You know on gag reflex alone I’d disagree with Andrew Bolt, and certainly Martin Ferguson has never really turned me on with his less than zero political score card so far, but on this I do agree. Australia could and should be a repository for nuclear waste. Why? On one basis only, we as sellers, hewers and drawers of uranium, have an ethical responsibility to take back what we sell to the world.
Putting aside Bolt’s usual tripe on environmentalism, off tangent musings on GMO and other issues, coupled with a strong dose of rich white mans triumphalism we do have this useful comment.
Enough. It’s time for scientists to defend good science. Time to listen to experts with answers, not mystics with vibes. Time to defend the reason that has made us rich. Time to bury the superstitions that will make us poor.
OK it was all I could find in his column worth a pull quote, and forget the rich and poor stuff, because this is not just about money, you’ll find that the science really is good on storing nuclear waste, and we do have the geography and technology at our disposal to do so as was clearly and simply explained in this past Four Corners report from a few weeks ago, now available in an expanded broadband edition, watch it. You can view the case studies on waste as separate items or watch the program in its entirety for a greater context. From the transcript.
While the fuel cools off, the Swedes have had three decades to plan what to do with it next. They don’t do things by halves. The granite bedrock in their country is at least 900,000,000 years old. They intend to drive a five-kilometre long tunnel through it, big enough to accommodate massive trucks, to a depth of 500 metres. At the bottom will be a whole network of further tunnels, with holes bored ready for the spent fuel canisters. Each canister made of solid copper that cannot corrode will be surrounded by bentonite clay, which will expand when wet, holding the canister’s rigidly in place. Then the tunnels will be backfilled right back to the surface.
Bob Hawke and Martin Ferguson are right to open this debate within the Labor Party. Here’s Ferguson.
“But the Australian community is not willing to accept that responsibility, hence it is not something that is going to go anywhere in Australia at the moment.”
And that is what it comes down to, responsibility, of the ethical kind.
Hey — that’s LDP policy.
I think Phil makes a good point here.
It makes sense morally, it could well make sense economically (I mean hiding away distilled and glowing earth juices will always be a growth industry) - and artistically, it’s a once in a lifetime shot at a Government commission that will see yer work surviving through for bloody eons.
[link]
[link]
Is this topic meant to be be a joke, or an attempt to generate some heat on your blog?
Spin versus reality
Which do you think the store the radioactive waste in Australia mob are working from.
The usual arguments…
It stays radioactive for 100’s of thousands of years
Radioactivity damages the structure of material that it is stored in - like the metal canisters. It makes metal brittle after some time. And how long is our experience with radioactivity - barely more than a century. And the stuff will remain radioactive for 100’s of thousands of years…
What happens if after it is buried we detect that there is a leak - nothing is ever a certainty with any kind of engineering. How do we deal with it? There would be tens of thousands of tons of wastes to search through - the cost of fixing even a leak would possibly be more than the money that we would receive for taking the stuff in the first place…
That is an argument I haven’t read before, that’s why I put it above. Plenty of posts on this issue on my blog. Lots of reasons against a nuclear waste dump, almost none for. The greenhouse one is spin in my opinion. Blah Blah Blah - why did Hawkey bring this issue up in the last week - there are plenty of political issues that are much more important during Howard’s reign…
No heat and no spin Pharoz, we’re simply faced with a palette of unappetising choices. Nuclear is one of them. And really I’m more interested in getting on top of this debate before it spins off into the hands of those who would do worse.
A number of things are driving my views, climate change, which is very real, energy choices, which is currently contributing to my first concern and practicality of the political and economic kind.
First climate change, it‚Äôs very real despite what nutters like Bolt and Blair and, and , and…….. say, we need to get to a near zero or emission balance future ASAP, secondly the big money option pushed by the PM and his energy friends is not a palatable one, coal.
And quite simply the political winds are changing for nuclear, it’s coming whether we like it or not. It’s important that those who are responsible to get on top of this debate and control its outcomes. That outcome logically leads from us as sellers to experts in storage and management of waste. What’s wrong with that? And by the way, with the way the unions are arguing for the scrapping of the three mines policy, how long before Beazley back flips on this and we get consensus on opening up to more mining of uranium?
The big coal option is crazy in this climate (no pun intended) and carbon sequestration is an even nuttier pie in the sky option compared to where a serious attempt at the science of nuclear waste storage currently stands. As we move into a post fossil world we’re going to have to throw big money at any number of energy options, solar, wind, etc. nuclear buys us some time, coal does not.
I acknowledge nuclear’s fatal downside, but compared to so many of the short-term options currently with us, it’s a choice we probably have to make.
And another thing, and I realise that this is another topic and has nothing to do with electricity generation via nuclear but I was quite taken by the NRMA’s Alan Evans comments on energy last weekend on Meet the Press.
If that wasn’t an admission of Peak Oil theory I don’t know what is. As usual the panel of questioners weren’t listening and didn’t follow up on his admission.
Dingdingding… Pharoz, that’s the sound of the bullshit detector going off.
“It stays radioactive for 100‚Äôs of thousands of years” - mate, it stays radioactive for ever, like the desk your’re sitting at, your coffee cup etc. It’s called “background”, and everything/one has it, to a greater or lesser extent.
I don’t neccesarily disagree with everything you say (or agree with Phil), but this IS about science & engineering, and we’ve got to discuss it using sensible scientific & engineering knowledge, not hype & cant. So you’ve got to get specific and start talking about levels of risk and consequence; low, medium & high level waste; real decay times etc. The nuclear industry has been responsible for some of the bull over the years, but the anti-science part of the environmntal movement has just turned what could/should be a worthy debate into a stupid circus.
Phil, I appreciate your enthusiasm. Tough choices need to be made, now.
As Tony points out, this IS a debate about science and technology. As such, I’ll sidestep Pharoz’s throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air pomo relativism, and point out how little we know about the impact of burying stuff in the ground. Do you have any idea how much of the biosphere is under the surface of the earth? I mean, I’m all for anthropocentrism, but damn, let’s be careful about certifying “what we know.”
Another point to ponder: if it wasn’t for a conincidental combination of skills and technology, we wouldn’t even know that nanobes exist, let alone what would happen to the biosphere if large stores of radioactive waste started leaking in the crust, or if we pumped carbon down there.
Tony, the current debate might look like a circus from where you’re standing, but it looks quite democratic from here.
“It stays radioactive for 100‚Äôs of thousands of years” - mate, it stays radioactive for ever, like the desk your‚Äôre sitting at, your coffee cup etc. It‚Äôs called “background”, and everything/one has it, to a greater or lesser extent.
Er no. Radioactive waste stays radioactive until every last little radioactive atom in it has finished throwing out alpha particles, beta particles and the rest and turned into something with a half-life roughly equal to that of the proton (which is incredibly bloody long, particularly by comparison with the half-life of U-235).
As for background radiation, that comes from a variety of sources which may include the occasional radioactive atom in a coffee cup but, if memory serves, most of it comes from cosmic radiation and such.
Stop the scaremongering “coffee-cups are radioactive” stuff, OK? You’re much more likely to get have adverse health effects from the accumulated brown gunge in your coffee cup than from any radiation it might emit.
The nuclear issue is very complicated, I know, and it would take some time to get up to speed with all the details - for anyone who decides to go for the ride.
For me some overriding facts put the whole debate into a context where I think it is not justified, at all in my opinion.
First is the fact that uranium ore is a limited resource, and that the economically viable store would only be enough to power the world’s energy needs for about thirty years. see [link]
The nuclear industry put up the prospect of fast breeder reactors as a response to this fact. Fast breeder reactors are, in theory, more viable over a longer time scale because they produce plutonium which can be fed back into the reactors after being extracted from used fuel and reprocessed. The French tried to have commercial fast breeder power stations, the largest being the SuperPhenix [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix] but it was constantly plagued by problems. They use sodium as the coolant - at school chemistry practs this was the stuff that blows up as soon as it comes in contact with air.
Another thing to consider is the expense of going nuclear. With large amounts of money, it is the reasonable thing to do to ask whether it could be spent in a different way for a similiar or better outcome. Putting those vast amounts of money - and the nuclear industry is heavily subsidised by governments - into the solar energy industry instead would result in more jobs, a technology that would be usedful for much longer than the nuclear industry, it would have nothing like the waste problems, there would be no proliferation or terrorism problems associated with the nuclear industry. When things go wrong with solar energy equipment it could be easily managed and fixed, as opposed to any problems with nuclear material [yes there are different categories of wastes with different kinds of toxicity].
My point is that if we need to spend money on non-coal based energy production, nuclear power is short-term, far more dangerous, also has a terrible waste problem [as does coal], and is extremely expensive.
Given all these reasons against the nuclear power option there are probably other reasons that a country might want to set up nuclear power stations. Just think about all the fuss about nuclear power stations in North Korea and Iran.
To me, the greenhouse gas argument for the nuclear power option sounds like spin. Yes there is a lot of money in it - and sure some people only think about money. But in terms of energy production and fixing the global warming problem nuclear power is a non-solution.
Tony,
dingdingding…
Carbon 14 is radioactive, yes. Lots of other isotopes are radioactive. Radioactive dating techniques are used to determine ages of …. So?
Its about concentrations of radioactivity, the kinds of radioactivity, the state of the radioactive isotope - Radon at mine sitesn- and the way that it enters the body, or the way and concentrations of gamma rays that a body is exposed to… Blah Blah Blah
Yes there is uranium in soil, in seawater … but its about concentrations.
In some ways it is the same with non-nuclear wastes. Polution is an excess of some material in a place, in such a way that it damages the environment at that place.
Its about concentrations - and having the world dump of nuclear wastes in Australia is about the concentrations of nuclear materials - not that Carbon 14 is also radioactive…
There is a longish post before the last one awaiting moderation…
Another point to make is that for the nuclear industry, the main problem that they have is how to get rid of the wastes. The build up of wastes has held up the industry. if they manage to dump the wastes somewhere, the industry would boom. Its about money mostly - money for the nuclear industy…
Having a dump in Australai would not solve energy problems long term - and it would not solve the global warming problems… it will make some people rich - other people feel more secure’ with the more nastier byproducts of the industry. And it would leave the place with the wastes with a burden for generation - possibly even past our human species is changed into something else or become extinct… long times. And all so that we - within the space of about thirty years - can watch the Simpsons on our plasma screen TVs… Na, not on…
And now another one awaiting moderation…
Loss of life expectancy in days due to various sources (Fells 1990)
Being male rather than female: 2800
Heart Disease: 2100
Cigarettes (1 pack a day): 1600
Stroke: 520
6.8kgs overweight: 450
Motor vehicle accidents: 200
Alcohol: 130
Firearms: 11
All eletric power in the US nuclear: 1.5 (Anti-Nuclear Society) 0.03 (NRC)
Nic,
Nuclear power stations need to be managed with extreme care, because of the nature of the fuel. Everyone is aware of that. So the standards have to be kept high.
But when things go wrong, they go really wrong.
Even the pro-nuke peple admit that while the standards are such that the probabilities for an accident are very low, the risks in the event of an accident are very high. One of the problems with the nuclear industries in the USA is that insurance companies won’t insure nuclear power plants. The govt had to pass legislation putting a cap on insurance payouts to try to get the insurance industry on board.
Just because standards are kept high up till now, does not mean that standands would be kept high in all the circumstances.
That probability you quoted could possibly also give similar average values for something like terrorism, or being caught in a huricane, etc, but this goes off past statistics. One big accident, and there could be alot of - irrepairable - damage. ‘Radioactivity’ is a word, but its effects are real.
There are alternatives that are safer, cheaper, cleaner, and that will have a more positive social and environmental impact.
So Bob Hawke gets a big tick here. So why has he been derided big time everywhere else?
Nicely raised, Phil.
“But when things go wrong, they go really wrong.”
But if Chernobyl is a bad as it gets, then how bad is “really wrong”? With all due respect & sympathy to those affected, it wasn’t the end of the world. Particularly when you consider the 20,000+ people killed in the Chinese coal mining industry every year.
Tony,
How do you fix a problem, such a leak of a highly radioactive substance, when the people sent in to clean up the mess can only spend a short amount of time doing the work before receiving a fatal dose of radiation. Some kinds of radiation can penetrate any kind of protective clothing that someone could wear. Other kinds of hazardous waste can still be managed.
Entropy - things tend to disperse over time.
The deaths in the Chinese coal industry. There would have been similar kinds of problems in the coal industry during the early industrial revolution - how was that situation turned around - through trade unions, regulation, political action to make the workplaces safe. If Chinese workers feel compelled to go into unsafe mines and risk their lives, this is part of a social and political environment where those people probably feel they have no reasonable alternatives for make a living. A simple utilitarian calculus in this context with regard to coal versus nuclear seems to me to be inappropriate. There are many other factors involved. Yes, the Chinese coal mining industry needs to be made safer, no I don’t think this is a valid argument for nuclear power.
What concerns me in the Chinese case is that the Chinese government wants to build dozens of nuclear power stations. What if they apply a similar lax regard for human safety and working conditions that apply in the coal industry to the nuclear industry? A major failure in a nuclear power station could polute a river, or the air etc, and could lead to widescale harm beyond even the numerical scale of the coal industry fatalities. Especially with a government that might try to cover up failures until after serious damage is already done.
How bad is ‘really wrong’?
The nuclear industry and scientists are aware of the risks, and they work accordingly. [Sometimes workers don’t understand the nature of the risks - as with the Tokaimura accident where some workers, eager to finish early, mixed together so much uranium that the critical point was passed].
With due care, the nuclear industry can keep the probability for mishaps extremely low. The problem is that the danger in the event of a mishap can be extremely large, long lasting and difficult to fix.
The problem with the Chinese coal industry is that they do not maintain an adequate level of due care for their workers. You are comparing the poorest of the poor in an underindustrialised situation, to some of the most highly educated people working in a highly regulated high-tech industry. Different problems. Apples and oranges.
“I acknowledge nuclear‚Äôs fatal downside, but compared to so many of the short-term options currently with us, it‚Äôs a choice we probably have to make.”
Nuclear power is also a short-term option; as well as being one of the most expensive.
“…Suppose, however, that the industry were to be set up on a scale large enough to make a difference. For how long could it continue to provide the needed energy before, for practical purposes, it had used up all the uranium ores rich enough to produce a positive energy balance? If it supplied the world with all its electricity, then the total quantity of useful ores on the planet would be sufficient to keep the nuclear industry going for just six years…”
From [link]
Nuclear power is also a short-term option…
I don’t believe the forecasts that claim nuclear fuel will run out after only a short time. They all seem to come from anti-nuclear campaigners.
The debate over nuclear energy is a struggle between realism on the “pro” side of the debate, and superstitious fear on the “con” side.
Seems to me that any case for extending the use of nuclear generated electricity as a replacement for fossil fuels has to deal with the problem that the resource is as finite as the fossil fuel reserves its supposed to supplement or replace, EP. So it’s at best a temporary solution to the problem of maintaining a high-technology, high energy usage material culture.
There might be a bit of superstitious fear on the “con” side; certainly some of the arguments get a bit hysterical. But that’s more than adequately matched by the superstitious reverence some arguing the pro-nuclear case show for technology and all its wonders. And then there’s that whole “we really truly believe this is the solution to our problems and don’t you dare tell us otherwise” thing.
Seems to me that any case for the use of nuclear power generation as a replacement for coal or oil fired power plans has to deal with the issue that urnaium resources are as finite as the fossil fuel reserves they’re expected to supplement or replace EP. Otherwise, we’re just substituting a quasi-religious faith in the plentiful availability of uranium for our quasi-religious belief that the oil will never run out. Not bright.
Oh bum! Thought the comments had busted.
Yes, uranium is a limited resource. But I don’t think it’s quite as limited as some people want us to believe.
If our civilisation is to survive, we need to be able to stretch temporary resources until we can develop long-term resources such as fusion power or orbiting solar arrays. It’s a race between resource depletion and development of new technologies, and fifty or a hundred years of uranium power can make a big difference.
I don’t know what the sums are but I think that to leave a margin of safety we need to include conservation and limits on growth as another element in the strategy.
Whether or not there is enough uranium to go around there is definitely not enough wealth and stability to build nuke power plants across the globe. Unrestrained use of the remaining fossils will have flow on effects for conflict and global warming.
There are many sides to this question. None of them can be ignored. There is no easy and safe and equitable way to power the lives of 6 or 10 or 15 billion people and not make compromises somewhere. Certainly cannot be left to market or technologist ideologies.
Nuclear waste leaves a very nasty problem for future generations - not nice if it can be avoided. I’ve read that we ‘waste’ in inefficiency up to 25% of current power - so first we should concentrate on that.
And why can’t we alter lifestyles somewhat ? There’s been some talk that WA could bring in a system that requires new homes to be more environmentally responsible - met with howls of complaint that it could add $8000 to the cost of a house. Meanwhile houses get ever bigger for fewer people, with home theatres etc., fully airconditioned …. Are we so stupid, that faced with obviously unsustainable lifestyles we just say, “Yeah, bring on nuclear and we can just go on as we are …..”
I think we are that stupid. It’s very difficult to take the long view. And very hard to pay attention to muted msgs about environmental degradation while the telly’s blaring ads for the latest 4WD and home cooling options.
Vic recently brought in new compulsory enviro bldg stds. All the reaction, if any, was +ve. (Must have been bipartisan.)
Asolutely, we should conserve energy and make use of renewable resources where possible. I don’t think such a policy is necessarily in conflict with the use of nuclear power or with continued economic growth.
I always felt a little disappointed that things like the first home buyers grant weren’t instead aimed at offsetting the current premium - at least in terms of initial construction - you pay for an environmentally sustainable house. I’m not sure how it would have worked policy wise (and in that sense I comment from a position of ignorance), but I’ve often thought it was an opportunity for a bit of visionary policy that went begging. It might also have gone some way to preventing the rise to prominence of those rediculous (neo-georgian?) blocks that now plague Melbourne.