2010 has been a bad year for dirt burners. Oil, natural gas, and coal have all taken their toll on people and the environment in the first five months of the year. Those I like to refer to as reasonable people might look at such disasters as a reason to replace fossil fuels by any means necessary including nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal. Yet somehow, antinuclear activists think this is a reason to NOT expand nuclear power.
HuffPo
Here is an article by Daphne Wysham from the Institute for Policy Studies trying to compare the oil spill to nuclear power plants. Maybe if I got myself an ‘Institute’ then HuffPo would give me a spot to counter this counter-intuitive dribble, but alas, my thinking is not in line with theirs and like so many others, my HuffPo account was deleted for the high crime of disagreement.
Greenpeace
The Old Faithful of antinuclear rhetoric, Greenpeace, warned the sponsors of the American Power Act with this opportunistic omen:
It would be a real shame for President Obama and Senators Kerry and Lieberman to endorse nuclear power, just like they recently did for offshore oil drilling, only for another national catastrophe to follow
Daily Kos
Then there was this guy who thinks he’s a Fish over at the e-rag known as The Daily Kos who wrote an article entitled Let This Be a Lesson to Those Who Support Nuclear Power where he evoked the mine disasters, the oil spill, and somehow managed to incorporate the meltdown of the financial sector in 2008 as well. Fish asked:
Does anyone here really believe that if we could know everything about what is currently going on at all of the nuclear plants in this country that we could sleep well at night?
Not to worry my aqautic friend, I know much of what goes on inside a nuclear power plant and I sleep quite well thank you very much. If I were you, I would worry more about the sweetener in my coffee.
The New England Coalition
The antinuclear ‘think tank’ (I use the term loosely), got together yesterday to cheer each other on as one psuedo-scientist after another got up to the microphone to compare the oil spill to a nuclear power plant. Disgruntled former nuclear worker turned professional antinuke David Lochbaum took his turn to say:
So far, it’s been pure luck that has prevented anyone in the United States from dying due to contaminated ground water caused by a leak at a nuclear power plant…
Pure luck and the laws of physics anyway. I’ve known for some time now that antinuclear activists tend to ignore the facts and distort the truth. However, the fact that they consider the average person stupid enough to believe oil spills and coal mine collapses are reasons to avoid nuclear power are bordering on insulting.
The worst nuclear accident in the 50 year history of commercial operation of nuclear power plants in the United States was the partial meltdown of Unit 2 at Three Mile Island in 1979. That so called ‘disaster’ did not result in one single death, injury or illness nor did it have any impact on the surrounding environment. In contrast, every single fossil fuel accident in the first 5 months of 2010 has been far worse in terms of human deaths and environmental impact.
Even the Chernobyl Disaster pales in comparison to the 2010 Fossil Fuel Meltdown. In 2005, the World Health Organization concluded that fewer than 50 people had actually been killed by the Chernobyl Disaster with many of those deaths occurring many years after the accident. More than 4 times that number has been killed in the first 5 months of 2010 alone with the environmental impact of these fossil fuel disasters even worse than that.
The truth is that there is no story the antinuclear activists will not spin, no fact they will not distort, and no statistic they won’t ignore.
Try to imagine for, just a moment, what it would look like if fossil fuels were held to the same standards as nuclear energy. Just in case you lost track, here is a quick list of those first five months of fossil fuel disasters in 2010:
2010 Chinese Coal Mine Accidents
January 1, 2010 – May 14, 2010: At least 200 have been killed so far this year in coal mine accidents all over China. Floods, natural gas explosions, and collapses have trapped and killed many. Believe it or not, this is a good year for miners in China as 2009 accidents killed over 2000 Chinese coal miners.
Kleen Energy System Natural Gas Power Plant Explodes
February 7, 2010: During a procedure known as a blow down, natural gas is purged from a pipeline (apparently into thin air). Investigators suspect an errant spark or propane heater caused this gas to ignite in an explosion that killed 5 workers and injured 12 others. The blast was felt as far as 10 miles away. Who’d have thought that spraying large quantities of an explosive gas into the air would be dangerous? Thank goodness every household in America doesn’t have this volatile and explosive gas piped through a furnace, hot water heater, stove, or dryer…oops.
Coal Freighter Shen Neng 1 Rams into the Great Barrier Reef
April 3, 2010: When the Chinese freighter Shen Neng 1 mysteriously wandered more than 7 miles off course on it’s mission to deliver coal to China, it slammed into the largest ecosystem in the world, The Great Barrier Reef. After dumping 6,000 lbs of oil into the water, the freighter was finally removed. Even though this disaster was not nearly as bad as it could have been, reef experts expect it will take mother nature more than 20 years to repair the damage done by the ship.
West Virginia Coal Mine Explosion
April 5, 2010: Natural gas that built up in the mine suddenly exploded resulting in the death of 29 men working in the mine. With more than 60% of our electricity generated by burning coal, it is unlikely this will be the last time something like this happens.
Oil Pipeline Leak in Delta National Wildlife Refuge
April 6, 2010: An oil pipeline in Louisiana ruptured spilling 18,000 gallons of crude oil into the Delta National Wildlife Refuge. As much as 1/4 of the refuge was affected by the spill.
Deepwater Horizon Oil Platform Explodes, Sinks, Leaks
April 20, 2010: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Platform exploded killing 11 workers, but this was only the beginning. Two days later the oil rig sank resulting in several leaks more than 5,000 feet below the surface. As of May 14, 2010 the leak is still spilling 5,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico (although 1,000 barrels per day are now being captured by a siphon). If it continues, this oil spill will soon surpass the infamous Exxon Valdez.
Image Credit
Spin Machine courtesy of Flickr user Joiseyshowaa published under the CC license.
12 Comments
Not to forget the coal mine disaster in Siberia May 8-9:
“Two explosions hit the Raspadskaya mine near Mezhdurechensk a week ago, killing 66 people and leaving over 100 injured. Twenty-four people are still missing underground.”
This sums up to two-to-three Chernobyl accidents in relative terms.
Additionally…there are millions that dies on an annual basis by emissions from the burning of stuff for heat and electricity production.
HuffPo,
Yes, I tried to sign up for an account and I was not given access to make comments. I wrote to the asking about this and got no reply.
I am interested in the difference in the dialogue. It seems that some people are interested in an actual conversation while others are interested in promoting their viewpoint without listening to any disagreement. Now….. which do I trust more..??
David,
You’ll find that silencing any dissent is becoming the calling card of antinuke activists. Like many using this tactic, they fear the flow of information will undermine their position which is based on fear and misinformation.
As I’ve said before, we have no such fear of debate nor do we have any need to silence the opposition. It’s just too much fun to prove them wrong.
Green”peace” — Nice energy plan you got there. Be a shame if somethin’ happened to it.
I am not sure why you have had trouble at Huffington Post. The editors there do accept dissenting opinions – I think they recognize that controversy gets people coming back and builds up their visit count.
If you go and visit the specific column from Daphne Wysham linked above, you should see at least a couple of pro-nuclear comments.
I did get an email from them saying that my account had some errors and I should try again. So I did try again and found that I could post to the article linked above Daphne W.
So, I was wrong about the Huff Post. Perhaps we should continue to try with them.
Are there really reactors that do fission reactions, produce huge amounts of usable heat, and have an effluent that is safe after only ioo years of storage? Thorium bed reactors? Are there alternatives to the U.S. “Bomb Makers” the hot water kettle reactors of the American 1960′s era? Tsinghua University in China has a Pebble Bed reactor up and running with claims of superiority over the massive and very costly American designs from the ’60′s. Is it possible that a better educated engineering corps in China could outstrip good old American “Know How” and produce a safer, less weaponized reactor with smaller amounts of waste materials for a given heat output? Is there any chance in Hell that someone other than the Americans might have a better idea?
Light Water Reactors are not bomb makers.
The Engineering core in China isn’t any better educated or more capable than the US, although it’s certainly more utilitized and more respected by it’s own people.
Until someone shows me a fleet of over 100 reactors that operates for more than 40 years with a capacity factor of over 90% without a single fatality among the public, the answer is an overwhelming NO to all of the above.
That said, I am excited about the Thorium reactor, I just don’t see it as a reason to abandon the proven LWR Uranium reactor. Both reactor types are better options than burning dirt.
TWR is the way to go if it works:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveling_wave_reactor
uses no enriched uranium and could run on nuclear waste. the company that wants to implement these reactors says that america has “an energy resource equivalent to $100 trillion worth of electricity”
the estimate sounds a little high to me, but if its true then we can forget about money troubles.
its still a theory, but bill gates recently backed it so its gaining steam.
“A traveling-wave reactor, or TWR, is a kind of nuclear reactor that can convert fertile material into fissile fuel as it runs using the process of nuclear transmutation. TWRs differ from other kinds of fast-neutron and breeder reactors in their ability to, once started, reach a state whereafter they can achieve very high fuel utilization while using no enriched uranium and no reprocessing, instead burning fuel made from depleted uranium, natural uranium, thorium, spent fuel removed from light water reactors, or some combination of these materials. The name refers to the design characteristic that fission does not happen in the entire TWR core, but takes place in a fairly localized zone that advances through the core over time.”
If you count DU as a usable fuel then the $100 trillion number holds water. U238 is 99.3% of all natural Uranium. We currently only utilize 0.7% of the Uranium we take out of the ground. This means that just the ‘spent’ fuel we’ve already used in LWRs could power the entire country for 500 years (based on current demand). Of course, there is many thousand times this amount of U238 sitting in storage from tailings of the current fuel fabrication process and left over military DU, so there is tens of thousands of years of fuel available for TWRs. To think antinuclear activists claim we’ll run out of Uranium in 30 years…
There are some engineering challanges remaining, but I am certainly excited about the TWR as well as the GEN III+ LWRs, the LFTR, and the PBMR. There are some great things coming out of our national labs and entrepeneurs.
Add 58 more fatalities to the Chinese coal mining accident list…
That is super sad, they gave their life to feed their families.
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