marklynas.orgTom Blees: Rebuttal to Greenpeace on nuclear 05 January 09
Tom Blees, author of Prescription for the Planet and proponent of Fourth Generation nuclear power, takes on Greenpeace.
As we enter the new year it may be instructive to hearken back to 1972 and take a look at the greatest environmental bestseller of all time, The Limits to Growth, from the Club of Rome. While its predictions of what would happen to human society and the earth itself was sometimes harshly critiqued at the time, 37 years later it is startling to see how prescient it was. It is our duty as stewards of the earth to interrupt the Club of Rome’s impressive record of prognostication.
The Limits to Growth modeled the interaction of population, food production, industrial production, pollution, and consumption of non-renewable natural resources, and predicted what would happen to our planet if we proceeded with business as usual. In my recently published book Prescription for the Planet, the reader will find a blueprint for a peaceful yet transformative global revolution that upends the business as usual scenario in order to solve many of the crises predicted back in 1972. As we near the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we find ourselves facing problems that seem all but intractable but which, with the necessary resolve, can likely still be solved in such a way as to greatly improve our future and that of our progeny.
One of the three technologies that underpin the proposed global revolution is that of the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR), a type of nuclear energy system that nullifies most of the arguments against nuclear power that have been voiced for decades. Discussions about the advisability of using this so-called Generation IV nuclear power often end up as fruitless exchanges because those taking positions on either side of the issue end up speaking about two very different things. It’s as if we were observing a discussion of the hazards of flying, with one side discussing the latest avionics and the other side talking about biplanes from the early 20th century.
Since publishing my book I have had many such discussions with both individual citizens and representatives of various environmental groups, among them Greenpeace, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Sierra Club, etc. What I have observed is that those most invested in a doctrinaire anti-nuclear position most adamantly persist in refusing to acknowledge the transformative advances represented by IFR technology. It is understandable that the specifics of this technology and the state of its development are unknown to most people, due in no small part to the fact that the U.S. Department of Energy has purposely squelched such information since 1994. But claims that the technology is untested, untried, needs decades of R&D, and other such claims is simply untrue, and ignorance of the real state of affairs is no excuse for dismissing this crucially important technology.
The article that Greenpeace submitted for Mark Lynas’ website is in large part inapplicable to discussion of the IFR and to its commercial incarnation as embodied by the PRISM [1] reactor system which, contrary to popular belief, is actually ready to build. With sufficient support from the Obama administration, the design could be certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and we could have the first commercial PRISM reactor up and running within five years. After that it would be possible to build hundreds of them every year if we so desired, for unlike all the Generation II and Gen III reactors, the PRISM doesn’t require a pressure vessel, since it operates at atmospheric pressure. Therefore the construction bottleneck resulting from the fact that there is only one foundry in the world capable of building reactor pressure vessels will not impact the deployment of the PRISM.
I will not attempt to match the Greenpeace article for sheer length, since so much of it doesn’t apply to the PRISM system. For those readers unfamiliar with IFR technology and how it solves the myriad problems discussed in the Greenpeace article, I would refer them to my book where it is all duly explained [2]. I will deal only generally with the issues that Greenpeace discusses at length, except where specifics require further explanation.
The first section of the Greenpeace article deals with the disposal of nuclear waste and its troublesome longevity. Not only does the IFR system NOT produce long-lived nuclear waste, but it actually consumes the spent fuel from the current generation of reactors, solving the problem productively instead of burying it. Whereas lightwater reactors (LWR) use less than 1% of the energy in mined uranium, the IFR system utilizes 100% of it. Once uranium and/or plutonium (from spent fuel or decommissioned nuclear weapons) enters the IFR power plant, it never emerges except in the form of electricity and a small amount of short-lived fission products.
Instead of being burdened with spent nuclear fuel with half-lives of tens of thousands of years, the fission products resulting from the fast reactor (as exemplified by the PRISM system) have half-lives measured in decades. Within a few hundred years, the radiation from this waste will be below normal background radiation levels. Yet it will exit the plant entombed in borosilicate glass which will resist leaching any of it into the environment for thousands of years, long after any radiation has dissipated.
The exceptions to this are the fission products of Iodine-129 and technetium-99. These do have long half-lives, with I-129 being mentioned specifically in the Greenpeace article. These are so-called soft beta emitters that can be incorporated into the vitrified waste stream and would pose no public health hazards in that form, being bound up for thousands of years. But if that isn’t safe enough, the most logical—albeit politically incorrect—method of disposal of the vitrified waste from IFRs would eliminate even that distant problem. That would be the practice of dropping the shielded canisters of vitrified waste into deep ocean areas with deep muddy bottoms. The canisters would bury themselves in the mud, and during the thousands of years that they would sit there without any chance of leaching anything into the environment even more mud would build up above, incorporating the vitrified substance and the casks containing it into the earth itself. Any I-129 that ever managed to escape into the ocean water thousands of years hence would be so diluted as to be completely innocuous. Indeed, more I-129 already exists on the surface of the earth from atmospheric nuclear testing in the past than would ever conceivably be an issue using this deep-sea disposal method.
That being said, both Tc-99 and I-129 can be transmuted into elements with considerably shorter half-lives, as has been demonstrated at Hanford’s Fast Flux Test Facility. But the extra expense of isolating and transmuting these substances would really be overkill. I realize that international agreement would be necessary to make such deep-sea disposal of the vitrified waste from IFRs acceptable to all, but since there is so little waste produced by IFRs it’s entirely feasible (and logical) to simply retain all the waste on-site (underground, for security reasons) during the lifetime of the power plant (about 60 years or so). That leaves us about ¾ of a century to come to some agreement on this politically volatile but scientifically rational method of disposal. Call me an optimist, but I think that 75 years hence logic and reason will prevail over the current state of political correctness.
The next section of the Greenpeace article discusses cancer incidence and other effects of radiation, primarily in regard to Chernobyl. Presumably this is as a warning that nuclear power is unsafe in general, that such an accident will ultimately happen again as long as we’re using fission to generate electricity. What isn’t mentioned is the fact that even when Chernobyl was built it was a recognizably inferior design that would never have been built in the USA, much less without a containment dome.
We can argue about how many people will ultimately contract cancer as a result of Chernobyl, but ultimately the issue raised by this is whether it’s possible to avoid such an accident in the future while still utilizing nuclear power. One might also raise the issue of how the tens of thousands (arguably hundreds of thousands) of deaths per year from coal use should be weighed against the risks of nuclear power.
It’s clear that nuclear power is not going to go away. Many countries are not only building new nuclear plants but are working toward the IFR concept, among them Japan, South Korea, India (currently building a 600MW fast reactor), China, France, and Russia (the only country with a long-running commercial fast reactor, with plans to build more). Pretending that convincing the USA or other individual countries to eschew the use of nuclear power—either fast reactors or lightwater reactors—will lead to the abandonment of these technologies worldwide is simply a convenient delusion to those who hope to eliminate nuclear power. Far more responsible would be involving the USA and other developed countries in the deployment of the safest possible reactor design in all those countries that are inexorably and determinedly pursuing nuclear power.
Every reactor design hoping to be certified by the NRC must meet what seems to be a quite stringent probabilistic risk assessment standard. The PRISM design is superlative in this regard, orders of magnitude safer than any other design of reactor either already in use or on the drawing board. Imagine, if you will, that all of humanity’s energy needs were to be supplied solely by PRISM reactors, thousands of them all over the planet:
As we’ve seen earlier, the IFR concept as exemplified by the S-PRISM was developed specifically to be about as fail-safe as humanly possible. And the adjusted risk assessment numbers for even such a huge number of reactors reflect the success of the IFR concept. They reveal that we could expect a core melt accident on the order of Three Mile Island, with these thousands of reactors online, about once every 435,000 years! [3]
Let’s put that into perspective a little: The last ice age had glaciers gripping much of the earth’s land mass about 18,000 years ago. Neanderthals died out about 30,000 years ago. Homo heidelbergensis, a forerunner of homo sapiens, was living in Great Britain about 400,000 years ago, and possibly hunting elephants with spears, or at least scavenging their carcasses for meat. According to most archeologists, the protohumans that would eventually evolve into homo sapiens began using controlled fire between 200,000 and 400,000 years ago [4].
These reactor systems are capable of providing all the energy humanity needs without greenhouse gas emissions or radioactive releases except the inert vitrified waste described earlier. Arguments against the certification of this design and the building of a single PRISM reactor in order to establish hard data about costs and time to build are difficult to countenance in the face of the grave problems we face. And this modest goal is all that is being proposed for now. Once this data is in hand and a PRISM reactor is operating, then the discussion about whether to deploy them in numbers can be conducted based on facts rather than speculation.
Dr. James Hansen, arguably the world’s foremost climatologist, is advocating just such a limited course of action. While stressing energy efficiency programs and the development and deployment of renewable energy systems and a smart grid as our primary goals, Dr. Hansen sees IFRs as a responsible backup plan. If we find, after the five years necessary for such a plan have passed, that we’re on track to provide all the energy that humanity needs from renewable sources alone, then we’ll have spent a paltry sum for the insurance of having the IFR option at our disposal. If, on the other hand, we find that renewables simply cannot be expected to meet all our energy needs, we’ll be ready with a proven technology (remember, the forerunner of the PRISM ran for 30 years at Argonne National Laboratory with barely a hiccup) to take up the slack, to provide whatever portion of our energy needs can’t be met by renewables.
The GP article also pans nuclear based on the cost of building nuclear plants, but here too the numbers aren’t based on the factory-built modular PRISM design that promises to be very competitive. We can argue all day about how much GE claims they would cost with how much Greenpeace and others claim, but the one way to really know is to just build one. GE could build a non-certified full-sized reactor vessel within the next year for about $50-60 million. This would be exactly the same as a certified version and could be filled with water and mockup fuel assemblies as a prototype to both simulate a lifetime of operation and to expedite the certification process by the NRC.
Complaining about the amount of subsidization the nuclear power industry has received in the past and speculating baselessly about how uneconomical this type of nuclear power will be is useless. The fact is that we can know for certain at very little cost, and in very few years.
The argument that renewables can supply all our energy needs and that even such a modest plan as this is unnecessary is belied by Greenpeace’s own Energy Revolution studies. The China study [5] states right in the beginning ”...it is economically feasible to cut global CO2 emissions by almost 50% within the next 43 years.” Yet a prominent Greenpeace representative (who shall remain nameless to spare him embarrassment) offers these studies in support of his claim that, “Fortunately, for both the US and the planet, expanded use of nuclear power is unnecessary. Not only can the US address climate change without resorting to new reactors, so can India and China.” Where, pray tell, is the other 50+% of China’s energy supposed to come from?
By Greenpeace’s own assessment, China alone will have an energy shortfall of over 50% after renewable energy sources are taken into account. That leaves us with two choices: fossil fuels or nuclear power. IFRs can produce all that energy and then some without contributing any GHG emissions. Which leads us to yet another claim thrown about blithely by anti-nuclear activists: that the life cycle carbon costs of nuclear power are barely better (or even NO better) than fossil fuel power plants.
This is patently false even when considering the older, larger, and more complex Gen II lightwater reactors in use today around the world. The IPCC has stated that they are about on a par with solar or wind power systems in terms of life cycle carbon costs. But much of the emission load attributed to nuclear power systems are those arising from mining, milling, and enrichment of uranium. With IFRs we wouldn’t need to do any of that for nearly a thousand years even if we produced all the energy humanity needs solely from IFR systems. As for the construction of the power plants themselves, IFRs use significantly less concrete and steel than Gen II systems. So look at this comparison of Gen II reactors, coal, and wind power from a study [6] done by the University of California at Berkeley.
Since concrete and steel comprise upwards of 95% of the construction inputs of both nuclear and other generating systems, it is glaringly obvious that if anyone wants to argue against IFRs based on life cycle carbon costs they will be only setting themselves up for extreme embarrassment. Remember, IFRs will be far better than even the figures above would indicate for New Nuclear, which is actually Old Nuclear.
The argument is also made that spending money on nuclear power plants will deplete the funds necessary for renewable energy supplies. Again, proceeding with the modest plan to certify and build a single PRISM reactor will provide the data we need to evaluate which types of technology can compete on a level playing field. There is no reason to bicker about it until we have the facts in hand, something we can easily do within a very short time and at negligible cost.
The Greenpeace article goes on to dispute Prescription for the Planet directly, claiming that these systems are nowhere near ready to be built, saying at one point, “In order for even prototype versions to be built, technological breakthroughs in material development will have to be made.” This and their other arguments to that effect are simply false. Either they don’t know the current state of the technology (very likely) or they do know, which would be worse yet. The PRISM is ready to be built. GE could start building one next week. The costly and time-consuming NRC certification process is the only reason it hasn’t already been done, that and the certain battle that awaits any attempt to deploy fast reactors because of their fuel breeding capabilities.
The contention that huge amounts of uranium would have to be mined in order to begin deploying these reactors is likewise baseless, but rather than deal with a lengthy explanation here I will simply refer readers to my book. We wouldn’t have to mine a speck of uranium for hundreds of years. Yes, we would have to reprocess current stockpiles of spent nuclear fuel from LWRs into fuel assemblies for IFRs, a one-time process that will be well worth the expense of building a small number of high-capacity plants for that purpose around the world. After that, all fuel production and recycling will take place in small batches within the confines of the IFR power plants, producing both the fuel they need for continued operation and that necessary to start up new plants of the same kind. This type of recycling from the spent oxide fuel form to the metallic IFR fuel should not be conflated with MOX reprocessing or with PUREX reprocessing such as that used elsewhere in the world.
The arguments that Greenpeace offers disputing my description of how plutonium and uranium can be used in IFRs don’t hold water either, but again I would direct the reader to my book rather than take the time to rewrite it here. I’m not trying to sell books here; just ask your library to order it and then you and all your friends can read it. It’s clear from the GP article that either they haven’t bothered to read it, or have ignored the facts. By the way, the MIT study cited in their article is duly critiqued in Prescription for the Planet.
The contention that France’s success with nuclear is a mirage is patently ridiculous. First of all the GP article argues that France has a higher per capita oil consumption than that of its neighbors. What does that have to do with France’s electricity use and production? Few generators use oil these days, in any country. Oil use reflects France’s driving habits. It says nothing about the considerable success of their nuclear power program, which contrary to GP’s claims provides about 80% of their electricity needs and at the same time provides so much excess as to make electricity France’s 4th largest export. GP states somewhat ambiguously, “the contribution of nuclear power to overall consumption was a mere 14%.” If they’re talking about electricity consumption, they’re off by a factor of about six.
I do hope that the writer(s) of the Greenpeace article will take the time to read Prescription in order to clear up the countless misconceptions obviously clouding their judgement about IFR systems. For those readers interested in more detail, as well as a fuller picture of how IFRs and the other two technologies discussed therein can lead to a much brighter future for our planet, I hope you’ll take a look for yourself. Don’t be misled by anti-nuclear arguments that don’t apply to this new power generation system that holds such transformative promise for solving the serious problems facing us today.
[1] When I speak of the PRISM throughout this article I am actually referring to the latest version of this design, actually called the S-PRISM (for Super Power Reactor Innovative Small Module). The “Super” designation resulted from a modification of the original design to increase both its physical size and its power output.
[2] You can read the Intro and first chapter at my website: www.prescriptionfortheplanet.com
[3] Based on GE-Hitachi risk assessment studies obtained by the author
[4] Prescription for the Planet, Chapter Eight
[5] http://www.greenpeace.org/china/en/press/reports/energy-revolution
[6] Per Peterson, “Current and Future Activities for Nuclear Energy in the United States,” (Berkeley, CA: Department of Nuclear Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, Oct 11, 2006)
Comments
Harmless sky
January 6th, 2009 at 04:20 AM
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=143
Says it all really.
Pete Best
January 6th, 2009 at 01:13 PM
Regardless of what Greenpeace states on environmental grounds, they are not independent and not objective. They have no reason to want nuclear power in any form even if they want to resolve AGW issues.
Carl Johnson
January 6th, 2009 at 01:56 PM
Thank you Tom for your article and also to Mark for posting it for us. A clear, concise and informative article which for me would seem to illustrate sensibly that nuclear power is not only viable in every way but also relatively safe. Additionally of course as Tom says we should explore and invest in renewables. What a great position it would be to not need nuclear power in the future, although like many I think we will need it. I will leave those better qualified to argue the science here but Tom’s points are well made. I await Greenpeace’s response again with baited breath!
Jean Marsh
January 6th, 2009 at 11:23 PM
An eloquent and in-depth rebuttal, Mr. Blees. If only all solutions were as rock solid as this one…
Shane Hughes
January 7th, 2009 at 11:38 PM
Thank you Tom for you rebuttal. Nuclear is here for the foreseeable future and in some places growing. There are also no guarantees that renewables can replace fossil fuels within the uncertain timeframe, even with the desired demand side reduction. On this basis alone I’m convinced that it would be logical to invest in testing S-PRISM. It sounds a little too good to be true and may well be just another pipe dream. But again that’s an argument for getting the testing done. If the technology is proven, it would likely become the only real diversion from our current direction of building ever more old style nuclear. While the article is optimist, I would have liked to see more references to credible studies (other than the authors book) and more detailed nitty gritty as to why the certification of this technology is being delayed. Is it because there are flaws or technological advancements still beyond our grasp?
Shane
Alan Gore
January 8th, 2009 at 02:47 PM
Hey you guys still worried about the Earth warming up? Darn, that’s so last year Man. Look, ever since I wangled, sorry won that rootin tootin big Nobel prize for Bullsh…. sorry scaremongering I didn’t expect this sort of crazy stuff to carry on into 2009, specially when there’s a whole heap of other stuff that should worry y’all. Hell, how Hansen managed to keep that ol hockey mum graph going after it was vilified and then managed to resurect it years later is, frankly, amazing. But I guess you gotta do what you gotta do. Some folk reckon He’s a one trick pony but hell if ya got it then ya gotta flaunt it right? Like our old friend here Marky. Man He’s been banging the drum for nooocular power for some time now and ya gotta give the guy a break, come on now!
It’s time to come clean and own up to ma sins and let y’all know that Man changing the climate really is one sick crock. But I had to do it. I did. We Alpha males can’t just stop in our tracks once We leave politics, hell no siree. We gotta keep steaming on like a mule train winding down a mountain. But, I’m tired now and I just want the peaceful life now, you all understand I’m sure. Now I suggest you all do the same instead of wasting yer lives on this Cockamanie climate change nonsense. Get out of the house, take a holiday, take some drugs just do something for crying out loud.
Well I gotta leave y’all now but I’ll leave you with this little piece I read over the interweb (which y’all know I invented heh heh). Take care y’hear.
Here’s the link guys, read it through till the end it’s not that long after all.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/lying.htm
Klaus Allmendinger
January 8th, 2009 at 08:51 PM
@ Shane Hughes,
Shane, you asked: “would have liked to see more references to credible studies (other than the authors book) and more detailed nitty gritty as to why the certification of this technology is being delayed. Is it because there are flaws or technological advancements still beyond our grasp?”
Not a reference, but ask yourself the following question: “What industry has the most to loose from an energy technology whose product cost is basically independent of the cost of input materials?”
The answer is clearly the fossil fuel industry. Its two parts, gas/oil and coal, would be destroyed utterly.
Gas/oil does not loose (even gains) from intermittant producers like wind and solar. They gain because the needed backup for those HAS to be natural gas (or oil) with fast reacting gas or diesel plants. The oil/gas industry will clearly loose from nuclear because it makes fossil plants obsolete, with no replacement revenue stream from nuclear material inputs as too small an amount is needed. Nuclear can even replace oil carbon neutrally in transportation. Either by going electric, or by producing synthetic hydrocarbons from air extracted CO2 and water as in http://www.lanl.gov/news/newsbulletin/pdf/Green_Freedom_Overview.pdf
The coal industry does not loose from renewables. Coal is a baseload producer, and cannot be replaced by renewables. It can be 100% replaced by nuclear, with no replacement revenue stream.
With the very large influence that the fossil fuel industry had and has in the political process of the western world, do you still have to ask your question? The fight against nuclear power is a survival question for the fossil fuel industry.
Tom Blees
January 8th, 2009 at 10:49 PM
Shane, I reference my book because all the info is in there, and every footnote that has an internet-accessible source is linked from my web site, to make it easy for readers to dig deeper if they wish. Much of the information I have about the S-PRISM is directly from my sources at GE. As to why this isn’t being built yet, it’s not because they’re not ready to build it or because the principles or materials have yet to be developed. GE is a big conservative company that doesn’t throw money away on gambles, and with this system it’s a gamble whether or not the government will support it. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission process to certify a new reactor is so costly (about a billion dollars US), and the chance of a political brick wall for the first commercial breeder reactor is very possible, so we’d be asking GE to invest over a billion dollars for something that might get scuttled indefinitely by political wrangling. Safer for them to continue servicing the current fleet of Gen II reactors and pursue their safer version of lightwater reactor, the so-called Gen III+, than to throw the dice with the Gen IV S-PRISM. Of course that can all change very quickly if the Obama administration decides to follow Jim Hansen’s advice and fast-track the certification of the S-PRISM. We shall see.
shaun burnie
January 9th, 2009 at 12:14 AM
Dear Tom – its difficult to take seriously the numbers you cite for deployment of IFR’s. As far as I am aware no nuclear power program has come on line at the price stated in advance. Is this just past history ? Well look at the current and increasingly panic stricken debate on nuclear power plant cost estimates – recommend these for a good overview http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2008/06/02/nuclear_power_price/; http://zedc4test.techprogress.org/issues/2008/nuclear_power_report.html, and only this last week http://climateprogress.org/2009/01/05/study-cost-risks-new-nuclear-power-plants/
There is a theme here – nuclear power is even more expensive than anyone thought and its only going one way.
You acknowledge that existing spent fuel will have to be reprocessed to provide the plutonium to fuel IFR’s. From what I understand, deploying a fleet of these breeders will require the reprocessing (Ok – call it pyroprocessing) of between 55 and 70 thousand tons of light water reactor spent fuel. As I said some months back thats a lot of reprocessing – the French plants at la Hague have reprocessed around 15,000 tons in the last ten years – with all the resultant environmental consequences. If your time frame for deployment is to be believed – General Electric give figures of 38Gw within 25 years (see- S-PRISM Fuel Cycle Study For Session 3: Future Deployment Programs and Issues Allen E. Dubberley GE Nuclear Energy 2003) – to fuel this deployment will require a level of reprocessing not experienced during the last 50 years – and rather than using purex which has been around for decades it will be technology that remains untested on anything other than at lab level – scaled up to process thousands of tons per annum. A more likely scenario is that the pyro-technlogy will remain at lab level and the purex or some modification thereof would be chosen. When the US Department of Energy understood this three years ago they permitted AREVA to submit plans for their technology to be considered as part of the GNEP project.
I presume that you believe that if this technology is to make an impact on global emissions, it will have to be deployed across the planet. Apart from the proliferation nightmares this would entail, there is not enough light water reactor spent fuel. If global stocks of spent fuel rise to 500 thousand tons – and all of this was to be reprocessed resulting in 5000 tons of plutonium it would provide fuel for around 300 gigawatts of IFR. This is less than current installed nuclear capacity which provides 2-3% of global energy. Its not difficult to see how this breeder reactor approach to saving the planet is not going to work.
The GE figures for the United States that will deliver 38Gw – a lot of power –is less than that cut by California efficiency programs in the last three decades (40Gw) and less than half of what the state’s public utility commission shows could be saved by 2020. Replicating these levels of effiency across the US would reduce demand by over 130 Gigawatts – by 2020. In other words three times more capacity than what GE envisage installing by 2035 (assuming no problems – which would be unusual to say the lease when looking at the history of nuclear power).
So why the push for breeder technology that since the 1950’s has been known to be the most hazardous in terms of proliferation ? One simple answer is that there remain in the US Department of Energy Labs. scientists and engineers frustrated and bitter that their dreams were shattered by politicians. The climate disaster unfolding today is a lifeline for them. However from all angles of looking at this problem there is no logic to their arguments and the need for real solutions so urgent that their lobbying is a very dangerous distraction.
regards – shaun
Shane Hughes
January 9th, 2009 at 10:42 AM
We seemed to be stuck in old school debate as usual; Mark Lynas and/or Tom Blees presents an optimistic picture, while Greenpeace presents the negative one. It kind of makes it difficult to take either side seriously. Most of us readers aren’t educated enough to know which bit we should be throwing our pinch of salt on.
When i said it would be nice to have “more detailed nitty gritty as to why the certification of this technology is being delayed”
Tom kindly responded “this system it’s a gamble whether or not the government will support it” as well as discussing Obama.
In old school debate both sides are scared to pitch in with the negative elements focusing purely on the strengths of their case for fear of losing their argument.
Debate “as usual” may mean that we all lose. it will certainly hinder our progress.
Tom Blees
January 10th, 2009 at 02:14 AM
Shane, I don’t have any connection with GE or the nuclear industry aside from informational connections. I call ‘em as I see ‘em. This isn’t some pie in the sky technology. Heck, the Soviets had a very similar reactor running in 1972. As for the recycling that Shaun discusses, we will eventually want to recycle all our spent fuel so yes, it will entail building big reprocessing plants, but it wouldn’t take too many. The pyroprocessing itself is a very well-known and long-used system. The one part of it that’s much different—reduction of oxide spent fuel—is a step that GE will have commercialized this year. It ain’t rocket science.
As for proliferation, pyroprocessing is probably the most proliferation-resistant method yet, far more so than the PUREX system and the MOX type of recycling that the French do, plus it’s FAR more efficient and all done on-site, with no isolation of plutonium involved. Besides, if someone wants to make a bomb it’s a whole lot easier and cheaper and more clandestine to just make the plutonium with a small research reactor, of which there are many around the world at universities and laboratories. The plutonium you get from spent reactor fuel is isotopically contaminated and makes pretty poor bombs, which is why power reactors haven’t been used for this purpose. You’re right, Shaun, there isn’t enough LWR spent fuel to build these quite as fast as I propose. But if we start out fast and configure them for maximum breeding, we can still get there by mid-century, especially if we combine that effort with energy efficiency programs, which we should do in any case. But even with great energy efficiency worldwide, we still need baseload power that’s NOT generated by fossil fuels. Nuclear can provide it, and these reactors can best provide it because of all their many advantages. As to cost, the latest figures from GE contend that IFR complexes built from the ground up will be able to produce electricity at about 4.6¢/kWh. That is very competitive. Don’t believe it? We can easily find out if we just certify and build one plant. That’s a modest proposal with a potentially planet-saving upside. If I’m wrong, we didn’t lose much. NOT doing it is a bigger gamble. Shane, I’d love to be able to make it easy for you to see who’s talking fact and who’s talking fiction. So let’s build one. Then we’ll all know for sure. Beyond that, we’ll have the data to make our decisions whether to deploy them or not. But let’s not tarry.
Mike Small
January 12th, 2009 at 10:00 PM
I find this sentence disturbing (for obvious reasons): “Once uranium and/or plutonium (from spent fuel or decommissioned nuclear weapons) enters the IFR power plant, it never emerges except in the form of electricity and a small amount of short-lived fission products.” I would like to be convinced but remain profoundly unconvinced by Blees’s case. Is this where your energy’s going now Mark?
G.R.L. Cowan
January 13th, 2009 at 01:34 AM
I probably speak for many when I say Mike Small’s reasons are not obvious and need to be briefly and clearly set out.
-G.R.L. Cowan (How fire can be domesticated)Carson Beck
January 21st, 2009 at 03:23 PM
Thank you, Tom Blees, for your inspirational ideas. I stand behind Integral Fast Reactors, and nuclear power…when its the correct method. I am a senior debate student at Buhler High School, in Buhler, Kansas. We have been using excerpts from your work as evidence in our debate rounds. I just want to say that your hard work is greatly appreciated!
Justin Kenrick
February 12th, 2009 at 12:11 AM
Technological solutions which appear to offer us the opportunity to continue with business as usual, miss the central point: which is that we shouldn’t be mesmerised by climate change and the desperate need to solve it at all costs, and in any technological way possible. We should keep our eyes focused on the causes of climate change: the economic growth (boom and bust) obsession and all the structures of inequality and social and ecological devestation that go with it. There is a solution to this – which is not technological, but social. Meeting our material needs within ecological limits and devoting our surplus energies to developing resilient and vibrant communities and supporting others to do the same. Let’s have a life, not a half-life – however attractive the obsession with being for or against nuclear power, and however fixated we can get with trying to solve climate change technologically, when obsessing with such fixes just serves to keep the machine plunging towards the precipice, rather than allowing us to dismantle it and rebuild communities where we can all be at home. An idealistic unrealistic long-shot? Maybe, but at least that’s asking us to head in the direction we need to walk . . . you get the point I hope, even if I’ve gone on a bit too long! I appreciate the care people are putting into debates such as this – but would we not do better to put that care into real relationships that rebuild resilient communities, so that we find the problem solved through living, not through seeking more of the technofixes that are a large part of what got us into this problem in the first place?
G.R.L. Cowan
February 13th, 2009 at 12:11 AM
“Technological solutions which appear to offer us the opportunity to continue with business as usual …”
Business as usual will not be quite the same when the petroleum and natural gas industries will have been eliminated, depriving the world’s governments of about a trillion dollars of their annual income.
“Dismantle it and rebuild communities where we can all be at home” — on holistic, ten-speed, hippie government cheques, right?
No more Ghislenghiens, no more Neyshaburs, no more Westrays, no more Piper Alphas, no more Aberfans, even if the cessation will cost the granolas money. Do you agree?
(How fire can be domesticated
Klaus
February 13th, 2009 at 12:43 AM
Justin, Please name one single area on the earth where people live in a low energy/capita “utopia” and live longer, healthier and happier than in the “technology obsessed” industrial countries. Despite all the romantic notions of small, middle-earth type villages populated by hobbits, it is nowhere, nor has it ever been, reality. What’s associated with energy deprivation anywhere in the real world is poverty, short lifespans, and, consequently, large population growth. What’s associated with energy abundance is relativ wealth for the population (compared to the energy starved nations), long lifespans, and birthrates below replacement levels.
Paul York
February 14th, 2009 at 06:53 PM
The article above is wrong on many points. The facts are wrong. Ethically it is wrong. Environmentally it is wrong. There are so many errors it is hard to know where to begin to refute it. There are numerous reports and studies to show that nuclear energy is not the answer to climate change mitigation. I really wonder what the motivation of this author is? Does he work for the well-funded nuclear lobby? For a grand synthesis of such sources see “Canadian Coalition for Nuclear Responsibilty.”
G.R.L. Cowan
February 20th, 2009 at 08:00 PM
Blees does not work for any lobby.
Why does York not suspect the CCNR of working for the fossil fuel lobby, a public-private partnership that, so far this century, has already netted millions of megabucks, and, but for the worldwide nuclear power industry, would have had a thousand billion dollars more?
Why does he not suspect all the numerous reports and studies of reaching conclusions predetermined by that lobby?
(How fire will be domesticated)
Justin Kenrick
February 24th, 2009 at 02:57 AM
Klaus and GLR Cowan,
Sorry for the delay in responding. Like you, I expect, I have been working flat out trying to help stop climate chaos. It always amazes me how effectively people are persuaded that there is no alternative to the myth that dominates – whether in this culture or, indeed, in any culture where the power of the few depends on persuading the many that there is no alternative.
Klaus,
‘Utopia’ is your word not mine. What I was talking about were places where people are aware of ecological limits and put their energies into social relations rather than always trying to acquire more. Greed, fear and loathing are no more central to being human than kindness, love and care – the story our culture tells us about ourselves persuades people that one aspect is ‘real’ and another ‘idealistic’. There are a whole range of ways in which we are persuaded from every direction that there is no alternative. The story is told intellectually day on day out (it’s much of what Universities teach through a range of apparently different subjects) but it is also told all the time in tiny ways: from the extraordinary number of adverts that have to hit children day in day out, to the Father Christmas story that tells children that there are fantasies (believing in him) and then there are harsh realities (knowing the story was a con).
Either way, the work goes on: split reality in two and persuade people that on one side is the harsh reality and on the other a fantasy (in your case: describing the places I refer to as ‘hobbit lands’ or ‘utopia’).
Ways of being human and organising society are far more varied than that – we have many more options if we choose to really challenge ourselves by looking at the central myth we force ourselves to live by, and being willing to do the really hard work of unthinking our assumptions and taking the risk of trying something else.
But you asked for references. For a start I’d suggest having a look at:
Mario Blaser’s ‘Life Projects: Indigenous Peoples’ Agency and Development’, AND Harvey Feit’s ‘James Bay Crees’ Life Projects and Politics: Histories of Place, Animal Partners and Enduring Relationships’, BOTH in Mario Blaser, Harvey A. Feit and Glenn McRae (eds.) (2004) In the Way of Development: Indigenous Peoples, Life Projects and Globalisation. London: Zed
Linebaugh, Peter and Marcus Rediker (2000) ‘The Wreck of the Sea-Venture’, in The Many-headed Hydra: sailors, slaves, commoners, and the hidden story of the revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon Press
Ingold, Tim (2000) ‘Hunting and gathering as ways of perceiving the environment’, in The Perception of the Environment London: Routledge
Kenrick, Justin (2005) ‘Equalising Processes, Processes of Discrimination and the Forest People of Central Africa’, in T Widlock & W Tadesse (eds.) Property and Equality: Vol. 2 Encapsulation, Commercialization, Discrimination. Oxford: Berghahn
Then you could have a look at some useful material on infancy and how we learn to think the world is the way we think it is. Su Gerhardt has a great chapter (Ch 2) in her 2004 Why Love Matters: how affection shapes a baby’s brain. New York: Routledge
Hope that gives you food for thought (and my apologies, if you were just writing a rebuttal rather than really being interested in whether there is any alternative to our Promethian myth) and good luck with your – obviously very different – ways of trying to stop this society dragging the whole world into climate chaos.
Klaus Allmendinger
February 26th, 2009 at 01:14 AM
@ Justin,
Justin, obviously I have very different life experiences than you. My experience with a low energy, “ecological” life is first-hand, not academic. I grew up in rural Germany in the early 1950s. As you might know, Germany’s infrastructure was basically bombed back into the 19th century during WWII. In the small town I grew up in, there was not a single tractor, nor a car, when I was a child. Farming was done for subsistence. Shoes were made (once a year was only affordable) from hides of those animals too old to work. Clothing was not bought, but made from bought cloth and meant selling part of the produce that could have fed us better. Few farm horses were left, as most were requisitioned for the war effort and died there. So cows and oxen were mostly used for field work. My father was a blacksmith and farrier. But also cows and oxen were shoed to allow them to last the work schedule. To feed a family required backbreaking work on the average of 12-16 hours a day, 6-1/2 days a week, as human labour had to replace energy consuming machines. And yes, also the labour of children as soon as they were old enough. I shoe’d my first (fortunately very kind) horse when I was 7 years old. The climate in central Europe is not as kind as that in tropical regions where indiginous people can survive with minimal ecological impact.
In most of Europe or North America it is a life that is romanticized too much by people that don’t know it. It’s no wonder that those who experienced it do not with to repeat it or wish it on their children.
I still love open spaces, horses, and undisturbed landscapes. I now live also in a rural community of a different kind in the middle of a national wilderness area in Southern California. Until about 12 years ago this community did not have access to the electrical grid. Everybody had solar panels, batteries and propane-powered backup generators. Of course that did not produce enough energy, or too expensive, to run clean heat pumps in the winter, or even a normal refrigerator. Inefficient gas powered refrigerators had to be used. Heating was mainly with wood, which caused many winter evenings where a noxious smog hung in the air. But then still about 80% of our energy actually came from propane because the sun does not shine in the evenings when light and power is needed. This all changed when we got grid connected and are now getting most of our electricity from a nearby nuclear power station. No more smog. No more rattling of the backup generators on quiet evenings, refrigerators that work, and heating that doesn’t emit noxious smoke, using ground source heat pumps and solar thermal heating. Before solar thermal was not used, because the prime roof area was needed for solar PV, and few people wanted or could afford to cover half of their property with metal/glas panels.
Andrew Carver
February 28th, 2009 at 01:02 PM
Killing our Own The Disaster of America’s Experience with Atomic Radiation by Harvey Wasserman and Norman Solomon
This book was published in 1982 in the aftermath of Three Mile Island. It can now be downloaded gratis as a pdf file friom the web.
25% of French people will die of cancer by the age of 65. 80% of French electricity comes from nuclear.
Secret Fallout by DR Ernest Sternglass
“Directly out of the business of nuclear weapons came the business of nuclear power, heralded in our country with the slogan, Atoms for Peace. Even that innocent-sounding slogan is part of the endless pattern of public deception that surrounds the entire nuclear enterprise. Let me interject a present example that poses the relationship nicely. In our country the entire hydrogen bomb enterprise—both R and D and production—is not under the Department of Defense, but the Department of Energy. It goes, not into the Defense budget, but the Energy budget. It is by far the largest item in that budget, consuming well over one-third of it. The next largest item in it is nuclear power.
“Nuclear power and nuclear weapons are two sides of the same coin. Nuclear power is life threatening in three independent ways, each in itself formidable.
“First is the threat of accident in nuclear power plants. This book tells in some detail the story of the accident at Three Mile Island. But one didn’t have to wait for that to know that nuclear power plants—unlike what the public has been told—are thoroughly accident-prone. Those great realists, the American insurance companies, refused from the beginning to insure nuclear power plants. Hence we have the Price-Anderson Act, renewed by Congress every 10 years since 1957, which lays the bulk of the liability in the event of nuclear accident on “the government”—i.e., on the taxpayers.
G.R.L. Cowan
February 28th, 2009 at 09:29 PM
Justin Kenrick reverses my middle initials
- this reversal seems to be a propagating meme -and doesn’t answer either of my questions. Just to remind, they end ”... government cheques, right?” and “Do you agree?”Societies differ. If they are truly aimed at being “resilient and vibrant communities”, there are different ways to do that, but in all of them, nuclear energy replaces fossil fuels. The only thing that tends to slow this is the fossil fuel interests. But if those interests include government, as through fossil fuel taxation they typically do, the footdragging can be by people who are well-placed to footdrag very powerfully.
(How fire can be domesticated)
Tom Blees
March 1st, 2009 at 09:40 AM
25% of French people will die of cancer by the age of 65. 80% of French electricity comes from nuclear.
France ranks #12 in cancer deaths per 100,000 people, behind such countries as the Netherlands (#1), Ireland (#6. Do they have lots of nuclear power plants there?), New Zealand, the USA, Australia, and Norway (#8-11). Among only women, France ranks 35th (guys smoke more, I think).
This is about the degree of rigorous argument I’d expect from someone who recommends Wasserman.
Danny Satterfield
March 24th, 2009 at 05:14 AM
It’s a good bet that we will see more, and more disagreement among those who abhor Nuclear Power, and those who realize that time is rapidly running out to do something about Carbon emissions.
I am reading through Prescr. now, and it certainly seems like an interesting idea. I’ve never been much of a fan of “Nuclear”, but the Science I read each week in the journals, is getting downright scary.
We may have no choice as at least a stop gap measure.
Chris L
April 13th, 2009 at 06:12 AM
In their desire to save the world, I have often found that activists lose sight of the big picture. You can see that in particular with human rights groups and those trying to deliver food to the poor. While admirable, do they seem to not realize that their efforts will be for nothing if the world does not change. Want to see a real poverty crisis? Wait until the world is 4-5 degrees warmer. Then who is going to come to their aid?
Whether we like it or not, nuclear fission is a proven technology. It works on a large scale. So does coal (but obviously unsustainable). Of course, one might argue that there is a finite supply of uranium and thorium in the ground, but hopefully by then, we will have developed fusion and that will be over. Indeed, fusion is the ultimate answer. There are simply no viable alternatives.
It really is sad that environmentalists have to be convinced this when everyone is trying to work to more or less a similar objective – develop a solution to global warming.
What terrifies me is that we may already be over the edge. Model after model seems to have underestimated how sensitive the earth is to our activity. When will we get the real picture?
Zack
April 23rd, 2009 at 06:01 AM
I wonder what Richard Heinberg or James Howard Kunstler would have to say about the IFR? Probably that if it’s too good to be true… it PROBABLY is. Damn.
Kurtis
May 19th, 2009 at 04:51 AM
Hello/Bonjour,
The reality tunnels being talked about are sure interesting. Blees’ book is a good read, enjoyable, though uncertainty exists within my mindscape…
I would be highly interested to see this debate broaden to include the academic community and such people that Zack lists…
Maybe I’ll try to forward Heinberg this thread.
Peace and Good Luck All Around!
KLA
May 22nd, 2009 at 06:45 PM
@ Zack
You said: “Probably that if it’s too good to be true… it PROBABLY is.”
This does not apply in this case. It applies only when known physical principles are violated. Consider the development of steam power. The first application of steam power was Newcombes coal fired steam pump. It used only 1% of the potential energy in the coal it burned. Then came James Watts steam engine. It used 20% of the energy. Todays steam turbines extract 40-45% of the energy. However, the Carnot limits of thermodynamic apply, and they can’t go much further. Todays nuclear power plants use only about 1% of the potential energy of the uranium fuel. However, different to Newcombe and James Watt, we have the tools of nuclear physics, thermodynamics and computer modelling at our disposal. With an IFR we can go directly to utilizing 100% of the energy contained in Uranium. As in that utilisation the Carnot limits don’t apply. That does not mean we get 100% of the energy as electricity out, as there the thermodynamic limits still apply, but we don’t throw 99% of the fuel away as nuclear waste. Can you see the difference?
Paul PCAN
May 24th, 2009 at 12:16 PM
Tom Blees said: “Imagine, if you will, that all of humanity’s energy needs were to be supplied solely by PRISM reactors, thousands of them all over the planet”
Maybe, but that would also cause environmental damage and pressure on resources:
1. Eric Chaisson points out that mass use of nuclear energy would increase global average temperatures. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227026.800-essay-the-heat-to-come.html
2. The reason for requiring so much energy would be due to economic growth and increased resource use. Which basically means more environmental destruction later down the road.
robert
June 11th, 2009 at 02:35 AM
An eloquent and in-depth rebuttal, Mr. Blees. If only all solutions were as rock solid as this one…
preklady
June 25th, 2009 at 08:24 AM
I agree, this solution really looks interesting and promising. I wonder what will happen in the future.
joe
July 5th, 2009 at 01:37 AM
Thank you Tom for your article and also to Mark for posting it for us
MartinT
July 23rd, 2009 at 03:20 PM
Thoroughly interesting article. It caught my eye because some 15 years ago whilst studying for my Master of Physics degree I produced a report of the methods of disposal of nuclear waste. The advances since the technology being proposed even at that time are staggering. I think one of the key advances is the utilization of the energy from the source uranium as you outline – going from 1% to 100% from LWR to IFR. Combine this with the shortened half-lives of the vast majority of the byproducts that are eventually produced and you would like to think peoples hysteria over the use of nuclear power would reduce due to these facts alone. In my opinion the world needs nuclear power, and the sooner this is accepted and embraced the better.
جيل
August 1st, 2009 at 11:55 PM
An eloquent and in-depth rebuttal, Mr. Blees. If only all solutions were as rock solid as this one…
فحص البيج رانك
August 1st, 2009 at 11:57 PM
Thank you Tom for you rebuttal. Nuclear is here for the foreseeable future and in some places growing. There are also no guarantees that renewables can replace fossil fuels within the uncertain timeframe, even with the desired demand side reduction. On this basis alone I’m convinced that it would be logical to invest in testing S-PRISM. It sounds a little too good to be true and may well be just another pipe dream. But again that’s an argument for getting the testing done. If the technology is proven, it would likely become the only real diversion from our current direction of building ever more old style nuclear. While the article is optimist, I would have liked to see more references to credible studies (other than the authors book) and more detailed nitty gritty as to why the certification of this technology is being delayed. Is it because there are flaws or technological advancements still beyond our grasp?
Shane
ahmed
August 4th, 2009 at 02:40 AM
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Fargin
September 7th, 2009 at 09:00 AM
As I see, the efforts of Tom Blees and people like you are not antagonistical to each other.
We should encourage both of these efforts.
The problem with 4th generation nuclear power (or nuclear power in general) is that this perspective is lacking when we criticize the options. Most of the criticism against 2nd generation nuclear power is valid, but faced against a much deadlier coal alternative, these power plants are a blessing.