There is now a solid recognition by most politicians in the world, and increasingly even by those in once staunchly anti-nuclear regimes in such places as Germany, Sweden, Austria and a few other Politically Correct holdouts (Italy), that nuclear power is becoming unavoidable. Furthermore, it is also shown to be the cleanest, safest, and often the cheapest way of generating reliable electricity in any advancing society.

However, even in this recognition, and mostly because of it, there is a growing howl of shrill desperation in the ever-shrinking, and increasingly irrelevant anti-nuclear constituency that is horrified by this rational and inevitable outcome. And it is inevitable, if we wish to survive.

The general public listens to the propaganda of these various critics only so long as there are easy and affordable energy alternatives. As soon as there is a threat of shortages and prices escalate dramatically as they have over the last few years, the public becomes more questioning and less inclined to believe the usual dogma. For this reason, the anti-nuclear brigade must continually harp upon whatever emotional issue they can resurrect and keep alive for long enough – they hope – to stall the nuclear option, while the world digs itself deeper into energy deficiencies and uncertainties, as it plows ahead with building more super-expensive and unworkable cuisinarts of the bird and bat world – windmills!

About here, one is also advised to reflect upon the revealing admission by one editor, that ‘it is not the responsibility of the media to report the truth about anything, but only to report liars, accurately.’

The broad-based anti-nuclear constituency, despite temporary victories in the 1970s and 80s in the U.S. and elsewhere (Sweden, Germany, Austria, Finland etc.), has recently seen its legs cut out from under it on most energy issues, as the accumulating facts about safety, environmental impact, health impact, long term fuel availability, and cradle to grave costs, from the last 50 years of growing commercial nuclear electricity have shown that:

1. Nuclear power is vibrant and affordable, as France, Sweden, Switzerland, and even Germany and others so clearly demonstrate. The same is true in the U.S., where utilities now are consolidating their highly profitable nuclear fleets and are applying for license extensions (generally granted). They are also considering building the next generation of nuclear, once the usually paralyzing influence of frivolous interveners can be blocked, and the regulatory and licensing maze is straightened and made clear. Europe would freeze in the dark were it not for France’s nuclear success as, despite another hysterical fear; that of Global Warming, they seem to be heading in the other direction, with spring a month later than normal, and thousands having frozen to death last winter.

2. Nuclear power is far safer than any other comparable alternative source of large-scale energy. It is even safer than the dilute and unreliable and intermittent small-scale renewables like wind and solar.

3. Nuclear fuel is defined for at least thousands of years, through the gradual adoption of advanced nuclear cycles and reprocessing.

4. Nuclear electricity is mostly cheaper than coal, oil, or gas fired electricity, as data from the Utility Data Institute (U.S.) have shown for the last few years, and as France, Japan, Finland, Ukraine, and others already know. No coal, no oil, no gas, no choice.

5. The average Capacity Factors of U.S. nuclear power plants has increased from about 60%, to more than 90% over the last 20 years and their lifetimes can be safely extended to something more than 40 years and more.

6. Decommissioning and waste disposal costs are collected from the already low nuclear electrical price paid by consumers.

7. Nuclear power is the most environmentally friendly and least environmentally harmful of any electrical generation process. If fossil fuels were to similarly pay for their detrimental environmental and health impact upon society (which they do not do at this time; see externe site: http://www.externe.info/), the costs of fossil fuel would rise considerably, and they would become even less competitive.

8. There are no significant emissions of greenhouse gases from the entire nuclear cycle, despite selective allegations to the contrary, by the much-discredited Storm van Leeuwen and Smith efforts and others. Had they conducted the same analysis of ALL energy facilities they would have been more relevant and honest, but this would have resulted in a ringing endorsement of nuclear energy, which was not their intent.

9. All nuclear wastes are 100% managed. Try saying that for coal, oil or gas, which blow most to all of their waste products into the atmosphere. If fossil fuels were required to sequester even a small fraction of their billions of tonnes of gaseous wastes, the energy diverted to do so, would similarly cripple their present economic rationale.

10. Alternatives to nuclear power and fossil fuels and hydro, can’t provide the energy that any industrial or advanced society needs reliably, consistently, affordably, or with the minimal environmental impact of nuclear. And now, many fossil fuels are starting to become too expensive, and are clearly seen to be major environmental polluters.

The Nuclear Waste ‘Issue’

The one remaining trumped-up nuclear issue, is to do with the mythology surrounding nuclear wastes and waste disposal and long term health concerns. There are even a few who believe that the nuclear waste issue is so unsolved, that we should not build any new nuclear plants until we solve this problem – as though the problem actually exists in reality rather than just politically.

Most of what we hear in the media about nuclear wastes is wrong, with minor glimmers of truth. It is intended to be frightening. Even the Yucca site is merely a political sideshow for Nevada politicians and others, to posture and grandstand.

The issue, as it is dealt with by the media and Special Interest Factions, is totally devoid of perspective and the necessary epidemiological data to place it in any ranking of comparable social risks. Such data exist, even on this site, but are studiously and strenuously ignored by these critics.

We continually hear other such emotionally loaded statements that spent fuel, the most highly radioactive ‘nuclear waste’ and its disposal is:

1 An unsolved problem
2. Dangerously radioactive for millions of years
3. A threat to the health of future generations
4. A proliferation threat
5. A terrorist target

That none of these statements is true, though one of them does have a grain of truth, seems immaterial. But let’s get one misconception out of the way first. Spent fuel is NOT nuclear waste. (See my article in EnergyPulse on “Nuclear Cycles and Nuclear Resources”).

The factual and honest responses to these perceptions go something like this:

1. Disposal of any nuclear waste is NOT an unsolved problem. The containment and emplacement-engineering is very well understood. Rather, politicians (in general) refuse to make a (temporarily vote-costing) decision to get on with what is known to be an acceptable method of disposal.

2. It is NOT dangerously radioactive for millions of years. It is slightly radioactive for millions of years only because it consists mostly (about 95%) of natural uranium which is weakly radioactive for hundreds of millions (U-235), to billions (U-238) of years. The truly dangerous component in the short term – about 4% fission wastes – is mostly decayed in less than a few days out of the reactor, as the tabulated data show.

About 16% of the fission nuclides are stable (non-radioactive); about 91% are either stable or have a half life of less than 24 hours; about 97% are either stable or have a half-life of less than 1 year; and about 98.1% are either stable or have a half life of less than 10 years. Only about 1.9% of fission nuclides have a half-life greater than 10 years. The two of most concern are strontium-90 and cesium-137 with half-lives of about 30 years.

About 1% of spent fuel consists of transuranic nuclides (plutonium isotopes, etc.). These fairly long half-life nuclides (some, thousands of years), along with the 95+% of remaining uranium, constitute ongoing reactor fuel in a closed reactor cycle, which seems about to be revived in the US after decades of being blindly proscribed in the Ford-Carter years. (See my article on EnergyPulse on “Nuclear Power and Politics”).

Spent fuel should be reprocessed, as it is in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere. And it will be. It is just a matter of time, economics, and political evolution.

Reprocessing removes 96% of the spent fuel back into the reactor cycle, and leaves relatively low volumes of easily managed fission wastes. These are required to be managed for a few tens of years (unless strontium-90 and cesium-137 have been removed for medical use), and perhaps further monitored for about a hundred years or so.

3. It is NOT a significant threat to the health of future generations. It is contained, and it is 100% managed. It represent far less of a threat than any other social or energy wastes produced in society. To the degree with which nuclear power replaces fossil fuel power, it would represent a net prevention (saving) of more than about 1 million lives from pollution, mining accidents, transportation accidents, etc., each year, at this time. I consider this to be a major health benefit. However, the EPA - by extrapolating calculated effects out to tens of thousands of years, and by using the flawed LNT hypothesis in calculating radiation injuries from doses that are a fraction of natural background everywhere in the world - believes (making some extreme assumptions) that it can perceive some few radiation-related deaths – perhaps much less than 100 in total - over the next ten thousand years from a repository like Yucca. If the EPA used the same notions of extrapolated risk for other sources of energy, the nuclear option would obviously prove to be thousands of times LESS hazardous to future generations. That particular piece of perspective is lost by not being revealed by EPA.

4. Nuclear wastes do NOT represent a significant proliferation threat. It is far easier to make a nuclear weapon by enrichment of uranium-235 (Iran) - which does not require a reactor - than to make a weapon from spent fuel from a commercial reactor. Military reactors, dedicated to weapons production, and easily detected, and useless for producing electricity, can produce weapon-useable fuel. Today, this has practically nothing to do with commercial nuclear power.

5. Terrorists, in their right minds, are NOT interested in spent fuel at this time. It is too difficult to deal with:
http://www.ecolo.org/documents/documents_in_english/dirty_bombs.Sutherland.htm.

There are numerous easier, and more vulnerable and ‘safe’ targets for them to go after. If we could, however, persuade them to try to steal this stuff, we could get rid of them most decisively.

The facts about even high-level nuclear wastes of any kind are very simple, and easily understood:

1. Nuclear waste has neither injured nor killed anyone in the last 60 years of nuclear energy use. No one. It is 100% safely managed and cannot cause any exposure to the general public.

Compare that envious safety record with the alleged hundreds of thousands of pollution deaths each year from the almost entirely unmanaged wastes associated with our use of fossil fuels and burning dung.

The average number of deaths from coal mining accidents throughout the world each week, and regularly reported on the inner pages in most newspapers, exceeds the total numbers of nuclear power related deaths in the entire 60 year history of the nuclear power industry; nuclear accidents included. From that empirical (observed) point of view alone, this makes nuclear power at least 3,000 times safer than coal.

In addition, the annual numbers of pollution related deaths worldwide (3 million per year WHO), from burning fossil fuels (50,000 per year in the U.S. if an MIT study is to be believed), make fossil fuels millions of times more dangerous than nuclear power operation and waste disposal. These facts alone bring the so-called waste safety issue into stark perspective, and reveal it as a truly minuscule issue about which there is a lot of noise, and a great deal of emotional misinformation, but little substance.

2. Nuclear waste from nuclear power facilities is very low volume; less than the size of a golf ball per person, per year, from all facilities. It is also easily managed and safely moved into storage. I have monitored and supervised it being done on several occasions. We’ve also been doing that safely for the last 60 years too, and it can continue indefinitely and safely.

There are approximately 40,000 tonnes of solid and managed nuclear ‘wastes’ produced each year from ALL of the world’s nuclear facilities.

Now compare that number, with the approximately 25 billion tonnes of ‘radioactive’ wastes from fossil fuel use, or about 4 tonnes per person each year. And YES, they are also radioactive, though at a very low level. These are mostly thrown into the atmosphere to affect us all. They are also partially blamed for what is regarded in some hand-wringing circles as the greatest threat to humanity; Global Warming, even if the other health effects from fossil fuel use didn’t exist.

The radiation dose to residents living around an operating coal burning facility is up to 20 times higher than that of residents who live around an operating nuclear power facility. Fortunately, they are both still minor compared with other radiation doses from nature and medicine. Coal burning plants produce much more nuclear waste per megawatt, than does a nuclear power plant, but we neither manage it well, nor consider it as nuclear waste. We've just got used to it without being terrified of it. However, it will constitute an extremely valuable nuclear fuel source over the next few hundreds of years.

3. The nuclear waste issue is entirely political at this time, and is milked to an extreme degree by many environmental activists, as opposed to active environmentalists, of which I am one. There is nothing unsolved about its disposal or management other than how to get politicians to let the engineers get on doing what they do best, and how to counter the various zealots spreading emotional misinformation about it.

The politicians of some countries have made their decision. And even the wrong one – not to reprocess, and to choose deep disposal (out of sight, out of mind) – can be reversed, as it eventually will be. Disposed spent fuel becomes a pure high-grade uranium/plutonium ore-body from the moment it is emplaced, and it will eventually be exploited and reprocessed. If this is a good example of a serious unsolved problem, we need many more of them to be as insubstantial and as harmless as this one is.

4. Spent nuclear fuel is NOT waste, though it is often misleadingly labeled as such. It can, and will, be reprocessed in future nuclear cycles. It should therefore NOT be disposed of at all, but that simple reality gets lost in all the political noise.

Only from 1 to 5% of the fuel resource is actually used in the first pass through the reactor. In North America, we are temporarily 'throwing away' – for the moment – the 95+% of fuel that is unused, and that can be readily recovered and used. Such ‘waste’ in any other endeavor would inflame and arouse even the most ignorant environmentalist, but not, it seems if it is associated with Nuclear Power. Such reprocessing is already carried out in Europe and Japan and Russia, and will shortly be revived in the U.S. along with the logical revival of the fast breeder reactor. In truth, there is no shortage of energy in the world; there is just a shortage of politicians with guts, at least outside of France and a few other countries.

Public radiation exposures today come about 75% from nature; about 24% from medical procedures; and about 1% from all of industry. Nuclear power plant operation contributes about 0.01%; nuclear ‘waste’ and ‘waste’ storage contribute less than about 0.001% at worst.

It is only the smallest three sources of radiation on the diagram that the public is usually stirred up about. Why?

Now, several Native groups in North America, including the Mescalero Apaches of the south-west U.S., have closely examined the nuclear waste disposal issues, consulted their people and decided to take advantage of this window of opportunity before others recognize the outrageously generous rewards for little work and practically no risk. They are considering offering reservation land as an interim repository to at least 30 utilities with whom they are negotiating. They see the jobs in engineering and health physics, and financial rewards and economic prosperity that far outweigh the small risks of managing such wastes with the available technology. The risks of being poor, without jobs or future prospects (stress, alcoholism, general ill-health, tuberculosis, substance abuse, violence, suicide), are thousands of times more detrimental to them than any risk from nuclear waste disposal, and all could be countered by increased prosperity and education that comes with wealth.

Additionally, the Meadow Lake Tribal Council in Saskatchewan representing 8,000 natives have also examined the issue, the costs, the benefits and the minuscule risks, and decided that there are up to billions of dollars to be made, over hundreds of years, just for offering a permanent repository and looking after something that poses little more than a public relations problem. Of course, various so-called environmental groups are climbing all over them to try and stir up tribal fears in order to sink the negotiations in the only way they know how – Distort the facts, and terrify them as much as possible!

A majority (about 72%!) of the residents of the nuclear community of Blind River, Ontario, voted recently to become the first Canadian municipality to offer to take radioactive waste. They know that the benefits far outweigh any risks, and have sufficient education and knowledge of the industry to be able to evaluate the risks.

Other communities may miss an opportunity to be part of this process and regret it for the next few decades.

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