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The annual Choices and Challenges Forum took place yesterday, hosting a variety of speakers who illuminated the history, logistics, benefits, and set-backs of nuclear energy.
The all-day event, titled "Nuclear Power Reconsidered," was held in both the Lyric Theater and the Graduate Life Center.
The open forum structure of the event allowed participants to question and challenge the thoughts of others regarding the facts of nuclear energy.
"We thought that was a perfect issue and a very timely issue," said Daniel Breslau, co-coordinator for the Choices and Challenges forum.
Breslau said that for a long time the United States' interest in constructing nuclear power plants has been in a lull because of cost and safety concerns.
He said that the current resurgences of interest is coming from corporate industries and those concerned with finding an alternative fuel source to oil.
"They are all coming at the issues from a different kind of disciplinarian or professional background," Breslau said.
At the forum, Richard Hirsh, director of the consortium on energy restructuring at Virginia Tech, spoke alongside Benjamin Sovacool, post-doctoral fellow in energy policy at the National University of Singapore. Both described the historical evolution, concerns and proponents of nuclear energy.
Research, regulation, and promotion of nuclear energy began in 1946 with the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission, Hirsh said.
"Almost every other new transition to a new technology has been because of demand changes," Sovacool said.
The advent of the AEC was the first time the U.S. government decided to promote a new invention prior to its demand.
This promotion was about the positive aspects of going nuclear.
The United States currently derives 49 percent of its energy from coal, 20 percent from natural gas, and 19 percent from nuclear power, Hirsh said.
For every one pound of uranium required by a nuclear power plant, a coal plant requires 1,500 tons of coal, he said.
Hirsh explained that a well-operated nuclear power plant will not release greenhouse gases.Some fears of nuclear power are the effects of radiation if a plant were to fail.
In 1974 the Three Mile Island plant near Harrisburg, Pa. had a failure in its Emergency Core Cooling System.
No one was hurt or killed during the event; however, there is speculation that some animals may have been injured and psychological effects remain, Hirsh said.
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission required that evacuation plans be in place near the vicinity where a nuclear power plant is built after the TMI incident.
Another downfall of nuclear power is the money required to build the plant.
The first demonstration nuclear power plant built in Shippingport, Pa. cost $84 million in 1957, Hirsh said.
Not only are there health affects and money issues with nuclear power, there is the problem of where to put waste.
Nuclear waste in the United States is collected in storage within the plants themselves, Hirsh said.
This form of storage is not ideal, so Bush proposed in 2002 that the waste be stored in Yucca Mountain in Nevada.
This proposition never took effect because of local adversity to the plan, Hirsh said.
France, who has 70 percent of its energy supplied by nuclear power, uses a reprocessing plant that recycles the nuclear waste into plutonium. The main use for this plutonium is weaponry, Hirsh said.
The implementation of a reprocessing plant in the United States was rejected by former President Carter because he did not want the American people to think the use of nuclear power was for weaponry, Hirsh said.
As a result, there still remains no political solution for the placement of nuclear waste in the U.S., Hirsh said.
The most current diplomacy that advocates nuclear power is the Energy and Policy Act of 2005.
This act provides financial support to companies building nuclear power plants and gives them tax credit, Hirsh said.
In Virginia, there was a reregulation law passed this past April.
This act gives companies an extra 2 percent in rate return for over 12 years if they are to invest in a nuclear power plant, Hirsh said.
Hirsh said it is now in the works for Dominion Virginia Power to build a nuclear power plant.
"Nuclear Power Reconsidered" is Choices and Challenge's 26th forum. Choices and Challenges have been organizing these forums since the project was established at Virginia Tech in 1985.
Breslau began organizing the event with co-coordinators Eileen Crist and Saul Halfon in Jan. 2007.
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There are scientific concerns about the suitability of Yucca Mountain for storing spent fuel which remains radioactive for hundreds of thousands of years. The presence of Chlorine 36 indicates that the repository may be penetrated by water much faster than originally thought leading to corrosion of the spent fuel containers and release of radioactive material into drinking water.There is also a volcanic crater, the Lathrop Crater which I have viewed from the top of Yucca Mountain. This crater was caused by an eruption. An earthquake in the last twenty years damaged a building on the Yucca Mountain repository site. Transportation of spent fuel largely from sites east of the Mississippi also poses risks of traffic accidents and terrorist attacks. No state is willing to permanently store spent fuel either that produced by reactors in their own state and much less that originating in other states.
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nswer to: Don't we need uranium to fuel cheap, clean nuclear power? Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) 2003 study and a 2004 University of Chicago study concurred that nuclear power is much more expensive than natural gas or coal for electrical production (MIT's estimated cost of electricity for coal was 4.2kWh/ natural gas 3.8-5.6 kWh/nuclear power 6.7kWh). The MIT study concluded "The potential impact on the public from safety or waste management failure and the link to nuclear explosives technology are unique to nuclear energy among energy supply options. These characteristics and the fact that nuclear is more costly, make it impossible today to make a credible case for the immediate expanded use of nuclear power." Brice Smith's book "Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change" (http://www.ieer.org/reports/insurmountab...) offers facts, figures, reports, and studies that show uranium and its radiation cannot be an answer to greenhouse gas reduction. In addition, for all the potential dangers nuclear energy will expose us to, it will have little effect on global climate stabilization. Peter Bradford, a former Commissioner of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, reports that, even if we were to triple today's worldwide nuclear capacity, it would only be equivalent to one third of what we can currently do to decrease greenhouse gas omission through energy efficiency and conservation. (See the nuclear power debate between Bradford, Patrick Moore, and Jim Riccio of Greenpeace USA at http://www.nirs.org/videodebate.htm) Dr. Helen Caldicott writes in her book Nuclear Power is Not the Answer on page viii: "Nuclear power is not "clean and green," as the industry claims, because large amounts of traditional fossil fuels are required to mine and refine the uranium needed to run nuclear power reactors, to construct the massive concrete reactor buildings, and to transport and store the toxic radioactive waste created by the nuclear process. Burning of this fossil fuel emits significant quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2)– the primary "greenhouse gas"- into the atmosphere. In addition, large amounts of the now-banned chlorofluorocarbon (as CFC gas) are emitted during the enrichment of uranium. CFC gas is not only 10,000 10 20,000 times more efficient as an atmospheric heat trapper ("greenhouse gas") than CO2, but it is a classic "pollutant" and a potent destroyer of the ozone layer."
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Corrections: 49% coal/20% NG/19% nuclear is US electricity, not US energy. Energy would include a great deal of oil for transportation. Yucca mountain was proposed for waste storage in 1978, not 2002. Studies are still ongoing and NRC licenses now being sought. France gets 78% of its electricity from nuclear. The main use of its reprocessed fuel, and the only use of the plutonium, is for re-use in nuclear power reactors.
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Mythbusters It is very telling that Richard Hirsh should mention Three Mile Island as the worst nuclear accident in US History. Even the antinuclear activists have a hard time substantiating any negative effects as a result, besides the obvious loss in a billion-dollar asset and the lost revenue from the electrical generating capacity. The best Hirsh can come up with is some animals *may* have been hurt and there *might* be some psychological damage. Tell that to the 15,000+ Americans who die prematurely every year from fossil fuels, when not one single member of the public has experience any real negative health effects from nuclear power. As for recycling, Hirsh is once again wrong. This nuclear waste is not waste at all, but 95% of it can be recycled as fuel for reactors and used again in reactors. France supports several electrical power reactors from its recycling program – not weapons! He is right about one thing. The nuclear waste “problem†is truly political, because it’s definitely NOT a technical problem. France and Japan are already proving that.
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The published story (above) contains several inaccuracies about my presentation at the Choices and Challenges forum. I wrote a letter to the CT to highlight some (not all) of the inaccuracies. That letter was published on November 15 and can be found at http://www.collegiatetimes.com/stories/2007/11/15/letter__nuclear_energy_story_contains_inaccuracies.
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