In September of 1981 I crossed the blue line, the line deliniating the division between public property and the private property of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo County in California.
Crossing the blue line, which was not a figure of speech, there was actually, and may still be, a blue line painted on the pavement in front of the gate to the plant, meant that I could be arrested for trespassing. Which I was. I trespassed in the hopes that my actions, and the actions of those who joined me, would keep the plant from opening.
For my effort, I spent four days in the California Men’s Colony with the rest of my Abalone Alliance cohorts, sleeping on the cold concrete floor, eating peanut butter sandwiches for all meals, and playing volleyball in the sun in the afternoon, while we were waiting to be processed through the San Luis Obispo court system.
During that time, I, and many other people, were rigorously fighting the opening of this now operating power plant. Most of the issues we focused on are the ones that should still, today, make you concerned about the newly ramped up talk about building new nuclear power plants.
Some of these issues would be:
** Storage of spent fuel. There is no system yet in place for long term storage of spent fuel. Spent fuel is highly radioactive and stays radioactive for thousands of years. The tunnel at Yucca Mountain has been started and should be finished by 2010, but there is no guarantee that the spent fuel will be safe, that the storage barrels will not corrode or leak, or that the radioactivity will not seep into the water table.
Not only that, but who and what can guarantee safe storage for centuries?
** Transporting nuclear fuel to and from plants poses some risk, for the most part if there would happen to be an accident with the vehicle or the train carrying the fuel.
** There are two issues concerning water and nuclear power. Nuclear power plants use a lot of water, and the amount that the power plants use is not determined by how much water is available. The amount of water used is determined by how much the power plant needs.
Water is used to cool the reactor, to keep it from overheating, and once the water is heated and cycled through the power plant it is then dumped into the body of water that the plant is sitting next to. This changes the environmental temperature and changes the ecosystem of the area.
** During the building of the Diablo Canyon power plant there was public concern about the plant being built within three miles of the active Hosgri Fault. It is also a concern that there are volcanoes around Yucca Mountain – although they haven’t been active for a million years or so, and two fault lines … should be safe, right? This will be the storage facility for all nuclear waste from all the nuclear power plants in the country.
Back in 1981 we weren’t thinking so much about the other end of the operation. The mining of uranium. Well, we did think about it, we did talk about it, but our main concern was storage and earthquake fault lines. The mining of uranium is a very dirty business.
Because uranium ore emits radon gas, uranium mining can be more dangerous than other underground mining, unless adequate ventilation systems are installed. During the 1950s, many Navajos in the U.S. became uranium miners, as many uranium deposits were discovered on Navajo reservations. A statistically significant subset of these early miners later developed small cell carcinoma after exposure to uranium ore. Radon-222, a natural decay product of uranium, has been shown to be the cancer-causing agent. — Wikipedia
But depending on the kind of mine they use to get the uranium, the land and water around the mine can become polluted and put not only the workers at risk, but also put the general public that live in the area at risk as well.
So, there are a few things to think about when the Presidential nominees are making their campaign speeches this year.
2 Comments
To address your issues:
Storage of spent fuel. What makes you think the waste containers would corrode or leak? The waste itself is not corrosive, and even if it were, the material the container is made of is chemically inert. Likewise, the containers are unaffected by radiation. Moreover, if we allow for nuclear reprocessing, then we can reduce the dangerous lifetime of the waste to perhaps just hundreds of years. Even at thousands of years, the waste becomes safer faster than coal byproducts like mercury and cadmium do. I think storing waste for hundreds of years is quite feasible, especially if we build the storage facility NOT on a fault line (i.e. Yucca mountain itself is a bad idea).
Transporting nuclear fuel. Yes, this is important. We don’t want terrorists stealing the fuel and making a dirty bomb, nor do we want the fuel to contaminate the populated areas it travels through. This is why some power plants do some of the fuel refinement on site. Fortunately, there isn’t much fuel to transport. A few ounces of uranium produces as much energy as a few tons of coal. Thorium fuel for breeder reactors isn’t even all that radioactive.
Water. Not all water-cooled plants dump heat back into rivers and streams; instead, some evaporate the water using cooling towers. The water vapor eventually condenses to form rain, which flows back into the river. Also, your assertion that water is consumed irregardless of environmental effects is false. In the United States, at least, there are strict regulations regarding how much waste heat can be dumped into streams and how much water can be withdrawn from streams. Nuclear reactors have to be temporarily shut down or operated below optimal power to meet these regulations if water becomes scarce; see this news story: http://planetsave.com/blog
Tectonic instabilities. Yes, building a nuclear power plant on a fault line or next to an active volcano is stupid. So let’s just not do that. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t build nuclear power plants at all.
Mining. As if mining coal, oil, or natural gas is more safe than mining uranium! In fact, coal mining also exposes miners to radioactive radon gas. And when the coal is eventually burned, it exposes you to radioactive radon gas as well as toxic mercury and cadmium. Certainly we should observe safety precautions, and one hopes we’ve come a long way since the 1950’s. Let’s make sure we mine uranium and thorium carefully and using techniques we know won’t damage the environment.
Read more on my blog: http://benkay.net/blog/2008/08/obamas-n-word/
You make some good comments.
My goal is just to get people to do their research before making a decision about this one way or the other.
My concern about storage is that it is a generational project, and even if we take all necessary cautions now, it doesn’t mean that something can’t go wrong in time. If we only had to be worried about storage for ten or twenty years, that would be a completely different discussion. Probably still a heated one.
I’m also not keen on mining coal or drilling for oil – especially off of the coast. I think our use of resources should move away from dirty energies that involve tailings, radiation, pollution created in the process, and dangerous minerals, to renewable resources such as solar, water, wind. If your solar panels crack or your windmill falls over, they *likely* aren’t going to cause any permanent damage or hurt anyone. All you have to do is replace them.
In the case of Diablo Canyon … rules and regulations are great as long as they are followed. See: http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/1997/May97/220enr.htm
Nuclear power plants are built by American corporations, and I have to say, that not all corporations, especially ones that have enough money to build plants like these, are honest. Their bottom line is creating revenue, not safety, not touchy feely moments.
Diablo Canyon and PG&E have done a lot in the past that lead me to not trust the company nor the power source. I think trust is the key word, rather than fear.