Half-Life Is Beautiful?

Smokestack releases effecting global climate as well as local health and air quality would be eliminated, and destructive mining practices associated with coal would be reduced (though uranium mining is not benign, it does not consume countless tons of strip-mined material daily).

It might be time to compromise and accept nuclear power to meet the inevitable growth of power demand.

Humanity definitely has backed itself into a corner, and there are no totally benign solutions. Under these pathetic circumstances, we have no choice but to consider giving nuclear power another chance. Even then, be prepared to ride close herd on the vendors, utilities, and regulators, because your best interest will not be their priority.

In factoring the "lifecycle" of nuclear energy, does Umbra Fisk discuss the many energy-intensive steps it takes to produce energy from nuclear fission? Does she factor -- or dare mention -- the energy spent in mining uranium? In milling the uranium? In enriching the uranium? In fabricating the uranium rods? In building the reactor? In building a containment vessel for the reactor? In building the radioactively-resistant pumps and turbines? In building the transmission lines?

All this energy gets expended before a single watt is generated. Gas, solar, wind expend much less up-front energy.

Nor did Ms. Fisk consider the multifarious (and energy wasteful) problems associated with nuclear generation -- while it's on-line. Did you know that nuclear plants require an external energy source that goes INTO the plant to operate the cooling system?

I know the Grist gets vexed by polluters externalizing the cost of doing business on the backs of the public. Nuclear power is the worse offender. Nuclear plants would fold-up and disappear tomorrow if it were not for the Price-Anderson Act which indemnifies nuclear utilities from paying liability insurance. Stunning, huh? Of all the business in the US -- they're exempt. If there's a major accident in US, the responsible company would pay but minor fees while the taxpayer and affected communities get clobbered. Imagine the unimaginable cost of an accident.

Nuclear plants make excellent terrorist targets and deemed vulnerable to attack -- as the National Academy of Sciences pointed out this week. Nuclear plants also annually create hundreds of pounds of plutonium -- the key ingredient of a thermonuclear bomb. Do we really want to promote an energy source that in turn promotes the proliferation of nuclear weapons?

Then there're the waste problems. When factoring the nuclear energy's "lifecycle" -- you need to shield the highly radioactive and carcinogenic radioactive waste for between 60,000 - 100,000 years. What kind of chutzpah is this? Fifty thousand years ago humans were eating berries and dodging Sabertooth tigers.

The American answer is to the nuclear waste problem is to build Yucca Mountain. Yet you saw fit to publish your ridiculous article supporting nuclear power the very week USGS scientists were found to have performed fraud at the proposed high-level nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain -- calling the whole project into question. The so-called government scientists invented instrument readings on water flow through that benighted mountain.

As Albert Einstein observed, "The splitting of the atom has changed everything, save our way of thinking. Thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."

A sound lesson.

Next, Friedman goes flat by most of an octave, inserting an ill-informed note on nuclear power: "We need to start building nuclear power plants again. The new nuclear technology is safer and cleaner than ever."

Nukes have largely died from market forces, so why any market-savvy thinker like Friedman would want to resurrect them (presumably through further subsidy) I cannot fathom. Our energy future should flow from least-cost planning that tries to incorporate social and environmental costs such as climate change and national security.

Under least-cost planning, nuclear power does not fare well. Efficiency and renewables beat nuclear power on price alone in almost every application, because nukes are extremely expensive. Add environmental and security costs and nukes fade to a footnote. Generating electricity through a technology that creates wastes still deadly for thousands of years seems like folly. Peppering the countryside with such facilities in an age of global terrorism seems, well, like lunacy. (A recent National Academy of Sciences report on the terror threat of one aspect of A-plant management was summarized in the Washington Post yesterday.)

Scooter, if "energy choices have been driven by profits and subsidies" and my "best interest" will not be a conern or priority, that makes me, well, VERY nervous.  No, it actually scares the HELL out of me.  

This makes no sense.  At all.

The main problem is 'rising energy demand' until we reverse this with lifestyle changes and increased efficiency there will always be a call for more generating capacity.

Really if you install a cheap inefficient air-conditioner in your house to improve your comfort you are basically saying yes to nuclear power. If you have a 400sqm house that you have dreamed of and use only a few rooms you are saying we want more power so I can have a big house I want instead of the small one I really need.  This increased demand has to be satisfied somehow.  This is the danger. To support the current and rising level of energy consumption, to supply our wants, we need massive power generation capabilities which nuclear or coal power are the logical answers.

Until we 'power down' we will never get rid of the Nuclear option.  Renewable power cannot power our current demands.  The only way renewable power will work, is for us, you and me, to reduce demand .

Stephen Gloor Perth Western Australia

Telling us to go back to the cave with candles just will not work.  More PCs, more PlayStations, more flat screens, more plasma televisions...you get the idea.  

Thank God for America.  And thank God for the mouse...we can now click our way around the world 24-7.

Norris McDonald

Fortunately, the American public is smart and they will soon let anti-nuke obstructionist know that 2+2=4.

Norris McDonald

Of course, the same is true about the terrorist threat- it's our way of thinking and our actions that perpetuate this problem. If we would just stop stealing the worlds resources for our 'blessed' nation and put an end to world hunger, few would see us as a threat, and security would be less of an issue.

Sure, nuclear is expensive, start-up costs are huge, but the issue is the cost per watt produced, and since these plants produce gigawatts for 30-50 years without releasing greenhouse gasses, they look a lot better than clearcut mountaintop-removal-dirty-air and hell-on-earth coal. I would also take nuclear before coal, but only if I can't have clean, local energy in an efficiency-driven economy.


a liberal in redsville

Don't look at half a life cycle - please.

-------- Karl R. Rabago

Environmentalists really need to reconsider the ill-conceived position that global warming is the most important environmental issue.  In fact global warming is merely a symptom of air pollution, which is what we really should be fighting.  Species extinction and ecosystem destruction are far more important issues than global warming, but anthropocentric humans who've created this problem (including, unfortunately, many environmentalists), are willing to sacrifice the rest of the planet in an attempt to save our destructive way of life.  We should forget global warming and concern ourselves with the root causes of ecological and environmental problems.  If we don't, we'll destroy so many other species and ecosystems that we'll become extinct, anyway.

Re consumption, yes, we need to greatly reduce it by two methods.  We all need to simplify our lifestyles and quit needlessly using so much electricity (the exact opposite of what Mr. McDonald advocates, which is to continue our mindless, imorral, anti-spiritual consumption).  More fundamentally, we need to greatly lower our population, which either causes or greatly exacerbates every important environmental problem, along with many others.

Finally, I'm totally sick of hearing that renewables like solar cannot meet reasonable energy needs.  Make that claim after every building has solar collectors on its roof.  In Berkeley California, which gets quite a bit of fog during the summer and regular rain in winter, solar panels on the roof of a home will provide all the power that the home needs.  And the the only reason that renewables can't compete with fossil fuels is that the latter are heavily subsidized and the former are not.  Change that equation renewables become as cheap as anything else.

Jeff Hoffman

jp's comment caught my attention because it deals with the whole life-cycle of uranium.  I would love to see a piece on nuclear power from the point of view of uranium, cradle to grave.  It occurs to me that a thorough piece of this nature couldn't help but be a fairly objective survey of all of the potential effects of a shift to nuclear.  If there is such a piece that I haven't seen, I'd love to be directed to it, and if one does not exist I'd be indebted to whosoever might take up the initiative to write such a piece.

I hope this isn't too shameless, but if anyone would like to take up this awesome task but doesn't have a blog of their own on which to post it, I'd be happy to offer up my own site.

I may be wrong, but I'm in good company.  The letter below is by one of the worlds foremost energy policy analysts - Amory Lovins.  

More of AL's opinion and accomplishments can be briefly surveyed on the web page copied below this letter, which briefly discusses an MIT study, interpreted by the publication "Nuclear News"  as finding in favour of increased nuclear power.

----------------------------

Comment on MIT study "The Future of Nuclear Power"

A letter to correct the public record

Nuclear News's otherwise fairly accurate September 2003 report of the MIT study "The Future of Nuclear Power" says it found that "billions of tons of carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere could be avoided by 2050 only by drastically increasing the number of operating nuclear power plants [to 1 TW]...." The MIT study said no such thing. It was built around a 1-TW-by-2050 scenario, which it found could avoid 1.8 GTC/y (a fourth of the projected incremental carbon emissions). But it couldn't have found that "only" such trebled nuclear capacity could achieve this result, because, as its Executive Summary states, "We did not analyze other options for reducing carbon emissions--renewable energy sources, carbon sequestration, and increased energy efficiency--and therefore reach no conclusions about priorities among these efforts and nuclear power"--let alone about what the non-nuclear ones could do.

Therein lies the unreported basic logical flaw of the widely misreported MIT study. Nuclear power faces, as the Executive Summary says, "stagnation and decline," chiefly because it's uneconomic. The study correctly finds that "In deregulated markets, nuclear power is not now cost competitive with coal and natural gas," but major cost reductions "could reduce the gap," and very large "Carbon emission credits, if enacted by government, can give nuclear power a cost advantage." Yet that advantage is only against other (coal and gas) central-station options that the market is rejecting because they're all uneconomic, with U.S. utilities' ordering rates shrunken to Victorian levels.

The market winners are chiefly distributed gas-fired co- and tri-generation (which the study doesn't mention even as an omission), windpower, and end-use efficiency. The study finds that new nuclear plants' busbar power under current conditions costs 6.7¢/kWh (levelized 2002 $). For conservative comparison with distributed options, we must add to nuclear or wind busbar cost the empirical 1996 investor-owned utility's embedded average delivery cost of 2.6¢/kWh in 2002 $ (marginal delivery costs more). Compared with new nuclear plants' 9.3+¢/kWh delivered, their three unanalyzed competitors are thus respectively about 5-10x (net of thermal credit), 2x, and 10- 30x cheaper today, and the latter two would be equally advantaged by carbon pricing.

Yet the study "did not analyze" any of them--its simplistic projections of electricity demand didn't even mention efficient use, let alone model its competition with supply--so it reached no conclusion about their competitiveness or capabilities. It nonetheless emphatically asserted that "it is likely we shall need all" these technologies, and "In our judgment, it would be a mistake to exclude any...at this time," so nuclear power merits increased subsidies.

Readers might be forgiven for supposing that somewhere, the 170-page report provides an analytic basis for that striking claim. It doesn't. The alleged need for all options, including nuclear power, is purely the authors' personal opinion wrapped in a big study of other questions. Also unanalyzed and unmentioned, therefore, is the key policy issue of opportunity cost--how the expanded nuclear subsidies they urge would divert resources from its competitors and thus slow their adoption.

The study recommends useful policy shifts on reprocessing and nonproliferation. Yet, disappointingly, its very capable authors spent so long examining uneconomic traditional energy technologies that they had no time left to consider the successful, less centralized options that, despite an unfavorably tilted playing-field, are rapidly displacing them. Global windpower (which could more than power the world), for example, grew in 2002 from 24 to 31 GW--over twice nuclear power's average 1990s annual addition.

--Amory B. Lovins, CEO

Rocky Mountain Institute

Snowmass, Colorado

---------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid171.php

E01-19, The Nuclear Option Revisited (PDF-11k)

Too expensive and unacceptably risky, nuclear power was declared dead long ago. So why would we resurrect it? Amory Lovins and Hunter Lovins revisit the nuclear option. This article appeared in The Los Angeles Times (08 July 2001).
---------------------------------------------

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===========
Sent: Monday, March 28, 2005 4:18 AM
Subject: NYTimes.com: Geo-Greening by Example

This page was sent to you by:(my family)  

Hi Guys, I know you don't like the Necular but you are wrong! It should be part of the energy mix. However we should explor all other sources too.

OPINION |   March 27, 2005
Op-Ed Columnist:  Geo-Greening by Example
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
How will future historians explain why President George W. Bush decided to ignore the energy crisis staring us in the face?

Copyright 2005  The New York Times Company | Privacy Policy    

Australia is America - sort of.  Per capita we are one of the highest emmiters of CO2.  This is not something to be proud of.

No-one suggested that we go back to candles and caves.  We need to reduce our footprint by reducing demand.  This does not mean giving up everything just making some of them much more efficient.

You say you are a consuming nation - but right at the moment you are consuming someone else's oil.  For your nuclear power plan you need someone else's uranium.  Do you support invading us if we will not sell you our 43% of the world's uranium supply or what if Canada also refuses to sell uranium?  We will not have a coal mining government forever - a green coalition could get in next time and ban uranium sales - what do you do then?

How about for the safety and security of your own country start living within your means and on your own resources.  The world will be a much safer place if this happens.

Stephen Gloor Perth Western Australia

We don't have to settle for these choices. The U.S. spends at least $20 Billion a year (not including our military costs) subsidizing the fossil fuel and nuclear industries.  If we diverted all of that $$ towards developing new efficiency and renewable technologies we would rapidly get out of this mess.  This is what we should be fighting for, not compromising our health and safety with Nukes.

Noah

You also want America to stop growing.  Do you really believe that is a realistic notion?  The entire American capitalist economic system is based on growth.  Every sector, company and small business person expects growth.  Housing starts, car sales, commodities, etc.--It appears that you do not like the American system.

Norris McDonald

According to data from the U.S. Energy Department (DOE), the production of nuclear power significantly contributes both to global warming and ozone depletion.

The enrichment of uranium fuel for nuclear power uses 93 percent of the refrigerant chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) gas made annually in the United States. The global production of CFC is banned under the Montreal Protocol because it is a potent destroyer of ozone in the stratosphere, which protects us from the carcinogenic effects of solar ultraviolet light.

CFC compounds are also potent global warming agents 10,000 to 20,000 times more efficient heat trappers than carbon dioxide, which itself is responsible for 50 percent of the global warming phenomenon.

But nuclear power also contributes significantly to global carbon dioxide production. Huge quantities of fossil fuel are expended for the "front end" of the nuclear fuel cycle -- to mine, mill and enrich the uranium fuel and to construct the massive nuclear reactor buildings and their cooling towers.

Uranium enrichment is a particularly energy intensive process which uses electricity generated from huge coal-fired plants. Estimates of carbon dioxide production related to nuclear power are available from DOE for the "front end" of the nuclear fuel cycle, but prospective estimates for the "back end" of the cycle have yet to be calculated.

more at http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0817-03.htm

I also live within a few miles of Indian Point Nuclear Power plant and so do about 20 million other people. The company that owns and operates it, Entergy, does not have a sound emergency evacuation plan. Entergy also has an poor security record: the list of violations is long.

It is worth noting that the planes that flew into the World Trade Center on September 11 flew within a few miles of Indian Point.

I think this poses an unacceptable risk.

And honestly, what on earth are we gonna do about the waste? In fifty years, the best solution we can come up with is to transport it all over the country and pump it under Yucca Mountain?

How about your backyard?

And when there are enormous gains to be made from smart energy planning, such as energy-efficiency, alternative energy, smart growth, green building, emmissions trading, etc., why do we need to jump on something so risky, expensive, hazardous, and uneconomical?

For the record: The U.S. never banned the construction of nuclear power plants.  Moreover, Three Mile Island was a success story.  The containment dome worked.

The items you mentioned [smart energy planning, such as energy-efficiency, alternative energy, smart growth, green building, emmissions trading, etc., why do we need to jump on something so risky, expensive, hazardous, and uneconomical?]are admirable, but America isn't slowing down; it is speeding up. Our society isn't centrally planned and regimented.  It is private sector and individual freedom oriented. Americans are buying houses faster than builders can build them.  The challenge for a utility is to provide the power needed to meet that demand. Do you want to take these freedoms away from people?

Oh. And no one has complained about Maryland Chesapeake Bay crabs.  Almost everything except the nuke plant is a bigger threat to them.
 

Norris McDonald

1. the energy return on energy invested (EROI)is low, about 5 or 6:1. (By comparison, sweet crude is close to 100:1). So many, many nuclear plants would be needed to make up the shortfall expected from peak oil. ( Even if peak oil were not immenent, we should be reducing and eventually eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels because of their contribution to GHGs).

2. it takes several years to construct a nuclear plant, and so much energy is used in the construction (full life cycle analysis) that it takes 7-8 years before there is a net energy gain.
   
3. to make up the shortfall expected with peak oil, we would have to build hundreds of nuclear plants; the more we build the quicker fissionable material will also be depleted.  REmember that the fuel is non-renewable.  Do we really want to use up large quantities of fossil fuels to build a nuclear system that will take years to produce a net energy gain, and then shortly thereafter run out of fuel?

4. the waste issue is immense and should not be passed on to the grandkids.
   
5. the terrorist issue is real and will remain for some time.
   

If we were to suddenly discover a clean cheap replacement for fossil fuel (which nuclear is not) it would be a disaster for the envrionment.  Our challenge is to reduce our energy demand, and focus on the important things in life.  cheers  J

But I may have been misunderstood; I do not advocate building more nukes, rather, in a moment of weakness, I considered compromise (yuk). Realisticly (OK, pessimisticly), renewables will not come fast enough in this economic and political climate to save our skins from an overheated planet, and 'voluntary efficiency measures' won't save a single species. I simply stated that if I CAN'T have clean, local energy and optimal efficiency, nuclear looks better than coal to me. Compromise is a choice between things you don't really want (John Kerry). Of course uranium is mined, and of course it makes miners sick- but how long does a coal miner live? Why couldn't the mining be done by machines instead of men (profit margins)? Do they remove entire mountaintops for a little uranium? I don't know, and it's not easy to find out. I did find out that purifying silicon (mined quartz) for solar panels releases dust that causes lung disease, and large quantities of strong acids are used to etch the silicon, and it takes from 1-4 years of operation to payback the energy cost of building a solar panel. Newer technologies may use Selenium and Cadmium Telluride (mined), and huge amounts of silver would be needed to satisfy a fraction of our current energy demand. Nothing is free- clearly we need a very careful study of ALL options and ALL their costs. I'm sure our Energy Department (Dick Cheney) is doing this, as we speak (ppffftt!).

As for the waste, no doubt, big problem. But at least the waste CAN be safely contained. The problem is in making sure it is done right. Air pollution has killed a whole lot more of the Earth than radioactive waste.

I claimed that solar and wind would never satisfy the energy this economy WANTS, not what people need. I think you and I would agree that what 'we' need is a small fraction of what 'we' want. Given the real opportunity to choose, I think anyone (not getting rich from dino-sludge) would pick clean, local energy sources- and we hardcores should continue to insist on it. Screw compromise.

a liberal in redsville

Uncontrolled growth is defined as cancer, and that's what capitalism advocates.  You're right, I don't like the current American system, I like the one that was here 500 years ago before the European invaders murdered the indigenous people, stole their land, and destroyed it to enrich themselves with material things.

Re what's realistic: the lifestyle you advocate is about as far from realistic as it gets.  Sure, humans can temporarily continue to destroy the Earth and everything living on it for fun and profit, but it will all come crashing down horribly in a very short time, geologically speaking.  Even if you don't care about other forms of life, ecosystems, or the Earth itself, if you want the human race to exist for as long as possible, humans must greatly lower their population and their consumption of needless garbage.  Evolution at this point in history is mental and spiritual, not physical or technological.  A truly evolved society would barely be noticeable, as opposed our society that disrupts and destroys everything around.

Jeff Hoffman

3. The often repeated claim of no air pollution overlooks two major types: a. nuclear power plants continuously vent radioactive gaseous fission products, and though most of them have short half-lives their daughters are also radioactive it all adds up to a significant increase in background radiation exposure to people living relatively nearby.  b. About 99% of the radioactivity of uranium ore remains in the discarded part after the uranium has been extracted, the 'tailings.'  They are usually piled up in the upen, unprotected from erosion by wind and rain.  If anyone has calculated what the health costs of this silent pollution are, I have not seen it.  Total silence about this problem from the industry.
   
4. Suppose we did let greenhouse gases accumulate while we built enough nuclear plants to supply the world's need for electricity (and doing so would significantly augment the amount of greenhouse gases), how long would this alleged solution last?  The proved reserves of uranium are enough to last such an augmented array of reactors only a few decades, so this proposed solution turns out to be quite temporary while its noxious side effects would last hundreds of thousands of years.
   

Finally, extensive facts and figures to back up these arguments may be found in the numerous papers by the Lovinses at www.rmi.org and by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service at www.nirs.org.  See especially their "Nuclear power can't stope climate change," Umbra: only two fact-filled pages.

Bob Holt

Gaia Theory creator James Lovelock, Bishop Hugh Montifore of Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace co-founder Patrick Moore have all come forward to support nuclear energy, and now Whole Earth's Stewart Brand has as well, as is discussed in his article in MIT's Tech Review:

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/feature_earth.asp?p=3

While I admire the Grist article's willingness (and courage) to consider nuclear, I still disagree with many aspects of the mindset that is expressed.  The basic view is that nuclear is really bad, with all these very serious problems, but global warming is so bad that we will be forced to use it.  In other words, if not for GW, nuclear wouldn't merit consideration.  This is far from the truth.  All of nuclear's supposed problems are really quite small, compared to those of all other major energy sources, and it would remain a vastly better option than coal even if GW did not exist.

Nuclear power's overall public health and environmental risks/effects, per kW-hr generated, are negligible compared to those of fossil fuels (especially coal), even when all aspects of the nuclear energy production cycle are considered, and even over the long-term.

Nuclear power's overall net CO2 emissions (including all aspects of production) are a tiny fraction of those emitted by coal and oil (~1-2%).  This is comparable to wind and is even lower than solar.

Long-term uranium supplies are NOT an issue, and will not prevent nuclear power being used for centuries hence, even at a much larger level of use than today's.

The nuclear waste problem has been "solved" for decades, with nuclear having a SMALLER "waste problem" than most other energy sources (especially coal) and industries in general.  The overall per-kW/hr risks associated with nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mtn are orders of magnitude smaller than those of fossil fuels, over any timescale you choose, and are therefore completely acceptable.

The continued use, or expanded use, of nuclear power in the US or other developed countries has absolutely no effect whatsoever on nuclear weapons proliferation.  Although anti-nukes deliberately try to blur the two and confuse the public on this, they are completely unrelated.

Although it recieved large amounts of support many decades ago in its early development, nuclear power has been the LEAST subsidised energy source for quite some time, with fossil fuels recieving more, and renewables recieving MUCH more, on a per-kW/hr basis.  On top of that, nuclear is held to infinitely higher standards than fossil fuels in terms of releases of toxic material, and public health and environmental effects.  On a level playing field, nuclear would be cheaper than coal.

Renewables and conservation can NOT eliminate all or even most of the need for new traditional energy generation in the forseeable future.  With hydro tapped, this leaves coal, gas and nuclear to meet a large, and growing energy need.  Gas is rapidly running out and will soon be too expensive to use for a large fraction of our power generation.  So yes, Virginia, it DOES boil down to a choice between coal and nuclear, for a large fraction of future power generation.

If you have any doubts on this, note what is actually going on as the environmental purists fiddle.  Roughly 50 GW of conventional (as opposed to clean) coal capacity is being planned and built in the US right now.  This despite renewable portfolio standards on top of large renewable's subsidies (all the support any reasonable person could ask for).  This is a testament to "how well it's going" with respect to having conservation and renewables meet all our energy needs.  Personally, I'd rather those plants be nuclear.

More details will be given on each of the above points in follow-on posts.

• Yucca documents were apparently falsified;
  
• The National Academy of Sciences issued a report that questions safety of onsite spent fuel pools and dry cask storage system;
  
• Utah officials are gathering support to prevent Skull Valley from opening.

Nuclear plants daily producing lethal radioactive waste which is stored on coastal bluffs is not in our state's best interest.

Planning to replace this radioactive generation must begin now. We can save multi-billion dollar investments in steam generators and other failing components at California's nuclear plants. We can use these ratepayers dollars to create electric generation that will benefit our state with new jobs, new property taxes, and clean energy.

Phasing out aging and dilapidating nuclear plants is possible and we invite California residents to work with us towards an energy legacy we can proudly leave our children.

The Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility is a non-profit statewide organization set up to advocate for legislation to prohibit relicensing on California's nuclear plants.  Although current license do not expire until the mid 2020's, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been accepting and granting license renewals 20 years in advance of termination.  To date 30 license renewals have been approved by the NRC.

Rochelle Becker, Executive Director
Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility
www.a4nr.org

Literally every such study that has ever been done has shown that nuclear's external costs are lower than those of coal, with almost all studies saying that they are vastly lower (a few percent at most).  Most studies also say that nuclear is better than gas.  One of the most comprehensive and up to date studies is the "ExternE" study that was published by the European Commission.  A table from this study which summarizes the external costs for various sources is shown below:

http://externe.jrc.es/All-EU+Aggregation.htm

Additional studies on nuclear power's external costs, relativ to other sources like fossil fuels, are presented in this report:

http://www.nea.fr/html/ndd/reports/2003/nea4372-generation.pdf

As shown by the ExternE study, nuclear's total external costs are only a fraction of a cent (~1/4 to 1/3 of a cent).  These costs include ALL aspects of the nuclear power process, including effects of mining and fuel processing, along with all risks associated with power plants (i.e., accidents, attacks, etc...) and with long-term waste disposal.  Meanwhile coal's external costs are several (~5-7) cents per kW-hr.  Coal and oil's external costs are greater than the total currently charged price (i.e. the "real" price is over twice as high).  This is something to keep in mind when hearing statements on how nuclear is "not competative" with fossil fuels.  If external costs were added, or if fossil fuels were not permitted to emit toxic materials into the environment (like nuclear), nuclear would win handily.

The fact that coal's external costs (i.e., public health and environmental risks/effects) are vastly higher than nuclear's has been thoroughly settled within the scientific community for some time.  If anyone bothered to listen to them....  This is the reason for the "matter of fact" statements made be the scientists referred to in the article.  It's hard to believe that you still hear people questioning which one is worse.

Not only has every scientific study confirmed that nuclear is far better than coal (even w/o considering GW!!), but it's actually pretty obvious that it is the case, if one just open's ones to look at the actual data/record, and applies just a little common sense.

If you stop and think, you will notice that coal's problems are always about things that actually happened, and continue to happen, whereas nuclear's "problems" are always about things that hypothetically could happen.  The health and environmental effects of coal are tangible, proven, and ongoing.  They are being observed directly.  With Western commercial nuclear power, nothing has ever actually happened.  It is always in the realm of people's overly active imagination.  Despite this, people seem to give real effects and hypothetically possible effects the same weight.

Recent studies estimate that coal plants kill ~25,000 people in the US alone EVERY YEAR.  This, in addition to being the #1 single source of CO2 emissions.  By contrast, nuclear power plants have emitted virtually no pollution into the environment, and have never had any measurable public health risk.  There are some negative effects associated with uranium mining, invluding (probably) a small number of miner deaths, but it is nothing compared to coal mining.  Nuclear power plants and nuclear waste have literally killed noone.  (No, TMI did not cause any deaths.  This is absolutely clear, as the maximum exposure to any person was still within the range of natural background dose).  To compare the record for the US, over the 40 years that nuclear power has been around, coal as caused roughly one million premature deaths, while nuclear has caused NONE.  Quite a comparison.  And still people wonder which is worse.....

Now lets take the comparison worldwide, and yes, consider Chernobyl.  If coal kills 25,000 annually in the US alone, it certainly kills well over 100,000 annually worldwide, especially considering how much dirtier it is in less-developed countries.  For nuclear, we are basically talking about one significant event, Chernobyl.  The official UN (UNSCEAR) long-term study on Chernobyl's health effects found that 32 workers died from acute radiation exposure.  no members of the public (including those living very close to the reactor) suffered from acute exposure, despite not being told about the event (let alone evacuated) for several days.  Roughly 2000 thyroid cancers have been observed, and there is a good chance that these are due to the accident.  However, as thyroid cancer is very treatable, few of these people are expected to die.  The scientists found no increases in any other type of cancer (or in birth defects) even to this day.  Yes, this is the truth, despite all the anecdotal evidence that to the contrary that has been widely reported.  Any effects other than the ones discussed above are non-existent or are too small to be seen.  Some have provided higher estimates of the total eventual death toll based on very conservative, theoretical estimates of radiation health effects, based on the numbers of people exposed to varius dose levels.  Even these conservative estimates put the total eventual death toll at on the order of a few thousand people.  Even the most extreme estimates, put out by groups like Greenpeace, are less than the ANNUAL death toll from coal in the US alone (i.e., ~20,000), let alone worldwide.  So, in summary, worldwide coal has caused 5, maybe 10 million premature deaths, whereas nuclear has caused only a few thousand at most.  Once again, quite a comparison.

So basically, nuclear has (in the West) been having no health or environmental effect at all for all this time, whereas coal has killed ~25,000 every single year.  With nobody harmed over the entire 40-year history, the record also clearly shows that the likelihood of a large release are extremely small.  Many respond to this by saying "Yeah, but one meltdown is enough, i.e., enough to make nuclear come out worse overall".  That might be a serious consideration if it had any truth to it, but the fact is, as shown above, even under the worst concievable accident events, the total deathtoll (including all long-term effects) would never get even close to the ANNUAL deaths caused by coal.  It should be noted that the casualty figure for Chernobyl (a few thousand, perhaps ~10,000) is based upon a radioactivity release that is vastly larger than the maximum release that could occur from a Western plant under ANY circumstances (including any type of terrorist attack).  The reality is that no type of Western nuclear plant accident could ever cause more than on the order of a thousand eventual public deaths.  This is clear from common sense comparisons to Chernobyl.  Any study or analysis that suggests otherwise is very clearly flawed.

People need to open their eyes and look at the actual facts, the actual record, when drawing conclusions about the risks of various energy sources.  Hypothetical event consequences, based on extremely unlikely events, circumstances, and assumptions, need to be given appropriate (low) weight when compared to actual, tangible, measurable, ongoing effects.  The statement that nuclear is "dangerous" is absurd on its face.  The one energy source that has never killed anyone (in over 40 years) is an "unacceptable risk"??  Nuclear has shown (has PROVEN) itself to be by far the safest source.  The actual record couldn't be more clear.  Nuclear has operated safely (without emitting any tangible pollution and without causing even a single public death or health effect) for long enough now for the burden of proof to fall more on the shoulders of the people with overly active imaginations.

One final point, conserning normal plant operations.  One post stated that emissions from nuclear plants cause people living nearby to have significantly higher exposure rates, and thus higher rates of cancer.  Baloney!  People living next to nuclear plants recieve less than 1 mrem per year, as compared to an average natural background level of ~360 mrem.  Thus, even the most exposed group sees an increase on the order of 0.1% over natural background, with the overwhelming majority of Americans (that live further away) getting no measurable exposure at all.

We know with absolute certainty that these tiny exposures have no health effect at all.  Natural background doses vary widely, from ~100 mrem/year to well over 1000 mrem/year in many highly populated areas.  Despite this huge variation in annual dose rate, no correlation between cancer rate (or any other health effect) and exposure level has ever been observed.  Thus, no health effects have ever been seen from exposure to (additional) radiation of up to ~1,000 mrem/year.  Actually, the official line of all the journals and scientific bodies is that no effects have been observed for dose rates under 10,000 mrem/year.  Since no health effects are seen for exposures that are thousands of times higher, we are pretty confident that exposures to a few mrem have no effect.  BTW, the maximum exposure to anyone from TMI was only ~100 mrem (clearly, no health effects there).

In terms of normal operation, nuclear power basically has no health/environmental effects.  Any effects are on the same (negligible) order as those from renewables.  They do emit a large amount of heated water though (as does any thermal/fossil system) and this can be a localized ecological issue in some cases.

http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Magazines/Bulletin/Bull422/article4.pdf

As the study shows, nuclear's net CO2 emissions are only a couple of percent, at most, of coal or oil's emissions.  Nuclear's emissions were similar to wind, and actually lower than solar's.  Not that the comparison between emissions for non-fossil (i.e., nuclear and renewable) sources is at all meaningful.  The real point is that emissions are basically negligible for all these sources.

All the points concerning the fuel enrichment process are largely specious.  Yes, the old enrichment plants use ~1 GW of electricity to run, but this meets the fuel needs for ~100 GW of nuclear capacity!  This ~1% effect jibes pretty well with the ~2% of coal's net emissions shown in the studies.  People say that coal plants are providing this power, but it is meaningless to say where the power from the US grid comes from.  The CFC emissions from the current (old) enrichment plants do not amount to a significant GW effect, as compared to those of fossil fuels.

Also, it is not as though CFC release is an inherent property of the enrichment process, as CO2 emissions are for fossil plants.  This problem can be fixed.  Furthermore, two new enrichment plants are planned and will come on line in a few years.  These plants will not emit any CFCs, and they will also use only ~10% as much electric power as the old plants did.  Thus, the input electricity will drop from ~1 GW to ~100 MW, which corresponds to only 0.1% of the associated nuclear power output.  This will make nuclear's overall net CO2 emissions even more negligible.  Finally, it should be pointed out that all such arguments based on electric power input are largely specious, because if we used non-fossil sources like nuclear for most of our power, this input electrical power would NOT result in CO2 emissions.

The net CO2 emission results of these studies also provide clear evidence that the statements made in other posts concerning nuclear's required "energy investment" are largely not true.  Net CO2 emissions (which are associated with plant construction, mining, fuel processing and enrichment, etc..) are a pretty good measure of net overall energy input/investment.  If nuclear power had an energy return ratio of only 5 or 6, or if it took 8 years for a nuclear plant to produce the energy invested, nuclear's net CO2 emissions could not be only a few percent of coal's.  As shown above, enrichment is only ~1% of energy produced, and will soon be much less than that.  Other energy use terms (e.g., plant construction) are even more negligible.

A given amount of nuclear or renewable generation will reduce net CO2 emissions by almost exactly the same amount.  Both are fully and equally capable of "solving" the global warming problem.  How much each one is used will depend on cost and other "desireabilty" factors.

    "Nevertheless, the common perception is that for geological disposal specifically, one must be able to predict the future accurately--and it is beyond established engineering practices to predict accurately for many thousands of years how the waste and the repository will behave. It is also beyond established practice to predict accurately whether or not some of the radionuclides disposed in the repository may move through the geological formations and eventually come in contact with human beings and the environment in the future and cause them harm. As emphasized above, however, the challenge is not to accomplish these impossible tasks, but rather to assess the range of potential future behaviors with sufficient confidence to allow the appropriate societal decisions to be made."

This is saying in black and white that is IMPOSSIBLE to predict the future behaviour of nuclear waste no matter how we dispose of it.  Yes we may be able to store it for a few human lifetimes or even a hundred but what about longer when our civilization is but a legend of dubious authenticity like Atlantis is today.

As has been pointed out in previous posts to which you seem to have paid no attention nuclear power's costs are heavily subsidised - so much so that you do not seem to be able to sort out the real costs from the subsidies.  Read this:

"Arguably the best and most current economic comparison of nuclear and fossil-fueled plants is by Professor Paul L. Joskow in a recent interdisciplinary MIT study, "The Future of Nuclear Power."4 As seen from the following table from the MIT Study, in the study new nuclear plants are far from being competitive with new natural gas or coal-fueled power plants. The levelized cost of electricity5 generated by a new nuclear plant is estimated to be about 60 percent greater than the cost of electricity from a coal plant or a gas-fueled plant assuming moderate gas prices."

and

* According to a July 2000 report by the Renewable Energy Policy Project, the U.S. government has spent approximately $150 billion on energy subsidies for wind, solar and nuclear power--96.3% of which has gone to nuclear power.

and

    "* Limited Liability: The Price-Anderson Act establishes a taxpayer backed insurance regime for nuclear power plants that limits liability of nuclear operators in the event of an accident. (The Act was enacted in 1957 as a temporary measure to support the fledgling nuclear industry.) Under Price-Anderson, commercial nuclear operators are required to carry only $200 million in primary insurance. A second level of retrospective premiums in the event of an accident is capped at approximately $88 million per reactor, for an industry-wide total of approximately $9.4 billion.

    Yet according to a November 1, 1982 Congressional Subcommittee Report, based on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's "Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences" ("CRAC-2") model, a worst case scenario accident at a U.S. nuclear reactor could cost as much as $500 billion in damages. The economic consequences of a severe nuclear waste transportation accident could cost as much as $271 billion. The sizable discrepancy between the coverage available under Price-Anderson and the calculated consequences of severe nuclear incidents leaves the public unprotected and the industry unaccountable in the event of a serious accident. Furthermore, by artificially limiting the liability of nuclear operators, the Price-Anderson Act serves as a subsidy to the nuclear industry in terms of foregone insurance premiums. By masking the risk of nuclear power, the Price-Anderson Act distorts economic viability assessments of nuclear power and encourages the construction of new nuclear plants. No other energy source benefits from this level of subsidy.

    * Electric utility deregulation and the stranded cost bailout essentially amount to $120-200 billion, mostly to utilities that are selling off their commercial nuclear power reactors.

    http://www.cato.org/dailys/05-18-01.html

    Here at home, the federal government took responsibility for the supply and enrichment of uranium but failed to charge nuclear power plants anything for the capital or inventory costs of the program. And just since the establishment of the Department of Energy in 1978, more than $20 billion of taxpayer money has been spent on nuclear power research and development.

    Then there's the granddaddy of all subsidies, the federal assumption of high-level radioactive waste-disposal responsibilities. If the feds had stayed out of this and simply required the industry to secure its own waste disposal through private arrangements, who doubts that the construction costs for such facilities and, more important, the liability costs would greatly exceed the fees the industry currently pays the federal government? In fact, it's extremely doubtful that the industry could insure itself against the possibility of accidents in waste disposal facilities, which could remain highly radioactive for thousands of years."

Also on the subject of risk.  Just because no accidents have happened does not affect the statistical likelihood of an accident occurring in the future.  I know that the chance of my house burning down or being broken into is less that 1% yet I still pay house insurance because the consequences of an accident or break-in to my home, though very unlikely, would have devastating financial conequences to my familie's finances for years to come if I was not insured.  Similarly it is not enough to say that nuclear power is OK because there has not been a significant accident for years because the possible consequences of a nuclear accident are so large any accident, no matter how far apart, still have unique to nuclear power devastating effects.  A perfect example of a low risk - high consequence event.

You also glibly dismiss the uranium supply problem when to get around this you need breeder reactors thereby greatly increasing the problems of nuclear weapon proliferation.


Stephen Gloor Perth Western Australia

The nuclear power industry and its governmental allies are spending tens of millions of dollars annually to promote atomic power as a "clean air" energy source and to encourage the construction of new nuclear reactors in the U.S. and worldwide. With Russia's ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, thereby putting this important agreement into effect, this industry initiative is expected to increase. If successful, we can expect to see a revival--we would call it a "relapse"-- of reactor construction across the globe. There already are numerous proposals for new reactors on nearly every continent.

Yet nuclear power is not only ineffective at addressing climate change, when the entire fuel chain is examined, nuclear power is found to be a producer of greenhouse gases. Adding enough nuclear power to make a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would cost trillions of dollars, create tens of thousands of tons of lethal high-level radioactive waste, contribute to further proliferation of nuclear weapons materials, result in a Chernobyl-scale accident once every decade or so, and, perhaps most significantly, squander the resources necessary to implement meaningful climate change mitigation policies.

In November 2000 the world recognized nuclear power as a dirty, dangerous and unnecessary technology by refusing to give it greenhouse gas credits during the UN Climate Change talks in the Hague. The world dealt nuclear power a further blow when a UN Sustainable Development Conference refused to label nuclear a sustainable technology in April 2001.

This section includes background information on nuclear power and climate change, documents from the COP 6 meeting of the Kyoto Protocol held in the Hague and other materials. This issue is a high priority for the international NIRS/WISE network, and you can expect to see more materials added here in the coming months.

For the complete report and more info: www.nirs.org

However, arguing over CO2 when tons of nuclear waste is being left adjacent to our nation's waterways and pristine coastlines is at the least short-sighted.

Rochelle Becker
Alliance for Nuclear Responsibility
www.a4nr.org

Their analysis assumes a capital cost of $2200/kW despite the fact that several reactors have been built over the last decade (in the Far East), on budget and on schedule, for less than that.  They've also been building them in only ~4-5 years.  This is not some theoretical possibility.  It's something that has been proven in the field.  Based on this proven field experience, GE has offered to guarantee a reactor cost of $1400 for its ABWR design (which it has built several of in Japan).  In other words, they're offering a fixed-price contract, you pay them $1400 (per kW) and they deliver the reactor, period (i.e., they take all the risk).  They wouldn'y make such an offer if they weren't confident that they could do it.  A cost of $1400/Kw corresponds to a power price of less than 5 cents.

The report is also based on current reactor designs, despite the fact that the proposals for new US construction are for new, advanced reactor designs.  These new designs are based on decades of engineering effort, technilogical advance, and a host of lessons learned from the first generation of reactors.  Much of the focus of these new designs is to reduce cost (although they are also far safer).  To assume that we have leaned nothing over all these years, and can't design a less expensive reactor is, well, extremely pessimistic.  Detailed analyses shows that costs would be significantly reduced, to ~$1000-1200/kW (with a cost of at most ~$1500 for the first demo plant).  This would correspond to power costs in the ~3-4 cent range.  The MIT report says that these cost reductions are "plausible but yet to be demonstrated".  A true statement, but its tone is unduly pessimistic.  There is a high degree of confidence in the lower costs.  Given the stakes (GW, etc..), is it so much to ask to let them at least try (i.e., build a couple of plants)?

Another (complicated) issue is the terms of financing, which can greatly affect the power price, even for a given (overnight) construction cost and operating cost for a given plant.  The MIT study was also based on the harshest possible financing terms, with an extremely high required return.  Better terms would signifcantly reduce the power cost.  As an illustrative example, the required return, and thus power cost, can vary greatly depending on whether a long-term power contract is in place (i.e., a guarantee of a customer for the power).  Simply having a long-term power contract would reduce the calculated nuclear power cost from 6.7 cents to ~5 cents.  After the first few plants are built, the aura of uncertainty around plant costs would lessen, and the borrowing costs for follow-on plants would drop significantly.  This, along with lessons learned in construction, would result in MUCH lower power costs for follow-on plants.  Most analyses show that these follow on plants would be fully competative with coal, gas, or any other source.

The only sources of energy nuclear truly hasn't been able to compete with in economic terms are dirty (conventional) coal, and natural gas during the brief period (the 90s) over which gas was extremely cheap.  But the days of cheap gas are already over, and the only reason conventional coal is cheaper is because not only is it held to astonishingly lax standards, but it isn't even required to pay for the massive effects of its ongoing pollution.  As the studies I referenced show, if external costs were included, coal would be way more expensive than nuclear.

Nuclear is already competative with gas in raw economic terms RIGHT NOW.  Concerning gas, the MIT and CATO studies are already dated, and are based on gas costs that are much lower than they are today (i.e., ~$3-4/MBTU, versus ~$7.5 today).  And no, don't expect gas prices to ever go back down....

Concerning coal, the MIT and CATO studies are right, in a sense.  Under today's current policies, conventional coal is, and will be, cheaper than nuclear.  Clean coal (i.e., coal gassification, or IGCC) is as expensive as nuclear, however, and coal with CO2 sequestration will be more expensive.  That's basically the whole question.  Do we care about the environment or not?  Do we care about 25,000 people dying every year?  Do we care about global warming.  If we do not, and we continue to refrain from passing any meaningful policies to address these issues, then yes coal will win out, and continue to be the dominant power source.

On the other hand, if we held coal to anywhere near the standards nuclear is held to, or at least make it pay for all the harm it's causing, nuclear would have no problems at all competing, with no need for any subsidy at all.

There is a difference between toxic material that is released into the environment and toxic material that is NOT released into the environment.  Nuclear is basically held to a zero-emission standard.  Not only is it not allowed to emit any pollution under normal plant operations, but it is required to show, to a high standard of proof, that none of its waste materials will EVER be released into the environent.  Coal, on the other hand, is allowed to routinely emit huge amounts of known toxic materials directly into the air, in quantities sufficient to cause large and readily measurable health consequences.  On top of that, it is asked to pay nothing for the priveledge.

If we were to hold coal to a standard even remotely close to nuclear's, we would at a minimum require IGCC for all new coal plants, and we would also slap on a large CO2 emissions tax.  To truly approach nuclear's environmental performance, however, nothing short of full "Future-Gen" technology would be required, with complete sequestration of all CO2 and all other pollutants.  And it wouldn't even end there.  In addition to sequestering (i.e., not emitting) any of their waste products (something nuclear has always done), they would have to guarantee that none of the sequestered waste material EVER leaks out into the bioshpere.  Given that coal's solid wastes are almost a million times as voluminous as nuclear waste, and NEVER decays away, this will be a pretty tall order.

In lieu of holding coal to the same "zero-pollution" standards as nuclear, at the very least we should make coal pay for all the public health and economic damages that it causes.  According to EPA, coal emissions cause ~$100 billion in economic damages every single year, in addition to the ~25,000 deaths.  Charging coal with these external costs would render it much more expensive than nuclear (as the ExternE study results make clear).

As shown above, any type of policy that would hold coal to any reasonable standard would make coal uncompetative.  Furthermore, if we have any type of CO2 policy, coal will be rendered uncompetative by definition.  Why?  Because in order to reduce CO2, we need to reduce coal use.  Coal would have to have a declining market share, and the only way that will happen is if it is more expensive than the alternatives.  Thus, under a cap-and-trade system, the price of a CO2 credit WILL rise high enough to make coal's cost rise above that of its non-fossil competitors.

The cost of gas is high now, and will only go higher in the future, as the production peak approaches, and as demand soars (from developing countries, etc..).  On top of that, North America is being rapidly depleted of gas, and very soon the gas situation will come to resemble the oil situation, with a large fraction of it being imported from unstable regions like the Middle East or Russia.  Thus, the use of gas will have "geopolitical" costs, in terms of energy dependence and vulnerability, negative balance of trade, and oh yeah, having to send our troops into wars (like Iraq) to protect the gas supply, as we do now with oil.  Based on all the above, it will be difficult, and would be irresponsible, to increase the fraction of power generated by gas.  Gas will also be uneconomic, for baseload power at least.

Thus, given that have a greenhouse policy, coal will have to be gradually phased out, and gas will be limited as well by supply limitations.  This leaves nuclear and renewables....  Based on the cost figures shown above, nuclear will be roughly as cheap as wind, while solar remains vastly more expensive.  And nuclear does not have the intermittantcy problem that renewables (especially wind) have.

I sense that I will never convince some of you that nuclear will be competative with renewables.  If that were the case, however, I would have to ask what you are so afraid of.  Nobody is ever going to propose nuclear subsidies that exceed those given to renewables (on a per-kW-hr basis).  Indeed the largest subsidy even being considered now is for the first few new plants to recieve the same 1.8 cent subsidy that wind gets.  But, unlike wind, after the first few plants, nuclear is off the dole completely, and must survive on it's own.  It's not a long-term thing.  It's just a "jump start".

If nuclear is indeed so much more expensive than renewables, than new plants will not be built even if the above subsidy were offered.  If they are built, it will be by totally private industry, and it will be clear that nuclear is indeed competative with renewables.  The bottom line is, if renewables (or conservation) actually could provide most or all of our power, at costs that are lower than those of nuclear, as many of you say, than new nuclear plants will simply not be built, period.  No policy will make it happen.  Given that renewables are not affected by pollution or CO2 limits, or any type of environmental policy, there would be no reason not to use them for all new energy needs, unless other sources were less expensive.

In an ideal world, there would be no energy subsidies.  Instead, there would only be externality (or pollution) taxes on sources that emit pollution or toxins.  Taxes would also be applied to reflect negative geopolitical effects like forien energy dependence.  If coal were required to meet reasonable pollution standards, or were required to pay for its external costs, or, alternatively, if we has ANY policy that limited CO2 emissions, nuclear would not need any subsidies at all (not that it gets any significant subsidies right now).  It would not even need the Price Anderson protection, which amounts to a tiny subsidy compared to coal's massive unpaid external costs.

Brings to mind the point made early on in this discussion- 'the devil is in the details'- this could have been done right (at least better) in the first place, but it wasn't. But with our enlightened government and their conscientious oversight, this would surely never happen again.

a liberal in redsville

1.  Nuclear waste has an unprecedented amount of (collective) toxicity, far beyond any other material we've created or deal with.

2.  Nuclear waste's longevity is without precedent.  No other material threatens the distant future as nuclear waste does.

3.  If the worst case repository leakage scenario were to come to pass, it would be an unprecented health catastrophe.

The fact of the matter is that solid waste (garbage), chemical toxic waste, and coal ash will all pose a much greater long-term health risk than will Yucca Mtn.  By this I mean over any time scale.  300,000 years from now, these wastes will be a far greater health risk than Yucca.  The volume of material is millions of times greater, the overall toxicity is actually higher, and the lifetime of many of these toxic materials is greater than nuclear waste or even infinte.

Consider all the mercury, arsenic, lead, uranium, etc.... that has been gently deposited throughout the biosphere by our coal plants.  These elements remain toxic forever, so the only way for the health risk to decrease is for these elements to somehow migrate back down out of the biosphere, far under the earth.  How long do think that will take?  And take landfills.  We put everything but the kitchen sink in there, and much of it is toxic and some is known to be long lived (e.g., styrofoam, etc..).  As for their containment performance, I've heard that almost half of all the landfills built several decades ago are now superfund sites.

The following reference shows the overall toxicity level of various commonly used industrial chemicals, as compared to nuclear waste of various ages.