Nuclear debate

Proponents of nuclear energy assert that nuclear power is a sustainable energy source that reduces carbon emissions and increases energy security by decreasing dependence on foreign oil.¹ Proponents also claim that the risks of storing waste are small and can be further reduced by the technology in the new reactors and the operational safety record is already good when compared to the other major kinds of power plants.

Critics believe that nuclear power is a potentially dangerous and declining² energy source, with decreasing proportion of nuclear energy in power production, and dispute whether the risks can be reduced through new technology. Critics also point to the problem of storing radioactive waste, the potential for possibly severe radioactive contamination by accident or sabotage, the possibility of nuclear proliferation and the disadvantages of centralized electrical production.

Energy security

For some countries, nuclear power affords energy independence. Nuclear power has been relatively unaffected by embargoes, and uranium is mined in "reliable" countries, including Australia and Canada.³⁴

The neutron-poisoning element boron, necessary for the operation of pressurized water reactors, is found primarily in two countries (Turkey and the United States) (see Boron).

According to a Stanford study, fast breeder reactors have the potential to power humans on earth for billions of years, making it sustainable.⁵

Reliability

Nuclear power plants are some of the more complex mechanical systems ever devised, although much of that complexity is due to redundancy of systems, extensive backups, and the defense in depth strategy of the designs.

In 2005, out of all nuclear power plants in the world, the average capacity factor was 86.8%, the number of SCRAMs per 7,000 hours critical was 0.6, and the unplanned capacity loss factor was 1.6%.⁶ [Capacity factor is the net power produced over the maximum amount possible running at 100% all the time, thus this includes all scheduled maintenance/refueling outages as well as unplanned losses. The 7,000 hours is roughly representative of how long any given reactor will remain critical in a year, meaning that the scram rates translates into a sudden and unplanned shutdown about 0.6 times per year for any given reactor in the world. The unplanned capacity loss factor represents amount of power not produced due to unplanned scrams and postponed restarts.]

The World Nuclear Association states that "Sun, wind, tides and waves cannot be controlled to provide directly either continuous base-load power, or peak-load power when it is needed. In practical terms they are therefore limited to some 10–20% of the capacity of an electricity grid, and cannot directly be applied as economic substitutes for coal or nuclear power, however important they may become in particular areas with favourable conditions." "The fundamental problem, especially for electricity supply, is their variable and diffuse nature. This means either that there must be reliable duplicate sources of electricity, or some means of electricity storage on a large scale. Apart from pumped-storage hydro systems, no such means exist at present and nor are any in sight." "Relatively few places have scope for pumped storage dams close to where the power is needed, and overall efficiency is low. Means of storing large amounts of electricity as such in giant batteries or by other means have not been developed."⁷ See also energy storage.

Nuclear power, however, has the inverse problem. Since operation has to be almost constant, it is a typical base load energy source. If used only for the base load, one would also need other energy sources most of the time, when power demand is over the minimum. Or, if it were to also cover peak demand, then most of the time it would produce huge surplusses and also require storage. In Belgium, this is solved by feeding the surplus into the lighting of the streets at night, making the Belgian highways the best lit in the world.^{citation needed}

Reduced operation during very hot weather

Since nuclear power plants are fundamentally thermal engines, waste heat disposal becomes an issue at high ambient temperature. In such very hot weather a power reactor (just as a coal-fired power plant will) may have to operate at a reduced power level or even shut down.⁸ In the 2006 European heat wave, a number of nuclear plants had to secure exemptions from regulations in order to discharge overheated water into the environment; several European nations were forced to reduce operations at some plants and take others offline and France, normally an electricity exporter, had to buy electricity on European spot market to meet demand.⁹

Economics

This is a controversial subject, since multi-billion dollar investments ride on the choice of an energy source. Which power source (generally coal, natural gas, nuclear or wind) is most cost-effective depends on the assumptions used in a particular study — several are quoted in the main article.

Nuclear plants generally have very high capital costs with operating costs just under those of coal-fired generation,¹⁰ but very low fuel costs.

In 2008 World Nuclear Association gave a 2005 comparison table and said "Nuclear energy is, in many places, competitive with fossil fuel for electricity generation, despite relatively high capital costs and the need to internalise all waste disposal and decommissioning costs. If the social, health and environmental costs of fossil fuels are also taken into account (for example, if a carbon tax is implemented), nuclear is outstanding."¹¹

On the other hand, proponents of nuclear power in the U.S., for example, demand support from the government in the form of loan guarantees. In a speech to U.S. Congressional members on April 24, 2007, Christopher Crane, Senior Vice President of Exelon, said that the loan guarantee must cover 100 percent of project debt, as otherwise financing of new power plants would be extremely difficult.¹² This suggests that nuclear power is competitive only if the financial risks are largely taken over by the public.

Anti-nuclear organisations consider that the economics of new nuclear power plants are unfavourable because of the initial costs of constructing a nuclear plant (see Darlington Nuclear Generating Station), the public subsidies and tax expenditures involved in research and security, the cost of decommissioning nuclear facilities, and the undetermined costs of storing nuclear waste.¹³¹⁴

In a study conducted for the SER, an economic advisory council of the Dutch government, the Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) expressed concern that the expansion of nuclear energy might reduce investment in renewable energy technologies through lock-in effects.¹⁵

Cost of new plants

Urgency in the face of possible fossil fuel shortages and climate change can be seen both as an advantage and a disadvantage of nuclear fission. If the present state of technology is used, then nuclear fission will in the long run be cheaper than other alternative energy sources. However, most of the cost is in building the plants. If, for example, the goal is to cover 80% of the world's (present) energy demand with fission, then thousands of new plants would have to be built, at a price of several billion US$ each, which would mean an investment of tens of trillions of US$. Also, building a nuclear plant takes about 10 years. This raises the question where other alternatives would stand by then if only a fraction of that money would be invested in making them cheaper and more efficient. It is possible that that route would in the long run be more economical, but that depends on how big the improvements would be. Solar energy, for example, which has received relatively little development investments, and is therefore still in early development stages, is still making rapid progress.

Subsidies

Critics of nuclear power claim that it is the beneficiary of inappropriately large economic subsidies — mainly taking the forms of taxpayer-funded research and development and risks (disaster liability, nuclear waste disposal) taken over by the taxpayer — and that these subsidies, being subtle and indirect, are often overlooked when comparing the economics of nuclear against other forms of power generation. However, competing energy sources also receive subsidies. Fossil fuels receive large direct and indirect subsidies, such as tax benefits and not having to pay for the greenhouse gases they emit^{citation needed}. Renewables receive large direct production subsidies and tax breaks in many nations.¹⁶

Energy research and development (R&D) for nuclear power alone has and continues to receive much larger state subsidies than R&D for all renewable energy sources put together or for fossil fuels.^{citation needed} In Europe, the FP7 research program has more subsidies for nuclear than for renewable and energy efficiency together. Part of this research money goes into ITER. However, today most of this takes places in Japan and France: in most other nations renewable R&D as a whole get more money^{citation needed}. In the US, public research money for nuclear fission declined from 2,179 to 35 million dollars between 1980 and 2000.¹⁶ However, in order to restart the industry, the next six US reactors will receive subsidies equal to those of renewables and, in the event of cost overruns due to delays, at least partial compensation for the overruns (see Nuclear Power 2010 Program).

A May 12, 2008 editorial in the Wall St. Journal stated, "For electricity generation, the EIA concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and 'clean coal' $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59."¹⁷

Costs of disposing of high-level waste

The cost of disposing of high-level waste is controversial due to uncertainties of the length of time the waste must be stored, the final method to be used, how payment will be structured, and other reasons.

In the U.S., the federal government pledged to take permanent title to the waste in return for a set fee on the amount of electricity generated. As the fee is fixed while the actual cost will be known only in a far future, effectively the tax payer is taking over the financial risk.

Nuclear waste is seen as a costly impediment to the nuclear power industry rather that the carbon free, sustainable, free source of energy with the potential of half of the operational reactors in the U.S.. It is an energy source capable of eliminating U.S. dependence on imported oil.

According to a U.S. Department of Energy report,¹⁸ the initial heat produced by U.S. nuclear waste will be on the order of 30 to 50 times the heat flux in the Geysers geothermal reservoir in California. According to The California Energy Commission,¹⁹ Geothermal Energy in California website, in 2007 California produced 13,000 gigawatt-hours of geothermal energy. Assuming the conservative estimate of 30 times this amount of heat flux for U.S. nuclear waste, 390,000 gigawatt-hours of energy is produced annually by U.S. waste. This is close to half of the power output by America’s operational reactors (806.5 billion kilowatt-hours (bkWh in 2007).²⁰

390,000 gigawatt-hours is the equivalent of 219,956,237.507 barrels of fuel oil (US). The energy return on investment for SAGD is 5.2/1 ²¹ therefore the heat flux of America’s nuclear waste has the potential to produce over a billion barrels of synthetic oil annually.

The U.S. has approximately a quarter of the global inventory of spent nuclear fuel therefore the potential exists for the development of significantly more unconventional deposits with imported spent fuel. Essentially America’s total oil demand could be met from the output from the global spent fuel inventory.

The Henry Hub pricing point for natural gas futures contracts traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange for the week ended July 30, 2008 was $9.01 per MMBtu. 390,000 gigawatt-hours is the equivalent 1,330,735,236.9199 MMBtu so the waste heat of America’s spent nuclear fuel has the annual potential of $12 billion worth of Natural Gas. Burning a clean fuel [natural gas] to make a dirty fuel [from oil sands] has been characterized as a form of reverse alchemy. A far better use for natural gas is making electricity, home heating or as Boone Pickens advocates, transportation.

The Nuclear Assisted Hydrocarbon Production Method,²² Canadian patent application 2,638,179, is a method for the temporary or permanent storage of nuclear waste materials comprising the placing of waste materials into one or more repositories or boreholes constructed into an unconventional oil formation. The thermal flux of the waste materials fracture the formation, alters the chemical and/or physical properties of hydrocarbon material within the subterranean formation to allow removal of the altered material. A mixture of hydrocarbons, hydrogen, and/or other formation fluids are produced from the formation. The radioactivity of high-level radioactive waste affords proliferation resistance to plutonium placed in the periphery of the repository or the deepest portion of a borehole.

Environmental effects

The primary environmental impacts of nuclear power come from uranium mining, radioactive effluent emissions, and waste heat, as under normal generating conditions nuclear power does not produce greenhouse gas emissions CO₂, NO₂ directly (although the nuclear fuel cycle produces them indirectly, though at much smaller rates than fossil fuels).²³ Nuclear generation does not directly produce sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury or other pollutants associated with the combustion of fossil fuels. In 2008, The Economist stated that "nuclear reactors are the one proven way to make carbon-dioxide-free electricity in large and reliable quantities that does not depend (as hydroelectric and geothermal energy do) on the luck of the geographical draw."²⁴

For the same amount of electricity, the life cycle emissions of nuclear is about 4% of coal-fired power. Depending on the report, hydro, wind, and geothermal are sometimes ranked lower, while wind and hydro are sometimes ranked higher (by life cycle emissions).²⁵²⁶

Nuclear plants require more, but not significantly more, cooling water than fossil-fuel power plants due to their slightly lower generation efficiencies. Uranium mining can use large amounts of water - for example, the Roxby Downs mine in South Australia uses 35 million litres of water each day and plans to increase this to 150 million litres per day.²⁷

Other issues include disposal of nuclear waste and nuclear decommissioning. Most countries with nuclear power agree that sequestering spent fuel in Deep geological repositories is the best option for waste disposal, but no such long-term waste repositories yet exist.²⁸²⁹

High level nuclear waste

According to anti-nuclear organizations, rendering nuclear waste harmless is not being done satisfactorily and it remains a hazard for anywhere between a few years to many thousands of years, depending on the particular isotopes. The same organizations usually oppose, and lobby against, processing the waste to reduce its radioactivity and longevity, and also oppose isolating the residual waste from the environment.³⁰³¹³²

The length of time waste has to be stored is controversial because there is a question of whether one should use the original ore or surrounding rock as a reference for safe levels. Anti-nuclear organizations tend to favor using normal soil as a reference, in contrast to pro-nuclear organizations who tend to argue that geologically disposed waste can be considered safe once it is no more radioactive than the uranium ore it was produced from.

Boron letdown

Towards the end of each cycle of operation (typically 18 months to two years), each pressurized water reactor reduces the amount of boron in its primary coolant system (the water that flows past and cools the nuclear reactor core). As a consequence, some of this irradiated boron is discharged from the plant and into whatever body of water the plant's cooling water is drawn from. The maximum amount of radioactivity permitted in each volume of discharge is tightly regulated.

Safety

Numerous different and usually redundantly duplicated safety features have been designed into (and in some cases backfitted to) nuclear power plants.

Accidents

The Chernobyl disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Ukraine) remains the worst nuclear accident in history and is the only event to receive an INES score of 7. The power excursion and resulting steam explosion and fire spread radioactive contamination across large portions of Europe. The report published in 2005 by the UN Chernobyl Forum "Chernobyl's legacy: Health, Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts"³³ concluded that the death toll includes the 50 workers who died of acute radiation syndrome, nine children who died from thyroid cancer, and an estimated 4000 excess cancer deaths in the future.³⁴ This accident occurred due to both the flawed operation of the reactors and critical design flaws in the Soviet RBMK reactors, such as lack of a containment building. This disaster however has led to some "lessons learned" for Western power plants, large improvements in safety at Soviet-designed nuclear power plants and major improvements to the sixteen remaining RBMK reactors (with the permanent shutdown of six).³⁵ It should also be pointed out that the Chernobyl accident involved a plant design -- graphite moderation -- which has never been used in any commercial generation plant in the West, which tend towards water moderation^{citation needed}. Even with the "safe nuclear" attitude common in the 1950s, the graphite moderated design was rejected as unsatisfactory. Hence, the sort of accident which occurred at Chernobyl presents little connection to the worst possible accidents in the West.

The accident at Three Mile Island Unit 2 was the worst civilian nuclear accident in the United States (INES score of 5). The reactor experienced a partial core meltdown. However, according to the NRC, the reactor vessel and containment building were not breached and little radiation was released to the environment, with no significant impact on health or the environment. Several studies have found no increase in cancer rates.³⁶³⁷

Cases where governments have misinformed or underinformed the public underlies much of the distrust. Incidents such as Brookhaven National Laboratory (a military-purpose reactor not regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission) leaking tritium into community groundwater for up to 12 years⁴⁰ and classified accidents at the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant, along with the extreme nuclear secrecy of East Bloc governments during the Cold War, may create the impression that the health and safety of communities surrounding nuclear facilities is of secondary importance. However such mistrust is often misdirected — while the industrial sites that were built to support the Manhattan Project and the Cold War's nuclear arms race display many cases of significant environmental contamination and other safety concerns, in the United States such facilities are operated and regulated completely separately from commercial nuclear power plants.

Contrast of radioactive accident emissions with industrial emissions

Proponents argue that the problems of nuclear waste do not come anywhere close to approaching the problems of fossil fuel waste.⁴¹⁴² A 2004 article from the BBC states: "The World Health Organization (WHO) says 3 million people are killed worldwide by outdoor air pollution annually from vehicles and industrial emissions, and 1.6 million indoors through using solid fuel."⁴³ In the U.S. alone, fossil fuel waste kills 20,000 people each year.⁴⁴ A coal power plant releases 100 times as much radiation as a nuclear power plant of the same wattage.⁴⁵ It is estimated that during 1982, US coal burning released 155 times as much radioactivity into the atmosphere as the Three Mile Island incident.⁴⁶ The World Nuclear Association provides a comparison of deaths due to accidents among different forms of energy production. In their comparison, deaths per TW-yr of electricity produced from 1970 to 1992 are quoted as 885 for hydropower, 342 for coal, 85 for natural gas, and 8 for nuclear.⁴⁷

Health effect on population near nuclear plants and workers

Most human exposure to radiation comes from natural background radiation. Most of the remaining exposure comes from medical procedures. Several large studies in the US, Canada, and Europe have found no evidence of any increase in cancer mortality among people living near nuclear facilities. For example, in 1991, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health announced that a large-scale study, which evaluated mortality from 16 types of cancer, found no increased incidence of cancer mortality for people living near 62 nuclear installations in the United States. The study showed no increase in the incidence of childhood leukemia mortality in the study of surrounding counties after start-up of the nuclear facilities. The NCI study, the broadest of its kind ever conducted, surveyed 900,000 cancer deaths in counties near nuclear facilities.⁴⁸

Some areas of Britain near industrial facilities, particularly near Sellafield (a nuclear reprocessing plant), have displayed elevated childhood leukemia levels, in which children living locally are 10 times more likely to contract the cancer. One study of those near Sellafield has ruled out any contribution from nuclear sources, and the reasons for these increases, or clusters, are unclear. Apart from anything else, the levels of radiation at these sites are orders of magnitude too low to account for the excess incidences reported. One possible explanation is viruses or other infectious agents being introduced into a local community by the mass movement of migrant workers.⁴⁹⁵⁰ Likewise, studies have found an increased incidence of childhood leukaemia near nuclear power plants has been found in Germany⁵¹ and France.⁵²

Nonetheless, the results of larger multi-site studies in these countries invalidate the hypothesis of an increased risk of leukaemia related to nuclear discharge. The methodology and very small samples in the studies finding an increased incidence has been criticized.⁵³⁵⁴⁵⁵⁵⁶

In December 2007, it was reported that a study showed that German children who lived near nuclear power plants had a higher rate of cancer than those who did not. However, the study also stated that there was no extra radiation near the nuclear power plants, and scientists were puzzled as to what was causing the higher rate of cancer.⁵⁷⁵⁸

Workers in the nuclear industry from the 1980s were found to be slightly more likely (2 extra deaths per year in the group of 65,000) to die from heart disease if they were exposed to high levels of radiation.⁵⁹ It is unclear if radiation, or other issues such as stress, level of education, etc. are the cause of this increased mortality.

One radionuclide which can be detected as being emitted into the environment from nuclear power reactors, at very small levels which result in an extremely small dose to the public, is tritium. Compared to BWRs and PWRs, Heavy water reactors create and emit a relatively large quantity of tritium. Tritium is a very low energy beta emitter, which is mobile in the environment and in biochemical systems since it is an isotope of the ubiquitous element, hydrogen.

Alternative reactor designs

The US Government is leading a plan to develop small "disposable" nuclear reactors (SSTAR) for deployment in developing countries. However, there has been considerable debate about the security and nuclear proliferation risks of such a proposal.⁶⁰

Russia has constructed on the first of seven nuclear power station ships which each will carry a 70-megawatt nuclear reactor. The ships will provide power to remote coastal towns, or be sold abroad, and 12 countries, including Algeria and Indonesia, have expressed interest. There is considerable debate about the safety of such "floating" nuclear reactors, especially since they may lack a containment building around them.

Nuclear proliferation and terrorism concerns

Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons and related technology to nations not recognized as "Nuclear Weapon States" by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NNPT). Since the days of the Manhattan Project it has been known that reactors could be used for weapons-development purposes—the first nuclear reactors were developed for exactly this reason—as the operation of a nuclear reactor converts U-238 into plutonium. As a consequence, since the 1950s there have been concerns about the possibility of using reactors as a dual-use technology, whereby apparently peaceful technological development could serve as an approach to nuclear weapons capability.⁶¹ Part of the radioactive material produced in some types of nuclear reactors has the potential to be used to make nuclear weapons by countries equipped with the capability of chemical and isotope separation.⁶² For that reason, the United Nation's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) closely monitors all reactors of nations who have joined.

Vulnerability of plants to attack

"The human, environmental, and economic costs from a successful attack on a nuclear power plant that results in the release of substantial quantities of radioactive material to the environment could be great."⁶³

However, each nuclear power plant's reactor (except those in Russia) is surrounded by a thick containment building. In the U.S. the plants are also surrounded by a double row of tall fences which are electronically monitored, and the plant grounds are patrolled by a sizeable force of armed guards.⁶⁴ The NRC's "Design Basis Threat" criteria for plants is a secret, and so what size attacking force the plants are able to protect against is unknown. However, to scram a plant takes less than 5 seconds while unimpeded restart takes hours, severely hampering a terrorist force in any goal to release radioactivity.

An additional concern with nuclear power plants is that if the by-products of nuclear fission (the nuclear waste generated by the plant) were to be left unprotected it could be stolen and used as a radiological weapon, colloquially known as a "dirty bomb". There were incidents in post-Soviet Russia of nuclear plant workers attempting to sell nuclear materials for this purpose (for example, there was such an incident in Russia in 1999 where plant workers attempted to sell 5 grams of radioactive material on the open market,⁶⁵ and an incident in 1993 where Russian workers were caught attempting to sell 4.5 kilograms of enriched uranium.⁶⁶⁶⁷⁶⁸), and there are additional concerns that the transportation of nuclear waste along roadways or railways opens it up for potential theft. The United Nations has since called upon world leaders to improve security in order to prevent radioactive material falling into the hands of terrorists,⁶⁹ and such fears have been used as justifications for centralized, permanent, and secure waste repositories and increased security along transportation routes.⁷⁰

Public confidence

Polls consistently show that populations continue to fear nuclear, but desire the energy security.^{citation needed} A comprehensive public opinion survey, performed in May and June 2006 in the European Union member countries, concluded that EU citizens perceive great future promise in the use of renewable energies, but despite majority opposition, nuclear energy also has its place in the future energy mix.⁷¹

Safety culture in host nations

Nuclear's safety also depends strongly on building, maintaining and operating the reactors as designed. The Chernobyl disaster was directly caused by a poor safety culture in the former Soviet Union.

Some developing countries which plan to go nuclear have very poor industrial safety records and problems with political corruption.⁷²

The improper operation of a badly-designed nuclear reactor with no containment building located near large populations can be catastrophic in the event of an uncontrolled power increase in the reactor, as shown by the Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine (former USSR), where large areas of Europe were affected by moderate radioactive contamination and the parts of the Ukraine and one fifth of Belarus continue today to be affected by radioactive fallout as of 2008.⁷³

Plants in adjacent nations

The limited liability for the owner of a nuclear power plant in case of a nuclear accident differs per nation while nuclear installations are sometimes built close to national borders.⁷⁴ The Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage is intended to address this concern.

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