Full carbon accounting for nuclear power
In an interesting report, a team of Australian academics created a life-cycle accounting of carbon dioxide emissions from nuclear plants and found them to be higher than previously thought. The main source of the difference is the mining of uranium, which is predicted to become more energy intensive as the high-grade sources diminish. This report is apparently the first to consider the environmental costs throughout the process of creating nuclear power. It is helpful to have a greater accounting of the impacts of nuclear energy, and this report could be used to further illuminate decisions about new electricity plants. However, I would still imagine that the greenhouse gas emissions of these sources are much lower than any fossil fuel source, even including the transportation and sourcing of the uranium.
Senate Energy Committee Tackles Nuclear
Looks like the Minnesota Senate Energy Committee is having a nuclear-themed week. They are taking testimony on the bills on Thursday; the agenda for Tuesday is as follows:
Legislative History of Nuclear Power in Minnesota
Report by PUC Concerning Certificate of Need for Dry Cask Storage
Overview of Nuclear Energy
S.F. 2081-Murphy:Nuclear powered electric generating plants
certificate of need issuance prohibition elimination; legislative
electric energy task force expiration date extension; nuclear energy
study.
certificate of need issuance prohibition elimination.
S.F. 1491-Jungbauer, M. J.:Nuclear powered electric generating plants
certificate of need issuance ban repeal.
S.F. 1414-Kubly:Monticello nuclear plant phaseout, contingency
planning and storage approval.
S.F. 1794-Kubly:Dry cask storage at Monticello stay extension.
S.F. 2144-Kubly:Monticello nuclear facility routine radiation
emissions health report.
S.F. 2199-Anderson, E. R.:Nuclear waste storage modification;
utilities greenhouse gas infrastructure costs recovery.
Currently, nuclear power plants are not permitted to receive a certificate of need by the PUC and therefore may not be built. Several of these bills aim to change that. I find it interesting that Senator Jungbauer is leading the fight to bring nuclear plants to MN as he has proven to be a major skeptic of climate science.
Accident at Monticello nuclear plant
The Star Tribune reports that a minor accident occurred recently at Xcel's Monticello nuclear plant. Apparently a control box broke lose from its support beams and fell about a foot onto a pipe carrying radioactive steam. No leaks were detected in the pipe as a result. Interestingly, the plant had been running for a record 637 consecutive days without a shutdown. Most plants run for 12 to 18 months before being shutdown for routine maintenance and refueling. Xcel officials deny that this created a risk.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has notified managers at four other nuclear plants around the country of similar age and design to check for this problem.
George Crocker of the North American Water Office is quoted as saying market forces are pushing utilities to push their plants to the limit. That's an interesting question but I'm not cynical enough to buy it just yet. Utility officials must be wary of negative publicity as any small accident gets reported in the news - much more so than other industries that work with hazardous substances. It seems to me that they would avoid taking shortcuts that might jeopardize safety.
Nuclear Storage in Doubt
Storage of nuclear waste remains my biggest concern with the technology. Now it looks like even our limited knowledge about how to store it moderately safely is in doubt. Nature is reporting that radiation degrades our storage containers more rapidly than we expected.
This is not to suggest that we have a problem with storage now or even in the near future. The question is what kind of a mess we are planning to leave for future generations.
Nuclear waste needs to be stored for hundreds of thousands of years. We thought we could store it safely for a couple of thousand but it looks like the technology is not there yet.
The problem is that the radioactive waste damages the matrix that contains it. Many of the waste substances, including plutonium-239, emit alpha radiation, which travels for only very short distances (barely a few hundredths of a millimetre) in the ceramic, but creates havoc along the way.
A fast-moving alpha particle knocks into hundreds of atoms in its path, scattering them like skittles. Worse still, the radioactive atom from which the particle comes is sent hurtling in the other direction by the recoil. Even though its path is even shorter than that of an alpha particle, the atom is much heavier, and can knock thousands of atoms out of place in the ceramic.
All this disrupts the crystalline structure of the ceramic matrix, jumbling it up and turning it into a glass. That can make the material swell and become a less secure trap. Farnan says that some zircons that have been heavily damaged in this way by radiation have been found to dissolve hundreds of times faster than undamaged ones. So if the ceramic gets wet, there could be trouble.
This does not make storing nuclear waste impossible, but it certainly suggests we have a lot more work to do. This strikes me as being a decent reason to wait for more research before adding more nuclear power plants.
Who Guards Nuke Plants?
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has decided against changing the specs for new nuke plants.
The question is basically who is responsible for deflecting terrorist attacks on the plants from the air. Obviously, terrorists attacking the plants with airplanes is a serious concern for everyone involved. As of now, the responsibility for preventing such an attack apparently goes to the Department of Homeland Security.
My impression of modern reactor design is that it has passive protection measures. From listening to Science Friday, I had the impression that if "things go bad," the reactor's design would cause it to stop the nuclear reaction without requiring much intervention.
So I wonder how much damage a 737 landing on the plant would do. Would it merely release some radioactive material into the atmosphere (merely?) or spread it via the resulting explosion?
Is there a threat beyond the spread of the reactor fuel? Such a threat is obviously scary, but I wonder about the likelihood. Do nukes have radar currently? I would hope that Homeland Security has a mechanism to alert nuke plants if a plane is acting erratically and approaches a plant. How much warning time does a plant need to secure its material against such an attack?
This is important because some firms will soon build new nuclear facilities:
Mr. Peterson said the industry wanted the regulations to be issued soon, because companies had expressed interest in building 30 new reactors. The actual number built is likely to be much smaller, experts say, but there is a widespread expectation of new orders, probably in 2007.
Some under-analyzed nuclear concerns
Submitted by Timothy DHT on Sat, 2006-11-18 21:47
I wrote this as a response to another comment, but couldn't see how to link to the Nuclear category, so I'm posting this here as well. A few concerns I have about nuclear (I really don't think it's the way of the future) that haven't been expressed as much.
1. The costs are ridiculously high. Nuclear, once thought too cheap to meter, is now one of the most expensive types of energy, and that's even without counting the government covering massive waste repositories and cheap energy subsidies for the feedstocks of nuclear. I recently heard that somewhere in Kentucky, there are 3 entire coal plants making electricity just to refine the uranium needed in a number of eastern nuclear facilities - not very clean, even in the global warming sense (this was on Kilowatt Ours, a recent film on energy in the Southeast). Nuclear takes lots of energy to mine, refine, and process, plus all the radiation controls and all, which makes it really expensive. It's more expensive than wind, geothermal, or cogeneration biomass, and within a few years, it will be more expensive than solar too. It's a bad energy return and a bad financial investment.
2. Waste storage facilities are too exposed to terrorism. I know the plants themselves are very well secured, but I know that at least on some plants - the one I know the most about is Indian Point, which is on the Hudson River about 30 miles north of New York City - store waste in water. For the details; you can read The End of Nature by Robert F Kennedy but here's the basics: tons of this waste is stored in liquid pools in buildings 'with the structural integrity of a Wal-Mart big-box'. There's no threat of fission in an attack, but a direct hit with a 747 full of fuel would shatter the roof and evaporate the water in these pools, causing massive meltdown. The fall-out zone is a 50 mile radius, and at least with Indian Point, that zone has about 20 million people in it. What's worse, the two planes that attacked the World Trade Center flew directly over this facility on Sept. 11. Now, this is partially just lax security and bad management at a single facility, but with terrorism (of course linked with our oil addiction) on the rise, is this really a threat we want to chance?
3. It's ridiculous to expect that strategies for storing nuclear waste can successfully envision security for 10,000-100,000 years. The former is the same period of time as since the agricultural revolution, the latter since roughly the evolution of our species. It's quite likely that waste storage plans that have functioned well in the past 50 years, and may function well for the coming decades or even centuries, will have significant negative consequences further down the line.
4. Conservation lifestyles, smart urban design, local economies, energy efficiency, and renewable energy are much more effective and safe strategies. They're also of course much more fun.
Monitcello License Extended
Submitted by shadoweyes on Sun, 2006-11-12 21:22
Xcel's license to operate the nuclear power plant in Monticello has been extended.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission on Wednesday gave Xcel Energy permission to operate its Monticello nuclear power plant for 20 years past its original license expiration in 2010.
The plant now is cleared to stay in business until Sept. 8, 2030.
The article gives a number of details about recertification process and concerns of some regarding the safety of nuclear power facilities.
My opinion: ain't nothing safe 'bout nothing. Nuclear power certainly is dangerous, but you don't see me working a coal mine either.
NYTimes Energy Challenge
Submitted by solarkismet on Tue, 2006-10-31 10:13
Roughly every two weeks, the NY Times has released a new article on various energy topics in what they are dubbing "The Energy Challenge."
Recent Topics:
Xcel's Nuclear Waste
Submitted by shadoweyes on Thu, 2006-09-14 11:15
Looks like Xcel will have to ask the Minnesota Legislature for permission to expand its temporary nuclear waste storage at its Monticello facility.
The Pioneer Press is reporting that Xcel's plans for temporary storage in Utah may fall apart.
The Interior Department last week rejected a lease Xcel and other utilities had signed with the Skull Valley Band of Goshutes to store waste on its reservation. It's still unclear whether an appeal will be filed, but Xcel said Wednesday it would not help pay for one.
The lease would have allowed Minneapolis-based Xcel and seven other utilities to ship up to 44,000 tons of nuclear waste to Goshute land southwest of Salt Lake City, where it would be stored for up to 50 years or until a permanent federal repository is available, either at Yucca Mountain in Nevada or elsewhere.
Xcel operates 2 nuclear power plants in Minnesota. When it needed increased storage capacity at Prairie Island recently, the legislature granted it in return for increased investments in renewable energy.
This will likely provide another opportunity to force Xcel to further increase those investments. I hope they word the legislation more clearly though in order to ensure Xcel is not able to weasel out of the intended commitments.
Nuclear Power to Save the World!!
A group in South Africa has developed a new nuclear power technology . The new technology includes two key advances. First, the fuel comes packaged in a way that is safer to handle and allows more complete use of the fuel. The advantages are not just in reduced cost and safety but also, since the fuel is used to exhaustion, it reportedly poses less of a proliferation problem. Second, the reactors are smaller and cooled with helium instead of water. This allows for them to be more easily located near areas of concentrated demand. The helium cooling also appears to provide increased security again devastating accidents.
So, what's the other side of the glowing coin presented in this news release?
Slow Start to Nuclear
Despite the Federal government sending a message to the private sector to push forward with building new nuclear power plants, the response has been tepid. A longish NY Times article looks at the business outlook on nuclear power plants. I found there to be a couple interesting tidbits. One is that the reasons companies decide not to build a new nuclear power plant are generally not the same as the reasons opponents are worried about:
Opponents often cite the risk of accidents and the problem of nuclear waste, but the companies that do not want to build say that those are not factors in their decisions…the risk that really matters to utility executives is financial. Among the companies that would actually build these plants, executives focus more on uncertain factors like the future price of power, the cost of producing competing fuels, and the cost of cleaning up coal plants to meet standards for the pollutants that Washington does regulate — sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and soot.
One energy company executive stated it clearly that their role is to maximize their shareholders profits. Even if nuclear power plants may eventually be more cost effective than coal plants they carry a much higher level of uncertainty and risk. An example is that typically when they build a new power plant they begin the process by selling the future power for a certain length of time (hedging). They then use these contracts to ease the worries of investors and bankers in order to get the outside financing necessary for the high capital outlay. Since nuclear power plants take on the order of 10 years to bring into production it is difficult to sell power 10 years from now for a 10 year timeframe.