jonw@azure.UUCP (Jonathan White) (04/05/84)
<>
Tim Sevener writes:
7)what is the purpose in continuing to underwrite Nuclear power at the
expense of alternative forms of energy--Reagan has increased the
amount of money the gov't spends on nuclear power. Is this the
"free-enterprise" approach? Increase gov't spending for those programs
which benefit the biggest businesses and tend to lead to centralization
and monopoly power while cutting spending for ordinary people?
T.C. Wheeler responds:
7. What alternative energy sources. Be specific. Then go ask
your Congressman why the expenditures are approved every year. I
don't like nuclear plants either, but we are stuck with them until
something better comes along. Would you rather close them all down
tommorrow and go back to fossil fuels, daming rivers, and generally
playing havoc with the environment?
At the risk of appearing to be a snivelling, commie-loving wimp, I must
disagree with T.C. on this one. The Reagan administration has actively
promoted nuclear power at the expense of a much more rational, soft-path
approach to our energy needs. I'm glad to hear that T.C. doesn't care for
nuclear plants, but I would like to make a few comments:
a) There are many viable alternative energy sources, but the most important
one is probably conservation. For an in-depth analysis of this, refer to
"Energy Future" by Daniel Yergin. Solar is becoming more feasible all
the time, especially now that the Japanese have taken the lead in photo-voltaic
development.
b) According to Ralph Nader, nuclear plants are more polluting than their
fossil fueled equivalents if you look at the total picture. That is, if you
take into account the exposed tailings from uranium mines, the environmental
impact of a nuclear plant is greater than a coal-fired plant. And when you
begin to consider the possibility of an accident, well, I don't think that
there's much of a contest.
c) Nuclear power provides 4% our nation's total energy needs (this is a 1977
figure, but it has got to be close to the current figure). I think that we
could probably shut down most of the existing plants if we had an aggressive,
national conservation effort coupled with a program to convert some of the
literally thousands of existing dams to hydro-electric.
d) Nuclear power wouldn't be here today if not for the Price-Anderson Act,
which is an insurance policy for the nuclear industry underwritten by
taxpayers. Do you think that private-sector insurance companies would be
stupid enough to risk insuring a nuclear power plant? Hell no. I say that we
let the free market work as it was intended to by repealing the Price-Anderson
Act.
In summary, the alternatives to nuclear power exist now, and the sooner we get
rid of that economic and environmental disaster the better.
Jon White
[decvax|ucbvax]!tektronix!tekmdp!azure!jonwbitmap@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA (04/07/84)
<....> Jon White claims: >Nuclear power provides 4% [of] our nation's total energy needs >(this is a 1977 figure, but it has got to be close to the current >figure). A perhaps misleading statistic. Nuclear power is generally used to provide electrical power, and should be compared with total electrical power energy needs. In the back of my mind I have the figure of 30% of the New England region's (electrical) power comes from nuclear plants. (anyone know for sure?) I seriously doubt that nuclear power plants are more polluting than their fossil fueled equivalents, esp. coal. I will also claim that there are far more coal power plant related deaths, adjusted for, say, national percentage of power, than there are for nuclear. You may include cancers from mining Uranium, cancers & lung related deaths from particulates from coal plants, deaths (any?) from accidents at nuclear power plants, coal mine/Uranium mine accidents, black-lung deaths, or whatever else you might think of for these two sources of energy. As far as being expensive & govt subsidized, I'll agree that they shouldn't be subsidized. Neither, I think, should they be subject to what many feel to be excessive red-tape, which is a large part of the reason for their expense. Does anyone know what the percentage of electricity produced by nuclear power in France is? My impression is that it is fairly high. Sam Hall decvax!ucbvax!ucbtopaz!bitmap
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (04/08/84)
===================
b) According to Ralph Nader, nuclear plants are more polluting than their
fossil fueled equivalents if you look at the total picture. That is, if you
take into account the exposed tailings from uranium mines, the environmental
impact of a nuclear plant is greater than a coal-fired plant. And when you
begin to consider the possibility of an accident, well, I don't think that
there's much of a contest.
===================
I don't know where Nader gets his information, but this topic was thoroughly
discussed at a AAAS symposium about 3 or 4 years ago, and in several
articles in Science since then. The bottom line is that if you include
all the environmental implications (black-lung vs uranium tailings,
transportation accidents and incidents ... ) nuclear power is about an
order or magnitude safer than coal, even with the most generous assumptions
favouring coal.
As for the worst conceivable accident (the one-in-a-billion chance),
the worst that could happen to a nuclear plant is to be blown up by
an H-bomb. This would make an area about the size of France uninhabitable
for quite a few years. With coal, the worst possible accident is that
the entire planet becomes uninhabitable because of the greenhouse effect,
that could (the one-in-a-billion chance) turn Earth into another Venus.
Even if you think only about radiation release to the environment, coal
comes out worse than nuclear on a daily basis, and the radiation release
from coal power plants is widely distributed. At least the problem of
nuclear waste is localized. The worst one could do with nuclear waste
is to dump it into a salt sea-marsh, from which it is distributed slowly
around the neighbouring coastal waters. Bad news for those nearby, but
it would be possible to quarantine the area of worst hazard. It isn't
possible to quarantine the area of hazard from coal plants.
Of course, conservation is best, but you can't do without central energy
supplies with our current technological civilization, and it takes around
50 years to ramp up an energy technology (and to ramp one down). Fortunately,
the one possible energy supply source that can fill the gap between oil
and something else is the safest supply source we know -- nuclear fission.
--
Martin Taylor
{allegra,linus,ihnp4,uw-beaver,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt