[Oz-envirolink] Monbiot : Environmentalists need to face the fact that nuclear power is less dangerous than fossil-fired global warming.

[Dave Kimble]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-op-monbiot11jun11,0,5430628.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
June 11, 2006
A few more nukes!

Environmentalists need to face the fact that nuclear power is less 
dangerous than fossil-fired global warming.
By George Monbiot,

George Monbiot writes an environmental column for the Guardian of London 
(www.monbiot.com). His book "Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning" will 
be published in Britain in October.


WHEN I TELL my "green" friends that I am rethinking nuclear power, they 
respond with outrage. I am an environmentalist, and, to a large extent, 
the green movements in the developed world arose from public concern 
about atomic energy.

For about 30 years we have seen nuclear power as dangerous, its 
radioactive wastes as unmanageable, the industry as incompetent and 
untrustworthy. In the environmental camp, any softening of this 
opposition is seen as a betrayal.

But climate change and falling energy reserves demand that we reopen the 
question. The nuclear industry now claims that nuclear power is the most 
reliable answer to the global warming caused by the overuse of fossil 
fuels. It argues that new technologies make it safe and cheap.

I've spent the last year searching for a way to cut carbon emissions by 
90%, which is necessary to prevent runaway global warming. One of the 
hardest problems is how to generate enough electricity. My sympathies 
lie with renewable power. Alongside a massive energy-efficiency program, 
it plainly provides part of the answer. But it cannot supply all of our 
electricity needs. The rest must come from somewhere, and to dismiss 
nuclear power without considering what the alternatives involve would be 
irresponsible.

I still detest the nuclear industry and its efforts to hoodwink the 
public about its costs, its dangers and its record. But I've reluctantly 
concluded that some of its arguments have merit.

It is true, for example, that a disaster on the scale of Chernobyl is 
highly unlikely to happen again because no new power station will be 
built without a containment vessel, which prevents most radiation from 
escaping in an accident. But the mining, processing and use of uranium 
will continue to be accompanied — as they always have been — by leaks 
into the environment.

It now looks as though radioactive waste can be stored safely. The 
Finnish authority responsible for nuclear waste disposal has developed a 
method that looks foolproof. The problem is that it is expensive, and 
the nuclear industry has a long record of cutting corners. One British 
company was caught throwing nuclear waste into open shafts it had dug 
above crumbling coastal cliffs. Another admitted that it had been 
keeping plutonium in uncovered ponds for more than 30 years. Workers at 
the U.S. Geological Survey, which is responsible for testing the Yucca 
Mountain waste repository in Nevada, falsified the rates of water 
percolation, apparently to make the site seem safer than it is.

After reading reams of conflicting data, I now also believe that global 
supplies of uranium are not the limiting factor many feared. On the 
other hand, the threat of nuclear terrorism can never be wholly 
dismissed, and the more fissile materials that are extracted and 
refined, the more opportunities there will be for people to obtain them. 
But although the radiation released by accidents or terrorists could 
kill hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, climate change caused by 
burning fossil fuels threatens hundreds of millions.

Though nuclear power is plainly less dangerous than climate change, I 
would still like to avoid building new plants if possible. But the real 
danger is this: If we oppose nuclear power without demonstrating that 
there are viable alternatives, we become, in effect, lobbyists for the 
coal industry. In Eurasia, there are still abundant supplies of natural 
gas, but in North America, gas production has already peaked and is in 
long-term decline. Already, coal supplies 32% of U.S. electricity, while 
natural gas supplies 24% and nuclear power 10%. As 90% of remaining U.S. 
fossil energy reserves take the form of coal, gas generators are likely 
to be replaced by coal plants. The same applies to aging nuclear 
generators, if they are not replaced by new ones.

If you believe that burning coal sounds more benign than nuclear power, 
I invite you to turn on your computer and search for images of the 
"mountaintop removal" being carried out by coal-mining companies in the 
Appalachians. It looks as if a nuclear disaster already has happened. 
The forests have been flattened, the hilltops blown off, the valleys 
filled with sterile rubble. Coal is also the worst of all fuels as far 
as climate change is concerned. It contains 40% more carbon per unit of 
energy than gas.

But if fossil fuels and nuclear power are bad choices, could 90% of the 
electricity in the United States be generated by greener means? There is 
no doubt that, if it could be harnessed, the U.S. has enough ambient 
energy to provide all the electricity it now uses. Amory Lovins of the 
Rocky Mountain Institute points out that the wind in a few counties in 
the Dakotas is, in theory, sufficient to supply the entire nation with 
electricity. Though no one is suggesting that all U.S. energy should be 
drawn from one source, the development of cheap, high-voltage direct 
current, or DC, lines of the kind now used in Brazil, Sweden and 
Australia would permit even the most remote sources to be exploited. The 
problem with transporting power has been that the electricity load 
carried by traditional alternating current, or AC, systems declines as 
the distance increases. But DC systems don't suffer such "line losses." 
In principle, DC lines could open up wind and wave power across the 
entire U.S. continental shelf, and solar electricity throughout its deserts.

What about the cost? Although estimates vary widely, electricity from 
large-scale wind farms appears to be cheaper than electricity from 
either nuclear power or coal, and its costs are falling fast. Even solar 
thermal electricity, a more expensive technology than wind, is now 
cost-effective in some places. A report published last year showed that 
during times of peak demand in Southern California, the cost of 
electricity produced by solar thermal plants is roughly equal to the 
wholesale price of conventional power. Peak demand in sunny places, 
driven by air-conditioning, coincides with maximum solar output.

The problem with alternative energies is that the coincidence of demand 
and supply is by no means guaranteed. Power companies can fire up their 
standby coal plant when demand rises, but they can't turn on the wind or 
ask the sun to shine. This problem can be partly overcome by using 
long-distance DC cables: When there's a flat calm in New York, there 
could be a gale blowing in Chicago. The wider the net from which 
electricity can be drawn, the more reliable ambient power becomes. But 
beyond a certain point — perhaps 50% or so of total supply — power from 
intermittent sources cannot be guaranteed. Part of the remainder could 
be supplied by burning biomass such as straw or wood. But farm waste is 
limited, and mass planting of fuel crops has implications for water 
tables and the global food supply.

So, with gas growing scarcer, where do Americans find the rest of their 
power? It seems to me that the U.S. has only two choices: either to 
build a new generation of nuclear plants or to find a genuinely 
acceptable, nonpolluting means of mining and burning coal.

Such a means might exist, if underground coal gasification fulfills its 
early promise. In principle, you can partly combust underground coal 
seams, capture the gas they produce and scrub the pollutants from it, 
producing either methane or hydrogen. The methane can be burned in power 
stations and the carbon dioxide in their exhausts extracted and buried, 
reducing greenhouse gas emissions by about 90%. The hydrogen could be 
piped to people's homes and used in mini-generators to provide both 
electricity and heat. But unless great care is taken, underground 
combustion could contaminate supplies of groundwater.

Picking "clean coal" or nuclear power is not a choice I would like to 
make. But if there is one thing I have learned in studying our energy 
systems, it is that there are no painless solutions.