Recycled Nukes and Renewable Energy

By Charlie Barber
Staff Writer

“Highly toxic plutonium is seeping from the damaged nuclear power plant in Japan’s tsunami disaster zone into the soil outside, officials said today, heightening concerns about the expanding spread of radiation.”- Bismarck Tribune, 3/29/11
 
“There are censors everywhere, aren’t there, making us believe the world’s better and safer than it really is.” -C.J. Sansom

“Politicians think that if matters look difficult, compromise is a good approach.  Unfortunately, nature and the laws of physics cannot compromise—they are what they are.” -James Hansen
 
“French, American and international experts—even a robot—are either in Japan or on their way,    and French President Nicholas Sarkozy visited Tokyo on Thursday to meet with the prime   minister and show solidarity.”  - Bismarck Tribune, 4/1/11
 

On top of the sheer horror of human suffering, news from Japan is very depressing for those of us who believe that responsible development of nuclear energy, such as has been accomplished in France for the past half century, or in the U.S. nuclear submarine program, represents the world’s best chance for mitigating the disastrous effects of coal burning on climate change. 

Even people who can’t stand Al Gore are accepting his concerns about the effects on the planet from unchecked burning of coal and other fossil fuels when those views are presented on the Weather Channel. 

Despite the fears we may have about nuclear energy, it is one of the few viable alternatives to coal for electricity on a massive scale. Unfortunately, like fossil fuels, or fire, for that matter, nuclear fuel hasn’t always been utilized with the care that such a powerful force of mother nature demands.

It isn’t so funny given the Japanese context, but I couldn’t help thinking the other day of one of “Murphy’s Laws” applied to geology: “If you build your home on a crack in the earth, it’s your own fault.” I also thought about a Willy Nelson verse: “...but I can’t take my guesses back, that I made on all those facts, it ain’t necessarily so.”

While pondering Murphy’s and Willy’s wisdom, and “nuking” a cup of coffee in my microwave oven, I came face to face with my old friend, the Nuclear Genie.

High Plains Reader: You again! To what do I owe this pleasure?

Nuclear Genie: You were asking yourself some perplexing questions, and confusing the scientific functions of microwaves and radiation. It was clear that you needed my help.

HPR: Well, yes. For instance: Why did plutonium (PLU) leak from the reactor in Japan?  Isn’t PLU too toxic for producing only electricity? Why are there so many reactors so close at Japan’s reactor site? Isn’t this construction more related to weapons grade production than electricity? Didn’t Japan promise not to do this?

NG: The presence of PLU does not prove military application. Reactor grade PLU is a byproduct of nuclear energy processes. It only becomes suspicious when a government manufactures enough of it to make weapons grade PLU in a PLU reactor. It is the amount and the intent of the PLU production that matters. Americans well know the intent of PLU production in North Korea and Iran, for example. While you might think the Japanese were getting “sneaky” again, it is equally likely they simply made the too much mistake, something I think North Dakotans are familiar with.

HPR: All too true, oh Genie. The Japanese people are now suffering from decisions their government made, for whatever reasons.

NG: The Japanese also made another fundamental mistake. They stored all their nuclear waste, including reactor PLU, at the same facility as the generating reactor. This allowed the waste, in a manner analogous to long-accumulated brush on a forest floor feeding a forest fire, to make a nuclear accident more catastrophic. In these situations reactors’ “fires” release radiation by “burning” nuclear waste and releasing that radiation from stored waste into the environment. Alternative models recycle the waste, that is they harvest energy from nuclear waste, which allows it to be “burned off,” so to speak, in the generation of electricity.

You know, perhaps, that we don’t actually “burn” nuclear material to make energy, the way wood or coal is burned. But “fires” at a nuclear plant can release more toxic radiation if there is enough waste material lying around. There was an estimated 800 tons of nuclear material at the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant when the earthquake and tsunami hit. It is estimated that half of this tonnage was unrecycled nuclear waste byproducts, including PLU. 

HPR: Why do nuclear plants have to be so big, and produce so much waste at one time and in one place? And while so much of Japan is along earthquake zones, why do nuclear plants in the vastly larger United States have to be built on top of places like the San Andreas Fault along the entire length of California? 
 
And speaking of sorta_ terra_ firma_, does Senator Mitch McConnell know that the nuclear project near Paducah, Kentucky is sitting on the second most dangerous earthquake zone in the United States, the New Madrid Fault, which is exposed dramatically at Cape Girardeau, Missouri? We know that Senator McConnell is a powerful political figure, and I applaud his promotion of the idea of Megatons to Megawatts as a wave of the future. But as much as he might wish to ride this wave for more jobs in Kentucky, doesn’t he realize that western Kentucky, southern Illinois and southeastern Missouri are atop an earthquake zone every bit as dangerous as those in California and Japan?

NG: So many questions. 
 
The answer to most of them sixty years ago would be “ignorance.” The answer to them today would be “arrogance,” or, in North Dakota parlance, “bullheadedness.”
 
You are correct that there are safer places in the U.S. other than California or western Kentucky, like the upper Midwest which, like Ontario and Manitoba in Canada, rests upon the older and less active geologic region of the Laurentian Shield.  These and other realities are well known to organizations like the United States Enrichment Corporation [www.usec.com]. Also, besides the need to recycle waste from reactors, there is the need to recycle nuclear material from weapons being decommissioned under the new USA-USSR START Treaty. With so much recyclable nuclear material and nuclear waste available, it will therefore not be necessary to engage in the mining of uranium ore for a long time.
 
Outdated plants in the U.S. do need to be shut down, especially those built on fault lines. Other plants can be maintained until they are replaced with newer designs that recycle nuclear waste. Newer plants can and should be built, as long as private corporations in the nuclear industry are willing to accept more regulation from Washington, D.C. than banks which created the Wall Street meltdown.

HPR: Did you have to use the term “meltdown?”

NG: It WAS an economic meltdown. Ask anyone who lost their individual and pension savings in 2008. The free market model for something as complicated as nuclear physics or rocket science is not the best one. Congress learned that when we wanted to beat the Russians to the moon and they created the National Aeronautics and Space Administration [NASA]. There was plenty of money to be made by private contractors, but it was quite clear that the federal government had to be in charge of all operations.

HPR: Can we really do this?

NG: Yes. Engineers learn more quickly from their mistakes than politicians. Smaller nuclear plants can be built, far more safe, far more efficient in disposing of nuclear waste, and which supply abundant baseline electricity. The French have proven that.  They even sell surplus electricity to the coal burning Germans.

HPR: The French?

NG: Yes, the French.

HPR: Too many Americans still don’t think the French can do anything right except produce good food, wine and romantic settings for Hollywood.

NG: Don’t you remember Jacques Cousteau?

HPR: Of course. He was that amazing explorer on Public Television who took us all over the world and under the oceans in his ship “Calypso” and its diving bell. He also showed us industrial pollution on the high seas in the 1970’s, which confirmed so many of us in our concerns about the environment, and the consequences of burning coal and other fossil fuels indiscriminately. It’s a shame he isn’t here to guide us today.

NG: It’s going to take a lot more than a reincarnation of Jacques Cousteau’s programs to get Americans to think and act sensibly about nuclear power. In her powerful book, “Power to Save the World:  The Truth About Nuclear Energy,” Gwyneth Cravens points out research from Northwestern University’s Biomedical Communications Center that only one in ten Americans knows what radiation is.

HPR: Count me in that group, I’m afraid. Because radiation technology helped save my life from melanoma when used at Medcenter One in Bismarck, ND and the Mayo Clinic, I’m not afraid of radiation. But I don’t really understand it.

NG: That is a big problem in the United States. Fortunately for folks in Fargo, ND, there is an International Physics Conference hosted by Dr. Alexander Wagner at North Dakota State University this next August 8-12, 2011. Also, Duane Sand, with a distinguished background in nuclear energy, has shared some enlightening OpEd pieces.
 
To really comprehend radiation and its effects in people, however, you need basic elementary physics and a little math, but even in good secondary schools today, students avoid physics and get their science credit by taking biology or geology.
HPR: True enough. But why aren’t the French afraid of radiation?

NG: The French learned to do nuclear energy “small” with big results. Instead of producing large rods of nuclear waste, and storing them near a producing reactor, the French move the rods from the producing reactor, cut up that radioactive waste, and harvest Uranium and PLU to recycle to the generating reactor to make more electricity. Elimination of “brush fire” nuclear waste thus enables France to have 58 nuclear plants in a country slightly smaller in area than North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin combined.

HPR: Wow! But don’t the French have a lot of people living near those nuclear plants?

NG: Of course! The population of France is over 62 million, more than five times the population of those states along the waters of the Mississippi, Red and Missouri Rivers.

HPR:  The French have a large number of rivers too, and long coastlines on the Atlantic and English Channel don’t they?

NG:  Yes. Water resources are important in the production of nuclear energy, but they need to be used scientifically and soberly, as the French have done.

HPR: Do you mean, if we in North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin could overcome our fears of radiation, we could produce nuclear energy like France?

NG: Yes, and there are other parts of the U.S. where this can be done as well. Your Energy Secretary, Dr. Chu, is exploring these issues (http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/intelligent-energy/should-we-recycle-nuclear-waste/4907).

HPR: Could we really do this in North Dakota?

NG: Of course. North Dakota was a crucial site in the Cold War for development and placement of nuclear weapons. One can learn its history at the “Ronald Reagan Minute Man Missile Site” in Cooperstown.
 
Cooperstown, ND, is also an excellent location for building a nuclear reactor. It is not far from two excellent universities with strong engineering programs. It could provide electricity along the I-29 corridor from Winnepeg, Manitoba to Sioux Falls, SD, and eastward to the Twin Cities. Many well paid jobs would result,...but you know that.

HPR: Yes, of course. The streams of income into North Dakota from Canada and Minnesota would be a welcome change. But Genie, how do we recycle all the radioactive waste and retired weapons? We don’t want to repeat the too much mistake of the Japanese and other nuclear plants in the United States.

NG: North Dakota has several excellent sites to recycle radioactive waste and retired weapons. At Minot, for example, the Air Force has the ability to replicate the French model, with their competence and experience in transporting nuclear material and in providing security. After all, it seems a foolish enterprise to leave decommissioned nuclear weapons in their weapons grade status here in North Dakota, when they could be brought to bear locally on a boom in electricity output. Why move them elsewhere and let them sit, when they could be put to such good use here?
 
The Minot Air Base could also serve as a receiving station for weapons grade material from other weapons sites. If North Dakota was a safe and secure environment for nuclear missile silos in the Cold War, why shouldn’t it be a safe environment for nuclear energy challenges in the post-Cold War era?

HPR: But we still need to study the French model carefully, don’t we?

NG: Yes. The French explain their unique technology at AREVA (]http://www.areva.com/EN/operations-1370/nuclear-waste-recycling-and-treatment.html].
 
You don’t live in France, however. You live in the United States, where decisions about where and how to do nuclear energy will have more to do with education and politics than with science and engineering. Politicians, especially in States like North Dakota, are fearful of rich, well-established industries like coal and lignite, which stand to suffer drastic changes in a shift to alternative energies like nuclear power. If current elected officials don’t support coal and lignite, those older industries will abandon them and use their advertising, money and influence to support their political opponents.

HPR: I think I need something stronger than coffee to think about that one. Will I see you again soon?

NG: Probably. I can see you need my counsel. Fear is harder to cure than a hangover.

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