Sustainable Energy and the Resurgence of Nuclear Power Plants in the USA

Editor’s Note: The opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Whatcom Watch.

Use of fossil fuels, principally oil and coal, has raised global warming and other problems to a crisis level. For example, melting glaciers and snowfields in the southwest USA traditionally supplied water in summer to irrigate crops and for residents in cities. Now water is in short supply, causing strident competition for water between farmers and city dwellers.

Acidification of saltwater by carbon dioxide in some places is killing small organisms low in the food chain. The result is inadequate food for fish and other organisms at the top of the food chain that are used for human consumption. In other places, the temperature has modified ocean currents leaving some with no oxygen where no marine organisms can live.

Nitrate and phosphate fertilizers used to grow corn to make methanol and other crops are being washed down to the Mississippi River and contaminating the Gulf of Mexico. When we canoed down the Upper Missouri River for five days, we were told not to drink the water because of the fertilizers in it. We never saw the river without foam on it caused by the fertilizer.

On the one hand, we have thousands of illegal immigrants with a birth rate much higher than average Americans and there are efforts to allow them to be U.S. citizens and to be fed. On the other hand there is strong support for bio-fuels, with a strong lobby and federal funding for corn to make ethanol. The corn grown is hybrid because it is the most productive provided that it has lots of nitrate and phosphate fertilizer. But a great deal of it is being washed over the Mississippi River and contaminating the Gulf of Mexico. As a sustainable fuel, I question that.

The family farm that owners used to contour till to save the soil for the next generation is all but a total thing of the past. Now we have the farms owned by corporations. All they care about is the “discounted rate of return” on their investment. Preserving the soil is of no interest so long as they make a good profit. One has only to see the muddy Missouri River en route to the Mississippi River to see where the soil is going. The situation will only get worse if the world, including the USA, doesn’t do a great deal.

The increasing wealth of China, India and other countries will increase in use of automobiles. According to The Wall Street Journal, China sold 1.74 million vehicles in the month of March, up 56 percent since a year ago. Moreover, if the world does not reduce green house gases soon, the permafrost will melt in Siberia, Alaska, and Canada, greatly increasing the rate of global warming.

Wildlife is one of the losses from global warming. Penguins in the Antarctic and polar bears in the Arctic get the most publicity. The herbicide Atrazine used as a weed killer in cornfields is converting male frogs to females.

It is sad that Democrats are ruled by crises. The crisis is here in America. The article that follows is intended to make it easier for politicians and voters to make early decisions.

Because of dangerous accidents in nuclear power plants, for years the U.S. public has had passionate objections to nuclear power plants. I oppose nuclear power plants for the additional reason that there are better alternatives as discussed below, and because nuclear power plants may be attacked by terrorists.

New interest in nuclear power is increasing. President Obama wants a nuclear power plant in Georgia. Presumably he did that because he has long been committed to reduction of gases that would increase global warming, and Georgia was the only state that would accept a nuclear reactor.

The Wall Street Journal dated February 22, 2010 stated that “General Atomics will launch a program to develop a new kind of small commercial nuclear reactor that could run on spent fuel from big reactors.” The kind of reactor that General Atomics is building is highly desirable. It can run on spent fuel from big reactors and greatly reduce spent fuel that either must be stored or could be used to make atomic bombs.

There are really only two fundamentally different types of nuclear power plants: slow neutron power plants and fast neutron power plants, according to Scientific American. What is new is only new names for them to fool the uninformed into thinking there is something predominantly new.

Nuclear power plants split atoms in a chain reaction producing heat that makes steam that runs a generator that makes electricity. Uranium has two isotopes, U235 and U238. Slow neutron reactors split uranium atoms, create heat, and convert U238 to plutonium that remains in the nuclear waste. It is plutonium in waste that supplies the energy in fast neutron reactors but also it can be used to make atomic bombs. For detailed information on nuclear power plants and other sources of energy, go to www.whatcomwatch.org and search for “Our Long Term Energy Future” by Al Hanners.

For those of you who hate anything nuclear and oppose nuclear power plants in any form, I suggest you have Plan B, which is what to do if and when the USA builds nuclear power plants. Run them safely. My oldest brother, Harvey, was sent by his company to inspect a nuclear power plant in a number of foreign countries. He was appalled by how poorly the trained staff was. He liked to tell the story about when he asked what should be done when something went wrong. The answer was, “Push the button.” He thought they should know what to do if that didn’t solve the problem.

I don’t think we can trust the company running the plants. We should protect whistle blowers and allow qualified private organizations to inspect them. The book, “The Silent Bomb” by Peter T. Faulkner, probably now out of print but possibly still around in libraries, reports a lot of interesting errors.

It is fundamental for us to get as much energy as possible from sustainable sources because importation from foreign sources gives us a negative foreign trade balance that is threatening the use of the U.S. dollar as world standard. Moreover, keeping jobs at home would greatly benefit our country.

I am disappointed that President Obama did not urge more use of solar and wind energy. The media recently stated that Bellingham is doing well with solar power. And that is fine, but solar panels almost entirely on single-family houses would be wholly inadequate for a large city and to supply electricity for electric bicycles and cars. We should be aware that improper sources of electricity for electric cars could have the unintended consequence that it would increase green house gas, not decrease it if electricity comes from the coal fired power plants.

Originally, Puget Sound Energy got its electricity from water-powered dams. But as population increased, that was not enough and electricity from coal-fired power plants was added. A while ago I saw an all-electric car hooked up to a Puget Sound Energy electric line. There should be a grace period, but very soon charging car batteries from coal-fired plants should be avoided.

As we need extensive use of wind and solar power for electric bicycles and electric cars, the U.S. government should now determine areas that are suitable and could be reserved for such use. No doubt there will be objections from the local population. That is why such work should start now so sites would already be chosen when contracting is ready to begin.

Wind power, for example, can be dangerous to birds. Hence, towers for wind power should not be built in flyways for migrating birds. However, 300-foot wind power towers should be adequate for birds in other areas.

My niece, Joann Goodlaxson, lives in Wisconsin near a marsh, the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge. There also is a wind tower for making electricity not far away. She says the wind tower does not affect birds, of which there are many, especially Canada geese. But the wind tower is dangerous for bats that are nocturnal and catch insects by echolocation. Swallows also catch insects, but bats catch many more. Information from the Horicon National Wildlife Refuge suggests that public concerns about wind tower danger to birds may be overrated, and danger to bats overlooked.Yes, I know that birds are cuter, but bats are useful.

A common criticism of solar and wind power is lack of energy at night. Yes, the wind often does go down with the sun. Here are some renewable night energy sources:

Thermal power (heat of the earth especially near volcanoes): Mirrors focused on a container of common salt, which is said to retain heat better than most other substances. I don’t know that method has been successful.

Hydrogen: Produced from water by use of electricity from daytime solar power, and then used as energy source at night.

Electricity can be transmitted a long distance without much loss of energy by using a high frequency current.

There is a lot of coal in the USA, but it is the dirtiest of any material burned to make power. It is bad for health and it puts much carbon dioxide in the air, promoting global warming. Most coals contain sulfur and mercury that are released into the atmosphere and are bad.

Now there is a proposal for so-called “clean coal.” Exhaust gases from a coal power plant would be put down abandoned oil wells and sealed tight. But unfortunately the best places for coal-fired electrical plants near such wells are very few. To reduce costs, we are likely to see coal-fired power plants with exhaust gases put underground in geologically inappropriate places and those gases will get back into the atmosphere. Who would measure how much gas escaped and who would pay for it? And a single test case would not solve the problem because local geology underground differs from place to place.

It is well known that mercury is released into the atmosphere from burning coal. According to The Wall Street Journal, a company in Toronto, Canada is extracting uranium from coal ashes and it has a contract promoting extraction of uranium from coal ashes in China. Uranium from that process may be cheaper than mining uranium. As has been said, “There is no clean coal!” Not yet and not soon.

More than a month ago, disaster hit an oil-drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico and a number of coal miners in West Virginia were killed because the company did not obey the United States Regulations. A few weeks ago, I watched the program “This Week on Television.” The consensus was that there should be U.S. safety regulators for oil rigs drilling offshore. I find that an excellent idea and I think that it will happen. §