Nuclear and NIMBY

A conversation about electricity arose this morning at the breakfast table, and primarily about sources of electricity that don't pollute as much as the common coal plant does. It's not hard to list sources that don't pollute (solar, wind, hydro, nuclear), but they all have their drawbacks. Solar panels are great, but they're not very efficient, the chemicals and amount of energy required to produce them is very decidedly not eco-friendly, and panels tend to lose their efficiency after 50 years or so. Wind is much more efficient but is not practical unless there's consistently a breeze. Hydro is wonderfully efficient, but supplying it large-scale only works for cities near a large river with a sudden elevation change (not to mention that making an artificial elevation change, e.g., with a dam is tremendously EXTREMELY devastating to the local ecology). You might say that of the sources I've listed nuclear is the scariest option, but I suggest it's actually the best.

Before you get all defensive, here are some things you might not know about a nuclear power plant.

1. It's clean. A nuclear power plant produces ZERO carbon emissions; one worker driving to the plant in a single day will emit more greenhouse gas than the plant will in its entire operation.
   
2. It's contained. The plant's reactor and all its radioactive stuff (steam and water) are contained in a concrete vessel. That means if anything goes wrong, like a meltdown or massive escape of radiation from the reactor, it doesn't get out. (By the way, the plant at Chernobyl didn't have this containment, so when the reactor exploded there was nothing to contain the radiation. In order to slow down the environmental impact they hastily built a containment sarcophagus, unfortunately too late for that plant and those who lived near it.)
   
3. It's controllable. Control rods in the core can be adjusted to slow the rate of the reaction.
4. It's automatic. The entire process of producing electricity is automated and run by computers, including the position of the aforementioned control rods, pressure valves, water levels, and everything else. If the temperature gets too high too fast the reactor will "scram," very quickly inserting all the control rods to shut it down in a matter in seconds. Like a passenger jet (which is much more automated than most people realize), the control systems are at least doubly redudandant, meaning that if one system fails there's at least one more system that backs it up.
5. It's not radioactive. As mentioned above the entire radioactive loop is contained. Ironically, a coal power plant will release more radiation than a nuclear plant. Mixed in with the coal are radioactive isotopes of carbon and other elements, and as they burn they are released into the air. Not a lot, but still more than a nuclear plant.
   

So with that out of the way, the biggest concern is the transportation and storage of the spent nuclear fuel. It's one of those things that poses no risk as long as it's done carefully, and a national repository has been selected for Yucca Mountain in Nevada. It's an old nuclear testing facility that provides miles of rock shielding in every direction, dozens of miles from anywhere, and is perfect for the task. It was supposed to begin accepting spent fuel in January 1998, but local opposition and Congressional foot-dragging has pushed that date more than two decades to September 2020. In the meantime, the spent fuel is generally stored at the power plant in a specially designed and thoroughly safe (though small) storage facility.

And what about accidents, like Three Mile Island (TMI) and Chernobyl? Well here's a brief summary. The fiasco at Chernobyl occurred during a scheduled test, and technicians had the reactor operating outside of its safe operation guidelines, with fewer than the permitted number of control rods and below the minimum power generating level. Those two things combined to be a big uh-oh, and by the time people realized what was happening it was too late. The lack of containment mentioned above caused this to be a devastating event for the surrounding area. This only affected one of the reactors on site, and the three other reactors are still producing electricity.

At TMI, there was a failure in the cooling system, causing the temperature to rise and pressure to build. In the investigation, the NRC said it didn't need to know the cause of the original failure, since it could have been corrected at many points during the incident. The primary cause of an incident was a combination of the plant not having the proper indicators and plant operators interpreting the indicators that were there incorrectly (note that all similar reactors have been retrofitted with appropriate equipment). The reactor involved has been offline ever since, but the other reactor at TMI is still producing electricity. At both Chernobyl and TMI, the accidents were entirely preventable if operators had reacted properly.

By the way all the claims I've made here are well-known throughout the nuclear industry and/or easily findable on the net, and you're welcome to verify everything I've said here. I'm just too lazy to cite.