have up to now shown a complete
disregard for the "human rights" of future
generations. It seems difficult to imagine how
so many "civilized" nations could have
allowed the production of such deadly and
long-lived radioactive wastes to occur. Even
more difficult to understand is how the
citizens in the same countries can silently let
the production of such long-lived toxic wastes
continue. If the ovens of the prison camps in
Nazi Germany are now viewed as a moral
outrage, one can only wonder how future
generations will view the actions of the
present generation.
Never before has the human community
been faced with such an awesome array of
problems, and unlike most other
environmental problems, acceptable solutions
for the disposal of radioactive wastes are as
yet unknown. This hard reality is
underscored by the fact that after more than
30 years of concentrated effort by a wide-
range of distinguished scientists from around
the world, no one has yet demonstrated a
solution to the radioactive waste problem.
Indeed, a study done by the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory of the California Institute of
Technology for the President's Office of
Science and Technology Policy concluded the
following:
"The problems of high-level nuclear ivaste
management are so complex and have
so many ramifications that no one person
or group of persons can possibly have all
the answers. The results of this study
indicate that the U.S. program fo r high-
level ivaste management has significant
gaps and inconsistencies."
As a result, it would seem that far from
solving the diminishing fossil fuel problem,
the nuclear power industry has only
succeeded in creating a whole new range of
technical and long-term environmental
problems that will be inherited by our
children and their children for thousands of
generations into the future. This unfortunate
reality brings to mind the observation that
Albert Einstein made about nuclear
technology:
"The splitting of the atom has changed
everything save our modes of thinking,
and thus we drift toward unparalleled
disaster. ”
Dr. Barry Commoner made a similar
observation in his book, The Closing Circle:
"O ur experience with nuclear power tells
they are being touted as the logical solution to
the problems created by burning fossil fuels.
But nuclear fission technologies generate
staggering environmental problems of their
own that revolve around the radioactive
wastes that have thus far proven to be
unmanageable. Moreover, if nuclear power
plants were to effectively replace the burning
of fossil fuels, literally thousands of nuclear
reactors would have to be built at a cost of
trillions of dollars. In addition, since the
existing uranium reserves will barely be able
to keep the 109 existing reactors in the U.S.
operating beyond the year 2000, a whole new
type of untested breeder nuclear technology
would have to be rapidly developed. For all
of these reasons, if nuclear systems were the
only energy alternatives to the burning of
fossil fuels, there would be little reason to be
optimistic about the future of the human
community.
Fortunately, there are several viable
renewable solar-hydrogen technologies that
are capable of displacing the use of both fossil
and nuclear fueled energy systems. While the
political aspects of re-oidering national
priorities are very real, most elected officials
determine their issue priorities by finding out
what the majority of their constituents think
is important. Although elected officials are
often criticized for tailoring their views to the
whims of public opinion, they do have a
responsibility to be aware of how the majority
of the people they represent feel about issues.
This essentially means it is necessary for the
majority of voting citizens to be informed.
Harry Braun
Editor, Hydrogen Magazine
Excerpt from "The Phoenix Project"
Publishers Press.
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us that modem technology has achieved
a scale and intensity that begins to match
that of the global system in which we live.
We cannot wield this power without
deeply intruding on the delicate
environmental fabric that supports us.
It warns us that our capability to intrude
on the environment far outstrips our
knowledge of the consequences . "
Placing such an ominous issue as
radioactivity into an evolutionary perspective
is not easy. Kenneth and David Brower have
expressed it as well as anyone in an article,
"Miracle Earth" that was published in Omni
magazine. In their article, they point out that
when a beta particle, (a high-speed electron
emitted from the nucleus of a radioactive
atom) strikes living tissue, "it rips negatively
charged electrons from the tissue's atoms,
leaving positively charged ions in its wake."
These liberated electrons in turn ionize other
atoms in a cascading effect which tears apart
tens of thousands of highly ordered biological
molecules that serve as the structure of living
cells. "This passage of such a particle leaves
the city of the cell in ruins. Alpha, gamma,
and X-rays all have this effect on biological
molecules. Their entry hole is small, but their
exit hole is spectacular."
Conclusions
Because fossil fuels are nonrenewable and
are being exponentially consumed, they will
be unable to sustain an expanding global
industrial economy. Even if the fossil fuels
were inexhaustible, however, their
unacceptable environmental impact would
still dictate that alternative energy
technologies and resources be developed.
Because nuclear energy systems do not
produce greenhouse gases or acid deposition,
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