rwsh@hound.UUCP (R.STUBBLEFIELD) (05/02/84)
Nuclear vs. Coal (I inadvertantly sent this (minus P.S.) to net.news last week. Thanks to the 8 people who politely corrected me. My sympathy to the person who implied you can't know anything if you don't know everything.) The energy concentration of uranium is 3.5 million times that of coal. This fundamental physical fact is why nuclear power is cheaper and safer than power from coal. Per KW-HR of energy produced, less human effort is expended to obtain the fuel, fewer lives are lost, and fewer waste products are produced. The major expense of a nuclear plant is financing the debt while waiting for the plant to come online. In spite of the inflation rate, the regulatory hurdles, and interventionary tactics that cause plants to take years longer to go online in the US than in any other country, "In 1983 the cost of US nuclear power was 12% lower than coal-fired and less than half of oil-fired power." [1] Although the energy concentration is so much greater, it is physically impossible for the fuel in a nuclear plant to cause a nuclear explosion. And you are exposed to more radiation on a flight from NYC to LA than by living next to Three Mile Island for a year. "Nuclear power saves ... between 20 and 100 additional lives for every 1000MW nuclear plant that will replace a coal-fired plant in the future." [2] (Of course if your standard is improving human existence, even coal power is to be preferred to no power.) If you wonder why some people are such anti-nukes even after knowing these facts, you might want to read "Philosophy and Nuclear Power" by Harry Binswanger. [3] 1. Access to Energy, May 1984, (Vol. 1, no. 9). 2. The Health Hazard of Not Going Nuclear, p. 121, Petr Beckmann, Golem Press, 1976. 3. The Objectivist Forum, Oct. and Dec. 1980, (Vol. 1, nos. 5 & 6). Post script: One person did not see the connection between energy concentration and safety. It is the same root as the connection with economics: less human effort is expended mining, transporting, processing, using, and disposing of the waste of the more concentrated fuel. Anti-nukers seldom mention the deaths that happen every day in mines and on the highways. If your concern with safety is fear of long term exposure to radiation, you might be interested in knowing that coal-fired plants do not meet the standards for radioactive emission enforced on nuclear plants. But even coal may be safer than conservation. You might want to look into the increased concentration of radon gas as home insulation is increased.[4] The fear of radioactivity should be put into perspective. A quote attributed to Edward Teller is "In sleeping with a woman, one gets just slightly less radioactivity than from a nuclear reactor; but to sleep with two women is very, very dangerous." If you are worried about the disposal of nuclear waste, you should consider that when measured by the quantity of water necessary to dilute a toxin to international drinking water standards, nuclear waste is less toxic after 500 years than the permanently toxic level of coal ash. And while a 1000MW nuclear plant generates 2 cubic meters of waste a year, a 1000 MW coal-fired plant produces 600 pounds of carbon dioxide per second, ten pounds of sulphur dioxide per second, 30 pounds of bottom and fly ash per second and as many nitrous oxides as 200,000 cars--not to mention the carcinogens, mutagens and radionuclides. (The argument treating uranium mill tailings as nuclear waste is so specious that no reputable journal article has given it any credence. Uranium ore is necessarily less radioactive after the most radioactive material is removed for fuel. If you bought that argument, you probably cannot explain how fuel rods will be less radioactive in 600 years than the ore they came from.) In spite of regulations preventing the reprocessing of nuclear waste, the real problem now is that there is not enough of it for anyone to make much money storing it. See Reference [5] for more. If your fear is of a catastrophe, imagine that you are a terrorist who has seized control of a nuclear plant. What could you do to kill the most people? Even the most rabid anti-nuke knows he can't cause a nuclear explosion--so why not try for the famous hydrogen explosion (remember the hydrogen bubble that made the press hysterical at TMI?). The Hindenberg disaster resulted from a hydrogen explosion. How many people could you kill by blowing up the equivalent of (a fraction of) a Hindenberg inside a six-inch thick stainless steel vessel inside a 3-1/2 foot thick steel-reinforced concrete building resting on a forty- foot thick concrete slab? Or could you generate a radioactive cloud (what quantity of emissions at what rate of generation and what level of radioactivity?) and count on atmospheric conditions to keep the cloud concentrated but to move it swiftly (so people will not have time to leave or go indoors) to nearby major population centers (less than 8% live within 25 miles of the ~100 current and planned nuclear plants)? I leave as an exercise to you how you might try to kill by polluting a water supply. In fact, the damage you as a terrorist can do is to sabotage the plant, destroying a multi-million dollar investment. Your effect would be just what is being accomplished by the intervenors now-- keeping cheap safe power from being sold for a profit to consumers like me. But some don't think nuclear power is cheap. They think it has hidden subsidies such as not paying for its own waste disposal or liability insurance. Waste disposal was covered above but an economic datum is that the cost of decommissioning a reactor is less than 2% of the cost of the reactor (several have been decommissioned already). A discussion of nuclear power economics can be found in reference [6]. If you are as opposed to subsidies and government regulation as I am, you will be pleased to know that since November 15, 1983, the Price-Anderson Act of 1957 (which was $120 million-deductible public liability insurance that had collected more than $8 million in fees in 1976 and has paid out nothingi to date) has become inoperative for new nuclear reactors. Insurance is now totally financed by public utilities and private companies. If this fact makes you want to search for other arguments against nuclear power, you should ask yourself what it is that you are REALLY against. 4. "Health Effects from Radon from Insulation of Buildings," B. L. Cohen, HEALTH PHYSICS, Dec. 1980, pp 937-941. 5. "The Disposal of Radioactive Wastes from Nuclear Fission Reactors," B. L. Cohen, June, 1977 SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN. 6. "Economics of Nuclear Power," A. D. Rossin and T. A. Rieck, SCIENCE, 8/18/78. Bob Stubblefield ihnp4!hound!rwsh 201-949-2846