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.