I'm going to ignore the global environmental hazards of the uranium cycle, questions about central vs. distributed power generation, for the moment.; somebody else can take those on.

I'm most immediately concerned about links between uranium processing for nuclear power, nuclear weapons, and war.

Here's what we know:

1. Most countries in the world want energy security. If they see other countries using a technology that seems to work, they will try to get it for themselves.
   
2. Nuclear power is attractive to a lot of nations that are becoming technologically savvy, such as Iran, Korea, and many others.
   
3. The equipment needed to enrich uranium for nuclear power is the same equipment needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. You just need to run it longer to make weapons.
   
4. Therefore, the spread of nuclear power capability is going to lead to risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.
   
5. Also, the spread of nuclear power capability will give nations who want to go to war a pretext for doing so, claiming nuclear weapons are being developed wherever uranium is being enriched for nuclear power. We saw that in Iraq. At the moment, since it's exactly the same equipment, we can't tell what's happening in Iran. See, for example, William J. Broad's April 29article on uranium processing in Iran.
   

Iran is slowly but steadily gaining the industrial experience needed to make reactor fuel, or, with the same equipment and a little more effort, bomb fuel.

What can we conclude from what we know?

Nuclear disarmament first. The Nonproliferation Treaty calls for global nuclear disarmament and the creation of a robust international system to monitor nuclear materials and equipment, so that the world can be sure the uranium is being used only for power generation, not for weapons.

The world will not cooperate with the monitoring system as long as the USA is not living up to its part of the agreement by getting rid of its nuclear weapons and becoming part of the monitoring system.

If we want an international system that works, we need global nuclear disarmament including the USA. We also need a much more robust international monitoring system.

Then we will need to solve the many remaining questions about the safety of the uranium cycle, including mining, transport, processing, the power plants themselves, reprocessing, and waste disposal.

Nuclear power is not a quick fix for the problem of excess carbon use. Nor are the concerns merely local.

-- Love doesn't just sit there like a stone; it has to be made, like bread, remade all the time, made new. --Ursula LeGuin

Nuclear's CO2 cost 'will climb'
The case for nuclear power as a low carbon energy source to replace fossil fuels has been challenged in a new report by Australian academics.

It suggests greenhouse emissions from the mining of uranium - on which nuclear power relies - are on the rise.

Availability of high-grade uranium ore is set to decline with time, it says, making the fuel less environmentally friendly and more costly to extract.

The findings appear in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Source: BBC.

The Frenchies and Germans still think their EPR will make a difference. Until they see the Chinese and the Indians are building tens of second generation reactors.

Nuclear is so doomed.

They take radiation directly and convert it to energy.


Texeme.Construct(Participant)

Surprisingly, this research was the first of its kind (and we thought this most basic of things was obviously extremely thoroughly research - apparently not.) It was conducted by Belgian nuclear scientists.

Human health may be the cost of a nuclear future

IN THE mountain village of Kara Agach in Kyrgyzstan people are unwittingly eating radioactive waste. Radium left behind by more than two decades of uranium mining during the Soviet era has contaminated their chickens, milk, potatoes and pears.

A new study by Belgian and Kyrgyz scientists has shown that villagers are receiving radiation doses up to 40 times the internationally recommended safety limit, mostly from the food they grow. If the uranium waste dumps were dislodged by earthquakes or landslides, thousands more could be in danger. "There is a potential for a radiological disaster to happen," says Hildegarde Vandenhove from the Belgian Nuclear Research Centre in Mol.

In the debate over the merits and demerits of nuclear energy, the situation in Kara Agach is a warning. Often the people and places that have to deal with the hazards of uranium mining are forgotten in discussions of the environmental costs of ...

Source: New Scientist

We must calculate the human costs of renewables and nuclear much more in depth.

For example, the mining of the metals used in large wind turbines has led to the death of 5 million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We don't hear about this very often.

The idea to build the huge Inga Dam could just as well kill many people, as has the Three Gorges Dam in China.

• Nuclear waste (think of all those fuel pools, sitting as easy targets to would-be terrorists).
  
• Nuclear proliferation
  
• Accidents (they did and will happen).
  
• Leukemia and other cancers clusters around nuclear plants.
  
• Uranium mining problems regarding human health and the environment.
  
• Difficulty in siting plants due to water requirements.
  

Please people check out Christian Parenti's article in the May 12 The Nation.

One of the quotes I liked best from the Parenti article was that no US nuclear power plant has ever been delivered ontime or onbudget.
http://nirs.org/factsheets/quickeconfact208.pdf
http://nirs.org/neconomics/utstatelegislativepresentation ...

And another fun one to consider is that Nuclear power has some pretty scary bloating going on when you compare overnight costs, versus final costs.
(For reference, the FutureGen coal sequestration project got canceled because it was going to cost $6500/KW)
http://www.nirs.org/images/fplturkeypointcostchart.jpg

Hopefully there will be some left as populations continue to rise along it's path. I lived in Yuma for a couple years (and Tucson for 13) and even in the 1980's the Colorado was almost dry compared to the mile wide river it once was in places 100 years ago when steamboats made trips up and down.  

Lately Lake Meade/Lake Powell's water levels have gotten worse I hear. Along with fast growing cities, agriculture along the southern CA and southern Arizona CAP 'canal' isn't helping the water situation either.  Pipeline Curiosity Soars With Concerns

I would consider these issues to be as much a "risk"  to be weighed along with the risks of Uranium tailings entering the water.

Also, remember that the Ocean itself has billions of tons of natural Uranium salts dissolved in it and this could possibly be filtered out with massive desalination, reducing the need for mining Uranium eventually if people woke up in time to start an effort to use nuclear power in smarter ways and bring it into the 21st century instead of 1940's technology (last applied in the 1970's).

If floating nuclear plants were developed along coastal areas, Colorado river drinking water would not be needed someday(25 years?), easing the Colorado water issue and possibly helping to restore it someday to a reasonable level.  But of course since nuclear power is bashed repeatedly by environmentalists (and the LA Times), this probably won't happen until the NIMBYs realize their spigots have run dry and it's all a wee bit too late by then to do anything in the nick of time (except the easy solution of building a lot of new coal plants!!!). Same old same old.

Can't have your cake and eat it too, I'm sorry to say. If solar could ramp up to produce gigawatts in energy density quick enough along with wind power it could possibly help with desalination.

However, this will take educating a lot of Californians and Arizonan's (and the US) to help.

Then again, there is the distinct possibility of using 'cold fusion' someday in small power stations(a distinct possibilty), but I won't go into that here, it's likely to get bashed too and besides being absolutely real isn't enough of a story for the LA Times to even look into it..even if it happened to light up non-believers at the summer Olympics.

 Atomic Motor Blog

-JChan

Millions of tons of NORM created worldwide in mining industry, oil and gas !!!...
NORM - What is it?

Run for cover !!..we're all going to die !!!

Radon Gas ..Oh no ..thousands of cancer related deaths all over the US yearly ..
Radon: a radioactive gas, but do you want it in your home?

Lesson learned:  Even God doesn't create a perfect world ..Risk needs to be weighed appropriately in any human endeavor.

Radiation surrounds us. Live with it. Develop sensors to protect us and feel safer. Create new industries to help do so.  We do have the technology and brains to do it.

-JChan

This is a false argument, but it's rather insidious because it's a partial truth.  The falsity of it lies in what is not said, which is that ANY amount of "radioactivity," which is the type of radiation we are discussing here, has negative effects on the vast majority of species, including humans, that ANY extra radioactivity increases those negative effects, and that there is no "safe" level of exposure to radioactivity.  So creating industries that add any radioactivity to our environment adds more poisons to it.

Humans are grossly overpopulated and many, if not most, consume far too much individually.  The solutions are greatly lowering human birth rates until the population is greatly lowered and living much more simply to greatly lower individual consumption, including using a lot less electricity.  LIVE WITH THAT!!!

Same ideals ..different channel. Mine is the "God gave it all to us channel, what can I make of it to better mankind"

I wish you well.

-JChan