Living Within Limits - Chapter 15

Nuclear Power

The most obvious alternative to carbon fuels is nuclear energy.  However, there remain some unresolved issues with peaceful human utilization of the power of atoms.

1) Unforgiving Danger - as is well known, nuclear power can potentially be very dangerous.  Though it is unlikely, aside from direct sabotage, that conventional nuclear power plants would ever experience a full-scale atomic explosion, there is the very real danger of radioactive exposure to human beings.  In fact, once the main reactor is in full operation, 'no one can ever go inside the shield, to repair or lubricate or adjust any of the reloading or control equipment inside... if an important part of it becomes inoperable we shut the reactor down and build another one'

2) Unresolved Disposal - nuclear reactors leave behind far more dangerous material, in the form of radioactive waste, than other conventional power plants.  In addition, the disposal of this material is further convoluted by the long half-life of radioactive material.  Unlike traditional waste, there really is no 'away' to throw radiation into, as dumping radionuclides into the desert may result in unintentional contamination of underground aquifers.

The dangers of nuclear energy are so profound, that attempts to quantify the theoretical costs of a potential nuclear disaster have been abandoned after several attempts.  This has, inturn, led to the creation of the Price-Anderson Act, which provides insurance to, and caps the liability of, nuclear energy providers (akin to FDIC and the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund which limits the liability of offshore oil explorers, such as Deepwater Horizon, to $75M).  In my mind, this is a form of corporate welfare, and is asking for future disaster.

The New Priesthood

Alving Weinberg, long-time director of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, was one of the most well-known defenders of nuclear power.  Below are his thoughts...

We nuclear people have made a Faustian bargain with society.  On the one hand, we offer an inexhaustible source of energy... But the price we demand of society...

We make two demands.  The first... is that we exercise the very best techniques and that we use people of high expertise and purpose... managing and operating our nuclear power plants with people of higher qualification...  The second... (that) we have relatively little problem dealing with wastes if we can assume always that there will be intelligent people around to cope with eventualities we have not thought of...

 The price we must pay for this great boon... is a cadre or priesthood who understand the nuclear systems and who are prepared to guard the wastes... such speculations about 100,000 year-priesthoods must strike an eerie and unreal sound

 Pessimistic translation?  There is nothing wrong with nuclear technology as a viable source of near-limitless energy.  The problem lies in human nature, and our inability to even mentally conceive (much less actually maintain) the notion of a '100,000 year priesthood'.