=======================Electronic Edition========================
RACHEL’S HAZARDOUS WASTE NEWS #145
—September 5, 1989—
News and resources for environmental justice.
——
Environmental Research Foundation
P.O. Box 5036, Annapolis, MD 21403
Fax (410) 263-8944; Internet: erf@igc.apc.org
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SOME LESSONS FROM THE NUCLEAR AGE.
Scientists no longer argue whether the “greenhouse effect” will
heat up the earth’s atmosphere and disrupt climate on a global
scale. It now seems certain to happen, and the major remaining
question is when the effects will first become visible: was the
heat wave last summer an effect? Was the midwest drought? What
about the wet spring this year on the east coast?
Ordinarily, sunlight streams in from outer space, strikes the
surface of earth, turns into heat and is reradiated back into
outer space as heat energy. The energy in the incoming sunlight
equals the energy in the outgoing heat, so earth’s average
temperature remains constant. However, carbon dioxide and other
“greenhouse gases” like methane are building up in the
atmosphere, primarily because of burning fossil fuels (oil, coal,
natural gas). Greenhouse gases have a peculiar property: they let
sunlight pass through, but they act as a mirror to radiated heat
energy, so sunlight striking the earth is radiated back but
strikes the “mirror” of these gases in the atmosphere and can’t
escape into outer space. As a result, the heat is trapped and the
average temperature of the earth is now increasing. (The glass in
a greenhouse has the same effect, which is why greenhouses are
warmer than the outside air, and why global warming is called the
“greenhouse effect.”)
The only real solution to the “greenhouse effect” is to reduce
our dependence on fossil fuels. One way would be to generate
electricity by some means other than burning coal, oil and
natural gas. (Changing to some other fuel besides gasoline and
diesel oil in cars and trucks would be another important step.)
The “greenhouse effect” is fueling a revival of nuclear power
because nuclear power doesn’t produce any greenhouse gases.
Unfortunately, nuclear power produces other problems.
Advocates of nuclear energy are now hoping to convince the
American public that the problems of nuclear power have been
solved, and that a new generation of “inherently safe” reactors
should be built. Respectable publications like the NEW YORK TIMES
now use the phrase “inherently safe” nuclear plants as if the
“inherent safety” of these new plants had been proven. It has
not. The concept of an inherently safe nuclear plant exists only
on paper.
Existing nuclear plants have the following problems:
1) Nuclear power plants are exceptionally difficult to operate
because they are the most complex machines humans have ever
invented; the nation’s 88 existing nuclear reactors have only
operated at 55% of capacity because of problems with turbine
generators, steam generators, pumps, valves, control-rod drives
and cracked pipes.
2) The design and construction of nuclear plants has been carried
out by humans, with the following kinds of problems resulting:
(a) in the Ohio Zimmer plant, the control panel could possibly
catch fire because the panel lights were put too close together;
(b) at San Onofre, California, the reactor was installed
backwards; (d) reactor supports were 45 degrees out of line at
Comanche Peak, Texas; (c) some operators at the Peach Bottom
plant in Pennsylvania routinely slept at the operating console,
while others played video games; (d) the wrong drawings were used
in assessing the earthquake response of steel beams at the Diablo
Canyon reactor in California. Humans are simply prone to errors,
and the humans designing, building and operating nuclear plants
are no exception.
3) The federal agency that regulates nuclear was (and is) staffed
by people whom it is difficult to trust. A recent history of
nuclear power portrays these individuals as blundering, fumbling
bureaucrats whose arrogance is surpassed only by their
ineptitude. (See Luther Carter, NUCLEAR IMPERATIVES AND PUBLIC
TRUST: DEALING WITH RADIOACTIVE WASTE [Baltimore, MD: Resources
for the Future, 1987.]) Even this view may be overly optimistic.
The revelations of the last six months, about serious coverups at
almost every nuclear weapons facility in the country, suggest
that those in charge of regulating nuclear operations in the U.S.
are not simply arrogant and incompetent; they also seem to be
criminals.
4) There is still no way known to handle radioactive wastes
safely. In 1985, commercial reactors had produced 12,450 tons of
highly radioactive wastes (wastes that would radioactively cook
you to a crisp if you stood next to them unshielded for just a
few seconds). By the year 2000 the total will have risen to
41,500 tons.
One way to judge the hazard of any waste is to calculate how much
water it would take to dilute the waste down to a concentration
that meets federal drinking water standards. In the case of the
30 tons of high-level radioactive wastes produced by one year’s
operation of one typical (1000 megawatt) nuclear power plant,
after the wastes had cooled off (through radioactive decay) for
1000 years, it would still take ten times the annual flow of the
Hudson River to dilute them down to the level officially regarded
as “safe”. No one knows what to do with existing radioactive
wastes.
5) The production of nuclear fuel requires the mining and
processing of large quantities of uranium. The mining of uranium
has produced an epidemic of lung cancer among two generations of
miners, and it has resulted in mountain-sized piles of uranium
“tailings” (radioactive sand) heaped on the desert, left free to
blow around, in New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and elsewhere.
There are two designs for “inherently safe” nuclear power plants
on paper, the HTGR (high temperature gas cooled reactor), and the
PIUS (process-inherent ultimate safety). Each of these designs is
supposedly better than today’s reactors because they would be
less subject to catastrophic failure (core meltdown) leading to
massive releases of radioactivity. However, both designs would
still be subject to human error during design, construction, and
operation. Both designs would be regulated by the incompetents
and miscreants who oversee today’s nuclear plants. Both designs
would require mining uranium in the same amounts as today’s
reactors; both would produce the same amounts of radioactive
wastes as today’s reactors. Reactors of the new types, like
today’s reactors, would themselves have to be disposed of as
radioactive waste when they were ready for the scrap
heap–presenting a disposal problem that the nation has grappled
with unsuccessfully since 1943.
Neither of the new reactor designs could be proven safe except by
building a lot of them and operating them for many years (in
other words, by trial and error)-the same way we learned about
the flaws in today’s reactors. In short, what we should learn
from nuclear power is not that marginally better plant designs
deserve to be termed “inherently safe,” but that (a) humans have
a strictly limited capacity to operate complex machines reliably;
and (b) before you make a lot of hazardous materials, you’d
better have in mind a safe place to put them, to keep them safely
away from living things for the duration of the hazard (in this
case, 100,000 years or longer). Inherently safe? Hardly.
Inherently uncontrollable seems more correct.
See: Russ Manning, “The Future of Nuclear Power,” ENVIRONMENT
Vol. 27 (May, 1985), pgs. 12-17, 31-37. See also: UNION OF
CONCERNED SCIENTISTS, THE NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE. Revised edition.
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1975).
–Peter Montague, Ph.D.
Descriptor terms: radioactive waste; nuclear power; energy; nrc;
doe; greenhouse effect; global environmental problems;
atmosphere; uranium;