If You Want Electric Cars, You Need Electricity

As of March 2011, China is
building 27 new
nuclear power plants (and plans 50). Russia is building 10, India and South
Korea five each, Japan and Canada two. In the US, there is exactly one new
reactor complex being built.

France gets 80% of its
power from fission. Most major nations have used nuclear power to make their
environment cleaner and their economies less vulnerable to $100/barrel oil. Yet
the US remains in superstitious dread of fission… even while dependent on the
20% of our electricity that comes from our 40-year-old Homer Simpson
specials.

US Nuclear Industry:
From Pollyanna to Panic

The US built the first
nuclear reactors. We even built the first nuclear rocket engines, way back
in the misty pre-Internet days of the 1960s. (It was misty from all the coal and
high-sulfur diesel smoke). Why did we turn into a nuclear backwater? Because the
US government in all its genius "helped" nuclear power with
subsidies.

The US government shoved
nuclear power into use in the 1960s, before it was ready for prime time. Early
reactors and their fuel were subsidized, and the Price-Anderson act dumped the
liability for accidents onto the taxpayers. (Taxpayers do seem to attract
liability for everything from subprime mortgages to shaky foreign dictators,
don’t we? It’s a wonder we can get insurance at all…)

Then, once nuclear
technology actually became reliable, US policy turned against it. Our new
electricity needs are now met almost entirely by frantic construction of
fossil-fuel plants, while we publicly bemoan the potential problem of Global
Warming from those very fossil-fuel plants.

US nuclear power was killed
by media-generated fears. Most of those fears were imaginary, and all were
exaggerated. But fear still trumps the actual numbers. It’s time for a look at
the current realities of nuclear power.

Not Your Grandfather’s
Reactor

The first hard fact about
switching to nuclear power: it reduces your radiation exposure. Nuclear power
plants, even old ones, release very little radiation. In fact, they release from
100 to 400 times less than coal plants, per kilowatt-hour. (There is a
significant amount of radium and polonium in coal). You get more radiation by escaping to NH from Vermont than you
would by living next to a reactor for your whole life (manly NH granite is full
of uranium and thorium, unlike the soft, limp sediments of Vermont).

So the net environmental
effect of US anti-nuclear policy has been… to raise our radiation dose for the
last 30 years. But don’t worry; compared to the tons of mercury and vast
quantities of organic chemical carcinogens released by the coal smokestacks, the
trivial extra radiation from coal doesn’t matter. Of course, in addition to
cancer there is the little matter of Global Warming CO2 from fossil fuels.
Nuclear plants are entirely carbon-free (which will be a good thing in a few
centuries, once we get enough CO2 into the atmosphere to stave off the Final Ice
Age).

New nuclear plants are also
meltdown free. There are several ways to make nuclear fuel rods or pellets that
stop fissioning when they reach a certain temperature. The US built the first
intrinsically safe reactor in 1986, the Argonne
EBR-II. The Argonne system used fuel rods made of an alloy that expanded
with heat to beyond critical density. Newer designs have used pebble beds and
Doppler scattering, but the result is the same: fuel elements that shut off over
a certain temperature, even if Homer Simpson turns off every cooling system.

Yet another breed of new
nuclear plants uses cooling systems which use convection instead of pumps;
again, even if everything is switched off, they can’t overheat. The Westinghouse
AP1000 uses this principle. (The Westinghouse nuclear division is now owned
by Toshiba, a company that thinks more than one fiscal quarter ahead.)

Other concepts include
small mass-produced reactors like the Hyperion. These
town-sized (only 25 megawatt) units would be more decentralized than most
current fossil or nuclear generators. They would also have passive safety
features… in fact the reactor itself is a sealed unit, with no way for Homer to
get inside.

The US has none of the
newer, safer plants yet (the one reactor under construction in Georgia is an
AP1000). Yet just like the ex-Soviet satellite nations, we remain economically
dependent on our 1970s reactors. Again, our anti-nuclear policy has put us at
more risk than other nations.

No Recycling
Allowed

Then there’s nuclear
"waste". Nuclear fuel rods are about 3% uranium-235 when they go into a
light-water reactor. They quit producing energy when they are roughly 1%
uranium, 1% plutonium, and 1% radioactive elements like strontium-90 and
cobalt-60.

In other countries the rods
are removed from the reactor, the uranium and plutonium are recycled into new
fuel rods, and the other radioactive elements are used by industry for various
purposes. Excess non-fissionable isotopes can be mixed with Pyrex glass and made
back into radioactive "rocks"… which, after all, is what uranium ore is in the
first place.

But in the US, no nuclear
recycling is allowed because of Carter-era regulations. Used but radioactive
nuclear fuel rods must stay in open ponds outside the reactors just in case
terrorists might need some. Thus the US has a "nuclear waste problem", while
other nations do not.

Speaking of recycling, it’s
hard to do much recycling of any kind without electric power. Conversely,
cheaper and more plentiful electricity will make recycling profitable…. and thus
universal.

"Peak Uranium" A Long
Way Off

Currently known reserves of
uranium are enough for a couple hundred years or so… enough that no one puts
much effort into finding more. Breeder reactors can make more uranium out of
thorium; estimates of thorium reserves get us up to 20,000 years. By the year
22,211, fission reactors will be in museums next to the flint-knapping tools.
The lights will stay on from fusion… or more likely, something we haven’t even
imagined.

Even on a shorter time
scale, nuclear fuel cycles are very stable. Once fueled, a reactor will run for
years, independent of possible wars, blockades or interruptions of
trade.

Obama: Nuclear OK As
Long As It’s Taxpayer-funded

On February 16, 2010,
President Obama announced $8.33 billion dollars in federal loan guarantees to
construct the two AP1000 units at the Vogtle plant in Georgia. This continues a
long tradition of meddling and favoritism (in other countries, we call giving
tax money to private companies "corruption"). Corruption of course knows no
technological boundaries; all forms of
power production have been distorted by subsidy.

Time For A Level Playing
Field

Nuclear power is the
cleanest rapidly expandable source of electricity. It produces no greenhouse
gases, no acid rain, no chemical pollutants. It doesn’t need ecologically
disruptive dams. It doesn’t cover up thousands of square miles of forest with
solar panels, it doesn’t kill migrating birds with eyesore windmill blades.

But is new nuclear
technology better than other alternatives? That is the question that matters,
and it can only be answered by the market. Let all power technologies compete
against the same safety and emission standards, and all be liable for any damage
they cause. Let coal plants have to meet the same radiation emission standards,
and let non-subsidized solar plants pay for the forest land they cover up (and
for their own capital costs).

Since the Congress and
Administration can’t seem to find anything to cut from the budget, here’s a
suggestion that would save a few billion: cut all corporate welfare to all forms
of energy companies. Government bureaucracy is no more likely to pick the right
technology this time than in the 1970s, when they decided to leave the US
forever dependent on burning coal.

The "right technology"
depends on time and place. Solar cells are fine, if they’re covering buildings
in Albuquerque instead of snowy
forest in Vermont. Windmills, wood-burning plants, methane from cow pies,
whatever can pull its weight on the market is great.

But neither windmills nor
wood chips will take us to the stars