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McCain Hearts Nuclear, Another Stupid Idea |
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Last week, I mentioned being of the opinion that a "solution" to a problem (e.g. crop-based biofuels in response to global warming) that creates a problem of comparable proportions (e.g. a global food crisis) is, in fact, no solution at all.
I also believe this to be true of nuclear power, yet another ill-conceived "solution" to the dual fossil fuel-shortage/climate change conundrum in which we presently find ourselves.
In fact, harnessing nuclear energy may qualify as an even stupider idea than harnessing biofuels, only because it represents humans' repeating the exact same mistakes they have made with respect to fossil fuels.
Here again, primarily for my own benefit, is a rapid review of human history: Humans discover what they believe to be an endless source of energy-intensive materials buried in the Earth, in the form of coal, natural gas, and crude oil. They begin extracting and burning these so-called "fossil fuels," slowly at first but then at an exponentially increasing pace, thereby growing a massive, unprecedented global economy. Then they realize these fossil fuels (a) are not in fact endless, and will soon run out, and (b) emit, when burned, gases with dangerous climate-warming potential, which are rapidly double-glazing and overheating the atmosphere in such a way that will soon make their planet uninhabitable.
"Shit," they say to themselves. "We're going to have to find another source of energy."
So what do they do? They look into the ground and find a different material, this time called uranium, which they again determine to be abundant in supply. They learn how to harness its energy, and when they discover it can be done without releasing any of those climate-warming gases, they cry "hallelujah!" They start extracting and using these new materials, slowly at first, and then more and more rapidly, giddy with the thought of switching their still-growing global economy over to nuclear power. (As they did with fossil fuels, they disregard the horrific environmental damage caused by uranium mining.) Humans forget, however, two important facts: (a) while abundant right now, this new material is not endless, with some predicting known resources running out in 70 years at current rates of extraction, and (b) while nuclear power plants do not produce climate-warming emissions, they do produce highly radioactive waste that can kill or mutate all life to which it is exposed for tens of thousands of years after extraction. Both the "source" and "sink" problems are repeated. Humans are back where they started — short on energy and inhabiting a profoundly polluted planet — except now nuclear weaponry is a perfected science.
Why oh why would we EVER start down this path again? We have no choice but to find an alternative to fossil fuels if we want to sustain our economy, but inherent in our efforts to find an alternative is an obligation to find one that will not just leave us in a similar predicament in a couple of generations. Humans should be exploring and cultivating energy sources that are precisely what fossil fuels are not: truly renewable and truly clean. Nuclear power is neither.
Sadly, however, many of America's leaders (along with France's, Japan's, and now Britain's) have decided to ignore these facts and pursue the "quick fix" promise of nuclear.
One American politician in particular has been attaching his name to nuclear power: presidential hopeful John McCain. McCain once struck us all as a progressive environmentalist, when in 2003 he and Senator Joe Lieberman introduced the country's first piece of federal legislation mandating a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gas emissions. The bill failed, and has since been reintroduced alongside more aggressive bills. However, later versions of the bill included one major alteration: massive subsidies for the nuclear industry.
Though McCain deserved credit in 2003 for his willingness to tackle the then-taboo subject of global warming, his climate rhetoric today has become softer, while his support of nuclear power is unequivocal. Throughout his presidential campaign he has been saying things like this:
We need to unleash the power and innovation of the marketplace in order to meet our environmental challenges. Right now safe, climate-friendly nuclear energy is a critical way both to improve the quality of our air and to reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources.
And this:
Nuclear power is going to have to be part of any equation if we're truly going to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.
"Going to have to be…"?! Phrases like this should always raise the question "Says who?" Nuclear power was categorically vetoed by a number of developed countries (e.g. Australia, Norway, Denmark, and New Zealand) as being too dangerous to pursue, and nuclear power plants have been decommissioned in other countries (e.g. Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands and Spain) that initially considered them to be a good investment. At some stage those energy-strapped countries realized that nuclear power does not have to be a part of anything, just as it doesn't have to be a part of our energy portfolio in the U.S. Moreover, when making any statements about energy "equations" McCain never entertains those other teeny tiny energy sources — solar, wind, and biomass — which along with geothermal, tidal, and small-scale hydroelectric constitute the only real environmentally and economically viable "solutions" to our energy problems we have identified so far.
Joseph Romm offers some additional, important observations of McCain's position (from Grist):
You can tell a politician is being wishy-washy when he or she uses the phrase "dependence on foreign energy sources." There is really only one foreign energy source Americans care much about — oil. It comes from unstable and undemocratic regions, and our trade deficit in it now exceeds $1 billion a day.
But nuclear power can't significantly reduce US oil consumption or imports — because very, very little electricity in this country is generated by burning petroleum (only 1.6 percent of electricity in 2006 came from oil). [In the future that could change when a significant number of vehicles on the road substitute electricity for gasoline, but that is not imminent.]
And since McCain presumably knows that, he uses the catch-all phrase "foreign energy sources" to try to make it look like nuclear power is homegrown and patriotic. But is it? In fact, we import the vast majority of the uranium we use, so it is an even bigger "foreign energy source."
So McCain's spiel reveals another great appeal of nuclear — its supposed benefits for national security. But while it is true that the U.S. possesses considerable uranium reserves, it also once possessed considerable oil reserves, and inevitably had to turn abroad when domestic demand for oil took off. Here is an indication of where we will be turning when the U.S. depletes its own uranium resources:
Known Recoverable Resources of Uranium
tonnes U percentage of world Australia Kazakhstan Canada USA South Africa Namibia Brazil Niger Russian Fed. Uzbekistan Ukraine Jordan India China Other World total 4,743,000 Reasonably Assured Resources plus Inferred Resources, to US$ 130/kg U, 1/1/05, from OECD NEA & IAEA, Uranium 2005: Resources, Production and Demand, ("Red Book").
Australia and Canada notwithstanding, this list doesn't spark a great deal of confidence that nuclear energy will relieve us of our dependence on foreign, less-than-democratic governments for our energy sources.
More to the point, the debate surrounding nuclear power (and crop-based biofuels) is too often mired in questions of what is "less bad" or "more tolerable" environmentally than fossil fuels; or of which alternative will pose a global crisis slightly less apocalyptic than global warming. This is all bullshit. Converting half the world's food into fuel or filling the Earth's crust with millions of tons of radioactive waste are not solutions to climate change, and advocating them based on their relative preferability to global warming is a dangerous game to play.
Finally, as an equal opportunist in my criticisms, I feel it necessary to point out that all three leading candidates support ethanol, which I consider highly unfortunate. Though I am a supporter of Barack Obama, I oppose his strong advocacy of ethanol, but am encouraged by his pledge to invest $150 billion over ten years in renewable energies that include solar and wind. (Hillary Clinton has promised a fund a third that size to do the same.) Both Democratic candidates have expressed aversion to nuclear power, while John McCain stands alone in his love for it.
To compare the candidates, please see this highly informative chart by Grist. (And if you want to see what an environmental platform ought to look like, don't forget to take a look at Ralph Nader.)
Your point about nuclear power having very little impact on our dependence on foreign energy is well taken, but you are wrong about the role nuclear power has to play in the world's energy future. I don't like McCain, but he is absolutely right when he says nuclear power has to be part of the equation and the simple reason is practicality. World energy demand is skyrocketing and developments in renewable energy technologies are not keeping pace. Maybe 9% of the world's energy comes from renewables right now and more than 50% of that comes from large hydroelectric projects whose potential for growth is severely limited. You are right when you call solar wind and biomass "teeny tiny," because they are. I believe they have vast potential, so I would be the last to advocate that we abandon efforts along those lines. Thinking that they can make a dent in the climate change problem any time soon, however, is just silly. Nuclear, on the other hand, already produces 6% of the world's energy and 16% of its electricity and the constraints on its growth are social and political, not technical. We don't need a breakthrough to seriously ramp up nuclear power and make a real dent in global carbon emissions, we just need guts and good regulation. The only other way we're going to get power to the people clamoring for it is to build a truly alarming number of coal plants.
Let me address your concerns about nuclear power because what I read in your post, and what I hear from so many who espouse similar views, is fear, fear of accidents, fear of waste, and fear of proliferation. You also raise a novel argument when you point out that the list of countries we might have to source uranium from is not altogether savory. As for fears about the safety of nuclear power, look at the wiki on nuclear accidents. It lists 21 incidents over six decades, most of which happened at experimental facilities and very few of which resulted in injury or death. Accidents and pollution from fossil fuel burning and hydroelectric dam failures have killed thousands over the years. Besides, the new reactor deigns being put forth are much safer than anything yet built, including the reactors in use in America today. One such design, the pebble bed modular reactor, has undergone walk away tests where the operators disabled all coolant and safety mechanisms and the reaction simply stopped on its own as a result of the core geometry being such that the chain reaction cannot physically continue without coolant flow to moderate heat build up.
To discuss the issue of nuclear waste, I first suggest that we do away with the term "waste". What results from the once-through fuel cycle our reactors currently use is not "waste", but rather spent nuclear fuel. It retains 90%-95% of its energy. We don't need to seal it away for thousands of years. What we need are a few safe places to keep it while we work on an economical reprocessing program so we can harvest the remaining energy. Your comment about filling the earth's crust with radioactive waste shows you don't have a good grasp of the volume of material we're dealing with. The US nuclear power industry generates only 2000 tons of spent fuel each year. Compare that to the hundreds of thousands of tons of radioactive material coal plants spew into the air we breath each year. Interestingly, a good reprocessing program would also over come the problem of mining our own uranium or buying it from unsavory, un-democratic countries. If we expend the resources to get a reliable econimical reprocessing program going, it may turn out that we have already mined all the uranium we'll ever need. Morover, some of the proposed designs for reporcessing reactors have the capability of pulling uranium from seawater.
Of course, proliferation is a stickier problem. It does not, however, get any better by our refusal to go forward with nuclear power. We can't unring the bell on nuclear weapons. They are out there and all the more reson to be careful of how we handle spent fuel.