Fukushima transforms anti-nuke, AGW activist into nuke power supporter

Flopping Aces ^ | 03-23-11 | Mataharley

[Starman417]

Just when you think there is no hope for some, and that catastrophic events will *always* be used by activists to promote an agenda, we find we can be pleasantly surprised. Case in point, English environmental activist and ArrestBlair website founder, George Monbiot, may have raised more than a few eyebrows when he penned an article, delineating a complete turn around on nuclear power plants in UK's The Guardian today.

One has to give some thumbs up to an adversary who is willing to do a major, public mea culpa, telling the world in a succinct bold headline, "Why Fukushima made me stop worrying and love nuclear power". It appears that Japan's woes and battles have actually sold him on an energy source that he was tepid on prior to the earthquake and tsunami.

You will not be surprised to hear that the events in Japan have changed my view of nuclear power. You will be surprised to hear how they have changed it. As a result of the disaster at Fukushima, I am no longer nuclear-neutral. I now support the technology.

A crappy old plant with inadequate safety features was hit by a monster earthquake and a vast tsunami. The electricity supply failed, knocking out the cooling system. The reactors began to explode and melt down. The disaster exposed a familiar legacy of poor design and corner-cutting. Yet, as far as we know, no one has yet received a lethal dose of radiation.

Some greens have wildly exaggerated the dangers of radioactive pollution. For a clearer view, look at the graphic published by xkcd.com. It shows that the average total dose from the Three Mile Island disaster for someone living within 10 miles of the plant was one 625th of the maximum yearly amount permitted for US radiation workers. This, in turn, is half of the lowest one-year dose clearly linked to an increased cancer risk, which, in its turn, is one 80th of an invariably fatal exposure. I'm not proposing complacency here. I am proposing perspective.

~~~

Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy technologies. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small. The crisis at Fukushima has converted me to the cause of nuclear power.

If you're not familiar with Mr. Monbiot, Wiki gives the basic run down... including authorship of multiple environmental activist books, such as his 2008 offer, "Bring on the Apocalypse: Six Arguments for Global Justice". His stance on war is certainly obvious, as I mentioned above, when he not only founded ArrestBlair.org, but offered a reward for anyone willing to do a peaceful arrest of the former UK PM, Tony Blair, so he could be brought to trial for crimes against humanity. And just to show others he wasn't adverse to doing the deed himself, he did attempt a similar citizen's arrest of John Bolton in 2008 for the same reasoning.

Needless to say, on this forum, it's likely that few of us will find common ground with Monbiot. But then, we can celebrate the small things and accomplishments when we find a formerly staunch opponent, admitting his errors. It's one more sane voice that reenters the debate.

[dfwgator]

Good, I do believe in the end that despite all of this, it shows that even in the worst case scenario, nuclear power is still very much viable.

[scorchedearther]

Even the far left envitonmental nutjobs realize that one of the safest and cleanest energy sources is nuclear power.

There are only two problems as I see it.

One is the NIMBY factor.

And the other is finding a way to reuse or recycle nuclear waste material so that it does not have to be stored.

[DannyTN]

"Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small."

Compared to the number of people who die on oil rigs or in the coal industry, nuclear looks pretty good.

[IYAS9YAS]

And the other is finding a way to reuse or recycle nuclear waste material so that it does not have to be stored.

Someone else may be able to help on this, but it is my understanding that the lack of recycling/re-use is due to a federal ban by Carter, and not the lack of capability.

[Spartan79]

A little perspective from an article by James Delingpole in the Telegraph (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100080636/japan-whatever-happened-to-the-nuclear-meltdown/):

Nuclear fatalities in the last 10 years: 7

Wind farm fatalities in the last 10 years: 44

[dayglored]

> Someone else may be able to help on this, but it is my understanding that the lack of recycling/re-use is due to a federal ban by Carter, and not the lack of capability.

You're thinking of "transmutation". Reagan reversed Carter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_waste#Transmutation

Transmutation was banned in the US in April 1977 by President Carter due to the danger of plutonium proliferation,[47] but President Reagan rescinded the ban in 1981.[48] Due to the economic losses and risks, construction of reprocessing plants during this time did not resume. Due to high energy demand, work on the method has continued in the EU. This has resulted in a practical nuclear research reactor called Myrrha in which transmutation is possible. Additionally, a new research program called ACTINET has been started in the EU to make transmutation possible on a large, industrial scale. According to President Bush's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) of 2007, the US is now actively promoting research on transmutation technologies needed to markedly reduce the problem of nuclear waste treatment.[49]

[kingu]

I guarantee that there has been more environmental harm done by the massive spills of fertilizers, petrochemicals and everything else in the tsunami than every single nuclear accident on the planet.

I’m also sure that there’s been more deaths at that nuclear plant from the tsunami and earthquake than from any radiological release.

And finally, six nuclear reactors under the worst worst worst case scenario, and they’re all pretty much intact and no massive radiological leak, much to the annoyance of environmentalists. Yes, we can, because we have totally awesome detectors, pick up evidence that there has been some leaks, but none of it comes to the level of imminent threat to life, and long term, only a slight risk of cancer, less than comes from living in a brand new home.

And that’s OLD OLD technology, just imagined if those plants had been rebuilt every twenty years.

[drbuzzard]

Someone else may be able to help on this, but it is my understanding that the lack of recycling/re-use is due to a federal ban by Carter, and not the lack of capability.

I don't know the origins of the policy, but back when I worked at Sandia Labs we were working on a project for recovering stainless steel from the piping used in nuclear reactors (and nuclear weapon production facilities). The idea was to use electro slag remelting(ESR) to remove the radioactive salts present in the pipes.

You see, the majority of the waste (by mass) that comes from a nuclear facility is in the water pipes that end up with radioactive salts trapped in micro cracks. The stainless steel itself is not actually radioactive, but those salts are very much so. Thus if you can just clear out those salts, you get your stainless back, and that's worth some money (stainless can be recycled easily).

Now here is where the problem lies- in the U.S. once a material is classified radioactive, it is always considered radioactive. This even if you cleared out 99.999% (something which was possible in the ESR process) of the radioactivity, the stainless would still be considered scrap even if the emissions were less than ambient background radiation.

Hence our project was actually in cooperation with the Russians to help clean up their nuclear facilities since they could actually make use of the old stainless without any stupid laws preventing it. (This was back in the days before Putin, when the U.S. was spending a lot of money to insure that Russian nuclear arms didn't get into the wrong hands).

[headstamp 2]

George Monbiot

That’s French for moonbat.