Build More Nuke Plants
Gregg Easterbrook explains it all in his Reuters blog:
The situation in Japan is horrific — but because of the earthquake and tsunami, not because of the malfunctioning atomic reactor station. The earthquake and its awful aftermath killed at least thousands of people, perhaps tens of thousands. That is an unspeakable tragedy. The damaged reactors at Fukushima haven’t killed anyone, and while posing a clear danger, especially to workers heroically fighting the malfunction, the odds are that any harm to public health will be minor, if public health is harmed at all.
Yet in the United States and European Union, what’s happening at the power plant is receiving more attention, and generating more anxiety, than thousands of innocents crushed or drowned.
He's right. Typically, the media is freaking out over the wrong thing, learning the wrong lesson, and spreading the wrong information:
The worst U.S. atomic accident, at Three Mile Island in 1979, was spooky and scary but caused no public health harm. Many studies, including this one from the Columbia University School of Public Health, found a slight increase in cancers near Three Mile Island in the years afterward, but also found radiation “did not account for the observed increase.” The Columbia researchers theorized that people who lived near Three Mile Island went to doctors to get checked, and physicians found cancers that were already incipient before the accident.
Studies found people who lived near Three Mile Island experienced stress and anxiety, and stress is bad for you. But it’s nothing like the panic-in-the-streets threat being suggested by coverage of the Japan reactors. Here, the Washington Post details the relatively mild nature of most forms of radiation from power generation, and recounts studies showing fear is a greater hazard than cancer. This story appeared on page 9.
At least it was on page 9, and not page C-32, where they usually bury the stories they don't want read.
Easterbrook's sensible solution? Don't stop building plants. Build better ones:
The Japanese station uses a half-century-old engineering concept called “boiling water” reactors. The devices are obsolete plumber’s nightmares: they need to be torn down and replaced with modern reactors. Broadly across the world, old reactors designed in the 1950s and 1960s, when far less was known about controlling atomic power, need to be taken out of service and replaced with modern designs that do not have the problems experienced at Fukushima.
All 104 nuclear power reactors in use in the United States are 30 or more years old, based on obsolete engineering. They need to be demolished and replaced with improved designs. Modern reactors require fewer moving parts than reactors of the 1950s and 1960s, and employ a new idea, “passive” safety. Passive safety means failures are not emergencies — if the cooling pumps fail, as happened at Fukushima, the atomic reaction simply stops. Hit by the same earthquake, a modern reactor would not have gone haywire.
Yet political opposition to construction of new atomic power plants is preventing the spread of improved modern reactors. Yesterday, Germany and Switzerland said they would postpone plans to tear down obsolete reactors and replace them with modern designs. Attempts in the U.S. to obtain political permission to demolish obsolete reactors, in favor of new systems, are likely to be set back.
My guess is that if we really started to get serious about state-of-the-art nuclear plants, we'd end up with even better ones than we imagine. Create a market for something, reward innovation, and you end up with innovative products. There's something irrational about the fact that I can read, post, and listen to Ricochet on my phone, computer, or iPad using advanced, highly competitive technologies, but the electric power required to do so still comes from 1971.
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Jul '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Yes! This isn't Chernobyl. Hell, Chernobyl wasn't even Chernobyl.
Sep '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Hear him, hear him.
Mar '11
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
As I understand it, these Japanese reactors were built to a theoretical worst-case-scenario of an 8.1 quake. They got a 9.1 instead, with no loss of life directly connected to the power plants. Remarkable.
The panicking libs here in the States respond by wanting to take power plants off line and continue the moratorium on building new ones. The calm and clever Japanese will likely build new reactors capable of withstanding a 10.1 shaker.
Another reason my next truck will be a Toyota.
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Rob, you are exactly right. Robert Zubrin, a man with a doctorate in nuclear engineering, provides the technical detail in a post at NRO.
Tens of thousands are dead and hundreds of thousands more at risk of dying, not from ionizing radiation but from exposure and disease brought on by the local collapse of industrial civilization.
Edited on Mar 16, 2011 at 2:17pmJan '11
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Not only irrational, but also absurd.
Mar '11
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
The real story is the devastation caused by the tsunami. A product, by the way, of this supposedly fragile earth that we are on the margin of destroying. Supposedly.
Edited on Mar 16, 2011 at 2:26pmFeb '11
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Good point Rob, we need 21st century nuclear power, I would like to see Google and Apple compete next to see who can create the safest and most efficient nuclear generators.
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Exactly. The worst seismic event in Japanese history, with an amplitude ten times the aged plant's design limit, yet the SCRAM was successful, leaving a ruined facility and local low-level contamination. In an earlier era, we would be praising GE engineers and the plant's operators for such a wonderful outcome.
Jan '11
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
The iPlant?
Jan '11
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Of course you are right, but this doesn't feed into the MSM template that nuclear is evil and must be eliminated from the planet. I bet there's been more environmental devistation in Japan caused by toppled windmills... assuming that the Japanese even bother with them. Of course, with all that nuclear? They really wouldn't need them.
Edited on Mar 16, 2011 at 2:35pmMay '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
The take-home message of this incident is precisely the opposite of what 90% of humans believe at the moment. It was the perfect storm of mishaps--a direct hit by a once-a-century earthquake and a once-a-century tsunami--and yet....there was no disaster, nor was there ever a genuine threat of one.
The whole world's gone mad.
Nov '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
For what it's worth, I've had NPR on in the car the last two mornings, and on both mornings they had mildly pro-nuclear-energy segments.
The first, yesterday, said that the Obama administration was not deterred in its enthusiasm for nuclear power by the events because nuclear power is the only possible large-scale "carbon-neutral" energy source. (Aside: Huh. I had heard tepid support, not substantial support, before this from the administration, but apparently there's even a silver lining to the cloud of AGW theory.)
The second, today, was an interview with a scientist who had studied the area around Chernobyl and found that the wildlife there, far from being eliminated in a "nuclear desert", is thriving despite being not just irradiated but in fact radioactive.
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
I wrote an article in 2008 highlighting one such modern alternative. It's a modular 30MW design based on the TRIGA reactor.
Dec '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
There is a separate and more general aspect that is also being overlooked; inertia
Commercial and industrial structures go through recertifications at the 30 year mark, then every 10 years thereafter. By 50 years, they are mostly complete messes, structurally and from an engineering perspective.
Commercial buildings are usually demolished well before then, for that reason. Some commercial builders plan for demolition after 10 years.
Industrial facilities, mostly, are kept limping along and government facilities are held up with band aids, long after they should be rebuilt. I have worked on government structures that no engineering firm will recertify, but have gotten local government approvals to bury the engineering studies that they paid for.
We refuse to tear old crap down and we attempt to keep it limping along, just as we refuse to tear down crippled government programs and replace them with newer, better approaches. There is industrial infrastructure, and especially government infrastructure in place, all over the country that is in very bad shape. Worse condition than you might imagine, given that it is still in use.
Historic structures aside, more than 30 years old is usually beyond the life of a commercial structure.
Mar '11
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Better still than the passively-cooled reactors are pebble reactors:
http://dvice.com/archives/2011/03/how-to-make-a-n.php
Not to mention fusion power.
It will probably be China and Japan who will take the lead, rather than Obama's Energy Czar, Apple or Google.
May '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Rob, you reminded me of this awesome photo.
(I had to link to the Google search page because all the sites carrying the photo are blocked at work.)
May '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
I think we have 21st century nuclear power technology. Look at how far nuclear reactors have come on our Navy aircraft carriers. The USS Enterprise, commissioned in 1961, has eight nuclear reactors. The ten Nimitz-class carriers (commissioned between '75 - 09) that followed have two. The new Ford-class has a new, more powerful reactor design. We have the technology. We use it for our military, but we should make it available for all Americans.
This from wikipedia, "[Nimitz-class] carriers use two reactors which drive four propeller shafts and can produce a maximum speed of over 30 knots (56 km/h) and maximum power of around 260,000 shp (190 MW). As a result of the use of nuclear power, the ships are capable of operating for over 20 years without refueling and are predicted to have a service life of over 50 years." Imagine if more Americans had that kind of access to that power and energy!
May '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
I wonder if that is just the shaft power delivered to the props, or the total power output of the reactors? And is that one or both reactors? A quick google search told me that the average coal plant produces between 600 and 700 MW, so possibly just a few reactors of Nimitz output could rival a coal plant.
May '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
Mark Wilson
I wonder if that is just the shaft power delivered to the props, or the total power output of the reactors? And is that one or both reactors? A quick google search told me that the average coal plant produces between 600 and 700 MW, so possibly just a few reactors of Nimitz output could rival a coal plant. · Mar 16 at 6:36pm
I think that's from both reactors, and I think what I cited referred to propulsion. But I'm not sure what the total output would be. That might be classified. I do know the maximum speed is classified. A carrier supports a crew of about 5,000 (with the air wing), with a potential for more. So, yes, we definitely have the technology... and a great safety record.
Sep '10
Re: Build More Nuke Plants
I think Karen touches on an interesting possibility. It has been the policy to build large power plants, which out of necessity are located some distance from the users of the power generated. Smaller nuclear generators, fuel cells such as the Bloom box and solar panels offer the potential of on or near site generation thus reducing the amount of power lost in transmission. The cost curve of the computing power that is necessary to monitor and regulate these generators is rapidly declining. This coupled with the cost savings of mass production makes them more economically feasible as time passes. Large power generation facilities, nuclear or non-nuclear does not seem to me to be the future of power generation