Nuclear energy

Reading Peña's latest post (on Obama's energy policies) has got me thinking about the supposed resurgence in nuclear energy. The Seattle Weekly even ran an article (which I did not think was that great), which you can find at http://www.seattleweekly.com/2010-03-17/news/atom-s-eve/. As someone who's family has been heavily involved in nuclear power and weapons, and who completed a 15-20 page research paper in high school on the combined nuclear industries, I think it is a terrible idea.

First of all, much of the argument for returning to nuclear power is that it does not release as much carbon dioxide as coal and other such things. The idea is that it is a "renewable" energy source that will not run out and is somehow better for the environment. In particular, the lack of negative effects from 3-Mile Island's near meltdown has been touted as proof that radiation is not that bad. Never mind that not very much radiation ended up being released, it can difficult to track the effects of radiation (how do you know if it caused a particular cancer case, for example?), and many of the potential effects of the accidence may not have shown up yet or may have manifested themselves in harmless ways. Never mind how close the reactor was to a FULL meltdown, which would have been much much worse (residents of the areas around Chernobyl have certainly seen that).

Another idea being thrown around is that the waste from energy production is really not that bad. It's just the waste from weapons production that is. And while there may be a kernel of truth in this, in that it is much more difficult to deal with waste from weapons production, we still don't really have a good method of dealing with any sort of nuclear waste. At least, not beyond "stick it in that heavy-duty container and hope it doesn't start leaking out any time in the next several million years." How could anyone think that creating more radioactive waste when we don't have enough room to store what we've already got is a good idea? Somehow, politicians are all for it until the wast is going to be stored in their state... Clearly showing how 'safe' they think it is.

The one note of sanity is from a new-ish company called Intellectual Ventures that recognizes that nuclear waste is an issue. It follows that up, of course, by claiming that their new technology would actually use existing radioactive waste to safely produce energy without re-fueling for up to a century. Needless to say, I am extremely skeptical. It would appear from their website that there is not even a functioning prototype reactor using their technology at present, leading me to believe that, like many other new technologies and nuclear power at almost every stage, their claims will not be borne out by reality. One of the Hanford reactors that my grandpa helped design was also new "safe" technology, and even won safety awards for its design. After Chernobyl, they had to shut it down because of design similarities. ...

In fact, the nuclear industries have always been plagued by safety concerns. Despite being a brilliant nuclear engineer abreast of the latest technologies, my grandpa always dismissed nuclear waste as "just trash" up until he died in 1982. When doing research for my paper, I came across a blurb in the New York Times' Science section (back in the 1950's or 1960's) talking about the "revolutionary" new method of nuclear waste disposal scientists at Hanford discovered: dumping the waste straight into sand. ... I think we now know that this is not the best method after all.

Even worse than all of the untintentional dangers of the nuclear industries have been the intentional dangers created by the industry. These dangers have been created primarily a desire to cut corners, increase efficiency, and make more money. They do sometimes have other purposes (as when Hanford scientists intentionally released thousands of curies of radioactive iodine into the air to test Soviet monitoring systems), but they are never good. There is a long history in the nuclear industries of ignoring safety and quality control regulations, to the detriment of workers and the public. Many of the workers who have fought against unsafe conditions have been ostracized and penalized--or worse. For a good film on a former worker in a nuclear plant who was run off the road and killed while working to expose critical safety violations at the plant, watch Silverwood. It could have just been an accident, true, but it is a little weird that the papers she was currently taking to a reporter were never found amongst all her other things in the car...

Even the research on nuclear safety is not very good. Much of the research has major flaws. For example, one study that examined the risk of a certain type of cancer (bone?) due to X-rays back when they were less safe than now found there were no cases in the group they followed. The study was 9 years long, but the cancer had an incubation period of 10 years, so they would have expected to see no cases even if X-rays had a huge effect on cancer rates. Another research study found a smaller difference than expected between cancer rates of people close to the atomic blasts in Japan and those in the suburbs (of those that survived, of course). Yet if an atomic bomb goes off in downtown Seattle, people in Shoreline will still have a pretty high exposure. It would be better to compare to people in another state who received little or no exposure to the radiation.

In sum, nuclear energy is a no go. For more on the history of the nuclear industries in Washington, check out the Washington Nuclear Museum and Educational Center (WANMEC) at this link. http://toxipedia.org/display/wanmec/Welcome;jsessionid=2FD67EB7C4176329E8196A8D0018460B