Congressional antinuclear activist Edward Markey has taken another jab at the nuclear power industry. In a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), Markey demanded thorough reviews of questions answered years ago in order to delay the NRC review of license applications for badly needed new nuclear power plants. As Chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee and coauthor of the now infamous Waxman-Markey Bill, it would appear recent events have left a bad taste in his mouth. His nuclear-snubbing energy bill is DOA in the Senate and now it would appear that a large segment of his own party is encouraging nuclear expansion. But the antinuclear representative is not going down without a fight. Here’s a few highlights from the GAO letter posted on his website and my rebuttals:
Licensing Process
“Whether the NRC processes for licensing new reactors and extending the licenses of existing reactors is sufficiently rigorous with respect to safety, and sufficiently transparent with respect to public access to the decision-making process.”
If I were to print out an entire license application and stack it on my desk, the pile of paper would be taller than a three story building. As to the public access to the decision making process, perhaps we would do well to limit the input of these guys in our nation’s energy policy:
Natural Disasters
“Whether actions by the NRC to evaluate and improve the resilience of nuclear power plants to climate change and natural disasters, such as earthquakes, severe storms and drought, are sufficient to ensure public safety. Whether the NRC’s response to ongoing fire safety issues has resulted in an improvement in the ability of nuclear reactors to withstand fires.”
Nuclear power has stood up to earthquakes for decades in Japan, California, and just last month in Illinois. Through all of this time, a US nuclear reactor has never caused a single death, injury, or illness among the public as a result of an earthquake, storm, drought, fire, or any other cause for that matter.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Fund
“Whether funds collected by nuclear reactor licensees for the purposes of decommissioning reactors are sufficient, particularly given the economic downturn and potential additional cleanup costs due to soil and water contamination by leaking buried pipes.”
Every nuclear power plant sets aside 0.1 to 0.2 cents per kWHr of electricity sold. That is between $8 and $16 million per year from each plant. Over the 40 year life of a plant, that is $320 million to $640 million paid into the fund. If licenses are extended for another 20 years, that number could reach as high as $1 billion per plant. Today, the Nuclear Decommissioning Trust Fund stands at over $34 billion to cover the cost of decommissioning the 104 operating nuclear reactors in the US. While some plants will likely begin withdrawing from that fund in the next few years, many are now entering periods of extended operation and will not be decommissioned until well into the 2030′s. That’s plenty of time to make additional payments and generate additional interest in the fund. Some of the plants operating today may even run for 80 years which means they won’t withdraw from the fund until 2050 or later. It’s actually far more likely that utilities will turn a profit on their decommissioning fund. Check out this excerpt from Public Citizen complaining about companies making a PROFIT from decommissioning funds:
“No one knows exactly what the surplus will be in Vermont Yankee’s decommissioning fund, although estimates are in the range of $100 million. If the new owners apply for a 20-year extension on the plant’s operating license, as anticipated, the surplus could be even larger.”
I suppose there’s just no pleasing some people.
I am no economist, but that certainly seems sturdy enough to weather even the 2008–2009 recession and still come out in the green. As to the cost of cleaning up an isotope of hydrogen that is over one trillion times less radioactive than some knick-knack key chains, I’m also not worried. Tritium has a half life of 12 years. So by the time most of these plants decommission, the tritium will be 2 trillion times less radioactive than those knick-knack key chains. Congressman Markey is also ignoring the fact that in the time it took him to write this letter in the Capitol Building, he received more radiation dose from the granite and marble in the building than any American citizen will ever get from a tritium leak.
In short, given the responsibility entrusted to Congressman Markey by those that elected him, he should spend less time adding to their energy and environmental problems, and more time figuring out ways to REMOVE some of the bureaucracy involved in building a clean, safe, and reliable new nuclear power plant.
Image Credit
Congressman Edward Markeycourtesy of Flickr user World Economic Forum under the CC license.
12 Comments
When I see Congressman Markey talk about energy issues, I am compelled to think that politicians should not be making science and engineering based decisions in the first place. When this country was first started electricity was only a novelty, now our civilization depends upon it. Can we afford to let our energy future be at the mercy of around 500 people, mostly with legal backgrounds, who know very little about energy matters or refuse to learn about them? There are exceptions of course. Senator Udall gets it as he introduced a bill to research and develop small reactors. Senator Murkowski gets it too. A lot of knowledge support is given to Congress so Markey can’t claim ignorance because of lack of information, for him it’s a choice.
I think the Kerry, Alexander, Leiberman Bill is a fine bipartisan substitute for Waxman-Markey. The key to solving the energy crisis is energy. If you don’t get more energy, all you’re doing is moving money from one place to another.
Nearly all nuclear plants planned or proposed are light water reactors that rely upon finite quantities of uranium that will peak in a few decades just like coal. The world has likely already passed the point of peak oil, which is destabilizing the financial system and causing chaos to erupt around the globe. The use of so-called breeder reactors could extend the horizon of obtainable electricity from nuclear power further into the future. But then we would be using plutonium, which may prove to be too dangerous for the society we are apt to become. Nevertheless, nuclear power may be all that stands between what we identify as civilization and its alternatives.
@ James,
“Nearly all nuclear plants planned or proposed are light water reactors that rely upon finite quantities of uranium that will peak in a few decades just like coal. ”
Your term “finite quantities” describes the whole universe. There are finite quantities of everything. The question is is there enough to consume until a good alternate is in place – like a Liquid Floride Thorium reactor (LFTR). The answer to that is YES, there is more than enough uranium to power our reactors until new designs come on line.
“The world has likely already passed the point of peak oil, which is destabilizing the financial system and causing chaos to erupt around the globe.”
Perhaps, I am not sure that we have passed “peak oil” or if the artificial limits on its use have caused a bubble. However, moving to a nuclear future would make sure that we are able to power our civilization for thousands of years more. It makes sense to move in that direction.
“The use of so-called breeder reactors could extend the horizon of obtainable electricity from nuclear power further into the future.”
Breeder reactors are not “so-called” they are breeder reactors. They produce either U233 and some U232 from Thorium or PL 239 and 240 from Uranium. Both U233/2 and PL 239/240 are FUEL that has vast energy potential and can be totally consumed in a properly designed reactor. U233 has the best potential. Thus, as Rod Adams has said, currently we are burning the bark and throwing the logs away. Moving to breeder reactors is a wise move and will greatly increase our energy resources. The PL can be monitored, stored and burned safely.
“But then we would be using plutonium, which may prove to be too dangerous for the society we are apt to become. ”
I am not sure what you mean by “may prove too dangerous” but PL from a power reactor cannot be used to build a military weapon and is carefully tracked at all times so that we know exactly where it is. If used as a fuel it can be transmuted into other elements that are highly useful.
“Nevertheless, nuclear power may be all that stands between what we identify as civilization and its alternatives.”
Yes, all other power sources are far inferior. I am a strong fan of the LFTR but every nuclear power plant designed in the west is safer and more reliable than any other alternative.
My view from Vermont is that the antis have more fun. Really. They march, they make up songs, they do skits and plays, they dress in silly costumes, they have potlucks, they get together to write letters-to-the-editor. It’s all very social. Us pro-nuclear people are stuck in front of our computers by ourselves (mostly). Something needs to be done about this, in my opinion.
@Meredith, you really make a great point about our competition. We would do well to take a step back, look at how antis are able to get their message heard, apply some of those measures to our fight, and ultimately do them one better. Say what you want about their alleged facts and their views, but their ability to mobilize and exploit the tools at their disposal gets them heard loudly and clearly.
So the next question becomes, what can we do to improve our platform to get the real message across to the public? More and more regular people are going to become more inquisitive about nuclear energy and that is what makes it of vital importance that they find their information from the nukes with the facts.
@ Meredith
I agree completely. People in favor of nuclear power need an organization that makes it easier to participate in letter writing campaigns, demonstrations, or other activities. Personally I’d love to spend a day doing a potluck or other group activity if it had the potential to increase the public’s knowledge base about nuclear power. Greg is right, we need to examine our opponent’s methods and do them one better.
I haven’t been a pro-nuclear type for all that long. I’ll see how much fun it is.
I have been a climate guy. If you study until you understand the state of the art in climate science it is horrifying, and the politics around it is not fun at all.
In contrast, learning about nuclear power has lifted some of the darkness for me.
I had a great time visiting an operating reactor recently. My wife and I visited the Columbia Generating Station in Washington State. If you can get in, its a bit of a social thing. I wouldn’t mind seeing the people who showed us around again at all. They had four people escort us around the whole plant.
We had to do some pretty silly things, like go through security again and again, or stand in front of and stick our hands into weird radiation detecting machines, or activate a door by waving a badge in front of a sensor and then having to open it fast on pain of causing an enormous problem involving security. There weren’t any potlucks.
But it was fascinating to stand on top of the refueling floor and see how small the reactor core must be and to think about how much energy was coming out of this plant. I really enjoyed talking to the reactor operators about TMI and wandering around the control room. These were serious people doing an important job they were proud of. The dry cask storage was fantastic – there were just this tiny number of concrete things sitting peacefully in a lot in the back of the plant. This was the “waste” problem that NPR assures me is “piling up” “unsolved”. Its a joke.
This is the solution to the climate problem. At least this is obvious to me.
Learning about the solution is a lot more fun than studying how bad the climate problem is.
@David – Can you tell me how you went about visiting the Columbia Generating Station? I live in Washington state and would love a tour.
@David -
Cheer up. The climate will take care of itself – always has, always will. The issue of localized pollution needs to be addressed appropriately and the more advanced and affluent a society becomes, the better they are, generally, at dealing with that problem.
Obviously, ignoring the physical properties of CO2 and other greenhouse gases as civilization alters the composition of the atmosphere faster than has happened since civilization evolved is nothing to worry about. Changing the climate thousands of times faster than at any time since human beings have existed is fine, because climate has changed in the past. Its obvious. Thanks for the tip about not to worry.
Its like what happened at Chernobyl. The clown in charge just did a lot of things he didn’t understand and he blew the reactor up. He knew that blowing the plant up wasn’t possible. Its just like that. It just isn’t possible that changing the composition of the atmosphere can have any great effect we might want to avoid. I’m so glad you’ve told me that climate change at the pace and scale we are being warned about can’t possibly be as dangerous as what the top climatologists in the US, China, Russia, Germany, Japan, the UK, France, India, etc. say.
Just because the leaders of the most prestigious scientific organizations on the planet, i.e. the President of the National Academy of Sciences, and every other head of every other comparable scientific society in every country the developed world, and many in the developing world, have all come together signing a formal statement warning civilization that it must decarbonize its energy supply as soon as possible to try to limit the effects of climate change means absolutely nothing. These people are morons. The only way to get to be the President of the National Academy of Sciences it to be a moron. They’ve only got 200 Nobel winners, i.e. almost 10% of the membership. That’s all. Its preposterous. They have no clue. Science itself is all BS. Everyone knows that.
My first contact with the Columbia Generating Station didn’t work out that well. The PR contact explained to me that they don’t have a budget for tours. I mentioned this to a pro nuke I had corresponded with, and the next thing I knew he had contacted the plant himself. I then asked the contact person he told me to write and the tour suddenly became possible.
I just watched this congressman give his view on global warming and his idea of scientifically expressing it was to compae it to baseball steroid use? The only statistic he used was 6 foot rises is sea levels.This to me is scary.Not even the IPCC
says that levels are expected to be a foot and they believe in AGW.This congressman goes on to belittle skeptics as deniers and tells lies while explaining his idea of man made cliamte change.How can anyone be in a position of power like this and be so stupid? It is so obvious this guy has no clue what carbon dioxide even is. I bet if someone asked him we are at 400 ppm what should we be at he would say zero.Which of course would end all life on earth as carbon dioxide is needed for pall plant life on earth.Doesnt Obama ever listen to his congressmen?This guy is embarrassing to watch
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