In defense of the atom

A Response to “Half Lives and Half Measures”

Our world is facing the Cerberus of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and a rise in energy demands. This means that we all must face the challenge head-on with technological, socioeconomic and political solutions. Root addresses this in his recent cleverly titled column “How Safe is Safe Enough? Half Lives and Half Measures.”

Although I do appreciate his willingness to bring to light issues related to the nuclear industry and his highlighting of the need to be skeptical, I wholeheartedly disagree with the stance of his argument that nuclear power should be relegated to the history books. For many people, the nuclear industry is a black box. We all clearly see the results of electrification, but the plants themselves are isolated bastions of complicated mechanisms. For example, according to a study by the Roper Center, 23 percent of Americans believe that nuclear power contributes a lot to global warming while 20 percent say that they don’t know; to set the record straight, the only thing that comes out of those large cooling towers is steam. 

It is the duty of prudent journalists to open up the black box to clear up misconceptions. Rather than perpetuating chaotic confusion and fear, information and understanding catalyze informed discussion. To help the reader develop a more nuanced perspective of the complicated nuclear debate, I shall shed some light on the multiple errors and oversimplifications in Root’s argument.

In his third paragraph, Root writes, “The first power plants built in the U.S. in the middle of the 20th century were built under the assumption that the plants would reprocess waste.” This perpetuates an inaccurate vision of the development of the American nuclear fuel cycle. In the late 40s and early 50s, nuclear reactors were designed to do two things: make bombs or power. The former category (re: Manhattan Project) bred potent Plutonium-239 from common Uranium-238 through neutron bombardment. Their purpose was proliferation: to build an intimidating arsenal, not power homes. For the latter category (re: Atoms for Peace), reactors were designed to operate within the context of a once through fuel cycle; that is to say, waste from a reactor would not be reprocessed. Why has the energy industry continued this modus operandi for the past 60 years? In an industrial capitalist mindset, the only thing that ultimately matters is the bottom line. It was significantly cheaper to simply dispose of waste than attempt to front the costs for recycling or reprocessing facilities. If there’s one thing Americans hate more than Soviets, it’s high energy prices.

In his fourth paragraph, Root writes, “However, this site [Yucca Mountain] failed to be realized due to inadequate planning and research and too much public disapproval from the citizens of Nevada.” The first part of his critique is wrong; Yucca Mountain was killed for entirely political reasons. The site was by no means inadequately planned; about 30 years and $9 billion were spent on geological surveys and rigorous safety assessments according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The 2006 Senate committee on environment and public works white paper concluded that the Yucca Mountain was a sound site for nuclear waste disposal. Even the Government Accountability Office publically stated in 2011 that the site was closed for solely political and not technical or safety reasons. There are many stories for why the site closed; I personally peg it on Harry Reid (D-NV) who used his clout as Senate majority leader to block the “not in my backyard” site, thereby pleasing his constituents, which any Promethean politician would do. This is evidenced by him saying (along with other variations), “Yucca Mountain is dead. It’ll never happen.”

Furthermore in the same paragraph, Root’s column contradicts what is said later in the seventh paragraph. To clarify, cooling pool storage is significantly more complex than simply “putting the waste in a large pool of water and leaving it to cool for thousands of years.” Coming out of the reactor after serving as a heat source for typically three cycles (each one being about 18 months to two years), spent fuel is comprised of about 96 percent Uranium (most of which is the more common U-238), 2.9 percent stable fission products, 0.9 percent Plutonium, 0.3 percent Cesium and Strontium (which have half lives of about 30 years), 0.2 percent long-lived fission products, and 0.1 percent minor actinides (Neptunium, Americium, Curium, etc.), according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials. The radioactive decay of the fission products causes the fuel to still remain hot; however, after five years, this decay heat drops by about a factor of 100, thereby necessitating the purpose for short-term active cooling storage. Plants generally use this temporary storage for about one to 20 years.

In his fifth paragraph, Root states, “Without electricity, the water in the [spent fuel] pools would boil away, causing the waste to burn, thereby releasing radioactive smoke into the air over an area of hundreds of miles.” Here, Root’s argument makes a fallacious appeal to probability. His contention is worded to imply that an electrical loss in a spent fuel pool will deterministically lead to mass dispersion of radioactive material. Yes, there is a probability that this could happen; however it is extremely low. In the event of a nuclear accident where active cooling to spent fuel pools was lost, assuming that proper safety protocols are followed, that matter would be dealt with expeditiously. These pools are very sophisticated facilities with many different layers of security measures. For example, filled with immense quantities of water — in the time that it would take for the water, with its extremely high specific heat capacity, to boil off, engineers could restore power to the heat exchanger pumps. Arguing like this does not inform or enlighten, but rather baselessly induces unnecessary fear.

In his sixth paragraph, Root writes, “Fuel rod fires, due to a loss of coolant, caused both the disasters at Fukushima in 2011 and Chernobyl in 1986.” Although technically correct, this fact is juxtaposed in a discussion of spent fuel pools; it perturbs the reality of these accidents to better align with the argument. To simplify the technical complexities of these events, the loss of coolant occurred within the nuclear reactors themselves and not the spent fuel pools. There are many historical and technical lessons that the nuclear industry can learn from these tragedies, but Root’s argument misuses them.

Finally, in his eighth paragraph, the statistic quoted on nuclear’s contribution to the power supply is misleading. Nuclear power contributes eight percent to the overall energy supply, which includes the transportation, industrial, residential and power sectors. But the last time I checked, there weren’t any nuclear heated houses or fission powered cars driving around. Nuclear power contributes 19 percent to the overall electrical generation; for comparison, fossil fuels supply 67 percent, hydropower 10 percent and other renewables seven percent. 

Claiming that Americans do not get the reward for the latent risk is unfair considering the other benefits provided by the knowledge of the atom. The national lab system was developed directly out of the Manhattan Project and has spurred basic and applied research. In addition, nuclear medicine (in the form of radiation treatment and radioisotope tracing) has saved many lives. Just because a technology is dangerous doesn’t mean we should stop using it. On the contrary, it necessitates the need for careful management. Cars, guns and cheeseburgers are all dangerous technologies that kill orders of more people per year than radiation from nuclear power plants, but we have defensive driving, gun safety, diets and radiation hygiene to help manage them all.

Despite these rhetoric flaws, the following statement by Root resonated with me: “The entire history of atomic power in the U.S. consists of a series of half measure.” But on a deeper lever, we can do better. It’s about time for some full measures of energy reform.