Thoughts about nuclear and alternate energy

From John Hill - Climate Change Action Yahoo Group.


A few things I thought I might list here which the nuclear industry often conveniently ignore:

1. We need to be cutting consumption - not predicating constant increases in use of electricity. There are many ways to do this with present technology and resources and there will, undoubtedly, be more in the future. One very simple step is to get rid of incandescent globes altogether and replace them with the new fluorescent ones which use only about 25% as much electricity. One report I saw in New Scientist magazine said that if all the incandescent globes in the U.S. were changed to fluorescents they wouldn't need a new power station until 2025. That's a pretty good start!
   
   Among many other ways to save electricity may be included these new "laser" colour screens you mention which are said to only need about 25% of the power needed to run a LCD screen and will cost about half the price (and less energy) to manufacture.
   
   
2. Nuclear power plants indirectly produce quite a lot of greenhouse gas emissions - in the processing, transport of fuel, construction, etc. Not as much as oil or coal fired plants, admittedly, but far more than solar, geothermal, biomass, wave and tidal-powered plants.
   
   
3. Nuclear plants destroy forever (in human terms) the land they are placed on. This land is usually prime land beside rivers as they need the water for cooling (and we have very few river banks left in Australia that are suitable and available). Moreover, almost all nuclear plants (and mines) experience some toxic and/or radioactive leaks which end up in our very precious and rapidly diminishing water tables. Additionally the plants heat the water in the rivers which supply them which has led to great biological disturbances downstream in many places.
   
   After the plants have to be decommissioned (usually within 30 years of building them) the land they were sited on is too radioactive to use for much else without prohibitively expensive cleanup regimes - often running into billions of dollars (a cost that is not usually included in the cost of producing the electricity by the nuclear industry)
   
   
4. One of the subjects that is rarely discussed is that nuclear power is hugely expensive and is only made viable by large government subsidies which can take several forms aside from the usual direct financial support, land grants, and tax breaks - e.g.. not including the clean-up costs after decommissioning, allowing companies to put the disposal of wastes on hold indefinitely ("more research needs to be done") - often in very dicey "temporary" containers such as 44 gallon drums, guaranteeing sales of so much electricity per year, and - very commonly - because "peaceful" nuclear reactors give governments the ability to develop nuclear weapons in a hurry if they want to at a future date ("leaving the options open") and thus they are keen to have "peaceful" nuclear facilities.
   
   
5. Peak power demand is usually during weekdays during summer, with a big drop-off at night and on weekends. Nuclear power plants are not good at being able to cope with these rapid spikes and lows in demand (see article below) and so, to be on the safe side, are usually kept up and running at more than needed capacity. This tends to eliminate other forms of electricity generation as there is no point having other forms if one needs to produce more than the full amount needed in nuclear plants. Therefore, once begun, the nuclear energy industry has a stranglehold on power generation and this limits new advances and experiments. Hydroelectric, geothermal and gas-fired plants are much more responsive to variabilities of demand than nuclear.
   
   
6. Because peak demand is usually in the day time and in the summer it makes a very good case for at least a significant mix of solar-generated power.
   
   
7. See the article below, which shows that wind is likely to produce far more electricity in the medium term than projections for nuclear production and has no problems with radioactive pollution, making deadly terrorist targets, there is little need for mining (except to produce the original equipment), the danger of damage from natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tidal waves, etc. - there are plans to put more and more nuclear reactors in places like Japan and Indonesia and along the San Andreas fault in North America - some of the geologically most active areas in the world.
   
   Also, we can see in the cases of countries like North Korea, Israel, Pakistan and Iran (just to name the most obvious) - having nuclear power leads to obtaining nuclear weapons and this is very dangerous if you have unstable governments (and which countries can we be sure will have stable, sensible governments in 10 or 20 years?) It seems to me it is just a matter of time before one of these factors will cause a really massive disaster.
   
   
8. I should mention that selling uranium for "peaceful purposes" is really an unbelievable goal that is impossible to police. India proved this long ago when they used a Canadian-supplied nuclear power plant and Canadian uranium to make their first atomic bombs and were able to use this knowledge to go on to build bigger and more sophisticated ones themselves. (I remember the Canadian govt. announcing at the time something like: "this is a wonderful foreign aid project to fellow democratic Commonwealth nation that has given binding guarantees to only use it for peaceful purposes").
   
   
9. New and much more efficient ways of storing both electricity and/or heat (that can be used for producing electrify later) are being developed at the moment which will reduce the need for "demand-time" generation of electricity. I am sure if a small fraction of what is being spent on nuclear power were to be spent on finding better alternatives to the primitive 19th century design lead-acid batteries I have to put up with in my home at the moment, solar energy would not only become much cheaper but more viable in many ways - both on the macro and the micro levels.
   
   Furthermore, the new solar cells recently developed at ANU look certain to be able to reduce the cost of production (and the use of energy in producing them) by about 50%. They are past the developmental stage and are just waiting for someone to fund full-scale production facilities.
   
   
10. Finally, when solar or geothermal or biomass or wind or even gas plants finally come to the end of their life there is very little cleanup needed and the land they once covered can be used for productive purposes. (This can even happen between windmills while they are working).
    

Just a few thoughts - perhaps some other listmembers would like to add to the list?

Best wishes,

John Hill