The longest-serving member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is retiring. Here's what he has to say about Yucca Mountain:
Ed McGaffigan, a veteran member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said Monday that the Yucca Mountain program is deeply flawed and that the Nevada nuclear waste site should be scrapped.
"It may be time to stop digging, and it may be time to rethink," McGaffigan said in a critique of the Energy Department program as he prepares to retire from the five-member commission that regulates nuclear safety.
...
"I think Yucca Mountain has been beset by bad law, bad regulatory policy, bad science policy, bad personnel policy, bad budget policy throughout its history," McGaffigan said. "Every time somebody has done something to try to speed things up, it has backfired."
This reminds me of an argument against nuclear that's worth reiterating: the consequences of an accident at a reactor or waste-holding facility are enormous. It may be possible to design systems that make such an accident extremely unlikely, but all those systems, in the end, rely on the competence of everyone from regulators to managers to low-level employees.
Relying on the uniform competence of large groups of people to prevent catastrophe doesn't strike me as a particularly wise strategy. Part of what's attractive about a decentralized renewable energy system is that it degrades gracefully; the consequences of individual screw-ups, accidents, or wrongdoing are relatively localized.
Comments
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GRLCowan Posted 9:47 am
25 Jan 2007
It is also true that natural environmental inventories of radioactivity are very large; if it were possible to dissolve every spent fuel rod now in existence in the ocean, its radioactivity would be only fractionally changed. Four billion tonnes of uranium does a lot of radiating, and marine radiopotassium, the principal isotope by which living creatures self-irradiate, does several times more.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, boron combustion fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes
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amazingdrx Posted 3:36 pm
25 Jan 2007
Consider the cost of waste disposal given these revelations. If even Yucca, with it's huge cost already (50+ billion), can't do the storage job safely, how many more 100 billion are we looking at to even get storage facilities?
And how many billions per century will nuclear contractors charge to guard the waste, move the waste around, test the waste, comb the waste, put little bonnets on it and so forth. Maybe 20 billion per year for facilities that will cost 500 billion to build? 2 trillion per century. How many centuries? 100? What about inflation?
So we can have really low cost nuclear power at 10 cents per kwh now? Wind is around 3 cents and dropping. So add that 200 trillion plus inflation to the "low" cost of nuclear powered kwhs. Maybe add 10 dollars per kwh to internalize the waste costs.
Now add the cost of liability insurance for the storage facilities. Sorry no one wouild ever insure them. Or nuclear power plants. That's why the nuclear industry bribed your government to waive their liability. If your home or business is rendered worthless by an accident, you lose. No compensation. You can't even sue anyone.
If you own a home or business within 50 miles of a plant and even one more three mile island or Chernobyl type event occurs,anywhere in the world, how much will your life savings be worth? Who will be desperate enough to invest in a home near a nuclear facility? Not much demand for homes in those areas if/when another catastrophe happens.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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amazingdrx Posted 3:40 pm
25 Jan 2007
I think France tried that, deep ocean dumping of their nuclear waste. Russia dumps their old nuclear subs in the ocean too.
Nice to know it won't be a problem. Hehehey.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 12:05 am
26 Jan 2007
Energy Department spokesman Craig Stevens said the criticism from McGaffigan was "highly predictable."
Naturally, that explains why his statements are making the news and environmentalists are stunned.
McGaffigan "is tainted in our view," Stevens said.
Yes, he was irradiated by a green-o commie treehugger energy beam that transformed his years of experience into nothing more than a thought infection. He is officially Off The Reservation. The memo has been circulated; he is to be Shunned.
Apparently the DOE has no intention of learning from its mistakes.
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amazingdrx Posted 12:27 am
26 Jan 2007
http://www10.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www10.ante...
This is one reason why this field is called a "nuclear priesthood". It includes vows of silence.
Shhhh, national security. Cover up for nuclear contractors by revolving door (look I'm a nuclear contractor corporate officer, now I'm a dOE regulator)DOE "oversight".
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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Nucbuddy Posted 12:37 am
26 Jan 2007
Do you mean "The Worst Possible Accident", or just a typical accident?
David Roberts wrote: It may be possible to design systems that make such an accident extremely unlikely
If you, perhaps, do mean "The Worst Possible Accident", no matter which "energy path" (nuclear, wind, hydro, solar, etc.) were selected as defining the accident locus, the worst-possible accident would, by definition, necessarily always produce the same pre-defined results (for example: everyone dies; or, everyone is tortured until the end of time and then dies; or, everyone reproduces to such a degree that the population becomes infinite, and then everyone dies; etc.).
As far as go the probability-rated accidents, would it matter if at any given degree of negative consequence, the probability of that consequence were higher in the case of soft energy paths such as wind, solar, or negawatt, than in the case of nuclear? For example: if it were probable that once in a quadrillion gigawatt-electric nuclear-reactor years, an accident would occur in which one-million people would die, would it matter that only once in a trillion gigawatt-electric wind-turbine years (e.g., 1,000 times more likely for the wind-turbine path) an accident would occur in which the same quantity of one-million people would die? Is it not in fact the case that wind-power is more dangerous than nuclear-fission power?
As far as go releases from nuclear reactors possibly harming people, it may be instryctive to note that radionuclides hurt people in ways that are shared by toxic chemicals: they create free radicals, can they cause DNA-strand breaks. Human society is continually reducing its sensitivity to these vecters of biological harm. There have so far been identified hundreds of different ontioxidants and chelation agents which protect against damage from radiation. Most of these agents also protect against harm from toxic chemicals. Many also even protect against central-neural system damage resulting from blunt force trauma. Most of these agents are mass-produced today (the bulk-spice wall and the supplement wall at your local natural-foods store mostly contains items that have been shown to be radioprotective) and the protective-agent science and production may continue and even accelerate in the future with the help of nuclear electricity.
Extrapolating on this trend, a world which was powered virtually-exclusively by nuclear electricity, and which ramps up its energy production/consumption by a reasonable rate of -- let's say -- 20 times per century (equals 8,000 times every 3 centuries (e.g., eclipsing the entire terrestrial average-solar-insolation power value in only the first 3 centuries), equals 10 trillion times every millennium), might be a profoundly biologically-safe world. In other words, if protection from harm were your affinity-group's bottom line, perhaps that bottom line could best be achieved through continuous exponential-increases in energy production-consumption. And the only energy-technology we know of that can enable that high of a rate of energy-increase is nuclear.
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter8.html#3
The final alternative to nuclear power is conservation, doing without so much energy. Improvements in efficiency are, of course, always welcome, and there has been heartening progress on this in recent years. Waste is bad by definition. But while many people think that doing without energy is the safest strategy, it is probably by far the most dangerous.
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EcoSpeak Posted 2:13 am
26 Jan 2007
OK, somebody please explain to me how windpower has any type of catastrophic consequence associated with it.
What, a turbine is going to fall down and squish someone?
Some poor folk are going to have to suffer through a few hot afternoons without air conditioning?
Hmmm....
And then Nucbuddy finishes with the quote, But while many people think that doing without energy is the safest strategy, it is probably by far the most dangerous.
Yeah, because people had such a rough time of it for all those millennia when we didn't have hair dryers, light bulbs, and refrigerators. Wiped us out, didn't it?
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GRLCowan Posted 2:53 am
26 Jan 2007
Having initiated the debate by offering pro-big-money, antihuman, antienvironment casuistry here, Roberts elsewhere says he is not going to get drawn into the debate ... except to say we don't have to resort to nuclear power. Very true.
The reason we want to is because it is a big step forward in cleanliness and safety over the power sources whose tax revenue funds various unsavory activities, including both anthropogenic global warming denial and legislative obstructionism against nuclear energy.
--- G. R. L. Cowan, boron combustion fan
Oxygen expands around B fire, car goes
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Nucbuddy Posted 2:59 am
26 Jan 2007
What, a turbine is going to fall down and squish someone?
Not necessarily.
Any catastrophe ultimately traceable to nuclear-power as the most-important culprit, ultimately is a chain of events. Any catastrophe ultimately traceable to wind-power as the most-important culprit, also ultimately is a chain of events.
phyast.pitt.edu/~blc/book/chapter6.html#5
if enough thought and "dreaming up" is devoted to any system, one can always devise a chain of events that can defeat all safety systems and do harm to the workers or the public. Though this is true for every technology, no other technology has ever been subjected to this degree of scrutiny. [...] while these efforts were highly laudable, their effects proved to be disastrous. The public did not understand these risk analyses. Its attention became entirely focussed on excerpts stating that nuclear accidents can kill tens of thousands of people.
The point is: pathological chains-of-events are not exclusive to nuclear power. Rather, they are ubiquitous in nature and society. Nuclear power's supposedly-special characteristic of unlikely but catostrophic events is actually not special at all. It is a characteristic shared by every energy source, both those existing and those merely possible.
Further explication of this concept:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perfect_Storm
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect
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jfleck Posted 4:09 am
26 Jan 2007
Stevens surely must know that Ed is leaving the NRC because he is dying. He also surely must know that Ed is a backer of nuclear power. Given the first point, his comments are callous beyond belief. Given the second point, his agency is surely short-sighted for not listening seriously to what people like Ed are telling it.
* Full disclosure: I am one of those journalists who have written about the reasons for Ed's departure from the NRC. In what I wrote, I made clear that he is an old and respected friend, one of the finest public servants I have had the pleasure to know in my journalistic career. So I come to this issue with a strong personal bias.
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amazingdrx Posted 5:09 pm
26 Jan 2007
Keep 'em talking and no one will trust it anymore. Good work!
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog
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