Tallying Up Energy Sources

Japan’s ongoing disaster at the Fukushima nuclear plant, now in its agonizing third week, has led many to conclude that nuclear is the most dangerous way to generate electricity. Not so. Nuclear is not the most dangerous, not by a long shot. That distinction unambiguously belongs to large hydroelectric dams.
The most catastrophic dam failure in history occurred in China in 1975, with the near-simultaneous failures of the Banqiao and Shimantan dams. The “August 1975 disaster,” as the Chinese call the horrors associated with the dams’ collapse, drowned 26,000 people, according to the Chinese government. Another 200,000 lives were lost in its aftermath.

I've seen a number of stories that take this tack. As we noted in the post a few below, nuclear energy has an extremely good track record - the number of people, inside and outside the plants, killed by it is very small. But I must admit that stating this point and then running through the grim tally for various energy sources can get awfully morbid awfully quick. Writer Lawrence Solomon follows the above paragraphs with a fairly gruesome account of what happened in China.

After this, he continues with a review of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl:

Neither can it compare to either of the two other serious nuclear accidents that have occurred, at Three Mile island, which led to no deaths, and at Chernobyl, where United Nations agencies such as the World Health Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, and the Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation have been steadily decreasing death estimates with the passage of time.

The latter is because the eventual deaths from cancer due to the radiation release from Chernobyl have not materialized in the numbers once forecast.

It's a good, fair article, but rather stark for a Sunday morning.

There's one additional point worth bringing out. Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Energy Probe, an anti-nuclear organization. Now, the next part of his series is called The Real Problem with Nuclear Power, so he'll return to task next time around. Assuming he has more to say than that nuclear power executives are a pack of lying jackals, in the mode of partial nuclear convert George Monbiot, that article might be worth engaging.

Hoover Dam. Looks pretty benign to me. My family still has 8 mm movies of us there.

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...

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...

How Much Land Does Nuclear, Wind and Solar Really Need?

Not too long ago, we reviewed a report that looked at nuclear energy (and other energy sources) as biodiversity agents. This had to do, in part, with the amount of land a facility needs to function. Nuclear energy and fossil fuel plants use relatively little, wind farms and solar arrays quite a lot of land . Based on an objective and transparent analysis of our sustainable energy choices, we have come to the evidence-based conclusion that nuclear energy is a good option for biodiversity conservation (and society in general) and that other alternatives to fossil fuels should be subjected to the same cost–benefit analyses (in terms of biodiversity and climate outcomes, as well as sociopolitical imperatives) before accepting or dismissing them. Writer Barry Brook, who collected 75 scientists to endorse his paper, is interested in land use as it impacts flora and fauna. Biodiversity concerns do not get as much play as they might – and, when they do, it annoys many when land is withdraw...

NEI Nuclear Notes

Search This Blog