I think nuclear energy is safe but saying it's safer than other forms seems to be comparing apples and oranges.

I think the only real reason radiation is particularly scary to people is because it's INVISIBLE. Like ghosts!

Beginning in 1972, when I started first grade, my father was involved in building four nuclear power plants in Ohio, Florida, Canada, and Illinois. My entire school-going childhood, he was a quality control inspector, then supervisor, then manager.

I remember doing a fifth grade project on Nuclear power plant design for my science project, complete with diagrams of reactors, the closed loop system they employ, the generators, and the Cooling Towers.

During the time we were in Ohio, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was constantly changing regulations and causing cost overruns due to rework to comply with new regulations.

Once Carter came into office, the new regulations came fast and furious. The obvious purpose was to increase the cost so as to make future construction fiscally unfeasable.

Three Mile Island (TMI) drove the nails into the coffin of the industry. Even though radiation sensors indicated that the safety precautions actually worked, and that ambient radiation levels in Washington DC were higher than ambient radiation levels near TMI, nuclear power had ceased to be a technological issue. The NRC had become the political weapon of choice to strangle the industry.

The anti-war crowd of the early 70's, displaying their great intellectual prowess, equated nuclear power with nuclear holocaust, and the politics killed the business. We moved to Canada in 1979, where a 3-year contract turned into a 19-month contract because the breeder reactor power plant being built was completed ahead of schedule and under budget.

Finally, we moved to Illinois to help complete the construction of a power plant that had been started prior to TMI. My father, having had extensive experience with the idiots at the NRC, was brought in to advise and run the Quality Control Department. Corporate Exec's ignored some of his advice.

The result was when the NRC found out, they threatened to shut the construction down. They instructed Illinois Power and Light that if my father was fired, the construction would end.

My father told me that his bosses were correct in their decision as an engineering or business decision. But he knew the NRC did not care about that. He knew his bosses had failed to take into account the political nature of the NRC flunkies. Of course, it is ALWAYS great for your career to have the government cram your point of view down the throats of your bosses.

My father never had to start his career over. In 1983, his kidney's failed due to diabetes and in 1987, he died. But I remember growing up realizing that the so-called experts were really just political hacks.

That is why the whole environmentalist movement really turns me off. As an engineer in the air conditioning business, I can categoricaaly tell you that the concern about CFC's from refrigerants causing ozone depletion is a total crock of s**t.

But on the other hand, the government requirement that "experts" like me handle refrigerant issues makes me a lot of money. I happily tell people that the CFC issue is bogus while I also happily charge them a bazillion dollars to change their equipment to be compliant with assinine politically motivated government regulations.

The ridiculous part (and the PETA people would love this) is that the new refrigerants, HCFC's are actually toxic to humans, while the old CFC's were inert. The only danger was due to the fact that they were heavier than air, so if you got them in your lungs, they might displace air and cause you to suffocate. But this danger was so slight that you had to conciously try to kill yourself by drinking down the refrigerant.

I guess that I learned from my father that you can make a pretty good living off of bogus scientifically challenged government regulations. By setting yourself up as the "expert", and having the government restrict all the "little people's" rights, you can make more money. Of course, that's what a large percentage of the professional licensing laws are about.

Maybe I'm a cynic. But I'm a practical cynic. At least I try to make money off of the government's idiocy. Hurray for capitalism and bureaucracy.

I think nuclear energy is safe but saying it's safer than other forms seems to be comparing apples and oranges.

No, Maor, it's not.

It is, in fact, completely possible to measure these things, and it's been done, exhaustively, by physicists, engineeers, and statisticians. Coal-burning plants are more dangerous. Petroleum-burning power is more dangerous.

The chemicals necessary to utilize solar power for electricity are more dangerous.

The truth is, there are molds that grow in peanut butter (aflatoxin), found in ALL peanuts, that represent a greater statistical danger to your health than living next to either a nuclear power plant or a nuclear waste facility.

And now I'm sure you're smirking and saying, "it's not the same thing."

But it is exactly the same thing, if what you're talking about is risk to life and well-being.

Nuclear power is simply the safest, cleanest, most environmentally responsible form of energy generation yet invented. We should have had breeder reactors supplying most of our electrical needs in this country by 1990. It would have long ago reduced our dependency on oil as a nation, and would give us cleaner air.

(Oh, and have you ever wondered why France is so hot on economy-crushing treaties like Kyoto? Because 90% of their energy is nuclear-based, and they don't generate much CO2. Their much-smaller nation also has a lot moe trains and less cars. Meaning Kyoto costs them very little, but they know it'll cost us trillions. Big shock, huh?

i think most of the fear stems from a similar cause of fear of flying, despite the fact that it is statistically safer than driving. in other words, while coal or petroleum plants may cause more toxins to be released into the environment than nuclear plants and nuclear waste, if a nuclear plant blows, well...it's sort of like a plane crashing. there aren't really huge chances of survival if you happen to live next door. and blixa's comment, while possibly made in jest, is not completely incorrect. radiation can be insidious, and it may take 20 years or more for people to realize there's a problem (once people start developing cancers left and right), while with a chemical plant, if something goes wrong, people start dying right away. can't say which is better, though...

The problem with reliance on nuclear power is not its safety vis-a-vis radiation. It has to do with two things.

1) Given the current world demand for 10 terrawatts of power, and the expected increase to 30 terrawatts by 2050 due to continued worldwide development, trying to produce power via traditional USA style U-235 reactors is unsustainable. Current known world reserves of U-235 will only supply the current demand of 10 terrawatts until 2035.

2) The solution to the U-235 shortage is breeder reactors. From a pure technological point of view, breeder reactors are the perfect solution- safe, sustainable, cheap to build, and environmentally friendly. But breeder reactors produce fisible nuclear waste that is useful in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

So the real problem is not local safety, or the environmental impact of nuclear waste. It is the inevitable political problem of large quantities of nuclear material suitable for weapons production if breeder reactors are used in politically unstable countries. If France continues Slouching toward Mecca, they could be just that unstable regime in the not so distant future.

If there's a fire or explosion at a chemical plant, or a massive release of something, people may start dying right away. Then again, they may not. It depends on what's released.

The biggest disaster at a commercial nuclear plant in this country was Three Mile Island. I remember seeing a report that if you'd traveled to stay in the center of the radioactive cloud that was released, you'd have acquired a dose of 85 millirem. That's less than I'm exposed to per year here in Denver, Colorado.

My concern is that nuclear plants are built by union labor. I used to be an engineering department officer on a nuclear sub, and a few of the enlisted men in my crew became NRC site inspectors after they left the Navy. One of them told me once about his experience monitoring the construction of a plant. Basically, anything he found that they had done poorly or wrong (bad welds, etc.) was waivered by the union's representative.

I don't have any problem with nuclear power - I have a problem with a lack of care in designing, constructing, and operating the plants.

One of my instructors in nuclear power school (this was just after the energy crisis in the early 70's) said that he expected to see a catastrophic nuclear accident in the US shortly after the next time we got into an energy crisis. His reasoning was that when people no longer were able to run their TVs and air conditioners, they'd clamor so loudly for energy that we'd build a lot of cheap nuclear plants in a hurry, and something would go wrong with at least one of them.

He didn't foresee the regulatory red tape and "avoid any risk at any cost" mentality that have pretty much shut down the nuclear industry here in the US.

Wheels,

I had forgotten about the union issues. They were very real problems.

The problem with the NRC was the constantly changing regulations. Union workers can have a pride of workmanship. But when they witness their work being torn out, and started again over and over to comply with new regulations that were primarily created for the political purpose of raising costs, and limiting the expansion of the industry, workers will adopt a "who cares" attitiude.

In the ideal world, union workers should appreciate the continued employment. But in day-to-day practice, people like to have their work valued. By constantly requiring the demolition and reconstruction of plants for obviously stupid reasons, the government destroyed the pride of workmanship aspect that even union workers have.

You hit the nail on the head with the Zero risk tolerance problem.

Scott,

"...the pride of workmanship aspect that even union workers have."

Heh. Your biases are showing. :)

Sam,

While in college, as part of my industrial engineering studies, I did a research paper on the history of organized labor. So I actually have a deep respect for the idea of unions, and even think that more professional fields should organize into unions because some of the historical abuses of industrial workers are now playing out against information age workers.

The problem with unions is their fear of change. This is human nature. Unions tend to try to sustain jobs in declining industries, rather than recognize that the only thing constant is change. When they do this, they become rigid, fossilized, and actually obstruct progress. This is what most anti-union people see.

The healthy aspect of unions is that they impose a kind of reverse accountability on upper management. I think this accountability has been lacking in information age industries, and that is why I would support the expansion of unions into those fields.

But I think Public Service Unions should be outlawed. The very concept of public servants, who control regulatory policy being allowed to organize as a political and economic interest group is anethema to democracy. They have a vested interest in expanding the influence and power of government which is contrary to the interest of individual freedom and government non-interference.

Unions are useful as a counterweight to the Darwinian extremes of capitalism. As such they should be limited to the private sector. Unions can only corrupt the government, and distort the government's ability to fill the proper role of arbiter.

Anyway, its a little off the subject, but unions are not all bad, and corporations are not all good. Just call me a radical moderate.

Sam,

One other comment about public servants.

I think public servants should be just that - servants to the public. And servants never enjoy the same freedoms as their masters. When someone seeks election to public office, they are voluntarily forfeiting some of their individual rights - protection from slander, free speech, etc.

The same should be true for employees of governmental bureaucracy. Service to the public should be a noble calling because of the sacrifices made. And all Americans should be encouraged to offer themselves as public servants for a period of time.

Public Service Unions seek to turn this concept on its head. They seek to make the (voluntary) servants into masters, and masters into (involuntary) slaves. They biggest example of this is the Teachers Unions which now dictate to parents instead of responding to them. If the education system was private, I would have no problem with the Teachers Unions; but as it now stands, I do.

'Nuff said.

At times I wonder if terrorists outside the US are actually even aware of how exaggerated Americans' fear of radiation really is.

Heh. Consider the laboratory technique of "Nuclear Magnetic Resonance" (aka "NMR"). This technology has been used in experimental labs for decades and has nothing whatsoever to do with nuclear fission or nuclear radiation. But that N-word is sooooo scary that when the technology was redeployed as a diagnostic medical technique, it was renamed "Magnetic Resonance Imaging" (MRI).

There's no difference whatsoever between NMR and MRI - it's exactly the same technology - but clinicians were (probably correctly) worried that no one would want to stick their heads into something "nuclear" (Booga-booga!).

"1) Given the current world demand for 10 terrawatts of power, and the expected increase to 30 terrawatts by 2050 due to continued worldwide development, trying to produce power via traditional USA style U-235 reactors is unsustainable. Current known world reserves of U-235 will only supply the current demand of 10 terrawatts until 2035."

Yeah, and "current known world reserves" of oil of a few decades ago were supposed to be gone already. We won't know how much U-235 there is until we have a more powerful incentive to go looking for it.

Also, since energy-per-pound and energy-per-m^3of U-235 is a hell of a lot higher than energy-per-pound and energy-per-m^3 of hydrogen (for burning) or natural gas, or whatever, importing it from space becomes a winning proposition a lot sooner than importing any other form of energy.

Ken,

I am not a Nuclear expert by any means. My information comes from conversations with my father as a child, and very minimal study. And my infomation is at least 5 years old or more. Even if U-235 is limited, I think we should exploit the technology to its maximum capacity until we run out of ore.

Exploration for new sources of U-235 is certainly one of the viable options. I guess I was trying to say that I really, really like breeder reactor technology because it does not require the expense of that exploration. But, unfortunately, waste from breeder reactors has the potential for political disaster. That's a Greek tragedy.

Gotta say it: More people have died in Ted Kennedy's car than all the nuclear accidents in America.

Or...

Cappaquiddick 1, Three Mile Island 0

Heh.

Scott Harris has the right of it--breeder reactors are the real answer, but they're politically dangerous. Not environmentally, politically, because they can also be used to create material for nuclear bombs (which is hugely difficult with current types of plants).

But by the way, to the danger of coal and petroleum plants: explosions at oil refineries kill people on a semi-regular basis. Much of that is because we use so much petroleum for electricity.

Also, there have been explosions at coal-fired plants. One, in the 1930s, flooded a valley in England and killed, literally, a few thousand people with the smoke. That not counting those who lived but suffered permanent lung and other damage.

Ambient radiation from existing plants, even if they suffered a catastrophic meltdown like Chernobyl, can be controlled and managed in many ways not much different than the way we deal with other chemical poisons.

Oh, and in case anyone's still reading: people often rant about how some nuclear waste remains radioactive for thousands or even millions of years. But there are chemical wastes produced by many other energy-producing (and steel-producing, etc.) that remain toxic for BILLIONS of years. Hell, for the most part, arsenic never beaks down, ever, and while it may be a valuable nutrient in tiny quantities, it's very dangerous in large quantities. And it NEVER breaks down (it's an element) and so far as I know there is just no way to get it out of the soil of an area that's become impregnated with it.

Fear of nuclear power and nuclear waste have done more environmental damage in the United States than all the logging companies combined.

Which just gets me back to something I've said so many times before: just because someone says he's an environmentalist doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about, or that what he's advocating is a good idea.

I agree with Scott Harris about unions: needed in the private sector (i.e., free enterprise), but they have no place in the public sector (i.e., government), which is supposed to _serve_, not control, "the public" (i.e., you and me) .

Anyway! Back to nuclear power. The late Dr. Petr Beckman used to put out a newsletter "Access to Energy", debunking the anti-nuclear hysteria. Dean is absolutely right that nuclear energy is one of the cleanest and safest sources of energy of which the mind of man has yet conceived. I wouldn't mind living next door to a nuclear plant, in fact I'd welcome it.

The worst pollution I ever heard of came from those old coal-burning smokestacks. And far more people have died in coal mines than in any nuclear plant. Of course, without coal we would never have had the Industrial Revolution, so we had to put up with it. But I never see the eco-radicals screaming against coal or protesting accidents in mines. So, obviously, safety and pollution are not their real concerns. What is their real agenda?

In the 1980's, they were very closely aligned with the Communist nuclear freeze movement, using hysteria against all things nuclear to scare us into disarming our military. Now that the nihilist and collectivist Left has shifted its allegiance from Moscow to Mecca, they use hysteria against nuclear power to further an agenda every bit as treasonous and as deadly.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: We need every source of energy we can possibly get our hands on in order to cut loose from our deadly dependence on Saudi Arabian oil. Saudi Arabia is our #1 Enemy, and the sooner the American people wake up to that fact the better. We are at War. Either we destroy Saudi Arabia or else Saudi Arabia will destroy the United States of America. It's them or us. One or the other. Either/or. And, yes, it _is_ that black and white.
The Scoreboard:
Three Mile Island - 0, September 11 - 3,000

Casey Tompkins is wrong about the number of deaths in nuclear accidents compared to Ted Kennedy's car, unless it's limited to nuclear accidents at COMMERCIAL power plants.

Google for the SL-1 reactor. Reactors are designed not to be nuclear bombs, but a steam explosion is not A Good Thing, either.

Coal mining also has accidents (besides the mine collapses that trap and kill miners) that have significant environmental effects. Coal mine fires can be particularly nasty.

In 2002, while the Hayman forest fire got most of the news, there was another fire here in Colorado that was started by flames bursting up from an underground coal mine.

In Pennsylvania, there are fires that have been burning since 1961: http://www.offroaders.com/album/centralia/centralia.htm

As for an agenda of nuclear opponents, one thing I remember is a report back in the 70's or 80's that many of the people active in anti-nuclear protests were against it on *moral* grounds. I've tried to find a reference to the survey it was based on, and couldn't, but I did come up with this:

"The Luddites moral battle against the inhuman factories is our fight against such technologies as road-building, nuclear power, toxic chemicals and open-cast mining." - from http://www-users.york.ac.uk/~socs203/luddites.htm

Watch out, Steve Malcolm Anderson - I agree with you on this...

Steve Harris: I may have run across your father. Was his name Vaughn?

Damn. I will be dipped in shit!

Thanks, wheels, I never knew that.

I'm thinking of keeping the scoreboard, though, since that was an experimental station... :)

No. Believe it or not, his name was Harris. :>

Thanks Scott. I guess that rules out Vaughn Harris, then.

Sorry, I've never seen Vaughn as a first name. My father's name was Jack.

Is opposition to nuclear power that widespread? Or is it limited to a small number of semi-professional protestors?