Same Old Anti-Nukes, Same Old Song and Dance

In today's Clarion Ledger, anti-nuclear activist Ruth Pullen trots out all the old familiar tropes about why America should reject expansion of nuclear energy. There are plenty of things to quibble with, but there's one particular passage that caught my attention:

Current studies indicate increased cancers and infant mortality in the vicinity of nuclear plants . . .

Now, as we saw on Friday, we're more than prepared to counter arguments like this one that have no scientific basis whatsover, and how anti-nukes deliberately juggle and distort data in such a way that would get a college freshman thrown out of Econ 101. Moreover, in the case we covered last week, Joseph Mangano's arguments have been consistently rejected by any and all public health agencies that ever reviewed them.

A number of thoughts struck me while reading: First, I couldn't help but notice the paucity of actual facts and figures. Here we are, more than a decade into the age of the Internet. Pullen was able to have these claim published in a daily newspaper, yet didn't provide a link to an online source that includes the data that buttresses her claim.

It's more than likely that such an online source doesn't exist. No matter, but when it comes to public debate, there should be a more rigorous burden of proof applied.

So here's the challenge to Ms. Pullen: Where's the data beef in this air sandwich?

UPDATE: Thanks to Alan Smith at Entergy for passing along a Public Citizen fact sheet that was apparently the source for the op ed piece. We're looking it over right now.

Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Technology, Economics

Comments

Activists' Claims Distort Facts about Advanced Reactor Design

Below is from our rapid response team . Yesterday, regional anti-nuclear organizations asked federal nuclear energy regulators to launch an investigation into what it claims are “newly identified flaws” in Westinghouse’s advanced reactor design, the AP1000. During a teleconference releasing a report on the subject, participants urged the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to suspend license reviews of proposed AP1000 reactors. In its news release, even the groups making these allegations provide conflicting information on its findings. In one instance, the groups cite “dozens of corrosion holes” at reactor vessels and in another says that eight holes have been documented. In all cases, there is another containment mechanism that would provide a barrier to radiation release. Below, we examine why these claims are unwarranted and why the AP1000 design certification process should continue as designated by the NRC. Myth: In the AP1000 reactor design, the gap between the shield bu...

How many nuclear plants does it take to meet the world's energy needs?

Several weeks ago Joshua Pearce at Clarion University in Pennsylvania released a study titled “ Thermodynamic limitations to nuclear energy deployment as a greenhouse gas mitigation technology .” In the study he stated... nuclear energy production would have to increase by 10.5% per year from 2010 to 2050 to both replace fossil-fuel-energy use and meet the future energy demands. This line, of course, made the headlines and has been picked up by several outlets and blogs . When looking into his calculations for this statement, he made one assumption error that overstated the above sentence by nearly a factor of three. Page 121, Section 4.1 of the study states: Richard Smalley pointed out that in 2004, the global economy consumed the equivalent of 220 million barrels of oil per day, which converted into electricity terms is the equivalent of 14.5 TeraWatts (TW), or 14,500,000 MegaWatts (MW) (2005). … With a nuclear plant having about 1000 MW (1 GW) of capacity, we would need 14,500...

What Happens During a Refueling Outage?

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that a number of nuclear plants are shut down for refueling outages or are resuming operations after just returning from one. This type of routine outage usually occurs in the spring or fall when electricity demand is low so that nuclear reactors can replace about one-third of the spent fuel rods with new fuel and conduct other routine maintenance and repairs at the plant. To get a better sense of how refueling works at a nuclear energy facility, I spoke with Marcus Nichol, NEI’s senior project manager for used fuel storage and transportation, and asked him to explain the basics. Why does a nuclear plant need to replace one-third of its fuel? Nichol: The main purpose of a refueling outage is to replace older fuel that is depleted—meaning it can no longer efficiently produce energy from nuclear fission reactions—with new fuel. This “used fuel” has typically been used in the reactor for four-and-a-half to six years before it is pe...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog