The Analysis is Close Enough to Completion, It is Time to Decide, Act and Advocate for Nuclear Energy
In my current assignment, I make my living as an analyst. However, I happen to be in a profession that does not do analysis as its main line of work. My employer understands the need to do research and perform the math, but it is far more interested in obtaining and implementing recommended actions. It is common for us to be told to put our pencils down, stop entering more figures into the spreadsheets and make our best recommendation.
It is with that background that I responded in an email conversation recently. I have adapted my response to share more widely. That is another habit I have picked up at my day job I often create a product once and use it many times via a bit of adaptation to the specific question or task at hand.
In that email conversation, I was questioning why some people can accept that vast oil spills are simply a part of the cost of maintaining our current way of life and keeping gasoline available and cheap while at the same time those same people cannot accept the potential hazards associated with extracting uranium using solution mining. We all have a pretty good idea what a large oil slick can do to the local environment, but few people understand that uranium solution mining is generally done in places where the aquifers already have radioactive materials in them. It kind of makes sense – if there is uranium in the rocks, there is probably some uranium and its daughter products in any aquifers that fed with water that flowed through the rocks.
The response I got back was that I was a self-admitted advocate for nuclear energy and that it is not a matter of claiming that one energy source is good and all others are bad. My correspondent put oil well blowouts from a deep ocean exploratory well and solution mining that contaminates a local aquifer on an equal footing. There was also an implication that the people running the nuclear industry give as much thought to there impact on the environment as the people running BP do.
Here is my adapted response to those fighting words. (Sorry, but the meek and mild do not generally succeed in my chosen profession. I sometimes have to fight hard to get my thoughts and ideas heard, but it is often worth it when I see the results.)
My main point in my previous discussion was that as an analyst (that happens to be the way I officially make my living), I am concerned about both the probability of accidents and the consequences of those accidents. I am concerned about physical difficulties and recognize that the potential for mistakes, errors, and equipment failures increase when you approach the limits of human endurance and material strengths.
There are certainly issues associated with uranium mining residues and there are certainly reports of serious consequences for some miners. I have read pretty widely about the details of why those happened and about the studies that provided the linkage between the illnesses of the miners and the effects of working in unventilated mines with few, if any, enforced regulations. No need to go into great detail here, but my analysis tells me that uranium mining is safer than it has been portrayed. Many of the cancer deaths that were attributed to it have other potential causes; as is always the case, it is difficult to assign the actual cause of any particular cancer. That is especially true for smokers, drinkers, and people who live in communities with few resources.
My analysis also teaches me that the annual world market for uranium requires as much material to be shipped as about one week’s worth of coal for a large power plant. More than half of that material comes from just a dozen or so mines around the world or out of existing stockpiles.
So my advocacy of nuclear energy, and the inevitable uranium mining that accompanies the industry is based on an understanding that both the consequences and the probability of hazards are significantly lower than the probability and the consequences of hazards from other energy sources that are more widely accepted.
Some analysis shows that people accept the hazards associated with fossil fuel because those energy sources are “cheap”, but my analysis tell me that commercial nuclear fuel – with all of its extraction, manufacturing, licensing, and regulation costs included – provides the same product as fossil fuel – controllable heat – at a cost of about $0.47 per million BTU. The competitive sources provide heat – at current prices – of about $1.50 for coal, $4.30 for natural gas, $13.50 for crude oil, and $20.00 for refined diesel fuel. Unlike those other competitors, commercial nuclear fuel does not release any contaminants to the environment when it releases its heat.
If people really want cheap energy, and they want energy that imposes as little real harm as possible to the environment, then they need some people who can do the analysis and help them figure out where they should be looking for that product. Sometimes, providing that information requires someone who can draw conclusions from their analysis. Sometimes, analysts who have done enough research and run enough numbers to have reached conclusions need to become advocates and spread the information which apparently few others have recognized.
If people want cheap energy with a little impact on the environment as possible, they will not find it under 5,000 feet of water in a reservoir that is 18,000 feet below the earth’s crust. They will not find it in a gooey substance that contains many components, some of which can cause cancer under long term exposure, which have infinite half lives because they are stable elements and compounds. They will not find it under mountains whose tops must be blown off to enable large machinery to scoop out hundreds of train car loads per day of a substance that releases vast quantities of CO2, SOx, NOx, and fly ash when it provides heat. They will not find it in tight formations of shale rock that require sophisticated horizontal drilling, millions of gallons of a water and chemical mixture, and high pressure sources (which requires running smelly, high powered diesel engines) in order to coax a bit of explosive gas to come out. They most certainly will not find cheap energy with little environmental impact by erecting enormous wind turbines or square miles of solar collectors.
If people really want whatever energy source makes the most amount of money for the largest corporations in the world, they might make different choices and continue to accept what they are getting today. The advocates of what exists today are certainly not shy about painting large signs on buses implying that the world should run on “clean natural gas” or producing TV commercials that imply you can stick an electric cord directly into a lump of coal.
Rod, you and I have been responding to the same issues this morning, because we have participated in the same conversation. I take the view, than uranium mining is really a non issue, because traditional mining ad even in situ leaching are largely unnecessary. I emailed you earlier today:
Rod, I would commend your work. Neither of us want to hide from the problems of nuclear power, and we both offer solutions. There is right now enough uranium and thorium above ground to power human society for thousands of years. The above ground resources come in the form of depleted uranium, phosphate mine tailings and other unconventional resources, for example uranium and thorium recovery from the fly ash of coal powered steam plants. In addition continued recovery of thorium is assured from rare earth mines. Rare earths are increasingly in demand for technologies that support post carbon energy. Thorium almost inevitably co-ocures with rare earths, and traditionally has been left in the tailings of rare earth mines. In addition the recovery of uranium from sea water has been demonstrated to be technologically possible at an acceptable price. The recovery of 32,000 tones a year of uranium from sea water is sustainable probably for millions of years, because 32,000 tons of year of uranium flows into the sea from rivers.
None of the sources I have mentioned would create the problems traditionally associated with the use of nuclear power.
I have further comments on Nuclear Green this morning in a post titled “Nuclear Green in a Nut Shell.”
http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2010/05/nuclear-green-in-nut-shell.html
Hi Rod and Charles. Thanks for the posts. Reading your posts was very reassuring.
The whole thing reminds me of the E M Forster book, Two Cheers for Democracy. Only two cheers, because it is an imperfect system of government, with definite problems. Two cheers, because it is the best form of government the world has ever known.
And in that spirit., I give Two Cheers for Nuclear Power.
It is also important to mention that the overwhelming number of issues with uranium mining both in health and safety, and environmental damage were from the middle of the last century. At that time these issues attended ALL types of mining, but since then regulation has tightened considerably, particularly in the case of uranium. As a consequence the number of incidences has gone down, while in petroleum and gas exploration and production these events are more common than they were in the past.
People are getting upset about uranium mining again, are they? Well, this is my contribution to the discourse:
http://channellingthestrongforce.blogspot.com/2010/05/mining-of-nuclear-fuel.html
“It is also important to mention that the overwhelming number of issues with uranium mining both in health and safety, and environmental damage were from the middle of the last century.”
I doubt if very many people realize the significance of that statement. I was in the Navy Nuclear Power Program in the early 60’s. While studying in the library I came across a military manual (Army?) on radiation protection written in the early 1940’s. The manual explained how they determined the “acceptable” radiation dose and why it was safe. In a nutshell they picked the level based upon that amount of radiation that caused reddening of the skin, like a sunburn – and to make sure it would be safe they divided that value by 10. Kind of scary isn’t it? More than likely these are the same dose limits that uranium miners were restricted to in the 1040’s.
Why is that scary?
Last time I checked, we still allow people to smoke cigarettes.
At least radiation is known to cause only cancer.
It is scarry because it takes about 200 to 300 rem to cause reddening of the skin like a sun burn and 10 percent of that, 30 rem, is well above the once in a life time dose. Yes, people receive that and more for medical reasons, but usally for prevention and to kill cancer. It would take several hundred bone scans and probably a thousand barium enemas to acheive that dose and quite hard to do all of thoese procedures in one hour. It is also scarry because I assume they gave someone a dose to determine what level caused reddining of the skin!
Yeah, but 200 to 300 rem is also enough to produce noticeable radiation sickness, and it will cause some people to die — if it is a whole-body dose. Since the focus was on the reddening of skin, without mention of any other (obvious) effects, I suspect that this justification of acceptable dose was for something other than whole body.
Something like a hand can withstand a much larger dose than the whole body because there are no major blood-producing organs located there. If I recall correctly, the DOE’s dose limit for the skin or extremities is still 50 rem/year.
As for how scientists knew about the reddening of the skin, the early twentieth century provided all sorts of opportunities to learn about the effects of radiation exposure: extensive, even frivolous, use of x-rays, radium baths, etc., were quite popular back in the days before people knew better.