Is Nuclear Power Worth Another Look?

In the early 1950’s, at the Dawn of the so-called “Atomic Age,” then President Eisenhower made a pledge to turn the awesome destructive power of the atom to peaceful means. Perhaps as an attempt in some way to redeem the United States for the nuclear holocaust of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the administration felt it was America’s responsibility to develop nuclear energy as a source to provide “clean and inexpensive” electricity for all of the nations of the world.

A half-century later, amid cost overrun’s, a near-meltdown at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and tons of nuclear waste in this country with no where to go, the dream of nuclear power has all but died. Or has it? In the quest for clean sources of energy and decreased reliance on fossil fuels, there seems to be a renaissance of sorts for the nuclear power industry. Even once ardent foes are starting to take a second look at nuclear energy.

Why is the sleeping dragon of nuclear energy once again rearing its head? The old arguments in favor of nuclear energy are still the strongest. From a Greenhouse Gas standpoint, nuclear power plants are emissions free. They also do not produce any other harmful compound emissions such as sulfur dioxide, which is produced in abundance from coal-fired plants and other industrial processes and is a cause of acid rain and respiratory illness. Compared with fossil fuels and even natural gas, sources for uranium and potentially thorium are abundant mostly in “friendly” democratic nations. Advocates point out that despite using decades old technology, there has not been a single accident of any kind involving any of the nations on-line nuclear power plants in the more than 30 years since Three Mile Island. The nuclear industry has been quick to jump on the renewed interest in a nuclear solution to global warming and our energy appetite. Proponents say that a push toward hybrid and eventually full electric vehicles will increase the need for electricity consumption to recharge these vehicles, primarily in the overnight hours. They then argue that the costs to run nuclear plants for longer hours is less then for coal-fired plants. As a result of this logic, we are now seeing the first applications for the construction of new nuclear power plants in this country since the Carter administration.

However, before we go any further with this, we should all slow down there a minute. Just because there has not been a major incident at any of the currently operating plants since Three-Mile Island, doesn’t mean that there haven’t been many, largely unreported near misses. This includes a 2002 near meltdown in Ohio of the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station. During refueling operations it was found that a buildup of boric acid had eaten a hole into the steel cap on the top of the reactor. A spokesman said that had the cap been eaten away merely one-third of an inchmore, one-third of an inch–a plume of radioactive steam would have engulfed the containment dome, and Ohio would have been the site of the Three Mile Island of the 21^st Century.

Also, let’s not forgot the continued nightmare of nuclear waste disposal. The Yucca Mountain Repository was supposed to be paid for largely by the industry when it opened in 1998. It is still stalled and will likely remain so for some time. Outstanding liabilities aside (the industry sued the federal government for breach of contract and won), if the facility opened tomorrow, experts say it could only house the waste that has already been generated by existing plants, which waste sits in “temporary” concrete drums. Plus, there are infrastructure and waste transport issues with a central repository that have never been fully addressed.

Fermi, Einstein, Oppenheimer, and their contemporaries, the best and brightest minds of the 20^th century, saw what they had wrought in the aftermath of Hiroshima. They proposed the idea of nuclear energy in the hope that the same destructive forces they unleashed upon the planet could also be turned to some good. It was a noble idea. However, as metaphorically foretold in Godzilla and many other “Giant Atomic Monster” movies of the era, nuclear energy is a beast, a tiger by the tail, which can never be fully controlled.

If not nuclear, then what? The major technological hurdle to get over for wind and solar is their problems with intermittence. In other words, how to keep the energy generating when the sun is not shining or the wind is not blowing. The major technological hurdle to nuclear power is still how to keep the beast caged or how can we ensure that another Chernobyl can never happen. An additional hurdle is figuring out what can we do with the tons of waste and byproducts that can be turned into weapons of mass destruction by a rouge state or non-state terrorist actor.

When looking at the problems of nuclear power versus other alternatives, I know which problem I would rather throw my money at. Despite what some politicians, big utilities, and other special interests would have you believe, nuclear power is expensive, dangerous, currently relies on outdated technology, and ultimately depends on humans to run it properly. Humans can and do make mistakes, and the consequences of “operator error” at a nuclear plant are far worse than any level of any accident involving any other current energy source. It will take much more research, money, and time to find a way to eliminate all of the problems with nuclear power. Instead, we should concentrate our efforts in developing alternatives for coal-fired electricity with renewable energy from the wind, the sun, and the earth herself.

If the minds of the best scientists of today are impelled in the same way that those who worked on the “Manhattan Project” were a half a century ago, which result do you think is more practical or more likely? Maybe President Eisenhower was right. Maybe we do owe the world something for its first, and thankfully only, Atomic War. However, lets not pay that debt by looking backwards at nuclear, but rather forward to renewable technologies like solar and wind. Sleeping dragons, like dogs, should be left to lie.