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  Half a Life

  It's truly shocking that the Grist -- which I usually enjoy -- would give a single pixel in support of nuclear energy. It's worse than shocking -- it's irresponsible.

  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.
  On Umbra on nuclear energy posted 4 years, 7 months ago 45 Responses