It's a pretty terrible thing that's happened to Japan recently. It was bad enough that they got hit with an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and the giant tsunami it created, and then they had to deal with stabilizing the Fukushima nuclear plant. Apparently the condition at the reactors is still serious but stable. [1] I'm not convinced that this is completely true as the Japanese government has a tendency to downplay crises as it seems they have been doing since the beginning of this catastrophe. However, even with this somewhat good news that the plant is stable, the people of Japan have a lot to worry about. Not only are there economic costs that the tsunami created that will takes probably decades to rebuild, the nuclear radiation that occurred and is still occurring from the Fukushima meltdown must be dealt with soon.
I hadn't really realized how serious the radiation situation is in Japan until two nights ago. Obviously, the cores of the nuclear plant melting would create a lot of serious problems but once they had stated that it was stabilized, I figured everything would become much better. As I was watching Letterman Monday night, I had found out that the situation was much worse. Letterman's guest for the night was renowned physicist Michio Kaku. In this interview, Kaku stated that he had family living in Tokyo and that they had to leave the city because everything was contaminated with radiation. This includes everything from their water supply, milk, bread, and other types of food. It's a pretty bad situation when not only are they getting radiation through the air but also the water that they need to survive.
This situation in Japan really allows to contemplate the need for nuclear energy in the US and around the world. Is nuclear energy really worth the risk? What can be done to prevent these nuclear disasters? I think that these questions should really be taken into consideration. It seems that any nuclear plant should not be placed on a fault or in any danger of being affected by nature, but this cannot always be guaranteed. What about existing nuclear plants that are in danger? There is currently a nuclear plant in New York City, Indian Pointe, that lies on two faults I believe. If there was two be a similar earthquake or other natural disaster to hit this plant, it would be devastating to not only New York City but the entire US. Do we need to just shut this facility down? These are a few questions that should be answered relatively quickly in order to avoid another incident like Japan is experiencing.
On a slightly related note, Germany has recently shut down 7 of their oldest nuclear reactors and their solar energy has been producing at an exceptional rate. They have been getting a max power output of 12.1 GW which is more than what the Fukushima plant was producing. [2] It looks like moving forward, that the US will focus even more on renewable energies such as solar and probably abandon the nuclear push that was starting to pick up.
Nate, I can't say that I agree with anything that you have said in this article. If this is your view, you should have spoken up in class the other day when we were having a discussion about Fukushima.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, let's get it straight that Germany has been anti-nuclear power for a long time and the political party in charge currently has been looking for any excuse they could find to shut the nuclear power plants down there.
As far as solar power, the United States has been working all these years on it and has only just made the 1 gigawatt mark last years. The solar industry has a long way to go before it can even think about replacing what nuclear power has done for us. Keep in mind that both solar and wind power don't operate as an economy of scale. This means that it does no get cheaper to produce power by them as they get bigger, as to where this is true for nuclear power. Keeping in mind that nuclear power produces roughly 35% of the nearly 500 gigawatts of power produced in the United States each year. This leaves roughly 175 gigawatts of power produced by nuclear each year in the US alone. Conservative estimates say that solar panels need about 20 square miles to produce one gigawatt of power, meaning that we would need 3500 square miles of solar panels laid across the united states in order to replace nuclear power. New York City only covers roughly 300 square miles, so this is huge. And where do you suppose we get that much silicon, process it, and build the panels. That is an enormous investment just to replace nuclear power. And yes, wind is even worse. I don't want to say that solar power and wind power don't have their place in the solution, but they just can't yet compete with nuclear power!
As far as the radiation in the areas around Japan, I think you should do a little more research. Try this CNN article found at http://edition.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/world/2011/03/23/sotu.boice.0320.cnn.cnn.html. There is not enough radiation to have any and I mean any health effects period. They have not even exceeded maximum doses. To give you an idea of how little radiation is being released, the workers at Fukushima working in the highest radiation areas are only expected to raise their cancer risks by a maximum of 1%. Their normal chance of dying from cancer is between 20% and 25%, meaning that it isn't that big of a deal. We still have higher levels or radiation here than what they are seeing over there. It is not worth all the hype!
Also, the technology of the nuclear industry has moved a long way since GE built those reactors in 1971. In fact, the nuclear industry has moved very rapidly in the last few years into designs that are passively safe, meaning that what is happening there cannot happen in modern reactors. Our technology has gotten better, just as it is in renewable energies. Read the wikipedia article on Generation IV reactors and you will see what I mean. The safety debate with nuclear reactors is coming to an end, that is if we can replace our aging reactors with new models. Yet we have not been able to build a new reactor in 30 years in the United States because of fear, and it is just resulting in the risk level increasing.
Interestingly enough, the NRC just in the last couple days approved two reactor sights for construction, meaning that our nuclear program is moving forward. I am glad to see that the government knows a little more of what is going on than most people. To be honest, we can't afford to get away from nuclear power right now as it is the only affordable large scale power source that can combat the global warming situation.
I'm not sure why you've taken on such a berating tone in this post. I guess it's because you feel so strongly about nuclear energy and really believe in it. I don't blame you for that because I too feel that nuclear is probably the only option to fulfill our energy demands in the future. If you read some of my past posts you see my position more clearly. I'll admit that maybe I jumped the gun on the radiation issue, but I was just going on the information that was available to me at the time. I don't really see how you can disagree with much of what I've said, unless you're trying to read into the post. I'm not really advocating abandoning nuclear in favor of solar and wind, I just feel that with what happened recently in Japan, this may be another speed bump for nuclear. Whether this bump is justified or not is another question.
ReplyDeleteMy post was merely looking at nuclear energy from a perspective I had never thought of before. I had never really thought about natural disasters harming a nuclear plant and causing a meltdown, I always thought about a lot of the issues with nuclear in properly running the plant. It's great that you mention that there are generation IV reactors that are even safer but what about current plants that are near fault lines or are in danger of other disasters? You say that we can update these plants to be safer, but I'm sure that would take a considerable amount of money. You say renewable energy isn't practical, this solution really isn't practical either. I enjoy that you feel so strongly about this position and our able to educate me through your insightful posts, but I think maybe you should be a little more open-minded.
I must apologize for be a little harsh there. I have just been frustrated the last few weeks by the amount of misinformation out their being touted against the use of nuclear power. I don't really want to take it out on you, and for that I am sorry.
ReplyDeleteAs far as with the renewables, they just aren't ready to be the solution yet. I totally encourage the research being done as of now to make them better and more viable and I hope that they may be the solution in the future, but the truth is that we just aren't ready for them. Putting that kind of stress on the renewables at this time would only hurt our power supply as well as the renewable energy industry. We would all be better off just to wait until they are ready to take their part in the grid. Until then, we can use nuclear power to help us get there ;)
If we could improve power transmission, like reduce losses, we could put the reactors away from the fault zones and tsunami areas (where everyone happens to flock to) and just send them the power from a safer place. Of course, this idea has probably been beaten to death and researched by a million people. And if we had any good results, we would have used them. So it looks like we just have to make our nuclear reactors that much safer. We definitely can't abandon it though.
ReplyDeleteObviously, you've hit a nerve with your post! I'm glad you wrote it. Sometimes people get afraid of saying the wrong thing and then we don't have any dialogue at all. So I'm glad you spoke out.
ReplyDeleteI think some of Aaron's points are up for debate (if I may say so, respectfully). We don't really know how much radiation has been released, and where, and may not know for a while. So I think it's premature to say there will be no health risks. They will most likely not be as severe as many fear, but to state there is no problem is probably equally irresponsible.
Also, I think public fear is only one part (and a very small part) of the reason we haven't built new reactors in this country. Public support for nuclear had actually been on the rise before Fukushima. In my analysis, cost has been a major factor; it is just very, very expensive to bring new reactors online and, until recently, the regulatory regime for bring new designs online was incredibly cumbersome. This is a systematic problem as well as a psychological one. Nuclear is incredibly complex, and it's best not to look for silver-bullet answers to any particular thing standing in its way.
You ask good questions, and I hope you keep asking them. Nuclear in this country may be comparatively quite safe, and does provide a lot of power. But that doesn't mean it's our only choice, and what happens in other countries will impact what happens here. We should all be asking good questions, and trying to talk with one another fairly and without anger.
I must say looking at reports now being released about Fukushima that the radiation levels are higher there than I first believed they would be. They are still not high enough as to pose any health risks to the public, but there are some contaminated areas on sight which might be a bit of a concern. It is hard to say what the future will hold and impossible to predict what the final dose measurements will be around the plant. Right now there is just too many unknowns. They don't even know where the higher levels of contamination are coming from right now. But it is important to note that the levels to the public remain small. I would predict that this will continue to be the case as levels outside Fukushima are falling now, but I really don't know. Could there be health effects, possible. Right now though the levels are not high enough to the public.
ReplyDelete