Thinking About Nuclear Power

Not At All Like Dancing About Architecture

BY KATIE OKAMOTO

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Illustration by Josh Lerner
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Things are looking up for nuclear energy. Despite what the Department of Energy would have the country believe, the supply of oil is falling, demand is growing and prices are rising. Americans can no longer turn their backs on Hubbert's peak (the infamous projection that an oil shortage will occur in the next few years—not when a reserve is run dry but when it reaches its maximum output.) As scientists and politicians look around for a solution, nuclear energy seems more and more like the obvious answer.

The environmentalist in all of us is ready to be wooed. Carbon dioxide emissions continue to rise with a growing population, along with associated respiratory problems. Global warming can be quantified with rising ocean surface temperatures and shrinking polar caps. Meanwhile, nuclear reactors, which control fission to produce electricity, produce zero greenhouse gases. In the search for clean energy sources, many believe nuclear energy is the most realistic alternative to fossil fuel plants, at least for the time being.

President Bush supports the shift. Earlier this year he signed the Energy Policy Act, which continues the Nuclear Power 2010 Partnership between industry and government. He hopes that incentives will bring America closer to "a vital national goal": the building of new nuclear power plants by the end of the decade.

But if nuclear power is going to bridge the transition between reliance on fossil fuels and reliance on renewable power, it must be more thoroughly scrutinized. There are, roughly, four questions at stake. They concern practicality, security, legacy and sustainability.

The Nuclear Option

One of the most obvious reasons why the US wants to 'get more nuclear' is because it seems practical. Some might be more excited about renewable sources such as wave energy or wind, but most governments do not believe that these are ready to provide reliable and sufficient power (those governments forget, of course, the delightful country of Denmark, which swears by windmills.) Use of nuclear power would allow time for renewable energy technologies and energy storage to improve.

Beyond this logic, heavier reliance on nuclear energy seems only natural, probably because nuclear power plants already satiate a hefty percentage of US energy demand. In 2003, nuclear energy comprised about 8 quadrillion Btu (1 Btu = about 1,055 Joules of energy), compared with about 40 quadrillion Btu of petroleum consumption, according to the DOE. It can probably be assumed that nuclear energy has been around for enough time that the industry knows what it is doing. At the very least, it knows what it has done wrong. Most critically, it is financially easier to make the shift when the infrastructure is already in place.

This infrastructure, however, might be a tad dated. No new power plant has been ordered in the US since the 1970s, something the Energy Policy Act seeks to change. Much of the scientific community has tended to blame the standstill on a panic-inducing press. Still, the public now seems open to a shift in energy policy. In order to innovate and improve on existing technologies, building more power plants in the US makes sense. Imagine how much more efficient and secure American power plants might now be had there been a continued push for evolving technology.

Playing With Fuel Rods

Still, it is a bit unsettling how quickly people can be reassured by the passage of time, rising oil prices, and a few lessons in probability. A charming factoid presented by advocates of nuclear energy is that one is more likely to be the victim of a car accident than the victim of a nuclear plant malfunction. But as risk communicator P. Sandman's somewhat cattily explained equation states, environmental risk equals hazard plus outrage. The magnitude of uncommon occurrences, in other words, matters too. The security and health threat posed by nuclear power plants is something about which the public still has its doubts.

I say, thank god the public is still thinking. While I have my doubts about the neo-cons and their fear-mongering, we do live in a time where the threat of terrorism is real. For all the Department of Homeland Security's defense tactics (patrols, check-points, barriers, limited access) it does not seem all that farfetched these days that an aircraft might find its way into a nuclear reactor building. Especially when the Department of Homeland Security has been criticized for not sufficiently funding and overseeing a number of its initiatives.

Even ignoring geopolitical conflict, it is also probably true that no list of preventative measures and steps that separate plant accidents from nuclear catastrophes will ever eliminate the danger of malfunctions and human error. True, plants can now shut down automatically when things go wrong, and it is generally stated that nuclear reactors are some of the most human-error-proof places on earth. But even with changes in plant design and equipment requirements, there is always the possibility that Three-Mile-Island-esque failures might occur. Again—possible, if not probable. An added reliance on nuclear power plants in the US would increase these admittedly slim chances. The question is how much trust the public is willing to give power plant operators in return for their juice. Whatever that decision will be (my guess is that Americans love juice), it is of the utmost importance that the public know that risk can never be one hundred percent eliminated.

To science people, the above points seem doubtless fuzzy and alarmist. Perhaps the more compelling and concrete question lies in the most problematic aspect of nuclear energy: waste.

Haste Makes Waste

There is a general impression that nuclear power is better for the environment than, say, coal plants, because nuclear reactions produce zero carbon emissions. Mysteriously, what is often ignored is that nuclear reactions also produce highly radioactive waste that will last for tens of thousands of years, according to the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management. The lifetime of this dubious legacy is due to the slow decay of atoms with large nuclei, where particles are emitted from the atoms as radiation until the atoms are stable. High levels of radiation can be carcinogenic and interfere with reproduction.

It is hard to believe how quickly nuclear power plants have been put to work with no clear acceptable plan for dealing with their hazardous byproducts. There has been insufficient consideration of the lasting environmental hazards of spent fuel rods and plutonium dust, stemming from their radioactive nature. This is a legacy that will persist with great certainty for countless generations, an environmental burden and possible health disaster.

In at least 125 US locations, nuclear power plants are already surrounded by unburied radioactive waste, with no immediate plan to lay the waste to rest. Remote Yucca Mountain, Nevada, looks like the likely cemetery, but neighboring citizens are less than enthusiastic. Nevada Senators Harry Reid (D) and John Ensign (R), representing their constituents, are quoted in the Oct. 26 Las Vegas Sun saying, "We have said all along the project is not safe and the science is bad." Still, the DOE has spent 20 years pushing the site and is not likely to give up now.

Space is indeed a major problem: who will be forced to live near these vessels, and how much land will the waste occupy as more and more nuclear energy is generated? There is the added concern that in the years to come the burial grounds will be exposed, stumbled upon, or disturbed by plate activity, or that the life spans of containers will not be sufficient to prevent eventual leaching of radioactive metals into ground water. It is uncertain if and how the danger of these vast cemeteries will be communicated in a millennium.

We Think Therefore We Plan

Ultimately, we must ask ourselves if the use of nuclear power can continue for generations. Even if nuclear power is to be the transition between fossil fuel and renewable energy conversion, it is probably true that nuclear power plants will be running for a while yet. This means that we must consider the supply of heavy metal and how it is obtained as well as the planet's capacity to hold nuclear waste.

The world has gradually grown to accept sustainable development, and while the term has its share of skeptics and critics, organizations like the United Nations are pushing for sustainability in the interest of the environment as well as the economy. While there is arguably more radioactive metal in the world to be had than there is oil, nuclear power is not sustainable in the real meaning of the word—it cannot continue to be used indefinitely without exceeding the planet's carrying capacity. The main reason for this is the waste question; there is a limited amount of space that the waste can occupy, and the demand for energy is growing with exponential population growth.

Nuclear energy should not be regarded as the easy solution to the world's, or even the nation's, energy problems. While it may be practical to undertake and perhaps even alleviate air quality and climate issues, a shift to reliance on nuclear power should be treated as strictly temporary so long as security and legacy remain drawbacks. It should also be remembered that while nuclear power plants cut carbon emission and demand for fossil fuels in the generation of electricity, they do not directly alleviate the demand for fossil fuel by transportation. There are pros and cons in a shifting reliance, but we must not be willing to accept a slapdash replacement to our current fossil fuel dilemmas.

At this crossroads, Americans have the unique chance to look at our values and choose our next direction. Whatever the choice, we should consider the energy problem with the same determination and excitement that got Americans into space. The US is behind in the "race" for reliable renewable energy; wave and wind technologies are even now successfully connected to national grids in Europe. In the 1950s, Americans put their minds to a task that a half-century earlier was pure whimsy. Those who thought George Bailey was being metaphorical when he promised Mary the moon in 1946 underestimated the power of scientific imagination. If we can unleash our energy to probe the universe, surely the sky is the limit in our pursuit of good energy. A mind, like energy, is a terrible thing to waste. Let's not sell ourselves short.

Katie Okamoto B'09 was a mad scientist back in the day—the day before plutonium ethics panels.

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