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Five Myths about Nuclear Power
Executive Summary
Van Snyder - van.snyder@sbcglobal.net
Only inherently-safe economical fast-neutron
nuclear reactors can destroy nuclear waste and consume all fissionable
materials in used fuel and decommissioned weapons.
- It's not safe (yes it is): Nuclear power is the safest-ever way
to make electricity by a very wide margin: 46 deaths in the entire
worldwide six-decade history, all at Chernobyl - a flawed
design that will never be repeated. Although no municipal reactor
outside the Soviet Union ever caused a fatality or disease, Argonne
National Laboratory believed even safer designs than the best in
service were possible. All loose ends concerning nuclear power were
tied up in a single reactor and fuel processing system, called
Integral Fast Reactor, or IFR, that was demonstrated to an
invited international audience in 1986 to be inherently safe. The
Clinton administration canceled the project in 1994 when it was an
inch from completion, at more cost than completing it. Clinton
pandered ``I know; it's a symbol."
- No one knows what to do about waste (yes we do): Used municipal
reactor fuel, currently called nuclear waste, is sufficiently
radiotoxic that it must be isolated from humanity for 300,000 years
if nothing else is done. It consists of 5% fission products and 95%
unused fuel. The unused fuel is the part that needs special
custody. 9% of fission products require isolation for only 300
years, and the rest are less radiotoxic than uranium ore before ten
years. Argonne National Laboratory designed a fuel processing
system called ``pyroelectric refining'' that is smaller, simpler,
less expensive, and more effective than systems currently in
service. It was used with the IFR prototype to separate fission
products from unused fuel. The reactor consumed unused fuel. IFR
could effectively destroy nuclear waste and nothing else can.
- It's too expensive (no it isn't): A 2009 MIT study concluded
that municipal reactors could be built for $4 per watt and produce
electricity for 6¢ per kilowatt hour (kWh). The Diablo Canyon
Nuclear Generating Station produces electricity for 5¢ per
kWh. The Palo Verde station was constructed for $1.79 per watt and
produces electricity for 4.3¢ per kWh. A GE/Hitachi consortium
estimated modular reactors based on the IFR design, called S-PRISM,
could be built for $1-2 per watt, and would produce electricity for
4-6¢ per kWh. Municipal reactors' capacity factors are greater
than 90%. Solar panels cost $1.80 per peak watt, but have an
average capacity factor of 15%, so the capital cost is $12 per
average watt. Amortized over 25 years at 5% discount rate, and
deducting the four-plus year energy payback period, this is
11.7¢ per kWh. Storage adds 30-40¢ per kWh. Continuous
operation at constant power requires doubled panel capacity (half
for daytime use, half to charge the batteries), bringing the total
to 50-60¢ per kWh. Operations, recycling, and grid changes to
exploit diffuse sources add more cost. Wind is less expensive but
could not contribute more than about 15% of all energy. Hydro
contributes 7% of electricity. No other sources except coal and
gas can contribute enough to be relevant. Wind and solar cannot
destroy nuclear waste.
- It leads to weapons proliferation (no it doesn't): Weapons
proliferation is a red herring. No country's nuclear power stations
or fuel reprocessing affect any other country's desires, decisions,
or ability to acquire nuclear weapons. On-site reprocessing implies
very few opportunities for diversion or theft. Plutonium in used
fuel in an IFR-type system is in a highly-radioactive and therefore
easily monitored state. Advanced industrial economies already have
nuclear weapons, or have the means to make them much more
effectively than from used municipal reactor fuel, which contains
no weapons-ready material. Nuclear waste is the most difficult
substance from which to make weapons. Only fast-neutron reactors
such as IFR can consume all fissionable materials in used fuel and
decommissioned weapons.
- There isn't enough uranium (there's plenty): The Australian
Uranium Association estimated enough uranium could be economically
extracted at today's prices to supply the entire world's current
electricity demand for 1,200 years. The situation isn't nearly so
bleak. Today's reactors use 0.6% of energy immanent in uranium, but
IFR-based designs would extract 99%. The contribution of uranium
prices to delivered cost of electricity would be the same as in
today's reactors (0.001¢ per kWh) if uranium prices increased
167 fold, making it economically viable to extract from much
lower-quality ores, or from seawater where there is estimated to be
1,000 times more uranium than could be extracted from land.
Uranium is an effectively inexhaustible energy resource. The
United States has 80,000 metric tonnes of used nuclear reactor fuel,
and 700,000 tonnes of depleted uranium. In IFR-type reactors this
could power an all-electric 1,700 gigawatt American economy for 450
years, without mining, milling, refining, or enriching any new
uranium, thereby effectively destroying all nuclear waste.
Next: Other considerations
Van Snyder
2017-07-24